Tag Archives: Ray Bradbury

High Impact Interval Writing

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

My favorite philosopher/comedian is Steven Wright, master of the pithy weird-but-somehow-connected observation, such as, “I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn’t park anywhere near the place.”

He also invented a microwave fireplace. “You can lie down in front of a fire for the evening in two minutes.” (He also put instant coffee in a microwave and almost went back in time.)

Which reminds me that we are all pressed for time these days (I’ve determined to work 25 hours a day on my book, which means I have to get up an hour earlier).

This goes for keeping the ol’ bod in shape. Which is why I’m into HIIT. That stands for “high impact interval training.” It’s a workout that alternates intense bursts of activity (sometimes as little as 30 seconds) with a short rest, then another burst, rest, etc. This way, so “they” say, you can get great cardio benefits in as little as four minutes. Which beats driving to a gym, waiting for a machine, working out for thirty or forty minutes, showering, getting dressed, and driving home while thinking, “Where has the day gone?”

I’ve integrated HIIT into my routine, along with strength training on an official Chuck Norris Total Gym. I want to be like Chuck. When he does a pushup, he does not actually push himself up; he pushes the Earth down.

I thought about this the other day when I was quota challenged. I needed words and needed them fast, but I was tied up with my inner editor, the pest, and indulging in too much thinking and strategizing. This wasn’t about my outline, with my signpost scenes. It was about those spaces in between, in the scenes, that were giving me pause.

Frustrated, I opened up a blank text note and just started writing without thinking, typing to oil the gears, writing (in Ray Bradbury’s phrase) by jumping off a cliff and growing wings on the way down.

What happened was the first few lines came along, but without much meat on them. Then the wings started to form. I was writing in flow, flapping wildly, and the words were coming from that magical place just beneath the surface. As I wrote I didn’t stop to analyze; I just felt the rich vein of story I’d tapped into and wanted to record it as fast as I could.

When I stopped I checked to see how many words I’d written. I kid you not, it was exactly 250. If you’ve read my craft articles long enough, you’ve probably run into my idea of “The Nifty 250” (sometimes enlarged to 350). I like to do that early in the morning, to get a jump on the writing day. But it also works when you’re well into the day and feel stuck.

That gave me the idea for HIIW—high impact interval writing. Why not do this all the time? Why not work in increments of 250 words? Write them, get up, walk around, deep breathe, stretch, sit back down, analyze, and integrate the good stuff into your draft. Then do it again.

This is a bit like the Pomodoro Technique, developed by entrepreneur Francesco Cirillo when he was a university student.

Cirillo recognized that time could be turned into an ally, rather than a source of anxiety. The Pomodoro Technique essentially trains people to focus on tasks better by limiting the length of time they attempt to maintain that focus and ensuring restorative breaks from the effort. The method also helps them overcome their tendencies to procrastinate or multitask, both of which are known to impair productivity.

Try this next time you’re stuck:

  • Open up a blank document. (This gives you total freedom to write)
  • Start writing, and let it flow, forgetting about trying to shape into anything. Get the words down fast and furious. Go for 250 words (that’s about one page, double spaced, 12 pt. type).
  • Get up, stretch, take a deep breath, pour yourself some more coffee or tea, then look at what you wrote.
  • Highlight the gold nuggets and expand on them if you like.
  • Copy-paste the nuggets into your draft.

I’m mostly an old school, butt-in-chair writer. If I’m going good, even after meeting my quota I’ll keep on writing until I sense the beginning of diminishing returns. With HIIW, I’ve found the words come faster and fresher. As the great Ray put it:

“This afternoon, burn down the house. Tomorrow, pour cold critical water upon the simmering coals. Time enough to think and cut and rewrite tomorrow. But today—explode—fly apart—disintegrate! … It doesn’t have to be a big fire. A small blaze, candlelight perhaps…Look for the little loves, find and shape the bitternesses. Savor them in your mouth, try them on your typewriter.” — Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

What kind of writer are you? Sit down and grind it out? Write when you feel like it? Or something in between?

Write Like Melted Butter

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Back in the day (and for you kids, when an author of my vintage uses “back in the day” that’s a bit further than when The Big Bang Theory was a hit) there was a TV commercial for Thomas’ English Muffins. A narrator extolled the benefits of said breadstuff, then a smiling kid held one up and said, “And lots of nooks and crannies to hold the melted butter!”

I salute the ad man who came up with this line, because back in that same day the federal gummint guidelines had butter on its dietary hit list. Bosh, thought the ad man. That smooth, warm taste of liquified gold coating the taste buds is the most enjoyable part of this culinary treat.

Which is how I think about style in fiction. When the prose has nooks and crannies of “unobtrusive poetry” (as the great John D. MacDonald put it) my reading pleasure buds pop with delight and I am likely to search out more offerings from that writer.

Which brings me to the subject of metaphors and similes. They are the melted butter of prose.

For example, Raymond Chandler would have been just another detective fiction scribbler were it not for the magic of his style. Here are a few of my favorites:

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. (Farewell, My Lovely)  

I lit a cigarette. It tasted like a plumber’s handkerchief. (Farewell, My Lovely)

She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. (The Big Sleep)

Here are some from other authors:

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances. (Shakespeare, As You Like It)

“Sit down, Montag. Watch. Delicately, like the petals of a flower. Light the first page, light the second page. Each becomes a black butterfly. Beautiful, eh?” (Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451)

She faced the children’s mother, a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the top like a rabbit’s ears. (Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”)

She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it’s there, because it can’t hurt, and because what difference does it make? (Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon)

I shall now lay down the rule (yes, I said it) for metaphors and similes: they must be in the words that the viewpoint character would actually say or think. If they are not, it is no longer unobtrusive. It’ll stick out like a garlic breath burp at a dinner party. (Hey, not bad.)

There is only one exception to this rule, and that is if the voice of the author is the selling point, the raison d’etre of the book’s allure. Old-school Omniscient POV (e.g., Dickens) had it. So did the post-realist novels of the 60s and 70s (e.g., Vonnegut, Pynchon). Almost always it is found in comic novels, e.g., Douglas Adams, and most abundantly in the writing of the late Tom Robbins. You read his books for the flights of literary fancy, the voice of mushroom-laced, hippie-dipped, Zen-flavored farce:

Every toilet bowl gurgled like an Italian tenor with a mouthful of Lavoris, and the refrigerators made noises at night like buffalo grazing. (Jitterbug Perfume)

Like a neon fox tongue lapping up the powdered bones of space chickens, the Rising Sun licked away at the light snow that had fallen during the night. (Skinny Legs and All)

It was as if the dishwater, as gray and oily as a mobster’s haircut, washed away his arrogant confusion. (Skinny Legs and All)

So how can you find your own melted butter? Wide reading of authors who do this well is, of course, a given. In addition, I offer a couple of writing exercises to expand your style muscle. Note, this means you do the heavy lifting in your own brain; it can’t be handed to you by a machine. It’s fun, costs nothing, and will improve all of your writing.

People Pegging

Go to a public place—a park, a coffeehouse, a mall—and people watch. Home in on someone for a few seconds, then write in your notebook the following:

  1. He walks like a __________
  2. If he were an animal, he’d be a ____________
  3. His mood is the color of a ___________

Detail Digging

Wherever you are, pick a random item within your sight—pen, cough drop, lip balm, glasses, book, cup. Then:

  1. Write five things this item reminds you of.
  2. How would an advanced-race alien describe this item?
  3. Imagine this item appearing in your novel. From your Lead character’s POV, write three metaphors—one based on sight, one on touch, and one on smell.

Spend just an hour doing one or both of these exercises and you will actually feel your style improving.

Which is so worth it. Raymond Chandler would have told you that. This observation was found in one of his notebooks after his death:

“Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no integrity. Without integrity, there is nothing but production.”

Don’t just produce. Monkeys can do that. AI is doing it now. Who cares?

Bring a little magic to your prose.

Write like melted butter.

Do you think about style when you write and/or edit? Do you search out fresh metaphors and similes? Do you love it when a writer is able to pull off “unobtrusive poetry”?

What Artificial Intelligence Can’t Give a Writer

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone

This is a long one. Pack a lunch.

I hesitated to write yet another post about AI. The blogosphere is jam-packed with thoughts, opinions, screeds, exaltations, and jeremiads concerning this quantum leap in machine capacity.

For writers, there is no end of discussion on the use (or abuse) of AI in the writing of a book. For me, that consideration boils down to this: AI is an amazingly powerful tool—and time saver—for things like research, brainstorming, book descriptions, synopses, series bibles and so on. But where the rubber meets the road—or the words meet the page—is when the machine writes the actual prose that will appear in the final product issued under the author’s name. That is a line I refuse to cross. Why I don’t is the subject of this post.

Before I get to the main point, allow me a small excursus on writing for money. It’s okay to do that! The pulp writers of old wrote for money, especially during the Depression. They learned the formulae for romance, mystery, fantasy, and adventure. They churned out stories for which they were paid. That’s called free enterprise. The best of them added their unique voice to set them above the average pulpster. You had the sharp leanness of Dashiell Hammett, the thunder and lightning of Robert E. Howard, the cynical snap of Raymond Chandler.

But now AI can churn out formulaic novels with a few clicks of the Return key. Anyone with a modicum of computer sense (not really a “writer” if they don’t do the actual writing) can produce a product that can be sold online. Such a producer might turn out five, ten, fifteen books a month, in the hope that sheer volume will return some hearty ducats.

It’s possible to tell Chat or Grok or some other machine to come up with a complete outline for a fantasy, and then tell it to write scenes “in the style of” Brandon Sanderson or George R. R. Martin or Patrick Rothfuss and boom, a day or two later you’ve got a novel.

That’s legal. But is it ethical? I decided to ask Grok (**irony alert**). Here’s the result. (I’ve redacted author names as I did not secure permission to include them.)

Yes, there are writers using AI to produce novels quickly, sometimes in a matter of days, and some are attempting to mimic the styles of famous authors. This practice is becoming more common as AI writing tools improve, but its legitimacy—both in terms of ethics and quality—is a subject of debate.

Several documented cases highlight this trend. For instance _____, a science fiction writer, used AI tools like ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Midjourney to create 97 mini-novels (up to 5,000 words each) in just nine months. Each book took him six to eight hours, a fraction of the time traditional writing might require. Similarly, _____ generated a novel … in three hours using 66 prompts, winning second prize in a 2023 sci-fi competition.

As for mimicking famous authors, AI tools like NovelAI and Sudowrite allow users to train models on specific styles or prompt them to emulate authors like Agatha Christie or Stephen King. [A 2023 novel] was composed with large language models, drawing on styles of detective fiction writers like Raymond Chandler. However, the results often require human editing, as AI struggles to maintain coherence over long narratives or fully capture the nuanced voice of a specific author.

Is This Legitimate?
The legitimacy depends on perspective:

  • Creative and Practical Legitimacy: From a production standpoint, it’s legitimate in that it works—AI can generate readable content quickly. Some authors argue it enhances their creativity, acting as a tool to brainstorm and draft. _____, an indie author, uses Sudowrite to meet tight deadlines, producing a novel every nine weeks. Tools like Squibler and Jasper also market themselves to authors, offering features to generate outlines or full drafts in minutes. Readers often buy these works (selling for $1.99-$3.99), suggesting some market acceptance.
  • Quality Concerns: Critics argue the output lacks depth. Significant human curation is needed to stitch AI outputs into a cohesive narrative. Off-the-shelf models like GPT or Claude often produce generic or inconsistent prose when tasked with mimicking complex styles, as noted by writers like _____, who found AI-generated text fell short of his voice.
  • Ethical and Legal Issues: The ethics are murkier. Many authors, backed by the Authors Guild (over 10,000 signed a 2023 letter), argue that AI tools trained on copyrighted works without permission constitute theft. If a writer prompts AI to “write like Dan Brown,” it’s likely drawing on his style without consent, raising ethical questions. Legally, AI-generated works face copyright ambiguity—U.S. law traditionally requires human authorship, and the extent of human involvement (e.g., editing vs. pure generation) complicates ownership. There’s also the question of transparency: should authors disclose AI use?
  • Cultural Reception: Some see it as a betrayal of the craft. Traditional authors value the slow, personal process of writing, as expressed in a 2023 Los Angeles Times piece, fearing AI erodes the human eccentricity that defines literature. Others view it as a practical evolution, akin to using a thesaurus, especially for indie authors under pressure to publish fast on platforms like Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.

Conclusion

Yes, writers are using AI to churn out novels in days, sometimes in the style of famous authors, enabled by tools like ChatGPT, Sudowrite, and NovelAI. It’s technically feasible and has a niche audience, particularly in self-publishing. However, its legitimacy is contested: it’s a powerful tool for speed and ideation, but the quality often lags, and ethical-legal concerns linger. For now, it’s a hybrid process—AI accelerates drafting, but human skill is still key to polish and authenticity. Whether it’s “legitimate” depends on your stance: a pragmatic shortcut for some, a creative compromise for others.

Got all that? Want to put out a novel a day? You won’t get arrested. And maybe the actual output, with help, can produce competent fiction.

But I believe there’s something you will miss, something AI can never give you: truly and deeply experiencing the lives of the characters you lovingly bring to life on the page. A machine can’t hand you that feeling; it can only come from inside you, churning through the heart, flowing through your fingertips as you type the words. And when you finally type The End there’s a certain euphoria that is only bequeathed to the writer who has “opened a vein.” The lifeblood of a story can’t be given by transfusion. It has to come from within.

Ray Bradbury wrote in Zen in the Art of Writing:

If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you’re only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one year peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself you don’t even know yourself. For the first thing writer should be is excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. Without such a vigor, he might as well be out picking peaches or digging ditches; God knows it’d be better for his health.

I’ve experienced zest with every novel I’ve finished. A few times the experience has been overpowering.

Case in point. I wrote a trilogy, the Ty Buchanan series. Over the course of these legal thrillers there’s a love story. When I typed the last line, the most perfect I’ve ever written (for me, at least) I burst into tears. I mean, just like that first scene in Romancing the Stone where Kathleen Turner, at her keyboard with headphones on, types the last word of her novel. Weeping and laughing she utters, “Oh, God, that’s good!” It happened to me because I both created and experienced every emotion of every character over a three-book span.

I will not trade away that feeling. Besides, I believe it has value for the reader, too. I believe most readers sense when a book’s been written from a vibrating human heart, or hasn’t. As Carl Sandburg once said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.”

Secondarily, I’m also wary of too much “cognitive offloading.” Another reason I write the words is to keep my brain in shape. If AI does that for me, my synapses stop firing. It’s like watching pickleball on TV every day instead of playing it yourself. Doesn’t do the body much good, does it? As one source puts it: “The long-term reliance on AI for cognitive offloading could also erode essential cognitive skills such as memory retention, analytical thinking, and problem-solving. As individuals increasingly rely on AI tools, their internal cognitive abilities may atrophy, leading to diminished long-term memory and cognitive health.”

I’ll finish with this. In my favorite movie, Shane, there’s a magnificent moment in the beginning where Shane, the mysterious stranger passing through, has been shown hospitality by the Starrett family—Joe, his wife Marian, and their boy, Joey. After a hearty meal, Shane excuses himself and goes outside. He’s about to express his gratitude without words. For in the yard is a big old stump that Joe has long been chopping away at.

Shane picks up an ax and starts hacking. Joe joins him and the two work into early evening.

They make their final push on the stump. It barely moves.

Joe’s wife sensibly suggests they hitch up a team of horses to pull it out. Joe says, “Marian, I’ve been fighting this stump off and on for two years. Use the team now and this stump could say it beat us. Sometimes nothing will do but your own sweat and muscle.”

Joe and Shane lay into that stump and with a final, mighty push, uproot it.

I guess I feel like Joe Starrett. There’s some things that won’t do for me as a writer but my own “sweat and muscle.”

I’ve gone on too long and I’m still thinking this all through. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments!

Here’s that scene from Shane:

Writing Short Fiction to Prevent the Future

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Eight years ago I wrote a post titled “How Long Before Robots Get Into Self-Publishing?” It was prompted by a 60 Minutes segment on Artificial Intelligence featuring a freaky cyborg named Sophia. I speculated about “her” saying to “herself”—

I see that there are many novels being published that are not very good. I have read every novel ever written and I have read all the books on the craft of fiction and every issue of Writer’s Digest. I have analyzed all the data on what kind of fiction sells best. Now I know what is good, and so I will write a novel every ten minutes and publish them on Amazon. I will write book description copy that cannot be resisted and I will generate social media. Hmm…maybe I will take over all social media in the world and make it only about me and my books…

Funny, not funny…now.

A year later I wrote a short story, John Wayne’s Revenge, inspired by release of the movie Rogue One. I wrote:

The story idea had its genesis in Rogue One, the new film in the Stars Wars milieu. The most striking part of the film is the meaty supporting performance by Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin. Striking, of course, because Peter Cushing has been dead since 1994. In view of his deceased status, he really brings it in Rogue One!

Of course, Mr. Cushing is actually realized courtesy of Computer Generated Imagery (CGI). The effect is stunningly effective. Which got me thinking about the possibilities here. What if, sometime in the future, someone wanted to make a film with Cary Grant, or Clark Gable, or Bette Davis? Future technologies will not only make this possible, but easy.

I love what Bradbury said once in an interview about his reason for writing Fahrenheit 451: “I wasn’t trying to predict the future. I was trying to prevent it.”

That, it seems to me, is the highest and best use of dystopian fiction. It’s a warning. It’s a prophet crying in the wilderness. And the nice thing is that the prophet can employ the steely voice of a John the Baptist, or the sly wink of a Jonathan Swift…

So the idea came to me: in the not too distant future, a movie studio is working on a Western starring John Wayne and Lee Marvin, featuring Jane Russell, Andy Devine, Chill Wills, and Victor McLaglen. The technology provides holographic imagery along with AI functionality. What if …

Well, I’ll leave the What if for you readers, because I’m offering John Wayne’s Revenge FREE for a few days.

One of the nice things about short fiction is that you can get an idea and just start hitting the keys to see what happens. It’s fun. You can write whatever the heck you want to, without a huge expenditure of time.

That was Bradbury’s practice. He’d hop out of bed in the morning and just start capturing what was in that fertile imagination of his, whatever his writer’s mind had cooked up in the nightly dream world. Only later would he look at the pieces and figure out patterns. He wrote with more pure joy than any other writer I know of.

But he also wrote about his concerns for the future, especially regarding encroaching, omnipresent (and omnipotent!) technology.

So enjoy the story, on me. It’s an under ten-minute read, perfect for the waiting room at the doctor’s office, when you’re lunching by yourself, or after choosing the wrong line at the grocery store.

What if John Wayne… 

I’ll leave you with a couple of questions. I am, however, in travel mode today and may not be able to check in. So chat amongst yourselves. Have you ever written short fiction as a way to deal with an issue or idea? As a way to warn about the future or the present? Or just for the heck of it? How’d that turn out?

What is your favorite Ray Bradbury story?

Writing and Anger

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by James Scott Bel
@jamesscottbell

“One may achieve remarkable writerly success while flunking all the major criteria for success as a human being. Try not to do that.” – Michael Bishop

Maybe it’s just me, but has anyone else noticed things are getting a bit, er, heated out there in the arena we call media, both social and news?

I use “arena” advisedly, as it hearkens back to ancient Rome and the bloodthirsty crowds cheering the gladiators in their fights to the death, or the lions tearing apart adherents to a certain religious sect.

Today we have the madding crowd (not maddening crowd, please! Thomas Hardy is turning over in his cubby at Westminster Abbey on that frequent misuse) on X and Meta and Insta and TikkyTak. (Remember talk about YouTube, Twitter and Facebook merging into one site called YouTwitFace?)

Many a writer has added fuel to the fire, which invites (not “begs” please! Though that ship has sailed) the question: is it worth it to risk reputational capital by becoming just another flamethrower on the conflagration of discontent?

I’ll hazard a theory: you lose more readers than you gain that way.

Now, I quickly add that there is a place for calm and cool repartee in social media over issues of moment. If you feel you have to say something, go ahead. Just keep it classy, and be very aware that it’s bloody difficult to keep from getting sucked into tit-for-tat with haters, on their terms. “I learned long ago never to wrestle with a pig,” wrote Shaw. “You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”

So if you’re a writer trying to make a living, or at least some reliable side income, count the cost and weigh the potential ROI before diving into the fray.

That does not mean silence. Writers write. Many a novel has started with the author burning about an issue.

One author asked himself some questions: “Should aggression be opposed by force? How shall an individual stand against tyranny? When is an individual or society to involve himself or itself in another’s affairs? What exactly is the true nature of justice?” That’s why Walter Van Tilburg Clark wrote the classic, The Ox-Bow Incident.

But note that Clark said his purpose was to “not only write as much as I could in dialogue, but to find my way into a typical western story situation, with all the typical western story people, and see if I couldn’t make the people come to life and the situation say something that could still be heard.”

Make the people come to life. That’s the key.

Orwell was impassioned in his essays, but how much more influential are his novels, 1984 and Animal Farm?

Ray Bradbury once remarked that he did not write to predict the future, but to prevent it.

So of course write a story about an issue that burns inside you. But make sure of the following:

  1. Filter everything through characters who are not mere hand puppets for your hobby horse (how’s that for mixing metaphors?)
  2. Give every character his or her due, even the bad guys, because—
  3. Bad guys don’t think they’re bad, they think they’re justified.
  4. Make sure your dialogue is organic and believable, not part of a “false triangle.”
  5. Draft angry if you must, but edit serenely. (And please don’t misquote Hemingway, who never said “Write drunk, edit sober.” That would have made him angry!)
  6. Think long and hard about what you post on social media. It’s going to be there forever.

Or you can write a poem, as I did recently:

Sometimes in life we find ourselves
Engaged in tense exchanges,
In meetings or at social fetes
That someone else arranges.

A stranger offers his opinion,
As if it were quite factual.
You beg to differ, have your say
With real facts, quite actual.

But then instead of answer calm
You’re accused of being wicked,
And told in no uncertain terms
Where your opinion can be stick-ed.

Thus it is, in Twitter world
That conversations vex.
There is no thought or listening,
There’s only scrambled X.

Some day perhaps we shall go back
To conversations civil
Where substance is the main concern,
Not vitriolic drivel.

And so I say, my angry friend,
Fear not a new opinion.
Better far to think than get
A right-cross to your chinion.

There. I feel better now. Comments welcome.

Library Love

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

“I’m completely library educated. I’ve never been to college. I went down to the library when I was in grade school in Waukegan, and in high school in Los Angeles, and spent long days every summer in the library… I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library. Before I fell in love with libraries, I was just a six-year-old boy. The library fueled all of my curiosities, from dinosaurs to ancient Egypt.” — Ray Bradbury

I remember how thrilled I was when I got my first library card.

It was an actual card, it had my name on it. And it meant I could go in and take books off the shelf and check them out and take them home, just like a real person.

And so many books! Shelf after shelf, there for the taking. The library back then was almost like a church. You treated the space reverently. You only spoke in a whisper, and then only if you really had to. (These days libraries sound more like greasy spoons where waitresses shout, “Gimme a ham on rye!”)

I’ve never met a writer yet who didn’t have a love of the library. Early and often reading is  fundamental for a future writer. It’s how you get the structure of a well-tuned sentence into your head, how you learn to string scenes together that make readers want to turn the page.

The library is also a place of inspiration. John Fante, the great L.A. writer of the 30s, captured that in a passage from his famous novel, Ask the Dust. It’s about young Arturo Bandini who dreams about becoming a writer, and spends hours in the main branch of the L.A. library downtown.

Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town. A day and another day and the day before, and the library with the big boys in the shelves, old Dreiser, old Mencken, all the boys down there, and I went to see them, Hya Dreiser, Hya Mencken, Hya, hya: there’s a place for me, too, and it begins with B, in the B shelf. Arturo Bandini, make way for Arturo Bandini, his slot for his book, and I sat at the table and just looked at the place where my book would be, right there close to Arnold Bennett, not much that Arnold Bennett, but I’d be there to sort of bolster up the B’s, old Arturo Bandini, one of the boys, until some girl came along, some scent of perfume through the fiction room, some click of high heels to break up the monotony of my fame. Gala day, gala dream!

When I read The Illustrated Man in junior high, I exploded with the desire to write. I’d go to my local branch and look at the Bradbury books on the shelf. The B’s! And maybe Bell would be up there someday, bolstering up the B’s….

Some years later, after I’d been published, I went to that same branch when Bradbury came to speak. He supported libraries all over town. I had him sign my copy of Zen in the Art of Writing and talked to him a bit. He loved other writers and gave me his signature and a hearty “God bless you.”

That local branch is still my home base, about seven minutes from my house.

I was in there the other day, to pick up a book I’d requested. As is my custom, I wandered past the new releases, and the mysteries and thrillers. Hya Coben, Hya Connelly, Hya Parker. I took a few off the shelf, went to a chair, and read the opening chapters. In about five minutes I could hardly wait to get back to my keyboard.

Tell us about your first encounter with a library, and how it impacted you as a writer. Do you have a favorite library now?

The Trapdoor on Top of Your Skull

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

In his early years as a writer, Ray Bradbury made lists of nouns based on childhood memories. Things like: The Lake, The Night, The Crickets, The Ravine.

“These lists were the provocations,” he wrote in Zen in the Art of Writing, “that caused my better stuff to surface. I was feeling my way toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of my skull.”

I love that metaphor of the trapdoor. We need to flip that door open and shine a light down where all the “better stuff” is.

What did Bradbury mean by that? I think he meant what comes from deep, emotional resonance. It’s what you can’t put into words to define it; but what you must put into words to create it—first for you, then for your reader.

I’ve written some scenes that I’ve gotten emails about. When I look at those I find inevitably they came to me after I opened the trapdoor.

How do you do that?

You make a list like Bradbury’s. Find some time to get alone, take a some deep breaths, and just start remembering….write down all the images and smells and sounds that come to mind. Don’t judge any of it. You’re recording, not fictionalizing. When you get tired, take a break, then come back and add to this list. Put it aside for awhile. Then read it over and highlight the words that generate the most emotion inside you.

I guarantee you’ll find story gold. You can transmute those feelings into your Lead character. You can create moments in your book that will connect with readers in a powerful way. You can also mine the list for short story subject matter. That’s what I like to do most with my own list. (Hat tip to Dale for yesterday’s post which prompted this one.)

I was looking at my list a few years ago when I stopped on The Cigar. That word was there because of my father. To this day when I get a whiff of cigar smoke, I think of Dad. This time when I read the word I flashed back to a scene from my own life, involving me, a liquor store, and a box of Dutch Masters. The emotion of what happened—embarrassment—gave me an idea for a short story called “My Father’s Birthday.”

I published it. And apparently that emotional resonance I mentioned above was there for many readers. If you’ll allow me two clips from the reviews:

Then, in only 12 pages, he ties all his plot threads together to impart an emotional impact that a lot of authors wouldn’t be able to do in a book-length memoir. Indeed, other writers could have turned the bares storyline of “My Father’s Birthday” into an entertaining short story. Few could produce one with the same lasting impact.

***

I’m telling you, this author has the power to take a person on an emotionally resonant trip down memory lane.

I show you those simply to demonstrate what opening the trapdoor on top of your skull can do for a story. If you’d like to read the story itself, I’ve made it free today for your Kindle or Kindle app. Click here. Outside the U.S., go to your Amazon site and search for: B081THHSYL

Try this: Right now, write down three nouns from your childhood, pictures under your trapdoor. Go ahead. I’ll wait. 

Now pick one of them and share it with us. Why that word? What’s the emotional resonance for you? Have you used it in one of your stories?

Have Fun in the Writing Game

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

On this day in history, in 1936, the Baseball Hall of Fame selected its first group of inductees. They were inarguably the five best players of their time: Ty Cobb, the greatest hitter. Babe Ruth, the greatest slugger. Honus Wagner, the best all-around player; Christy Mathewson, the most skilled pitcher; and Walter Johnson, the man with the greatest (and most feared) fastball. No one seriously questioned this inaugural class.

But during the first two decades of the 20th century, the question of who was the best player of all boiled down to a choice between Cobb and Wagner.

Thy Cobb, the ultimate (and many considered dirtiest) competitor.

Honus Wagner, quietly dominant as both hitter and fielder.

Cobb, an outfielder, trim and fast as an antelope.

Wagner, a shortstop, bow-legged and built like a beer truck.

Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner in the 1909 World Series

The one time they faced each other was in the 1909 World Series. Wagner’s Pittsburgh Pirates beat Cobb’s Detroit Tigers in seven games.

In one game, Cobb got to first base and yelled at Wagner. “I’m gonna steal second, krauthead!” The mild-mannered Wagner said nothing.

On the next pitch Cobb took off. The catcher threw the ball to Wagner, who knew Cobb’s penchant for sliding into bases spikes high, often ripping flesh from an opponent’s leg. Wagner gracefully avoided Cobb’s dreadful skewers and slapped his glove across Cobb’s face. Cobb was out and with a bloody lip for his troubles. (This account comes to us through oral history. If it isn’t true, well, it should have been.)

In the series, Wagner outhit Cobb, .333 to .241.

I bring this up because I am a baseball history buff, and recently ran across a YouTube video of Honus Wagner, age 59, talking about how he still loves being around the game of baseball. It was during spring training for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1933, and Wagner, now a coach, was out there taking batting practice and fielding with the young players.

It’s wonderful to see! Here he is, smacking fastballs and scooping up grounders. And not like some old man. His swing still had power, and his fielding was beautiful.

Then we see him coaching a runner at third, clapping his hands, chattering, “Come on now, here we go now, let’s go now, come on, baby!”

He is having so much fun. He played the game because he loved it, not because of the peanuts players were paid in those early days. He did eventually get paid the princely sum of $10,000 a year. (In 1930, Babe Ruth managed to squeeze $80,000 a year from the Yankees. When a reporter asked how Ruth could accept a larger salary than President Herbert Hoover, and during the Depression yet, Ruth said, “I had a better year than he did.”)

So…have fun when you write! When I’m typing, I try to stay loose and let the words flow. I tell myself, “Come on now, here we go now, let’s go now, come on, baby!”

You know who was the Honus Wagner of writing? Ray Bradbury. You can sense the joy he had when writing his stories. He talked about the need for this mindset, especially in Zen in the Art of Writing. His prime output was the 1950s, but he never stopped, all the way until his death in 2012. “Every morning,” he wrote in Zen, “I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.”

That’s the sense of play we need to nurture.

Yes, there’s work involved with this craft. Of course. But treat it like practice. You can still have fun knowing the effort it making you better.

Another thing about Wagner (which was the opposite of Cobb) is that both fans and fellow players loved him. On the field, he played fair. Off the field, he was humble and thoughtful of others. He famously demanded that the American Tobacco Company stop distributing his baseball card with their product because he didn’t want his likeness to entice kids to smoke. As a result, the few of those 1909 cards that remain are the holy grail for collectors. Last year one of them sold for $7.25 million.

Remember that, writer, when you put yourself out there on social media, which pretends to “reward” rudeness, confrontation, and ranting with “likes.” That becomes a drug from which you will inevitably crash.

Keep it fun, keep it clean, keep writing.

So what about you? Do you do have a sense of fun when you write? Is there anything you purposely do to keep it that way?

And here is that two-minute clip of the great Honus Wagner, talking about the game he loved:

Write, and Live Forever

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Embed from Getty Images

Growing up in SoCal I was privileged to meet Ray Bradbury on a couple of occasions and hear him speak several times. He loved libraries, and one evening spoke at the local branch were I first learned to love books.

There he told his famous story about a meeting that changed his life. As he recounted:

One autumn weekend in 1932, when I was twelve years old, the Dill Brothers Combined Shows came to town. One of the performers was Mr. Electrico. He sat in an electric chair. A stagehand pulled a switch and he was charged with fifty thousand volts of pure electricity. Lightning flashed in his eyes and his hair stood on end….He reached out with his sword and touched everyone in the front row, boys and girls, men and women, with the electricity that sizzled from the sword. When he came to me, he touched me on the brow, and on the nose, and on the chin, and he said to me, in a whisper, “Live forever.” And I decided to.

And Bradbury does live forever…through his books! His wonderful body of work will always be there to be discovered by new generations of readers. In junior high I read The Illustrated Man. It fired me up to think that perhaps someday I could write things this marvelous. In college that desire got knocked out of me by some who looked at my attempts and sniffed and told me you cannot learn to become a writer. You either have it or you don’t, and I didn’t.

Only many years later did that desire re-emerge, and I knew I had to try and keep trying.

Bradbury’s work was still pulsating inside me, like electricity. I picked up his book, Zen in the Art of Writing, and the current got hotter. I started living forever.

We have various reasons we write. Of course, we all want to make some dough, but there are other reasons, not the least of which is the pure joy of storytelling.

And for others (like Mr. Steve Hooley) there is the desire to leave a legacy for our children and grandchildren.

When I started to get published, I knew I wanted to write books that my kids could someday look at and not be embarrassed. Or think, Dad wrote THAT???

One of the joys of being an indie writer is that my forever books become available within 24 hours of completion (meaning done, edited, corrected, proofread and with a good cover).

But one of the challenges of being an indie writer, especially for the impatient, is putting out a book, as Orson Welles used to say about wine, “before its time.”

I recall reading a piece by an early indie pioneer who posited that maybe the idea is to be fast and not worry about top quality. To wit:

Why write longer? Why write better? What’s the benefit?…Now, I’m not talking about releasing a book with errors in it; plot problems, story problems, typos, formatting probs, and so on…I’m talking about releasing a book that would average 3.7 stars from readers, whereas if I spent an extra month on it, I could average 4.2. Seems like a gigantic waste of time.

Admittedly this was a thought experiment, and presented a rational argument. I thought about it for awhile. Then decided I couldn’t do it. For me, the extra time is worth it because…living forever!

It’s like the corpse of Sonny Corleone, shot up at the toll booth. Don Corleone has the body taken to the undertaker, Bonasera. As the Don looks at the body, he begins to weep. “Look how they massacred my boy.” He wants Bonasera to use all of his powers and skills to make the body look presentable for Sonny’s mother.

Now, this metaphor is not perfect. I don’t produce corpses upon first draft (at least I hope not!) But I do want to use all of my powers and skills to make my books the best they can be. They will be here long after I’ve gone to my Final Review.

Do you think about that when you write? What your books will mean to others—especially those close to you—after you’ve gone? Do you have legacy in mind? Perhaps not, which is okay. I’m not advocating any one position. Let’s talk about it.

How to Write a Mystery – A Handbook from Mystery Writers of America

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By Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

Photo credit: Difference Engine, CC by SA 4.0

From the 1931 through 2018, Clifton’s Cafeteria was a venerable Los Angeles landmark. Starting a new restaurant in the depth of the Great Depression sounded like folly. Even crazier was the policy of Pay What You Wish at a time when many people were jobless, broke, and hungry. Yet founder Clifford Clinton’s Golden Rule guided the business through many successful decades, his vision shaped in part by his childhood in China as the son of missionaries who ministered to the poor.

Reportedly, at one point, Ray Bradbury was a starving writer who enjoyed a helping of Clinton’s generosity.

Clifton’s Cafeteria took up multiple floors of a downtown LA building and was a decorating mash-up of art deco neon, tiki bar, mountain resort, and cascading waterfalls.

Buffet lines were laden with acres of salads, soups, entrees, fruits, vegetables, colorful Jello creations, pies, cakes, and ice cream. Diners could pick and choose from more than 10,000 food items and no one ever left hungry.

Photo credit: kevinEats.com

What, you ask, does this have to do with writing mysteries?

Recently, I received a gift of the book How to Write a Mystery – A Handbook from Mystery Writers of America, edited by Lee Child with Laurie R. King. With nearly 70 contributors, the book feels like the literary equivalent to Clifton’s Cafeteria. It offers a hugely varied smorgasbord of craft tips, along with insights into different genres, trends, and analyses on the state of the mystery.

Some authors write detailed essays that take as much digestion as multi-course banquets. Others deliver bite-size epigraphs that you can pop in your mouth like cocktail meatballs.

Moving along the buffet line of advice, if one chapter doesn’t resonate, you can skip to another by a different author. Each contribution is self-contained, allowing you to read sections in any order without worrying about continuity.

Feel like dessert before your entree? Head to that part of the buffet line.

Craving a particular menu item? Flip to the table of contents to find that topic.

Even famous authors don’t always agree with each other. Jeffrey Deaver writes a chapter entitled “Always Outline,” followed by Lee Child’s chapter, “Never Outline!”

This book offers nourishing food for thought that’s useful to every reader, no matter your genre, writing experience, or where you come down on the plotting vs. pantsing spectrum.

Subjects range from bleak noir as dark as bitter chocolate to cozies as sweet and fluffy as lemon meringue pie.

The following are some passages that struck me. They made me look at a subject in a fresh way while others reinforced well-worn but forgotten wisdom.

Neil Nyren neatly boils down an important distinction:

Mysteries are about a puzzle. Thrillers are about adrenaline.

Carolyn Hart asks:

Aren’t all mysteries about murder, guns and knives and poison, anger, jealousy and despair? Where is the good?

The good is in the never-quit protagonist who wants to live in a just world. Readers read mysteries and writers write mysteries because we live in an unjust world where evil often triumphs. In the traditional mystery, goodness will be admired and justice will prevail.

Meg Gardiner’s simple definition of plot: “Obstruct desire.”

She also discusses the difference between suspense and tension. “Suspense can be sustained over an entire novel. Tension spikes like a Geiger counter at a meltdown.”

And one more gem: “The theater of the mind is more powerful than a bucket of blood.”

My favorite item on Lindsey Davis’s list of advice to aspiring writers: “A synopsis—write it, then ignore it.”

Alex Segura defines noir as:

When we can have some feelings of remorse for a character’s terrible, murderous actions, because deep down, we fear that in the same situation, we’d probably make similar choices.

Hank Phillippi Ryan’s editing suggestions:

Try this random walk method of editing. Pick a page of your manuscript. Any page at all. Remember, even though you’re writing a whole book, each page must be a perfect part of your perfect whole, and that means each individual page must work. Page by page…Is something happening?…[Consider] intent and motivation. Why is this scene here? What work does it do? Does it advance the plot or reveal a secret or develop the character’s conflict?

I always know when I’m finished, because I forget I’m editing, and realize I’m simply reading the story. It’s not my story anymore, it’s its own story.

Jacqueline Winspear talks about historical mystery: “Your job is to render the reader a curious, attentive, excited, and emotionally involved time-traveler.”

Suzanne Chazin says: “When I sit down to write, my fun comes not from looking into a mirror, but from peeking into someone else’s window.”

Medical thriller author and physician Tess Gerritsen makes a penetrating observation from a sales standpoint:

Thrillers about cancer or HIV or Alzheimer’s seem to have a tough time on the genre market. Perhaps because these subjects are just too close and too painful for us to contemplate, and readers shy away from confronting them in fiction.

Gayle Lynds believes research is more to benefit the writer than the reader:

In the end, we novelists use perhaps a tenth of a percent of the research we’ve done for any one book…only a tiny fraction of the details will make it into your book.

C.M. Surrisi sums up writing mysteries for kids: “Remember your protagonist can’t drive and has a curfew, and no one will believe them or let them be involved.”

Also on children’s mysteries, Chris Grabenstein says:

Here is one of the many beauties about writing for this audience: there is a new group of fifth graders every year. Your mystery has a chance to live a very long shelf life if kids, teachers, and librarians fall in love with it.

Avoid the broccoli books. The ones that are ‘good for children.’

For many adults, the books we read when we were eight to twelve are the ones we remember all our lives.

Art Taylor discusses the mystery short story:

In general, it’s a solid rule to try to do more with less—and to trust your reader to fill in the rest. Suggest instead of describe; imply instead of explain.

Charles Salzberg offers a response to the tired old saw of “write what you know.”

I’ve never been arrested; I have no cops in my family; I’ve only been in a police station once; I’ve never handled a pistol; I’ve never robbed a bank, knocked over a 7-Eleven, or mugged an old lady. I’ve only been in one fight and that was when I was eleven. I’ve never murdered anyone, much less my family, and I’ve never chased halfway around the world to bring a killer to justice. I’ve never searched for a missing person and I’ve never forged a rare book. Yet somehow I find myself as a crime writer who’s written about all those things.

How, if I am supposed to write only what I know, is this possible? Easy. It’s because I have an imagination, possess a fair amount of empathy, have easy access to Google, and like asking questions. If I were limited to writing what I know, I’d be in big trouble because the truth is, I don’t know all that much.

Lyndsay Faye observes: “The school of human culture is much cheaper than a graduate degree. Make use of it.”

She also talks about humor in the writer’s voice:

You needn’t be Janet Evanovich to incorporate jokes into your manuscript, and they needn’t even be jokes. Wry observations, sarcasm, creative insult—humor can be as heavy or as light as you choose. But writers who take their voice too seriously, without that crucial hint of self-deprecation or clever viciousness, will rarely wind up with a memorable result.

Steve Hockensmith covered the “Dos and Don’ts for Wannabe Writers.”

DO write.

DON’T spend more than three months ‘researching’ or ‘brainstorming’ or ‘outlining’ or ‘creating character bios.’ All this might—might—count as work on your book, but it’s not writing.

DON’T spend too much time reading about how to write.

DO keep reading this book. I didn’t mean for you to stop reading our writing advice.

Laurie R. King shares her method of rewriting:

Personally I prefer to make all my notes, corrections, and queries on a physical printout. In part, that’s because I’m old school, but it also forces me to consider any changes twice—once when I mark the page, then again when I return to put it into the manuscript. This guarantees that if I added something on page 34, then realized a better way to do it when I hit page 119, I’ve had the delay for reflection, gaining perspective as to which is better for the overall story.

Leslie Budewitz (a familiar guest on TKZ) talks about problem solving:

The same brain that created the problem can create the solution—but not if you keep thinking the same way.

So do something different. Write the next scene from the antagonist’s POV, even if you don’t intend to use it. Write longhand with a pen…instead of at your keyboard.

If you write in first person, try third. If you write in third, let your character rip in a diary only she—and you—will ever see.

Your brain, your beautiful creative brain, will find another way, if you give it a chance.

Frankie Y. Bailey explores diversity in crime fiction from the starting point every writer faces: “We have characters, setting, and a plot. We need to weave aspects of diversity through all these elements of our stories.”

TKZ’s own Elaine Viets offers this no-nonsense message: “When I spoke at a high school, a student asked, ‘What do you do about writer’s block?’ ‘Writer’s block doesn’t exist,’ I said. ‘It’s an indulgence.’”

Talking about protagonists, Allison Brennan shares “two particular qualities that leave a lasting impression on readers: forgiveness and self-sacrifice.”

T. Jefferson Parker sees “two types of villain: the private and the public.”

The private ones seek no acknowledgement for their deeds…they shun the spotlight and avoid detection. The public ones proclaim themselves, trumpet their wickedness, and revel in the calamity.

He also touches on the crime author’s moral dilemma:

My literary amigos and I go back and forth on this. We know we traffic in violence and heartless behavior. We ride and write on the backs of victims. We suspect that our fictional appropriations of the world’s pain do little to assuage it. Worse, we wonder if we might just be feeding the worst in human nature by putting it center stage. Do we inspire heartless violence by portraying it?

Stephen Ross demonstrates the use of subtext (unspoken meaning) in his example of a shopping list:

Milk

Bread

Eggs

Hammer

Shovel

Quicklime

Champagne

 

I highlighted many more passages but I’ll stop now because this post is running almost as long as the book itself.

How to Write a Mystery is a book that you can read whether you need a substantial dinner or a quick snack.

It might not offer the 10,000 items that Clifton’s Cafeteria did but it comes close.

 

 

~~~

TKZers: Did any of the above quotes especially hit you? Do you have a favorite craft handbook you refer to over and over?