How Writers Should Die


When I first waded into the waters of self-publishing, I did so with two novellas. The first, WATCH YOUR BACK, showed me within the first month the potential for shorter books in the indie world. The second, ONE MORE LIE,became the first self-published work to be nominated for an International Thriller Writers Award, for which I will always be grateful.
And I owe it all to James M. Cain.
Cain, as most of you know, was the author of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, his most famous work. Just behind it are DOUBLE INDEMNITY and MILDRED PIERCE. With hit movies based on each, Cain was, by 1947, one of the most famous novelists in America. The postman was delivering him a lot of money in those days.
His best books were written in a style that Cain made his calling card: the first-person confessional. The narrators recount their downfalls due to the entanglements of lust or greed or some combination thereof. There is something so direct in Cain’s prose. Spare and unsparing. Hardboiled but with a heart. Dialogue that snaps. Plots like runaway trains.
So one day I found myself sitting down to write about a man with a confession to make, and out came WATCH YOUR BACK. I liked it so much I did the same with ONE MORE LIE.
And I’m pleased to no end that the novella is back! You couldn’t get them published traditionally. They just didn’t sell. They were a staple of the old pulp era, but dinosaurs by the end of the twentieth century.
Now, with self-publishing, with low prices and instant delivery, novellas are back stronger than ever. I plan to make them a staple of my future work.
But even more important to me in all this is the example of Cain the man, Cain the writer. He was riding high when the 1950s hit, but then began a period of decline. Publishers started rejecting his stuff. He became, in the eyes of many, “damaged goods.”
By 1963 Cain was 71 years old and without any contracts. He thought he might be the very thing he never wanted to become: an ex-writer. Yet James M. Cain still wrote a 1200 words every morning. Here he is doing that very thing, on his beloved typewriter, at the age of 75:

Now that is inspirational. And guess what? At the age of 82 James M. Cain received the largest advance of his career, for his novel RAINBOW’S END, which was published to excellent reviews. He completed another novel that was published and well received, then immediately got to work on a new one. He had just completed THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS when he died at the age of 85. That last “lost” novel has now been published by the good folks at Hard Case Crime.
That is a writer’s good death–type THE END and keel over! Don’t you believe that? You’re a writer, after all. It’s what you do. You’d do it even if everyone in your family came to you at midnight, woke you up and begged you, for your own good, to stop writing once and for all. You’d tell them to get out of the room because you’re dreaming of your next book and the boys in the basement need to get to work!
And that is why I will never stop writing. Even if the postman stops delivering checks. 

Give Us the ‘Tude

We’re all about helping writers here at TKZ. We can do that on the blog, of course, but every now and again one of us will show up in person at a conference.
Or, we’ll throw one ourselves. That’s what I’ll be doing in Los Angeles, June 4th and 5th. Two solid days of getting your writing to the next level. Wall-to-wall instruction on what you can do to rise above the slush, get noticed, get sold. Click here if you’d like more information.
Of course, we’ll talk about openings and POV, which brings me to today’s first page entry:
THE FEN
The surveillance van stank. That wasn’t unusual. Put two or more people in a confined space for hours on end and the scent fallout will inevitably be a combination of stale sweat and funyuns with the desperate hint of pine from a cardboard tree hanging on the rearview mirror. 
           
 “…so I told her that’s how it would be irregardless of what she wanted,” Johnson said.
           
The words registered, but I hadn’t paid the slightest attention to the context. “Uh huh.”
           
“You’re a woman, what do you think the problem is?”
           
“I don’t know. Your use of the non-word irregardless?”
           
Surveillance work was the closest I’d been to the field since being shot three months earlier. I thought it would be better than desk duty. I was wrong.   
           
I popped the lid off a bottle of ibuprofen and dry swallowed three. Getting shot hurt. What was done to keep me alive hurt more. The company in the van and our location wasn’t helping. Ed Kowalczyk once wrote a song called “Shit Towne,” about York, Pennsylvania. I’ve been to York. Ed wrote a good song. He needs to write one about Reading.
           
“Do I have to go outside?” asked Johnson, changing topics. At least, I thought that’s what he was doing.
           
“What?”
           
“When I’m on surveillance with a guy,” he put too much emphasis on that gender specific word, “I can just pee out the back door of the van.”
           
“If I see your penis, I will shoot it,” I said.
           
He grumbled, but left in search of a public restroom, or a bush. I didn’t care as long as the smell from the contents of his bladder didn’t reach my nose.
***
The voice of the narrator in this piece is strong. When writing in First Person, that’s the main goal. Give us an attitude. The narrator should sound like someone specific, and someone who might be worth listening to. 
This narrator has a good, irreverent, spunky style. We like protagonists who have a bit of the rebel in them. Why? Because that promises conflict, which is the engine of fiction. In that regard, the repartee is promising. We know this Lead is going to run afoul of those she has to work with.
I also like the crisp attention to detail. The desperate hint of pine from a cardboard tree is excellent. And it’s mixed with Funyuns (note: capitalize product names). That’s specific. It’s almost always better to use actual names than generic categories.
The main way I’d strengthen this opening is to root us in the POV right from the start. I see this kind of opening a lot—a sensory description, but from a voice we have not identified yet. Could this be the author’s omniscient voice? A third person “in the head” voice? Or is this First Person? If so, who is the person?
We don’t get clued in until the third paragraph.
Thus, I strongly urge writers to make that opening paragraph clear about the POV. My suggested reworking is below. It’s by no means the only way, but it’ll give you an idea of what I mean.
****
I popped the lid off a bottle of ibuprofen and dry swallowed three. Getting shot hurt. What was done to keep me alive hurt more.
“…so I told her that’s how it would be irregardless of what she wanted,” Johnson said.
           
The words registered, but I hadn’t paid the slightest attention to the context. “Uh huh.”
           
“You’re a woman, what do you think the problem is?”
           
“I don’t know. Your use of the non-word irregardless?”
The surveillance van stank. That wasn’t unusual. Put two or more people in a confined space for hours on end and the scent fallout will inevitably be a combination of stale sweat and Funyuns with the desperate hint of pine from a cardboard tree hanging on the rearview mirror. 
Surveillance work was the closest I’d been to the field since being shot three months earlier. I thought it would be better than desk duty. I was wrong . . . .
***
Now, I know the thinking is that the author wants to establish the setting first, the van, then get to the scene. But readers will wait for setting information if something is happening, like dialogue with a little spice (with all due respect to Brother Gilstrap.) So putting in description after action is often the better choice for the opening page.
Establishing POV and voice right away are:
Janet Evanovich in Two for the Dough:
I knew Ranger was beside me because I could see his earring gleaming in the moonlight.
James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice:
They threw me off the haytruck about  noon.
J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye:
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
And so on. I know immediately we are in First Person, and that lets me understand better the descriptions that follow, because it’s coming through a particular perspective. And there is an attitude apparent in each narration as they move along.
Main point: it’s the voice of the narrator that’s the number one thing I look for in First Person. This piece has a good voice, so I would keep reading. 

How to Grab Them on Page One

It’s first page week here at TKZ, and if you’re an unpublished writer you’ve been treated to some real gold. The instruction from our band of bloggers has been a valuable workshop on the art of what I call “the big grab” – getting the reader hooked from the start.

Last week, I wrote about what not to do on your opening page. Today, I want to suggest to you an opening strategy that works for any type of fiction.

At the outset, please note that what follows is not a formula. This isn’t painting by the numbers. But it is a principle, and thus has infinite possibilities for application. No matter what your style or genre, this principle will work its magic for you, every time.

Recall that last week’s post was triggered by something an agent said at a recent conference, to wit: “If you cannot write a compelling opening scene, from the opening sentence, I’m not going to finish your proposal.”

I assume you do want agents — and editors — to finish your proposal. If so, you must grab them on page one. How can you do that?

By beginning your novel with a disturbance to the Lead’s ordinary world.

Why disturbance? Because: Readers read to worry. They want to be lost in the intense emotional anticipation over the plight of a character in trouble. Only when that connection is made does reader interest truly kick in.

But in their opening pages many writers fall into what I call the “Happy people in Happy Land” trap. They think that by showing the Lead character in her normal life, being happy with her family or dog or whatever, we’ll be all riled up when something bad happens to this nice person, perhaps at the end of chapter one, or beginning of chapter two.

Or they fall into the “I’m the Greatest Literary Stylist of Our Time” trap. This is where a writers desires to display brilliance via pure prose before, somewhere down the line, something like a plot kicks in.

But that’s too long to wait. You need to stir up the waters immediately.

A disturbance is something that causes ripples in the placid lagoon of Happy Land. It can be anything, so long as it presents a change or challenge to the Lead. (It’s important to note that this disturbance need not be “big” as in, say, a thriller prologue. The opening disturbance can be a jolt, however slight, that indicates to the Lead she is not having an ordinary moment here).

And you need to have that jolt on page one, preferably paragraph one.

This is true for both commercial and literary fiction, BTW. Compare the following two openings, the first a commercial example, the latter a literary one.

They threw me off the hay truck about noon.

(The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain)

The world outside the window was in flames. The leaves on the pistachio trees shone fire-red and orange. Mattie studied the early morning light. She was lying on the side of the bed where her husband should have been sleeping.

(Blue Shoe by Ann Lamott)

Notice that Cain starts with a character in motion at a point in time that is obviously a disturbance to him. In this case, the disturbance is physical.

In Lamott’s example, we have two lines of description, then the Lead is introduced, and the last line is a ripple of disturbance, this one emotional: where is her husband?

Dialogue, if it indicates immediate conflict, is another way to create an opening disturbance. I’ve heard more than one agent say they like to see dialogue in the first pages. Why? Because it means you are writing a scene. Not exposition or description or backstory, but a real scene. Like this:

“The marvelous thing is that it’s painless,” he said. “That’s how you know when it starts.”

“Is it really?”

“Absolutely. I’m awfully sorry about the odor though. That must bother you.”

“Don’t! Please don’t.”

(“The Snows of Kilimanjaro” by Ernest Hemingway)

From these examples it’s plain to see that there are countless ways to grab readers right away through this wonderful thing called disturbance.

Now why wouldn’t you want to do that?

Perhaps you have a reason. Maybe style is what you’re after most of all. A mood. Or maybe you’re writing a grand epic, and want to “set the scene” as it were. But before you abandon the disturbance principle, look at the opening lines from a couple of “big” novels:

The boys came early to the hanging. (The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett)

The gale tore at him and he felt its bite deep within and he knew that if they did not make landfall in three days they would all be dead. (Shogun, James Clavell)

I don’t know about you, but that’s enough narrative energy to propel me through the next few pages. If I get a long weather report up top, or two pages on the sunlight over Rio (no matter how beautifully rendered) I will be sorely tempted to put the book down. If you tell me how the character got to the scene, via backstory or flashback, I’m definitely moving on.

But if you indicate there’s a character here facing change or challenge, uncertainty or conflict, I’m going to want to know why. I don’t need to know the background info yet. I’ll wait for that if trouble is brewing.

John LeCarre once said, “The cat sat on the mat is not the opening of a plot. The cat sat on the dog’s mat is.”

Mr. LeCarre has it right. The opening page of a novel has to draw the reader in with an indication of trouble to come.

Do that by disturbing your characters from the very start.