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.

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?

Have I Heard of You?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

“The Deed is everything, the Glory nought.” – Goethe

I dread these conversations.

I’ve just met a person at a social gathering. (“I’m Jim.” “I’m Bill.”) We exchange pleasantries (“Here’s one of my pleasantries.” “Thank you, have one of mine.”) and before too long he asks, “So what do you do, Jim?”
I know what’s coming. It always ends the same way. But there’s no way out, unless I lie (“I own a plumbing company. Got a leak? We take a peek.”) So I give it to him straight. “I’m a writer.”

“Oh really?” (It’s coming…) “What do you write?”

“Thrillers.”

“Ah.” (Here it comes!) “Have I heard of you?”

I clear my throat. “James Scott Bell.”

Blank look. Embarrassed pause. “Um, no…”

The answer is always no.

In an effort to save a shred of dignity, I test him. “Have you heard of James Patterson?” In the off chance he says yes, I’m prepared to say I write for the same audience. That only a small fraction of his audience may have picked up one of my books is something I don’t feel compelled to share. But even with Mr. Patterson, the answer is usually along the lines of—

“Wait…um, wasn’t he heavyweight champion of the world?”

“You’re thinking of Floyd Patterson.”

“Oh, right. Do you mean the guy who killed his wife? Wait a second…Scott Patterson?”

“I think you mean Scott Peterson.”

“Yes! I have heard of him!”

I slink away, wondering if it’s too late to take up plumbing.

Even back in the “old days” of trad-only publishing, the answer was always no. Today, with all the indies and ’bots producing millions of books, the odds against some random person knowing your name are astronomical.

But this is not a new thing. Have you read any Thorne Smith lately?

Who?

Thorne Smith was a wildly popular author of the 1920s and 30s. He wrote numerous bestsellers, the most famous of which were about Cosmo Topper, a quiet, respectable banker pestered by the ghosts of a fun-loving couple, George and Marion Kerby. (In the 1937 movie, Roland Young played Topper, Cary Grant was George and Constance Bennett was Marion. It was also a popular TV show in the 50s.)

But today Thorne Smith is little more than a Jeopardy answer, and probably would stump everyone except three-time Jeopardy champion Meg Gardiner, who is wildly popular in her own right as a #1 bestselling thriller writer.

Have you heard of Carroll John Daly? No, he’s not the great grandfather of a certain rotund golfer. He is, in fact, the father of the hardboiled detective character.

Usually that honorific is given to Dashiell Hammett, going back to when he published the first of his Continental Op stories in Black Mask. But Daly’s hardboiled detective, Race Williams, appeared in Black Mask on June 1, 1923, pre-dating Hammett’s Op by several months, and Sam Spade by several years.

Daly’s contribution to the hardboiled genre was indeed monumental; far more than simply being the first at bat. And his impact was felt far beyond the private eye field alone. The Shadow, The Spider, The Phantom Detective—all the famous masked avengers of the pulps were merely gussied up versions of Race Williams. Daly took the two-gun American Hero from the wooly plains of the West and transplanted him in New York. He allowed his hero to retain all those traditional fantasy concepts of what the American Hero is and has been since the days of Cooper’s Natty Bumppo, and he gave him the desire and ability to back up his code of individualism, his distrust of authority and his interest in Justice over Legality, with a pair of smoking .44s. (BlackMaskmagazine.com)

And yet Mr. Daly’s star has faded, while people still read the writers he influenced—Chandler, Spillane, Robert B. Parker, to name just a few.

What’s the point of all this?

Write for your audience, write to please yourself, write to say something, write because you must…and let time and tide take care of themselves.

And if someone at a party does know your name, enjoy the moment! It may be the last time. Just don’t let it go to your head.

“How swiftly passes the glory of the world!” – Thomas á Kempis.

Do you have a favorite obscure writer?

What would you like a one- or two-line obit to say about your own writing?

Cinematic Dads

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there. We have a rich history of movies about fathers, from King Vidor’s silent classic,The Crowd, to Judge Hardy (Lewis Stone) in the Andy Hardy series (keeping Mickey Rooney on the straight-and-narrow), to A River Runs Through It and Finding Nemo. So many others. Today I thought I’d share few favorite clips. Enjoy!

Tarzan adjusts to fatherhood in Tarzan Finds a Son:

Spencer Tracy gets ready for his daughter’s wedding in Father of the Bride:

Laurence Fishburne starts his son on the road to responsibility in Boyz N the Hood:

Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) teaches Scout an essential lesson in To Kill a Mockingbird:

So what film fathers would you like to mention? And Dad, enjoy your day.

The Power of Dilemma

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

In his famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) monologue at the 2020 Golden Globes, Ricky Gervais said:

Seriously, most films are awful. Lazy. Remakes, sequels. I’ve heard a rumor there might be a sequel to Sophie’s Choice. I mean, that would be Meryl just going, “Well, it’s gotta be this one then.”

At least Meryl, in the audience cracked a smile…before shaking her head. Me, I was reminded of how the novel William Styron novel tore my guts out. I could not see the movie. Even years later, I still remember the agony I felt reading that book

Such is the power of dilemma in fiction.

A dilemma is a choice between two incompatible and dreadful outcomes. Thus, it tests a character to the limit.

Just the other day I was leisurely watching an episode of Bonanza (Baby Boomers are now humming the opening theme in their heads). For you youngsters, Bonanza was set in the 1860s, and focused on the family Cartwright. Patriarch Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene) owned a huge spread next to Lake Tahoe, the Ponderosa, along with his sons, Adam (Pernell Roberts), Hoss (Dan Blocker) and “Little Joe” (Michael Landon).

Ben was a paragon of virtue, and in this episode he had been made a judge in Virginia City. An old safecracker Ben knows, Sundown Davis (Tom Tully), cleaned out the Virginia City bank, then turned himself in to Ben. He said he hid the money and promised to give it back if Ben will make sure he goes free.

The townspeople are desperate without their funds. Some won’t be able to feed their families. A big mining company will have to lay off workers.

Ben, however, sees that the law requires a four-time loser like Sundown to be sentenced to a mandatory prison term of twenty years.

Thus, the dilemma. Shall Ben side with the town and all of his friends? Or with his duty to the law?

The bank president sums it up to Ben. “If Sundown goes to prison, this town goes broke.”

The pressure mounts, as citizens press their case to a man they trust.

When the time comes to sentence the prisoner Ben, in his judicial robe, faces the crowded courtroom and explains that what the town is going through is a problem of the moment, but the law is for all time.

He sentences Sundown to twenty years.

The town is in an uproar. Ben becomes a pariah.

But it turns out that Sundown did not rob the bank after all. It was his son-in-law. Sundown took the rap hoping to protect his expectant daughter and her husband. He figured Ben would let him go so the town could survive.

When Ben didn’t do what was planned, the son-in-law starts to crack. His wife tells him he must do the right thing (a dilemma of his own!) He finally breaks down and gives the money back. Ben can now apply leniency so the son-in-law gets out of prison in a few years. He can rejoin his wife and soon-to-be child. And Sundown will be free to enjoy his grandchildren.

Ben’s staunch decision cost him at the time. That’s what a dilemma forces. But then there is a reversal of sorts.

Thus the structure of dilemma: choice, sacrifice, reward.

Sacrifice

The only way out of a dilemma is sacrifice. The hero will be wounded, sometimes fatally, for the choice that has to be made.

That is the power in Casablanca.

Here’s the dilemma. Rick Blaine can have the thing he wants most in the world, Ilsa Lund. She has told Rick she will go with him on the plane to Lisbon, by way of the two Letters of Transit in Rick’s possession.

The other choice is to put Ilsa on the plane with her husband, Victor Laszlo. That means Rick’s certain death at the hands of the Nazis.

The latter choice is the only moral one. Rick would not just be taking another man’s wife, he would be hurting the war effort by sending a spear through Laszlo’s heart.

“You’re part of his work, the thing that keeps him going,” Rick says to Ilsa at the airport.

Rick sacrifices his own happiness and, he understands, his life.

Dilemma is also the power in Shane, my favorite movie.

A mysterious gunfighter is seeking a place of peace to live out the rest of his life, and seemingly finds it with a homesteading family, the Starretts.

But the cattlemen, led by Rufe Ryker, are determined to drive the homesteaders away though violence, intimidation and, if need be, death. When Joe Starrett determines to resist, Ryker hires a gunfighter, Jack Wilson (played by the inimitable Jack Palance) to do some killing.

Shane now has a choice. Go back to his gunfighting ways or move on. Ryker tells Shane he has no quarrel with him, and he can ride out of the valley with “no hard feelings.”

But doing so means the death of Joe Starrett.

**Spoiler alert. If you haven’t seen the movie, watch it ASAP, on a big screen TV**

Shane rides to town for a final showdown with Wilson.

I love this scene. Here’s the clip:

What we find out immediately afterward is that Shane is bleeding, wounded in the side (Biblical quiz: Who else was wounded in the side on behalf of others?)

Outside the saloon, little Joey Starrett sees the wound, and begs Shane to stay.

“A man has to be what he is, Joey.” Shane says. “You can’t break the mold…Now you run on home to your mother, and tell her…tell her everything’s all right and there aren’t any more guns in the valley.”

And he rides off, with Joey shouting, “Shane! Come back!”

What many people miss is the subtle visual after this. Shane’s horse takes him through a graveyard. Shane’s arms are hanging at his sides. Because Shane is dead. (Biblical quiz redux.)

Reward

The hero has the wound, is either dead or alive, but receives a just reward for his moral choice.

Hero Dies

Shane’s sacrifice brings peace to the valley. His memory is carried forward by the boy, Joey, who will grow up “strong and straight” as Shane told him.

Braveheart, William Wallace, has refused to confess, and as he’s disemboweled shouts his final word, “Freedom!” His sacrifice inspires the Scots, under Robert the Bruce, to fight a final battle that wins their independence.

Samson kills himself kills himself three thousand Philistines by bringing down their temple. He becomes a heroic example for the Israelites.

The Hero Lives

In Casablanca, Rick shoots and kills Major Strasser, the Nazi, in front of the French police captain, Louis, just as a cohort of French police arrives.

Louis tells them, “Round up the usual suspects.”

As the two of them walk off together to join the war effort, Rick has his reward. “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

At some point in your writing, think about a dilemma. What two choices can you give your hero, both of which carry a cost?

  • An immoral choice that would cost the hero spiritually.
  • A moral choice that would cost the hero (potentially or actually) his life.
  • What reward can the hero receive as a result of the moral choice?

There is perhaps no more powerful trope in fiction than the dilemma. It can raise a cracking good read into one that is unforgettable.

Comments welcome. I’ll be in and out today, and will respond when I can. 

Oh, What a Feeling: How to Show Character Emotions

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Don’t talk of stars burning above. If you’re in love, show me!
Tell me no dreams filled with desire. If you’re on fire, show me!
– Eliza Dolittle in My Fair Lady

How to describe a character’s emotions is, of course, one of the most important tools in the fiction toolbox, right next to the plot caulk, the dialogue drill, and the scene saw.

And there are, as we all know, two choices: showing and telling. A good many critique group sheriffs will insist that you must never tell (name) an emotion. Never a simple Nancy was worried or Bob was frightened.

Well, I shot the sheriff (figuratively speaking!). It all depends on what I call The Intensity Scale. Think about the emotional intensity of a scene on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being nearly catatonic and 10 a loss of control like the “Leave Britney alone!” guy. And think of 5 as the demarcation line.

A scene can travel, and usually does, from below the line to above the line.

My rule guideline is that any emotion below 5 can, and usually should, be named. If Nancy is worried about how the meatloaf will turn out, you don’t have to go into sweaty palms and racing heart. That’s too much (unless the meatloaf is being prepared for Hannibal Lecter and the cops are nearby). Just write, Nancy was worried about the meatloaf.

But when you go over 5, you should show the emotion. The goal is to help the reader feel, not just know, what the emotion is.

So how do we show when we’re in the intense portion of a scene?

Nancy Kress, my former colleague at Writer’s Digest, had a great article on that in the January, 1993 issue. She gives five ways. Here they are, with my comments.

Physical Reaction

This is the one we usually go to first. Because it’s effective. Rendering how the character feels physically helps the reader vicariously feel it, too.

The trick is to find original ways to do it. Readers are used to sweaty palms, racing hearts, and twisting guts.

Does that mean never using them? Not at all. Just give them a little boost:

Her hands were slick and slippery now.

Her heart thrummed like a souped-up engine.

His stomach rocked in a greasy hammock. (This is like something I read once in a Stephen King story, but can’t remember which one. Anyway, you get the idea).

So: Don’t just grab the first description that comes to you. Play around a little. Add your touch of originality.

Action

Actions speak louder than words, right? You can always show the character doing something as a result of the emotion.

Again, watch out for the instant answer. An angry boss pounding his fist on the table, for example. That’s expected. Add something to it.

How about pounding a coffee mug down, spilling the brew?

How about yanking out a drawer, scrambling the contents?

A good exercise is to visualize the moment and let your character improvise, try different things. Go a little wild. You’ll hit on something surprising that seems right. When that happens, you know it will surprise the reader, too.

And a surprised reader is a delighted reader.

Dialogue

What a character says in the context of a scene should reveal emotion. And the way you can tell if you’ve succeeded is that you don’t need an adverb to make it clear.

Not:

“Get out of here, John!” Nancy said angrily.

“That’s the last time I pet a lion,” said Tom offhandedly.

No finer example of how it’s done is this clip from Hemingway’s story “Hills Like White Elephants.” A man and woman are sitting at a train station, sipping drinks, as the man jauntily tries to tell the woman that an abortion is no problem. (The mastery of the story is that the word abortion is never used).

“Then what will we do afterward?” [Says the woman]

“We’ll be fine afterward. Just like we were before.”

“What makes you think so?”

“That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy.”

The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the string of beads.

“And you think then we’ll be all right and be happy.”

“I know we will. You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people that have done it.”

“So have I,” said the girl. “And afterward they were all so happy.”

That last line hits hard. We know how she feels from the context and word choice. We don’t need said the girl sarcastically.

Setting

We waste a description of setting if we don’t use it for “double duty.” It should add to the tone of the story and reflect the character’s emotion.

In “All That You Love Will Be Carried Away,” a short story about a man’s darkest moment, Stephen King begins this way:

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.

Fading light, dusk, wind, emptiness. We are being set up to feel the inner life of the character even before we meet him.

Thoughts

This is, I think, the most powerful way to convey emotion, because it’s coming directly from inside the character. It’s also the best opportunity for originality, as there are an infinite variety of choices under two main headings: explicit and implicit. Here’s an example of explicit emotion.

I can’t open this door. I just can’t. John will kill me. But I have to. I have to.

Implicit emotion can be proffered by way of metaphor (A thousand devils poked his brain with pitchforks), dreams, and memories.

And example of using a dream is the beginning of Chapter 15 of The City by Dean Koontz:

Eventually I returned to the sofa, too exhausted to stand an entire night watch. I dropped into a deep well of sleep and floated there until, after a while, the dream began in a pitch-black place with the sound of rushing water all around, as if I must be aboard a boat on a river in the rain …

Here’s an example of memory from my novel, Your Son is Alive:

He was surrounded by cops, touched by strong hands, hearing voices, but they were growing distant, and he went into another world, long ago, seeing the Mickey Mouse balloon from Disneyland when he was four, and his dad tied the string around his wrist. But he wanted to hold it himself so he slipped the string off his wrist and held the balloon and waved it around. Then had to scratch his back and somehow the string got away, and the balloon went up, up, up and he said Oh no oh no oh no, and he could only watch, helpless, his grief expanding because Mickey was all alone in the sky, no one to help him. Unmoored.

So try this:

Go to any scene in your WIP and ask:

  • Where do the moments fall on the Intensity Scale?
  • Do I show or tell intense emotions?
  • How might I use or more of the 5 ways?
  • How can I “originalize” the showing?

Jim Butcher says the emotional component of his books is the secret of their popularity. In writing about scene and sequel, where sequel = emotion, he writes:

People don’t love Harry [Dresden] for kicking down the monster’s front door. They love him because he’s terrified out of his mind, he knows he’s putting himself in danger by doing it, he’s probably letting himself in for a world of hurt even if he is successful, but he chooses to do it anyway. Special effects and swashbuckling are just the light show. The heart of your character—and your reader—is in the sequel.

Comments welcome.

Some Scene Should be Hard to Write

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

I was happily writing along in my WIP, the next Romeo thriller, and things were going pretty much as planned. That’s a great phrase for an outliner…as planned preceded by pretty much. That gives me the right amount of room to enhance or deviate from the plot outline while knowing I’ll still be on track with the overall story.

But then I came to a scene and it started fighting me. I had it outlined. I knew the general structure of the scene. But it wouldn’t flow. I’d start, write a few lines, then stop because it felt…not right.

Why was this happening? Was I overthinking? Trying too hard? That’s certainly a danger in our craft. The vile scourge of perfectionism is always lurking in the shadows. The old advice First get it written, then get it right applies. We should write like we’re in love, and only later edit like we’re in charge.

But I wasn’t loving this scene.

Finally, it hit me. The reason I was having a tussle with it is that it’s one of the most crucial in the entire series (this book will be #9). In fact, what happens here will affect all the books in the future.

Then I had a further thought: That’s why it’s hard, Bucko. It should be!

Because the difficulty was telling me that I’d hit on a vein of story that was deeper than I first thought. It was my signal that the richest material was still there in the rocks, and it was time to chip away and find it.

Raymond Chandler once said of Dashiell Hammett, “He did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that never seemed to have been written before.”

Wouldn’t you like readers to say that about you? By going deep into the difficult, you can get there.

Now, some say that’s too much work. Why not let the characters decide? This brings up the oft-cited experience, “My characters took over.”

Let’s think about that.

In one sense, it’s good to have a character surprise you from time to time, because that means the character will surprise the reader, too.

But then again, who’s the boss? Are the characters running the show, or the writer?

I know there are some who advocate always following the characters, wherever they lead.

But what if it’s off a cliff?

Bradbury famously said you should jump off that cliff and grow wings on the way down. Far be it from me to disagree with the great Ray, but it seems to me it worked best for his primary métier, short fiction. It is less successful in his full-length novels, especially the crime ones that came later in his career.

So I kept digging into the difficult. I re-wrote the scene maybe a dozen times, tweaking, discarding, adding and subtracting sentences.

There was a moment when one of the two principal characters was supposed to say, “Yes.” But I found myself typing, “No.”

The next morning, I woke up with the conviction that it shouldn’t be either Yes or No (see Sue’s post on answering Yes/No questions). I came up with something else and, finally, it clicked. I felt like Goldilocks tasting the porridge and pronouncing it “just right.” (Or “Just Write” as the case may be.)

So now it’s all settled and I can move on.

Until it’s time to edit, when I read the scene again.

Ack!

Do you think a scene should ever be hard to write? Or are you more with the “merrily we roll along no matter what” school of writing?

Are Smartphones Impairing Thrillers?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

“I gave a smartphone to my dumb cousin. Now he’s average.” – JSB, channeling his inner Steven Wright

Free Girl Smartphone photo and pictureInstead of my usual craft post, I’d like to open up a discussion. Here’s the question: How do smartphones impact the way we write thrillers?

Let’s say your hero is out in public and has to take down a thug. Maybe he bends the law a little as he does, though he is morally justified.

In today’s world, a dozen smartphones will capture the encounter on video. And then, boom, the hero’s face and actions go viral. 

Now every cop, friend of the thug, past enemies, and thousands of social media jockeys know who he is, or at least what he looks like. 

Heck, you can’t even have a bar fight anymore without the world finding out about it. 

So: How do we thriller writers deal with this?

  • What are the consequences of such a scenario in a stand-alone thriller? Must it become a major plot complication?
  • What are the consequences for a series? Will the viral notoriety follow the hero from now on? Must it be dealt with in each subsequent book?
  • Or can you pull a retcon? What, you may ask, is a retcon? It stands for “retrograde continuity,” a fancy term for when material in past books is “adjusted, ignored, supplemented, or contradicted by a subsequently published work that recontextualizes or breaks continuity with the former.” (Wikipedia)
  • Or should we do whatever we can to avoid these scenes? Would that be realistic?
  • Or would the large majority of readers not care that much if smartphone recordings don’t happen in a scene such as I’ve described? Maybe you get a few emails or are docked one star in a review. But if the scene works in all other aspects, is that a big deal?

Give this all some thought and let’s start a conversation!

The Writing Biz: Noncompete Clauses and New Careers

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Two things caught my eye this week I think you should know about.

1. The End of the Noncompete Clause?

Traditionally published authors authors take note (and discuss with your agent): The Federal Trade Commission has issued a rule banning noncompete clauses. Under the rule, existing noncompetes for the vast majority of workers will no longer be enforceable after the rule’s effective date on Sept. 4, 2024.

The Authors Guild applauds the rule:

The Authors Guild has long objected to non-compete clauses and advised their removal in our contract reviews. These clauses, which are purportedly designed to protect publishers’ investments by preventing authors from selling the same or substantially similar work to another publisher, are often too broad. Authors are routinely asked to agree not to publish other works that might “directly compete with” the book under contract or “be likely to injure its sale or the merchandising of other rights.” Even more broadly, they may be asked not to “publish or authorize the publication of any material based on the Work or any material in the Work or any other work of such a nature such that it is likely to compete with the Work.”

Such open-ended non-compete clauses can prevent authors from pursuing other writing opportunities. If a new project even arguably deals with the same “subject” as the book under contract, the non-compete can be invoked to prevent an author from publishing elsewhere. For writers specializing in a particular subject, this could be career-derailing.

Certainly an author shouldn’t “compete” with their trad book by, say, self-publishing a similar book in the same season, etc. The publisher does deserve some protection for their investment, and your full marketing effort to help the book succeed.

On the other hand, a writer should be free to make more dough without the threat of a noncompete hammer coming down upon them. Thus, I have advocated for a more specific and fairer noncompete. But that may be moot in view of this new rule.

However, keep watch, for there are grounds for a lawsuit challenging the rule. Indeed, one of the Commissioners strongly dissented:

The rule nullifies more than thirty million existing contracts, and forecloses countless tens of millions of future contracts. The Commission estimates that the rule could cost employers between $400 billion and $488 billion in additional wages and benefits over the next ten years—and does not even hazard a guess at the value of the 30 million contracts it nullifies.

His reason for dissenting is that “an administrative agency’s power to regulate … must always be grounded in a valid grant of authority from Congress. Because we lack that authority, the Final Rule is unlawful.”

We shall see.

2. Can New Writers Still Have a Career?

It is “staggeringly difficult,” according to industry vet Mike Shatzkin.

You don’t have to be an insider to know that there were 500,000 titles in English available in 1990 and that more than 20 million are available from Ingram (thanks to print-on-demand) today. And that everything that was ever made available remains on sale through “normal channels” (which is “online”, not “in store”) forever. It doesn’t take a math genius to reckon that a pretty stable total book purchasing and readership constituency will result in dramatic reductions in sales per title.

In a meeting with publishing vets, he came away with this:

One agent has two clients who are successful self-publishers (there are subsidiary rights and foreign rights to occupy an agent.) Two things stood out about them. One is that they both published exclusively with Amazon, without the complement (which I would have thought would be “standard”) of also working through Ingram. The other thing was that they both started working their genres (and they publish exclusively genre fiction) in 2008 or so, before the rush of self-publishers in genres had saturated the market. So they established their brands in their genre marketplace when the competition was still minimal. The agent reports that both of these authors don’t believe they’d be successful starting to do this today.

JSB: I don’t agree with the last statement as a “rule.” The goal for a writer today is not wide distribution, but growing an “own list.” That can still be done, if the quality is there. True, the “breakout novel” is rarer than ever, but it has always been the exception. The writers who make a good chunk of change over time deliver quality product that grows a readership, which they nurture via email list and some social media presence.

It is, indeed, almost impossible to get a significant advance from a publisher unless sales are assured either by a highly branded author or an author platform of some kind that has significant promise for marketing and sales.

JSB: True that! And if that noncompete rule holds up, I would expect advances to be lower to nonexistent.

Comments welcome.

Subject to Change With Noticing

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

“You can observe a lot just by watching.” ­— Yogi Berra

Serendipity - a Persian fairytale, 1302Serendipity is a word derived from a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip (an ancient name for Sri Lanka). The story tells of an eminent trio making happy discoveries in their travels, through accident and observation. The English writer Horace Walpole coined the term serendipity to describe this combination of chance and mental discernment.

Recently I mentioned the first modern detective story, credited to Edgar Allen Poe, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Poe was inspired by a rendition of the Serendip story by the French writer Voltaire. Poe called his story “a tale of ratiocination…wherein the extent of information obtained lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the observation.”

In short, stuff happens, but if you keep your head about you, observe, and are ready to think anew, you can come up with gold. That applies to writing our stories, too.

As Lawrence Block, the dean of American crime fiction, put it, “You look for something, find something else, and realize that what you’ve found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for.”

Doesn’t that describe some of the best moments in your writing? I once had a wife character who was supposed to move away for a time, to get out of danger. That’s what I’d outlined. But in the heat of a dialogue scene with her husband, she flat out refused to go. From Can’t Stop Me:

“This doesn’t change anything. I want you and Max out for a while. I’ll keep in touch and—”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“No, Sam. I’m not leaving. This is my home.”

“And I’m your husband.”

“And what does that make me, your property?”

“You’re talking crazy now.”

“I’m not going, Sam.”

 

Turns out she was right and I was wrong, and the story was better for it. It took some adjustments to the outline, in the form of new scenes, but on I went.

A friend of mine, a #1 NYT bestselling writer, once remarked to me, “I didn’t plan on killing this character. I started writing the scene and found him dead.”

Can we ramp up serendipity as we write? I think so. Here are a few suggestions.

  • Don’t just be about imposing your plans on the story to the detriment of happy surprises. Be ready to shift and move. This applies to all types of writers. A planner might resist changing the plans, while a pantser might resist going down a rabbit trail. What do you do in a situation like this? Think. Do some ratiocination. And then…
  • Write first, analyze later. It is in the heat of production that diamonds are formed—a striking image, a line of dialogue, a new character. But you have to be prepared to go with the flow, to play it out and see where things lead. After you write, step back and assess. Where is this new direction taking me? Shall I keep on going?
  • Write what you fear. Go where there are risks in the story. The crew of the Starship Enterprise discovered new worlds by going “where no man has gone before.” It’s often here that a deep, rich vein of story is found.
  • Research. When you delve deeply into the areas you’re writing about—by reading, talking to experts, or doing something in the field—you inevitably come up with gems that will enliven your story or even change it into something other than what you had planned. And that’s not a bad thing. I once wrote a scene about a SWAT team, doing as much research and supposing as I could. Then a chance conversation with an LAPD police captain at a neighborhood meet-and-greet led to my having to revise the whole darn thing…but in ways advantageous to the novel as a whole.
  • When in doubt, add a character. (Remember Raymond Chandler’s advice to bring in a guy with a gun?) Whenever I’ve come to a “thin middle” the first thing I do is add a character. A minor or secondary character who shows up, with an agenda and a backstory, is the fastest way to fight second-act drag.

The way of serendipity is open to every writer, be ye outliner or pantser, or anything in between. It’s just a matter of showing up and being aware. And the nice thing is that the more you write, the more you’ll recognize serendipitous moments when they happen. Then pounce!

Tell us about a serendipitous moment you have experienced in your writing.