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What Happens When A Reporter Writes a Novel?

I know how to write fiction, but I don’t know how to make up stories. Well, I don’t know how to make up stories out of whole cloth, I should say. Mystical, real cloth, yes, whole cloth no.

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My novels, like my life as a take-no-prisoners, tell-the-truth columnist for the New York Daily News have both begun with an actual event. And then like the investigative reporter that I am, I followed the trail until I found out the truth behind the event or (in my case) bizarre experience into which I’d been thrust.

Then and only then can I begin to create a story—a tale built around the truth.

But I’m not giving enough credit to the stars here. See, I believe that both of my novels, The Sixth Station published in 2013 and Book of Judas, out September 19, 2017, almost had nothing to do with me. They’re sort of like a news event that I cover—I’m in it, but didn’t start the damned thing.

For each book I was led by the hand like a willing lamb to slaughter. And after going through what I went through to dig out the truth in both cases I do feel like I almost was being, if not slaughtered, well, at least put through hell.

With all the craziness I’m about to tell you about, I had to keep one thing familiar to me. That would be my character, Alessandra Russo. She just happens to be a New York City reporter, who is very much like I am in real life—with a bunch of years and sometimes hair—shaved off.

Russo can’t help getting herself mixed up in bad situations any more than I can. It’s the nature of a journo: Investigating a story can sometimes be dangerous, and is always wrought with complications and risks, but you do it because, well, because that’s just what you do to breathe.

The Sixth Station began when my husband and I took a road trip. But not a road trip like normal people to Disney World or anything. We took a road trip through Turkey. It was all going great until I got to the House of the Virgin Mary in Ephesus. While I am very spiritual I am not particularly religious person, so what happened next was a complete shocker.

Being in that house knocked me flat. I started having visions and was told from somewhere or other that I had to track down this story whatever that would be.

The research took me six years in which I drove through five countries alone, climbed a mountain in France twice, was escorted through parts of France by a motorcycle gang, stayed with monks in a monastery in Manoppello Italy, and spent time with a crazy, cloistered nun who lives up the mountain from that monastery. Oh, and right, I also took another road trip; this one through Italy with an 84-year old exorcist priest from the Vatican.

I did all this until I believe I found what I’d been searching for: a relic in that monastery with the DNA of Jesus on it.

Then the hard work began—the research that doesn’t involve adventure—just intense concentration to detail and an unforgiving quest to find out the truth behind what I believed I’d discovered.

What I discovered too, however, oftentimes discouraging because, well, it’s tough to get half-way through writing a novel, only to find that truth gets in the way of fiction. I’d discover something that would throw my whole story off and I’d have to start again.

Sure it’s easy to just say, well, hell it’s fiction after all, but when you’re a reporter, you just can’t get past that sticky habit of making sure your facts actually are facts and haven’t been debunked somewhere by someone.

My new novel, Book of Judas, began in an equally bizarre way. I’d seen a book on a shelf in a house I’d owned for 12 years and had never seen before even though it was sitting right there. Nobody in my family could have brought it there because it was I, Judas by Taylor Caldwell and Jesse Stern and it was 40 years old!

Intrigued ,I began to read it and was surprised to discover that not everyone thought Judas was an evil villain. Huh?

A few days later, while perusing a bookshop on a girl’s getaway weekend, I saw on the front table, another book about Judas. Weird? Not as weird as it was about to get. The book was about the discovery of the real Gospel of Judas, which had been discovered in the 1970s in a cave in Egypt. The-nearly 2,000 year old codex had been lost and found and lost and found again.

Where was it found? In a safety deposit box in a bank in Hicksville, Long Island. Dear God! I grew up in Hicksville, Long Island.

Weirder still, that Citibank branch turned out to be the very same bank branch where I’d had my first bank account as a teenager!

Judas, scarier even than all the mobsters, and criminals I’ve interviewed in my career, was calling. Who in hell—literally—was I not to answer that call?

My research took me into a 3,000 year old hidden burial cave in Israel and then hundreds of feet underground in the still-unfinished steel and concrete labyrinth of Second Avenue Subway tunnel that looked like something out of the end of the world.

But I did it, because hey, I didn’t expect that Judas was going to take me out on a nice dinner.

LINDA STASI, the popular and well-read columnist for the New York Daily News, and previously for the New York Post, is also an on-camera TV co-host with Mark Simone on NY 1 -Spectrum “What a Week!”

Brash, funny and opinionated, the acerbic Stasi’s first novel, The Sixth Station, published in January of 2013 by Forge Books was hailed as, “A helluva religious thriller,” by Nelson DeMille, while Steve Berry said, “You’ll be grabbing the pages so tight your knuckles will turn white!” Booklist said of the book, “Dan Brown and Steve Berry fans have another controversial novel in which to lose themselves.” For The Sixth Station, Stasi was selected as a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award.

Stasi’s anxiously awaited sequel, Book of Judas, has received acclaim from mega bestselling authors such as Sherrilyn Kenyon, who calls it, “An innovative masterpiece!”

Stasi has appeared on TV talk shows and news channels such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, The O’Reilly Factor, Hardball, Good Day New York, and The View, as well as CNN, Fox News, MSNBC news shows, and many others.

She is a regular guest on iHeartRadio’s nationally broadcast Mark Simone Show, Boston’s “Matty In The Morning,” and countless others around the country.

Stasi has also authored the non-fiction books – Looking Good Is the Best Revenge, A Field Guide to Impossible Men, Simply Beautiful, Boomer Babes, and Scotto Sunday Suppers.

Not afraid to say what’s on her mind in her popular Wednesdays and full-page Sunday columns in the New York Daily News, her readership has reached more than 600,000 in a single day.

She was named “One of the Fifty Most Powerful Women in NYC” and has won numerous awards including Best Columnist by the Newswomen’s Club of NY, Best Humor Columnist, and Woman of the Year by the Boys Town of Italy for her charitable work such as driving a tractor-trailer in an 18-truck convoy from NYC to the gulf states with relief supplies for Hurricane Katrina victims.

Writing in the Interstices, guest post by Edward Ashton

When I was in graduate school, one of my writing professors pulled me aside after class one evening. He wanted to offer some well-intentioned advice.

“Writing a novel,” he said, “is like launching a rocket into orbit. You can sit there and grind away on the launch pad forever, but if you never achieve escape velocity, you’ll only wind up crashing and burning in the end.”

Setting aside his questionable understanding of orbital mechanics, I got the point he was trying to make. He felt I had too many distractions in my life, and that if I didn’t winnow them down, I would never reach my potential as a writer. He wanted me to apply to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Failing that, perhaps I could at least stop spending so much time eating chicken wings, or running around on a basketball court?

I thanked him politely, but I knew even then that a single-minded focus on writing wasn’t going to work for me.

I’ll preface the rest of this post by saying that I’m not in any way suggesting that the approach that I’ve taken to writing is the only one that works, or even the best one—but it was definitely the best one for me. I’ve always had a lot of different things going on in my life. As an undergrad, I had two majors and a raft of extracurriculars. In graduate school, I got into triathlons. Shortly after that discussion with my writing professor, I met someone. We got married. We had a child, and then we had two more. I got a job, then started teaching classes on the side because children, as it turns out, are expensive.

Through it all, I kept writing. I produced dozens of short stories, as well as two published novels. How?

The answer is that I learned not to need unbroken hours of solitude in order to put words on the page.

I have a friend who’s a very talented writer. He’s sold short pieces to multiple professional markets, won awards, gotten solid reviews—but he hasn’t published anything in years now, because he’s got a young family, and he just doesn’t have the time. He does, though. We all do. Contra my professor, writing—even novel writing—doesn’t have to be accomplished during marathon sessions in a garret somewhere. You don’t need to quit your job, or ignore your children, or alienate your spouse to produce a novel in a surprisingly short amount of time. You just need to learn to write in the interstices.

What do I mean by this? Your life’s interstices are those stretches of time between finishing one important thing and starting another. Classic interstice? The end of lunch. My work generally gives me an hour to cram food down my neck in the middle of the day. I eat a lot, but even so, I don’t actually need that much time. In between the time I finish eating and the time I need to get to my next meeting, I could surf the net, or jaw with my coworkers, or just get my nose back to the grindstone. I don’t. Instead, I usually pull out my laptop and bang out somewhere between a hundred and two hundred words. That doesn’t sound like much—but over the course of a year, those words will add up to half a novel or more.

Once you stop thinking of writing as something that has to be done in a specific place and in big chunks of time, opportunities to add to your word count start to appear everywhere. Waiting for your kid to finish soccer practice? That’s a hundred words, easy. Partner insists on binge-watching The Walking Dead? Half a chapter. Stuck in a desolate canyon with your arm pinned under a boulder? You’ll have to type with one hand, but you ought to be able to finish a short story at least before gnawing your way to freedom.

Anyway, the tl;dr is this: we all have time to write. We just need to stop thinking of writing as the bricks in our life, and start thinking of it as the mortar in between.

Also, writing professors know jack-all about how space travel works. Can’t forget that part.

Edward Ashton lives with his adorably mopey dog, his inordinately patient wife, and a steadily diminishing number of daughters in Rochester, New York, where he studies new cancer therapies by day, and writes about the awful things his research may lead to by night. He is the author of Three Days in April, as well as several dozen short stories which have appeared in venues ranging from the newsletter of an Italian sausage company to Louisiana Literature and Escape Pod.

You can find him online at edwardashton.com.

Twitter: @edashtonwriting

Facebook: Edward Ashton Writing

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A weak opening is a novel killer. And, there are quite a few suspects standing in the line-up.

The first in line is a serious, serial novel killer: the clichéd “starting with a dream.” It seems like a good thing -- kicking the story off in high gear with some dramatic scene that engages the reader, or a daring action scene that has the reader on the edge of his seat. Then the character wakes up and we realize it was all just a dream. This culprit really only serves one purpose and that’s to trick and aggravate your reader.

Next in the line-up is another cliché that describes someone getting out of his car in the first sentence of the book. It’s obvious why this novel killer appears to be helpful and serving to the plot: the main character and the reader are arriving at both the scene and in the story together. There’s action happening, which is also a good thing. Unfortunately, it’s been done too many times and some agents and editors will actually decline a book based on that opening. Why take the risk when the heart of the scene – and probably a great opening line – is just a few paragraphs away?

The third novel killer in the line-up is the lengthy description of the location and scenery. The hazelnut hues of the carpet and the dusty paintings of various family members hanging on the wall or the sun peeking through gathering white clouds above the lush forest of majestic pine trees may be pretty sentences and provide many details that you find interesting, but it’s not necessarily interesting to your reader. Scenery description must play hand-in-hand with action and dialogue. It should never stand alone as the opening paragraph(s) of your novel.

The fourth killer is a tricky one, because – like the femme fatale who plays both sides of the law – sometimes it works with the author and sometimes it works against. This deadly tightrope is known as “opening with dialogue.” Strong, dramatic dialogue can be engaging, provide a shocking and memorable first line, and swiftly move the reader from the opening line into the opening scene. It can be a powerful ally. However, be warned. If not used correctly and handled with the utmost care, it will drop the reader into the middle of a muddled, confusing conversation. A confused reader who doesn’t understand who is talking and what they’re talking about will close the book faster than a lid on a coffin, and *BANG* the book is dead.

Finally, in this line up, we have the worst offender to open any book. This is the novel killer that spells certain doom, and that’s “The Boring Opening.” This culprit comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, including the lengthy back-story, a history lesson about the time period or the location, a flashback or a character biography. Authors generally fall into this trap because they want to provide information that they feel is pertinent to the story. They’re attempting to set it up, and dumping loads of information in the process. And that’s exactly what it is – a process. It’s often the result of hours of painstaking research or world building on the author’s part. It’s good stuff – to the author – and he doesn’t know what to do with it. Cut it from the opening and skip to the chase.

The opening must hook the reader. It must start with something happening. That doesn’t mean James Bond-style adventure. Nothing has to blow up. It simply means it must be interesting and entertaining to the reader.

The sun peeking through gathering clouds? Boring! A diatribe of the sleuth’s grandparents arriving in

America

in 1812? Tedious! Recognize these five culprits in the line-up and avoid them as you’re writing. Their job is to kill your novel.

JC Gatlin lives in Tampa, Florida. He’s written two mystery-suspense novels: The Designated Survivor and Prey of Desire. He also maintains a blog about the art of spinning a nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat mysteries at www.jcgatlin.com.

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I started my writing journey as a screenwriter, most notably as the writer of the film Slingshot (Weinstein Co.). When I decided to switch to writing novels, I thought the transition would be smooth…and boy was I wrong about that. Here are a few things I learned while writing my debut novel Nightlife.

Learn How to Tell

“Show Don’t Tell” is a maxim thrown about all too often in the writing world. When you are writing a screenplay, it makes sense. Why would you put a bit of information in a character’s mouth when you can just show it with a quick image? Rather than have someone mention that they are being followed by a shadowy figure...simply include a shot of said “shadowy figure” from over their shoulder.

When it comes to prose fiction, however, all you really have is the ability to tell. Don’t be afraid to use that. With a film all you get are images and sound. It’s impossible to express the other three senses except through the characters reactions. And you aren’t allowed to get inside a character’s head except through an intrusive voice-over. Why would you throw away this opportunity? USE IT!

As Lee Child once said, “Do your kids ever ask you to show them a story? They ask you to tell them a story. Do you show a joke? No, you tell it…There is nothing wrong with just telling the story. So liberate yourself from that rule.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Forget About the Budget

What costs more to film? Two actors having a stand-off in a generic alleyway with a couple of .38s?…or the same actors having the same stand off on an alien world with massive space armies ready to back them up?

The answer is obvious. When you are writing a spec screenplay, the question will usually pop up “how much will this cost to film?” And as day follows night, nagging thoughts about what actors, director and other attachments will be needed to justify a big budget will also arise.

The bigger the budget, the less likely the film is to get produced (and the smaller part the screenwriter has in determining what the final product will look like). This can lead you to determine what you want to write next based on financial concerns alone.

But with a novel you are bound only by your imagination. Ink and printing costs the same if you are writing a grand fantasy epic, or a contemporary domestic drama. Follow your heart on this one.

Learn to Work Your POVs

With a film you get only one POV…the camera. This gives you a lot of freedom and a bit of authority when it comes to what the audience gets to see. But it also forces a certain amount of physic distance.

If you are going to write a novel you are going to have to understand what it’s like to tell a story from inside the head of a character…whether this is the intimate first person or the more removed third person (or the seldom-used second person). No matter what your choice, embrace it.

Cast It

You need to write compelling characters, that’s a given in any genre. But with a screenplay you also want those characters to appeal to a wide variety of actors that might wish to attach themselves to the project. Is your male lead 35 and blond? Forget George Clooney or Will Smith then. Is the femme fatale a six foot ice queen with crystal blue eyes? I guess Halle Berry and Jennifer Lopez are off the list.

In a novel, you get to write your characters as you see them. And don’t worry about what happens when they make the inevitable movie. Six-and-half-foot-tall Jack Reacher ended up being played by the five-foot-seven Tom Cruise. Six-foot-two (and not particularly hairy) Hugh Jackman immortalized the diminutive and hirsute Wolverine.

Don’t Sweat the Three-Act Structure

Screenwriters (especially those who learned the craft post Christopher Vogler) are almost hardwired to write stories that adhere to a three-act structure. For good or for ill, the “Hero’s Journey” reigns supreme in modern movies.

The artistic merits of this format may be debatable when it comes to film (although it’s commercial merits might not be). When it comes to a novel, however, all bets are off. Tell the story you want to tell…if it involves a “call to adventure” or an “approach to the innermost cave” then that’s great…but don’t be afraid to tell the story you want even if it doesn’t contain a “return with the elixir” or some other such pre-programmed event.

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Matthew Quinn Martin was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. However, it wasn’t until he moved to Manhattan that he realized he was a writer. These days, he lives on a small island off the North Atlantic coast of the United States where it gets quiet in the winter…perhaps too quiet.

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I’ve been asked that question numerous times in interviews and emails, and it’s a good one. As a former professor, I wrote more than a handful of scholarly books, and certainly could have expanded on the premise of The Messiah Matrix as nonfiction instead of in the format of a romantic thriller.

My main reason for choosing to write it as a novel is that, to quote Muriel Rukeyser, “the universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” I wanted this story to reach its maximum audience, and knew it would never do that as a nonfiction “study” of the origins of Christianity in imperial Rome. Even contemporary quantum physicists would agree that without our perception and report reality would not be all it’s cracked up to be. If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one to tell the story it simply doesn’t matter whether it fell or not. We humans lead our lives through stories, depending on them as coping mechanisms and guides through the labyrinth of possibilities that face us every day—relying on them as inspiration for continuing the struggle and as consolation when the struggle comes to its inevitable end.

Once in a blue moon an idea comes your way that’s worthy of Herman Melville’s observation, in Moby Dick: “to write a mighty book you must have a mighty theme.” When I started putting together the parallels between Julius and Augustus Caesar and Jesus, I knew no one would take them seriously unless they were presented as part of a contemporary tale of relevance to our world today. I’m not comparing my novel to Moby Dick, nor claiming it’s a mighty tale—but its premise was powerful enough to compel me through the forty-something drafts I went through in the four years it was on the drawing board. I’d still like to do some more revising, and will no doubt do so on its way to the screen.

Storytelling is such a privilege that the ancient Greeks put the story teller, teknos, on a par with kings when it came to honoring his appearance in the polis. He was the center of attention because in the preliterate world his songs brought heroic behavior and insight into the human condition to a populace hungry for meaning, for figuring out what life is all about. Today’s novelist, making his way from blog to blog in the new frontier that is the Internet, is like that ancient teknos. He is welcome if he tells a story that provokes us, that makes us laugh, or weep, or think.

Story Merchant Dr. Kenneth Atchity believes in the power of stories to change the world (www.storymerchant.com). His first solo novel, The Messiah Matrix, predicted the resignation of the pope and the election of an Argentine Jesuit (www.messiahmatrix.com).

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