Let me save you some time. I am not Robert Frost. I am not Walt Whitman. Nobody is stopping by my woods on a snowy evening, and I have never once heard America singing—mostly I hear it honking on I-66.
I’m a storyteller. If you want lyricism, get a poet. If you want to know what happens next, stick with me.
The fifty-dollar word problem
Somewhere along the line, writers got the idea that a big word is a better word. It isn’t. It’s just a more expensive one.
Why write “perambulated” when “walked” gets him across the room just as fast? Why “ameliorate” when “fix” is sitting right there, ready to work, asking for nothing? Every time a reader stops to decode a word, they’ve stopped reading the story. They’re out of the car, looking at the map. That’s a bad trade, and I’m not making it.
I teach at an engineering school. Engineers have a word for parts that don’t do any work: waste. A sentence is a machine for moving a reader from here to there. If a part doesn’t move the reader, pull it.
Don’t use a fifty-dollar word when a ten-cent word will do. The ten-cent word was doing fine. Leave it alone.
Straight-line sentences
Subject. Verb. Something happens. Next.
That’s the whole method. No scenic detours through three subordinate clauses and a semicolon. No sentence that needs a running start.
And yes, fragments. On purpose. Because people think in fragments. Because sometimes a fragment hits harder than the full sentence ever could. Like this one.
Humor is the engine, not the paint job
Every thriller has tedious parts. Every one. The drive to the safe house. The scene where somebody explains how the money got laundered. The forty-five minutes of waiting before the bad thing happens.
That’s where I put the jokes.
Humor is how I keep you turning pages through the stretches that would otherwise feel like homework. It’s not decoration. It’s load-bearing.
It’s also what my characters do under pressure. When Greg Newsome cracks wise with a gun pointed at him, it isn’t because he’s not scared. It’s because he is. Humor is a defense mechanism. Ask anyone who has ever laughed at a funeral and then felt terrible about it, and then laughed again.
Here’s my one confession: a joke is the one place I let myself pile on. One beat, then another, then a third that makes the first two funnier. Some editors call that overwriting. I call it the show.
Tonal whiplash is a feature, not a bug
One page you’re laughing. The next page somebody is dead, and you’re still holding the smile you had a second ago, and now you feel bad about it.
Good. That’s the point.
Life doesn’t check the tone before it happens. Tragedy shows up mid-punchline. The worst day of your life usually has something absurd in it. My books are tragicomic because that’s how it actually feels.
Yes, I know you’re there
Sometimes my narrator turns around and talks to you. Directly. Like I’m doing now.
Hi.
The fourth wall is a convention, not a law. Breaking it reminds you that somebody is telling you this story—and that somebody has opinions, nerves, and a questionable relationship with the truth.
What’s actually under the hood
Character. That’s it.
The thriller machinery—the bombs, the clocks, the guy in the parking garage—is scaffolding. I put it up so I can watch what my people do when it starts to shake. Who they protect. What they lie about. What it costs them.
The plot gets you in the door. The people are why you stay.
People talk like people
Nobody talks in complete, grammatical sentences. They interrupt. They repeat themselves. They say “had had” and don’t notice. My dialogue sounds the way people actually talk, not the way an English teacher wishes they did. If it reads a little rough, that’s because real conversation is a little rough.
The bottom line
Plain words. Straight sentences. A joke when it’s getting heavy, and a gut punch when you’re laughing.
If that isn’t literary enough for some folks, that’s fine. I’ll be over here telling a story.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go kill somebody.
On the page. Relax.