How I Stumbled Into Crime Writing and Why I Stuck Around

Meet Charles Salzberg, a wonderful writer and an eloquent champion of fine writing and writers. Charles is the author of the Shamus Award nominated Swann's Last Song, and the sequel, Swann Dives In.  His latest novel is Devil in the Hole, based on a 40-year old true crime.  The third in the Swann series, Swann's Lake of Despair, will be published next fall.  He also teaches writing at the Writer's Voice and the New York Writers Workshop, where he is a Founding Member.

 I once heard Charles describe why he prefers pantsing to outlining.  Until then, I always thought I should be outlining carefully alla Agatha and my heroine Ann Perry. I just couldn't make myself do it.  Every time I tried, my fingers just started typing out the real story instead.  Then at the launch of the his second Swann novel, Charles said, "If I already know what's going to happen, I'll get bored."  Bingo! I thought.  I need to keep myself guessing in order to keep the reader guessing.  Now when I get that scary feeling that I don't know where my story is going, I think of Charles's words, take heart, and then surprise myself.  Here is the story of how Charles surprised himself by becoming a crime writer.

Annamaria Alfieri

I never meant to be a crime writer and in fact, I still don’t see myself that way.  But I am.  Three novels published with a fourth on the way.  All crime.  So yes, I guess I am a crime writer.

            As a young wannabe writer I was partial to authors like Saul Bellow, Phillip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Norman Mailer, Henry Roth, Djuna Barnes, Margaret Drabble, Fitzgerald, Twain, Dostoevsky.  But writing in that vein, with a heavy emphasis on character and inner dialogue, although satisfying, was getting me nowhere.  I became too involved with character and not enough with plot. 

            And so—I would like to think it was late one night as I hunched over my typewriter, but I doubt that was the case—I came up with a plan.  I would force myself to write plot.  The best way to do that, I decided, was to write a detective novel, because there is nothing more tightly plotted than a good detective tale. I would write a mystery novel that seemed to be in the tradition of masters of crime, but with a twist.  In preparation I gorged on the genre.  Everything from Hammett’s The Continental Op to Charles Willeford’s Hoke Moseley, and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, even throwing in a little Mickey Spillane and James M. Cain. Once I finished, I knew what I would do.  I’d shake things up a bit.  I’d start with the requisite missing person, progress to a murder, have the detective follow all the clues looking for the killer, but in the end, he would not solve the crime.  A friend called it “an existential detective novel.”  I liked that.    

I finished that novel, but although praised by agents and editors, no one wanted to publish it.  “You can’t disappoint your audience.  You’re writing a detective novel, you have to have the detective solve the crime.”

            That kind of ruined the point I was trying to make: that the world isn’t tidy, that things didn’t always add up, that sometimes chaos rules over reason. So, I tucked it in a drawer—yes, those were the days when you had an actual manuscript—and moved on to make a living as a magazine journalist.

          

          Years passed.  I got older.  And somewhat wiser.  I pulled out the manuscript, tinkered with it a little (on a computer, this time), changed the ending, and the book was published.  The title, which I loved, didn’t quite make sense anymore—Swann’s Last Song, because the detective is so disillusioned to find that the world is not necessarily knowable and logical that he quits the business—but it was too good to let go. 

            

         That was going to be it. I had written what is called a stand-alone.  I had no interest in continuing to write crime novels.  I would go back to what I loved, writing character driven, literary novels. But to my surprise, the book was nominated for a Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel.  I lost.  I got ticked off.  I’d show them.  I’d write another. (Get it: revenge). And so Swann Dives In was born.  I had so much fun writing it, that I wrote a third, Swann’s Lake of Despair.  In the next two Swann books there are no murders.  That would be too easy.  There are way too many more interesting crimes to write about.

            Sounds like I was hooked on crime, but really not so much.  At least not as in the conventional crime novel that focuses on murder and robbery.

The Sweet Mysteries of Life

Today, I am happy to introduce Charles Salzberg, author of the Swann series of novels about a finder of missing persons.  Charles  is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in New York magazine, GQ, Esquire and the New York Times Book Review.  He is the author of Swann's Last Song, nominated for a Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel, the sequel Swann Dives In, and the upcoming Devil in the Hole. He has also been a Visiting Professor of Magazine Writing at the S.I. Newhouse School for Public Communications, and teaches writing at the Writer's Voice and the New York Writers Workshop, where he is a Founding Member.  You can find out more at www.charlessalzberg.com/

Annamaria Alfieri

A few years ago I found myself on a panel with several other mystery and crime writers, most well-established.  I was pretty much a novice, recently having published my first detective novel, Swann’s Last Song.  In a way, I felt like a fraud, since I had spent a couple decades writing non-fiction books and magazine articles, while always thinking of myself as a “literary” novelist, whatever that was.  After writing a few novels with nary a crime in sight, other than the “personal” crimes we commit each day, I had tried writing a detective novel merely as an exercise, to see if I could write something where a tightly woven plot was critical.

            When it came time for questions from the audience a woman asked, “what’s the different between mystery writing and any other kind of writing?”  Without thinking, I blurted out, “there is no difference.”  Quickly realizing I had to back this up, I added, “every good novel is a mystery.  If not, why would you bother turning the page to find out what happens next?”

            A couple of the other panelists nodded in agreement, and then we went on to the next question.  But later, when the panel was over, I couldn’t help coming back to this question and my answer.

            I hadn’t really considered it before but what I’d said was not only true but essential for me as a writer.  It brought to mind other questions I and no doubt other writers have been asked over the years, namely, do I write from an outline and do I know the end of a novel before I get there?

            The answer to both is, no.  For me, an outline would not only be scary and inhibiting, but also confining.  When I write mysteries or in my case detective novels, I think my plots would suffer terribly if I knew where I was going.

            Especially in fiction, I think it’s essential to keep the reader guessing.  I’m afraid if I know where I’m going, so will my reader.  And so, not only don’t I know how, where and when my novel will end, but I don’t even know what’s going to happen on the next page, often even the next sentence.  For me, this keeps the writing fresh and if it’s fresh for me I’m assuming it will be for my reader, as well. 

            Another way to accomplish this is to constantly do the unexpected.  It’s what I tell my students to do all the time.  When they get to a point where things seem to be going swimmingly toss in a hand grenade to shake things up.  It’s similar, perhaps, to a plot twist, but it’s really more than that.  To me, it’s a matter of setting up a roadblock that the character, or really the author, has to overcome.  It’s like those speed bumps meant to make drivers slow down, and slowing down means having to think more about what you’re writing. 

            For instance, in my last Swann novel, Swann Dives In, in his search for a missing coed, skip tracer Henry Swann comes across a beautiful college professor.  The temptation was to have them get together, she seducing him or vice versa.  But this seemed stale and predictable to me and so, with no prior planning, I made her a lesbian.  Suddenly, the whole arc of the story changed, as did their relationship.  It made me a better, more creative writer, because I had to think of my feet.  I had to make it work.  This is far more like life, which can be unpredictable, capricious and uncontrollable.  Just when we think we’ve got it whipped, we’re thrown a curve when we’re looking fastball, and if we don’t adapt we’re done for.

            Of course, there is no right way or wrong way.  Other writers need to know just where they’re going and how to get there.  The two schools of thought are personified by two talented immensely talented, but very different kinds of writers.  Truman Capote claimed he couldn’t write the story unless he knew the ending, while Norman Mailer claimed he couldn’t write the story if he did.  I’m with Mailer.  Why would I even bother writing it if I know how it ends.  The thrill for me is in the discovery of what’s going to happen, how the characters will act and react.  And if you’ve created “real” characters they will react in real ways, ways that you don’t have to manufacture. 

It’s a cliché that they take on a life of their own, but it’s true.

And so, each time I approach the computer there is a sense of dread, but also the excitement of not being quite sure of what’s going to happen next. 

That’s the real mystery.

Charles Salzberg