Author: Lin Robinson

Linton Robinson was born in occupied Japan, schooled in Asia, and is now a 20 year resident of Latin America. Robinson is an award-winning journalist and noted photographer, with credits in top markets. His syndicated columns were cult favorites in the nineties. Learn more at his blog and his Amazon author page.

Tips from the Masters: John Gilstrap

Author Lin Robinson

John Gilstrap has an unusual characteristic for a multi NYT best-selling author: he’s known online as very approachable and forthcoming individual, open and willing to connect. Maybe that has something to do with his kind of thriller, the kind that are less about whizbang, agency name-dropping, and international scare-shows, and more about human beings coping with hairy situations.

He’s always shown up heavily in the audio book market, with major sales to listeners and bling like The Copper Bracelet being #1 at Audible.com, with Audiobook Of They Year and Audie Award honors for The Chopin Manuscript.

But my personal favorites of his books is an early one, Nathan’s Run, a excellent example of what I mean by his human scale. There’s no huge world-shaking threat, no blazing action sequences; just a 12 year-old boy on the run from death with nobody to protect or care for him. In fact, a scan of his work shows that many show similar themes, as much so as his more typical investigators and assassin thrillers: church camp teens held hostage, a son lost in a frozen wilderness, a couple protect a hunted waif, criminal parents fleeing capture with their teen-aged son. It’s suspense in the real world, the world you know and depend on–fear and action in your own size and idiom. Continue reading “Tips from the Masters: John Gilstrap”

Tips from the Masters: Laurence Shames

Author Lin Robinson

Those who’ve followed my series on writing advice are in for a treat, because starting this month, it won’t be “tips from some dude on the web”, but favorite advice from some major professional writers, some best-sellers, some cult figures, some in my personal pantheon of admiration. Some of these might not seem like earth-shaking angles, but all are worth thinking over because these are people who’ve succeeded at the Master level.

It’s my great pleasure to start out with remarks from Laurence Shames, one of my handful of favorites, the kind of work I can read over and over. There doesn’t seem to be any normal route to writing success, but Larry’s “strategy” is more checkered than most. He was a hotshot magazine writer in New York, contributing editor to Esquire among other glittering credits. Unlike most blue-chip writers, he also did–and still does–ghostwriting, leading to two major flags on his career. He wrote a pseudonymously titled book called “Bad Twin”, which is significant to viewers of the “Lost” TV show, a story within the story that among other things created the fictional Hanso corporation that ran ads in newspapers denouncing it’s “defamation”. Yes, that’s damned weird. His big score was writing the 1991 NYT best-seller “Boss of Bosses” with two FBI agents. The score from that one enabled him to buy a house in Key West and get out of New York. He has ghosted best-sellers since, but it was the move to Key West that, as it has for others, started the magic. You owe it to yourself to read his series of eight luminous novels set there, starting with “Florida Straits”. Joey, scion of a New York mafia family, chucks it and drives down the Keys in search of himself. He strikes out trying to start his own mob in paradise, but comes out on his feet despite incursions of the Family From Hell. A core of a half-dozen characters keep the series linked, even if Joey and his girl aren’t present. Bert the Shirt, his “consigliere” for island ways is a main thread, along with his aging Chihuahua. Continue reading “Tips from the Masters: Laurence Shames”

A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS

Author Lin Robinson

As I mentioned last time, I have found useful writing tips to be few and far between. This is, to me, one of the most powerful things you can use in creating fiction, but it’s subtle and has no real nuts/bolts application. But just being aware of it helps you when nothing else does. The term is “narrative voice”.

I first heard it in school from Jack Cady, a very talented short story writer who taught writing and science fiction in the Engineering department. Oddly, two weeks later I was sitting in a bar just off campus with Ken Kesey, and he said exactly the same thing. So I took it to heart.

It’s a vague and slippery concept as writing tips go, closer to psychology or spirituality than to medicine or exercise. But you should be aware of it: just keep that awareness a little unfocused. Narrative voice is, in Cady’s words, the way your story wants to tell itself. It’s way more than a point of view or style or dialect or mode or any of that, though all of those are elements in it. You pick up a children’s book about a kid looking for a lost friend and read it, it’s telling itself in a certain way that fits the story. Then you pick up a noir detective story about a guy looking for a lost friend and it tells itself in a very different way. Continue reading “A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS”

MOVE IT OR LOSE IT

Author Lin Robinson

Having dwelled, last month, on several posts about “rules” and concepts I advised writers to ignore or at least salt down, I thought I should balance it with some more positive material; tips to help writers work better. It surprises many to learn that I actually have a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing. From the University of Washington, to be precise: Go Huskies! But I learned more while writing for a living: meeting deadlines for newspapers, pressure to write better than the staff on magazines, measuring copy against sales figures for catalogs. And in all those classes and decades of exposure to pro writers, I only picked up a bare handful of tips that I feel are useful enough to pass along to others. So, since I rate in top echelons of truly wonderful guys, that’s what I’m going to do. These are things that actually help and actually work. They are additive, rather than prohibitive tips, ranging from truly simplistic to fairly arcane. And both kind of mystical.

I’ll start out at the simple end of the scale, with something that might just seem silly to many. But for some reason it works. I first heard it from the editor of an Army newspaper, and later, almost word for word, while interviewing a great American writer, the late Ross Thomas. Here goes. Continue reading “MOVE IT OR LOSE IT”