Crime and Collage
What Writing Crime Fiction Taught Me
It's been a strange, dislocated week, some highs and some lows. Highs have involved delicious eats and conversations, catching up with writing friends over coffee and homemade scones, over tea and birthday cakes. Neither the scones nor the cake were baked by me I hasten to add, but as it happens I've done more than my fair share of cooking this week, as my little twin granddaughters and their parents have all been ill - they are currently dubbing their home the 'plague house.' It's not Covid but every bit as bad from what I can gather, so I'm doing what I did when they had Covid and sending care packages, via John, consisting of various pans of soup, curry, cheese scones, and a lasagna. If you know me, you'll know cooking is not really my happy place but needs must. It's tough bringing up twins - you need all the help you can get.
Lows have been not feeling at my most energetic, still trying to chase off the last virus I had. Disappointments too as our plans to visit Amsterdam and see the Vermeer exhibition have been scuppered. I was too late. When I went online to book tickets, I discovered it had 'definitively sold out.'
Otherwise, I've been happily preparing for the launch of the Linen Press poetry anthology, Tabula Rasa, (see last week’s post) and doing what I often do when I'm not writing, which is playing with my paper and fabric collages. Often referencing my writing. It's something I've always done, from way back. As a writer I love paper, as the daughter of a dressmaker I love fabric. Added to this I am undoubtedly a frustrated artist.
I've also been comfort reading some crime fiction. Unusual for me, although I watch it a lot, but I do love Adrian Mckinty's, Sean Duffy series, set in a troubled Northern Ireland in the 1980's. (Suspend disbelief occasionally and you may love it too.)
Reading Adrian McKinty has reminded me of my own foray into crime fiction, with Blood Tide, a novel set in Newcastle Upon Tyne, featuring former prison Governor, Danny Beck. Blood Tide and Danny Beck, much loved by my second agent, was the nearest I came to a publishing contract - with Constable in the UK and Soho Press in New York. It looked like a done deal... but it wasn't to be.
Nothing is ever wasted. I learned so much writing that novel and it convinced me that all novelists have a lot to learn from the masters of noir.
Before embarking on Blood Tide (sadly no longer available) I read a lot of crime fiction. I paid particular attention to one of the books in Henning Mankell's Wallander series. I read it forensically, page by page, chapter by chapter, making notes, constantly asking myself what he was doing as a writer, and how.
Here are some of the things I learned reading and writing crime fiction and which I have taken with me into my subsequent novels.
Character is everything and although characters might be understated - I know mine often are - your protagonist cannot be passive – he/she must act.
Dialogue is key to the pace of a novel. It needs to be authentic and sharp – readers rarely if ever skip dialogue. Its vital for pace, as is a hook at the end of the chapter. This can really crank up the pace leaving the reader compelled to read on.
Managing time, place and the internal logic of the novel are crucial skills. Internal logic does not necessarily involve the extensive planning that crime fiction often requires but it does mean ensuring that the motivations and consequences of your characters’ actions make for a rational whole.
Which brings me to something I'm almost ashamed to admit, it took me several books to realise that in the end you write for your reader and never just to amuse yourself. Story is also everything.
Evoking a sense of place brings your scene alive and scenes are a vital component of the narrative. I've always been interested in evoking place, but I was amazed to see how Mankell achieved it in just a few, well-written lines. Less is sometimes more. (Though for more, in terms of evoking place and time, Annie Proulx's Barkskins is transcendent. Many thanks for the recommendation - I'm slowly working my way through reading suggestions).
Finally, something I found helpful in progressing the narrative, not through the reading but through the writing itself, was when in doubt think TV, think your favourite cop show or psychological thriller and ask what would happen next? TV/film is also a great reference for thinking in scenes, as is screen writing, another skill worth the novelist’s attention.
Does remembering this, remembering Danny Beck who I was very fond of myself, make me want to write another crime novel? This answer is no. For one thing the market is flooded and there is huge commercial pressure in writing crime fiction. I made my decision, after Blood Tide, not to write genre fiction, no matter how much I may admire it, and I’m sticking by it.
What are your favourite crime reads or series? I’d love to know
See you next time - thanks for reading - Avril x
Scones- hmm did scones ones, ended up with a batch of chipboard n cheddar! Hmmm- deconstructing books- and not in the way Joe Orton and his lover did which earned then 6 months inside lol! I wonder if, like your gorgeous stitched poetry pamphlet, there is a way for you to publish a novel, and the book object comes as a work of deconstructed art in itself? There's that adage, art can't be reproduced, but it would have to be, to publish multiple copies, wouldn't it? And why not, prints are acceptable of paintings. Crime and genre fiction has never been my bag, not out of snobbery, anything's my bag if my nose loves to sniff through it. But- on the crime/thriller front, I do love Thomas Harris' 3 novel featuring Hannibal Lecter. The details and cleverness missing from the films is superb!
So very interesting. It is a great essay about how good writers learn their craft through their perceptions of their own own process. Here the use of crime novels as a way to learn structure. I always thinks crime novels echo the structure of fairy tales exploring cause and consequence in a safe and reassuring way. I was sorry that your Danny Beck story didn't make its way to the bookshops. It is a great novels full of insights from your own prison experience. Writing focused on genre can, if you let it be a literary prison in itself. On the other hand much so called literary fiction like your Grear new novel could perhaps fit into a psychological fiction genre. Another great novel here