The Story Behind the Story -- Guest Post by Laura Brennan

Every week we answer a set question. This week you have the opportunity to write about whatever you want to write about as long as it has something to do with the intent of our blog.

by Paul D Marks

Since today’s post is an open question, I thought I’d have Laura Brennan pinch hit for me. Laura’s eclectic career includes television, film, theater, fiction, and news. Her weekly podcast, Destination Mystery, features interviews with mystery writers of every subgenre. Her short story, “Driving Dead Daisy,” is available on Amazon, while other stories have appeared in anthologies such as “Hell Comes to Hollywood” and “Live Free or Ride.” On screens large and small, Laura has lopped characters’ heads off and fed them to dinosaurs. But it’s not all blood and guts: her web series Faux Baby explores the lighter side of motherhood. And if the faux baby loses a limb here or there, well… No, actually, she has no justification for that at all. Laura talks about many of the authors and stories she’s been exposed to since she started interviewing authors a couple of years ago. So take it away, Laura:

The Story Behind the Story

by Laura Brennan

Two years ago I started the podcast Destination Mystery. I did it because I love mysteries and wanted an excuse to interview authors, and also because, as a newbie mystery writer myself, I wanted a way to be part of the conversation.

But over two years and sixty-plus interviews, I have learned so much from my chats with other writers. Some of the highlights:

1) We all write from our own life. Like her heroine, Dr. Ellen Kirschman is a therapist who worked with first responders and their families. Leslie Karst has restaurant experience in both the front of the house and on the hot line, bringing authenticity to her Sally Solari mysteries. And Kellye Garrett was broke in Los Angeles when she saw a billboard offering a reward for information on a murder. She didn’t solve the case, but Dayna Anderson, the heroine of Kellye’s debut, Hollywood Homicide, did.

2) Mystery writers tend to have experience with law enforcement. Criminal Minds’ very own Paul D. Marks told me how he pulled a gun on the LAPD and lived to tell the tale (a story you can check out here: http://destinationmystery.com/episode-52-paul-d-marks/). Jessie Chandler, who writes capers, is herself a former police officer, while S.M. Freedman worked for a decade as a private investigator. Living the dream!

3) Other crime writers have had what Denise Swanson calls an “encounter with evil.” Denise stumbled across a satanic cult that was abusing children and became a target of them herself. Jane Kelly lost a friend to a murder -- a loss that had a direct impact on her writing. And of course, true crime writer Holly Tucker, while not herself directly touched by tragedy, was inspired by real life events: an epidemic of poisoning in the court of Louis XIV.

4) Writers grow and change -- and so do the books they want to write. Cozy author Ellery Adams has been pushing against the confines of the genre for a while and made a clean break with her new series, The Secret, Book & Scone Society, which she calls suspenseful women’s fiction. On the opposite side, Olivia Matthews comes from a background of romance and romantic suspense while her new series is squarely cozy -- and her protagonist is a Catholic sister!

5) Finally, everyone has themes that they return to again and again. This one worries me a little, because I can see a theme in my own writing -- one of unreliable narrators and moral codes that are just a little outside the norms. Not quite sure what that says about me!

But I can’t fight it. It seems impossible to escape our obsessions, at least on the page. Jenny Milchman writes thrillers about women who find the strength to recover from betrayal and learn to trust themselves. Steph Cha’s Juniper Song mystery novels are a modern take on LA Noir, infused with Raymond Chandler’s sensibility. And Kwei Quartey’s traditional police series is set in his native Ghana; in each Darko Dawson novel, Kwei ties a wider social issue to the very human and personal motives for murder.

Destination Mystery has exposed me to subgenres I would never have picked up on my own: Pirate Noir, anyone? While Steve Goble’s The Bloody Black Flag introduced me to that genre, I’ve learned about the Great Fire of London from Susanna Calkins, Joseph Haydn (Nupur Tustin), and growing up during the Civil Rights Movement (Valerie C. Woods). But best of all has been the chance to chat with fantastic authors about the struggles, inspirations, and successes in their careers.

Mind you, I’m still a bit worried about that unreliable narrator theme of mine…

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Thank you for stopping by, Laura. And I hope people will check out Destination Mystery at http://DestinationMystery.com 

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And now for the usual BSP:

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Yesterday and Today

If you could talk to the person you were when you were writing your first-published novel, what insights and guidance would you give yourself about the writing life?

by Paul D. Marks

Younger Paul

Younger Paul: Hey, Paul, how ya doin’? You look different than I remember you.

Older Paul: Really, how so?

Well, less hair for one thing.

Yeah, tell me about it. Anything else? Anything good, like do I look smarter?

Hmm, not really, dude. Maybe a little more wrinkled. Do you think you’re any smarter?

I hope so. I hope I learned something in all these years.


Oh yeah, what’d you learn?

Older and Wiser Paul

I learned to get in less fights.

Oh yeah, less fights with who?

With everyone – from the producer who threatened to send his pals in the Mossad after me to burly construction workers.

You learn anything about writing? Or the writing life.

I learned that you have to be patient. I wanted to be an overnight success. And that happens, but it happens to very few people. Most overnight successes have been slogging around for years.

So what should I write about?

Don’t follow fads. The writing world changes quickly. Don’t write a vampire book when vampire books are all the rage. You might get in on it but more likely you’ll be late. Be ahead of the curve, not behind it. Make your own curve. Write what you want. Though I think I pretty much always did that, at least in terms of prose writing.

Think long-term: The first novel I completed was accepted for publication at a major publisher. It was a satire on a screenwriter trying to make it in Hollywood. Eventually, the whole editorial staff at that publisher was swept out and as a new broom sweeps clean my book was swept out with them. And since the humor was topical it was pretty dated even after only a couple of years so it couldn’t really go to another publisher. The lesson: don’t write things that are so topical that their shelf life is shorter than yogurt left on the counter on a steaming, hot day. Remember what George S. Kaufman said, satire is what closes Saturday night.

Any other pearls of wisdom?

And when I wrote that book the NY publishing scene was still more like the Old Club publishing business, where people actually read and relished books and good writing. Today it’s more like Hollywood. More commercial. More big name and blockbuster oriented. And, like Hollywood, they’re looking for High Concept stories. On the other hand, there’s a lot of smaller, indie publishers out there these days who aren’t quite so constrained in what they’re looking for—though they do have their constraints too. So my advice to my younger self on this would be to remember that, whatever you’re writing, the number one goal is to entertain. As Sam Goldwyn is reputed to have said, If you want to send a message call Western Union. That’s not to say you can’t have something to say in your stories, just say it an entertaining way.

I would tell myself not to go kicking and screaming onto social media, but to take it in stride. It’s actually worked out pretty well for me. And along those lines, be nice to people. Pay it forward. A lot of people have been nice to me and I’ve tried to do the same. No more screaming matches—or worse—as with the producer who threatened to send his pals in the Mossad after me.

Contemplating the Future

Don’t listen to everyone’s silly advice. New fads come along and some producers/editors/agents—what have you—fall for them. For example, they’ll insist you have eight beats to a scene or follow the Hero’s Journey or whatever the fad of the day is. Write a good, tight story, but write your story your way. That’s not to say it should be all over the place, but you don’t have to follow every new fad.

Don’t rewrite for everyone. Just because an editor or agent says you need to do X or Y doesn’t necessarily mean to do it. Of course, not doing might mean they’ll tell you to take a hike. But doing it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll buy the property either. So do what works for you. And don’t let anyone change your voice! Some will try to do that. Resist.

Be true to yourself. You can’t please everyone and there’s no guarantee that if you rewrite something they’ll be interested anyway. So don’t rewrite unless you’re getting paid or if you think it needs work.

So what’s your bottom line?

As RM said earlier in the week, “I guess it would be folly to try to change who I was, because who I was is who I am, and the road I travelled had to be travelled.”

The thing is, if we had done things differently we might not be the writers we are or even the people we are today, so we wouldn’t be writing the things we write. I've had a lot of adversity of one kind and another and haven't particularly enjoyed it, but without it I don't know if I'd be able to write what I write. So, I guess the bottom line is we are who we are because of the sum of our experiences.
So, be open to advice, but be true to yourself.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Yeah, it’s probably not a good idea to kill off the dog in a story.

Thank you for joining me, Older Paul.

Thank you, Younger Paul.

You’re welcome, Older and Wiser Paul.

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And now for the usual BSP:

Please check out the interview Laura Brennan, writer, producer and consultant, did with me for her podcast, where we talk about everything from Raymond Chandler and John Fante to the time I pulled a gun on the LAPD and lived to tell about it. Find it here: http://destinationmystery.com/episode-52-paul-d-marks/

www.PaulDMarks.com

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