Writing

The Thrill of Sexism?

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The International Thriller Writers has enjoyed nothing but success, praise and enthusiasm since it was co-founded by Gayle Lynds & David Morrell two years ago…until now. On the eve of ITW’s first convention in Phoenix, Author Elaine Viets has criticized the organization’s inaugural list of Thriller Award nominess:

It’s tough to define an award-winning thriller, but the new International Thriller Writers has succeeded:

It’s anything written by a man.

That’s not what it says on the ITW Website. That tells us,
"Thrillers provide a rich literary feast – the legal thriller, the spy
thriller, the action-adventure thriller, the medical thriller, the
police thriller, the romantic thriller, the historical thriller, the
political thriller, the religious thriller, the high-tech thriller, the
supernatural thriller. The list goes on and on, with new variations
being invented constantly. This openness to creation and expansion is
one of the field’s characteristics."

Unfortunately, the plums at this literary feast are served to men
only. For the first ITW Thriller Awards, every single novel nominee is
a man.

Best Novel – five men.

Best First Novel – five men.

Best Paperback Original – five men.

And the winners of these Thriller Awards?

No surprise there: They’re all going to be men.

So is the recipient of the first ITW Life-Time Achievement Award.

The judges were men and women. So was it sexism…or did men simply write the best work this year? You tell me. I didn’t check, but how many Jews were nominated? Jews write lots of crackling thrillers. Hmm.

UPDATE 6-23-06: Novelist Joe Konrath calls Elaine Viets "a troll" and ITW co-founder Gayle Lynds reponds to her charges. Gayle wrote, in part:

As an author (not as a woman who has spent her life battling sexism), I
could complain that no women were nominated. At the same time, I could
also complain that no people of color were. I’m not sure whether any
Muslims or religions other than Christian or Jewish were nominated, but
I think they weren’t either. There also might be a preponderance of
nominees from one section of the United States, which could be taken as
a prejudice favoring that area.

As long as awards are given in
whatever field, there are always going to be those who say, "I wish it
were otherwise. And because it isn’t, it’s prejudice."

The only
time there’s really an institutional problem, at least in my mind, is
when there is a history of one group of people being disenfranchised.

Since this is ITW’s first year, the organization can have no track record of institutional prejudice.

The Perils of Signing

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Author Barry Eisler signed THE LAST ASSASSIN at a small, independent bookstore in the mid-west and then left and signed stock at two nearby big chain stores in the same town.  Barry reports that this did not sit well with the independent bookseller, who wrote:

Signing
stock at chain stores signals to the people who did take the time to
come to your [our independent bookstore] event and support you that
their effort was not necessary. More importantly, calling attention to
that fact that you need to leave to do such a thing is insulting to
your hosts. If that was something you felt compelled to do, you
probably should have done so without drawing attention to yourself. I
chalk it up to you not understanding the dynamics of the situation.
Other booksellers may not be very forgiving. Some in particular that we
know would simply stop carrying your books without comment.

[…] Like many of the key independents, we’re in the business of selling
books and we also produce author events. In order to drive the
publicity for an event, particularly for genre fiction, there has to be
a unique quality to the experience we’re offering. Part of that
uniqueness is the opportunity to meet the author and purchase a signed
book. If someone can go anywhere in town and purchase a signed book,
then that unique aspect of the event marketing is lost.

Is the independent bookseller over-reacting or did Barry make a  mistake? Barry doesn’t think he did:

I can’t apologize for signing stock at chains, my friend. They’re
important distributors in my business, and I can’t make a living
selling through independents alone (nor would I have been able to build
my business as I have without the backing of independents). If I
insulted you by doing I see as best for my business, I regret it, and
am somewhat surprised, as it’s not a reaction I’ve run into before.

If you’d like to have me back for another event, I would be delighted,
as you, along with other key independents, have done a tremendous
amount to get me where I am, and where I hope to go. You also run a
first rate signing and seem like good people. But whether I do a
signing with you or not, you should know that I’ll also sign stock at
as many chains in town as I can. This is a business decision for me,
not at all personal, and you shouldn’t feel insulted by it.

What do you think? Was Barry right or was he wrong? I’m not in my friend Barry’s league, but I can see both sides of the argument.

I know one independent bookseller who was very upset to find out that a week before they were hosting a signing for A Big Bestselling Author, signed copies of his book were being sold at the Costco two miles up the street (he’d signed thousands of copies at their distribution center) and he’d signed stock at the Barnes & Noble  less than a mile away a day earlier.

After the signing at the independeant bookstore, the Big Bestselling Author made sure he stopped by the nearby Borders, too. The independent booksellers were pissed…but there wasn’t much they could do about it. They still sold a lot of his books, just not as many as they could have sold if they weren’t undercut by the much cheaper signed books at Costco and B&N.

On the other hand, people who came to the independent bookseller’s event got to meet the author…something they couldn’t do at Costco, B&N or Borders. And they presumably were willing to pay a little extra for that priveledge.  I do believe the indie offered something unique that the other stores couldn’t, and that the people who’d buy the signed book at Costco aren’t necessarily the same customers who’d attend an author signing.  One doesn’t necessarily cancel out the other.

Like I said, I can see both sides.

I wonder how the independent feels about authors who do signings at another indies in the same city? I know it happens all the time in L.A. area and authors are very upfront about it.  Mystery/thriller  authors frequently sign at Mysteries to Die For the same day as Mystery Bookstore and Book’em… and even ask for directions (as Barry did, asking the indie how to get to B&N). If the indies here mind, they haven’t said anything about it that I know of…

Like a Needle in a Haystack

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Author Jerry B. Jenkins has some very good advice about removing cliches from your writing over at Writer’s Digest. Yep, Writer’s Digest. Hard to believe.

Clichés come in all shapes and sizes. There are just as many clichéd
scenes as phrases and words. For instance, how may times have you seen
a book begin with a main character being "rudely awakened" from a
"sound sleep" by a "clanging" alarm clock? Have you written an opening
like this yourself? Wondering where to start, you opt for first thing
in the morning. Speaking of clichés, been there, done that. We all
have. Don’t ever do it again.

Compounding that cliché is having
the "bleary-eyed" character drag himself from his bed, squinting
against the intruding sunlight. And compounding that is telling
the reader everything the character sees in the room. What comes next?
He’ll pass by or stand before a full-length mirror, and we’ll get the
full rundown of what the poor guy looks like.

Are you cringing?

LOST Novel Author Outed

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Variety has revealed that "Gary Troup," the fictional author of the LOST tie-in novel BAD TWIN, is actually acclaimed novelist Laurence Shames.

Insiders say writers on "Lost" were asked to provide a list of elements that Shames could incorporate into the novel. But the author had his own vision and wound up including only a few of the elements.

[…]Show staffers also were frustrated that the book referenced copyrighted elements for which the publisher had not sought clearances, saying it would make it difficult to use those elements on-air.

But Hyperion told ABC that, like all publishers, it doesn’t normally seek clearances on copyrighted items in its novels. The house also said the book’s production schedule could have been held up if such clearances were sought.

Remaindered

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My short story REMAINDERED is now available on Amazon for a mere 49 cents.

Whether you are a bestselling author or a writer toiling in mid-list obscurity, your books will eventually end up remaindered to the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble. The fear, of course, is that your career will eventually end up remaindered, too. I got the idea for this dark-comic mystery while actually living the humiliating booksigning experience that opens the story….

Lester Dent’s Fiction Formula

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Dent2
I got this email from "Bigby" today:

Lester Dent, the pulp writer who created Doc Savage
(and I believe wrote all or most of the Shadow stories) and God knows how many
others once gave his formula for any 6000 word pulp story… which is EXACTLY
the four-act structure for TV. He even breaks those six thousand words into four,
1500 word acts…Absolutely fascinating.

Bigby is right.  Dent’s formula reads almost exactly like the four-act structure of an episodic teleplay. For example, here is how Dent describes the first 1500 words of a story:

  1. First line, or as near thereto as possible, introduce the hero
    and swat him with a fistful of trouble. Hint at a mystery, a menace or
    a problem to be solved–something the hero has to cope with.
  2. The hero pitches in to cope with his fistful of trouble. (He
    tries to fathom the mystery, defeat the menace, or solve the problem.)
  3. Introduce ALL the other characters as soon as possible. Bring
    them on in action.
  4. Hero’s endevours land him in an actual physical conflict near the
    end of the first 1500 words.
  5. Near the end of first 1500 words, there is a complete surprise
    twist in the plot development.

That’s pretty darn close to what the first Act of any episode has to accomplish. The first Act sets up the central conflicts of the story:  what the hero has at stake, what others have at stake, what his goals are and the obstacles that prevent him from achieving his aims. Dent says much the same thing, only in a different words ("He
tries to fathom the mystery, defeat the menace, or solve the problem."). Dent’s advice is worth taking — whether you are writing a thrilling short story or a spec episode of a TV show.

Hollywood & Crime

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Hollywood
Here’s  sneak peek at the rough cover for HOLLYWOOD AND CRIME, the new anthology edited by the prolific Robert Randisi (author of over 400 novels!). My contribution to this anthology, which comes out in February,  is a short story entitled "Jack Webb’s Star." My friends Max Allan Collins, Stuart Kaminsky, Michael Connolly, Paul Guyot, Dick Lochte, Gary Phillips and Gar Haywood are just a few of the other authors who have contributed stories, all of which feature at least one scene at the corner of Hollywood & Vine (Les Roberts, whose name is featured on the rough cover, unfortunately has had to bow out).

Writing Blind

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Novelist John Connolly has an interesting post on researching his novels. But what intrigued me was this little nugget about how he writes:

I brought with me to the US the initial draft of The Unquiet.
I imagine it would be almost unintelligible to anyone who tried to read
it as a coherent narrative. My first draft tends to be a little rough.
There will be inconsistencies of dialogue and character. Some
characters will appear in the early stages only to disappear later,
their failure to manifest themselves once again left entirely
unexplained. Some things seem like good ideas at the start, but quickly
prove to be distractions from the main thrust of the book, and as soon
as that realisation hits me I tend to let those elements slide.

I don’t fret too much about how untidy the text may be (although,
in my darker moments, I wonder what might happen if I didn’t live to
finish the book and someone else, for whatever reason, decided to piece
together whatever was left behind. I wish them luck. I mean, I’ve
written it, and sometimes even I’m not entirely sure that I always look
forward to trying to put all of the pieces together). After all,
there’s nobody looking over my shoulder, and my main aim is to get the
plot and characters from A-Z, even if that means bypassing Q and R
entirely, and occasionally having to loop back to P just to reassure
myself that I have a vague notion of what I’m doing.

I’m guessing that John doesn’t write with an outline. I know a number of authors who write the same way he seems to…just going where ever the inspiration takes him.  I’m not going to knock it because clearly it’s worked great for him.  But I don’t think I could ever write that way. That doesn’t mean that I stick religiously to my outline, or that characters don’t come and go (I’ve had characters who were meant to die in Chapter One that I kept alive through the whole book), but I need it to keep me more or less pointed in the right direction. I would find writing a book, particularly a mystery, very difficult to do on-the-fly.

Making a Living

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I had lunch with a TV writer-friend not long ago, and he was lamenting how the business was letting him down lately. He hadn’t worked much in TV during the last year and was despairing about his future. He told me that he wished he wrote books, too. So write one, I said. But I could see from the expression on his face that he wouldn’t. He liked the idea of writing a book…actually doing it was something else. He was a TV writer, and that was it.

I decided long ago that I was going to be a writer first and a TV writer second. There’s no question that I make most of my living in television…but I believe it’s important to me professionally, financially, psychologically and creatively not to concentrate on just one field of writing (It probablyhelps that I started my career as a freelance journalist, then became a novelist, then a non-fiction author, and finally, a TV writer/producer).  So I write books, both fiction and non-fiction, I teach TV writing, and occasionally I write articles and short stories… most of the time while I’m simultaneously writing & producing TV shows (though the TV work always takes priority over everything else). 

While the income from books, teaching, and articles doesn’t come close to matching what I  make in TV, those gigs keep some cash coming in when TV (inevitably) lets me down, keep me "alive" in other fields,  and, more importantly, keep my spirits up.

As a result, who I am as a writer isn’t entirely wrapped up in whether or not I have a TV job or a book on the shelves. I often have both, or one or the other — but if I have neither, I have a class to teach or an article to write.

I’m not producing a series right now. But last week, I partnered with a major production company and pitched a movie with them to a cable network. I met with representatives of a European TV network that’s interested in having me teach TV writing to their writer/producers and consult on their series. I rewrote a  TV movie treatment to incorporate studio notes.  I turned in a freelance script to the producers of a new drama series. I taught an online screenwriting class. I submitted a short story to Amazon shorts. I wrote 60 pages of my next novel. Next week, I have a meeting with a studio exec who has shows to staff up, a notes meeting on the freelance script, galleys to proof on one of my novels, more pages of my book to write, and probably a whole lot more that I don’t even know about yet. 

The bottom line is, I am always writing something for pay, even if that check is miniscule and hustling for my next gig, whether it’s in TV, publishing, or something else.  Why? Because that is who I am… a professional writer. And I have a mortgage to pay, just like everybody else.