I love to chat with other authors, even if it’s via the internet.  (In fact, I’m ugly and big enough that I might scare them in a face-to-face meeting!)  Linda Hall, whose excellent book Night Watch I recently reviewed, mentioned that my style was a bit like Raymond Chandler’s.  She was referring to my mystery/thriller/crime/detective series featuring NYPD homicide detectives Chen and Castilblanco (the series is now featured in my new look).  Oh, the memories!  I thought back to those many “hard-boiled detective stories” I read in my youth.  Linda is right in seeing their influence, but I use a different stylistic description; to me, “hard-boiled” means something more general, minimalist writing.  You’ll find it even in my sci-fi stories.

Minimalist writing is a technique to get the reader to participate in the creative process.  I want every reader to develop his own mental picture of Detective Castilblanco, physically but also in mannerisms, language, and actions, for example.  I have to paint a wee bit on the canvas, suggestions, as it were, but the reader has to finish the painting.  Is this lazy writing?  I suppose some writers would call it that.  It includes “hard-boiled,” of course, but goes much farther.  The truth of the matter is, unless you actually know Castilblanco and have been around him for years, your mental picture generated from my words on the page is just as valid as mine!

Long ago, I concluded that was what writers of hard-boiled detective stories were trying to do.  In that sense, those wonderful old and wonderful Sam Spade Bogart movies were less successful, because a movie viewer differs from a book reader.  A book has no visuals, beyond the cover.  While many might identify Sam Spade with Bogart, a reader of those tales who never saw the movies will have his own internal visual.  The written words on each page stimulate the human brain to create an imaginary picture of the character.  Every kid knows this  (I’d read my Tarzan comics and then go in the backyard  and jump off a cliff onto a threatening lion with a knife in my mouth—the cliff was a stepladder, but the knife, my Dad’s bait knife, was real).  Your mental picture of Castilblanco will differ from someone else’s.  Sure, there will be common elements—everyone will have Mr. C chomping on Tums, for example.

On Tuesday, I referred to the Z-series by John Stockmyer.  Z, or Bob Zapolska, is a hard-boiled PI who lives on the edge and often jumps from the frying pan to the fire.  Although some might say his life is full of nasty coincidences—disparate events suddenly coming together in a mega-crime—the Z-series is fine minimalist writing (Z chomps on aspirin instead of Tums, though, although he mentions the latter in the second book in the series).  In my casual reading as well as my writing, I prefer minimalist to verbose description (Moby Dick) and taut dialogue to seventy-page discourse (Atlas Shrugged).  It’s all a reflection of the Goldilocks Principle liberally applied to writing—not too much of anything, but just enough.  I probably would have had three dwarves, not seven!  (You need three to resolve differences, especially if you keep Grumpy around.)

Minimalist writing goes beyond hard-boiled.  It’s difficult to call Mary Jo Melendez’ story in Muddlin’ Through a hard-boiled mystery about a woman out for revenge, but it is minimalist writing.  So are the sci-fi novels in my “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.”  While sci-fi must contain some description, often called world-building, you still must pay attention to Goldilocks.  People often find 19^th century classics boring due to excess verbosity and schmaltzy dialogue (the interminable suffering of Jean Valjean found in the novel was carried over to the musical stage, making that musical just as boring as the book and a bladder-buster besides).  Reading tastes are just as subjective as Broadway plays, of course; some people revel in verbose schmaltz.  I don’t.

Tom Clancy once said, “I try to keep it simple.  Just tell the damned story.”  He didn’t follow his own advice in Red Storm Rising (the modern version of War and Peace—where were the Pentagon censors?) and later books, but his book Hunt for Red October was a minimalist jewel—he “just” told a great story.  Modern readers like minimalist writing, even though many probably don’t even realize that’s what they’re reading.  That’s an easy explanation for the popularity of cozy mysteries, for example—either minimal mysteries with a romantic flare or minimal romances with a mystery flare (you pick the definition that suits you).  Surprisingly, the short story and novella seem to be waning in popularity, and even kid readers are counter examples (maybe just not wanting Harry Potter to end explaining the continued popularity of  Rowlings later verbose monstrosities in the series?), so readers’ love of brevity isn’t necessarily the rule (how else can we explain the Jane Austen fad?).

The truth is, we love to write what we love to read.  I hate 19^th century romanticism, for example—the only Dickens novel I truly like is Tale of Two Cities, an excellent minimalist thriller (some call it a morality play, but what good mystery or thriller isn’t?).  I despise Jane Eyre and Silas Marner.  That’s just me.  You might have other opinions about Dickens, Austen, and Eliot.  That’s why we live in such a great time.  There are enough books out there, even new releases, for every reading taste.  It might be hell on Earth for writers, but readers can’t have it any better than that!

In libris libertas….

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