RWadams

Everything I Need to Know About Writing I Learned From Spenser

(With apologies to Robert Fulghum)

I was saddened to hear of the passing recently of the Grand Master of American Detective Fiction, Robert B. Parker. Parker’s Spenser, and later Jesse Stone, were the inspiration for me to begin my own writing career. Going one step further, I realized that everything I have used in my own writing I learned from absorbing pages and pages of the adventures of Spenser, Hawk, Susan Silverman, and the other characters brought to life through the skill of Robert B. Parker. This is what I have learned:

1. Characters drive stories. The situations the characters find themselves in develop as a result of who your characters are. Develop and know your characters, put them into a situation, and the story develops from there.

2. Keep your main characters consistent. Spenser is always the tough guy with a flair for literature and gourmet cooking. His only true weakness is, will ever be, his devotion to Hawk and Susan. Nothing changes, regardless of the case, regardless of the villain. Nobody is tougher than Spenser.

3. Make the villain worthy of the hero. In Parker’s “Stone Cold”, Jesse Stone battles a pair of highly intelligent thrill killers who flaunt their superiority under a false claim of innocence. Only after they make their murders personal does their story start to unravel. Stone is as dogged and unrelenting as the serial killers are cold and unremorseful. A match made in mystery heaven.

4. Show, don’t tell. I know, almost all writers know this. Even my mentor, Suzanne James, encouraged me to use that as my mantra. Nothing will bore the readers faster than long winded meticulous descriptions of a scene. Parker used crisp dialogue and actions to show propel the stories forward, and there aren’t a whole lot of writers who have done it better.

5. Set the pace, and encourage the reader to turn every page. Something worth reading happens on every page, and changes in chapters bring changes in scenarios that bring additional momentum to the story.

6. Don’t forget the even the toughest of the tough guys have a sense of humor. The one-liners shared between Spenser, Hawk, Vinnie Morris, Lt. Quirk and the rest helped bring a sharp contrast to the dramatic tension of the story. They make the characters more real, more engaging, and served to define each personality.

7. I would also like to add, and I’ve recommended this a lot to anyone who has asked me about writing, read. Reading really good writing, regardless of which author you like, will help provide working examples of a style you can use and emulate in your own writing.

So my thanks to Spenser, Hawk, Susan Silverman, Jesse Stone, Sunny Randall, and rest in peace Mr. Parker. Thank you for setting the bar, for providing me with concrete examples of writing excellence, and a lot of literary enjoyment.

As a writer, I steal time.  In other words, when I’m working on a new article, or a new story or plotline, I use whatever resources I have available whenever I can.  I also have family obligations and a day job that has nothing to do with the other side of my life as a crime fiction writer.  The fun comes when these two lives pass a hair too close in unexpected situations.

For example, a friend of mine suggested an article on how to hide a dead body.  Well, at lunch I was using the computer at work for a little research, when my boss came by and looked over my shoulder. The computer is out in the open, with no real privacy, so the user has to be aware that anyone can see what is on the screen.  I had the Google search window open, and had just finished typing, “How to Hide a Dead Body.”  He said nothing at first, just standing there reading over my shoulder as I reviewed the admittedly odd search results. After a few minutes, he spoke.

“Research?” he asked, knowing I write mysteries.

“Sort of.” I decided to have a little fun.

He looked puzzled. “Oh, anything you want to tell me about?”

“Well, my daughter Katie is growing up, and is starting to discover boys.  I just want to be ready, ya know.”

His eyes went wide. I smiled at him.  And didn’t see him for the rest of the day.

For the benefit of my readers, (both of them), I wanted to share an excerpt from my first novel, LAKE EFFECT. Boffalo PI Joe Banks is called in to investigate the death of two children in a winter carjacking. Enjoy, and as always, feedback is encouraged and appreciated.

It was about 6:30 pm by the time I got home. Supper was a warm plate in the oven, and I ate quickly as Kyle and Amanda colored pictures with Paula in the family room. I took the plate to the sink, rinsed it off, and joined the rest of the art class. Paula was great with art, and even dabbled in painting classes in oils, pastels and acrylics before we got the kids. She has a fantastic sense of color, proportion, and fun, whereas all my pictures never made it past the level of fifth grade, back of the school book scribbling. Kyle wanted nothing to do with any of the other colors except for blue, which suited Amanda just fine. That just meant more crayons for her.
“Catch the bad guys yet?” Paula asked playfully.
“Still trying to figure out who the bad guys are,” I replied, trying to draw a circle in blue crayon for Kyle.
“Sounds like a productive day.” My wife has a gift for sarcasm.
“Uh-huh, just another day in paradise. I did manage to get some answers, though, and discovered I was one of the least welcome guests at the funeral of the Dellaplante children.”
“How did that go?” Paula asked, looking up from her Crayola still life, handing the yellow crayon to Amanda. We walked in to the kitchen adjacent to the family room, so we could talk and keep an eye on the kids at the same time.
“Uncomfortable, and intrusive, especially on my part. But I think I really made an impression on Maddy Dellaplante, and managed to surprise Frank. And I got to meet and talk with Michael Lawrence.”
“Who?”
“Lawrence works for Dellaplante. Turns out he is the dead kids’ father, and that he has some dirt on Frank and Dellaplante Development. We were having this really nice conversation, baring our souls like two guys in a coffee shop do, you know. Then somebody spooked him, really bad. I never got a good look at him, and I wasn’t able to go after him, but it shut Lawrence up completely. It was weird.”
“What do you mean?” Paula asked nervously. She always had a look of concern when she heard me talk about some of the less comfortable parts of the job. She told me once not knowing was worse, because her imagination was generally worse than any reality I faced.
“It was as if somebody wanted him to know they were watching him, and they could get to him if they wanted to. And he apparently got the message.”
Paula looked down. “And if they know how to get to him, and they know who you are, will they know how to get to you, too?” she asked in hushed tones.
The answer was probably yes. “I don’t know, hon,” I told her, hoping to give her some kind of comfort.
“Should I call my cousin, Carrie? I could take the kids and stay with her for a few days if we have to,” she said.
“That’s a little premature I think,” I told her, still wanting to make her feel like she was safe in her own home.
“Really?”
“Yeah, I think so. It’s probably nothing for us to worry about. If they wanted to send me a message, it would have been a lot more direct.” I hugged her and kissed her forehead.
Amanda came in to the kitchen with her yellow crayon, and tugged at Paula’s pant leg. “Mamma, you have to draw with me, please?”
We smiled at each other, and Paula took Amanda by the hand and went back to the family room. I stood in the doorway, soaking in the domestic tranquility of it all. The nasty business of the Dellaplante family faded a little watching Paula, with little Kyle on her lap, and Amanda diligently working on her latest refrigerator masterpiece. Times like these disappear too quickly, and come too far between.
Bedtime for the munchkins came at 8:30 pm, and Paula and I were left to clean up the aftermath of a hard day at play. Once the toys were put in their respective toy boxes, we stalled out beside each other on the couch, hands held tightly. We flipped through the channels on the television, and discovered absolutely nothing. We turned to each other, smiled, and turned off the TV. Paula kissed my ear playfully, and whispered, “Good idea.” We managed to exchange a lot of good ideas on the couch. There was a deep comfort in knowing that, even fifteen years later, we could still make love like when we met, and we didn’t have to make love to prove how we felt about each other.
About 11:30 pm, Paula decided to turn in for the night. I felt too wired, and probably would have just laid there tossing and turning, so I decided to catch the late news, and go over my notes on the Dellaplante case. I turned off the outside lights on the garage and the front porch, and had turned out the lights in family room. Our house was deceptive, because with the family room lights out, and the nightlight we kept on in the kitchen, it was hard to tell from the outside if anyone was awake or not inside. We used to have an alarm system, and, while we live in a quiet subdivision, it did give us some minor peace of mind. But after a while, feeling safe and secure, we stopped using it. It became just an unnecessary expense, and we really didn’t need any extra frills in our already tight budget. So when I heard the first thud coming from the back of the garage, I started wishing that we kept the alarm connected.
On the side of the garage near the back, Paula and I had the builder install a door so that we could have a second entrance from the back yard, behind the stockade fence. At the first noise, I got up, and moved to the pantry in the kitchen. We keep a full size MagLite there in case of blackouts. It is long and black and hefty in your hand, a heavy-duty light for heavy-duty work. I pulled it out and moved out of the kitchen and into the front hallway as the back door between the mudroom and the garage opened with a metallic pop. My pulse raced as I heard the first footsteps from the mudroom and into the kitchen. I waited with the flashlight down at my side in my right hand, back against the hall wall, barely breathing.
I watched, eyes adjusted to the dark, and listened as the footsteps approached closer and closer. The intruder wore soft-soled shoes that were wet, and squeaked slightly on the linoleum. I saw the barrel of a pistol come into view, followed by a gloved hand, and a pair of black jacketed forearms as the prowler continued to move forward. As soon as I saw his elbows, I brought the flashlight up hard and fast around the corner, and felt the steel hit something hard that gave way under the force of the blow. I came around the corner as fast as the flashlight did and grabbed the hand holding the gun, twisting it down and away. The hand hit the island counter, and the gun skidded across the floor towards the sink. I continued forward and wound up straddling the intruder, sitting on his chest as his free hand covered his face, blood oozing from between the fingers. I looked down and saw the red and silver Buffalo Sabres logo on the left side of the chest. Looking at me was the man whom I had seen at the Tim Horton’s with Lawrence. Behind me the kitchen light came on, and I could hear Paula say, “Oh my God, Joe…”
“Honey, go back up to our room and call the cops, and an ambulance,” I said as calmly as I could. I noticed the left sleeve of his black jacket was ripped at the shoulder seam.
“An ambulance? Are you hurt?” she asked nervously.
“It’s not for me,” I said, grabbing the stranger’s already bleeding nose and twisting it to the sound of a grown man’s screams. As he howled and reached again for his nose, I drove my fist hard into his hands. His eyes rolled back into his head as he lost consciousness.
“Quiet,” I said, “you’ll wake the kids.”

I started thinking  about the title of this site, Inspired Author. We all seek and strive for inspiration in order to pursue our passions. I personally take inspiration from the people around me, my family being the biggest source. But every once in a while, I take inspiration from the words of wisdom of others. Enjoy, and take from these quotes what you will.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the things you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” – Steve Prefontaine

“I find the harder I work, the luckier I become.” - Thomas Jefferson

“If you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford

“Let us so live that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry.” – Mark Twain

“Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it’s cowardice” – George Jackson

“Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can.” – Danny Kaye

“The greatest pleasure in life is in doing what people say you cannot do.” – Walter Bagehot

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others.” – Jonathan Winters

“The greatest conflicts are not between people, but between one person and himself.” – Garth Brooks

“I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity.” – Tom Stoppard

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” – Elbert Hubbard

“Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening.” – Dorothy Sarnoff

A while, back a friend of mine found out that I write books and short stories. After his initial astonishment, he informed me that he had always wanted to write a fantasy/sci-fi novel. I recall his exact words:
”I want to write so bad!”
So I scoured the Internet for advice on how to write a truly bad novel. After much diligence and a few cold, holiday beverages, I found and submit for your review, the following (really funny) list:
1. Remember that real writers use a typewriter. They don’t like these newfangled computers. A manual typewriter and a bucket of Wite-Out™ are the tools of a serious writer.
2. Never pick an average name that a regular person would have. Go with something that explains the character. If your character is a cop on the edge, then try a manly nickname coupled with the name of a gun — something like Rip Magnum.
3. If your book is about a real person, just alter their name and location slightly — Jorge M. Bushe, Presidente of the Federated Territories.
4. Make sure you’ve got a lot of similar names too. Donald, Donna, Dina, Dana and Danny just feel right together.
5. Make sure that the good guys are clearly good and the bad guys are overwhelming evil. Don’t confuse your readers by having all the characters have good qualities and bad ones.
6. Explain everything. When your character is angry, just say that she’s angry. There’s no point in trying to show that through her actions when you can just tell that to your reader.
7. Don’t explain anything. Why did your villain spend the whole book clutching a blanket? Leave it up to the readers. They’ll fill in the blanks.
8. Pile on the adjectives and adverbs. Why have a woman speak when you can have her whisper breathlessly in her lustful, wind-swept voice?
9. Fill your book with coincidences, especially towards the end. Nothing beats having the exciting climax occur because the hero bumped into the villain in a small-town cafe when they both had a craving for peach-filled semi-sweet chocolate pie. Did you mention that both characters love the exact same pie? Now would be a good time.
10. Don’t let your character’s established traits get in the way of a good plot twist. Just because your hero is a priest who preaches non-violence doesn’t mean he can’t be an expert marksman with an itchy trigger finger.
11. Use lots of technical jargon. Don’t worry about whether your reader will understand it, or whether you understand it. Just stick it in. It will make your characters sound smarter.
12. If you are writing a historical novel, don’t sweat accuracy. The reader won’t care. Go ahead and have Napoleon invent the automatic rifle. Who could say he didn’t?
13. If you are writing fantasy literature, make sure your magical animals have never been thought of before. Try a talking armadillo.
14. Make sure to add …A Novel to the end of your title. You don’t want people to forget what they are reading.
15. Don’t feel as if anything has to happen. Plots are optional. Two people sitting in a room staring at each other is great material, as long as it is handled with plenty of adjectives and adverbs (see tip five).
16. Exclamation points! Exclamation points! Exclamation points!
17. Ellipses too…
18. Don’t sweat the order of the action. If the big football game needs to occur just after the prom, then that is when it should be.
19. Nothing beats a catch phrase!
20. Brothers are always very different and they always argue about everything. Never portray brothers who are similar and get along unless they are twins (except if one is an evil twin). If they are twins they must finish each other’s sentences and no one should be able to tell them apart.
21. Sisters must always steal each other’s boyfriends. Additionally, one sister must be outgoing and the other must be quiet and serious. This makes no difference to the boyfriend though, he’ll gladly dump either for the other.
22. Don’t start your novel with an interesting event. Take a few dozen pages to explain everything that would lead up to that interesting event. The reader will gladly hang around until you get to the point.
23. Don’t make your secondary characters interesting. It will just detract from the main characters. Lesser characters don’t need reasons for their actions. They are just there to keep the plot moving.
24. If the plot seems to slow down, give someone a gun or a knife and kill off one of those secondary characters you don’t care about anyway.
25. Writing a book about vampires? You probably don’t need any help making it bad, but you should definitely make sure you show how cool it is to be a vampire and make up your own rules for the way vampires can die or have sex.
26. If you are writing about sports, make it clear that sports always provide important life lessons. Make sure the novel has one obsessive and one downtrodden coach.
27. If you want to write a serious novel, make sure the main character is jaded and has lost interest in life. This anti-hero must view all other people as phonies, fakes or idiots. The character should experiment with drugs and sex. At some point the character should watch someone die or at least be assaulted. At no point should the anti-hero feel any real pleasure. Happy endings are strictly prohibited.
28. Writing a mystery? Make sure the clues are really obvious or really obscure. Either way, your hero will be the only person who can piece these things together. At some point they must accuse the wrong person and be ridiculed for it. In the end though, they should deliver a speech that explains exactly how everything happened.
29. Character conversations should always be used to explain what is happening and how people are feeling. It is perfectly natural to have a character explain to his office mate (whose brother is a bank president) that he used to be a safe cracker, but now he just wants to go straight.
30. Don’t forget to use italics when you want to emphasize something.
31. At the end of the book, you must have the main character reach an important and life-changing epiphany. Make that epiphany really obvious. Don’t worry about why they had one, just make sure they had it so the reader knows the book is ending.
32. Editing is just a waste of time. Spell check it and move on.

Have you always wanted to write a book? Do you see the whole tale in your head but find yourself unable to get it out on to the page? Do you begin writing with enthusiasm only to burnout before you’ve begun? Here are a few ideas that may help you harness a bit of that enthusiasm, and focus your creativity.

1. Outline Your Ideas
Most people need to form their ideas in some kind of outline. An outline is the easiest and best way of organizing the brainstorm of ideas into something workable and understandable. An outline also provides the writer with a framework they can refer to as the story develops, helping them to stay “on track.” It doesn’t have to include every detail of your novel, just the framework. And you can always add and modify as you go along.

2. Consider Point-of-View
For each scene, decide what point of view you are going to use. I write primarily in first person, but will write chapters in third person as I need to develop the action outside of the immediate view of the hero. One thing my editor would catch me doing was called “head jumping,” or changing POV in mid-chapter. Stick with a single POV for each individual scene/chapter, and your story will flow much better.

3. Dialogue
Read and re-read the conversations aloud. It is the best way to “hear” the characters, and makes the written word more real to you. Be cautious of accents, however. There are authors that can introduce accents into a story, but I’m not one of them. I have used a description of the accent, but have never tried to actually “write with an accent”. It’s tough, I’m lazy, and I avoid it if possible. However, if one of your characters speaks a foreign language, be sure to get an accurate translation before using the language, and triple check the word spelling. I used Cuban Spanish in one of my novels, and had a Cuban friend check it, and correct it, for me.

4. Concept
Imagine you are writing the back cover blurb for your novel. You have 25-50 words to excite the reader enough to want to crack the binding. If you can do that, you have a strong story concept that will satisfy both you the writer and the readers as well. If you can’t, well, try going back to tip #1.

5. Building the Drama
A good story needs conflict. But every good story builds the drama gradually over the course of the book. You should try to let the drama flow as the conflict between the hero and the villain mounts towards the conclusion.

6. Show- Don’t Tell
Re-action speaks louder than words. Use action instead of description to set the emotional tone of a scene, and try to avoid the “–ly’s” as much as possible. Too many adverbs spoil the narrative.

7. Obvious Mistakes
This is actually one of the most important. No matter how great your word processing program or how many times you proofread yourself, you can always overlook misspellings, grammatical errors and incorrect punctuation. You should have someone very qualified in English or a professional editor proofread your work. In his book, “On Writing”, Stephen King recommends putting the manuscript away for a time, then re-reading it with fresh eyes. Not a bad idea, really, and one I have used myself.

Good luck, and I hope to see YOUR name on the best seller list.

My friend Kim Smith, a talented and hard working writer and artist from Tennessee, has taken a departure from her usual realm of the cozy mystery and has released her first romance novel on Red Rose Press, “A Will To Love.”  She was kind enough to share this with me, and I am thrilled to share it with you.

Kim Smith author of A Will to Love available at http://www.redrosepublishing.com …” I settled down in front of the computer this morning with a hot cup of tea, a lit fragrant candle, and A Will to Love on my computer screen, and read the entire novelette in one sitting. It’s an absolutely wonderful romance! When A Will to Love comes out as a “regular” book I expect to see it at the bedsides of B&B’s all around the U.S. and Ireland!” –Susan Ortlieb, reader and reviewer 

Pplease check it out and join me in wishing Kim a world of success with her latest work.

What Makes a Good Bad Guy?

Getting your readers to hate the bad guy is much easier than getting them to sympathize with them. True, you may want to give your villain some redeeming qualities, but if your character does something truly loathsome, your readers will never forget.
Some of the most memorable villains will often cause their victims to suffer in either their body or mind. Think about some of the most notorious bad guys, and you’ll see what I mean. Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest used degradation and humiliation to make her patients less than human. Jamie Gomb in Silence of the Lambs kidnapped and held his victims hostage before removing pieces of their skin. You get the picture. They were bullies and sadists, and they use their power to torment their victims.
On the other hand, murder is nowhere near as powerful a tool in defining the villain and making the readers hate him. Bullying can never be justified enough to make the sadistic character sympathetic, murder can often be explained away in a manner that the assassin can be a hero. A good rule of thumb is that murder and other violent crimes will only make a character villainous if the acts are performed for purely selfish reasons. Motives make the all the difference in determining the villain’s proper place on the moral spectrum. A con man can be a hero, as opposed to a cold blooded killer.
We are truly terrified by those who have an altered view of reality than we do. The villain who shows himself insane cannot be reasoned with, cannot be bargained with. While mental health experts may not like it, the criminal who is dangerously insane leaves the hero one alternative: to stop him. But remember one thing about your character, whether or not he is insane: Everybody is the hero of their own story. So even the villain believes there is something heroic in their actions from their point of view. I know. Crazy, right?
I would also recommend that your bad guy be a mirror for your hero. Think Holmes and Moriarty, Starling and Lecter, even Luke Skywalker and Dart Vader. Each villain reflects aspects of the good guy, defining both as they progress towards the final confrontation. The hero is defined as much by the evil of their foe as they are by their own nobility. A good bad guy enhances the hero’s story and gives us something cheer for.  I hope this gives you the author a little guidance as to what makes a good bad guy.