Table of Contents
ALSO IN THE NOW WRITE! SERIES
Now Write!
Fiction Writing Exercises from Todays Best Writers and Teachers
Now Write! Nonfiction:
Memoir, Journalism, and Creative Nonfiction Exercises
from Todays Best Writers and Teachers
Now Write! Screenwriting:
Screenwriting Exercises from Todays Best Writers and Teachers
Now Write! Mysteries
is dedicated to the inspiring memory of
SHERRY ELLIS
a bright, witty, fun-loving soul,
a caring social worker and writing coach,
an avid reader, committed writer, passionate editor,
and a terrific friend to the whole writing community.
A NOTE FROM LAURIE LAMSON
Sherry Ellis, my aunt, got involved in the literary scene in 2002 when she started interviewing fiction authors she admired, including Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award winners, and an NEA recipient. Her background as a social worker and her love of literature combined to create deep, dynamic interviews that were published in The Bloomsbury Review, Glimmer Train, The Kenyon Review, Writers Chronicle, and other magazines.
In 2006, Tarcher/Penguin published the first Now Write! anthology of eighty-nine writing exercises by fiction authors and teachersmany my aunt had previously interviewed. She then put together Now Write! Nonfiction, which was published in 2009, also by Tarcher/ Penguin. The same year, Red Hen Press published her book of author interviews, Illuminating Fiction.
From the start I cheered her on from the sidelines. When I suggested the next Now Write! book could be about screenwriting, she generously invited me to be her coeditor, and Now Write! Screenwriting was published in 2011.
My aunt was collecting the exercises for Now Write! Mysteries when she was told she needed heart surgery. She requested I take over as editor if she wasnt able to finish this book, and those were hard conversations for me. I never believed it would become necessary. Sadly, she passed away a few days after the surgery.
I want to thank all the contributors from the bottom of my heart for participating in this book, and for all your compassion as I took on such an emotionally challenging task. I couldnt have done it without your support and kindness.
Im proud of my aunt Sherry for creating a wonderful legacy with her books, one that will surely serve and inspire writers for generations to come.
DETECTIVE WORK
The Art and Science of Research
STEPHEN JAY SCHWARTZ
Dontcha Just Hate the Research Part?
STEPHEN JAY SCHWARTZ is the bestselling author of Boulevard and Beat. He spent years as director of development for Wolfgang Petersen, where he helped develop AIR FORCE ONE,OUTBREAK, RED CORNER, BICENTENNIAL MAN, and MIGHTY JOE YOUNG. Stephen has written for the Discovery Channel, and he works as a freelance screenwriter and script doctor. He is currently writing his third novel and is on assignment rewriting a 3-D zombie film. He has personally interviewed half a dozen zombies and hes lucky to have made it out alive.
I might be in the minority here, but I actually love it. With a capital L. I can trace the moment back to college, when I convinced five professors that the research I would do in the Navajo reservation was important enough to excuse me from two weeks of classes, and it would require the rescheduling of my midterm exams.
I can understand why my screenwriting professor went along with this, and maybe even the guy who taught Film as Literature. But how did I convince my American history, astronomy, and sociology professors? Somehow I got them on board, and then I was off on a road trip that took me through California, Utah, and northern Arizona, taking the picaresque journey I was writing for the protagonist in my screenplay.
What the hell was I doing? I had a broken-down Toyota Corolla and a hundred bucks to my name. Was I ducking my responsibilities, intent upon reenacting my own version of Kerouacs On the Road?
Yes! And yet it was one hundred percent university-stamped-and-approved, under the dubious title... RESEARCH.
But then a funny thing happened. The road trip became a life lesson. I met amazing peopleNative Americans and Anglos alikeand, after skating through Mojave Desert flash floods and sucking rainwater from my cars overwhelmed carburetor, I somehow landed at an acquaintances house in Window Rock, Arizona, on New Years Eve with a .32 revolver under my pillow. The next day I found myself strapped to a wild beast in a snowy desert plain after saying the words, Sure, why not? to the little Navajo kid who asked me, Wanna ride my daddys rodeo horse?
Dangerous? Maybe. Fun? Hell, yes. I ended up near a place called Rough Rock, without electricity, plumbing, or running water, surrounded by hundreds of dogs and thousands of sheep wandering the hills looking for shrubs. I played duets with an ancient Navajo medicine manhis tribal flute to my soprano saxand he fed me peyote for my ailing back and blessed it with cedar bark and eagle feathers, and soon I saw spirits in the linoleum on his kitchen floor.
And I rode horseback through Canyon de Chelly to view the Anasazi Indian ruins firsthand, and I interviewed Navajo teachers and prophets and politicians and farmers. On my last day, I was driven out to the boonies (it was all the boonies) to the home of a Navajo educator who had promised to drive me back to Gallup. It was late and cold when I arrived and he saw me and said, Its an old Navajo tradition to sleep in the same bed for warmth, you know, and I realized that I had just met the first gay Navajo Id ever known and I said, Thank you, Ill just stay over here in this bed... and when I awoke I found him standing over me peering out the window saying, Doesnt look good. Well be snowed in for days... and he was right, the snow had descended on our little world and there I was.
Then at breakfast I met his parents who figured I was one of those hippies who blew through in the sixties, stopping to herd their sheep for weeks on end. They asked if I would herd their sheep and I declined. And during my stay I discovered that the gay Navajo (who was respecting my boundaries, by the way) was an amazing writer who had graduated from St. Johns School of Great Books and had, in his youth, danced professional ballet in New York City and had been a good friend to Andy Warhol.
When you call yourself a writer, people talk. People will tell you the most amazing things. Everyone wants to be remembered, and everyone has a story to tell. And if youre willing to listen... watch out!
When I start a project, I like to do what I call wallowing in research. Sometimes I call it drowning, or sponging, or diving off the deep end. Its boots-on-the-ground stuff, and youll discover things about yourself and your characters youll never learn from Internet research or books alone. If youre unpublished, you might think you dont have the credentials to ask for an interview. Nonsense. Writers ask questions. Writers need to know. Define yourself as a writer and move forward. The odds are that you know someone who knows someone who knows the thing you need to know. Contact the guy you know and begin the process.
