Chris Orcutt, Writer

The first time I read John Irving's The World According to Garp, I choked on a Big Mac.

It was a cold March day 15 years ago, and I was in a McDonald's in Norwich, New York, eating lunch, when a passage took me by such complete surprise that I started choking.

Reluctant to suffer an ignominious death in a Mickey D’s, I dropped the book and looked around clutching my throat. Thankfully, an old-timer saw what was happening, jumped up from his seat and gave me the Heimlich (he was remarkably spry as I recall). The food dislodged. (Never mind where it went. Gross.)

What I was eating when Irving's book surprised me.

"What the hell happened?" he asked.

"Something surprised me," I said, nodding at the book. "Something I read."

"Well, you probably shouldn't eat while you're reading then."

"Probably not, sir. Thank you."

As I sat down, I glanced at the book that had nearly caused my death. I realized that, while I didn't want to cause readers of my own writing to choke in fast-food restaurants, I did want to emulate Irving's ability to surprise them—the smile-inducing sentence; the word choice that evokes a gentle shake of the head; and best of all, the memorable, unexpected scene.

The hardcover version. I wore out my paperback.

From the first, what grabbed me most about the novel was its delicious unpredictability. Take the first line, for example. I can quote it from memory:

Garp's mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater.

This was, and still is as far as I'm concerned, one of the best opening lines of a novel ever. The key word, of course, is "wounding." From time to time, I consider the dozen other words he could have used there, and I realize what a surprising and brilliant choice "wounding" was.  Stabbing? No, too specific, too violent. Injuring? No, too vague. What about "lacerating" or "contusing"? Afraid not. "Wounding" was, and still is, perfect. The questions that "wounding" raises, and doesn't answer, are what entice the reader to continue.

The famous Russian short story writer and playwright, Anton Chekhov, once said the following (I paraphrase): "If a gun hangs above the door in the first act, it must go off in the last act." As a student of Irving who has read Garp and one of his other excellent novels, A Prayer for Owen Meany, at least a dozen times, I'm convinced that Irving must have held Chekhov's view—at least subconsciously—because nothing gets wasted in the story. Every character trait, setting detail and conflict is important, they all build to the climax, and along the way there are hundreds of surprises.

Today, looking out my window and watching the shaking trees, I remember that fateful day in McDonald's when I not only learned to be careful trying to eat and read at the same time, but also the value of surprise in writing. Shortly after that episode, I wrote something on an index card that I've kept on a bulletin board ever since. It's a piece of advice to myself that I've tried to heed in everything I write. Many times I've fallen short, but once in a while I nail it, and here it is:

Put a surprise on every page.

It’s the surprises that keep me reading.

It's the surprises that keep me writing.

It’s the surprises that make life worth living.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A recent survey of teens in Great Britain by the newspaper The Telegraph came out with some interesting results. Of the respondents, only 25 percent believed that Sir Winston Churchill really existed.

On the other hand, many more respondents believed certain fictional characters had actually lived. For example, "Sherlock Holmes, the detective, was so convincingly brought to life in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novels, their [sic] film versions and television series, that 58 percent of respondents believe that the sleuth really lived at 221B Baker Street."

The Troublemaker: the homepage for Dakota Stevens Investigations.

This fact caught my eye because yesterday I received an email from a private investigator in Houston, Texas asking Svetlana Krüsh, my fictional detective's fictional Gal Friday, if she would be open to a link exchange. Here's his email. Here's "Svetlana's" reply. And here's a PDF of the PI's links page so you can see his description of Dakota's site.

Over the past couple of years, since I first launched Dakota & Svetlana into the cyber-ether, I've had several people in emails or on websites thinking they were real people. Take this chess blog entry, for example. I felt bad, so I finally had to intercede and tell them the truth.

A chess club thought this was Svetlana Krüsh.

I've also received 10-12 requests from people for advice on their cases. (I wish I'd saved those emails. I lost them when I changed accounts.) The most memorable of these came from a desperate husband who believed that his wife was not only stepping out on him, but also prostituting their daughter. Ouch! He wanted to know if this was a case that "Dakota" would be interested in. "Dakota" considered it and said to himself, "Fuck that." My fictional PI replied that the man should probably go to the police.

Aside from the people in pain part, this is exactly what I was hoping for when I created these two characters. They're real to me, so if others think so, that's great. With this in mind, I'd love for two people to have a conversation someday similar to one I once had with my step-grandfather Cecil.

Back when I was 13, I read the Sherlock Holmes stories in their entirety. At the time, I was visiting Cecil in Vinalhaven, Maine, and the conversation somehow drifted to Sherlock Holmes. I went on and on about the stories and how much they meant to me and how I wanted to create a detective like him someday. Yada, yada, yada. The maunderings of an eager 13-year-old.

Anyway, Cecil interrupted and said the following (in a thick Downeast accent):

"Yessir, I remember my teacher tellin' us bout all those cases that there Sherlock Holmes was solving. Boy, he was one smart fella, wasn't he, Chris?"

"Uh, Cecil...you realize he's a fictional character, right?" I said. "He was made up. All of it."

Cecil gave a start in his chair like he'd just seen a ghost.

"You don't say!"

"They were all stories, Cecil," I said. "Every word was make-believe."

Now, even though Cecil had limited education, he's no dummy. He believed that Holmes and Watson existed because his teacher probably gave him that impression. Anyway, he's no worse off than the 58 percent of those Britons I mentioned above.

It's nice to know that Dakota and Svetlana are in good company.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday I alluded to John Gardner's book on writing, The Art of Fiction, and casually mentioned syntactic slots. Since then, I've received a few emails asking me what these are. I'll do my best to explain.

Mind you, although I taught college English for several years, I am not a grammarian. That being said, let me refer to the book where I first learned of this concept, Gardner's The Art of Fiction.

Although heady, Gardner's book is remarkably thorough.

For those of you unfamiliar with Gardner and his work, he was an English professor at SUNY Binghamton who had achieved literary fame from his novel Grendel, which was the story of Beowulf told from the monster's point of view. Earlier in his career, he had taught at the famed Iowa Writers Workshop. He died in a motorcycle accident in 1982.

On page 104 of his fiction writing classic, Gardner wrote, "Sentences in English tend to fall into meaning units or syntactic slots—for instance, such patterns as..." (Below, the numbers in superscript indicate the start of a new syntactic slot.)

¹Subject, ²verb, ³object.

OR

¹Subject, ²verb-modifier.

Gardner's main idea is this: "A writer may load one or two of the slots with modifiers, but if the sentence is to have focus—that is, if the reader is to be able to make out some clear image, not just a jumble—the writer cannot cram all three syntactic slots with details."

So I'm not borrowing exclusively from his book, I'll give you my own made-up example:

¹Subject, ²verb, ³object.

¹Jack and Jill ²went ³down the hill.

Okay, there's our sentence with the slots empty of modifiers. Now, let's load up slot 1:

¹Jack and Jill, dressed warmly for their journey, smiling, laughing, feeling frisky with the warm spring air, ²went ³down the hill.

See how only modifiers were added to the first slot? Those details only modify the subject. Now let's load up slot 2:

¹Jack and Jill ²went slowly, carefully as though walking over a bed of rattlesnakes, making a chore of going ³down the hill.

As you probably noticed, loading up slot 2 (the verb) makes for awkward constructions. My example is not the best, but of the three slots, I've found the verb slot to be the most resistant to modifiers. Here's the sentence with slot 3, the object, loaded up:

¹Jack and Jill ²went ³reluctantly down the steep and slippery hill, a hill from hell, a hill that should not have been there in the first place, a hill that, by all rights, they should not have had to traverse—ever.

There it is with the object heavy with modifiers. Finally, to prove Gardner's point, let's see what the sentence would look like if all three slots were loaded up:

¹Jack and Jill, dressed warmly for their journey, smiling, laughing, feeling frisky with the warm spring air, ²went slowly, carefully as though walking over a bed of rattlesnakes, making a chore of going ³reluctantly down the steep and slippery hill, a hill from hell, a hill that should not have been there in the first place, a hill that, by all rights, they should not have had to traverse—ever.

I rest Gardner's case. The same is true, by the way, if you invert sentences to form "Yoda Talk"—¹Object, ²subject, ³verb. ("To the moon he goes!")

So there you go—syntactic slots. I hope this has cleared matters up. Enjoy them in your own writing, and remember, you can load up one or two, but three, unless you're William Faulkner, probably won't work.

Just for fun, here's an example of a long sentence from Faulkner's The Hamlet:

Hill-cradled and remote, definite yet without boundaries, straddling into two counties yet owing allegiance to neither, it had been the original grant and site of a…plantation, the ruins of which—the gutted shell of an enormous house with its fallen stables and slave quarters and overgrown gardens and brick terraces and promenades—were still known as the Old Frenchman place…and even some of the once-fertile fields had long since reverted to the cane-and-cypress jungle from which their first master had hewed them.

Good luck beating Willie. You'll have to get juiced up and write on your wallpaper first.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm finally prepared to admit it. One year ago, I was hooked on the H.

Not a day went by that I didn't need my fix of this special brand of H—the LH.

I had to have it. I set up my life to get three doses a day: two in the morning, one at supper. 'Cause one thing I learned was, you can never get enough LH.

In case you're wondering what the hell LH is, it's Little House on the Prairie. Now don't laugh. That show had me hooked, I tell you. It started back when I was a kid in the late 70s and early 80s. Unbeknownst to anyone except my sisters, I watched reruns of LH between episodes of CHiPs and Magnum, P.I., and I never missed a show.

Charles and Caroline Ingalls. Or, just Pa & Ma to me, thank you.

All last winter, Alexas was unemployed, which honestly was a lot of fun. Every morning we'd rise at eight o'clock, or before dawn if there had been a storm during the night, and go out and shovel. (For Alexas, a California gal, shoveling snow was a novelty, and one I was glad to share with her.) Then we'd have breakfast— johnnycakes with maple syrup—and watch LH.

I'm something of a lay expert on LH, and I'll admit, I did my fair share of showing off to Alexas. At the outset of each episode, I would recite the plot—often within one minute. Mind you, I hadn't seen this show at all for 20-plus years.

Continue reading "When I Was Hooked on the H" »

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 04:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's raining today in Millbrook, New York. When I lived and worked in the Big City, I enjoyed rainy days because they gave you the feeling of, "Screw it—what else am I gonna do today? Might as well work. At least it's dry."

But when you live in the country, and you work at home, you've pretty much got three choices for places to go when it rains: the diner, the library and church. On dry days, I'll often hit all three during my daily walk, but when it's raining...well, I'm stuck inside.

Which leads me to the subject of this entry: Richard Scarry's Rainy Day Book. I loved it as a kid, and it's tough to believe that it's been around 30 years. I must have had one of the originals.

The rainy day savior by Richard Scarry

Continue reading "A Rainy Day Book for Grownups" »

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Giving titles to your writing is a bit like knighting somebody. When you do it, the object of the knighting or the title-giving isn't intrinsically changed by the act; if the person's a jerk, he's still a jerk; if the writing stinks, it still stinks. However, what the title can do is make others take notice of something they might otherwise ignore, whether that something is an obscure person from Southern England or a boring book.

The best titles do several things simultaneously:

1. Arouse interest.
2. Encapsulate the story.
3. Include some kind of symbolism.
4. Become their own ideas.

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I'm pretty good at coming up with titles for my own work. If nothing else, they're often intriguing. Usually they're based on a catchphrase or a line of dialogue, or they're "homages" to other creative works I admire. Here are a few of my favorite titles of short stories of mine, and the stories behind them:

TITLE: "I Hope You Boys Know What You're Doing"

STORY: My friend Carl and I were doing some "landscaping" for a 98-year-old woman, which basically meant we would cut down anything living. At one point, concerned that we weren't doing a very good job, the old woman shuffled out onto the porch and yelled, "I hope you boys know what you're doin'!" Here it is, from the collection of the same title, on Google Books: IHYBKWYD!

TITLE: "You'll Be Fucked for the Rest of Your Life"

STORY: This is an Al-ism. Al is my inimitable father, and I got this title from a time when he gave me the talk. I was in high school, going out with a senior from Vassar, and my father became concerned that I might get her pregnant. So, loaded up on vodka and tonic, and after having thrown the cat in the pool ("He can swim fine..."), Al said to me (in a thick Maine accent), "Chris...if you get her pregnant, you'll be fucked for the rest of your life!"

TITLE: "Whose Van is that on Fire Out There?"

STORY: My friend Tony and I were in a deli-slash-video store when a man in overalls (I swear), stood in the doorway, clutched his overalls straps and boomed out, "Whose van is that on fire out there?" I went to the window (we were on the 2nd floor), and sure enough, the flames were about 20 feet high. Here it is, if you want to read it (or don't believe me).

TITLE: "Sonata for Knife and Violin in F Major; 'Revenge'"

STORY: This one came to me two or three summers ago when I listened to Beethoven's "Sonata for piano and violin N 9 in A major, Op.47 'Kreutzer'" about 200 times. I wanted to write a story about a homicidal violinist who kills with a chef's knife for the creative power it gives him. I wrote it in four "movements", where each movement has notes to the "conductor" in Italian. Sounds pretentious, but it's not. Oh, and the F Major stands for "majorly f-cked".

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As far as other writers are concerned, I'm interested in the stories behind their titles, as well as the titles that might have been. Here are a few examples:

TITLE: The Great Gatsby

ALTERNATES: Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires, Trimalchio in West Egg, Gold-Hatted Gatsby, The High-bouncing Lover

TITLE: All the President's Men

ORIGINAL: At This Point in Time

TITLE: Jaws

ALTERNATES: Leviathan Rising, Great White, The Shark

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My favorite "title story" though, has to be for James Cain's noir masterpiece:

TITLE: The Postman Always Rings Twice

STORY: While writing this book and others, Cain had worked out a system with his mailman where he would ring once when it was good news (checks or an acceptance letter) and twice when it was bad news (bills or a rejection). The postman, he said, always rang twice, so he decided to name the novel for this and the frustration it gave him. There have been a few geniuses in American literature, and Cain is one of them.

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Well, there you have it. A couple hours spent writing about titles. I especially like the title of this piece because that's how I want to die—by redheads, baby.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 07:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over the past year, I've become obsessed with the writers of paperback noir/crime/sleaze novels from the late 40s through the 60s.


Having now read at least 100 of them (no small feat, considering how difficult they are to find), I can say with authority that these guys knew better than any other authors of their time (and today, for the most part) how to hook the reader and keep him hooked.


And yes, the covers were eye-catching, but as titillating as they were, they weren't enough to keep men reading if the story sucked.

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A recently republished Gil Brewer novel, available at Amazon

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This skill of keeping the reader reading is known as narrative drive or "the threat or promise that something is going to happen." Given the number of titles that came out around this time, it's amazing that these authors achieved such variety within a fairly common framework.
The general plot structure, which each author tweaked depending on his style and the quirks of the story he wanted to tell, was as follows:

A competent man, usually with a drinking problem, is either a stranger to town or stumbles into an unfamiliar situation.

Usually on page one, he meets a femme fatale, a sexy and often younger temptress. The woman draws him into her web with a tale of how she is trapped by her circumstances, but with his help, they can kill the guy in the way (the overbearing husband) and keep the loot (a bag of money, gold, or an insurance policy like in DOUBLE INDEMNITY by James Cain).

The two of them then engage in crazy animal sex in every place imaginable. The man is now hooked on the woman and will do anything she wants. He convinces himself that he'll be able to get the money and the girl, if he can only commit the murder perfectly.

Most of the time, though, the guy's drinking gets in the way, and there's always some annoying twerp/blackmailer that catches on and comes in towards the end to foul things up, so they have to kill him/her as well and screw it up.

The temptress then double-crosses the competent man who helped her and absconds with the money, sometimes killing the man herself.

As I said before, that's the framework. There are dozens of variations on this structure. Mind you, I'm not making fun of it; in fact, I'm working on a novel of my own that follows a similar structure.

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A Gil Brewer novel I'm seeking

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What amazes me is this: even though I've read dozens of these stories and know how they'll end, every time I find myself hoping, and in some cases believing, the pair will get away with it—that they'll have each other and the money and get away with killing the schmuck who usually deserves it.


And every time, it ends badly for them.


The fact that I continue reading when I know, every time, that it won't end well, is a testament to the skill of narrative drive these authors possessed. I can't tell you how many nights I've lain awake well up to 2 or 3am reading one of these sons of bitches. Here are my favorite authors in this genre:


1. Gil Brewer
2. Charles Williams
3. Harry Whittington
4. Jim Thompson (his work went well into the 70s)
5. Hank Janson

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Another title I'm seeking for my collection

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And in case you were trying to think of a nice little gift to buy me (friends & relatives, listen up), I'm looking for the following titles to add to my collection:


TALL, BLONDE AND EVIL by Greg Hamilton

SNOW BUNNIES by Joan Ellis

NAKED ON ROLLER SKATES by Maxwell Bodenheim

NUDE ON THIN ICE by Gil Brewer

SATAN IS A WOMAN by Gil Brewer

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my novel, in which a competent stranger shows up and a sneaky vixen tricks him into killing her husband...

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 08:00 PM | Permalink

I wanted to be a writer from the day I first read Casino Royale by Ian Fleming. It was a soft, warm summer afternoon, and I lay on my bed beneath the window reading. I was 13 years old, and all of my friends were in my neighbor's pool. I could hear them laughing and yelling, but I wasn't tempted to go outside. Fleming's words had me transfixed.


At one point, I remember laying the book on my chest and telling God that this was what I wanted to do: I wanted to become a writer, I wanted one day to tell a story as good as the one I was reading. A boy's foolish, but honest, prayer.


I'm not sure if I'm there yet, but I still enjoy reading Fleming's work for inspiration. And the new movie Casino Royale starring Daniel Craig has only rekindled my interest in this character.


I was prepared to go on record with my next statement after seeing the movie once, but I decided to wait until the endorphins cleared out of my head and I could see it a second time, when cool analysis took over. Now that a few days have passed since viewing #2 and I still find myself thinking about certain scenes and shaking my head in awe, I can say the following with 100% conviction:


Daniel Craig is the best James Bond yet.

Period.

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Continue reading "A Bond Aficionado Speaks" »

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 12:07 AM | Permalink

If you're a literary agent interested in my mystery novel, A REAL PIECE OF WORK, you understand that the one-page query letter requires us writers to leave out a lot of interesting detail about our characters and the worlds they inhabit. I'd like to take a moment to tell you about my detective, Dakota Stevens, and his brilliant & sexy sidekick, Svetlana Krüsh.

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Continue reading "Dakota Stevens & Svetlana Krüsh—A Modern PI Duo" »

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 08:00 AM | Permalink