The Movie in Your Mind

By David Corbett

I spent last weekend attending the 2012 Noircon, the biannual lovefest to all things noir devised and convened by Lou Boxer and Deen Kogan in Philadelphia. 

I love this festival, which is far more intimate and writer-centric than most others I’ve attended. The participants largely form a congress of equals, and there is never a great divide between the contributions of the various panelists and the comments from the floor. It’s a smart group, widely read and not shy, and I always come away learning more that I could have imagined.

This year was particularly exceptional, with what at times seemed to be a continuous string of highlights. That said, one presentation stood out for me—the keynote talk by Robert Olen Butler.

Butler’s a gracious, witty, generous man with a knife-like body and a steel-trap mind. An astonishing talent, he’s written thirteen novels, six story collections, nine screenplays, an essential guide to writing (From Where You Dream—trust me, read it), and has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and a Guggenheim Fellowship in addition to an almost unseemly bundle of other awards and distinctions.

Why, I hear you ask, is such a literary hotshot slumming at Noircon?

Well that’s an interesting question, one ironically answered by Otto Penzler the day before Butler spoke. Otto explained how, after studying English and American Literature at the University of Michigan, he discovered crime fiction and promptly realized that its best practitioners owe apologies to no one.

Butler agrees, not just in theory. His most recent novel, The Hot Country, is a historical thriller set in Mexico in 1914, combining intrigue from both that country’s revolution and the worldwide cataclysm routinely known as World War I. The plan is for nine more novels in the series, all to be published by Otto Penzler’s Mysterious Press.

But what Butler chose to discuss at Noircon was craft—specifically, the way in which fiction mimics the cinematic portrayal of events in the mind. (His remarks, I now know, were a distillation of his chapter, "Cinema of the Mind," within From Where You Dream.)

The American filmmaker D.W. Griffith, Butler informed us, once remarked that he owed everything he knew about cinematic technique to Charles Dickens—who died years before the advent of film.

By way of example, Butler turned to the following passage from Great Expectations, which appears shortly after the narrator, Pip, sets the stage, identifying himself and his family, then continues:

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.

“Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. "Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!"

A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.

"O! Don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded in terror. "Pray don't do it, sir."

Butler called our attention to several techniques here, all of which have cinematic elements, and there are two particular points that stuck with me, involving the first and the third paragraphs.

Butler noted that the first paragraph serves as what in film is routinely called the establishment shot—setting the story in its initial setting. We start at a distance in a long shot then move in to the nettles of the churchyard and the headstones in arresting close-up, then look out across the landscape again, as though to put those deaths in perspective.

That perspective is not local. Dickens moves beyond the "low leaden line" of the river to : “the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing ... the sea.” A great many writers might leave that phrase out. Such an omission, he argued, would be a mistake, for the establishment shot doesn’t just lay out the scenery. This crucial phrase broadens not just the physical landscape but the thematic one, extending our view not just to the immediate environs but to the world at large, setting the stage for so much of the story to come, and hinting at its universality.

And then, with incredible boldness, Dickens snaps us back again to "the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry," the narrator himself, Pip. This movement in and out creates a marvelous sense of the larger savage world and the small scared soul that form the essential focus of the tale, and do it subtly with this implicit, cinematic movement in and out of the action.

Similarly, the third paragraph might readily find itself in many a writer’s Dead Darling file—another error. It’s not just the unnerving description of Magwitch we’d lose. Note the suspense that builds by separating “I’ll cut your throat” from “‘O! Don’t cut my throat, sir,’ I pleaded in terror.” Note also how that tension is created and how it builds. There are no independent verbs in the main clauses of any of the sentences, for the desired effect is one of attenuation—Pip staring in terror at the man emerging before him—and verbs in grammatical structure are the device for conveying movement in time. Omit them, and you're standing stock still.

The next example was one with which more of the crowd was familiar, the first few paragraphs from the second chapter Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon:

A telephone-bell rang in darkness. When it had rung three times bed-springs creaked, fingers fumbled on wood, something small and hard thudded on a carpeted floor, the springs creaked again, and a man’s voice said:

“Hello?...Yes, speaking…Dead?...Yes…Fifteen minutes. Thanks.”

A switch clicked and a white bowl hung on three gilded chains from the ceiling’s center filled the room with light. Spade, barefooted in green and white checked pajamas, sat on the side of his bed. He scowled at the phone on the table while his hands took from beside it a packet of brown papers and a sack of Bull Durham tobacco.

Cold steamy air blew in through two open windows, bringing with it half a dozen times a minute the Alcatraz foghorn’s dull moaning. A tinny alarm-clock, insecurely mounted on a corner of Duke’s Celebrated Criminal Cases of America—face down on the table—held its hands at five minutes past two.

Spade’s thick fingers made a cigarette with deliberate care, sitting a measured quantity of tan flakes down into the curved paper, spreading the flakes so that they lay equal at the ends with a slight depression in the middle, thumbs rolling the paper’s inner edge down and up under the outer edge as forefingers pressed it over, thumbs and fingers sliding to the paper cylinder’s ends to hold it even while tongue licked the flap, left forefinger and thumb pinching their end while right forefinger and thumb smoothed the damp seam, right forefinger and thumb twisting their end and lifting the other to Spade’s mouth.

He picked up the pigskin and nickel lighter that had fallen to the floor, manipulated it, and with the cigarette burning in the corner of his mouth stood up. He took off his pajamas. The smooth thickness of his arms, legs, and body, the sag of his big rounded shoulders, made his body like a bear’s. It was like a shaved bear’s: his chest was hairless. His skin was childishly soft and pink.

He scratched the back of his neck and began to dress. He put on a white union-suit, grey socks, black garters, and dark brown shoes. When he had fastened his shoes he picked up the telephone, called Graystone 4500, and ordered a taxicab. He put on a green-striped white shirt, a soft white collar, a green necktie, the grey suit he had worn that day, a loose tweed overcoat, and a dark grey hat. The street-door-bell rang as he stuffed tobacco, keys, and money in his pockets.

As with the Dickens example, the main focus again resided on the creation of a series of mental images that form a vivid film-like sequence, visually clear in our minds, even including camera angles—the ceiling light shot from below, followed by the close up of the rolling of the cigarette, both mimicking Spade’s own focus.

But there’s more than that, too. Once again, suspense gets created through the use of detail an impatient writer might discard—or never visualize to begin with. Spade rolls himself a smoke right after learning his partner, Miles Archer, has been killed. We don’t know as yet for sure that the two o’clock phone call concerned Archer, and it’s not until later we’ll learn Spade was sleeping with Archer’s wife. Instead we get this enigmatic, slow-motion rolling of a cigarette. Its intrusion into the scene piques our interest, precisely because it doesn’t quite fit. It suggests without stating outright that Spade has something serious on his mind, and yet in the casualness of the activity we also sense no great alarm. There’s even a hint of relief.

Note: Interestingly, the day before, Lawrence Block had remarked that Hammett, sensing that his literary success might well depend on his novels being made into films, deliberately limited his descriptions to only what could be seen and heard. This wasn’t, as many have believed, a nod to Hemingwayesque technique. It was a professional calculation.

In the Q&A that followed his talk, Butler noted that as a teacher in the Ph.D. program at Florida State, he encounters some of the best aspirants to literary fame to emerge from the various MFA programs across the country. And all too often, “They know the second through tenth most important things about writing, but they don’t know the first.” The first, he explained, was that stories are about yearning.

He suggested that genre writers often understand this point well—if they sometimes have an insufficient grasp of the next nine most important things about their craft—because genre often has the yearning built into the premise of the form. Crime fiction is driven by the search for justice, romance novels by the craving for love, science fiction by the need to humanize technology, etc.

His talk burned a nasty little hole in my brain, and as soon as I could I got my hands on a copy of From Where You Dream and I’ve been devouring it ever since.

So, Murderateros -- how does the cinema of the mind guide you in your writing? Do you take time to envision camera angles? Do you consider tempo in your descriptions? Do you play with quick alteration betweeen and long shots and close ups to create a dramatic effect between thematic or narrative extremes?

* * * * *

There were a great many other excellent presentations at Noircon, including but not limited to:

            —Well-deserved awards bestowed on Lawrence Block and Otto Penzler, with interviews of both men, giving Block a chance to, among other things, recount his days as a writer of lesbian romance novels, and Otto an opportunity to discuss how obscenely cheap real estate was when he bought his first store in Manhattan.

            —A panel on music with SJ Rozan and John Wesley Harding (who writes crime fiction under the pen name Wesley Stace), complete with songs.

            —A wickedly lurid, funny, and confessional true crime panel with Megan Abbott, Allison Gaylin, Wallace Stroby, and Dennis Tafoya.

            —A blackly comic panel of cautionary tales from Hollywood featuring Lawrence Block, Duane Swierczynski, Anthony Bruno, and Ed Pettit.

            —And last but not least, a panel on burlesque and noir, with Lulu Lollipop, Frank De Blasé, Timaree Schmit, and Susana Mayer.

As I said, I had a gas, and I fully intend to return in two years. Even without Lulu Lollipop.

* * * * *

Blatant Self-Promotion Segment: For all the month of November, Open Road Media/Mysterious Press is featuring 100 titles for less than $3.99, including The Devil’s Redhead at a nifty $2.99.

If you haven’t yet read it, pick it up. If you have, share it with a friend. (Or an enemy. I can live with that.)

* * * * *

Jukebox Hero of the Week: In tribute to John Wesley Harding, who so graciously regaled us with song, here's "Ordinary Weekend," which he wrote after reading Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me. (In his performance for us, he remarked somewhat sheepishly he should have practiced, and ended up forgetting several verses, only to offer some of the best advice I've ever heard: He said years of performance had made him utterly un-selfconscious about fucking up. Not that anyone cared. We were enthralled):

THE JEALOUS AUTHOR'S WISH LIST

by Gar Anthony Haywood

I have Author's Envy.

We all do.  No matter where a writer is in his career, there is always another one somewhere who makes him green with envy.

For instance, we all wish to God we had this woman's money:

And, except for those of us lucky enough to be even better looking, we would all like to have this guy's face:

(Yes, even the ladies.  He's that pretty.)

But enough about the superficial.  The objects of envy I want to post about today are those that go beyond the obvious.  Sure, I covet the way some authors write dialogue or craft plot, tell a story or create character --- but these are all skills of the trade I could conceivably develop over time.  The things I want most that other writers have have little or nothing to do with writing, per se.  For the most part, they are intangible.  They cannot be bought or sold.  They are lines on an unwritten resume that, in my mind, help make certain authors unique.  And since I can't claim these things for myself, I am envious of those who can.

Here are the specific traits and possessions I'm referring to:

The Generosity of LEE CHILD

Okay, show of hands: How many people out there have asked Lee Child for something --- a blurb, a signature, a few minutes of his time --- and been turned away?  Nobody?  Anybody?

I didn't think so.

If anyone in our business can afford to be less than gracious to others, it's Mr. Child, but that kind of behavior just isn't in his DNA.   He lends an all new, respectable heft to the otherwise lightweight term "nice guy."

The Self-Confidence of SOPHIE LITTLEFIELD

Anyone who's ever heard Sophie describe how she got her first book, A BAD DAY FOR SORRY, sold knows it wasn't a particularly easy road to hoe.  Because not every editor who read the manuscript was charmed by some of the language she likes to use.  She was encouraged on several occasions, in fact, to tone it down, if not eliminate it altogether.

But Sophie held her ground.  Her voice was her voice, and hell if she was going to change it just to get published.

Aren't those of us who've read her work thankful she had that kind of faith in herself?

The Voice of GARY PHILLIPS

I don't want the angry squint, nor the imposing, Sumo-like form factor.  He can keep his booming laugh and signature porkpie hat.  I just want Phillips's trademark speaking voice.  With that voice, I could do readings to make grown men weep and women swoon.   I could moderate panels with the authority of Zeus and stop a convention bar fight with a single call to "Cease!"

Never heard Gary speak, you say?  Well, it's sort of like this, only more powerful:

The Honesty of LEE GOLDBERG

Let's face it, when you're trying to build a readership and every live, book-buying body counts, honesty isn't always the best policy.  Saying the wrong thing, to fans and fellow authors alike, can have consequences, regardless of how much truth is in the telling.

Incredibly, Goldberg has managed to build a leviathan-like career, both in television and mystery fiction, saying what he feels needs to be said while staring any possible repercussions square in the face.  He offends and he ruffles feathers, but he always tells it like he sees it, without malice aforethought.

I've been on the receiving end of his Searing Blade of Truth myself at least once, so I know how much it can sting.  Still, there's something to be said for a man in our business, in which discretion almost always pays better than being frank, who consistently answers a question with what he really thinks, rather than what the questioner would most like to hear.

The Output of LAWRENCE BLOCK

Being prolific is one thing.  Being prolific and damn good, time and time again, is quite another.  Over a career spanning more than fifty years and multiple genres, Block's been churning out novels and short stories the way McDonald's makes hamburgers.  With that kind of production, you'd think he'd turn out a dud or two.  But no.  Quality plus quantity is how this Mystery Writers of America Grand Master rolls, and that's what makes his vast body of work so impressive.

LAURA LIPPMAN's Mastery of Social Networking

Neither Allison Pearson's 2002 book I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT, nor its recent film adaptation, has anything to do with Laura Lippman, as far as I know, but that doesn't stop me from thinking of her every time I hear that title.  Because in addition to writing some ungodly number of words towards her next New York Times bestseller, her daily regimen also seems to include supervising home repairs, tracking down the world's best citrus butter cookies, composing open letters to JetBlue, putting younger women to shame at the gym, and informing a growing mob of fans and followers of all the above, as it happens, via every social networking platform yet known to Man.

If all her tweets and posts read like those of some ("Just brushed my teeth.  Next up, flossing."  Or: "Will be signing Sunday at Harriet's Pickles & More, would love to see you there."), this last wouldn't be so amazing.  But Ms. Lippman's missives are always cute, clever, and just goofy enough to be entertaining.

While others wield the power of social networking like a club with which to beat potential readers into submission, Laura makes a party invite of it, and to far greater effect.

ALAFAIR BURKE's Dog

Okay, this one I admit is a little creepy.  But readers love pets, and nothing makes them happier than knowing that their favorite author is a pet lover, too.  Do some writers use this knowledge to their advantage?  Yes.  And do some even go so far as to pimp their dog or cat just to steer readers in their direction?  Absolutely.  Is Alafair Burke one of those writers?  No.

No.

But goddamnit, the Duffer is cute.  And if an author has to have an animal best friend in order to maximize their sales potential these days, then it may as well be a canine as handsome as this guy.  Woof!

Question for the class: What does your "Author's Envy" list look like?

BY ANY OTHER NAME

by Gar Anthony Haywood

Quick: What do the following upcoming films and television shows all have in common?

 

If you said they all feature poster art suitable for the Louvre, you're wrong.  And you're blind.

If you said they all feature A-list talent whose work you never miss, well . . .  I don't quite know what to say about that.  Though the expression "get a life" does spring to mind.  (Taylor Lautner??)

If, however, you said all four are burdened by an incredibly unimaginative and dumb-as-a-stick title, you nailed it.  And therein lies the tale of this Murderati post.

Several months ago on my own blog, I wrote a post describing how much it mystifies me when creative people consciously decide to attach a one-word, generic title to something they've spent months, sometimes years to produce.  This is what I wrote in part:

"Now, I know not every writer cares to spend a thousand sleepless nights trying to come up with a title for their book or film that's as fresh and original as it is memorable.  It's a pain in the ass process and, sometimes, it hardly seems worth the effort. . .

"But here's where I'm coming from with all this:  A writer busts his ass for months, maybe even years, to write a novel or a screenplay.  He puts his heart and soul into the work, trying with all he's got to make it something special, something different, something he and he alone could have written.

"After all that, why on earth would he want to give the work a generic, overused, blatantly obvious title that anybody with a fifth-grade education could have come up with?

"I don't get it."

I was careful to point out in that post that this sort of thing happens far more often in the realms of film and television because the creative process in Hollywood, as Alex and Stephen know far better than I, is almost designed to produce something ridiculously simplistic at every turn, so as not to confuse our feeble minds when it comes time to turn on our TV or buy a ticket at the box office:

"Hollywood has a long tradition of treating the movie-going public like a herd of mindless cows that would forget how to chew cud if you gave them anything other than grass to think about.  And its penchant for dumbing down titles to their most obvious and uninspiring form is only getting worse."

And every published novelist knows that the title his book winds up with is not always the one he chose for it, because publishers make the final call on such things.  So my gripe is not with authors in any medium who are forced to live with a Dumb-Ass-Title (hereafter referred to as a DAT) by forces beyond their control.  Authors who go with a DAT by choice are the ones with whom I take issue.

What, in my opinion, constitutes a DAT in the literary world?  The following trifecta of death, "death" in this case being no interest from me whatsoever in reading the book so afflicted:

• A length of one word (or two, if you include a preceding and pointless "the").  Think about it --- the entire scope and breadth of your novel can be reduced to ONE WORD?  What kind of message is that to be sending to potential readers?
  
  
• Ubiquity.  If the word you choose for your title is as commonplace and ordinary as sliced bread, why should anyone expect your writing to be any different?

And most importantly:

• Predictability.  "Detective" is a nice word, and it really comes in handy when you write crime fiction, but I think we can all agree that it's rather lacking in multiple meanings, yes?  Chances are, if the title of a book is DETECTIVE, its storyline involves someone who could most accurately be described as. . . well, a detective!  Big surprise, huh?  Yet another way to appeal to potential readers --- announce by way of your book's title not to expect anything unexpected.

To really qualify as a DAT, a title has to meet all three of the criteria above.  For instance, BEAT may only be one word (yeah, Schwartz, I'm talking about you), but is that word particularly ubiquitous?  And does BOULEVARD immediately suggest what the book is about?  The answer in both cases is no, so these titles don't make my DAT cut.  (Okay, Stephen, you can exhale now.)

In the comments to my original post, I engaged in a rather lively debate with a crime writer who objected to my assertion that he'd given his latest book a DAT.  He argued that the title he'd chosen was in fact an ingenious one because, as readers of the book would discover in the end, it had a secret meaning.  I won't rehash all the ways I debunked that argument here, except to say that the cleverness of a title with a "secret" or double meaning is completely lost on somebody who hasn't yet read the associated book --- i.e., somebody cruising the shelves at their local book store looking for something great to read.  Like a duck, if it looks like a DAT, sounds like a DAT, and smells like a DAT, people are going to be inclined to assume that it is a DAT, and won't grant you 389 pages to disabuse them of that notion.  The time to impress potential readers with your capacity to surprise is at the start of your book, not the end of it, and that start --- even before page 1 --- is your title.

If you're beginning to get the idea I could go on and on about DATs if left to my own devices, you wouldn't be far off the mark.  This phenomenon doesn't just confound me, it saddens me a little, in the same way that all avoidable, self-destructive behaviors we humans sometimes engage in do.  However, as I've beaten this poor, dead horse into the ground online once already, and don't particularly feel like being the negatron I usually am, what I'd like to do today is turn my old post on its head and devote the rest of this one to singling out some relatively recent crime novel titles that I think are the polar opposite of a DAT.  The following are Kick-Ass Titles (KATs), the kind a reader can't help but notice and be drawn to, and in my estimation, all are no less exceptional and creative than the fine novels --- and authors --- they represent.

(As an added bonus, I'm including an Alternative DAT for each, just to demonstrate what might have been, had the gods not smiled upon us all.)

A BAD DAY FOR SORRY - Sophie Littlefiield

This title has blown me away since the moment I first heard it.  Its primary message is immediately and abundantly clear: Somebody in Littlefield's terrific book is about to suffer the effects of a full can of whup-ass.  And seriously, what more should the title of a crime novel ever need to say?

Alternative DAT: PISSED

THE BARBED-WIRE KISS - Wallace Stroby

Shit.  This title ticks me the hell off, and always has, because I wish to God I'd thought of it first.  It makes all the jacket copy for Stroby's debut noir thoroughly unnecessary, as everything you need to know about his story is right there: Love; pain; sex; betrayal.  No title in the tradition of Chandler and Ross Macdonald could be a more a fitting homage to the masters than this one.

Alternative DAT: THE FLAME

EIGHT MILLION WAYS TO DIE - Lawrence Block

All of Block's titles for his Matthew Scudder novels are memorable --- A DANCE AT THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE, TIME TO MURDER AND CREATE, etc. --- but this one, I think, is his best.  Some reference to death in the title of a mystery or crime novel is a no-brainer, but it's hard as hell to work it in in a way that isn't blatantly obvious or unoriginal.  Block managed that trick here.

Alternative DAT: MORTALITY

THE CONCRETE BLONDE - Michael Connelly

Blondes are a fixture in classic crime fiction, and concrete is often used as a metaphor for the cold, hard city.  Put these two things together and you have a title that promises nothing but trouble for a beautiful woman --- and by extension, Connelly's homicide detective Harry Bosch.

Alternative DAT: BURIED

61 HOURS - Lee Child

One thing a great title does, even as it's offering hints as to what kind of book it belongs to, is raise questions.  Note that Child didn't title this Reacher novel 24 HOURS, or 48 HOURS --- it's 61 HOURS.  And what in the hell can happen in exactly 61 hours?  You have to read the book to find out, and Child is counting on you becoming curious enough to do just that.  Clever.  Very clever.

Alternative DAT: THE CLOCK

DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND - Dennis Lehane

Lehane's another author whose book titles all tend to stick in the mind --- MYSTIC RIVER is a prime example --- but this one, for his second Kenzie-Gennaro mystery, which deals with a serial killer who targets children, is my favorite.   It alludes to the temptation evil sometimes holds over us all, and what could be a more ominous intro to a crime novel than that?

Alternative DAT: TWISTED

THE BLADE ITSELF - Marcus Sakey

Nothing conveys life-altering heartache quite like the expression "cut to the bone," and Sakey's title for his debut novel evokes this experience brilliantly.  Could there be any doubt that this is a noirish thriller with serious attitude?  None whatsoever.

Alternative DAT:  THE DEFENDER

FUN & GAMES - Duane Swierczynski

Though Swierczynski is capable of dropping a DAT of his own every now and then --- THE BLONDE?  Really? --- more than a few of his titles hit the Kick-Ass Title sweetspot for me.  It's a toss-up which title I like better --- this one or POINT & SHOOT --- but they both speak volumes about Swierczynski's old school, pulp-era sensibilities, and the emphasis he places on entertainment above all else.

Alternative DAT: THE BRUNETTE

FEAR OF THE DARK - Walter Mosley

Actually, my appreciation for this title to Mosley's 2006 Fearless Jones/Paris Minton novel is entirely selfish, because it immediately reminds me of a debut novel near and dear to my heart that was published 19 years earlier:

Remember what I said earlier about THE BARBED-WIRE KISS being an homage to Chandler and Ross Macdonald?  Well, that's got to be what this was, right?  An homage to me?  So I'm flattered.  Really.  I swear to God.

Alternative DAT: SPOOKED

One last word before I sign out: There's another level to the moronic-title descent into hell that I call "Just Plain Stupid."  JPSTs can be of any length, yet still manage to be even more obvious and devoid of originality than DATs, and the reason I chose this subject for today's post is a JPST that's been all over billboards lately that makes me want to tear my hair out, rather than shave it cleanly from my scalp:

Hmmm.  You think maybe this film has something to do with horrible bosses?  Talk about a title that requires zero brainpower to interpret.  The only mystery in it is just how long the geniuses behind it took to come up with it: four seconds or a whopping fourteen?

Pathetic.

Questions for the class:  How about you, my fellow 'Ratis?  Do DATs make the top of your head come off the way they do mine?  If so, name a few that really bent you out of shape.  Or conversely, name some titles that you think qualify as KATs instead.

Writing Is Re-Writing, Or, There's a Pony In Here Somewhere

by J.D. Rhoades

Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with the first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing.

- Richard North Patterson

I don't make any corrections. Everything's down there just the way I want it. That's the way it's going to be. -Jack Kerouac

I've had the subject of rewriting, or revising, or editing, or whatever you want to call it, on my mind this week, because that's the stage I'm in in the current work in progress. And, after four books, I'm doing it differently than I've ever done it before.

This is the first book I've written where I didn't revise as I went. In the past, I'd obsess over every setence, every paragraph, writing each in a dozen different ways until I liked it enough to go on. Sometimes after an evening of writing, I'd have written one page. I cussed a lot on those days.

It was even hairier when something new would occur to me or I had one of those bolts from the blue that sent the story off in a new direction. I'd make the change, then I'd have to immediately go back to what I'd written before, scour it to  eradicate continuity errors,  and change things around so that the new direction would be at least plausible.

Not this time. This time, I just put my head down and pushed to the end. If I wasn't happy with a chapter or a paragraph, I just muttered "fuck it, I'll catch it in the rewrite," and kept typing. If a premise changed, I gritted my teeth and let it ride until I got to the end of the first draft.

Lawrence Block, one of my heroes,  is not a fan of this approach. In fact, in his excellent book TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT, he takes a distinctly ambivalent attitude towards rewriting at all, going so far as to title the chapter on the subject "Washing Garbage." When I write "The End"," he insists, "I mean it...all a sloppy first draft teaches you is to be sloppy in your writing."

Now, some of Block's feelings on the matter could have arisen out of the fact that he was writing his treatise in the era of the typewriter. Back then doing another draft didn't mean going through, deleting, cutting, and pasting blocks of text. It meant sitting down at the typewriter and doing the whole damn thing over again. But even now, with computers, I know of at least one very well-known thriller writer who nonchalantly claims that when he gets to "The End", he just closes the document and e-mails it off. Or so I've heard.

Stephen King, on the other hand, in HIS excellent book ON WRITING, suggests putting the book in a drawer for, oh, six weeks or so, then pulling it out, reading it all the way through (in one sitting, if possible), letting your trusted "First Readers" look it over, and begining revisions.

So, having done it both ways, what have I learned about which is preferable? Well, the way where I  revise as I go has its points. When I wrote THE END, the books were done. Mostly. I didn't quite have the balls to just e-mail it off that same night, but except for checking spelling, punctuation, changing some word choices, and chopping long, run-on  sentences into a manageable size, the things were finished.  I was so sick of them I  never wanted to see them again, but they were done.

With this one, it's true that I wasn't totally sick of it when I got the first draft done. There was one other problem, though: the book was a giant pile of horseshit. It was freaking incoherent. There were things in it that made no sense. Characters suffered abrupt personality changes for no discernible reason. Sometimes, their very names, heights, and hair colors changed. But, like the optimistic kid in the old joke who received a giant pile of dung for Christmas, I grabbed my shovel and got to work. Because I knew there was a pony in there somewhere.

I've been hacking away at it, adding, subtracting, moving, and yes, chopping those sentences into bite-sized pieces for a week or so. And I'm getting happier with it. I know there's a pony in here. I can hear it whinny.

So writers, how do you prefer to re-write? As you go, or after the god-awful first draft is done? Rreaders, do you know any other writers who claim they never revise or revise as they go?