Experimentation…
Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone! It’s the day lovers celebrate…maybe book lovers? Enjoy it!
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Writers should never stop experimenting. I don’t mean silliness like writing a crime story in reverse (Deaver) or a mystery where the ending comes first (Garcia Marquez). Or a horror story containing a monstrous clown who eats people (King)—OK, maybe that was fresh and new at the time, and played off on some people’s clown phobias. No, I just mean telling a story in a new way with new characters or old ones in new situations.
The opposite of experimentation is to put yourself in a rut: You’re enamored with one of your stories, so you write more like them. Writers of series often fall into that trap (it often seemed that Grafton just copied and pasted sections in going from A to whatever letter she ended on, but maybe I shouldn’t knock success?). Sometimes that’s no fault of the author; the publisher wants more books just like that first one, especially if that first one is successful.
Sci-fi might be the one genre where experimentation is essential. I might have shocked some readers with the experimental sex scenes in Rogue Planet, for example, but who knows how sexual mores will change in the future? And it’s all tame compared to Heinlein’s Friday and some of his other books, for example. (The old master became quite ribald in his later years.)
If space is the last frontier, sci-fi goes beyond that frontier and provides infinite possibilities for experimentation. But mysteries and thrillers also allow that; we just have to work a bit harder. For mysteries, how many ways can I kill a person? For thrillers, how many conspiracies can I create?
Aristocrats and Assassins was another experiment, for example. When I had the initial idea long ago and much later started the story, I thought I might be in legal trouble—most of the aristocrats are real ones! Outside of writing mode, I studied that legal problem a bit. It turns out that if we don’t say anything bad about persons, we can put them in our books. (The aristocrats in my book do some really great things.) I remembered that Clancy did that with Prince Charlie (Patriot Games), so I felt safe. That whole book was an experiment. Maybe some readers don’t think so, but I liked the result—Aristocrats and Assassins is my favorite Chen and Castilblanco book. (By the way, Bastiann van Coevorden from Rembrandt’s Angel first appears there in a cameo.)
Every Chen and Castilblanco book is an experiment, of course. They all start with a murder—the two cops are homicide detectives, after all. But I cheat: I don’t write about their boring and routine cases! I create new ones, experiments that often leave the NYC area to go national or even international, like Aristocrats and Assassins (that tale begins with Castilblanco and his wife on vacation in Europe—no NYC at all). Angels Need Not Apply is another example of that.
Is this the way to write a series? Maybe not for you, but it worked for me. Better still, as a reader, it seems to work for the fiction authors I read the most. They experiment, even within their series. Consider Clancy’s oeuvre. Every Jack Ryan book is an experiment, a refreshing, new story that entertained many people (Red Storm Rising is an exception). He might not have been a great writer, but he was an entertaining one because he experimented. Same for Heinlein. Every book in Asimov’s Foundation trilogy is also an experiment.
The desire for experimentation might cause writer’s block, I suppose. If a writer has fallen into a rut, it’s hard to come up with something new and bold. It’s probably advisable to avoid those ruts. Publishers don’t often understand that; authors should.
So, readers, enjoy all the experiments in writing out there—they will keep you reading. And writers, sit down and write some experiments. Your readers will thank you.
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Comments are always welcome!
The Last Humans. Ex-USN and LA County Sheriff’s diver Penny Castro surfaces from a forensic dive and finds the apocalypse. Can she survive the post-apocalypse? Follow Penny’s adventures as she creates a new family and then strives to protect them. This post-apocalyptic thriller is coming soon from Black Opal Books! A sequel is already in the works. (By the way, check out the Black Opal catalog. Lots of good reading there.)
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
