Maine Crime Writers

An article in the newspaper the other day gave me that uncomfortable feeling a lot of authors get at least once in a while — there’s my story (kind of) and now no one is going to think my book is original. It was followed, fortunately, by a good does of “get over yourself.” Not just because the book has been languishing for years without being finished, but because it shouldn’t matter to a writer if a real-life situation is similar to one in a book. It’s the book itself that matters.

In grade school, Sister Catherine used to tell us, in her smug, superior way, “Shakespeare was not one bit original.” It was meant to shock us and disabuse us of the silly notion that even the greatest of the greats could pull a story out of thin air. Every writer, Sister Catherine pounded into us (literally as well as figuratively), gets their ideas from somewhere. As a 12-year-old, it bothered me. Since Sister Catherine’s motives were usually rooted in making us miserable, it was probably meant to.

More than 50 years later, as a published writer (take THAT Sister Catherine!), I not only am not bothered by the notion of ideas “not being original,” I embrace it.

I spent more than 35 years in the newspaper business. Obviously a lot of that is going to inform my writing. I’d be a fool to deny it. More importantly, though, all writers draw from the world around them and their experience, in both big and small ways. It’s what they do with that information and how they make the stories their own that matters.

A friend a while back told me that she went to an author talk at which an audience member asked if the book was based on a very similar real-life incident. The author denied that it was. My thought was, why deny it? Maybe the author believed that it diminished their writing to admit it. Who knows? I wasn’t there. I have had the expereience of audience members wanting to know how much of my writing is “from” my newspaper career. The answer is, a lot. Some of it frames plots, but most of it helps with the details, the little things, that give the book some texture. When someone expresses disappointment — one guy once said something like “Doesn’t that make you a chronicaller rather than a writer?” How do you even answer that? I said “NO.”

It would be virtually impossible to write a book where it was all totally from the writer’s imagination and nowhere else. How could that even happen? Imagination is sparked by what we see and experience. We take it a step, or many steps, farther, asking “What if?”

Once, years ago, I was driving to work and stopped at a red light, saw a little boy standing on the corner waiting for the light to change. He was dressed up, holding a box of cupcakes, and crying. By the time I got to work 10 minutes later, I had a whole story in my head. That story, sadly, is no longer in my head or anywhere else, but I still remember the moment, because it’s a great example of how a writer’s mind works. We see something, big or small, and it blooms. [By the way, if you’re that little boy, drop me a line and tell me what was going on. It would’ve been 1995-97, corner of Hanover and Maple streets in Manchester, N.H. Thanks!]

When I first started writing fiction, I wasn’t so much concerned about pulling things from real life and being judged about it as I was other books having similar things. While they’re different issues, they come from the same root — “stealing” ideas from real life, or from someone else. What’s original and what isn’t? What can be considered “writing” and what won’t be?

With more than a decade and four finished books, two unfinished, and countiless ideas for more, I don’t worry about that stuff. It can’t be avoided. Or it can be, or should be, depending on what it is. Over the years, I’ve devised categories to look at these things as a way of reviewing and revising my writing.

Here are the most major and general of these categories. These aren’t “rules” or judgments, they’re my opinion and a way to help me write what I feel are better books. Your opinion may be different. That’s okay!

It’s a trope, but it’s fine. There are some tropes that are just going to happen, and they actually make for good stories. That’s one reason they keep happening. One common one is the protagonist returning to the small town where the grew up, or where they first worked. They’re older and wiser, maybe with a backstory that was a big bump in the road for them, and kind of a fish out of water. I’ve done it. You may have done it, too. It’s a great way to frame a story and no one seems tired of it yet. There are other ones, too, that just work. They’re a thin frame for a more robust story, and when done right, they just glide through the story without drawing attention to their tropiness.

It’s a trope, and there’s got to be something better. There are other tropes that can be cycled out for something better. I could name a bunch, but let’s just leave it at you know it when you read it. Your reading brain goes, “Ugh, not this character/situation/whatever again. I know how this arc is going to go.” One benefit to recognizing these as a writer is that when you brainstorm with yourself about how to rework it, your plot and themes expand in ways you may ot have expected.

Pulled from the same headlines. There are situations in the world we want to say things about. We’re not alone. A lot of other writers do, too. The important questions to ask as a writer, though, are what am I saying and how am I saying this? Or am I just including this type of crime/situation/person because it’s a big thing right now? It’s important for better writing to make sure it’s not gratuitous or just an easy fall-back, or boring for readers who have seen it all before.

Pulled from a headline no one has read. The flipside of that is drawing from something in real life that readers (or a publisher or editor) can’t get their head around. The fact that it really happened may not be enough to sell it. Your writing has to do some work, too. Once example is a manuscript critique I underwent while writing my first book. The bestselling author doing the critique read the first chapter and found it laughable that a police chief would be at the scene where a body was found in a snowbank. I’d worked for daily newspapers in Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire for years by then and could assure the world that, yes, small-town police chiefs show up at all sorts of things. But if this top author didn’t get it, then a lot of readers [or agents, publishers, etc.] also wouldn’t. That didn’t mean I had to remove it from my book. It meant I had to do a better job of selling the sitaution with my writing.

Pulled from a headline as your plot framework. There’s nothing wrong with using a real-life incident to frame a work of fiction. There are plenty of really good books, famous ones even, that do this. It doesn’t diminish the writer. It’s up to the writer, though, to make the story their own and not feel licked in by what happened in real life. The major incident in my first book, Cold Hard News, was sparked by a real one in New Hampshire. But it’s not “based” on it, and in some ways it’s wildly different. In part, because I was unhappy with some of the real-life conclusions and writing my own story was a way to work that out.

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned an article in the paper that was similar to a book I’ve “been writing” for years. In fact, my book precedes the real-life incident. My first thought was, great, now my great, original idea is going to look like it’s not that original. But, of course, that’s silly. Not just silly because I momentarily fretted about a book I’ve been working on since 2018 that shows no sign of every being completed, but for the reasons I’ve written about today.

If anyone even read about, or remembers, the real-life incident, it may even help get attention for the book. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the book itself, on its own merits. Is it well-written? Did I de-trope where necessary? Did I make even the unbelievable believable? Did I say what I wanted to say?

None of us are Shakespeare, but the lesson is the same. “Original” doesn’t matter. If you tell your story well, its origins won’t matter.