M. R. Bailey

A review of the mystery/suspense and thriller aisles this afternoon at Borders inspired six observations:

1. Deceased authors are publishing new novels (i.e., Robert Ludlum, Margaret Truman)
2. The Cold War is over, the War on Terror has evolved into traditional war, and espionage and conspiracy are bigger than ever
3. Protagonists in thrillers are best when they are deeply, irredeemably flawed
4. Women are gaining market share in the pantheon of mystery, suspense and thriller authors (i.e., Lisa Unger, Lisa Scottoline, Kathryn Fox)
5. The Mystery/Suspense market is growing
6. Successful writers in these genres ‘burn down the house’ and create palpable peril

In these categories, my reading has yet to venture beyond Ludlum, Clancy, Forsythe, Cruz Smith, and Patterson, so forgive me if my categorization of those other above-mentioned writers contains errors.  In this, I suspect I am like many of my fellow shoppers in the aisles, scanning titles, cover art, jacket copy and blurbs – drawn to personal favorites, interested in broadening my horizons, yet sufficiently conflicted about the burden on my budget and the quality of my reading that I am reticent about dropping $7-$12 on an unproven author.  LeCarré is a personal favorite.  He set the standard long ago in the spy novel genre and continues to craft writing that seems transparent, the writer’s holy grail.

Larry went officially missing from the world on the second Monday of October, at ten minutes past eleven, when he failed to deliver his opening lecture of the new academic year.

- OUR GAME (1995)

There is an entire novel in that single opening line.

In mystery, Martin Cruz Smith raises my expectations, not only for quality writing, but also for my own work.

Blair lit an oil lamp hanging on the wall. Its wan illumination reached to the glory of the room, an oil painting of Christ in a carpenter’s shop.  Jesus appeared delicate and unaccustomed to hard work, and in Blair’s opinion His expression was overly abstracted for a man handling a saw.

- ROSE (1996)

But I digress.  If there is a single thread that unites the work of all of the above, it has to be the last observation.  These writers burn the character’s house down, usually early in the book, and often more than once.

Why write something if it will not change your life?

Too high a standard?  Not a chance.

Care deeply about your characters, the questions that affect them, the relationships, ideals, and treasure they gamble, and your reader will care.  Writing a book takes time, a year or more, sometimes much more.  At the end of that time when you turn around and look back at what you’ve been doing all of that time, you want see your book in a window on Main Street, or your characters brought to life by actors on stage, or your screenplay moving people to laughter and tears in the cinema, right?

…if a story is important to you, it may be important to a lot of other people in the audience. And when you’re done writing the story, no matter what else happens, you’ve changed your life.

John Truby – The ANATOMY OF STORY (2007)

Comparing The Modern Library Board’s List of the Top 100 Novels 1900 – 1999 to the Readers’ List gives me some reasons for hope.  Looking at the top 10, for example:

Board’s List

1.  Ulysses, James Joyce

2.  The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

3.  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

4.  Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

5.  Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

6.  The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

7.  Catch-22, Joseph Heller

8.  Darkness At Noon, Arthur Koestler

9.  Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence

10. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

Reader’s List

1.  Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

2.  The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

3.  Battlefield Earth, L. Ron Hubbard

4.  The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

5.  To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee

6.  1984, George Orwell

7.  Anthem, Ayn Rand

8. We The Living, Ayn Rand

9.  Mission Earth, L. Ron Hubbard

10.  Fear, L. Ron Hubbard

This 1990’s poll continues to generate discussion about the most popular books vs. best literature of the 20th century.  The Modern Library’s talking points are just the beginning.  For example:

Is it possible to compare books as different as Ulysses, The Great Gatsby, and Brave New World? Are there any features that unite these three books? More widely, are there any literary features that unite the best books as a whole?

My interest here is less intellectual or academic.  What I see is the state of literary art in 1999, not just from writer’s and publishers’ perspectives, but from the reader’s perspective. What moved readers sufficiently that they were willing to take time to vote, and write, and talk about it?  Aside from the fact that we are wired to be social creatures, inclined to exchange ideas, count and make lists, what is it that makes these novels in particular list-worthy?

These measures of popular appeal and perceived importance can be a source of information. Of course, they also can be a time sink amounting to nothing more than another set of questionably useful information.  Still, writers appreciate the hunt, the mystery, pulling back the layers of the story, even when it’s their own.

So what can we learn from the Lists? If the Modern Library’s Top 100 Novel List provides any lessons that are useful to the novelist, these might include the following:

Screenwriters tend to write novels that appeal to everyday readers more than to cultural leaders.

It’s true. Ayn Rand (a.k.a. Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum), Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter, holds four places in the Readers’ Top Ten List for her novels, Atlas Shrugged (1), The Fountainhead (2), Anthem (7) and We The Living (8). Ayn Rand was a screenwriter?!  Yes.  Her first literary success was the sale of her screenplay, Red Pawn, to Universal in 1932. Rand’s aforementioned publications are novels, not screenplays; yet her initial success as a screenwriter suggests her creative instincts began in the language of showing rather than telling her stories.

By the way, the fact that L. Ron Hubbard comes second after Rand with three novels in the top ten almost made me toss this post-in-progress. But that’s another entry.

Everyday readers buy more novels than the cultural elite buy novels.

There are more readers than cultural leaders and scholar-readers, hence more demand and larger market. Unless you are writing scholarly theses, which is good too, focusing your energies on the significantly larger market of novel readers increases the odds that your agent will succeed in closing a deal with a publisher who, after all, is very much in a numbers game.  If he/she can’t sell it to at least 5,000 readers, it’s D.O.A.

The top-twenty most popular novels in both lists, Board’s and Readers’, are dense with screen adaptations.

What, if anything, does this tell us?  Consider all channels as you develop your concept.  Popular sentiment has the printed book on the mat and down for the count.  That may or may not be true; only time will tell.  What is clear is that the story, the tale, the CONTENT is king. Demand for story/content is greater than ever before.  So it makes sense to adapt your material to your reader’s/viewer’s/listener’s preferences.

♦

On another front, a glance at Publishers Marketplace offers even more to confuse the muse…

> Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Books Editor Geeta Sharman-Jensen Takes Buyout

Is the book review market so deflated that early retirement, unemployment or part-time teaching at the community college look like reasonable career choices?

> Teen Sues Amazon for Deleted Kindle Homework Notes

What can the U.S. justice system possibly make of this ‘dog ate my homework’ story? Intellectual property and privacy issues notwithstanding, I’m following this case for what it reveals about the game changing ramifications of epublishing, wireless downloading, and even cloud-based computing for writers, publishers, and service providers.

> Supermarkets Responsible for One in Five UK Book Sales

That’s bad news, right? No, that’s good news; supermarkets are one of the sectors least damaged by the economic downturn. Rising paperback sales there suggest a market opportunity for novels – procedurals, romances, mysteries, conspiracies, religion – novellas, and self-help.

♦

What’s your view on the physics of successful publication?  What is the role of technology … of publicity and exposure … of representation … of literary merit … of perception as a genre master … what differentiates the published from the unpublished … is it any different in its end result than the old model?

Creative Writing

What is creative writing?  Opening to an idea, following where it leads, exploring it, getting inside it and crafting a way to bring it alive through story.  Creative writing is observing a subject, its strengths, weaknesses, contexts, perceptions and misperceptions about it, wants, needs, identity, senses… the full spectrum of facts. Then writing a story, poem, screenplay, stageplay, or novel in an imaginative way that is characterized by originality and expressiveness.

Why write? Developing an idea into a concept, then into a premise, and then writing about it is Sisyphean, like hauling a wheelbarrow up K2. No one undertakes this lightly. So why do it? Often, the ambition sprouts from a fertile childhood, a sense of otherness from earliest memory, or distinctive experience. Maybe something as simple as an insatiable curiosity to learn and understand. Michael Chabon ( in Imaginary Homelands, which first appeared in Civilization) describes it:

I write from the place I live: in exile.   …    I bear no marks or scars. I haven’t lost anything that isn’t lost by everyone.

And yet here I am – here I have always been, for as long as I can remember knowing anything about myself – feeling like a stranger.

For his entire life, he says he has been engaged in

One search, with a sole objective: a home, a world to call my own.

The Money Myth

Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Samuel Johnson (“No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money”) notwithstanding, no writer starts writing for the money.  For most if not all of the writers I know there is never any rumuneration equal to a living wage for the work invested in a novel. “If you would be a reader, read; if a writer, write,” said Epictetus.  Novelists write to learn, to understand, to experience, to entertain, to create a world in which to live. That’s pretty much the sum of it.

If I can’t write the final beat of a story, brief, or article, or the last five seconds of a commercial or video, I know that the premise is not yet fully realized. Those concluding seconds, or those cascading syllables leading to a final conclusive sustaining note should resonate.  The end should resolve, summarize and underscore the point.  If those qualities are absent or not sufficiently present, then the foundational work – the premise in most instances – is not done; the ad, video, short story, screenplay or novel is not complete. The piece might move, twitch, even walk, but it won’t fly.