On a Roll

Has your approach to writing changed during the time you’ve been published? What was the change in response to? Or, if not, have you considered other approaches and rejected them? What were they, and why?

by Dietrich

There are times I think it’s best to stick to what works, and then there are times I want to try something new. 

Since I started writing the process has become easier. Confidence came along, and I generally know when I’ve got it right. I’ve also learned to recognize when it’s time to stop. But, I don’t want to become so comfortable that the writing becomes routine. So, it’s good to take a new approach or a chance now and then. I’ve tried different genres, different points of view and perspectives and explored various settings and eras.

My first three novels were unrelated modern-day crime stories written in third person, all set on Canada’s west coast where I live. Then I tried a historical novel, House of Blazes, set in San Francisco during the great quake and fire of 1906. It was interesting and involved a lot of research and fact checking. Then it was back to Vancouver for the onset of the punk rock era during the late seventies. It was an intriguing period in music and that one, Zero Avenue, was seen through the eyes of a female protagonist. I followed it with the current one, Poughkeepsie Shuffle, written in first person and set in the mid-eighties in Toronto where I used to live, and alternating between upstate New York. The one coming out in October is Call Down the Thunder, and it’s set in Kansas during the dustbowl days of the late 1930s. Again, there was a lot of research. And I followed that with a story that starts in Vancouver and takes readers up to Alaska. It’s due out next year. Right now I’m focused on a true story about a couple of lesser-known bank robbers who were at large in the Plains during the late thirties.

I wrote my third and fourth novels simultaneously, alternating between drafts. I thought that taking a long break from the first draft of one while getting started on the next one could be a good way to go. Then I alternated back and forth until they were both complete. It did work out in the end, and they were both finished in about a year and a half, but I doubt that I’ll try it again.

My first drafts are usually penned in longhand. There’s something organic about it. Then I type the second draft into my computer. It’s so much easier to deal with the amount of changes I make at that stage. Plus, I can only imagine my publisher’s reaction if I sent them a manuscript written in longhand.

I generally do my best writing early in the day, and I often go from the time I get up until about noon. Sometimes I write again in the early evening. I just have more energy and a clearer head at those times.

One thing that remains the same for me, it’s a creative expression, one that needs a high level of belief and enthusiasm in what I’m doing. And that level needs to carry me through from beginning to end. I think if I couldn’t maintain that, then I doubt a reader would want to stick with the story either.

For inspiration I read a lot, and I like anything from crime novels to science fiction to autobiographies, as long as I feel the writing is good. I’ve recently revisited a couple of old favorites: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, published in 1962, and Deliverance by James Dickey, published in 1970. I also just finished George Pelecanos’ The Man Who Came Uptown, The Good German by Joseph Kanon, and House of Earth by Woody Guthrie. All very good and all very inspiring.

What’s in a name?

How do you choose your titles? Put a bunch of words in a hat and pull them out at random? Use a title generator? Does your publisher do it? Do you find it easy or hard? Do you start with a working title, or just start writing? Has the title ever stayed the same? Is there a title you wish you could steal?

by Dietrich Kalteis

Sometimes the title comes to me before the story even takes shape, sometimes it comes from a scene or a line I’m writing, and often it changes long before I submit the story. 

A title has to grab the reader. Maybe you can’t judge a book by it, but a strong title will surely get somebody to pick it off a store shelf and have a look. 

Title ideas can come from just about anywhere, and there’s nothing hard about coming up with them, it’s more about knowing when I’ve got the right one. Some of my story ideas sit on the back burner long before I start writing them, and I sometimes think about them while still working on the last story. So, by the time I start that first draft, I’ve often got a working title. And it may not be perfect, but I keep it until something better comes along. The same goes for ideas for scenes and the names of characters.

I’m fortunate to have a creative family to bounce ideas off, and I always ask my wife and son what they think of my titles and other ideas I come up with. Sometimes the thumbs go up, and sometimes they go down, but it always helps. And sometimes they come up with something better – like when my wife came up with the title Poughkeepsie Shuffle, which replaced the working title I had at the time.

The titles for House of Blazes and Zero Avenue came as soon as I started thinking about the stories, and they just felt right. Triggerfish started with a different working title, which changed as the story took shape. The same thing happened on the one I’m working on now.

A couple of my favorite book titles started out with working titles. To Kill a Mockingbird was originally called Atticus. And Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls was originally called They Don’t Build Statues to Businessmen. A couple of good examples of why you want to get the title right.

Sometimes the name or a line from a song can make a perfect title. The Deadbeat Club came from a song by The B52's. It just suited the story. And I’ve been asked if my first one Ride the Lightning came from the Metallica album of the same name. It actually came from police slang, meaning to get tasered. And I understand the expression can also mean to fry in the electric chair.

The worst thing about coming up with the perfect title is doing a search and finding out that the perfect title has already been used. Although it gives you a sinking feeling, it might not be a big problem if the other book is in a completely different genre and hopefully printed a long time ago.

Coming up with a title is part of the creative process, and I wouldn’t want to rely on something like a title generator. I need to trust myself to come up with it and know when it’s right. The bottom line is that by the time the novel goes to my publisher, I have to feel 100% sure about every aspect of it.

And the last part of the question: Is there a title you wish you could steal? Here are a few from across the genres that really grabbed me: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams, The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, Death to Smoochy by Danny DeVito, Go the Fuck to Sleep by Adam Mansbach, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe, The Winter of Frankie Machine by Don Winslow, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. I could probably go on and fill several pages.

There is a line

Research is a little like an iceberg. A lot of it doesn’t show. How do you decide how much research to put into your work?

by Dietrich Kalteis

Depending on the story I’m writing I may go about the research differently from book to book. I look for interesting facts and details that lend authenticity and accuracy, which allows the reader to believe the settings and what’s going on in the story. When I wrote House of Blazes, set during San Francisco’s earthquake and fire of 1906, I found a wealth of historical information: archives, newspaper articles from the time, first hand accounts and diaries, historical books, archives, web pages. I also found hundreds of photos from the times. There was so much, I had to put blinders on, being careful not to turn the novel into a history lesson. The photos alone gave me fantastic descriptive images, and I picked up some great expressions of the times from the first-hand accounts and diaries. 

One of the best parts of researching a story is going to the location I’m writing about. Of course, it’s not always possible, but it helps to experience the where, as well as to meet the people, see the architecture and so on.

I didn’t have to work as hard or go as far when I researched for Zero Avenue, which is set during the early days of the Vancouver punk music scene. Although I didn’t live in Vancouver right at the time, it’s home now, and I know it well, along with most of the locations I wrote about. I’m also a longtime fan of the music which helped make it easier. And the same went for the next novel, Poughkeepsie Shuffle, (Sept. 2018), set in Toronto in the mid-eighties, where I lived at the time.

The folly of including too much information is a writer can step all over the story’s pace. The details are important, sure, but the story also needs that flow to hold the reader’s attention. So, it’s important to include the strongest images for the reader to paint the scenes I’m describing, all without slowing the story.

And the descriptions have to suit my voice. And more often they have to suit the voices of my characters if something is told from their point of view. Sometimes the details are just snippets and they get tossed around quite casually.

Accuracy is key in any research, so I try to cross-check the reliability of any information I find. If the details end up in the narrative then they have to be right; not so much if it’s coming from a character. They’re allowed to be flawed, the writer isn’t.

Surrounding and immersing myself with a sea of research, sketching diagrams, writing notes to myself, listening to music from a particular period, talking with people who experienced what I’m writing about, all of it helps get me into the setting, imagining what a different time or place was like.

And since I don’t usually plot ahead, it’s amazing what comes along via the research. Sometimes an account, fact or news story comes along and adds a subplot, lending another layer to the whole thing.

When I think of William Faulkner writing the outline for A Fable across his office walls, I appreciate how working on a computer makes the whole process easier and faster these days. I can edit or Google something in mere moments without even getting up. But there is something to the organic process, and I like to go to a library and look things up, and I like to write first drafts in longhand.

So how much research to put into the work? I go for details that paint the best visuals for the reader. It’s key to never let any detail slow the pace. The whole thing to move along with interesting visuals created through the help of careful research. Above all, the writing has to sound authentic.

Closing thoughts on opening lines

by Dietrich Kalteis

As a writer, what do you make of readers who flip to the end and see what happens last first?

Flipping to the end of a novel to find out how it ends is like reaching under the Christmas tree when no one’s around and unwrapping a present, getting a sneak-peek, then rewrapping it, and trying to act surprised Christmas morning. To me, that just ruins the moment. 

The ending to a good novel is the wrap up of everything that came before. At times the author may hint at several possibilities to a story’s ending, or throw some last minute twists and surprises to keep the reader from predicting the ending. Maybe for some people, novels should come with spoiler alert stickers. 

William Goldman said, “The key to all story end­ings is to give the audi­ence what it wants, but not in the way it expects.”

While the ending to a good story is like the punchline to a good joke, I’m more interested in the first few pages of a book — the opening. If it doesn’t grab me, I may not read much more before putting the book down. If it doesn’t grab me, I won’t keep turning pages to see what the ending holds in store.

There’s a lot of promise in a strong opening, and it’s hard to imagine putting a book down that starts like this:

Some years later, on a tugboat in the Gulf of Mexico, Joe Coughlin’s feet were placed in a tub of cement. Twelve gunmen stood waiting until they got far enough out to sea to throw him overboard, while Joe listened to the engine chug and watched the water churn white at the stern.

— Dennis Lehane, Live by Night

As Roy Dillon stumbled out of the shop his face was a sickish green, and each breath he drew was an incredible agony. A hard blow in the guts can do that to a man, and Dillon had gotten a hard one. Not with a fist, which would have been bad enough, but from the butt-end of a heavy club.

— Charles Willeford, Miami Blue

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon. — James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss

Dennis Lenahan the high diver would tell people that if you put a fifty-cent piece on the floor and looked down at it, that's what the tank looked like from the top of that eighty-foot steel ladder. — Elmore Leonard, Tishomingo Blues

Great opening lines are real grabbers, but a great book is a combination of all the story elements that have to work together to keep me turning the pages. It’s the writer’s voice, the pace, plot, conflict, setting, and the characters and their dialog. And when it’s all working together, it’s like magic. I recently finished The Force by Don Winslow and it was like that for me, the story just fired on all cylinders. Another one I just read that was hard to put down was Trouble in Paradise, Robert B. Parker’s second Jesse Stone novel, and one of his best.

While I love to discover authors I’ve never read before, the greats are always worth revisiting because they just did everything so well. And although I already know the story’s outcome, I like to reread classics by Hemingway, Steinbeck and Salinger from time to time — those rare authors who mastered every aspect of a great story, from the opening line to the final scene. And there are great crime writers who I’ve read more than once — authors like Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, James Crumley, and Charles Willeford.

So, if a novel can be this great adventure, with a killer opening, interesting characters and dialog, with exciting and unexpected twists, and told in a voice that resonates, why flip to the last few pages to see how it ends?

The bits and pieces

Writers gather a huge miscellany of info - drafts, notes, contracts, plot ideas, pix, reviews, etc; do you have any tricks for keeping it all organized?

by Dietrich Kalteis

I don’t plot or outline my stories, it’s all seat-of-the-pants stuff, but under the surface I’m fairly organized. Electronic files and folders, that’s the key. I keep a general file on my computer for each category of what I write: novels, short stories, screenplays, etc. Then there are sub-folders for the drafts, edits, final files, cuts, reference files, character files, character names used, references, timelines, graphics, photos, marketing files, and so on.

When I finish a novel, I cull through the files and folders and toss out anything that I don’t need anymore. Clearing the clutter. And I start new ones for whatever I’m working on next. The trick is to keep it simple and organized, and in the end I just hold onto what I really need. 

Right now, I’m sifting through the final files for Zero Avenue, and except for copy edits, I’m pretty well finished the one after that, Poughkeepsie Shuffle. Meanwhile, I’m close to sending my publisher a final draft of a new story I’ve been working on, and I’ve got a longhand draft ready to key into the computer for the one after that. Then there are a couple of short stories I’ve been working on. So, with all that going on, I have to stay very organized.

I back up all electronic files on two separate drives. Everything. Every day. Hitting ‘command save’ has become a reflex — as my character Zeke Chamas from Zero Avenue might say, “It’s automatic, like scratching.” And it’s something I learned back when I was in the graphics field (saving, not scratching) — and yes, I learned it the hard way, by losing something I had been working on.

I write first drafts in longhand, keeping the pages in old-school folders. There’s something organic about working with pen in hand. Then the second draft gets keyed into my computer. I wish I could write the whole thing in longhand, but I edit and add too much, and my studio would just end up being a sea of crumpled paper by day’s end. Before the computer came along, I did type out a novel on my old Selectric. Working drafts were a mess of lines scratched out and scribbled notes, and the final draft was painted in Wite-Out and had cut strips of paper taped across the pages, not individual letters like a ransom note, but pretty close. There was never a clean final copy. It was all smoke, mirrors, correction fluid and tape by the time I had a submission ready to photocopy and send out. I guess I sometimes have this love/hate relationship with my computer, but it sure saves me a lot of time.

I still write myself little notes for whatever story I’m working on, and these litter my desk. They’re the little ideas that pop into my head and need to find their way onto the page.

When I wrote House of Blazes I did more research than for the novels set in present-day. The setting was the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and in addition to the usual files, I had to keep some on ships, autos, dress, which buildings were destroyed, street maps, statistics, newspapers, files on army involvement, ships involved in rescue, a time sequence of actual events that ran concurrent with the story’s events, personal accounts, and so on. When I started out, I thought all that research and organization would drive me nuts, but I actually liked it and learned so many interesting facts along the way. After which I’ve gone on to write more novels steeped in history.

Back when I was writing mainly short stories, I kept lists of where each story had been submitted, often making simultaneous submissions to three publishers for each story, keeping track of rejections and what was still out there. Once a rejection came in, I’d send the story right back out to another publication, keeping track of all that.

In the end, coming up with a system that keeps me organized and avoids disaster sure gives me a lot more time for writing. 

So what if?

by Dietrich Kalteis

What sources do you draw on for ideas for your stories?

Ideas can spring from just about anywhere: memories, headlines, newscasts, personal experience, what happened to the neighbor, dreams, song lyrics. They can be imagined or borrowed, and when I find something interesting I often find myself thinking, “so what if?” And it starts me writing a single scene. And from that, it leads to the next scene. 

The idea for my first novel Ride the Lightning came from a bit of dialog I wrote for another short story. Two characters talking and it just grew from that. For the next one, The Deadbeat Club, I came across an article about the thousands of grow-ops here in British Columbia that contribute to forty percent of all the pot in this country. From that I came up with a pot grower up in Whistler who grows a killer strain and just tries to stay off the radar when a couple of rival gangs come up from Vancouver to squeeze him out. The idea for Triggerfish came from a program I watched about these high-tech narco subs being built by drug cartels in secret locations in the jungles of the Amazon — subs that can travel two thousand miles virtually undetected. I checked the distance from Mexico to Canada, and I had the starting point for my story. House of Blazes started out as a screenplay I wrote about a dozen years ago, set during the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. It was a time of lawlessness, corruption and debauchery, the perfect setting for a crime novel. As I started writing and sifting through piles of research, I found a recent article about 11 million dollars worth of gold coins a couple discovered on a property they own not too far from San Francisco. The gold had been minted in San Francisco around the time of my story, and experts still can’t explain how it got there. It fit perfectly into my story and expanded it from the original screenplay.

When I come up with the spark of an idea I have to be totally jazzed about it since it’s going to take the better part of a year before I’ve got a novel to send out. And that spark is usually just for a single scene and maybe an undeveloped character or two, and everything just builds from there. I don’t know where the story will go at that point since I don’t plot out my stories. As I keep writing other scenes come to mind and the characters develop and usually by the second draft the whole thing starts taking shape.

It’s interesting to find out how some of the greats came up with ideas for their stories. For instance, Mark Twain based a character on a childhood friend and came up with Huckleberry Finn. John Steinbeck wanted to tell about the hard times people had to endure when he wrote Grapes of Wrath. After a classmate got jumped by a gang on the way home from school, fifteen-year-old S.E. Hinton started writing The Outsiders. And Jules Verne was flipping through a newspaper one day when he spotted an ad offering a chance to travel the globe in just eight days.

I keep an idea file for scraps to be used for future stories. Some of them I’ll use, and some I probably never will, but one thing’s for sure, there never seems to be a shortage of ideas out there that can get one thinking, “so what if?”