Writing

Relentless Forward Motion

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It's shaping up to be 'Interview Lee Week." The first of my three-part interview with Booklife is up today. Here's an excerpt:

And, along those same lines, what has writing for television taught you about writing novels?

Lee Goldberg: I think that being a screenwriter, particularly for TV, has made me a much better novelist. You have to write outlines for TV, so it has forced me to focus on plot before I start writing my books. I’m not figuring things out as I go along as some authors do. I know exactly where I am going…though I may change how I get there along the way.
Being a TV writer has also trained me to focus on a strong, narrative drive, to make sure that every line of dialogue either reveals character or advances the plot (or both), and to cut anything that’s extraneous or bogs the story down.  I also suspect that being a TV writer has given my books a faster pace and more of a cinematic structure.

Have you picked up any habits–good or bad–writing for television that you had to unlearn or put aside when writing novels?

Lee Goldberg: Not really, but if I have a bad habit, it may be the need to have a relentless, forward motion to the story. In TV, you cut anything that’s the least bit extraneous to keep the story moving and to keep your episode within your allotted running time. With books, I have to remind myself that it’s okay to take time out to contemplate a moment, an experience, or a place…but only if it’s a moment.

 

Off the Cuff

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The Dabbling Mum blog did a long, Q&A interview with me about all kinds of stuff. Here's an excerpt:

What is your biggest obstacle when it comes to pitching yourself as a writer and what steps have you taken to overcome that obstacle?

I haven’t been a freelance journalist in almost thirty years. Nowadays, in the television and movie business, the biggest obstacles are my age and my history. There’s a lot of ageism in Hollywood and now that I’m in my 40s and have lots of credits to my name, I have to spend a lot of time and effort proving to execs that I am more than the sum of my credits…and that am capable of doing other things than the kinds of shows I have done in the past. 

I don’t necessarily want my credits to define me…after all, there are some jobs I took because I needed the money or because they were the only folks hiring at the time. 

With books, I don’t have to pitch myself anymore. The business has changed so dramatically in the last year or so that there’s more money in self-publishing than in publishing right now. So the only person I have to query is myself.

What is your best advice for getting past writer's block?

Write. No matter how bad it is. Just write. Give yourself permission to suck. Sometimes, all it takes is just hitting that one good line or paragraph to break the creative log jam. I also recommend taking a break and reading a good book. Reading forces you to work with words and your imagination. That said, I’ve found that writer’s block usually comes from a poorly conceived story. The problem isn’t that you can’t write, but that the project you’ve sat down to work on has a crippling creative flaw.

E-Volution

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IMG_0218 The talk of the Romantic Times conference, at least among the published authors, was the e-volution of publishing. I was fortunate enough to spend time with two authors at the forefront of it all…Barry Eisler and Boyd Morrison.

Barry and I got together for breakfast and, while I can't go into details of what we discussed, he has some very innovative, creative, and ambitious plans for  self-publishing his books. He's definitely given his controversial decision to walk away from a $500,000 book deal, and how best to capitalize on the ebook/self-publishing market, a lot of careful thought and there's no question in my mind that he will be successful. 

It occurred to me that one major advantage that all of us who were published before have going for us as we enter the self-publishing world…which the newbies flooding the Amazon, Smashwords, etc. do not… is a network of other published, successful authors we can reach out to for blurbs, advice, cross-promotion, recommendations, etc. Those relationships, and that wealth of shared experience, will give us a considerable edge in the marketplace and a way to rise above the tsunami of swill for a while to come.

After our breakfast, I headed to the RT booksigning event…which was,without a doubt, unlike any booksigning I've ever attended in my career. There were hundreds of authors and thousands of fans. It was amazing. IMG_0222

I was sandwhiched between a woman who wrote "man on man erotica" and Colleen Gleason (aka Joss Ware). Colleen and I passed the three hours, between signing scores of our books, talking about — what else? — ebooks and self-publishing.  She's concerned, like many other authors I talked to, about this race to the bottom, in which authors are pricing their books at 99 cents in a desperate effort to sell books or crack the top 500 rankings.

After the big signing, I got together with Brett Battles, Robert Gregory Browne, and Boyd Morrison for a late lunch…which went so long, it almost became an early dinner. We had a great time talking shop and just about every aspect of the ebook/self-publishing/"traditional" publishing biz.

Boyd, you may recall, was the first Kindle sensation…and quickly got snapped up by a big six publisher with a rich, multi-book contract. He's now published in print world-wide. His take on the Amanda Hocking deal, from his uniquely informed perspective, was very interesting (without going into details, essentially he thinks it's a no-lose situation for her, even in the unlikely event that her books under the deal fail).  I came away from that long, liesurely lunch with a lot to think about.

I had a great time at the RT conference…it certainly exceeded my expectations. But the best part for me wasn't any of the programming…it was talking shop with my fellow authors. 

(Pictured: One corner of the vast signing hall as it was beginning to fill up. And Joanna Bourne, Stephanie Bond, and Rhys Bowen)

Scribe Award Nominees & Grandmaster Announced

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N327137 The International Association of Media Tie-in Writers is proud to announce the 2011 Scribe Award nominees for excellence in licensed tie-in writing —  novels based on TV shows, movies, and games – and this year’s Grandmaster, honoring  career achievement in the field.

This year’s Grandmaster is Peter David, who has worked in television, film, books (fiction, non-fiction and audio), short stories, and comic books. He’s the acclaimed author of over fifty novels, many of them New York Times bestsellers. His extraordinarily prolific output of consistently excellent books includes two dozen original Star Trek novels, three Babylon 5 novels and novelizations of such major motion pictures as Spiderman, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, and The Hulk. 

David is also one of the most successful and acclaimed comic book scripters in the business with popular runs on such titles as Supergirl, Star Trek, Wolverine and, in particular, his work on The Incredible Hulk franchise (in comics as well as books). His many awards include the prestigious Will Eisner Comic Industry Award. He lives in New York with his wife Kathleen and their three children.

Our 2011 Scribe Nominees are:

GENERAL ORIGINAL

CSI: SHOCK TREATMENT by Greg Cox

BURN NOTICE: The Giveaway by Tod Goldberg

MIKE HAMMER: THE BIG BANG by Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane

MURDER SHE WROTE:  The Queen’s Jewels by Donald Bain

PSYCH: The Call of the Mild by William Rabkin

SAVING GRACE: TOUGH LOVE by Nancy Holder

SPECULATIVE ORIGINAL

GUILD WARS: GHOSTS OF ASCALON by Matt Forbeck and Jeff Grubb 

STAR TREK: MIRROR UNIVERSE: THE SORROWS OF THE EMPIRE by David Mack  MUSORROWS_01-tt

STAR WARS: FORCE UNLEASHED II by Sean Williams

SUPERNATURAL: HEART OF THE DRAGON by Keith R. A. DeCandido

WARHAMMER: BLOODBORN: ULRIKA THE VAMPIRE by Nathan Long

BEST ADAPTATION

FINAL CRISIS by Greg Cox

GOD OF WAR by Matthew Stover & Robert E. Vardeman

THE WOLFMAN by Jonathan Maberry

BEST YOUNG ADULT

ALPHA & OMEGA: THE JUNIOR NOVEL by Aaron Rosenberg

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: ALDWYNS ACADEMY by Nathan Meyer

THUNDERBIRDS: SITUATION CRITICAL by Joan Marie Yerba

The Fifth Annual Scribe Awards will be given at a ceremony and panel discussion held during Comic Con International in San Diego in July 2011. Details will be announced soon. 

 

 

Daniels on the DEAD

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Booklife has posted part two of their terrific, indepth interview with James Daniels, author of DEAD MAN #2: RING OF KNIVES. And if you want to know why we signed him up, and why we're so excited to have him writing on our series, all you have to do is read this excerpt:

What was it about Lee and Bill’s “dark mythology” that got you excited?  What direction did you take in?

 James L. Daniels: I love the fact that the central character in the series is a loner who travels endlessly in search of the answer to a mystery, which will heal both himself and others.  To me, this type of tale hearkens back to the Grail legend, which I incorporated into Ring of Knives.  I think that Matt is the modern-day equivalent of the medieval knight errant, and also of the gunslinger-in-a-white-hat, who is his American descendant. This set-up is an incredibly flexible template for storytelling, and it allows the author to take it in any direction possible.  I’ve seen brief summaries of the stories to come, and they range from gritty urban shoot-em-ups to gothic Lovecraftian lore.  It’s wonderful stuff.  My own brand of pulp is derived pretty directly from Edgar Rice Burroughs; he’s the one (along with “The Uncanny X-Men”) who first snagged my attention as a twelve-year old, and those old-style heroics never cease to move me.  So I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from John-Carter-type stories and fashioned my own tale, which I dressed up in the trappings of Clive Barker, fed raw meat, and unleashed.

What is up with Mr. Dark, anyway?

James L. Daniels: That’s a good question, and every author in the series is going to come up with their own interpretation.  Lee and Bill have been enormously generous letting the writers contribute to the development of the Dark Man’s nature. And it’s interesting, because – like Matt’s character – the Dark Man is an archetype that’s incredibly versatile.  A blogger recently implied that Lee and Bill may have borrowed the evil-clown idea from Todd McFarlane’sSpawn series.  But this is nonsense.  The  unpredictable trickster is one of the oldest characters in fiction.   McFarlane’s Violator was begat by Stephen King’s Pennywise who was begat by Jerry Robinson’s The Joker, who was begat by Edgar Allen Poe’s Hop-Toad, who was begat by Mr. Punch, who was begat by Shakespeare’s Fool, who was begat by Harlequino (and perhaps Sir Thomas Malory’s Merlin), who was begat by Loki, who was begat by Raven (Europe), Coyote (America), and Spider (Africa).  They are all manifestations of the same principle.  What is that principle?  Every writer of the Dead Man will come to his or her own conclusions.

For myself, however, that principle is Entropy, and the madness and despair that arise from our recognition that all our efforts will ultimately end in death.  The major challenge of life is to withstand – and maybe even overcome – that terrible prospect.  In the Welsh Grail legend “Peredur”, the hero is frequently tormented by a black hag who reminds him at every turn that all his acts of valor are causing more harm than good.  That hag, portrayed eight hundred years ago, is the direct ancestor of Mr. Dark.  And you don’t have to be a medieval knight errant to know who she is.  I’ve seen her.  And I bet you have, too.  How we deal with her terrible message is the biggest challenge that we face in life.  And one of the ways we learn to deal with it is by reading about others who confront it head-on.  Matt Cahill is a hero because he does just that.  That’s why it’s a thrill to read about him.  That’s why, when we read about him beating the devil, we set down the book hopeful and happy, believing – for a time – that we can, too.

Check out the rest of the interview for some revealing insights into his creative process.

The Talk on Talk

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Lee Child, James Scott Bell, Jon Land, Joseph Flynn, Jim Duncan Heywood Gould and I are talking on the ITW Site this week about how to craft dialog that reflects character. It's an interesting discussion. Here's a tidbit:

Heywood Gould: 

You are what you say.

Dialogue is character. If you know who your characters are, where they come from and what they want, then you know what they will say in a given situation. Characters are not one dimensional. They don’t speak the same way to everyone in their lives. A cop will not speak the same way to his wife and kids as he does to his colleagues or to suspects.

Dialogue is strategy. Do your characters decide to coax. coerce, seduce, charm to get what they want. Dialogue will expresses their strategy.

Dialogue is style. People use dialogue to project an image of themselves. Do they want to be considered smart, funny, professional, truthful. They will use dialogue to show that they belong to a certain group—political party, profession, gang…

The best lines are often the ones drawn from real life. I like to eavesdrop. People say things a writer could never make up. A conversation can crystallize a character. I like to draw people out. The best advice I ever got was from my City Editor at the NY Post:
“Shut up and listen.”

[…]Lee Child: 

I once won an award from the Fort Worth evening newspaper (I think it was) for “natural dialog” … which mine isn’t … and nor is anyone else’s. Dialog in books is very far from natural. Many above have extolled eavesdropping, which I love too, and it’s very instructive to notice how incoherent, stumbling, gappy and repetitive real-life conversation is. If we were “natural”, a book would be 1,000 pages long.

So the trick is to make something grossly unnatural sound natural. And it’s very hard to do that. The “X” factor is subtle and elusive. I think we all agree that dialog is where poor books fail. Poor dialog sounds amateur. Good dialog can suggest stress, accent, and pace, just with a few black marks on white paper.

Home from Virginia

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Photo (2) I just got back from the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville and had a wonderful time, both as a panelist and a book lover. I was in town less than an hour before I bought my first book, a signed copy of John Casey's COMPASS ROSE, the sequel to the SPARTINA, which won the National Book Award. I was thrilled…and took that as a good omen.

One of the great things about Charlottesville is that they really, really love books. They have lots of great, independant bookstores, including four used bookstores in their historic downtown pedestrian mall. I bought so many books over the first two days (including a signed first edition copy of SPARTINA, courtesy of the wonderful folks at Read It Again, Sam) that I had to send them home in a box. So even without the festival, I would have had a great time. 

The festival is first class all the way…not just in terms of the headlines (three National Book Award winners, Scott Simon, Kathy Reichs, Jim Lehrer, Mark Childress,  Alan Cheuse, Myla Goldberg, etc) but how it's run. It's classly, slick, and exceptionally well-organized. It takes place all over the charming, colonial town, which I suppose can make it seem too sprawling, but it allowed me to get a real feel for the place and it's people. There were panels & events at bookstores, libraries, big hotel, a grade school, the University of Virginia, government offices, wine bars, and local theaters.

My first event was mixer at Read It Again, Sam, were I had the opportunity to chat with author Diane Fanning, Jenny White, Meredith Cole, Brad Parks, Andy Straka, and Louis Bayard, to name a few, before heading over to the Albemarle County Office building the Friday Night Frights panel with Kathy Reichs, John Connolly, Louis, Jenny and Andy.  I was astonished to see every single book I have in print, including my CreateSpace reprints, on sale in the lobby. I could have hugged the bookseller. Photo (1)

The panel was great, even though Kathy was felled by the tail-end of a bad cold. It's not easy keeping up with authors as smart and witty as John, Louis, Kathy and Jenny (who told a particularly hilarious story about the time her friends came close to accidentally killing her with belladonna). I hope I managed to hold my own. Afterwards, I hung out at a local bar with John, his publicist (and my old friend) Ellen Clair Lamb, and his friend Jeff, who works for the CIA. I had a blast, even if the crowd of college students made me feel like a grandfather who snuck into at a frat party.

The next morning I was up bright-and-early for a screenwriting panel with WKRP creator Hugh Wilson and  Oscar-winning documentarian Paul Wagner that drew a standing-room only crowd. Hugh's colorful and hilarious stories won everybody over, especially me. At the booksigning afterwards, a woman asked me what it was like to be married to Myla Goldberg and if we were competitive with one another.   

Photo (3) I signed a bunch of books, attended the Kathy Reichs luncheon and then scooted off to a panel with fellow Jewish authors Micah Nathan, Phoebe Potts, and Ariel Sabar, all of whom were enormously entertaining. 

That left me me with an hour or so to myself, so I did some quick sight-seeing at the University, which is beautiful, before heading to an authors reception and, finally, capping the Festival with a long and wonderful dinner at a steakhouse with Kathy Reichs and her daughter Kerry, Jenny White, John Connolly, Ellen Clair Lamb, Brad Parks, and Meredith Cole. We talked and ate and drank well past the restaurant's closing time…but the patient proprietors were kind enough not call the cops and have us forcibly removed.  

All in all, it was a terrific festival and a welcome getaway for me. With luck, the Virginia Film Festival with select REMAINDERED and I'll have an excuse to go back.

(Pictured 1. a corner of the Daedalus bookshop, 2. my books for sale, 3. Kathy Reichs, Andy Straka and Louis Bayard).

The Casino Royale You Never Saw

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The Telegraph has a fascinating story today about development of Ben Hecht’s unproduced screenplays for CASINO ROYALE…which eventually morphed into the comedy debacle that starred David Niven, Peter Sellers and Woody Allen. Here’s an excerpt:

The fact that Ben Hecht contributed to the script of Casino Royale has been known for decades, and is mentioned in passing in many books. But perhaps because the film Feldman eventually released in 1967 was a near-incoherent spoof, nobody has followed up to find out precisely what his contribution entailed. My interest was piqued when I came across an article in a May 1966 issue of Time, which mentioned that the screenplay of Casino Royale had started many years earlier “as a literal adaptation of the novel”, and that Hecht had had “three bashes at it”. I decided to go looking for it.

To my amazement, I found that Hecht not only contributed to Casino Royale, but produced several complete drafts, and that much of the material survived. It was stored in folders with the rest of his papers in the Newberry Library in Chicago, where it had been sitting since 1979. And, outside of the people involved in trying to make the film, it seemed nobody had read it. Here was a lost chapter, not just in the world of the Bond films, but in cinema history: before the spoof, Ben Hecht adapted Ian Fleming’s first novel as a straight Bond adventure.

[…] these drafts are a master-class in thriller-writing, from the man who arguably perfected the form with Notorious. Hecht made vice central to the plot, with Le Chiffre actively controlling a network of brothels and beautiful women who he is using to blackmail powerful people around the world. Just as the theme of Fleming’s Goldfinger is avarice and power, the theme of Hecht’s Casino Royale is sex and sin. It’s an idea that seems obvious in hindsight, and Hecht used it both to raise the stakes of Fleming’s plot and to deepen the story’s emotional resonance.

 

UPDATE: You can read excerpts from one of those terrific lost scripts here.

Farewell to the Mystery Bookstore

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IMG_0057 Tonight, the Mystery Bookstore had their farewell party. It was a bittersweet event. It was great to see so many mystery writers and fans in one room…but sad to see a legendary, independent bookstore close down.

 

The owners and employees, in their good-byes, observed that they've never met a nicer, more supportive group of people than mystery writers and what a pleasure it was just having the chance to get to know them all.

They're right. As I was looking at all those faces, and talking to all those writers, I was struck by what an incredibly friendly, warm, and out-going group they are…and how much I like them.

Unlike TV, where there is a real class system…you don't see showrunners hanging out with staff writers and treating them as equals… that isn't the case at all among mystery novelists.  Everyone mixes together. The superstars like Michael Connelly and Robert Crais are as friendly, approachable, and supportive as the least-known mid-list writer. They don't just hang out with other writers in the bestseller list. Everyone treats one another with mutual respect. Sure, there are a few in the biz who don't, but those are the exceptions. 

The Mystery Bookstore was like our home, the place where all of us could get together several times a year, like a family gathering for the holidays, and talk shop and catch up with one another. Losing the store is like losing our home. I wonder now how often we'll all get together under one roof now that we've lost the store…my fear is that it will be hardly ever.

The loss of independent bookstores, which are really so much more than just places that sell books, is one of the real, and painful, downsides of the success of the Kindle.

(Pictured: Lee Goldberg, Dick Lochte, Thomas Perry)