Building on PJ Parrish’s post from yesterday, it occurs to me that the casual discussion of writing poses many false dichotomies. Is your work character-driven or plot driven? Is it about action or about vivid storytelling? If your story meets its potential, the answer to all of the above is simply, “Yes.”
I also hear a lot about rules that don’t really exist. We all know that prologues are a mistake–unless they work. We know that we should never start with the weather or with backstory. Bull. Anything that works for the story will work for the reader. Countless works of successful fiction break the rules, thus proving that the rules were never truly rules in the first place. Take a hard look at the latter Harry Potter books. While I am an unapologetic devotee of Harry and his exploits, there is no objective evaluation of the prose itself that could rate it any higher than average-plus. JK Rowling never found an adverb that she didn’t like, and she’s quite the fan of passive sentence construction. A TKZ First Page Critique would not make her happy.
Yet her books work–really, really work. Why? Because the story and the characters are so compelling that we’re willing to overlook some of the basic mechanics.
When I teach writing seminars–as I will next month at the Midwest Writers Workshop at Ball State University, and again on August 5 at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC–I reveal two basic truths that I hold dear: 1) that no one can teach a person to write; and 2) that successful writers get out of their heads and out of their own way and just tell the damn story.
I do believe that instruction and workshopping can hone and develop talent, but it cannot create talent where there is none. Some people are not wired for storytelling. I say this from the point of view of a writer who is entirely self-taught and was driven by my unblinking desire to make my writing better by reading the works of others and dissecting them. And I whole-heartedly admit that what worked for me may not work for all.
Some of the most creatively constipated writers I’ve ever spoken with have spent gobs of money over the years attending writing classes, yet paradoxically have few stories–and often no books–to show for it. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that they believe in the rules and the dichotomies. They value perfect sentence construction over compelling characters. In short, they spend too much time stressing over getting it right when maybe they’d have been better off if they’d just gotten it written.
In my own case, my “first” book–the first to be published–was in fact the fourth book I’d written. Those other three were my own private master class in fiction. But the single biggest difference between Nathan’s Run and its unpublished predecessors is that that was my first effort to forget about WRITING A BOOK (read that with a rolled R) and instead tell the story the way I would tell it orally, using the same turns of phrase and the same rather cynical squint that pretty much defines my worldview. As I wrote each scene, and I found that I liked them, I began to realize that I’d discovered that elusive “voice” that people always talk about.
At that point–before agents or sales–there was no way for me to know if the book was any good, but I knew that it was exactly the book I wanted it to be, exactly the book I’d set out to write. And because I have always been a voracious reader, I had enough confidence (hubris?) to believe that it was as good or better than any book I’d read that year.
A good part of this writing biz is about attitude, I think. It’s about believing from your own experience that the book you’ve written is exactly the book you want it to be. If you know its close and you know what’s wrong–or at least you think you do–then by all means workshop the manuscript and attend classes and seek guidance. Similarly, if you want to be introduced to the basics of the craft–the literary equivalent of learning how miter joints in carpentry–then classes and workshops are a terrific resource.
But never lose sight of the fact that if you truly believe that a scene or a chapter or a whole story is exactly what you want it to be, yet others in your group disagree, only one name goes on the spine. Only in workshops do people sit down to read with an eye toward nit-picking and changing things. In the real world, when people sit down to read, they have every expectation of a good story well told.
Don’t let them down.
e mutually exclusive. Both are handguns, but they operate under entirely different principles. A revolver, otherwise known as a “wheel gun”, holds its cartridges in a cylinder that rotates as the hammer comes back and prepares for each shot. The revolver in the picture features an external hammer, and can be fired double action (DA) or single action (SA), which makes it a DA/SA revolver. (Double action means that with the hammer down, a single pull of the trigger with bring the hammer back, rotate the cylinder, and then drop the hammer again, firing the gun. Single action would describe the condition where the hammer is manually cocked and remains back–“condition zero”. From this condition, the trigger is more sensitive by a large margin.) Generally, there are no external safeties on a revolver. The fact of the long DA trigger pull functions as a safety. Only a fool would carry a revolver in condition zero.
Recent years have seen a growth in the popularity of the DAO (double action only) revolver. With no external hammer to cock, every pull of the trigger is double action. The upside of a hammerless revolver is the ease of the draw from concealment (hammers have a way of snagging on clothing).
A pistol, on the other hand, carries its load in a magazine that is inserted in the grip. As the weapon fires, the slide cycles, ejecting the spent shell casing and pushing the next round into battery. The picture at the top of this post of me at the range shows this cycling action of a Glock 36 at 1/4000 of a second–thanks to my son, Chris, for getting the picture. 
The pistol in the picture with the revolver has no hammer, but is rather “striker fired”–a distinction that is best left to a future post. Striker fired pistols may or may not have external safeties. Some pistols have external hammers, such as the Colt Defender in the picture. As shown, the Colt is in condition one, which means cartridge in the chamber, hammer back and safety on–otherwise known as “cocked and locked.” In yet another iteration, many manufacturers make DA/SA pistols. The Bersa Thunder in the photo offers a very long, hard DA trigger pull for the first shot, which leaves the hammer back for a SA follow-up shot. For most DA/SA pistols, the “safety” is not a safety at all, but rather a de-cocker, which safely returns the hammer to its DA position.
If your character is an on-duty cop or active duty military, where sidearms are worn in some kind of duty rig, the sky’s the limit for what they want to carry. You can buy holsters for all kinds of hand cannons. The choices become more limited when it’s important for your character to conceal his or her weapon. As a general rule, the larger the firearm, the harder it is to conceal. The obvious corollary is that bigger people can conceal bigger guns.
When it comes to carrying a gun on one’s belt, the critical first choice is inside-the-waistband (IWB) vs. outside-the-waistband (OWB), and both mean exactly what the words say. Generally, OWB carry is more detectable, 
but with the right holster and an effective cover garment, it can be very effective. By contrast, IWB carry allows for concealment by means as simple as an untucked T-shirt. On the downside, the gun takes up waistband real estate that would otherwise be used by the waist. 
If your character wears skinny jeans, IWB could be a problem. IWB carry positions are referred to as positions on a clock face, where one’s navel would be 12 o’clock and the right hip would be 3 o’clock. The IWB position in the picture is referred to as “appendix carry”, and for the life of me, I don’t know how he would be able to sit down. Shoulder rigs are popular in movies and television shows, but I 
have never met a real person who wore one and didn’t hate it over time. They’re hard on the shoulders, and you can never let your arms hang normally. But the deal breaker for me would be that during the draw stroke, you pretty much have to point the gun at the person behind you, and then subsequently at yourself. That violates the basic tenets of firearm safety–as do many of the specialty retention devices such as the bra holster. ‘Nuff said, can we agree?
the only concealment option is a vest pocket, or perhaps a boot? Search the Web for specialty guns that are actually well-made and very effective for what they are. North American Arms makes a mini-revolver that easily fits in your fist, and can be chambered in .22 magnum, a round that shows very similar terminal ballistics to a .38 special, un
der ideal circumstances. The tiny, nearly non-existent barrel is a problem for a shot longer than, say, 10 yards, but as a belly gun, it’s kind of impressive, and since it’s a revolver, your character gets five tries to bring justice to another character.