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.

Writing Sprints

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

There are many ways to write a novel. That much has been made quite clear on TKZ and in the comments thereto.

Some outline, then write. Some write and don’t outline. Many do it a bit of both.

Not many do it the Dean Koontz way. I shake my head in wonder at his method and output. In Dean Koontz: A Writer’s Biography, he describes it thus:

I go through a manuscript, slow page by slow page. Every page may be revised as few as twenty times or more than a hundred. Then at the end of every chapter, I print out and read it, because it looks different in hard copy. I pencil the changes in and then go back and include them. Then I go on to the next chapter.

Whew!

Of course, Mr. Koontz has been a full-time writer virtually his whole career, and has a work ethic second only to the harvester ant.

The rest of us mere mortals must find our own way. Especially those with what Brother Gilstrap calls “a big-boy job.”

For me, the daily writing quota has been the key. For most of my career the goal has been 6,000 word per week (I take one day off to recharge).

Early on, I’d sit down at my keyboard and type for as long as it took to reach my quota. Some days the words flowed. Other days it was like extracting moisture from a cactus.

Then one day I read something about exercise that helped change things. I always thought the benefits of aerobics was to do a certain minimum—say, thirty minutes straight of walking or jogging. But I discovered that three stints of ten minutes was just as good.

I liked that because I tend to get bored when walking, even if I’m on the treadmill watching a movie or listening to a book.

So now I try to get ten minutes of walking in early in the morning, to make twenty minutes later more doable.

And the same applies to my quota.

Even before I walk, I try to get some writing done. I sprint. I go for what I call a “Nifty 350.” Sometimes it’s just 250 (that number is important to preserve the rhyme scheme. I don’t know how to rhyme, say, 243, except with “afternoon tea.”)

Anyway, whatever I do makes the quota easier to complete later in the day.

I also carry my trusty AlphaSmart with me when I’m out. I may stop in at Coffee Bean and do more words there, come home, and do more. If I have to wait in an office, I peck out some words. (Young people always ask me what that is. When I explain that it’s just for text and runs forever on AA batteries, they’re somewhat astonished. I then tell them about rotary phones, manual typewriters, and Ed Sullivan. And words they will never hear, like, “Check your oil, sir?”)

Another benefit of writing sprints is that in between sessions my boys in the basement are working on the project. They send up notes for me to incorporate when I get back to writing. All they ask is that I send down some coffee and the occasional apple fritter.

Intentional writing sprints can serve you just as well. A friend of mine has written a several excellent legal thrillers on his commuter train ride to and from the city where he practices law.

So now I ask: Have you ever considered making writing sprints a regular practice? What is your method for producing the words (and I don’t mean by asking AI to do it for you!)

Cutting the DULL from Your Scenes

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

George Horace Lorimer was the legendary editor of The Saturday Evening Post from 1899 to 1936. He brought the circulation up from a few thousand to over a million, and made it a place known for quality fiction.

In the early days of his reign he received a letter from an indignant author which read, “Last week you rejected my story. I know that you did not read it for, as a test, I pasted together pages 15, 16 and 17, and the manuscript came back with the pages still pasted. You are a fraud and you turn down stories without even reading them.”

Lorimer responded, “Madam, at breakfast when I open an egg, I don’t have to eat the whole egg to discover it is bad.”

Painful, but true.

We talk a lot here at TKZ about opening pages. We all know how important they are to agents, editors, and readers. But we should think the same way about every scene in our novel. And thus to the topic for today: Cutting the DULL from your scenes. To wit:

Description Dumps

We talk often about avoiding “info dumps.” That is, larding on exposition or description in a way that makes the story seem to stand still. Yet, we need to know the setting of a scene, too.

The way to go is to write not so the reader merely sees the scene, but rather experiences it.

The best descriptions are a) woven into action, and b) consistent with the mood of the story. Stephen King’s “All That You Love Will Be Carried Away” is a melancholy tale about a traveling salesman who is thinking of ending it all. Here’s the opening paragraph:

It was a Motel 6 on I-80 just west of Lincoln, Nebraska. The snow that began at midafternoon had faded the sign’s virulent yellow to a kinder pastel shade as the light ran out of the January dusk. The wind was closing in on that quality of empty amplification one encounters only in the country’s flat midsection, usually in wintertime. That meant nothing but discomfort now, but if big snow came tonight—the weather forecasters couldn’t seem to make up their minds—then the interstate would be shut down by morning. That was nothing to Alfie Zimmer.

You can go line by line and see how King uses mood words within the simple action of a man arriving at a Motel 6 with a depressed disposition.

Here’s the great Raymond Chandler, as his cynical PI Philip Marlowe takes a drive in Chapter 13 of The Little Sister. Notice how this tells us as much about Marlowe as it does about the setting. (I love it because I have taken the same drive many times, albeit on the freeway):

I drove east on Sunset but I didn’t go home. At La Brea I turned north and swung over to Highland, out over Cahuenga Pass and down on to Ventura Boulevard, past Studio City and Sherman Oaks and Encino. There was nothing lonely about the trip. There never is on that road. Fast boys in stripped-down Fords shot in and out of the traffic streams, missing fenders by a sixteenth of an inch, but somehow always missing them. Tired men in dusty coupés and sedans winced and tightened their grip on the wheel and ploughed on north and west towards home and dinner, and evening with the sports page, the blatting of the radio, the whining of their spoiled children and the gabble of their silly wives. I drove on past the gaudy neons and the false fronts behind them, the sleazy hamburger joints that look like palaces under the colors, the circular drive-ins as gay as circuses with the chipper hard-eyed carhops, the brilliant counters, and the sweaty greasy kitchens that would have poisoned a toad.

Do you experience the scene like Marlowe does? How could you not?

So: Always describe your scenes in words that reflect the tone, which you’ll most often find in the mind of the viewpoint character.

Uninteresting Characters

Why does a story seem dull to a reader? In short, predictability. Subconsciously, the reader is anticipating what a character will do or say. If the character does do or does say something along those lines, the experience for the reader is boredom. “I’ve seen that before,” their sub-mind whispers. “Why keep reading?”

So: When you think about the scene you’re going to write, plan one action (even if it’s just a line of dialogue) a reader won’t see coming. A good practice is to make a quick list of the things the average reader might expect to happen…then don’t do those things.

Lethargic Action

Kurt Vonnegut said a character in a scene must want something (the scene Objective), even if it’s just a glass of water. I’d add that the Objective must be something essential. So if it’s a glass of water, the character better be dying of thirst.

So: Make the Objective an essential step toward solving the story question. The story question should involve death stakes (physical, professional, or psychological). Otherwise, why should the reader care?

Leaden Prose

John D. MacDonald went for what he called “unobtrusive poetry” in his style. He wanted sentences that “sing,” but not in such a way that it sounds like Ethel Merman in the shower. Like this, from Darker Than Amber:

She sat up slowly, looked in turn at each of us, and her dark eyes were like twin entrances to two deep caves. Nothing lived in those caves. Maybe something had, once upon a time. There were piles of picked bones back in there, some scribbling on the walls, and some gray ash where the fires had been.

Leaden prose, on the other hand, is like Amish furniture from the 1850s. Functional, yes, but that’s it.

So: Work on expanding your voice. I wrote a book about that. Do some morning pages where you write page-long sentences. Try things. Make up wild metaphors, not to use (necessarily) but to stretch. Read challenging prose, even in nonfiction. Read poetry out loud (I recommend Robert W. Service).

And remember Hitchcock’s Axiom: “Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.”

The Heroic Vision

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Publicity shot from The Magnificent Seven (1960)

There are two kinds of heroes.

One is the man or woman who responds to an immediate crisis, and in rising to the occasion discovers who they really are. This used to be called “the testing of one’s mettle.” It’s the classic Hero’s Journey wherein a character arcs to a transformation.

The second kind of hero responds to a crisis because of a moral vision. The arc is not so much one of transformation but of vindication.

The first hero represents the triumph of an individual, which inspires the community.

The second represents the triumph of a vision, which inspires and strengthens the community. (Where there is no vision, the people perish. – Proverbs 29:18).

Many stories—both fictional and real life—involve the immediate response to a crisis. Think of Sully Sullenberger, who saved an entire plane of passengers by landing his suddenly incapacitated ship on the Hudson River.

Then there are examples of the heroic vision. I would define this as a view of life which combines duty, honor, and courage. Every civilization that manages to survive has told stories of heroic vision. Some of the best movies ever made have it.

One of my favorites is Sergeant York (1941) starring Gary Cooper in an Oscar-winning role. It’s the true story of Alvin C. York, a poor boy from the Tennessee hills who had to hunt to help his family eat, and in the process became a dead shot with a rifle. Drafted during World War I, he sought an exemption based on his Christian beliefs, but was later became persuaded that he had a duty to save lives in a just war. During a battle in France he used his rifle skills to take out a German machine gun nest that was mowing down American soldiers. Single handed he killed 25 of the enemy, and captured 132 more. For this he was awarded the Congressional Medal of —wait for it—Honor.

Another favorite is The Magnificent Seven (1960), the classic Western starring Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen and Eli Wallach. A re-vision of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai, it’s the story of a group of gunfighters hired by a poor, Mexican village to save them from the plundering of a bandit gang.

At first, the seven take the job because the age of the gunfighter is over, and there’s nothing but menial jobs for them in town. But as they get to know the villagers, the heroic vision begins to take hold. It’s seven against forty, but they stay and fight because it’s the right fight. It is reminiscent of last stands like the Spartans at Thermopylae, and the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto.

The movie has terrific dialogue, too. Like in the scene where Calvera (Wallach), the leader of the bandits, first encounters the gunfighters. He rides in with his men and finds Chris (Brynner), Vin (McQueen) and Britt (James Coburn) waiting for him. Calvera, not looking overly concerned, remarks on the new walls. “They won’t keep me out,” he says.

“They were built to keep you in,” says Chris.

Calvera mulls it over, and offers to make the seven equal partners. When asked about the poor villagers, Calvera answers with a vision (decidedly unheroic) of his own. He says to Chris, “I leave it to you. Can men of our profession worry about things like that? It may even be sacrilegious. If God didn’t want them sheared he would not have made them sheep.”

Oh heck, it’s better if you watch it:

So in your work, consider giving your Lead characters a heroic vision. Ask yourself some questions:

  • What do they believe about duty, honor, and courage?
  • Who or what would they die for?
  • What will their stand cost them? (A good source of inner conflict)

And flesh out your villain with a vision of his own. Why does he think he’s justified? Calvera has to feed his men, and these villagers were born to be sheep. The clash of visions makes the denouement all the more satisfying. (If you’d like to see how the seven answer Calvera, you can watch the rest of the scene here.)

Comments welcome.

Reader Friday: What Writing is Like

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James Salter, Wikimedia Commons

“In the end, writing is like a prison, an island from which you will never be released but which is a kind of paradise: the solitude, the thoughts, the incredible joy of putting into words the essence of what you for the moment understand and with your whole heart want to believe.” – James Salter

What is writing like for you?

Becoming a Brand Name

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Power Up Your Fiction is endorsed by Betty Crocker.

Today’s post is brought to you by that new craft book, Power Up Your Fiction: 125 Tips and Techniques for Next-Level Writing. Yes, you too can write fiction that has the extras readers crave. Removes those ugly speed bumps, too. Don’t be the last one in your critique group to own a copy. Get yours today at a special price! And now here’s your host, JSB…

Brought to you by…

In the early years of television, most shows had a single sponsor paying the bills, e.g., Colgate Comedy Hour, Texaco Star Theatre, Goodyear TV Playhouse, Kraft Television Theatre. The shows that were “brought to you by” often featured the stars in a commercial.

“Father Knows Best, brought to you by Maxwell House Coffee. Good to the last drop.”

“Leave it to Beaver has been brought to you by Ralston Purina, makers of the eager eater dog food.”

“The Fugitive has been brought to you by Viceroy cigarettes. Viceroy’s got the taste that’s right.”

Speaking of that ubiquitous weed, a plethora of shows were sponsored by tobacco companies. Everybody smoked back then, even cartoon characters:

Even the pious:

Consistent quality was the key

The sponsors hoped the brand would be associated with a quality show and its stars, week after week. Not just quality, but consistent quality, directed to a target audience.

The most popular show of 1953 was I Love Lucy. It worked because Lucille Ball was a brilliant comedic actress, Desi Arnaz a perfect foil and also an astute producer who worked with a great team of writers.

The second most popular show that year was Dragnet, about as polar an opposite of Lucy as you could find. A police drama, it had a consistent style developed by its star, Jack Webb. That style featured staccato dialogue and underplayed acting. It became famous and easily parodied. Fortunately, Jack Webb had a sense of humor about it:

What if you want to write something “off brand”? In the traditional publishing world, this is problematic for obvious commercial reasons. You’re building an audience and helping bookstores know where to shelve your books. Publishers are investing in you, hoping for a long-term relationship that is profitable for all.

This is what hamstrung early John Grisham, whose massively popular legal thrillers made the big bucks. But Grisham wanted to write literary fiction, too. It was only when he had sufficient leverage that his publisher came out with A Painted House.

Indie writers have more flexibility, though they also want to build a brand. But we have short stories and novellas to try things out, and can publish them instantly. The old ad man saying applies here: “Let’s run it up the flagpole and see if anybody salutes.”

So…build your brand with consistent quality. Meet reader expectations in your genre, but also exceed them by adding unique and memorable touches. Everybody remembers Lucy and Ethel stuffing candy into their mouths, hats and down their uniforms.

Remember famed writer/director John Huston’s axiom: a great movie is made up of “three great scenes, and no weak ones.”

Which also means don’t flood the market with less than your best. For as another movie legend used to say:

Reader Friday: Advice

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“If you want to write fiction, the best thing you can do is take two aspirins, lie down in a dark room, and wait for the feeling to pass. If it persists, you probably ought to write a novel.” — Lawrence Block.

What’s the first word of advice you’d give someone who says to you, “I think I’m going to write a novel.”

Get That To-The-Bone Feel For Your Characters

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Some years ago, Kill Zone emeritus Robert Gregory Browne wrote this:

If my lead character is a divorced father of three who finds himself unwittingly involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the government, the first thing I ask myself when approaching a scene (even though I’m happily married and wouldn’t know a conspiracy if it jumped up and bit me) is this: how would I react in this situation?

Then I add the color (read: attitude/emotion). How would I react, if… I was a self-centered bastard… a no-nonsense cop… an officious political hack. And I apply this technique to every character I write.

In short, I’m like a method actor playing all of the parts. By using myself and a healthy dose of imagination, I can approach characterization from the inside out. And once I’m able to get into the skin of my characters, it’s much, much easier to create someone whom I, and hopefully the audience, can identify with.

As a former thespian myself, I’ve used (and teach) acting prep techniques for writers. This is the simplest, and perhaps the best one: first, be yourself.

Spencer Tracy in Captains Courageous (1937)

That is the sum and substance of the philosophy my favorite actor of all time, Spencer Tracy, used. He didn’t go for any of the fancy schools of method acting. He said he always started by imagining what it would feel like if he were a taxi driver….or a priest….or a Portuguese fisherman. That gave him attitude and emotion. From there it was just a matter of knowing his lines and listening to the other actors.

Back when I was lawyering I edited a little newsletter called Trial Excellence. It was a monthly dedicated to the lawyers who actually go to court and present cases in front of juries. In that role I had the opportunity to interview some of the top trial lawyers in the country. One of them was Don C. Keenan, who told me:

My rule of thumb is that I feel very strongly that the plaintiff’s lawyer, to be successful with the jury, you literally have to make the jury walk a mile in your client’s moccasins. They cannot be spectators. They cannot view their role as being a referee or a mediator. They literally have to fully understand and feel—and by feel, I mean, to-the-bone feel—what your client feels. So they then become an advocate in the jury room for you and not just some referee. As such, the only way that you can get strangers to walk a mile in your client’s moccasins is by you, the lawyer, not only walking a mile in the client’s moccasins, but sleeping in the same house, and washing the dishes, and going to the doctor’s visits with them, and living it with them. I’m a fanatic when it comes to up close and personal with your client.

I like that: to-the-bone feel. Spend time imagining yourself in your characters’ world, watching and listening to them, even being them. Do this until you feel your character in your very bones. Put that on the page and your readers will become participants, not just spectators.

What do you do to get that to-the-bone feeling for your characters?

NOTE: This post is adapted from my upcoming book Power Up Your Fiction (available for preorder). In other news, the book was kindly mentioned in The Saturday Evening Post!

Put Some Saga in Your Stories

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Around 850 A.D. a crew of Scandinavians was sailing around and got off course. They saw some land, and decided to check it out.

They didn’t know how cold this land could get, for if they had they might have turned right around and headed home. The place was packed with ice. “Let’s call it Iceland,” one of them said. And so it was claimed for good King Fairhair.

When word got to the king, he said, “The future is all about real estate. So let’s put in some family homes, a fish market or two, and a boat yard.”

The settlements began. It was hard at first to find a hospitable spot to set down roots. Whoever designed Iceland had put in lots of lava streams and glaciers, rocks and crags, and one strip mall with a tattoo parlor and the offices of the physician Dag “Dr. Leech” Gunnarsson.

Nevertheless, after several exploratory ventures, they found a place where at least the modicum of a village might be established.

But there was a modicum already there—with some strange fellows in cowls. These were Irish monks, who’d been there for over 100 years. These early inhabitants of Iceland were “Culdees.” Culdee comes from the Celtic Céile Dé, which means “God worshipper.” These monks lived lives of asceticism apart from human society, seeking entire sanctification. They had learned early, at least as far back as the 700s, that there’s not much sanctifying taking place in the world of human passions. Thus, they eschewed all video games, smart phones, talk shows, and Twitter.

The new settlers had to come up with their own form of entertainment. Life was taken up with catching foxes and ducks, reindeer and mice, whales and seals. These were often eaten at great feasts, where the conversation revolved mostly around the development of table manners. A century of this kind of palaver grew boring. So one night someone suggested, “Can somebody please tell a story?”

Thus was born the saga:

The original sagas were Icelandic prose narratives that were roughly analogous to modern historical novels. They were penned in the 12th and 13th centuries, and blended fact and fiction to tell the tales of famous rulers, legendary heroes, and average folks of Iceland and Norway. And they were aptly named: saga traces back to an Old Norse root that means “tale.” The English word first referred only to those original Icelandic stories, but saga later broadened to cover other narratives reminiscent of those, and the word was eventually further generalized to cover any long, complicated scenario.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1947 ed., the saga “in its purest form, extolled the life of a hero, governed by fixed rules, and intended for oral recitation.” The fixed rules were “simplicity of plot, chronological order of events, set phrases used even in describing the restless play of emotion or the changeful fortunes of a fight or a storm. The absence of digression, comment or intrusion of the narrator’s person is invariably maintained.”

Here you have plot, structure, restless emotions, and no author intrusion.

Further, these sagas display “the keen grasp of character, the biting phrase [style], the love of action and the delight in blood which almost assumes the garb of religious passion.”

The most popular of these oral tales were eventually written on scrolls. We have none of the originals, but copies that passed through various iterations: Editing and compounding (1220-1260), padding and amplifying (1260-1300), and the collection in large manuscripts (14th century).

Among the most famous Icelandic sagas are Vatzdaelasaga (890), relating to the settlement and chief family of Waterdale [historical fiction!]; Hord’s Saga, originally composed around 980 and telling the story of an outlaw named Hord [Anti-hero!].

We also have Havard (c. 1000), which recounts the titular character’s revenge for his son, murdered by a neighboring chief [revenge plot]; Heidarvigasaga (1015), the tale of a great blood feud [The Godfather, anyone?]; Eyrbyggia (1031), political intrigue; and Laxdaela (1026), a love triangle. Laxdaela features a female lead, Gudrun, who is the most famous of all Icelandic heroines. (Laxdaela spent forty weeks on the Icelandic Times bestseller list.)

All this goes to show how the fundamentals of storytelling seem innate throughout various cultures, and are still valid:

  1. A hero with whom we identify.
  2. A plot complication.
  3. Restless emotions.
  4. Action.
  5. Death stakes.
  6. Style (absent author intrusion). 

Saga has come to mean novel or series of novels that take place over a long period of time, usually in a historical context. The Trials of Kit Shannon is my saga series. I also wrote a long historical that covers World War I and takes us into 1920s Hollywood.

But the essence of saga, like that of myth, can apply to all genres of fiction. Think hero. Think big. Think action. Think emotions. Think death stakes (physical, professional, or psychological).

Most of all, think about telling a story to an audience that has worked hard hunting or fishing all day, and will fall asleep if you bore them!

Reader Friday: The Difference

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Rumer Godden, author of Black Narcissus

When my last novel was published, I received from the publicity department one of those biographical questionnaires sent to authors these days. Some of the questions were impertinent, especially, I thought, the last: “What makes you feel your books are different from other peoples’?” I did not have to ponder over this because there is really only one answer: “What makes my books different? They are written by me.” Every author ought to be able to say that. – Rumer Godden

What do you try to bring to your books that is different?