Bottled Lightning – Jack Reacher, Larceny and Lessons for Writers.

I have a confession to make.

I was a Chris McQuarrie fan before I was a Lee Child fan.

Who’s Chris McQuarrie?

Some of you may have heard of a little movie called The Way of The Gun. It had a small theatrical release and nobody went to see it. I did. I was first in the line for tickets. This was because the movie was written and directed by McQuarrie. And I thought, and still think, that McQuarrie is a genius. The first script he got produced was for a little film he wanted to make with his buddy, Bryan Singer. That script was The Usual Suspects which earned him the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The Writers Guild of America voted the screenplay for The Usual Suspects at #35 on the list of best screenplays of all time. The Usual Suspects is a heist movie, the title comes from a line in Casablanca and most of the main characters take their names from guys that McQuarrie worked with in a legal firm.

The Way of The Gun has its flaws, it’s not perfect, but it’s vastly underrated. Two criminals, played by Ryan Phillippe and Benicio Del Toro, plan to kidnap the surrogate mother who is carrying a child for a wealthy couple and hold her to ransom. They get a lot more than they bargained for. It’s a modern day Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid with a final shootout that rivals The Wild Bunch. One of the things I love about The Way of The Gun is the interaction between Phillippe and Del Toro. A lot of their communication is non-verbal: a wink, a nod, and all the time you can see them thinking their way through the problems thrown at them. It’s an incredible piece of writing and film making and James Caan is superb in this film – some of his best work is on screen here.

When I heard Lee Child’s Jack Reacher was going to be made into a movie, I secretly prayed that McQuarrie would write and direct it.

He did.

I thought there would be no-one better to capture Reacher on screen. And you know what? He does it. He nails the heart of that character.

Now, I can already hear you shouting – ‘BUT JACK REACHER IS FOURTEEN FEET TALL, BUILT OUT OF DETROIT STEEL AND THE BROKEN BONES OF HIS ENEMIES AND TOM CRUISE IS A MIDGET FROM A COLGATE ADVERT.’

I will admit to being surprised at Tom Cruise being cast as Jack Reacher. It’s a little like casting Arnold Schwarzenegger as the lead in a biopic on Charlie Chaplin.

I’ve been in the room when Lee Child discussed this and I agree with him that there are not a lot of lead A List actors who are anywhere near Reacher’s physical size. The actors that are that size aren’t great actors to begin with. There are a few who would’ve been closer in size to Tom Cruise but it was a case of ‘is this movie ever going to be made? We have a star and a shoot ready.’

Lee Child has had to endure a fair amount of criticism but casting isn’t really his decision anyway and I can completely understand his reasons for that film being made. The movie adaptation will never live up to some fans expectations.

But in my opinion, humble as it may be, McQuarrie and Cruise captured Reacher, and in fact they captured the most difficult aspect of his character to realise on screen.

For me, what makes Jack Reacher isn’t his size, it’s his mind.

Reacher outthinks his opponents in fights before a single punch is thrown. He thinks through the problems that he encounters in the books to figure out what’s really going on. Those are the best moments in any Reacher thriller.

How do you capture someone thinking on screen?

You hire Christopher McQuarrie.

I really enjoyed the Reacher film and I hope there’s more to come.

For me, McQuarrie and Cruise bottled a fair amount of Reacher lightning.

Feel free to disagree, it’s a movie, it’s an interpretation of a character, not a theft.

Speaking of theft, I’ve been robbed by two films in recent years. Robbed of my time, lied to, and generally I got played.

Spoiler Alert. I’m, going to talk about The Grey and The Amazing Spider Man 2. If you haven’t seen The Amazing Spider Man 2 and you might want to see it, then don’t read on. If you’ve seen TASM2 but you’ve not watched Liam Neeson in The Grey – then I urge you to read on because you’re not missing anything.

Sorry Liam.

I’m a big Liam Neeson fan; I’m from Northern Ireland after all, but Christ on a bike, The Grey infuriated me like no other film I’ve ever seen and it’s not Liam’s fault. He was good in the film. The film itself is poor.

Now, a lot of people liked it. I know Harry Knowles and a couple of his buddies over at Ain’t It Cool News, really loved it.

I hated it and it’s largely because of the trailer.

Liam is a marksman who works for an oil company in some Artic wasteland. He protects the other employees from wild animal attacks, chiefly wolves.

For this film, I willing ignored the widely held knowledge that wolves are terrified of people and rarely do they attack anyone. That wasn’t my bug bear. In the trailer we see Liam on a plane, with around twenty other guys and the plane goes down, they land in the frozen wasteland and about twelve or so survive.

So far, the trailer, and the movie itself up to this point, is setting up a survivor story. I love a good survivor story; man bonds with man against the elements in an effort to survive beyond all the odds. It’s a story about hope, friendship, and the triumph of the human spirit. To triumph, you need adversity. In this movie we have the environment itself and a pack of ravenous and truly terrifying wolves.

So the wolves begin howling as the survivors huddle round a campfire – that’s a really cool scene, probably the best in the film.

At this point, watching the trailer and the movie, I was rubbing my hands thinking this was going to be a great story.

It isn’t.

Before I tell you about the rest of the film, I have to mention the big problem with the trailer.

In the trailer we see a few scenes with Liam on his own; he’s being surrounded by wolves, he’s injured, he takes a couple of empty miniatures of vodka and whiskey and tapes the bottles in between his fingers, then tapes a dagger to the other hand. He smashes the bottom of the miniatures against a rock so now he has his own make-shift broken glass claws, the wolves move closer, quick cuts between the wolf’s eyes and Liam’s eyes and… the trailer ends.

I was thinking, ‘wow, I have to watch that film to see that fight between a desperate Liam and a CGI wolf.’

Back to the movie.

The wolves pick off the survivors. Just as we get to know and like a character, they get killed. More people die. Then more. Then some fall off a rope stretched over a ravine, more get taken by the wolves.

This is getting pretty depressing.

More die.

It’s all hopeless and one character, and I shit you not, dies by simply giving up; he sits his ass down in a rock and says, ‘that’s it, I want to die, I can’t take it anymore.’  This is a little over three quarters of the way through the film and at that stage, I knew how the man felt.

But I didn’t turn off the film.

I’d remembered the trailer. I’m sticking with this depressing film because I want to see Liam fight the wolf. That’ll be awesome, that’ll make the whole film worthwhile.

More die.

Liam’s hurt and scrabbling through the snow.

‘This is it,’ I tell myself.

Liam’s being surrounded by wolves, he’s injured, he takes a couple of empty miniatures of vodka and whiskey and tapes the bottles in between his fingers, then tapes a dagger to the other hand.

‘Here we go,’ I say, and I sit forward in my chair.

He smashes the bottom of the miniatures against a rock so now he has his own make shift broken glass claws, the wolves move closer, quick cuts between the wolf’s eyes and Liam’s eyes and… the movie ends.

Dear Reader, there is very little, if any, swearing in my books, but believe me, I am a world heavyweight contender when it comes to swearing.

I almost woke the kids and frightened the shit out of the dog.

There is no fight with the wolf. The scene in the trailer for the film is in fact the last scene and the very last shot in the whole movie. How bad is that? The very last shot is in the trailer.

Trailers are supposed to tease. This teased me into believing I would see a Liam v Wolf. I didn’t.

This is essentially a survivor film where everybody dies. That might be intellectually brave and challenging cinema. But not for me, I like the bad guys to go down, I like Bruce Willis in a dirty vest, I like Mel Gibson and Danny Glover getting drunk and shooting people. I like to see the underdog win.

A survivor movie where everyone dies is pointless. It’s like making a comedy that isn’t funny, or an action film with no explosions, or a Bruce Lee movie where Bruce doesn’t actually hit anybody.

Sigh…..

With Spiderman, again, we see the very last shot of the movie in the trailer.

This is not good enough – this is trickery.

So I’m not watching trailers anymore.

But then I saw the trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy. This restored my faith in cool trailers that tease.

If you haven’t seen it, check it out now, it's funny, cool, exciting and it teases, and if Mrs C is reading this - watch the trailer, Peter Serafinowicz is in it - you like him.

   

Is there a lesson in all of this?

Yes.

(1) If you’re getting your book adapted for the screen – Chris McQuarrie is a good bet.

(2) If you’re writing a story – don’t promise what you can’t deliver.

(3) Even though he’s only three feet tall, Tom Cruise could probably kick our asses.

(4) If Liam Neeson should get cast in a Renny Harlin film about a tribe of junkie, cannibalistic traffic wardens who moonlight as Burlesque dancers – it will still be a better movie than The Grey.  

(5) Lee Child will continue to write fantastic thrillers with the full-sized Reacher as the central character.

(6) There is a lack of gun-toting, sarcastic raccoons in literature - maybe this is what Will Self is going on about.

(7) If Arnie ever plays Chaplin on screen, I'll be first in line to buy a ticket.

That’s all for now, folks.

Best,

Steve.

Blog Tour - My Writing Process

 

A little while ago I was delighted to hear from Rob Pateman, who tagged me into the blog tour on ‘the writing process.’

You can check out Rob’s answers here.

Rob and I are lucky enough to be represented by the same literary agency and we have the very same Editor at Orion in the shape of the brilliant Jemima Forrester. Rob writes as RS Pateman and his debut novel THE SECOND LIFE OF AMY ARCHER, will have its paperback release on 24^th April. In case you didn’t catch it in hardback now’s your chance. The book has a fantastic premise and Rob’s writing has a real emotional resonance that will keep you turning the pages.

Highly recommended folks.

So my thanks to Rob for the nod, here we go.

 

WHAT AM I WORKING ON?

At the moment I’m awaiting the copy edits on my first book, THE DEFENCE, and I’m hard at work on the second book in the Eddie Flynn series. At the time of writing this piece I’m about a third of the way through the first draft of that book. There’s not much I can tell you at the moment, as it’s still very much in its infancy. I’ve been reading a lot of stories and blogs about “that difficult second book.” If you’ve read Rob’s post above, you’ll know just how difficult it can be. I did find one piece of advice on the interweb that resonated with me. It was a comment on Stuart Neville’s old blog when he posted about writing his second novel and the rather brilliant Declan Burke offered some great advice. Declan said that there is no such thing as a second book; these days, in this publishing market, every book is your first book. Incidentally, Mr Burke’s latest – Crime Always Pays, has just been released and Stuart Neville’s new book, The Final Silence, will be released shortly. You should look into both; two great writers at the top of their game. And while I’m at it, congratulations to Stuart for the recent Barry nomination for Ratlines.

 

HOW DOES MY WORK DIFFER FROM OTHERS IN THE GENRE?

My books are legal thrillers set in the US. A lot of legal thrillers, and very good ones at that, begin with a murder and then an investigation with most of the drama happening around a third of the way into the book when the trial begins. Typically the hero is a high-flying corporate attorney who is whiter than white and believes in truth, justice and playing fair. The whole book is a build up to that ultimate question – guilty or not guilty.  

There are half a dozen great writers that take that basic legal thriller premise and do amazing things with it. How could I hope to compete with those writers? The truth is, I can’t; they’re better writers than me.

My answer was to rip up that basic premise and start again from scratch. While I don’t want to give too much away, I can tell you that THE DEFENCE will, hopefully, be unlike any courtroom thriller you’ve ever read. I’m trying to put my own stamp on the genre by tearing up the usual narrative form. My Dutch Editor says that THE DEFENCE is like “24” with Jack Bauer as a lawyer. If I’ve accomplished what I set out to do then the book should read like a breakneck, tension-filled courtroom thriller that makes you think. There’s a ‘story within a story’ element to the novel, which I’ve not spoken to anyone about yet; it’s very subltle, but if you look for it, and you follow the white rabbit, you’ll find it. But you can just read it purely for the thrills and twists. Hopefully, at certain points, Eddie will make you reconsider what you thought you knew about the justice system, and maybe even look at things in a different light. In that way, I’m hoping that THE DEFENCE will stand up to more than one read.

I suppose the main thing about my writing that will stand out is the main character, Eddie Flynn. Eddie possesses a truly unique set of skills that hasn’t been seen before in this genre and I’m really hoping that readers warm to him.  

 

WHY DO I WRITE WHAT I DO?

One day I was in the middle of a trial, cross-examining my opponent’s witness. I had a whole strategy worked out. First I would go in hard and aggressive and get the witness on the back foot. This part of the cross examination would deal with a minor, but important point in the case. After fifteen minutes of tough, quick, aggressive questioning, I relaxed. I paused. Took a drink of water. Flicked through the case file in front of me. Leaned back in my chair, fixed my gaze on the ceiling and breathed out heavily as I asked one simple question. It sounded like a throwaway question, like it was unimportant, like I was conceding something in the guy’s favour before moving on to more important issues in the case. The witness grabbed the opportunity to wrestle back control of the evidence and stated his answer firmly, unequivocally, hammering home his evidence without any prompting from me. That was the answer that sank the witness completely; he’d sealed his own fate. As soon as I had my answer I realised that I’d pretty much conned that guy. Albeit, I conned him into telling the truth and inadvertently admitting that he’d been lying in his witness statement. Only I hadn’t really conned him; I’d used a tried and tested advocacy technique that any first year advocate could perform.

Nonetheless, it struck me at that moment that a lawyer and a con artist share almost exactly the same skill set.

And words are their weapons.

Eddie Flynn was born in that moment.

My books explore the question of truth in an adversarial system of justice and whether it has a place or even a relevance. In reality, judges and juries don’t decide what is and what isn’t true – they decide whether an evidential test is met by the prosecution, that’s all. I see Eddie Flynn’s journey through the series as a quest, but he’s not looking for truth, he’s looking for redemption.

 

HOW DOES YOUR WRITING PROCESS WORK?

I’ve been asking myself that same question. First of all, I’m not entirely sure you can call it a ‘process’ and secondly whether it works or not largely remains to be seen. In an attempt to get something written about this, I tried to analyse what it is that I do in order to get words on a page. The first thing I do is brew coffee. I start writing around 10pm and I stop when my head hits the keyboard. Come to think of it, there’s considerably more processing involved in the brewing of the coffee than the formation of the novel.

I don’t outline anything.

I get an idea and I kick it around in my head for a long time. When I begin writing a book I will redraft and redraft until I have the beginning nearly perfect. I won’t go past the first 30 pages until I’m relatively happy with them. Sometimes that feels like you’re spinning your wheels and not really getting anywhere, but I’m happy to do that.

In my experience to date there has been no tangible pattern to the writing. For example, the first paragraph of The Defence is unchanged from my first draft. I wrote that paragraph in maybe twenty minutes and I haven’t felt the need to change it even though it was the first creative writing I’d done in 15 years. The next 30 or so pages took six weeks to get right before I could move on. With my second novel, I took two weeks to write the first page and a half and a month to get the next thirty pages right. Now I’m on solid ground I go for it and I don’t look back until the whole first draft is finished. I think if I have the beginning almost perfect I’m much more confident to just plough on, knowing that I have a strong starting point which gives a central spine to the story and also sends up a beacon for the final scenes in the book.

By the way, the first page and a half of the next book gave me – 1) a slightly different voice than the last book 2) a huge additional narrative engine that launches the reader head first into the story and will keep them turning the pages  3)  With my best estimate, at the moment, working purely from what’s in my head, those 500 words set up three surprise twists and give me multiple possible endings.

So the start of this book gives me both focus on the story and the characters and yet it also allows me some freedom with the plot.

I’ve only ever written one short story, which will appear in the Brooklyn based Akashic Books latest Anthology – Belfast Noir. That story took maybe two nights. It just sort of arrived fully formed.

So that’s it. I’m handing over now to three great writers who will be posting next week about their writing process.

 

First up is a legend in Northern Ireland Crime Fiction – Gerard Brennan. At various points when I’m reading Gerard’s work I have to put down the book and smile, because nobody gets close to this guy for dialogue – it’s just so incredibly sharp. Every time I read him I think ‘Elmore Leonard,’ (and yes, he really is that good). Why not try out The Point, on Kindle, for free, and see what I’m talking about. And don’t forget, Gerard also has a short story in the upcoming Belfast Noir, alongside Lee Child, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR Brian McGilloway (*winks to NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR Brian McGilloway*), Glenn Patterson, Claire McGowan, Lucy Caldwell, some guy that nobody’s heard of called Steve Cavanagh, and many more…

 BIO -  ‘Gerard Brennan's short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime. He co-edited Requiems for the Departed, a collection of crime fiction based on Irish myths. His novella, The Point, was published by Pulp Press in October 2011 and won the 2012 Spinetingler Award. His debut novel, WEE ROCKETS, was published by Blasted Heath in 2012. He is currently working on a creative writing PhD at Queen's University Belfast.’

http://crimesceneni.blogspot.co.uk/

Follow Gerard on twitter @gerardbrennan

 

Next up is Eva Dolan.

Her debut novel is Long Way Home, a police procedural with a brilliant and unusual setting. The lead characters are DS Zigic and DS Ferreira of the Peterborough Hate Crimes Unit and they get more than they bargained for when they begin investigating the murder of a migrant worker. It’s crime fiction at its best – two great ‘outsider’ characters and a brilliantly realised setting that provides for a gripping story whilst exploring contemporary issues. The writing is top class and it’s no wonder that Eva was previously been shortlisted for the Debut Dagger at a ridiculously young age.  Read the first chapter and you’ll find yourself immediately at home with her dark, rich and assured prose, so make sure you check out Long Way Home. You hear that? That dripping sound? That’s talent - running out of her ears.

BIO - 'Eva Dolan writes books and plays poker and the rest of her time she just wastes.'

 

http://loiteringwithintent.wordpress.com/

Follow Eva Dolan on Twitter @eva_dolan

 

Last up is Jason Dean.

A few years ago I read Jason’s debut – The Wrong Man, which introduces series character James Bishop. Ripping through that book in a couple of days I knew Bishop would be sticking around for a long time to come. The first chapter of The Wrong Man is still one of my favourite openings to a thriller in the last 10 years, and the rest of the book lives up to that fabulous start. The latest James Bishop short story is free on Kindle at the moment, so there’s no excuse for not checking it out.

BIO 0 ‘Jason Dean is an English author of American thrillers, who spent most of his professional life as a graphic designer before deciding to try his hand at writing. His debut novel, THE WRONG MAN - the first of a series starring his ex-Marine protagonist James Bishop - was picked up by Headline and published in 2012. This was followed in 2013 by BACKTRACK, and the third Bishop novel, THE HUNTER’S OATH, will be released in June 2014. Jason now resides in the Far East with his wife and dog and is currently at work on the fourth Bishop novel.’

http://www.jasondeanbooks.com/

Follow Jason on Twitter at @Jasondeanauthor

A final note to the above authors, who all sent me images, I'm afraid technology defeated me.  

 

 

 

From Disaster to a Dream Come True Part 2 - Getting a Publisher

In Part 1 I talked about what it was like to be accepted by a leading literary agent and the waiting, hoping and nail-biting inevitably involved when you’re searching for a literary agent. I know what it’s like to be on that search, to have that goal. Once I’d achieved it I thought I’d got it made and the worrying would be over.

I was wrong.

The fear doesn’t go away. If anything the anxious anticipation just gets worse.  

Before your book goes out on submission to publishers your agent will probably want you to do some work on it. For me there wasn’t that much. I was really just tidying up. How much or how little you do is up to you but invariably most of the advice you get at this stage from your agent is probably spot on. The advice I received certainly hit the mark. So after you’ve revised the book, proof read again and again and you send it off, you feel pretty good about the book. For me this feeling lasted right up until the book went out on submission. Then I felt about as confident as an MP submitting his Parliamentary expenses. However much you’ve sweated, lost sleep and swept from the peaks of blissful optimism to the crushing reality of rejection during your search for literary representation – trust me, this is nothing, absolutely nothing compared to the near constant nerve-shredding anxiety that you will go through when you know that your agent has sent your book out on submission to publishers. What if they hate it? What if it doesn’t sell? What if all those rejections I received were right and my agent is wrong? Will my agent drop me? Will they find out I claimed seventy-five thousand pounds for toilet roll and digestive biscuits? (sorry, getting confused with the MP.)

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m aware that a lot of writers have said that this stage was by far the worst and I can only suppose that it very much depends on what type of person you are and how you deal with it. If you do an internet search you won’t find nearly as much out there on what it’s like to have a book on submission. I suspect that the  reason you don’t read so much about this stage of the process is down to one very simple truth - Sadly, most aspiring writers will not get a literary agent. If you blog or write about how nervous you are whilst your book is out on submission to publishers you will not only sound ungrateful for what’ve you’ve already achieved but you will garner no sympathy from the host of aspiring writers who would sell their grandmother to be in your shoes. So you don’t complain, you don’t bitch about it – you can’t because you are so lucky to have an agent that loves your book enough to put their name and their reputation behind it.

The only thing to do is suck it up.

The best advice I’ve read about how to deal with this agonizing waiting game is to simply write something else. I didn’t want to do that. My novel, The Defence, is the first in a series and I knew that the next book I wanted to write was the next book in that series. I didn’t want to do that in case I couldn’t sell the first book. Incidentally, even though my books are a series, you will be able to read them in any order. So I couldn’t write something else. Instead I would have to resign myself to checking my email every five minutes.

So how long does this process last? It can take years. It can take months. It can take re-writes and re-submissions. There are plenty of fabulous writers that have taken a long time to get accepted by a publishing house and some very talented writers (people with a lot more talent than me) that never get their work through the traditional publishing model. I was one of the lucky ones – for me it took about a week.

It took all the will power I had not to phone my agent, or email him to ask what was going on. He’d told me that he would let me know. Of course he would. On the Friday of that week, about 6.30pm I got an email from my agent. I was standing in my hall. I saw the little email icon on my phone. It was an email from Euan. My first thought was that this is an email to tell me not to worry, that there had been no offers but he would be trying the next round of publishers.

Again, I was wrong. The email thanked me for being so patient. Then it said there had been an offer for The Defence. In fact, four publishers wanted the book. Each of the four publishers were from respected publishing houses. Each of the publishers not only wanted The Defence, they wanted the next two books in the series. I had plenty of ideas for the series but at that stage hadn’t managed a single word of prose for any of them. Euan was going to hold an auction. The sums of money involved were life-changing. I almost dropped the phone. My wife was ecstatic. What did I feel? I can’t really describe it. I still feel it. Relief is one part of it.

You see, I didn’t write The Defence for money. I wrote it because I had to write it. Now that might sound a little strange and quite pretentious. I’m not saying that I was compelled, through the sheer power of my own genius to write this book. No, nothing like it.

I wrote this book for my mother, knowing that she would never read it.

The only reason I’m a writer today is because of her. When I was a kid my Dad would take us to Harry Hall’s second-hand book shop on Gresham Street in the heart of Belfast. My Mum and I would pass a morning choosing our 5p paperbacks. When we didn’t have enough money for the bookshop, we went to the Library. When I started to write in my teens she was the person who gave me encouragement. I stopped writing before I turned twenty. At that stage I was writing screenplays, I’d gotten an agent but I could never sell anything. So I decided I was never going to make it as a writer and I stopped writing for the next 15 years.

In 2011 my Mum passed away, suddenly, after a quick and devastating illness. She was the one person in my life who had told me I should write. So I decided that life was too short, I was going to give this another shot and this time it would work. This time, I would write a book and I would get it published. I did this for her. To show her that I wasn’t a failure. I suppose, losing myself in my book helped me push away the pain for a few hours while I worked away on a small, Compaq notebook that I used to write my first draft. While writing the book I was escaping into a different world, a world that I could control.

At that moment in September 2013, standing in my hallway, with the knowledge that my book would be published, I felt massive relief.

The next days and weeks went by in a blur. I would have been lucky and honoured to sign with any of the four publishers that offered and I eventually signed with Jemima Forrester and Jon Wood of Orion. Two great professionals and two thoroughly warm, generous and funny people who have been a joy to work with. I landed on my feet there.  Following a German auction, a pre-empt for Dutch Rights within hours of submission and a pre-empt for Italian Rights at the Frankfurt Book Fair, I felt like a lottery winner.

And it just gets more and more surreal – well known Hollywood Production companies are interested in the film rights, the book will be going out to more and more territories.

I’ve been very lucky so far.  

I hope you will be too.

Steve.

 

Rules of Writing via Nazis, Kafka and Peter Sellers

 

If anyone reading this post has not read Elmore Leonard’s rules of writing, stop now, do a Google search (other search engines are available but they’re not as good and the FBI won’t get to read your history – seems a shame to keep them out in the cold) and enjoy. Oh, and do come back won’t you. I’ll be here…

 

I’m not a great believer in rules when it comes to most things. Testing boundaries, stretching them even, produces the best from everyone.  There are of course some of Elmore Leonard’s rules that should not be broken, ever. For me, and I’m paraphrasing here, ‘cutting out the parts that readers skip,’ is an absolute. Quite a few of the other rules can be bent. ‘Don’t open with the weather,’ - lots of books open with the weather and some great books at that. Before we go any further, I would like to state that Elmore Leonard didn’t mean to have his rules be hard and fast deal breakers. He meant it more as a guide, to be used or not, as the case may be, however, a lot of what he says is good advice. Then you have the vast amount on the internet that is concerned with ‘rules’ of writing.

 If you read enough ‘advice’ articles on the net you feel as though there’s a rule book of writing. I’ve read a number of these articles and they all seem to have a common theme.

(1) Your protagonist (hero) has to be likeable. I’ve no idea where this came from but you see it time and again.

(2) The antagonist (villain) has to be in direct opposition to the protagonist.

(3) The protagonist has to have a strong moral motivation that the reader can really get behind i.e. the protagonist’s goal should be a noble one.

Bear these three in mind.

Because it’s possible to have an incredible story by breaking all three of these rules which come up often in writing advice articles.

To illustrate, for a moment, let’s pretend that the world is a darker and lonelier place. We are imagining a world without the movie ‘The Producers.’ For the next part of this blog post, strike that movie from your mind; it does not exist.

Now imagine a young writer is calling his agent, today, January 2014, to pitch him an idea for a movie. I stress, this is not my agent – who is a very nice man indeed.

Agent: So what’s this great movie idea you want to pitch? I can’t wait to hear it.

Writer: Okay, so the movie opens in a run-down apartment building where we find the office of Max Bialystock, Broadway Producer. He’s fending off a sex-crazed octogenarian. Max leeches money from this little old lady to finance his terrible plays. In exchange for cash Max indulges in sex games with the old lady…

Agent: Wow! Great villain.

Writer: Villain? No, no, no… you don’t understand, he’s one of the heroes.

Agent: What? So who’s the villain?

Writer: There isn’t one. Not really.  

Agent: No villain? So Max is a hero, okay, who’s the other hero?

Writer: Well the other hero is about to enter the story. Leo Bloom is a neurotic accountant who has just arrived to inspect Max’s books.

Agent: Hang on…so there are two heroes in this movie: Max - a pervert who exploits the elderly, and Leo, a neurotic accountant?

Writer: Yeah. So, while doing the books Leo notices that the last play Max put on was over financed. He’d raised more money than it cost to produce. But the play closed after a week and didn’t make any money. The IRS won’t audit that play. Nobody is interested in a flop so Max could keep the extra money that he didn’t use to stage the play. That’s when Leo has an idea – technically it would be possible for a Broadway producer to make more money with a flop than a hit. They would just need to raise a lot more money than they needed to produce the play. Max thinks this is genius and persuades Leo to join him in a scam.  

Agent: Tax fraud? This is a movie about a sex maniac and an accountant defaulting on their taxes?

Writer: No, not at all. The fraud is on the little old ladies that Max persuades to finance the play with their life savings by promising them sexual favours in return for the cash.

Agent: That might be…problematic. Let’s move on - why do they need the money? What’s their real motivation? Does a kid need a life-saving operation? Or maybe they’re raising the money to save the local orphanage?

Writer: No, nothing like that. They want to go to Rio.

Agent: Rio. So the two heroes in this movie are on a quest to scam a whole bunch of little old ladies out of their life savings so they can move to Rio?

Writer: Yeah, well, actually no. The move is really about gay Nazis.

Telephone falls to the floor.

Agent: Sorry, what? I dropped the damn phone. For a second there I thought you said the movie was really about gay Nazis.

Writer: (pause) it is really about gay Nazis, well super-camp Nazis. You see, Leo and Max have to put on a play that is a sure-fire stinker, a guaranteed loser that will close on opening night because it’s so bad. So they find this play which is basically a love letter to Hitler.

Agent: Hitler, as in Adolf Hitler?

Writer: You know another Hitler?

Agent: I’m not sure this is such a good…

Writer: So they find this awful, offensive play and they hire the worst director in the county who’s going to turn it into a fabulously camp musical. Then they employ this permanently-stoned actor to play Hitler…

Agent: A drug addict Hitler?

Writer: Sure. The play has beautiful women in SS uniforms dancing in swastika formations and tanks and the lead tenor is dressed as a member of the Gestapo. It’s just spectacular and the actor playing Hitler is so bombed and the songs about invading Europe are so camp and gay that the audience actually thinks it’s a satire. So instead of the audience hating it, the play becomes a surprise hit. Of course, the Nazi playwright isn't happy and he tries to blow up the theatre...

Agent: So in the finale, how do they get away with the money and fly to Rio?

Writer: They don’t. They all get caught and end up in prison. I’m going to call the movie ‘Springtime for Hitler: A Gay romp with Adolf and Eva,’ or ‘The Producers.’ I haven’t quite decided yet.  

Silence.

Writer: Hello? Hello…you still there?

If I pitched the same project to my agent, he’d tell me it was a great idea, superb, wonderful. He’d hang up the phone and call my wife and tell her that I’d had some kind of mental breakdown and she should call the doctor (I told you he was a nice man).

What astounds me is that The Producers ever got made. I’m not sure if it were to be pitched as an original idea today that it would stand a chance of getting the green light. It’s amazing that this movie went into production just 15 years after the end of the Second World War.  Upon release the critics hated it but it went on to win an Oscar for Mel Brooks for his screenplay and has since been recognised by the American Film institute along with the Library of Congress preserving the film in its archives due to its cultural significance. That brilliant screenplay and the performances were the key to the film’s success. It’s funny, it’s original and despite Leo and Max’s motivations, you’re with them all the way. You want them to get the money and fly away to Rio but you’re not sure why – you just fall in love with them. If you analyse the film, it’s easy to see that the play within the movie actually serves as a metaphor for the film as a whole; in the film, the play ‘Springtime for Hitler’, shouldn't work, but, in spite of everything, it does work and it’s genius. Same with the film itself – on paper it should not work, it should in fact be one of the worst films ever made. Instead, it’s amazing.

As an aside here's a couple of little facts: 1) The character of Max Bialystock is based on a real Broadway producer that Mel Brooks worked with but has stoically refused to name (2) Peter Sellers was supposed to play the part of Leo Bloom (3) Dustin Hoffman was cast as the Nazi playwright Liebkind, but begged Mel Brooks for permission to audition for a lead part in another movie. Mel knew this part was a lead alongside his then partner Anne Bancroft and didn't think Hoffman stood a chance of getting the role so he let him audition. Against all odds Hoffman got the lead role opposite Bancroft in The Graduate and pulled out of the Producers.

This film breaks all the rules of taste, commercial appeal and story arc together with every one of those basic 3 rules of writing quoted above.

 

Lots of other artistic works broke all the rules.

When Leo and Max are sifting through scripts looking for the worst play ever written, Max reads aloud a first line – “I woke up one morning to discover I had transformed into a giant cockroach. No, too good.”

That’s a line from Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’. An existential story that also broke the rules. Kafka didn’t have any real success as a writer during his lifetime but is now thought of as one of the most influential writers of the last hundred years. Interestingly, while doing a little research on Kafka I found out that he never managed to become a full time writer. His day job was practicing as a personal injury lawyer. I knew he was a lawyer but I didn’t know that he devoted most of his working life to representing employees in accident at work claims. He went on to open an Asbestos factory. Somebody reading this who is smarter than me can probably tell if that is merely ironic or veritably Kafkaesque.

Anyway, even though the critics hated The Producers and it didn’t do great business in the US, it is now regarded as a classic. One of the great endorsements it received at the time was from Peter Sellers, who took out a full page ad in Variety and called The Producers the greatest comedy ever made.

I suppose the real lesson here is not to stick too closely to the rules. If we all wrote according to what we thought agents or publishers or the market was looking for, or if we listened to every single advice article and shaped our characters to a demographic, we wouldn’t have great pieces of art like The Producers. And the world would be a darker place for it.

By all means, write something commercial, write something that everyone will love. It can still be original. Break the rules or stick to them. The trick is believing in what you write. If you want to write a love story between a golden retriever and a hooker with an artificial leg who enters a bowling tournament in order to win a lifetime’s supply of hair gel, then go right ahead. As long as you have talent you might be able to pull it off. And that is the one thing that agents and publishers are looking for – talent. Not badly written, but likeable characters on a noble quest that they’ve read hundreds of times before.

A great character doesn’t have to be a likeable character. In reality, there are no rules. Write whatever you want. Sometimes crazy can be good; if it’s good-crazy.

To illustrate good-crazy, and for one final little joke, we return to Peter Sellers.

It’s the early Seventies, Peter Sellers is one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. It’s three o’clock in the morning and Seller’s best friend, Spike Milligan, is awakened by a loud and insistent knocking on his front door. A bleary-eyed Spike puts on his robe, goes downstairs and opens the door to his London home. Standing before him is a completely naked Peter Sellers who simply says, ‘Do you know a good tailor?’

To me, that’s crazy, but isn’t it good crazy?

Steve.

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Be good.