How To Write Gooder

I wanted to be a writer since I bought a Travis McGee novel in Mitchell, SD, for thirty-five cents. As I stood there on the sidewalk, the novel in my hands, I had an epiphany. Old John D. wasn’t writing for his health. He did this for a living. It took me a long time to learn how to write a novel, but that’s because I’m a slow learner. I always had a flair for stringing words together, and I was always confident of my ability to tell a story. I attended the University of Wisconsin, majoring in political science. And a fat lot of good it’s done me. But I did study writing with the great Jerry McNeely, who said, “You make ‘em laugh a little, you make ‘em cry a little, you scare the hell out of them, and that’s entertainment.

Upon graduating, I moved to Boston. I heard there were newspapers there who would hire anyone who could string words together. My first job out of college was smoking marijuana for the government. I answered an ad in the Boston Phoenix looking for volunteers to live on a hospital ward in Mattapan for a month, smoke government-grown marijuana, and take a battery of tests. It was just like college. When it was over, I wrote it up, the Boston Phoenix hired me, and that’s how I became a newspaper editor. I was music editor. It was my job to go out, night after night, listen to music and interview the musicians. I still write about music to this day, at www.popgeekheaven.com.

In ‘77, I moved back to Madison and took a job at an insurance company. I broke into comics in 1981, when Steve Rude and I created the science fiction superhero Nexus. We were in the right place at the right time. Capital City Distribution, the second largest comic distributor in the world, was looking to publish their own line. I drew out the first twelve pages of Nexus by hand, gave it to the Dude, he drew, inked, and lettered, and we showed it to the boys. We were off and running. Nexus is still being published today, from several sources. It may be the longest running independent super hero title of all. Because we made a splash, I was soon working for the majors, writing Punisher for Marvel and Flash for DC. I worked with giants such as Archie Goodwin, Denny O’Neil, and Julius Schwartz.

I wrote a lot of comics. For fifteen years, I wrote them by drawing each page out by hand. Archie Goodwin used the same method. Artists and editors loved it. My art was good enough to see what was going on at a glance. I recommend this method to anyone starting out because it teaches you how much weight a page can bear, when to expand the image, when to contract, and to think visually. I now write full script, but my scripts are sparse.

PAGE ONE

1/1 Horizontal. Exterior, day, an elegant old funeral home backed up against the Rocky Mt. Foothills, with a curving driveway beneath a porte cochere, several cars parked. A sign on the porte cochere says Orlock Funeral Home. Old fir trees frame the building. Voices from within.

JOHN BURKE

He looks at peace.

JANE BURKE

And so handsome.

ORLOFF

We do our best.

1/2 Interior, viewing room, with John (John Forsythe) and Jane (Angelica Huston) wearing formal clothes, staring into an open casket while Orloff (Boris Karloff) stands to the side, hands clasped behind his back.

ORLOFF

It is always terrible to lose a child.

JANE

He was our father.

ORLOFF

Please forgive me. I don’t know how I could have been so stupid.

1/3 Looking down into the coffin where a dark young man, mid-twenties, lies with his hands crossed just below a silver ornament that sits right over his heart. He has a widow’s peak, black hair, with a unibrow.

JANE

Is the mausoleum secure?

ORLOFF

It can withstand a direct hit from a ten megaton bomb.

JOHN

And the stake?

1/4 Orloff with hands steepled piously.

ORLOFF

The stake is affixed to the steel bottom. If you’re concerned about disinternment, we can use the crematorium. You will receive a refund on the coffin.

1/5 John, Jane, Orloff.

JOHN

Father was a devout Catholic. Without the body, there can be no transition to the afterlife.

ORLOFF

Of course.

Novels are another story. I stopped writing for ten years while caring for my ailing wife. I couldn’t get any writing work. We moved to Colorado for her health. Didn’t work. One day after her passing, I started writing again, an idea that clawed its way into my brain and wouldn’t let go. Banshees is about a satanic rock band that comes back from the dead. About a third of the way through the novel, I thought, holy shit! I see it now. I understand the novel form and what constitutes story! Story is many things, and that’s another discussion, but I finally had the power. I’m working on three novels now. Far Horizon is a military science fiction novel I’m writing with Green Beret Major Diggs Brown. Kahn is the ninth in my Biker series. Josh Pratt is a reformed motorcycle hoodlum who went to prison and found God. This is my tribute to John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee, who has inspired so many writers. And I’m most of the way through the new Nexus novel, based on my comic book creation.

People tell me I’m prolific. I laugh. Prolific is Kevin J. Anderson, who publishes three to four hundred and fifty thousand word books a year. Prolific is Western author Peter Brandvold who publishes six books a year. I’m lucky if I finish three novels a year, but I’m still writing comics. Also, I’m in FB jail for another week. I posted an article that Norway had lifted all restrictions and within five minutes I was banned. So this article won’t appear on FB unless I get someone else to provide a link.