  Short Stories
This week: I Ate Lunch With Rambo Edited by: Shannon  
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For those of you who may not recognize the name, David Morrell is the author of First Blood, widely considered to be the "father of all action novels."
On June 6, 2008 I had the honor of meeting David. It was the first day of the annual Murder in the Grove Writer's Conference. I remember being excited about attending the all-day Master's Class hosted by David Morrell. The 8-hour class was called "Writing the Thriller," and although I'm not a thriller writer, I knew this man with 28 published novels and 36 years in the business could teach me a lot, so I took copious, detailed notes. This week's newsletter is based on those notes. At times David's recommendations seem to be a jumbled up mismatch of unrelated advice, but each one is priceless and I wanted to include them all. All of the quotes are from Mr. Morrell himself unless otherwise noted.
"Graham Greene once said, 'An unhappy childhood is a goldmine for a writer.'
"There have been three major events that have shaped me and changed my life. (1) My father died on D-Day in WWII (David told us this story on June 6, 2008--the 64-year anniversary of D-Day). My mom tried for a while to raise me herself, but it was hard in those days to take care of a child on your own and work enough to support him. She didn't have a car, but she knew someone who did, and one day she asked me if I wanted to take a drive out in the country. I said, 'Sure!'
"We drove down this really long gravel road, and then I saw this huge, ominous-looking building with all these children playing outside. My mother said, 'Would you like to get out and play with those children?' I said that yes, I would. I remember turning around and seeing my mother getting back into the car, and she drove away.
"That's when I found out I was in an orphanage. I was three or four years old. I escaped twice, and eventually she came back to reclaim me--or did she? I believe she was my real mother. I don't think I was adopted.
(2) "In 1960 I was 17. My life changed when Route 66 came on for the first time. I felt like I was hit by a bomb and it changed my life. I knew I would never be happy unless I was a writer.
(3) "In 1987 my 15-year-old son was dying from bone cancer. My friend, Stephen King--and I call him Stephen because we really are friends--sent me a copy of his latest book, The Tommyknockers. For those of you who haven't read it, these people start losing their hair and their teeth because there's a radioactive spaceship buried under their town. I mean ... I was reading this 'fake' horror story when the real thing was just ten feet away. I wondered how I could possibly find the book satisfying. Why wasn't I reading Anne of Green Gables or something? After a time I realized that there is great anecdotal power in the 'fake' stuff."
David talked about how you always need to better yourself and your writing by editing, reediting, and editing some more. "Even when it's good, it's not good. Never stop trying to improve your work. This is a vocation. What we're doing is almost holy."
David spoke about his time in the orphanage and how he wrote The Brotherhood of the Rose, The Fraternity of the Stone and The League of Night and Fog. This series is about a military school from which some of the students are recruited to be assassins. "Did you know that the main recruiting grounds for assassins are orphanages?" he asked us.
We shook our heads. No, we didn't know that.
"Every writer has a predominant emotion--an emotion that controls and drives them and defines who they are. You need to determine what your predominant emotion is, and that is the kind of story you should write. All writers need to chase their ferrets. You know what a ferret is, right? They're rat-like creatures who can wiggle and squirm--they can get in anywhere. We all have stuff secreted away--hidden deep within the recesses of our minds, and I want you all to pursue the ferret. You might be surprised where he leads you.
"Zen Buddhism has a lot to offer us. One of them is surrender. You can fight your life, and it'll fight back ... but if you surrender, it's amazing how smoothly your life will run." (This comment was made after he described how, being a professor, he felt he needed to write high-brow literature. "The college got to me, till one day I surrendered to the writer within and Rambo was born.")
"Never have a period at the bottom of a manuscript page. Always make them turn the page! Rewrite it if you have to, but never, under any circumstances, submit a manuscript with a period at the bottom of the page."
David spoke about his friend, Stephen J. Cannell (famous writer/producer of such shows as The A-Team, Silk Stalkings, Wiseguy, Hunter, The Greatest American Hero, and 21 Jump Street just to name a few). He told us that Stephen is dyslexic and grew up with a desire to prove himself. He said one day a very popular television series had a problem with a script and they needed a "shootable" script by Monday (this was on Friday). They sent an invitation out to anyone who thought they might have a decent script, gathered them all together, and asked them to pitch their ideas. Then they narrowed the group down to five (Stephen was one of the five) and told them that whoever showed up first Monday morning would get the job. "Stephen was the only one who showed up," he said. "A lot of life is showing up. You never know, if you're prepared, what can happen to you.
"Be aware of your daydreams. The good ones we can all agree on: we're lying on a beach somewhere drinking a cold something-or-other with an umbrella in it. Yeah, those are nice, but the daydreams that make you uncomfortable, the ones that make you ashamed--those are the ones I want you to pay attention to. These are the ones your subconscious is telling you to write about.
"Most biographies are dull, dull, dull. Everyone's got exciting, unique stuff in their past. Fictionalize it!
"It's a given that your sense of sight is utilized when you write. It happens automatically. If you write something as simple as Jack and Jill went up the hill, can you not see that in your mind? Of course! What you need to do is engage the other senses: smell, touch, sound, taste ... these are the descriptors you should use when writing a scene. Your description falls flat if you use sight to describe a scene. Get rid of the adjectives and adverbs. Expand the scene by using other senses. And always make sure your readers are spatially oriented: He turned right, and.... Whenever you write a scene, remember the light and sound values change when you enter, leave, or change rooms. Rooms also have odors. Was someone smoking? Is there a wood-burning stove? Is there incense burning? Pay attention to these things when you write. They should become automatic to you. Remember: you want your reader to feel something!
"For the most part, first person and third person limited are the only viewpoints used nowadays. First person encourages chattiness. It's a minefield. If you're going to use first person point of view, use it correctly. Third person limited point of view stays in one particular character's thoughts and feelings at least through the end of the chapter. If, at the beginning of the next chapter, you want to go into another character's viewpoint you may, but only within that chapter. Only one POV per chapter.
"The Postman Always Rings Twice is as lean as a book can be.
"Don't tell your story, write it!" Here, David was talking about telling your friends and family your story ideas as opposed to writing them down. "Things get lost or forgotten in the telling."
As an example, David told us a story about how one day his wife was out working in their yard in New Mexico when a young child walked by with a bunch of drawings. It was the last day of school, and the boy asked his wife is she wanted to see his pictures. "This is my classroom, and these are my friends. Here I am on the playground ... in my head it was a whole lot better," the boy said. "That's something you never want to say about your stories--that in your head they were a whole lot better. Write them, edit them, and reedit them. Make them as good as you imagined they could be.
"Writer's block is often a writer's misunderstanding of where the story wants to go.
"Ask yourself, 'What in this project is worth a year of my life?' If you don't love the story and the characters enough to dedicate a year of your life to them, you're writing the wrong story.
"Movies ruin your sense of how to tell a story.
"How many times do you think I refer to my wife by name throughout the course of an average day? Hardly ever. In life we do not talk to each other using names. The number one way to improve your writing is to pay attention to your speech tags. I allow myself to use he said, she said, she asked. Insisted, demanded, and wondered are okay, too. If you stick to these, they become invisible. Here are a few examples of bad speech tags I've actually seen in printed work:
 'The fuse is lit!' he exploded.
'He ate his hamburger with great relish.' (That one belongs to Stephen King).
"I love you!" he ejaculated.
'His watch lay on his lap unwatched.'
There's not a need for speech tags if the dialogue is written properly. And things like, 'Get out of here, you sonuvabitch!' she said angrily, are just redundant.
"Viral marketing is marketing that is so contagious it spreads like a disease. Check out Printable Promotions When you have a book published, find nonfiction sites that are of the same subject matter. Offer some freebies like free signed copies for a spot on their sites.
"Remember, when you do signings your main concern is not to sell books, but to make nice with the owners. Even if no one buys a book, be gracious and appreciative. They will remember you and stock their shelves with your work.
"Don't incorporate popular, trendy things into your stories because it dates your work. Fifteen years from now you want readers to say your book feels like it was written now.
"Writing should be a daily thing like showering and brushing your teeth--not that you should only brush your teeth daily. You know what I mean. Even if you write for just one hour or one page each day, you'll have a book at the end of the year."
Someone in the crowd asked Mr. Morrell where he got the idea for Rambo. David said, "I was watching the Smothers Brothers television show, and Glen Campbell came on singing Gentle on my Mind. It was like a video, and Glen was walking down a remote railroad track with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. I thought, What if he was a Vietnam vet? and the story evolved from there.
"When First Blood came out it received rave reviews. But Time Magazine hated it. They called it 'carnography,' like pornography, but with blood instead of sex. Carnage. The new violent 'meat' novel.
"People always ask what the difference is between a mystery and a thriller. Mysteries are about intellect; thrillers are about emotion. If you go to http://www.thrillerwriters.org, of which I am co-founder, you can read our top 100 recommended reads. Acquire the history of the form you are writing about, whether it be thrillers, romance, mysteries, whatever. If you want to write thrillers, you must take a firearms class. I also suggest buying On Combat and On Killing. These will prove to be invaluable resources. And remember that your villain must be of an equal stature with your hero.
"The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins is considered to be the inventor of 'the novel of sensation.' Bleak House is my favorite Dickens novel, and Edgar Allen Poe invented the mystery story when he wrote Murder in the Rue Morgue.
"The setup is easy, and you generally know where you want to go with it, but the muddle in the middle is the hardest part of a story to write.
"High Noon was originally written with lots of flashback scenes. It was missing something and needed fixing, so they removed all the flashbacks and replaced them with a picture of a ticking clock. Suddenly they had a suspenseful thriller.
"When you go to sign a contract, always make sure you have 100% control of the character. It's called 'print control.' No one else can write about your character but you. No novelization without the consent of the author and the producer.
"If it's in a movie, it's wrong.
"Don't get so overwhelmed by the research that you forget to do the writing. It's a trap.
"Write the book you want to read.
"You must be a first-class version of yourself and not a second-class imitation of someone else. The writers who get talked about are the ones who are unique.
"Someone once wrote Ernest Hemingway and said, 'I think I'd like to be a writer.' Hemingway wrote back, 'I think you ought to hang yourself.'
"Someone once asked Stephen King why he writes horror. Stephen said, 'What makes you think I have a choice?'"
I took my old, very well-used 1985 copy of First Blood to the conference for David to sign. He signed it as follows:
To Shannon--Best wishes from Rambo's father.
David Morrell
June 7, 2008
Boise
David Morrell, June 7, 2008
I hope these notes have inspired you as much as they continue to inspire me. Thank you for reading.
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The following is in response to "Short Stories Newsletter (June 22, 2011)" :
saraiv says, "Say WHATTTT? I didn't know that about the Bible, very interesting. I will have to remember that plagerism is plagerism. Do they have a fee for certain quotes? Do you know?" Each publisher is different. I haven't personally seen any Bible publishers who charge a fee, but I highly recommend researching each and every one thoroughly before you quote their material.
wiccara says, "It's true that you learn something new everyday. This applies in writing as well as in everyday life." Yes it does, Bliss. Thank you for reading!
Jeff  says, "Good NL this week, Shannon! A lot of people don't realize that there's a difference between the original work and someone's newer expression of that work. Just because Chaucer's Canterbury Tales was written in the 1300s and is in public domain doesn't necessarily mean that the version you pick up off a shelf in your local bookstore is. Depending on the work, it could be a translation or interpretation that's original to that editor/publisher ... and that IS still protected under copyright if it was written in the last 75 years or so. This problem also comes up with classical music a lot. Beethoven's 5th is public domain ... but if you're listening to a recording on a CD, the London Philharmonic's rendition of it IS protected. It's not always as easy as 'hey, that's a really old work so it's okay to use.'" Exactly, SoCal! I couldn't have said it better myself. 
NickiD89  says, "Fascinating newsletter concerning copyrights and Bible verses. I would have assumed The Holy Bible was public domain as well. Don't know about you, but the specific guidelines of The Lockman Foundation sound, I don't know, un-religious-like. I mean, it's supposed to be God's word, in the first place. Insisting they get credit for their edition seems self-serving, and so not in the good Samaritan vein of religious institutions. I'm probably looking at the whole issue through jade-colored glasses, lol. Thanks so much for giving me something interesting to think about!"  You're welcome, Nicki. Thank you for reading and commenting!
BIG BAD WOLF is Merry  says, "Give credit where credit is due." Yep, that pretty much sums it up, BBW. Someone spent a lot of time writing that translation and should get credit for their work.
atwhatcost says, "Okay, you surprised me too. I thought it was 'Fair Use' more than 'Public Domain,' which it is to a degree, but this still comes down to the next question. So, how to we give credit to religious text, assuming under 500 verses? All this time I've just been adding the version, chapter, and verses into parenthesis, and indenting, if more than a verse. (I'm slapping my own hand, now.)" The guidelines The Lockman Foundation set forth are for their version of the New American Standard Bible' only and may differ from those of The Open Bible. Again, I highly recommend researching each and every publisher thoroughly before quoting their material.
Caledonia Lass  says, "It is SUPER important, especially these days with easy access to things on the internet, to get permission! Don't steal someone else's hard work. I have all sorts of warnings all over my website but I know people have already taken my work, that's a given. I suppose I will have to stick to my 'Poor Man's Copyright' and mail my originals through certified mail to myself. I hope that still counts these days." I heard at a writer's conference once that mailing yourself certified copies of your work does NOT count because it's easy to steam open an envelope. It was also suggested that it would be easy to mail an envelope without sealing the flap closed with anything other than the brads, which would make it easy to open the envelope and reseal it.
Rustgold  says, "Re : Question about Bible copyright. The original version of the bible mightn't be copyrighted, but the particular version is. Lockman is claiming the rights to their wordings & alterations of the bible. Personally I wouldn't touch that version, but that's another topic. It's not what some might call Christian-like, but it's a business." There are so many versions out there to choose from, and individuals spent a lot of time translating and printing them. I don't see it as "UnChristian-like." I think they just want credit for all their hard work, just like you and I do. Thank you so much for taking the time to read and comment!
SkyHawk - Into The Music says, "I'm curious ... what is the process to go through in terms of copyrights and permissions when dealing with recorded works, such as songs? Some of my projects have been inspired by and even include verse quotes form assorted songs, and I need to figure out what to do before I try to publish." That depends on what you're quoting. Every writer/producer/publisher is different. I highly recommend researching each one thoroughly before quoting their material.
honolulu says, " Please feel free to look at some of my written works and tell me about what kind of copyright or trademark rules it has. For instance, is the writing I have done in my name if used, and are the credits mine if ever used? Thank you!" This is how I look at it (it's the easiest and safest way, in my humble opinion): you own your own original writing, period (unless you've relinquished those rights in the process of selling your work). I view anything written, photographed, painted, translated, recorded, or drawn by someone else as belonging to someone else. Err on the side of caution and give credit where credit is due. I hope this helps. Thank you for reading!
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Short Stories: July 20, 2011 Issue [#4507]
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