The Law and Order Approach to Writing Fiction

Today I welcome John Sharpe blogging about how Law and Order helped mold his writing. John is a Colorado native whose family lineage includes lawmen, ranchers, miners and businessmen - with a couple school teachers thrown in for balance. He spent many years in the magazine business and retired as managing editor of The Texas Longhorn Trails. He writes mysteries set in the mountains and ranchlands of Colorado.

John will be giving away two copies of his book (choice of print or digital) to randomly selected commenters. As always, you have until Friday to post your comments, and winners will be announced here over the weekend. (I might be late because I'll be in LA cheering on my daughter who's running the LA Marathon that weekend.)

I consider Law and Order (I’m talking the long running TV program here) a good learning tool for writers. I wrote for magazines for years while reading from one to three works of fiction every week and secretly wishing I was writing those instead of about the worries of hoof rot, wonders of artificial insemination, how to build an electric fence or reporting on current livestock market conditions. When I retired to finally write mysteries I realized I didn’t know how. I had read hundreds of books but studied none of the techniques that allowed me to enjoy them. So before I could write I had to learn how.

I started by doing what I always did before I got a computer that I didn’t need to crank and discovered Google, I went to the library. If I found a how-to book I liked by someone that seemed to know what they were talking about and had the credentials to back it up I would buy a copy so that I could highlight and write notes in the margins. I ended up with twenty-two of them. I know; they’re sitting on a shelf behind me and I just turned around and counted. The second thing I did was join Pikes Peak Writers based in Colorado Springs, attended many of their seminars and their wonderful annual conferences.

I learned today’s reader wants you to start off with a bang. Get their attention. Keep the pace moving to retain the reader’s interest. Provide red herrings to keep them off guard. Add surprising plot twists. Don’t write down to the reader, but avoid terminology that is too specialized without some explanation. Develop believable characters and provide them with dialogue that sounds like real human beings. A sonsabitch should sound like a sonsabitch and not Aunt Tillie at a pot luck. And don’t forget - show don’t tell.