In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* Mastery of Craft, and Plagiarism vs. Writing Your Own Version
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
“Soul is when you take a song and make it a part of you—a part that’s so true, so real, people think it must have happened to you.” Ray Charles
That is the definition of good fiction writing. H
Mastery of Craft, and Plagiarism vs. Writing Your Own Version
You noticed (I hope) there was no TNDJ on Sunday. That’s because I really didn’t have anything to pass along other than a link to Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week. So I put off posting that link until Monday.
Then at about 7:30 on Sunday morning, I had a thought for a Journal topic. It was too late to post it on Sunday, so I’m posting it today.
As I sat outside, babysitting my wife’s two cats in the cool morning air, I was also watching hummingbirds chasing each other away from feeders, looking out a distant mesquite-covered hill, and casting about in my mind for my next novel.
I can easily write a short story pretty much any time with only a character, an initial, insignificant problem, and a setting. But I like writing novels.
Using the character with a problem in a setting, I could probably write a short story every day. But then what would I do with all of them? The golden days of magazines hungry for short fiction are largely over, especially for prolific writers.
Soon I thought about a novel start I wrote a long while back: A man, alone, walking along an apparently deserted highway in the midst of southeast Arizona.
(If you’re familiar with southeast Arizona, the opening scene was set about 5 miles north of Sierra Vista along US 90. The protagonist was walking south.)
But I never wrote that one because it would have been my version of Stephen King’s The Stand.
I realized there was no room for another version.
This is something you can’t say very often about ANY novel, regardless of who wrote it. Even Hemingway left unexplored rooms in his stories and novels for new or related versions.
Don’t misunderstand. My novel wouldn’t have been plagiarism in any form. There’s no legal or moral problem with writing your own version of any published work as long as you don’t plagiarize (a nice way of saying “steal from”) the original work.
As I’ve said before, in my mind Stephen King is easily the only Stage 5 writer working today, with the possibly arguable exception of Lawrence Block and (maybe) Elmore Leonard.
Note that I’m not talking about reader taste or favorite authors or even bestsellers here.
I’m talking about mastery of craft, mastery of all the techniques that pull readers into a story and hold them there. Those craft things that exist regardless of whether any reader ever picks up the book.
The Stand is an excellent example of that. I’ve heard that King’s The Dark Tower series is just as masterful. I own it, but I haven’t read it yet.
King was so masterful and brilliant in The Stand that he literally covered every aspect of the story: the private lives of the main characters, the life of the two collective main groups, the descriptions of the rural and urban settings, focusing down in presenting the scenes, etc.
In fact, The Stand was written so tightly that it’s all bone, sinew, and muscle. If it were a living entity, I doubt you could squeeze the tiniest amount of air out of it.
Conversely, Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove was the primary catalyst that spurred me to write my first novel, Leaving Amarillo. My novel was about a Texas Ranger in the 1880s Texas Panhandle, the center of the Comanche nation of Comancheria.
As with The Stand, I wasn’t trying to copy McMurtry’s book. But with Lonesome Dove, I quickly learned that wouldn’t be a problem. As it turned out, there was more than plenty of room for the Wes Crowley Saga.
Whereas McMurtry mentioned Gus and Call as having been Texas Rangers, that repeated mention was almost in passing. We never got to see them actually being Rangers. And that’s fine.
In Lonesome Dove, Call was a former Texas Ranger and a cattleman with big dreams. Gus was only his wise (and wise-cracking), life-loving sidekick on an epic cattle drive from south Texas to Montana.
Even in the prequels, it was a good story, but we still didn’t get to see them actually being Rangers.
So given that space, I wrote a short story titled “Adobe Walls,” about a character named Wes Crowley. In that story, Wes was a deputy US marshal and a former Texas Ranger.
The whole thing might easily have ended there.
But “Adobe Walls” spurred Wes to tug on my sleeve and ask me if I’d like to know what had brought him to the silver-ore mill-stamp town of Adobe Walls. (The name of the real ghost town is Charleston, Arizona. It’s on the San Pedro river.)
Well, of course I’d like to know. And just like that, I was off and writing Leaving Amarillo.
I also thought that novel would probably be all Wes would give me, but it quickly turned into three novels to “complete” the story.
Or so I thought.
Wes had more stories to tell, so I wrote three prequels, and then six sequels.
Then I wrote ten more novels (all the while also writing novels in other genres) to fill-in a 16 year gap in the story. When the smoke finally cleared, I’d written 22 novels in the Wes Crowley saga as well as several short stories.
And although each novel stands on its own, collectively all of that became an ongoing story—a saga—spanning over 60 years of the life of one man.
If you’re wondering, yes, I could easily see Steve Zahn for the younger version of Wes (and Robert Duvall for the older version) and Karl Urban as the younger Otis “Mac” McFadden (either Tommy Lee Jones or Jon Voight for the elder Mac) if the Saga was ever made into a mini-series.
I’m confident that will happen someday too. Everything runs in cycles. Westerns will come around again, and my grandchildren will grow rich beyond their wildest dreams.
My point is this: Who knew that what started out as a single short story and then a single novel would become a 22-volume saga? I certainly didn’t.
When an idea strikes, Trust Yourself. Sit down right now and write it. You never know what might happen.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Books Don’t Spoil from April 27, 2021
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 1110
Writing of
Day 1…… XXXX words. To date…… XXXX
Fiction for September……………… 25560
Fiction for 2025…………………….. 559709
Nonfiction for September.………… 18350
Nonfiction for 2025………………… 204600
2025 consumable words………….. 756695
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 14
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 32
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 118
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 302
Short story collections……………………. 29