Author Archives: James Scott Bell

About James Scott Bell

International Thriller Writers Award winner, #1 bestselling author of THRILLERS and BOOKS ON WRITING. Subscribe to JSB's NEWSLETTER.

What Writers Can Learn From The Fugitive

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

The Fugitive (1993) is one of my all-time favorite thrillers, both to watch and to teach. So many great lessons can be drawn from it. I’ll share a few with you today.

Based on the hit TV show from the 1960s, it’s the story of respected surgeon Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford), who comes home one night to find his wife dying at the hands (or rather, hand) of a one-armed man. Kimble fights with him, but the man gets away. Kimble tries to save his wife, to no avail. He is convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. He escapes. A crack team led by Deputy U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) sets out to track him down.

The story question: Can Kimble keep ahead of the law long enough to prove his innocence by finding the one-armed man?

Structure

At a little over two hours, the movie is a terrific study in the power of structure. The film would not be nearly as engaging if it did not hit the right signposts at the right time.

Thus, we get the opening disturbance in the very first shot: a TV reporter stands outside the Kimble home, where the police are investigating the death of Kimble’s wife. Kimble is taken to the police station and questioned by two detectives. He thinks it’s as a grieving husband, but soon it dawns on him that they consider him the chief suspect.

Yeah, I’d be disturbed, too.

Lesson: Start your story by striking a match, not by laying out the wood. (h/t John le Carré.) You have plenty of time for backstory later. Readers will happily wait for fill-in material if they’re caught up in immediate trouble.

On we go through Act 1: Kimble is convicted, sentenced, put on a prison bus. A couple of convicts stage an uprising, the driver is shot, a guard is stabbed, the bus tumbles off the road and onto railroad tracks…just as a train comes right for it!

This is one great action sequence. The convicts and one guard get the heck out of the bus. But Kimble stays behind to help the wounded guard, gets him out a window, and jumps one second before the train hits the bus. That would be enough for most writers, but not for screenwriters Jeb Stuart and David Twohy. Half the derailed train breaks off and comes right at the fleeing Kimble! He barely avoids being crushed.

Lesson: When you have a great action sequence, or suspenseful scene, stretch the tension as far as you can. Ask: What else could go wrong? What could make things worse?

At the crash site, while local law enforcement is botching things, Deputy U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard arrives with his crack team. He figures out what’s going on, orders roadblocks, and announces, “Your fugitive’s name is Dr. Richard Kimble. Go get him.”

Boom! We are ¼ of the way into the film, and the Doorway of No Return has just slammed shut. Kimble cannot go back to his ordinary life. He must face the “dark forest” (almost literally) at the heart of myth. Survive or be killed.

Lesson: In a novel, my view is that the Doorway should happen no later than the 1/5 mark. Otherwise, things start to drag.

Solid structure is a beautiful thing. Far from being a hindrance, it is the most powerful way to share the story in your head and heart with an audience. See: “Story and Structure in Love.”

The Mirror Moment

Act 2, of course, is a series of rising action, mostly of Kimble barely keeping escaping his pursuers. At the exact halfway point, where we would expect to find it, is the Mirror Moment.

(If this term is unfamiliar to you, I’ve written a book about it. But lest you think I’m only interested in money (I am interested in it, just not only interested in it) you can check out a couple of TKZ posts here and here.)

As I explain in my book, there are two types of mirror moments: 1. The character looks at himself and asks questions like, “Who am I? What have I become? Am I going to stay this way?” It’s an internal gaze. 2. The character looks at his situation and thinks, “I’m probably going to die. There’s no way I can survive this.” This is an external look.

The second kind is what we have in The Fugitive. In the middle of the film Kimble has rented a basement room from a Polish woman. He’s using it as a base of operations to sneak into Cook County hospital. He wants to access the records of the prosthetics wing to get a list of patients with artificial arms.

In the mirror scene, Kimble is awaked from slumber by the sound of police swarming the house. Kimble looks for a way to escape, but there is none. He’s done for!

Only it turns out the cops are there to nab the Polish woman’s drug-dealing son.

As the police lead him away, Kimble has a small breakdown. He’s thinking, “I can’t possibly win against these odds. I’m as good as dead.”

Lesson: No matter how you write, via outline, winging it, or something in between, take some time early in the process to brainstorm possible mirror moments, of both varieties. Push yourself past the familiar. Inevitably, one of them will feel just right. It will become your guiding light for the entire novel.

To get us into Act 3, we need a Second Doorway. This is either a setback or crisis, or major clue/discovery. It should happen by the ¾ mark, and in The Fugitive it does. I won’t give the spoiler here, but suffice to say it’s the major clue implicating the villain. Now the Final Battle becomes inevitable.

Pet the Dog

This is such a great way to increase the audience bond with the hero. It’s a scene or sequence in Act 2 where the hero takes time to help someone more vulnerable than he, even at the cost of making his situation worse. The Fugitive has one of the best examples you’ll ever see.

Kimble is disguised as a hospital custodian. He’s accessed the prosthetics records he needed. As he’s leaving he walks along the trauma floor. All sorts of triage patients being tended to. He notices a little boy groaning on a gurney. A doctor orders a nurse to check on the boy. The nurse gives him a cursory look. Kimble is aghast. He knows there’s something wrong here.

The doctor reappears and asks Kimble to help out by taking the boy to an observation room. Kimble wheels him away, checking out the X-ray as he goes. He asks the lad a few questions about where it hurts, then changes the orders and gets the boy to an operating room for immediate attention.

That’s a success, but in a thriller any success should be followed by some worse trouble.

Turns out the doctor saw Kimble look at the film, and confronts him as he’s walking out. She rips off his fake ID and calls for security. More trouble! (This sequence has a favorite little moment. As Kimble is rushing down the stairs to get away, he brushes past someone coming up. He looks back and says, “Excuse me.” Kimble is so fundamentally decent he apologizes even as he’s running for his life!)

Lesson: Create a character the hero can help, even in the midst of all his troubles (e.g., Rue in The Hunger Games). The deepening bond this creates with the reader is so worth it.

Character

The Fugitive features a protagonist and antagonist who are both sympathetic. Kimble, of course, is a devoted husband wrongly convicted of murder. Sam Gerard is a great lawman who doggedly pursues justice.

Lesson: You don’t need a traditional villain to carry your thriller. In The Fugitive, it’s two good men with agendas in direct conflict. The true villain reveal is at the end.

Dialogue

Many of the great lines in the movie were actually improvised. The most famous is from the spillway scene. Kimble has a gun on Gerard. Kimble says, “I didn’t kill my wife!” And Gerard says, “I don’t care!” Tommy Lee Jones came up with that.

Another perfect line not in the script is just after the train derailment. Another prisoner, Copeland, a stone-cold killer, helps Kimble to his feet. He says to Kimble, “Now you listen. I don’t give a damn which way you go. Just don’t follow me. You got that?”

As he’s pulling away Kimble says, “Hey Copeland.” Copeland turns around. Kimble says, “Be good.” Another mark of his decency, like when he said, “Excuse me.”

Love it! You can get a bestselling book on the subject, but the gist is simple:

Lesson: Great dialogue is the fastest way to improve any manuscript.

Over to you for discussion. And as a bonus for reading all the way to the end of this lengthy post, let me mention that Romeo’s Way, the novel that won the International Thriller Writers Award, is FREE, today only. Grab it here.

How to Increase Your Productivity When You Don’t Feel Productive

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Sometimes it’s just plain hard to write. Like when you’re sick. Or feeling drained from a job. I recently went through a season of this, a mix of some medical stuff and general lethargy. For the first time in 25 years, I found myself missing my weekly quota disturbingly often.

It made me mad. I’ve always tried to stay in the tradition of the great pulp writers, who had to produce or they wouldn’t eat.

Erle Stanley Garner routinely wrote a million words a year.

John D. MacDonald was known as the writer with the red-hot typewriter.

My keyboard was getting cold. So I had to go back and re-establish some disciplines. Here they are:

  1. Plan the next day’s writing the night before

At night, when I’m always too spent to produce more, I take just a few minutes to think about what I’ll write tomorrow. Hemingway famously said he’d leave off writing midsentence, so he could take off running the next day.

So I think about the scene I’m going to write next. I give it some structure brainstorming: Objective, Obstacles, Outcome.

Then I’ll write one sentence. Just one. And that’s where I start when morning comes. Which brings me to tip #2:

  1. Sleep

We all know that good, restorative sleep makes a big difference in our daily lives. We also know sleep problems are rife, especially in the anxiety-inducing world we live in.

That’s why there’s a boom in sleep products. The most common ingredient is melatonin. I like to manage my melatonin naturally. I try to get ten to fifteen minutes of sunlight between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. (good for Vitamin D, too). I also try to keep off the blue light of phone and computer and TV screens before bed. If I do some computer or watch some TV, I wear yellow-tint glasses. This renders color movies or shows a bit, well, yellowish. But I can live—and sleep—with that.

Now here’s JSB’s secret tip for a good night’s sleep: Quercetin. I pop an 800mg tab half an hour before I hit the pillow. I no longer wake up in the middle of the night.

And here is an added benefit: Quercetin is an ionophore. That means it’s a molecule that helps your cells absorb good things, like zinc. Another ionophore is hydroxychloroquine. Remember the suppression of HCQ at the beginning of Covid? Don’t get me started on the political and medical malpractice of that. HCQ, like quercetien, helps the cells absorb zinc which, along with D, is the Praetorian Guard of the immune system.

Thus the adage “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Apples are a great source of quercetin. That’s why all those apple-egg-meat eating farmers never got sick.

  1. Write first thing in the morning

Well, second thing. First thing is make the coffee. Mrs. B and I spend devotional time together, so I get up earlier and knock out a Nifty 250 (or 350 if I’m going good) before she joins me in the living room. I sometimes do this on my laptop. I used to do it on my beloved AlphaSmart. But Alphie is showing his age lately, so I invested in a very cool Macally wireless keyboard that has a slot for your phone or tablet. I write my words in Google Docs.

Getting a 250 or 350 jump on the day makes hitting the quota so much easier.

I’ll sometimes do some morning pages to get the engine started. This often results in a new idea for a story. [Note: I don’t count morning pages in my quota, unless I end up using some of them in a project.]

  1. Sprint

I look at 250 word chunks as “writing sprints.” Go fast. Catch my breath. Then sprint some more.

Periodically, I stand and move around, so I’m not on my butt for more than a half hour at a time.

  1. Lightly edit the previous day’s writing

I emphasize the word lightly. I’m not going to labor over things, but just go over the pages to make obvious changes. More often than not, I add new words (which counts toward my quota).

  1. More than one project

I usually have at least two projects going. My novel is primary, and if I’m going good I push through to the quota. But, like Asimov, if I get to a cul-de-sac I jump over to another project—usually a short story or a piece of nonfiction—and work on that for awhile.

Following this plan, I find myself more easily hitting my daily quota of 1k. I finished typing this at 11:07 a.m. Friday, and my word count is 1754. Now I can look forward to lunch. Hawaiian pizza, anyone? Ha!

What about you? What do you do to stay productive, even if you’re not feeling like it?

Beginnings Are Easy. Endings Are Hard.

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Back when Lost became a TV phenomenon, I watched the first season and was just as hooked as everybody else. Man! Each episode ended with an inexplicable and shocking mystery, and I had to keep watching.

A group of my writing friends were also caught up, posting how fabulous this all was.

But then came the second season, and I posted a warning. “It’s easy to come up with a cliffhanger if you don’t have to explain it. The day of reckoning is coming. I think you’re going to be massively disappointed.”

“Bah,” came the answers. “The show is great!”

“Just wait,” I said.

“Bah!”

Well, the day of reckoning finally came. I was on Twitter while the final episode was showing. It was a madhouse of frustration and even rage, with an occasional defense that got ratioed badly.

Some time after this, leaked documents and private conversations with the writers came out. One of the writers was asked by his friend, “How are you going to pay all this stuff off?” And the writer answered, “We’re not. We literally just think of the weirdest most f****** up thing and write it and we’re never going to pay it off.”

Mission accomplished.

But for those of us who write mysteries and thrillers we hope will sell and make fans, that’s not how we roll. We all want a satisfying, resonant ending.

I can write opening chapters all day long that’ll grab you by the lapels and get you flipping to Chapters 2, 3 and beyond. But wrapping up a twisty plot in a way that is both unpredictable and convincing? That takes some work.

That’s why, before I start writing, I have to know who the bad guy is, his motive, and his secrets. It takes imagination and brainstorming. That’s why one of the greatest plotters of the pulp era, Erle Stanley Gardner, spent hours walking around, talking to himself, working on what he called “the murderer’s ladder” before he wrote one word of a new story.

The murderer’s ladder was Gardner’s way of showing the step-by-step machinations of the villain, from the initial act of treachery (usually murder) through the first attempts at cover up, and then progressive steps to keep from getting caught.

The worth of this pre-work is that all of the villain’s steps are “off screen” in what I call the shadow story. Knowing the shadow story is the key to plotting mystery and suspense. You know what the villain is planning (the reader does not) and that spills into the present story in the form of red herrings and various ways the villain attempts to evade, frustrate, or even kill the hero.

In working out the murderer’s ladder, you avoid having to rely on a contrived ending to wrap things up.

Plus, as you outline (or just starts writing, if that’s what floats your boat), the plot starts to unfold almost automatically. I say almost because your main task now is to avoid predictability. When you know the shadow story, that’s easy. You can pause at each step and ask yourself: What is the best off screen move the villain can make? Also, ask yourself what the typical reader would expect to happen next—and then do something different. If you work off the shadow story, the ending will ultimately make sense.

Of course, your ending is subject to change without notice. Sometimes a new twist ending occurs to you as you close in on the final pages. That happened to me with Romeo’s Town. The nice thing was, the steps on the murderer’s ladder were the same. All I had to do was tweak them a bit.

Yes, endings are harder than beginnings. They’re also more important, because that’s the last impression you make on the reader. It’s what sells, in Mickey Spillane’s axiom, your next book.

The ending of this post is brought to you by The Last Fifty Pages: The Art and Craft of Unforgettable Endings.

Discuss!

Little Writing Pests

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

For the last few years in L.A. we’ve been invaded by a nettlesome pest called the No-See-Um. That’s because, as the name implies, they’re hard to see. Of the family ceratopogonidae, they are tiny flying demons who bite and suck your blood.

Actually, it’s the femme fatale of species who do the biting, leaving itchy welts. The male is content to seek nectar from flowers, then lounge in a hammock with a good book. The females, on the other hand, need protein for their eggs, and seek it in our precious bodily fluid. As one site explains, “Their mouthparts are well-developed with cutting teeth on elongated mandibles in the proboscis…The thorax extends slightly over the head, and the abdomen is nine-segmented and tapered at the end.”

I mean, ick, amirite?

When summer rolls around, these creatures come out in force, like hormonal high schoolers at Zuma Beach. I don’t know if they’ve replaced the larger mosquito, but I haven’t seen the latter lately.

When the weather’s warm, I like to do morning typing outside, with a nice cup of joe at my side. But if I’m not protected in some way, like long sleeves, my skin becomes an epidermal Home Town Buffet for these airborne spawn of Hell. Indeed, I’m typing this in my backyard, and these devilish creepies are buzzing around me. It seems that when I breathe out, the CO2 attracts them, and they become ravenous for a meal.

Mrs. B has concocted a peppermint essential oil mix that we spread on our exposed skin. That frustrates the little buggers. They’re really fast, though. I try to swat them, usually to no avail. But dang it all, this is my yard, and I will not concede it to them!

You know what else? They’re small enough to get through normal screens. So when we have our windows open, a few manage to get inside our house. This has to be a bio-plot. Were they developed in some lab and unleashed upon the world? (Like that ever happens.)

Anyway, so as not to waste this unnerving experience, I extend to you a writing metaphor. There are some little pests that pop up and fly around the page, such as:

Annoying Adverbs

Elmore Leonard said, “Never use an adverb to modify the verb ‘said’ . . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange.”

While I’m not an absolutist on this, I think the use of adverbs should be as rare as a solar eclipse. Therefore, cut as many as possible. You can use the “end of word” Find feature in Word for this (see Terry’s explanation of that function).

Look always for a good, strong verb. Instead of He walked softly across the room use He padded across the room.

Swarming Semicolons

We’ve had this discussion before. I haven’t changed my opinion: “The semi-colon is a burp, a hiccup. It’s a drunk staggering out of the saloon at 2 a.m., grabbing your lapels on the way and asking you to listen to one more story.”

In nonfiction, the semicolon serves a good purpose. It ties thoughts together. You use them to make an argument and add evidence. But fiction is not an argument (unless your name is Ayn Rand). It’s an emotional ride, and semicolons are speed bumps. Eliminate them. Use a clean em dash or period instead.

Misplaced Attributions

I see this all the time in manuscripts by new writers. In dialogue, the attribution is often in the wrong place. The simple rule (yes, rule) is this: put the attribution after the first complete clause, or in front of the sentence. Not this:

“I don’t think we should case the joint. We should just go in with guns blasting. Then we can take the money and get out. Shock and awe, right?” said Maxwell.

This:

“I don’t think we should case the joint,” Maxwell said. “We should just go in with guns blasting. Then we can take the money and get out. Shock and awe, right?”

Or:

Maxwell said, “I don’t think we should case the joint. We should just go in with guns blasting. Then we can take the money and get out. Shock and awe, right?”

Or an action beat:

Maxwell slapped the table. “I don’t think we should case the joint. We should just go in with guns blasting. Then we can take the money and get out. Shock and awe, right?”

Elliptical Errors

And speaking of dialogue, you don’t use ellipses for interruptions. Not this:

“I don’t think…”

“Shut up, Max!”

Our friend the em dash is for interruptions:

“I don’t think—”

“Shut up, Max!”

Use ellipses for a voice trailing off.

“I don’t think…” Maxwell shook his head.

Apostrophe Befuddlement

It’s its when it’s possessive, and it’s when it’s “it is.”

Clear?

It’s not that hard! Use it’s only when you’re putting it and is together. The apostrophe is telling us there’s a letter missing. Every other time, use its. People get this wrong all the time because everywhere else the apostrophe is used to denote possession.

Which brings us to another bit of confusion. When should you use the possessive ’s for a name ending in s?

Is it: That’s James’ car or That’s James’s car?

The leading style guides recommend the latter. My personal preference is to use ’s as well, except when it sounds odd. So I use Dickens’ instead of Dickens’s.

Of course, you can avoid the whole issue by not giving your characters names ending in s.

Okay I’m tired of repeated attempts to suck my blood, so I’ll go indoors now and leave it to you to talk about any other writing pests that bother you.  

Also, what’s the mosquito or no-see-um issue where you live? How do you handle it?

Writing Fiction That’s “Ripped From the Headlines”

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

The news is obviously a great place to find plot ideas. I used to clip news items from actual newspapers and toss them in an “idea box.” When getting ready to develop a new novel, I’d go through the box looking for something that still grabbed me and could be the basis of a story, or at least provide an interesting subplot.

An example is my latest Mike Romeo thriller, Romeo’s Justice (which, as it happens, launches today, at the deal price of just $1.99. What a coincidence!)

For Romeo’s Justice I riffed off a story I read about the mining of lithium in California’s Salton Sea. That’s obviously timely, as electric vehicles (EVs) are being…encouraged…and lithium—lots and lots of lithium—is needed for manufacturing EV batteries. Thus, there is a rush for “white gold” and the Salton Sea is the new Sutter’s Mill. This provided both a setting and a subplot for my novel.

That’s one way to use the news—find an issue of current moment and either weave it into the narrative or make it the foundation for the main plot. Goodness knows, there are plenty of issues to choose from these days, but a word of caution is in order. A novel is not a sermon, extended rant, or thinly-disguised jeremiad. It is not 80k words worth of Twitterspeak (or should I say Xtalk?).

You’ve got to play fair with the characters. You have a strong opinion, fine, but make sure it is dramatized and not hammered. Give characters with the opposing view a justification (even if it’s just in their own minds) for what they are doing. Otherwise, a good portion of your potential readership will likely skip your other books. If they want to get yelled at they can doomscroll on X for free.

There’s another way to use headline ripping, and that’s taking an actual event and using it as the main plot. Now you’re dealing with real people, and the primary caution here is defamation.

Now, libel cases are notoriously difficult to sustain, especially in the fiction context. Though not impossible. There was the case some years ago of a novel called The Red Hat Club in which the author based a character on her (former) friend. The character in the novel is “an out-of-control alcoholic, who drinks during flights. She has sex with ‘stud puppies’ and married men, dresses provocatively, acts rude and crude, and is labeled as a ‘right wing reactionary’ and atheist with an awful temper.”

The ex-friend was not happy about this. She sued, and since she was not a “public figure” (thus bearing a more favorable burden of proof) she won.

Blue-footed booby

And so, while libel cases against novelists are as rare as the blue-footed booby, there are a few simple things you should do just to be safe.

Of course, put in the standard disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

But also change key facts. For example, if the real person is a man, consider making the character a woman. If he’s a lawyer, you could make him an investment banker. If the event happened in New York, set it in Los Angeles.

At the very least, change the name, for goodness’ sake. The TV show Law & Order uses real events all the time. They always run their disclaimer, then usually do an episode based on a real crime. They change things around, but one time they got lazy. In a story with the headline Was a Law & Order Episode Ripped Too Closely From the Headlines? the Hollywood Reporter documented an episode where a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge accepts cash bribes from a bald, Indian-American lawyer named Ravi Patel.

A bald, Indian-American lawyer named Ravi Batra sued the show’s creator, Dick Wolf. “In real life, Batra had close connections with a New York politician who allegedly accepted bribes and was said to have influence over a a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge.”

Defendant Wolf moved for summary judgment (a dismissal of the suit as a matter of law). But a judge denied the motion, holding that there was “a reasonable likelihood that the ordinary viewer, unacquainted with Batra personally, could understand Patel’s corruption to be the truth about Batra.”

I don’t know what ultimately happened to the case; I suspect it was settled shortly after this. But the show could easily have changed the first name of the character. Or made him a Greek-American named Xander Papadopoulos. It was careless not to.

So remember the two Ds when riffing from headlines: Disclaimer and Differences. Do that and you’re golden. (Memoir writing is another kettle of carp. See this article over on Jane Friedman’s site.)

Speaking of headlines, I can’t resist sharing a few of my favorites, gathered over the years. These are real:

Milk Drinkers Turn to Powder

Iraqi Head Seeks Arms

Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Experts Say

Include Your Children When Baking Cookies

Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim

Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge

Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant

Complaints About NBA Referees Turning Ugly

Do you use the news for inspiration? Or just frustration?

And don’t forget:

Do You Bleed on the Page?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

One of the more ubiquitous quotes about writing out there, almost always attributed to Hemingway, is: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

Great quote, eh? Only problem is, Hemingway never said it, never wrote it, and probably never even thought it.

So why is he considered the source? Because some quote aggregator back in the 1970s thought it sounded like something Hemingway would say. You know, the running-with-the-bulls guy, the likes-to-box guy. He’d be all about blood.

Not.

Later, the line was given to him in a mediocre TV movie called Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012). So now you see it almost daily on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, along with another thing Hemingway never said: “Write drunk. Edit sober.” I’m starting to feel like that Britney Spears guy. “Leave Ernest Hemingway alone!!!!”

The real source for the blood quote comes down to a choice between two writers: Paul Gallico (author of The Poseidon Adventure) and the great sports columnist Red Smith. In a 1946 book, Confessions of a Story Writer, Gallico wrote:

It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader. If you do not believe in the characters or the story you are doing at that moment with all your mind, strength, and will, if you don’t feel joy and excitement while writing it, then you’re wasting good white paper, even if it sells, because there are other ways in which a writer can bring in the rent money besides writing bad or phony stories.

This is good advice. You can write competent fiction without feeling. Heck, that’s what AI does. But you won’t get that deep connection with the readers—and turn them into fans—unless you pour your own heart’s blood into the characters and your prose.

Shortly after Gallico’s book came out, the widely-syndicated columnist Walter Winchell quoted Red Smith as saying, “You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.” It’s likely, then, that Winchell and/or Smith paraphrased Gallico.

Smith apparently liked the blood metaphor, for in a profile in 1961 in Time magazine, he was asked how hard it was to produce a sports column every day. “Writing a column is easy,” he replied. “You just sit at your typewriter until little drops of blood appear on your forehead.”

This has a different meaning than the “bleed on the page” quote. It’s an obvious reference to the agony of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:44). Smith was talking about the agony of having to come up with a fresh column idea every 24 hours (not easy!) and then write it in his singular style.

Putting these two sentiments together, I find it essential to feel something when I write a scene. Music helps. I have a playlist of various moods taken from movie soundtracks. I need an inner vibration to make a scene come alive.

And while I wouldn’t describe myself as “agonizing” (Proust-like) over my style, I do go over my words at least three times. There’s the daily editing of the previous day’s work; then the first read-through in hard copy; and a final polish. I pursue that “unobtrusive poetry” John D. MacDonald talked about. The effort, for me at least, is entirely worth it.

Mega-bestselling author John Green (Turtles All the Way Down) put it this way:

[W]riting is difficult for me. Sometimes it is difficult because I do not know what I want to say, but usually it is difficult because I know exactly what I want to say but what I want to say has not yet taken the shape of language. When I’m writing, I’m trying to translate ideas and feelings and wild abstractions into language, and that translation is complicated and challenging work. (But it is also — in moments, anyway — fun.)

It is indeed fun, and fully satisfying, to sit back and look at something you’ve written and think, “Ya know, that’s pretty darn good.” Maybe that’s what Hemingway meant when he (really) said, “For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.”

So…do you ever think of yourself as “bleeding” on the page? Should you?

Minor Characters to the Rescue

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Today’s post is brought to you by the new Mike Romeo thriller, Romeo’s Justice, now available for pre-order at the ridiculously low deal price of just $1.99. (Outside the U.S., go to your Kindle store and search for: B0CHMTRC6N)

Which brings me to the subject of minor characters (you’ll find out why in a moment).

First, let’s define terms. Though you’ll find variations on how fictional character types are defined, I’ll break it down this way: Main, Secondary, and Minor.

Main characters are those who are essential to the plot and usually appear in several scenes.

Secondary characters are supporting players who have a more limited, though sometimes crucial, role.

Minor characters are those who are necessary for a scene or two, and may only appear once, twice or a few times throughout.

For example, in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, the main characters are Sam Spade, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, Joel Cairo, and Casper Gutman. They recur throughout the book.

Effie Perrine, Sam Spade’s secretary, is a secondary character, who provides information and plot relief later in the story.

Wilmer Cook, Gutman’s enforcer, is a minor character, as is Tom Polhaus, Spade’s cop friend.

I call secondary and minor characters “spice.” They can add just the right touch of tasty flavor to a story. But if they’re bland or stereotypical, you’re wasting the ingredient.

So where do you start? By giving each one a tag (something physical) and a singular way of talking.

The Maltese Falcon is a masterclass in characterization. The following descriptions are for main characters, but I include them as examples of Hammett’s orchestration—making each character different in order to increase conflict.

Early on, Sam Spade gets a visit at his office from an odd little fellow named Joel Cairo.

Mr. Joel Cairo was a small-boned dark man of medium height. His hair was black and smooth and very glossy. His features were Levantine. A square-cut ruby, its sides paralleled by four baguette diamonds, gleamed against the deep green of his cravat. His black coat, cut tight to narrow shoulders, flared a little over slightly plump hips.

Cairo has a distinct way of speaking:

“May a stranger offer condolences for your partner’s unfortunate death?”

***

“Our conversations in private have not been such that I am anxious to continue them.”

Then we have the “fat man,” Casper Gutman, who—

was flabbily fat with bulbous pink cheeks and lips and chins and neck, with a great soft egg of a belly that was all his torso, and pendant cones for arms and legs. As he advanced to meet Spade all his bulbs rose and shook and fell separately with each step, in the manner of clustered soap-bubbles not yet released from the pipe through which they had been blown.

When he talks to Spade, he sounds like this:

“Now, sir, we’ll talk if you like. And I’ll tell you right out that I’m a man who likes talking to a man that likes to talk.”

***

“You’re the man for me, sir, a man cut along my own lines. No beating about the bush, but right to the point. ‘Will we talk about the black bird?’ We will. I like that, sir. I like that way of doing business. Let us talk about the black bird by all means…”

You get the idea. Physicality and speech pattern. Tags and dialogue. Even for minor characters. In Falcon, Wilmer Cook, the “gunsel,” plays a small but important role. Hammett describes him only as a “youth” wearing a “cap.” When he talks, he tries too hard to sound like a tough guy.

Dwight Frye as Wilmer Cook in the 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon

The boy raised his eyes to Spade’s mouth and spoke in the strained voice of one in physical pain: “Keep on riding me and you’re going to be picking iron out of your navel.”

Spade chuckled. “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter,” he said cheerfully. “Well, let’s go.”

And while we’re on the subject of minor characters, I want to talk about how they can save your bacon when you close in on the end of your book. This happened to me as I was finishing the aforementioned Romeo’s Justice. My plot was rolling along nicely, unfurling several threads of mystery and suspense, strategically woven into the plot according to my outline. But when I got to the end, there was one thread that was still dangling. I needed to clear this up for the reader. But how?

I made up a minor character to explain it.

But wait, didn’t I just say this was at the end? You can’t just bring in some character at the very end, out of the blue, to save your keister, can you?

Of course you can! All you have to do is work that character into an early scene or two, setting him up for the big reveal.

I thumbed through my hard copy of the first draft and located a place in Act I where I could intro the character. I ended up with a minor character who I’m sure is going to show up in a future book.

This is what’s fun about being an author. You create your world and your people, and you remain sovereign over the proceedings. You can go back and move things around as you see fit. And then you can put the book up for pre-order.

What’s your approach to creating minor characters?