Storytelling, journalism live on The Wire

Abby and I are reveling in the sweep and depth of HBO's The Wire. It's a piece of genius, 60 hours of entertainment that feels like reading a masterful series of crime novels. Or a week's worth of old-school newspaper reports, what was once called "a series" and now is a rare breed indeed.

The creator of these connected, 1-hour dramas started as a journalist at the Baltimore Sun, but after 13 years of crime articles David Simon aspired to say more than newsprint could carry about important issues. He wrote a non-fiction book in the late '80s that became the blueprint for Homicide, another TV show. In The Wire Simon, along with his ex-cop, schoolteacher creative partner Ed Burns, takes on big matters like poverty, crime, education, graft, politics both good and bad. They have created a Book That Makes a Difference and plays out on your DVD screen.

In his closing letter after the series wrapped, Simon points out that The Wire was built on interviews and details with experts. Once upon a time, he asserts, journalism at its best told this kind of story.

For those of us writing The Wire, a television drama, story research involved dragging the right police lieutenants or school teachers, prosecutors and political functionaries to neighborhood diners and bars and taking story notes down on cocktail napkins and paper placemats. To be more precise with their tales? To record it and relay it in a manner that can stand as non-fiction truthtelling? Yes, that's harder to do. But there was a time when journalism regarded that kind of coverage as its highest mission.

The true stories that The Wire traded in are out there, waiting for anyone willing to take the time. And it is, of course, vaguely disturbing to us that our unlikely little television drama is making arguments that were once the prerogative of more serious mediums.

The lesson to take away here is the drive for details, usually accumulated through personal contact. Efforts to connect with resources in this way will make a story stronger, whether it's drama or non-fiction or the creative non-fiction that blends both. (There's also the lesson about journalism fundamentals being a sound foundation for fiction, but this old newspaperman will not wax on too long about that bromide.)

By the way, if you rent The Wire, be sure to turn on the subtitles. It adds a level of richness for a writer, or anyone who enjoys a good read.

Popular and good writing can be exclusive

A USA Today story reports that Stephanie Meyer of the Twilight series is now "dominating" the paper's bestseller list. These books of the undead, and the movie franchise they've spawned, are lively enough to have earned her publisher Little, Brown $40 million already. So the author has her own $4 million in royalties to bank.

By most accounts, though, the writing is weak. Especially compared to the Harry Potter series, which USA Today was quick to compare to Twilight. Bestselling seems to be the only point in common. A reading teacher reports as much in the comments on the USA Today site.

I'm a Reading teacher, its my job! And I must say JK Rowling's books are far superior in writing, character development, plot, and readability, just to name a few things. Meyer is good, but Rowling is great! I put Breaking Dawn down utterly disappointed, compared to the tears of joy and sorrow that were gushing from my eyes when I put The Deathly Hollows down. Meyer may break records, but overall Rowling is Queen.

Does Stephanie love it, and live the creating like Rowling did? Her publicist reports that she's taking a break from the romance of vampire passion.

When Meyer might publish a new novel isn't known, says Megan Tingley of Hachette's Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. She's "enjoying the writing process without a deadline or targeted publication date.

What writer wouldn't enjoy that kind of writing life? Wealthy beyond her dreams, with only millions of Potter fans and the reading teachers of the world to sniff at her work. As for the publisher, they want the books as fast they can get them, to piggyback on the publicity. As the article points out, Stephanie has tapped the motherlode of young female readers with Twilight, Edward and vampire fantasy. If you desire good and popular writing all at once, working for the first might be a better place to start to get to the second. Unless you're plugged in to the fantasies of YA-reading women. They buy a lot of books.

I'm reminded of the line from Citizen Kane, when his business manager Bernstein is interviewed. "Making a lot of of money isn't difficult, if all you want to do it make a lot of money." I'd be wary of starting a vampire novel just about now, though. When every publisher wanted the next DaVinci Code when it was soaring, imagine how many candidate queries poured in trying to be just like the Flavor of the Last Three Months. The time of just-average writing of vampire teen romances is gone by now.

Know what your story desires to tell

NPR has a great interview with Richard Russo you can listen to on its site. The author of the divine Empire Falls (a Pulitzer winner) has a new book, That Old Cape Magic. The book is about a writer, a device that lets Russo explain a common author's problem, for those still learning the craft. It's not easy understanding what a story needs to say.

In his novel, [his character] Griffin decides to write about his childhood on the Cape -- including his love for a neighboring family. But his first draft of the story isn't any good because the characters don't come to life.

Russo, who used to teach fiction writing, says this is a problem that he frequently sees in beginning writers.

"The deepest failures any fiction writer is likely to have are failures of not quite comprehending the truth of the story that he or she is telling. And I think that's why Jack Griffin can't write this story ... there's something about himself that he hasn't quite recognized."

Russo says this idea of missing the point is as common in life as in novels. And as memories corrode or morph, people -- parents and children, husbands and wives -- tend to form different ideas of the past.

How to avoid this pitfall? Keep crafting that three-paragraph synopsis, if it's a longer work like a book. In this format, paragraph one describes the inciting event. Two tackles the expansion and evolution of the story. Three delivers the Big Message: Why your readers should open the book, to learn a larger story, like how faith can overcome fear of the future.

Big truths of stories cover common ground, so a reader has empathy with the lesson: "Hey, I lived that one." Or knew someone who did. Or failed at the lesson.

By the way, Russo sounds like a dynamite interview subject on the radio. A voice as crackling as his characters.

When a book is finished

I've taken a couple of months away from this blog and the manuscript workshops to complete Viral Times. It's been a process of learning craft and considering workshop responses over more than six years to finish this first novel. (Thanks to all who read this in progress; you'll be in the foreward.) Although it took longer to finish than I expected, it feels delicious to have transformed my creative work from a project into a book.

At the end, in the last gallop to the wire, I used Scrivener on my iMac to make a pack of 51 chapters into a cohesive narrative. I'd been searching long and hard for a piece of software that would take dozens of Word documents (one per chapter) and line them up in my sequence of plot. The most brilliant part of Scrivener is creating what's called scrivenings: an test-run of scenes and sequel to make up a chapter, or a proposed set of chapters to devise a book. Highly recommended, Mac only, but there's a similar tool for Windows in Page Four.

I'm lucky in being able to bull my way to the finish with the Mac and Scrivener. Some of this fortune comes from earning a journalism degree rather than an English degree more than 25 years ago: the journalism pays for things like the 24-inch iMac and provides time to work on the book. I figured, back in 1980, that learning journalism would give me a better chance to earn a living than a proper literature degree. While I had to learn the craft of fiction over the past six years (a education in process), I was at least writing all the while to run a house and a business.

Now I'm in the rather comfy spot for awhile of waiting on an agent's response. A lucky connection with Cameron McClure of the Donald Maas Agency netted a request for 100 pages. Big chunk of a 293-page book, good agency, and an agent who sells stories like this future fiction tale of mine. No promises, but the book is on its way to whatever it will be in the months and years to come.

When is something this large really finished? You never can be sure, and I still think of what could have gone into it, or been cut out. Those things might still happen (and probably will) as the book moves toward publication. But one marker of completion is length. Scrivener helped in an enormous way with this. Few books should be longer than 120,000 words, with the rare exception. Fewer still will sell at under 70,000. Those numbers come from the Maas Agency, where one of the agents posted a great article on book length.

And now that Viral Times has come in at 98,000 words, I can look forward to my manuscript workshops of this fall. By the time we've met for half of the 8 monthly sessions, I'll have read and responded to 100,000 words. I come back to that work renewed and ready after my summer vacation.