Opposites Attract: Making a big point with imagery and dialogue

by Jamie Freveletti

I'm a huge fan of classic movies (and songs). If you're a writer you need to watch the old ones to see just how conflict between women and men or evil and good should be done. I've been fairly outspoken about my dislike of the current "torture porn" movies and books. I'm not really blaming the writers, we all realize that the world we live in is getting more vicious by the year--one only has to watch the political attack ads to see that civility is long gone, but I do think that there is still a lot of room for finesse.

There's no putting the graphic scene back in the corner. We're seeing way too much violence in our world and media now to act as though it's not happening.

Do these books work? Yes. Are they going to last? Maybe. Should you write one? If you want, but before you go straight to the scene where the woman is strapped to the bed and being attacked you should probably watch some classic movies. These writers had to produce the same thrill and do it by igniting the imagination, not by writing an overt scene.

Case in point: What are these two going to be doing next? (Spoiler alert)

If you said making love, you would be right. This scene oozes sex, and just about everyone over a certain age can see it. They're at the end of their dinner (the coffee's on the table), he's doing something for her -an act of deference and a courtly gesture--and she's holding his hand lightly as she responds. Now, if you wrote this scene, but changed his behavior just slightly, everything changes:

What if she had asked for a light and he simply handed her the lighter? Would those two be racing to her room? I think not. And if you wanted to show that he is even more uninterested, or perhaps even a boor, you would have him toss the lighter on the table.

Second shot-- Look at the photo of Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant above. Who flirting here?

Clearly the woman. Audrey Hepburn's next line, "How do you shave in there?" Great bit of dialogue that points out his cleft chin. If this scene was in a novel the fact that he had a cleft chin and she points at it and you added that line it would speak volumes about his looks without using the word "handsome" anywhere. These two also end up in bed, but only after he insists on marriage. Nice twist, and Cary Grant is the one who wanted to have the woman chase and the man hold out.

Contrast that with this scene:

He's definitely on the move and Doris Day is considering her next one--should she say yes or no? Since it's a Doris Day movie she says yes only after safely married. But if you write a scene that describes a man stepping up behind a woman, gently placing his hands on her bare shoulders, and whispering in her ear, that paragraph screams intimacy and approach, and you never once have to clarify his intentions.

But conflict is always best when writing mysteries and thrillers, and this photo says it all:

What I like about this scene is he's angry--his face shows it and he's got her by the wrist--but look at her, she's not intimidated at all. Her chin is up and she remains relaxed and doesn't try to pull her arm away--all moves that a writer would describe if she wanted to send the message that the woman is not worried. Here Grace Kelly's character looks like she's still got the upper hand: and she does, because he doesn't leave--they end up...

Having sex-okay some behavior is universal and I guess when you're Cary Grant you end up having a lot of sex in your movies, but in this case it was unclear whether he was going to go for it. For most of this movie Grace Kelly's character spends her time chasing him in order to unmask him as the famous cat burglar and he was fascinated by her but more often than not angry, too. In the actual movie the ending was changed. Initially Hitchcock had them going their separate ways, but he was pressured to change the end to a more "hollywood" happy one. He does it with a funny little twist.

I like the subtlety of the classics. I like the challenge of making a statement without overtly saying it, and I don't always get it right, but I hope to keep working at it. Thrillers generally require broader images, but readers notice the small ones too. Here's to adding more of those!

Moebius Life

by Marcus Sakey

I've written five books now, and one of the things I've learned--along with the absolute necessity of caffeine--is that writing makes for a cyclical lifestyle. For me it goes something like this:

A period of blank wandering about, during which I read a lot and soothe myself with metaphor (a field has to lie fallow for awhile, you can't just plant crop after crop, etc.)

Growing panic which forces me to focus on one of the ideas that have been swirling in the back of my brain.

Weeks spent wrestling with the concept, freewriting, exploring variations, looking for a way to crack it open. Also, hating it and myself.

An arbitrary moment in which I decide I will start tomorrow, goddamnit.

The first day of writing, which is one of the more intense of the year. Spending hours looking for the opening sentence. Moving words around. Moving them back. In a good first day, I'll write a paragraph.

The second day, which is really the first of work. I sit down and for awhile, I feel like a professional. The story comes along, I build out the characters, I toy with mood and style. There's a sort of "la-la-la, I'm writing a book" feeling to things. Until...

Page 200. At which point I completely melt down. I've gone the wrong direction. Chosen my traveling companions unwisely. Darkness is setting in. Was that a wolf I just heard?

Between two weeks and five months of floundering about. I reread everything I've done. I try to put my finger on what it is exactly that's got me so troubled. Is it a flaw in the story? A character thread I need to reconsider? An upcoming plot point I no longer believe in?

Slowly I push past. There's a real temptation to abandon the book, but I've never done it, and I hope I never do. I suspect that if I did, I might be opening myself up to the kind of doubt you just can't afford. You can't actually hit reset in life, you can't reload the game at the beginning of the last level.

Eventually, things get back on track. I make good progress. My confidence returns, albeit tempered by the fear.

The climax, which is one of the more interesting and agonizing parts of the process. Interesting because of the million variations I play with, both alone and in conversation with other authors. There are so many ways to tell the same story,a nd so many ways to end it. But the thing about a really good ending is that it when you read it, it seems like the only possible way to finish the book. The agonizing part of the process is that until you figure it out,it's just one of the herd of options.

But eventually I spot it, the ending for me. At which point I write the remaining 50 - 100 pages in a mad fucking rush, often a week or two.

My wife takes me out for dinner and martinis.

Then there's the cooling off period, the rewriting, sending it to other people, receiving their reactions, and the like. This whole period is actually a sort of disengagement, though. You're beginning to unplug.

Finally, there's the part when the book is accepted and essentially done--not counting copyediting and so forth--and it's time to begin to start thinking about the next one.

In other words, see Step One.

Right now, I'm somewhere between Steps One and Two. It won't be long before the panic forces me to click over. It's an odd time. I feel very lucky and sort of guilty and a little blank, blank like the page I'll soon be facing. This cycle has started to become central to me. I realize that I very much mark my life by the story I'm telling at the time, and there's something quite sweet to that.

Though it would be sweeter if I knew what I was doing next.

For you writers, does this seem familiar, or do you do it differently? And if you're not a writer, what is it you use to mark your days? When I was in advertising, I know I saw things differently...

You Gotta Read This...

by Sean Chercover

I've posted here before about some of my favorite books on writing, and many folks commented to recommend their favorites as well.

Here's another book you should read. A book not just about writing, but also about getting published, promoting your work, issues faced by the publishing industry, the rise of e-books, and so on.

THE NEWBIE'S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING, by J.A. Konrath.

Joe Konrath has been blogging about his publishing journey since he was a newbie, and is one of the most generous writers in the business. He's gone out of his way to help publishing newbies who've come after him, and to help aspiring writers graduate to newbie status, themselves.

And now Joe has now collected the best of his blog essays into a book.

An e-book, actually. At over 1100 pages, it is not something you'll finish in an afternoon, but it is well worth your time. And at only $2.99 for Kindle, it is a steal. If you don't do Kindle, it is also available as a PDF download on Joe's website, for free. See what I mean about Joe being generous?

It also includes an excellent series of essays by bestselling thriller writer (and all-around great guy) Barry Eisler.

Now, I don't agree with all of Joe's opinions. Joe is somewhat of an iconoclast - I don't think even he agrees with all of his opinions - but he asks the hard questions, challenges the status quo, and we all come away richer for it.

A story: When I was writing TRIGGER CITY, I got stuck on a plot issue. Over many beers at The Red Lion, I explained to Joe how I'd written myself into a corner and would never find my way out. Then Joe started talking. And a rapid-fire burst of solutions poured out, one on top of another, competing for attention.

In five minutes, Joe came up with 2,193 different ways to fix my book. Some better than others, but all workable. What amazed me even more was that Joe's suggestions were not mere plot contrivances, but all stemmed from character issues faced by my protagonist.

The guy is a force of nature.

Go get THE NEWBIE'S GUIDE TO PUBLISHING. You won't be sorry.

“How To” Books for New Writers—Have a Favorite?

by Jamie Freveletti

I’m preparing a presentation to a group of new writers and writing a list of “How to” books for them.

Like most debut authors, I spent a few years writing, rewriting and reading about how to write. I’d get stuck in the process and race to the Harold Washington library here in Chicago to a group of shelves that held books written by writers on writing. I’d yank one out, read it on the subway ride home, and plunge back into the novel. Some were quite helpful, some not so.

There are a few “standbys” that we all know, Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird,” and Elmore Leonard’s wonderful, fun read: “10 Rules of Writing” (Rule #3: Avoid Prologues).

I’d add the following:

1. The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (and how to avoid them), by Jack Bickham.

Bickham’s short, numbered mistake list, with a bit of explanation for each, is bound to hit on one that every writer will recognize as one they have made or are still making. At the time I grabbed this book I was deep into the first manuscript and nothing was going well. Mr. Bickham clued me in: I was protecting my protagonist and having a sidekick interact with the main second character. Why? My protagonist was married, and unless she was going to have an affair, there was no way she could run around with the male character in the story. I rewrote her as single, lost the sidekick, and continued forward.

2. Give ‘Em What They Want: the right way to pitch your novel to editors and agents by Blythe Camenson.

This is a must read for any author in the query stages of writing. I used this book religiously when creating my query (along with the advice of a good friend) and it really helped me see what agents needed in order to evaluate the novel. What’s great about this book is that many of the agents interviewed are still in the game and they are generous with advice about what they want to see in the queries they receive.

3. Making a Literary Life: advice for writers and other dreamers, by Carolyn See.

See’s book is one of the few that really helps published authors as well as the unpublished. Her “So what?” approach to reviews and her advice to use a form of “literary aikido” to take a negative event and spin it positively is a quite helpful (and as a black belt in aikido, I loved the analogy). See addresses whether to have launch parties in New York (better to wait and be sure you’ve got enough friends to back you) and gives a lighthearted account of her attempts to get an editor to accept some of her freelance work (pictures of goats were involved).

These are my current favorites, but if any of you have a book to recommend do tell!

Writing About Writing About...

by Sean Chercover

When I was very young, my mother worked as a dialect coach. Mom is from Atlanta, had majored in Theatre at the University of Georgia, and was a stage and television actress before she had children. So whenever a Tennessee Williams or Lillian Hellman play was being staged in Toronto, they'd call in my mom to teach the actors how to talk Southern.

I remember, as a little boy, spending the day up in the darkened balcony, watching actors on the bright stage as they worked on their lines and blocking with the director, and of course on their accents with Mom. As rehearsals progressed, the stage began to morph into a set, with furniture and props added, and flats painted like the walls of a living room. And the actors morphed too, as they developed their characters with distinct body language and costumes and makeup.

It was magic.

When I grew a little older, I'd sit with the script and read along, as the actors rehearsed. And I'd listen to the actors complain when a line just didn't 'ring true' for them. Of course, you didn't mess with the script, so the director would work with the actors to try and find 'the truth' buried in the words, so they could perform the line with conviction.

In 1978, my mom started working as a scriptwriter in the television industry. She would sometimes call me into the living room for a "story conference" and ask for my input on a script she was writing. She'd explain the characters and the scene, and ask what I thought the characters might do in that situation.

At the time, I was of course pleased that Mom treated me like a grown-up and valued my opinion. But looking back, I realize what an amazing thing it was to grow up in such an environment, with such a Mom.

She also subscribed to Writer's Digest, and I started reading the fiction column around that time. The fiction columnist at WD in those days was Lawrence Block.

Lawrence Block! Can you believe my luck?

Block's WD columns are collected in two books, TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT, and SPIDER, SPIN ME A WEB. If you haven't read them, you should. He also wrote an excellent book called WRITING THE NOVEL, FROM PLOT TO PRINT. The "print" part of the book is a little dated, as the industry has changed greatly since 1979, but the writing stuff is as valuable as ever. Still in print, and well worth reading.

Anyway, it was the first "book about how to write a book" that I ever read. And I must confess, I've been reading books about how to write books ever since.

The funny thing is, I think the best way to learn to write fiction is (as Stephen King says in his terrific ON WRITING): write a lot and read a lot. He means, of course, read a lot of fiction - not read a lot of books about how to write books.

Reading books about how to write books often becomes a procrastination tool. You read a book about how to write a book, and you tell yourself that you are working on your craft. But unless your ass is in the chair and your fingers are on the keyboard, you are not working on your craft. In most cases, you can learn more if you dedicate your reading time to reading great fiction.

That said, I do believe I have gained a great deal from some of those books about how to write books. Some offer mostly inspiration, while others roll up their sleeves and get into the nitty-gritty of writing technique. The vast majority are eminently forgettable, but here are a few that have stuck with me over the years:

THE ART OF DRAMATIC WRITING, by Lajos Egri
This is actually a book about writing a play, not about writing a book. But it is a classic in the field for good reason, and most of it is directly applicable to writing a novel. And it nails character development and human conflict in dialogue like no other.

ON WRITING, by Eudora Welty
I love Eudora Welty's fiction. Love, love, love it. ON WRITING is a collection of her essays on both the craft and philosophy of fiction writing, written from 1943 to 1979. A mere 106 pages, with gems on every page.

STEIN ON WRITING, by Sol Stein
A roll-up-your-sleeves volume of writing techniques and strategies, it is impossible to read this book and not improve your craft. Yeah, Stein is often dismissive of "commercial" writing techniques, but he was James Baldwin's editor, so just shut up and read this.

IF YOU WANT TO WRITE, by Brenda Ueland
This slim volume is more inspiration and philosophy than technique (although there's valuable craft stuff in here, too). Ueland writes beautifully about writing, and it has stuck with me for many years. And the chapter, "Why women who do too much housework should neglect it for their writing," is worth the price of admission, alone.

ON WRITING, by Stephen King
Probably the best "book about writing a book" that I've read to date. The first half is a literary memoir of sorts, the second half is nuts-and-bolts fiction writing stuff. Great book.

Those are some of my favorites. Now I'd love to hear some of yours, since I still haven't broken my addiction to books about writing books...

Oh, and one more thing: My mom is one of my first-readers, and now we have "story conferences" about my work. Pretty cool, how things come full circle, isn't it?

Bad Writing Advice

by Marcus Sakey

There’s an axiom that writers should “write what they know.” It’s one of those nuggets of threadbare wisdom that has probably screwed up a whole passel of aspiring authors:

“Write what I know? Okay. Well, I’m a administrative assistant with a pug, so I’ll write about an administrative assistant with a pug…who solves murders!”

If that’s the book you want to do, great. But don’t get suckered into it.

“Write what you know” isn’t terrible advice; it’s just been elevated beyond its inherent value. It’s like a solid character actor who reliably nails bit parts. That’s valuable, but it doesn’t mean they should carry the starring role, and “write what you know” has been given far too much weight.

Here’s what I recommend. Forget “write what you know.” Replace it with these three statements instead:


“Write from the inside.”
Consider the person who is serving as your point of view character. Describe the world, and their reaction to it, according to what kind of person they are. The same place, event, or individual will look very different to a bubbly high-school cheerleader than it will to a world-weary journalist. Different even to a man and a woman. Think about those differences, and exploit them in your writing. That way you not only paint a more vivid scene, you define the character at the same time.

And remember cultural and temporal factors. Medieval characters aren't disgusted by open sewers, modern travelers are more interested in their seat assignment and free drink than the wonders of aviation, and no one on Star Trek thought tricorders were particularly neat.

A hamburger is a different thing in Texas than in Mumbai.


“Learn something about what you’re writing about.”
AKA, research. Depending on your topic, that might mean riding with cops, reading histories of the Boer Wars, or taking swimming lessons. You should always try to get close to the things your characters are doing, especially if it’s a major part of their world.

The caveat is that research isn’t the same as writing. Don’t let research get in the way of page count. Most of us aren’t writing Clancy novels, where the info dump is part of the fun.


“Write what you know…about people.”
This is the most important component. Don’t worry about applying the explicit details you’ve learned in a job, or a hobby, or a religion. Just because you’re 20 doesn’t mean you can’t write about someone 90. But every experience you’ve had, and most especially those involving other people, has some impact on the way you write. That’s good. Use it.


One of the central goals of storytelling is always to render life to the page as accurately as you can. Even if you’re writing the most fantastical piece of magical realism, you should still be trying to capture accurate truths about the way people think and act. Without that, you got nothing.

Unauthorized Advice from Arthur Phillips

by Marcus Sakey

Six or seven years ago, my wife bought me a book called PRAGUE on a whim—she liked the cover and the flap copy, and knew that I harbored expatriate daydreams. The book turned out to be amazing, and I’ve been a big Arthur Phillips fan ever since.

Three books later, he hasn’t disappointed. The man is wicked smart, and writes emotionally sophisticated showpiece prose that’s also a pure joy to read. His latest, THE SONG IS YOU, came out this year, and I snatched it in hardcover but pleasure-delayed until the other day.

It’s wonderful. Each of his novels tread distinctly new ground; this one focuses on music, and the longing it can evoke, and how that longing effects the lives of those who love it, and which came first, the music or the longing or the love. I’m about halfway through, and spellbound.

The reason I bring it up is that there’s a section where the middle-aged protagonist is watching a woman sing, this rock-star-to-be who is just on the cusp of exploding, and he’s writing notes for her based on his experience as a commercial director. I thought the advice applied to writers as well:

(Arthur, if you’re out there and object, email me and I’ll take ‘em down, and, separately, offer to buy you a beer next time you’re in Chicago.)

1. Indulge in no one’s taste but your own
2. Never fear being loathed and broke
3. Repeat only what is essential; discard mercilessly
4. Sing only what you can feel, or less
5. Hate us without trepidation
6. All advice is wrong, even this; a little makeup would not go astray
7. Never admit to your influences, not dear Mum or Da, nor the Virgin Mary (competition)
8. Laugh when others think you should cry—we will gladly connect the dots
9. Even now, cooing, swooning ghouls of goodwill scheme to destroy you
10. Oh! Bleaker and obliquer.

Good stuff, huh? Of course, they’re aimed at a developing pop diva, at a woman trying to morph herself into a myth, so some apply more than others. But honestly, I got something from all of them.

“Repeat only what is essential; discard mercilessly” is a variation on some of the best writing advice you’ll ever get; Elmore Leonard puts it, “Don’t write the parts people skip,” Strunk & White say, “Omit unnecessary words,” but it comes to the same.

“Hate us without trepidation” sounds like it applies more to a punk rock girl, and does, but what if you apply it to free yourself to write what you want? Or to keep yourself from falling into a comfortable, safe place, where you’re begging for love instead of trying to tell honest stories?

“Never admit to your influences” is antithetical to my instincts—I tend to shout the names of the people whose work formed mine, as you all know—but is probably great advice. If your goal is to craft a public image, there’s some merit to the idea that it’s best to present yourself as a finished whole, the influencer instead of the influenced.

Anyway, while I wouldn’t take every word as gospel, I think there’s some damn good advice there. But what do you think? What about the later ones, which are a little more challenging, a little less comfortable—do think they apply? Do you like them?

Plan to not fail

By David Heinzmann

Every once in a while I think of a tidbit about David Mamet I once read. On the wall next to his writing desk he had tacked a card that read something like: To fail to plan is to plan to fail.

Some writers need to plan more than others, perhaps, but everybody needs a layer or two of discipline. Often when we talk about this we mean either carving out the same writing time and a word count every day, or addressing the question of outlining or not.

For a handful of reasons (but mostly because of two shorties under the age of 5) I struggle with carving out the regular writing time. And I can’t say that the outlines I’ve made have been worth all the time I put into them, though I’d surely have been worse off without them.

Lately, when I've thought of the Mamet maxim, I’ve also been thinking about the first kind of planning I learned as a writer. When I was in college I had a wonderful creative writing teacher named A.E. Claeyssens who taught a novel writing class. We all had a novel we were planning to write, but first Claey had us spend most of the semester writing what he called preliminaries, volumes of character profiles, pages and pages of their external and internal lives, biographical details we’d never put on the page in the novel, but the stuff that makes you understand who they are so that the actions and thoughts that do make it onto the page ring true. Exploring characters before you write is one way to tell as story, but some writers feel they need to discover their characters as they go. When they’re in the zone and become lost in the story, the characters reveal themselves, etc.

I got a lot of out preliminaries, but somewhere along the way I stopped doing them, partly because in the years since college I’ve learned to write with a gun to my head—on deadline, nearly every day.

By necessity, I do a good bit of my fiction writing on the L-train ride to and from work. It’s not the best method, mainly because it comes in half-hour chunks. But I take my time alone where I can get it.

I write in a notebook atop a leather brief case sitting on my lap. The eventual typing up of my chicken scratch becomes an act of revision, with most of those revelatory writing moments coming in the late-night transcription sessions at the keyboard. I actually find the process to be fairly productive, if not ideal.

Lately, as I’ve been rewriting the ending for the novel I’m trying to finish, I’ve felt particularly unplanned and at least frustrated, if not failing. When my agent read the manuscript a few months ago, he said the ending felt a little easy. So I pulled back from the big moment of revelation in the book, and started going sideways a bit. I wrote several new scenes with my man Flood continuing to stumble in the dark.

But I was having trouble finding the final confrontation that will get me back to the end. Trying to major surgery on the plot, I suddenly had no real plan.

This is what brings me to the lessons of Mamet and Claeyssens. Without thinking about it the other day, I started retroactively writing out preliminaries on the train. I’m once again finding my way through with the preliminaries.

Looking forward, I’m pretty sure I’m going to need preliminaries for the next book, too. I have a premise and protagonist, a couple of scenes, but the big picture remains a fog. I’m going to need serious plan.

The First Six Weeks Are Like Hell

by Sean Chercover

There’s a video (embedded below) of Joyce Carol Oates talking about writing. She says that she always starts with characters, and setting (which she also considers a character).

She says some stuff about the various personalities of dogs and cats and horses that I found a bit odd, as much as I love animals (Hi Edgar! – if you’re reading this, which, since you’re a dog, I guess you’re not).

She talks about writing her way into a novel by listening to the way the characters express themselves as she writes, and the desire that new writers feel to give up at this early stage.

She says, “I know, the first six weeks of writing a novel for me are like hell. I’m very unhappy and very frustrated, and actually very miserable. But I keep on going. ”

I don’t delight in her misery, but it is reassuring to know that this happens to everyone. Even Joyce Carol Oates, who probably wrote three short stories in the time it took me to write this sentence.

Facing the blank page is always challenging, but at the beginning of a story, the page is really blank. To help get past this, some people write detailed character biographies, others do free-writing exercises where they interview their characters, or where the characters interact with each other in scenes that probably won’t end up in the novel. And each of those techniques is great, if it works for you.

But there’s a fine line between “developing your characters” and procrastination, just as there is a fine line between “researching” and procrastination, or “plotting” and procrastination.

Eventually, you have to face the blank page. Eventually, your fingers have to push down on the little buttons with the letters on them, making words, and putting those words in order to make the sentences that comprise your novel.

Most writers*, no matter how prolific, will tell you that the beginning is hell. But you keep on going. And then you hit a point – page 20 or 30 or 50 – where you’ve got a handle on your characters, you understand their goals and problems, and you can see where they are headed and the obstacles in their path.

At that point, you love your story and you love your writing and the world is beautiful and you are a genius.

You know it won’t last, and it doesn’t. You cruise along for a while, then doubts arise and the voices in your head get louder, and by the time you hit the halfway point in your manuscript, something breaks in your head and you become convinced that you’ve written the worse POS in the history of writing, and that there is no way to fix it.

And, somehow, you get past that little bump in the road.

But today I’m focusing on the first bump, at the beginning. I recently got an email from an aspiring novelist who wanted to know about finding an agent. I asked him if he’d finished his book, and he answered at length about all the research he’d done. I asked again if the novel was finished.

He hadn’t even started.

You must start. Like Ms. Oates, you will be “very unhappy and very frustrated and actually very miserable.” But if you want to write a novel, you must start. And you must keep going.

As Bugs Bunny said, “Watch out for that first step. It’s a doozy!”
____________________________________________
*changed from "every writer" - see comments.

Your Ideas Suck...

by Sean Chercover

When you do a speaking event, there are questions you know you’re going to be asked. Three of the most popular asked by aspiring writers (and people who think they might like to give it a go) include:

1. Where do you get your ideas?
2. I want to query agents and publishers, but how do I protect myself so they don’t steal my ideas?
3. What do I do if I get a publisher, but they want me to make changes? After all, they’re my ideas.

Okay, let’s take them in reverse order…

3. What do I do if I get a publisher, but they want me to make changes? After all, they’re my ideas.

Here’s what you do: Make changes.

I suspect that aspiring writers think the process of getting “notes” from an agent or editor goes something like this:



Not so. Not in the publishing world. If you want that kind of helpful feedback, you have to work in film or television. In my experience, the notes you get from an agent and/or editor are not an attempt to make you write a different book, but simply to make the book you’ve written better. These people are expert readers, and they’ve been doing this a lot longer than you. So listen to them. You don’t have to make changes in response to all of their suggestions, but you should probably do so for most of them. Get your ego out of the game.

2. I want to query agents and publishers, but how do I protect myself so they don’t steal my ideas?

I’ve got some very bad news for you: Your ideas suck, and nobody wants to steal them. Not just your ideas - mine too. Everybody’s ideas suck. Agents and editors are not looking for ideas; they’re looking for execution. And nobody can steal your execution, your distinctive voice.

Here’s a little film about Pepe. Poor Pepe didn’t have any big ideas of his own, so he decided to steal some. But they don’t work on his head.



So stop worrying and send out your damn queries.

1. Where do you get your ideas?

I honestly haven't got a clue. I always resort to the standard glib answer that writers give ("I get my ideas in the Ideas isle at K-Mart.") but I really don't know how to articulate where my ideas come from. Yeah, it's easy enough to talk about reading good fiction voraciously and reading newspapers and asking "what if..." questions all the time. But all of this seems inadequate to explain the strange process by which ideas form.

So my question to you is, Where do you get your ideas?

The Name Game . . .

by Sean Chercover

The Mouse is two years old. Well, two and change. 27 months, if we must be specific. Most of the time, he calls me Da-da, or Dad. Da-da was fun, but I welcome the transition to Dad.

The surprising change is that, with increasing regularity, The Mouse is now also calling me Sean.

A couple of people have suggested that I correct him. But he is correct. My name is Sean, and he hears other people call me Sean, so why the hell shouldn’t he call me Sean?

I admit I am still slightly startled each time he does it. It’s just a little odd to hear my 2-year-old son calling me by my Christian name.

“Christian name.” You don’t hear that very often, these days.

Anyway, I find it interesting that other grown-ups are uneasy about it. Also interesting to note my own emotional reaction to the different names. When the Mouse calls me Sean, it feels different than when he calls me Dad, which in turn feels different than Da-da.

Do you think about this when naming your characters? Not only how the name feels and what it conveys, but also what nicknames the characters might call each other, and what those nicknames convey about the relationships between the characters.

Like everybody, I keep a few “Baby Name” books near my desk. But sometimes reading a list of names with notations of the “Welsh/Irish/Hebrew/Latvian” origins is not enough.

Occasionally I use names of real people. It’s fun to give a shout-out to people I know and love. Like many writers, I’ve donated character naming rights to be auctioned to raise money for a good cause, and I have a contest on my website, one of the prizes being a character named after the winner.

Then there are the names of characters from other books. Gravedigger Peace from Big City Bad Blood and Trigger City is a tip-of-the-hat to Chester Himes, one of my all-time favorite crime writers. His Grave Digger Jones was a corrupt and brutally violent Harlem cop. The resemblance between Gravedigger Peace and Grave Digger Jones doesn’t go much beyond the fact that they both have a pretty deep wellspring of rage, and they’ve both killed more than a few people, but I love using the name as a nod in his direction . . . and it fits my character who is, in fact, a grave digger.

Ray Dudgeon, my series protagonist, went through many names along the way. His penultimate name was Ray Dunbar. Dunbar Road is the street I grew up on. I didn’t like the name Dunbar, but I liked Ray, and I liked the way it sounded with a surname that started with D. I also like names that have independent meaning as words. Spade, Archer, Hammer, Reacher, Strange, Rain . . . all great names that tell us something about the character. So I started flipping through the letter D, in Webster’s dictionary.

Dudgeon fit my protagonist perfectly, both for its modern meaning and for the archaic meaning, most famously used by William Shakespeare in Macbeth. A few folks have commented that Ray’s name is a bit too clever, but the vast majority of people dig it. And I’ve had email correspondence with a number of real-life Dudgeons as a result, including a real Ray Dudgeon.

A totally unexpected benefit of using an unusual name.

I’d love to hear some of your favorite character names, and your method of naming the characters you create. So have at it.

BONUS: A signed, first-edition of Trigger City goes to the first person who tells us the archaic definition for Dudgeon (as mentioned in the Macbeth reference above).

ALSO: Libby mentioned this in the previous post, but in case you missed it. . . The amazing folks at Bleak House Books are giving away FREE books this holiday season. For real. You only pay for shipping. Check it out.

AND: For those of you who are buying gifts this holiday season, please consider buying and giving books.

LAURA CALDWELL, GUEST BLOGGER

by Libby Hellmann

It’s summer and today is my birthday and I can’t think of a better present to myself than to travel to far away places, at least virtually. So please welcome Guest Blogger and Friend-of-the-Outfit Laura Caldwell. A Chicago trial attorney, law professor, and a wonderful romantic suspense author, Laura is amazingly talented, but her greatest talent might well have been snagging a month long trip to Rome. Be sure to check out her most recent book -- THE GOOD LIAR-- a real page-turner-- and her website.

And now, from a sidewalk café in Rome, heeerrre’s Laura. Saluti!


Ciao from Roma!

How lucky am I? I’ve spent the last few weeks teaching at the Rome campus of my alma mater, Loyola University, and now I get to step in and blog for the wonderful Libby Hellman. Happy Birthday, lady! And thanks to Sara, Barb, Michael, Marcus, Sean and Kevin for letting me hang with you guys.

I had great designs on writing lots while in Rome. But another professor who arrived before me had emailed, telling me that things still take a long time in Italy and cautioning me not to count on too many hours at the writing desk.

So I decided to try and get my words done while still enjoying la dolce vita. One day I wrote at the Piazza Barberini, a glass of Greco de Tufo wine in front of me on a yellow linened table.
The Italians don’t sit at cafes or coffee shops working on laptops the way we do, so I went back to my roots—good, old fashioned paper. I wrote my first book, Burning the Map, a book set partially in Rome, on a raft of yellow pads, then dictated it and had it typed. Now, I’m a straight-into-the-computer kind of girl and usually only scribble notes when my laptop isn’t around. Marcus Sakey, who I was lucky enough to tour with a few months ago, said that he sometimes breaks out the Mont Blanc when he’s a little stuck, and I agree—actual pen to paper can be motivating, inspiring something off the beaten path.

The ristorante I wrote at that day faced Via Veneto, a wide, stately avenue with regal apartamentos decorated with stone balconies and potted plants. At the Piazza Barberini, a hotel sat to one side. Its unimaginative brick front looked more like an American hotel, but around it were stuccoed buildings painted ochre and mustard, their windows and shutters thrown open. Taxis and scooters and the tiniest of cars zipped around the circular piazza and the fountain in the middle that looked like a large naked man on his knees. Perfecto!

For the first hour, I kept neglecting my notebook, gazing instead at the foot traffic. Rome is the perfect city for people-watching. The Roman women are gorgeous, and the men are strutting peacocks, masculine and yet dressed to perfection. And it’s always comforting to see another tourist pointing, wearing befuddled books, turning a map one way, then another and another.

I thought about the last two times I was in Rome—signing Italian versions of my books, Burning the Map and A Clean Slate. Reminding myself that there would be no more book signings, not with Sakey, not in Rome or anyplace else, if I didn’t get down to work, I dropped my attention to my notebook and started to write.

But then I ran out of wine. Somehow, in my pathetic, meager Italian, I managed to have a twenty minute conversation with the waiter about Italian whites. When he delivered my much debated glass, I finally got back to work.

My first mystery series—what we’re calling the Red Hot series—will be released in the summer of 2009. It features a sassy, red-headed lawyer named Izzy McNeil who keeps finding herself in loads of trouble. The first book, Red Hot Lies, is done. Ditto for the second, Red Blooded. But the third (anyone have a sizzling, suspenseful ‘red’ title?) needs to be done by the end of this year. Why not, I thought, send Izzy to Rome, at least for a little while?

I was a few paragraphs into a scene when I heard my name called. I looked up to see a Loyola alum and his wife, a couple who have recently moved from Chicago to Paris and have been spending time at Loyola of Rome. The Italian way requires inviting people you bump into for a glass of wine. Far be it from to ignore cultural tradition. They sat down, we talked, we watched the pedestrians, the waiter brought more wine.


I had recently read Sara Paretsky’s post about the fairly alarming trend of corruption (okay, I’m a lawyer, I’ll say alleged corruption) amongst Illinois governors), and I mentioned this to my friends. We began comparing and contrasting Italian politics with those in Chicago and Illinois.

Two and a half hours after I arrived, those few paragraphs were the only thing to show for my “writing time”. I said Ciao, Ciao, to my friends. I strolled over to Palazzo Barberini and gazed at the frescoed ceiling for the rest of the afternoon. I hadn’t scored a lot of pages, but at least I got the la dolce vita part right.

Details And Destruction . . .

by Sean Chercover

Note: The idea for this post was sparked by reading the blogs of J.D. Rhoades and David Terrenoire. They both write great books and great blogs, so check ‘em out.

David and J.D. both posted the following video, which got me thinking…



Sure, you can intellectualize about guns and bullets and their influence on human history; you can argue about the power of a gun to protect and defend the innocent and procure food, or you can argue about the power of a gun to murder and terrorize and accidentally kill children whose parents didn’t secure said gun responsibly.

But what I thought, while watching bullets rip through inanimate objects in extreme slow motion, was: How utterly beautiful.

Or, as David said on his blog, “Stuff blows up real good.” It sure does. (And, as an aside, this video also provides a lesson in the physics of energy transference, and shows that things do NOT fly backward through the air when shot.)

But let’s turn away from bullets. Here’s ultra slow motion video of the popping of a kernel of popcorn:



Beautiful, isn’t it?

And watch, how the water in a balloon retains the balloon’s shape after the balloon is popped, and then slowly succumbs to gravity:



Or how a dropped water balloon flattens out before exploding:



Okay, so what the hell does any of this have to do with writing?

For me, watching these videos is a reminder of the power of showing details that normally fly by unnoticed. Like that scene in Taxi Driver when Travis Bickle becomes mesmerized by the fizzing Alka Seltzer in a glass of water, and disconnected from the people around him in the diner.

By zeroing-in on an unexpected detail, we slow down time, just like a high-speed camera, and we gain insight into the mind of the character doing the observing.

Of course, a little of this goes a long way. When I wrote BIG CITY, BAD BLOOD, I sent the manuscript to a few early readers, and one of them wrote back the following email:

“Great book. Too much furniture.”

Awesome note. I mean, I like furniture as much as the next guy, but he was right. In my desire to display Ray Dudgeon’s observational skills, I’d gone way too far.

So I went through and cut out a lot of the furniture. If it said something important about the character who lived there, or about Ray’s emotional reaction to the environment, then it stayed. Otherwise, it went. Which meant, most of it went.

As the master, Elmore Leonard, so famously advised: Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

And the really cool thing is, once the meaningless details are gone, the important details jump up and sing, creating the emotional impact of Travis Bickle’s Alka Seltzer dissonance moment.

It’s a fun challenge, deciding when to be brief and breezy, and when to slow down time and zero-in on that emotionally resonant detail that normally goes unnoticed.

The aforementioned J.D. Rhoades does this extremely well, stopping time in the middle of a scene of high action and focusing on the telling detail.

What authors do you admire in their judicious use of detail? Got any favorite moments?

NaNoThanks

by Marcus Sakey

This being November, it's time again for a little exercise in insanity called NaNoWriMo, short for National Novel Writing Month. To quote their website:

"National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly."

I've had a lot of people, especially students, ask what I think about NaNo, and it's this:

I think it's a terrible idea.

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing inherently evil about it. The organizers are very upfront about the fact that since all that matters is output, you'll mostly be producing crap. However, they argue that you'll also produce some pieces of value, and that you'll overcome the mental block that's preventing you from writing a novel. So in theory, come December, you could take a break, look over what you've written, and attack it fresh, keeping the good parts and dumping the junk.

Except I don't believe it actually works that way. I think that unless you are a professional who is doing this on something of a lark, like my friend Joe Konrath, what you'll end up with is 50,000 nigh unusable words and no skill set to improve them.

Look at it this way: would you participate in National House Building Month if you had to live in the result? Of course not, because a house takes care to build. It takes time and skill and forethought and consideration. Could you slap something together in a month? Sure. And in theory, you could come back and fix the leaky roof and sinking basement later.

But the truth is that once you've laid a foundation, even a rotten one, it's hard to change. Moving walls and adding stories isn't easy. And if you're going to take the time to do that part right, why not take the time to do it properly in the first place?

Whenever authors talk about how difficult writing can be, people have an urge to say, "Yeah, but you could be digging ditches." And they're right--being a novelist is a very pleasant way to make a living. But I've dug ditches, and while I'd rather write novels, it's not because it's easier. More rewarding, definitely. But not easier.

If what you want is to spend a month toying with your creativity, then by all means, go with NaNo. It's a charge, I'm sure, and there's a terrific community around it, and when you're done, you'll have the joy of printing out something you've written that's two inches thick. All of which is groovy.

On the other hand, if your goal is to write a novel, then don't kid yourself. A month's worth of coffee and sore fingers ain't going to do it.

But hey, that's just my opinion. Anybody have good luck with NaNoWriMo?

Great First Lines (and a contest!)

By Sean Chercover

NOTE: At the end of this post, I’m giving away prizes. Yes, prizes!

At a recent lit conference, the conversation among writers in the bar turned to great opening lines. Not, “Hey baby, what’s your sign?” opening lines, but opening lines of novels.

Writers love to talk about opening lines. What makes a great first sentence, what grabs the reader . . . or what is likely to make the reader close the book, put it back on the shelf and reach for another.

I’ve noticed a recent trend toward such whiz-bang first lines as:

“The bullet slammed into Joe Smith’s chest and threw him against the wall.”

“The safety line snapped and Jane Brown fell away from the rock-face and plunged toward the canyon floor.”

“Just as the man entered the bank, his head exploded.”

Okay, I made those up. But I’ve seen many that are just as bad. Full of action and danger, but ultimately boring as hell. I don’t care about Joe Smith or Jane Brown or the man with the exploding head. I haven’t even met them yet.

Here are some great first lines, pulled from the nearest bookshelf:

“Nothing is so sad as an empty amusement park.” - Soul Patch, by Reed Farrel Coleman.

“What do you do with an old madam when she’s peddled her last pound of flesh?” - Retro, by Loren Estleman

“Much later, as he sat with his back against an inside wall of a Motel 6 just north of Phoenix, watching the pool of blood lap toward him, Driver would wonder whether he had made a terrible mistake.” - Drive, by James Sallis

“It surprised him, how light she was.” - In This Rain, by S.J. Rozan

“When I was a kid, my favorite book was Horton Hears A Who, and, like most kids, I wanted to hear it over and over and over again.” - No Good Deeds, by Laura Lippman

“Gold was up 2 percent the morning that Benjamin Raab’s life began to fall apart.” - The Blue Zone, by Andrew Gross

“Calderon figured that, on this night, he had to be the only chauffeur at Los Angeles International Airport who was picking up a dying boy.” - Stigma, by Philip Hawley, Jr.

“It’s hard to get lost when you’re coming home from work.” - Blonde Faith, by Walter Mosley

And finally, one that always gets me, no matter how many times I've read it:

“Because Lydia didn’t have arms or legs, she shelled out three thousand bucks to a washed up middleweight named Cap to give her ex-husband the beating of his life.” - Psychosomantic, by Anthony Neil Smith

These are all fantastic opening lines, I think, because they are written in a distinctive and authentic voice. And nothing hooks me as strongly as voice. These lines convey a mood, but more than that, they convey an attitude, they hint at a world-view. And they make me want to know more about the characters.

The bad examples I wrote above are written without any distinctive voice. They convey no distinctive attitude, and they fail to breathe life into the characters. They seem gimmicky, a cheap (and even a little desperate) attempt to try and grab the reader by the collar. The only mood they covey is, “Look Out!”

And a distinctive voice does more than just hook me. It also assures me that I’m in good hands, that the writer is confident in his or her ability to take me into a fictional world for a few hundred pages and keep me there. That the characters I’m going to meet along the way will be fleshed out and three dimensional.

So what do you look for in an opening line? Does voice matter to you, or do you want to get straight to the action?

Share with us, some of your favorite opening lines. Not the one's you're writing (we already did that post) but from books already published.

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BONUS: The first person who posts the opening line from James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss, wins a prize. I don’t have my copy handy, and I don’t want to misquote it. I’m not telling what the prize is, but you’ll like it. And another prize to the person who posts the best opening line (other than Crumley’s), as determined by, well, me.