Dave's Fiction Warehouse

T he first post I ever wrote here was about The Sopranos, HBO’s series about the New Jersey mob. At the time I was annoyed by the ending: an abrupt black screen that said “hardware malfunction” a lot more than it said “this is a fitting end to one of the most groundbreaking TV shows ever made.” That was six years ago. I mention it because I recently watched The Sopranos again for the first time since then. This time I viewed the episodes three or four at a sitting, instead of waiting a week between shows and six months between seasons. We got through the whole show in three weeks or so. It was a different experience. The condensed viewing schedule makes the story less episodic, more novelistic. The characters and their relationships become more clear. Even the hated dream sequences seem somehow less self-indulgent. On the other hand, I quickly went from disliking Tony’s kids to actively despising them. One more accolade for David Chase: A truer portrait of asshole teenagers, circa 2005...

As a reader and part-time writer of crime fiction, I'm familiar enough with most of the rules of the genre -- for example, your story had better have a corpse in it. But if you'd pressed me on it, I would have listed maybe five such rules. Turns out there are 20, at least according to this list , first published in 1928 by mystery-writing legend Willard Huntington Wright. (Don't know WHW? Then you don't know jack.) Actually, by today's standards, just about five of the rules still seem to be in force -- including the one about the corpse. Some of the others might be a little dated. No. 11, for example: "A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person — one that wouldn't ordinarily come under suspicion." Oooh-kay. No servants. What else should the aspiring mystery writer guard against? Rule No. 20 is a handy guide to keep by the d...

A few weeks ago, I wrote that I was returning to the keyboard after a hiatus of too many months napping, reading, working out, doing crosswords, playing solitaire, drinking wine, mowing the lawn, surfing the Internet, cursing the cats, brooding through Wichita's monsoon season -- any and all of the hundreds of things writers do to avoid actually writing. As a bit of reinforcement before the fact, I bought a new laptop computer, reasoning that it might be easier to write if I didn't always have to be in the same room when I was doing it. So far, it's working. While I'm not going to give the new machine all the credit, it's probably true that the deep shame of buying unnecessary hardware has fostered at least a temporary surge in productivity. My goal is a minimum of 500 words a day; so far I've been closer to 1,000. For this book project, I'm trying a couple of other new tricks -- new to me, at any rate. I only reread the last few paragraphs of what I've...

Looking over the New York Times fiction bestseller list this morning, I notice that only four of the top 16 titles can't be classified as mysteries or thrillers. Those include "A Thousand Splendid Suns," Khaled Hosseini's book about the enduring friendship between two Afghan women; and "Bungalow 2," Danielle Steel's book about, well, what most Danielle Steel books are about. I suppose that's good news for writers of mysteries and thrillers, particularly if you happen to be named Janet Evanovich or James Patterson. Surely it must mean there is a vast demand for the genre we've chosen. The rest of us can brood over the list, nursing our lukewarm coffee and lukewarm talent, and vaguely imagine the sequels for the breakout novels we have not yet written. But really, while the bestseller list is every writer's fantasy, it probably shouldn't be any writer's goal. That path leads to imitation and formula, and practically guarantees even dee...

When I'm browsing books, I always give special weight to the opening line. The very best of them set up the essential conflict right off the bat. They reassure you that, yes, there's a story here, and you're not going to have to wait until Chapter 8 to get interested in it. I'm a great fan of opening lines, from the famous to the obscure. Often they're the reason I take a closer look at a book I might otherwise pass by. So it's interesting to examine this list, compiled by American Book Review, of what they deem the 100 best first lines of all time. Some I agree with; others ... meh. For example, the No. 1 choice: "Call me Ishmael." I don't know. While eloquent, as a single sentence it doesn't really grab you by the throat, or suggest the epic struggle to come in Moby Dick. Then there's that other famous beginning: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Leo Tolstoy's oft-quoted opening...

When you fancy yourself a writer, it complicates the pastime of reading for pleasure. Like it or not, you end up judging every book with the eye of a technician. I inevitably have one of two reactions: "Hell, I could do better than this" (to which the inner voice replies, "then why didn't you?"); or "I could not write this well in a million years" (to which the inner voice replies, "You're finally starting to get it"). I'm having the second reaction to " The Yiddish Policeman's Union ," which I mention below. While I'm thoroughly enjoying this book, it's also kind of depressing to be reminded so forcefully that there is such a thing as innate talent, and that some people have a lot more of it than others. Michael Chabon puts more pathos, humor and insight into a single paragraph than I've been able to do in a thousand of them. He's a fine writer to read, but a daunting one to compare oneself against. I gu...