By PJ Parrish

So I got into an argument on Facebook the other day. No, not about that. It was over Jaws.

I posted something to the effect that I thought it was one of the greatest movies of all time. That prompted this response from a guy I came to call (in my head) Pencil-Neck:

“It isn’t even Spielberg’s best movie. It’s just commercial trash. Besides, the book is far better. You should read it.”

The gauntlet was thrown. Pencil-Neck didn’t have a chance.

Now, I admit I didn’t read Peter Benchley’s mega-seller when it came out in 1974.  Jaws was a huge success, the hardback sitting on the bestseller list for 44 weeks and the paperback selling millions. Steven Spielberg snatched up the rights a year later. You know the rest.

I finally did get around to reading the book — 35 years later. I had been invited by David Morell to write an essay for an anthology he was editing called Thrillers: 100 Must Reads, put out by the International Thriller Writers. All the good ones were taken by the time I got there — everything from Lee Child writing about Theseus and the Minotaur to Jefferey Deaver writing about Len Deighton’s The Ipcress File.  I chose Jaws because I think the shark ranks up there alongside Hannibal Lector as the greatest serial killer in all of fiction.

Then I read the book. Ah, geez. I was in trouble. The book was terrible.

I should have known just by looking at the cover. (I had to order a tattered used copy off Amazon). On the original cover, the killer fish looks like a toothless old dolphin. Compare that to the revised cover after the movie came out:

This is one of those rare cases, I think, where the movie improved on the book. The critics in 1974 were brutal, taking Benchley to task for “lifeless characters,” “rubber-teeth plot” and “hollow pretentiousness.” The Village Voice sniped: “If there’s a trite turn to be made, Jaws will make it.”

Alas, all of it is true. The craftsmanship is bad-pulp level. The characters are corrugated cardboard.The plot is bogged down with cheesy subplots, eratz-Cheever class warfare, supernatural omens and some gin-fueled adultry (including a cringe-worthy groping scene between the police chief’s wife and Hooper in a booth at a seafood restaurant.)

Get this: The shark gets its own point of view.

Worse: Brody doesn’t kill the shark. It dies of its own wounds and sinks to the bottom of the sea.

Now, I recognize that novels are more expansive, that subplots contribute to enjoyment, and that organizing a story around a theme is good. For Benchley, the theme was that humans prey on each other by instinct and impulse like, well, sharks. The Brody-Ellen-Hooper love triangle is thus not a messy sub-plot but the point of the book. The shark is mere metaphor for human viciousness.

Sigh.

I also recognize that movies are a different kettle of fish, that plots must be streamlined, debris cleared away, and character inner-musings kept to a minimum. Spielberg’s movie is pure genius in this regard. He jettisoned all the subplots. And he conveyed character through dialogue and action. He transformed Benchley’s moody passive-aggressive Chief Brody into a classic Everyman warrior, swept up in Joseph Campbell’s monomyth of the hero’s journey.

And he blasts the hell out of the shark at the end.

So, what did I write about for that anthology? Pretty much what I’ve told you here. But I acknowledged that the shark is a terrific character, the best-rendered one in the book. Whenever he appears on the page, he pulls the narration along in his wake and diverts our attention from the tedious human dramas on land.

Second, the book tapped into a primal but believable fear. Benchley broke a barrier between fiction and non-fiction, giving us a predator stalking the real world (a benign beach no less!) but also emerging from a place of darkness and danger. Chief Brody is all of us when he thinks (in a passage that I do like):

In his dreams, deep water was populated by slimy savage things that rose from below and shredded his flesh, demons that cracked and moaned.

Lastly, it’s a helluva serial killer story. As one character says to Chief Brody in the book: “Sharks are like an ax murderer. People react to them with their guts.” (yeah, well, quite literally, right?)

Are there lessons to be learned here for us book writers? Sure. I use the movie Jaws as an example in plot workshops — see Powerpoint slide above. This is because Jaws is easy to digest for inexperienced writers who get lost at sea with plots or drift aimlessly trying to figure out character motivation. Here are just a couple things we can learn from Jaws — book vs movie.

• Keep your subplots under control.
• Don’t get preachy in your themes
• Don’t whimp out with your ending and take the gun out of your hero’s hand.
• Don’t write icky sex scenes set at the Red Lobster.

What’s the bottom line? What did I finally tell Pencil-Neck? I told him I stood by my assertion that Jaws is a great movie. I conceded the book had its good moments. That great thriller novels always pack a visceral punch and stay with us long after we’ve turned off the light. Benchley created the second most famous fish in fiction. Not too shabby.

Benchley gets the last word: “It’s nice being a little rich and a little famous. But dammit, I didn’t intend to rank with Melville.”

So, crime dogs…do you have your own examples of book vs movie? What did you learn from comparing books vs movies? And don’t get me started on The Bridges of Madison County.

I have this fascination with houses.

It might have originated with my grandparent’s old homestead. Peeling wallpaper, bare wire bulbs, and push-button switches, it was an old, old structure with no air conditioning, or plumbing for that matter, but it had a tin roof that thundered under a heavy deluge and huge double-hung windows that rippled in the evening light.

My grandparents moved from that one to a much smaller frame farmhouse with indoor plumbing and a window unit, but no functional kitchen sink until I installed one nearly twenty years later. That homestead still figures in some of the stories that flow from my fingertips.

But the one I want to discuss today was about two hundred yards from my grandparent’s place, slumped in the middle of a washout pasture. With nary a drop of paint on the outside, the nine-hundred square foot (and that’s a guess) house was abandoned probably ten years before I hit the ground.

I was told one an old bachelor uncle I never met was the last inhabitant, but he was an influence on my life, and ultimately, my writing. From the looks of the interior, he one day picked up, packed up what he wanted, and walked away, leaving a life unremembered.

When we were kids, my cousin and I often visited that former residence that could have been the set for a slasher movie. Four long-dead trees reached skeletal arms into the air not far from the structure. They’d provided shade when he lived there, and were likely planted by the long-forgotten builders.

Two others had fallen across what was once a main dirt road leading from Arthur City to Chicota, Texas, and had flanked the house. The state built a new creek bridge and re-routed what was to become Highway 197, leaving the old dirt trace to fade into obscurity.

Sad, because the house under discussion and another unpainted domicile belonging to my blind great-great aunt Becky faced that same track, as well as the Assembly of God Church.

NOTE: After the re-route, the men of that small community engineered a way to lift the church and turn it 45-degrees to face a different oil road. To me, fascinating.

I loved to visit that great-uncle’s house that smelled of dirt dauber’s nests and ancient mouse droppings. The door was gone, as well as the windows on either side, likely salvaged for another build somewhere, giving the illusion of a blank, wide-eyed expression of open-mouthed shock.

The porch sagged, and inside, the bare, warped floors undulated like the surface of the ocean,. The rusty sheet-iron roof bent and curled toward the sky, loose sheets creaking in the wind that was responsible for its eventual demise.

It had a kitchen with one counter and two holes in the surface to hold dishpans. The doorless cabinets still held dishes and bowls. Dust-covered utensils on crusted plates were evidence that he’d eaten and left. A rusty iron bedstead with a frazzled cotton mattress took up the lone bedroom floor. Straight-back wooden chairs with cane seats sat in the silent living room, roosts for birds that spend the nights there.

As adventurous kids, Cousin and I often crept through the dead house in silence, looking at the remnants of life. An old suit coat lay tossed in one corner, a bed for stray dogs or coyotes. A pair of work pants hung on a nail driven into the bedroom door where he left them.

After poking around without touching a thing, we always walked out onto the rotting porch to look toward the south. Two gullies extended from the yard at an angle of embrace. They would eventually erode all the way to the structure itself. One was full of tin cans, glass, and whatever refuse he had no use for. It was his version of a landfill.

I was grown and married the last time I visited the house. Defying the odds, it was still standing, though slumped and completely worn out. The pants still hung behind the door, thought the chewed coat was nothing more than a few fibers. A rat snake had taken up residence in the now floorless kitchen, and slithered away when I stood in the door and consider my own memories, and possibly what Uncle had seen.

It’s gone now, bulldozed over for a new build thrown up with little or no character.

That old house somehow took up space in my psyche, and I’d like to think it eventually had something to do with my college career in architecture.

It’s there in dreams, and daydreams, and I can’t tell you why.

It was a dead house that meant nothing to me, but somehow influenced my life and writing.

Is there some special thing or place that still haunts you, as this former home does me?

By John Gilstrap

Big Brother breathed on my neck yesterday, and I confess it gave me a serious case of the willies. There’s some movie stuff going on that can can’t discuss in detail yet, but it all looks very promising. Extended email exchanges last week culminated in a 4-person Zoom call yesterday afternoon (for me, morning for the other three) that was essentially an opportunity for us all to get to know each other and share some creative ideas.

I’m old school about timeliness (on time is five minutes too late), so at 12:55 I follow the Zoom link and I wait in the virtual waiting room until our host, Cory, opens the meeting. At the top of the hour, the screen blinks, and there’s the Brady Bunch Zoom screen with my face, plus three others from the production team. As we’re about to say hello, a fifth window opens, announcing itself to be me and saying, “Recording.”

“Whoa,” I said. “What’s that?”

“It says it’s you, so I let it in,” Cory said. “I figured you wanted to record the conversation.”

“I don’t mind if you want to record,” said Josh, the director. “I’ve never done that, but I don’t mind.”

“It’s not me,” I said. “I have no idea where it came from. Can you dump it from the meeting?”

“Maybe it’s the Russians,” Adrian, the producer, joked.

After some more cross-talk, Cory found the dump button, and the intruder was excluded from the call. The meeting went well.

That would be creepy enough. But then, I found this in my email, sent to me by Otter.AI:

During a Zoom call, Cory XXX and others discuss an unexpected recording request, initially thought to be from John. There is concern about the presence of Russian hackers and the privacy implications of the recording. Cory suggests exiting and rejoining the meeting to address these concerns. Despite the unease, they decide to proceed, as there are no significant secrets to protect. Cory then instructs to remove an AI note-taker associated with John from the meeting, indicating a preference for transparency and control over the recording process.

But that’s not all. The email goes on to present a more detailed summary of the part of the discussion it listened to, and then there’s a link to the actual recording.

Has anyone else experienced the uninvited arrival of AI bots in their business lives? At least this one had the decency to announce itself before recording, but when I put on my thriller writer hat, it’s easy to see a world where that won’t be necessary.

The creepiest part of it all isn’t the recording, actually. It’s the narrative summary of the recording that freaks me out. Now I have to figure out how to make sure that Otter.AI doesn’t bother me again.

There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer. — Ansel Adams

By PJ Parrish

Got a lot on the brain today: So the time has come to talk of many things: Of slip-on shoes, Scottish ships and ceiling whacks — of cabbage-heads and kings.

Shoes? I have to decde whether getting a pair of Skecher slip-ons will make me look like I’ve given up and am content to slip into old bat-hood.

Scottish ships? I’m just glad Jamie and Claire are heading back to Scotland because the last season of Outlander begins soon and I miss the moors and half-naked men in kilts.

Ceiling whacks? I have to find someone who can repair my bathroom ceiling because the plumber poked a giant hole in it while trying to fix the toilet. (Don’t ask).

Cabbage heads and kings? Politics….nope. We don’t go there here.

But politics is my jumping off point today. I was reading a column by David Brooks the other day wherein he posed an interesting question about election campaigns that relates to us novelists: How do you keep an audience’s attention?

Here at TKZ, we talk often about how a book is divided into acts. We all know how crucial it is to capture a reader’s attention early and set up Act. 1. We all know how easy it is to get bogged down and lose our way in Act. 2. We all know how horrible it is to get to that Act 3 and realize we’re barreling toward a plot abyss.

David Brooks suggests campaigns have a similar structure. So he asked novelists and screenwriters, how they do it. How do they build momentum and keep audiences in their grip? The answers were illuminating.

Playwright David Mamet says that no one tunes in to watch information — they crave drama. What is drama? Mamet: “It is the quest of the hero to overcome those things which prevent him from achieving a specific acute goal.”

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin tells us that a fictional hero, like a good campaigner, must be seized by a strong, specific desire and they need to face a really big obstacle. A hero/campaigner also needs a clear and compelling plot. Here is the threat. Here is where we’re going. Here is what (me, the hero) is going to do about it.

Brooks then cites Christopher Booker’s book Seven Basic Plots. Booker writes that there are only a handful of iconic storylines in fiction — and in real life.

1. Overcoming the Monster.
2. Rags to Riches.
3. The Quest.
4. Voyage and Return.
5. Rebirth.
6. Comedy.
7. Tragedy.

He then links these plots to politicians, saying that a good politician tells a story about himself or herself. They create narratives that propell their campaign forward and help them connect with audiences. (Remember Mamet’s words: drama = good. information = boring)

Allow me one brief political aside: Brooks gives several examples of politicians who found their “plots.” For Ronald Reagan, it was rags to riches. For George W. Bush it was redemption: beating alcoholism and finding faith. Nixon, he suggests, saw himself as the classic David taking on the monster. (the establishment).

Likewise, as novelists, our protagonists need a life narration: They can’t know what to do (plot) until they know what their basic need is. (motivation). You, as a writer, can’t create a compelling plot until and unless you understand what your character wants, at her most basic level. (Hint: It’s not to solve the case).

Brooks wraps up his article by saying that politicians, like fictional heroes, can’t hold our attention unless they reveal something honest about their core. The hero cannot hold back. The hero has to let the reader into his inner self. He points to Obama as an arms-length overly-cerebral politician who failed to connect with voters — until he made his speech on race in 2008.

The novelist E.M. Forster said that there is only one overriding imperative in fiction: “Only connect.”

An audience — be it at a political rally or browsing in a bookstore — needs to feel a connection with the character, needs to understand what they want, needs to empathize with what they feel.

Which leads me to my last point.

You, as a writer, can’t find your audience, can’t connect with readers, until you find your own courage. Courage to do what? To open your an emotional vein and bleed a little on the page. Readers crave drama, not information.

I came across another article recently with this off-putting title: How To (Not) Think Of Your Audience As You Create. Click here for full article.

Don’t get huffy. It’s not as bad as you think. The writer was asking novelists and screenwriters who they wrote for — themselves or their audiences. All the respondants came down on the side of the audience. The one answer that most intrigued me, though, came from novelist Wiz Wharton, author of Ghost Girl and Banana. Listen to this:

Beginning writers often forget that rather than gatekeepers lying on the bones of aspiring authors, agents and publishers are also an audience for your work. Although the bottom line might be whether they can sell your material, they’re also looking for something that appeals to them on a heart and gut level, i.e. something they’re investing in personally. And I honestly don’t think it’s as simple as replicating what’s already out there. Yes, you should have a good grasp of structure and language and all those tools, but more than this, it’s the emotional truth of a project that will ultimately get you noticed.

One of the greatest joys of stories is how they vicariously allow an audience to rehearse emotional and physical scenarios, and when you write with truth you can take something specific and make it absolutely universal and resonant, whether you’re writing a Spartan epic, or a space western, or a domestic noir. Great ideas are everywhere, but it’s the authenticity of the world and its characters as seen through your unique voice and your unique perspective that’s going to make an audience stick around to see how things turn out.

I love that last part. Anybody can come up with a great idea. But it is the realness of your hero’s narrative — as filtered through the realness of your own life-plot — that captivates an audience.

Which leads us back to David Brooks. Cardboard politicians are a dime a dozen, cabbage-heads and would-be kings. The compelling ones? They’re rare. Like great fictional heroes, they hold our attention because they connect.

Write with truth. They will find you and follow.