I’ve stumbled upon a writing resource that needs to be shared on the Kill Zone. It’s called the Ultimate Story Checklist, and it’s on a website called Cockeyed Caravan hosted by Matt Bird. If the names aren’t familiar, Matt Bird is an A-List screenwriter who recently published a book titled The Secrets of Story.

While the website and book are aimed at the screenwriting market, there’s a lot of value here for regular storytellers. Matt Bird delivers many great takeaways, one being, “Audiences purchase your work because of its concept but embrace it because of the characters”. I put that quote on my daily affirmation board.

You can download the Ultimate Story Checklist here. However, I’ll list the highlights so you’ll get an idea where this craft book and blog are coming from. Here’s the CliffsNotes version of over 200 sub-points to check off:

Part 1: Concept

The Pitch — Does the concept excite everyone who hears it?

Story Fundamentals — Wil this concept generate a strong story?

The Hook — Will this be marketable and generate word of mouth?

Part 2: Character

Believe — Do we recognize the hero as a human being?

Care — Do we feel for the hero?

Invest — Can we trust the hero to tackle the challenge?

Part 3: Structure

1^st Quarter — Is the challenge laid out in the first quarter?

2^nd Quarter — Does the hero try the easy way in the second quarter?

3^rd Quarter — Does the hero try the hard way in the third quarter?

4^th Quarter — Does the challenge climax in the fourth quarter?

Part 4: Scenework

The Set-Up — Does this scene begin with the essential elements it needs?

The Conflict — Is this a compelling collision of competing agendas?

The Outcome — Does the scene change the story going forward?

Part 5: Dialogue

Empathetic — Is the dialogue true to human nature?

Specific — Is the dialogue specific to this world and each personality?

Heightened — Is the dialogue more pointed and dynamic than real talk?

Strategic — Are certain dialogue scenes withheld until necessary?

Part 6: Tone

Genre — Does the story tap into pre-established expectations?

Framing — Does the story set, reset, upset, and ultimately exceed its own expectations?

Part 7: Theme

Difficult — Is the meaning of the story derived from a fundamental moral dilemma?

Grounded — Do the stakes ring true to the world of the audience?

Subtle — Is the theme interwoven throughout so that it need not be discussed often?

Untidy — Is the dilemma ultimately unsolvable?

As mentioned, there are well over two hundred sub-questions in the parts and categories. I plugged my WIP netstream series City Of Danger into the Ultimate Story Checklist. It’s a well-worthwhile exercise that brings clarity and gives guidance.

Kill Zoners — Has anyone heard of this resource or of Matt Bird? Do you use any sort of checklist or guideline for your storytelling? Please share what works for you and any recommendations you have.

By John Gilstrap

Back in 1994, when I was putting the finishing touches on the manuscript that would become Nathan’s Run, I followed a self-imposed rule that as I read through the final draft, if I came to a substantive change–something other than a typo or minor grammatical thing–I would make the change and then go back to the beginning of the manuscript and read it again, up to and beyond the point of the substantive change. When it happened again, I’d repeat the process. I think it added up to something like 30 editing passes.

After my final pass, I fired up by brand new HP inkjet printer (agents wouldn’t look at dot matrix submissions), and I watched as the manuscript printed out at the blistering rate of six pages per minute. In the end, the book launched a fun career, though I’m not sure those last five or six passes had anything to do with it.

My agent at the time, Molly, told me a story that altered my view of the editing process. A neighbor had a friend who had written a book that the neighbor thought was fantastic. Would Molly give it a look? I imagine this happens a lot in the life of a literary agent. With more than a little hesitation, Molly agreed to give the manuscript a look.

When the neighbor delivered the goods, it came as a stack single-spaced type-written pages (typewritten, as in, clackety-clack, ding) on erasable bond paper. Remember how dirty your hands felt after handling erasable bond? When she was done, Molly was moved to tears, and she instantly took on that brand new author, whose name turned out to be Frank McCourt, and whose manuscript became a little runaway bestseller called Angela’s Ashes.

The guy had broken every rule, yet somehow his talent won the day.

Welcome to the capricious world of the entertainment business. Happenstance and serendipity play huge roles, but such is the case in every professional endeavor. Many a career is launched by an introduction at a party or a business conference. The business world calls it networking. But the seed that makes the serendipity function is the underlying talent of the individual, and that individual’s willingness to work hard to improve.

A number of the regulars here at The Killzone have expressed their frustration with the editing loop. They can never get their chapter to check off all the boxes in the rule books that purport to know more than perhaps they do. This is why I profess that there are no rules to this game of writing fiction.

Of course first impressions matter, and as such, you want every manuscript to be as clean as possible, but if the story is there, it’s there in spite of a misplaced comma. If the characters are compelling, their personalities will transcend the prologue that may or may not survive through publication.

The Forbidden City of traditional publishing, as Brother Bell calls it, is not forbidden at all. Its gates stand wide open for new and experienced talent, and as I have demonstrated several dozen times now, it is not necessary to thoroughly understand how commas work, or the difference between that and which. All that is necessary is good story that is well told.

Plus a willingness to seek opportunities to spark the serendipitous event that can make it all happen. You’ve got the talent and the skill for writing, right? You’re happy with your recently completed manuscript? It’s time to network!

“Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.” –Fred Rogers

By PJ Parrish

A sequence of events this past month has been making me chew on a pretty important question: When is it time to stop writing?

I don’t mean stop writing whatever you’re working on. That’s a relatively easy decision that might mean abandoning a book that’s going nowhere and finding a new story to tell. I’m talking about the R-word.

Yup, this makes it official, crime dogs. I am retiring.

It is time to stop writing books. I know this now with all my heart. I have been thinking about this for about three years. Back then, like all of you, was feeling really at sea and done-in by the Covid scare. I figured it would pass and I would go back to my work in progress.

But now I know, this is it. Time to stop, hang up the cleats, and ride off into the Michigan sunset. Don’t fret for me. I am really happy with this decision. I just wonder why it took me three years to finally come to terms with it.

Here’s the thing. I am getting old. I am healthy and reasonably well off, thank God. But I want to use my time more wisely, while I still have the marbles and mobility to do so. As I said, some events of late have helped me to this place. I have two dear friends who are fighting cancer battles. Both are doing okay right now (one friend, who was really sick, now is back to skating in his over-65 hockey league!). But my time with them now is especially precious. As it is with my husband and small family. Also of late, I have had several writing friends confess privately that they are worn out and want to pull back from the publishing rat race. All are successful, have nice backlists and contracts. Several came home from the Bouchercon writer’s con with Covid and feelings that there are other ways they want to spend their time and money. I sense a retrenchment among the old guard.

Here’s the second thing. Writing is work. It’s not a physical thing. Writing takes no toll on the body. But it devours your time and energy. Alice Munro said, as she retired, “I don’t have the energy anymore.” Yes, writing is joyful and sure as hell beats filling potholes or waiting tables. But if you’re doing it right, it is a job. More so now that it has ever been, as the traditional publishing support system has deteriorated. You have to punch that time-card, at least five days a week.

John Updike used to rent a one-room office above a restaurant, where he would report to write six days a week. John Cheever famously put on his only suit and rode the elevator with the 9-to-5 crowd, only he would proceed down to the basement to write in a storage room.

I’ve been working fulltime since I was 18. I don’t want a job anymore. I have other things I want to do with those 40-plus hours. For health reasons (chronic back pain), I need a consistent exercise regimen. I want to travel more. I want to devote time to friends, family and my dogs. I want to keep my garden going. I want to learn more languages. I want to go back to the piano lessons I had to give up ten years ago. I want to read for pleasure. If things work out, I’d like to go live aboard for a while.

As Mr. Rogers says, when you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.

I think we make it hard on writers to retire. Maybe it’s because we imagine them as magical machines that produce pleasure just for us. As Don Winslow said, as he announced his retirement a while back, “I think a lot of people don’t expect writers to retire. They expect us to just keel over at the keyboard.”

Stephen King tried to retire but it didn’t take. In 2002, after almost dying in a bad accident, King said he was walking away from his horror show. But he barely slowed down, and just released his 64th book this month. More power to him.

When Lee Child retired, he handed care of Reacher over to his younger brother, and retreated to a ranch in Wyoming, where his only neighbors are moose and mountain lions. He claims he will never write another book.

Child said one reason he’s retiring from his series is because he struggles to identify with a younger audience. “I’m rapidly getting out of date,” Child told the Australian Financial Review, “and Reacher has always been behind the curve with technology.”

The timing was right, he says. “I had made myself a promise based on reading other people’s series … that I would never phone it in, and I never have. I cannot keep this up forever.”

I really get this one. I had a really great run that lasted almost 30 years. I made some money, won some awards, made the bestseller list. I have lovely memories of meeting fans and reading their emails and letters. I never phoned it in. No one wants to be the Brett Favre of crime fiction.

With our last series book, The Damage Done, we left our character Louis Kincaid in a very good place. We didn’t realize at the time it would be the last Louis book, but now as I re-read its ending, I know his character arc has come to a full, almost spiritual, conclusion.

And as Lee says, no one wants to be an anachronism. Through my work with the Edgars, I get a front row seat on the next generation of crime writers. Our genre is changing and as Brian Wilson wrote, I just wasn’t made for these times.

So what does retirement look like for me? Sort of like it does for Lee Child. “I’m going to buy a real comfortable sofa, and I’m just going to read for the rest of my life,” he says. “I was born in Europe. I have no work ethic.”

Like me, he feels the pull of other interests: “I’m an extremely poor guitarist,” he says, “and I may try to get better.”

But what about The Kill Zone? I’d like to stick around, if that’s okay with you all. I won’t have any new books to tout and I can’t contribute a whit about what’s going on with AI, YA, Amazon’s ACX, Binkist, or any other trend with initials. But I can help new folks with critiques and maybe start conversations here about what makes for good storytelling because that never changes.

So, be happy for me. Think of me as Mr. Chips, dawdling in the TZK doorway, going on and on about the value of friendship, the beauty of craftsmanship, and the need for reverence of our grenre’s forebearers. Haec olim meminisse iuvabit. 

Peace out.

During a recent book talk, a lady raised her hand. “How long does it take to write a novel?”

Oh boy! I got to use my high school freshman teacher’s taunting question right back at her. “How long is a piece of string?”

She frowned, as did almost everyone in the audience. And like Miss Adams, I had to explain. “My piece of string isn’t the same as yours, or hers, or his. They’re all different.”

“What does that have to do with my question?”

“My first novel took years. I wrote it whenever I had a few minutes, and I’d be willing to bet that most authors will have a similar story. Few of us were able to sit down and hammer out our first book out without stopping.

“Then I finished the novel and lost it in an electronic hiccup. Starting over, it only took three or four years after that to write it from memory. Then I carried it around, polishing here, tweaking there, telling everyone I’d written a novel and basking in the glory of having finished it.

“The truth is, I was still tweaking it even after finding an agent. While she shopped it around, I polished it some more, because I’d read that you have to make the stinkin’ thing shine.”

Nods all around.

“So if you’re asking how long that particular manuscript was under construction, I’ll have to say about ten years.”

Her eyes widened and I nodded knowingly, because I came through the other side.

But here’s the fun part for the rest of you to ponder. After it was accepted for publication, I kinda lounged around, being an author in my mind. About ten days after it hit the shelves, my editor reached out. “You got great reviews! When do I get to see pages for the next one?”

“Huh?”

“Your next book comes out in about a year. We already have it on the schedule.”

Wait, what? They have another book scheduled and I haven’t even started it yet? What the hell!!!???

I didn’t have a ghost of an idea for another book and my publisher wanted a finished manuscript to follow the first novel. Stunned, we hung up and I sat at my desk and looked around. What am I gonna do? I’m already a failure.

Then I remembered a novella I’d worked on through the years. Would that work?

I dug the pages from our file cabinet and read them. Yep, I could change the name here, add a character here, throw in the two now-eleven-year-old kids Top and Pepper. Cool! I have a jump on the next book! I can change the location and set the whole thing in my fictional town of Chisum, which I’d modeled on Paris, Texas.

I looked at the word count. I looked at the calendar. I looked out the window and examined my fingernails. Then I went to work.

Burrows, that piece of string, came in at 90,000 words and was finished in six months.

The woman at the book signing was giving me the Hairy Eyeball as I rambled on. “In my case, once I finished the second, I got into a rhythm. I shot for five pages a day, which seems like a lot, but by then I’d retired from a long career in education and was dedicating all my time to writing.

“Some folks’ piece of string is only a page a day. Others might be a thousand words, and I’ve heard of authors who hit their personally established word count and stop in mid-sentence so as not to burn their candle too fast.”

I learned, and now with several different series in the queue, I’ve gotten faster.

One novel birthed in a dream wrapped in six weeks.

I just finished a traditional western that took three months.

I’m working on another traditional western that I believe will wrap in eight weeks. I’ve been averaging four to five thousand words a day on that WIP, on these days I can invest the time. Other days come in at two thousand words. I’ve cracked 30,000 words on that one, and in my mind, I’m almost on the downhill side.

So how long does it take to write a novel?

I don’t know.

Looking online at “master” classes, or dozens of articles, you’ll see different lengths of string. One self-publishing site states with authority that you need eight months to write 80,000 words.

Another says your first draft should only take three months.

The truth is, your piece of string is different. Screw what everyone else says. It’s your work, and your own pace.

J.K. Rowling took six years to write the first Harry Potter.

It took Stephen King “several years” to finish Carrie, and then he worked on The Stand for two years.

Don’t let arbitrary deadlines or timelines to drive your work. Write when you can, as much as is comfortable and still keep the juices flowing. But make no mistake, speed, or the lack thereof, isn’t important. It’s the quality of work that makes a novel readable, and successful.

Write on!