I’ve always been a story-teller, but it took a sea-change in my life–occasioned by my forced retirement from the practice of neurosurgery–to get me started writing books of fiction, and a couple of nonfiction works. My books come about from assiduous research and a creative and eclectic imagination. The subject matter in my twenty-nine books ranges from action/thrillers, suspenseful spy thrillers and war, to historical fiction, to medical narrative, and to fictional biography. I have seen my fiction as being somewhat similar to John Grisham, Amor Towles, Leon Uris, Tom Clancy, and most recently, Noah Gordon. I write about intelligent, courageous, flawed, demanding, beautiful, resourceful, and some altogether wicked characters, and makes no effort to renounce my rather professorial desire to inform, to educate, and to surprise my readers with new information. I include background history, geography, explanations, and descriptions to beguile my readers into believing that they are not just readers but actual spectators in the stories being woven.
I was a small frog in a small high school in a small town when I started to have an interest in writing. My great English teacher, Mrs. Hoyt, taught us how to write a decent essay; but we did not actually write fiction. The competition was not particularly stiff; so, I got “A”s. I applied to exactly one university, one of the best known in the country, because I thought that is where I wanted to go. I asked Mrs. Hoyt if she thought my writing was good enough to make it in that university, and she answered with a flat and discouraging “no.” She went on to explain that I would have to work harder and to be more original if I ever wanted to write a successful piece of fiction.
In that era, I was full of confidence, especially after I actually got into my desired university, a semi-miracle that I have not explained to this day. My big shock came at the end of the first week when my new English professor gave me a sad “C” on my first attempt at writing a story. I supposed that Mrs. Hoyt had been right, and I was now crest-fallen. Nonetheless, I had to get “A”s because I was in pre-med; so, I made an appointment to try and persuade my English teacher that I should have and “A” because I needed one. Not surprisingly, he was unpersuaded. However, he taught me my first great lesson about writing fiction—“Put yourself, your emotions, into your writing. Cry when you write; make your reader cry. If I cry, I’ll give you an “A”.
I took his instruction to heart and wrote an essay about the impact that the death of my father had on me when I was fourteen and knew that the sole financial support of my life was gone. I wrote about a real feeling that event engendered in my mind. I said that it was like being “it” in the stupid junior high gym game where “it” stands in the middle of the gym floor and every other student gets to throw one of five or six balls at you. I was overwhelmed and felt wearied by the incessant need to pivot, to weave, and to dodge. The professor gave me an “A” and explained what I should have learned.
Since then, I have written numerous scientific journal articles, twenty-nine books of fiction, and two long nonfictional books. All of them were written to convey a message, something I felt passionate about. Each succeeding work was better than the previous writings, and I learned a great deal about writing as I went along. I would like to share some of that education with you.
Consider these suggestions or rules, if you like, for writing:
1. Have a desire to write, to convey to other people your real feelings and what you want them to learn. Believe in your own work and your own ability.
2. Know to whom you are writing—the readers of your genre. You cannot interest everyone nor even a wide variety of readers for a book suitable only for one kind of reader. Sci-fi fans are not going to like your Western action thriller, or vice versa. That implies the obvious: know your audience, and your genre. Make a study of what they like, who they read, and what they read about. Reread your favorite authors’ works to see how they captured your interest and study their submissions to social media. Always remember that you cannot be all things to all people. Share with your reader, don’t just tell them.
3. Along the lines of knowing your audience, have a care about the subject matter, the language in which you express it, and the manner and mode of your story telling. What grabs a Mickey Spillane fan is likely to be grossly offensive to a dedicated Christian such as a confederate states old-line conservative protestant.
4. Above all else, have a story, and make certain it gets told. Do not get lost in side issues, minor plot lines, and by paying excessive attention to minor characters and their thoughts and activities. Only major characters get to think. A very few of them get to speak. The story is the most critical element of fiction, no matter what your professor might have told you.
5. Write and rewrite, revise, revise, and revise until your storytelling, your descriptions, and your emotional impact is such that you put the reader into the story as a partner and confidant, as if he or she is actually an onlooker. Your reader must be a believer, or your book will flop. Do not be afraid to “kill your own children”—those ideas, paragraphs, and sequences that you love so well and are so proud of, but do not really keep the plot and story fresh and moving along briskly.
6. Create real rounded characters. Nobody in real life is perfect or perfectly evil. The protagonist should not be so pristine as never to have a lascivious thought, never to have told so much as a white lie, or never to have taken unfair advantage of his fellow man. No antagonist in a book should be portrayed as utterly irredeemable and devoid of compassion or generosity. He or she is an opponent or even an outright enemy, but sometimes it is more believable to have both types of characters portrayed with only shades of difference between the two. In fact, you—the author—and your reader may dislike the protagonist, but he or she is your main team member; and you are stuck with him or her.
7. Use dialogue wherever possible instead of explanatory prose. The standard rule is “show, don’t tell.” As you type your story and get yourself lost in conveying its message, take a pause to look back to see if you have included too many pages or paragraphs of description or explanation. It is good and interesting to tell about the setting, the historical scene, and the backdrop of the story. Just remember to have your characters talk in order to provide descriptive material. And, to be repetitive, stick to the main plot and let the main characters do the thinking and the talking.
8. The very idea of a fictional story holds conflict, obstacles, opposition, and difficulty. It may well be that the main story line is the protagonist overcoming the impediments or defeating the opponents. At a minimum, there must be some kind of struggle and usually over an idea or opponent worth fighting over or against. Give the antagonist some considerable strengths and resources, or why tell the story at all? Creating conflict is a definite art. You must learn how to weave it convincingly into the story. Have your constructive critic read your work with a jaundiced eye to determine independently whether or not you have mastered the art in this book you are about to offer to your world—i.e., your genre.
Edgar Allen Poe, in The Philosophy of Compensation, an essay written in 1846, wrote about several principles that he considered to be outright rules. I agree in principle with some, but disagree with others, especially when it comes to writing novels instead of poetry or short stories. His rules included the following:
1. The story can be read in one sitting. This was applicable to short stories and poetry, but obviously not to novels. I agree with the general principle, but only to the degree that the storyline should be clean and tidy, and that it does not get lost in side issues such as excessive descriptions, history, ruminations and soul searching by characters, or side plots.
2. Unity of effect, as Poe puts it. The story should only have one mood—which I tend to consider as applicable to poetry, maybe to short stories, but not to novels. In The Philosophy of Compensation, Poe dismissed the notion of artistic intuition and spontaneity. Think how many great novels would not have been given to we readers had this sentiment become some sort of Stalinistic law of writing. A variety of moods and opinions are rife among the characters, and fictional events may change or temper the resulting mood of your book. Feel free to make changes, to have the characters change their minds, or to have events alter and illuminate your story. Just don’t lose the story. Poe was overly interested in emotional response or effect as he described it. I think variety is the stuff of life. His poem may require strict unity, but I do not think your novel does.
3. Ending the story. Poe made two observations about ending your story. He said the story should end in its climax. I largely agree. If you have taken your reader on a long, maybe convoluted ride, you owe them a climax, an ending, that is at least in concert with the “facts and history” you have provided. While it is all right to include a twist, that abrupt change constituting the novel’s end should not be considered wholly implausible, or improbable based on the story in chief. Maybe it is just me, but I seldom enjoy reading an interesting book to the end only to be sucker punched by an ending that can only be construed as an entrée to the next book in the series.
Know the ending before ever beginning writing, says Poe. That may be a good way to think but tends to violate another good suggestion about novel writing, which is to avoid doing outlines. Knowing the end in general, or at least, with a few possible differing options, is necessary to gather the momentum of the book towards an ending and giving enough evidence and information to make the ending plausible and satisfying (or disturbing, if that is your intent). In his essay, Poe said, “Nothing is clearer, than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its dénouement before anything be attempted with the pen.”
His rule insists that, once writing commences, the author must keep the ending “constantly in view” in order to “give a plot its indispensable air of consequence” and inevitability. The author must “establish the climax.” That is too stuffy and regimented for me. However, I do believe in the sanctity of the story as the core of the book. There does need to be a beginning, a forward moving center, and a climax worthy of the book. It’s ending should be at least justified by the preceding chapters.
4. Decide of the desired effect. No incident in your book should be insular from the rest of the story or its intended effect on the reader. This rule of Poe’s is worthy of attention by an author. Consider the impact of your book. Who is it intended for? Do you want to protect the feelings of your readers or would you just as soon shock them?” Is the subject material new and different enough in your book to write in something of a dogmatic manner to get the point across? Do you desire a reputation of being Pollyannaish—all is happy and well all the time—or do you want to turn over rocks and see the crawling things underneath and let the readers know that there is more to life than they learn in kindergarten or Sunday School? You are the king where your book is concerned; you control the narrative and the tone of the work—and may have to accept the consequences.
5. Determine the setting, Poe advises; and so do I. That is why I insist on prodigious research before starting an history-based novel, and why I make every endeavor to remain in character and in the right time frame, place, and dialogue. It is jarring to have twenty-first jargon and slang issuing from a 13th century Muslim talking to a Scottish trader who replies in the same careful and current English with which the reader is thoroughly familiar. Poe was adamant about keeping the setting accurate to the purpose of the character’s speech and mood. I happen to think that it is equally worth while for the purpose of color, humor, and verification of authenticity that the reader desires to enjoy your book and to find himself lost in the time and setting. It must be believable.
6. Determine the theme and characterization of the work, Poe says. That goes along with number four in his rules. Carried to the extreme, Poe’s rule would create wooden characters, a hollow Hallmark Channel effect which would be death to your book unless that is your ideal reader, one who wants no surprises, downer emotions, or sad plots. Or, conversely, if your ideal readers want a surfeit of horror and violence, even they might like a bit of a rest from the gore and melancholy once in a while.
My parting advice: Write for the passion and enjoyment of it.
Maybe you will not become a millionaire famous writer, but you can have the sheer joy of feeling your book in your hand, seeing it in print, or hearing it quoted by someone you respect. Above all, write.
