When what you write isn't what you read

It all started a week or so ago when Jim Winter resuscitated the old "literary/genre" debate in a recent post, and then Ray Banks followed suit in a spirited fashion. But one thing Ray said really struck home with me:

While I'm racking up the Hail Marys, I might as well confess this too: I didn't read a hell of a lot of crime fiction when I embarked on The Big Blind. Jim Thompson was an obvious influence, but then so was Chuck Palahniuk. So was Charles Bukowski. So were Ken Kesey, John Fante, Raymond Carver and Hunter S. Thompson. While arguments could be made for Palahniuk as a genre writer in literary clothing (what's more noir than transgressive fiction?), in the Ira Levin mode, I never set out to be a crime writer.

I can't say I'm terribly surprised to hear this, considering Banks' voice and the way the story of THE BIG BLIND unfolds. But it also brings up a broader question, one that I've been thinking about a lot lately: when do you realize that the kinds of books you love to read aren't necessarily what you're cut out to write?

Obviously, the vast majority of what I read now are crime novels. Though much of it is due to having to write a column every month (never mind fueling this site), I wouldn't keep reading them if I didn't love the best of what the genre has to offer. But I cannot count the number of times that, about a page or two into a given book, a little voice in my brain either goes, "No way I can write like this" or "I'm really not interested in writing like this."

I don't want to get into a long-winded manifesto about it, but I can safely say that at the moment, I'm not terribly interested in writing a very long series, using the traditional story structure of a crime novel (read: whodunit), and especially in spending the bulk of my time and energy building things up to an expected (or unexpected) resolution. And although I am interested in having some kind of crime as a focal point of whatever I write, I suspect that focus will be equally mixed with a more general focus on character conflict, especially of the religious variety.

Which isn't to say that different story ideas won't show up. I hope they do, because I don't want to be one of these people whose best ideas were generated in my earliest years. But since the last three short stories I wrote had some kind of Jewish theme, since the project I'm working on has one, and since the next story I think I want to write will have one, well, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what ultimately interests me.

And that's why it's been so important for me to read outside crime fiction, to find other voices -- fiction or non-fiction -- that speak to me, and that will aid me in discovering my own.  Because much as I love the genre, I'm not certain that the stories I want to tell will necessarily fit within its inherent constraints.

To flip the topic another way, it's interesting to me that a number of crime writers began writing science fiction before they turned their attention to the mystery novel. I chalked it up to their early influences, reading SF novels as teens and being wowed and wanting to write like that. But then, when it didn't work -- in the forms of novels in drawers or those that simply didn't sell -- they tried something different, a much better fit for their natural voices: crime fiction.

But I'd like to hear more about this from those who did make the switch -- what finally convinced you to do so? And for other crime writers, did you always want to write such stories? And how much does what you read match what you write?

Comments

[Donna]

Well, this isn't answering your question satisfactorily Sarah, but I would really, really love to be able to write something noir. I love noir books and film noir, and I consider myself a hard-boiled dame to some extent. But anything I write turns into something stupid and ridiculous. If I tried for something along the lines of Night of The Hunter it would turn out more like Night At The Opera. Only nowhere near as funny. There are books I put down in awe knowing that I would never in a million years be able to write anything as marvellous.
Donna

[Ingrid]

I may be totally wrong about this, but I always thought romance writers turn to mystery because it pays a tad better and gets more respect. For SF writers (more males here?), it may be that there is a wider audience (read sales/publishers). As I said, I may be wrong.

And I neither write about myself, nor do I read the sort of book I write (not all that many in that category). I read pretty widely, with a slight preference for the British police procedural, but tend to shy away from historicals (barely keeping in touch with what is "out there"). Not typical, I think.

[Jim Born]

I read very little crime fiction other that what my friends produce, which is becoming quite a long list. The main reason I gravitate to military and history is that as a cop, I often have a hard time accepting some of the actions of cops in stories.

I like a P.I. on a cold case because I have seen families hire retired cops to look into the disappearance of a family member or death in which no one was charged with a crime. In my experience, both with a federal agency and now the state police, we would never allow a P.I. to investigate a felony and no State Attorney would accept the case unless it was from a police agency.

Since I was never in the military when Tom Clancy describes someone or something I take it on face value. I also like the idea of large scale consequences to actions.

That being said, I still appreciate a good book no matter what the plot or protagonist. I just have to overcome a few points. I do especially stories from the point of view of the criminal or victim. Two excellent examples are Charlie Stella's books and Jason Starr's. Also Ken Bruen's tales of Jack Taylor and the gardai are absolutely the best.

[Kevin Wignall]

It's no secret that I don't read much crime, and that I don't really consider myself a crime writer, or even a thriller writer. I write exactly the kind of stories I'm interested in as a reader - and the two should match to some extent, because the themes that attract you to a book as a reader should also be the themes you're interested in exploring - but I write them in a way that is unusual and leads to me being described as a thriller writer. This is in part, a response to growing up in a Britain in which the literary novel was (and still is - McEwan, Heller) a sort of Hampstead navel gazing exercise - I wanted to cover my themes in a more vital, more visceral way. I suspect there are a lot of writers out there with the same approach - both Ray and Olen spring to mind here - and between us, I think we bring down your notion that you can't cover your themes of interest within the genre. Sure, you might have to avoid the police procedural or the series characters, and you might lose some readers in the process, but the "genre" is as wide and deep as we care to make it.

[Megan]

[Insert some sort of disclaimer here, because I think saying one genre is inherently better or worse than another is about as meaningless as saying literary fiction is inherently better or worse than genre fiction, even if you can get past the initial classification issues.]

Certain varieties of science fiction require skill sets other genres don't. Bringing a real world setting to life is not the same thing as world building from scratch. Some writers are more suited to one or the other.

And yes, there is probably a certain degree of market pressure, a desire to break out of the genre ghetto. I think there's a perception that it's an easier tranistion to make if your books have a gun on the cover instead of a space ship.

[Laura]

What Kevin said: At least, the "wide and deep" part. I didn't have much experience with the Hampstead navel-gazing experience. I read a lot; I read widely. I also spend a lot of time trying to decide what a crime novel is and tying myself up in Potter "I know it when I see it" Stewart knots. I don't think "Samaritan" is a crime novel, for its true climax has absolutely nothing to do with the attack on Ray. "Mystic River" is one, I'm pretty sure. My work? Absolutely. The only thing I can tell you for sure is that I like stories and I like writers with authoritative voices, who assure me from the very first sentence that they're in charge of the narrative that's about to unwind.

There was an article in the New York Times earlier this week about the various television shows headed for cliffhangers -- and how their writers didn't necessarily know what was going to happen. And, in fact, might have changed some plot points (killing a popular character, for example) because of fan reaction. This was portrayed as if it were all very positive and wonderfully artistic, but to me it simply established why I don't watch Desperate Housewives or Lost. Yes, I know about Dickens and the serial novel -- and I'm tempted to follow Gregg Hurwitz's tip and subscribe to the Stanford program that distributes Dickens in the form in which his work originally appeared -- but I still think this seat-of-the-pants kind of storytelling is a plague.

Good crime novels, by necessity, have to sort this stuff out or they're going to be godawful. Good mainstream novels should, too, and some do; Lolita is brilliantly plotted. (If you haven't read the annotated version, which tracks Nabokov's scrupulously fair clues about the identity of Lolita's "abductor," I highly recommend it, although some of Appel's notes are very, very silly.) But a lot of promising novels end so abruptly and unsatisfying that one has the sense that the writer had to evacuate rather suddenly.

I ran over to my bookshelves to look for literary novels that disappointed for this reason. But I'm not apt to keep such books, given that space is finite. I did find a lot of mainstream books with wonderful earned endings: Little Children, The Night Listener, The Water Method Man, Love Warps the Mind a Little . . .

Oh, and to answer Sarah's question: I started out writing horrible, precious little stories, bad imitations of Carver and Bobbie Ann Mason, stories in which nothing ever happened. My first semi-competent effort was about a middle-aged county tax appraiser in Waco, Texas -- I was fascinated with the tax appraisal system in Texas at the time. No, seriously. But even that had a tiny mystery in it, a secret withheld by the newly arrived sister-in-law. Like Donna, I later yearned for a noir, hardboiled voice. But it just wasn't to be.

[Lisais]

I read a wide variety of books. I'll read four or five books from one genre, but then I'll skip genres for five or six books. I might go through six or seven genre/sub-genres before I'll repeat a genre. When I hear, "Write what you read," I sometimes feel perplexed. How do I choose just one genre, one set of books from those I may be reading?

I like what Keven said about themes. Even though I read books from a wide variety of genres, I do tend to gravitate towards books with similar underlying themes.

My writing may be different in tone and genre from any of the books I'm reading, but deep down there is that theme coming through. So I guess I do write what I read.

[Michael Bracken]

I'm one of those crime fiction writers who started out as a science fiction writer, and I made the transition long before I ever wrote a novel.

An editor at a men's magazine returned one of my short stories with a note that the publisher didn't want any science fiction. So I wrote a mystery, and he bought it. I wrote another mystery, and he bought it. I wrote a third mystery. He didn't buy it, but the editor at Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine did.

When my first three mystery short stories sold quickly at a time when my science fiction short stories kept returning like boomerangs on speed, I shifted genres.

I write in many genres now, but crime fiction has become my favorite, to read and to write.

[Steve Hockensmith]

The second-to-last paragraph of Sarah's blog entry really nails my experience with science fiction: I loved it as a kid, couldn't quite lick it as a writer. Like Michael above, I switched to mysteries from sf and almost immediately started selling stories.

Why the change in luck? To grossly oversimplify, I think sf tends to be about Big Ideas and technology while mysteries are about Little Details and human nature. Big Ideas and technology are tough for me. Little Details and people I can handle. (By the way, this is not meant to imply that the best sf writers don't write strong, interesting characters or that the best mystery writers don't tackle Big Ideas. Cut me some slack -- I'm grossly oversimplifying here, remember?)

I think crime fiction also allows writers to use zippy, colorful, coloquial language in a way sf and fantasy writers usually can't. The otherworldliness of sf or the mythic quality of fantasy would be seriously undercut by a style that's too flip or cynical or contemporary. I think that's why after reading science fiction for a decade I only found one (arguably) sf writer whose *voice* really struck a chord with me: Kurt Vonnegut. On the other hand, when I decided to explore the mystery genre (having read nothing of it save Arthur Conan Doyle) THE BIG SLEEP was the first book I picked up -- and I immediately fell in love with it and knew I'd found my home.

I still read science fiction novels from time to time, and I find I actually enjoy them much more now that I'm not trying to write sf. I think the Spinach Factor accounts for that. These days I read a lot of books because I feel I have to. I want to check out Writer X, I'm curious about Technique Y, I need to educate myself about Subgenre Z. In other words, I'm reading these books because they'll be "good for me" (as a writer). After a while, that starts to feel like work, not pleasure. When I read something that has little or no overt connection to my own writing, it can be liberating -- I'm just reading for the pure *fun* of it again. And that's probably more helpful and inspiring than sticking to what's "good for me" all the time.

-Steve

[Trey R. Barker]

Interesting question. I tend to read fairly widely, all kinds of fiction and tons of non-fiction and written investigative journalism. And while I have written widely, spending years as a daily journalist, I don't write as widely as I used to. I read quite a bit of historical fiction and I know I'll never be able to write in that field as well as a Gary Jennings. I read the occasional cozy novel but don't have any desire to write in that style.

When I started reading, it was mostly horror so that's what I wrote first. And while I still sometimes write a horror tale or two, my interest in that genre has waned, I've no idea why. There are horror writers like Tom Picirrilli, Graham Joyce, Tim Lebbon, a few others, who I read constantly, but their work tends to be less about the scary thing under the bed than about their characters' reactions to that thing. That is what the best writing does, genre or not.

I am interested in Sarah's idea of not write with a traditional structure building toward the expected/unexpected ending, though my writing doesn't generally work that way. Nor am I particularly enthusiastic about a long series. It amazes me there are writers who have written the same character for twenty or twenty-five books. If that works for them, great. I don't think it would for me.

And to chime in on the SF bit: I never read much science fiction. My reading was horror and anything about the US Cavalry...I'm still not sure why.

[Christopher Gooch]

I have never really known anything other than crime/mystery fiction. It started when I was nine or ten, reading Hardy Boys (and even, heaven forbid, Nancy Drew), then progressed to the Holmes stories, Christie, Alistair MacLean (still a good writer), Erle Stanley Gardner, John Dickson Carr, Chandler, Stanley Ellin (the master of the mystery short story) and so on.

But that's not to say I haven't read non-mystery books--of course I did read Twain and Dickens and Hemmingway and so on while in high school...

For me, I can only say that my writing is that much better because I've read so widely and so much within the mystery genre. My thinking goes something along the line of "If you haven't read it, how can you write it?" And yet I do appreciate the originality someone can bring to the table if they haven't read any mysteries.

Look at Patricia Cornwell (whom I haven't read, so I can't say anything about her books)--she claims that she doesn't read any crime fiction, she just writes it.

Steve mentioned THE BIG SLEEP. I read that not too long ago, and I thought it was pretty good. But then I read Stephen King's ON WRITING and he talks about the huge whole in it (WARNING SPOILER). The guy who was found dead in his car that ran off the dock (Oscar, perhaps?), was the murderer's boyfriend...how does that make sense?

Anyway, I was reading about the movie a couple days ago and I learned that Humphrey Boggart was having a lot of trouble understanding that, so he wrote to Chandler asking whether it was suicide or murder. Chandler wrote back, and I'm paraphrasing, "Dammit, I forgot all about him."

END OF SPOILER.

Rather amusing, isn't it, that Chandler--whom some people think is the best--was such a sloppy writer. :)

[Steve Hockensmith]

Yeah, that "But who killed so-and-so?" hole in THE BIG SLEEP comes up all the time. You can find holes or slow spots or contrivances in a lot of Chandler's novels. But I still wouldn't call him a sloppy writer. He was a sloppy *plotter*. At its best, his prose -- word by word, line by line -- is anything but sloppy.

It was Chandler's voice that wowed me (and still wows me), not his ability to weave in clues and plant red herrings and unmask a clever killer and so on. Obviously, Christopher (or Stephen King) would read a book like THE BIG SLEEP with a different eye than a mystery newbie would. Because there was so much there that was fresh and appealing to me, I didn't even notice the flaws. Which brings us back to the discussion at hand by demonstrating what can be gained from reading something new and diferent and off our particular beaten path: the excitement (and inspiration) of discovery.

This message has been brought to you by the Raymond Chandler Defense League -- sticking up for The Man since 1959.

-Steve

[Christopher Gooch]

Oh, heck yeah, Steve. I didn't mean to disparage Chandler in anyway. You're definitely right about the distinction--he was a sloppy plotter but a heck of a writer.

Actually, the only reason I would have noticed that huge hole was because I read about it. Frankly, when I finished it, I thought it was a good read and was oblivious of the "mistake".

A fellow member of the Chandler defense team...

Christopher

[Steve Hockensmith]

Welcome to Team Chandler, Christopher! Now there's two of us!

-Steve

[Gaia]

If you haven't already you should read "Cast of Shadows" by Kevin Guilfoyle. It's an incredible story instigated by a crime that avoids crime genre cliches and also has signifcant religious and philosphical themes. It's a book with an incredible amount of layers, just the kind of book you're talking about.