Bob Trapp’s Exploration

As part of directing more of my energy toward writing, I’ve also been looking more at reading. To that end, I perused my local book store for authors who were current and seemed to be having some commercial success. That’s when I stumbled across the books of Stuart Woods.

There were several shelves of his books, and many of them are in series, of which he has about five. I finally found his novel called Choke (Harper 1996). It tells the story of a tennis pro and old detective solving a murder or two. That’s the part that had me a little leary, but I decided to give the book a try.

The reason I was reluctant to read the book is that I’ve never really liked crime fiction. This is a leftover reaction from younger days when I found that the mysteries were rarely that exciting or complex. My young mind could not connect with the characters so I didn’t really care that someone was killing them off. Given their language, and the language of the narrators, murder seemed okay.

To my great surprise, I started reading the book and could not stop. Really, the book is just over four hundred pages in I read it in one night. The writing grabbed me quickly and kept me going. I was impressed; so much so that my next fiction reading excursion is Mr. Woods’ novel Under the Lake (Signet 2011).

I immediately went into analysis mode to figure out what it was about this writing that kept me reading. The only other author to do that to me was Donald Harstad, who also writes crime fiction, but he’s an old deputy from my native Iowa, so I could more easily relate. I tried to compare the two.

The great thing about Harstad’s books is that the author has full knowledge of his complex world of characters and he can keep them all straight. The narrative voice is that of an old deputy, so it comes from the author’s own experiences. By having a complex world where all the people of the fictional county have clearly defined relationships, the reader begins looking for those relationships and the crimes take on a more personal aspect. Again, I may have been biased because the stories take place in a fictional version of my backyard.

The novel Choke, on the other hand, has none of Harstad’s characteristics. There are many viewpoint characters depending on who is in the individual scene. The story takes place in southern Florida, a thousand miles from my backyard. The characters have professions and personal histories with which I could not connect. Why was I so interested?

As far as I can tell, and I’m seeing more of this as I start reading Under the Lake, is that Mr. Woods is very good at not telling the reader anything useful. He does tell the reader a great many things, but always stops just short of giving the details of the situation. That teasing seems to form a very effective carrot on a stick.

When Choke ended, the last of the details emerged, and that was very satisfying. Persevering through the book paid off, making for a very pleasant experience. It’s easy to see how Mr. Woods has been able to get over sixty books published. I look forward to reading more of his work and, frankly, trying to learn to do what he does.

One of the questions I have is: will this sort of technique be useful in fiction that is not crime oriented? The whole point of the crime thriller is that it contains a mystery to be solved. If one is not going to solve an actual mystery, could the thrill of finding clues carry a story forward or would it just add frustrating complexity? Since most stories center on a main character overcoming an obstacle, one could imagine that trying to find a solution would be a sort of mystery.

Another question on my list is: would this work on something far shorter than a novel. In a novel, there would be time to drag out the details. How far can a short story be dragged? Again, there is a fine line between a useful technique an annoying one.

Regardless of the answers to those questions, I believe that I can learn much from Mr. Woods. If nothing else, it gives me an excuse to devote more time to his works.

As mentioned elsewhere on this site (repeatedly), I’ve often placed other work at a higher priority than writing. As a result, my publishing credentials drift lightly through the cracks of literature. My goal is to apply the same principles applied to my waist and have the credit grow weighty and wide.

The following were published while attending Kirkwood Community College

“Way too Fast”
Cedar Valley Divide (2004): 8

“Wild, Wild Ward”
Cedar Valley Divide (2004): 19

“My Dream Car”
Cedar Valley Divide (2004): 45

“Morning with Fish”
Cedar Valley Divide (2004): 54

The following were published while attending Mount Mercy College (now Mount Mercy University)

“A Reaper of Another Color”
Paha (2006): 56

Novels

“Cordell’s Rebellion”
Barnes and Noble Press (2018)

Hour of Consequence
Barnes and Noble Press (2019)

In my day job, I teach computer programming and databases. Though I get bored quickly with actual programming, the software and database design are fascinating. It may seem odd to some that I can balance the harsh logic of computers with the creativity and flow of creative writing, but these things are actually quite well related.

My skill in the design part of computing is very similar to the world building in my writing. In the same way that I can manage the interactions between two characters in accordance with the rules of their story world, I can also manage the interactions between two data constructs in their world. There is no real disparity.

If anything, I would say that my writing skill has given me an advantage in my technical work. Many years ago, I worked on various electro-mechanical devices. These things ran from large format photocopiers to life support equipment. It took little time with a machine before I had a mental model of how it worked and could quickly diagnose problems by duplicating the symptoms in my head. This made my repairs very quick and they tended to last.

Now, if I have to model a business process in terms of data flow, I can build that model as well. Not only do I build a strong database to manage the data, but I can also design software to control and use the data as well. This is the same modeling that helped me repair the machines mentioned above.

I see no difference between that and keeping track of a population of fictional characters as they interact within a fictional environment. Once the rules are understood, the agents move as they are supposed to move within the given constraints.

One thing that can be a little more difficult to conceptualize is that the software agents rarely have emotions attached, nor do they experience character development. Like many things, this is merely a linguistic issue. In the field of software agents, the emotional aspects are represented by “utility”, a term borrowed from economists. Likewise, learning agents could be said to develop over time. Since my graduate degree emphasized Artificial Intelligence, I could go on for quite a while, but most people don’t want to hear it.

The gist of what I’m saying is that, if you get a chance, you should take a little time to see how the database and computer programming people model their worlds. You don’t have to become an expert in their field, but you may be able to gain some insight into how you model things in yours.

I’ve always been a storyteller. I remember times in my childhood, when the cousins would gather around and insist that I tell them stories. We sat on the stairs and I made up tales that kept them enthralled. The parents didn’t mind, as long as I didn’t tell anything too intense for the smaller kids. I was less than ten years old; I didn’t know anything that intense.

In junior high school, I began reading more. The fact that people could be published for these stories fascinated me. It didn’t matter. I needed to get my head out of the clouds. Still, when my friends engaged in role playing games, they wanted me to create the scenarios. Mine were more complex and inventive.

Then I got older. No college for me; I had work to do. It was real work, not that fanciful stuff. I still have notebooks from those days. The stories were interesting, but the writing style was poor. It really needed work.

Eventually, I joined my first writers’ group. It took years before I could write very well. My stories were often technically correct, but the readers could not relate to them. Then there came a breakthrough. The group discussed how all of these Great Authors all had various forms of depression. Then they talked about how all of members also had some form of depression or other. I was the exception, since I tended toward the other end.

That night at home I immediately attempted to think depressing thoughts. It was tough. Every time I started to feel completely bummed, I would get excited about it. It didn’t take long till I gave up on that. I decided to write a short story in first person where the character was depressed and I would just have to fake it. It was the best received of any of my stories. People could relate and I had learned a valuable lesson.

It didn’t matter, of course. I still had real work to do and could not be wasting time on the writing nonsense. That thought was still dogging me, as it does to this day. Long periods of time will go by where I grind away at my “real work” and my writing goes undone. The stress builds until I finally realize the problem. A few hours at the keyboard or scribbling in my notebook and the stress is gone. I am a writer by nature.

Now I’m trying to train myself to see writing as real work, to overcome that negative image placed in my mind so long ago. It’s nothing for me to put down thousands of words a day or to create large and complex worlds, when I take the time to do it. I need to channel that into something productive and, hopefully, something that can pay the bills. Time passes and leaves age in its wake. I really need to do something with this writing thing before I have a wake of my own.