Too Much Information

            A while back I wrote about the vexing question of how to handle background detail in a book, more specifically a mystery. The question the author has to decide is whether such material slows down the book and annoys the reader or whether it adds verisimilitude and atmosphere to the mystery.

            As with anything else in writing, a lot depends on the execution. A good writer can pull off things that would send a lesser one crashing to the pavement. Still, some of the reaction is bound to be reader-specific. Certain people just want to get on with the story and really don’t want to pause for a digression, no matter how witty or erudite.

            In the earlier piece I raised the issue because of feedback I’d received on my mystery, The McHenry Inheritance. The story involves a man who goes on a fly-fishing vacation and winds up getting involved in some serious local intrigue, which results in a murder and a murder investigation.

Had to Be There for a Reason

            As I tried to put that book together, I reasoned that since the protagonist was on a fishing trip, I should have a couple of fishing scenes in the book, and that they should be detailed enough to be real. It was also the case that the victim was fly-fishing when killed, and the two key witnesses were fishing downstream and out of sight when it happened.

            Therefore, I reasoned, fishing scenes would be as much a part of the book as wetness is a part of water. And certainly if my character had been mountain-climbing or bird-watching, I would expect to include descriptions of those activities. So I put the scenes in and took considerable care in writing them and making them as real and richly detailed as possible.

            Reader reaction, at least the reaction I’ve heard, was divided. Some people said they really enjoyed the scenes and were intrigued to learn about something they’d known little if anything about. Others said they got bogged down in them, and some older readers in particular seemed to suffer because they felt they had to understand those scenes before they could continue with the reading of the book.

Try Harder and Punt

            Aside from trying harder to make sure the scenes would be as clear and understandable as possible, I didn’t, until last week, have any ideas about how to handle this issue in the second book featuring the same fishing character. Then it occurred to me that a note to the reader might be in order.

            Any writer considering such a device has to contend with the reality of being unable to top the note Mark Twain put at the beginning of Huckleberry Finn:

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

            Still, you can’t shy away from a necessary task because someone else once did it so much better. With that in mind, I’ve decided to put this note to the reader at the beginning of my second mystery novel:

This book contains several descriptive and detailed passages about fly-fishing. They are there for the benefit of those who fish, those who enjoy the outdoors, and those who might want to learn more about this pastime. These passages are not germane to the solution of the mystery, and readers who fall into none of the categories above may feel free to skip past them, if so desired, without missing out on a vital clue.

           

Just Because You Can

            Mark Twain had a soft spot in his heart for a man who could swear well, particularly appreciating the men who worked the riverboats on the Mississippi and the miners in the American West. He wrote about them on a number of occasions, but there was one thing he never did.

            He never quoted them directly.

            Back in his day, he couldn’t have. The American literary prejudice against cuss words, not to mention the nature of obscenity laws and the prevailing prudery of society ensured that he couldn’t. For most of its existence, America was a country where Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Ulysses couldn’t be legally sold. I don’t agree with those who believe it was better that way; all I can think of is the large number of unwritten books that must have stirred in the minds of great authors who felt they dared not tackle a subject because, given what they would be allowed to publish, they couldn’t do it justice.

Dirty Harry’s Riposte

            In the space of ten years, roughly comprising the 1960s, the taboos on sex and violence collapsed completely, and books, plays and movies were able to depict those aspects of human behavior.

            Some good things came out of it. To stick roughly to that period, we can be appreciative for the new license that allowed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Dirty Harry, and Bob&Carol&Ted&Alice. From the language standpoint, Dirty Harry, with a fine screenplay by John Peter Milius, was groundbreaking. No one who ever saw it will forget Clint Eastwood’s riposte to the persistent mugger he cold-cocked as he was on his way to deliver ransom money.

            Some bad things came out of it as well. One of the problems with artistic license is that it is too often used by people who shouldn’t. In books written over the past 40 or so years, I have come across plenty of explicit sex scenes that made me cringe or laugh. One book was so awful in that way that I gave Linda a dramatic reading, and after she finished laughing, she said of the author, “The poor man. I feel so sorry for his wife.”

            The same is true of unimaginative use of bad language. After reading one dispiriting modern mystery, back in the 1990s, where every fourth word began with the letter “F,” I took a vow.

Keeping It Clean

            When I began to write my first mystery novel, The McHenry Inheritance, I made a conscious decision to steer clear of foul language and keep the sex scenes restrained and discreet. In the first instance, it was a matter of rebelling against what I was seeing as an over-use of profanity by people who didn’t know how. In the second instance, it was a matter of knowing my limitations as a writer, plus not wanting some reader laughing and saying, “I feel so sorry for his poor wife.”

            That decision made a certain organic sense as well. I was trying to write in the vein of the classic mystery novel, and those were written in the days before profanity and explicit sex were permitted. I was being true to the genre, if you will. And I did include one utterance of profanity in the book, but did so feeling that it was right under the specific circumstance.

            I’ll leave that to the reader to judge, but the point here is that I had the freedom to do it the way I wanted — clean or dirty. Sixty years ago, I wouldn’t have had the choice and probably would have missed it.

           

When Journalists Write Novels

            Ever since my mystery novel The McHenryInheritance came out in late July, I’ve been cataloguing the responses I get when people hear about it. As a recovering journalist, who still knows a lot of people in the newspaper business, I’ve heard a recurring comment from that particular group.

            “I think every journalist is actually a frustrated novelist,” wrote one. “I’ve still got a few manuscripts in a desk drawer.” He went on to say, essentially, good for you that you published your book.

            Another ink-stained wretch I’ve known for a long time said, when I ran into him, “Yeah, I’ve tried writing a novel a couple of times, but it didn’t work out.” Others voiced a similar refrain, essentially that they had tried to write fiction, gotten a ways into a book, and realized it wasn’t working so set it aside. Pretty much permanently.

Twain and Hemingway Did It

            Up until the last half-century or so, it was not at all unusual for journalists to switch to fiction writing with success. Mark Twain was a newspaperman first, and someone who believed that newspapers were an essential element of a civilized society. (Or an uncivilized one: See his hilarious short story “Journalism in Tennessee.”)

            Ernest Hemingway worked for a couple of newspapers in the early 1920s before his novels began to sell. He often said that journalism was good discipline for a young writer, and that he had learned a great deal from it. I have my doubts.

            Increasingly, though, fiction writers tend to come out of creative writing schools, not newspapers. There are exceptions, like Carl Hiaasen, but they mostly prove the rule. There simply isn’t much crossover any more.

            Actually, news writing and fiction don’t have much in common. Writing a news story is a matter of collecting facts and arranging and presenting them lucidly and coherently. The stories are short enough that the reporter doesn’t have to worry about pacing and structure in anything like the way the fiction writer does.

            In fiction, the author has to imagine the story, then structure and restructure it until it flows seamlessly.  He or she has to develop characters and work in dialogue that brings out their humanity and individuality. Reporters don’t have to do anything like that.

The Freedom of Genre

            A few times during my misspent youth, I tried writing serious fiction. It always ended the same way. I got to a point where I felt I had a strong enough idea to write a book, sat down and wrote a passable first chapter, then a much weaker second chapter, then began a third chapter that remained unfinished because I was utterly at sea.

            Although I had been a fan of mystery novels since the age of 12, it didn’t occur to me back then to try writing one. I didn’t think I could come up with a clever enough plot, or conceal the clues well enough to fool a reader of any intelligence.

            Imagine, then, my surprise, when somewhat late in the game, I actually tried writing a mystery and finished it, when I’d never been able to get far with a serious novel. I found that the imposed structure of the mystery forced me to outline an entire book, rather than have a good idea that fizzled out after a couple of chapters. The confinement of the genre proved to be the liberation I needed to become the author of a book, rather than an imaginer of books that never got written. Who knew?

           

           

           

When the Writer Has to Let Go

            Mark Twain had a problem with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and some scholars contend he set the book aside for several years because he couldn’t figure out how to end it. Hemingway even advised people to stop reading at a certain point.

            Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, a book almost no one gets through high school without reading, and never wrote another. Joseph Mitchell, an award-winning reporter for The New Yorker came to work every day the last 30 years of his life, sat at his desk and never wrote anything, a victim of acute writer’s block.

When the Writer Sees Only the Bad

            Now I’m not Twain, Lee or Mitchell, and neither is anyone reading this, but almost anyone who writes can identify with worrying over what’s wrong in a piece of writing to the point where you begin to doubt the whole enterprise.

            My first mystery novel, The McHenryInheritance, came out as a Kindle e-book today. For four decades, I’ve been a respected writer of reporting and comment, but this is my first published work of fiction. That it’s mystery, a genre where many people expect less of an author, didn’t make it any easier to do, and I have conflicted feelings about the final product.

            Sometimes I think it’s really good and should rocket to the top of the best-seller lists. Sometimes I think it’s a mess, and it will be a miracle if anyone buys it and doesn’t return it, dissatisfied. Most days I’m capable of holding both opinions within a ten-minute time span. Several times a day, in fact.

            Probably the truth is somewhere between the two extremes: The book is as good as half the books on the mystery shelf at the local bookstore. The problem is, I don’t know which half.

How the Newspaper Business Helped

            What has carried me through the rough spots and the pre-dawn wide-awake hours of doubt, more than anything else, has been my newspaper experience, particularly being the editor of a daily community paper.

            Facing a deadline every day develops a discipline tempered by perspective. A reporter, hunched over a computer, trying to polish and re-polish a story, has to deal with an editor screaming at him to turn the damn thing in. You learn that in journalism, as in politics, the perfect is the enemy of the good. If the facts are as accurate as you can get them, and the story makes sense, that may be the best you can do today. And there will be another newspaper coming out tomorrow.

            For three years, as editor of the paper, I had to write an editorial every day. Every one was capably written and passably argued, but some were better than others, and some I would like to have back. But something had to go in the space every day, and I learned to live with the idea that the good ones and bad ones alike would be lining bird cages or wrapping fish within three days.

            The only writers who never doubt the quality of their work are the unconsciously incompetent. The rest of us worry, and a few let the worry take over to the point where they never put their writing out. Better, I think, to do what Mark Twain did with Huck: Let it go at some point and allow the readers to decide. That’s scary, but holding on to a book, or any other piece of writing, in search of elusive perfection is at some level allowing your fear to triumph.