The Bridge on CBS

by
John McFetridge

This week my two sons (ages 10 and 11) and I have gone camping at a provincial park in Ontario. If we don't set the tent on fire or get eaten by bears we'll be back in time to see the debut of The Bridge on CBS this Saturday at 8:00.



I have mixed feelings about this because it was a great opportunity for me to work in the writers' room (I'm credited wth writing one episode and co-writing another), I met some great people and learned a lot but I don't think I did a very good job.

The show is about a beat cop who gets fed up with the politics and hidden agendas of the brass and gets himself elected the union president to try and clean up the force. It's ambitious material and was sold to me as "The West Wing of cops shows" (it's interesting that The West Wing was always a bigger hit in Canada than in the US). It wasn't designed as a police procedural about cops solving crimes, it was going to be about the inner workings of a big city police department.

This is the kind of thing I like to write about. A sub-plot in Everybody Knows This is Nowhere involves a union election and corrupt cops protecting one another. Okay, not breaking any new ground, really, but The Bridge promised to show the details. The way The Wire showed the details of policing and what the cops are really up against.

But with one Canadian and one American network involved there was a lot of push and pull and it did become more of a procedural and less political and even social.

Entertainment Weekly has this to say about the show:

"Another Canuck cop drama imported by CBS, The Bridge is (meager-praise alert!) better than Flashpoint. There's a nifty, Wire-esque exploration of police bureaucracy. As a rabble-rousing union chief, Battlestar Galactica's Aaron Douglas is no McNulty. And the criminals, like the truck-driving killer grandma, are lame. Oh, Canada. (C)"

TV Guide said, "The bureaucratic corruption forces the apolitical and hard-nosed Frank to get his Norman Rae on. His and the show's heart are in the right place but you'll likely predict every beat." The reviewer gave it a 5 out of 10.

The two-hour pilot and the first episode after that were written before the rest of us writers were hired. I think the pilot asks some good questions and raises some good issues (and, frankly, has some holes - how come the cops end up in a chase even though they had the name and address of the guy who owned the truck? Would there really be no lawsuit after the kid dies? Was there really enough justification for the police to go on strike?), but I don't think we were very successful in addressing much of them in the following episodes. Probably why CBS has only scheduled seven out of the thirteen episodes that were shown in Canada.

So, if the bears don't get us I'll be back here next Wednesday and if anyone has any questions about the show (either what goes on in the show or the production) please send them to me at: jmcfet@hotmail.com and I'll answer any I can next week.

On Writing

By Jay Stringer

I've been thinking a lot about craft lately. Or rather, I've been struggling with it.

I have a few projects that are overdue, with people waiting on me to get my ass in gear, and it's been a fight to try and get them done. It's not block. The stuff is in my head and I know most of what happens to the characters. It's more a lack of form, a lack of the structure that will make the work sing.

I've caught flack before for saying I don't believe in writers block. I still don't. What I do believe in is distraction. And right now I'm cornering the market in that. This month I visit New York and turn 30. I have a couple of health issues and, king of them all, I'm getting married. The gurrl and I are planning the whole thing ourselves, down to writing the wedding service and vows, and that's taken a lot of doing.

So amid all of that, I can cut myself a little slack about all of the work I've not finished. I know I'll get back on track. But in the meantime I decided to explore craft a bit more, to try and give my scattered brain a little more focus. I bought a handful of books about writing, and started looking up more interviews and documentaries on the subject.

Some of the books come highly recommended and I look forward to reading them. There's a King, a Maass and a Stein. Each suggested by people that I trust. The first one I'm reading is STORY by Robert McKee. Here's my first thought on the book; I know you can't judge a book by it's cover, but can you judge one by its size?

I look at the others in my pile, and they seem a decent size. The Stein is 224 pages and the Maass is 250. Okay, so the King is 384, but he does have a tendency to go on for too long. The McKee is 455, excluding the index. 455 pages on how to write a story. That's a couple hundred more than the Stein and Maass books, and almost a hundred more than the King. If your book is longer than the one by the guy who wrote THE STAND, you maybe need to rethink that delete button. The shorter books feel right somehow. As if i can imagine a 250 page book on writing will help be to refresh or learn a few things and then go and apply them to my work. But a 455 word book is time spent away from the blank page.

One thing I notice very quickly in books is whether I think the writer is using too many words. I like to use as few as possible to tell a story (though my agent still finds a way to do it with fewer,) and generally if I feel the writer is overdoing the word count, I stop reading. McKee mentions many times that writers don't get to the point quickly enough, and yet the first 31 pages of his own book don't really need to be there. The same information could have been presented in around five pages of concise writing.

A great example of getting to the point comes in William Goldman's THE PRINCESS BRIDE. In presenting the 'good parts version,' Goldman is giving a running critique on self editing. Each of the scenes he laments cutting are scenes that added nothing to the story. I think a writer needs to be brutally honest with themselves, and if a page doesn't need to be there, then lose it.

I don't want to get sidetracked onto criticising STORY because I've not read all of it yet. There may well be something buried away in a later chapter that blows my mind, and McKee obviously knows more about craft than I do.

But every time I pick up the book and start reading, I feel it's size and weight, and can't help but wonder why I'm reading a book about how to write, when I could be spending that time writing. And it could be as simple as me making a snap judgement, because the Stein and the Maass are much shorter and I'm looking forward to reading those.

But I can't help but wonder about writing advice. This website has been up and running for almost a year, and you'll notice we rarely stray into giving out direct advice. Instead, we review things, we analyse, we discuss general topics and give opinions. Buried away in these posts you'll find tips and ideas that work for us, but that's not the same as giving out direct advice. I do give out advice to friends or via email to the fools....ummm...i mean.....folks who ask me for it. But on a blog like this, it wouldn't feel right. Part of that will be because my books aren't published yet, but I get the feeling that even once I get a deal, I'll still feel wrong to be giving out public advice.

A friend recently asked me for advice on how to get work finished. I write him an essay-length reply with various different tips on how to get his ass into the chair, and how to get work done every day. Just before hitting 'send,' though, I realised it was all irrelevant. The best advice I could give him was to not worry too much about my advice. I told him to find a couple of rules that worked for him and to stick to them. Ignore everything else.

I'm not saying there is no place for books on writing. I'm sure i will find some of the books in my pile very useful. But surely there comes a point when writing is like murder; the best way to learn is by doing it.

So how about you guys, what books have you read that have helped? Or do you avoid them? Do you come to sites like this looking for advice, or for random football and TV talk?

The Cold Kiss: The book that almost wasn't

This week marks the release of THE COLD KISS, a fantastic book from John Rector. He stopped by DSD HQ to talk about it.

By John Rector

This week, on July 6, The Cold Kiss will officially be released in the US and Canada.

For those of you who haven’t experienced it, seeing your first published novel on the shelves of your local bookstore is a surreal and wonderful experience. The stars have aligned in your favor, and the result is right in front of you. When it comes to the writing life, it’s the best feeling you can have. But in my case, that feeling comes with a long sigh of relief.

You see, I almost didn’t write the book.

Seventy pages into The Cold Kiss, I turned my back on it. I didn’t like the setting, too claustrophobic, the characters too dark, and the ending I had in mind seemed far too grim and depressing. I’d just spent several months being beaten up by NY publishers over the first book I’d written, The Grove, and I thought if I came at them with another dark, dread-filled novel, they’d send me packing yet again. So, I closed the file on The Cold Kiss, saved it in a dingy corner of my hard drive, and moved on.

If it hadn’t been for my wife reading a printed version of those first seventy pages and telling me she wanted to know the rest of the story, The Cold Kiss never would’ve seen the light of day.

As it turned out, she liked the claustrophobic setting and those dark, forgotten characters lost in all that snow. She convinced me to give it another try, so I picked it up again, and it didn’t take long to realize she was right.

There was something there.

I went back to work and finished the first draft of The Cold Kiss in sixteen weeks. Along the way, a new and much better ending presented itself, and for the first time I saw how all the pieces of the book would fall into place. That moment when everything comes together and you see your novel, complete and whole, for the very first time has always been my favorite part of being a writer.

At least until this week.

----------------------------------

All Nate and Sara want is a new life in a new town, away from the crime and poverty of their past. So, after being approached at a roadside diner by a man offering $500 for a ride to Omaha, they wonder if their luck might be changing.

At first it seems like easy money, but within a few hours the man is dead.

Now, forced off the road by a blizzard and trapped in a run-down motel on the side of a deserted highway, Nate and Sara begin to uncover the man's secrets. Who he was, how he died, and most importantly, why he was carrying two million dollars in his suitcase.

Before they know it, Nate and Sara are fighting for their lives, and in the end, each has to decide just how far they are willing to go to survive.

The Cold Kiss is an everyman psychological thriller that pits a young couple against moral corruption, greed, betrayal, and love. More simply, for two characters who may have used up all their chances, it's the classic final trip down the dark tunnel that might lead to heaven, but drags them through hell. This is A Simple Plan meets The Getaway, with a pulse-pounding plot and a twist ending. John Rector is name that all thriller fans will come to know and love for years to come.

For a solid review of THE COLD KISS, check out what Spinetingler thought here.

Order THE COLD KISS right here from the B&N people.

Independence Day

by: Joelle Charbonneau

Happy Independence Day to everyone in the USA!

Independence Day was always one of my favorite holidays as a kid. More than all the other holidays, I always got the sense that this was a day we celebrated as a community. The town got together for a parade, a huge festival at the golf course and, of course, fireworks when the sun went down. Our neighborhood backed the golf course where the fireworks were set off. Every 4th, we snuck through a hole in the fence, dodged the golf course rangers and watched the fireworks from the closest green possible. I should point out that our parents did this with us. In the finest tradition of our founding fathers, we were rebels.

Everyone always likes to talk about the founding fathers with a sense of reverence. As if they were blessed with a sense of what the future would hold when they put pen to paper and told King George to take his taxes and shove them where only a proctologist would find them. I’m paraphrasing just a tad here, but you get the point. These men had no sense of what the future would hold. I’m guessing that five of signers of the Declaration of Independence who were captured and tortured as traitors might not have been so keen to sign their name had they known what was coming. But sign they did. 56 men made a choice that had huge repercussions for them individually, for their families, their friends, their community and their country.

The best crime fiction (yeah – it’s a writing blog, so I had to circle back) is often created from those kind of choices. A character makes a choice they believe is right hoping they know what the outcome will be. Only they don’t. That choice sets into motion a series of events that they couldn’t have dreamed of leaving us on the edge of our seat while we take the ride with them. In the case of our founding fathers, their choices led to war. Some lost their homes. Some lost their families. Others lost their own lives. Their story contains all the elements from which great fiction is made. Only their story is true.

Happy 4th of July everyone! Be safe.

Re-reading books: Why?

by
Scott D. Parker

I'm an NPR geek. When America's birthday rolls around, the hosts and reporters of NPR team up to read the Declaration of Independence. As a historian, I get as big a thrill by Independence Day as I do about few other things. Each year, I enjoy marveling at our great experiment, how it's evolved, and how, despite flaws, we keep tinkering the machinery, fine tuning the engine that makes us all free.

When I hear the Declaration read aloud (or when I re-read it silently), a swirl of emotions run through me: pride, happiness, awe, wonderment, solemnity. I've gotten to the point where I stopped reading the Declaration at any time during the year, reserving for the first week of July the special feelings I get when I read the document.

I got to thinking about re-reading books in recent days. I'm in a science fiction book club (four members) and we each take turns picking a book for the month. Starting in July, we've all agreed to select a favorite book* and re-read it (or, in the case of a book picked by someone else, read it for the first time). When we agreed, I didn't realize that I would happen upon a roadblock: I don't want to re-read most books I read.

Pondering this, I started to list out reasons why. The most obvious reason is that I don't have enough time in this life to read all the books I want. When I die, the TBR stack will not be empty. Thus, why waste time re-reading something when there's another volume waiting to be opened for the first time? That's a huge driving force for me and one that usually wins any argument.

But there's a different part that also wins arguments. Surely I am not alone in investing in a book a certain level of emotionality (is that a word?) on books. (And this is a big reason why ebooks, for all the convenience, will never, truly kill the printed word.) For books that really strike a chord with me, I can remember all the details of my life that were then current when I read said book. Most of the time, those memories are a time capsule and I don't want to disturb them. Believe me, I've cracked a time capsule open before and the results usually don't measure up to the original reading. Thus, the entire experience is, for me, tainted.

In a few, rare times, when I re-read a book, the second go-round is purely for craft. I did this most recently (i.e., 2002) with Dennis Lehane's "Mystic River." But, this happens infrequently.

Oh, and most of this discussion applies to fiction books. I re-read non-fiction whenever necessary.

Do you re-read books? If so, why? Am I the only one who attaches a certainly level of emotion to a book? And, if so, does the second reading stand up to the first?



*Since I'm restricted--obviously--to SF for this book club, the last SF book that truly blew me away was Dan Simmons's Hyperion. I just read it last year and don't feel the need to re-read it. I'm more interested in its sequel. Thus, I'll likely pick a favorite book that, ironically, I never finished reading back in 1995: Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow. Then again, I might just pick a Star Wars book. Who the heck knows. If it were open to mystery fiction, the choices would be much, much easier: Dawn Patrol, Money Shot, Gabriel Hunt at the Well of Eternity, The Shadow of the Wind.

"Well correct me if I'm wrong, gentlemen, but would you agree that we have been passing through the sea of time?"

This week, I turned thirty. Some of you, you’ll be thinking, God, he’s young. You’ll maybe wonder why this is weird for me. Or maybe you’ll remember that, too. This feeling that suddenly you’re not entirely as young as you think you are.

When I started out writing, the plan was this:

First novel in late teens/early twenties (Looking at some of the rejection letters, I think I actually came pretty damn close).

Steady career by mid twenties, full time writing by maybe twenty seven.

Writing full time (and probably acting on the side – yeah, you didn’t know I almost did the while drama school thing, did ya?*) by thirty. With my own house. And no damn money worries.

Okay, it didn’t quite turn out like that. But I think it’s a pretty modest dream (except for the acting thing, where I was likely to be playing The Doctor by now, not that whippersnapper Matt Smith**). And I think it was closer to achievable than most. So how well did I do?

Well, I was first paid to be published at 24 with my sub to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. I’m still awe-struck and grateful for the opportunity. And to have been published several times since then, too, is just the icing on that cake. I was published previous to this, but these were unpaid and so in terms of the dream, this is where it first started. But I wasn’t actually published in novel form till late twenties.

28.

This is still a remarkable achievement, and I’d have to say to my teenage self that it was better to have waited. I think the 8 years on the plan gave me a huge advantage because it allowed me to experience life. Now that sounds like a cliché, but the heart of all writing is emotional honesty and I think that when I was a teenager I was too wrapped in figuring who I was to be able to empathise honestly with my characters. So, yeah, I’m glad the plan was held back.

And I’m glad, too, that I got to find other things at uni. Leaving behind English and doing philosophy worked wonders for me. Opened me up to other ways of thinking. And allowed me to interact with people. Which is actually a pretty important part of any writer’s research. More so than anything technical, I’d argue.

Part time and full time retail jobs were always part of the plan in a way. Because I had always instinctively known that a writer needs to be part of the world. And as much socialising as you get in uni, let’s be honest, students don’t live anything close to “real” lives most of the time (or was that just me?).

So things didn’t go according to plan. And I’m 30 and not yet indepently wealthy, still supporting myself with a day job. But you know what, I’ve had a blast, and I’m still having a blast.

And even though I noticed some grey hairs in my beard the other day it’s not that old either. In fact, I think despite my plans as a teenager, I think the really exciting part’s just around the corner…



*The reason I gave it up was twofold: 1) I was always more comfortable with a less in-yer-face creative process and so writing came more naturally to me and 2) I found most drama students irritatingly extroverted.

**Of course, I couldn’t be the doc and have a beard. And anyway Smith owns the part. Mind you, with the beard I could play the Master. I can do evil.

What Are You Doing Here?

It's the Thursday before the 4th of July and you're reading Do Some Damage?

Leave work early. Throw a Bratwurst on the grill. Have a beer, or several. No? Stuck at work? Can't leave for the shore until tomorrow?

Okay, fine. Lemme try to wrangle up a post for ya:

I'm a teacher. I've mentioned that several times before. One of the perks of being a teacher is summer vacation. Some teachers get shore houses. Some teachers teach summer school. Some veg.

Me? Well, for the last few years, I take these two months and see what it's like to be a full time author.

Let me tell you something: My guess is full time authors don't shower.

Besides that, it's an interesting life. I find I'm not in as much of a hurry to meet goals (unless there's a deadline). Usually, I get home from work and go through my routine.

Now, I have time to really focus on what I'm working on. The summer time is great for revising. I can really think about the part I'm editing and where it comes up again. What I have to add. I have more time to read and re-read passages and find out how they work or tick. Or take my fantastic agent's notes on the piece and get them to work.

I'm not hurried.

Right now, I'm not revising. I'm drafting. For the last month, while working, I was writing every day, but I was having trouble figuring out more than just who the characters are. It would be my goal to get them talking to each other and see what they wanted to talk about. I knew the barest bones of the story, and that helped guide the conversations, but I was really busy trying to figure out who they were.

Now, I'm pretty sure I know them, so I'm getting to the point where I'm having them do stuff. More than just talk. The plot is moving ahead. The gears in my own brain are functioning only on the story (oh, and the upcoming wedding), so there's less clutter. I can work out parts of the story and really get the action to happen.
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I don't know if that's because I have more time to work or because I'm deeper into the book, but either way the time helps.

So, how do I spend my summer vacation?

Writing.

But I'm done writing for the day, so I'm going to head outside with my copy of So Cold the River and do something else every writer should do.

Read.

Happy Holiday Weekend, everyone!