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.

Don’t Leave Out the Good Stuff

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

It’s First Page Critique time. Here we go:

THE END OF THE SUMMER

TEN YEARS AGO

November. The rain started first thing that morning and Marc Newman listened to the fat drops splatter against the window panes. He sat at his desk, diddling with a pencil, watching the rain and ruminating. She was still on his mind. About nine-thirty the Sheriff and two deputies knocked on the front door. They were there to arrest him for murder. He had been expecting them for months.

He didn’t resist and didn’t say anything.

At the Sheriff’s office, Newman endured the fingerprinting, photographing his mug shot, and watching a deputy type up the arrest form. He was allowed to call his attorney, Harold deLuca.

That afternoon, he was taken from his cell to an interview room. A woman introduced herself as Assistant District Attorney Melonie Edgars.

He wondered why deLuca wasn’t there.  

She told Newman that he was being charged with the first degree murder of Lya Marie Reynolds. She wanted him to sign a paper indicating he understood his rights under Miranda v Arizona. He didn’t respond to her request.

“Mr. Newman, I’m here as a courtesy. We already have enough evidence on you to put in prison for the rest of your life. This is your chance to get your story on the record and that might help you during your trial. Tell me what happened on August 13th of this year.”

“I’d rather wait for my attorney to get here before I answer any of your questions.”

Edgars leaned back and sighed. “Guilty people always say that. Are you guilty of murder, Mr. Newman?”

He wanted to tell her to go screw herself but remained quiet instead.

“Did you know Lya Reynolds?”

He said nothing.

“She was only three weeks from her sixteenth birthday when you murdered her. Did you know that?   Her sweet sixteen. Turned out to be pretty bitter for her didn’t it.”

He looked away.

“Did you know she was pregnant when she was murdered?”

A tear rolled down Newman’s cheek. He didn’t try to wipe it away.

Edgars laid out several eight by ten glossy prints. “These were taken when we found her body. It was a vicious attack. Only someone who really hated her could have done this.   Look at them Mr. Newman. Look at what you did.”

“I . . . I, huh.” Newman gulped for air.   “I didn’t do this.”

“You’re a liar, Mr. Newman. And I can prove it.”

JSB: Writer, we have some work to do. Let’s roll up our sleeves.

Give Us the Good Stuff

There are two ways to render action on the page—scene and summary. A scene is showing us what’s happening in real time. Summary is telling us what happened.

In Stein on Writing, Sol Stein explains:

Narrative summary is the recounting of what happens offstage, out of the reader’s sight and hearing, a scene that is told rather than shown.

An immediate scene happens in front of the reader, is visible, and therefore filmable. That’s an important test. If you can’t film a scene, it is not immediate. Theatre, a truly durable art, consists almost entirely of immediate scenes.

Just as every form of writing that is expected to be read with pleasure moves away from abstraction, every form of pleasurable writing benefits from conveying as much as possible before the eye, onstage rather than offstage.

The first half of your submission is all summary. Summary does not grab or engage. In fact, it should only be used to transition from one scene to another. Let’s say a guy has to leave his house and drive to the office. Unless the character is going to get into an accident, get shot at, or find a snake in his car, just write: John stormed out of the house and drove to the office.

But when there’s real conflict, real purpose, do not summarize it. Here, you open with a fellow getting arrested, taken to the station, and booked. All that is fodder for suspense, tension, worry. But you can’t create any of that in summary form.

She told Newman that he was being charged with the first degree murder of Lya Marie Reynolds. She wanted him to sign a paper indicating he understood his rights under Miranda v Arizona. He didn’t respond to her request.

Again, summary. Give us the good stuff! Interrogation scenes, like courtroom scenes, carry conflict by definition. Show show show!

All that being said…an author with a strong narrative voice can open with summary, as in To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee), or with description, as in The Time It Never Rained (Elmer Kelton). Just know it takes some real wordsmithing to pull that off in a way that draws readers in.

Research the Good Stuff

We’ve got a lot of work to do here. The scene is implausible and needs the help of an expert (see Terry’s recent post and the comments). When you write about legal procedure and courtrooms, you need to nail the details (which often differ depending on state and local settings).

Our trouble starts with this: Here’s a guy who is suspected of murdering a pregnant teenager. The DA has “enough evidence” to put him away. How is this guy not in the clink? If the DA is involved and the case is heading for trial, that means there’s been an arrest, a booking and an indictment.

So we have the booking, and he watches a deputy “type up” the arrest form. Even ten years ago I doubt typewriters were used for this. Everything is computerized. And they wouldn’t let the suspect sit there and watch. He’d be in a cell. If he wants to call his lawyer, there’s usually a phone in a semi-private area they’ll allow a suspect to use.

As to the questioning itself, no ADA is going to tell a defendant she’s there to help him with his trial. Indeed, this ADA would not be talking to Newman at all because he has not signed a Miranda waiver and he’s asked for his attorney to be present before questioning. And yet the ADA goes on with her interrogation. She should be disbarred.

Perhaps you are setting up a later court hearing where the statements are thrown out by a judge. Most readers aren’t going to buy that. After years of Law and Order and myriad other TV shows and movies, we are well aware of Miranda and its meaning.

Side note: Unfortunately, there is a legal clinker on every episode of Law and Order. Whenever the detectives slap on the bracelets they immediately advise, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say…” Etc.

Problem is, in real life police do not give Miranda at the point of arrest. Miranda only comes into play when they begin to interrogate the suspect. Indeed, if the suspect starts mouthing off or says something incriminating on the way to the station, those statements are admissible in court. The cops want them to talk.

The bad effect of this trope is that some readers will object if you write the scene correctly. I enjoyed this thriller, but the author makes a huge mistake. When the police arrest Alan they do not read him his rights! How can the author not know that? 

That’s why, in my thrillers, if someone’s arrested I include a line or two, or an internal thought explaining the actual procedure.

End of rant side note.

Write the Good Beats, Cut the Useless Ones

A useless beat is redundant and makes a sentence flabby:

He wanted to tell her to go screw herself but remained quiet instead.

“Did you know Lya Reynolds?”

He said nothing.

We don’t have to be told he remained quiet instead. It’s obvious from the action.

He wanted to tell her to go screw herself.

“Did you know Lya Reynolds?”

He said nothing.

Reads better, doesn’t it?

Further, emotional beats need to be woven into the fabric of the scene in a plausible fashion.

“She was only three weeks from her sixteenth birthday when you murdered her. Did you know that?   Her sweet sixteen. Turned out to be pretty bitter for her didn’t it.”

He looked away.

“Did you know she was pregnant when she was murdered?”

A tear rolled down Newman’s cheek. He didn’t try to wipe it away.

It’s much too sudden for a tear to roll. It’s only been seconds from He wanted to tell her to go screw herself. What we’re missing are the beats where the inner turmoil heats up enough to start the waterworks.

How you write this depends on what you’re doing with the character. Did he do it? Is he feeling remorse? Or is this human pity for a victim of foul play? Whatever the answer, we need more to justify whatever he’s feeling, especially when it’s the opposite of what he felt a few seconds ago.

One minor note: You’re using the old-school double space after a period. No longer done.

Assignments

  1. Rewrite this opening without any narrative summary. Present-moment scene only. Put the good stuff in.
  2. Do your research on arrests, criminal referrals, and in-custody interrogations.
  3. Read the first chapter of Michael Connelly’s The Last Coyote. Bosch is on involuntary stress leave and forced into a counseling session with a police psychologist. It’s twelve-pages long. That’s how it’s done.

Let’s help the writer out further in the comments.

This Week I Saved a Darling 

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

I write thrillers. That means I major in action. But I do have a lead character who is wont to share an opinion every now and then. That’s one of the things I like about John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee. There are times, briefly (which is the key), when McGee takes a moment to let loose on something. Here’s a bit from The Quick Red Fox:

And so we drove back to the heart of the city. San Francisco is the most depressing city in America. The come-latelys might not think so. They may be enchanted by the steep streets up Nob and Russian and Telegraph, by the sea mystery of the Bridge over to redwood country on a foggy night, by the urban compartmentalization of Chinese, Spanish, Greek, Japanese, by the smartness of the women and the city’s iron clutch on culture. It might look just fine to the new ones.

But there are too many of us who used to love her. She was like a wild classy kook of a gal, one of those rain-walkers, laughing gray eyes, tousle of dark hair –– sea misty, a little and lively lady, who could laugh at you or with you, and at herself when needs be. A sayer of strange and lovely things. A girl to be in love with, with love like a heady magic.

But she had lost it, boy.

Some object to these passages as “stopping the action.” I call it controlling the pace and deepening our bond to the lead character. 

So I wrote a paragraph of my next Mike Romeo thriller expressing an opinion. A bit later I came back to the scene and wrote another paragraph in a similar style. When I edited the first draft I saw that these two bits overloaded and overwhelmed the story. 

But they were so well written! (I humbly thought). I loved them! Which is the first clue that you have a “darling” on your hands. And we’ve all heard the old saw, “Kill your darlings!”

To me that always sounds like “Destroy your delight” or “Drown your puppies.” Yeesh! I mean, if something is your darling should your first instinct be to kill it? Sounds positively psychopathic.

A darling is at least owed a fair trial!

The phrase has its origin in a lecture on style delivered by the English writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch back in 1914. He said:

To begin with, let me plead that you have been told of one or two things which Style is not; which have little or nothing to do with Style, though sometimes vulgarly mistaken for it. Style, for example, is not—can never be—extraneous Ornament … [I]f you here require a practical rule of me, I will presentyou with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

At least Sir Arthur was honest enough to call it murder! But murder requires malice aforethought, and that is a terrible way to think about a darling.

Darlingcide should be outlawed, not encouraged!

Stephen King strikes the right balance. In his book On Writing King says the whole idea behind “kill your darlings” is to make sure your style is “reasonably reader-friendly.”

Thus, your darlings may be the very thing that distinguishes your voice from the vanilla sameness of so much writing these days, especially in the omnipresent AI epoch which we now inhabit. 

Which means sometimes a darling stays, sometimes it goes, and sometimes it gets a skillful edit. In my case, I did remove one of the paragraphs in its entirety. The other I clipped a bit, but it remains largely intact. 

It pleases me to write darlings. I do not summarily execute them. I let them sit, I look at them again, I have my wife render an opinion, and then I decide if they must go, stay, or get a loving manicure. 

And I know I’ve done good work when I can finally say, “Darling, you look marvelous!” 

Comments welcome.

“Your Book Deserves To Reach a Larger Audience”

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

“Everybody talks about the weather,” Twain wrote, “but nobody does anything about it.”

Yes, and everybody talks about Artificial Intelligence, and nobody can do anything about it. It’s here, it’s there, it’s everywhere. It’s Skynet, it’s HAL, and soon it may be telling you, “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that.”

Today I won’t revisit the pros and cons, complaints and commendations, misgivings and infatuations writers have with AI. Rather, I refer to a recent report from Microsoft on the professions most and least susceptible to disruption from generative AI.

Writers, we made #5!

  1. Interpreters and Translators
  2. Historians
  3. Passenger Attendants
  4. Sales Representatives of Services
  5. Writers and Authors

The professions least likely to be impacted are manual jobs like phlebotomists (people who draw your blood), highway maintenance workers, plumbers, massage therapists, roofers, and embalmers (stiff competition for this job).

First question is: what the heck’s the difference between writers and authors? It’s subtle.

A writer writes stuff (you’re welcome). But they may not own the stuff. A writer can be someone who produces content for someone else, a writer-for-hire, e.g., a ghostwriter. Clearly, AI is replacing them.

An author owns the stuff (and can therefore license it), and AI is replicating them. The big issue for us fiction writers is whether AI can produce more than soulless trope rearrangement. And whether authors who’ve spent years learning the craft and developing a singular voice can compete with AI in the marketplace.

This is not to say that authors should avoid all things AI—things like copywriting, book descriptions, marketing materials. For these AI is good and fast, freeing up time for writing more fiction and playing Connections. It’s free, too. Pro copywriters are out of a job. Trad publishing doesn’t use them anymore, not to mention any other business that produces sales copy—which is every business.

Series writers can upload pdfs of their books to Google Notebook, press enter, and boom—series bible. Need a recall all the plots in in your 15-book series? Ask your notebook for summaries, and there they are. Need to recall how recurring characters were described in every book in which they appear? Presto. Those are all good uses of the tech.

There’s a dark side, of course A big new scam is targeting authors via AI-generated phishing emails. These are slick (gone are the good old days of scam emails from Nigerian princes rife with shoddy grammar). They purport to be a from an actual person who works for an actual marketing firm. This person just loves your book and wants to help you reach more readers!

What they’re doing is scraping info about you from the net and using high-praise buzzwords to give you a dopamine hit.

I got one of these just the other day. It begins by saying she (a female name) recently “came across your book” (one dead giveaway is when it doesn’t give you the title. But other emails do). She was “truly struck” by the “raw emotion and depth of storytelling.” And I “deserve” to have my book reach a wider audience. Dopamine!

The email goes on to promise higher book rankings on Amazon and a “customized campaign” to increase exposure across “key global markets.” She has “just worked with an author in a similar genre” who experienced a measurable increase in sales (but doesn’t tell us who the author is). She invites me to receive a “complimentary review” of my current Amazon presence and “explore” how the company can help me out. The email signs off with Warm regards, followed by the name…but no link to a website (which, of course, does not exist).

I laughed then trashed it. I should have labeled it “spam,” for two days later I got a follow up, hoping that I and my family “are doing well” (that’s so nice!) and understanding that “life can get busy” and reminding me “I have a specific idea for a campaign that I’m confident could get your book in front of a huge number of new readers who are actively looking for exactly this kind of story…I’d love to share the details with you in a quick 10-minute chat or call this week. No pressure at all, just a conversation to see if it’s a good fit.”

The ultimate goal of this “good fit” is to get my money and access to my KDP account. What could possibly go wrong with that? (You can read about this scam at the invaluable Writer Beware website.)

This con feeds off our bottom-line desire—we all want new readers. Well, the anecdotal evidence suggests that many readers sense when a book is AI-generated (and consider it “cheating”) versus having a unique voice and style, which only comes via the hard work of learning the craft, writing, getting feedback, and writing, writing, writing.

Yeah, we have to concede that AI is getting better at plagiarizing generating competent commercial fiction that can provide a quick escape. But will it create a rabid fan? I don’t think so. Only blood can do that.

So does your book really deserve to reach a larger audience? Not if AI writes it for you. Do the work. Be the author. Bleed. Get better. And if you need a side hustle, learn embalming.

Comments welcome.

Steinbeck on Writing

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

I read Of Mice and Men in high school and was wiped out for a week. I’ve seen the 1939 movie adaptation only once, in college, and I can’t watch it again.

That’s storytelling power. John Steinbeck had it.

So I thought it might be of interest here to share some of his writing advice via an interview in The Paris Review. I’ve added some comments, which is rather cheeky considering Mr. Steinbeck is a Nobel Prize ahead of me. But here goes anyway:

  1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

JSB: I like this. It’s similar to what Ann Lamott counsels in Bird by Bird, i.e., the “one inch frame.” Just face your daily writing, with full attention. If you do this faithfully, at some point you’ll look up and see a full novel. And that’s a very nice feeling.

  1. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

JSB: I somewhat agree. I am a planner, and once I get going I want to finish that first draft as rapidly as I can. However, I do edit my previous day’s work. I sharpen it, and it gets me back in flow.

  1. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

JSB: I don’t think about readers, plural or singular, when I write. I think about the characters. I think about the market when I nurture and idea. I want a concept that will appeal to sizable slice of folks who have discretionary income to spend on books. But once I’ve put that concept into motion in a novel, I’m involved only with the characters and how they get out of trouble.

  1. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.

JSB: This is good advice, so long as  you’re not doing it a lot. If you do, there’s going to be a much bigger mess at the end than there was at the beginning. If you have too many scenes that are not “working,” the problem may be in the structural foundations or in scene writing itself.

  1. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.

JSB: I believe “out of drawing” is an art term which means an element that doesn’t fit. “Kill your darlings” is another way to put it. But this advice has always puzzled me. Maybe that scene that’s dear to you is the best one in the book. I think the only test is, Does it work in the story? Does it slow things down? Are you showing off?

JSB Axiom: Don’t write to impress your readers. Write to distress your characters.

  1. If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

JSB: I prefer to write dialogue and let it flow. When I edit the dialogue, that’s when I might say it out loud, or listen to the text.

So what do you think of this advice, TKZers?
Have you read much Steinbeck? How does he rate with you?

What Writers Can Learn From The Twilight Zone

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Submitted for your approval, the greatest TV show of all time: The Twilight Zone.

Rod Serling

It was the brainchild of Rod Serling, who served as executive producer and host of the anthology series. He had a voice like a modulated tension wire, with which he delivered the intro and outro of each episode. He also wrote 92 of the 152 scripts, an amazing output considering the fresh twists and turns that were the hallmarks of the Zone. Two other prolific contributors were Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson, each of whom wrote some of the most memorable offerings. With writers like that it is no wonder the show was high in the ratings from 1959 to 1964.

And it’s a gift that keeps on giving, as each new generation gets to discover it via the July 4th “marathons” on the Syfy and Heroes & Icons networks, not to mention streaming. You’ll also see many famous actors early in their careers, like Robert Redford, William Shatner (“There’s a man on the wing!”), Robert Duvall, Jack Warden, Martin Landau, Leonard Nimoy, Elizabeth Montgomery, Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin and on and on. Sometimes the actors were in the twilight of their careers, like Ed Wynn and Buster Keaton.

I was a bit too young to appreciate the original airings, but the show has never been out of reruns. When I did see them, the impact was palpable.

I’ll never forget the profound gut punch I felt when I first watched “Time Enough at Last” (written by Serling) which is consistently voted the most memorable episode. That’s the one with Burgess Meredith, and I shan’t get within miles of revealing the twist. Hunt it down and watch before you read anything about it. (This should be your ironclad rule for any episode of the Zone!)

Equally stunning is the other episode that gets the most votes, “Eye of the Beholder” (Serling).

For you youngsters out there who’ve never seen a Zone, let me say I envy you! You’ve got some incomparable experiences coming. As a public service, I shall give you my personal list of favorite episodes (adding to the two just mentioned):

  • “The Howling Man” (Beaumont)
  • “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (Matheson)
  • “The Hitch-Hiker” (Serling)
  • “Perchance to Dream” (Beaumont)
  • “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” (Serling, and an episode that absolutely speaks to us today)
  • “It’s a Good Life” (Serling)
  • “To Serve Man” (Serling and Damon Knight)

And my all-time fave, the second episode of the first season, written by Serling, “One for the Angels.” I shall give you here Serling’s outro which does not contain spoilers, but sums up the heart of the episode:

Ed Wynn in “One for the Angels”

Lewis J. Bookman, age sixtyish. Occupation: pitchman. Formerly a fixture of the summer, formerly a rather minor component to a hot July. But, throughout his life, a man beloved by the children, and therefore, a most important man. Couldn’t happen, you say? Probably not in most places – but it did happen…in the Twilight Zone.

I’ve long thought a good personality test would be knowing a person’s favorite Zone. So what does this episode tell me about me? That I’m a lot like Rod Serling. He had a soft heart and many of his episodes end on a redemptive note. That’s me. I love redemption. And justice.

Which reminds me that Serling wrote the script for one of my favorite political thrillers, Seven Days in May. What a cast! Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredric March, Ava Gardner, Edmond O’Brien, Martin Balsam. I won’t give any spoilers here, but if you like you can hop over to my Substack and see what I wrote about it (reproducing one of the great movie lines of all time!)

The lesson here is that twists and turns that are tightly woven into the plot are the golden threads of reading pleasure. But what makes that gold truly glitter is heart.

Maybe you’re not a softie. You still have a heart (I’m assuming). What is it you care most deeply about, besides selling books? Tap into it. Draw from it. Make it thrum throughout your work.

Rod Serling came to prominence in 1950s television, with a special empathy for the working stiff. Several of his episodes dealt with the pressures on executives and salesmen. “A Stop at Willoughby” is a notable example. Here’s the intro:

James Daly in “A Stop at Willoughby”

This is Gart Williams, age thirty-eight, a man protected by a suit of armor all held together by one bolt. Just a moment ago, someone removed the bolt, and Mr. Williams’ protection fell away from him, and left him a naked target. He’s been cannonaded this afternoon by all the enemies of his life. His insecurity has shelled him, his sensitivity has straddled him with humiliation, his deep-rooted disquiet about his own worth has zeroed in on him, landed on target, and blown him apart. Mr. Gart Williams, ad agency exec, who in just a moment, will move into the Twilight Zone—in a desperate search for survival.

Here’s an exercise: Write a Twilight Zone intro and outro for your WIP. This will tell you directly whether you’re tapping a vein or just spinning your wheels hoping for traction.

So what is your favorite Zone? (Try to avoid spoilers if you can, for there may be a young writer out there who has the series waiting to be binged.)

What does your favorite episode tell you about yourself and your writing?

***

If you’re interested in what made Rod Serling tick, I highly recommend you take twenty minutes to watch this interview from 1959, back when Mike Wallace and his guest could light up and carry on a meaningful and substantive conversation. Serling was intelligent, articulate, self-aware and honest about what he wanted to be as a writer. One of my heroes.

 

Be Interesting

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

There were two ad campaigns in the last twenty years I truly loved.

The first was the “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” spots. They featured Justin Long as the “cool guy” who was the Mac, and John Hodgman as the stuffy PC guy. Mac sales zoomed after this. Microsoft’s answer was to roll out Vista. We know how that went.

You can watch all the ads here.

The other campaign was “The Most Interesting Man in the World” for Dos Equis.

A typical spot featured “vintage film” of the man in various pursuits, while a narrator recites a few facts about him, such as:

  • In a past life he was himself.
  • If opportunity knocks and he’s not home, opportunity waits.
  • He once had an awkward moment, just to see how it feels.
  • The police often question him, just because they find him interesting.
  • When in Rome, they do as he does.

The commercials finish with the man sitting in a bar surrounded by beautiful people. He looks into the camera and, with a slight Spanish accent, says, “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do I prefer Dos Equis…Stay thirsty, my friends.”

In both your fiction and your “author presence” on social media and email marketing, dullness is the kiss of death.

Fiction

I’m going to suggest that “interesting” in fiction is a category unto itself so it doesn’t get lost amongst all the other craft studies we do around here. Think of it as an added spice, a little extra that draws a reader further in. Specifically, it’s tied to what characters do.

Stephen King, in On Writing, says readers love learning about work, the details of a character’s vocation. You can start with what you know. My courtroom background allows me to show the ins and outs of trials, criminal procedure, search and seizure law, plea bargains and the like. But I also like to learn about other work (via research, interviews, etc.) and render it on the page. Yes, it’s an effort, but it pays off. If I’m interested and can convey that on the page, the readers will be interested, too.

A particular skill the character has can also be of interest, especially if it helps said character at a crucial moment. I love that device in the Ron Howard movie Willow. The hero of the story, little Willow Ufgood, is an amateur magician who, early on, does his “disappearing pig trick.” It goes comically wrong as the piglet squeals out from under the stage. But in the climactic battle with the evil Bavmorda, Willow performs the trick to save the baby Elora from her clutches.

Give us those kinds of details and the fictive dream will be all the richer.

Author Presence

Of course, we all have to present ourselves to the digital world now. And at each stage—from websites to blogs to podcasts, newsletters and emails—we need to find ways to hold readers’ interest because they are inundated with content competing for attention.

So…be interesting. Don’t just give us thinly veiled iterations of “Hey, my new book is out! I’m excited about it, and I think you will be, too!”

I have a newsletter on Substack that is purely for entertainment but also provides information I think many readers will find interesting. Our own Terry Odell offers travel and other nuggets on her Substack.

A little humor always helps. Dean Koontz’s newsletter always has a little fun before giving his soft-sell pitch. Here’s how one began:

Dear Readers,

I’m thinking of making a career change, taking on something that’s intellectually challenging like miniature golf or hot-dog-eating contests. I don’t know what it is, but I feel as if life is passing me by, as if I have less time remaining than I did when I was 20, which makes no sense. Maybe it’s the mid-life crisis I never had, coming on me later than it does with most men. That would make sense, because I held on to infancy until I was 25.

A personal story rendered in singular style is also gold. Our Reavis Wortham specializes in such tales. (I can’t help thinking of “most interesting man in the world” squibs for Rev, e.g. “His moustache has its own zip code”…”Stetsons line up to audition for his head.”)

Stay interesting, my friends.

Do you give details of work/vocation in your fiction? Have you gone beyond your knowledge base to find out about a particular line of work? 

In your social media and newsletter, what do you do to keep things interesting?

 

Competent and Forgettable Fiction

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

We have a first page for critique today, with a twist. Read on to find out what it is,

Chapter One

The first scream barely made it through the hotel’s thick glass windows. But the second one cut through like a blade. Jack Rainer froze mid-step in the hallway of the Bellamy Grand, a five-star fortress in downtown Chicago. Rain hammered the city like it wanted to wash the whole thing away. Jack tilted his head. Third floor. Same as him. Room 314—just ahead.

He slipped his hand inside his jacket and felt the cold steel of the Glock. Habit. He hadn’t carried it in years, but tonight something told him to bring it. Instinct, maybe. Or guilt.

Another crash. Glass. A woman’s voice, shrill and panicked, yelling something unintelligible. Jack moved fast now, heart kicking into gear. He reached the door and pressed his ear against it. Silence. Too much silence.

He knocked twice, sharp and hard.

“Hotel security,” he lied.

Nothing.

He glanced up and down the hall, then used the heel of his boot to break the latch. The door slammed open.

The suite was trashed. Blood on the floor. A single high heel by the window. And a man’s body slumped in the chair, head tilted at an impossible angle.

Jack muttered, “Welcome back.”

***

JSB: I’ll let the proverbial cat out of the bag right now. The above was generated by ChatGPT, to the prompt: Write a 200 word opening page to a thriller.

I just wanted to see what it came up. My overall impression is this is a cliché-ridden, implausible scenario with nothing in the style to set it apart.

First cliché: Naming the character Jack. We have more than enough Jacks. Jack is no longer nimble in the thriller world.

Second cliché: cold steel. How many times have we seen that? Not as many as Chat, which has “read” every book on the planet.

Implausibility: If this is a “five-star fortress” hotel, a kick isn’t going to break any latch or slam the door open.

I pointed this out to Chat. It responded:

Great point—and you’re absolutely right to question that. A “five-star fortress” hotel would likely have solid, reinforced doors, especially for privacy and security. Kicking one in would not only be implausible for a lone individual, it would also make a huge racket—drawing attention and making the act feel more like an action movie than a grounded thriller.

To keep it realistic and suspenseful, we can revise that part. For example, Jack could use a hotel passkey he lifted from a distracted staffer earlier, or maybe he knows an old trick from his past life that lets him manipulate a door latch in seconds—something subtle and skill-based rather than brute force.

Well, at least it takes helpful criticism (it’s probably already sucked up last week’s post).

The writing itself is competent. That’s not a virtue. Marian Lizzi, editor-in-chief at Perigee Books (an imprint of Penguin Group USA) once wrote about reasons a submitted book gets turned down by a publishing company. Among them was the following:

Not remarkable/surprising/ unputdownable enough. This one is the most difficult to articulate – and yet in many ways it’s the most important hurdle to clear. Does the proposal get people excited? Will sales reps and buyers be eager to read it – and then eager to talk it up themselves?  

As my first boss used to warn us green editorial assistants two decades ago, the type of submission that’s the toughest to spot – and the most essential to avoid — is the one that is “skillful, competent, literate, and ultimately forgettable.”

That’s what we’re flooded with these days—competent and forgettable fiction. Not the kind that has readers going Ah at the end, but Meh. This does not create what we authors desire most—repeat readers who become super fans.

I won’t go into further detail on how I would change today’s submission from our “brave (new world) author.” I’ll leave that to you. Does this pass our “I would turn the page” test? What would you suggest to improve it?

Taking Criticism

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Recently, I was the subject of a silent auction at a writers conference. The item was a detailed critique of the first 3k words of a novel. The winner sent me her pages and I spent considerable time with comments, suggested edits, and ways to improve.

You never know how someone will take constructive criticism. In my email, I told her not to get discouraged, and that early on in my career I had a brilliant editor who was known for his lengthy, single-spaced editorial letters. Whenever I got one of these I placed it, unopened, on the corner of my desk, and circled around it for a couple of days. I knew there would be ample work to do.

And every time I did the work I came out a better writer.

So when I didn’t hear back from this writer, I wondered if I’d discouraged her. I was about to write her a follow-up email when hers arrived. It read:

Thank you so much for your encouraging words. Your notes throughout provide me with so much I can improve upon. I will keep at it! I am so thankful for you. Thank you for your time spent!

I wrote back and told her, “Now that is the response of a true writer.” Because to my mind, a true writer wants to get better and sees criticism not as an assault but as an ally. That’s the value of a trusted editor or beta reader (see Brother Gilstrap’s recent post and my comment therein).

Of course, not all criticism is constructive; indeed, these days, it’s likely not criticism at all—it’s an eruption of bile directed at the author for some insular and dyspeptic reason. These diatribes are not offered to help a writer, but rather to make the writer feel like this:

I’ve never learned anything from a nasty, negative review. So I don’t read them. (I’ll read good reviews from time to time as a little shot in the arm, perhaps not the best metaphor these days, but there you are.)

Writers worth their salt (an idiom that goes back to how ancient Roman soldiers were paid) seek feedback on a manuscript. Not just to catch obvious errors, which we all make, but to spotlight areas for improvement. It’s up to the author what to do with those notes.

A few suggestions:

1. Find good feedbackers. We’ve talked about editors and beta readers a lot here at TKZ. How to find the good ones is a matter of research, trial, and culling. There are many experienced freelance editors out there. Check their background and client lists. I’ve heard good things about Reedsy. Try gathering some beta readers and cull the list to settle on one or two of the best. When you have those, shoot them some moolah for future critiques.

2. Be objective. To the extent you can, look at the suggestions as if you were a disinterested third party. Some things are worth fighting for, but not if you have a chip on your shoulder.

3. Listen, but remain true to your vision. There’s a famous story about Bennett Cerf, a legendary editor for Random House, suggesting edits to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. She took a puff on her cigarette and said, “You would not cut zee Bible, would you?” No shrinking violet, Ayn. She won, and Atlas Shrugged still sells tens of thousands of copies a year. When you reach that level, maybe you can say the same thing. Until then, listen, assess, use what is helpful while, at the same time, keep the vision of your book intact.

You’re in this to write books not just for yourself, but in hopes of connecting with readers and turning those readers into fans. If you want to write just for yourself or, heaven forfend, let AI write for you, and throw stuff out there to see if anything sticks, well, it’s not illegal, just ill informed, ill fated, and will probably make most readers ill, too.

But if you want to keep getting better at your craft, form a plan to get helpful criticism. And ignore angry people with a shoe in their hand.

Agree or disagree? Have at it in the comments.

In Search of the Penny Drop

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Mutoscope at Disneyland

In the good old days (you know, before virtual reality, smartphones, TikTok, and even TV and radio) the kids loved to go to penny arcades. So named because almost everything in them cost a penny, they provided brief respite and entertainment from the drudgery of life. 

For that one copper coin you could play games—like the claw-grabbing-a-toy game—or get your fortune told. 

Most popular were Kinetoscopes and Mutoscopes. The former were short silent films, the latter a series of flipping photographs that told a short story. When you first looked into these machines you saw only one image. When your penny dropped you turned a crank and the “show” started. 

Which is where we get the concept of the “penny drop” in mystery fiction. It is that moment where something happens that triggers or points to the final solution. It’s that last bit that allows the sleuth to connect the dots. 

We see it in all classic mysteries, from Holmes to Poirot, Father Brown to Miss Marple, Columbo to Jessica Fletcher.

In my own thrillers, there is usually a mystery at the heart of things. Which means I need that penny drop. It is often the last thing I find. In my personal Scrivener template, I have a penultimate card labeled “Penny Drop” where I scribble notes as I go along. I’ll include memos sent by the Boys in the Basement when I first wake up.

When you nail the penny drop, it’s one of the most satisfying moments of the whole process.

Here is a description of the penny drop from Tom Sawyer’s excellent Fiction Writing Demystified (Note: Sawyer was showrunner for Murder, She Wrote.)

[T]he penny drops for the sleuth at the instant he or she hears, sees, tastes, smells touches or otherwise experiences something which—when combined (usually mentally) with a fact or facts gleaned earlier—tells the detective that till now, everyone in the show has been following false leads. Suddenly, the protagonist has it FIGURED OUT—if not all of it, most of it—and is off and running in the direction of the “Gotcha” scene, leaving the other characters, and the viewers, mystified as to what has been put together, how it has been accomplished, and where he or she plans to go with it.

And here is the #1 most important rule (there, I said it) of all:

[I]t’s important, even if the  penny drop is prompted for the protagonist by some lucky accident or coincidence, that most of the other elements of the equation are earned—the result of his or her doing.

Put that down on a Sticky Note and paste it where you can see it, or better yet burn it into your writer’s memory bank.

Now, mystery writers are all over the map when it comes to the who done it part. Some like to write a discovery draft to find out. Others, me included, like to start with the who and the motive, giving me a “shadow story” that helps create the plot. 

Whatever your approach, you’re going to need the right penny drop. How to find it?

1. Don’t settle on the first thing that comes to mind. It may be the right solution, but allow others to bubble up and audition. In my Romeo WIP, I seriously considered at least six possible drops. I woke up one morning with a seventh in my mind, and that’s the one I chose.

2. Create a visual of all the main characters and look at them from time to time. I use two things for this: A Scapple (a Scrivener app that lets you create mind maps and connection); and a Scrivener corkboard with character photos (since you’re not publishing these, you can use Google images, which is my preferred method. It’s no secret many writers create their own images with AI).

3. Consider all the senses. As Sawyer points out, not every penny drop is visual. There’s sound (see Chesterton’s Father Brown story “The Queer Feet”), smell, taste, touch. Agatha Christie used every one of these at one time or another. 

Of course, not every book has a traditional mystery involved. But I contend page-turning fiction always has mystery elements that keep the reader wondering, Why is this happening? What’s going to happen next? How can the character possibly survive (physically, psychologically, or professionally)?

Instead of solving a murder, you can use the penny drop as a “big reveal” that explains all the happenings to the main character (as in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca) or to the readers themselves (Gone Girl).

It has been announced that the U.S. Mint will soon stop making pennies. I’ll miss them. I used to spend mine on Bazooka bubble gum, with its comics featuring Bazooka Joe. Will it now be a nickel for your thoughts? There’s inflation for you.

Here at TKZ, your thoughts are free, so go ahead and share them!

The Living, Breathing Novel

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

The other night, Mrs. B and I re-watched the 1999 BBC adaptation of David Copperfield. Superb. And what a cast: young Daniel Radcliffe as David, the legendary Maggie Smith as Betsy Trotwood, Bob Hoskins as Micawber, Ian McKellen hilariously chewing the scenery as Mr. Creakle, and so on down the line.

It made me wonder again at how Dickens, with quill and ink, turned out massive tomes, full of plot twists and unforgettable characters, like Peggotty, Steerforth, Mr. Dick, Barkis, Uriah Heep. Dickens never gives us colorless, throwaway story people.

So I went on a little journey to research Dickens’ method. I wanted to find out if he was an outline guy, a pants guy, or something in between. My conclusion is that he started a project with the “big picture” in mind, along with some main characters, but allowed himself room to expand and explore as he went along, with help from a trusted beta reader and his own wife.

We know Dickens wrote in serial form, sometimes in periodicals, sometimes in pamphlets. I read somewhere that anxious readers would often gather at the docks when the boats came in with the delivery of the latest installment.

I discovered a massive biography of Dickens by John Forster, the man who read almost everything Dickens wrote before it was published. In the clip below, Forster tells about the writing of Oliver Twist. (“Kate” was Dickens’ wife.)

Then, on a “Tuesday night,” at the opening of August, he wrote, “Hard at work still. Nancy is no more. I showed what I have done to Kate last night, who was in an unspeakable ‘state’ from which and my own impression I augur well. When I have sent Sikes to the devil, I must have yours.”

“No, no,” he wrote, in the following month: “don’t, don’t let us ride till to-morrow, not having yet disposed of Fagin, who is such an out-and-outer that I don’t know what to make of him.” No small difficulty to an inventor, where the creatures of his invention are found to be as real as himself.

The ending of The Old Curiosity Shop was suggested by Forster:

He [Dickens] had not thought of killing her [Little Nell], when, about half-way through, I asked him to consider whether it did not necessarily belong even to his own conception, after taking so mere a child through such a tragedy of sorrow, to lift her also out of the commonplace of ordinary happy endings so that the gentle pure little figure and form should never change to the fancy. All that I meant he seized at once, and never turned aside from it again.

This sums up the Dickens “method”:

Its [The Old Curiosity Shop] effect as a mere piece of art, too, considering the circumstances in which I have shown it to be written, I think very noteworthy. It began with a plan for but a short half-dozen chapters; it grew into a full-proportioned story under the warmth of the feeling it had inspired its writer with; its very incidents created a necessity at first not seen; and it was carried to a close only contemplated after a full half of it had been written.

I draw a few lessons from Mr. Dickens.

1. Plan your novel, but give it room to breathe. Dickens didn’t sit down with no idea of where he was going. He started with a main character in mind, a set of problems for that character, some secondary characters, and an envisioned outcome. But for each section he wrote he was flexible in how things developed. He could change his plan or his characters if he so desired. I can’t prove this, but I have a feeling James Steerforth in David Copperfield was such a character. Initially a hero to David, he became the driver of the tragic Little Emily subplot.

2. Unforgettable fiction is written when you are imbued with “warmth and feeling.” Note: You can’t get that from a machine. You get candy bars and soft drinks from a machine, not living, breathing, blood-pounding, heart-racing fiction, the only kind that turns browsers into readers, and readers into fans.

3. You produce warmth and feeling by experiencing the lives of your characters. The great alchemy of unforgettable fiction is moving your characters from your head to your heart. The great Dwight Swain wrote: “People read fiction for feeling. Whether they know it or not, they grope for stimuli that move them. The thing in fiction that gives them this stimulation is emotion projected through characters.”

You’ve got to feel the emotion before you can project it. An added benefit, Swain says, is that this how you produce “zest”—the “best way to escape the fatigue and boredom that endless hours of writing often bring.”

Recall what Forster said, that “the creatures of his invention are found to be as real as himself.” In the 1850 preface to David Copperfield, Dickens wrote:

I do not find it easy to get sufficiently far away from this Book, in the first sensations of having finished it, to refer to it with the composure which this formal heading would seem to require. My interest in it, is so recent and strong; and my mind is so divided between pleasure and regret—pleasure in the achievement of a long design, regret in the separation from many companions—that I am in danger of wearying the reader whom I love, with personal confidences, and private emotions.

4. Get the benefit of another set of eyes. A great editor or beta reader is gold. You’re too close to your manuscript to spot subtle—or sometimes obvious—errors. You may be blind to an obvious plot hole or undeveloped character motivation. If you don’t deal with them now, readers and reviewers will deal with them later.

5. Be developing your next project. Dickens had a family to support and debts to be paid. He always had a next project in mind. He kept a notebook of ideas. Forster: “In it were put down any hints or suggestions that occurred to him. A mere piece of imagery or fancy, it might be at one time; at another the outline of a subject or a character; then a bit of description or dialogue; no order or sequence being observed in any. Titles for stories were set down too, and groups of names for the actors in them.”

And that’s not humbug. Comments welcome.