Why I Became a Writer in the First Damn Place
Almost everybody I’ve ever encountered who hasn’t run away fast enough has heard this tale. But these are the Interwebs (which, wise men tell us, are a series of tubes), and they open a whole world of people to me I’ve never met in person. Try to run away faster than light. Hah! Hah!
So now you’re stuck reading it. My friend, can your heart stand the shocking facts of how my career began?
When I was a lad there was a TV show called Mannix, which starred Mike Connors, mainly because the network suits thought no one would watch a series starring some Armenian guy named Krekor Ohanian. Imdb (“I am Vic M., and I admit that I have no power over the Internet Movie Database”) calls it, “One of the most violent detective series in TV history.” Wow. I don’t remember it being that cool.
But there must’ve been some reason I kept watching it. And it sure wasn’t the smart, well-crafted action writing. Because each and every week, at least once, we would see our hero, on foot, pursued by bad guys in a car through a parking garage or lot. And he would run right down the middle of the open lanes.
Every frickin’ week. It was even in the opening credits, if I recall correctly.
Leave aside the question of why the car didn’t go faster than he did - granted, this was the heyday of heavy Detroit iron, but it was also the heyday of great big studly six and eight-cylinder engines that sucked gas like an elephant at a Sahara stock tank (yes, if the Sahara had stock tanks. And elephants. And if they drank gasoline. It’s a metaphor, dammit!) I always reckoned, stripling though I was, that what I would do if I found myself in that position was, like, hide behind something heavy.
Indeed, I’ve long envisioned myself putting my back to a yard-thick concrete support pillar, giving the baddies the double-barreled finger (both-handed, not that Dane Cook Virgin Vulcan Herbie thing), and saying, “All right, motherfuckers, drive at me real fast.” And if they were dumb enough to do so, nipping smart-quick around the pillar at the last second, so none of the flying glass and random metal bits would hit me.
As I watched that inevitable scene one evening with my grandmother, I remarked on how astonishingly stupid it was that our hero just kept running down the street like that instead of dodging behind one of dozens of instantly available obstacles. And my grandmother said, “They have to do it that way. Otherwise they wouldn’t have any drama.”
Wait for it … five, four, three … can’t hold it - ARRRRGGGHH!
Yes. It had to be stupid so it could be action. If I wanted action entertainment, I had to turn off my brain.
No! Gods all damn it, a thousand times no! Ich werde nicht! Je refuse! ¡No Pasará!
I had my life’s work laid out abruptly at my feet, and it was this thing: to disprove, a thousandfold and irrefutably, that for an entertainment to be action it must also be stupid.
And there you have it. So have I done. In over 70 novels (not all of my 91 and counting are adventure) and a number of short stories. Have I always succeeded? In honesty, I can’t say I know. Probably not, and anyway, that judgement isn’t mine. It’s each reader’s.
But what I can say is that always - in each and every action scene I write - I have striven, I strive, and I shall strive that you can enjoy it without shorting out your brain.
And that’s how I became a writer.
Tags: bad action, mannix, pet peeves
April 10th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
You wrote a scene in Cybernetic Samurai that sticks with me to this day as an “Oh, duh” action moment.
At one point, a character is threatening a room full of people with a submachine gun, trying to make them think she will shoot them if they don’t do what she wants. People, as is often the case, are slow to react to this threat. So, to create a greater sense of immediate danger, the character racks a round into the gun. A scary noise our culture has learned to equate with, ’someone is about to start shooting.’
What was great about the scene was that the gun was already loaded and had a round in the chamber, so all the character accomplished was ejecting an unfired round onto the floor.
I loved that. It’s such an obvious thing, and yet that was the first time I’d ever read anyone mention it. Now I can’t watch that scene on TV or in a movie (tough guy racks a round before going to work, then later racks it again to let someone know he means business) without imagining the unfired bullet he just ejected bouncing across the floor.
April 11th, 2008 at 12:33 am
Wow, I’d forgotten that.
Glad it made an impression on you.
And congratulations! You’ve hit what was probably going to be next “Movie Pet Peeve.” Still bugs hell out of me.