The Drummer Girl

 

I’m clearly coming late to the party, when everybody and their mum knows who Florence Pugh is but me.  I didn’t see her in Little Women – which probably got Greta Gerwig the greenlight for Barbie.  I haven’t seen a single picture in the Marvel superhero universe.  I didn’t have a clue that Cooking With Flo has 52K subscribers on Instagram.  And last but not least, I haven’t brought myself to sit through Oppenheimer, in spite of my admiration for Cillian Murphy in Peaky Blinders, and my fascination with the Manhattan Project.  So, watching Florence in the six-episode BBC adaption of The Little Drummer Girl (released in 2018, six years ago, already) was eye-popping.  She may be the hottest thing since sliced bread, as an influencer, but she took that part in her jaws, and shook it like a big cat.  It wasn’t one of those things where the actor is chewing up the scenery, not in service to the script, it was an actor completely inhabiting the character, no light between the cracks.  Florence was so much Charlie, in all her random willfulness, her hesitations and her fury, her heart on her sleeve, her transparent pretense, that you couldn’t keep up.  Charlie kept you guessing, Florence kept you guessing.  There was no disguise; it was all disguise.

A word about the story, and Charlie’s place in it.  The Little Drummer Girl is my favorite le Carré, and I think his most skillful book.  It has that extraordinary opening, the terror bombing in the Bonn suburbs.  “Sooner or later, they say in the trade, a man will sign his name.”  And then the introduction of the relentless Kurtz.  Charlie seems like a device, in the novel, a kind of Vanessa Redgrave avatar.  In the 1984 movie, which fails mostly because it’s compressed into a two-hour runtime and doesn’t have enough breathing room, Diane Keaton plays to Charlie’s naiveté, which isn’t wrong, exactly, but it’s not enough.  Charlie is brittle, a shell of defense mechanisms, and her handlers break her, and then remake her in her own image.  That’s the biggest trick, or narrative reversal, that Charlie isn’t an empty vessel, who’s filled – or fulfilled – by her mission.  She’s already waiting in the wings, her role is only waiting to be cast.  The reason the mini-series works, and the reason Florence Pugh works so well as Charlie, is that everybody seems to understand the meta aspect of this.  Charlie isn’t acting the part, she’s reimagining herself.  It’s her audition for the theater of the real, but as Gadi Becker tells himself at the end of the book, the last thing he wants is to invent somebody. 

There was a lot of huffing and puffing, when the book was first published, because people took issue with le Carré’s sympathies.  Or what they assumed were his sympathies.  And that, of course, depended on what theirs were.  The book describes an Israeli deception operation – but for our Charlie’s recruitment to work, it’s the Israeli spy-runner, Gadi, who voices Palestinian grievances.  This doubling effect mirrors Charlie’s conflicted inner discipline.  The end public result, though, was that reviewers got their panties in a bunch.  If you had sympathy for the Palestinians, you thought the book was an apology for Israeli violence; if you sympathized with the Israelis, you thought the book was an apology for Palestinian terror.  The idea that le Carré was trying to give voice to both, in an intractable, Biblical struggle, was lost.

I don’t think the struggle is any less intractable; if anything, given Bibi Netanyahu’s worst instincts, it’s even more so.  (It has to be said that le Carré’s political sympathies were very much not in support of the Arik Sharon scorched-earth philosophy.)  On the other hand, after the October 7^th attacks, and in the wake of the pretty much complete collapse of Iran’s proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, is it possible we might actually see some daylight?  I don’t know.  My point in writing this piece is only that the newer, more extended version of The Little Drummer Girl is an adult entertainment.  It’s not simple-minded, it’s ambiguous.  I admire the impulse of the people who made it, who clearly thought the time was right, and got the right people on board to make it happen.  It’s hard enough, these days, God knows.  I salute the effort. 

Life is What Happens...

The mess of interrupted projects on my desk.

Do writers and other artists ever actually retire?

Sure, sooner or later we leave our day jobs, but—barring physical or mental decline—we rarely abandon our artistic pursuits. Even so, leaving the daily grind behind presents us with a new set of challenges.

For me, leaving my part-time day job early last year should have opened up twenty-plus hours each week to spend writing and editing. I had my schedule planned. I would do this on Mondays, that on Tuesdays, and this other thing on Wednesdays. I would even—unlike when I worked part-time and freelanced the rest of the time—take Sundays off.

That plan went right to hell in a handbasket.

Instead of working around the requirements of my former salaried position, I’m now working around other things—deliveries, home repairs, family emergencies, and planned and unplanned medical appointments. (Trust me, getting older is time-consuming.)

Little of what I had planned to accomplish has come to pass, and I’m only occasionally taking Sundays off. I am—thankfully—not unproductive, just not nearly as productive as I had expected.

And that frustrates me.

I am not a spontaneous person. For example: Temple and I have purchased concert tickets and planned trips as far in the future as next December. But adhering to my day-to-day plans?

Phooey.

When I was younger and worked a full-time job, I was able to switch gears rapidly. I often wrote during my lunch hour, and there was no time to ease into the creative mindset. Once I slapped the metaphorical time clock to begin my lunch break, I had to be ready to write. So, I was.

Nowadays? Not so much.

Even though I try to roll with it when interrupted by things I cannot control, once interrupted it is difficult to get back into the creative swing. I can no longer switch off and on like rebooting a computer. So, after a five-minute interruption, it can take as long as an hour to get back up to speed. It only takes a handful of interruptions to obliterate a day’s productivity.

I wish I weren’t like this.

While I struggle to devise a plan I can adhere to, I console myself with the knowledge that any productivity beats no productivity, and I just keep plowing forward.

What about you? If you’ve left the work-a-day world behind, what has helped you establish and maintain a productive schedule?

* * *

Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 5, the latest in this annual series of noir anthologies, was released earlier this month by Down & Out Books. Volume 6 is already in the can for next December, and I will read submissions for volume 7 during February 2025. Submission guidelines here: https://www.crimefictionwriter.com/submissions.html.

“Twink” was reprinted in Great Googly Moo!

Reading and the Holidays

This is an updated version of a post I first wrote in 2008.

Holiday shopping season is upon us, and not only do books make wonderful presents (to give and to receive), but books also played a part in shaping my perceptions and expectations of the holidays. I suspect that this is true for many people.

One of the great opening lines in literature is Jo's lament in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women: “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.” Yes, all the way back in 1870, there was no surer way to disappoint a child than not to provide Christmas presents. Thanks to Alcott’s high moral Transcendentalist principles, what the March girls actually do is quit complaining, decide to put their annual one-dollar spending money into presents for their mother instead of treats for themselves, and end up giving away their festive holiday breakfast to an impoverished immigrant family with too many children. Generations of American girls have internalized the lessons in that story.

I can’t remember the name of the children’s book in which the family had a tradition of reading Dickens’s A Christmas Carol aloud on Christmas Eve, but the idea of such a tradition has stuck with me all these years. I also remember that the youngest boy was in the choir, and there was great tension about whether he would be able to hit the high note in his solo, “Glory to God in the highest,” presumably from Handel’s Messiah. (He did.) I shouldn’t have been paying attention to Christmas at all as a kid, but my Jewish parents were so afraid we’d feel deprived if we couldn’t participate in the general fuss that we decorated what we facetiously called a “Chanukah bush” and got stockings stuffed with presents on Christmas morning. Today, there’s an abundance of books about Jewish families celebrating Chanukah, including entries featuring Curious George, the Very Hungry Caterpillar, Grover, Clifford, and Oy, Santa! But I don’t remember any back then.

In my ecumenical present-day family, we celebrate both holidays. Rather than reading aloud, for many years we watched movies made from the great books already mentioned: Alastair Sim as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol and the Gillian Armstrong version of Little Women, which my husband and I both liked in spite of the the terrible miscasting of Winona Ryder as Jo. At my forty-fifth college reunion, I learned that a friend and her family read Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales aloud every year. So I know that the tradition of holiday reading survived into the new millennium.

Even today, no gift list in our family is complete unless it includes at least one book. In 2008, I said I wasn't happy unless there was at least one fat hardcover by a favorite mystery author that I wouldn’t have bought for myself under the tree, so I can curl up on the couch with it at some time during the long, lazy day. Now, I'll happily take an Amazon gift certificate so I can gobble up a whole series and binge on it on my Kindle. In 2008, books were the present of choice for my stepdaughter and her husband, who live in London, because we could order just what they wanted from their amazon.co.uk wish lists and have them shipped free. These days, we send money, and some of it still goes for books.

One of the great shopping pleasures these days is buying books for my granddaughters. Talk about books I’d never order for myself! In the 21st century, there are children’s books about everything. On a visit in 2008, the almost-two-year-old had me read her one entitled It’s Potty Time, with separate illustrated editions for boys and girls, and it’s only one of dozens on the subject. Last year, she got books about sports marketing and business—her dream career is managing an NFL superstar—and her older sister, who's at Cornell, got books about hikes and excursions around Ithaca and the Finger Lakes region.

What books are on your holiday gift list? What books, if any, shaped your image of how holidays should be?

A Good News Story of a Cigar, a War Won and Priceless Stolen Art Returned

In these difficult days, we all need a good news story and this one began eighty-four years ago when an Ottawa photographer, Yousuf Karsh, pulled a cigar out of Winston Churchill's mouth, rushed back to his camera and took a photo of the furious Churchill. 

The day was December 30, 1941 and Churchill had just given a speech to the Canadian House of Commons to rally support for the war against Hitler. Britain and Canada had been at war for two long years, endured the loss of many lives, and America had just entered the war on December 8, 1941. Churchill was desperate to steel the resolve of the allies and to rally more help from America; Churchill's annoyance at Karsh for taking his cigar would help with both of those, while also becoming the most reproduced portrait in the history of photography. 

Canada’s leading general interest magazine at the time, Saturday Night, published the scowling photo of Churchill, dubbed the Roaring Lion. When Life magazine put The Roaring Lion on their cover three weeks later, it focused the attention of the American public on the plight of Britain, and convinced them of Britain’s determination to win the war. The Roaring Lion photo is widely credited with helping Churchill rally the support he desperately needed to win the war. 

Maria Tippett, Karsh’s biographer, stated: 

“Just like the Old Masters who made kings and queens appear more beautiful or more powerful than they were, Karsh had used artful manipulation to transform an unpromising negative of a tired, overweight, sick, and slightly annoyed man into a photograph of a heroic figure.”

The Roaring Lion photo also catapulted Karsh's career and he soon became one of the most famous portrait photographers of all time. He went on to  photograph many famous political and military leaders, writers, actors, artists, musicians, scientists, and celebrities in the post-war period. Among his other famous portraits are the iconic photos of Ernest Hemingway, George Bernard Shaw, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. 

Karsh gifted the Roaring Lion photo, along with with other portraits, to the Chateau Laurier, the Ottawa hotel that was his home for almost two decades. This was another part of the good news story - these photographs were placed in the Château’s reading lounge, where everyone could enjoy these priceless works of art in the same lounge that Karsh and his wife spent many hours. 

Unfortunately, making The Roaring Lion accessible to everyone who loves art also made it accessible to those who love to steal art and, sometime between December, 2021 and January, 2022, it was, indeed, stolen. However, because it was replaced with a forgery, it was eight months before the theft was discovered. 

Robert K. Wittman, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent said, “The real trick in art crime...is not in the stealing; it’s in the selling.”

The time between the theft and the discovery of that theft gave the thief a window of opportunity to sell it when no one knew it was stolen property. When The Roaring Lion photograph was finally located in Italy, in the home of art lover, Nicola Cassinelli, the problem was that Italian law didn't oblige him to relinquish it. He had bought it in good faith and he could keep it. 

Here's where more good news comes in: Cassinelli waved his rights as a good-faith purchaser along with any financial compensation for the portrait, and he handed it over to Italian police. 

“It cannot belong to one person and cannot be confined to the private space of a living room,” Cassinelli said. “The Roaring Lion belongs to anyone who cherishes freedom… I did not hesitate to return it.” 

The other piece of rather charming good news is that Cassinelli still enjoys the photo, because he purchased a cheap replica from an online poster shop and hung it in place of the stolen original. 

The thief? He was arrested on April 25, 2024, and charged. 

When I first wrote about this art heist, it was not as a good news story but a story of a tragic loss for Canada. Now that the Roaring Lion was put back in it's original place in Chateau Laurier on November fifteenth, 2024, I'm able to see the thread of good news in this eighty-four-year-old story. 

I'm not a 'glass half full' person because, like with most sayings, I don't even understand what it means. If there's good news and bad news, putting it in a glass doesn't change that - it's just good and bad news in a glass - whatever putting it in a glass means in the first place. However, I am forever in love with stories because turning the page in time brings a new twist, another turn, and that can alter everything. 

Who knew that taking away Churchill's cigar could result in the good news stories of helping to win a war and also helping a Canadian photographer capture images of many iconic figures of world history? Many years later, the good news continues in the form two other utterly unique stories; priceless works of art that can be enjoyed by anyone who walks into the reading lounge of a downtown hotel and an Italian returning a priceless piece of art back to its home in Canada, just because it was the right thing to do.

Caddyshack 2? Seriously?

  

I like movies. In fact I love 'em, and have probably helped keep several local theaters in business over the years. These days, my movie watching is mostly on the small screen, but between the many DVDs I own and the many movies out there and available for streaming (for me, it's mostly Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Apple TV Plus), there aren't many I want to see that I haven't seen.

But . . . I also watch more than my share of bad movies. Oddly enough--or maybe not so oddly--a lot of those movie disappointments have been sequels. I can't think of many novel sequels I didn't like --Scarlett does come to mind, along with The Death Cure and Go Set a Watchman--but there were many, many movie sequels that fell short. Some of them short by a long way.

In my defense, why would I not look forward to moviemakers' attempts to follow up on classics like Rocky, Jaws, The Magnificent Seven, Wall Street, Saturday Night Fever, The Sting, Get Shorty, Halloween, Speed, Poltergeist, The Exorcist, The Man from Snowy River, Crocodile Dundee, Romancing the Stone, Under Siege, Escape from New York, Airplane!, City Slickers, Our Man Flint, Dirty Harry, etc.? But every single one of the sequels to those twenty movies (at least in my opinion) fell flat.

There are, though, exceptions.

Here are a dozen movie sequels that I think were as good, and in come cases better, than the originals. I ranked them from 1 to 12 because that makes it sound like I know what I'm doing, with #1 being the best. 

NOTE: I'm referring here to first sequels, not Rocky 4 or Die Hard 5, etc. Almost all of those after-the-second-sequels are terrible. The only more distant sequels that come to mind that weren't bad were Back to the Future III; Goldfinger; Return of the Jedi; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; the third Indiana Jones (The Last Crusade); the third Lord of the Rings (The Return of the King); and the fourth Mad Max (Fury Road). I liked all of those.

Anyhow, here's my list of (what I think are) watchable sequels:

12. A Shot in the Dark (1964) -- Not as famous as the original, but it's a better movie. And the best of the Pink Panther series. Still funny, sixty years later.

11. Spider-Man 2 (2004) -- At least as well done as the original, and the love-story part of the movie might be even better. Great villain, too--hard to believe he's the same guy who threw the idol (not the whip) to Indiana Jones, in Raiders.

10. The Road Warrior (1981) -- I think everything about The Road Warrior was better than Mad Max--and I liked Mad Max. The last twenty minutes of the sequel is crazy but fun, and nonstop action.

9. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) -- A vast improvement over the first movie. Good plot, good suspense, good villain (Ricardo Montalban with a blond shag hairdo--if that doesn't creep you out, nothing will.)

8. Superman II (1980) -- Maybe not better than the original, but every bit as good. It was also the last quality movie in this series--from there on, Supe ran downhill. 

7. The Empire Strikes Back (1980) -- At least as well done, possibly better, than the first Star Wars. Better acting, cool plot lines, better special effects.

6. From Russia with Love (1963) -- This was the fifth Bond book but the second movie, and--like the first one--it stuck closely to the novel, which helped. As in the Star Wars and Superman franchises, the first few installments were the best. 

5. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) -- Again, an improvement on an already good original. One of James Cameron's best movies, and that's saying a lot.

4. For a Few Dollars More (1965) -- As much as I liked the first of Eastwood's spaghetti Westerns (A Fistful of Dollars), this one's better. The music, the plot, everything, plus Lee Van Cleef. Even non-Western fans have told me they love this movie.

3. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) -- The original, believe it or not, didn't feature Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Lecter. It was Manhunter, which was okay but not as good as its sequel. Lambs won, deservedly, the top four Oscars that year (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director), plus three more.

2. Godfather II (1974) -- It's as good as the original, which was wonderful. I think this was the first movie sequel to win Best Picture.

1. Aliens (1986) -- Not only does this one top my list, it was the best of the Alien franchise and one of the best movies I've ever seen. Watch it sometime, if you haven't already.

Possible runners-up: The Gods Must Be Crazy II, Top Gun: Maverick; Catching Fire. Toy Story 2.

Once again, this is my opinion and mine only--and yes, Liz Zelvin, I realize most of these are "guy" movies. My apologies--although you must admit both Silence of the Lambs and Aliens had great female protagonists. Don't forget, I also loved Somewhere in Time, which--though it wasn't a sequel--was a romantic fantasy and had no shootouts at all. (There's hope for me yet.)

As for recent sequels, I watched Twisters the other night, and I understand the sequel to Gladiator was released a couple of weeks ago. I confess I was disappointed in Twisters, and I also don't have the highest of hopes for Gladiator 2. What I do hope is that no one tries to make a sequel to Galaxy Quest, The Shawshank Redemption, The Big Country, Body Heat, Reservoir Dogs, The Rocketeer, Once Upon a Time in the West, L.A. Confidential, Medicine Man, Casablanca, Forrest Gump, No Country for Old Men, Raising Arizona, Signs, The Big Lebowski, Witness, Shane, Dances with Wolves, 12 Angry Men, and so on. If they do, there'll be at least 1 angry man. Just leave those originals alone.

Now . . . What do you think, about all this? Have you seen any truly terrible, barf-baggable sequels? Any that you had high hopes for, beforehand? Any good ones? Which ones did I leave out? Do you disagree with some (or most) that I picked? How about novel sequels? Let me know, in the comments below. Inquiring minds want to inquire . . .

Next time, back to mystery fiction. I promise.

Christmas Capers

20th Century Fox

We are now into December, with its best-of lists for the year, wall-to-wall holiday ads, and bustle of work and family functions. And with it, crime.

Oh, there's plenty of real crime on the 10 o'clock news. Here in Cincinnati, though, the formerly depressed neighborhood of Over the Rhine has gone from gang violence to drunks shooting each other outside bars. Having Ubered for about four years, five if you count the Door Dashing during lockdown, I'm not surprised. OTR, as it's commonly called in Cincy, is half bars and all crowds after 10 PM on Fridays and Saturdays. Great cash, lousy company. I don't miss that side gig.

But crime is more fun in the movies. You could probably name a hundred crime movies set at Christmas. After all, 'tis the season for endless debates as to whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie. It is. So is Deadpool, since the Merc with a Mouth tells his favorite taxi driver "Merry Christmas." They were part of a Christmas marathon the one year I spent the holiday alone. (Along with A Christmas Story and Christmas Vacation. So there.)

But leaving the ceremonial dropping of Hans Gruber on Christmas Eve aside, when the police cruisers all become a festive red from his splattering on the pavement (OK, that's not in the movie. Just the fall.), there are literally dozens upon dozens of Christmas crime movies out there. Some pretty obvious.

20th Century Fox

Like Home Alone. I mean, it has Joe Pesci. How is that not a crime movie? Most people see it as a live-action Warner Brothers cartoon. But let's get to the nitty gritty. Home Alone is Kevin left, of course, home. Alone. Over Christmas. That's the setup. The real story is the Wet Bandits, two guys straight out of those Warner Brothers cartoons, only with a nine-year-old in place of Bugs or Daffy. I've known a couple of recovering burglars in my time, and both have said it's the stupid ones who don't turn around and leave the moment they realize someone's awake. Not these geniuses. Kevin, with a house full of groceries, plenty of time off from school, and a creepy neighbor guy who turns out to be an ally, proceeds to make as much noise as possible. Even playing with a VCR (Remember those?) to play that infamous line, "Keep the change, ya filthy animal." When noise and lights don't work, Kevin booby traps the house, tapping his inner Rambo and possibly laying groundwork for the phrase, "Come at me, bro." These are very stupid criminals, and the average kid, even pre-mobile phone, would have dialed 911 and left the phone off the hook for the entertainment of the dispatcher.

Miramax

 

Then there's Bad Santa. Once again, burglars. This time, it's a drunken mall Santa and his diminuitive elf who plan to rob the mall after close on Christmas Eve. Billy Bob Thornton is Willie, the Santa, which should scare you already. He's foul-mouthed, verbally abuses his boss (played by the late, great John Ritter), and cheats on his wife with a bartender who has a Santa fetish. (To be fair, he hooks up with a few other women off screen, so at least he's consistent.) Marcus, the elf (Tony Cox), is the smart one, planning the operation and recruiting Willie's wife as the getaway driver. Marcus can deal with his drunken, horny, misanthropic partner. But it's a kid named Thurman who throws a monkey wrench in the works. Thurman (Brett Kelly, who seemed to play every ten-year-old in every movie filmed between 2000 and 2005) thinks Willie is the real Santa Claus. Some might say this is a real-life take on How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but then Jim Carey played the actual Grinch right around then.

Focus Pictures

Around the same time and also featuring Billy Bob Thornton is The Ice Harvest, featuring John Cusack. Based on the Scott Phillips novel of the same name, it concerns two small-time hoods who steal $2 million from their boss. Set in Wichita, Kansas on Christmas Eve, the pair split up while waiting out an ice storm to flee town. Thornton holds the money while Cusack tries to lay low. But Cusack lusts after the bartender at the strip club where he's holed up. He hints he has money. She hints she might be a gold digger. Unfortunately, Cusack has picked up a buddy, played by Oliver Platt in the days before he played grumpy old men. It's a series of double-crosses that ends up with Cusack and Platt leaving town and a trail of bodies behind. Is it a Christmas movie? It's Christmas Eve. And while it may not be as Christmas-themed as Home Alone and Bad Santa (or even Die Hard, which is a Christmas movie. I have spoken.), the time plays as much into the story as the place.

So what other Christmas capers are there? Are they Christmas because they revolve around Christmas in the plot? Or just set at Christmas? Or, like Deadpool, does a smart-mouthed mutant just tell a taxi driver "Merry Christmas?"

Merry Christmas from Disney

Everybody’s Gotta Start Somewhere

(Just wrapped up a very satisfying piece one step ahead of a deadline, and it’s left me on the back foot with regard to my scheduled turn in the rotation this time around. So, in light of the fact that I once again find myself about to embark on “the first step” of a new writing journey, I’ve dusted off this chestnut originally posted at Sleuthsayers way back in 2016. As writing tips go, I like to think these have aged pretty well. See you in two weeks! -Brian)

I published my first book (nonfiction) in 2005. Sold my first short story a year before that, in 2004.

And now, a full decade into the writing game, I find myself in the position of serving as mentor to a couple of fledgling writers who are looking to me for advice on not just how to write fiction, but how to start writing it.

Now bear in mind that these are both people with an extensive amount of experience writing nonfiction. Millions and millions of words written and published in one form or another. So they know how to write a proper sentence, and they understand how to edit themselves, etc.

And coincidentally they both approached me, as the only really "experienced" fiction writer they know (they are not acquainted with each other), and asked whether I would take a look at their first pieces and give them some feedback.

It occurred to me as I was writing up my responses to their initial forays into writing fiction that what I was writing likely applied to the work of pretty much anyone who's ever decided, "Hey, I'd like to write something like that..."

Hence this blog post.

So here they are, in no particular order. Some rules to start by:

– Writing narrative is hard work. Writing first-person narrative is even harder. Writing it without starting most of your sentences with "I" (as in "I got up. I went to the freezer. I put my head inside. I closed the freezer door on my head repeatedly. I died.") unless you're keeping this sort of thing in mind is damned near impossible. So keep it in mind.

–People do not speak in complete sentences over the course of casual conversations. Make sure your casual conversations sound "casual." Embrace sentence fragments and dropped "g"s – "I was just teasing you," sounds more realistic/authentic if written as "Just teasin'!"

–Show, don't tell. If your character is telling the reader in the course of her narrative how she moved to town and quickly made friends, and how important those friends now are to her, have her think it in the course of a conversation with one of those treasured friends. It helps break up the dialogue (See below).

–Dialogue–Great for exposition. Easy to abuse. If you're writing pages and pages over the course of a single conversation, you're not writing fiction. You're writing a screenplay, which is a completely different animal. If you've got a conversation this long in your novel and it's not broken up by some action, you don't have exposition. You've got an info–dump.

–Info–Dump. Learn this word. Hate this word. Avoid this word.

–Info–Dumps don't just pop up in dialogue. They're pernicious and can sneak into narrative as well. Like this:

I never got along with my mother. She knew how I felt about her and made sure that I felt guilty about it. I fled her house as soon as I graduated high school, and worked my way around the world, cooking on a tramp steamer, hoeing rows and toting an AK-47 on a kibbutz north of Ashkelon. I got a tattoo in Hamburg, a piercing in Belize, and a social disease in Rio. When I'd had enough of wandering, I settled in New York City. Too many people. Then I moved to Death Valley. Too few. Then to Kansas. Too flat. And Wyoming was too cold (and also had too few people). Then my dad died and left me this diner on the Oregon coast...

I think you get the idea. These details are potentially interesting, but not coming all jumbled together. 

Learning to tease them out and parcel them out in a naturalistic (not the same thing as "natural") manner is a skill. Work at it. KISS guitarist Ace Frehley once famously said that when his band first got together they weren't very good musicians, but "Playing 300 gigs a year will get your better fast." (Or words to that effect.

He was right.

But, you can't practice, practice, practice, until you start. Hopefully these few tips will help the rookies among you to avoid so-called "rookie mistakes" in your writing, and save you some time and sweat on your own road to publication.

Good luck!

You Could Look It Up

There are probably as many Rules for Writers as there are writers. Maybe more. The rule I’m thinking of today goes like this: Don’t show your research.

A good author of fiction will often do a lot of digging before they write.  Does that type of pistol have a safety? What symptoms does that poison cause? How much wood would a woodchuck—Never mind.

These details can make a story more believable and more interesting.  But it has to look natural.  If the reader thinks they have stumbled into a college lecture they may fall asleep out of sheer habit.

I try to avoid this trap but I must admit that sometimes, darn it, I want you to notice my research. This is partly because I am a recovering librarian, but mainly because when I write a historical mystery it is important to be clear when I am not just making things up.

Bandon, OR

I have a story coming out in the next issue of Black Cat Mystery Magazine called “The Night Beckham Burned Down.” It was inspired by the actual tragic events that occurred in Bandon, Oregon in 1936.
Editor Michael Bracken was kind enough to let me put an Author’s Note at the end pointing out that many of the bizarre anecdotes in my story really happened.  (For example, some people survived the wildfire by submerging themselves in a cranberry bog.) I simply imposed the true events on a group of fictional characters and, naturally, added a murder.

So that’s one way of handling the see-my-research problem.  I used a different trick in  my story in the November/December issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.  “Christmas Dinner” is part of my series set in Greenwich Village in 1958, and there is an important clue based on something that really happened back then.

I thought it was important to make that clear.  Why? Well, imagine the master detective announcing: “I knew John Fictional was the murderer because his middle name is Tyrone.  That fact was never mentioned in this novel, but I just happened to know it.”  You wouldn’t cheer; you’d probably throw the book away. Vigorously.

So I wanted the reader to know that my clue was based on an obscure fact but a genuine one. My solution was to have my detective, the beat poet Delgardo, announce the clue and then say “This is true. Look it up.” He is supposedly talking to his friends, but in reality I am having him speaking to my audience, hopefully without breaking the fourth wall.

I doubt if any of the readers really will look that fact up but at least they know they could.

Let’s get slightly off topic. Until I started writing this piece I had thought Delgardo said “You could look it up,” so I want to look at that longer phrase.

I easily found a website that credits the phrase to Yogi Berra, the legendary New York Yankees catcher and manager.  He was also known as an amazing phrase-maker so it is not surprising that the term gets attributed to him, considering its baseball connection (What baseball connection?  We will get to that.).

Berra’s talent was coming up with phrases that seemed to be half-incoherent and half-Zen koan.  My favorite: “If the people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them.”  And:  “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Believe me, I could go on.

But “You can look it up” is hardly a phrase worthy of the master.  So it is not surprising that I found another website indignantly insisting that the creator was actually Casey Stengel, a legendary pitcher and manager.

Sorry, folks.  He didn’t say it either.

Eddie Gaedel

James Thurber (also legendary, but as an author not a ballplayer) wrote “You Could Look It Up,” a story which appeared in Saturday Evening Post in 1941. The narrator (who sounded a lot like Stengel, actually) told a wild tale about a baseball manager hiring a little person (Thurber said midget but that term is frowned on now) because “I wanted to sign up a guy they ain’t no pitcher in the league can strike him out.”

And here is where the fact and fiction coalesce again.  In 1951 Bill Veeck, the owner of the famously awful and unlucky St. Louis Browns, hired Eddie Gaedel, a little person, as a pinch hitter for publicity's sake.  He claimed he had forgotten about Thurber’s story until his man came up to bat.

Back to fiction. One more thing about my story “Christmas Dinner.” I suspect that if any readers complain it will not be about the aforementioned clue.  If they do gripe will be about something else that occurs in the tale.  “That’s not how X happens!” they will exclaim.

Ah, but I have a link to a website that proves that the way I describe X is exactly how it happened back in 1958.

And if they don’t believe me, they can look it up.

Finding the sweet spot for detail

Thanks for coming by. This is a rerun of a column from 2016 with some updates. I hope it is helpful.

In search of blogging topics, I asked my friends for suggestions. This paraphrased question caught my eye right away:

How much detail should a writer use when describing the setting, what the characters look like, and what the characters are doing?

The amount of detail a writer should use is of course a personal matter. Some authors love expounding on setting and appearance, giving every detail so that a person could--if they had to--draw an exact replica of a room or a picture that would make a sketch artist proud. Other authors take a minimalist approach, preferring to leave setting to the readers' imagination. Readers' taste also varies, with some wanting to know every detail of each place and character's appearance, others not wanting their time wasted on that detail.
 
Given that readers' tastes do vary across the spectrum, an author obviously can't please everyone. I typically suggest something in the middle of the spectrum (though my personal taste is toward the minimalist side). You want to set the scene but you don't want to bore the reader or hold up the action.

When it comes to what characters look like, I suggest telling the reader one or two telling details, something to make the character stand out in the reader's mind. Does the character have a large mole on his cheek? Does she walk with a limp? Does she have extremely big hair? I wouldn't limit myself to thinking a character's description only applies to what he or she looks like--you might have guessed that from the question about the limp. Saying the woman who came to visit smelled like she worked in a kennel or her voice rumbled like she'd been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for decades will hopefully be more memorable than simply saying she had shoulder-length brown hair and blue eyes.

Now this is memorable.

I suggest getting this type of detail in early, before the reader decides for herself what the character looks like. But don't force the detail in right when we meet the character if it doesn't work there.

If there's something important about the character's appearance or description, make sure you get it in early too. You wouldn't want your bank robber to be described as someone who sometimes slurs her words, and not show the reader until the end of the book that this character sometimes slurs.

Of course sometimes you need to give a little more detail in order to create a smoke screen. If something about a character's appearance is an important clue (or red herring), try to weave that detail into the narrative, hiding it among other details so it doesn't appear important. For instance, if it's important that Jane has dark green eyes, don't make that the only thing you say about Jane because then that detail will stand out. Instead tell the reader that Jane has ratty brown hair that looks like it hasn't been washed for a week. Her hair is so nasty you can hardly see her dark green eyes or the scar on her forehead she got from a bar fight. The reader will hopefully focus on the scar and Jane's nasty hair, with the eye color fading into the recess of her brain.

These same techniques can be used for setting. You want to create your world, but you don't need to spell out every detail to do it. Are you creating a charming town? Tell me Main Street has an old-fashioned ice cream shop and a Mom and Pop diner that's been there for decades. Let me know that a large green is adjacent to Main Street with some Revolutionary War statues and large shade trees people picnic under in the summertime. That's more than enough for me get the quaint picture you're trying to set. I don't need the name of every store, of every statue, of every street. But if it's an important clue that a certain statue was defaced, don't have that be the only damage done. Bury that clue in a report of the damage supposedly all done by the vandal.

As to detail of what characters are doing, I also advocate for minimalism. If you have two characters driving and discussing the case, I don't need to know each time the driver changes gear or flips on the turn signal. If you tell me that Bob is driving, I can picture what he's doing, though an occasional mention that Bob changed lanes could work as a tag. In contrast, you definitely want to show things that are unusual--things that are important to the plot. If Bob is distracted and keeps looking at his phone or the radio or keeps checking out the rear-view mirror because he thinks they're being followed, I want to know.

There are some actions you don't need to show at all. If your character is beginning a new day, I don't need to see her brushing her teeth unless her toothpaste is poisoned or someone is going to strangle her while she's working on her incisors. I don't even need to know she brushed her teeth. Just show her arriving at her office, finding it in disarray from the burglars who struck overnight. And if your

When brushing teeth, less is more.

character is going to a staircase, intending to go up, and she thinks a bit, and then she's at the top of the stairs, that's just fine. The reader can infer that she just walked up those steps. You don't need to show every step as it's taken unless you're trying to show that she's wobbly or that a stair is creaking or if someone is going to push her over the banister. (Such fun!)

Of course, again, everyone's mileage may vary about the amount of detail preferred. I'd love to know what you think.

Wanna read a mystery-romance-literary-sci-fi-cozy-thriller?

             I have a whole stable full of hobby horses, and probably the one with the most mileage is the question of genre.  A writer friend of mine had reviewed the opening chapter of a novel I’d just started, and asked, “What is this?  Mystery?  Romance? Mystery-Romance?”

            My first response, unspoken, was “What freakin’ difference does it make?”

            This writer friend is a published novelist, and he was right to ask, and I’m sorry but it’s a legitimate question.  The need to classify everything is an irresistible human impulse.  Probably a survival instinct.  We obviously need to impose some level of order on a chaotic, confusing existence.  It makes us feel more in control, less threatened by our rambunctious day-to-day reality.  It also provides a common language, a sort of spread sheet where individual objects can be compared to others, fit into a reasonable set of descriptions that are best understood by similarities and deviations.  Science and linguistics are utterly reliant on taxonomy and philology.  It all makes sense, making sense of the world.

            But there is a dark side.  Classification has a tendency to leave out the oddballs, which is not that bad in biology or chemistry, but when it affects people, the downsides are manifold.  No one wants to be stereotyped, or pigeon-holed. Even classified.  Put in a box. The same can be said about writing, both fiction and non-fiction.

            I understand why bookstores want to know where to slot a new book.  They have shelves with labels, and have to keep things organized and customer friendly.  People search for books according to their likes and dislikes, usually defined for them by genre.  If they can’t easily find the type of book they usually enjoy they’ll leave the store, as will most others, and the store will eventually go out of business.  Consequently, booksellers are diligent in describing their offerings according to genre, and sub-genre, better to align with publishers and not disturb customers. 

           

            So we’re stuck with this, us writers, who may occasionally want to drift outside our assigned paddocks.  Publishers hate this, by the way, and usually try to discourage these impulses, giving in only when a successful novelist is such a hot property they can afford to play around a little with YA, or sci-fi, or write a cookbook (John Irving's 101 Ways To Grill a Bear).  

It doesn’t seem to matter that many detective novels are now considered great literature, and established literary works are filled with intrigue and gunfights.  Critics get to play in this sandbox, as do Ph. D candidates proffering theses on the poetry of John La Carré or “Frankenstein – Horror Novel or Towering Critique on the Social Consequences of Rampant Industrialisation?” But publishers and booksellers have to sell books, and these nuances are lost on the genre-focused public.

            My beef, and yes I have a beef, is that too many of us humans only know how to think about something in relation to how it fits into a belief system, which is all a genre is.  You might call it dogma, or ideology, or simply a set of preferences and biases that conforms to an organized array of convictions.  In its simplest form, think of a Catholic who believes all of the church’s doctrine.  Alternative views, say by a Presbyterian or Jew, are inadmissible.  If you are a behavioral psychologist, you have a body of scholarly work that you cleave to, and by definition, reject the beliefs of a competing gang of scholars, say those anachronistic Freudians.  You can call it group think, or kin selection, or tribal loyalty.  You’re a Mets fan or you root for the Yankees, and that’s all you have to think about.

            And that’s the point.  You don’t have to think.  You just have to check those pre-existing boxes. 

            This is not a wise life strategy if you want to understand as much about the world as you possible can.  Unless you own a bookstore or hawk paperbacks out of the back of your van, genre matters not a wit.  What matters is the quality of the work, judged by that ineffable emotional response to an artistic expression, of any sort, from any source. 

ConVocation

Presumed US location of Adven

Consequences

Lily has a knack for drawing scammers like some people attract mosquitoes with similar blood-sucking results. You’ve met Lily a couple of times including a phishing scam involving Chase Bank.

I’m dismayed how often Chase victimizes its customers, freely handing out money to con artists and then blaming customers. I’ve noted a number of Chase fraud stories since and spoke with a lady who lost tens of thousands to a scam that Chase refused to acknowledge. Because Lily received advice to withdraw her funds and not a penny more, she remains the only person I know who survived monetarily intact.

She and I spent hours making phone call warnings and visiting Chase and state police, trying to apprise them of a crime in progress. We explained how the fraud worked, despite snorts and sniggers and snarky wishes *they* had a friend (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) who’d deposit thousands in their account.

“There is no money,” I insisted.

“Sure there is, we can see it right… right… Wait! Where did it go?”

After the fact, the bank blamed Lily and demanded she reimburse them for their shortfall and shortcomings as a so-called trusted financial institution. Ha. That’s ever likely.

Presumed US headquarters of Adven

Conversation

Lily sometimes struggles. She listed with LinkedIn seeking work at home. Unlike some, the girl self-motivates as long as the job doesn’t require copying the Encyclopædia Britannica in longhand.

Out of the blue, she receives a message from a European company expanding into North America. They require Lily to take a test and write an essay, but she’s hopped. She can take on as much work as she chooses and the pay is respectable, even a bit higher than her current salary, nicely filling in financial gaps.

Conjecture

Lily excitedly calls her boyfriend, she calls her mother, she calls me. I can’t pinpoint what, but something sets off my alarms. I ask for all the information she can provide, including text messages and anything else she can tell me. The list of accounting programs dismays me. Normally companies seek one or two, not half a dozen. I’m putting a damper on her happiness, but it turns out her boyfriend also senses something off.

I go to work.

Content

First thing, Adven exists. It’s a 600 employé company registered with a real web site and a presence in other European countries. But they mention nothing in the Americas. Okay, the contact explains they are setting up shop in the US.

I’ve been through that before, working for European concerns expanding into the States and vice versa. I consider calling to double check and notify Adven I suspect they are being used in a scam, but for the moment, I opt to let things play out.

Further research reveals Hanna Summa is a real person with a Linked-In page and a profile on her company’s web site. Acting so hands-on for a potential entry level employee raises an eyebrow, but again, I’ve seen this within major corporations when placing fresh folks overseas. Directors and vice presidents keep an eye on details to avoid screw-ups.  An executive engaging with new staff and line isn’t inconceivable.

Meanwhile, this ‘Hanna Summa’ assigns Lily an essay. I suggest she consider an AI piece to avoid heavy vestment at this early stage, but, honest as she is, she writes a paper as agreed. Hanna Summa promises to send a check.

And she did.

Concept

I recognize the scheme. I advise Lily not to deposit it, but ask her bank to vet the check. Most checks clear the same day, but occasionally a draft may take fifteen days or so to slog through the system. This is where this type of scam takes root. Senders instruct their victim to spend or send much of that money elsewhere, ultimately into scammers’ own pockets. By the time a check is returned as fraudulent, it’s too late– the victim has been financing the scheme with her own money.

Conversion

This method obviates another scheme, the business of money laundering. Con artists arrange with a person in another country to sell goods or collect and distribute funds and perhaps packages. The unknowing party isn’t so much a victim as a patsy, flushing money through the system. In one case, a foreign ‘artist’ arranged for ‘commissioned partners’ in North America to sell his paintings, retain 10% and return 90% to the cheerful dauber who just laundered illicit monies or and avoided taxes.

Contrariwise

Meanwhile back at the bank, instead of making a conditional deposit as usual, at Lily’s behest, clerks go to work investigating that critical slip of paper with its excellent engraving and holographic sticker between the memo and signature. When they reluctantly hand the check back to Lily, they shake their heads but with respect for her instincts.

Still playing along, Lily tearfully informs her Adven contact that her bank has refused the check, saying it was no good. Our fake Hanna expresses shock and dismay, shock I say, shock. She posited her company’s accounting partner inexplicably made a mistake, perhaps a matter of misinterpretation. She will investigate and get back to Lily posthaste.

Shock, I tell you.

Lily is still waiting for the results of the investigation.

Conclusion

Lily merely wanted earnest work to make an honest wage. Reaching back to the J.P. Morgan Chase episode, her first reaction was to visit the bank at least twice and explain something was wrong.

Opinionated pundits contend victims perpetuate swindles because of their greed. I disagree with such a blanket statement. ‘Found cash’ scams work because no owner can be found. ‘Bible bequests’ play upon emotions of grief, not greed, supplemented by deepset religious underpinnings. Avarice might motivate cynical experts, not necessarily others.

I sometimes toy with fraudsters, an activity called scam baiting. My approach is more psychological than technical. One future day I might talk about that, but know I have no sympathy for those who drain bank accounts and ruin lives.