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 With Alert Watchfulness

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

The first time I rode a motorcycle I ran into a fence.

One of my college roommates, Rick, got a bike. One day I asked him if I could try it. He showed me the basics of clutch and throttle. No problem. At the time I was driving my dad’s old three-on-the-tree Ford Maverick. I knew the drill.

Only it’s different when it’s your first time using hands instead of feet. I let the clutch out too fast and twisted the throttle too hard. I lurched forward and before I could turn I rammed into a wooden fence. The bike listed and jammed my right ankle into a post.

When Rick stopped laughing he suggested I sign up for lessons with the local CHP.

I thought about that experience the other day while reading The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew B. Crawford. It’s about authentic identity getting lost in the midst of the noise and distraction of our digital age. We have what Crawford calls a “crisis of attention” which leads to fractured perceptions of the world. Crawford contrasts that with the intense concentration required of an ice-hockey player, a short-order cook, or the maker of fine pipe organs.

Also, Motocross champions. To compete at the top level, you have to develop what is called “alert watchfulness without meddling.” This makes possible a focus on what’s immediate and consequential, like an unforeseen bump in the track. In other words, you no longer need to stress about clutch and throttle; those are ingrained. Instead you rely on an intuition formed by long experience. Crawford explains:

This “alert watchfulness without meddling” by the conscious mind while one is riding on the street often takes the form of hunches: hypotheses about what might happen that are conscious but not fully articulate, because they don’t need to be. You recognize a familiar situation: there are strip malls on either side of a major thoroughfare, each with entries to the main road. The street numbers are posted only erratically, on haphazard buildings set far back from the main road. The car in front of you slows down, then speeds up, repeatedly. Hypothesis: this person is looking for a particular business, and when he spots it he may quickly veer across two lanes to get to it. Your motor responses are cocked and loaded, as it were, because you recognize the pattern.

That seems to me to describe what goes on in the head of an experienced writer engaged in the act of writing itself. Be the writer a planner or a discoverer (as we’ve discussed many times here) when they are into the writing of an actual scene “alert watchfulness without meddling” is the optimum practice.

For example, if you have structured your scene in advance (as explained here) you write with purpose. But if something pops up during the writing, some new possibility, your experience should “recognize the pattern.” You can consider it without “meddling” (which we often refer to as the “inner critic”). You form a hypothesis of how it might fit the overall story.

On the other hand, the wild-eyed panster should be “watchfully alert” against straying too far away from a pattern that best serves the story (not every “discovery” is a brilliant idea; not every glittering  nugget is gold).

How do you develop this alert watchfulness sans meddling? Writing and craft study. Writing alone can bring forth lots of words with little value. Just like a new golfer and ingrain bad habits by going out just to “play.” (Groundskeepers call that hunting gophers.)

On the other hand, just reading about the craft yields nothing without practice. In my early years studying writing, long before I was published, I’d design writing exercises based on what I’d learned in a book. This proved invaluable.

In college I also performed close-up magic. I got to occasionally hang out at the Magic Castle, the private club for pro magicians in Hollywood. Many of the legends of card magic, now in their 70s and 80s, were still around.

One of them was Dai Vernon, reputed to be the best card mechanic of the 20th century. I got to watch him up close, informally showing fellow magicians some moves.

Dai Vernon

I got all his magic books. In one of them he had “The Trick That Cannot Be Explained.” The reason was that he never performed it the same way twice. Everything was based on what the audience member did, from choosing a card to shuffling a deck. Vernon always produced the selected card in a surprising way, because he knew from experience literally hundreds of ways to manipulate cards. He would choose his method based on his “alert watchfulness” of what was happening. He didn’t have to take time to “meddle.” He just knew, instinctively, what to do.

I like that analogy applied to writing. When you have practiced your craft fruitfully and for a long time, you can perform “tricks that cannot be explained.” You form “hypotheses about what might happen that are conscious but not fully articulate, because they don’t need to be. You recognize a familiar situation.”

Does this resonate with you? Think about what’s going on in your mind as you write a scene. Are  you alert? Meddling? Hesitant? Risk averse? Or do you let it all out, even though you might run into a fence?

Should You Abandon Your Novel?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Back when I was doing the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference every year, I read a lot of manuscript excerpts for critique. One year I read the opening chapters of a fellow’s first attempt at a novel. He gave me the pitch and was obviously enthused about the idea. He’d had it for years, in fact, and was finally getting it down on paper (as we used to say). I marked up the MS for him and gave him some tips.

The next year he was back. When we met he showed me the same manuscript. “I made some changes you’ll like,” he said.

I asked him if he’d written anything else since last time.

“No,” he said. “Still working on this.”

A whole year (’nother) with the exact same book? Trying to get it in shape to submit to agents? And while I don’t remember the entire pitch, I do remember thinking it’d be a challenge to market.

Plus, it was his first novel. How many writers produce a publishable (or sellable) first novel right out of the gate? Not many (though I believe our own Brother Gilstrap is one of them, with Nathan’s Run).

I’ve had some people over the years come up to me and say, “I think I have a novel inside me.” And I bite my tongue to keep from saying, “That’s a good place to keep it.”

Because there are two things wrong with their sentiment.

First, if you only think you have a novel inside you, you won’t have the drive you need to make it in this game. You’ve got to think: I am a writer inside, and I’m going to write that book.

Second, no one is interested in publishing a novel. They want a novel-ist. They want someone who can deliver the goods over a career. The landscape is littered with first-time novelists whose second effort fell flat, along with their future prospects inside the walls of the Forbidden City.

Now that we have self-publishing, of course, there is no barrier to entry. But if you toss up dismal offerings that readers don’t respond to (except with one-star reviews or, what may be worse, no reviews at all) you’re not building a career, you’re just exercising your fingers.

So how long should you labor over a book before saying, “This isn’t getting me any further. Maybe I should start another one.”

There is no magical answer, but maybe I can offer some suggestions, such as:

Spending a year on one book is long enough.

Yes, that’s a bit overstated. If you’re intent on writing a novel that begins with the pre-Cambrian protozoa and ends at the Treaty of Versailles, that’s your choice.

But a novel-ist produces. A page-a-day is a book a year. A Ficus tree can write a page a day. Don’t be shown up by a Ficus tree.

If you have completed your first novel, celebrate. You’re ahead of most “I think I have a novel inside me” writers. If you’ve studied craft along the way, you will have learned a lot, so your efforts are not in vain. Almost every novelist in the 20th century had a “trunk” novel. Maybe years later they came back to the idea. Or maybe not. What they didn’t do was workshop it over and over, waiting for the cows to come home or the agents to come calling.

This assumes, of course, that you’re hoping to have a career or at least happy vocation that brings in a little dough for your efforts.

But what if this is my second attempt?

You’ve written two whole novels. Good job. Now compare the second one to your first. Did you improve? Consider getting some objective feedback from a few beta readers.

I don’t need no stinkin’ beta readers!

How big is that chip on your shoulder?

This sounds too time consuming. I want to be published yesterday.

When I was in college I wrote to a novelist I admired, the author of The Last Detail, Darryl Ponicsan. He wrote me a nice letter with some solid advice, ending with, “Be prepared for an apprenticeship of years.” (I tell that story here, with a comment from Mr. Ponicsan himself).

It did take me years, and some pretty clunky efforts, before I was published. I spent seven years writing and immersing myself in the craft before a publisher gave me a shot. I’m glad easy self-publishing was not an option back then (just expensive, worthless “vanity” publishing). Going through the grinder of submission and rejection made me a better writer. When my break came, I was ready.

But writing should be fun. This doesn’t sound like fun.

You know what the best fun is? Getting better at what you do. I loved basketball as a kid and had my dad put up a hoop on our garage. I spent hours and hours practicing, sometimes in the rain. I played hours of pickup every weekend at the gym. I got real good, and that was doggone fun. I played in college. For years afterward I had fun playing, until I blew out my knee. That was not fun. But it didn’t negate one bit all the satisfaction I got out of getting good, of hitting the winning shot with the crowd cheering.

This sounds like you’re talking to newer writers. Am I hearing you right?

Loud and clear.

So what about a “seasoned” writer? Should they ever abandon a book?

I’ve got the answer: It depends.

Okay, genius, what does it depend on?

First, on whether or not you’ve got a contract. You may not have the luxury of simple abandonment. You may be able to get a deadline extension from your publisher, but don’t make a habit of it.

If you’re an indie writer, or are writing “on spec,” you have more flexibility. We’ve talked about the “30k wall” here at TKZ. I seem to hit that with each book, even with an outline. I’ve found that a day or two of letting the basement boys have at, then coming back with a vengeance, always provides a breakthrough.

But I also have known a successful “pantser” who has written up to a point where the book flattens and loses steam, so much so that he sets the book aside and moves on.

I do my “pantsing” in the plotting stage. I explore many possible scenarios and outcomes, possible twists and turns, before choosing the path that has, for me, the greatest potential. If some twists pop up during the writing (and they always do) I take a little time to assess, and then tweak my outline. I prefer tweaking over abandoning.

I do have a file of first chapters. I can write first chapters all day long. I’ve done that as part of my creativity time, just to see what it sparks. Sometimes it is a jumping off point into further development. Other times I consider it writing practice.

Nothing is wasted when you exercise your writing muscles.

Can Artificial Intelligence save your bacon?

That is a whole can of worms (to mix metaphors). I’ve run plot problems by Mrs. B, whose intelligence is not artificial. So it is good to a brainstorming partner. The advantage of AI is you don’t have to make a phone call and set up a meeting. It is instantly available.

I would just advise not becoming too dependent on AI, because then you’re not exercising your imagination, as stated above. When that atrophies, it affects all aspects of your writing.

On the other hand, the more you work out that brain of yours, the stronger your writing will become. Plus, you’ll bring that secret sauce called self to the pages, the thing that makes your writing stand apart from the noisome pestilence of mediocrity.

Don’t ever abandon yourself.

How I have rambled on. You take over now in the comments. I’d love to hear what you have to say. (Mrs. B and I are watching the grandboys all day, so my responses may be limited. We never abandon grandboy time!)

Should You Go Ahead and Write Mediocre Books?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Years ago I was walking along Sunset Boulevard on a sunny day in Los Angeles (no surprise there) when I ran into a gent in a hat, with a big smile, holding a plate of cookies. He asked if I’d like to have one.

Being a struggling actor at the time, I eagerly accepted. It was an oddly shaped chocolate chip cookie. Not uniform or perfectly round. Each one was unique. That’s because they didn’t come out of a machine. They were handmade, and each glop that was put on a cookie sheet differed slightly from the others.

What was the same was the taste! My buds broke out into The Hallelujah Chorus. The cookie was a perfect blend of dough, chocolate chips, and nuts. I immediately went into the little store and bought a whole bag.

These were, of course, Famous Amos Cookies, and the man was Wally Amos himself.

As I walked away I thanked him, and he said, “Have yourself a real brown day.”

Wally Amos died last week at the age of 88.

The Famous Amos cookie thrived for a time, became legendary in Los Angeles. But as with many an entrepreneur, Wally Amos got underwater and had to sell. The new business soon went wide, not with unique Amos-style cookies, but with machine-made roundies that tasted no different than Chips Ahoy, which only make my taste buds sing a dirge.

And so we lost a singular savor to a dull sameness.

Which brings me to the state of writing today. We’ve discussed AI several times here at TKZ. Developments continue apace. I wasn’t aware of how apace things were until I read the latest issue of Jane Friedman’s Hot Sheet (subscription required). Jane interviewed Elizabeth Ann West, co-founder of Future Fiction Academy. What jumped out at me was a question about whether Big 5 publishers are using AI not only to create new “brand names” but also to extend established ones. West thinks the latter may already be happening:

I can’t say for sure. But if you read the Look Inside for some recent releases, those of us who write with AI all the time, we see the tell-tale signs that they’re using AI, particularly New York Times bestsellers. There’s one in particular, the first paragraph is like 15 sentences about boats, boats, boats inside of New York harbor. And when you compare that to this author’s previous work, that doesn’t even match.

AI also has a tendency to put four ideas in one sentence. You will open up a book and it will say, “Susie Q walked down the path, chewing her gum, her phone rang, and the scent of jasmine was in the air.” Most humans write in threes. Another big tell is echolalia. In the dialogue, you’ll see, “Jane, how are you feeling today?” And Jane says, “I feel fine, Elizabeth.”

And this is not to mention the thousands (tens of thousands?) of indies using AI to publish dozens of novels and novellas in the time it usually takes an old-school author to write one book.

The question is, are all these AI-generated books like the generic cookies that followed the Famous Amos sell off?

Does that even matter?

Some time ago, one of the leading voices for indie publishing, Joe Konrath, wrote a cheeky blog post asking:

Why write longer? Why write better? What’s the benefit?

Readers will forgive me if I phone-in a book. Or four. Especially with a series. As long as my first 12 are solid, I could probably make the next 6 mediocre, or even shitty, and most of my fanbase will stick with me.

Now, I’m not talking about releasing a book with errors in it; plot problems, story problems, typos, formatting probs, and so on, even though Maria [Joe’s wife] forgives authors for those indiscretions, and according to her they happen in about half the ebooks she reads.

I’m talking about releasing a book that would average 3.7 stars from readers, whereas if I spent an extra month on it, I could average 4.2.

Seems like a gigantic waste of time.

Yes, sure, if you want to put out product, lots of it, and fast, without laboring over it, you can. Especially with AI. You can even make money that way.

Now, I’m not claiming to be pure as the driven snow (I live in L.A., so the only snow I ever see is driven snow, meaning I have to drive to see it), but something in me makes me need to hand make my cookies, one by one, with some effort to make them as tasty as I can. I still think there are readers who appreciate that.

I don’t know the financial ramifications of writing with care versus pumping out mediocrities. It’s impossible to design an A/B test without a time machine.

But that’s my recipe and I’m sticking to it.

“Have yourself a real write day.”

Just thinking out loud today. Add your own thoughts in the comments about AI, mass production, care in writing—and does it even matter?

The Art of the Outline

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

[NOTE: I had this post prepped before seeing yesterday’s Words of Wisdom. Consider this an adjunct to that discussion and let’s continue the conversation in the comments.]

Partial of J. K. Rowling’s outline for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

At my first ThrillerFest I went to listen to a panel of writers talking about their working methods. I was a bit late to the packed proceedings, so found myself a place to stand in the back. A minute or so later a writer of some repute came in and took the spot next to me.

At about that time writer Andrew Gross was talking about working with Mr. James Patterson (I think Gross was the first, or at least among the first, of the Patterson co-writers). He went into detail about the single-spaced, eighty-page outlines favored by the world’s bestselling novelist.

At which point the writer next to me issued an anguished sigh. He sounded like Sisyphus looking down the hill after his rock rolled back to the bottom.

After the panel, as we walked out, I said to him, “I take it you don’t favor outlines.”

To which Lee Child said, “I don’t even know what I’m going to write in the next paragraph.”

And there we have the two ends of the spectrum on the perennial question new writers ask: Should I outline my novel before I write it?

We all know there are various opinions on the matter. Generally the issue is robustly discussed, with pros and cons, and usually ends with, “Well, do whatever works for you.”

At the extreme ends, however, you will often be treated to voluble zealotry. I call these camps the NOPs and the COPs—“Never Outline People” and “Copious Outline People.”

Your hard-core NOP will often assert that never, under any circumstances, unless you are a complete and utter doofus, must you ever attempt to outline, in any form or fashion, lest your story become an empty shell or bloodless ruin.

I find such conviction fascinating, for nothing in art, or even life, is a matter of such certainty.

Those pressing for the copious outline can also be a bit too fervid in their advocacy.

There are, of course, some famous “pantsers,” such as Mr. Child and Stephen King. Both extol the value of their approach. But I herein offer a theory: those guys, because of their backgrounds (Child from TV, King from voracious reading as a kid) have story and structure wired into them. The outlines are actually there, unfolding in their heads. They’re not so purely NOP after all.

And there are famous outliners, with J. K. Rowling and James Patterson at the head of that class.

My conclusion: all ultimately successful writers outline, whether they write it down beforehand, house it in their brains as they go along, or some mix of both.

Further, outlining should be considered an art. And as with any art, the more you practice, the better you get at it.

I thought about this recently as I revisited the first craft book I ever studied, Writing the Novel by Lawrence Block. He has an entire chapter on outlining. His definition is as follows: “An outline is a tool which a writer uses to simplify the task of writing a novel and to improve the ultimate quality of that novel by giving himself more of a grasp on its overall structure.”

He quickly adds: “Because the outline is prepared solely for the benefit of the writer himself, it quite properly varies from one author to another and from one novel to another.”

That’s where the art comes in. No two jazz pianists are alike, but they all know the scales.

Among the NOPs there is an assertion bandied about which Block traces to the sci-fi writer Theodore Sturgeon: “If the writer doesn’t know what’s going to happen next…the reader can’t possibly know what’s going to happen next.”

Block doesn’t think this “logic” holds up. “Just because a writer worked things out as he went along is no guarantee that the book he’s produced won’t be obvious and predictable. Conversely, the use of an extremely detailed outline does not preclude the possibility that the book will read as though it had been written effortlessly and spontaneously….”

Block does not advocate the “copious” outline, but rather chapter-by-chapter paragraphs to describe the action in each, using only enough detail “so that the storyline makes sense.”

Nor is the writer chained to the outline. Inevitably, things grow and change as you write. In those places, Block emphasizes, be ready to deviate from and rework the outline.

That’s the art of it. Like a jazz riff, but still ending up with a coherent tune with an overall structure. (Yes, there is a school—a small school—of music eschewing any effort at tonal coherence, which creates an effect similar to having your head peppered with a nail gun. But I digress.)

My own practice is to outline 14 “signpost scenes” (explained fully in Super Structure). It gives my story coherence (kind of important for readers) and meaning (the latter by way of the “mirror moment”), but also gives me the freedom to riff my way from signpost to signpost.

I actually do my “pantsing” before I lay out my scenes. I start what I call a “white-hot document,” which is me writing fast, following my synapses wherever they lead. (David Morrell does much the same thing, asking and answering questions like “Why?” and “So what?”)

I’ll open each day by revising, cutting, and adding to the document. This is fun and exciting, as the story begins to bubble up and, most important, take shape.

Finally, I start laying out the signpost scenes and brainstorming scenes I’d like to see. Then off I go and write the thing.

I’ll leave the last word with a writer named Dean Koontz, who I’ve heard has sold a few books:

Occasionally I encounter a critic or a would-be writer who believes that an author should let his characters create the entire plot as they act it out. According to this theory, any pre-planned plot line is hopelessly artificial, and it is supposedly preferable for the writer to discover the direction of the story only as the characters discover it. In some arcane fashion, this is supposed to lead to a more “natural” plot.

Balderdash.

When a master furniture maker crafts a splendid Queen Anne-style table, is he being “artificial” merely because he follows an established pattern? Are the paintings of Andrew Wyeth “artificial” because the artist limits himself to a painstakingly realistic rendition of our world?

The answers to both of those questions are, of course, the same: No!

***

If a writer allows his characters to seize total control, he is actually allowing his subconscious mind to write the book without benefit of the more sober and steady guidance of his conscious intellect, and the result is fiction as formless and purposeless as much of what takes place in the real world, precisely the kind of fiction that frustrates most readers. (How to Write Best-Selling Fiction)

Comments welcome.

Little Things Add Up to Something Big

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

We have today another first page for critique. The author describes the work as “Spec Fic with Horror Elements.” Let’s have a look and talk on the other side.

Bankside warehouse (Wikimedia Commons)

Bankside warehouse (Wikimedia Commons)

Watch All Night

Joe shivered his way down the cobbled alley lined with old Bankside warehouses. The February sun barely touched the first of them, but a freezing gust blasted its way in from the Thames. Nasty long winter, this. All slashing winds and feeble light. Soon be inside, though.

He buried his hands deeper into the pockets of the jacket Dil had “lent” him. The one that happened to be in his size and not Dil’s… but at least he’d have only bought it second-hand for Joe. Once this Eldmill job started, he’d sneak some money back to Dil. Move out of the hostel. Save up for a course, something working with at-risk teens. Do everything right this time.  No dealing. No recruiting runners. No prison. 

That must be it, that next one coming up, tarpaulin lunging from the roof, whip-crackling. All the warehouses he’d passed had already been turned into something new. They kept their listed historic shapes, though, their brown brick and shaded glass. Outside the Eldmill, changing into a swanky apartment building, plastic-wrapped packages clustered. A rusty security gate lay on the pavement. A forklift idled nearby. Unseen construction workers banged and drilled. 

He stepped past a mud-splashed bollard dug out of the ground to make room for hauling the packages into the building. Now he’d arrived at his new job. 

Fancy new glass door, steel frame glittered from the safety of the manufacturer’s tape that still covered it. Across about forty feet of beautiful granite floor, a reception desk fronted in warm, yellow-beige marble welcomed you. Two blokes in hardhats and multi-pocketed work trousers crossed the floor, the taller man sputtering laughter across one of those eco-mugs, printed with smiling golden giraffes, at something his mate said. 

Joe stepped back. The heel of his trainers smacked into the unearthed bollard. 

‘I’m not going in there.’

JSB: Well, I am chuffed to bits (that means “pleased as punch” in England) about this offering from across the pond. Let’s have a butcher’s hook (Cockney for “a look”) in detail:

Joe shivered his way down the cobbled alley lined with old Bankside warehouses.

This is an action opening. It has a character in motion, not mere narrative description. The descriptive elements, including the weather, are woven in as we move along.

Note the vivid descriptor shivered. A lesser hand would have written, Joe walked down the cobbled alley. He was shivering. 

Tip: Train yourself to take just a moment or two to consider alternatives to “plain vanilla” verbs. If nothing comes to you, write on and look later. I find the best time for this is when I edit my previous day’s work. It’s not a heavy edit and I don’t linger, but always pick up ways to make the writing stronger.

The February sun barely touched the first of them, but a freezing gust blasted its way in from the Thames. Nasty long winter, this. All slashing winds and feeble light. Soon be inside, though. 

Excellent. We’ve got the time and place and weather. Evocative words: gust blasted, slashing winds, feeble light. And a hint of what’s going on. Joe is heading “inside” somewhere. I want to know where.

We’re also in deep POV. The narrative portions are how Joe would think about these things.

Tip: To get into deep 3d Person, try writing a scene in First Person, then switch it.

He buried his hands deeper into the pockets of the jacket Dil had “lent” him. The one that happened to be in his size and not Dil’s… but at least he’d have only bought it second-hand for Joe. Once this Eldmill job started, he’d sneak some money back to Dil. Move out of the hostel. Save up for a course, something working with at-risk teens. Do everything right this time.  No dealing. No recruiting runners. No prison. 

I love this paragraph. It has background info but it’s slipped in unobtrusively. Joe has “borrowed” (stolen?) a jacket from a character named Dil. Joe has an honest streak in him, wanting to get money back to Dil. We know he’s been staying in a hostel and wants to save up money so he can make something of his life, something good. Do everything right this time. He’d been a drug dealer. He’s been in prison.

We’re only in the second paragraph and know just a little about Joe, but we have a rooting interest now. We love characters who have known hard times but who aren’t playing the victim, characters who want to better themselves.

There’s also mystery about what the “Eldmill job” is. Good. A little mystery in the opening prompts us to read on.

That must be it, that next one coming up, tarpaulin lunging from the roof, whip-crackling.

Superb. A tarpaulin is not merely hanging from the roof, it’s lunging. And the sentence ends with the original and striking whip-crackling.

Tip: The power of a sentence can often be improved by moving the most vivid word to the end. Hemingway did this all the time, e.g., Villalta, his hand up at the crowd and the bull roaring blood, looking straight at Villalta and his legs caving.

The author does more of the same here:

Outside the Eldmill, changing into a swanky apartment building, plastic-wrapped packages clustered.  

How much better this is than clustered, plastic-wrapped packages.

It may seem like a little thing, but an accumulation of little things adds up to a big thing indeed: a vivid reading experience, the kind that makes fans.

A rusty security gate lay on the pavement. A forklift idled nearby. Unseen construction workers banged and drilled. 

Visual and audible details. I’m there. (Tip: Don’t overlook the underused sense of smell.)

He stepped past a mud-splashed bollard dug out of the ground to make room for hauling the packages into the building.

Not: a bollard covered with mud. 

Fancy new glass door, steel frame glittered from the safety of the manufacturer’s tape that still covered it. Across about forty feet of beautiful granite floor, a reception desk fronted in warm, yellow-beige marble welcomed you.

The one cavil I have with this is welcomed you. That’s a slight break from Joe’s deep POV. Might I suggest instead: Across about forty feet of beautiful granite floor, a welcoming reception desk fronted in warm, yellow-beige marble.

Two blokes in hardhats and multi-pocketed work trousers crossed the floor 

Blokes is exactly the word Joe would use.

the taller man sputtering laughter across one of those eco-mugs, printed with smiling golden giraffes, at something his mate said. 

The man doesn’t just laugh, he sputters laughter, and not with any mug, but an eco-mug. And not just an eco-mug, but one with smiling golden giraffes. What a nice, original detail that is.

Joe stepped back. The heel of his trainers smacked into the unearthed bollard.  

Not the heel of his shoes, but the more specific trainers. And it doesn’t hit, it smacks. The author is choosing vivid descriptors each time. The little things!

‘I’m not going in there.’

Thus ends the page. I don’t know what the author intended here. It seems as if Joe says this out loud. Or maybe it’s someone else who is identified in the next line. And I believe it’s a British thing to use the single quote marks. Like Brother Gilstrap, I’m not a fan of that mark, but then again I don’t want to be a stuffy Yank. If that’s how they do it over there, so be it. I mean, they like blood sausage, so there you go.

I’m also not a fan of characters speaking out loud only to themselves. In movies or on the page it usually seems false. Consider changing that to an interior thought.

At least, however, if it is Joe speaking, we want to know why he suddenly doesn’t want to go in. The page-turning mystery is planted. And that’s the main point of these first-page critiques. Do we want to turn the page? I certainly do.

In short, my British writer friend, Bob’s your uncle!

Chime in, TKZers. What do you think of today’s page?

First Light a Fire

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

A story is told of a writer reading some bad poetry to a friend in a cold apartment. The only heat was a dying fire. Finally, shivering, the friend cried out, “My dear sir, either put fire into your verses or your verses into the fire!”

Readers respond to heat. That’s why you need fire in your fiction (a nod here to TKZ emeritus Jodie Renner and agent Donald Maass). Let me offer a few “hot” suggestions.

Fire Up Your Openings

It all starts with your first page, which we here at TKZ write about a lot (click on “First-page Critiques” in the menu and you’ll get a graduate-level course on the subject).

A wise writer (I’m not sure who) said, “A story begins when you light the match, not when you lay out the wood.” Give us some heat from the get-go.

It doesn’t have to be high heat. Just something that disturbs the Lead’s ordinary world. A portent of things to come.

I’ve critiqued many a manuscript at writers conferences, and when I find a “lay out the wood” opening it’s usually because there’s too much backstory. The author thinks the reader has to know a certain amount of information to understand what’s going on.

Nix. Readers will wait a long time for background information if they’re seeing conflict happening on the page.

I’ve suggested two things for wooden openings that work 99% of the time.

Tip #1 is to go to the first instance of dialogue in the manuscript. Dialogue automatically means action, something happening between two or more characters. Then see how you can pump up the conflict in the conversation.

Tip #2 is the “Chapter Two Switcheroo.” Toss Chapter One and begin with Chapter Two. Works wonders! You can then “marble in” only the Chapter One exposition that is absolutely essential.

Fan the Flames of Emotion

When you come to a particularly emotional scene, overwrite it. You can always tone it down later if you want.

I like to do the page-long sentence technique. I open a fresh document and then write in the character’s voice for at least 250 words. No periods, just stream-of-consciousness thoughts, telling me how they’re feeling, not in a simple terms like “angry” or “sad,” but in vivid metaphors and physical reactions. Write write write…then set that aside and come back to it later.

Usually, I’m looking for that one line or image that is striking, that arose out of my subconscious as my fingers flew across the keyboard.

It’s worth the effort. We’re elevating our fiction out of the “pretty good” (tepid) pile and into the “fantastic!” (high heat) pile.

Combust the Conflict

Be sure to give every character in every scene an agenda. They should all want something. There are no seat warmers in fiction.

Put those agendas in opposition.

Even minor characters can add conflict if their goals get in the way of the viewpoint character’s objective.

Push your characters to disagree with each other. In dialogue, use the em-dash interruption every now and then (as I describe here and John there).

Enflame the Philosophy

In my opinion a great Lead character has, well, opinions. Some things should make them hot under the collar.

I like to do a Voice Journal for my main characters, and prod them with questions, one of which is, “What is your philosophy of life?” Then I sit back (as I type) and listen to what they have to say.

An important caveat is not to let the character get too preachy (John Galt to the contrary notwithstanding). The best way to present the material is through dialogue. Here’s a bit from the great film On the Waterfront starring Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint. It’s about an ex-boxer, Terry Malloy, who now works as a strong arm for a waterfront boss.

When the mob murders a potential witness against them, Terry comes into contact with the victim’s sister, Edie. Not knowing Terry’s complicity in her brother’s death, Edie is drawn to Terry, as he is to her. Terry takes her to a dive for a drink. After some conversation, he says—

TERRY: You wanna hear my philosophy of life? Do it to him before he does it to you.

 

EDIE: I never met anyone like you. There’s not a spark of sentiment, or romance, or human kindness in your whole body.

            

TERRY: What good does it do you besides get you in trouble?

EDIE: And when things and people get in your way, you just knock them aside, get rid of them. Is that your idea?

            

TERRY: Don’t look at me when you say that. It wasn’t my fault what happened to Joey. Fixing him wasn’t my idea.

EDIE: Who said it was?

            

TERRY: Everybody’s putting the needle on me. You and them mugs in the church and Father Barry. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me.

EDIE: He was looking at everybody the same way.

 

TERRY: Oh, yeah? What’s with this Father Barry? What’s his racket?

 

EDIE: His racket?

            

TERRY: Yeah, his racket. Everybody’s got a racket.

 

EDIE: But he’s a priest.

 

TERRY: Are you kiddin’? So what? That don’t make no difference.

 

EDIE: You don’t believe anybody, do you?

            

TERRY: Listen, down here it’s every man for himself. It’s keeping alive. It’s standing in with the right people so you get a little bit of change jingling in your pocket.

EDIE: And if you don’t?

 

TERRY: If you don’t? Right down.

EDIE: It’s living like an animal.

            

TERRY: All right. I’d rather live like an animal than end up like …

EDIE: Like Joey? Are you afraid to mention his name?

Write like that and readers will get fired up, too…for your next book!

So how do you turn up the heat when you write?

Time Getting You Down? Tune In To Radio Station KDRI

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory, 1931. Oil on canvas

We’ve had some discussions about time recently. Brother Gilstrap opined about making time for the things that count. Garry laid out a grid of 100 10-minute blocks. Heck, Kay has a whole cozy series centered around time.

Just thinking about time takes time! The trick is not to go crazy about it.

Reminds me of some Dad Jokes:

Why did the woman put a clock under her desk? She wanted to work overtime.

Why shouldn’t you tell secrets when a clock is around? Because time will tell.

What does a wall clock do after it stops ticking? It hangs around.

Ba-dump-bump.

All seriousness aside, I’ve been a lifelong learner about what we call “time management.” There are tons of books out there on the subject, my favorite being the classic How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein.

To me, it all boils down to deciding what you want to do and then prioritizing the list.

I’ve used the A-B-C method. You look at your list and mark all the “must do” tasks with an A, the “want to do” tasks with B, and the “can wait” tasks with C.

Then you prioritize each letter with a number. Thus, A-1 becomes the first thing you tackle, followed by A-2 and so on. If you have time, you start on the Bs. Usually you don’t do anything with the Cs, until they move up to a B or an A.

I find taking a few minutes each morning to write a fresh list extremely helpful.

The other day I was thinking about time again because, well, the sands of time run on and our allotment gets a little less each day. Yet the things I want to do seem to keep expanding. The bucket for my list is a twelve-pound drum.

Pondering the possibilities can be overwhelming. I am reminded of the Donald Fagin song lyric: But tell me what’s to be done, Lord/’bout the weather in my head?

It’s like the static and program bits you hear as you keep changing the channels on a radio.

And that’s when an idea hit me. I needed to find the right station.

So I formed KDRI.

That stands for four columns: Know, Do, Read, Ideas.

Under K, I began to list the things I want know more about. It includes subjects like Alexander the Great, The Mongol Empire, George Orwell, Vikings, and secrets of the grill masters.

The Do list is all my tasks, with writing as top priority. I list here my WIP, my WIP-to-come, Substack posts, blog posts, and miscellaneous other projects. Then there are things I want to do and places I want to go.

Read is for the books and long articles I want to get to. A few of the titles on my TBR list are: Musk by Walter Isaacson, the autobiography of Jim Murray, Jerry West by Roland Lazenby, Nicholas Nickleby, The Raymond Chandler Papers, and The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories.

Ideas is for my creativity time, capturing ideas for later sorting The best way to get good ideas is to come up with lots of ideas, assess, and throw the weak ones out. Mostly these are story ideas that I’ll look at for further development.

Each day I look at the columns and write my priority list, as described above. (And I do mean writing, with a pen on a piece of paper. There’s something empowering about doing so.)

I include exercise time, eating time, a power nap, and leave some time for discretionary goofing around. I start early and go till about 4 p.m. The rest of the day is wife time: dinner, maybe a movie, maybe play a game, or just talk. Of course, that’s subject to change if we have friends over, go out, or life tosses in one of its many intrusions.

Sunday is a day of rest. I usually try to catch up on my reading.

I’m mindful of not getting too obsessive over this. As Sue said in her comment on John’s post, “Balance is key. I learned that lesson the hard way.”

But I also know that a few minutes of planning can pay off in productive dividends.

So next time the static is getting you down, try tuning in to KDRI. It’s free!

What are some things you have in your KDRI columns?

5 Timeless Truths of Popular Fiction

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

It was in the 1920s that “commercial” or “popular” fiction really took off. Radio was in its infancy and TV was two decades away. The local movie house gave you a night’s entertainment for a dime or a quarter. But to fill the rest of the week, a voracious reading public wanted entertaining fiction delivered regularly…and fast.

Thus, the pulp market exploded, with magazines printed on cheap paper so they could be sold for ten or fifteen cents.

The usual pay for writers was a penny a word. Pulp writers used certain tricks to make an extra penny. For instance, Erle Stanley Gardner (creator of Perry Mason) liked to use both names when a character did or said something (with some unneeded adverbial attributions), a la:

Paul Drake entered Perry Mason’s office.

“Hiya, Beautiful,” Paul Drake said to Della Street, Perry Mason’s confidential secretary.

“Hello, Paul,” Della Street said with a shy smile.

“What brings you by, Paul?” Perry Mason remarked in a curious tone.

A pulp writer named Wyatt Blassingame gave his series character the name Joe Gee, because it was only six letters but counted as a two words. Smart!

But above all these writers had to master what I’m calling “The 5 Timeless Truths of Popular Fiction.” They were writing for the market and if they wanted to keep bread on the table and beer in the icebox, they had to please that market. These truths helped them do it.

  1. A Lead to Root For

Gardner said this was the key. He called it “the lowest common denominator of public interest.” It is the “firm foundation.” If an author doesn’t have that in a story “he doesn’t have anything.”

I don’t see any counter argument for that.

Which is not to say your Lead needs to be a classic “hero.” There are anti-heroes we root for, and also “negative Leads,” such as Scrooge and Scarlett. We root for the latter because we hope for their redemption.

  1. Colorful Characters

No stereotypes or “placeholder” minor characters. This is where am author can add “spice” to the plot. It’s what sets Dickens apart from other Victorian writers. It’s what makes The Maltese Falcon a pleasure to read and view (I mean, how can you beat Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet added to Bogart and Mary Astor, not to mention Elisha Cook, Jr. and Ward Bond? Come on!)

Don’t throw away the opportunity to spice up your tale with colorful characters. 

  1. Major in Action

Leave us not go into the merits of literary fiction. But there is a reason we demarcate literary and commercial fiction. The latter sells more. And it does so in part because it majors in action.

That doesn’t always mean car chase or gunfight type action. It means the main thrust of the story is a character doing things to solve the story question.

And while I’m an advocate of “unobtrusively poetic” prose, solid action by colorful characters can override somewhat clunky writing. If you want an example, read any of the Conan stories by Robert E. Howard. His writing is rough but so full of “blood and thunder” that pulp readers couldn’t get enough of it.

  1. Cliffhangers

The term “cliffhanger” came from the early silent movie serials featuring Pearl White (“The Perils of Pauline”) where an episode would end with Pearl tied to the railroad tracks or literally hanging over a cliff, clutching a branch. You just had to come back next week to see how she got out of it.

But cliffhangers are not limited to these “big” moments. They can also be the subtle things that make a reader want to turn a page or read a next chapter.

One of the things I did when I was learning the craft was read a bunch of thrillers and ask myself why I wanted to read on. I made a list of techniques I call “Read On Prompts” (ROP). I’d jot ROP in the margin of the books each time I found myself eager to turn the page. It’s an invaluable practice I commend to you.

The prolific pulp writer Lester Dent made up a “formula” for a 6k word suspense story. He broke it into four parts of 1500 words, listing the fundamental elements of what needed to be in each quadrant. Here are his goals for the ROPs:

  1. Near the end of first 1500 words, there is a complete surprise twist in the plot development. SO FAR: Does it have SUSPENSE?
  2. A surprising plot twist to end the 1500 words. NOW: Does second part have SUSPENSE? Does the MENACE grow like a black cloud? Is the hero getting it in the neck? Is the second part logical?
  3. A surprising plot twist, in which the hero preferably gets it in the neck bad, to end the 1500 words. Does it still have SUSPENSE? The MENACE getting blacker? The hero finds himself in a hell of a fix? It all happens logically?
  4. Ending the final 1500 words. Final twist, a big surprise, (This can be the villain turning out to be the unexpected person, having the “Treasure” be a dud, etc.). The snapper, the punch line to end it. The suspense held to the last line. Everything been explained? It all happen logically? Is the Punch Line enough to leave the reader with that WARM FEELING?

That last bit brings us to Timeless Truth #5.

  1. Resonant Endings 

Dent’s “warm feeling” I call resonance. As stated in my book The Last Fifty Pages, “Resonance is that last, perfect note in a great piece of music, leaving the audience not just satisfied, but moved. Perhaps even changed.”

That’s why I spend more editing time on my endings, even the last page and paragraphs, than any other part of the book.

We all know that a lousy ending can sour the taste of an otherwise good book or movie.

A good ending is better of course, one that connects all the threads.

But a resonant ending is best of all, for it captures the hearts of the readers and sends them looking for more of your books, which makes you a popular author.

And that’s the truth.

Comments welcome.

How to Avoid Dumb Moves

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

There was a hilarious commercial a few years ago riffing off of horror movie clichés. It has a group of teens running from some unseen threat, wondering where to hide:

Which brings up the subject of dumb moves.

My wife and I enjoy old TV crime shows, like Peter Gunn, Mannix, Hawaii-Five-O, Dragnet.

We watched one the other night. The PI is looking for a sadistic killer of prostitutes. He gets a call from one who is scared, asking him to meet her at a bar. She thinks she knows where the killer is but doesn’t want to tell him over the phone.

So the PI goes to the bar and wisely sits at a table far from the door. The hooker comes in, spots him, sits down. She’s scared she may be next. But she wants money to show the PI where the guy hides out.

PI agrees and off they go walking down—naturally—a dark city street.

At which point my wife says, “It’s a set up. Don’t go there!”

But he does go there. They get to a chain link fence with an opening. Woman tells PI to follow.

“Don’t do it!” Mrs. B says.

He does it.

And, of course, a few feet later the killer and his thug buddy subdue the PI.

Now what? The killer proceeds to tell PI what he’s going to do. He’s going to kill another girl. Then he’s going to kill the PI. “You won’t know when it’s coming,” he says with a smile, then knocks him out.

PI comes to with just a bad headache. And of course nabs the killer at the end.

We’ve talked before about the TSTL (Too Stupid To Live) character. That happens because it violates a rule (yes, I said rule): Every character in every scene should make the best move possible in pursuit of their agenda.

Violation of the rule results in the dumb move, and readers hate that.

In the above scenario, there are two.

First is when the PI goes through the fence. What else could he have done? Well, for starters, how about not going through the fence? Maybe we can buy that he follows the girl this far, but his PI sense should have told him not to enter unknown territory. But the PI walks right into the trap.

The other dumb move is the killer’s. A sensible killer (if I may suppose such a thing, and Sue and Debbie can check me on that) would have offed the PI right there. But he has the idea that making him wait is the better move.

Um…no.

(Need I go into detail about the “chatty villain” who explains his whole scheme while holding a gun on the hero? Or, worse, sets up the hero to die a horrible death then walks out, giving said hero—often named James Bond—the opportunity to use some clever device to get out of harm’s way. “You expect me to talk?” Bond asks Goldfinger, as Bond is about to be sliced in two by a laser. “No, Mr. Bond,” Goldfinger says. “I expect you to die.” And then he walks out!)

Maximum Capacity

So, when you write a scene—which means Objective, Obstacles, and Outcome—give some thought before you begin on the best moves each character can make. This is called “acting with maximum capacity.”

No character should ever be passive, even the minor ones. Give each character a goal, even if it’s as simple as (in Vonnegut’s words) getting a glass of water. Then have the goals clash, which creates conflict.

The tension will rise unless a move proves dumb.

You should also give thought to what the main characters are doing “off screen.” In other words, they aren’t in suspended animation, waiting to come onstage and improvise. While the viewpoint character is dealing with the scene trouble, other characters are planning their next moves, and they should be at maximum capacity, too.

I call this “the shadow story.” If you give this some brainstorming time, you’ll be developing a lot of plot material, as if by magic.

This is not to say that every maximum move is always positive. Indeed, a character flaw can hinder a best move even though—and this is key—the character thinks it’s best at the moment.

Farley Granger in Side Street (1949)

An example would be a familiar noir trope—the nice guy who is struggling to support a family. Such a film is the noir classic Side Street (1949) starring Farley Granger. Granger plays a decent guy named Joe who has a pregnant wife (Cathy O’Donnell) but has found only part-time work as a mailman. He longs to treat his wife to some of the finer things in life.

One day Joe delivers mail to a lawyer’s office and catches glimpse of a guy putting two C notes into an accordion folder, then shoving it into a file drawer.

The next day, Joe brings the mail into the office, but the lawyer has left a note saying he’s in court and will be back soon.

Joe remembers the two hundred bucks. He looks at the filing cabinet. He hesitates…he resists….he starts to leave. But then desire overtakes judgment. He breaks into the filing cabinet and stuffs the folder into his mailbag. He takes it to a rooftop where he won’t be seen.

There he discovers that the folder contains not two hundred, but thirty-thousand dollars.

Now his wife can have a private room for her delivery.

But of course the thirty Gs belongs to a criminal who will soon hunt Joe.

The point is you can have a fundamentally good character make a maximum move for the wrong reason—and for which he will pay the consequences.

So remember, write your scenes to the max so readers don’t do what Dorothy Parker once suggested: “This is not a novel to be lightly tossed aside. It should be thrown with great force.”

What dumb moves annoy you in fiction or film?

What Fuels Your Writing?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

“Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there.” – Thomas Berger

So how can you get gas these days for under $4?

Eat at Taco Bell.

Ba-dump-bump.

And where do you get fuel for your writing? That’s today’s question.

Some of the ways are as follows.

Caffeine

Not everyone begins the day with a cup of joe, but it has been a mainstay of many a writer, starting with Balzac. He overdid it, of course. Drinking up to 50 cups of heavy-duty mud during his writing time, which was generally from 1 a.m. to 8 a.m., he produced nearly 200 novels and novellas before succumbing to caffeine-induced heart failure at the age of 51.

But the benefits of moderate coffee intake are now well known. It wasn’t always so. I was looking at a 1985 edition of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, which had a headline about how a couple of cups of coffee posed a danger of developing heart disease.

Which reminds me of that scene in Woody Allen’s Sleeper, where a health-food store owner is cryogenically frozen in 1973 and wakes up 200 years later.

There he sees doctors smoking and talking about the benefits of tobacco, steak, and hot fudge.

“Those were once thought to be unhealthy,” a doctor explains. “Precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.”

That’s coffee for you. In moderation, caffeine boosts alertness, powers up short-term memory, accelerates information processing, and increases learning capabilities.

I have a multi-published friend who favors diet, decaffeinated Coke. To which I say, “What’s the point?”

And to you I ask:

Do you have a favorite beverage to sip when you write?

There is also inner fuel that motivates writers.

Something to Say

There’s an old axiom in Hollywood: “If you want to send a message, use Western Union.” Meaning story comes first. A “message picture” can devolve into preachiness or propaganda if one is not careful.

Same for fiction. If you’ve got an issue you want to write about, go for it. But don’t let your characters become one-dimensional pawns in a hobbyhorse chess game.

My advice is to give your hero a flaw, and your villain a justification. Remember, a villain doesn’t think he’s pure evil, except for this guy:

Write a “closing argument” for your villain, as if he’s arguing to a jury to justify everything he’s done. This is great psychological backstory, and you can drip some of it in. Believe me, this will make your villain more chilling and the reading experience more emotional, which is your goal.

Fun

Brother Gilstrap has said on more than one occasion that he is tickled he gets paid to “make stuff up.” That’s not a small matter. When you have joy in writing, it shows up on the page.

“In the great story-tellers, there is a sort of self-enjoyment in the exercise of the sense of narrative; and this, by sheer contagion, communicates enjoyment to the reader. Perhaps it may be called (by analogy with the familiar phrase, “the joy of living”) the joy of telling tales. The joy of telling tales which shines through Treasure Island is perhaps the main reason for the continued popularity of the story. The author is having such a good time in telling his tale that he gives us necessarily a good time in reading it.” – Clayton Meeker Hamilton, A Manual of the Art of Fiction (1919)

A Healthy Brain

Another reason to write is to fight cognitive decline. This has been mentioned here several times, by Sue and myself.

When you exercise your head through the rigors of writing a coherent and complex story, you keep it in fighting trim.

Last Friday was the 98th birthday of Mel Brooks. He and his partner, the late Carl Reiner (who died in 2020 at age 98) were trained in the Catskills style of improv comedy. Always on, always with the word play. At parties they started doing an improv skit about a 2000-year-old man, with Reiner as the interviewer. It got so popular they made a comedy album that became a huge hit, and they did their skit well into their 80s. Here’s a bit:

That’s why I’m skeptical of letting AI do your creative thinking. Every time it makes a decision for you is a time when your brain is lounging in a hammock, getting fat.

Money

Yes, some people write because they want to make money. It’s a hard gig for that, but if you treat it as a job and approach it like a business, you have a shot.

The old pulp writers knew this. They had to approach writing for the market like going to work each day, because they needed to put food on the table during the Depression.

But to do it, they had to know how to write stories that pleased readers. It’s a simple, capitalistic exchange: the product (a good story) sold to a customer (the reader) who is looking for a respite from the angst of the current moment.

“In a world that encompasses so much pain and fear and cruelty, it is noble to provide a few hours of escape, moments of delight and forgetfulness.” — Dean Koontz

Legacy

Mr. Steve Hooley has talked about writing for his grandchildren. My grandfather on my mother’s side was like that. He loved history, and wrote historical fiction that didn’t sell to publishers, so he published it himself for his family and friends.

He was especially interested in the Civil War. One of his stories was titled, “The Civil War Did Not Necessarily End at Appomattox.” Yeah, he need to work on his titles. But I’m glad to have the stories!

Without fuel, our writing is flaccid, uninspiring, boring. So I ask:

What fuels your writing?