The Writing Process

Tod Gives Burn Notice the Burn Notice

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10082679 After writing five BURN NOTICE  books, my brother Tod has called it quits, turning down a contract for more. Remarkably, the publisher has decided to retire the series as a result. Now that THE BAD BEAT,   his final book in the series is coming out, Tod reflects on his blog today on what he's learned from the experience. Here's an excerpt:

…writing Michael Westen taught me how to write series fiction and, beyond that, how to pace commercial crime fiction. See, previously, the crime fiction I wrote was decidedly not series and decidedly not commercial, really. (And I would argue that I never really set out to write crime, specifically, even if Living Dead Girl and Fake Liar Cheat and a bunch of my short stories are, you know, stories about crimes.) At any rate, writing the books required a completely different skill set — the deadlines alone required that they be almost completely plot and voice driven, which is somewhat different than my other work which tends to be character and setting driven. Writing Burn Notice has changed the way I approach crime fiction, which is good since the novel I'm writing now — more on that in a moment — is a pretty straight crime novel. 

[…] because the deadlines were so close, I also had to learn to not be an obsessive rewriter, which meant I had to keep a pretty tight plot, which meant I did more outlining than usual…and by that I mean I outlined anything at all, which I typically don't do. I also ended up trusting myself more. Usually when I'm working on something new, I show drafts to my wife or to my agent or trusted friends to get some feedback, but I just didn't have the time to do that with these books and the result is that I ended up needing to be honest with myself. Not an easy thing for any writer.

Now I don't feel so guilty about getting him the gig.

I Hate William Rabkin

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WRITING-600x900 (1) William Rabkin has a new screenwriting book out on the Kindle — Writing The Pilot — and I hate him for it.

I hate him because I only meant to browse the book the other day…but I ended up getting sucked in by his engaging, smart, and entertaining voice and spent all !@#$% night reading it.

I hate him because it would be the perfect update for our long-in-print screenwriting book Successful Television Writing.…and now it won't be, the greedy bastard.

And I hate him because I actually learned some things about a subject I thought I knew at least as well as Bill, my best & oldest friend and my long time writing partner…who also happens to be Adjunct Professor of creative writing in the University of California, Riverside's MFA Program, Palm Desert Graduate Center, and also teaches television writing at the UCLA Extension.

But even through my blinding hate, I have to admit he's a terrific and justifiably beloved teacher and that Writing the Pilot is both extremely entertaining and jam-packed with useful information.
His analysis of what makes a great pilot…vs what makes a great opening episode for a series…is simply brilliant.

His indepth analysis of the pilots for Fast Forward, Life on Mars  and Fringe were particularly smart and insightful. He also deftly uses examples from our own career, in particular our unproduced CBS pilots Ella Clah and Silhouette, to illustrate the thought-process behind developing and writing pilots (and candidly discusses some of mistakes along the way and what we learned from them).

Spec TV pilots are all the rage right now, contrary to what we said years ago in the last chapter of our Successful Television Writing, and his book couldn't be more timely. If you want to get into the TV biz, or if you are a veteran TV pro struggling with pilot-writing issues, Writing the Pilot is a must-read.

The book will soon be available in trade paperback and Nook versions as well.

(Pictured: Tod Goldberg, me, and Bill Rabkin signing at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in 2010)

UPDATED 8/19/2011 to add new cover.

Me on Me Again

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The Writer Underground interviewed me this week about, well, writing…here's an excerpt.

Q: You came to writing early; you wrote and sold your first novel while still in college. How many novels have you written over the course of your career?

Eight Diagnosis Murder novels, 13 Monk novels, four Jury novels, My Gun Has Bullets, Dead Space, Watch Me Die, and The Walk.

Q: In an era where a lot of “experts” suggest you have to specialize to succeed, you write in several different formats (novels, online, TV, etc); how has that versatility paid off during your career?

It’s kept me alive. I have never put all of my eggs in one basket. So when TV lets me down, the books pick up the slack, and vice-versa. I also work as a TV consultant to studios and networks around the world.

Q: How do you approach new projects when you have little or no experience with that kind of writing (e.g. — your first script, your first novel, first tie-in novel, etc)?

With terror… and excitement. I like challenging myself. It keeps me sharp. I usually begin by researching the subject and talking to experts in it… before tackling it myself.

Q: Any quirky writing habits that would immediately endear you to my readers?

I write in the nude while listening to TV themes. I’m joking, of course. I at least wear underwear.

Q: You’ve got a pretty active online presence; how much time are you investing in your blog, interviews, social media, etc?

Way too much. In fact, I shouldn’t even be answering these questions.

Q: Writing professionally means dealing with tight deadlines, yet “writer’s block” is still a hot topic among writers. How do you make yourself “creative” on a deadline?

It’s the deadline that makes me creative. I do much better when I have a drop-dead date. I have never missed a deadline, even when I had an accident and broke both of my arms.

Q: Any advice for novice writers, or observations about the mistakes they make over and over and over and over…?

Avoid clichés.

 

The Rap on Me and Monk

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Lee Goldberg and Traylor Howard-2 Kirkus Reviews is spotlighting the MONK books today in an interview with yours truly conducted by J. Kingston Pierce, who also runs the excellent Rap Sheet blog.  Here's a taste:

The series focused primarily on Adrian Monk, but your books are told from Natalie’s first-person perspective. What affect has that had on your storytelling?

I think it humanizes Monk. It gives us a necessary distance and, at the same time, a perspective to frame what we’re seeing. In a way, Natalie’s eyes become the replacement for the TV screen that’s was usually between us and Adrian Monk. Also, a little Monk goes a long way. You can overdo the joke and all the obsessive/compulsive stuff. By telling the stories from Natalie’s point of view, we aren’t with him all the time. We get some space, a breather from his shtick, and I think that’s important.

It’s also a conscious homage to Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe, who were seen as well through the eyes of their assistants.

The interview was huge, and all the stuff that Kirkus couldn't use, Pierce has posted on his blog.  For instance,we expanded on the previous question…

JKP: You’ve said before that telling these stories from the first-person viewpoint of Monk’s assistant, Natalie Teeger (played on screen byTraylor Howard), rather than from a third-person perspective more similar to what we saw on television, “humanizes Monk.” Could you explain that further?

LG: [I]t’s allowed me to add an emotional resonance to the storylines that goes beyond just Monk’s eccentricities and the solving of puzzling mysteries. The underlying theme of the book (and yes, there always is one in each tale) is often reflected in whatever is happening in Natalie’s life. Her personal story frames the way in which she perceives the mystery and reacts to Monk, so it’s all of a piece. It’s allowed me to make her a deeper, more interesting, and more realistic character. By doing that, I ground the story in what I like to think of as “a necessary reality.”

Without that reality, Monk would just be a caricature and cartoon character. Natalie humanizes Monk and makes the world that the two of them live in believable to the reader. Through her, we are able to invest emotionally in the story. Without that crucial element, I believe the books would have failed.

Old Dog, New Tricks

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Warner Hollywood Studios Over the last couple of weeks, I've had the opportunity to stick my big, one-hour drama toe into the sitcom world, courtesy of a friend of mine who is writing & producing a pilot for a major network. Much to my surprise, he invited me to the studio one afternoon a few weeks back to participate in the initial punch-up of the script…along with a roomful of Emmy-award winning,  comedy legends, like my friend Ken Levine and his partner David Isaacs. I figured I'd just sit in the corner, keep my mouth shut, and watch the masters at work. 

But like the lead character in the pilot, sometimes my mouth and my brain don't always work in concert. I was only there for a few minutes when I contributed a joke…which went over only slightly better than if I'd vomited on the table. I decided to keep my mouth shut. That resolve lasted perhaps five more minutes, when once again I heard myself suggesting a joke…which went over so badly, I expected security to be called to escort me out of the studio.

I know I can be funny…when I am sitting at the computer, by myself, writing. And I know I can be amusing on panels or when speaking in public. But I'd never had to be funny on-demand, to contribute specific jokes to serve a plot point or character beat. 

Who the hell was I to think that I could participate?  I decided I was going to just shut up, listen, and learn. But then, the more I listened, I realized that everybody was offering stinkers as well as winners…for every ten bad jokes someone threw out, perhaps one would stick. And before I knew it, I was throwing another joke into the mix…and to my shock, everyone laughed and my buddy put it in the script. 

I was ridiculously pleased and my reluctance to participate evaporated. I stopped feeling so self-conscious about my horrible jokes and did what everyone else was doing — sharing whatever came to mind. And to my delight, a couple more of my jokes got laughs…and found their way into the script in some form or another.

I ended up having a wonderful time and learning how a comedy writers room differed from the "drama" rooms I'd been part of for most of my career.  IMG_0266

The closest I've ever come to something approximating the punch-up experience was writing for MONK. Andy Breckman and his writing staff all came from SNL or Letterman or stand-up, not the episodic world, so they were always throwing out jokes…but we were still writing a mystery, and the room, and the plotting, felt comfortable and familiar to me. I knew I could do the job and I didn't feel any pressure to be funny. I was more likely to offer a funny situation to the room than a joke, per se.

But in the punch-up room, story structure wasn't the main issue. It was making the funny stuff funnier…creating new jokes to address specific problems. I've re-written scripts before…and made funny scenes funnier…but never on-demand in front of a room of other writers. Rewriting has always been a private affair.

But one thing the punch-up experience shared in common with all of my other writing room experiences was that brainstorming was encouraged, that even bad ideas were welcomed because they could lead to good ones. In that respect, throwing out jokes was no different than suggesting clues, plot points, character beats, or any other aspect of writing a drama. 

It was a great day…it was an honor and a thrill just to be in the room with all of those extremely talented and acclaimed writers… to see how their minds worked…and how they worked with others.

The last thing I expected was to be invited back.

But I was. 

The pilot has now been cast,  a major director has been signed, the sets have been built, and it will be shot this week. Today I was invited back to help punch up the script following the final run-through.

This, too, was an entirely new experience for me. An entirely different group of comedy writers were gathered this time to watch the show on its feet, to see what worked and what didn't, then help the showrunner tweak the script to address network notes and smooth out some last-minute bumps that emerged during the staging.

So that's what we did. We watched a full run-through of the show, then locked ourselves in a conference room with a deli platter, soft drinks, a stack of scripts and lots of pencils. It was a lot like my previous experience…only scarier, because two top-level studio execs would be sitting in on the punch-up. I had no idea what I was supposed to do, what the rules were, or how this was supposed to work. But I knew if I made a fool of myself, the studio execs would certainly remember.

My friend, the showrunner, went through the script scene-by-scene, telling us what the problems were that had to be addressed and asking the writers in the room, all good friends of his, for their thoughts on any other bumps he might have missed.

People threw out new jokes and, once again, I hesitantly offered one of my own…that clearly nobody liked. It was as if I'd dropped my pants and urinated in the middle of the room. Well, at least that's how it felt to me.

More jokes flew around. I hesitantly offered another one, also D.O.A.  I was a fraud, a witless moron who had no place in a room full of professional comedy writers… so I tossed out one last joke to confirm what I already knew about my failings.

Everyone laughed.  And then they took that joke and started improving on it. So I added a tweak of my own. The joke went in to the script.

There was a young writer in the room who was absolutely fearless. Or perhaps "shameless" is the better word.  He threw out one joke after another….dozens of them, most of them lousy, and just kept doing it until he hit on something hilarious… and if that wasn't the joke that went in, it led the room to the one that did.

I learned a valuable lesson from him — I realized my biggest problem was my hesitancy. I had to commit to my jokes, or go in the opposite direction, throw them out casually, without worrying about whether they were any good or not. 

From that moment on, I contributed whatever came to my mind…and was surprised, and ridiculously pleased, by how much of my stuff either made it in, or inspired someone else in the room to come up with something much, much better than what I'd offered, but along the same lines.  We began to work as a big team, backing each other up. It was great fun.

I have no illusions about being any good at this, or that I came close to holding my own with the far more talented people in the room, but I had a great time…it actually felt good to be scared, to be challenged in new ways,  to discover new strengths as well as new weaknesses about myself.

This experience is going to make me a better writer…and for that, I owe my comedy-writing friend a big thank-you for taking a chance and inviting me into the room.

Hot Sex, Gory Violence

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0348 Goldberg POD The Jury Series Final CreateSpace
Newsweek published this My Turn essay of mine back in mid-1980s, while I was still a college student and writing my JURY books, then called .357 Vigilante, under the pen-name "Ian Ludlow." Now that I have re-released the books, I thought you might enjoy it:

HOT SEX, GORY VIOLENCE

How One Student Earns Course Credit and Pays Tuition

My name is Ian Ludlow. Well, not really. But that's the name on my four ".357 Vigilante" adventures that Pinnacle Books will publish this spring. Most of the time I'm Lee Goldberg, a mild mannered UCLA senior majoring in mass communications and trying to spark a writing career at the same time. It's hard work. I haven't quite achieved a balance between my dual identities of college student and hack novelist.

The adventures of Mr. Jury, a vigilante into doing the LAPD's dirty work,  are often created in the wee hours of the night, when I should be studying, meeting my freelance-article deadlines or, better yet, sleeping. More often than not, my nocturnal writing spills over into my classes the next morning. Brutal fistfights, hot sexual encounters and gory violence are frequently scrawled across my anthropology notes or written amid my professor's insights on Whorf's hypothesis. Students sitting next to me who glance at my lecture notes are shocked to see notations like "Don't move, scumbag, or I'll wallpaper the room with your brains.

I once wrote a pivotal rape scene during one of my legal-communications classes, and I'm sure the girl who sat next to me thought I was a psychopath. During the first half of the lecture, she kept looking with wide eyes from my notes to my face as if my nose were melting onto my binder or something. At the break she disappeared, and I didn't see her again the rest of the quarter. My professors,  though, seem pleased to see me sitting in the back of the classroom writing furiously. I guess they think I'm hanging on their every word. They're wrong.

I've tried to lessen the strain between my conflicting identities by marrying the two. Through the English department, I'm getting academic credit for the books. That amazes my Grandpa Cy, who can't believe there's a university crazy enough to reward me for writing "lots of filth." The truth is, it's writing and it's learning, and it's getting me somewhere. Just where, I'm not sure. My Grandpa Cy thinks it's going to get me the realization I should join him in the furniture business.

Read more

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.

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.