Old Dog, New Tricks

Here are a handful of writing-related stories worth chewing over this weekend:

If you really want to get away with murder, don’t write about it in your best-selling thriller and then taunt the police with evidence of your “genius.”

Cherie Priest made a really strong debut with her horror novel “Four and Twenty Blackbirds.” Here’s what she’s learned since the publication of her first book.

Anybody who has a vested interest in the health of newspaper book review sections should read this (long) article by Steve Wasserman, former editor of the LA Times Book Review.

On my other blog, I often make fun of the venerable “For Better or for Worse” comic strip by Lynn Johnston. In general, I think it’s been a creditable example of long-form serial storytelling: well-drawn, affecting, well-intentioned and sensitive to modern life’s joys and sorrows.

Right now, though, it’s a freakin’ train wreck.

By forcing Liz Patterson and Anthony Caine back into a romantic relationship that many readers find just plain nauseating, Johnston is squandering a lot of the goodwill she’s banked over the past decades. Liz seems to be throwing away her independence for a needy, passive-aggressive guy whose redeeming qualities are greatly exaggerated. Why is Johnston insisting on doing this?

Part of the answer may lie within this long interview with Johnston conducted by Chris Mautner. Asked about her readership’s negative reaction to the Liz/Anthony coupling, Johnston admits that Anthony is “just a shadow figure.” His backstory hasn’t been fleshed out:

The child was a very big question mark and also, what did happen to Anthony’s marriage? What really happened? All of those things I wanted to explore. I haven’t had a chance. I don’t know Anthony. (my emphasis)

At this point, I’m not sure whether Johnston can salvage her strip’s finale via a deeper understanding of Anthony Caine. However it turns out, this episode serves as a cautionary tale of how faulty character construction can wreak havoc on a work of fiction.

When investigating topics, I definitely prefer experts, but I also appreciate enthusiastic neophytes. That’s why find myself making return visits to Bloggrrl.com. She’s learning how to build traffic and monetize her blog, and she approaches the process with a cheerful candor that I like.

Of particular interest to me have been her articles about 12 worthwhile forums for bloggers and making money with affiliates. Lots of chewy food for thought there. She’s also quick to admit when things don’t work out the way she planned.

 Currently, she’s running a strip poker contest. You can play along at home, if you like.

I’ve read 15 or 16 novels by Dean Koontz, and some of them were pretty damn good, including “Intensity,” “Watchers,” “Whispers” and “Night Chills.” For a while in my twenties, I haunted used bookstores for copies of the paperbacks published under his many pseudonyms.

In my opinion, however, the best book he’s written is one that’s long out of print and never mentioned in the “Also by” list of his recent best-sellers. It’s “How to Write Best-Selling Fiction,” published by Writer’s Digest Books in 1981.

That might sound like an over-reaching title, especially considering that Koontz was far from a household name when he published his manifesto. But time has certainly proved him right. He publishes two hardcovers a year and achieves terrific sales. By some accounts he’s now America’s No. 1 thriller writer.

I found a used copy of “Best-Selling Fiction” in Berkeley nearly 25 years ago, and since then it has informed many of my views of what popular fiction is and should be. I still drag it out from time to remind myself of some of Koontz’s advice. I also wish I had taken better care of my copy, as dealers are now asking upwards of $800 for one in mint condition.

I obviously can’t reprint huge chunks of “How to Write Best-Selling Fiction,” but I’ll highlight some of the points that made the biggest impression on me. If you don’t want to pay a small fortune for a complete copy, well, see what inter-library loan can do for you.

1. Immediately plunge your hero or heroine into terrible trouble.

I think this is the No. 1 lesson I took away from the book. In real life, I tend to shy away from conflict, but that’s the absolutely worst thing you can do in fiction. Koontz writes about the importance of threatening your protagonist with terrible trouble in the very first pages of the manuscript:

In its structure, each action scene should be a microcosmic representation of the larger structural pattern of the novel itself… Hit your hero with startling and/or frightening complications, one after the other. Be tough on him. If you keep those words in mind, your action scenes will be well-rounded, exciting and satisfyingly long.

3. Complications must never arise because of a character’s stupidity.

Yeah, but you have to play fair while being tough. If the hero’s an idiot, you can’t care about his fate.

4. Read, read, read.

Koontz provides commentary on nearly 100 pre-1980 writers who exemplify his notion of a best-selling author. I’ve always be an omnivorous reader, but there were a plenty of people on his list whose work I had not explored thoroughly in 1983, from Richard Condon to Cornell Woolrich to Richard Stark.

5. People have vastly different ideas of what’s funny.

This is not a lesson I learned from “Best-Selling Fiction.” Rather, it is one that has become painfully obvious to me from reading Koontz’s recent books. Over the years, he’s taken to injecting more “comedy” into his novels, creating off-kilter characters who indulge in allegedly humorous banter and wacky hijinx.

Sorry, but I wish he’d cut it out. When it comes to funny, Koontz and I are on entirely different wavelengths. I sit there with an expression on my face that could win me the Buster Keaton Lookalike Contest. Just give me the escalating tension and dispense with the shtick, OK, Dean?

Detroit-based freelance editor and writer Nancy Nall runs a very smart eponymous blog. She’s a veteran of the daily newspapering game and obviously knows what she’s talking about when she discusses journalistic matters. She’s also a fan of Warren Zevon, which gives her bonus points.

I was struck today by her mini-essay on subject and theme. You should read the whole thing, but here’s what she’d probably call the “nut graph”:

It’s been my experience, as a writer and an editor, that when you’re blocked on a piece of writing the problem is one of two: 1) You haven’t done enough reporting; or 2) You don’t understand the theme. What’s it really about? Does this paragraph illuminate that? If not, you’ve lost your way. The subject is the path, the theme lights the path.

I recently joined the “secret cabal” at Blogcritics and today posted my first piece. You can read it there by clicking here, or you can simply keep your eyeballs on this page.

Donald Westlake, screenwriter of “The Grifters, author of “The Hot Rock,” “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” and many other novels, is one of my favorite thriller writers. Pick up any of his books at random, and you can learn something valuable from it, as well as be guaranteed hours of first-rate entertainment.

Under the pseudonym Richard Stark, Westlake also writes about no-nonsense thief Parker. The character has appeared, always with a different name, in a handful of movies, some of them good (”Point Blank”) and some of them not (”Slayground”). There are currently 23 Parker novels, and many of them epitomize what their author does best. They’re fast, lean, gripping and darkly, darkly funny.

Here are five lessons I’ve learned from Westlake/Stark:

1. Choose a strong title.
   Some of the early Parker novels have titles so terse that they don’t really stick in the memory: “The Score,” “The Outfit,” “The Seventh,” “The Hunter.” I have trouble keeping track of them in my head. But after a 24-year break from writing about Parker, Stark brought him back in “Comeback.” Which was followed by “Backflash.” Followed by “Flashfire,” “Firebreak” and “Breakout.” The titles are down to one word, but they’re evocative and the progression from one to the next is clever without being distracting.
2. Waste no time getting the story started.
   In the early books, the first sentence always started with “When…”
   When the woman screamed, Parker awoke and rolled off the bed. He heard the plop of a silencer behind him as he rolled, and the bullet punched the pillow where his head had been. — “The Outfit”
   When he didn’t get any answer the second time he knocked, Parker kicked the door in. – “The Split”Even without that gimmick, the openings are always active and compelling.

   Parker jumped out of the Ford with a gun in one hand and a packet of explosive in the other. — “Slayground”

   These aren’t books that begin with long ruminations about the weather. There’s action on the very first page.

3. Understand structure.
   Many of the Parker books are organized around a four-part structure. The first two parts are from Parker’s perspective. The third offers multiple viewpoints of a critical plot turn. The final portion wraps things up, again from inside Parker’s head.It’s a particularly effective technique. The third-person limited perspective keeps everything focused and leaves little room for extraneous business. The late-in-the-game breakout from the protagonist’s perspective allows the author to ramp up the suspense by dramatising conflicts that Parker can’t foresee.
4. Don’t be afraid to change your style. Westlake has said that he once grew frustrated with a draft in which Parker kept losing the thing he was trying to steal. Rather than bull his way through a book that wasn’t working, Westlake decided to turn it into a comedy, thereby creating his long-running character John Dortmunder, who first appeared in “The Hot Rock.”
5. If you don’t work to avoid obsolescence, you may wind up having to kill someone to keep working. Although not published with the Stark pen-name, “The Axe” is one of the bleakest novels Westlake has ever written. The tale of a middle-aged middle-manager who strikes back against downsizing by killing off his competitors, “The Ax” is cautionary tale for anyone who has become too complacent about their job security.

At The Onion’s AV Club, there’s a really good interview with comedian Patton Oswalt, vocal star of “Ratatouille” and sidekick on ”The King of Queens.” One paragraph in particular struck a chord with me as I muse about being happy in my work: