Author Archives: Murderati

Where’d My Safety Net Go?

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. But isn’t every day. What a silly phrase.

But today is different for me. Today is my first day without a day job. I left mine yesterday.

Julie made the decision a few weeks ago that I needed to leave my day job (even though I only work a 3 day week anyway). She said, “You’re not getting any younger. Your best years are behind you.” I believe in a previous life Julie gave pep talks on the Titanic.

I railed against the idea. My day job doesn’t identify me as a person, though I’m mad keen on the benefits and pension schemes that come with it, but I got to thinking about what was important to me and my day job didn’t really feature. I really want to write. At the moment, I’m lucky enough to have more than a full plate in that department and I still have room for a little more. Unfortunately, that pesky 9 to 5 thing keeps getting in the way. Something had to give, so I handed in my notice. Obviously I prepared myself for my boss’ denial and the offers to double my salary if I would reconsider. To my boss’ credit, she held herself in check and said, “So when would your last day be?” That woman is a trooper. Brave to the bitter end.

I have to admit it took a little getting used to the idea of leaving my day job security blanket behind. I’m a very pragmatic person. I need my food and shelter requirements squared away before I can go crazy, but as Julie says, I’m not getting any younger and I could run out of time before I get to do all the things I want to do. So, I’m going for it. I’m quite fortunate to be in a position to do this. We live comfortably off Julie’s salary and mine goes towards vacations, investments, the house, etc. For the first time in my writing career, I’ll earn something close to what I earned at my day job. In addition, I have secondary income from some very nice investments and added to that I have a second job. It’s very non-traditional, super secret job and is the reason Robin Burcell stood in for me last week. So financially, I won’t be struggling for food.

So as of this morning, my job title is writer. It’s a little scary. It jars with my pragmatic sensibilities. Writer. It’s such an intangible profession and in the same leagues as cloud wrangler and attorney general. But my pragmatic sensibilities drive me to make this work. Not because I want a new car every other year, but because I like being a writer. I like being a professional liar. I want to make people believe in something I made up. I think I can do it and I hope I can pull it off. I’m going to give it my best shot.

Naturally, I’ll have to make adjustments. Some of my priorities will change. If this is my job then I have to treat it as a job. I’ll have to get my act together in some respects and work damn hard to nail down some projects I want to do. Julie has expectations as the sponsor of this adventure. Someone is going to have to look pretty for her and better have the dinner on the table when she gets home. And that someone isn’t going to be the dog or one of the cats. On the plus side, I will have certain freedoms. How many of us out there can go to work in their underpants and not have the boss complain?

So, I’ve dispensed with the safety net. I’m not sure how it’ll go. I don’t have catlike abilities where I always land on my feet, but I tend to fall on my arse and not my face, so I’m hopeful. Now please turn away, I have to scratch.

Yours flying high and not looking down,
Simon Wood

Next month will be a special month as I’m going to make it things that I survived. I have a small talent for calamity, so I’ll be sharing some of mine.

All That You Dream

by J.D. Rhoades

All, all that you
dream,
Comes through shining,
silver lining
-Little Feat

This past weekend,
some friends of mine came to town. The local library hosted a “Women of Mystery”
panel featuring my old friend (and early inspiration) Katy Munger, along with Sarah
Shaber, Diane Chamberlain, Brynn Bonner, and Murderati’s own Alexandra
Sokoloff. They were all doing a stint as
Writers in Residence at local arts retreat The Weymouth Center. I had met
everyone but Brynn before, and it was great to make her acquaintance, as well
as touch base with the folks I already knew. The big news is that we can expect
to see some long awaited new work from Katy soon. Stay tuned.

During the
discussion, the panelists touched on something that’s always been a particular interest
of mine, namely dreams and their effect on the creative process. Diane
mentioned that she sometimes liked to take what she called a “creative nap”,
where, if she was stuck at some point in the creative process, she’d lie down
with a pad and pen next to her and jot down ideas that came to her just as she
was falling asleep or waking up. She related a story about Thomas
Edison, who used to
nap in his chair with a ball bearing held
loosely in each hand, and a pair of metal pie plates on the floor
beneath his
hands. As he fell asleep, his hands
would relax, the bearings would hit the plates and wake him, whereupon Edison would write down whatever came to him in the
twilight between sleep and wakefulness.

Later, Sarah mentioned that she wrote best in
the mornings and Katy suggested that perhaps that was because she was closer to
the “dream state.”

***

Sweet dreams are made
of this
Who am I to disagree?
Travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody’s looking for something

-The Eurythmics

Many artists
report drawing inspiration from dreams. Salvador Dali springs immediately to
mind. Robert Louis Stevenson apparently said that the idea for the story “The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”
came to him in a dream in which he saw himself morphing from one character into
another. Paul McCartney supposedly heard the melody to “Yesterday” in a dream.

Perhaps my favorite example comes from an interview I saw with Swedish actress
Liv Ullman, who was
talking about living with the late
director Ingmar Bergman. “He
would come down to breakfast and describe one of his nightmares to me, “ Ullman
deadpanned, “and I would think, ‘Oh, Lord, I suppose I’m going to be starring in this
next year.”

I’ve always been
fascinated by dreams. Why do we do it? What really goes on? Are dreams actually
your subconscious speaking to you? Are they suppressed sexual fantasies expressed symbolically? Why
do dreams that seem so vivid upon waking up fade away during the day so you don’t
remember them unless you write them down?

And yes, I do write
mine down, fairly often. I keep my notebook by the bed and jot down a few brief
notes after a particularly vivid or disturbing dream.

I’m not sure why I do it; it just seems important.

So how about you?
Has anything that ever came to you in a dream turned into actual writing? How’d
it turn out? Do you find that writing in the morning is more effective because
of its proximity to the “dream state”? What do you think dreams really are, anyway?

I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours…
-Bob Dylan

I’d Rather Be In Croydon

By Ken Bruen

Someone close to me has been in hospital for the last 2 weeks and is in an open ward….private rooms are not so much expensive as just impossible to get

And ok………..they do cost

We have the trolley situation here, that means, if you can be admitted to a hospital, you’re on a trolley for 2 days , in a public corridor and lucky to have it

The new Ireland, just after we’d been declared the 2nd richest country after Japan, we treat our nurses and hospitals like total shite

Most days, I sit by her bed and am ……….just there, as she is heavily sedated and I dunno if she even knows I’m there

I know

So, I’m a writer, I do what writers do

I listen

Wish I didn’t

There is a woman across from us, aged 80……….I know, she told me

And she has had two strokes

She doesn’t know that

She tells me, as I hold her beautiful weathered, worked line hands

“Amac ( son), you have ferocious cold hands”

I say

Cold hands……………..

And let her finish

Her whole face lit up

“Warm heart.”

Every day, I try to bring her some small trivial item and she grabs my hand when I bring the Claddagh angel, says

“You’re a lovely man.”

I look at my friend opposite and wish she could have heard that

Better, probably, she didn’t…………..she’d have said, in the way only Irish women can

“And you’d have believed that?”

The woman, of the strokes?

She spent 50 years working in Croydon as a bar lady and said

“Tis a wicked place, I hated every moment of it.”

But she did it

Paid to put her family through college and she smiles, that Irish melancholy, not one trace of bitterness, adds

“They don’t talk to me now”

Now Croydon is a bad Detroit and if you live in Detroit, I mean no offence, it’s just a place where they chew you up and spit you out, the English version is worse, all cement and coldness and as I don’t expect to be doing a reading there anytime soon, that’s how it is

Her husband Larry…………I swear, on me child’s head is ninety, and looks like an Irish Clint Eastwood, all lined face, gravitas, and dignity and he is going deaf, so he has a hearing aid

He sits by her bed, I think, nine hours a day and holds her hand and she’s yapping away, he can’t hear much but looks at her as if he is hanging on her every single word

Now fuckit…………….that is love

What do I know about it?

Indeed……….when you’ve lost your marriage, you’re hardly the expert on the topic

I do know when I see such care, warmth and affection, I’m seeing something rare, I look at them, with ok, yearning and

They kill me

I’m downstairs in the coffeeshop, grabbing some respite when Larry comes along, sees me and adjusting his hearing aid, asks if he might have the honor to join me?

Aw fook

Honor?

I say of course and go and get him a cup of tea…………..I just know he’d never have drank coffee his whole life and I add a slice of Danish

He looks at it when I put it down and reaches for his wallet

I say, not shouting , but clearly

“My treat.”

He nods

Tries the tea and I know he thinks it’s shite, a weak tea bag and piss poor water……….he says

“Isn’t this grand”

No irony

He really means it

He has the most amazing blue eyes I ever saw, full of knowledge, and deep, deep sorrow.

He’s wearing an impeccably white shirt, not a speck on it, a carefully knotted tie, blue blazer, a little the worse for wear, and grey pants with a crease you could shave yer own

self with

I’m wearing a t-shirt with the logo Head Games

And me faded blue jeans

Guess how I feel?

He says, adjusting his hearing aid to max

“You were very kind to Mairead”.

I mutter she is easy to be………..kind to

He tries the Danish, his false teeth having trouble with all the sugar, say’s

“She thinks she is going back to Croydon.”

And I say nothing…………..not one word

He adds

“She hated the feckin place.”

After my friend is released from hospital, I buy a large bunch of flowers, go to see Mairead and her bed is vacant, I ask the nurse where they moved her, she says, her whole body screaming

knackered !

from too many shifts and without any malice or bitterness, just the facts, the words

“Oh she died.”

She is too tired to be nice

Moves on

I stand there

The flowers in me dead hand

Tom Russell’s rendition of Bukowski’s Crucifix in a Dead Hand unreeling like a slow snake in me mind

I remember when Craig Mc first introduced me to TR………..and how blown away I was by him…………without music, there is no heart, only the void

Think of Mairead, think of that smile when she saw the tiny angel

Thank god she’s not in Croydon

I give the flowers to another nurse who says

“I have a boyfriend.”

Right

Let’s hope he has half the stuff of Larry

I get outside of the hospital and it’s pissing down, like teeming, I have me hat but you know, for one moment, I just stand there, the rain lashing down and I’m not going to go deep…………..say………gee…….it was cleansing or I felt I knew the answer

Mainly I was thinking

Now and again, you get the chance to meet people like them………….is it a blessing or a curse?

Base a whole doctorate on that.

A man passing says

“You’re getting fucking drenched there”

I give him the look, say

“What’s it to you?”

Wonderful man……………right, I’m so relieved that Mairead never got to know me, the temper, the insecurity, the depression…….yada yada………..who I really am…………. she saw a simple surface , I’m so glad she never knew I was a writer and all that entails …………… Maybe I’ll move to Detroit

And yes, me hands are cold

Seems fitting

On Sight

by Pari Noskin Taichert

Near the southern edge of New Mexico sits the state’s second largest city. Las Cruces — "The Crosses" — is a solid four hours from Albuquerque even if your foot hits the acclerator too hard for most of the time.

I went down there a few weeks ago with my two school-age children to do more research for my fourth book in the Sasha Solomon series. I’d been in the area earlier in the year to attend an international chile pepper conference, but that trip had been limited to sessions about plant DNA, pesticides and fertilizers, and how the local industry was faring against competitors in South America and China.

This time, I didn’t expect to accomplish much with kids in tow. I wouldn’t have the freedom of spontaneity.

It just goes to show how wrong a person can be.

My trip was one of those blessed adventures when everything comes together. I met the right people — the ones who read mysteries, who work at the library, who offered to be my eyes and ears in the town after I left. They told me about great restaurants and marvelous blue highways. I went to the farmers’ market and talked with an old woman who grew and sold medicinal herbs. I met a food processor who allowed me to come back to his business and see how his family makes their products (highly proprietary information). His wife opened their business files so that I could see what the EPA and FDA demand during their annual inspections. For more than an hour, his wife answered every one of my questions.

I got to see the New Mexico Chile Pepper Institute and its demonstration garden in full fruit.

I love doing on-site research. I adore having an excuse to be an observer in a different location, to be able to take notes and veer off the road well traveled. It’s part of the joy of writing my New Mexico series.

But what am I going to do for my new series? How will I reconcile myself with being forced to depend on the internet and my imagination rather than on-site visits? It’s going to be frustrating as hell. Believe me, if I could spend weeks away from home in places like Malibu, Tahiti and Saint-Jean Cap Ferrat, I would.

I keep telling myself that it’s going to be all right. For my first book in series #2, I’ve met some people who live in Houston and who are sending me pictures of River Oaks detailing the plants and animals a person might find there. They’re and telling me about restaurants and stores that the wealthy residents of that area might patronize, what they might wear on a July day there.

Still, a part of me screams. How will I get the details that I notice — the smells, the exact color of the heavy humid sky, my first sighting of a palmetto bug — when I’m not there to experience them myself? What if I don’t ask these people the right questions? Will I ever be able to make the places believable to my readers?

So here’s what I want to know from writers: How do you handle putting your books in locations away from home? Have you ever completed a manuscript without visiting the places you mention? How do you get the feel and details that make these descriptive sections real?

And, for readers, what interests you most about the locations where mysteries are set? Of course, I’m talking about real places — not made up towns or villages — the ones you might actually visit some day.

The Dirty Little Secret (Screenwritng, Part 3)

by Alex

Sorry to everyone showing up expecting Guyot today, but that’s Hollywood for you – hurry up and wait! Tune in next week for his essay and insights on the TV business.

So I was going to write today summing up the differences between writing novels and doing film work as a career. Instead I ended up writing mostly about the one difference that ultimately drove me to novels. I didn’t even want to write about it because I find the whole idea so repellant, and just wrong, but it’s something a lot of people aren’t aware of about the process and reality of film writing and it’s something that novelists contemplating screen work need to know.

Well, what is the difference? Really?

In terms of the creative process – not all that much, really. A story is a story. There are many different ways to tell it. The format is different. Some emphases are different (screenwriting is very visual, novel writing is generally much more internal..). But dramatic structure, characters, dialogue, theme, subplots, action, pacing, business, sensory detail, the world of the story… the major building blocks are all there in both. Even, to some degree, voice. Much more noticeable in a novel but undeniably there in any good script as well, and, I would argue, just as crucial. Every script I’ve ever written could be a novel. With my scripts, I’ve had to leave out more of the story than I actually knew about it, going in. With my novels, I’m having to discover and work in more of the story than I actually knew about it, going in. But the story, in every case, is still the story.

But which should you do?

Well, the question is, what do you WANT?

No one can decide that for you.

If you find yourself going around saying “I just want to get PAID to write” (and I hear that constantly from aspiring writers) – then you probably want to think about screen or TV writing. Or technical writing, or journalism, or speechwriting, or nonfiction, or advertising (because, notice, that sentence doesn’t specify what KIND of writing you want to get paid for. When you make these kinds of life-altering wishes, you must be SPECIFIC.)

But odds are, if you’ve got the talent, and the drive (and that’s an enormous if), you can probably make more money in film or TV than in novels. I have no statistics to back me up about that, it’s completely and totally anecdotal. But I suspect the cold hard steel of truth in this quotation (if someone can provide the author, I’d be grateful): “You can’t make a living writing books – but you can make a killing.” This isn’t true of Hollywood. You can make a living, and you can make a killing.

If you do decide to go for the money in Hollywood, what you give up is creative power. What you give up is unique voice. What you give up is copyright. What you far too often give up is your soul.

Oh, right, I’m exaggerating.

No, really, I’m not.

I love film. I do. I love the form, I love the power of it. A great movie makes me want to drop to my knees in gratitude. When a movie actually hits that groove, it’s transcendent. But there are so many stupid, unnecessary complications ingrained in the business. I have seen so many great scripts mutilated, stripped of all power and individuality, ground into meaningless pablum… and I’m not even talking about my own, I really thank whatever gods are out there that the some of the scripts I’ve written HAVEN’T been made – I’m talking about the scripts of other writers I know, and writers I don’t know. When I think of all the brilliant movies that could have been made simply by shooting an even fair approximation of the original scripts, I just want to kill myself.

There are exceptions, of course – good movies do get made, and the exceptions are what keep passionate writers working. Sometimes miracles happen.

But less and less. I think – for two basic reasons.

One – the increasing vertical integration and corporatization of Hollywood. Novelists worry about, for example, Walmart’s increasing influence over what books get ordered, bought and sold, right? Well, that kind of thing has been happening in Hollywood for years, and it’s not pretty.

Two – is rewriting.

And I don’t mean rewriting as in “Writing is rewriting.” I don’t mean, rewriting your own work. I mean, rewriting other writers.

Rewriting is a concept that is alien to most novelists. After all – when JT turns ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS in to Mira, Mira doesn’t turn around and say, “Great story, has potential, we like it… but we don’t love it. Let’s get Lee Child in to do a pass to beef up the male characters, maybe bring in some international intrigue to help with foreign markets. Actually, female protagonists don’t do well in the foreign markets so let’s also have him switch the genders of the characters.” And JT is fired off her own book (her agent will deliver this news to her, because her editor (producers) and publishers (studio/executives) certainly won’t take the trouble to do it themselves. Then after Mr. Child has done his rewrite, the conversation might go like this: “International serial killer books are just not doing well right now, but medical thrillers are off the charts. Let’s make the detective a doctor and get Tess Gerritsen to do a pass. Oh, and also, 80% of books this year were bought by women so let’s make this doctor female.” And after Ms. Gerritsen has transformed this police thriller cum international serial spy actioner into a sexy medical thriller, the conversation might go something like this: “Stephanie Meyer’s fourth book has been #1 on the NYT bestseller list for a year and a half now, and Stephanie has a window. Let’s get her in to revision this puppy as a teenage vampire story, and get this – the vampire is in med school! You know, a protégé. Um, prodigy.”

Repeat two dozen times until the final version, whatever the hell that is, is slapped up on screen, or in this hypothetical, print – or (as in the vast majority of cases) until everyone is so sick of trying to make the story “work” that they just shelve it. And no, I’m not kidding.

I wish I were.

Now, I love all the authors I’ve mentioned above. But I love them for their unique voices. I don’t want to read their half-assed attempts at trying to “fix” someone else’s writing, which in all likelihood wasn’t even broken to begin with.

Can you imagine? Barry Eisler being hired to layer some martial arts into the Irish tragedies of Ken Bruen…. Dennis Lehane being hired to pump up the urban reality in Neil Gaiman’s mythic fantasies… Heather Graham to weave a paranormal subplot into PD James’ psychological mysteries…

You have to understand this, though. That’s the main money that’s out there to be made in screenwriting – rewriting other writers’ work, to studio specifications.

And then there’s another factor. I said before that only three writers (or writing teams) are allowed to be credited on a movie. But if three dozen writers have done a draft, or two or three, on this movie, who decides who gets credit? And how?

Well, that’s a huge subject, but basically, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) has the sole power to determine credits. Studios may submit who THEY would like to see credited on the movie (guess who they’d prefer – the brand new writer or the multimillion dollar writer?) but the WGA has that call, through a process called credit arbitration, in which writers submit their own drafts of the script and their arguments about why they should receive credit, and a panel of writer/arbiters reads all the drafts and makes the determination whose names go on the movie.

And here’s the really troubling thing. Back end compensation for writers, a huge part of the money you potentially receive for writing a movie, is completely tied to credit. No credit, no back end money. So a lot of the rewriting that gets done has nothing to do with what would be good for the story, but has to do with deliberate shifts in character and plot that will change the script enough for the rewriter to get credit. Writers go through and change all the names of characters, change characters’ professions, change locations, combine characters – and that’s just for starters.

(I won’t even go see a movie if I see more than two writers listed on the poster, because I know all too well the kind of mess that signifies.)

So screenwriters are not just in constant competition with each other for jobs – they’re often engaged in battles over credit.

I myself couldn’t do it. I think it degrades writers – both the rewriter and the writer being rewritten. I think it dilutes or outright destroys the original and unique power of the story. I think it’s the prime factor in the reality that feature writers have no power in Hollywood.

And I think it’s a major reason that movies are so bad, these days.

It’s something to think about.

So what am I saying? I guess my advice is, if you just want to make money, be an investment banker.

Well, no – I have no idea how to make money. I’ve done okay, but real money? I don’t have a clue. Investment banking might not be such a good way anymore. Real estate certainly seems to be tanking. The stock market – well, surely you’ve noticed. Truly, I’m not the one to ask. That’s not the point.

The point is, if you just want to make money writing – go to hell. Really. I absolutely believe authors should make a good living. But books and films and television and games are too precious a resource to be left in the hands of people who are only doing it for the money. These are dreams we’re dealing with, here. As writers, we dream for other people. And if you’re not passionate about your writing, your OWN writing, the dreams you dream, I have nothing to say to you.

In terms of working for Hollywood, though, in the present climate, this is what I will say, and this is just completely my own opinion.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a new movie that enthralled me as much as some recent television: DEADWOOD, THE WIRE, and my current obsession, ROME. (I was not a SOPRANOS junkie but yes, I understand, it was brilliant, too.) I believe that great television is happening right now, and if you want to work in moving pictures, that’s probably the place to go. The writer has power in television – the screenwriter does not have power in features. And HBO, in particular, has vision. I think it shows. And I believe television writing is a more honest and effective writing process because – at least – it’s collaborative up front. (But Guyot will certainly have his opinions on that, and I’ll leave it to him.)

Otherwise, if you care about what you do, and what you are putting out into the world, I hope you’ll keep writing novels.

No matter what – be very specific about what you are aspiring to. If your dream is to make a great movie, make sure you understand what that takes and consider how you might be able to do it in the present corporate climate. Can you do it as an independent, instead? Can you do it as a TV series? Can you do it as a novel? If this for some reason was your one shot, how could you bring your story to fruition and die satisfied with the result?

Know what you’re getting into – and go for it.

Good luck.

—————————————————————————————-

Part One of this series (The Job) is here.

Part Two of this series (The Craft) is here.

Chasing the Wistfuls Away…

by JT Ellison

cre·a·tiv·i·ty [kree-ey-tiv-i-tee, kree-uh–] -Noun

1. the state of quality of being creative

2. the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination: the need for creativity in modern industry; creativity in the performing arts

3. the process by which one utilizes creative ability: Extensive reading stimulated his creativityPronunciation

[Origin: 1870–75; creative + -ity]

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)

What better way to erase the wistful week in Colorado than a celebration of sorts. Life is good. We’re 3 1/2 weeks post-surgery, Mr. Wrist is healing nicely (though I’m stuck in this crazy halfway to my shoulder arm bent at a 45 degree angle contraption for another 2 weeks), I’ve relearned how to type, and I have a new toy. I bought a Sony Vaio out in Colorado, and boy, am I impressed. Vista works smoothly and is so similar to a friend’s cool new Mac that I don’t feel shortchanged, the Word 2007 package is totally cool, I’ve moved all my documents over from the sick laptop and sent it off to be fixed. There’s just one little nagging question.

Will I be able to create in this new world?

I didn’t plan to buy a new laptop just yet. I wasn’t emotionally prepared (I’m a classic Taurus, I loathe change for change’s sake.) My old Dell has worked fine. After a small existential fight, I actually made the transition from desktop to laptop, and wrote all but the last four chapters of my new book on the Dell. Then it decided to up and drop the soldered lead from the power jack to the motherboard, and bam, no more laptop. Now, timing is everything, right? So happens that the day after the
laptop heaved it’s last, lonely breath, I had the surgery. I couldn’t
type for a week, then started back one handed. I’d scheduled this to
coincide with a planned break from the manuscript, with every good intention to get it
done before they cut me open.

But the creative Gods conspired against
me and left me four measly chapters short. Then I went to my parents.
Now I’m home with this shiny, happy new baby in tow, which means I can’t finish the book where I started it. For the past five months, I’ve been parked in my favorite recliner, the soft leather warm and inviting, pecking away on my ancient Dell. I’ve done everything on this book in my living room, instead of sitting in my office, which was a massive transition.

I’ve spent the past few days transferring files, learning new software, playing around with different styles and colors (man, the desktop and screensaver choices are dynamite, and for a girl who takes great stock in images, that’s a good thing.) As far as ease of use, this thing smokes the old one.

I need to spend this week getting JUDAS KISS finished. I’m not procrastinating; I’ll get up first thing Monday, grab a Starbucks, plop into my chair and write the end. But I am curious. Will I be able to work as well with this new tool? Was the old cranky laptop a muse? (All my computers are named MUSE, by the way, just for the added inspiration.)

The question is, does it matter? Where does creativity stem from? Do the tools have anything to do with it? The setting you’re writing in? I know the question has been asked a million times, the coffee shop versus home office debate. What I’m talking about is changing your method in the middle of the game.

John Connolly got me thinking about this in his latest blog entry. Do our environs really play into our creativity? If we’re truly writers, does music or no music, laptop or desktop, office or coffee shop actually have any bearing? Are these just excuses we lob when we’re having a hard time thinking through a plot device, or a character isn’t singing for us?

So here’s a question for you. Where do you work, and how do you think you’d do if your cozy habitat was taken from you?

Wine of the Week: Michele Chiarlo Barolo Tortoniano, 2000, drunk with new friends in celebration of my father’s birthday at a phenomenal restaurant in Colorado named Gabriel’s. Highly recommended, we had three bottles of the stuff and it was all brilliant. I believe I’m on a nebbliolo grape kick again…

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Robin Burcell will be my guest next week, and her essay is moving and exceptional. Please stop by and say hello. I’ll be back September 7th. Thank you for being so patient with me!

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Also, for our Sisters In Crime readers and anyone else who might find it interesting… Trust me, this is going to be a good time. Great panels, huge authors. Big audience for writers too, 30,000 plus, so if you’re a SinC member and interested, contact J.B. Thompson at the address below.

SinC-Middle Tennessee at Southern Festival of Books

When: October 12-14
Where: Legislative Plaza, Nashville
TN
Details: Sisters in Crime-Middle Tennessee will host a booth at
the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, Tennessee, October 12-14, 2007. In
addition to promoting Sisters in Crime, the booth will be utilized as a signing
venue for up to 20 SinC authors, with one-hour time slots assigned on a
first-come, first-served basis. Travel expenses are the responsibility of the
author. Book sales will be handled through the Middle Tennessee chapter on a
consignment basis (details available upon request).

The Southern Festival of Books is a free, three-day book festival held in
alternating years between Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee and is attended by
thousands of book lovers from all over the country each year. For more
information, see the Festival’s
web site.

Contact SinC-MidTN chapter president J.B. Thompson to request a signing time
slot assignment and for additional information regarding book sale arrangements.
SinC authors who are unable to appear in person are invited to send bookmarks,
postcards, or other promotional materials for distribution to Festival attendees
(limit 100 pieces).

Anatomy of a Logline

by Robert Gregory Browne

The screenwriters are taking over Murderati. Alex’s last couple of posts have been about screenwriting, so I thought I’d add my two cents on the the subject with a blast from the past — an article I wrote for Screentalk Magazine several years ago. But I think what follows works just as well for those of you writing novels.

As always, take everything you read here with a grain of salt. Process is an individual and very personal thing. Everybody’s is different.

ANATOMY OF A LOGLINE

You’ve
written your script. You’ve labored over it for weeks and months and
polished every syllable until your masterpiece is ready to hit the
marketplace. Now comes one of the most frequently asked questions I get:

Who do
I send my script to?

My response is usually another question: are you sure you’re ready to send it?

So
many of us want to send out our scripts the moment they’re finished,
yet we don’t even think about what it takes just to find someone to
send it to.

"Find" is actually the wrong word. You’ll never be able to
"find" anyone in this business who actually wants to read a script.

What you have to do is attract readers. And to attract readers you have to call on all your skills as a salesman.

SELLING YOUR WARES

Salesman?
you cry. But I’m a writer not a salesman! Uh-huh. Glad you’ve enjoyed
your stint in fantasyland, my friend, but it’s time to take a step into
the real world. In fact, I could argue that you should be thinking like
a salesman with every single word you put down on paper, but that isn’t
what this article is about.

At
this point, you have a product that needs to be moved and there’s only
one way to move it: Advertising. Any good salesman knows all about the
benefits of advertising. From the biggest corporation with their
multi-million dollar commercials to the guy standing on the street
holding a sign for the local car dealer: Big Savings! Today Only!

Advertising
is what any good salesman uses to attract buyers. You go to a used car
dealer to see what’s available and what happens? The salesman comes
over and guides you toward the latest lemon while he tries to
smooth-talk you into buying it. And, boy does he make it attractive. It
has the latest this and the latest that and it’s only been driven by a
little old lady on weekends, and once you get it on the road, this baby
purrs. His sales pitch is his advertisement.

And
that’s exactly how you get people to read your screenplay. Your sales
pitch. You have to prepare your pitch both verbally and on paper and
you have to present it with confidence and polish. Otherwise nobody
will take you seriously, and nobody will want to read your script.

THE ALL-IMPORTANT SALES PITCH

You’ve
all probably heard of a Svengali Deck, otherwise known as TV Magic
Cards. For those of you who haven’t, a Svengali Deck is a special deck
of playing cards that allows the user to perform a dozen or more
amazing card tricks without having to develop any sleight of hand
skills.

In
the old days, magician/pitch-men used to stand on street corners or at
swap meet booths and demonstrate the wonders of this deck of cards by
showing you an eye-popping trick. This trick would be brief and
straight to the point — just enough to show off the virtues of the
deck and get you digging for the cash to buy one.

When
you prepare your all-important sales pitch to entice readers to your
script, you have to approach your pitch with the same economy and magic
the magician/pitch-men use. You have to get your story across in a few
simple words and those words must have eye-popping appeal. They must
have that wow quality that forces the reader to say, "I’ve gotta read
that script…" That’s where your logline comes in.

WHAT’S A LOGLINE?

There
are always a few out there who are relatively new to the game, so this
is for you: a logline is a one or two-sentence summary of your story.
Probably the best place to find a sample logline is to look in your TV
Guide or local equivalent, which are full of brief story summaries. But
let me give you an example.

Here’s a logline for The Fugitive:

After
he’s wrongly convicted of murdering his wife, a high-powered surgeon
escapes custody and hunts down the real killer, a one-armed man.

Maybe
not the liveliest logline in the world, but it tells you just about
everything you need to know about the movie. We know who the lead
character is, what his dilemma is, and most importantly, what he hopes
to accomplish.

What
we have above is essentially the spine of the story — the sentence the
entire movie hangs on. Sure, we could talk about the relentless U.S.
Marshal who is after the doctor; we could talk about the train crash
and the chase sequences and the experimental liver drug, but when it
comes to the logline, none of that really matters. We don’t have time
for it.

Like
that TV Magic card trick, your logline has to be simple and to the
point and it has to attract the reader to the possibility of a great
read. When I look at the above logline, I think, wow, that sounds like
it could be an exciting story. And, of course, we all know it is.

The
anatomy of a logline is this: the lead character has a problem and must
achieve a certain goal in order to solve that problem. Who, What, How.
Who is the lead character, what is his problem and how is he going to
solve it.

Let’s take a look at The Fugitive again:

Who: A high-powered surgeon.

What: Wrongly convicted of murdering his wife.

How: Escapes custody to hunt down the real killer.

Chances
are pretty good that you’re scratching your head right now and saying,
"But my story is much too complex for that." This may be true, but if
you can’t boil your story down to a simple Who, What and How, I’ve got
some sad news for you: you are in serious trouble.

Because
if you can’t boil your story down, no one else is going to be
interested in trying to figure it out. So what’s a poor screenwriter to
do? Try this on for size:

CREATE YOUR LOGLINE BEFORE THE FACT

That’s
right. The most important step you can take toward structuring a script
is to create your logline or spine before you start writing the script.
You have your idea, you have your characters, you have a general idea
of what you want to happen and how you want it to happen, but what do
you hang it on? Without a spine, your creation will be nothing more
than a mess of flesh and bones. There may be a lot of interesting stuff
there, but it has nothing to cling to.

So
before you start page one, scene one, the best thing you can do for
your story is figure out the Who, What and How. Write them down.
Fashion them into something that has movement and purpose. Then start
writing. And as you write, always remember your spine. And stick to it.

Then,
when the script is done and it comes time to work up a sales pitch, you
don’t have to search. You already know what it is. Your entire story is
based on that sales pitch. As it should be.

I
can hear you now. "Come on, man, I already told you. My story is too
complex for that." Is it really? Let’s take a look at a very complex
story: The Godfather. We all know The Godfather is full of vivid
characters and great subplots and big moments, but what really is the
essence of the story?

Here’s what I get:

When a powerful gangster is gunned down, his reluctant son must seek revenge and take over the family business.

The
movie plays on a rich canvas, but it is much less about Brando, the
Godfather, and more about Pacino — Michael Corleone — the up and
coming Godfather. It is the story of his ascent (or descent, depending
on your POV) to the leadership of the Family. Everything in the movie
leads up to the moment Vito Corleone is shot, then follows Michael as
he gets revenge, then eventually takes over as head of the
organization. Everything in the movie hangs on that simple logline or
spine.

Do you think Coppola discovered this spine only after he and Puzo wrote the screenplay? I seriously doubt it.

LOGLINE AS SALES PITCH

Let’s
get back to our original notion of what a logline is for. As I said, if
you know your logline before your start, then you shouldn’t have a
problem figuring out what it is after your script is done. But you’re
trying to sell something here. If you follow the usual marketing
strategies, you’ll be sending out query letters and making phone calls
and throwing your pitch at just about anyone who is willing to catch
it. And in order to get their attention; the logline you pitch had
better shine. It shouldn’t simply tell the story. There should be
something in that brief one or two-sentence pitch that really makes it
stand out.

Unfortunately,
that’s difficult to do if the elements aren’t there. In this day and
age, it isn’t enough to have a great story. These days, with all the
competition out there, you have to have a great story with an even
greater hook. You have to have what is commonly referred to as high
concept — an idea that jumps off the page.

A cop must find out a way to save a busload of people stranded on a bus that will explode if it drops below 55 MPH.

A
young wife discovers that the husband she’s been convicted of killing
is not really dead, and escapes custody to track him down.

These
are high concept ideas that immediately grab you. You can go back to
The Godfather pitch and even that has a pretty high concept idea. And
unless you start with a high concept idea, you’re going to have a
really tough time making your logline shine.

And if your idea isn’t high concept? What do you do?

First,
you wonder if your script really is ready to be read. If you think it
is, you have to find the hook hidden inside of it, find that simple
spine that tells us what the story’s about…

And turn it into gold.

Pushing through the pain

by Pari Noskin Taichert

On Saturday, August 4, I earned my brown belt in Tae Kwon Do. I also broke my toe and seriously bruised my right forearm. In the first photo in this blog, you can see me standing with one foot off the ground. That’s because I couldn’t put my weight on it. The pain was excruciating due to the double whammy of osteoarthritis in the same toe.

I’ve also included two photos of my friend who tried the same kick (double shuffle front). She had the height and the power, but couldn’t break the boards either.

I’ve been thinking about this testing and how very difficult it was for me.

The first parts of the afternoon were wonderful. I did the forms — known as "kata" in Japanese martial arts — beautifully. In the first two photos in this section, you can see that I’m in the center; we all faced different directions to make the test more challenging. Look at the concentration on my face when I’m yelling — and with the lower belts whom I was asked to inspire later in that portion of the event — and you’ll see that I put my heart and soul into it.

Master Kim also had me spar with lower belts, to teach them. We had fun; the less advanced participants got in some good shots and felt great about that portion of the testing.

But the real lesson for me came at the end of the day. It was the fact that I couldn’t give up, even though I really, really, wanted to. Believe me, I would have gladly hidden from the world. When that toe hit the board with all the force I’d mustered, I sank to the ground and screamed.

It didn’t stop hurting just because I moved on to another board-breaking technique. I screwed up that one too. I finally broke a single board and felt like a total failure.

(Now, before anyone starts worrying about undue cruelty, I want you to know that I could have stopped; I think Master Kim would have let me. But a broken toe is only a tiny part of a human being and I wasn’t about to give up.)

However, in the photos below, you’ll notice me looking down, holding myself. These photos were shot right before we got our new belts. Master Kim knew this had been an awful testing for many of us and he spoke about perseverance and dedication. All I wanted to do was to run from there and cry in shame; I didn’t feel I deserved such a high rank.

(Do you see the crap I was pulling on myself? How often do we do this, make ourselves feel bad when we’ve actually accomplished something important and have shown true spirit?)

When my husband saw my tears, he spoke to me about true mastery and what it means. People can be dilettantes all of their lives. The real test of your mettle is when you come up against a major setback and you refuse to let it stop you, when you find another way to achieve what you need to do.

Most of us — writers and everyone else — have experienced these moments. They can be seminal.

That day, I forced myself to continue the testing and to go to the celebration party afterward. For two weeks, I’ve looked within to see if I have the strength of will to continue TKD, to earn my black belt.

I do.

It’s the same kind of test I’ve had with my writing over the years. And I’m still here.

What about you? Will you share one of your life tests with us?

I’m in the mood to be inspired.

The Big Adios

by Mike MacLean

As I write this, my wife’s laptop taunts me with robotic DOS curses, refusing to work even after hours on the phone with the tech-support guy. My wife is frustrated. My baby girl is crying. And I’ve got the mother of all migraines.

Wish I could say this is a one-in-a-million bad day, but it isn’t. Lately, STRESS has been my co-pilot, and I so wish I could toss him screaming from the plane.

This is life sometimes. You either roll with the punches, or grab a rifle and find the tallest clock tower.

I don’t see any clock towers, so I gotta roll. That means setting priorities and making tough decisions. Sometimes, it also means giving up things you enjoy. And that’s just what I’ve had to do.

Today is my last blog post for Murderati… at least for a while.

I do this out of necessity. As my wife returns to school in the evenings, I have to step up my role as Mr. Mom. Which means less time for writing. In the end, I had to choose between blogging and fiction. As much as I’ve enjoyed Murderati, fiction wins every time.

I’d like to thank all the Murderati (Pari, J.T., Louise, Ken, Rob, Dusty, Simon, Alex, Naomi, Toni, Elaine, and Paul) for teaching me so much these past months. You’ve spoken with experience and listened with patience. Terrific writers one and all.

I’d also like to thank all the murder fans out there, the authors and the readers, who have indulged my ramblings.

Despite my whining at the top of the page, the last couple years have been very good to me. A few of my stories have seen print and now reside in the same books as authors I’ve idolized for years. I’ve gotten a paying gig, building a screenplay for B-movie legend Roger Corman. And of course, there is my little girl, who reminds me of all the mystery and wonder in the world every time she peers up at me with those big eyes of hers.

The migraine’s fading now, Chloe is asleep on the sofa in her momma’s arms, and even the broken laptop seems to be on the mend. Everything will be just fine.

Next week, Bryon Quertermous, writer and editor of Demolition Magazine will fill in. Then, starting in September, Toni Causey will take my regular Sunday spot. Be nice.

Adios,

Mike

Screenwriting, Part Two (Craft)

by Alex Sokoloff

SO IF I WANT TO WRITE A SCREENPLAY, HOW DO I START?

I hear a lot of people say that screenwriting is a harder form than novels. This perplexes me. It’s definitely a more restrictive form than novels, and you really have to KNOW your story – you can’t throw dazzling and evocative prose at the reader to cover up the fact that your story doesn’t actually end – but I think it’s much harder to write a good novel.

What I think is, people are intimidated by the form because they’re just not used to reading it. Think about it. We’ve been reading books since we were four or five years old. We (well, the people reading this blog, anyway!) have read not just thousands of books, but probably into the ten thousands. Okay, I’m wretched with math, but I don’t think that’s an unreasonable figure for this crowd. We’re voracious.

And how many screenplays have you all read?

Exactly my point.

That’s why starting as a story analyst is such good training for a screenwriter. You read dozens of scripts a week. You absorb the form through osmosis.

So if you want to be a screenwriter, start reading scripts. Tons of them. And start doing the same kind of analysis that you do as a novelist. Barry Eisler does a great motivational seminar on writing – well, I’m sure he does any number of them, but in the one I saw he really, really emphasized the point that writers are primarily self-taught: they have to be constantly reading and analyzing what other writers do to make a story work.

FREE ONLINE SOURCES FOR SCRIPTS:

(remember, the writers don’t get any money from these sites, so if you enjoy a script, why not write to the writer and let her or him know it?)

http://www.script-o-rama.com/table.shtml
http://www.allmoviescripts.com/
http://home.online.no/~bhundlan/scripts/
http://www.dailyscript.com/
http://www.weeklyscript.com/
http://www.corky.net/scripts/
http://www.joblo.com/moviescripts.php
http://www.movie-page.com/movie_scripts.htm
http://members.fortunecity.com/rs8/
http://www.scifiscripts.com/default.html
http://simplyscripts.com/movie.html
http://www.subcin.com/
http://www.iscriptdb.com/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/source-1411/
http://www.rosebud.com.br/scripts.htm
http://www.lontano.org/
http://www.wiredonmovies.com/scriptindex
http://www.moviescripts.de/
http://www.scriptpimp.com/screen…g/home.cfm
http://www.scriptcrawler.com/
http://www.movie-page.com/main.htm
http://onlygoodmovies.net/screen…ndex.shtml
http://www.moviescriptsandscreenplays.com/
http://www.blowsearch.com ( Enter Keywords: movie scripts online.)
http://www.screentalk.biz
http://sfy.ru/
http://www.seinfeldscripts.com
http://www.madmoocow.com

BOOKS AND CLASSES ON SCREENWRITING:

Unfortunately there’s not one book I can really recommend on film writing, but it is useful to read Syd Field’s SCREENPLAY. It’s groaningly simplistic, but it will teach you very general basic movie structure and teach you how to work by putting your scenes on index cards, which is a great method of developing a story, especially a movie.

Christopher Vogler’s THE WRITER’S JOURNEY is also worth reading. I’m sure other screenwriters here have useful suggestions, but I’ve read a lot of the how-to books and have really never have found anything like a definitive text on the craft.

However:

The best screenwriting course I’ve ever come across is John Truby’s Story Structure class, which you can get in its entirety on DVD or CD online: truby.com (The master class is the one called “Great Screenwriting”).

It’s not cheap but I don’t think there’s a film school in the entire country that is as good.

I do recommend taking classes, but I don’t recommend paying too much for them. Some of the people teaching out there don’t have any experience whatsoever in the business, so go to the first class, see if you think you can actually learn something from either the teacher or the other students, and if not, opt out.

BREAKING DOWN MOVIES FOR STRUCTURE

After you have at least read SCREENPLAY I would recommend that you take 10 movies you love in the genre that you want to work in and watch each one – first all the way through, then again, this time starting and stopping so you can write down every scene and what happens in it. Then look at your scene outline and identify the three acts and the turning points, or climaxes, of each. Then see if you can identify the 8 sequences that make up the movie (almost every movie at least roughly follows an 8 sequence structure – each sequence being 10-15 minutes long. The first act has two sequences, the second act, four, and the last act two shorter ones, or one continuous sequence and a capper. Do that with 10 movies in a row and, again, you will have gone through better writing training than most film schools will put you through.

SCREENPLAY FORMAT

Here’s a crash course in script format: pick a movie you particularly like and would like to have written, get yourself a copy of the script, and type the whole script from beginning to end, in the same screenplay format the script is in. That exercise will teach you what you need to know about script formatting and pacing.

WHAT IS “HIGH CONCEPT”?

High concept is a whole other column! But if you can tell your story in one line (this is called a LOGLINE) and everyone who hears it can see exactly what the movie is, that’s high concept. (Name this movie: A shark terrorizes a beach town during high tourist season).

One of the best classes I ever took on screenwriting was SOLELY on premise. Every week we had to come up with three loglines for movie ideas and stand up and read them aloud to the class. We each put a dollar into a pot and the class voted on the best premise of the night, and the winner got the pot. It was highly motivating – I made my first “screenwriting” money that way and I learned worlds about what a premise should be.

I highly recommend you try the same exercise – make yourself come up with three story ideas a week, and try to make some of them high concept. You’ll be training yourself to think in terms of big story ideas – extremely useful for novelists, as well.

And now go here and read this essay on “Mental Real Estate” on Wordplayer.com

It’s vitally important if you want to work in Hollywood that you understand what a premise and what a high concept premise is, and that article does a great job of explaining it. Then take some time (got a few years?) and explore the rest of the site. It’s a free mini-film school by two of the best in the business – Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott.

http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp42.Mental.Real.Estate.html

And for television: TVwriter.com

So I guess I will be continuing this series next week! Yes, yes, I’ll post a list of the questions I’ve gotten so far with answers, and I’m very pleased to announce that Paul Guyot will be back to guest blog about the TV side of the business, to further everyone’s educations in his inimitable – uh – style. Tune in next Saturday.

So again – ask away.

(Part One of this series is here.)