I was watching a movie the other night that should have been great, but the pacing was so slow I hit the pause button. “This movie is making me want to drink.”

The Bride raised an eyebrow. “You have a gin and tonic in your hand right now.”

“I need another one to stay awake.”

“No, you need a break to get up, and while you’re there, pour me a glass of wine, please. Let’s finish this tomorrow.”

She was absolutely right, and we did. Despite two of my favorite actors, what should have been a good movie was damaged because so many useless scenes should have been left on the cutting room floor.

I know this blog is about writing, but someone wrote that script that became a movie. Now I know how hard it is to write a screenplay. I wrote one myself that’s under consideration (read “it’ll never be filmed” here), and it was one of the hardest projects I’ve ever undertaken. That’s because I distilled my first 350-page novel, The Rock Hole, down into 130 narrow pages. The industry standard has been 120 pages, but I simply couldn’t tighten it up any more without losing the essence of the novel. One thing I did though was to maintain the pace, which brings us to what is essential in a novel.

Let me repeat that, pacing, which is the process of discovery.

Pacing is the speed at which a story unfolds, the rhythm and flow. Consider a roller coaster. There are times the train moves slow, the rise to the crest of the ride, and then the fall of plot points and events which should be fast enough to keep us turning the pages until we  rise again in anticipation of the next drop and ultimately, the final rush into the climax.

In other words, it’s how fast your story unfolds to the reader.

Let’s jump back to movies for a moment and look at two films about the same subject that released within months of each other, Tombstone, directed by its star Kurt Russell, and Wyatt Earp, directed by its star Kevin Costner.

Both are about the Earp brothers and the ultimate shootout at the O.K. Corral, but their pacing is dramatically different. Tombstone moves fast. Even what might be considered a slow scene passes quickly because of either action or humor, or a combination of both.

In Costner’s three and a half our hour film, Wyatt Earp, we find a movie dedicated to history and character development. He emphasizes Wyatt’s younger years and tells us how he eventually became the man he was, and the drive that sent him to Tombstone…

…and in the movie of the same name that lasts two hours and fifteen minutes, Kurt Russell utilizes a rule all authors should learn, show, don’t tell. He doesn’t give us half an hour of slow moving angst and backstory, he picks up the action almost at the outset and takes us for a satisfying roller coaster ride.

An interesting point is that the original Tombstone screenplay was so long it could have been a limited miniseries, but Russell understands what viewers want in a theatrical release and left huge chunks of already-filmed dialogue and character development on the floor.

It’s the same thing John Wayne learned from his legendary mentor, John Ford.

Keep it moving.

Tombstone works because he shows us instead of telling us, and unfolds the story with efficiency and a measured tempo. He keeps it moving.

How about another example, this time between mysteries and thrillers? A mystery usually advances with slower steps. We don’t know who the bad guy or killer is, so we follow the clues as the protagonist unravels a tangled web of suspects or motives until the end where it is all revealed. It’s a detailed process that some revel in, while other readers aren’t that detail oriented.

Thrillers are like that aforementioned roller coaster ride. We usually know who the bad guy is near the outset of the story, but we hang on for the ride until the end and justice (hopefully) prevails.

In my opinion, there are a couple of musts that have to be included in a well-written novel and of course one is tempo. Each chapter must push the story forward (pacing again), but it must have enough elements to keep the reader engaged. If you lose a reader because the story moves to slow, you’ll likely lost them before the end.

And things have to move , maybe not at hyper speed, but enough keep a reader interested. One of my favorite methods of driving the story forward and keeping someone turning the page is the use of short chapters. I grew up reading chapters that took days to push through, and often lost my place when I had to put the book down, or because there was wayyyy too much included in that one chapter (read Costner’s Wyatt Earp here again).

I love short, quick chapters and use them to effect. Then, as the action speeds up in the third act, I’ll shorten them even more, sometimes to only a page. This leaves the reader’s heart pounding, breathless (we hope) and ready to move on to the next chapter to see what happens next.

Consider this, many people like to read a night in bed. Slow, ponderous chapters and pacing will keep their interest until the Sandman comes in and throws his grains around, but short chapters will make the reader flip ahead and think, “Hey, this next one’s short. I can read another.”

Then another.

Flip.

Short chapter.

How fast did you hit those three extremely short chapters above?

Now we have velocity and the reader stops checking the length of those chapters, caught up in the story’s drive and pushes ahead. “I can finish this before I go to sleep.”

Do you want your fans to mark their place, put that book on the nightstand and turn out the light, or create a fast-paced novel that drives them to stay up until one in the morning because they can’t put it down?

Here’s my answer. I’ll watch Tombstone every time it’s on, and to the end, because it’s engaging. I simply can’t watch much more of Wyatt Earp other than the shootout at the corral. Why? Because. It. Moves. Slow.

So pace yourselves.

This week I finished the first draft of my work in progress, Texas Gravel, when I typed The End. This is number fourteen, and I had the same feeling of satisfaction as when I completed my first novel over ten years ago. It took years to finish that one and have it ready for publication, but this one unfolded in a matter of months.

Now the real fun begins.

Writing is enjoyable, or I wouldn’t do it. World-building is fun and rewarding. There’s great satisfaction in creating and developing characters, exploring whatever it is that makes them tick, and bestowing upon them all the ingredients necessary to become real in our imaginations.

But my absolute favorite part of the process is editing. Some folks approach it with dread, and others simply endure it as just another part of the process. I look forward to starting with the first sentence and combing through several months’ worth of creativity for a variety of issues.

There are as many theories about how to edit as there are editors and authors. Some say “write in one room, edit in another.”

Well, I guess that’s a good idea, but for me, that’s impossible. I write wherever I light on any particular morning. It might be at my desk, surrounded by bookshelves that reach sixteen feet high. Other days it might be feet up in my recliner, propped up on the couch, on perched on a stool at the kitchen island. More recently, I wrote much of the second act on the kitchen island in our weekend place, while workers made enough racket to wake the dead.

One of my favorite places to work is lying on our bed with my laptop across my legs ala Mark Twain. There’s a great photo of him partially under the covers with a typewriter on his lap and if memory serves, he’s the first novelist to write a book on the Iron Maiden.

I edit the same way, and in those same locations, and then some. It might drive some folks nuts, but I’ll work on the laptop for a while, then move to the Mac in my office and perch there for a day or two, reminiscent when I had a real job in an office.

My first edits are part of the first draft. I’ve told you how each morning I read what came the day before, edit those pages, and then slide into the current day’s work. In essence, I edit every day as I go.

Then once finished, I dig into the first draft, rewriting and tightening sentences, and looking for errors in continuity. I have a bad habit of forgetting what kind of cars my characters drive, or any number of descriptions about what they do, like, or feel. This is also when I start to notice repetitive words and do a search. The first time it happened in The Rock Hole, I realized I’d used the word “porch” two hundred and twenty-seven times.

That’s 227.

It happens all the time. A host of other words including, windows, car, sedan, door (especially door), and a host of others make wayyyy too many appearances in my work. I won’t even search for the word, “that.” This gives me the opportunity to look for useless words such as “just” or “very” or those pesky adverbs I’ve discussed in the past. Editing on the screen gives me the chance to rewrite even more sentences and tighten them up. I even more entire paragraphs around, or pull a sentence from here and there, and plug them into different places to make the draft read better.

I’m pretty good at setting scenes, but this is when I add a lot more description and detail to locations, people, and their actions to put the reader in that place and time. At this point the manuscript grows, even though sentences and paragraphs melt away with alarming frequency.

By the original draft’s third act, I’m thinking and typing fast, pushing hard to get the framework concreted into place. Detail takes a back seat to the action at that point, and editing is the time to expand certain scenes that were cheated the first time. I look for the opportunity to use all of our senses, sight, sound, smell, touch, and even taste. Many writers forget those descriptors and their work would likely improve if they added details to make it even more realistic.

This is where “He smelled woodsmoke” becomes “Smoke from a distant fire reminded him autumn was the time to burn leaves,” or “Burning leaves created a fog-like haze in the chilly autumn air.” The edits and possibilities are endless.

Here is where we can lift our vocabularies. We tend to use the same common words over and over, but now is the time to add excitement and richness with the use of the right word. Dialogue changes at this point, adding and subtracting, and getting into the character’s rhythm of speaking and acting.

Editing on the screen is fine, but I need to see it in true print form, as close to a real book as possible. It’s now the time to print the manuscript and read it again from start to finish. It’s stunning to see how many typos I’ve already missed, or sentences or paragraphs that are in the wrong place. Despite all the work I did in the first draft and the electronic edits, the printed manuscript is a riot of scratched out words, replaced words, corrected sentences, and margins full of hand-written notes and questions.

Finished, the pages then go to my personal editor, The Bride, who has a degree in journalism and worked several years as a newspaper reporter before she came back from the dark side. Her copy is marked with even more typos that I missed, and suggestions in the margins, and questions about a character’s actions or what they might or might not do in a particular situation.

Back at my desk with two different hard copies, I type in all those changes and the completed manuscript is polished and ready for my agent.

Maybe this peek behind the curtain in my writing world will help novice writers realize there’s no magical right or wrong way to edit. It’s about writing and rewriting as they attempt to complete that polished manuscript and find their place in the publishing world.

Do what works for you.

More than once when I was a kid, my Old Man loaded me up into our 1956 Ford pickup and headed for the river bottoms on what seemed to be the hottest days of the year. The short drive was miserable as the Northeast Texas the sun beat down so heavy you could feel it on your skin. That truck had no air conditioning, and the radio worked only after the tubes warmed up, usually just as we got where we were going.

Left arm hanging out the open window, he commented on the crops, the heat, and a mix of hot summer days, and frozen winter nights, while this kid in a Boy’s Regular haircut wanted nothing more than to go back and sit under the water cooler at the house.

He followed the same route down dirt roads under a cloudless sky between fields of cotton and corn, with no particular reason in mind other than to get out of the house. He drove slow, sometimes thinking about lord knows what. Other times memories poured out in a torrent of descriptions about how those bottoms looked when he and his family lived on a dirt-floored sharecropper’s cabin during the Great Depression.

By the time we reached the woods where we inevitably wound up, I was a listless lump half-hanging out the open passenger window. That was our destination all along, a massive red oak sitting at the corner of a cotton field where years earlier my grandaddy cooled and watered his team of mules on hot days just like those.

He killed the engine and metal popped as it cooled. He opened his door and the hinges popped. “Let’s get a drink of water.”

I knew the drill. “It’s too hot, and I don’t feel like it. Can we go back now?”

“You’ll feel like it when the water comes up.”

“Let’s just go.” I came up with a list of excuses not to get out in the heat and prime that old hand pump that had been there for decades. “I want to go back to the house and read. I want to get something to eat. I want to build with my Lego blocks. (Yeah, they had them back then.) I want to watch The Dating Game that comes on in a little while. I want to take a nap, Grandpa needs me to wet the straw on the water cooler, how about we go to the show….”

“Nope. Get out.”

It was useless to argue. We detrucked and waded through the heat and humidity to the iron pump perched on a black pipe sunk deep in the ground. He took the lid off a 55-gallon barrel of water only a couple of feet away and leaned it against the side. The shimmering surface reached nearly to the top and reflected blue sky shining through the leaves above.

“Good.” He tilted his straw hat back and nodded. “Looks like somebody filled the barrel the last time they were here.” It was the neighborly thing to do. “Go to pumping and I’ll dip.”

Sweat running down the sides of my face, I worked the handle up and down. He filled the dipper over and over and poured the contents it into the top to prime the pump. Half a minute later, water gurgled in the pipe and gushed from the spout and splashed on the leaves at my feet.

He rinsed the dipper, filled it from the fresh stream, and handed it to me. “You did the work. You get the first drink.”

Y’all, the water that came up from deep underground was sheer bliss. Gin-clear, cold and sweet, it was a tonic that changed my outlook on the day and it happened the same way every single time we went out there. Though I resisted the drive, heat, and work, the reward was something I recall today as absolute glory.

Why’d I tell you this story?

Because we sometimes find other things to keep us from writing. Life gets in the way. We have to push through and prime that writing pump. It doesn’t take much, just putting your fingers on the keyboard helps.

There are exercises to get started. One recommendation is to read what you wrote the day before (that’s the barrel of water analogy), and edit that. Simply getting back into the story is the way to reprime your mental pump. There are times when we just don’t feel like writing, but we have to keep at it.

If there isn’t a foundation to help launch that day’s work, type something. The lyrics to a song, what you might be thinking about (it doesn’t have to be a polished draft, this post started with a memory), or throw something out there, and once the creative pump’s primed, you’ll find the story flows like water.

We’re all in the woods when we start a story, or novel. The secret is finding a trail, and there are many winding through the forest. Follow it to see where it leads. It might take you somewhere you don’t expect. That’s good. Let your subconscious take you there.

Sometimes other trails intersect, and one looks better than the other. Take it and see where it goes. They might split, converge, lead uphill, but sooner or later, one will lead to a stream, or that hand pump in the woods, and a stream of words will follow for another session.

Until next time, stay primed and keep at it. There’ll be a payoff at the end.

The thick, familiar odor frying bacon, onions, and the sounds of clanking utensils against cheap plates filled the small country café. I’d been lamenting a temporary stall in my writing career while we had our weekly appointment with eggs over easy.

Across the booth, my former boss and friend of over forty years, the Cap’n, raised an eyebrow and sipped from a steaming cup of coffee. “You hear yourself, right? You remember what you said back in the old days when we were taking those education courses?”

The Cap’n doesn’t have an eidetic memory, but he comes pretty close and I had to flip through several cases of dusty mental files to dredge up a nearly forgotten conversation between two young men in the teacher’s lounge. I finally found the memory and blew it off. “I said I wanted to get just one book published.”

“Right. It was back in ’81. You wanted to get just one book published and then you said you’d be finished. Let me see, ‘I just want one book on shelf and I’ll be through.’ That about what you said?”

I thought I had one book in me, and had never considered writing another. As a teacher working in the classroom during the day, taking Masters level courses in the evenings two days a week, and sitting behind an old IBM Selectric in a bedroom/office, I wanted to leave something behind that would outlast me.

“Well, that was a long time ago, but I never expected to get a series.”

“Yeah, and now you have a dozen books on that shelf and you’re bitching about how you’re not on the best seller list.”

“You realize you’ve already achieved what others dream about? You’re published.” He raised an eyebrow and held the nearly empty cup like a smoker with a cigarette. “Ever thought you’d be here, with two series going at the same time?”

“No.”

“My manuscript is still in the drawer and I piddle with it only every now and then. You did it your way, now shut up and keep writing and you’ll make it one of these days. Breakfast is on you by the way, big shot writer.”

That conversation somewhere around 1980 came after I’d already been struggling for years, trying to get at least something published. With a stack of rejection notices that reached from the floor to the top of the table I used as a desk, I needed to find a way to break in. Eight years later, I achieved that dream that most budding writers only talk about, but it didn’t come easy.

I was reading a book by the author who inspired my style, Robert C. Ruark, when an idea clicked. Ruark launched his writing career by getting published in a newspaper.

Hey, I can write a newspaper column.

And like Ruark, I used newspapers to establish a foundation by writing outdoor humor, a niche that, in my mind, needed to be filled.

Of course we all want to explode on the writing scene with a massive bestseller, and that occasionally happens, but the cold hard truth is that we need to build that solid foundation by finding our voice, and most often that comes from practice and a lot of work.

But you have to get that voice out there, and one way is my suggestion for beginning writers who come to me for advice. Here it is, but you might not like it.

Write for free.

Shrieks.

Recoiling dreamers!

Shuddering writers!

So let’s examine this suspicious piece of advice. How do you write for free?

Try small publications. My first column was published in The Paris News back in 1988, and they paid me. My work caught the attention of another paper about an hour away, and a year later I was writing for them, too. Then another, and before long, I was in 50+ papers in Texas and Oklahoma. They paid me, too, but that was then.

When the Internet became a Thing, papers dropped me like falling snowflakes as their income dwindled and readers turned to finding their news online. The first thing to go were the columnists. But that was an excellent place to cut my teeth.

There are still small town papers and independent publications that need content. They may not be able to pay, or pay much, say $5 a column, or they may only offer space for your work, but that space results in tear sheets that can be used to establish your writing reputation.

Online magazines and organizations need writers, and through I have no experience in that world, I’m sure there are online entities that are looking for good writing. Contact them and offer to write for free. It’s the perfect place to polish your craft, and is an excellent way to gain exposure.

“But I can do the same on my blog.”

Yes, mysterious, figment of my imagination. You can, and keep doing it that way, but one outlet these days isn’t enough. You need to expand that foundation and create a name for yourself. Write online, in local magazines and papers, in those small community publications that appear in your mailbox, and anywhere else you can find. Build name recognition, assemble a collection of tear sheets both physical and electronically, and use them to get noticed.

Get it? Reach into a new box of spaghetti and pull out one strand. Yep, there it is, one piece of dried noodle that you can boil and consume. Small. Unimpressive.

Now, shake the whole box into onto the table and watch them scatter like pick-up sticks. Look at all of them. That single stick might be difficult to see, but the contents of the entire box is right there, impossible to miss.

Get your name out there, and eventually, someone will offer a few bucks for your work.

Then build on that momentum. One…step…at…a…time.

Try it my way and someday maybe you’ll have that one book on a shelf, then you can start complaining about not being further along.

In the meantime, Happy New Year and good luck with your writing!

“I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.” Stephen King.

I can’t agree more. I fear I’ll step on some toes here, because there are hundreds of authors who love adverbs and will argue ‘til the cows come home that they improve their writing. I can’t go there. Oh, I know they’re in my own novels and columns, they pop up without notice in the first drafts, but I do my best to weed them out and rewrite the sentences to make them better than the original.

A few years ago, I packed a couple of books in a carry-on, intending to spend the almost nine hour flight to Hawaii with my nose in a book. I’ve written novels and newspaper columns on planes, and have edited several manuscripts while hanging in the air over various parts of this great nation, but I prefer to read.

I’d purchased a much-touted post-apocalyptic novel from Amazon and had been looking forward to losing myself in the tale (I got hooked on those when I read Alas Babylon fifty years ago). The flight leveled off, I ordered a Bombay Sapphire and tonic, (they had my gin in stock, huzzah!) and settled back with The Novel That Shall Not Be Named (not the real title). The problem began in paragraph one and I knew the book was going to be a wall-banger when I read:

He headed for the baggage claim tiredly, hoping this would be the last time for a while.

Good lord. That sentence required two deep swallows of Bombay before I could continue, and I did, hoping the writing would get better.

Maybe that one slipped through the editing process.

Here we go again. Still on the first page, I read the word “battered” twice in two short, consecutive paragraphs and sighed.

Please get better.

In the next couple of paragraphs, our protagonist leaves the airport, lights a cigarette, and outside for his delayed ride. Unlike him, we didn’t have to wait long for more adverbs.

“Hey pal, can’t you read?” someone said sharply.

“Does your daddy know you’re out playing cop?” he said snidely.

Sigh.

There were two more books in my carry-on, because I never go anywhere without backup, but reading that book was like watching a train wreck. I couldn’t stop, and my fascination with bad writing and boring sentences kept me from throwing the hefty novel against the bulkhead.

There were other problems as well, though I won’t dwell on them other than to say the author fell back on using character’s name in conversation over and over in order to identify the speaker, something I discussed in my last post.

His protagonist and other characters also snapped, spat, snarled, growled, grunted, barked, remarked (unnecessary), shouted, screamed (he just loved for verbs to follow dialogue), but I couldn’t get past the adverbs scattered like rice at a wedding.

Unceremoniously, firmly, loudly, tiredly (again), actually, expertly, apologetically, evenly, and finally (four times), all in the first short chapter.

And it was the way he used them. For example, he insisted on using adverbs that were redundant to the verb they modified.

“Amy whispered quietly to her mother.”

Uh, whispering is already quiet, so we don’t need it. That’s like…

He screamed loudly. Or, Amy drove quickly to the store.” This adverb is modifying a weak verb, so maybe Amy can “jump in her car and race to the store.”

Then there’s the adverb “very,” which I propose is the gateway word leading to Hell Road. Some writers use it the same as so many people who insist that the whole world and everything in it is amazing.

Amy was very tired.                               

Nope. Amy was exhausted, wrung out, beat, worn out, bushed, dog-tired or even wiped out, but for cryin’ out loud, lift your vocabulary! Her dogs were barking, she was dead on her feet!!! Jeeze!

I believe Mr. King also said adverbs prefer the passive voice, and seem to have been created with the timid word in mind. He was dead-on with The Novel That Shall Not Be Named. I closed it at the beginning of the second chapter. With no suitable walls to throw it against, and fearing aggressive responses from the other passengers if I heaved it into the aisle, I stuck the offending work in the seat pocket in front of me.

It’s something I regret today, because I figure some unsuspecting soul picked it up and found themselves subjected to poor writing. I regret leaving it on that plane for another reason, because I often use it these days as a teaching tool (I found another copy in a bookstore, which means I bought the damned thing twice). The Novel That Shall Not Be Named is a good, bad example of how adverbs allow the writer to be lazy, instead of allowing the work to support itself with well-constructed, thoughtful sentences.

Let’s go back to the first example from The Novel That Shall Not Be Named. I’ll refresh your memory:

He headed for the baggage claim tiredly, hoping this would be the last time for a while.

How about:

Exhausted from the long flight from Dusseldorf, he joined the herd of passengers making their lemming-like way to the baggage claim, hoping he wouldn’t have to travel overseas again for a while.

Now, I know we can argue the point to excess, but to me, it reads better with some context and gives the sentence a little more gas. Here are a few more examples.

I had her wrist firmly in hand.

I squeezed her wrist.

She closed the door firmly.

She slammed the door.

The horse loped around the arena speedily.

Comfortable in the saddle, Matt loped around the arena.

He stuttered haltingly.

How about a simple, “He stuttered.”

Read your manuscript carefully.

Read your manuscript with a critical eye toward those annoying adverbs.

Again, they tend to prop up weak or listless sentences, and that’s when I can’t stand those little buggers. When you find them, re-write the sentence and it will almost always be better than the original.

This example from Daily Writing Tips is a perfect example of these useless weeds (King’s description).

“Adverbs, like adjectives, have gotten a bad rap for their cluttering qualities. They are ever so useful, and so applicable and adaptable that writers often employ them mindlessly and indiscriminately. But which of the three adverbs in the preceding phrase (not only mindlessly and indiscriminately but also often) must I mercilessly vaporize with the Delete key?”

How about “…writers employ them without conscious thought,” or maybe, “…writers employ them with unconsidered, gleeful abandon,” or “…writers should find a better way to construct their sentences.”

I don’t think budding authors even know they’re being lazy, or maybe they don’t recognize adverbs for what they are. After reading On Writing by Mr. King, I went back and combed through my first manuscript, excising as many adverbs as I could find, and the truth be told, my writing sparkled when I deleted most of them.

Just this past Sunday, a friend asked if he could pick my brain a little about becoming an author. I have an idea for a non-fiction book.”

“I’ve written a lot of how-to magazine articles, but fiction is completely different and that’s where I’m comfortable.” I suggested some conferences or writing classes he could take to get started, but he had other ideas.

“I just want to talk about language and style.” He glanced around, as if worried that someone was listening in.

I couldn’t resist having a little fun with him. “I can give you a quick lesson now.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“Write conversationally and avoid adverbs.”

Nodding, he wrote the sentence down on a scrap piece of paper.

It was just too easy, because he was concentrating on the subject at hand, much like writing the first draft of a manuscript, and those adverbs weren’t yet resonating. “Remember, no adverbs if you can help it. Seriously. That’s the best advice I can offer right now.”

“Absolutely. Thanks for your help.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.” Stephen King.

I can’t agree more. I fear I’ll step on some toes here, because there are hundreds of authors who love adverbs and will argue ‘til the cows come home that they improve their writing. I can’t go there. Oh, I know they’re in my own novels and columns, they pop up without notice in the first drafts, but I do my best to weed them out and rewrite the sentences to make them better than the original.

A few years ago, I packed a couple of books in a carry-on, intending to spend the almost nine hour flight to Hawaii with my nose in a book. I’ve written novels and newspaper columns on planes, and have edited several manuscripts while hanging in the air over various parts of this great nation, but I prefer to read.

I’d purchased a much-touted post-apocalyptic novel from Amazon and had been looking forward to losing myself in the tale (I got hooked on those when I read Alas Babylon fifty years ago). The flight leveled off, I ordered a Bombay Sapphire and tonic, (they had my gin in stock, huzzah!) and settled back with The Novel That Shall Not Be Named (not the real title). The problem began in paragraph one and I knew the book was going to be a wall-banger when I read:

He headed for the baggage claim tiredly, hoping this would be the last time for a while.

Good lord. That sentence required two deep swallows of Bombay before I could continue, and I did, hoping the writing would get better.

Maybe that one slipped through the editing process.

Here we go again. Still on the first page, I read the word “battered” twice in two short, consecutive paragraphs and sighed.

Please get better.

In the next couple of paragraphs, our protagonist leaves the airport, lights a cigarette, and outside for his delayed ride. Unlike him, we didn’t have to wait long for more adverbs.

“Hey pal, can’t you read?” someone said sharply.

“Does your daddy know you’re out playing cop?” he said snidely.

Sigh.

There were two more books in my carry-on, because I never go anywhere without backup, but reading that book was like watching a train wreck. I couldn’t stop, and my fascination with bad writing and boring sentences kept me from throwing the hefty novel against the bulkhead.

There were other problems as well, though I won’t dwell on them other than to say the author fell back on using character’s name in conversation over and over in order to identify the speaker, something I discussed in my last post.

His protagonist and other characters also snapped, spat, snarled, growled, grunted, barked, remarked (unnecessary), shouted, screamed (he just loved for verbs to follow dialogue), but I couldn’t get past the adverbs scattered like rice at a wedding.

Unceremoniously, firmly, loudly, tiredly (again), actually, expertly, apologetically, evenly, and finally (four times), all in the first short chapter.

And it was the way he used them. For example, he insisted on using adverbs that were redundant to the verb they modified.

“Amy whispered quietly to her mother.”

Uh, whispering is already quiet, so we don’t need it. That’s like…

He screamed loudly. Or, Amy drove quickly to the store.” This adverb is modifying a weak verb, so maybe Amy can “jump in her car and race to the store.”

Then there’s the adverb “very,” which I propose is the gateway word leading to Hell Road. Some writers use it the same as so many people who insist that the whole world and everything in it is amazing.

Amy was very tired.                               

Nope. Amy was exhausted, wrung out, beat, worn out, bushed, dog-tired or even wiped out, but for cryin’ out loud, lift your vocabulary! Her dogs were barking, she was dead on her feet!!! Jeeze!

I believe Mr. King also said adverbs prefer the passive voice, and seem to have been created with the timid word in mind. He was dead-on with The Novel That Shall Not Be Named. I closed it at the beginning of the second chapter. With no suitable walls to throw it against, and fearing aggressive responses from the other passengers if I heaved it into the aisle, I stuck the offending work in the seat pocket in front of me.

It’s something I regret today, because I figure some unsuspecting soul picked it up and found themselves subjected to poor writing. I regret leaving it on that plane for another reason, because I often use it these days as a teaching tool (I found another copy in a bookstore, which means I bought the damned thing twice). The Novel That Shall Not Be Named is a good, bad example of how adverbs allow the writer to be lazy, instead of allowing the work to support itself with well-constructed, thoughtful sentences.

Let’s go back to the first example from The Novel That Shall Not Be Named. I’ll refresh your memory:

He headed for the baggage claim tiredly, hoping this would be the last time for a while.

How about:

Exhausted from the long flight from Dusseldorf, he joined the herd of passengers making their lemming-like way to the baggage claim, hoping he wouldn’t have to travel overseas again for a while.

Now, I know we can argue the point to excess, but to me, it reads better with some context and gives the sentence a little more gas. Here are a few more examples.

I had her wrist firmly in hand.

I squeezed her wrist.

She closed the door firmly.

She slammed the door.

The horse loped around the arena speedily.

Comfortable in the saddle, Matt loped around the arena.

He stuttered haltingly.

How about a simple, “He stuttered.”

Read your manuscript carefully.

Read your manuscript with a critical eye toward those annoying adverbs.

Again, they tend to prop up weak or listless sentences, and that’s when I can’t stand those little buggers. When you find them, re-write the sentence and it will almost always be better than the original.

This example from Daily Writing Tips is a perfect example of these useless weeds (King’s description).

“Adverbs, like adjectives, have gotten a bad rap for their cluttering qualities. They are ever so useful, and so applicable and adaptable that writers often employ them mindlessly and indiscriminately. But which of the three adverbs in the preceding phrase (not only mindlessly and indiscriminately but also often) must I mercilessly vaporize with the Delete key?”

How about “…writers employ them without conscious thought,” or maybe, “…writers employ them with unconsidered, gleeful abandon,” or “…writers should find a better way to construct their sentences.”

I don’t think budding authors even know they’re being lazy, or maybe they don’t recognize adverbs for what they are. After reading On Writing by Mr. King, I went back and combed through my first manuscript, excising as many adverbs as I could find, and the truth be told, my writing sparkled when I deleted most of them.

Just this past Sunday, a friend asked if he could pick my brain a little about becoming an author. I have an idea for a non-fiction book.”

“I’ve written a lot of how-to magazine articles, but fiction is completely different and that’s where I’m comfortable.” I suggested some conferences or writing classes he could take to get started, but he had other ideas.

“I just want to talk about language and style.” He glanced around, as if worried that someone was listening in.

I couldn’t resist having a little fun with him. “I can give you a quick lesson now.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“Write conversationally and avoid adverbs.”

Nodding, he wrote the sentence down on a scrap piece of paper.

It was just too easy, because he was concentrating on the subject at hand, much like writing the first draft of a manuscript, and those adverbs weren’t yet resonating. “Remember, no adverbs if you can help it. Seriously. That’s the best advice I can offer right now.”

“Absolutely. Thanks for your help.”

“You’re welcome.”

I cut my writing teeth on humor columns.

It came from years of reading great writers who knew how to make readers smile and laugh, authors such as Patrick McManus (one of the funniest columnists I’ve ever read, who made me laugh out loud and was a surprise when I finally met him, because the guy was dry as a geology professor), Donald E. Westlake (who combined classic whodunits with humor), Max Schulman (author and creator of Dobie Gillis), and Jack Douglas (most of you haven’t heard of him, but he was an outstanding TV writer who became a noted author in the 1960s and 70s), and finally a good friend and author, Joe R. Lansdale, who combines action and dark humor and is still going strong.

They all taught me one thing about being funny. Don’t try so hard to make people smile and most of the time, subtlety is the answer (which is not the column below).

I can go into the sociological aspects of writing humor, but that ain’t one bit funny.

I sat in on a humor writing class once, and came out weeping. The presenter broke down humor with sentences like, “Writing comedically usually requires establishing a setup pattern and then misdirecting the reader by throwing in a punch line. The simplest way is to create a pair of ideas and then add an incongruent statement. I like to list three, because 30 is too many.”

Good lord.

How about misdirection, which can be funny by taking readers someplace they expect to go and suddenly shifting direction.

“I looked down at my five-year-old son who broke the window and lied about it. I was shocked to think he wouldn’t tell the truth, and had to get him to understand what he’d done wrong, so I knelt on one knee, took his small shoulders in my big hands and looked him in the eye. Son, I have something to tell you.”

“What?”

“Quit picking your nose.”

Most of the things we laugh at in real life are true stories that someone exaggerates for effect. I once wrote a column about running from a bear while wearing a backpack…

“That thing was right on my heels, and I ran like rats across the tundra. My backpack came open and I left a string of equipment behind, my tent, half the food I’d packed, tent stakes, the stove, a laptop computer, two cameras, a chair, the kitchen sink and a VCR along with all my John Wayne videos. Now light as a feather, I left the bear far behind, sniffing the laptop full of newspaper columns and probably wondering what stunk so bad.”

Some other things I’ve learned:

Don’t try to write jokes. Look for something that happened in real life and make a few changes. Here in Texas, every truck has a trailer hitch. We all know they’re right there, but when the guys get together, someone inadvertently barks his shin on the damn thing. While we curse and rub that shin, the rest laugh like loons. What is it that makes us guys giggle like little girls? We’ve all done it. Exaggerated familiarity is funny

Don’t tell your reader something is funny: “Hurts, don’t it,” he joked. Like the old saying goes, if you have to explain it, it ain’t funny.

Avoid sarcasm, except to identify a character.

Surprise your reader.

I’ve judged humor writing contests, and cousin, exclamation points don’t make a story funny!

Use humor sparingly, unless you’re shoving it in someone’s face, like this slightly insane column I wrote some years ago about an Outdoor Detective that somehow caught on with readers. I only produce one of these a year. They’re a lot like fruit cakes, you don’t want too many, but an occasional bite is good.

The Case of the Invisible Case

I’d been puttering around my office all afternoon. After a while I put the putter away, kicked the golf balls into a corner and leaned back in my chair. Putting my feet on the battered desk, I scraped some off on the floor and relaxed.

I had just returned to my job as the Outdoor Detective from a weekend of pheasant hunting in the Texas high plains. We flushed birds for two days. Then I called the plumber and he cleared the drain.

“Don’t flush anymore pheasants,” he ordered.

I joined him and ordered a hamburger and fries as well.

“Try flushing quail, they’re smaller,” he said, then left.

A timid knock at my office door caught my attention. It was noir time. I turned on the background saxophone music to set the mood. “Come in.”

The man who entered looked like he wanted to run. He was sweating. It was his running shoes, headband, and shorts that gave him away. “Where’s that sax music coming from?”

“It’s a mystery ain’t it. That’s what I do. Solve mysteries. What can I do for you?”

“My name is Nobody. I want to hire the Outdoor Detective.”

“That’s me,” I answered.

“I expected more.”

“They always do. What can I do for you?”

“I want to hire you to find my missing hunting guide. His name is Earl. You need to keep your eyes peeled for him.”

“I’d rather not,” I said. “They always dry out when I do that, and those dried peelings crackle under your feet.”

His gaze wandered as I talked. “Is that your dog?” Nobody pointed to the corner.

“Yes.”

“What’s his name?”

“Neil.”

“Play dead, Neil,” Nobody said. “Good dog.”

“He is dead. Croaked last night.”

“Don’t don’t croak.”

“Oh. Wise guy, huh? Fine. Now we know where we both stand.”

Nobody pointed at the floor. “Of course. You’re there, and I’m here.”

“Now that we’ve established that, I’ll help you look for the guide. You can be my partner.”

“But I don’t know how. Maybe you could show me the ropes around here?”

I produced several ropes of various lengths.

“It looks too complicated,” he decided. “Maybe you’d better do it for me. How much will it cost?”

“That depends. Are you rich?” I asked.

“No, I’ve already said my name’s Nobody, but that sometimes confuses people. You can call me Ken.”

“You don’t look like kin. You must be from dad’s side of the family.”

He nodded. “Will it cost a lot?”

“What’s a lot to you?”

“A big piece of land to scrape clean and cover with concrete buildings.”

“I’m talking about money.”

He produced a wad of bills and I licked his hand gratefully. “All right. What happened to your hunting guide?”

“I’m not sure. We were hunting out near Abilene and communicating by walkie-talkies…”

I took notes as he talked. Mostly B flats.

“…and I was in a deer stand. He was in the coffee shop and we were singing a duet when a huge buck stepped into my view. I described it; a large animal with legs and antlers. I heard him order coffee and then he said “shoot.”

I was almost ready to pull the trigger. I just had to load the rifle and attach the scope, when guns began firing all around me. Then machine guns started chattering and pretty soon I heard artillery thumping in the distance. Soon the mortars kicked in for support. It was awful.”

“The shooting?” I asked, sympathetically.

“No, the coffee he’d ordered. He said it was chicory. Ya gotta help me!” he shouted.

“You’ve gotta stop saying words like ya gotta!” I shouted back. “I don’t know what your guide looks like. Do you have a picture?”

He produced an oil portrait of Picasso.

I didn’t say a word. He has mean eyes, I thought, both on the same side of his head.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Just read the sentences above.” Annoyed, I dummied up.

His eyes narrowed. “I can see the dummy’s mouth move when you talk.”

“It’s supposed to be the other way around,” I answered.

“Good luck.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it.” We shook hands and he left.

I practiced my yodeling and for a while, turned off the music and smiled at Neil. “Good dog,” I said.

I hate it when dogs jump up on people.

*

And with that, potential humor writers, read the authors who make you laugh and study their technique. They’ve figured it out and it’s something that triggers your giggle-box. Learn to use it in your own way.

Good luck, adios, and adieu.

Don’t use television as a writing source.

I should end there with that one true sentence and be done with this blog post, but then again, I probably need to defend it with some examples.

Let’s start with dialogue.

“Marcus, you cover me from over there,” the long-haired man said, fingering his rifle. “Don’t let anyone get behind me.”

“Right, Bill,” Marcus said, rubbing the scar over his right eye. “I’ll be behind that empy barrel that won’t stop a bullet, but it’ll look good on the screen if they ever make a movie about us.”

“Marcus!”

“What!”

“My name’s not Bill, and remember, Marcus, when you shoot, stand up in the open and hold the trigger down until a thousand rounds are fired. Then run to that rock, jump into a forward roll and come up firing again as if you’ve reloaded, but you won’t, because you have a magic machine gun.”

“Bill, you know you’re my best friend.”

“Then why can’t you remember my name, Marcus. It’s about that woman, isn’t it? That Harry girl.”

“She wasn’t that hairy, maybe a little on her knuckles, but she gave me a case of the screaming memies every time she was around.”

“She gave me a case of something else, Marcus, but that’s a discussion for another day. Marcus.”

“What?”

“Start shooting now!!!!”

Well, you get the picture. I don’t know how many wall-banger books I’ve started that are filled with dialogue like this. (A wall-banger is a novel that’s so bad you throw it against the wall). Lordy, I’ve read enough of them, or tried to.

In fact, it was a wall-banger forty years ago that made me sure I could write novels. I distinctly remember closing it after five pages and saying to myself, I can write better than that.

The dialogue above could have come from a screenplay. Movies use names all the time to help viewers understand who’s talking and to identify a character,

(although I wish they’d done that in Blackhawk Down, because all those kids look the same in uniform),

but that’s not necessary in novels. We don’t say a person’s name in every sentence. Instead, identify the speaker with mannerisms or actions.

I can get bogged down here with names and dialogue for an hour, but let’s move on to other ways television and the movies can get a writer into trouble, like…

…cars don’t always flip over in automobile accidents. We all know it sometimes happens, but for cryin’ out loud, give us a reason and not just that it ran into a knife lying in the road and blew out a tire and rolled onto its side, but thinking about cutlery…

…the most dangerous knife in the kitchen isn’t that big chef’s knife half-naked women grab when they’re scared. It looks good on screen I guess, but don’t use this in your action scene. How about a nice boning knife, long and sharp and your character can use it when a bad guy comes running into the kitchen shooting a hundred times but…

…the aforementioned guns really don’t fire forever. A six shooter only shoots…six times. Be sure you know how many rounds a semi-automatic magazine will hold. They vary. Know your weapons if you’re going to write about them. No one can intentionally shoot a gun out of someone’s hand, and shooting a bad guy in the leg is iffy at best. If you’re unfamiliar with firearms, reach out to an expert, especially if someone shoots a car or something filled with gas and creates explosions…

…and those aren’t always big balls of yellow, red, and orange flame. What you see on the screen is usually a controlled propane explosion. Again, do a little research to find out what real detonations look and sound like, instead of a slow-motion ball of fire, and while we’re talking about fire…

…torches don’t burn for hours.

Let’s pause for reflection. I learned this when I was a kid. My grandparents lived in the country, so we were always building fires (and that’s how I learned spirits of camphor is an excellent remedy for burns). Us kids grew up watching movies with people carrying torches into gold-filled caves or to burn castles and such (by the way, those people were geniuses at whipping up a batch of torches on the fly), so one evening when I was around twelve, my cousin and I decided to make some of our own.

We built a fire in the pasture a good distance from the house and barn and stuck some old ax handles into the coals. They soon burned cheerfully and when it came time to run off into the darkness and chase boogers with a cheerful flame, I pulled mine out. Instead of the steady blaze I’d seen on TV, it went out.

I blew on it and flames flickered alive. Aha!

If blowing on the smoking end will produce flame, then I can run and get the same result. Maybe walking brisky along with a crowd intent on burning a monster is the idea.

My Old Man recalled watching from the porch as Cousin and I ran, trotted, and walked with brisk determination through the pasture, holding the “torches” high in the air. He said it looked like fireflies that went out as soon as we stopped.

And darkness closed in.

Hollywood torches burn forever. Real ones might burn for a few seconds if they’re made properly. If you’re gonna have torches in your scene, give us a quick sentence or two about how your characters made them.

Let’s see. Oh, victim aren’t thrown across a room when shot with a 9mm or even a .45…

…and getting shot in the shoulder isn’t like a mosquito bite that heals the next day and speaking of shooting…

…you can’t shoot the lock on a door with the abovementioned pistols and have it swing open. Your character will likely wound themselves or just shoot holes in wood and that can be loud and…

…speaking of loud, silencers don’t work on revolvers and they don’t make the report as silent like the desert at night where…

…the old west isn’t all deserts and Monument Valley.

There.

It’s all right to use movies and television to spark an idea or two. That’s called working, and when the Bride comes into the living room to find me stretched back in the recliner, I’m getting ideas for later.

I think I’ll go do that right now. Or I might read. That’s working, too, and I can be inspired by books…good ones, that is.

When I was ten years old, I told an old aunt (she was in her late forties then) that I wanted to be a writer. I took that first solid step when my first newspaper column was published in 1988. The second writing milestone came to fruition in 2011, forty-seven years after telling Aunt Rene my life goal.

All right, I’m a slow starter.

As the manuscript that began in 2000 developed, I realized my characters were talking like those country folks I grew up with. They became people with personalities and who lived as my grandparents did.

They used words and phrases like, “Hand me that pair of dykes so I can cut this wire,” or “He took a notion to string off over there and he got in trouble for it,” or when looking at a line of cars passing on the highway, “It looks like they put the gate down.”

I was unconsciously using, and preserving on paper, the way of life I grew up with. Soon, the Red River series became known for those words and idioms.

One man at a signing came up to me with a grin. “I know you’re from Northeast Texas, because you called that watering hole a pool. Out in West Texas, they call it a tank.”

“Well, I was born in Paris, Texas, and we don’t call them ponds there, either.”

“I sure appreciate it when you write about those things I’ve forgotten. My mama used to call skim milk blue-john. She used words like clabber, and said ‘well I swan’ when she was surprised. Only folks from where we grew up would understand how cornbread in sweet milk tastes, or talk about toting a ‘tow sack up to the corn crib to get some ‘taters for our supper.”

Many people from other states don’t understand that this state is so huge it has five different regions that includes everything from high deserts, to prairies, to piney woods, rolling hills, and the gulf coast. Each region has its own unique voice, and that’s the subject of today’s blog.

At a Bouchercon writers conference a few years ago, a panelist beside me on the stage admitted that she wrote novels set in Texas, but had only been to the Lone Star state once. “I get most of my information from the internet and Google Maps.”

My hat was the only thing that kept my head from exploding.

I read one of her books a couple of weeks later and it was good, but it didn’t have one bit of Texas flavor. She got everything from the computer and likely television, including the most hated phrase (my opinion) a writer can use when penning dialogue set in my state.

“Yee haw!”

I’ve never heard that expression come from the mouth of one single native Texan.

A couple of years ago I was visiting my good friend and fellow author, Joe R. Lansdale in his home town of Nacogdoches, in East Texas. A mutual friend from Italy was in the states and the three of us had dinner at a local Mexican restaurant.

Here’s where we get to the nut of my subject. Rural native Texans eat three meals a day. Breakfast, dinner, and supper. There’s a lot of confusion because we eat dinner at noon, instead of the evening meal, but that changes in school when kids have lunch in the lunchroom. See what I’m talking about. Regional or local customs.

We finished dinner around two o’clock and Joe asked Friend if there was anything in particular he wanted to do while he was in town. Friend is an Italian author, a musician, and works as a translator for Americans who vacation in his home country.

“I’d like to buy a ‘cowboy’ shirt like the one Rev’s wearing to take back home.”

I reached halfway across the table full of dirty dishes bearing the remnants of tamales, beef enchiladas, scraps of rice and beans, and the stem of a chili relleno, and picked up an orphan chip. Dipping it into the last of the hot sauce, I raised an eyebrow at Joe.

“Is there a good western wear shop in town?”

“There’s a Boot Barn a little ways from here.”

We adjourned to the parking lot that hot afternoon and waited while Friend took several photos of my truck. He’d never laid eyes on a dually before, a one-ton pickup with an extra set of wheels in the back (two on each side of the axle). Then he shot photos of the three of us beside the truck, photos of the dash, and shots of us inside the four-door cab.

Joe took the back seat while Friend rode shotgun. I fired up the big diesel and glanced at Joe in the rearview mirror. “Where to?”

“Pull out and hang a left.”

A thick line of cars going both directions held us up for a few minutes as I waited for a break in the traffic. “Looks like they let the gate down.”

“It’s that time of day.”

Because we’re both from the eastern side of the state, we have a similar accent. There’s another difference in where we live. Folks from behind the Pine Curtain, like Joe, speak with a distinctive southern accent mixed with deep regional inflections, while out in west Texas, the flavor leans more toward south blended with some influences from border Spanish.

“I’m gonna hammer it.”

“A’ite.” I heard Joe fasten his seatbelt as

“Y’all hang on.” I made the turn and my hat slid across the dash as we joined the traffic. When I’m with Joe, my own accent gets deeper and heavier. “Grab ‘at t’ere, wouldja Friend?”

He caught the hat and returned it to the center of the dash. I met Joe’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “How far, amigo?”

“Up ‘ere a piece.”

“Fur piece?”

“A ways. Maybe a mile as the crow flies.”

I steered around an electric car. “How’s mama’n them, Joe?”

“Fair to middlin’.”

We drive fast down here, so the mile went past in a blink. Joe tapped the back of my seat. “Right ‘chere. Whup in there.”

I steered into the parking lot and Friend finally spoke up. “Would you stop here for a minute, please?”

“Sure.” The parking lot was fairly empty, so I straddled several lines and shifted into park. “’sup?”

He turned in his seat to see both of us. “I haven’t understood a word you two have said since we got in this…pickup. Would you mind translating all that for me?”

We did, and he finally understood what two old country boys were talking about.

(We pause here for an author-service announcement. Don’t string that much local dialect together in your manuscript. It’s too much, and too hard to read. You’ll understand what I mean if you’ve ever read Huckleberry Finn, which is one of my favorite novels by Mark Twain. Just sprinkle in two or three regional words or phrases to help establish your character, and move on, dropping in a little more spice every now and then to help identify the speaker).

My fellow panelist at Bouchercon that year couldn’t have known how we talk down here, because you have to hear people (and not on television, either). To write about a location, in my opinion, an author also needs to smell the air, listen to the symphony of sounds in the location they’re describing, to walk the streets and feel the grit underfoot, or on their face.

The late Edward Abbey wrote some fine fiction and nonfiction. He was once a park ranger and an environmentalist who had plenty to say, and said it with a razor sharp edge. That old curmudgeon who loved our natural parks out in the American West despised cars, (and anything else that was unnatural in the landscape) and had this to say about people who visited his desert without stopping.

“In the first place, you can’t see anything from a car; you’ve got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet, crawl on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbrush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail, you’ll begin to see something, maybe. Probably not.”

In that paragraph he described the red rock desert of Moab, Utah, and how visitors (read authors here) and miss details when they don’t personally visit an area. Go where you plan to set your novel. Research in person, and not on those infernal machines that take up so much of our lives these days.

At the very worst, you can write off a vacation, and at best, your characters and descriptions will come alive.

Much obliged for reading today, y’all.

Those who’ve grown familiar with these posts over the past few months realize that I have severe diarrhea of the keyboard, but that’s only here on the Kill Zone blog where I let my mind free. My Red River and Sonny Hawke novels come in somewhere around 90-100,000 words. They aren’t Tom Clancy-size doorstops.

I also write short bursts of weekly self-syndicated mostly humorous outdoor columns (though there are plenty of serious columns) that began back in 1988, and so through the decades…

…good lord. I’ve written those for decades, and I’m from the generation who said, “Never trust anyone over twenty-one years old.”

Anyway, in those columns for The Paris News, The Rockport Pilot, and Country World (a rural newspaper distributed across the entire Lone Star State), I have to tell an entire story in less than a thousand words. They usually come in at around 850-950 words and most of them are in the right order.

Now there’s a lot of info packed in there containing the traditional three parts of a story, beginning, middle, and end. It can also translate into the three acts of a novel, something I hadn’t consciously considered until I’d written three of my books.

Here’s where we pause to make fun of myself. Gilstrap and I were drinking scotch outside at a conference somewhere after the release of my third novel, and talking about books and writing. We were alone (thank the Lord), when I mentioned that I’d recently noticed an interesting structural component in my work.

“They seem to be divided into thirds, somehow.” I took a sip of Glenlivet. “It just happens, and I didn’t notice it until I was proofing this last one. Then I went back and looked at the other manuscripts I’d sent in. It’s like my high school English teacher taught us. There’s a beginning that’s about a third of the book, then the second part seems to arc up, and in the third part, all the action races downhill to the end.”

He took a delicate sip of Lagavulin and cut his eyes at me giving me that country bless your heart look. “Rev.”

“Huh?”

“Those are the three acts in a novel.”

“Oh, yeah. Uh, let me pour you another drink.” A torrent of long-forgotten memories rushed through the haze of single malt peat. “Good Lord! Now I remember those lessons. I’d completely forgotten!”

But I hadn’t. They were still chugging away in my subconscious and I’d been applying those lessons for years as I developed my newspaper columns and magazine articles without knowing it.

If I’m writing those humor columns, the three acts are the setup, the story arc, and the punchline (and that sometimes translates to the punch-paragraph). To accomplish all this with enough detail to put the reader in place and time, I learned to write tight.

That’s hard for novelists, and so in a way, it worked in reverse for me. Two thousand columns taught me concise structure, and that’s the way my mind works, no matter what I write. So when I was hammering out my first novel, I decided to abandon the write tight rule and put it behind me, so I could include everything I wanted.

There were broad, sweeping descriptions of the world I’d created. In my mind, I wanted to preserve the way my Old Folks spoke, so I added a lot of their phraseology and words. In addition, I went into great detail about how to render lard in large cast iron pots, or how my grandmother canned vegetables and fruits, and how the house smelled and felt through the seasons.

I ended up with a tome that required severe editing. Once I was finished, you couldn’t tell anything had been deleted and the manuscript flowed like a spring-fed creek.

In the years since, I construct novels with an eye toward an 80,000-85,000 word length in my first draft. That gets the structural foundation in place. Then I go back and add more conversation in places, tightly controlled descriptions, and elements left out in the first frenzy of construction.

But back to compact construction. While pounding away at the keys this morning to meet my weekly newspaper deadline, I registered a song playing in the background and stopped to listen. It’s a fine example of writing tight, a song that’s the perfect structural foundation for a novel. A story written tight.

I use this song and those lyrics when teaching classes how to construct a story (and I even tell those in attendance it’s the textbook outline, if outlining is easiest for them).

The structural foundation for this popular song (in my part of the world) could become a short story, or a screenplay, is titled, The Lights of Loving County, by Charlie Robison. (I really hope someone approaches him to buy the rights for a movie). It’s a song with three full acts circling back to mesh with the beginning with an astonishing connection. The song was written by Charlie Robison, too (I’m trying to give as much credit as possible so as not to get sued here). Read this as a story, and not as a grand poem set to music, and I’ll be waiting for you on the other side.

Well, I loved a girl,
She lived out in Pecos, and pretty as she could be.
And I worked the rigs on out in Odessa
To give her whatever she needs.

But that girl, she run with an oil company bum
‘cause a diamond was not on her hand.
And he left her soon ‘neath the big loving moon
To go out and X-ray the land.

Now I sit in my car at the New Rainbow Bar downtown.
And the frost on the windshield shines toward the sky
Like a thousand tiny diamonds in the lights of Loving County.

Well, l walked in that bar and I drank myself crazy
Thinking about her and that man.
When in walked a woman, looking richer than sin
with ten years-worth of work on her hand.

Well, I followed her home and when she was alone,
I put my gun to her head.
And I don’t recall what happened next at all,
But now that rich woman, she’s dead.

Now I drive down the highway
Ten miles from my sweet baby’s arms.
And the moon is so bright it don’t look like night,
And the diamond how it sparkles in the lights of Loving County.

Well, she opened that door and I knelt on the floor,
And I put that ring in her hand.
Then she said, “I do: and she’d leave with me soon
To the rigs out in South Alabam’.

Now I told her to hide that ring there inside,
And wait ’til the timing was good.
And I drove back home and I was alone
‘cause I thought that she understood

The next night an old friend just called me to wish us both well.
He said, he’d seen her downtown, sashaying around,
And her diamond, how it sparkled in the lights of Loving County.

Well that sheriff, he found me out wandering
All around El Paso the very next day.
You see, I’d lost my mind on that broken white line
‘fore I even reached Balmorhea.

Well, now she’s in Fort Worth and she’s just given birth
To the son of that oil company man.
And they buried that poor old sheriff’s dead wife
With the ring that I stole on her hand.

And sometimes they let me look up at that East Texas sky.
And the rain on the pines, oh Lord, how it shines
Like my darling’s little diamond in the lights of Loving County.

God, I wish I’d written that. There it is, an entire novel in one neat little package. An outline, if you will, just waiting to be fleshed out. This is a prime example of writing tight with just enough detail to bring the story to life, and yet not too much fat.

In there, we see the harsh West Texas landscape, and a hardscrabble life in the oil business. Charlie shows us the two main characters who set this story into motion, a man who loves a woman deeply and despises another suitor, and a woman who sees worth in the baubles men provide to make her feel better out there in the desert.

Then the action begins. The jealous protagonist needs two things on a cold winter night. Booze and money. One to sooth his emotions, and the other to buy the girl he’s crazy about. It always comes down to money, doesn’t it? In an alcoholic blackout, he commits murder. He has what he wants, but at the same time is struggling with right and wrong, soon to be overcome guilt and mental breakdown after she starts flashing that diamond around town.

Murder, intrigue, and a brilliant twist that leads to his capture and final incarceration in Huntsville State Prison where he sometimes can see rain caught on the pines that surround the penitentiary. It’s the dichotomy between the dry west and lush eastern part of our state, still another level in this multifaceted story.

I’ve provided a link below so that you can hear the original version of the song. It needs nothing else, except to be fleshed out with a minimum of instrumentation, another brilliant version of writing tight. As my young daughters heard until they gagged, “Less is more.”

Hope this quick little lesson has some impact on your writing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uewrSagO-r4