Edgar Wallace on Words and Writing

"[Edgar Wallace] would shut himself up in his study with a Dictaphone, an endless supply of cigarettes and fresh pots of tea brought in from the kitchen by a servant at regular intervals, and dictate the text using only a bare outline of 1,500 words, in addition to a hastily composed list of character names, places, and a few scraps of additional material to be inserted into the narrative as authentic talismans of the material world.
"Thus engrossed, Wallace would dictate an average of 3,000 words around the clock until the text was finished, and then retire to his bed to recuperate while Curtis finished the typing. Once he had completed his dictation, in fact, Wallace scrupulously avoided reviewing the typed transcript of his work; as soon as the typing was completed, off it went to Hodder and Stoughton, Ward Lock and Co. or one of Wallace’s other publishers, and the author was free to contemplate his next assignment."—Wheeler Winston Dixon, "The Colonial vision of Edgar Wallace," The Journal of Popular Culture, Volume 32, Issue 1, 1998

Image source: Wikipedia

Gregory Mcdoanld on Words and Writing

"I work very hard at being simple. By the time a person is 18 years old today, he has seen 21,000 hours of film at 24 frames per second, and he has just incredible images already built into his consciousness or unconsciousness. Back when Sir Walter Scott was working, he was writing for people who hadn’t been 50 miles from their houses. So if he was describing a street in Edinburgh, let alone Paris, he’d have to describe what was going on and what everyone was doing. Now, unless you are writing about something really exotic, you have this incredible bank on which to draw. Where Sir Walter Scott used 7,000 words, I can get it down to seven by conjuring the images that are already there."—Gregory Mcdonald, in conversation with Bruce DeSilva

Talmage Powell on Words and Writing (2)

"Pulp, it turns out, constitutes only a small part of my work, but it was perhaps the most important phase. It demanded writing discipline; it required the constant exercise of originality; it offered the opportunity to learn and employ techniques that are essential in any genre of creative writing. It was the exercise that provided the foundation from which I have remained in print for a half-century." —Talmage Powell, excerpted from "An Interview With Talmage Powell (December, 1997)" at the Vintage Library

Image source: Ashville Citizen-Times, August 30, 1988

Elmore Leonard on Words and Writing

On Tuesday January 24, 2012, I had the great pleasure of seeing Elmore Leonard speak at the Center for Fiction here in New York City. These are some of Leonard's words of wisdom from one of the most extraordinary careers in writing.

"I don't write seriously. I always write having fun."

"[My style is] simple, declarative sentences telling a story ... I think."

"I write three pages to get one. I revise continually as I go."

"I don't want to appear smart. I want to tell a story."

On dialog: "Don't you hear people talking in your head? That's all it is. Use it."

"I never introduce or inject myself into the story. I'm nowhere to be found. I never use a word my characters wouldn't use."

"I don't like to write about weather."

"Verbs other than 'said' call attention to themselves. You're mucking it up with your 'ly' words."

"When I get to the last page, it is done."

"After 45 books I'm excited about the next one."

Ken Bruen on Words and Writing

“There'll be times when the only refuge is books. Then you'll read as if you meant it, as if your life depended on it.”
--Ken Bruen, The Killing of the Tinkers

Louis L'Amour on Words and Writing

Excerpted from "The West Lives On in Louis L'Amour" by John Riley, from the Los Angeles Times, Oct 19, 1975.

He [Louis L'Amour] writes three or four books a year. Every morning at the breakfast table he reads the classics to his wife, Kathy, an ex-actress, and his son, Beau, 14, and daughter, Angelique, 11. The rest of the day he reads western nonfiction from a huge collection of journals and periodicals and histories. And he writes. He seldom researches any one book specifically. He has set himself the goal of swallowing the West whole and regurgitating it as one long, linked masterwork. Currently, his project is a 40-volume cycle showing three families, the Chantrys, Sacketts and Talons. The hero of "The Man From the Broken Hills" is half Talon, half Sackett. Ten of the three-family cycle are complete.

The most important elements of L'Amour's books are the setting, the terrain, the atmosphere. It is his most important character.

"The terrain is always an important factor," he says. "In those days, you couldn't go form here to Phoenix without worrying about where you could get a drink and where you'd camp tonight. And where the Indians might ambush. I always write about real places. I go to a great deal of trouble to find about that place."

…

"Nothing begins here," he says. "Always in the past writers seemed to write about The West in capitals as a place in limbo, a kind of never-never land where things happened that had no relationship to the rest of the world at all. Well, I don't like that at all. People were coming and going from the West. There was a man named Oliver Wallop who ranched up in Wyoming for 30 years and then went back to England and took a seat in the House of Lords. Men came in and went out contributing and taking from it. Like Teddy Roosevelt coming West a sick man and going back East healthy with the western spirit in him."

John D. MacDonald on Words and Writing (2)

Recently, I came across an in-depth article on John D. MacDonald from around the time of the movie adaptation of Darker Than Amber. "The man who writes those Travis McGee stories: A look at John D. MacDonald" was written by Mike Baxter and was published in The Washington Post Times Herald on Feb 1, 1970. It was a fairly lengthy article, but below are excerpts of some of the most insightful parts:

[Mickey] Spillane visits [John D.] MacDonald's home at intervals, and both write mysteries. As craftsmen, however, they are as close as Eldridge Cleaver and Sam Spade. Even Spillane can recognize the gulf. "I am a writer; you are an author," The Mick once told MacDonald. There is more in that than semantic nonsense.

MacDonald writes on a beige IBM Selectric as if Doom were about to unplug it in the last great denouement…He devotes a business-like seven-to-nine hours a day writing, doing it until the lunch hour, then doing it again until the cocktail hour. Fast subtraction shows that this leaves "too little time, dammit" for other pursuits.

...

MacDonald can pension McGee off without affecting his workload. While completing McGee No. 12, he is working on three other novels in his unorthodox way, moving from one to another at the first outbreak of boredom.

He writes without outlining, weaving intricate plots and large casts into the empty middle separating a known beginning and a known climax.

He writes on expensive 25-pound bond paper. "I think the same situation is involved as with painting and sculpture. If you use the best materials you can afford, somehow you have more respect for what you do to it."

He seldom edits with pencil. "I rewrite by throwing away a page, a chapter, half a book, or go right back to the beginning and start again."

He is also a happy writer, another unorthodoxy. "I enjoy the hell out of writing," he said, "because of the rare times when it really works good. It's like an East egg hunt. Here's 50 pages, and you say, 'Oh, Christ, where is it?' Then on the 51st page, it'll work. Just the way you wanted it to, a little better than anything in that same area ever worked before. You say 'Wow! This is worth the price of admission'."

Rex Stout on Words and Writing

Rex Stout makes writing novels seem so damn easy.

"I never worked more than three months a year. Thirty-nine or forty days on each novel, and I'd do two a year.

"No, there's nothing much to planning them. Of course, I was lucky on having hit on the name–Nero Wolfe. Simple but odd, people remember it. And Wolfe was born; he wasn't synthetic. I didn't have to sit down and decide: 'What color will his eyes be? Well they'll be blue. How much will he with? How will he walk? What expressions will he use?' He was born.

"I tried another detective later, Tecumseh Fox–because the Saturday Evening Post editors wanted a fresh detective–and he never was born. He was put together piece by piece and wasn't worth a damn.

"As for the story, you take a setting that interests you, think of what might happen in that setting, choose the most entertaining happenings, and then ask yourself" 'Well, why would a man want buy buy that champion bull? Why would some one murder a man because of a bull?' The answers come right along. You have your plot. You write it."

--Rex Stout, excerpted from "An Interview With Mister Rex Stout" by Robert van Gelder, New York Times, Sept 21, 1941

I was also struck by van Gelder's description of Stout's beard, with which he opens the article.

"His beard is not a particularly good beard: it has rather the sparse look of barberry bushes that have been trampled by the house painters. The beard's purpose, probably, is to ambush one's attention from the eyes above it, which are not cataloguing [sic] eyes and seem to reflect open judgments, but are intent and observing to a rare degree."

Leigh Brackett on Words and Writing

Leigh Brackett on living and writing with her husband, Edmond Hamilton:

You were asking how living and working together affected us. We almost broke up our happy home I think right after we were married. I had an order for a 40,000 word novel from Startling Stories and I said, “I think I've got an idea for an opening.” And he said fine. So we figured if we collaborated we could do the stories twice as fast, write twice as many, and make twice as much money. You know, which we didn't have much of at that time. So I went out in the kitchen and pounded the typewriter and came back in with a couple of chapters and I said, “What do you think of it?” He read it, said it was great, but where do you go from here? I said, “I don't know.” He looked at me, said, “You don't know! This is the so-and-so bleep adjective deleted way to write a story I ever heard of!” (Laughing) He used to write the last line of the story before he'd ever write the first one.

--Leigh Brackett, excerpted from "An Interview with Leigh Brackett & Edmond Hamilton" by Dave Truesdale and Paul McGuire III, from Minicon 11, April 16-18, 1976

John Steinbeck on Words and Writing

"I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar–if he is financially fortunate."

--John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Brian Garfield on Words and Writing

In 1973, Brian Garfield published his "Ten Rules for Suspense Fiction" in Writer's Digest. John Grisham famously claimed that he used Garfield's advice as the foundation for The Firm. The full article is available at The Big Thrill, but below I have posted Garfield's last two rules which made the biggest impression on me.

I like that Garfield says, "There is no such thing as a dead genre because the human imagination is limitless." The heritage of genre can, at times, seem intimidating (at least to me), but Garfield reminds that even within established forms there are always new alleys to walk down. Prime examples within Garfield's own work include his innovative take on the kidnapping plot in What of Terry Conniston?, the Navajo Highway Patrolman Sam Watchman in Relentless and The Threepersons Hunt, and the Western revenge-picaresque in Tripwire.

The other point that Garfield makes which I like is: "Don't write into a genre for which you have contempt...If you thoroughly enjoy sea stories --- even if you don't know a thing about nautical life --- you're better off attempting to write a sea story because you'll go into it with enthusiasm." It might be obvious, but sometimes we forget the obvious things. As I gear up to write some new stories this summer, this advice is going to be important for me.

And now, on with Garfield's words of wisdom:

Don't rush in where angels fear to tread.

I admit this one is a catchall. Essentially I mean that it is wise to observe not only what the pros do, but also what they avoid doing. The best writers do not jump on bandwagons; they build new ones.

The pro doesn't write a caper novel about the world's biggest heist unless he's convinced he can write an unusual story with a unique and important twist. Otherwise he risks unfavorable comparison with the classics in that subgenre. "Why bother with it if it's not as taut as Rififi and not as funny as The Hot Rock?"

Yet this should not be taken to mean every writer must obey faddish advice, such as "Spy fiction is dead," or "Historical novels are out this season." There is no such thing as a dead genre because the human imagination is limitless, and there is never a dearth of new ideas, new twists, new talents.

The question is, "Is this idea strong enough and important enough to make the story sufficiently different from its predecessors to merit publication?" If a novel is good enough, it will find a publisher whether it is a hard-boiled detective story, a western, a spy novel, a historical adventure, or a novel about bug-eyed monsters from Mars. If it isn't good enough, the publisher may reject it by saying that such novels are out of style, but this is merely a euphemism.

Don't write anything you wouldn't want to read.

This one sounds self-evident, but I've met several young writers who decided they wanted to start out by hacking their way through gothics or westerns, just to learn the ropes, because those categories looked easy to imitate. Nuts. I f you start out that way, you'll end up a hack.

Now if you like to read westerns, then write a western. But don't write into a genre for which you have contempt. If you don't like gothics but insist on writing one, your contempt will show; you can't hide it. I don't say you can't sell books this way; God knows people do, all too often. But if you thoroughly enjoy sea stories --- even if you don't know a thing about nautical life --- you're better off attempting to write a sea story because you'll go into it with enthusiasm.

James M. Cain on Words and Writing

"The only way I can keep on the track at all is to pretend to be somebody else – to put it in dialect and thus get it told. If I try to do it in my own language I find that I have none. A style that seems to be personal enough for ordinary gassing refuses to get going for an imaginary narrative. So long as I merely report what people might have said under certain circumstances, I am all right; but the moment I have to step in myself, and try to create the impression that what happened to those people really matters, then I am sunk. I flounder about, not knowing whether I should skip to the scene at the church or pile in a little more of the talk at the post office. The reason is...I don't care what happened. It doesn't matter to me. Narratively, I do not exist, I have no impulse to hold an audience."

--James M. Cain, quoted in The Baby In the Icebox and Other Short Fiction, ed. Roy Hoopes.

Margaret Millar on Words and Writing

Some words of wisdom from Margaret Millar about her own writing, as well as collaborating with her husband, Kenneth Millar (aka Ross Macdonald).

"I loved writing dialogue. He [Kenneth] used to like writing action. And I hate writing action. When somebody has to go someplace, I say: 'He went someplace.' That's the most action I want to write. Because to me, it's irrelevant. What's relevant are the words: the mood, and the words that are exchanged. Because you can be driving a Chrysler, or a Jeep -- who in hell cares? What matters is what you say when you get there!"

And:

"He's always been tactful. I'll show him something I've written and he'll say, 'This is marvelous, but it would work even better if you did thus-and-so.' Then I know I'm in for a major job of rewriting. He edits me with positives instead of negatives… I did teach him to write better dialogue, so that everybody didn't sound like him. In his first two books, all the characters talked like Ken! I don't even know anybody who talks like Ken. And I told him he had to listen... And we went around to a lot of places: pawn shops, low bars... And he realized how different people talk."

--Margaret Millar, from "Ross Macdonald and Margaret Millar: Partners in Crime" by Tom Nolan, (Mystery Readers Journal, Vol. 17, No. 3, Fall 2001)

Reed Farrel Coleman on Words and Writing

"The best advice is the simplest: Write every day even if you think what you’re doing stinks. Fall in love with writing, not with what you’ve written. Put your energies into writing the best things you can, not how to sell them. If it doesn’t say it on the page, it doesn’t say it.

"About mystery writing, the first rule is engaging the reading. If you can’t engage the reader enough to keep turning the pages, then the rest of it, no matter how brilliant your prose might be, isn’t worth a thing."

--Reed Farrel Coleman, from an interview at Noir Journal

Also, Coleman's latest Moe Praeger novel, Innocent Monster, will soon be published by Tyrus Books. Be sure to request a copy form your local, independent bookseller.

Read my review of the first Moe Praeger novel, Walking the Perfect Square. Also reviewed on Pulp Serenade is Coleman's collaboration with Ken Bruen, Tower, and Coleman's short story "The Frog."

Craig Rice on Words and Writing

"When [Craig] Rice did finally sit down to write a book, it was a sight to see. Her writing habits were legendary. She wrote without an outline, or character sketches, or any good idea of where she was going, simply typing away until she'd completed a novel. The manic sessions would sometimes last for days. These focused writing sessions provided the first indication that perhaps Craig Rice didn't behave like other writers – she was driven to complete a work in a few sittings. No one would see her until she emerged with a finished book." -- Jeffrey Marks, from Who Was That Lady? Craig Rice: The Queen of Screwball Mystery

Frederick C. Davis on Words and Writing

Renowned pulpster Frederick C. Davis passes on the following advice to writers:

The most valuable and penetrating comment I have ever seen on writing--any kind--is one made by Henry Seidel Canby of the Saturday Review. He said: "A writer doesn't write with his mind, he writes with his hands."

(Quoted from The Mystery Writer's Handbook, edited by Herbert Brean.)

Lester Dent on Words and Writing

Ever wanted to write like Lester Dent? Bang out 200,000 words a month for years on end without running out of steam? Well, you could dress like Dent in the photo and wear a gun around your hip, an adventurer's hat on your head, and put your hands on your hip and look real manly.

If that doesn't work, try reading "The Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot." In the article, Lester Dent tells all and reveals his very own formula for writing fiction. The article was originally published in the 1936 Writer's Digest Yearbook and is available online courtesy of Atlus Press.

Here is how Dent describes his master design, which he claims is good for any story of 6000 words. According to him, "it has worked on adventure, detective, western and war-air. It tells exactly where to put everything. It shows definitely just what must happen in each successive thousand words."

While he describes the process in great detail in the article, I'm only quoting the outline of the design. For more info, be sure to read the whole article.

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

SECOND 1500 WORDS
1—Shovel more grief onto the hero.
2—Hero, being heroic, struggles, and his struggles lead up to:
3—Another physical conflict.
4—A surprising plot twist to end the 1500 words.

THIRD 1500 WORDS
1—Shovel the grief onto the hero, who continues to fight back, most heroically.
2—Hero makes some headway, and corners the villains or somebody in:
3—A physical conflict.
4—A surprising plot twist, in which the hero preferably gets it in the neck bad, to end the 1500 words.

FINAL 1500 WORDS
1—Shovel the difficulties more thickly upon the hero.
2—Get the hero almost buried in his troubles. (Figuratively, the villain has him prisoner and has him framed for a murder rap; the girl is presumably dead, everything is lost, and the DIFFERENT murder method is about to dispose of the suffering protagonist).
3—The hero extricates himself, using HIS OWN skill, training or brawn.
4—The mysteries remaining—one big one held over to this point will help grip interest—are cleared up in course of final conflict as hero takes the situation in hand.
5—Final twist, a big surprise. (This one can be the villain turning out to be the unexpected person, having the “treasure” a dud, etc.)
6—The snapper, the punch line, to end it."

Let me know if anyone has tried out Dent's method! (Or if you try dressing up like an adventurer next time you sit down to write.)

Talmage Powell on Words and Writing

Oh, the marvels of the internet. While doing research on pulp editor Fanny Ellsworth, I came across this fascinating interview with pulpster Talmage Powell courtesy of the Vintage Library. Here are some of his reflections on the craft of writing.

In the matter of style, if I have one some academic will have to define it. I never thought of it consciously. My personal method was to think first of a predominating effect I wanted a story to build to and achieve, both in structuring and in the writing, which influenced the choice of words. Characterization and atmosphere creation also determined the nuances and I've sometimes spent half-a-day hunting the precisely right word, more often than not experiencing defeat...

Pulp, it turns out, constitutes only a small part of my work, but it was perhaps the most important phase. It demanded writing discipline; it required the constant exercise of originality; it offered the opportunity to learn and employ techniques that are essential in any genre of creative writing. It was the exercise that provided the foundation from which I have remained in print for a half-century.

Read the full interview here.

Ed McBain on Words and Writing

"She Was Blond. She Was in Trouble. And She Paid 3 Cents a Word" is a fond and humorous reflection on writing mystery fiction by Ed McBain (Evan Hunter) that originally appeared in the New York Times on March 29, 1999. What McBain (whose real name is Salvatore Lombino) achieved in his career is astonishing. His publishing record spanned over half a century, including hits such as The Blackboard Jungle (1954), the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) (based on a story by Daphne du Maurier), and a mind-blowing 54 novels in his 87th Precint Series.

In his article, he talks not only about humanizing the police genre, but he also riffs on the many tropes used by authors in mystery fiction. Among the many themes-and-variations he discusses are: Private Eye, Amateur Detective, Innocent Bystander, Man on the Run, Woman in Jeopardy, Guilty Bystander, Cop Story, and the Biter Bit.

Here are McBain's opening two paragraphs:

There used to be a time when a person could make a decent living writing crime stories. Back then, a hard-working individual could earn 2 cents a word for a short story. Three cents, if he was exceptionally good. It beat polishing spittoons. Besides, it was fun.

Back then, starting a crime story was like reaching into a box of chocolates and being surprised by either the soft center or the carmel or the nuts. There were plenty of nuts in crime fiction, but you never knew what kind of story would come out of the machine until it started taking shape on the page. Like a jazz piano player, a good writer of short crime fiction didn't think he knew his job unless he could improvise in all 12 keys. Ringing variations on the theme was what made it such fun. Getting paid 2 or 3 cents a word was also fun.

You can read the whole article HERE at the New York Times website.

Richard Sale on Words and Writing

More stories from the front line, courtesy of pulpster Richard Sale. It is anecdotes like these that make pulp veterans sound as much like action heroes as the characters they wrote about.

"Up in the morning and hit the typewriter. I wrote a story a day. Three thousand words, five thousand words. Sometimes it carried over into the next day if you were doing novelettes–that would be 12,000 words. You might spend more time for the top magazines–Argosy, Adventure, Blue Book–but for the others you really rattled them off. First draft was the last draft, straight out of the typewriter and send it off. You had to keep them coming all the time otherwise you'd starve."

-Richard Sale, in Danger Is My Business by Lee Server (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993).