Writing

Literary Cannibalism

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Here’s a new twist on the fanfic debate:   an article in the Daily Telegraph implies that  Thomas Harris stole from Hannibal Lector fanfic for his novel HANNIBAL RISING. The article quotes some fanfic passages and compares them to passages in Harris’ new novel.

Trawling through the Lecter fanfic, one comes on other tantalising parallelisms. Six years ago, for example, ‘Leeker17’, on www.typhoidandswans.com
posted a narrative which uncannily forecasts the opening chapters of
Hannibal Rising in its detailed description of how the hero’s parents
and sister met their ends in 1944. So close is it that one might fancy
that Leeker17 had some privileged connection with Harris. Or that
Harris himself, under a nom-de-web, may be the ‘leaker’. Or, like
Blythebee, Leeker17 may just have struck lucky.

If
an author picks up and uses something from ‘his’ fanfic is he
plagiarising, collaborating, or merely playing games? One thing’s
certain. Harris won’t tell us.

(Thanks to Sarah Weinman for the heads-up!)

Parker is Prolific

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There are a couple of interesting things about Robert B. Parker’s latest Amazon blog post. For one, he’s openly soliciting people to buy the movie option on his Sunny Randall novels (and offers the name and address of his agents)…which I find extraordinary for an author of his experience and success in both the publishing and TV business.

But the really amazing thing about his post is what it reveals about how prolific he is. His last Spenser came out in November. He has a Jesse Stone novel coming out in February, a young adult novel in April, a Sunny Randall in June, and  Spenser in October. I figure he must be writing a book at least every eight to twelve weeks. That’s an amazing output…especially for a  bestselling author in his late 60s (or is he in his 70s?) who really doesn’t need to work that hard any more.

Change is Good

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My brother Tod and I were talking the other day about certain authors we know who burst onto the scene with a great book and have been replicating that same novel ever since with ever-worsening results.  It’s a dangerous rut for writers to get into, as bestselling author Tess Gerritsen points out.

Selling a book is just the first step in your career as a writer.  Look
at all the first-time novelists who later vanished from the publishing
world.  They discovered a very painful truth: to make a career in this
field, you’ll have to do a lot more than just sell one book[…]

If the books you’re writing aren’t finding an
audience, maybe it’s time to write a different kind of book.  In my
case, I first moved from romance to thrillers.  I loved writing
romance, but I just couldn’t write fast enough to make a living at it.
Writing for Harlequin was fun and satisfying, and I loved the genre,
but when each book was only earning out around $12,000, I knew I’d
never send my kids to college on my earnings as a writer.  As it turned
out, I had a great idea for a medical thriller (HARVEST), which was my
debut novel on the New York Times list.

But four books later, I could see that my medical thriller sales
were flat, and even starting to decline.  By then I had a crime
thriller in mind, one that I couldn’t wait to write.  With THE SURGEON,
I launched the Jane Rizzoli series.  And my sales have increased since
then.

If Harlan Coben had stuck with his Myron Bolitar books instead of shifting to standalone thrillers, would he be the international success that he is now? And if Michael Connelly, Ed McBain, Robert B. Parker, Richard Stark, Laura Lippman, Lawrence Block and Robert Crais hadn’t stepped away from their long-running series to write other books (and other series), would their writing have remained as fresh? I don’ t think so. I believe one of the reasons they’ve been so successful is because they’ve branched out into other areas  (of course, there’s always folks like Sue Grafton, Lee Child, Barry Eisler, and Ian Rankin who do just fine without leaving the confines of their series).

It’s why I’m glad I had the opportunity the last couple of years to alternate between writing the DIAGNOSIS MURDER and MONK books…they are two very different kinds of writing, even though they are both mystery series. DM is written in third person and is essentially a drama. MONK is written in first person and is primarily a comedy. 

Shifting between genres is also one of the pleasures of screenwriting. I’ve written, for instance, about lifeguards (Baywatch), private detectives (Spenser For Hire, Monk), werewolves (She Wolf of London), clever dolphins (Flipper), cops (Hunter), FBI agents (Missing), cross-dressing comics (Dame Edna), and just this week I wrote a pilot about urban street racing.

I like to think that the challenge of writing in different genres, characters and voices — and doing so in books and TV — keeps me and my writing fresh.

(updated 1.1.07)

Will Agents Consider Tie-Ins?

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This question was buried as a comment on an old post:

How receptive are literary agents to getting media tie-in novel
queries? Is there a reason they aren’t listed in the genres that the
agent will accept, or are tie-ins considered just part of the ‘fiction’
genre?

To answer this question, you have to understand what a tie-in is:  it’s a piece of fiction using characters licensed from a rights-holder like a movie studio, a literary estate, a gaming company, etc.

Usually the way a tie-in novel comes about is that the rights-holder will approach publishers with a property or publishers will approach the rights-holder. Several publishers, for instance, sought the rights to do "Monk" novels and Penguin/Putnam eventually won out.  Only after the rights are licensed to a publisher do editors seek out authors to write the books. That’s when an agent might enter the mix.

So it wouldn’t make any sense for you to query a literary agent with an idea for a tie-in novel…or the manuscript itself… unless you are the person who holds the rights to those characters.  Otherwise, what you’re asking an agent to do is sell your fanfic…and no agent will do that. That’s   why tie-ins are not among the genres  that agents are willing to consider for submissions.

If what you’d like to do is write for an existing line of tie-in novels (like, say, the STAR TREK series),  querying an agent isn’t the way to go. Agents simply aren’t looking for new clients to take to the editors of tie-ins…for one thing, there isn’t enough commission money in it to make it worthwhile. If an agent is going to suggest someone for tie-in assignment, it will be one of their current clients.

So, in general, you need to already be on a editor’s radar to get an assignment for a tie-in… it’s the editors you need to reach, not agents.

Momentum

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I haven’t conquered my jet-lag yet, but I’m not letting it bother me. Now that I am back in L.A.,  and it’s a "holiday" week of sorts, I don’t have to go into any office besides the one in my home so it doesn’t really make any difference what time I get up or go to bed. With that new attitude, and nothing to do but write, things are going much better with my script.

It’s amazing to me that, no matter how much experience I have at this, I still have the same insecurities and have to keep re-learning the same lessons… one of which is that writing goes better when you can generate some momentum.

I have been doing nothing but writing the last few days, rather than in  fits-and-starts like last week, so it’s no surprise than I am much happier and doing better work. The importance of momentum isn’t a new discovery for me…but it seems like I have to keep reminding myself  every time I start a writing project.

An Argument for Outlining

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I am a firm believer in the importance of having an outline before you sit down to write. It doesn’t have to be detailed outline– it might only be a page or two.  You just need to know where you’re going and, to some degree, how you are going to get there…or what happened to author Sandra Scoppettone could happen to you:

In the course of writing today (yes, I did) I inadvertently
discovered that I have two different men involved with the same two
women who are trying to get the money everyone is after.  It has to be
one man or the other.  Pages and pages must be rewritten.  Whole
chapters.  Nightmare.

Did this happen because I took off so much
time?  Or am I losing it?  I understand forgetting the color of a
character’s eyes, but this is crazy.  And with one man I’m not sure I
even did the set-up with the women.  I think these three just happen.
The reason I don’t know this is because I couldn’t go on with this
today.

Tomorrow I’m going to have to trace backwards and find out.  And then I’ll have to write new scenes, rewrite others completely.

"How Did This Happen?" is the headline of Sandra’s post. No offense to Sandra, but I can answer that question in two words: No outline.

That doesn’t mean that if you have an outline that the writing of your book is going to go smoothly. You could still find yourself having to go back and rewrite everything…but not because you’ve inadvertently duplicated a character. Outlines give you a path and a direction for your story, although that doesn’t mean you have follow it.

But at least the path is there.

I think of my outlines as "living outlines," since I’m constantly revising them as I write my books.  Why? Because I am always deviating from my outlines and going in new directions, so I have to replot my story to take into account these new events and discoveries.  I usually end up finishing the outline about a week or two before I finish my books.

I’ve read so many books that were clearly made up as the author went along…and I find them a lot less satisfying that a tightly plotted, tightly-written, confident narrative.

Dark Times for Screenwriters?

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Paul Guyot pointed me to Nikki Finke’s column in the LA Weekly. She says that it’s bleak for feature film  screenwriters these days:

“These jobs,” said the admittedly depressed literary agent, “just
disappeared.” A manager joins the pity party and describes a litany of
givebacks by his scribbling clients: free treatments, free rewrites,
free polishes and/or free script-doctoring — all done with the hollow
hope that the studio will give these schmucks with Underwoods a paying
gig sooner rather than never. As for those sparse scribes offered real
pay for projects, they’re buckling under studio demands by cutting
their usual and customary by 30 percent. “It’s the bewildering nature
of the business right now that nobody has a quote. It’s a quote-free
system,” an agent describes.

In a word, it stinks out there for
screenwriters, worse even than the fetid stench of the usual shit flung
at them in previous years. These aren’t wannabes, either. These are
some of the top names in the biz. “I am fucking terrified,” a major
scribe tells me about his year of not getting any work. “I can’t
believe my career is ending like this.”

It’s no wonder so many of them are running to television and narrowing the opportunities even further for TV scribes…

The Desperate and the Impatient

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All aspiring writers are desperate to get into print. That’s a given. I certainly was, but that was before the advent of  POD vanity presses, which prey on the "I-want-it-now" impatience that afflicts so many aspiring writers these days. These aspiring writers just don’t want to invest the time and effort that’s a necessary part of shaping their voice, their skills and their careers. Bestselling Tess Gerritsen writes about that today:

What makes a new writer today think he should be immune to that
desperation I felt?  What makes him think this is SUPPOSED to be easy?
What makes him think his very first book is going to get published — or
deserves to get published?

I’ve lost count of how many crappy novels I wrote before I got my break. Tess wrote three unpublished books before she finally sold her fourth. And she knows another writer who wrote seven books before finally selling her eighth.

Think of her desperation, her
hunger, to be published.  It had to be there, driving her, or she would
have just given up.  But she just kept going and wrote manuscript #8. And it sold. Think about that — writing seven books that don’t sell.  Would you
have the persistence to start writing #8?  Do you accept the fact that,
yes, there’s an apprenticeship involved in being a writer, a period of
training that you will be forced to undergo before you finally
understand what the craft is all about?

No, it isn’t easy to get accepted by a publisher, and get paid for
your work.  It’s a lot easier to whip out the checkbook and pay a
vanity press to print your manuscript.

That’s the real danger posed by these vanity presses — besides the emptying of a gullible writer’s bank account. The self-publishing companies are also robbing the writer of the experience that’s required to become a successful writer (and part of that is learning to deal with, and learn from, rejection).  Too many aspiring writers fall for what appears to be  "the easy way" — when, in fact, it’s not — rather than
accept the fact that their books are unpublishable and that they have a lot more work to do on their writing.  They don’t want to work. They want a book now. Or at least the illusion of one. But it’s a career-sabotaging move…not to mention stupid and expensive.

And if you can just pay to get published, where’s the incentive to hone
your craft, to study your own work with a critical eye, to polish and
polish some more?  Where’s the incentive to write books number seven
and eight and nine if each one is just going to mean you have to whip
out that old checkbook again to pay to see yourself in print?

There isn’t any. Sure, there are a handful of people who have found a measure of success self-publishing, but for the vast majority it is a financial sink-hole and a self-destructive mistake.

UPDATE 11-26-2006: Author Mat Johnson blogs about how the lure of vanity presses is ruining African-American fiction.

If I had hit my wall just three, or even two years later, all of those
self-publishing options would have been available to me. As desperate
as I was, I don’t know if I would have said no to the idea. I don’t
think I would have known to. At the time I was working on that book, I
actually considered it good enough to be published. I might have jumped
at any opportunity not to take "No" for an answer.

[…]I saw a generation of black writers fall into this
trap, authors that could have been original voices that added to the
canon, who instead became literary canon fodder. They went pop, blew
up, and then almost instantly started vanishing, their worth dwindling
with their sales.

Sadly, instead of working actively on getting better, many of this crew instead try to falsely justify the merit of their work.

Tie-Ins Rule

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Publisher’s Weekly reports that the #2 bestselling trade paperback in the nation is HALO: GHOSTS OF THE ONYX by Eric Nylund…outselling Amy Tan, Lisa See, Paula Coelho, Nicholas Sparks, Clive Cussler, Jodi Picoult, Jan Karon and Elizabeth Kostova to name a few. The book is in its second printing with 180,000 copies in print so far. Not bad for a tie-in novel based on a video game. While critics may sneer at tie-ins, they are wildly popular with readers and publishers are increasingly depending on them to prop up their bottom-lines.