Once when I was in high school I came home one afternoon to find that my mother had left the place locked. I went around and crawled in through the milk chute, an accomplishment which looked to be as likely as slipping a camel through the eye of a needle, given the tiny dimensions of the milk chute and the unpleasantly plump dimensions of the embryonic author. I was to repeat this procedure on numerous occasions when the door was unlocked, for the entertainment of friends and relatives, and I can still recall squirming through that hole in the wall and landing upside down in a confusion of mops and brooms and scrub buckets; the milk chute, unused since the war, opened into a cluttered broom closet.
Nowadays I write books about a burglar. (Perhaps the seed was planted all those many years ago, when I first discovered the thrill of illicit entry.) I’ve written three novels to date about Bernie Rhodenbarr without making use of that milk-chute entrance, but I recalled it a week or so ago, and this time I saw it from the stance of one who writes about burglary. I immediately saw any number of ways such a bit of business could fit into a novel about a burglar, and I let my mind play with the possibilities, and I filed them all away in the cluttered broom closet I call a mind; someday I’ll quite probably get some use out of it.
In the same fashion, ongoing experience becomes grist for the mill. I can’t seem to enter a building without pondering how Bernie would enter it illegally. When I visit a museum I see not merely objects of artistic and historical significance, but things for him to steal. On a recent trip to London, a visit to the Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields turned up a display of the photograph of a pistol which Soane purchased in the belief that it had belonged to Napoleon. It was actually an utter fake and the whole story about its provenance a pawnbroker’s fabrication; however, only the photo was on display because the actual pistol, fake or no, had been stolen from the museum in 1969.
I think I’d like that story even if I wrote nothing but stories about kittens and bunny rabbits for preschoolers. Given the kind of writing I do, I immediately thought of six different ways to work that item into fiction. I may never use it at all, but my writer’s eye and my writer’s imagination have taken a museum exhibit and turned it into the raw material out of which fiction may someday be fashioned.
Cultivating this habit becomes increasingly important the more time you spend in this business. Consider the paradox of the full-time professional writer: He writes out of his experience, using up his past, and the greater his success the less likely he is to store up useful new experiences. I don’t get a hell of a lot of fresh input sitting at a desk with a typewriter for company. And, while I derive enormous essential stimulation from the company of other writers, I don’t often get source material from them.
Happily, my inclinations are such that I spend a great deal of time away from my desk. My circle of friends includes people of all sorts, and their conversation puts me in worlds I’d never explore otherwise. Just the other day a policeman friend of mine told three or four stories that will very likely turn up in my work sooner or later; more important, his company sharpens and deepens my sense of what a cop’s life is like.
Some years ago a friend told me of an evening his father, then the manager of a Miami Beach hotel, had spent in the company of John D. MacDonald. As a long-time fan of MacDonald, I was very interested in knowing what he was like and what he’d had to say.
“Well, he didn’t have much to say at all,” my friend reported. “He got my father talking, and evidently he’s the world’s best listener. By the time the evening was done, my father didn’t know too much about John D. MacDonald, but MacDonald sure learned a lot about hotel management and the life history of Seymour Dresner.”
And that’s how it works. A lot of us enjoy holding court, sitting back and talking expansively about our work. It’s hearty fare for the ego, to be sure. But if instead we make a real effort to draw out other people’s stories, we’ll be using the time to good advantage, providing ourselves in due course with stories of our own.
The use of conversation just described is another example of the manner in which the writer is always working, even if he doesn’t know for certain what he’s working on or what he’ll ultimately wind up doing with it. Every conversation, every book read, every new place visited, is a part of the endless and all-encompassing business of nonspecific research.
Which in turn leads us—and I hope you’re paying attention to the facility with which I’m making these transitions—which leads us, then, to the business of specific research. We’ve seen a few of the ways to use what we know. How do we cover ourselves when it comes to something we don’t know?
Let’s go back to our hypothetical gothic novel, our widow’s tale of furniture appraisal on the moors of Devon. Having examined some of the ways we could change that story to fit our own areas of knowledge and experience, let’s suppose that for one reason or another we’ve considered them and ruled them out. Because of particular plot elements we like too much to sacrifice, we’re locked to the antique furniture business and the Devon location.
The obvious answer is research. Before you start to write, you have to learn enough about Devon and the antique trade to allow you to feel confident writing about them.
You do not have to become an expert. I’m italicizing this because it’s worth stressing. Research is invaluable, but it’s important that you keep it in proportion. You are not writing The Encyclopedia of Antique Furniture. Neither are you writing A Traveller’s Comprehensive Guide to Devon and Cornwall. You may well consult both of these books, and any number of others, but you’re not going to be tested on their contents.
On the whole, I don’t doubt for a moment that too much research is better than too little. Sometimes, though, research becomes a very seductive way to avoid writing.
Ages ago, before I began the first novel I’ve mentioned earlier, I decided that a historical novel set during the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin would be a good first book for me to write. I knew nothing about Ireland in general or the Rising in particular, so I read several books on the subject. These made it clear to me that I lacked the necessary background. I decided it was important to begin at the beginning, and I decided further that I couldn’t properly grasp Irish history without a thorough knowledge of English history, whereupon I set about amassing an impressive library of books on the subject. You might well ask what a six-volume history of Britain before the Norman Conquest had to do with the purported subject of my novel; I can reply now, in retrospect, that I evidently found reading history a more congenial prospect than writing that novel, and that I found buying books an even more attractive occupation than reading them.
Over the years I did do considerable reading in English and Irish history, for recreational purposes rather than research, and I don’t doubt that it enriched my writing in various subtle ways. But I never did write that Irish novel and I doubt I ever shall. I didn’t really want to write it in the first place and used research as a way out.
George Washington Hill, the legendary tobacco company president, used to say that half the money he spent on advertising was a flat-out waste. “The trouble is,” he added, “there’s no way of telling which half it is.”
Research is a lot like that. For the mythical book we’ve been discussing, you would want to browse extensively in books on antique furniture, nibbling here and there, trying to get a sense of the antique business while deciding what type of furniture to deal with in the novel and picking up here and there some specific facts and labels and bits of jargon to give your writing the flavor of authenticity.
Some general reading along these lines, perhaps coupled with a few visits to antique shops and auction galleries, ought to precede the full-scale plotting of your novel, whether such plotting will involve a formal written outline or not. In this way the perspective of your research will very likely enrich the actual plot of the book. Then, having plotted the book in detail, you can return for the pinpoint research, picking up the s
pecific fact that you now know to be necessary for the book.
This is what I did with The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling. In the original proposal for the book, I supplied a vague outline, explaining that Bernie Rhodenbarr, now operating a bookstore as a cover occupation, is engaged to steal an unidentified whatsit from one collector for another. During the idea’s gestation period, I decided to make the stolen item a book of some sort, figuring this would go nicely with Bernie’s cover as bookstore proprietor.
Because I envisioned the man who hired him as a pukka sahib type, the thought came to me of making the elusive volume one of Rudyard Kipling’s. I accordingly availed myself of an armload of rare book catalogues to find out where Kipling stood in the antiquarian book market. I also got hold of a biography of the author and read it.
My research and my vaunted writer’s imagination worked hand in hand. I figured out that the particular book in question would be the sole surviving copy of a privately printed edition which Kipling saw fit to destroy; my copy would be one he’d already presented to his great good friend, writer H. Rider Haggard. I plotted the book accordingly, then went back to the research desk to learn more about Kipling now that I knew what I was looking for. I read a collection of his poems. I sifted some anecdotal material.
Then I started writing the book. And, intermittently, I stopped for some specific spot-research when points came up during the writing that required it.
I could have done more research. I could have read everything Rudyard Kipling wrote instead of limiting myself to the poetry collection and the Just So Stories. I can’t see that it would have hurt the book had I known more, because there’s always the possibility I would have stumbled on something that would have enriched my novel.
By the same token, I could have managed to write this book with considerably less research than I did. I could have invented an item of rare Kiplingana without taking pains to root it in the facts of his life. It would have been good enough with less research, I suspect, but it would not have been as good a book as it is now (whatever its overall merits may be).
How much or how little research any area demands is very definitely a subjective judgment. If the Kipling book played a less central role in the mystery, I’d have been wasting time to delve into the subject so deeply. If it played a greater role—if, say, the whole puzzle hinged on various events in the great man’s life—then more extensive research might well have been indicated.
If you substitute antique furniture for Rudyard Kipling in what I’ve just recounted, you’ll see how the same principles would apply in our gothic novel. And if you’ll substitute whatever unfamiliar subject matter plays a role in your own novel, you’ll be able to see to what extent research is required.
What about geographical research? How much do you have to know about a place in order to set a novel there?
Once again, the amount of research advisable is both subjective and relative. Feasibility is a consideration here. I spent an afternoon in Forest Hills Gardens walking around the neighborhood where Bernie was to steal The Deliverance of Fort Bucklow, but Forest Hills Gardens is only a fifty-cent subway ride from my door. If I were writing that gothic novel we’ve been talking about—and I’m beginning to feel as though I am—I could hardly afford to go winging off to Devon for the sake of local color.
On the other hand, if I felt this gothic had enough going for it so that it might transcend its genre and be a candidate for “bestsellerdom,” then it might indeed be worth a trip to Devon to give it that added dimension. But if my plot’s nothing more than a good honest sow’s ear, in no way transmutable into silk-purse status, I don’t want to spend as much on research as I can legitimately expect to earn on the finished book.
When I wrote the Tanner books, my hero commonly visited eight or ten countries in a single novel, zipping sleeplessly if not tirelessly all over the globe. Equipped with a decent atlas and a library of travel guides, it’s not all that difficult to do an acceptable job of faking a location. A few details and deft touches in the right places can do more to make your book appear authentic then you might manage via months of expensive and painstaking on-the-spot research.
I don’t want to suggest that such research would be detrimental to a book, just that it’s often too costly in time and money to be undertaken. It’s worth noting, too, that in certain instances a smattering of ignorance can be useful. In the Tanner books, I’m quite sure my Balkan settings bore little relationship to reality. Then again, I’m equally certain the overwhelming majority of my readers weren’t aware of the discrepancy between my version of Yugoslavia and the real one. I was free to make Yugoslavia as I wished it to be for the purpose of the story I wanted to tell, as if I were a science-fiction writer shaping an uncharted planet to my fictive purpose.
I don’t know how comfortable I’d be working this way now; I’ve become a more meticulous writer, sacrificing brash self-confidence in the process. I know, too, that the cavalier attitude I showed would have been a mistake if I had been writing for a market composed of readers who knew Yugoslavia firsthand. One thing a reader will not abide is glaring evidence that the writer doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
The work of James Hadley Chase is a good example of this. Chase writes hard-boiled suspense novels set in the United States, and while he may have visited here briefly he certainly never spent substantial time on these shores. His American locations never ring true and his American slang is wildly off the mark, the American equivalent of having a dutchess drop her “aitches” like a Cockney costermonger. Because of this, his novels have never sold terribly well in the U.S. and most of them are not published over here.
But this doesn’t hurt him in England. Some of his readers may realize that the United States of James Hadley Chase bears about as much resemblance to reality as the Africa of Edgar Rice Burroughs, but the false notes don’t constantly hit them between the eyes—and they’re reading the books for action and suspense, not for their travelogue value. So Chase continues to sell very well over there, year in and year out.
Is Chase a poorer writer because the United States of his fiction differs so greatly from the real United States? I don’t think so. It’s worth remembering, I think, that fakery is the very heart and soul of fiction. Unless your writing is pure autobiography in the guise of a novel, you will continually find yourself practicing the dark arts of the illusionist and the trade of the counterfeiter. All our stories are nothing but a pack of lies. Research is one of the tools we use to veil this deception from our readers, but this is not to say that the purpose of research is to make our stories real. It’s to make them look real, and there’s a big difference.
Sometimes a few little details will turn the trick, doing far more to provide the illusion of reality than a mind-numbing assortment of empty facts and figures. Sometimes a phony detail works as well as a real one. Bernie Rhodenbarr talks admiringly of the Rabson lock, making me sound quite the expert; there is no Rabson lock—I borrowed the name from Rex Stout’s novels. Archie Goodwin always has things to say about the Rabson lock.
Sometimes these little “authentic touches” can happen quite by accident. When I read galleys of Two For Tanner, I was startled when a CIA agent in Bangkok pointed out “drops and meeting places and fronts—a travel agency, a tobbo shop, a cocktail lounge, a restaurant….”
A tobbo shop?
What on earth was a tobbo shop?
I checked my manuscript. I’d written “a tobacco shop” and a creative linotypist had vastly improved on it. I decided a tobbo shop would be the perfect CIA front, adding a cracker-jack bit of local color.
So I left it like that.
And now I look forward to the day when I spot in someone else’s fiction a reference to the notorious tobbo shops of Thailand. And who’s to say that the day will never come when some enterprising Thai opens a tobbo shop of his own? Stranger things have happened.
A very important part of research consists of making use of
acquaintances and friends. You’ll learn more about what it’s like to be a sandhog or a scrap dealer or a bond salesman by hanging out with one than by reading books on the subject. Friends with an expert’s knowledge of an area can frequently help you work out bits of plot business; if you present them with a problem, they may be able to think of a solution which would never occur to you.
I’ve found people even more useful after the book is written. They can read the manuscript and may spot the sort of howlers that, once in print, will draw you no end of angry letters from outraged readers. I don’t know much about guns, for instance, and I doubt I ever will; the subject is of limited fascination to me. But I’ve learned to check points occasionally with a friend of mine who’s a gun enthusiast; otherwise the mailman gets tired of bringing me letters from indignant gun nuts.
I wouldn’t worry too much over imposing upon acquaintances in this fashion. People like to help writers in their own areas of expertise. I suppose it’s ego food. Then too, it gives them a brief role in the writing world, a world which appears to those outside of it to be somehow touched with glamour and romance. I don’t know what they think is glamourous about it, but I do know that an astonishing percentage of people go out of their way to help writers, and it makes sense to take advantage of this help when you can use it.
Chapter 8
Getting Started
Every novel has a beginning, a middle, and an ending.
I picked up this nugget of information when I first studied writing in college, and I’ve heard it restated no end of times since then. I pass it on to you because I’ve never been able to challenge the essential truth of the statement.
I’ve been trying to think of one solitary instance over the past twenty years when it’s helped me to know that a novel has a beginning, a middle and an ending. And I can’t come up with a one. I learned at about the same time that in 1938 the state of Wyoming produced one-third of a pound of dry edible beans for every man, woman and child in the nation, and that fact too has lingered in my mind for all these many years, and it hasn’t done me a whole hell of a lot of good either. But I pass it on, too, for whatever it’s worth.