When is Enough Research Enough?

            Mystery writers love Raymond Chandler.  As one of the world’s most famous writers of “hard boiled” detective and crime stories, he was known for being both lyrical and gritty at the same time.  His characters sprang to life and his knack for suspense kept the pages turning.  But even he neglected to do research now and again.  In describing a California coastline, he wrote “…rolling hills of yellow-white sand, terraced with pink moss.”  Well, unfortunately moss doesn’t come in pink.  What he was describing is ice plant, which grows along the sandy coasts in a dense profusion of almost blinding pink and purple.  Does it matter?  Not terribly.  Not if you’re Raymond Chandler.  But it might make an editor or a reader pause and mutter, “Wait a second—what?”

            So we need to research.  We want our stories to read as true, even if they’re fiction.  We want authentic detail.  When I was researching Jungle, an adventure which takes place on a fictitious island in the Indian Ocean, I couldn’t just make up my own plants and animals as if this were science fiction or fantasy.  I had to learn about the flora and fauna of the nearest countries, because they would likely share the same creatures and foliage.  Climate, weather, indigenous people—it had to match, to be plausible.  Did I get tired of reading about which birds could fly how far and could likely have migrated there? Yep.  Was it annoying to find a fantastic animal and then learn that it was nocturnal and wouldn’t work in a certain scene?  Yep.  But I wanted anthropologists and other scientists to be able to read this book without rolling their eyes.

            In writing Pinholes Into Heaven, which takes place in the Midwest, it helped enormously to have lived in Iowa for three years. It gave me a genuine sense of place, and immersion in Midwest attitudes and values.

            Not only do we need to spend hours and hours doing research, but we need to compile more than what we initially think is necessary.  We must know our locale, time in history, customs--- all of it—backwards and forwards.  Trust me-- some stray detail will come up, and you’ll be so glad you knew that a certain action could never have taken place in that setting.

            Research means that if your story takes place in a country near the equator, you won’t have an icy wind that makes your character pull a hoodie up over his head.  It means the humidity in Asia will make it difficult to bake meringue cookies.  Or that in India there are such strict social rules about caste and class,  that certain people simply do not speak to certain other people.  Or that in Korea there’s such a deferential politeness that it sounds unbelievable to American ears, where anybody can speak to anyone they wish.

            If you set your story in the rural South, you’d better know the cuisine, the local trees and animals, the Yessir-No Ma’am’s, and the phrases they use.  “Where’d you get that?” might be answered, “At the gettin’ store.” 

Have you ever read a story based in your own home town and caught mistakes-- things that were out of place or unlikely to happen there?  One reason writers often base their stories in towns where they live, is because they know these places.  The road names, the topography, the crime rate, the width of the streets, the smell of the lakes and canyons, the way the sidewalks buckle from tree roots on a certain avenue.   There’s a cadence to the speech in certain areas, a pace to the way people walk and move.  You can’t know these things without doing research.  And, even if you live there, you need to research for accuracy.  It’s the only way to avoid pink moss, growing along the beach.

Your Chance to Group-Write a Novel!

For months we've been talking about how to get you from blank page to finished novel.  And it's a daunting task for anybody, no question.

But what if you only had to contribute a few pages to a group-written novel?  That might be an easier challenge, especially with support from the group sponsoring it.

Wait no longer.  I just heard from my good friends at Grammarly, and they've launched a fantastic idea they want me to tell you about.  Many of you are already aware of National Novel Writing Month  (NaNoWriMo), a chance to write a novel during the month of November. But this sounds like a truly clever twist; each writer need only contribute 800 words. At the end of NaNoWriMo, Grammarly hopes to publish a book that boasts the largest number of authors of any novel ever written. This is your chance to make history, folks!

They also just announced that Gayle Brandeis, a published NaNoWriMo author, will be contributing the first and last lines to the group novel. If this sounds like a fun adventure, visit Grammarly, online, to learn more:
The deadline is October 15th, this Friday.  So contact them right away, then write away!

Elmore Leonard's Rules

            When I was in Professional Writing graduate school at USC, one of my professors said, “Elmore Leonard is to literature what Las Vegas is to society.”  Clearly, he was not a fan.

            Elmore Leonard carved out a huge following in bestselling crime fiction.  And, while popular authors do not always please the literary crowd, you have to give them credit for knowing how to craft a story that will sell.  Elmore Leonard recently passed away, but left a large body of work, and some pretty good advice for other writers.  Today, I thought I’d share his List of Ten* with you:

     Never open a book with weather.

     Avoid prologues.

     Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.

     Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.

     Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.

     Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."

     Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

     Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

     Don't go into great detail describing places and things.

     Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

            And then he wrote, “My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.  If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”

            And that last suggestion—Number Eleven, really-- is the one I most want you to heed.  Writing should flow, should captivate the reader, and should never reveal your effort.  You may have worked on a line for hours, days, weeks—but the reader should never see your sweat.  When writing sounds forced, overly formal, pedantic, or unnatural, scrap it.  Go back and start over.  Don’t ever let it sound like writing.

 * Excerpted from the New York Times article, “Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle”

The Importance of Connections

Today I’m going to underline something we writers don’t like to believe, but which we secretly know: Much of your success in your work will depend upon who you know.  And, sadly, it’s whom you know, but “who” is how the saying goes. Already I digress.

            Connections can make all the difference.  People in power (publishers, agents, editors) are only human, and tend to believe the recommendation of a trusted friend more than your carefully crafted cover letter.  Because of this, often the son of their buddy will get the assignment before some stranger will, four states away.

            Yes, you can forget this principle and doggedly work on your book, your script, your articles, and you will attain some measure of success.  But the chances of launching your work to the next level are slim.  Oh, it happens, but it’s rare.  Frequently the people who “break through” knew someone, and they’ll even admit it.  I was at a dinner party once where an Emmy-award-winning writer confessed that he never once got a job on his own; it was always through a friend of his dad’s, or some other connection.  Was he good?  Probably.  Was he lucky? Absolutely.

            We don’t like to think that luck trumps talent; it negates the importance of the skills we’ve honed, the passion we’ve devoted to our craft.  And it isn’t fair, doggone it—something we still believe we are owed by the universe, a holdover idea from our childhoods. 

            So what can you do about it?  First of all, stop pouting and resenting those with better connections than you have.  It is what it is.  Self-pity will stifle your creativity and your energy to do those things you actually can, to sell your work.  I was meeting with agents and producers in Hollywood when we suddenly moved to (you will never believe this) IOWA!  Are you kidding me?  Be a screenwriter living in the Midwest?  So I shifted gears and wrote books and plays.  Today I live in Northern California where it’s still hard to zip into L.A. for meetings, so my (brilliant, thank you) screenplays are not getting shopped around.  Also, I’m not 28 anymore, and ageism in Hollywood is widely known.  But I don’t sit and cry; I roll up my sleeves and do what I can.

            The second thing you can do is to network, socialize, and make friends.  This sounds like bitter medicine to many an introverted writer, but it’s what you must do to market your work.  And you can do it both electronically and in person.  Attend those parties, chat up those folks in the biz, and make yourself known.  Obviously, if you live in L.A. or New York, you have many more opportunities than if you live in Billings, Montana.  But again, do what you can where you are.  Use Facebook, Twitter, and every other social media device you can to make friends.  Notice I said friends, not contacts.  Develop real relationships with people and doors will open.  Like it or not, it’s who you know.  Ouch. I mean whom.

Getting to Know You

To write believable dialogue you need to be a good listener.  Eavesdrop.  Notice how people really speak when they’re getting acquainted, and how it varies depending on the culture, income bracket, education, and age of the speaker.  This used to be easy—folks would chat on buses, while standing in line at the bank, just about anywhere.  But today people are texting or tuned in to their ear buds, and you hear conversations much less frequently.  It takes effort to find random snippets of dialogue.  Sometimes you’ll hear people visiting in a forced social gathering where it would be rude to pull out a cell phone or speakers, such as at a funeral, a bridal shower, or at a dinner party.  And, occasionally, you’ll discover folks who simply choose to be gregarious and get to know their seatmate on an airplane, or other shoppers in a market. 

            Watch how strangers get to know one another.  It usually involves one of two styles.  The first style is where people ask one another questions.  Where are you from, what do you do, how old are your children, how do you know the bride, have you ever vacationed here before, and so on.  We’ve all seen this and done this.  But the second style is the odd one I want you to observe.  It consists of people talking about themselves in a ping-pong style, asking no questions whatsoever.  Back and forth they carry on in this self-absorbed method of revealing themselves, unaware that they haven’t once expressed interest in the other person. Here’s an example of two women talking:

            “I love when it rains like this.”

            “Oh, not me.  I’m a sun girl.  Give me hot over cold anytime.”

            “Oh, I can’t stand the heat.  I love to wear sweaters and jackets.”

            “I was raised in Arizona.  I don’t think I owned a coat until I was 20.”

            “Oh my gosh.  I was an Army brat and moved all over the place.”

            “Not me.  I like a hometown where you can stay put.”

            “That would have driven me stir crazy.”

            Notice no one ever asks the other what kind of weather they like, or what kind of clothing, or whether they like moving.  But it’s offered up in “I” statements as a way of showing how they differ.  It could also reveal things they have in common:

            “This reminds me of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

            “Hey, me too—that’s one of my favorite movies.”

            “I just love Audrey Hepburn.”

            “Oh, I know, right?  She was the best.”

            From time to time you’ll hear people tell about their lives and opinions in a series of competing statements of one-upsmanship, even escalating into a quarrel:

            “These are the best mountains for skiing, hands down.”

            “Oh, but they’re nothing like the dry powder in Utah.”

            “I’ve skied there, and I think the Alps have the best snow.”

            “Well, I’ve skied all over the world, and I’m telling you the best snow on earth is in Utah.”

            Many people don’t really want to understand, so much as to be understood.  They want to argue their position, be right, and then sit back, self-satisfied.  Making friends is not as important as making their point.  They could go months without asking another soul a question that shows real caring or interest.  Is it a good way to get to know people?  Not really.  But it’s the only way some people roll.  And knowing this will make you a better writer.  Your characters won’t all speak the same way, but the way that’s consistent with who they are inside.  And if one of them is self-centered, this is probably the way he’ll respond when trapped in a conversation with someone entirely new. 

SIck of Comparing and Contrasting?

            I don’t know about you, but I used to groan (an inner, quiet groan) with agony whenever a teacher assigned a “compare and contrast” essay.  To me, this meant busywork—taking two things (poets, movies, cars, foods, whatever) and then tediously describing how they are alike, and how they are different. As if any fool can’t see both.

            Painstakingly I would describe the similarities.  Then, equally painstakingly, I would outline the differences.  No detail left behind.  Ugh.

            And for years I never understood why we had to point out the obvious.  And then I grew up a bit.  One day I realized this skill is not just handy when choosing one author over another, or when writing an opinion piece about why one politician’s plan is better than another’s.  It’s a life skill.  You use it with every decision you make.

            In short, it’s brain training.  We compare and contrast every day—which bread to buy, which friends to pick, which interests to pursue, which activities to schedule.  You cannot make an informed decision without knowing the pros and cons.  Being able to analyze similar and different choices, helps you make wiser decisions.

This exercise also helps us connect ideas together, read with more comprehension, and analyze life’s perplexities.  It helps us organize our thoughts as we listen and speak, it helps us classify and sort, it expands our knowledge, and it enriches our vocabulary.

But the skill of being able to compare and contrast is not just for reading or decision-making.  It’s essential for writing.  Much of what we tell our readers is new to them— sometimes this is the whole reason they’re reading.  People like fresh ideas.  They like to learn new things, “see” new places and cultures, and encounter characters and concepts they’ve never encountered before. Yet, without the ability to draw analogies, or to tell your readers how this is somewhat like something they already know, you’re writing about a situation they can never grasp. You can be writing about a made-up planet, but if you want them to breathe the hot mist rising from the cracks in its crust, you need to draw parallels to the humidity, and maybe the volcanic lava they know from their own planet.

If you’re in a school setting, whether you’re a teacher or a student, the way to inject greater value into the assignment is not just to identify likenesses and differences, but then to explain why it matters.  Because it always does.  And students need to know that.