Three Unforgettable Scenes and No Weak Ones

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

I believe it was the writer-director John Huston who once said a great movie has three unforgettable scenes, and no weak ones. Makes sense to me. Maybe that’s the difference between a good book and a great book, a fine read and an unforgettable one. Let’s think about it.

Huston wrote and directed many great films (let’s not talk about Annie. Why Ray Stark tapped Huston to direct his first and last musical, I’ll never know). One of my favorites is The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) starring Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt and John’s dad Walter Huston (who took home the Best Supporting Actor Oscar). It’s a stark, noirish drama set in Mexico. The first unforgettable scene (for me) is a brutal fight in a bar, when Bogart and Holt confront the man who owes them money. It’s brilliantly choreographed, and done without musical score.

And then there’s a scene that is with us today, whenever anybody utters the line, “Batches? We don’t need no steenking batches!”

I also love the scene where Walter Huston dances around calling out Bogart and Holt. “You’re dumber than the dumbest jackass! Look at each other, will ya? Did you ever see anything like yourself for bein’ dumb specimens? You’re so dumb, you don’t even see the riches you’re treadin’ on with your own feet. Yeah, don’t expect to find nuggets of molten gold. It’s rich but not that rich. And here ain’t the place to dig. It comes from someplace further up. Up there, up there’s where we’ve got to go. Up there!”

Let’s talk thrillers. Let’s talk The Silence of the Lambs.

There’s the  first time Clarice meets Lecter. When I saw the movie I felt  a distinct chill throughout my body as Clarice first approaches Lecter’s cell in the bowels of the prison.  We watch from her POV and she first lays eyes on him.

He’s just standing there, looking like Anthony Hopkins, in a position that’s hard to describe. It’s almost like he’s at attention, but with the slightest smile that is full of mystery and menace. It just radiated off the screen. And then begins the cat-and-mouse game that is almost ten minutes of pure tension, primarily through dialogue (as in the book as well).

Quieter movies or books need those unforgettable scenes, too. To Kill a Mockingbird  has several to choose from. There’s the cross-examination of Mayella Ewell (the movie version is enhanced by the knockout performance by Collin Wilcox as Mayella). At the end there’s the revelation of Boo Radley (brilliantly portrayed by a young Robert Duvall).

And then there’s the scene at the jail where Atticus faces a lynch mob, and the scene takes a most unexpected turn. See for yourselves:

It’s no undiscovered writing tip to say that we ought to strive for unforgettable scenes. Some writers don’t think about it. They just go from scene to scene doing the best they can with them. I prefer to be more intentional.

One of the things I used to do (before Scrivener came on the scene) was take a pack of 3×5 cards to a local coffee establishment and start brainstorming “killer scene” ideas for my upcoming project. I didn’t pre-judge. I just wrote and looked at the cards later. I remember writing cards for my first Ty Buchanan legal thriller, Try Dying. I had this “vision” of Ty getting on a conference table and tap dancing. Wait, what? But it fit in the book as Ty, whose fiance was killed on page one, is in the conference room of a big-time lawyer trying to intimidate him:

I grabbed my notes and stuffed them in my briefcase. With a quick step on the chair I jumped onto the conference table. As Walbert’s eyes opened wider, I did a little three-step tap dance.

“What are you doing?” he howled.

“Gene Kelly,” I said.

“Get off that table!”

“This is what it’s going to be like, Barton. You looking up at me from now on.”

His face changed colors. Cheeks rosy like the dawn. I don’t know why I did it, except that I never liked bullies. On the schoolyard or in a plush conference room.

Gerry Spence, the greatest trial lawyer of his day, was once asked on 60 Minutes what he’d have done if he were a cowboy in the old West, facing a guy with a knife. “I’d leave him bloody on the floor,” Spence said, “which is the way I try cases.”

I jumped off the table and said, “See you in court, Barton. I’m going to leave you bloody on the floor.”

Let your imagination run wild, without judgment. That’s how you get the gold. That’s what Walter Huston would say. He’d point to your head. “Up there’s where you’ve go to go. Up there!”

How about you? What scenes do you remember from books or movies that were unforgettable?

Rewiring

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We shook things up at Casa Wortham this week. We’ve lived here for about seven years in what we call the new house, and felt the kitchen needed a change not long after the Bride’s oven sparked, gagged, and filled the house with the heady aroma of burned chemicals.

But this isn’t about major appliances. Remember when you first moved into your place and beheld empty drawers in the kitchen?

One question always comes up. Where does the silverware go? (In Texas, daily eating utensils are silverware, even though the real silver ((plate)) is in a wooden case stuffed back in a cabinet or under a bed and only comes out on Thanksgiving or when someone dies).

Then there are wooden spoons, cup towels, oversize forks and spoons, tongs, measuring cups and spoons, vegetable peelers, graters, garlic presses, thermometers, kitchen scales, bottle openers, corn cob holders.

They need a home in the shallow drawers.

What’s the proper dispersal method?

And while we’re at it, there’s the (ominous music) junk drawer. Where will that one be, because we know for certain that a drawer will devolve into one of these chaotic black holes that scientists with pocket protectors in their shirts discuss in hushed tones.

I’m sure you have one of these sacred disorganized repositories of migratory odds and ends nestled in a bed of bread ties, old rubber bands, thick blue rubber bands off celery stalks, nuts, bolts, mysterious batters that might or might not be dead (but you can’t throw them out until you know), and mysterious keys you’ve never seen before in your life. Wait. How the hell did my razor get in there? Was someone shaving carrots?

On moving day in the new house, we unloaded boxes marked KITCHEN into random drawers that were probably open and waiting, and have lived with those spur of the moment decisions since.

But there have been problems. The silverware drawer is between the oven and stove. That’s our serving area when we don’t have sit-down meals, which is 95% of the time. And there are usually a lot of people in line.

If someone is filling a plate, they’re in the way of spoons, forks, and knives, which we usually forget. Then we go back and excuse ourselves to open the drawer, or cut in line, which can be deadly with sons-in-law and hungry teens.

On Wednesday of this week, the Bride came home with a couple of classy bamboo dividers to help separate some of the more aggressive utensils. I was between writing projects, and the next thing I knew, we’d emptied all the drawers onto the countertops and forced significant changes in implement and gadget placement.

Now it all makes sense, to a small degree, but here’s the problem. We keep returning to the wrong places for wooden spoons, measuring cups, and the scissors which reside in the junk drawer. We’re on a learning curve, and I sent our daughters and sons-in-law a thirty-second video preparing them the new organization.

They were aghast.

The Redhead, mother of two, sent an eye-rolling emoji, and Taz, the youngest and mother of three kids, was verbally displeased. But then again, she even hates it when the Bride replaces accent pillows with new, fresh additions.

But I explained. “Change is good. Remembering where everything is in their new locations is exercise for the brain.”

With that, I needed proof to counter verbal attacks when the all come over Sunday night for out weekly get together.

An exhausting thirty second search on medical databases provided this agreement. “Positive change and new experiences are excellent for the brain, promoting neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to form new connections), boosting cognitive function, improving mood (via dopamine, that’s why it’s called dope, according to my dad) and building mental resilience, even though the brain’s amygdala might initially perceive change as a threat. Varying routines, learning new skills, exploring new places, and engaging in diverse activities build cognitive reserve, helping you adapt and maintain long-term brain health.” 

Now I have to make this relevant to my writing blog post.

With that in mind, I looked up “neuroplasticity and amygdala” before diving into another search to find that it’s beneficial for authors to change genres, or write short stories, or nonfiction articles or books. In other words, shake it up.

While reading those confusing medical evaluations and articles for another fifteen minutes, I learned that changing genres or writing styles introduces new narrative tools, breaks writer’s block (which I don’t believe in), fosters artistic growth, and offers fresh perspectives, though it requires extra time.

Switching genres challenges an individual to think differently, find new solutions, and prevents creative stagnation, leading to broader skills and more diverse ideas that can even enrich their primary genre. 

But wait! Getting out of your writing lane is commonly considered a bad idea in literary circles. One article I read explored and supported Stephen Kings change from his traditional horror novels to write an alternate history with 11/22/63, or Cormac McCarthy’s shift to his post-apocalyptic The Road. I’ve been told only bestselling authors should take those chances.

Some say we should stick to our writing lanes and do what our fans come to expect.

Fine, wait a while after you write something different before submitting it, but there’s nothing wrong with taking a break from your WIP and writing a science fiction or post-apocalyptic short story if only for personal satisfaction.

This mental exercise is a great way to get out of a rut.

When you do that, find a different place to write for a day or two. Such a change just might inspire something different. Many authors write in one location, and edit in another.

You don’t have to sell those new works today, or tomorrow. You can put them in a figurative junk drawer (see the unplanned connection here? I love the subconscious author.) and dust it off sometime in the future when you need it.

I did that way back in 2012, when my first novel was published and my editors wanted the next book. I’d written a three-thousand-word short story in 1986 that sat in my file all that time, but when I needed an idea, I re-read that old experiment and found the foundation of the second novel in my Red River series, Burrows, which was truly a horror story.

Or maybe you’ve read a non-fiction article in a magazine and thought, “I know that much.” Give it a try.

For several years I wrote “hook and bullet” stories for several outdoor magazines. More than one took awards from the Outdoor Writers of America and the Texas Outdoor Writers Association. I’m proud of those stories and the framed acknowledgments from my peers.

One was an informative history of the longbow, and with liberal applications of scotch, the article was quirky and funny.

I’d exercised my creativity and different writing skills, because I like to try different things.

Like moving the silverware drawer.

In Science Explores News, an article about Dr. Nathan Spreng, a neuroscientist at Cornell University, explored how the brain changes as we learn. Much of the article concentrates on new physical tasks, such as hitting a baseball, but a deeper idea comes from pianists who can play complicated musical scores without thinking about where their fingers go. Their minds can wander, and that opens up even more neural pathways.

So if we get out of our writing lane and try something different, can authors open new creative paths to follow?

Some doctors think it does.

Try a short story, or an article, or start a new chapter in a different kind of novel just to see if that old excitement is there, or if a different way of thinking helps your writing. No one has to see it but you.

 

What a Difference a Word Makes

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By Elaine Viets

When I taught English as a second language, one of my favorite students was a young man I’ll call Sam. Sam was 18, from South Korea. Smart and hard-working, Sam was brushing up on his English that summer before he went to college in the US. Sam had applied to several universities, many of them distinctly second-rate.

“Why didn’t you apply to any Ivy League schools?” I asked.

“Oh,” he said. “I couldn’t get in. I spent my senior year in high school screwing.”

“What??” Sam didn’t talk like that. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t work hard and I got bad grades.”

“That means you spent your senior year screwing AROUND,” I  said, and gave him a quick course in American idioms.

I hope my students learned from me, but I definitely learned from them. English is a complex, expressive and extremely difficult language, fraught with pitfalls.  Consider the South American banker who told me, “My wife and I fled our country naked.”

“Naked?” I asked. “You weren’t wearing clothes?”

“Of course we were,” he said. “But we couldn’t take anything with us.”

Turned out he was using an idiom from his country. “Right. In the US, we’d say, ‘You left with nothing but the clothes on your backs.’”

In the words of Bill Bryson, “Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel and a critical part of a gentleman’s apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.” (If you haven’t read Bryson’s Mother Tongue, you’re missing a linguistic treat.)

Teaching articles, those pesky three words, “a,” “an” and “the,” is another misery. Try explaining that these two sentences mean basically the same thing:

There is little traffic at 4 a.m.

There is a little traffic at 4 a.m.

And don’t forget regionalisms (why is a carbonated drink “pop” in parts of the country and “soda” in others?), and accents.

A Japanese businessman said he was worried about going to South Carolina. He told me, “I can’t understand what the people there are saying.”

“That’s OK,” I told him. “None of us can.”

But before you get too smug, native speakers, tell me which of these ten words is misspelled:

mahagony

embarassed

sherriff

fourty-four

supercede

graffitti

rhythum

syrep

abdomenal

concensus

 

Answer: They all are.

Now in paperback: Sex and Death on the Beach, my new Florida beach mystery, is now in paperback. Check out it out here. https://tinyurl.com/3ut3chuu

 

What’s In A Format?

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What’s In A Format?
Terry Odell

Happy New Year. It’s hard to believe we’re already two weeks into 2026. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

birthday cake and balloons next to 3 formats of Deadly Ambitions by Terry OdellI hope you don’t mind if I indulge in a little BSP. It’s release day for Deadly Ambitions. Happy Book Birthday!

What’s it about?

Here’s the description:

Mapleton Police Chief Gordon Hepler is juggling a bitter town council candidate who refuses to accept election results and a new council member determined to cut his department’s funding, funding he needs to finance refresher training modules for his officers. Grant money is slow in coming.

Meanwhile, Angie’s diner remodel continues to suffer setback after setback. During the process, she uncovers an old journal. Her search for the girl who wrote it, along with the mysterious “Johnny” help keep her mind off the construction. Are the delays normal? Or are they personal?

When Angie’s in danger, Gordon must balance following the letter of the law with caring for his wife. Could there be a connection to the remodel? Or the journal? Or something else?

Does the threat to Angie come from history or from much closer to home?

I had a lot of fun—along with the sweat and frustration—writing the book. Fun because it was another in my Mapleton Mystery series, and I always enjoy spending time with the familiar characters.

Frustration because it’s always a challenge to keep things moving forward when I’m tempted to spend time chasing plot threads that entertain me, but aren’t needed for the story. In writing/researching Deadly Ambitions, I learned a lot about Colorado history along with Angie and Gordon.

Also, I wrote about health issues that (I hope) will sneak a little education into my readers, should they not already know about them. (No spoilers here.) And, I confess to taking some small pleasure in putting my own spin on some of the chaos of the ‘outside world.’ Justice might be hard to come by there, but in a book, I get to make sure it’s meted out.

Advance readers have given wonderful and positive feedback.

  • “Her crisp writing paints a visual picture of the town and its workings, incorporating real world situations that readers can relate to.”
  • “Odell does a skillful job of weaving in and out of the subplots to bring the reader to a satisfying, and somewhat surprising, resolution. A great read!”
  • “Before you start reading, set aside some time because you will not want to put this book down. This Mapleton mystery grabs you from the start and just keeps getting better.”
  • “A great addition to the series.  This one is tough to put down and you have more than one mystery to solve.  Will the diner ever get completed?  How can it possibly be involved with the death of the ex-mayor?  Or is it?  Who is behind all of the mysteries?”
  • “Deadly Ambitions drops the reader right into a small town cozy mystery complete with well-drawn characters, unexpected plot twists, and unidentified bones found in an abandoned mine. Personalities clash between Police Chief Hepler and local politicians, well balanced with a sweet love story as Angie’s bakery runs into construction delay after delay.”

Okay, and on with what the subject of the post says I’m supposed to be talking about.

Deadly Ambitions is available in three formats: ebook, trade paperback, and audio, which brings me to a pet peeve. I’ve seen far too many social media posts talking about Real Books.

They’re adamant in saying if it’s not printed on paper, it’s not real.

I say hogwash.

I spent months writing 85,000 words in the creation of Deadly Ambitions. Actually, a lot more of that before edits kicked in.

Then, when it was as good as I could get it, I published it as an ebook. After that, I adjusted formatting, changed front and back matter, and published those same 85,000 words in trade paperback format.

And, I hired the narrator who’s done all my Mapleton mysteries, and he read those same 85,000 words and created an audiobook.

Which one is real, I ask you?

Is my book club member who confesses to dyslexia not getting the same story when she listens to the audiobook? What about the person who has trouble holding a print book, or the one with vision problems who prefers a digital format she can manipulate to suit her eyes?

What do you think, TKZers? Does format matter? (And if you want a copy in the format of your choice, you can find them here)

New! Find me at Substack with Writings and Wanderings

Deadly Ambitions
Peace in Mapleton doesn’t last. Police Chief Gordon Hepler is already juggling a bitter ex-mayoral candidate who refuses to accept election results and a new council member determined to cut police department’s funding.
Meanwhile, Angie’s long-delayed diner remodel uncovers an old journal, sparking her curiosity about the girl who wrote it. But as she digs for answers, is she uncovering more than she bargained for?
Now, Gordon must untangle political maneuvering, personal grudges, and hidden agendas before danger closes in on the people he loves most.
Deadly Ambitions delivers small-town intrigue, political tension, and page-turning suspense rooted in both history and today’s ambitions.

Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”

New Year’s Thoughts from Fifteen Authors

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by Debbie Burke

The New Year is a time when many writers ponder what we want to accomplish.

I thought it might be fun to see what well-known authors, past and present, think about the New Year. Here’s a collection of advice, musings, and cautions:

1. “Cheer up! Don’t give way. A new heart for a New Year, always!” – Charles Dickens (1812-1870), English novelist

2. “We went nowhere without figs and never without notebooks; these serve as a relish if I have bread, and if not, for bread itself. They turn every day into a New Year which I make ‘happy and blessed’ with good thoughts and the generosity of my spirit.” – Seneca, who lived at the cusp of BC and AD.

Frances Burney

3. “I opened the new year with what composure I could acquire…and I made anew the best resolutions I was equal to forming, that I would do what I could to curb all spirit of repining, and to content myself calmly—unresistingly, at least, with my destiny.” – Frances Burney AKA Fanny Burney (1752-1840), English novelist and playwright

4. “‘A merry Christmas, and a glad new year,’
Strangers and friends from friends and strangers hear,
The well-known phrase awakes to thoughts of glee;
But, ah! it wakes far different thoughts in me.
[…] I, on the horizon traced by memory’s powers,
Saw the long record of my wasted hours.” – Amelia Alderson Opie (1769-1853), English novelist and abolitionist

5. “Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.” – Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), English poet

6. “New Year’s Day: now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual . . . New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.”– Mark Twain (1835-1910), American author and humorist

7. “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.” – T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), American poet

8. “Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.” – Brooks Atkinson (1894-1984), American theatre critic

9. “Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to.” – Bill Vaughan (1915-1977), American author and columnist

10. “I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.” – Anaïs Nin (1903-1977), French-American author

11. “The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.” – G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), English author

Benjamin Franklin
Photo credit: Wellcome CC BY-SA 4.0

12. “Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.” – Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), American author and a founding father of the U.S.

13. “I have always loved New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Even though our sense of time is arbitrary and human, it still means something. I love the feeling I always get on New Year’s Eve that I am lucky — that the universe has been generous to me, to have let me stick around for another year, and to now erase the slate and give me another chance. Tomorrow I will be gifted with a brand new year — with no mistakes in it yet, and no heartbreaks yet, and no failures yet. I get to try again. Amazing. You will be gifted with this huge blessing, too. A clean and empty book awaits us all. Maybe we will be able to write things differently this time. Maybe a bit better. Maybe we will be wiser this time. At least we get to try. We have all been given a fresh chance. Let’s close the old book, and open a new one.” – Elizabeth Gilbert (1969-), American author

Woody Guthrie Statue
Photo credit: Cosmos Mariner, CC SA-BY 4.0

14. Woody Guthrie (1912-1967), American songwriter, offers his list of resolutions:

  • Work more and better
  • Work by a schedule
  • Wash teeth if any
  • Shave
  • Take bath
  • Eat good—fruit—vegetables—milk
  • Drink very scant if any
  • Write a song a day
  • Wear clean clothes—look good
  • Shine shoes
  • Change socks
  • Change bed cloths often
  • Read lots good books
  • Listen to radio a lot
  • Learn people better
  • Keep rancho clean
  • Dont get lonesome
  • Stay glad
  • Keep hoping machine running
  • Dream good
  • Bank all extra money
  • Save dough
  • Have company but dont waste time
  • Send Mary and kids money
  • Play and sing good
  • Dance better
  • Help win war—beat fascism
  • Love mama
  • Love papa
  • Love Pete
  • Love everybody
  • Make up your mind
  • Wake up and fight

15. And last from Susan Sontag (1933-2004), American author:

“I want to make a New Year’s prayer, not a resolution. I’m praying for courage.”

~~~

TKZers: Which of these quotes resonated with you? Why?

Do you disagree with any of them? Why?

Did you make writing resolutions or set goals? Want to share them?

~~~

Is 2026 the year you want to learn to write fascinating villains and antagonists? Please check out Debbie Burke’s bestselling craft guide, The Villain’s Journey-How to Create Villains Readers Love to Hate.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Apple

Kobo

Interested in taking a villain workshop from Debbie? Please visit debbieburkewriter.com to learn about upcoming zoom and in person classes.

NATIONAL CLEAN OFF YOUR DESK DAY

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“Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness.” —John Wesley

* * *

Yes, that’s right. Today is National Clean Off Your Desk Day. Oh, great. I just finished putting away the holiday decorations and was working on tax info to turn over to our accountant, and now they tell me I have to clean off my desk. I don’t have time for this.

But I’m a good team player, and my desk definitely needs some reorganization, so I went to the National Clean Off Your Desk Day site to get some inspiration and advice on exactly how to proceed. Here’s what they say:

This day is an opportunity to begin your new year with a clean and organized workspace. Whether your desk is in a private or shared office, cubicle, home or a make-shift desk on the counter, having your workspace uncluttered and organized will help you work more efficiently. A clean workspace improves productivity and inspires us, too. It often gives us a sense of serenity. (My emphasis)

They go on to outline a step-by-step process:

  • Remove everything from your desk. Yes, everything.
  • Clean the surface. As you replace items, clean them with the appropriate cleaning supply. Usually, a damp cloth is sufficient, but other electrical items need specific care.
  • Get out the shredder and the garbage can. Shred, file, scan documents, business cards, recipes, photos as needed.
  • Place all documents and photos in the appropriate locations.
  • Shred and toss outdated documents, non-working pens, junk mail.

That’s good advice, and I was just getting ready to start on Step One when something occurred to me. Maybe there’s another way to look at this.

* * *

“Cleanliness is the scourge of art.” —Craig Brown

I don’t know if Craig Brown is correct, but since I place myself on the messier side of humanity, I want to believe it. Is it possible that creative people are messier than others?

I found evidence in an article on sciencedaily.com entitled “Tidy desk or messy desk? Each has its benefits.”

Working at a clean and prim desk may promote healthy eating, generosity, and conventionality, according to new research. But, the research also shows that a messy desk may confer its own benefits, promoting creative thinking and stimulating new ideas.

Well, that’s a relief. Maybe I can ignore the chaos for a while longer.

In an experiment overseen by psychological researcher Dr. Kathleen Vohs, 48 participants were asked to come up with novel uses for a ping pong ball. Half the participants worked in a messy room and half in a neat room. The result?

Overall, participants in the messy room generated the same number of ideas for new uses as their clean-room counterparts. But their ideas were rated as more interesting and creative when evaluated by impartial judges.

“Being in a messy room led to something that firms, industries, and societies want more of: Creativity,” says Vohs.

And we all know creativity is the lifeblood of good fiction.

So my desk isn’t messy. It’s simply a manifestation of my creativity. I like that.

Now where did I put that stapler?

* * *

So TKZers: What does your desk look like? Does a messy desk inhibit your work? Or does it inspire you?

* * *

 

My ten-year-old protagonist and aspiring novelist, Reen, understands the signs of creativity. When her 9-year-old cousin points out a smudge on Reen’s shirt, she replies, “No problem. Authors are supposed to be sloppy. That’s because we’re creatives.”

I like the way she thinks.

Click the image to go to the universal book link.

What Type of Writer Are You?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

John D. MacDonald and his lunchpail

I have been musing about something of late. Call it a typology of writers. Here the categories I’ve come up with, recognizing there will be some overlap. Let’s discuss.

1. Nothing But Fun

There are some writers who believe writing fiction should be nothing but a joy, carefree, never a matter of sweat or concern. Under this category, there are two sub types. The first believes that a carefree first draft is the only draft it should be written. Cleaned up a bit for typos, perhaps, but left mostly alone. The other subtype writes that first draft and then looks at it and wonders what the heck to do with it, and tries to apply some actual craft and editing.

2. Hate Writing, But Love Having Written

I know a few colleagues who fit this category. They find writing a first draft to be a somewhat difficult trudge. Sometimes this is because their standards go up with each book. The bar is raised. And they seriously want to meet that challenge.

But when they are done with the whole process, including editing and polishing, and the book is the better for it, they find tremendous satisfaction.

3. Lunchpail Type

This is a writer who goes to work each day. They’re not looking for a rapturous experience, though that may happen when they’re not looking. They set out to write a certain number of words each day and do that job. They know their craft and care about it, because they want to sell to readers, and readers care about good stories. The great pulp writers of old were like this. They could type 1 million words a year, sometimes more, and sell their product for a penny or two per word.

4. Doesn’t Care About Sales

In truth, I think every writer cares about sales. Who wouldn’t appreciate a little green from what they write? There’s that famous Samuel Johnson quote: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” But this type of writer rejects that notion and finds their satisfaction in writing alone. Nothing wrong with that. Writing can be a form of enjoyment, diversion, mental exercise, or escape.

5. Only Cares About Sales

Finally, there is the writer who is in this strictly for the money. There’s never been anything illegal about that. If somebody write something and there’s a market for it, that’s a fair exchange. But these days it’s possible to make money producing acres of “AI slop.” We all wish this weren’t true, but it is. This type shouldn’t even be categorized as a “writer.”

On the other hand, someone who sees writing as a way to make money, or at least side-hustle dough, and works to figure out how to write a good product, fine. I suspect this is the least populated category.

In reviewing this list, I would put myself as a #3. I’ve always written to a quota. I have also found tremendous satisfaction in learning my craft and getting better at it.

So what do you think about the above categories? Would you add one? Modify one? Where would you place yourself?

Words of Wisdom from January 2010

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For my first post of 2026 I decided to look for KZB posts published sixteen years ago this month. It was hard winnowing it down to three excerpt, but choose I did.

First is a post by Claire-Langley Hawthorne about meeting the challenge of writing a short story by laying out the structure first. Next is an evergreen post by James Scott Bell dealing with the structure of a novel. Last is a touching post by John Ramsey Miller on experiencing death and how that can deeply inform our writing.

I view a short story as having a single transformative story arc – one told in the most concise and most powerful terms possible. All fine and dandy in theory but no sooner do I start than I fall prey to an overabundance of backstory and plot complications – and these little buggers have an annoying habit of multiplying, so by the time I reach around 4,000 words I realize what I really have is, you guessed it, chapter one of a new novel. Characters have already started taking control, offering me a range of complexities that I can’t help but want to explore, the setting demands detailed description which I cannot resist providing and the story arc takes on a much grander scale that will inevitably fail as a short story.

With this particular short story (which I’m hoping will pass muster and be published in the Kill Zone collection you’ll be hearing much more about) this dilemma created both opportunities as well as challenges. I had to rise to the challenge of paring everything down so it would succeed as a short story and I realized I had the seeds for a new series set in Australia which was quite exciting (oddly enough I’ve never written anything actually set in the land I grew up in).

My first step to transforming my piece into a ‘proper’ short story was to think about structure. I focused on the four main elements I thought I needed:

  1. Establishment of setting
  2. A trigger for action
  3. A build up of suspense and conflict
  4. A critical choice
  5. Resolution

When I found I basically had all these elements (albeit muddied by too much dialogue, description and backstory!) I knew my main focus had to be on paring everything down to its essential elements. This included character, setting, as well as plot and once I started this process I also found that I could focus on what the story was really all about.

Last Friday I took my short story to my writing group for their critique and they helped me identify areas of improvement and further ‘pruning’ – hopefully I’m now close to the final product and, more importantly, I feel like I’ve grappled with a new challenge that has improved me as a writer.

I can’t say I like the short story as a medium – I am a novelist at heart – but I do appreciate the intensity and power it can bring. I may not have enjoyed the process but as compensation I do have a new (male) protagonist that intrigues me. So who knows, this particular challenge may spur me on to develop a whole new series of books!

Claire-Langley Hawthorne—January 11, 2010

 

Now, the first doorway is an event that thrusts the Lead into the conflict of Act 2. It is not, and this is crucial, just a decision to go looking around in the “dark world” (to use mythic terms). That’s weak. That’s not being forced.

A good example of a first doorway is when Luke Skywalker’s aunt and uncle are murdered by the forces of the Empire in Star Wars. That compels Luke to leave his home planet and seek to become a Jedi, to fight the evil forces. If the murders didn’t happen, Luke would have stayed on his planet as a farmer. He had to be forced out.

In Gone With the Wind it’s the outbreak of the Civil War. Hard to miss that one. No one can go back again to the way things were. Scarlett O’Hara is going to be forced to deal with life in a way she never wanted or anticipated.

In The Wizard of Oz, it’s the twister (hint: if a movie changed from black and white to color, odds are you’ve passed through the first doorway of no return).

In The Fugitive, the first doorway is the train wreck that enables Richard Kimble to escape, a long sequence that ends at the 30 minute mark (perfect structure) and has U. S. Marshal Sam Gerard declaring, “Your fugitive’s name is Dr. Richard Kimble. Go get him!”

The second doorway, the one that closes Act 2 and leads to Act 3, is a bit more malleable, but just as critical. It is a clue or discovery, or set-back or crisis, one which makes inevitable the final battle of Act 3. It is the doorway that makes an ending possible. Without this, the novel could go on forever (and some seem to for lack of this act break).

In The Fugitive, at the 90 minute mark (the right placement for a film of just over two hours), Kimble breaks into the one-armed man’s house and finds the key evidence linking him with the pharmaceutical company. This clue leads to the inevitable showdown with the “behind the scenes” villain.

In High Noon, the town marshal reaches the major crisis: he finally realizes no one in the town is going to help him fight the bad guys. That forces him into the final battle of Act 3, the showdown with the four killers.

By the way, this structure works for both “plot driven” and “character driven” stories. It’s just that the former is mainly about outside events, and the latter about the inner journey. But that’s beyond the scope of this post.

Now, there is always some well meaning literary genius howling in protest at the idea of structure. Too rigid! I don’t write by formula! I am a rule breaker, a rebel! An artist! Away with your blueprints and let me run free! The 3 act structure is dead!

Let me say, first, I understand this artistic impulse. A good writer is a rebel, someone out to make waves.

But let me also say that the literary waters are littered with the works of those who ignored the basic principles of the suspension bridge. Unreadable novels with pretty words that didn’t sell.

You want to write an experimental novel? Go for it. Just be aware that not a whole lot of people are going to care.

What they care about are characters, dealing with trouble by fighting their way over a bridge—meaning, through a plot that matters and is laid out in the right way.

Structure is “translation software” for your imagination. You’ve got a great story in your head. The characters, the feeling, the tone, the gut appeal, the thing you want to say. But it means squat unless you can share it with other people, namely, readers.

Structure allows you to get your story out with the greatest possible impact.

James Scott Bell—January 16, 2010

 

Like Gilstrap wrote on his blog, I also think and write about death and destruction and it’s a subject I know better than I’d like. I have seen death and the destruction guns and knives and cars can do to human beings and it made quite an impression on me starting at an early age. We lived across the street from a funeral home when I was ten or so, and that was where my experience began. Our neighborhood kids used to lie on our stomachs and watch Mr. Barry embalm people in the basement. He always had the louvered-glass windows open and he never saw us as his back was usually to us. It was like watching horror movies. We used to run when we heard the ambulances heading for the hospital and we’d stand, an audience of innocents, watching as some unfortunate victim was wheeled in on a gurney. Often the ambulance (again Mr. Barry) would often make a quick stop before putting the vic back into the ambulance (it doubled as the hearse for black funerals at the other Barry home in another part of town) and it had red lights in the grill and a howling siren. The lights were covered with black cloth baggies for funerals. It showed me a side of death I’ve carried with me since.

I have a problem in that I never know what to tell kids about death, how to explain it without instill fear and worry in them. I told Sasha that the old moves aside so the young can have room to grow up, that it was true with every living thing. I told her that dying was just like being born into this world but in another place. I’m not sure about that but I don’t mind lying to children about that.

Before my funeral home days in Starkville, Mississippi, when I was five or six, my eighty-four-year old grandfather died, and I remember how empty I felt and how sad it made me. I took little consolation in people telling me he was in heaven. I only knew he was never coming back and that I’d never sit in his lap and use his pocket knife to carefully cut cubes of tobacco for him to chew. I’d never hear him tell me stories about his life as a cattleman, about gunfights in downtown Hazzlehurst, about driving cattle in storms, of lean times, of being gored by a bull and thrown by horses into bad places. Although I took no consolation in the idea of Papa in heaven, I did in the fact that he died of a stroke while cheering the Friday Night Fights on TV in the nursing home. I am so glad that I knew him for the years I did, and how he called my mama, “baby” and I thought she was truly old.

As I’ve grown older I’ve seen a lot of people I knew and loved die, and it’s never easy. Never. But it has given me feelings to run my fingers over and to put into my words.

John Ramsey Miller—January 30, 2010

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  1. How do you meet a writing challenge?
  2. What helps you with structuring you novels?
  3. Experiencing death is one of the most emotional aspects of being human. Has it deepened your own writing? If so, how?