The dreamthe fiction that followed: John Le Carre was a spy; John Grisham is a
lawyer; Robin Cook is a doctor.
Others' fiction has its roots not in their occupations but in their avoca-
tions. Clive Cussler is a case in point: he was an advertising man who
developed a passion for diving while in the military. Today he writes
full-time, but also participates in several marine archaeological expe-
ditions every year. Not surprisingly, mystery authors are often cops
and lawyers. The science fiction field is full of scientists and engineers.
Clearly no occupation gives one a particular advantage where
fiction is concerned, but it is true, I believe, that one's occupation
will strongly influence not only what but how one writes.
One would think, for example, that screenwriters, playwrights,
and poets would have a huge head start when it comes to fiction;
after all, they have word craft and story sense. That is so, but in my
experience those backgrounds do not supply a disproportionate
share of our professional novelists. Why? Because such writing
stresses qualities that are secondary in novels.
Take screenwriters, for instance; I am often contacted by them.
Screen writing is a brutally competitive business and when the
going gets tough, novel writing looks, to West Coast types, like an
easy way to make money. (Needless to say, it ain't that easy.)
Novel manuscripts by screenwriters typically have several short-
comings. One is their length. Screenplays usually run 120 pages
maximum, and tell stories that can comfortably fit into two hours of
viewing. Premises of that sort are usually not strong enough to sus-
tain the length of a novel.
Screenwriters also tend to underwrite their characters, which is
normal for them since much of the characterization in a film is, and
must be, invented by actors. Similarly, screenwriters tend to leave
out exposition—the "interior monologue" that brings us inside a
character's head—because in movies too much spoken exposition
is deadly dull. As you can imagine, I am cautious when screenwrit-
ers send me their manuscripts.
Poets and playwrights have wonderful experience with, respec-
tively, words and character conflicts, but those are only a few of the
skills that make for successful fiction. Technical writers and journal-