Don't Just Magnify - Matthew Greene

When I was in middle school, we had a unit our English teacher called "magnifying the moment." The aim, if memory serves, was to teach us how to use sensory language to enrich our writing. We were handed a bland paragraph devoid of detail, and our job was to fill a page (or more!) with the missing sights, sound, smells and etcetera. 

Being the overachieving little punk that I was, I opted to write ten pages of what I'm sure were meaningless, tiresome descriptions. (Worse than anything on this list, I'm sure.) But my efforts garnered praise from the teacher, which was my primary motivator at that age. I didn't have many friends. 

The point of this sad little reminiscence is to contextualize the unlearning I had to undertake when I set out writing my first novel. Coming from the world of theatre—where you have an entire design team to fill in the details implicit in your script—I brushed off my old "magnifying the moment" skills and filled pages and pages with unreadable prose. 

It was then that I learned a valuable lesson: sensory details should serve the story, not stop it cold.

We've all been there—we're engrossed in our reading, enraptured by the high stakes plotting, desperate to know what happens next...when the author pauses for half a page to inventory the exact geography of a new location or wax poetic about the color of a new character's eyes. I'm sure there are readers who devour that kind of indulgence. But few things will get me to DNF a book (as the kids say) faster than overwritten description. Especially in crime fiction, I think, we just don't have the time.

Of course, we can't jump to the other extreme, leaving out these details entirely. We do want to be able to visualize the world we're stepping into, to hear what the characters hear, to feel what they feel. We do need to know the color of someone's eyes. (Although Rebecca Makkai would beg to differ, in this fascinating post.) The trick is to use those details to push the narrative along.

Am I an expert at this? Not yet! But hope springs eternal. And in the meantime, I'll share a few examples from There's No Murder Like Show Murder that I'm a bit proud of. Moments when I managed to keep the plot moving while still trying to make my middle school English teacher* proud.

"The whole theatre seemed to exhale at once. Actors drifted into the wings, crew members grabbed for their cigarettes, and the house lights had everyone in the auditorium squinting in the sobering glare."

This is an example of a line that had, in an early draft, eaten up close to an entire page. Large group scenes carry the temptation to overwrite, to give everyone their moment in the spotlight. But there are a few key details our narrator notices. And, as it turns out, that was all we needed.

"The cool nighttime breeze welcomed me home, clinking through the wind chimes Mom had hung on the porch years ago."

Perhaps it's too much to squeeze into one sentence—the weather, the time of day, the location, and a little twinge of grief that sets Tasha up for the emotional confrontation to come. But you have to admit, it's economical. 

"The whole place smelled like teakwood and opulence, but there was no time to enjoy ourselves."

In early drafts, I spent inordinate amounts of time describing the Harbour Inn, especially since I based it on an actual location in Old Saybrook that is far too fancy for me. There are other details peppered throughout this chapter, but our narrator has other things on her mind. Only the most salient sights, sounds, and smells break through her focus and make their way onto the page.

(Did my first three examples all start with the word "The"? Let's shake things up, shall we?)

"Her dark hair was pulled into a messy bun, and the circles under her eyes looked like they were ready to take over her whole harried face."

Character descriptions, as I mentioned, are tricky for me. But I try to use every detail to reveal something about what the person wants, what they're doing, where they're coming from...something more than we'd see on their driver's license. 

"Feeling the gun against my spine and [name redacted]'s fingers digging into my waist, I knew there was no use trying to struggle out of [pronoun redacted] clutches."

This was an opportunity to make danger feel tangible, to use sensory details raise the stakes. The language isn't the most poetic thing I've ever written, but it gets the job done. There's no time for poetry when there's a gun at your back.

"Even the bathroom light caught her at an oblique angle, bathing her face in half-light as she turned my way."

An absolutely blatant ripoff of film noir aesthetics...but let's call it an homage. One specific image that I hope conjures up feelings of intrigue, deceit, and high drama. 

Of course, I found a lot of examples that made me cringe. Clumsy metaphors, bland descriptors, and moments I may have magnified too much. But I'm not sharing those. My old teachers may be reading this, after all...

*By the way, the aforementioned English teacher came to my book signing. And yes, her approval means way too much to me, a fully-grown adult.

Dear Teacher, With Love by Poppy Gee

Did you have a favorite teacher that had major influence on you as a writer?

I grew up in a river city in northern Tasmania, a well-preserved colonial town with grand Georgian architecture and elegant English-style parks. I attended West Launceston Primary School, a suburban school set on about fifty acres of ovals, tree plantations, tennis and basketball courts and playgrounds. It is located 300m from the Launceston Basin picnic ground, an inner city park of deep natural waterholes and rivers, wild forest and manicured lawns, surrounded by mountainous walls. We often walked down there for school outings, to swim in the pools, walk around the hiking trails, or have a end of year barbecue. It's a magical place where wallabies, pademelons and peacocks roam freely. 

It was a small school of 300 students, and classes were composite. Mrs Forster taught grade 1/2. Ms Davies taught grade 3/4. And Mrs Bryan taughter grade 5/6. The great thing about this is students got to know their teachers very well because you had the same teacher for two years. 

It was Mrs Forster who taught me to read, and she encouraged us to do creative writing. There were two students whose stories she often read out loud, and I aspired to be as good as them at writing. As one of the younger children in the class, I wasn't as strong a reader or writer as them, but Mrs Forster always made me feel like I was doing really well. Mrs Forster was beautiful and kind - like Miss Honey in Matilda. 

Ms Davies was another wonderful influence. A free spirit, she spent a lot of time in Nepal. She'd taught there for a year, in a tiny one-room school up in the mountains. Our classroom was decorated with posters depicting Mount Everest and the Himalayas. We had penpals from her Nepalese class, who we exchanged letters with regularly. She had a sister who was a teacher in a small town on Tasmania's east coast, and we were also penpals with the children in her class. When we would go on an excursion, we each had a Nepalese number to recite. Ms Davies asked us to 'number off' in Nepalese - that's how she kept track of us. I adored Ms Davies; she was an example of how to live a life that stretched far beyond the boundaries of smalltown life. The first woman I'd ever met who used the Ms prefix.

My final teacher in primary school was Mrs Bryan. A kind, experienced teacher in her sixties, she was dynamic, energetic, smart and inspiring. I loved being in her class. She encouraged creative writing, there was personal reading time every day, and we would hold discussions about what makes a story work. Her name was Schon, which she told us was German for beautiful. On school camp, she stood in our bunk room each night, telling us made up stories, helping us quieten down in preparation for falling asleep. She taught us to knit, and every child in the class made their own woollen slippers. I still think of her favourite phrase: 'If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well.' 

Now that I have seen my own three kids move through school, I have a renewed appreciation for primary school teachers. How lucky a child is to have a wonderful teacher in their life. Also, shout out to my, kindy teacher Mrs Masters. Mum said I did the worst paintings or craft - rushing through them just to get outside and play. Mrs Masters let me spend most of my time playing outside, on the bikes or in the sandpit, playing make believe games, which is often where a love of story begins.

Bell's Went! by Catriona

Did you have a favorite teacher that had major influence on you as a writer?

I did and he was in touch only yesterday to say good luck for the mid-terms.  WOOOOHOOOOOO!

He blew in like Mary Poppins and was different from all the other teachers. Even the other English teachers. For one thing, he is actually English and took a lot of pleasure in the kids' Scottish dialect.

When the bell rang, most teachers said "The bell is a signal to me, not to you." Quite pompous. Stuart would clap the book shut, or snap the chalk in half, or abandon his point mid-sentence, and shout "Bell's went!" - our cue to scatter. 

Another memory is Stuart writing on the blackboard, coming upon a word like . . . necessary or embarrassment . . . and giving the chalk a good work-out saying, "Oh, lots of Ss probably". Because he wasn't teaching us spelling; he was teaching us poetry. He taught us to love it, and to love books, language, story, drama . . . (Actually, I already loved books and stories. And language. But he taught me to feel more at home and to have fun with them. Less reverence and more joy.)

We read The Twelfth Day of July, by Joan Lingard. It's about Catholic and Protestant teenagers at the height of 'the troubles' in Belfast and was a bold choice in the 80s in Scotland, even in the east of Scotland, which wasn't quite as sectarian as the west of Scotland, but was still deeply divided by (basically identical) religions. Well, it wasn't really about religion. Pro tip: if you've colonised a country and you're finally getting out, don't keep a bit. Or to put it another way, look at a map of Britain and Ireland and see if you can work out where the border is. I'm just saying.

And one of the reasons I'm saying it is Stuart Campbell. 

We read a book called Nowhere to Stop by Geraldine Kaye, another bold choice. It's the story of a family of gypsies as we then called them, although I'd probably ask what they'd like to be referred to as now and make a guess at Roma if I couldn't check. It's a cold December as the book opens and they're camped at a pretty miserable town dump with a new baby due any day. It made a big impression. We had read Anne Frank's diary (well, I had) and we'd all been glued to Alex Haley's Roots a few years before, but Kaye's novel made us face a prejudice that was still revoltingly prevalent. Is still revoltingly prevalent.

One of the reasons I'm revolted by anti-traveller bigotry is Stuart Campbell.

So we'd read Romeo and Juliet in Northern Ireland and the Chrtistmas story set on the town dump, but when we came to Macbeth, we read Macbeth. It was local. We also went on a bus trip to see a film of Macbeth. Thing is, it was Roman Polanski's Macbeth, in which Polanski made directorial choices informed by the trauma he was experiencing after the recent murder of his pregnant wife at the hands of the Manson Family. So . . . yeah. We all got back on the bus again and one of the teachers made a heartfelt plea to the kids not to say anything about what had just happened. I don't know if we all kept to it (until now) but certainly nothing more was ever said.

I don't know either if Stuart Campbell was involved in that eye-opening cinema visit, but if I had to pick a teacher who knew what the film was like and decided to take us anyway, it would definitely be him.

We lost touch for a good few years after I left school and he left teaching to do something even more admirable. Then he found out I had written a book - Scotland is tiny - and came along to help me celebrate its launch. Then I found out he was writing a book and I found myself in the unsettling position of being the one who had things to teach him, about the world of publishing. Me! Teaching Mr Campbell! I was already having a hard enough time calling him Stuart.

He has written eight books now.  You can find them all here.

Cx

The Principal Is Not Your Pal

  

Did you have a favorite teacher, either as a kid or an adult, that had a major influence on you as a writer?

Abandon all ye hope for one teacher like Mr. Keating here, because I contain multitudes of experiences in the hallowed halls of institutional terror.

I am the sum of a Catholic education, so Sister Mary Stigmata provided the standard for my “formative years.” Sisters of Infinite Cruelty and Finite Compassion. There was the nun who had to jump to hit my friend George’s hand because he was left-handed and she was so short. I don’t remember her name, but I’m certain it was masculine. Then there was the principal who loved to say that the principal was your pal. She would float into classrooms unannounced with report cards. You were called up and stood in front of her while she reviewed your progress. There were never compliments because ego fed Pride.

I dreaded school, and I especially disliked math. I was the shortest kid in class, so I had to sit in front. My impaired hearing exacerbated that status. Line formation: shortest to tallest. Butt of jokes. Picked last in gym class. The classroom was also my introduction to societal inequities, injustices, and favoritism. Our classes were divided into A and B; the former were bright and the latter dim. And don’t assume you maintained an A-game year to year.

And no, I don’t have a Napoleon Complex, but society is cruel to the vertically challenged hominid. Before you send me copies of The Handmaid’s Tale, I will tell you firsthand, as one of seven boys outnumbered four to one, that it was not Utopia. Us boys were all terrorized by a gaggle of girls who fancied themselves Pinky Tuscadero and the Pinkettes. Yeah, that allusion dates me.

Everything changed during sixth grade, which, for those doing the math, was circa 1978–79. Mrs. B entered our lives. She was innovative. She set aside ten minutes every day when we could write whatever we wanted. It was never graded. For Christmas, she taught us how to sing “Silent Night” in German. It’s a song that remains emotional for me because of her and my grandmother. Four-plus decades later, I still can’t get past the line Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh! without a tear.

Every. Damn. Time.

I disliked school but loved learning.

The problem was that the subjects did not interest me. I loved Art and Reading. The latter consisted of reading paragraphs around a table, waiting for corrections on pronunciation. There was no analysis. The closest I came to that was the monthly book report, and I was the weirdo who read way above his pay grade. I was the kid caught reading “weird” books from the library. Ibáñez and Quiroga. It was fine to read the Hardy Boys or Homer abridged, but you got suspicious looks when you presented Conrad, Orwell, and Twain to your peers. My covers were hand-drawn.

One teacher noticed and lent me her copies of Christie. Over two years, I read all of Christie. So I guess this future Criminal Mind and You owe her.

I attended a prestigious all-boys school run by the Benedictine Order. A different experience. The school would later be mired in scandal, and I was acutely aware of malfeasance during my time there. Those experiences hardened my distrust of organizations and authority. I write about the atherosclerosis of power structures in all my novels.

But there were profound and positive moments, too. What we learn is not always what’s in the classroom. Sometimes it’s in the throwaway breadcrumbs that reveal perspective, character, and integrity.

I had a Latin teacher who was rigorous and demanding. He also taught history, and Armistice Day was sacred to him. He described watching a beloved uncle slowly die from the effects of mustard gas in World War I. Thanks to him, I can still decline nouns and conjugate verbs in Latin. Most students thought he was Paul Hunham from The Holdovers, except in a black robe. He’d send us home for vacation expecting twenty translations upon our return. We didn’t just have to learn the damn vocabulary. We had to provide five cognates per word.

Ah, the sweet gateway to the Romance languages and the language of science. Volvere: to roll, to turn becomes revolver and revolution. Mitto, mittere: to send became admit, emit, omit, permit, and transmit. Suddenly words had histories. They had relatives.

The lesson was associative thinking: seeing connections and then learning to make them.

He taught me another lesson. Use your critical thinking here. The school had a policy that if you had an A average, you could forego the final exam. I had the grade, but he told me I had to take the exam. I was furious. I took it, and he made me wait while he graded it. I scored a 99.

He told me the policy should be for his poor students. They needed the pardon, not me.

You decide the lesson.

I had two lay teachers, both women, for Literature. They lectured the tried-and-tired interpretations but dared the class to form our own. It didn’t matter what we argued so long as we could back it up. Their classes were ones I looked forward to because they deepened my love of reading, and I began to see literature as a continuous and timeless conversation.

I did not have that experience at university. There was the prof as Moses: Thou shalt not have any other interpretation but mine.

One haunting lesson from my senior year bears upon today’s landscape. We were reading Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and we were discussing epiphany when one of those teachers conveyed her own epiphanic moment. She had been a graduate student at Columbia, studying the poetry of William Blake in 1968.

I was born in 1968.

She said it was the one year she thought the world would end: the nihilism and despair, the assassinations, the unrelenting violence at home and abroad.

I look outside.

I’m not sure what the tribe has learned since then. But I know I could have conformed. I could have weaponized learning for monetary success without the guardrails of ethics or principles.

The principal is not your pal.

I didn’t. I became someone else, and I think I am the better person because of them.

For that, the endless lesson is gratitude.

 

This is dedicated to the incomparable Wanda Coleman

 

Did you have a favorite teacher, either as a kid or an adult, that had major influence on you as a writer?

I never knew writing was a possibility for me until my 30’s, which is also when I started college. Let me explain.

Growing up in the inner city of Cleveland, Ohio, life wasn’t so much about dreams, well not the kinds of dreams that most people associate with growing up. We dreamed of having enough food, staying safe, and having a permanent home. But I loved books. Books were my safe space. I spent hours at the library in whatever neighborhood I was living. I didn’t know then but as I was reading all those stories and envisioning what it would be like to be any of those characters, I was training myself to write. And I was dreaming. I just didn’t have the words to express that yet.

As soon as I graduated high school, it was off to the Air Force, where I continued to read, but never even considered that I could be a writer. After my military career was over, I came home and was a little lost, a lot of sad, and for the first time had no one to tell me what I needed to be doing. So, one day, on a whim, I started writing. The result, a 600-plus-page book written straight from my heart without the benefit of anything even close to technique. I knew nothing, no formatting, no silly writing rules whatsoever, just straight story. That book eventually became my first three novels, Fat Chance, Chasing Navah, and Maria’s Song. I didn’t know it then, but I had written a whole trilogy in one beautiful, award-worthy masterpiece (I kid).

But the universe is weird. Around this same time, thanks to my military service, I got to college, where I met friends who became my writing group, the almighty, Literary Llamas. That was in 2005 or so, and we’re still rocking today. They, along with a lot of professors from Cleveland State University, taught me how to take my voice and all those words and turn them into an actual book. And for that I am eternally grateful.

But the moment that made me seriously consider that I could become an actual writer was meeting the incredible American poet, Wanda Coleman. She was a moderator during my very first writer’s conference, put on by Cleveland State University. She was like no one I had ever seen before. She was big, Black, bold, and did not hold her tongue. But she was kind in her honesty as she gave everyone their feedback.

 When my turn came, she looked around the table before looking me dead in the eye, and told us all. Some stories you can write for yourself and leave in a drawer, but not this one. This one needs to be written and shared with the world. I couldn’t believe she was talking about me and my story, Lily White.  She passed away November 22, 2013, but I still think of her words often.

Since then, I’ve gotten a lot of critiques, both negative and positive, but it was Wanda Coleman, American Poet, who made me believe that I could be a writer. One day Lily White will find its way into the world, whether traditionally or by my own hand. When it does, I already have the dedication.

Go West, Young Man from James W. Ziskin

What advice would you give to your younger writing self?

My favorite piece of advice in life and in writing is “Know what you don’t know.” I don’t remember where or when I came across this gem, but I believe it was during my corporate days. A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing, so it’s best to challenge yourself and question what you think is true and correct. At every turn, verify. Make sure. Don’t trust your faulty memory or your inadequate education.

Now, what else might I tell my younger self? How about “Buy $1,000 worth of Apple stock in 1980.” It listed for $22 at its IPO, but, adjusted for splits, that was the equivalent of ten cents per share. Which, in turn, means a 2,200% appreciation. So $1,000 invested then would be worth $2.2 million today. 

On second thought, perhaps I’d tell my younger self to buy $10,000 of Apple stock.

Another tip I’d offer myself would be to write a thriller about a murder that leads to the discovery of Jesus’s hitherto unknown bloodline and living descendants. Oh, and be sure to write that book before 2003.

Finally, I’d tell myself to get rid of that mustache I tried to grow in college.

But, as they say, hindsight is 20/20. Instead of looking for profit and a better look, I’ll say this:

• Experience the world, but don’t waste time putting off your writing. 
• Never stop yearning, dreaming. 
• Never abandon hope. 
• Don’t have regrets. 
• Don’t chase fame or fortune. Your place just might be more modest than that. But that’s okay. You may not always be the tallest person in the room, but that doesn’t mean you’re not the grandest in the room.

Do I follow that advice now that I’m older and wiser? I try and fail. But that’s okay. 

*********************

THE PRANK…enigmatic and unnerving. The pace never flags for a second. This is some masterly plotting. I loved it.”

—Liz Nugent, author of Strange Sally Diamond

 

“The Holdovers meets The Bad Seed,”

THE PRANK. A picture clipped from Playboy magazine, a missing Swiss Army Knife, and a prank gone terribly wrong conspire to make Christmas 1968 a deadly holiday to remember.

From two-time Edgar Award finalist, Anthony, Barry, and Macavity award-winner James W. Ziskin, THE PRANK releases July 2026.

Psst, Hey Kid!

Advice to my younger writing self.

By Dietrich

Look at you, sitting there waiting for the lightning to strike. Let me break it to you gently, kid: inspiration isn't coming, and if you only write when you feel like it, you’ll just be a guy with a clean desk and a tragic amount of blank paper.

Grab a pen, get your hands on a decent typewriter, and get to work. Then all you have to do is show up, put words down, and keep doing it until it starts to sound like something worth reading. And for the love of God, don’t try to sound like Salinger or Steinbeck. I know they’re your favorites. 

Right now, you’re insecure. You’re sweating it, trying to show off your chops. I know exactly what you’re thinking: you’re going to write three straight pages about the pattern on the wallpaper, the shade of the drapes, and the architectural history of the molding. Let me save you the ink. Nobody wants to read about the wallpaper. The reader wants to know who just walked through the door, what they're after, and what they’re packing under their coat.

You’ll want to show off your research, too. Spend weeks digging up facts just to dump them on the page. Don’t do it. Sift the pile. Pick out the best bits—the smell of coal smoke, a dented fender, the exact shade of a neon sign. That’s your picture. Leave out the rest. If it doesn't move the story, it’s just noise. Don't take the reader out of the scene just to prove you did your homework.

Do yourself a favor. Go open a thick book, find a massive, unbroken wall of scenery description, and watch how fast your eyes skip right past it looking for the quotation marks. Why dialogue? Because that’s where the life is.

Get out of your room. Go sit at a lunch counter, stand on a street corner, sneak into a dive bar where the lighting’s bad. Listen to how people actually talk. Real people don't speak in flawless sentences. They don't use semicolons—and if you use them when characters are speaking, we’re going to have words. People speak in fragments. They interrupt each other. They talk over the good parts, mishear the bad parts, and say everything by saying absolutely nothing. That’s how you show who a character is.

And stop looking for a roadmap. Throw out the checklists and the genre formulas. Don't toss in a bedroom scene or rack up a body count just because you think it’ll sells books. What do you know about that anyway—you’re just a kid. Don’t be cheap, it looks desperate.

The whole game is simple: put two interesting people in a room, give them a history and a reason to disagree, and see what happens when they start bumping heads. Let the plot do what it wants, and make the collision sound like it belongs to them, not to your ego.

Finally, don’t sit there thinking about the great novel you’re going to write "someday." Quit dreaming and get to work. Now, not next year.

Advice to Myself

 

Terry here with our question of the week: What advice would you give to your younger writing self? Is there anything you'd do differently? 

 This will not be a long post, because the advice I would have for my younger writing self is simple: Take yourself seriously. 

 By that, I mean, pay attention to what you are writing and think about these things: 

 1) What do you hope your book will be in the end? The reason I would say this is that for several years I just wrote whatever struck me. I churned out novels without having the slightest idea what I wanted to say. I wrote okay stories, but they didn’t resonate. A nice story is not enough. The story needs to have a heart, a mind, and a philosophy behind it. That doesn’t mean it has to be deep into literary territory, but it has to have some thought behind it. 

 2) Have you chosen the right vehicle to tell the story? Don’t try to shovel a cozy into a thriller; or a psychological thriller into a police procedural. Make sure you know your genre. 

3) Are you writing what you mean to say? On every page? It’s interesting when you hear authors say “my character took over.” But that isn’t serious. It’s your world. Don’t let anyone hijack it. 

4) Are your characters who you want them to be? Are they fully fleshed out? Would you recognize them if you ran into them in the world? 

5) Have you done the proper research to get the details righ? 

6) Are you describing the action and the setting properly? Sometimes I write a scene and when I go back I think, “Where are they in this scene? Are they standing in the air?” And make sure the setting comes alive. Make sure the book couldn't be set anywhere but where you've written it.

 7) Finally, and most importantly, is this a book that comes from you? A book “only you can write?” Or is it a rehash of stories you’ve read. It may take some hard work, but you need to find your voice. Think about what makes it unique. Not sort of unique. Unique. One of the first short stories I wrote was critiqued by the great Max Apple at a conference. Very gently he said, “This is well-written. But we already have Eudora Welty.” He was right. She was my idol and I wanted to write like her. But…I had to find my own voice. 

 So if I could go back, I would tell myself: think. You don’t have to outline. You don’t have to know every detail. But you do have to know what makes you think this book is something people need to read.

When I first starting writing I would tell myself that I don’t need to address these things, that the “editor” would take care of the details. No. It’s up to you. I eventually learned that I didn’t have to address every single one of those things in the first draft, but that I needed to know my intentions. By that I don’t mean know exactly how the story would end. But what I hoped people will walk away with. 

 I read an enormous amount. And it’s fascinating to me that many authors I read write a perfectly good whodunnit. But it lacks heart. The book lacks a sense that the author has something urgent to convey. Or the book seems like I’ve read it before. 

And one more thing, I would say that taking yourself seriously means sitting down every day and writing as if it is your job, instead of waiting for “inspiration” to strike. Make the time to do it. If you value having a career as a writer, make it happen sooner rather than later. This last part is one that still eats at me because I think how much more I could have accomplished if I had taken myself seriously when I was younger. But…as my old friend Marilyn Wallace used to say, “You are the product of everything that has gone before, all the living you’ve done. That’s what goes into your work now.” Still, I wish I had known that earlier.

Out of the Shadows - Matthew Greene

What advice would you give to your younger writing self? Is there anything you'd do differently?

When I was coming up in theater, I was taught that a playwright belongs in the dark.

That may sound harsh or punishing, but I found the concept comforting. While the actors stood in the spotlight, the designers built beautiful things, and directors pontificated and made their presence known, I was allowed the luxury of letting my work speak for itself. I dreaded talkbacks for exactly that reason—I didn't want to be the face of the work. I was much more comfortable sitting (or, more accurately, pacing) in the back of the auditorium. In the darkness, where I belonged.

Fast forward to a few years ago, when I made my first foray into the wonderful world of fiction. Writing prose, I reasoned, was an even more solitary act. If I could stay mostly out of sight in my theatre work, I'd be able to outright disappear as a novelist.

Boy, was I wrong.

So, my words of wisdom to that younger me would come down to three emphatic words: show your face.

The cynical version of this advice came to mind during various book events when I was asked what I'd tell aspiring writers. I'd sometimes smirk and say, "Get a lot of social media followers," followed quickly by caveats and apologies.

But the frustrating truth is...online followers matter more than we want to admit. When I was prepping for my debut novel's release, my publisher's marketing department encouraged me to share pre-sale links with my "followers." And then panic set in.

Followers? What followers? You mean the few hundred friends and family members who had likely already ordered the book? Was I supposed to be amassing my own audience? 

The answer to that was a full-throated "DUH!"

In today's attention economy, it's harder than ever to get eyeballs on our work. Publishers' marketing budgets (especially for debuts, especially for cozies, and so on...) are not enough to break through the noise and attract a base of loyal readers. When I realized this (too late) I started furiously making content, attending conventions, and stepping out of the darkness I thought was my realm as a writer. 

As it turns out, people want to know who they're reading. Who they're supporting. They have to see us to believe us.

I think this will only get more important with the rise of AI. The more we can put a human face on our work, the more we can stem the tide of synthetic prose. We want people to read us, connect with us, and invest in us as storytellers.

And to do that, we may just have to come out of the shadows. 

Jane Austen and Stephen King both said so, by Catriona

What are some of the best tips you've taken on board from other writers whose work you love? Name the writers and their book that inspired you, and how it did so.

Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird? SS Van Dine's Twenty Principles? Ronald Knox's Ten Commandments? Elmore Leonard's Rules for Good Writing? Strunk and White?

Yeah, naw.

I've seen everything that all these renowned style and composition gurus have to say, and who am I to pooh-pooh the wisdom of the ages, but there's only one writing manual that I've re-read and would recommend and that's Stephen King's On Writing. I adore his novels so it's no surprise that I would drink in all the hot tips about how he makes them.One bit in particular that I valued from the first time I saw it, is something I was learning organically from Jane Austen anyway, but King drove it home. In the back of On Writing, King reproduces a draft of a short story with his handwritten notes and edits. One of his changes is taking out the character name Ostermeyer and making it Olin instead. With his typical lack of pomposity, he says it was annoying to type, would be more annoying to read and absolutely unbearable to say in the audiobook.

Jane Austen knew this too. Her books are filled with Annes, Janes, Lizzies, Edwards, Johns, Williams, and Fannys (Stop it! You're better than that.) In fact, her very early Marianne and Elinor is as fancy as she ever gets.

I'm always trying to make sure my names are just - but only just - noticeable enough to be remembered but otherwise exactly the kind of names people of that age in that place would have. Who was it who said: so many Tiffanys, so few Ednas? They were right. Edna in one of my books would need to be accounted for. Mind you, so would Tiffany.  
 
Another thing, I've learned - this time from Joy Fielding and Dorothy L Sayers working as a tag team - is the importance of good dialogue. Fielding's dialogue in Kiss Mommy Goodbye is a masterclass in how to make realistic speech reveal plot and character. It gets so that every time the loathsome Victor clears his throat, you are as ready for flight or flight as poor Donna in the novel. And every time Donna fluffs and stumbles her way through an attempt to deal with what's happening, you get that cold feeling that you wouldn't cope any better and thank God you don't have to.

But Dorothy L Sayers? And realism? Absolutely not. In - for instance - Clouds of Witness (but it could be any of them) Peter Wimsey talks with an effortless articulateness, an affability and unexamined noblesse oblige and he goes on for pages! Likewise, the dowager duchess witters on up tangents and down rabbitholes without any through line. And it doesn't matter. Their speech is so full of aphorisms and allusions, so stuffed with tantalising titbits and so regularly subject to hairpin bends of topic that you're hard-pressed not to say "Wheeeee!"
 
What have I learned then? That dialogue is the writer's to do with what she will. There are no rules worth sticking to.

Finally, I want to talk about a differernt pair, Stewart Arnott and Simon Wood. Stewart is a retired West End stage manager who has written a memoir of his decades on Miss Saigon and Phantom of the Opera. Simon is a crimewriter who's written . . . well, tons, but I want to talk about his Aidy Westlake mysteries about a professional racing car driver. 

Now, I'm not a musical theatre fan. I don't know much about it and I've never felt the lack of that knowedge. I've been to see musicals, mind you. So when I say I'm not a motor-racing fan, I need to find a different way to say it. Never been, never watched it on the telly, never not left the room if someone else was. Don't get it. 
 
However, what these books taught me is that if you write well about something you know and love, you can take the reader with you regardless. National parks? Night markets? Cadaver dog training school? I've been happily ensconsed in all these worlds for the length of a novel and it's helped me stop worrying about my books finding an audience beyond the pretty grim bit of Scotland where I'm drawn to set them. 

Cx

Still learning by Eric Beetner

 What are some of the best tips you've taken on board from other writers whose work you love? Name the writers and their book that inspired you, and how it did so. 

I can’t say I’ve ever taken notes on pearls of wisdom about writing, even from writers I admire. I do think I take many lessons from how they compose a story, how they conduct themselves as a public figure, how they create an authorial persona.

Writers like Ken Bruen and Barry Gifford come to mind when I think about how important a unique voice is. These are two writers who I greatly admire and who you could remove their names from a book and I’d still know it was them two chapters in. The downside is I constantly self-censor myself for sounding “Too Bruen” or “too Gifford-esque” Such distinct voices risk mimicry. 

I remember killing more than few songs back in my band days for sounding too much like other artists who had influenced me. My bandmates would protest and say it was still a good song, but I knew I’d never be able to play it and not think of the musicians I was ripping off. I'd hate to have someone reading something of mine and think, "Well, this guy is surely a Ken Bruen fan." 

Similarly, a writer like Joe R. Lansdale taught me to be proud of sounding like yourself. Joe is unabashedly East Texas on the page and he never shies away from that or tries to sound like anyone or anywhere else, despite what the flavor-of-the-month in publishing might be. Be true to yourself and the readers will find you.

I could say the same about Christa Faust, a fiercely singular writer who does not care if she’s not your cup of tea. As a result, she writes some of the most entertaining books I know.

I’ve long cited A Simple Plan by Scott Smith as the book that made me solidly a thriller reader. I’d been an eclectic reader until then, following suggestions and borrowing books. I read Horror and Sci-Fi, tried books that were the source of movies I liked. I even read The Bridges Of Madison County because someone said I should. I grew to know what I didn’t like. Then I read A Simple Plan. It scratched every itch and I knew all I wanted was to find more books like it that gave me that same feeling. It also solidified my love of crime stories with ordinary guys in them. Even if I like then, my top novels have never been PIs or police procedurals. I like stories of normal folks living normal lives until fate comes in and sticks out a foot to trip them up and knock them to the ground. Most of my books have followed suit. I can trace that inspiration back to a single book.

 Brian Panowich taught me how to fight for your story even if it threatens to derail your publishing career in its infancy, but not compromising is more important than a few extra book sales.

John Rector taught me the value of knowing when to walk away.

Countless authors with long careers taught me the value of sticking with it. 

Bill Crider taught me that being kind and helping other authors didn't have to be a chore.

I learn a little something with every book I read. Sometimes I learn what not to do – or what I certainly don’t want to do. Sometimes I learn to trust myself and follow the story off the beaten path. I learn that a little sentiment is not a bad thing. That humor and darkness can mix well and each elevate the other. Now and then I learn that if this pile of crap can get published then maybe I still have a shot. 

And once in a while, I can look back at my own work and learn that yeah, I really can do this. Time to go do it again.

What I Learned by Not Taking Writing Advice

  

What are some of the best tips you've taken on board from other writers whose work you love? Name the writers and their book that inspired you, and how it did so. 

 

There is an old classical warning: be afraid of what you ask, because you might not like the answer.

 

When asked what tips I’ve taken on board from other writers, my first answer is: none.

 

That sounds more contrary than I mean it to be. I have learned an enormous amount from other writers. I’ve simply never thought of what I learned from them as “tips.”

 

I suspect the expected answer might include some of the usual—and deservedly popular—books on craft: Stephen King’s On Writing, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, or Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. But I was never particularly interested in “How To” books about writing. Perhaps I’m suspicious of the premise. “How to” can suggest that there is a method to be followed, or that we should aspire to reproduce someone else’s success. I don’t want to be another writer, or even to write like one. I want to sound like myself.

 

There is also something peculiarly modern—and perhaps peculiarly American—about our appetite for optimization. Everything becomes advice, a hack, a set of habits, ten things successful people do before breakfast. Writers are not exempt. Apparently, somewhere out there is the secret that will put us in the top one percent of people sitting alone in rooms making things up.

 

I’d rather read.

 

When I first started reading, the stories that captured my imagination were Greek and Roman myths. They seemed to contain greater truths, universal and sometimes esoteric. I read to pierce the veil, to find the reality behind the obvious. Reading was a quest.

 

Perhaps that is why my first literary love was poetry.

 

Poetry taught me compression: how an image can carry more than its apparent weight, how the concrete can express the abstract. T. S. Eliot called this the objective correlative. Mallarmé and Valéry could create an image and distill an experience into something simultaneously precise and almost untranslatable. They taught me more about writing than being told what a writer ought to do.

 

Latin was also part of my education. It taught me grammatical structures, rhetoric, and the architecture hidden beneath language. English was not my first language, and I had my struggles with it, compounded by profound hearing loss. I developed compensatory mechanisms. I watched people. I paid attention to gestures, expressions, silences, and all the little things people communicate without realizing they are communicating.

 

Writers are often advised to eavesdrop on conversations. I did that too, although not always accurately. The mishaps probably account for some of my humor and perhaps my reserved demeanor.

 

I remind people that knowing English is an achievement that shouldn’t be taken for granted. It is a damn hard language.

 

What poetry taught me about compression eventually found its way into my dialogue. Elmore Leonard and others are routinely held up as exemplars of dialogue, but I want to study comedians because they are masters of timing. A comedian understands that changing one word—or putting a fraction of a second in the wrong place—can kill a line. Cinema taught me something related: visual compression. A glance, an object, a cut can accomplish what several paragraphs might otherwise explain.

 

And then there are writers who taught me things without ever offering advice.

 

Philip K. Dick could write some terrible dialogue, but his ideas were extraordinary. What mattered was the question underneath the story: Is the world what we think it is? Is the person we think we are who we really are? He, too, was trying to pierce the veil. From him I learned that the idea animating a story can matter more than technical perfection.

 

Eduardo Galeano showed me that history could be rendered as poetic prose without becoming didactic. He could compress politics, memory, violence, irony, and human experience into brief passages that retained the force of history without sounding like a lecture. His work showed me that political writing need not announce itself as political writing.

 

Umberto Eco taught me something else: erudition need not preclude wit. Ideas, history, semiotics, theology, politics, and social criticism could coexist with playfulness. Intelligence did not require solemnity.

 

Those lessons matter to me because I write crime fiction. I didn’t choose crime because I couldn’t write Literature with a capital L. I chose it because crime fiction has enormous potential for examining power and corruption: who possesses power, who abuses it, who suffers because of it, and who gets to decide what constitutes a crime in the first place.

 

Genre has never seemed like a limitation to me. All literature works within conventions of one kind or another, and every book must ultimately encounter an individual reader. Reading is Rashomon: put the same book into the hands of ten readers, and you may get ten different reactions back.

 

The few writing resources I have deliberately consulted have therefore been practical rather than inspirational. Because I couldn’t afford a professional editor when I started—and because I’ve encountered published books that made me wonder whether anyone could either—I had to teach myself how to edit.

 

For that, Renni Browne and Dave King’s Self-Editing for Fiction Writers was genuinely useful. What I appreciated was its method: state a principle, then demonstrate it on the page, often by examining or revising recognizable prose. It gave me something practical to interrogate rather than a commandment to obey. I suppose it is the closest I come to a writing tip.

 

Learn the technique. Understand why it works.

 

Ezra Pound famously said, “Make it new.” I would revise it to: Make it yours.

 

Whatever I’ve learned as a storyteller, I’ve learned primarily by reading, watching, listening, failing, and figuring things out for myself. What you teach yourself tends to stay with you because it has been tested against your own instincts. It becomes knowledge rather than imitation.

 

So perhaps my original answer was wrong. I have taken plenty from other writers.

 

I just never thought of any of it as advice.