Aaron Philip Clark is a native of Los Angeles, CA. He is a novelist and half of the spoken word/ jazz duo Soul Phuziomati. He has worked in the film industry as a documentary producer and currently teaches screenwriting and English in North Carolina. To learn more about him visit www.aaronphilipclark.com.
*Editors's addendum. He also wrote a killer novel called The Science Of Paul*
1) Try to avoid cliché’s. If you find yourself writing something that is considered to be cliché then do the exact opposite. Cliché’s can cause your writing to become stale and manufactured, especially when it comes to noir and the crime genre. If your protagonist seems too cookie cutter, say a hard drinking ex-cop, then make him or her a rookie who enjoys yoga and green tea.
2) Read. Yes, read, not only crime fiction but any book you deem interesting. Branching out into other genres is a good way to stimulate creativity and keep your ideas fresh. I’m a big fan of existential fiction and literature in general. A few titles that inspired The Science of Paul were J.M. Cotzee’s Life And Times of Michael K, James Baldwin’s Another Country, Albert Camus’ The Stranger, Kem Nunn’s Tapping the Source, and Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Also poetry can help free up your prose. John Banville who writes crime fiction under the pen name Benjamin Black openly stated that his writing is an attempt to merge poetry with prose, and the results are well-crafted and lyrical—the kind of sentences that stick with you even after you’ve moved on to the next. It often takes me a while to read his books; I tend to read the same sentences more than once because they’re so enjoyable. Another poet is Maggie Nelson. She wrote a very interesting re-examination of her Aunt Jane’s unsolved murder. Her writing is crisp and honest; her poems get to the heart of the matter, which is a must when writing about crime.
3) Don’t be afraid to take chances and experiment. I tell my students all the time that taking chances in their writing forces them to grow. It builds tough skin and helps them to mature. Not everyone is going to like what you do, that’s a fact, but taking chances on something you believe in helps establish a level of confidence that every writer needs to be successful.
4) Surround yourself with other writers and like-minded people. The best thing a writer can do is participate in a community of writers. This comes easy if you’re in a program studying writing, but if you’re not then you should actively engage in writing conferences, readings, signings, and other events. This allows you to meet people and network. It’s incredibly difficult to get published and knowing people never hurts. Also it keeps you inspired, when you hear how other writers were able to get published, which often involves a lot of tenacity and a bit of luck, it doesn’t seem like it’s impossible.
5) Read the newspapers. Every crime writer should stay up to snuff on crime. There are an abundant of stories and characters just waiting to be fictionalized in your local newspaper. I used to keep article clippings of bizarre crimes. Now with the Internet it’s even easier, you can save links or copy and paste into a Word document. Crime writers have to accept that if it weren’t for criminals and crazies our books would be much more difficult to sell. But the fact is people are in love with crime, they’re perplexed by it, they want to understand it, and make sense out of why people do what they do. As crime writers we may not be able to give them concrete answers, but we can at least give them something to think about. Therefore the crazies feed us, and we feed the public—it’s rather quid pro quo.
6) Never sacrifice character for plot. Character is the life blood of any story. If you’re character fails to be well-developed, then no matter how interesting the plot is the audience will have trouble engaging. Keep in mind, the definition for plot is nothing more than a sequence of events. Sure, you want your novel to have engaging events that lead to some destination, but a writer shouldn’t feel that the character is a vehicle for plot; instead, plot should be a vehicle for character. If a character’s decisions result in a plot that is staccato, it’s much easier to forgive than a character that lacks depth.
7) When it comes to your first novel, don’t compromise. When I was seeking out agents to represent my first novel, many of them rejected it because they felt it wasn’t commercial enough. It is important not to craft your novel around what is popular at the time. Write the novel you want to the write, write it well, and write for your smartest reader—never dumb it down or sterilize it because you think you’ll have a larger audience. Don’t sell yourself short. For every writer there is a publisher somewhere, whether large or small, who will be interested in your novel.
8) Revision. Don’t be afraid to cut things out. Revision can be the most difficult part of writing but it’s also the most important. I once had a student that refused to cut out a large portion of a screenplay that stymied the storyline. It featured two characters (Angels) having a conversation about how much they missed their bodies and the physical world. Though it was an intriguing scene, it went on for ten pages. The student obviously found the scene to be fun to write, which let me know that perhaps it was this aspect of the script that interested the student the most. I suggested the student scrap the whole script and begin a new script starting with this scene. The same can be said when writing a novel. I used to dread having to cut certain things out, but now I find it freeing. It’s also okay to linger in a place in your story; you just don’t want to linger for too long. James Sallis does a great job of taking time to settle in a place before moving on to the next thing. He develops a full scene rather than a snippet.
9) Figure out the tone of your novel. I’m not a big fan of high-octane types of stories. I tend to enjoy small, character-driven tales of murder and mayhem. I write the types of novels I would most likely want to purchase, but if high-octane is your thing then go all the way, don’t half-step as my grandmother used to say. If bullets fly from the start, the dialogue is Tarantinoesque, and the body count is high, don’t drift into melodrama 100 pages into the novel. There’s nothing more frustrating than a novel that changes its tone in the middle of the book. If you find yourself exhausted from an explosively charged plot, then perhaps it’s best to reduce the budget. Remember what ever tone you choose, keep it consistent.
10) Stay the course. When you tell people you’re writing a novel, you never know the reaction you may get. Some people will be supportive, some may not. One of my professors put it best, “You have to be like Ulysses and his crew. Tie yourself to the mast and put wax in your ears—drown out the sirens—the naysayers.” Keep writing every day, even if it’s only for a few minutes at a time. If you can’t write that day, think about writing—daydream about. Work through your stories; figure them out in those quiet moments. Sometimes inspiration comes at the most inopportune time. So you may want to keep a journal at your bedside, maybe one in your car or desk drawer at work. I had a friend who used to carry around a digital recorder. I tried it for a bit and it didn’t work for me. I’m better at writing my ideas down and committing them to paper. I can later revise them and make notes as well. You have to do what works best for you, as long as you keep the words flowing. Walter Mosley’s book This Year You Write Your Novel is filled with practical advice and can give a budding writer a much needed jumpstart. Writing takes discipline. Mosley, who began writing rather late in life, is a prime example of a disciplined writer. French crime author, Georges Simenon, was highly disciplined as well with nearly 500 novels and short works under his belt. I may never write as many as Simenon, but I hope to write as many as Mosley. A budding crime author should enjoy the process of writing their first novel. It’s quite possibly the most freedom they will ever have as writers. The role of the author has changed. Today most up-and-coming and even well-established authors have to be business minded, blog friendly, and Amazon obsessed. But the budding novelist is free of those burdens—free to write without worry. I say enjoy it!
