The LadyKillers

Moments in History By Michael A. Black

 

When I was in grammar school I viewed history as something you read about in books. By the time I got into high school and then college I came to the realization that history was happening all around me. It just wasn’t always readily apparent. Unfortunately, a lot of these events are marked by less happy occasions. Future generations will be asking their parents the questions, “Where were you on September 11, 2001?” or “Do you remember the Boston Marathon bombing?” While we may recall where we were, how accurate will the retelling of these incidents be?

It’s long been said that history is written by the victors. There’s also a lot of unfortunate distortion going on by the writers. Back in college during my Spanish class we had to read a book about the history of Spain. The book was written in Spanish and published by that country. It gave an exacting history from medieval times up to the present, but one student, who was married to a Spanish national, mentioned that it completely omitted the 1898 war with the United States. (“Remember the Maine!”) Sure, it was an eminently forgettable event in the history of Spain. They lost quite handily, but should it have been left out like it never happened? How would future generations react if the scribes left out our disastrous experience in Viet Nam?

Certainly, historical events might be slanted a certain way to make them more palatable or more dramatic. I remember sitting through the movie Lincoln last year and marveling at the political maneuvering our sixteenth president had to accomplish to get the 13th Amendment passed. But apparently not everyone was enthralled. One Congressman from the state of Connecticut publicly criticized the movie as inaccurate, saying the four representatives from his state voted “Yay,” not “Nay” when the vote was taken. The movie changed their votes to increase the tension and make the build up to the final vote more dramatic. This was a bit before my time, so I didn’t weigh in on the controversy, but it brings up an interesting point. How accurate is our depiction of history in books, TV, and movies, and is it acceptable to distort things a bit under the guise of artistic license?

How about downright distortion of history? The Untouchables is one of my favorite movies and was based on historical events in Chicago in the 1930s. I thought Kevin Kostner made a great Elliott Ness, but remember the climatic scene where he pursues Frank Nitti, deftly played by Billy Drago, to the roof of the courthouse and tosses the villain over the edge? It was very dramatic, but Nitti didn’t really die in that manner. In fact, Nitti was convicted of tax evasion alongside his boss, Al Capone, for income tax evasion in 1931. He served 18 months in prison and subsequently took over the leadership of the gang after his release. In 1943 he committed suicide alongside some railroad tracks in North Riverside, Illinois.

This set me thinking. The movie obviously took great liberties with the actual historical facts, but got around this by calling the production a “dramatic retelling of history.” I guess that’s a euphemism for a good old fashioned “fish tale.” Think of the implications. A few years from now someone who’s channel surfing might come across this old movie and watch it, thinking, that’s the way it really happened. Only, it didn’t. History was deliberately distorted in the name of entertainment. Or should that be in the name of docudrama?

On the flip side, as a cop I learned that two people can actually witness the same event and have two varying opinions of what occurred. Often prejudices and distorted perception are to blame, which is why each witness statement has to be carefully evaluated. Of course, as we move toward a more constantly monitored society, with surveillance cameras on every corner, history is being recorded in a lot of cases. The recent terrorist act in Boston is an example of this. Future historians will hardly be able to distort that incident, although I’m sure some people are probably already trying. After all, look at the conspiracy loonies who claim that it was a military plane that flew into the World Trade Center, and not the hijacked airliner, despite the videos.

There’s an old adage that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes fact. And history is definitely “rewritten” to suit the current times. Comedians had a lot of fun with the old Soviet Union photos that would periodically delete pictures of political figures who had fallen from grace? I wonder if any of the updated photos ever make it to the gulags or unmarked graves where those people might have been sent? Sounds a lot like George Orwell’s 1984 and Winston Smith’s job at the Ministry of Truth, doesn’t it? Since Orwell’s novel was written in 1948, the Soviet’s photographic alterations sort of turned out to be a case of life mirroring art.

Writers who like to stretch the historical end of things have plenty of company. But is it ethical? Fiction is one thing, history is another. How we depict it in fiction is like walking a fine line, but I hope that there will be enough objective recorders of the truth around to record the actual sequence of events without embellishment. Sometimes I wonder if this is really possible. Perhaps it’s best summed up by the ending line of another of my favorite movies, Sunset, which depicts fictional meeting between real life characters Wyatt Earp (James Garner) and Tom Mix (Bruce Willis):

And that’s the way it really happened . . . Give or take a lie or two.

Outline or Not? By Michael A. Black

To quote my old buddy, Hamlet, “To outline, or not to outline, that is the question.”

Okay, maybe those weren’t quite the words he used, but it’s still one heck of an important question. It’s also one that seems to take up way too much time for people interested in writing. The answer is actually fairly simple: if outlining works for you, do it. If it doesn’t, don’t. That’s such a simple answer to a complex question, let’s backup and examine things a bit.

When I was in grammar school my teachers stressed the importance of organizing one’s thoughts by using an outline replete with Roman numerals, letters of the alphabet, and numbers. Once I got the hand of it, I kind of liked the process. It was sort of like the roadmaps we followed driving down to Florida on family vacations. Everything was laid out there in front of us, and we could see where we were and how far we had to go.

Fast forward to high school and college, where those inevitable weeks would always pop up in which I’d either have a paper due or a test in every class. Using that old outline format allowed me to organize my thoughts and write those papers in succinct fashion. When it came to my creative writing classes, however, the professor was less exacting. While I still had a midterm deadline, the structure of how to proceed was left to the individual student. The instructor was pretty laid back and didn’t give us many suggestions on how to write a story. He just said, “Write one and turn it in. I’ll get back to you.” In the meantime we read and discussed short stories by other authors such as Graham Greene, Henry James, and James Joyce. Most of the other students in the class didn’t fare well, struggling to write that great work of fiction that would be significant in the greater scheme of things. I, on the other hand, concentrated on a smaller scale, writing slice-of-life stories that were loosely based on my own experiences. For whatever reason, I didn’t outline. I just sat down and wrote that first sentence. The rest would just flow.

For the record, I admit that I enjoyed the freedom of sitting down and seeing where the muse led me. “No surprise in the writer, no surprise for the reader,” Robert Frost once said. At the time, he seemed to be talking to me. But I should have realized that Frost, while extremely talented, was at his best as a poet, not as a prose writer. I began to run into problems following that elusive muse. Many times she would lead me down the garden path only to giggle and slip away, leaving me with the realization that I had several pages of writing that went exactly nowhere. Other times I’d discover, after I’d written about eight to ten pages that my story actually stated on page nine, and I’d have to toss out the preceding eight.

Now this is fine, if you have all the time in the world, but I didn’t. I still don’t. That’s why over the years I’ve become a strong advocate of outlining. I get the basic idea for a story and begin thinking about it. Sometimes scenes and snippets of dialogue will come to me out of the blue. (These usually happen when I’m on one of my long runs, and I rush to write them down when I get back home. The only problem with this is that paper tends to get a bit soggy after a four or five mile run.) I write the story in my head, recording notes as I need to, and then eventually sit down and outline the entire story.

The beautiful thing about an outline is you can make as many changes to it as you want. I often liken it to the road map metaphor. If I were driving from Chicago to Las Vegas, the first thing I’d do would be to get a road map and chart out the route. Once I had a good idea of where I was going, and how I wanted to get there, I’d start driving. But this road map, like the outline, need not be chiseled in stone. If I were driving through Missouri, and passed a sign advertising Mark Twain’s cave at the next exit, I would feel totally comfortable changing my plan and taking this detour. You can do the same with your novel or short story outline. I usually go through at least three or four outlines during the writing of a book.

Now there are those authors who don’t like outlining at all. They like the thrill of sitting down to surprise themselves with the plot developments. Some say they let “the characters tell the tale.” This is fine, although I could easily make a case that these individuals are actually following a cognitive outline of some sort. And I would also venture to say that the tendency to write one’s self into a corner is much more likely if you write in this manner. It also requires a much more thorough revision. Again, do you have the time to waste?

When writing a mystery or thriller it’s imperative to play fair with the reader. You have to put in enough clues or foreshadowing so that dynamic developments that occur in the climax don’t seem like the old magician’s trick of pulling a rabbit out of his hat. All of us of a certain age know how that worked out for Bullwinkle. (“Nothing up my sleeve…”) An outline is the perfect tool to know what to put in and where to put it. It’ll also let you know what to leave out, and why. Best of all, when it’s complete an outline will give you a good idea of the pacing of your story. The slow spots are easy to spot. And if you need to write a synopsis, your outline has it all laid out for you.

With all these advantages, I find it amazing that some writers are so much against outlining. “It stifles your creativity,” one of my professors said to me in grad school. How does something you’re creating stifle creativity? It’s merely an abbreviated version of your story awaiting the fleshing out. I’ve written books and stories both ways—with and without outlines, and the best ones were those in which I followed a good, strong outline.

Lest I continue to belabor the obvious, I’ll end with a simple question: if you were having your dream house built, would you want the construction crew to have a solid set of blueprints, or just show up every day with their hammers, saws, and nails and say they were going to see where things took them?

Rejection By Michael A. Black

I happened to come across a couple of old rejection letters that I’d filed away a long time ago. These were the old form rejection slips of paper with the generic, Dear Contributor: Thanks very much for letting us read the enclosed. Unfortunately, Sorry, it doesn’t suit our present needs.—Cordially, The Editors. I remembered reading this and wondering to myself, Does this mean that at another time you might be interested? I later found out it didn’t. They were only shining me on, but in those days I was still an optimist about things fairness and talent and hard work as they relate to writing. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. Now they can e-mail you a lot faster.

I once set what must be the world’s record for “the fastest paper rejection ever.” I sent a story to a prestigious magazine in New York. I should add that this was not the first time that I’d sent them something, and they’d rejected all my previous submissions. This particular story was, I felt, the one that was going to be my break-through piece. I assembled neatly and correctly, paper-clipped my polite cover letter, and enclosed my SASE. I was even careful to go to the post office on a Monday morning, figuring it would take three days to travel from Chicago to New York, so they’d have it well before the weekend. Visions of the editor taking my story home with her and loving it danced in my mind as I paid the postage, affixed the stamps to my SASE, sealed it up, and whispered a prayer. I subsequently realized that I’d underestimated the efficiency of the U.S. Postal service, because by Friday of that same week, my story appeared in my mailbox in the SASE with a form rejection enclosed.

I was crushed.

I did the math and figured they’d seen me coming, in a manner of speaking. But this has still got to be a world record: I’d mailed it in Chi-town on Monday morning; my story spent two days in transit to the Big Apple; they received on Wednesday morning, had immediate name recognition, inserted the rejection form and placed it in the outgoing mail by Wednesday afternoon. It was back to me by Friday morning. All things considered, that was a pretty damn impressive performance by the postal service. I’m still waiting for the award for the world’s fastest rejection, though. May I have the envelope, please?

I’m kind of glad I did keep a lot of my old rejections, especially after I graduated to getting letters instead of the generic reject forms. That meant that the person actually sat down and thought about writing me something that would perhaps let me down easy. I did receive a few that were sort of mean spirited, and I still have those as well. There’s always my hope that I’ll cross paths with that agent someday and be able to remind him what a jerk he was. I use that hope as motivation every time I get ready to go that extra round on the heavy bag at the gym when I just don’t feel like it.

They make good motivators for writing, too. I still remember the best one I got from the editor of the now defunct New Mystery magazine. I’d sent him a story called, “All the Players,” and had worked very hard on it. I was really hoping for acceptance, since I hadn’t been published at all up to this point. After a month or so, the story came back in my SASE, but lo and behold, along the flap I read these handwritten words: Close, but no cigar. Too long. Try again. I was ecstatic. An editor had actually read my story and liked it, albeit not quite enough, but he liked it. He really liked it. (No, I’m not trying to emulate Sally Field’s Oscar speech.) His few scribbles gave me encouragement and most of all, some hope. It was still a rejection, but what the heck, it was a personal rejection. I quickly revised the story and it subsequently became my first published work when, months later, it was accepted by Hardboiled Magazine. I still treasure those words on that envelope to this day.

In all fairness, I have spoken with editors who say that they really don’t like sending out those rejection forms and letters, and sometimes I believe them. Perhaps they’re trying to develop a taste for it with practice. I’ve also been told that rejections often don’t have anything to do with the quality of your work, but rather the specific needs of the editor on the day he or she opens the letter. Somehow, hearing that doesn’t make me feel a whole helluva lot better about getting one, but like I’ve said before, there is no shame in getting knocked down, which I’ll be sure to remind that one agent who wrote me the mean-spirited rejection letter, if we should ever cross paths. In the meantime, things have changed a little bit. A lot of submissions are now done electronically, which saves on the paper and stamps. But I’d still advise you to keep them in a file somewhere so you can look back on them with satisfaction when that rejected piece eventually gets published. It makes success a lot sweeter.

So I guess the moral of this story is to remember those famous words by Winston Churchill: “Never give in, never give in, never; never; never; never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.”

Good words for any writer to live by.

NEWS and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

NEWS FLASHES!!

• FREE TODAY ON KINDLE!! Mermaids 13, the anthology containing Michael A. Black's story "Fishtale," is FREE this weekend only (April 12-14)... which means you gotta get it TODAY (Sunday) if you want it free. The editor is John French and it's published by Padwolf Publishing Inc. Here's the direct, take-you-there-in-a-flash link: http://www.amazon.com/MERMAIDS-13-Tales-Padwolf-ebook/dp/B00AM1CMDA

• Carole Price has turned in her manuscript of Sour Grapes, the second in her Shakespeare in the Vineyard Mystery Series, to her editor at Five Star. Let's all join Carole in dancing around the kitchen and cheering!
• Michael A. Black will be signing his book Sacrificial Offerings at the Once Upon a Crime bookstore in Minneapolis, MN, next Saturday, April 20, 12:00-2:00.

THAT TWO-FACED, BACK-STABBING DUDE...

This week, The LadyKillers tackle "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Come visit each morning with your favorite cuppa to see where this twisted road takes us...

And now, a few quotes for inspiration from the classic tale "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.

“If he be Mr. Hyde" he had thought, "I shall be Mr. Seek.”

“You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others...”

Breaking the Rules By Michael A. Black

Rules, they say, are made to be broken, and sometimes you just have to do just that. As April 15^th, the deadline for filing your income tax rapidly approaches, however, it might be a good idea to be a bit more circumspect in your admissions. The IRS might not be as forgiving as fiction readers, even if you fall back on the pronouncement that the only absolute rule is that there are no rules. I suppose it’s all a matter of perspective. So let’s take a look at breaking rules.

In the case of driving a car, for instance, breaking the rules is seldom a good idea, but when you’re driving it’s pretty tempting. When’s the last time you actually drove at the posted speed limit, used your signal for every turn and lane change, or sped up to make it through that yellow light? (Yeah, that last one is actually a violation: accelerating through an intersection.) So we’re a society that is used to stretching things. When I was a cop, it was standard procedure to give people the benefit of the doubt in most cases of minor infractions while on traffic details. So a ticket for going five miles over the posted speed limit was virtually unheard of, unless it was necessary for establishing probable cause for a more serious violation. (If your rear license plate light was out you could usually expect a pass unless your driver’s license was suspended or revoked. Then you were out of luck.)

Do we have a similar tolerance for stretching the rules of writing? Just as with driving, I find it almost a natural thing to do, but certain rules seem more sacrosanct than others. I find myself holding the line at splitting an infinitive, although it was done most artfully by Gene Roddenberry in the now classic Star Trek preamble. “To boldly go where no man has gone before . . .” (I think they changed “no man” to “no one” by the time the Next Generation came around as the specter of the rule of political correctness began to raise its ugly head.) But which sounds better? To go boldly or Boldly, to go . . . Neither one has that engaging cadence of the split infinitive original. How something sounds is important in writing, but I still don’t think I would feel comfortable doing it.

There are other grammatical rules that hold fast for me as well. “Everyone should have his chance to break them,” rather than have “their chance.” And let’s not forget the confusion surrounding the use of the transitive verb, to lay, and its kissing cousin, intransitive to lie. How many times have you been lying on the sofa watching someone laying items on the floor? Sometimes it’s better to let sleeping verbs lie, lest you make the statement, as one of our former presidents did, that he didn’t “want anybody to lay down on the job.” It isn’t easy being intransitive in a transitive world, but don’t feel bad. Even spell-check gets that one wrong sometimes.

None of the aforementioned group of rules is absolute, however, when it comes to fiction. To establish the voice of a character, it may indeed be necessary to use improper grammar. I once had a reader send me an e-mail saying that I had incorrectly used the word “irregardless” in a sentence and it is not a proper word. This was in reference to a novel I’d written a couple of books ago, but I immediately went back to check on the matter. I did find “irregardless” in my book, but I replied back to the reader had failed to take into consideration the context of the usage. I’d used the word in a section of dialogue with the intention of making the character uttering the word somewhat pretentious and obviously less intelligent than he thought he was. Thus, sometimes it might be appropriate to bend the rules of grammar to give the reader a better feel of the character.

Sometimes you have to stretch the rules, especially in dialogue. Can you imagine a tough hoodlum saying : “The gun was lying on the floor as I entered the room. Everyone had his hands raised, but I didn’t see anyone else in the front section.” Perhaps, this would work if he were an Ivy League hoodlum. (Note the use of that proper subjunctive mood in the last sentence.) Oftentimes in fiction characterization necessitates stepping inside that character’s shoes. Thus, being immersed in the hoodlum’s point of view, we might decide to break a bunch of rules. “Lemme tell ya, the gun was laying on the floor when I come in. Everybody had their hands up, but I didn’t see nobody up in front.” This voice, improper grammar and all, could also translate into non-spoken sections: Royce looked at this fat-cat dude and knew, straight up, the sucker was lying like there wasn’t no tomorrow. Dude had to be taught a lesson, fo’ sure, and Royce had just the man to be teaching it. He looked toward fat cat and smiled. “If you lying, I be introducing you to a friend of mine named Bubba, and he the kind that’ll cut you first and say he sorry later.”

Sure, I stretched a couple rules, but I think you got a better feeling of the character by doing so. So in this sense, as in my aforementioned use of irregardless, in fiction you can stretch the rules a bit under the guise of artistic license. Certainly, if you’re writing a non-fiction piece, such as an article or a text book, you should make every effort not to break the rules. (Would that have sounded more natural if I’d written <grin> “to not break the rules?”) I must admit, I was tempted, but I just couldn’t do it.

The bottom line is you should first know what the rules are, and then and only then allow yourself to break them, if necessary in order to get the job done. It’s sort of like driving over the 55 MPH limit on the expressway because you don’t want to impede the flow of traffic.

And how many times did I hear that excuse when I’d pulled someone over for speeding?

News and Breaking the Rules

 

NEWS FLASHES!!

Some news! Some news! And it's good stuff!

• Pat Morin announces that her third short story collection will be published by Harper Davis Publishers, CA. This collection will be out in early 2014... more details will be posted as we get 'em!

• Michael A. Black has a new book out this month! Pope's Last Case and Other Stories — A collection of all his Vince and Laura Pope stories, plus some new ones and a complete novella featuring his homage to Hammett's The Thin Man. Published by Oak Tree Press. Check it out! Better yet, for the price of three cups of fancy coffee, you can buy it!

BREAKING THE RULES... A GOOD OR BAD THING?

Next week, LadyKillers tackle "breaking the rules." For or against? Come visit us and bring your daily cuppa for company to find out!

 

Juggling POV By Michael A. Black

Juggling more than one point of view in a scene can be tricky. The current stylistic preference is to avoid the omniscient POV, where an all-knowing narrator can jump into the heads of more than one character in a single scene. But this is only a stylistic preference and not a solid, unbreakable rule. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s begin by reviewing the basic types of POV: First Person, Second Person, and Third Person. There are also a couple variations of third person. While none of these is superior to the other, it’s important to pick the right POV for your story. Each one has its own particular advantages and disadvantages.

My advice would be to avoid using the Second Person POV. It might work for a short story, but there aren’t very many novels where this POV has worked at all. You know what I’m talking about as you read this, and you know I’m right. You agree. (The preceding was written in the second person. See what I mean? Would you want to read an entire novel with me preaching at you?)

First person is perhaps the POV most frequently used in mystery and detective novels. The tale is told through the eyes of one narrator, and the reader vicariously experiences the story as it unfolds: I walked down the hallway and suddenly saw someone moving in the shadows. The “I” character is the main (and only) narrator. The biggest advantage is that there is an immediate sense of identification with the narrator on the part of the reader. It’s also a very natural way of telling a story. While it isn’t absolutely necessary that the narrator be the kind of person the reader will like, it helps if he is. I mean, who would want to walk a mile in the shoes of some detestable narrator?

This is where the use of the third person POV has a slight advantage over the first person POV. While it may not be a pleasant reading experience trapped in the point of view of an unpleasant character for an entire book, we can normally stomach it in brief scenes. Thus, to build the suspense and establish the villain as a really detestable creep, you might want to do a section of a scene in his POV. My advice: keep it brief and use it to establish his particular pathology. This can add legitimacy to your bad guys. Don’t forget the old adage: the villain is the hero of his own story.

The current stylistic preference for third person is to stay in one POV per section, and then use a break when switching to the next one. As I stated before, using the omniscient POV isn’t incorrect, but bouncing around in the POV of more than one character in the same scene can be jarring to the reader. This is especially true if one of these characters is a bit of an eccentric. Plus, it can let the cat out of the bag too soon and impinge upon the overall suspense.

Here’s an example. Three people—a detective, a high society woman, and the rich lady’s family butler—are all in the drawing room of the mansion where a murder has taken place. We start out in the POV of Trent, the detective, then immediately switch without a break to the POV of the lady in question, Miss Lenore, and finally switch seamlessly once again into the POV of Jeeves, the butler. (Apologies to P.G. Wodehouse.)

Trent looked at the dame and her butler. One of them was a murderer. That much he knew, but which one? The woman hardly looked strong enough to wield a candlestick holder with sufficient force to deal a fatal blow, but the dead guy had a bullet in him. He looked down at the corpse: a hole right between the eyes. A small caliber shell casing lay on the floor next to him. A dame’s weapon of choice

Maybe I can ferret the killer out.

He straightened up and pointed at the butler. “You killed him, didn’t you?”

Who does this man, Trent, think he is, accusing Jeeves, she thought. He’s been with my family for years. If this upstart, this rent-a-cop in a cheap suit thinks he can waltz in here and accuse our most faithful manservant of murder, he’s got another thing coming. I’ll have none of it. She raised her eyes toward the detective and spoke in a calm, but determined voice. “Sir, you are very much mistaken.”

Jeeves felt a chill run up his spine as he wondered, How did Trent know I did it? If Miss Lenore only knew that I was only trying to protect her reputation . . . And the reputation of the family, as well. It was a matter of honor. I guess I have no choice, he thought, as he reached in his pocket and felt the comforting hardness of the revolver’s handle as he pulled it out. “I must ask you, Mr. Trent, to please raise your hands or I shall have to shoot.”

Okay, great writing it’s not, but this is an example of the all-knowing, omniscient POV. See how jarring it is and how devoid of suspense the scene becomes as it evolves? Now let’s do a quick rewrite, keeping the whole thing in the POV of one character.

Trent looked at the dame and her butler. One of them was a murderer. That much he knew, but which one? The woman hardly looked strong enough to wield a candlestick holder with sufficient force to deal a fatal blow, but the dead guy had a bullet in him. He looked down at the corpse: a hole right between the eyes. A small caliber shell casing lay on the floor next to him. A dame’s weapon of choice

Maybe I can ferret the killer out.

He straightened up and pointed at the butler. “You killed him, didn’t you?”

“Who do you think you are, accusing Jeeves?” she said. She raised her eyes toward the detective and spoke in a calm, but determined voice. “He’s been with my family for years, you upstart, you rent-a-cop in a cheap suit. You can’t waltz in here and accuse our most faithful manservant of murder. I’ll have none of it. You are very much mistaken.”

Jeeves’s face showed no emotion as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, but deadly looking pistol and pointed it at Trent. “I must ask you, sir, to please raise your hands or I shall have to shoot.”

If I wanted to put in a break after Jeeves pulled out the gun, and then switch to the POV of another character, or even another location, it would leave the reader wondering what Trent was going to do. Would he raise his hands or try to jump the butler and wrestle the gun out of Jeeves’s hands? Whatever he decides, I think you’ll agree that it sure beats jumping from one POV to the next in the same scene, which is why the third person limited POV is the current stylistic preference for fiction writing. But once again, there are a few recent examples in which an author has used the omniscient POV and pulled it off. I believe Boston Teran’s controversial novel, God is a Bullet, was one such book.

So, in the final analysis, the only hard and fast rule is that there is none.

Telling Details By Michael A. Black

It’s crunch time for me trying to finish up the first novel of a three-book contract as well as this blog piece and dealing with the latest winter snow storm of the season. Well, the storm really isn’t a factor because, as storms go, this one was pretty much a non-event. It tossed about three to four inches of snow down on Chi-town, which most of us living here in the Mid-West view as little more than an inconvenience. Still, in terms of telling details, it was a rather heavy snow, and made shoveling it a bit more of a workout than if it had been the fine, light, fluffy kind. Regardless, this unusually mild winter continues with the weather prognosticators saying that it’ll reach the 40 degree mark by the end of the weekend, so hopefully, by the time you’re reading this, most of the aforementioned snow should be history.

It strikes me that I’ve been meandering quite a bit the last few times during my times at bat here on The Ladykillers. The topic this time is supposed to be Telling Details, and I’ve been writing about the weather. I hope I put in enough details in the preceding paragraph to qualify.

Whenever I do think about telling details, though, the old writer’s axiom of “show, don’t tell,” comes to mind. Basically, it says the writer should “show” the scene, letting the reader experience it, rather than pedantically “tell” what’s supposed to be happening. And the way you show something is by using those telling details.

As I mentioned, I’m closing in on the CFFL of my latest book. (For those of you who don’t know what a CFFL is, it’s an abbreviation that my former writing partner, Julie Hyzy, and I came up with a few years ago. It stands for the Customary Fight For Life scene that normally appears at the climax of an exciting story.) As I wrap things up, there are a variety of plot points that I have to include in this section. These telling details are needed to round out the various subplots and give the CFFL, or climax, that satisfying resolution. In trying to make sure that I got everything in that I needed to include, prior to writing the scene I devised a list of plot points, or details, that I felt were indispensible. I jotted these details down in random order on a piece of paper, then I numbered them in the sequence which with they needed to happen during the course of the scene. The hero arrives on scene would naturally be the first, and the villain’s last gasp would bring up the rear. In between were the resolutions and fates of a couple subplots and secondary characters. When I’d finished the numbering, it struck me that I had completed a short outline of the entire scene. It was simply a matter of figuring out how to present this list of telling details in a showing manner, and the scene would practically write itself.

I’ve been teaching some creative writing classes at a junior college and one of my sessions involves this show, don’t tell concept. It begins with the advice once given to me by my friend, Sara Paretsky, who graciously gave me some pointers back when I was a fledgling writer. “You have to make the reader feel he’s right there in the scene,” she said. (If there’s ever been a simpler, more eloquent explanation of show, don’t tell, I’ve yet to come across it.) My lesson goes on by giving the students a rather “telling” paragraph:

I followed Breck’s trail through the jungle. It stank and the ground was soft and wet. Plus, it was also very hot. I was sweating heavily.

I then tell them to expand each sentence in the paragraph using one of the five senses. For instance, in looking at the first sentence, I ask, what does the narrator see as he walks along?

I followed Breck’s trail through a maze of high grass and hanging vines, dipping down like snakes and periodically blocking out the sunshine.

The next sense I use is hearing:

Something slithered through the brackish water to my left.

The other senses, touch, smelling, and tasting follow:

The wetness seeped through my shoes as my foot suddenly sank into a murky patch. The stench of rotting vegetation and who knew what else assailed my nostrils and I could taste my own sweat.

I also make it clear that using the list of the five senses to expand the original paragraph in a “show, don’t tell” manner doesn’t have to be done in order. I usually suggest a little tweaking:

I followed Breck’s trail through a maze of high grass and hanging vine, dipping down like snakes and periodically blocking out the sunshine. The stench of rotting vegetation and who knew what else assailed my nostrils and I could taste my own sweat. The wetness seeped through my shoes as my foot suddenly sank into a murky patch. Something slithered through the brackish water to my left.

As you can see, I changed the order so the reader will be left with something slithering through the water right after the narrator’s foot is immersed in a murky patch. But in terms of telling details, how much is too much? Remember, in good writing, every line should advance the plot. The writer must put in enough detail to make the reader feel like he’s there in the scene, but not so much that it diverts the reader’s attention by going off on a tangent of superfluous description.

So how do you tell the difference? The answer is simple: you finish it, let it sit for a bit, then do your revision. As Rolad Dahl was fond of saying, “Good writing is rewriting.” No truer words have ever been spoken. The devil is often in those “telling details,” but the nice thing is, you don’t have to get it exactly right the first time.

Affairs of the Heart By Michael A. Black

Well, even though it’s still technically winter, the lack of snow and mild temperatures around here have gotten me thinking about spring. Spring, the time of year when a young man’s fancy turns to . . . baseball. For the rest of us, it’s, you guessed it, affairs of the heart. Plus, we’re also coming up on one of the most romantic holidays ever devised: St. Valentine’s Day. Imagine the economic suffering it might cause among those employed by the chocolate, floral, and jewelry industries if we forgot it.

But I’ll get back to Cupid a bit later.

I’m currently working on an adventure novel and it’s virtually devoid of romance, but that’s the way they want it. To compensate, I’ve been thinking about some of the best romantic tales I’ve read or seen. Certainly Casablanca is at the top of my all-time best list. Who could be better than Bogey and Ingrid as star-crossed lovers . . . Did you know that the parts almost went to Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan? Imagine our fortieth president saying, “Here’s looking at you, kid.” What a cinematic moment that would have been.

And although Clark Gable was always the front runner to play Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind, the role of Miss Scarlet wasn’t decided upon until the cameras were rolling. I still wonder why that spoiled southern belle lacked a Southern accent. Of course Lesley Howard sounded a tad British, too. “Oh, Ashley!” And although Gable was an American, he was born in Ohio. In fact, was there anybody in that movie who sounded like they were from south of the Mason-Dixon? But sometimes romance is all about image.

Take the recent SNAFU involving Manti Te’o and the love of his life, the “girl he met and fell in love with on the Internet.” He’d never met her in person, never talked to her on the phone, never skyped (if that’s the right term), or any of the normal stuff star-crossed lovers usually do. I doubt he even sent her a Hallmark card. Now it’s now been revealed that this beautiful “girl” was actually a guy. Whether Manti was stupid enough to fall for this ludicrous charade, or whether he was going along with the sham should be the subject of someone’s dissertation. But anyway you cut it, she must have been a cheap date.

But that’s not always the case. Apparently, a lot of people (especially lonely women) are falling victim to similar scams on these on-line hook-up sites. I use the word “scam” because of a recent report of an Internet site supposedly matching kindred spirits on line. Naturally, the pictures on these sites portray the other person as very attractive, but often geographically far away. Unfortunately, there are a lot of unscrupulous people who are ready to capitalize on the loneliness of others. It’s easy to see how someone who’s lonely and vulnerable would be easily taken in by the duplicity. “Things are all peaches and cream at first,” one of my sergeants in the army once said about new relationships. The sarge made it clear that in good military fashion, you should be waiting for the other boot to drop. In many of these on-line match-ups the wonderfully attractive person you’ve fallen in love with brings up his need for a quick loan that will, of course, be returned with interest. Alas, people in love often tend to ignore the red flags.

Ah, but let’s not finish out this romantic topic on a sour note. Like I said, it is getting close to St. Valentine’s Day . . . Let’s see, I could talk about the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre that happened in Chi town in 1929. The old garage where Al Capone’s boys gunned down seven men from Bugs Moran’s gang was located at 2112 N. Clark. It was demolished a while back. (Sometimes there’s no respect for historical landmarks in this city.) But don’t get too emotional. They transported one of the walls, complete with the chips from the bullets, to the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. How’s that for a tribute to romantic St. Valentine’s Day?

And while I was perusing the newspaper this morning I came across another romance-related item from the area where I used to work as a cop. It seems these two young people thought they were in love, when they really were in lust. They established “a casual” relationship, during which she did a little strip tease for him, while he recorded her on his cell phone. Unfortunately, things went sour and when word got around that he was threatening to post the sexy video on the Internet, she and her family kidnapped him. They allegedly tied him up with duct tape, beat him with a lead pipe, and took pictures of his exposed privates. It had sort of a happy ending with his escape and their arrest, although what happened to the aforementioned video and pictures, I have no idea.

One of the problems in today’s high-tech world is that people are constantly recording things. If you don’t want to end up on the Net, then don’t pose for any pictures you wouldn’t want your mother to see. Remember, the images could be posted for posterity and for all to see with the click of a mouse. This wasn’t true in the old days. I once handled a case where a spurned boyfriend, who had a compromising photo of his ex-girlfriend in the shower, made a photo copy and scribbled, For a good time call (her name and phone number). He posted copies all over town, and the poor girl suffered through a plethora of obnoxious callers and embarrassment until she changed her number. At least the cad had to go to a little expense and effort, which probably limited the photo’s exposure. But with today’s computers making photo dispersal so quick and easy, the damage can be done in the blink of an eye or the push of a SEND button. Pass the lead pipe and duct tape.

But that’s kind of an inappropriate topic for our biggest romantic holiday, isn’t it? How about chocolates? What’s more romantic than giving your sweetie a box of chocolates on St. Valentine’s Day? Now, there’s a chance of overindulgence by eating the whole box in one sitting. That could cause a whole new group of problems: nausea, dental bills, etc. Of course, if you’re in one of those on-line, long distance relationships, you probably wouldn’t be close enough to notice.

Well, it looks like we’ve come full circle.

So, the moral of the story, and Cupid’s tag line for St. Valentine’s Day, is to proceed with caution when indulging in those affairs of the heart.

Favorite Crime Flicks By Michael A. Black

Coming up with a list of favorite crime flicks is always fun, but difficult as well. Originally this list was a Baker’s Dozen, but I’ve managed to pare it down to my top ten. So here they are . . .

Number 10: No Way to Treat a Lady, 1968. Starring Rod Steiger, Lee Remick, and George Segal. Any movie with a cast like that is a must-see. In this one Steiger shows off his versatile acting talents by playing a murderous psychopath who assumes various disguises to stalk and kill his victims. Segal is the dedicated detective determined to bring him in, and along the way he meets and falls in love with the beautiful Ms. Remick, who is eventually, you guessed it, stalked by the killer.

Number 9:The Detective, 1968. Starring Frank Sinatra, Lee Remick, Jack Klugman, Robert Duvall. Based on Roderick Thorp’s novel of the same name, this had to be one of Old Blue Eye’s best non-musical roles. Sinatra, who was a fine actor, played a tough, but conflicted homicide detective who solves a “heater” case, only to subsequently realize he has the wrong man. It’s a very adult film that touches on the seedy side of things in such a way that you’ll be squirming in your seat. There are some excellent performances all around.

Number 8: Fuzz, 1972. Starring Burt Reynolds, Raquel Welch, Yul Brenner, and Jack Weston. This was actually the second teaming of Burt and Raquel, their first being the 60’s western, 100 Rifles. By this time both of them were major stars and each turned in a solid performance in the film version of Ed McBain’s 87^th Precinct novel. The ensemble cast brought the 87^th alive so well that no one actor stole the show. Yul Brenner gave a deft performance as the Deaf Man, and the various story threads all coalesced to a fantastic ending. The scene in which Reynolds and Jack Weston interrogate a suspect while they’re wearing nun’s habits is so hilarious that you’ll be rolling on the floor laughing.

Number 7: Coogan’s Bluff, 1968. Starring Clint Eastwood, Lee J. Cobb, Susan Clark, and Dan Stroud. This is probably my second favorite Eastwood movie. Clint hit all the right notes as an Arizona sheriff in the Big Apple trying to apprehend the prisoner he let escape from his custody. Lee J. Cobb gives a brilliant performance as the beleaguered NYPD lieutenant who has little regard and even less patience for the western lawman. It’s a classic “fish out of water” story, and spawned the popular television series, McCloud.

Number 6: The French Connection, 1971. Starring Gene Hackman, Rob Schneider, Fernando Rey. Real life NYPD copper Eddie Eagan had a role in this tough, gritty film that netted Hackman his Oscar. It’s an excellent portrayal of a couple of dedicated narcotics cops who get caught up in the case of their lives. Aside from the excellent dialogue and brutal depictions, two parts really stand out: the famous car chase through the streets of New York where Hackman purses an el train, and the ending, which shows the degree of obsession that working a case of this magnitude can cause.

Number 5: L.A. Confidential, 1997. Starring Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Kim Bassinger, and Guy Pearce. Although Crowe and Pearce are the stars of this one, Spacey steals the show with his off-beat performance of a sophisticated detective who moonlights as a Hollywood consultant. It was an arduous task bringing James Ellroy’s novel to the screen, but this movie does it with aplomb. The climactic shotgun shootout is magnificent.

Number 4: Dirty Harry, 1971. Starring Clint Eastwood, Andrew Robinson, John Vernon, and Harry Guardino. Director Don Siegel teamed with Eastwood again in this remake of Siegel’s previous cop thriller, Madigan. This time Eastwood struck gold as Dirty Harry Calahan, the cop who hates everybody, and consequently gets “every dirty job that comes along.” Andrew Robinson’s portrayal as a psychopathic killer will have you writing your congressman to repeal the Miranda Rights decision, and John Vernon’s performance as the condescending big city mayor is a classic. This is my favorite Eastwood movie and set the stage for one of the most successful movie series of all time. In the final scene Eastwood pays homage to Gary Cooper and the ending of High Noon.

Number 3: In The Heat of the Night, 1967. Starring Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant. This one had two of the greatest actors of their generation playing in one of the best movies of the era. Set in the Deep South in the 1960s, Philadelphia police detective Poitier must assist racist police chief Steiger investigate a murder in the small town of Sparta, Georgia. The movie was actually filmed in Sparta, Illinois, and some of the buildings used in the film are still considered local landmarks. Based on John Ball’s Vigil Tibbs character, this movie showed that the mystery genre could produce not only an engrossing story, but inject a theme of social consciousness as well.

Number 2: Heat, 1995. Starring Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Val Kilmer, Amy Brenneman, Ashley Judd. Director Michael Mann hit all the right notes in this gritty, yet stylistic face-off between cop Pacino and bank robber DeNiro. Each plays a man at the top of his game, and they happen to be on opposite sides of the track and on a collision course. The movie was so realistic that a couple of real-life bank robbers tried subsequently tried to emulate the bad guys M.O. and found out that it wasn’t so easy going up against the real LAPD. Despite being a tad too long, and having one too many domestic unrest scenes between Pacino and his unfaithful wife, the movie is as smooth as silk gliding over glass.

Number 1: Bullit, 1968. Starring Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bissett, Robert Vaughn, Robert Duval. Besides being one of the best cop movies of the turbulent 60’s, and having the grand daddy of all car chases (in which McQueen did much of his own driving), this one also reunited Magnificent Seven co-stars Robert Vaughn and Steve McQueen. Vaughn, branching into movies after portraying Napoleon Solo on The Man from UNCLE, gives a standout performance as a politically ambitious prosecutor with his own agenda, and McQueen is a superb as Frank Bullit, San Francisco’s finest detective and rule-breaker. One of the greatest moments in movie history also occurs when McQueen and Vaughn face off in the airport finale. McQueen sums up his disdain for the duplicitous prosecutor with one, eight letter word: “Bullsh*t.”

Well, there you have them. My favorite, all-time crime flicks. Do yourself a favor and rent the ones you haven’t seen. You won’t be disappointed.