Crime Rate Ink Soars in Manhattan

– By Mitch Silver –

Today I am a proud graduate of Crime Fiction University, the annual two-day symposium sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America for writers who want to improve their craft. Maybe it’s not as prestigious as Yale or even Harvard, but you still get a degree … OK, it’s called the Third Degree … just for sitting there and listening to the teachers.
And what teachers they are! The day kicked off with Rye’s own Lee Child (“Bad Luck And Trouble”) and Leslie Silbert, (“The Intelligencer”) describing “The Thriller Map.” How do you hook the reader and hold him or her through the troublesome middle (“Death Valley”) all the way to the last syllable? Lee likened the question he often gets, “What ingredients make up a great thriller?” to “What ingredients make up a great dinner?” He told us the question really ought to be, “How do I make my family hungry?” His answer: serve dinner four hours late. While we were still laughing, he explained that meant giving the reader a question in the beginning and then delaying the answer for as long as you can while the tension builds.
Second period wasn’t Math, but David Black and Lee Goldberg on writing crime for television, and the difference between 22 episodes a year on the tube versus 90 minutes on the big screen. Black, Supervising Producer (or “showrunner”) on “Law & Order” and a writer for hit shows as far back as “Hill Street Blues”, and Goldberg (“Monk” and “Diagnosis Murder”, among others) agreed that the single best way to show a TV producer what you can do is to write a spec script for the show you want to hook on with. “I’m looking for a high signal-to-noise ratio,” said Black, in one of his more cryptic moments. “Give me crisp dialogue and conflict. Every scene has to deepen character or move the story along. Period.” Goldberg explained that every show is composed of four acts, and demonstrated how the structure can be used in writing beyond the small screen.
After each session, the teachers stood around the lobby of the Lighthouse auditorium on 59th Street where the program was held, signing books and chatting with the students.
Dr. Doug Lyle, a psychiatrist, discussed character arcs by taking the class through something he calls Psychological Polemics, using Sarah Connor’s development in the movie “Terminator” as an example. As played by Linda Hamilton, Sarah begins the movie as a not very ambitious waitress in Los Angeles who can’t get the burger orders right. By the end, she’s as much a laser-focused killing machine as the “Governator”, Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the process her character goes from Dummy to Smarty, Whiner to Tough Guy and Wallflower to Blooming Rose, all to save the future of mankind. Whew!
After lunch, Naomi Hirahara (“Gasa-Gasa Girl”) and S. J. Rozan (“In This Rain”) gave the class a writing exercise as part of their discussion of three-dimensional sleuths, sidekicks and villains. We were asked to take five minutes to describe a room using all five of our senses. Then they had us do it again, only this time we were in the room to steal something. Finally, they handed us our take-home assignment: imagine the same room with someone you love in it with you. The intent of the three essays is to show how the description of something neutral, like a room, changes with the varying emotions (nervousness, passion) of the narrator. My room remained somewhat on the stoic side.
Finally, outgoing MWA President Nelson DeMille (“Wild Fire”) and incoming President Harlan Coben (“Hold Tight”) discussed such burning questions as what to do when you’re sitting in a Cleveland bookstore for a book signing and it’s just you and the store manager — a problem neither man has faced for years.
Crime Fiction University is part of Edgar Week, which included a launch party for ”The Blue Religion” — MWA's newest anthology, edited by Michael Connelly — and the bestowing of coveted Edgar Awards, named for Edgar Allen Poe, at the Grand Hyatt. This year’s winners were: Best Novel, “Down River” by John Hart; Best First Novel, “In the Woods” by Tana French. (Under the heading Dress Code, invitations to the ceremony read, “Dress to Kill.”)

Now that I have my CFU sheepskin, I’m ready to achieve my next goal in life: making it to the 35th reunion.