By Their Errors
You Shall Know Them

So pitiful were my powers of observation in the beginning that I had to read the first page of Tom Sawyer fourteen times in a row before I could at least understand why I laughed at Mark Twain's brand of humor.   

"You don't understand the mind of Asimov," the professor responded. 

The man shook his head in disbelief, "I am Isaac Asimov." 

The professor glared at him. 
"And what makes you think you understand your own mind?"

The great Asimov was silenced. 

There are clues which dangle like little strings from a huge ball.  Pull the right one and everything unravels.  In 1954 I discovered Ellery Queen.  Ellery was meek, mild mannered and capable of brilliant feats of deduction.  His father was a high standing police detective that could get Ellery introduced to various crimes that needed solving, and his valiant sergeant could keep the bad guys from physically demolishing our great master of deduction. 

For years I wanted to write like Ellery Queen and waded through all of his books again, in despair.  Where the professors of literature can extract skeletons that hold up the plot and make the story move, I found nothing.  Queen was too smooth, too polished for my mind to pierce even when some professor showed me the entire layout.  Oh, I could understand what the professor was saying, even see it in some instances; but as far as duplicating those feats in my own writing... huh uh!

Under Orders

Therefore it was without any premonition of any kind that I opened up his book UNDER ORDERS and discovered all the magic was gone.  I could not believe it.  I must be having a bad day and not have known it when I began.  Over again I started, and the novel still failed to lift me up and carry me forward.  I set the book aside for a day then came back, and it was still the same.  Me, it had to be me! 

I have every novel written by Dick Francis.  Back to my bookshelf I went and picked out any Dick Francis book at random.  Within two paragraphs he had picked me up and was sweeping me forward, as always. 

Under Orders was opened again and I began to read once more.  I wanted to quit, every minute, but I slogged on through the whole, entire book, searching for that breath of magic that has endeared me so completely to Dick Francis.  Alas and alack, that magic was entirely missing.  The plot was there, the flow was there; had it been some new author's name on the jacket I would not have been disappointed in the least for it was and is -- good.  But this was supposed to be Dick Francis, MY Dick Francis -- and the magic was missing. 

The reason that I mentioned Ellery Queen earlier is that all of the Queen stories and novels were written by two brothers.  One created all the plots and the other fleshed all of them out.  Occasionally there were family bickerings over the merits of the writing, or of the plot but all in all they did a remarkable job of creating a cohesive work of art.  Now that I have read Under Orders and pondered over it for some time I wonder if I would not have been in the same state of shock had I read an Ellery Queen novel that had been written by only one brother.

It may be that Mr. Francis had a wife that gave a final polish to his work.  Perhaps Mr. Francis gave a final polish to her work?  According to Powell's Books: "Francis lives in the Caribbean. In June 2000 he and his wife, Mary, who helped with much of the research for the books, celebrated their 53rd wedding anniversary. Sadly, Mary died later that year, bringing to an end one of the great literary partnerships of the twentieth century. However, a new partnership now blossoms with his younger son, Felix, who has helped with the research for Under Orders, the first Dick Francis novel for six years."

That proves my point.  Dick Francis had a different partner for this book.  It was written, well-written, but I do not believe this book was published before the master had even started the final polish.  Oh, it was mapped out -- mapped out and ready for the master's hand. 

And THAT is wonderful news for you and me as emulative writers.  Even better, Under Orders is a Sid Halley sequel.  Sid is one of the master's flawless characters.  That means we can go back to Whip Hand and the other Sid Halley novels and see EXACTLY how Dick Francis set up the orchard and plucked all the little plums off the trees he planted.  As we read along, little promptings will come, "What Mr. Francis was going to do here is --" 

Even if we never do learn how to duplicate his finesse, we can glean an understanding of the principles involved.  As it is with Mr. Francis so it is with any other writer we admire.  Given unlimited access to any writer's trash can we could eventually understand every tool and strategy s/he employed. 

First, we need to know the master we wish to emulate.  That is predicated on reading their best work repeatedly.  Then we read the earlier works (or the later works if the magic is lost) and -- using what knowledge we have gleaned -- REPAIR the work to our own satisfaction.

We're not going to publish this repair work so there is no plagiarism involved.  This process is purely a personal learning experience.  What we want to happen is for the groove of greatness to open in our own minds so that we can use the mechanics to produce our own masterpieces.  Maybe we will never produce plums for the world like Dick Francis did, but the quality of our work shall definitely improve with professional practice, following in the footsteps of the masters.

Dick Francis books are found in the mystery section, but actually they are adventure novels with a mystery (or two or three) as the plot.  And now we have a very interesting development to consider:  Dead Heat, a book by Dick Francis AND Felix Francis has been published. 

For several month now I have refused  to even open it up.  Now it is my birthday and my wife decided to indulge me with this  half-branded Dick Francis Book.  After choking over the price I did finally open it, but I was ready to reject it at any second as a feeble imposter.  Instead I discovered a masterpiece of mystery writing. The masters don't know how to plant plums, or pick them, but we do have a good mystery.

Their latest joint effort is "CROSSFIRE" and Felix has done a marvelous job of creating a superb mystery.  Unfortunately, he has no clue whatsoever about the job of plucking plums AFTER they have been planted, instead of plucking plums first and then planting them.  It really bothers me that Felix hasn't studied the growth of plums better.  It would be a simple matter of transposing a few paragraphs at the most, or a few sentences most of the time. 

Traditional Francis Plum planting is done throughout his books. Plucking the plums is done in an almost sleight of hand fashion. If you (the reader) catch them, that's fine. If they sail over your head that's okay, maybe your subconscious mind will pluck up the plum and insist you have just had a singular treat on a par with Christmas plum pudding. For example, his sterling jockey heroes are steel-nerved young men suffering incredible pain.  He's not going to tell anyone.  No sir, He's a MAN!

But you just wait a few minutes and sure enough, here's somebody that knows our hero is hurting desperately, and they tell the reader.  Then the second crop comes in and that person tells someone important in the novel just how much our brave young jockey is suffering.  In the end everyone that is anyone gets the message; our brave young hero deserves a medal. 

Once you see these foiled attempts at raising plum trees you can recognize the jewels on the pages of earlier Francis work.

+++

Recently I have been devoting a lot of my reading time to Lee Child's REACHER NOVELS.  This guy is fantastic and well worth your undivided attention.  2 days ago my wife bought his first novel for me to read.  His first novel wasn't as good as the other books, but it was extremely well-written, until I had finished the first 3rd of the book.  The story was gone to pot and I had lost interest, realizing that Lee Child had lost his bearings. 

His first book, so that was understandable, and besides, he was doing a whole lot better than I can.

I put the novel aside for 12 hours, then boredom forced me to picking it up again. In the very next chapter Lee Child hit the ground running and we never looked back.  Writing quality had shifted from good to superb.

What had happened? 

I suspect that Mr. Child recognized the mud hole his book was in and took a break of some kind.  Maybe it was a vacation that let his mind brood over the book's problem until a solution was found, or maybe he showed it to some brooding artist whose plume was a polished pencil.  In any event, the rest of the book has the power and the genius of a writing craftsman that knows how to find his groove, and stay in it.  By comparing the two products I could see many insights into the mind of Lee Child.

Mind you, like the professors we started with, I can't produce a Reacher novel, but I do have a handle on what makes the author one of a kind.