Tag Archives: Erle Stanley Gardner

5 Timeless Truths of Popular Fiction

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

It was in the 1920s that “commercial” or “popular” fiction really took off. Radio was in its infancy and TV was two decades away. The local movie house gave you a night’s entertainment for a dime or a quarter. But to fill the rest of the week, a voracious reading public wanted entertaining fiction delivered regularly…and fast.

Thus, the pulp market exploded, with magazines printed on cheap paper so they could be sold for ten or fifteen cents.

The usual pay for writers was a penny a word. Pulp writers used certain tricks to make an extra penny. For instance, Erle Stanley Gardner (creator of Perry Mason) liked to use both names when a character did or said something (with some unneeded adverbial attributions), a la:

Paul Drake entered Perry Mason’s office.

“Hiya, Beautiful,” Paul Drake said to Della Street, Perry Mason’s confidential secretary.

“Hello, Paul,” Della Street said with a shy smile.

“What brings you by, Paul?” Perry Mason remarked in a curious tone.

A pulp writer named Wyatt Blassingame gave his series character the name Joe Gee, because it was only six letters but counted as a two words. Smart!

But above all these writers had to master what I’m calling “The 5 Timeless Truths of Popular Fiction.” They were writing for the market and if they wanted to keep bread on the table and beer in the icebox, they had to please that market. These truths helped them do it.

  1. A Lead to Root For

Gardner said this was the key. He called it “the lowest common denominator of public interest.” It is the “firm foundation.” If an author doesn’t have that in a story “he doesn’t have anything.”

I don’t see any counter argument for that.

Which is not to say your Lead needs to be a classic “hero.” There are anti-heroes we root for, and also “negative Leads,” such as Scrooge and Scarlett. We root for the latter because we hope for their redemption.

  1. Colorful Characters

No stereotypes or “placeholder” minor characters. This is where am author can add “spice” to the plot. It’s what sets Dickens apart from other Victorian writers. It’s what makes The Maltese Falcon a pleasure to read and view (I mean, how can you beat Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet added to Bogart and Mary Astor, not to mention Elisha Cook, Jr. and Ward Bond? Come on!)

Don’t throw away the opportunity to spice up your tale with colorful characters. 

  1. Major in Action

Leave us not go into the merits of literary fiction. But there is a reason we demarcate literary and commercial fiction. The latter sells more. And it does so in part because it majors in action.

That doesn’t always mean car chase or gunfight type action. It means the main thrust of the story is a character doing things to solve the story question.

And while I’m an advocate of “unobtrusively poetic” prose, solid action by colorful characters can override somewhat clunky writing. If you want an example, read any of the Conan stories by Robert E. Howard. His writing is rough but so full of “blood and thunder” that pulp readers couldn’t get enough of it.

  1. Cliffhangers

The term “cliffhanger” came from the early silent movie serials featuring Pearl White (“The Perils of Pauline”) where an episode would end with Pearl tied to the railroad tracks or literally hanging over a cliff, clutching a branch. You just had to come back next week to see how she got out of it.

But cliffhangers are not limited to these “big” moments. They can also be the subtle things that make a reader want to turn a page or read a next chapter.

One of the things I did when I was learning the craft was read a bunch of thrillers and ask myself why I wanted to read on. I made a list of techniques I call “Read On Prompts” (ROP). I’d jot ROP in the margin of the books each time I found myself eager to turn the page. It’s an invaluable practice I commend to you.

The prolific pulp writer Lester Dent made up a “formula” for a 6k word suspense story. He broke it into four parts of 1500 words, listing the fundamental elements of what needed to be in each quadrant. Here are his goals for the ROPs:

  1. Near the end of first 1500 words, there is a complete surprise twist in the plot development. SO FAR: Does it have SUSPENSE?
  2. A surprising plot twist to end the 1500 words. NOW: Does second part have SUSPENSE? Does the MENACE grow like a black cloud? Is the hero getting it in the neck? Is the second part logical?
  3. A surprising plot twist, in which the hero preferably gets it in the neck bad, to end the 1500 words. Does it still have SUSPENSE? The MENACE getting blacker? The hero finds himself in a hell of a fix? It all happens logically?
  4. Ending the final 1500 words. Final twist, a big surprise, (This can be the villain turning out to be the unexpected person, having the “Treasure” be a dud, etc.). The snapper, the punch line to end it. The suspense held to the last line. Everything been explained? It all happen logically? Is the Punch Line enough to leave the reader with that WARM FEELING?

That last bit brings us to Timeless Truth #5.

  1. Resonant Endings 

Dent’s “warm feeling” I call resonance. As stated in my book The Last Fifty Pages, “Resonance is that last, perfect note in a great piece of music, leaving the audience not just satisfied, but moved. Perhaps even changed.”

That’s why I spend more editing time on my endings, even the last page and paragraphs, than any other part of the book.

We all know that a lousy ending can sour the taste of an otherwise good book or movie.

A good ending is better of course, one that connects all the threads.

But a resonant ending is best of all, for it captures the hearts of the readers and sends them looking for more of your books, which makes you a popular author.

And that’s the truth.

Comments welcome.

Beginnings Are Easy. Endings Are Hard.

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Back when Lost became a TV phenomenon, I watched the first season and was just as hooked as everybody else. Man! Each episode ended with an inexplicable and shocking mystery, and I had to keep watching.

A group of my writing friends were also caught up, posting how fabulous this all was.

But then came the second season, and I posted a warning. “It’s easy to come up with a cliffhanger if you don’t have to explain it. The day of reckoning is coming. I think you’re going to be massively disappointed.”

“Bah,” came the answers. “The show is great!”

“Just wait,” I said.

“Bah!”

Well, the day of reckoning finally came. I was on Twitter while the final episode was showing. It was a madhouse of frustration and even rage, with an occasional defense that got ratioed badly.

Some time after this, leaked documents and private conversations with the writers came out. One of the writers was asked by his friend, “How are you going to pay all this stuff off?” And the writer answered, “We’re not. We literally just think of the weirdest most f****** up thing and write it and we’re never going to pay it off.”

Mission accomplished.

But for those of us who write mysteries and thrillers we hope will sell and make fans, that’s not how we roll. We all want a satisfying, resonant ending.

I can write opening chapters all day long that’ll grab you by the lapels and get you flipping to Chapters 2, 3 and beyond. But wrapping up a twisty plot in a way that is both unpredictable and convincing? That takes some work.

That’s why, before I start writing, I have to know who the bad guy is, his motive, and his secrets. It takes imagination and brainstorming. That’s why one of the greatest plotters of the pulp era, Erle Stanley Gardner, spent hours walking around, talking to himself, working on what he called “the murderer’s ladder” before he wrote one word of a new story.

The murderer’s ladder was Gardner’s way of showing the step-by-step machinations of the villain, from the initial act of treachery (usually murder) through the first attempts at cover up, and then progressive steps to keep from getting caught.

The worth of this pre-work is that all of the villain’s steps are “off screen” in what I call the shadow story. Knowing the shadow story is the key to plotting mystery and suspense. You know what the villain is planning (the reader does not) and that spills into the present story in the form of red herrings and various ways the villain attempts to evade, frustrate, or even kill the hero.

In working out the murderer’s ladder, you avoid having to rely on a contrived ending to wrap things up.

Plus, as you outline (or just starts writing, if that’s what floats your boat), the plot starts to unfold almost automatically. I say almost because your main task now is to avoid predictability. When you know the shadow story, that’s easy. You can pause at each step and ask yourself: What is the best off screen move the villain can make? Also, ask yourself what the typical reader would expect to happen next—and then do something different. If you work off the shadow story, the ending will ultimately make sense.

Of course, your ending is subject to change without notice. Sometimes a new twist ending occurs to you as you close in on the final pages. That happened to me with Romeo’s Town. The nice thing was, the steps on the murderer’s ladder were the same. All I had to do was tweak them a bit.

Yes, endings are harder than beginnings. They’re also more important, because that’s the last impression you make on the reader. It’s what sells, in Mickey Spillane’s axiom, your next book.

The ending of this post is brought to you by The Last Fifty Pages: The Art and Craft of Unforgettable Endings.

Discuss!

How to Write a Mystery in Any Genre

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

There’s an old joke about a guy walking into a bar with a squirrel in a cage. The bartender says, “What’s that squirrel doing here?” And the guy says, “Thinking about his next mystery.” The bartender asks what he means, and the guy says, “My squirrel is a mystery writer.”

“Come on!” the bartender says. “How can a squirrel write mysteries?”

“Easy,” the guy says. “He comes up with the ending, then works his way back.”

That squirrel was onto one way to write a mystery: Know the ending, the who of the whodunit, before you start writing. Some of the most successful mystery writers of all time—e.g., Dame Agatha, Erle Stanley Gardner—did it this way.

Their formula was simple. You have a dead body and several possible suspects, each with a motive and an alibi. The killer, when revealed, is a surprise.

That’s always the fun of a Perry Mason. In the classic TV show, the redoubtable Raymond Burr would be grilling a witness on cross-examination so incisively that someone out in the gallery would be forced to stand up and say, “Yes! I killed her! But she was going to force me to give up everything I worked for!”

This trope was hilariously sent up in Woody Allen’s Bananas:

But this is not the only way to do it. Other writers “pants” their way forward, not knowing until the end who the killer is going to be. They extol this method by saying, “If I can’t guess the killer until the end, then readers surely won’t be able to!”

That’s a pretty good argument, though it may entail substantial rewriting and rewiring the plot.

A rejoinder of the plotters is this: If I work out the motive and method first, I can design a whole web of red herrings to throw readers off the scent.

James N. Frey, in How to Write a Damn Good Mystery, is of the latter type. He advises picking a killer, then writing a lengthy biography to explore and justify the murder.

Personally, I don’t like to do lengthy character bios. I find it closes me in before I really get into the story. I like a little living and breathing space for my cast.

I do, however, want to know a few key things about my main characters:

  • Looks
  • Dominant Impression (a Dwight Swain advisory, which means a noun of vocation and an adjective of manner)
  • Timeline of Key Events. I identify the year of birth and go forward to other important years: first day of school, first job, first love. I always like to ask what happened to this character at the age of 16, which seems a pivotal year in everyone’s life.

Another thing the timeline gives me is a basis for cultural markers. I like to know what music, movies, and TV shows were popular in a given year. A few will pop out that seem right for the character.

When it comes to the villain, I have to come up with the most important thing: the motive. I want to have a “hidden” motive that is revealed near the end.

That’s when I write “the speech.”

We’ve seen this in many classic mysteries. The sleuth gathers all the suspects together in a room and starts explaining the clues. Hammett does this in The Thin Man, and Gardner in his courtroom scenes.

It can also be done one-on-one, as in The Maltese Falcon.

In the speech, my hero explains the whole setup, the red herrings, the clues that lead him to identify the killer. (Note: this speech is not intended for the final product, though I may use some of it. It’s a brainstorming exercise above all else.) I work on the speech over several days, sleep on it, add layers to it. This enables me to set up the “game” from the start, to know the hidden moves made by the villain “off-stage.”

Now, I’m not a pure mystery writer. I walk down the thriller street. But I believe all good fiction has a mystery to it, a question in the readers’ minds: What is going on here? Why are these things happening to the character? Why is the character acting this way? This is essential for any genre, from romance to thrillers to literary.

Because the great driver of fiction is a reader turning the pages to find out what happens next, and why. Otherwise, the story becomes predictable. And predictability is boring.

What about you? Do you agree that a mystery element, as defined above, is essential to good fiction? And when it comes to mysteries and character secrets, are you like that squirrel who knows the ending up front? Or do you like to pants-and-wait?

Write With Your Eyes Closed

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

I’ve written before about the pulp writer W. T. Ballard. He was a friend of my parents, and I only wish I’d been aware enough to arrange a sit-down with him to talk writing. Alas, he died in 1980 while I was still trying to become the next Brando.

Fortunately, there’s an entertaining interview with Ballard from 1976 which fills that gap.

Also fortunately, when I started my writing journey, I was able to get some guidance from his sister-in-law, Sue Dwiggins Worsely, who was in the movie biz. She gave me a lot of encouragement, and also a box of Ballard’s paperback originals. Included in the box was a collection of his Bill Lennox stories, which were immensely popular in Black Mask, the legendary pulp magazine. The intro has a short reminiscence Ballard wrote about his pulp days.

One incident he recounted was the first time he met Erle Stanley Gardner. Gardner, of course, was the creator of Perry Mason, and one of the most prolific pulpsters of all time. In part that’s because he dictated his books into an old-fashioned Dictaphone and had a team of secretaries to do the transcribing. Gardner invited Ballard to come to his apartment in Hollywood and they’d go out to dinner.

West Coast Black Mask writers, 1936. Raymond Chandler, standing second from left. Dashiell Hammett, standing right. W. T. Ballard, seated, middle.

When Ballard got there, one of the secretaries greeted him at the door and asked him to have a seat, telling him that Mr. Gardner still had two chapters to finish.

“I began to burn,” Ballard wrote. “He had made the six o’clock date, I had rushed to be there on time, and now he expected me to cool my heels while he did two chapters. I wondered how long he’d be at it.”

Then Ballard heard Gardner’s booming voice through a curtained arch. He went over and “I got my first look at Erle Gardner. He sat on a couch, bent over his knees, a Dictaphone horn cupped in both hands, talking so fast that I could not follow the words. Ten minutes later he came out. I don’t know how long those chapters were but I’m sure they were spoken faster than any two others on record by any other writer.”

I rather imagine that Gardner had his eyes closed as he dictated.

Which reminded me of a note I made early in my writing journey. Back then I’d scribble a reminder every time I came across a technique I learned or discovered. I’d write on cards, scraps of paper, napkins, whatever was handy. I still have those notes in a big envelope, sitting on the bookshelf in my office. One of my early notes was, Write with your eyes closed.

What I’d discovered was this: if you close your eyes and let a scene start playing like a movie in your mind, you see things you never would if you look at your words as you type. Instead, you visualize and record the details, like a careful journalist.

I use this technique primarily to deepen descriptive elements of a setting or character.

There are three complicated steps to follow. Let’s see if I can break them down for you:

  1. Close your eyes
  2. Visualize.
  3. Type.

If any of that is confusing, feel free to ask me questions in the comments.

There’s a second benefit to writing with your eyes closed—it keeps you from stopping in the middle of a sentence or paragraph to make a correction. When you are creating you should do all you can to stay in “flow.” Every time you stop and backspace to fix a spelling error, or pause to wonder if you like the sentence you just typed, you’re frustrating flow. You’re putting a kink in the hose of your imagination.

So lower the lids over your orbs, at least some of the time, as you clack the keyboard.

Do you ever write with your eyes closed?
Do you do some form of visualization before you write a scene?
Do you look at the words on the screen as you type?

More Escapism, Please

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Erle Stanley Gardner

Say, just wondering, but have any of you awakened lately and felt like you’re not in your own bed, but rather inside the trash compacter from Star Wars?

That’s what I thought. Thus the word escape comes to mind. And isn’t that what good, solid, entertaining fiction is about? I believe in escapism. It’s as necessary for human flourishing as good food, good sleep, and good company.

Erle Stanley Gardner, said:

“The public wants stories because it wants to escape.…The writer is bringing moral strength to many millions of people because the successful story inspires the audience. If a story doesn’t inspire an audience in some way, it is no good.”

Dean Koontz said:

“In a world that encompasses so much pain and fear and cruelty, it is noble to provide a few hours of escape, moments of delight and forgetfulness.”

And this from our own Brother Gilstrap:

“I want to make their hearts beat a little faster and I want to make them laugh and sometimes cry. I want to earn those occasional emails I get from readers who share that my stories have been welcome diversions from the problems stacked up by real life.”

That can be said of all of us here at TKZ. Nothing pleases us more than transporting readers into a fictive dream.

And yet, it isn’t always easy to escape into fiction these days. When was the last time you “got lost” in a book? So much so that all considerations of time and other pursuits went completely away?

It was a lot easier in the days before computers, smart phones, social media, cable and satellite TV with a gazillion channels, endless content streams, 24/7 news cycles and on and on.

In spite of all that—nay, because of it—we all have a craving for regular escape.

So here’s what I’ve done. I have a special chair in my family room, set by a window, which is my reading chair. Having the same physical location for my reading sets off a Pavlovian response in my mind, i.e., that here is where I don’t have to check my phone, scan the internet, or worry about anything. The only concession to technology is putting on smooth jazz via the Pandora app on my phone.

Also, in this chair I prefer to read a physical book. I like that old-school feeling of having pages in my hands and a to-be-read stack on the table. (When I’m not in my chair, but in bed or waiting in an office, I do utilize my Kindle, with its 99¢ collection of the complete works of Dickens, and so on. I’m no Luddite.)

Next comes the “getting lost” part. There’s a certain mental practice required here, I believe. For example, when I start a novel I give the author the benefit of all doubt. I am pulling for them to pull me in. When they do, it’s magic. If the opening chapters aren’t stellar, I still give the author some space, hoping things will change for the better. This space is limited, however; I am more prone to setting aside a book that doesn’t hold me than I used to be.

What if you don’t have a lot of time to escape? Or you’re in the midst of a pressing day and you need to snatch some relief?

The answer is the short story. In the bookshelf near my reading chair are several collections of short stories. Everything from Hemingway (who I consider the undisputed master of the form) and Irwin Shaw, to collections of classic pulp, such as The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (ed. Otto Penzler).

I can always grab one of these and go for a satisfying ride. When I return to “real life,” I feel refreshed.

In that regard, please indulge me in a short commercial. I’ve got a project for escapism over at Patreon. My product is short stories. I write stand-alone suspense, stories that tug the heart, and on occasion something speculative, a la Ray Bradbury. I also have a series character who is a troubleshooter for a movie studio in post WWII Los Angeles (written in classic pulp style). These stories are exclusively for patrons, and cost less than a Starbucks drip. (I also do flash fiction—under 1k words—for ten-minute escapes.)

And for the price of a fancy-dancy frothy drink, you get the stories plus advance review copies (ARCs) of my full-length fiction.

All the details can be found here. I would be most grateful for your support.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program, with some questions from our host:

When was the last time you got lost in a book? Is finding time to read more difficult for you these days? Do you have a preferred place to read? Are you a “physical” or “ebook” or “doesn’t matter” reader?

 

Writers I’ve Learned From: Erle Stanley Gardner

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Erle Stanley Gardner

A friend of mine sent me an article about the great pulp writer Erle Stanley Gardner. Since he has been an influence on my own work, I thought I’d do a little reflecting on the man and his method.

Let’s start with work ethic. All the great pulp writers had to relentlessly hammer the keys in order to put food on the table. Get a load of this:

When he died, in 1970, Erle Stanley Gardner was the best-selling American fiction author of the century. He wrote 100,000 words a month for some fifty years. His New York Times obituary cited sales of more than 170 million books in the US alone, and reported his paperback publisher saying that in the mid 1960s they sold 2,000 Gardner books an hour, eight hours a day, 365 days a year.

From the 1920s on, Gardner produced an avalanche of pulp stories, novellas, cowboy yarns, science fiction, travelogues and several mystery series, on top of the 80 Perry Mason novels that cemented his fame and fortune, and won him fans such as Einstein (reported to be reading a Perry Mason novel on his deathbed), Harry S. Truman, and Pope John XXIII.

Early on, Gardner pounded manual typewriters. Sometimes his fingers would bleed and he’d tape them up and keep typing. Later he made copious use of the Dictaphone and a team of secretaries. This, I will note, did not result in deathless prose. But Gardner knew what buttered his bread:

“I write to make money, and I write to give the reader sheer fun. People derive moral satisfaction from reading a story in which the innocent victim of fate triumphs over evil. They enjoy the stimulation of an exciting detective story. Most readers are beset with a lot of problems they can’t solve. When they try to relax, their minds keep gnawing over these problems and there is no solution. They pick up a mystery story, become completely absorbed in the problem, see the problem worked out to final and just conclusion, turn out the light and go to sleep.”

Some years ago I decided to read several Perry Mason novels in order. What was it about Mason that caught on in such a big way? The first Mason is The Case of the Velvet Claws (1933). It didn’t take me long to see the appeal. It wasn’t just smarts Mason possessed. All series detectives have that (e.g., Holmes, Poirot, Marple). No, it was his dogged loyalty to his clients and his determination to fight for them to the bitter end. In a letter to William Morrow about the series he was contemplating, Gardner wrote:

I want to make my hero a fighter, not by having him be ruthless with women and underlings, but by having him wade into the opposition and battle his way through to victory. . . . the character I am trying to create for him is that of a fighter who is possessed of infinite patience. He tries to jockey his enemies into a position where he can deliver one good knockout punch.

Even more, Mason was a modern knight, with a code. As the article states:

Central to these novels is the idea of loyalty—Mason’s loyalty to clients and to the truth; Drake and Street’s loyalty to Mason. Such loyalty is integral to the code of King Arthur’s round table, and the Three Musketeers, whose motto is “All for one and one for all.”

Perry Mason—incorruptible, clever, dedicated, dogged—slots nicely into the Arthurian mould. His “grail quest” is the pursuit of justice on behalf of innocents unable to defend themselves; his jousting field is a courtroom. He is never unseated.

My series character Mike Romeo is, like Mason, a knight. When I was a wee lad I used to watch Perry Mason (starring Raymond Burr) with my lawyer father. The other influence from that time was Have Gun, Will Travel which starred Richard Boone as Paladin (paladin, n., a knight, a champion, a legendary hero). I wrote about that influence here.

So thanks to Mr. Erle Stanley Gardner for his example. Now all I have to do is write 100,000 words in the next four weeks…

Is there an author whose work ethic or professionalism has made in impression on you? How is your own writing practice during these challenging days?

Great Art is About Killing Dragons

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Earlier this year I spent three days at Disneyland with the fam, including the two grandboys, ages 4 and 2. Let me tell you, it may be the happiest place on Earth, but for three days it’s also an endurance test. My daughter told me, via her FitBit, that we averaged 21,000 steps each day. My dogs were screaming for mercy.

But we had a stupendous time. I mean, how can you not when you experience the park through the wide-eyed wonder of two small boys?

In Fantasyland there are five indoor rides within close proximity of each other. The most popular is Peter Pan. There’s always a long wait to get into this one. Right across the way are two rides for which there is virtually no wait time: Snow White and Pinocchio.

So as I waited in the Peter Pan line, I wondered, Why should this be?

I have some theories. For one thing, Peter Pan seems the most magical because you’re whisked away in a pirate ship to go flying through the sky—over Victorian London and then Never Never Land itself. There’s just something about flying that every kid loves.

Yet why should poor Snow White and Pinocchio be so lonely? There might be one reason parents don’t take their little ones on these rides—they’re scary!

I mean, in Snow White, there’s a sudden turn from happy dwarfs and singing birds to a frightening old crone who turns on you holding out a poisoned apple. From there it gets even darker, with thunder and lightning, and the crone appearing at the top of the hill wanting to smash you and the seven dwarfs with a big rock! (Confession: I recall going on this ride when I was little, with my big brother, and I was terrified.)

Pinocchio has more of a house of horrors type of scare. Pinocchio and Lampwick are taken to Pleasure Island where they smoke cigars, play pool and such. But as a consequence they are turned into donkeys. That’s not all. Just around the corner a giant whale jumps out at you, jaws agape! Sure, you end up safely back in Geppetto’s workshop, but it was one hairy journey to get there.

So I wonder if concerned parents simply don’t want their younger children to be frightened. I also wonder if that might be an opportunity lost. For fairy tales don’t exist in a vacuum. They are meant to be didactic. As G. K. Chesterton observed:

Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. (Tremendous Trifles)

Which invites the question: is great fiction always moral? We know there’s plenty of darkness swirling around, especially since anyone can upload a book or video. But is it “art” to wallow in the darkness?

The respected editor Dave King mused about this at Writer Unboxed:

Why are so many gifted writers drawn to the dark side of life? Why are they driven to present characters who are hard to love or lovable characters in situations that are either hard to follow or hard to endure? Why does it feel like work to read them? And why are they winning awards for this?

The best art, from painting to fairy tales to commercial fiction must have, in my view, a moral vision. John Gardner put it this way: “I think that the difference right now between good art and bad art is that the good artists are the people who are, in one way or another, creating, out of deep and honest concern, a vision of life . . . that is worth living. And the bad artists, of whom there are many, are whining or moaning or staring, because it’s fashionable, into the dark abyss.” (On Moral Fiction)

And turning again to Chesterton:

All really imaginative literature is only the contrast between the weird curves of Nature and the straightness of the soul. Man may behold what ugliness he likes if he is sure that he will not worship it; but there are some so weak that they will worship a thing only because it is ugly. These must be chained to the beautiful. It is not always wrong even to go, like Dante, to the brink of the lowest promontory and look down at hell. It is when you look up at hell that a serious miscalculation has probably been made. (G. K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions, 1911)

There are dragons everywhere. Sometimes they have form, as in, say, a villain wanting to kill good people. Or there might be inner dragons, psychological beasts keeping a character from full form and function in life. Readers read to experience the battle, and the outcome. If the dragon is slain, it’s upbeat. If the dragon wins, it’s a tragedy but also a cautionary tale. In either case, there’s lesson to be drawn (the “return with the elixir” in mythic terms) that helps us make it through this vale of tears.

Erle Stanley Gardner (creator of Perry Mason), once said:

“The public wants stories because it wants to escape.…The writer is bringing moral strength to many millions of people because the successful story inspires the audience. If a story doesn’t inspire an audience in some way, it is no good.”

(The above, BTW, is the governing philosophy of my Patreon site.)

So I offer this up for discussion. Do you think art should have a moral compass? (Yes, we can disagree about what vision is moral; but good art should at least be about making an argument for the vision, don’t you think?)

By the way, I was greatly pleased recently to learn that my oldest grandboy’s favorite bedtime story is “St.George and the Dragon.”

Escapism Rocks!

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

There’s always been a certain amount of stress associated with being alive. In pre-historic times, this was largely based on concerns over being eaten by large animals. Or by having pointy things stuck into your body by the tribe down the road. At the same time, you had crops to attend to and weather events to deal with. All with no TV, internet, or Candy Crush.

Later on, the Greeks sat around inventing philosophy and giving people more reasons for stress, as in, trying to figure out the point of this bewildering existence. Religion was asking the same questions in places like India, China, and Jerusalem.

As the great historians say, stuff happens. Like war. More stress. In America we had a war oddly called “Civil.” And later joined the right side in a couple of wars big enough to be called “World.”

In between WWI and II, we had the Great Depression, and the stress of actually getting food onto the table. Jobs were scarce. Prospects, in many cases, dim.

Which is where escapism stepped in to offer rays of entertaining sunshine. You had the movies, of course. For a dime you could spend a few hours with Astaire and Rogers, Gable and Tracy, Hepburn and Grant. Radio was pervasive, providing laughs from Benny and Hope and Fibber McGee, and adventures with The Lone Ranger and The Shadow. And comfort by way of “fireside chats” delivered by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself.

But by far the most popular form of escapism came by way of the pulp magazines. In the 1930s the pulps were booming. Newsstands and drug stores carried dozens of magazines with names like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Amazing Stories, Adventure, and Thrilling Western. Popular series characters (what the great pulp writer Erle Stanley Gardner called “the writer’s insurance policy”) included Nick Carter, Doc Savage, Tarzan, Conan the Cimmerian, Buck Rogers, Sailor Steve Costigan, and Bill Lennox.

Indeed, some of our best American writers came out of the pulps—people like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Robert E. Howard, Fredric Brown, and Horace McCoy. Not to mention the many steady professionals who knew one thing above all—how to tell a dang good story.

And just what did these stories have in common? I think Gardner himself said it best:

“The public wants stories because it wants to escape.…The writer is bringing moral strength to many millions of people because the successful story inspires the audience. If a story doesn’t inspire an audience in some way, it is no good.”

I believe this is still true. Which is why I’m launching my own short fiction channel via Patreon.

If you’re not familiar with Patreon, it’s a site where artists of various stripes can find support for their work. Friends, family, and fans become patrons of the artist. Usually that comes in the form of monthly pledges, in return for which a patron receives various benefits, such as early access to new work or a personally autographed print.

But there is another model called “per creation,” which seems to me more applicable to writers. In this model, patrons are not charged monthly, but only when an actual story is published. My job is to deliver the goods, which means entertaining escapism for a busy reading public. Stories you can read on the subway or the bus, or while waiting for the doctor, or simply at home after a long day when you don’t feel like cracking Moby Dick.

All of the details about this venture are on my page. I hope some of you will join me in this venture. The stories I publish will not appear anywhere else. You’ll be able to read this exclusive content online, on your phone via the free Patreon app, or on your Kindle, Nook or Kobo ereader.

My first story will come out June 1. It takes place in Hollywood in 1945. There’s a movie studio, a murder, and a studio troubleshooter named William “Wild Bill” Armbrewster. He’s going to be a series character, so this would be a good time to get in on the ground floor.

Because in times such as these, escapism rocks.

So what are some of your favorite books, movies, or TV shows when you simply want to escape?

Be Productive, Persistent, and Professional

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

I’ve written often in this space about my admiration for the pulp writers of old. As I was learning the craft myself, I often turned to these writers for inspiration. Not just for their stories, but their practices as well. I found they did three things above all—they were productive, persistent and professional.

Productivity

The first mark of the successful pulp writer was productivity. They wrote. They wrote a lot. And they usually wrote on manual typewriters, several of them producing up to a million or more words a year.

Frederick Faust, aka Max Brand

Indeed, perhaps the most prolific author of all time, Frederick Faust (better known by his pen name Max Brand) wrote 4,000 words a day every day for about thirty years. How on earth did he do it? Especially since he drank whiskey all day and then, when finished with his fourteen pages, settled down to his serious drinking? (I do not recommend this method.)

Pulp writers had to be productive. They had to put food on the table, especially during the Depression. They were often being paid a penny a word. (Erle Stanley Gardner figured out that if he used a character’s full name in dialogue attributions, it was an extra penny. Thus, you’ll see his Perry Mason stories filled with: “Come in,” Perry Mason said. “Hello,” said Paul Drake. “Shall I stay?” asked Della Street.)

Be productive. Set a weekly quota of words. What can you comfortably do? Up that by 10% and keep track of your daily output on a spreadsheet. Review and adjust your quota every year.

“The most critical thing a writer does,” said the late Robert B. Parker, “is produce.”

Persistence

In the pulp days, if you wanted to break into a market, you had to overcome hundreds of rejection slips. In the 30s and 40s, the golden age of pulp, most magazines had headquarters in New York. Many a writer moved to the Big Apple so they could walk around and knock on doors and meet editors personally.

While they waited for a break, they continued to write and cop “hobo soup” at the automat. (That’s where you’d get a cup of hot water and dump in a healthy dose of ketchup, salt & pepper, and stir, then crumble in saltines—all these ingredients were free.)

Now, with digital self-publishing a viable option, you don’t have to wait to be published. But in most cases you’ll have to wait to make significant headway in the market. How long will it take before you start seeing more than coffee money come your way? That all depends on how productive you are (see above) and if you operate like a professional (see below).

Professionalism

The pulp writers approached writing as a job. They had to. They didn’t have time to sit around cafés gabbing endlessly about theories of literature. So they studied the markets, figured out what worked in those markets, and learned how to make their own writing better.

You can do the same. Study markets, expand your craft, and keep writing and adding your own spices.

When pulp writers sent in a manuscript, they made sure it was typed cleanly. When they talked to an editor, they made sure they spoke cleanly, for burning bridges was a fast route to the soup kitchen.

They had egos, sure, but they kept them in check because publishing is a small world. On occasion they’d push back on an editor messing with one of their stories, but they tried to keep it respectful. It was a good thing Twitter did not exist in the 1930s.

Professionalism still matters. Even if you self-publish, readers will pick up a vibe about you, stretching from the design of the books themselves all the way through your social media footprint.

So be wise about your profile, remembering what Erle Stanley Gardner said: “I serve the reading public.”

So should you. Which is why I’m happy to announce a new book, one I’ve wanted to do for a long time. It’s designed to teach the secrets of the great pulp writers, everything from how to be more prolific to the best plotting methods to my exclusive Start-a-Plot Machine.

HOW TO WRITE PULP FICTION is available now. Here’s where you can get it:

KINDLE

NOOK

KOBO

PRINT VERSION

A final word on pulp fiction. A certain class of literati has sniffed at its very existence. I even read one jeremiad that claimed commercial fiction writers have “sold their souls” to the “devil” of profitability, and how can they even look at themselves in the mirror?

Yeesh.

Well, I continue to shave in the morning and my mirror is clean, and I delight in what a successful pulp writer named William Wallace Cook (writing under the pen name John Milton Edwards) wrote over 100 years ago:

The tale that moves breathlessly but logically, that is built incident upon incident to a telling climax with the frankly avowed purpose to entertain, that has no questionable leanings or immoral affiliations—such a tale speeds innocently an idle hour, diverts pleasantly the harassed mind, freshens our zeal for the duties of life, and occasionally leaves us with higher ideals.

An honorable goal, I would say.

So, TKZers, how are you stacking up on the three Ps—productivity, persistence, professionalism?

Avoiding Reader Burnout by Texting the Gods

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(c) Copyright 2017, Random House Books for Young Readers

I’ve been repeatedly having the same vaguely disturbing conversation in person and via email with a number of individuals recently about books and reading. The topic is variously referred to as “reading fatigue,” “book burnout,” and “reading slump,” among other terms. The complaint centers upon the perceived feeling that new books being published are “all” following the same pattern. Elements of that pattern would include 1) “the placement of the word ‘girl’ in the title; 2) the unreliable first-person narrator; and 3) a missing child/husband/sister who seems to suddenly reappear with an inability to explain their absence.

It is true that publishing industry generally is reactive and not proactive. We all remember The Da Vinci Code. That book became a sub-genre unto itself. It seemed for a while as if every other newly published book concerned a hunt for an ancient relic that, depending on what it was and who was hunting it, would destroy, save, or enslave the world. Going back a bit further, Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent and John Grisham’s The Firm revived the popularity of the courtroom thriller, though it’s not as if that sub-genre ever really went away, once Erle Stanley Gardner had taken that beachhead in the 1930s with his Perry Mason novels.

There is some method to publishing’s madness, based on the proposition that if the public likes a certain type of book then it will want more of the same. I don’t recall a research  ever calling me and asking, “If you went to the library tomorrow, what type of book would you look for?” My answer would be “bound,” but that’s beside the point.

What does this mean for budding authors? My best advice is to not follow trends. If someone writes a book about an alcoholic housewife on a train who suspects that she has witnessed a murder being committed, and it becomes a bestseller, write your book about something else. Flip the script. Write about a recovering alcoholic who is as reliable as a Fossil Haywood and who, while doing some backyard gardening,  believes that she sees someone being murdered on the LIRR. I’m only kind of kidding. Do something different, because by the time you write your book and find an agent the publishers will probably be looking for something else. As for readers: if you’re tired of new books, look for an author who is new to you, or go back to the past and seek out something in your favorite genre among the mountains of books that have been published in the past sixty years or so. You can also seek out a couple of go-to authors. When I do my own reading, and nothing seems to please me, I pick up one of Timothy Hallinan’s fine novels, or an Elmore Leonard book, or start working my way through James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux canon, among others, to shake me out of my doldrums. Reading is good for you. You don’t want to stop.

Whatever you do, whether you are writing or reading or both, please don’t develop the impression that there are too many books. One of the blessings in my life is my association with bookreporter.com. I started reviewing books for Carol Fitzgerald’s website twenty years ago, and one of the many happy results of that relationship is that I receive new books of all sorts on an almost daily basis. Some of them are outside of my interest or demographic or whatever you wish to call it, as was one which I recently received entitled Greek Gods #squadgoals by Courtney Carbone, a children’s book editor and author. I thumbed through it and was totally lost — I don’t get the whole ‘#’ thing, or tweeting, Instagram, Pinterest, and the rest,  and probably never will — but the premise of the book was interesting, if incomprehensible to me in execution. It tells the stories of Greek Mythology from the point of view of the participants while assuming that they had smartphones and could text one another. I passed the book onto Samantha,  our (almost) eleven granddaughter. Samantha lives in the same city as we do, and as a result — another blessing — we get to see her frequently. I left Greek Gods at her place at the kitchen table. She came over for a visit, picked it up, and was entranced. She put her phone down, ignored the computer, turned off the flat screen, and started reading it from beginning to end, laughing all the way and sharing passages with us. Samantha is no stranger to books. She is working her way through that wonderful Warriors series by Erin Hunter and the likes of R. L. Stine, Chris Grabenstein’s Mr. Lemoncello books, and a host of others. This doesn’t happen by accident. Her father —my son — is a reader himself, and makes sure that she gets to the library and a local children’s bookstore pretty much on demand. I was happiest, however, about Samantha devoting full focus to Greek Gods. Whether she will at some point down the road pour over Edith Hamilton’s classic work on the subject, in the same manner in which those wonderful Classics Illustrated comics led me to H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and yes, Fyodor Dostoyevsky,  remains to be seen. What is certain, however, is that from Samantha’s perception there won’t be too many books, or not enough interesting ones. There simply won’t be enough time to read them all.

Back to you. What book or series would you want to read right now, time and availability permitting? For me, it would be Richard Prather’s Shell Scott series, in the original paperback editions. You?