Kay Mills

Writing: Going from Fact to Fiction

Journalists often carry within their hearts the dream of writing The Great American Novel. Not me. I’d love to do that, of course, but I know my limitations. Besides, I think Faulkner beat me to it. But sometimes when I read mysteries, I think, “I can do that.Not as well as P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, or Donna Leon for sure, but I can do that. I’m hopeful that blogging about the process of going from straight journalism to fiction writing will help me—and you—focus on what we’ve learned and what we still need to learn.

Part of that process for me was going first from journalism to books, period. That process helped me prepare for the move into fiction. Journalism and books are obviously vastly different forms, and not just because books are longer than news articles. True, you have to sustain a longer story arc but you simply have to be more expansive, more descriptive, more character oriented even in non-fiction than you can be in most journalism. So we’ll get into that transition first. I’m planning a number of entries in this category so you’ll start to see my thought processes. Some of them will cover how I got the ideas and how I found the information for the books as much as about how I wrote them, but that’s part of the package.

Without this discussion, your first question might be, “OK, if you’ve never published a mystery, who are you to talk about this?” Answer: I have had five non-fiction books published, one of which was on the New York Times list of notable books the year it came out (see the My Works section of this website). I proved I could sustain book writing. I learned many lessons in going from news writing to book writing, lessons that I have been using as I move into fiction. And I have written two mysteries, one of which is in The Drawer Where All First Novels Go, and the other is about to be sent out into the world. The second is much better than the first and I’m constantly picking up ideas to help with plot, characters, setting, and dialogue. And I’ve started a third. I’ll also throw in tips rom some of the writers who have written astutely about their art.

On this blog, I’ll also list mystery writers I find that I like and I’ll list them occasionally with a mini-review. Or journalists who’ve made the transition from fact to fiction successfully. Michael Connelly, who covered cops for the Los Angeles Times, comes instantly to mind. Edna Buchanan, Jim Fusilli, Denise Hamilton, Carl Hiaasen, Laura Lippman, and Pete Dexter are others. (See links below.) You probably know some as well.

This is doable, folks. Here’s a preview of coming attractions:

Going from Journalism to Writing Books: Journalism can be a confining form. You have to tell readers quickly what the gist of the story is, why you are telling them now, and perhaps why it matters. Unless you are describing a baseball game or a political debate or some other event that you saw, you can’t just make a flat statement—you need to attribute it with he said, she said. And he said, she said in a book is boring. In a book, you don’t tell, you show. Books require different organization—either chronological if it’s history or biography or topical if it’s about an organization like the Head Start program for poor children or an exploration of different kind of cooking or planets or whatever. Books allow you more of a point of view—you may not be saying, “This is what I think,” but what you report forms the impression readers take away with them. You don’t even necessarily have to be fair, although I’m still enough of a journalist to think that’s essential.

Organizing Your Material—Ways to keep your information straight and to set up your books, whether fact or fiction. For example, to outline or not to outline? This will provide a seque to the fiction part:

Characters—Write not only what you know but who you know. Not necessarily real people, but types, composites. Write their back story before you ever start. You may never use some of the elements but you will know your characters better. Give them weak spots, flaws that get them in trouble. That helps make them believable.

Plot—Where do you get ideas? Read the papers, talk to your friends, pick a place you’d like to write about and think what kind of mysterious doings might occur there. As author Sarah Dunant said, “You have your imagination.” If you don’t have that, stick with non-fiction.

Settings—Here’s where being a journalist really helps. You know how to research the places you write about. You go there. You look at the neighborhoods. You smell the food, listen to the buzz in the restaurants, catch the rhythm of the places. And you’d better get it right. As Eudora Welty once said, if you have a scene in a garden, you’d better have the plants right; if you get them wrong, your readers won’t believe anything else you’ve said.

Dialogue--I resisted writing fiction for a long time because I felt I couldn’t write dialogue. Wrong. Journalists can write dialogue because we quote people every day. We know the rhythms of their speech (and sometimes clean up their grammar). Just do it. Your characters will help you.

Friends as Readers—Tell them to be honest but don’t expect them to be. And if they are, remember, you asked for it.

Rewriting—You have to do this and do this and do this. And then do it again even when you think you’ve finished.


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Links to authors mentioned
Michael Connelly
Edna Buchanan
Jim Fusilli
Denise Hamilton
Carl Hiaasen
P.D. James
Donna Leon
Laura Lippman
Ruth Rendell