​A noted Midwestern creative writing instructor offers a unique approach to storytelling. He tells his charges to put aside all trendy plotlines (Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train e.g —driven by an untrustworthy narrator) as well as genre formulas.  Instead, he insists that you try not to write. When whatever is going on out there in the world becomes so unbearable you find yourself saying, “I can’t take this anymore,” that’s the sure sign of readiness. You now have a viable generator that will sustain you.  
In a way, this tack is reminiscent of Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar winning screenplay for Network (1976). Here we have the ravings of Howard Beal, a news anchor who can’t abide the commercialization of the news and exhorts viewers everywhere to stick their heads out the windows and shout “I’m mad as hell and I can’t take it anymore!” There was so much going on at the time to rile people up that folks everywhere were shown opening their windows and wholeheartedly following Howard Beal’s directive.    
There are countless other examples. Like Michael Clayton (2007) Tony Gilroy’s Oscar nominated screenplay with best actor winner George Clooney in the leading role. In this tale, Clayton, deployed as a fixer for a prestigious law firm, starts to have second thoughts when he’s sent out one evening to get a client “off the hook” after a hit-and-run accident. He finds the man safe and cozy in his upscale McMansion claiming the victim had no business crossing the dark street in the rain. Later on, the firm’s chief litigator has a breakdown while representing a major chemical company during a multi-billion-dollar class action suit. It turns out this seasoned advocate is also having a crisis of conscience, realizing the company’s pesticides have had disastrous effects, and is convinced he’s been summoned to make amends.
The lesson centers on what it takes for a believable character to finally take on the powers that be.  In one telling instance, as the forces of duplicity begin to close in on him, Clayton pulls over, drawn by the sight of a trio of horses at twilight grazing at the top of a rise; perhaps because they’re untainted, natural and free. This cinematic shot is all the more powerful because it’s both symbolic and wordless. Clayton no sooner reaches the horses when his car blows up far below; the chief litigator is subsequently done away with; and Clayton’s quest becomes that much more urgent.  
It’s interesting to note that in real life this kind of intrepidness doesn’t always hold. Not long ago, a junior Republican Senator from Arizona, upset with the current machinations of the White House, addressed his colleagues in the Senate, urging them to take heart and speak truth to power. Getting no response, he shrugged off his campaign as a hopeless cause. In contrast, during a point in Lewis Foster’s best original story Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), a novice junior senator (Jimmy Stewart) collides with the political corruption in Washington, crying out on the Senate floor that “a lost cause is the only cause worth fighting for!” After a futile, uphill battle, this naïve common man eventually triumphs.
In this same light, today’s #MeToo- like movements  have finally, at long last, been set in motion as women banded  together for a hitherto lost cause.  
As it happens, in my recent effort entitled Miranda and the D-Day Caper I literally couldn’t take it anymore, longing for days gone by when the small town virtues of truth, decency and the longing to right a great wrong were easily identified with. When two cousins from the Heartland left their comfort zone to take on the powers that be, became thwarted at every turn and, finally, when all seems lost, blew the whistle.
I guess I’m such an incurable storyteller that I couldn’t help myself and had to find some way to step in.            

An example of a tale devoid of characters with a life of their own is Raymond Chandler’s The High Window. Unlike his previous Philip Marlowe caper, Chandler settled for one-dimensional stereotypes.   
 For example, at the outset Marlowe is summoned by a wealthy crotchety old woman to recover a vintage coin. During their first exchange, in her crotchety way, the lady defends her wine drinking and snaps, “It’s medicine for my asthma.” In turn, Marlowe narrates, I swung a leg over my knee hoping it wouldn’t hurt her delicate condition. At this point, it was clear that Marlowe would always be a wise-guy, whoever he encountered would be typecast, and there would be no one for the reader to identify with.  Whatever happened was scripted and never involved the interplay of self-generating human beings with all their flaws and contradictions.    
In contrast, in his first detective novel The Big Sleep, Chandler’s Marlowe was changeable:  by turns wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious. Moreover, there was the sense that Marlow was keenly aware that pain hurt, life really mattered, and you never knew what you were going to run into.  He found himself immediately taken with his client the General, a dying millionaire with “only a few locks of dry white hair clinging to his scalp,” a man who spoke slowly, “carefully using whatever strength he had left.” It seems that one of the General’s unpredictable and troublesome daughters was being blackmailed. In addition, he’d lost touch with a dear friend and wished to clear up both these loose ends before he passed away. Soon enough, the reader comes upon intimations of kidnapping, pornography, seduction and murder as a number of characters, working at cross-purposes, send the action winging in different directions.
Arguably, the prototype for freewheeling characters in detective fiction is Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. In this edgy, breakthrough novel there’s always a subtext beneath the surface behavior. As Sam Spade endeavors to catch the person who killed his partner Miles Archer during a stakeout, Spade runs into a trio of colorful characters like Brigid O’Shaughnessy who is so deceitful, she seems to be lying even when she may be telling the truth and leaves Spade perplexed to the point of even falling in love with her.  
Years later, and by extension, the playwright Edward Albee confided to a handful of us graduate students that he’d had a problem with his play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The circumstances centered on a jaded couple he called George and Martha, stuck in a small New England college campus, who’d invited a newly arrived younger couple over for fun and games.  The payoff, Albee assumed, was the outlandish behavior this setup would unleash. However, reaching an impasse, he realized the results were actually flat and predictable. Soon enough, George and Martha imaginatively came to him and threatened to quit if he didn’t back off. In truth, the pair of them claimed, they were not only unpredictable, they had deep dark secrets percolating underneath and all hell would burst loose if, and only if, he’d let go of his outline and set them free. Albee complied and the fresh and compelling results can be seen in the movie version starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. The possible link with the Falcon may stem from the influence the volatile playwright and longtime companion Lilian Hellman had on Hammett’s view of characterization. Admittedly, that’s just a notion.  
On a more modest and personal note, I recently attended a book fair in New York and, at the same time, was having trouble with my crime novel Murder Run. The story centers on a laconic handyman named Jed who’d been falsely accused of the untimely death of a woman he’d been working for in the Connecticut hills, a choreographer who had a studio in New York who’d taken a hiatus for her health. Jed had good reason to believe the real culprit was a mobster who drove down the night in question and then took off back to the mean streets. Eventually Jed found himself in New York completely at a loss. At the same time, there I was, sauntering around the Little Italy section on a bright spring morning when I ran into a stocky character who called himself Johnny Diamonds and announced, “This is my territory, man.” Then a fourteen-year-old scamp named Angie came along and said, “If you’re lost, mister, I can show you around for a little coin.” I began to see that this tough little girl could be developed into Jed’s sidekick and guide, a figure like Johnny Diamonds could be the key to the world of the local Mafia, and anything could happen as Jed proceeded down this path.   
Perhaps the novelist E.L. Doctorow put it best when he said that writing fiction was like driving  at night with only the headlight beams to guide you. You know where you’re headed but have no idea of the turns you’ll make, who you’ll meet along the way, and what influence they’ll have on your journey.
For my part, after I create an intriguing springboard and open-ended structure, I rely on a set of vital characters to surprise me and keep me going. Or, as Rilke, the Bohemian novelist and poet wrote, “All art is the result of being in danger, of going as far as one can go and beyond.”   

Given the absence of an editor or mentor while in the throes of a new effort, there’s always an impulse to check out a new set of guidelines. Perhaps a fresh approach has come along recently or clues to certain aspects you may have overlooked. Or perhaps a master of the craft has decided to reveal a few hitherto concealed pointers that’s just what you needed right now while wrestling with a story that’s still in a developmental phase.  
However, just because a book is an addition to the slew of handbooks on the market at the moment doesn’t mean it’s worth examining. And just because a well-known master in the field has come out with a sequel doesn’t mean it’s just a rehash and more of the same old same old.
As a case in point, someone (who shall go nameless) has come out with a “snowflake” method. Not only is the book self-published by a writer with no listed professional credentials, nowhere to be found is any explanation or justification of the book’s title. To make matters worse, the reader is expected to identify with Goldilocks as she wrestles with standard formats and interplay with the three bears until she discovers the marketability of the best approach which, at a guess, is the still unjustified “snowflake” path to success. Perhaps if you wanted to wade through all the one-star reviews on Amazon you might come across some higher-star reviews that reveal a possible benefit of going through all the trouble. But you’d still have to relate to Goldilocks. Good luck with that prospect.
On the other hand, Walter Mosley, the acclaimed writer of the Easy Rawlins mystery series and recipient of the Mystery Writers Grand Master Award, a Grammy and an Edgar Award, has just come out with Elements of Fiction, a compact but insight-rich treatise on the craft and process of mastering the essential elements. A work that never for an instance promises a sure-fire shortcut to cranking out a saleable product.
Take this passage as an example: 
“The novel is bigger than the writer’s head. It is a mountain and she is an ant. It is a globular planet when he at first thought it was a vast flat plain. A novel is a realm of discovery, a place where the characters and the writer and the evening news come together to create something they had not, they could not have known beforehand.”
Or this one:
“Why write a novel if the only goal is to inform, instruct, or explain? You believe in the politics of this story the way a farmer believes in the spring. But what does that famer think when she looks out over the distance and sees a mile-wide tornado bearing down on her farm? That is the right question. A killer storm had descended to destroy our better selves, our hopes and beliefs. That is the mood and key to this particular story.”
And now we’re getting somewhere.   

If you’ve read enough editions of the weekly New York Times book review section, perused the ads and taken into account the gamut of one-to-five-star reviews of current mainstream fiction on Amazon, it’s apparent that “engrossing page-turners” are either the order of the day or a chief component of stories that seem to make the grade. By the same token, it follows that tales that don’t immediately draw readers in and keep them engrossed are off the mark.
Moreover, there are promotions all over social media like Facebook promising writers “Foolproof ways to keep your readers in suspense,” “. . . establish that all-too vital disturbance and sustain it,” and so forth. It’s as if, given the competition, novelists  have to make certain that the graphics on the cover lure buyers to turn immediately to the first page. If that opening doesn’t do the trick, or once they get the book home and reach for it on their nightstand and settle in, the narrative doesn’t keep them up at night, the jig is up, the game is over.  
As a case in point, Big Sky, best-seller Kate Atkinson’s new venture featuring her popular British detective Jackson Brodie has apparently let her readers down.  Admittedly, I myself was looking forward to Brodie’s latest foray and willing to forgive Atkinson’s usual flaws, but it seems her loyal readers weren’t able to put up with a plot that’s slow to emerge, lack of  mystery or suspense until late in the narrative, plodding pace, Brodie’s pondering over his relationships, ambivalence over his chosen profession, random thoughts , parenthetical stream of consciousness, memories, plus a barrage of characters and loose threads.
In other words, Atkinson seems to have deprived her lead character with any sense of drive and thereby kept her faithful fans from wanting to turn the page. And, as a reader, the same thing has happened to me.  New books pile up on my nightstand because I have no compulsion to go on. I seem to have an abiding need to relate to the leading character’s plight, inner thoughts and, at the same time, be drawn in to the setting and the life.
For what it’s worth, this need has spilled over into my own works in progress. For what it’s worth, here’s a revision I made when I sensed my lead character was running all over the place just for the sake of plot. In this brief passage, I stopped and asked myself, Why couldn’t Josh be driven, take a moment to ponder, and take another moment to engage with the little girl next door as part of the natural flow of circumstances?
But all this equivocating was a complete waste of time. He’d changed his name, written countless profiles for the paper attempting to get lost in other people’s lives and, despite all that, still wound up under the gun.
Taking a time out, he drifted over to the picket fence and tried to get Amanda to hold still for a moment in order to get her to look out for things while he was gone. As usual, however, she was too frisky to engage in what passes for a normal conversation.  She simply had to demonstrate  new variations on her dance solo the choreographer gave her which now included twirls, high kicks and jazz movements she called step-ball-change.
“Isn’t that cool?” she asked, returning to the  fence. “Dance lady added it ‘cause she thought I could handle it and it might be a show stopper. How about that?”
“Pretty nifty, kid. Pretty soon all you’ll need is an agent.”
“You think so? Hey, I know what that is. Mom told me if I keep it up, she might take me to auditions for that musical Annie in Asheville. Now wouldn’t that be something?”
“Sure would,” said Josh, realizing for the umpteenth time the amazing difference between himself and Amanda when he was the same age. “Listen, I’m going to be out of town for the next couple of weeks and I’d like to hire you to keep an eye out. Make sure of things like checking for poison oak crawling up the trellis by the back porch taking over the morning glory. There are sprays and stuff in the tool shed.”
“That’s what that weird cousin said. I mean about looking high and low for you. So’s you could help out ‘cause something came up back north and you’re needed.”
“That’s right,” said Josh as the anxiety kicked in again. “Something pressing came up.” He tried to keep his response easygoing, brushing off anything worrisome. As if this was just a chat between a harmless nice-guy with a perky little girl next door. A sweet bit of Americana, nestled in a quiet idyllic neighborhood, embraced by the Blue Ridge and the rosy hue of twilight afterglow.  

​Back in the day, Fritz Perls, the noted Gestalt therapist, proclaimed that none of us were put on this earth to live up to other people’s expectations. It was vital in terms of self-realization to be true to yourself and your genuine values and intentions.
All that is well and good unless you’re a writer of crime fiction (and any other genre for that matter) and have to contend with considerations like establishing a platform and a readership, a pursuit some have likened to identifying and appealing to a special, designated tribe. And that, of course, has little to do with the process of creation and, say for the sake of argument, bringing a compelling mystery to life.
In short, when you send a published work out there, even after you polished it and worked out all the kinks and holes in tandem with your editor’s insights and suggestions, 5 star and 1 and 2 star reviews may likely begin to appear under “books” in places like Amazon.
For example, after you’ve done your level best to insure that Miranda, your unwitting but intrepid amateur sleuth is believable, vulnerable, and comprised of many of the inconsistencies that make us all human, some readers will complain that she’s too scatterbrained. In this particular case, a few housewives from the Midwest were disappointed that this lead character didn’t resemble “the tough feisty gal” traits that Sue Grafton’s detective exhibits. In essence, you’ve left mystery buffs down and haven’t lived up to what they had every right to expect.
On the other hand, some readers award your efforts with a glowing 5 star because, at long last, you’ve provided them with a flawed character they can relate to. Other readers key primarily on plot and twists and surprises, and still others focus on a compelling sense of place and grade you on how closely your work adheres to the tenets of noted British writer P.D. James.
Just for fun, I recently presented a successful New York crime writer with this particular dilemma and case in point. She wrote back that as long as I was garnering this range of reviews everything was fine. “If you’re getting all 4 and 5 star reviews, it’s time to worry. Either all your reviews are coming from friends and relatives or you’ve sold out and are writing formulaic stuff and what’s the point in that?”   

This handbook promises a set of “innovative tools for perfecting fiction, captivating readers, and achieving success.”  What it actually offers are 250 pages of checklists based on the premise that you have to perfect and master seven skills, including concept, character, structure, scene work, dialogue, tone and theme, before setting out to conquer this special world. Which is like saying t before embarking on some beckoning Appalachian Trail, you first have to earn a certain number of scouting merit badges.
In rebuttal, the first thing that comes to mind is Anne Lamott’s iconic book Bird by Bird. At the outset, she argues that “perfectionism kills creativity.” She urges all aspiring writers of fiction to follow their heart, intrepidly out on their journey, keep forging ahead and write a lousy first draft with no thought given to the final result. By the same token, F. Scott Fitzgerald famously advised a young aspirant that it takes “the soul of a peasant” to plow ahead no matter what conditions you encounter. Before embarking, you could of course ask yourself if the trip was potentially going to be worth the candle—why here, why now and so what? All and all, however, it’s hard to imagine any creative person wanting to perfect some checklist of skills beforehand, sustained by a vague promise of success (whatever that means) plus an even more vague guaranty that this effort in the long run will “captivate readers.”
Instead, you might be far better off to take into account what inspired and sustained the making of one of your favorite books. Take Harper Lee’s beloved To Kill a Mockingbird. The setting (which isn’t even on Matt Bird’s checklist), namely that of Depression era 1930’s in Lee’s tiny home town Alabama, encompassing all that conjured up—bouts of racism, making due as a child with  games like rolling around in a worn automobile tire, spending hours at the courthouse watching her lawyer father plying his trade, etc—continued to haunt her. And even so, the initial results of her “lousy first draft” was a series of vignettes. Still and all, underneath it all was the rich drive, authenticity and compelling memories which prompted an editor to guide her over the course of a year in New York to turn these vignettes and unique voice into a memorable narrative.
Needless to say, the examples of beginning with an enduring quest are too numerous to recount. As for Matt Bird’s itemized format, it couldn’t hurt to skim through the pages, note which ones may apply during moments when the story fails to come alive, try them out and see whether or not it makes a marked difference. Then again, you might be far better off taking a page from Harper Lee, and seeking out insightful editorial advice.          

Though it’s never been spelled out, my editor at the publishing house and I have a tacit understanding that there’s something filmic at play in good crime fiction. Along with the basic factors, it’s as if there’s also an imaginary cameraman at work looking for something provocative to shoot--zooming in, tracking, taking in the entire scene with a wide angle lens, etc.
In fact, often when I pull back as a narrator, I’m prompted to bring this moment to life instead and pick up on the action.  
For example, in the latest draft of a work in progress, there was a point where I summed up a long-lost cousin’s predicament by simply stating that Miranda (the unwitting sleuth) underscored the situation one last time and moved on.   
The editor felt I should let the moment play out which led to this revision:      
“Look,” Miranda finally said, “I hate to break it to you, kiddo, but the facts are the facts. Cindy at the motel swore it was a guy on a motorcycle who snuck into your room at the crack of dawn. Then tossed your cat into an airport rental where he crawled up by the rear window as the car took off. The upshot is, right-wing pundit Russ Mathews damn well was the driver. He’d obviously flown all the way down from New York to keep you under wraps one way or another.”
As Skip sat there in the passenger seat in stunned silence, she couldn’t help but notice a white compact pulling in a few rows back of the entrance to the ER. It could very well have been that selfsame Toyota Corolla airport rental.
In terms of these frequent prods, the only cinematic justification my editor ever gave was an occasional “given your background” (theater and film), “your genre” and/or “your style” (highly visual and self-generating).
All told, what’s gratifying about this approach is the feedback I’ve generally received from readers. Take a response from Moon Games, my latest foray into the cozy genre. A lady mystery buff from the heartland was taken by “so much going on.” She felt she had to keep alert, like a moviegoer who didn’t want to slip out to the concession stand and miss something. Upon reaching the twisty climax, she declared she was happy she stuck with all the scenes.
Like everything else, seeing the unfolding tale from a movie perspective is no guarantee of success.  However, employing it as part of your writing arsenal surely helps  to keep the reader engrossed. 

Imaginative Dragonfly Reads   April 2019
I love a good mystery and any time I can get my hands on a very good one I get excited. Moon Games was no different. From the characters to the heart of the story, Frome has done a wonderful job creating such a beautiful mysterious piece of literature.
I was confused some, but I could tell it wasn't myself alone. The characters confusion jumped out and grabbed me. A wonderful read filled with such gripping description.
​
Excerpt from Moon Games
The wind picked up yet again, joined by spatters of cold rain and the rustle of leaves from the encircling shrub. 
All at once, the lantern flicked off, a scream cut through the wind and spatters. The cries became muffled, replaced by the grunts of a hulking figure clambering up the knoll, coming directly toward him with something writhing and flailing over its back.
For one interminable moment, he caught sight of her eyes, frozen, terrified, beseeching him.
Reflexively, despite every decent intention deep in his bones, Harry dropped the Maglite, turned and ran down the slope, tripping and stumbling, falling to his knees, righting himself, smacking into a brush that scraped his cheek. Rushing headlong now, smacking into more brush and banging his elbow, he kept it up, twisted his ankle but hobbled forward fast as he could until he reached his station wagon. Squirming behind the wheel, he fumbled for his keys, dropped them on the mat, groped around, snatched them up, grinded the ignition, set both front and back wipers going and shot forward hitting the trunk of a tree. He backed up into the hedgerow, turned sharply, not daring to flip on the headlights, scraped another tree and slid onto the narrow lane.
He switched on the low beams so he could see where he was going in the drizzle and fog and began making his way down. Dull headlight beams flashed behind his rear window and faded.
With his mind racing and the wipers thwacking away as the rain lashed across the windshield, he careened down the zig-zagging lane and thought of the car that was wedged under the branches parked on a downward angle and the hulking figure carrying his prey over his shoulder shambling toward it. And her eyes, those beseeching eyes.  

As a college teacher specializing in novel writing, Dufresne has filled this book with exercises and passages relating his own personal experiences.  He does so as if making the process akin to delving into lessons learned, unfinished business and material at hand or just out of reach. As if reassuring any and all aspiring writers that it’s just a matter of tapping one’s own life while mining for material and then keeping at it and polishing the results.
In effect, Dufresne is just a guy and look what he went through to get to this point. You’ve probably had similar doubts, relationships and/or struggles. If not, turn to one of the exercises like coopting family stories or go back and recall your first love, etc.
However, it’s a sure bet that none of this is going to sustain you and give you that abiding soul of a peasant Fitzgerald spoke of. None of this will carry you through the seasons until the seeding, tilling and plowing in all kinds of weather comes to something you can truly harvest. Moreover, examine one of Dufresne’s novels and it becomes obvious that his personalized dilemmas may or  may not be generally  relatable, let alone his idiosyncratic and somewhat meandering style.
Even in terms of his reliance on memory, pick up a copy of Pat Conroy’s notable Prince of Tides and it’s highly doubtful that anyone else could have employed that flowery style while, at the same time, intensifying personal recollections with imaginary, horrific, southern- gothic traumas—events that psychologically needed to come to light in order for his tidewater protagonist to go on.  
On the positive side however, if you’re more or less just starting out and able to skim through these chapters, you can pick up little gems like “even after you’ve written a second or third draft, you may just be beginning. You’ve still got endless problems to deal with like inconsistent characters and a sputtering through-line for a plot that has to be dealt with.”  
In other words, if you’re sufficiently haunted to begin with and have to work through this dynamic come what may, you might be able to pick up pointers here and there to see you through.  

Though it’s never been spelled out, my editor at the publishing house and I have a tacit understanding that there’s something filmic at play in good crime fiction. Along with the basic factors, it’s as if there’s also an imaginary cameraman at work looking for something provocative to shoot--zooming in, tracking, taking in the entire scene with a wide angle lens, etc.

In fact, often when I pull back as a narrator, I’m prompted to bring this moment to life instead and pick up on the action.  

For example, in the latest draft of a work in progress, there was a point where I summed up a long-lost cousin’s predicament by simply stating that Miranda (the unwitting sleuth) underscored the situation one last time and moved on.
  
The editor felt I should let the moment play out which led to this revision:
     
“Look,” Miranda finally said, “I hate to break it to you, kiddo, but the facts are the facts. Cindy at the motel swore it was a guy on a motorcycle who snuck into your room at the crack of dawn. Then tossed your cat into an airport rental where he crawled up by the rear window as the car took off. The upshot is, right-wing pundit Russ Mathews damn well was the driver. He’d obviously flown all the way down from New York to keep you under wraps one way or another.”
As Skip sat there in the passenger seat in stunned silence, she couldn’t help but notice a white compact pulling in a few rows back of the entrance to the ER. It could very well have been that selfsame Toyota Corolla airport rental.

In terms of these frequent prods, the only cinematic justification my editor ever gave was an occasional “given your background” (theater and film), “your genre” and/or “your style” (highly visual and self-generating).

All told, what’s gratifying about this approach is the feedback I’ve generally received from readers. Take a response from Moon Games, my latest foray into the cozy genre. A lady mystery buff from the heartland was taken by “so much going on.” She felt she had to keep alert, like a moviegoer who didn’t want to slip out to the concession stand and miss something. Upon reaching the twisty climax, she declared she was happy she stuck with all the scenes.

Like everything else, seeing the unfolding tale from a movie perspective is no guarantee of success.  However, employing it as part of your writing arsenal surely helps  to keep the reader engrossed.