Some wind last night but it didn’t seem extreme. It is not raining right now. The air feels warmer. In any other part of the lower 48 states this would be crappy weather but today feels fine to me…. almost exhilarating. Dot went on a wild rampage this morning running in figure eights in the yard as if there were a mechanical rabbit ahead of her. Two nights ago she ate our tulips and dumped out our winter rock salt supply and I’m sure ate some of that salt, then threw up everything in her stomach, which held some interesting contents. Which looked like a mixture compost, concrete and construction waste. Then she lay on the couch and snuggled for the rest of the night. This is what Munchhausen’s by proxy must be all about. She is so dear when she is sick. But she is all better now.
In one of Raymond Chandler’s books, Phillip Marlowe has been brought it to talk with the cops and of course, after the hard nose interview where they fail to get Marlowe to spill any information on his client Spade gets a bottle out and they all have a shot. Marlowe makes a toast before they all drink it down, “To Crime, May it Pay.” Which of course is wonderfully ironic at the time and for the morally ambiguous private “dick” to say.
I sometimes use that toast when I’m with other crime writers, trying to get points for being clever but mostly for saying the obvious that we are all hoping to make it over the top to actually earn a living doing what we enjoy. Over the years since I started publishing in 1993,I have had some good years, two great years, and a lot of mostly lean years in terms of earning money at writing. The last four years with Soho Press reissuing my back list and by trying to provide books more quickly, I’ve done well. Our financial advisor said that I was earning enough to live well if I planned to die “fairly soon.” So… that can’t be bad can it?
But does Crime still pay? Will it in the future? What do you think people will want to read in the near future, and by that I mean within the span of my (admittedly shortened) life-span?
There are different types of crime stories of course: the cozy mystery, Agatha Christy. Louise Penny. Very, very popular, particularly it seems with women. A crime happens and a smart person either an amateur sleuth or a professional of some sort, but not usually an agent of the law, out wits the criminal and solves the crime, using intelligence and courage but not a lot of violence. The tension is HOW the detective is going to get there.
There is the Bone Crusher: violent, and explicit: me, sometimes, Michael Connolly, Pelaconos, maybe even Poe. Usually considered an American taste. Some writers will have a smart detective and a Bone Crusher sidekick, which was popular at one time. Easy Rawlings, had Mouse, Spencer, had Hawk, so when intellect came to an end they had a super badass sidekick to get the job done.
Then of course there are hundreds of other sub-genres. Thrillers, Police Procedurals, Gay and Lesbian Crime Stories, Techno thrillers. I’m not sure you even count Female Writers with female protagonists as any kind of sub genre because they have become so dominant. In my experience from mail, reviews and going to conferences women shape the nature of most crime writing now. They are largely the readership, for mysteries, maybe not bone crushers or thrillers, but clearly for mysteries. Remember Thrillers are when your protagonist prevents a really big event that threatens an whole community or nation from happening. In a mystery a person solves a crime that has happen, and may, prevent other bad things from happening too.
It’s often thought that men LOVE military history and tech, and hardware. Thrillers with lots of tech details about military hardware and Cold War, anti communist propaganda or anti ISIS history and information are marketed to men and may include graphic descriptions of beheadings then evil doers getting their comeuppance.
Is there a winning formula? Some writers, have had good luck with what they have done and they stick with it. But still they had to change it up enough so that they had to make the characters and the circumstances believable. Conan Doyle, and Sherlock Holmes be a “Consulting Detective” which is perfect for versatility. He also gave him Watson which was perfect for steadiness. Anything that came in through the door at Baker street seemed believable and anything Holmes did seemed reasonable for the “greatest living consulting detective.”
But no, I don’t believe there is an overarching formula for a crime story. Or no one is letting go of it if they know it. If you are aiming at a particular audience and a kind of an effect, then you build your world of the book around a mood and atmosphere and you think is rich in a kind of conflict you understand. I met Louise Penny many years ago before she was so hugely famous. I asked her about her books and she told me about her little town and her detective. She said, she knew these people and she wanted to write a “quiet kind of crime story, with a fabulous and interesting detective” and sure enough she did. I found her a very nice person. Very focused and very smart. Much liked Dana Stabenow. She knew what she was doing and what she wanted to do. This seems to me how many popular writers are. They have their eyes on a prize. In the very best way. A focused intelligence.
But back to the formula to making Crime Pay. Create an Interesting world. This is a physical and emotional world. Someplace you know and feel. Someplace you can smell, and hear, and taste. Where you know the people and know the animals and the food they eat. Then Create an authentic inhabitant of that world who has some interesting and unanswered questions in their past. Give them room to grow and change. Don’t box them in. Avoid cliché’s. Try to find qualities you know. Then if you are starting out with a plot of a novel think of it in three acts. I. Introduce the world and the seeds of conflict. II. The beginning of the conflict. III The resolution of the conflict. If you need more structure that that you can have as many as eight chapters per act. A novel should be no less than sixty thousand words. Don’t have more than five main characters. Three is better. Making incidental characters interesting is better than trying to make them all main characters. This crime story will be a series so you can keep filling them out as the series goes on.
Okay so you have caught on that this is basically the formula for any story. And that might be my point. Some people go to crime writing because they think the literary standards are lower in crime writing. That kind of pisses me off. Nothing gets my hackles up more than when I hear some English major ask, “Have you ever tried writing a real novel?” Fuck you,
Crime novels are real novels, just like young adult novels and science fiction novels. Don’t ever think you are doing your readers a favor by going slumming into their genre.
I think there is something that I don’t really like to admit about crime writing, that there is a kind of formula, and it is unstated. It is not experimental, the crime reader wants to be absorbed in a story, they want the satisfaction of rooting for the values of intelligence, and decency in the end. Of course there are complex characters. BUT in the end the resolution has to come down on the side of decency and kindness, openness and yes. True Love. Even if it doesn’t happen to the main character. A broken heart after all is evidence of the expectation of true love. So when the reader puts the book down they may be shaken up by the ride, they know, that they don’t live in a world of existential dread.
This… as much as I’m not sure I like it. Is as close to we come to an unbreakable rule in crime writing.Now I’m sure there are some books that end and you feel like old Leo T. “It’s hopeless, it’s hopeless, Listen to me, I’m consoling you!” But still, if you enjoyed the experience of reading it. If you wrapped up in that chair with the light on above you and finished the damn thing, then there was hope in it somewhere.
The cherry blossoms were brighter today.
Here is a recording I made today reading from Double Indemnity by James M. Cain.
This wet cherry tree
shows more color than it did
yesterday… I think.
jhs
