By
Scott D. Parker
There’s a moment in Captain America: Civil War where Tony Stark visits Peter Parker at Parker’s home in Queens, New York that distills what it’s like to be a super-powered superhero better than anything done in movies to date, especially Batman v Superman.
Tony is there to recruit the young (emphasis *young*!) man to do the things you’ve already seen in the trailers. Parker talks about being able to do the things he can, *choosing* when to do them, and the consequences of that choice being something he has to learn to live with. It’s basically the MCU’s version of the “With great power comes great responsibility” from the Sony Spider-Man films which, I assume, the MCU cannot use, or chose not to. Anyway, the moment was beautiful.
It’s the kind of line—albeit from a different viewpoint—that Christopher Reeve’s Superman says in Superman II when he’s horrified that the Kryptonian bad guys start throwing stuff at the humans. “The people!” It’s the kind of sentiment Barry Allen’s Flash gets behind every Tuesday on television. And it’s the kind of line Superman should have used in Batman v Superman but never did.
That’s the real loss of Batman v Superman. We see Superman saving people, but he never utters any words to the effect that he tries hard to be a hero. Peter Parker’s Spider-Man—and, more importantly, Steve Rogers’ Captain America—know that they can’t save everyone, but they’ll try their darnedest to save as many as possible.
I knew going in to see Captain America yesterday that it was going to be better than BvS. I just didn’t know how much better. The content is the same: Do super-heroes (“enhanced humans” in Civil War) have the right to do whatever they want despite the consequences or should they be held in check? Batman thought Superman should be held in check in the film and went about trying to kill him. Unlike the comic book version where Supes himself gave Bats some kryptonite as a check on Supes’s power. But where Bats and Supes just fought it out without talking, Cap and Iron Man and other talk to each other. They have conversations and, when they reach an impasse, the fight breaks out.
But they *talked* first!
Ugh! I watch the MCU films—Marvel was always second in my comic-reading days—and lament the possibility of what the DCU could be. To date, the MCU is largely hitting home runs, or, at least doubles and triples. On television, the DCU is batting 1.000. But on the silver screen? It’s like they reached first base on a throwing error.
I loved Captain America: Civil War. I love how each film organically is an extension of the films that came before. Civil War is no exception. And I’m pretty sure I know how Avengers 3.1 and 3.2 will come about. I’m not always a fan of heroes fighting each other, but it works in this film. Unlike BvS. There are a lot of little moments and visuals that are worth the price of your ticket. And it’ll make you crave the next film. Granted, I think the next film is Doctor Strange so that’ll be…different.
But, anyway, the MCU: thanks for showing everyone how it’s done.
And DCU? Take notes. And forget your fear about “copying.” We DC fans want DC movies that reflect these iconic heroes, not distort them. Just do it already.
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Friday, May 6, 2016
Word on the Street with James Queally Pt. 2
Continuing LAST WEEK'S amazing interview with LA Times crime reporter James Queally, here's part two, where we discuss OJ Simpson, true crime television, and "crime porn."
I think the immediacy, when we’re watching television coverage of big news events like this that starts to get a little sticky. Do you think there is an advantage to – you have to go get the information, process it, write it, hopefully it goes through an editor, and then it is published vs. watching CNN when, I think it was the Boston Bombings, and they’ve got three reporters in the same parking lot and you can actually see the bus driving through it – they’re just scrambling to say something, anything, get any relevant sound bit they can get out. That’s their sense of immediacy. But you’re taking your sense of immediacy and filtering it through more of a process. Do you think there’s an advantage to that?
No, I can agree with that. There is an advantage. I don’t have a hot mic. Somebody is going to at least breathe and think about whatever feed I just sent in. The only immediacy situation I have is, you know, we’re encouraged, especially in a situation like Ferguson, I was essentially using Twitter as a notepad. At that point, I’m taking pictures of clashes, of officers in riot gear and protestors, I’m sending out tweets that I just got hit in the face with tear gas. At that point I am just sending out, just pretty much stream of consciousness. But as far as a full report, and a continuous live stream – yeah, I feel like TV is at something of a disadvantage.
Especially when - San Bernardino is a perfect example. I’d written a story about this months later. The initial couple of press conferences, the information that came from some witnesses at the scene was that there were three shooters. There was no evidence that there were three shooters. The FBI said only two weapons were used. This was never true, but because they were dealing with such a chaotic scenario the initial press conferences with Jarrod Burguan, the San Bernardino Police Department’s chief, he said there were three shooters and that got carried live by CNN, ABC, NBC, everybody who was there.
And it’s, through no fault of the TV station, but they have to carry the live feed of the press conference. And they put out - everybody put out – that false information, just because it’s that immediate chaos following a scenario like that. And yeah, when they’ve got to constantly have live feeds, sometimes stuff gets misappropriated. You know this is a story I was telling out of Ferguson, too. The third night I was there was the night before Thanksgiving and everyone had kind of calmed down. You were talking about, there were hundreds of protestors out every night, but standing in front of the Ferguson police department I was like coin flip you were going to get arrested if you were anywhere near the protestors or God forbid you stepped into the street toward the cops. So it was a madhouse the first two days, and then day three – not really anybody there.
It was like half media, half protestors/demonstrators. At one point, a bunch of us came back from eating somewhere and I heard the CNN guy mutter something to the effect of “the crowd is doubling” into a live camera. The crowd of protestors isn’t doubling! It’s me, the guy from Buzzfeed and whoever else just walked back into the parking area. But they are running continuous coverage so they don’t … what’s his fact check on that? He’s going to turn over his shoulder? He’s going to run over and ask all forty of us if we’re demonstrators or not? It’s not the highest of journalistic sins that they’re committing, but it’s just the reality of, yeah, if you’re constantly live broadcasting – like you said – there’s no filter, there’s no check. You might have a producer yelling in the anchor’s ear to get away from something if something truly onerous goes on. You know, this happens during police pursuits– this has happened during police pursuits in LA before. I think there have been one or two cases where they actually shot and killed the fleeing driver on television. This happened a long time ago, before I was here. But that is the danger of covering anything constantly. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You can’t edit out what’s actually occurring on a livestream.
If I could lead you a
little bit, away from actual TV news, which I think TV news is becoming more entertainment than
news - I know that you said you’re not actually a big true crime
entertainment fan. Is there a reason
why you, personally, are not catching this wave that a lot of people are into
right now, watching all these shows, listening to the podcasts – all of that.
Or is it just that you’re too busy?
Part of it is overload, quite frankly. As you know, how you met me, I also write crime fiction. So I’m spending the day reporting on crime, I come home and I’m working on a short story or a novel. A lot of what I read is a lot of genre fiction and a lot of the TV I watch, in general – Better Call Saul is at the top of my list right now – that’s kind of a sad sack noir story. I need something different after awhile. Sometimes I just need to watch a basketball game.
Moreseo, from a critical standpoint, I guess I’m touch and go. I got into Serial for a few episodes and kind of faded away from it. On the one hand, I think stuff like Serial and Making A Murderer can be good because one of the main headaches of crime reporting, especially as I said at my old job, I was covering Newark Police Department, which is the largest department in New Jersey, a hundred murders a year in that city. And then I was doing Enterprise investigative pieces throughout the state. Any major disaster that happened I got sent on it, Hurricane Sandy, I was living on a cot for ten days in my photographer’s apartment – we don’t have time to do these kind of projects. It’s very rare if you’re a police beat reporter, we can’t do what Serial did. [Note: James did originally slip and call “Serial”, “Scandal” and he would like it on record that he does not watch Scandal].
I guess there is something of a danger in re-litigating a
case, and it’s also, the other side of it – Serial did uncover some interesting
things about the Adnan Syed case, especially the stuff regarding the defense
attorney, I remember she had died before they did the podcast, but she had some
serious misconduct allegations, I think. It kind of called into question
whether or not he received adequate counsel. To some extent, I think something
like that is very interesting. It does open up this kind of logical sinkhole,
can the media re-litigate cases and what are you really doing it for? Are you
doing it for journalistic integrity, are you doing it because you saw what a
smash hit Serial was and now you’re going to profit from that as well? I
haven’t watched Making A Murderer, so I can’t really comment on that, I don’t
know the first thing about it.
Right, and I feel like that can be a problem in and of itself because you can never – all of the things we’re talking about, whether it’s the motive as to why a sixteen year old got killed on a street corner in Newark or it’s what lead to one of these officer involved shootings that ends up on the national stage, or it’s something as complicated as a criminal trial – if you want to look at it for the quick fix of was somebody guilty or was somebody innocent – like you said - you’re missing the point of: was there prosecutorial misconduct? Was there inadequate counsel on side? What were the societal factors that lead to this? You know, these documentaries can answer a ton of important questions, but really only if their audience is willing to actually look for those from the show. If they’re not, if it’s just crime porn for them, it’s Court TV, you may not be accomplishing anything.
The OJ phenomenon, which I guess is the most recent example of this – I had a bit of a skewed take on this because I was like six years old when this happened. For me it was just really interesting to learn all of this stuff about the case –
Wait, how old are you?
I’m 28.
Okay. So you were older than six.
When the chase happened… no, when the chase happened I was seven.
Oh, okay. Right, because there was a gap. I was just thrown off because I’m thirty-two and I remember in sixth grade math class, the teacher putting on the verdict.
Yeah, they didn’t do that for us. I guess I would have been in fourth grade and they decided nine was too young for that.
And your teacher hated you everyday for it.
Yes.
The only thing I remember about the OJ trial, from being that young was, this is going to sound stupid, it was a sports reason. I was living in New York at the time, I was a huge Knicks fan and it interrupted game six of the Knicks – Rockets NBA finals. That’s the only thing I really knew about OJ growing up until I started reading about it later. I had not read Tupin’s book, so like this was really a kind of dive in for me for all of the – I never knew about people cheering for him on the freeway in South L.A., about Marcia Clarke and what she went through during the trial, really just the insanity of the 24/7 media cycle. Really, to some extent that case and really Rodney King, kind of gave birth to the endless coverage of something you see on virtually any news story now. None of that was known to me then. I’d read articles about it here and there, looked up things about it. You know, obviously OJ is constantly in our news cycle, especially with that psychotic incident with the knife being found that we were covering about a month or two ago, but I really never had it in one sitting. One condensed – “This is what happened.” I think OJ was different because it was kind of a retrospective, for the most part it didn’t really try to pass judgment on anybody. I mean, there were a few characters that the show runners really couldn’t seem to hide their contempt for, OJ chief among them. For the most part it just kind of blends into history. It wasn’t some kind of alternate reality, it wasn’t some attempt to suggest that this, that, or the other thing happened. I think it was just a lens for, at least for me as somebody who really missed it while it was happening, to kind of relearn about this kind of dramatic shift.
They’re supposed to be doing Katrina next year, I really don’t know how that’s going to work.
So that leads me onto something else I wanted to touch on, because I’m really interested in how you as a crime reporter – you have a job to do. You go out, you do that job every day. You see these things with your own eyes a lot of the time. You speak with people who are affected by it. I would assume that gives you a different perspective and maybe a different amount or type of empathy for the people involved in these crimes whereas when you look at something that isn’t necessarily retrospective but happening in the moment, like watching court cases on HLN or any one of a million day-time TV crime shows you can watch where someone is talking about this heinous crime they worked on – that empathy seems to get lost in 1) trying to entertain and 2) a sort of distance that’s harder to reconcile. So I was wondering if there was anything you could say about your experience being there on the street about how you hope that people are interpreting the things that you’re putting out there.
I think some of the day time shows you’re talking about, and I think I mentioned this when we were chatting some other day, some of those like Snapped or that one that focuses on social media, I think that’s like Oxy or HLN. Those are the two I’m familiar with, those are the two my girlfriend is obsessed with. Those two shows irritate me because – like you said, the empathy gets lost in the distance, whether it’s the narrator reading like he’s writing the worst dime store novel ever. You know the kind of awful puns that will come up from time to time, and you do see whenever they talk to a local newspaper or TV reporter who covered the case, they will have felt something. But yeah it just seems like the shows almost have fun with these cases where women died. Sometimes, often, in these situations, they are domestic violence cases. Nothing is funny about that in any way but it’s sometimes a more tragic murder than a random crime because it’s almost always somebody knew something and didn’t speak up and then things got out of hand. This kind of nausea comes over me, even if it’s like two in the morning and I’m like sitting there because I can’t sleep. It’s like why am I… I am part of why it’s okay to use these people’s corpses for a point 2 cable rating in the middle of the night. I feel like I’m not helping the problem.
There’s definitely a kind of empathy that comes with these kind of situations. Frankly, on both sides. I’ve interviewed the parents of people who were arrested for murder 48 hours after their son or daughter got taken into custody and I’ve spoken to way too many families of people who have been killed. And you have to take on an empathy for them. It’s very rare that you’re going to catch the mother, the husband, the wife, the daughter, at the scene and get them talking right then and there. You’re going to catch witnesses, you might catch some relatives and you might talk to them briefly and get their immediate from the gut reaction, but you’re not going to get that longer conversation that’s going to lead to the feature later. When you have that – you’re kind of asking them to tell their entire – the victim’s whole life story. You have to care. You can’t fake it.
There is, I will admit this, and I’m not the only reporter on Earth who does this – the way I begin those conversations is a little bit, almost scripted in my head. I’m hoping that’s not coming across like a manipulative connotation but you have to steel yourself to have this conversation for the five hundredth time in your career. It’s “I know this is a bad time. I understand if you wouldn’t want to talk.” You’re offering your condolences. You do say the same things over and over again early on. But after that, you have to invest yourself in that conversation or you’re not going to be listening, quite frankly. There’s no way you don’t make a connection with somebody sitting in a room in that scenario, and when you watch these more dime-a-dozen versions of these shows, I feel like when they talk to the reporters who were there, they will generally still seem to feel that empathy I remember feeling in those scenarios. I would imagine even the producers, the people who are doing the interviews for these shows generally, you know the people asking the questions on camera, they’re never shown on camera, you never hear their voice. I would imagine they’re having the same empathy toward these people, too, just from the documentary stand point. But it’s what it gets packaged into that kind of gets away from it.
I feel like that is, maybe, the problem with a lot of these shows is they become formulaic because people watch them for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons someone is going to sit and watch the twelve hour Snapped Marathon is there is a sense of familiarity and knowing what’s going to happen.
There’s also a sense of… it’s simple story telling at the end of the day. We like heroes, but we also like villains. I don’t know if you watched it or not, but one of the big phenomenons from the last year of Netflix was the Killgrave character on Jessica Jones. That guy’s a monster! He’s a sexual predator, he’s terrifying, and he was probably my favorite part of the show. I think that does come across, too, when you’re watching these shows, like the killer is interesting and that is part of the issue, you get lost in that to some extent.
Two things following on that: 1) You mentioned that you did this really in-depth piece on civilian casualties in police chases, but admitted to me that in the news room, you’re still watching them. It still draws you in. And what’s funny is that I’ve sort of made a reputation over the last year of criticizing true crime, but I was watching one of these shows – Dateline something or other. Actually, it was called “Plot Twist”. I was watching it, and I was into it, I was totally invested and texting my husband saying ‘Oh my god, you’re not going to believe what happened now!” So I think we can criticize it all we want but at the same time…
We’re human.
Right, we’re human.
But what struck me was that you said you have that sense of empathy for both sides. Not just for the victims and the victim’s families, but it’s also for the perpetrators of these crimes, or the accused, depending on what the case may be.
Well the empathy is for the families. Usually the families of the accused, usually not the accused themselves.
I had one specific incident I remember in Newark, I wrote about this kid numerous times over the course of a year, thirteen year old kid just went on a killing spree. He robbed about four different people and two of them, after they surrendered and gave him money, he shot them in the back and killed them. He killed multiple people in the span of a month. A couple sources I had in the prosecutor’s office, I managed to get the family’s home address, and I got down there and the family life was not the best.
You know, there was an uncle in there who had a blood tattoo on for a set I recognized. I name-dropped a gang leader who was one of my sources at the time and he knew who he was, and this guy was around the kid all the time. But the older brother and the mom, they were just kind of constantly… they didn’t know what to make of this. They didn’t know that their son and brother was capable of this. She’s sitting there like, you know he loved playing basketball. She’s got the uniform of him in the, whatever the New Jersey equivalent of the CYL basketball league that I grew up playing in New York was. To her it was just her baby boy. You feel terrible for that woman. It’s like you could say bad parenting or whatever, but I don’t know… I feel like there’s very few cases of bad parenting that lead to your son going on a robbery/murder spree in some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Newark. I’m sure there are abuse cases where that might be, but that was never alleged here, and to my knowledge that’s not what happened. This is just a woman who’s kid is thirteen years old, and threw his whole life away and ruined the lives of how many other mothers and fathers sitting there having the opposite side of this conversation with a different reporter or a homicide detective?
There have definitely been situations where I’ve spent a lot of time with them. I did a magazine profile of Frank Lucas, the guy that American Gangster was based off of, his youngest kid, I felt bad for. The kid was brilliant, he was clerking in a law office for the guy that Russel Crowe played in the movie. The kid was an innocent, nice guy, but he’s living in the shadow of one of the most famous drug lords in history. It’s the people around the suspects that I always really feel for. It’s every reporter’s dream to prove somebody’s innocence but those situations don’t really happen that often so for the most part, the suspect is kind of just the suspect. If they’re cleared later, you know through the Innocence Project, you feel horrible that somebody was locked up forever and a day, but obviously when someone is going through the arrest and prosecution and judication scenario, I don’t really get access to talk to them. So it’s the people around them you empathize with because those are the people you meet.
Read James's work at the LA Times here, and follow him on Twitter.
I think the immediacy, when we’re watching television coverage of big news events like this that starts to get a little sticky. Do you think there is an advantage to – you have to go get the information, process it, write it, hopefully it goes through an editor, and then it is published vs. watching CNN when, I think it was the Boston Bombings, and they’ve got three reporters in the same parking lot and you can actually see the bus driving through it – they’re just scrambling to say something, anything, get any relevant sound bit they can get out. That’s their sense of immediacy. But you’re taking your sense of immediacy and filtering it through more of a process. Do you think there’s an advantage to that?
No, I can agree with that. There is an advantage. I don’t have a hot mic. Somebody is going to at least breathe and think about whatever feed I just sent in. The only immediacy situation I have is, you know, we’re encouraged, especially in a situation like Ferguson, I was essentially using Twitter as a notepad. At that point, I’m taking pictures of clashes, of officers in riot gear and protestors, I’m sending out tweets that I just got hit in the face with tear gas. At that point I am just sending out, just pretty much stream of consciousness. But as far as a full report, and a continuous live stream – yeah, I feel like TV is at something of a disadvantage.
Especially when - San Bernardino is a perfect example. I’d written a story about this months later. The initial couple of press conferences, the information that came from some witnesses at the scene was that there were three shooters. There was no evidence that there were three shooters. The FBI said only two weapons were used. This was never true, but because they were dealing with such a chaotic scenario the initial press conferences with Jarrod Burguan, the San Bernardino Police Department’s chief, he said there were three shooters and that got carried live by CNN, ABC, NBC, everybody who was there.
And it’s, through no fault of the TV station, but they have to carry the live feed of the press conference. And they put out - everybody put out – that false information, just because it’s that immediate chaos following a scenario like that. And yeah, when they’ve got to constantly have live feeds, sometimes stuff gets misappropriated. You know this is a story I was telling out of Ferguson, too. The third night I was there was the night before Thanksgiving and everyone had kind of calmed down. You were talking about, there were hundreds of protestors out every night, but standing in front of the Ferguson police department I was like coin flip you were going to get arrested if you were anywhere near the protestors or God forbid you stepped into the street toward the cops. So it was a madhouse the first two days, and then day three – not really anybody there.
It was like half media, half protestors/demonstrators. At one point, a bunch of us came back from eating somewhere and I heard the CNN guy mutter something to the effect of “the crowd is doubling” into a live camera. The crowd of protestors isn’t doubling! It’s me, the guy from Buzzfeed and whoever else just walked back into the parking area. But they are running continuous coverage so they don’t … what’s his fact check on that? He’s going to turn over his shoulder? He’s going to run over and ask all forty of us if we’re demonstrators or not? It’s not the highest of journalistic sins that they’re committing, but it’s just the reality of, yeah, if you’re constantly live broadcasting – like you said – there’s no filter, there’s no check. You might have a producer yelling in the anchor’s ear to get away from something if something truly onerous goes on. You know, this happens during police pursuits– this has happened during police pursuits in LA before. I think there have been one or two cases where they actually shot and killed the fleeing driver on television. This happened a long time ago, before I was here. But that is the danger of covering anything constantly. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You can’t edit out what’s actually occurring on a livestream.
Part of it is overload, quite frankly. As you know, how you met me, I also write crime fiction. So I’m spending the day reporting on crime, I come home and I’m working on a short story or a novel. A lot of what I read is a lot of genre fiction and a lot of the TV I watch, in general – Better Call Saul is at the top of my list right now – that’s kind of a sad sack noir story. I need something different after awhile. Sometimes I just need to watch a basketball game.
Moreseo, from a critical standpoint, I guess I’m touch and go. I got into Serial for a few episodes and kind of faded away from it. On the one hand, I think stuff like Serial and Making A Murderer can be good because one of the main headaches of crime reporting, especially as I said at my old job, I was covering Newark Police Department, which is the largest department in New Jersey, a hundred murders a year in that city. And then I was doing Enterprise investigative pieces throughout the state. Any major disaster that happened I got sent on it, Hurricane Sandy, I was living on a cot for ten days in my photographer’s apartment – we don’t have time to do these kind of projects. It’s very rare if you’re a police beat reporter, we can’t do what Serial did. [Note: James did originally slip and call “Serial”, “Scandal” and he would like it on record that he does not watch Scandal].
Right, and I feel like that can be a problem in and of itself because you can never – all of the things we’re talking about, whether it’s the motive as to why a sixteen year old got killed on a street corner in Newark or it’s what lead to one of these officer involved shootings that ends up on the national stage, or it’s something as complicated as a criminal trial – if you want to look at it for the quick fix of was somebody guilty or was somebody innocent – like you said - you’re missing the point of: was there prosecutorial misconduct? Was there inadequate counsel on side? What were the societal factors that lead to this? You know, these documentaries can answer a ton of important questions, but really only if their audience is willing to actually look for those from the show. If they’re not, if it’s just crime porn for them, it’s Court TV, you may not be accomplishing anything.
The OJ phenomenon, which I guess is the most recent example of this – I had a bit of a skewed take on this because I was like six years old when this happened. For me it was just really interesting to learn all of this stuff about the case –
Wait, how old are you?
I’m 28.
Okay. So you were older than six.
When the chase happened… no, when the chase happened I was seven.
Oh, okay. Right, because there was a gap. I was just thrown off because I’m thirty-two and I remember in sixth grade math class, the teacher putting on the verdict.
Yeah, they didn’t do that for us. I guess I would have been in fourth grade and they decided nine was too young for that.
And your teacher hated you everyday for it.
Yes.
The only thing I remember about the OJ trial, from being that young was, this is going to sound stupid, it was a sports reason. I was living in New York at the time, I was a huge Knicks fan and it interrupted game six of the Knicks – Rockets NBA finals. That’s the only thing I really knew about OJ growing up until I started reading about it later. I had not read Tupin’s book, so like this was really a kind of dive in for me for all of the – I never knew about people cheering for him on the freeway in South L.A., about Marcia Clarke and what she went through during the trial, really just the insanity of the 24/7 media cycle. Really, to some extent that case and really Rodney King, kind of gave birth to the endless coverage of something you see on virtually any news story now. None of that was known to me then. I’d read articles about it here and there, looked up things about it. You know, obviously OJ is constantly in our news cycle, especially with that psychotic incident with the knife being found that we were covering about a month or two ago, but I really never had it in one sitting. One condensed – “This is what happened.” I think OJ was different because it was kind of a retrospective, for the most part it didn’t really try to pass judgment on anybody. I mean, there were a few characters that the show runners really couldn’t seem to hide their contempt for, OJ chief among them. For the most part it just kind of blends into history. It wasn’t some kind of alternate reality, it wasn’t some attempt to suggest that this, that, or the other thing happened. I think it was just a lens for, at least for me as somebody who really missed it while it was happening, to kind of relearn about this kind of dramatic shift.
They’re supposed to be doing Katrina next year, I really don’t know how that’s going to work.
So that leads me onto something else I wanted to touch on, because I’m really interested in how you as a crime reporter – you have a job to do. You go out, you do that job every day. You see these things with your own eyes a lot of the time. You speak with people who are affected by it. I would assume that gives you a different perspective and maybe a different amount or type of empathy for the people involved in these crimes whereas when you look at something that isn’t necessarily retrospective but happening in the moment, like watching court cases on HLN or any one of a million day-time TV crime shows you can watch where someone is talking about this heinous crime they worked on – that empathy seems to get lost in 1) trying to entertain and 2) a sort of distance that’s harder to reconcile. So I was wondering if there was anything you could say about your experience being there on the street about how you hope that people are interpreting the things that you’re putting out there.
I think some of the day time shows you’re talking about, and I think I mentioned this when we were chatting some other day, some of those like Snapped or that one that focuses on social media, I think that’s like Oxy or HLN. Those are the two I’m familiar with, those are the two my girlfriend is obsessed with. Those two shows irritate me because – like you said, the empathy gets lost in the distance, whether it’s the narrator reading like he’s writing the worst dime store novel ever. You know the kind of awful puns that will come up from time to time, and you do see whenever they talk to a local newspaper or TV reporter who covered the case, they will have felt something. But yeah it just seems like the shows almost have fun with these cases where women died. Sometimes, often, in these situations, they are domestic violence cases. Nothing is funny about that in any way but it’s sometimes a more tragic murder than a random crime because it’s almost always somebody knew something and didn’t speak up and then things got out of hand. This kind of nausea comes over me, even if it’s like two in the morning and I’m like sitting there because I can’t sleep. It’s like why am I… I am part of why it’s okay to use these people’s corpses for a point 2 cable rating in the middle of the night. I feel like I’m not helping the problem.
There’s definitely a kind of empathy that comes with these kind of situations. Frankly, on both sides. I’ve interviewed the parents of people who were arrested for murder 48 hours after their son or daughter got taken into custody and I’ve spoken to way too many families of people who have been killed. And you have to take on an empathy for them. It’s very rare that you’re going to catch the mother, the husband, the wife, the daughter, at the scene and get them talking right then and there. You’re going to catch witnesses, you might catch some relatives and you might talk to them briefly and get their immediate from the gut reaction, but you’re not going to get that longer conversation that’s going to lead to the feature later. When you have that – you’re kind of asking them to tell their entire – the victim’s whole life story. You have to care. You can’t fake it.
There is, I will admit this, and I’m not the only reporter on Earth who does this – the way I begin those conversations is a little bit, almost scripted in my head. I’m hoping that’s not coming across like a manipulative connotation but you have to steel yourself to have this conversation for the five hundredth time in your career. It’s “I know this is a bad time. I understand if you wouldn’t want to talk.” You’re offering your condolences. You do say the same things over and over again early on. But after that, you have to invest yourself in that conversation or you’re not going to be listening, quite frankly. There’s no way you don’t make a connection with somebody sitting in a room in that scenario, and when you watch these more dime-a-dozen versions of these shows, I feel like when they talk to the reporters who were there, they will generally still seem to feel that empathy I remember feeling in those scenarios. I would imagine even the producers, the people who are doing the interviews for these shows generally, you know the people asking the questions on camera, they’re never shown on camera, you never hear their voice. I would imagine they’re having the same empathy toward these people, too, just from the documentary stand point. But it’s what it gets packaged into that kind of gets away from it.
I feel like that is, maybe, the problem with a lot of these shows is they become formulaic because people watch them for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons someone is going to sit and watch the twelve hour Snapped Marathon is there is a sense of familiarity and knowing what’s going to happen.
There’s also a sense of… it’s simple story telling at the end of the day. We like heroes, but we also like villains. I don’t know if you watched it or not, but one of the big phenomenons from the last year of Netflix was the Killgrave character on Jessica Jones. That guy’s a monster! He’s a sexual predator, he’s terrifying, and he was probably my favorite part of the show. I think that does come across, too, when you’re watching these shows, like the killer is interesting and that is part of the issue, you get lost in that to some extent.
Two things following on that: 1) You mentioned that you did this really in-depth piece on civilian casualties in police chases, but admitted to me that in the news room, you’re still watching them. It still draws you in. And what’s funny is that I’ve sort of made a reputation over the last year of criticizing true crime, but I was watching one of these shows – Dateline something or other. Actually, it was called “Plot Twist”. I was watching it, and I was into it, I was totally invested and texting my husband saying ‘Oh my god, you’re not going to believe what happened now!” So I think we can criticize it all we want but at the same time…
We’re human.
Right, we’re human.
But what struck me was that you said you have that sense of empathy for both sides. Not just for the victims and the victim’s families, but it’s also for the perpetrators of these crimes, or the accused, depending on what the case may be.
Well the empathy is for the families. Usually the families of the accused, usually not the accused themselves.
I had one specific incident I remember in Newark, I wrote about this kid numerous times over the course of a year, thirteen year old kid just went on a killing spree. He robbed about four different people and two of them, after they surrendered and gave him money, he shot them in the back and killed them. He killed multiple people in the span of a month. A couple sources I had in the prosecutor’s office, I managed to get the family’s home address, and I got down there and the family life was not the best.
You know, there was an uncle in there who had a blood tattoo on for a set I recognized. I name-dropped a gang leader who was one of my sources at the time and he knew who he was, and this guy was around the kid all the time. But the older brother and the mom, they were just kind of constantly… they didn’t know what to make of this. They didn’t know that their son and brother was capable of this. She’s sitting there like, you know he loved playing basketball. She’s got the uniform of him in the, whatever the New Jersey equivalent of the CYL basketball league that I grew up playing in New York was. To her it was just her baby boy. You feel terrible for that woman. It’s like you could say bad parenting or whatever, but I don’t know… I feel like there’s very few cases of bad parenting that lead to your son going on a robbery/murder spree in some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Newark. I’m sure there are abuse cases where that might be, but that was never alleged here, and to my knowledge that’s not what happened. This is just a woman who’s kid is thirteen years old, and threw his whole life away and ruined the lives of how many other mothers and fathers sitting there having the opposite side of this conversation with a different reporter or a homicide detective?
There have definitely been situations where I’ve spent a lot of time with them. I did a magazine profile of Frank Lucas, the guy that American Gangster was based off of, his youngest kid, I felt bad for. The kid was brilliant, he was clerking in a law office for the guy that Russel Crowe played in the movie. The kid was an innocent, nice guy, but he’s living in the shadow of one of the most famous drug lords in history. It’s the people around the suspects that I always really feel for. It’s every reporter’s dream to prove somebody’s innocence but those situations don’t really happen that often so for the most part, the suspect is kind of just the suspect. If they’re cleared later, you know through the Innocence Project, you feel horrible that somebody was locked up forever and a day, but obviously when someone is going through the arrest and prosecution and judication scenario, I don’t really get access to talk to them. So it’s the people around them you empathize with because those are the people you meet.
Read James's work at the LA Times here, and follow him on Twitter.
Wednesday, May 4, 2016
The Narrative and the Talisman
Guest Post by Thomas Pluck
Like America, I have a complicated relationship with guns. One of the first memories I have of my father is him shooting a Colt Junior automatic in the basement when I was six years old. The last memory was the call to tell me he’d committed suicide with a snub nose .38 revolver.
So when Eric Beetner asked me to contribute to a collection of crime stories without guns, I was eager to join. I own firearms but I don’t keep them in my house. They’re in my stepfather’s gun safe. I have been assaulted, but the last thing I would have wanted at the time was a gun. It was three on one. I left with a bloody nose and one of them with a wrenched neck. None of us died that day. But that’s just my experience. I wouldn’t force that opinion on anyone else. Ten years of boxing and grappling in a dojo where the teacher made us practice every move on him, someone who had been stabbed, shot, and fought bareknuckle in Burma, I feel much more comfortable in possibly dangerous situations than I ever did when I carried a gun.In stories, guns are instant tension. They appeal to our fears and desires for power. Chekhov’s “law” was that if you see a gun in the first act, it must go off in the third. Which has its own problems. Why can’t it be a red herring? What about Hitchcock’s adage about suspense? If a bomb goes off, it’s a surprise. If we know it is ticking under the table, that’s suspense. I’ve written stories where the gun doesn’t go off, and readers have told me how the suspense gnawed at them long after they stopped reading. But with no gun at all, you have to look elsewhere for that fix. For my Denny the Dent story, “The Final Encore of Moody Joe Shaw,” I chose different avenues of suspense. Is someone trying to kill the sweet old lady who’s hired Denny to clean up her mangled fence? She’s based on a woman I used to deliver groceries to in college. The real Mrs. Kolb worked for Houghton-Mifflin and loved books, so it’s fitting that now she’s in one. She didn’t have jazz records, but first editions of Hemingway and many others, and I wondered if someone pilfered her shelves when she died. I was out of state when it happened, and only learned of her death long after, but the mystery formed in my head, as they do.
The other source of suspense is the yearning that Denny’s friend Ike feels for connection, which for me, was the stronger. That sense of loss and what might have been comes from the death of my father, and that we never fully reconciled. He gave me the chance, when he had made his decision, but I was too young and headstrong to see it then. So I had a well to draw from.
I didn’t sell my guns or bury them in the ground when he killed himself. Guns are a tool, it’s our brains that are the problem. We mythologize them. The American hero is a lone killer with a gun. How many stories end with a man setting off to right things with his gun? It’s a narrative we’ve embraced, so that when our problems are too complicated to shoot our way out of, we shrug our shoulders and say “what ya gonna do?” There are few easy answers. We say we admire gumption, then why do we love stories where instead of hard work, the hero just kills everyone giving him static? Some of my favorite stories do this. It’s become The Narrative.
And who can change the Narrative? If stories matter, then we who write them hold some responsibility to change its course. Does the mere presence of a gun in a story inspire violence? I don’t think so. If it’s a magical talisman that solves all our problems and the stories end before the consequences of violence are explored, then perhaps it can. If the villain is simply “evil” and exists for the hero to kill with impunity, then maybe it does. My upcoming novel BAD BOY BOOGIE from Down & Out Books does not shy from the consequences. Jay Desmarteaux enjoys meting out vengeance, and those around him have used that to fire him like a hate-seeking missile at their enemies since he was a child. The scars from vengeance run deep, and an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. And if you think “consequences” is “killing ten bad guys every novel in a ten book series just means the hero is a lonely whiskey aficionado,” I direct you to Lt. Dave Grossman’s excellent book on the subject, ON KILLING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL COST OF LEARNING TO KILL IN WAR AND SOCIETY. There are people who can kill without being deeply affected; in the end, most are in prison or hold long-term careers in the military where their skills can be directed toward socially acceptable targets.
Does this mean we can’t enjoy a good action story? I hope not. I love reading them and I love writing them. But part of me is glad that the new action tale involves grown men in leotards flying around shooting lasers or webs out of their hands and moving battleships with their minds, where the villains are defeated and imprisoned rather than blown away. Maybe the kids growing up on these will see a different Narrative than those of us who were weaned on Rambo and Schwarzenegger mowing through a small city of stuntmen? Say what you want about the immaturity of superhero stories, but the part where the bad guy is never truly defeated, and sometimes we have to join forces with them, even though we have irreconcilable differences.That sounds a lot more adult than the story where one bullet solves all our problems.
***
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Don't Spoil Nabokov's Book, You Idiots
by Scott Adlerberg
I just finished reading the Vladimir Nabokov novel The Eye. It's his fourth novel, written in 1930 in Russian when he was living in Berlin as part of the Russian emigre community. Later, with his son's help, as he did with all his books written first in Russian, Nabokov himself translated the book into English.
Now, literary magician that he is, prose stylist nonpareil, Vladimir Nabokov also happened to like using detective story conventions in his works. Crime and murder and odd forms of detection pop up in a number of his books. The Eye is one, Despair another. There are whole mystery novel plots described (for non-existent books of course) in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, and the two greatest masterpieces of Nabokov's later years, Lolita and Pale Fire, both have murders at the core of their narratives. Not that Nabokov ever does anything conventional with the mystery form such as he has it in his books, but there's no question he liked the genre. Nabokov put Poe, Conan Doyle, and G.K. Chesterton among his favorite writers when he was a child, and when he was asked why, more than once, he had parodied detective novels, he said, "My boyhood passion for the Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown stories may yield some twisted clue."
Of all his novels, The Eye is the one most transparently like a detective story. In the introduction, Nabokov says this himself: "The texture of the tale mimics that of detective fiction, but actually the author disclaims all intention to trick, puzzle, fool, or otherwise deceive the reader. In fact, only the reader that catches on at once will derive genuine satisfaction from THE EYE."
Interesting, that last sentence. And now that I've read the novel, I know what Nabokov means. I may even read the book again (it's short enough to zip through quickly) just to appreciate how he worked his deception. But the one thing I would not do is rob a reader of the pleasure of enjoying some mystification while flipping through the book, and yet, that's exactly what the people who fashioned the back cover of the current Vintage Books edition did. The back cover describes the novel as a farcical detective story - true enough - and then tells you exactly the "solution" to the puzzle. The book is not a crime story - it involves a suicide, not a murder - but without doubt there is a "who is that" question to be solved. It's a novel, in part, that's an investigation into a person's identity. The disclosure comes near the very end of the book, so why would you want to give that away on the book's back cover?
The only answer I can come up with is that whoever did the cover saw no reason to treat the book like detective fiction, with a climactic surprise to be revealed, because they saw the novel as high literature. Which, to use that term in the accepted sense it's used, it is. But so what. That doesn't mean the writer's sense of play, his wanting to engage the reader through mystery and surprise, can't be respected? When Vintage puts out a straightforward detective novel, or a thriller, you can bet they don't give away the solution and twists on the cover. They'd never dream of doing that because they're dealing with what's considered "mere entertainment", and they know the fans of that entertainment would howl if they indulged in blatant spoilers. What's revealing here is the assumption that readers of Nabokov don't mind plot and character spoilers because readers of Nabokov don't come to the man for the things readers of "mere entertainments" come to a book for.
But is that actually so? Well, perhaps for some people (boobs), but for anyone who reads to experience a book spontaneously, surrendering to the craft and artistry and fun the writer has woven into that book, this idea is absolute nonsense. It's nonsense whether you're reading a pulp crime novel, a wild espionage thriller, or Vladimir Nabokov. Suspense, tension, plot tricks, carefully calibrated surprise - these are basic tools of the trade that even the purveyors of so-called high literature use. Does this even need to be pointed out? I would hope not. And I have a feeling that Nabokov, if he saw the cover giving away his main conceit, would be as annoyed with that spoiler as I am.
I just finished reading the Vladimir Nabokov novel The Eye. It's his fourth novel, written in 1930 in Russian when he was living in Berlin as part of the Russian emigre community. Later, with his son's help, as he did with all his books written first in Russian, Nabokov himself translated the book into English.
Now, literary magician that he is, prose stylist nonpareil, Vladimir Nabokov also happened to like using detective story conventions in his works. Crime and murder and odd forms of detection pop up in a number of his books. The Eye is one, Despair another. There are whole mystery novel plots described (for non-existent books of course) in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, and the two greatest masterpieces of Nabokov's later years, Lolita and Pale Fire, both have murders at the core of their narratives. Not that Nabokov ever does anything conventional with the mystery form such as he has it in his books, but there's no question he liked the genre. Nabokov put Poe, Conan Doyle, and G.K. Chesterton among his favorite writers when he was a child, and when he was asked why, more than once, he had parodied detective novels, he said, "My boyhood passion for the Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown stories may yield some twisted clue."
Of all his novels, The Eye is the one most transparently like a detective story. In the introduction, Nabokov says this himself: "The texture of the tale mimics that of detective fiction, but actually the author disclaims all intention to trick, puzzle, fool, or otherwise deceive the reader. In fact, only the reader that catches on at once will derive genuine satisfaction from THE EYE."
Interesting, that last sentence. And now that I've read the novel, I know what Nabokov means. I may even read the book again (it's short enough to zip through quickly) just to appreciate how he worked his deception. But the one thing I would not do is rob a reader of the pleasure of enjoying some mystification while flipping through the book, and yet, that's exactly what the people who fashioned the back cover of the current Vintage Books edition did. The back cover describes the novel as a farcical detective story - true enough - and then tells you exactly the "solution" to the puzzle. The book is not a crime story - it involves a suicide, not a murder - but without doubt there is a "who is that" question to be solved. It's a novel, in part, that's an investigation into a person's identity. The disclosure comes near the very end of the book, so why would you want to give that away on the book's back cover?
The only answer I can come up with is that whoever did the cover saw no reason to treat the book like detective fiction, with a climactic surprise to be revealed, because they saw the novel as high literature. Which, to use that term in the accepted sense it's used, it is. But so what. That doesn't mean the writer's sense of play, his wanting to engage the reader through mystery and surprise, can't be respected? When Vintage puts out a straightforward detective novel, or a thriller, you can bet they don't give away the solution and twists on the cover. They'd never dream of doing that because they're dealing with what's considered "mere entertainment", and they know the fans of that entertainment would howl if they indulged in blatant spoilers. What's revealing here is the assumption that readers of Nabokov don't mind plot and character spoilers because readers of Nabokov don't come to the man for the things readers of "mere entertainments" come to a book for.
But is that actually so? Well, perhaps for some people (boobs), but for anyone who reads to experience a book spontaneously, surrendering to the craft and artistry and fun the writer has woven into that book, this idea is absolute nonsense. It's nonsense whether you're reading a pulp crime novel, a wild espionage thriller, or Vladimir Nabokov. Suspense, tension, plot tricks, carefully calibrated surprise - these are basic tools of the trade that even the purveyors of so-called high literature use. Does this even need to be pointed out? I would hope not. And I have a feeling that Nabokov, if he saw the cover giving away his main conceit, would be as annoyed with that spoiler as I am.
Monday, May 2, 2016
I Don't Like Fish
It's true. I don't like fish. I mean, I like English fish & chips when it's coated in batter and doesn't taste like fish. There are certain fish sticks I can buy that are also more batter than fish and therefore palatable.
But I don't like fish. I might learn to tolerate it in order to survive if I somehow magically ended up as a contestant on Alone, because let's face it, I'm not exactly survivalist material, but tolerating fish would be a matter of necessity. It would never be a choice.
I started thinking about this when I was thinking about Kristi's excellent advice yesterday about feedback. There's a reason you need to have a threshold for criticism to be taken seriously, and that's because you have to filter out the objective analysis from the subjective opinion.
Outside of my own writing I offer editing and critique services. As a result I've read a number of unpublished manuscripts that I've had to assess. I try to note when something in the feedback is subjective. At that point, what I'm offering is food for thought. I offer it with the clear understanding that it is subjective, and try to ensure the person receiving it knows that it's just an opinion.
However, that doesn't mean that writers don't occasionally argue with me about the objective analysis. For the most part, I've been fortunate enough to work with people who are serious about improving their craft and take the feedback seriously.
Occasionally, the writer takes everything personally. Pointing out spelling mistakes and errors with the use of semicolons and commas is, to them, the equivalent of saying their baby is ugly.
Here are a few extra things I think those seeking and giving feedback should consider.
For those giving feedback:
Don't pull your punches. You aren't doing anyone any favors if you're too focused on hurting the writer's feelings. Be honest and thorough in your assessment of the material you've been asked to critique.
Don't be a dick. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean others won't love it. I don't like fish. I know I don't like fish. Other people love fish. It's one thing to say that something isn't what you typically read and wouldn't be your genre choice. It's another thing to say that stories about ____ are stupid.
Keep an open mind. I don't like fish. But I didn't know just how freaking much I could love a vampire story until I read an unpublished manuscript that brought me to tears. As far as I know the writer is still sitting on that book, and it's a tragedy. It was an amazing read.
For those seeking feedback:
It's important to understand that the person who's reading your work should be trying to help you improve your craft. If all you want is a bunch of people who say it's wonderful then you don't want critique partners. You want cheerleaders.
Separate the objective and subjective. There are rules about how to spell words and when to use commas and semicolons. There are also general story structures that are more common in publishing, so a comment about the premature climax may be an objective analysis. A comment about not liking your character's name would be subjective.
Take time to let the feedback sink in. Process it. I know when I received feedback (from a published author) on five chapters of a drafted manuscript I didn't work on that project for a month. I was disappointed. I also had a hard time seeing my way forward, given the comments. It took me a while to process the information, filter out what was subjective and to utilize the feedback to improve my writing.
The stages of feedback:
1. Feeding the Dream. Early on, we often draw support from our loved ones. They will usually provide biased feedback that's filtered through their love for us. This usually isn't objective feedback.
2. Writing Peer Circles. The next phase is trying to find other aspiring authors we can exchange work with to receive feedback. It's usually best to pair up with people who have similar experience at this stage. A critique group might be all unpublished writers, or include a few writers who've had a couple short stories published. Having aspiring authors paired with traditionally published authors is unlikely, because traditionally published authors receive editorial feedback and have already established a writing peer circle they trust. Also, aspiring authors would be more likely to be intimidated by established authors.
3. Goal-Oriented Writers. Once you're ready to begin submitting to agents and editors you might begin to outgrow your writing peer circle. In my own experience, one group I associated with years ago became very focused on their aspirations. Anyone in the group who had success with acquiring an agent or with traditional publishing soon found themselves on the outside of the group, because the focus was all about those who had the dream of someday publishing. Very little in the group delved into the business of publishing and transitioning from aspiring to published. Some had spent years polishing the same manuscripts. One had been invited to submit their manuscript to an agent and a year later still hadn't done so. They didn't want to face the submission-rejection process, and if you want to be a published writer that's something that you have to go through.
4. Agent/Editor/Select Peers. Successfully published authors tend to receive most of their feedback from other authors who they trust, their agent and their editors.
It can be very difficult to transition from stage 2 to stage 3. At that point, you may want to consider a professional critique. Always make sure the person you purchase these services from has traditional publishing credits to their name so that you know they've gone through a professional editing and revision process and are giving you valid information.
But I don't like fish. I might learn to tolerate it in order to survive if I somehow magically ended up as a contestant on Alone, because let's face it, I'm not exactly survivalist material, but tolerating fish would be a matter of necessity. It would never be a choice.
I started thinking about this when I was thinking about Kristi's excellent advice yesterday about feedback. There's a reason you need to have a threshold for criticism to be taken seriously, and that's because you have to filter out the objective analysis from the subjective opinion.
Outside of my own writing I offer editing and critique services. As a result I've read a number of unpublished manuscripts that I've had to assess. I try to note when something in the feedback is subjective. At that point, what I'm offering is food for thought. I offer it with the clear understanding that it is subjective, and try to ensure the person receiving it knows that it's just an opinion.
However, that doesn't mean that writers don't occasionally argue with me about the objective analysis. For the most part, I've been fortunate enough to work with people who are serious about improving their craft and take the feedback seriously.
Occasionally, the writer takes everything personally. Pointing out spelling mistakes and errors with the use of semicolons and commas is, to them, the equivalent of saying their baby is ugly.
Here are a few extra things I think those seeking and giving feedback should consider.
For those giving feedback:
Don't pull your punches. You aren't doing anyone any favors if you're too focused on hurting the writer's feelings. Be honest and thorough in your assessment of the material you've been asked to critique.
Don't be a dick. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean others won't love it. I don't like fish. I know I don't like fish. Other people love fish. It's one thing to say that something isn't what you typically read and wouldn't be your genre choice. It's another thing to say that stories about ____ are stupid.
Keep an open mind. I don't like fish. But I didn't know just how freaking much I could love a vampire story until I read an unpublished manuscript that brought me to tears. As far as I know the writer is still sitting on that book, and it's a tragedy. It was an amazing read.
For those seeking feedback:
It's important to understand that the person who's reading your work should be trying to help you improve your craft. If all you want is a bunch of people who say it's wonderful then you don't want critique partners. You want cheerleaders.
Separate the objective and subjective. There are rules about how to spell words and when to use commas and semicolons. There are also general story structures that are more common in publishing, so a comment about the premature climax may be an objective analysis. A comment about not liking your character's name would be subjective.
Take time to let the feedback sink in. Process it. I know when I received feedback (from a published author) on five chapters of a drafted manuscript I didn't work on that project for a month. I was disappointed. I also had a hard time seeing my way forward, given the comments. It took me a while to process the information, filter out what was subjective and to utilize the feedback to improve my writing.
The stages of feedback:
1. Feeding the Dream. Early on, we often draw support from our loved ones. They will usually provide biased feedback that's filtered through their love for us. This usually isn't objective feedback.
2. Writing Peer Circles. The next phase is trying to find other aspiring authors we can exchange work with to receive feedback. It's usually best to pair up with people who have similar experience at this stage. A critique group might be all unpublished writers, or include a few writers who've had a couple short stories published. Having aspiring authors paired with traditionally published authors is unlikely, because traditionally published authors receive editorial feedback and have already established a writing peer circle they trust. Also, aspiring authors would be more likely to be intimidated by established authors.
3. Goal-Oriented Writers. Once you're ready to begin submitting to agents and editors you might begin to outgrow your writing peer circle. In my own experience, one group I associated with years ago became very focused on their aspirations. Anyone in the group who had success with acquiring an agent or with traditional publishing soon found themselves on the outside of the group, because the focus was all about those who had the dream of someday publishing. Very little in the group delved into the business of publishing and transitioning from aspiring to published. Some had spent years polishing the same manuscripts. One had been invited to submit their manuscript to an agent and a year later still hadn't done so. They didn't want to face the submission-rejection process, and if you want to be a published writer that's something that you have to go through.
4. Agent/Editor/Select Peers. Successfully published authors tend to receive most of their feedback from other authors who they trust, their agent and their editors.
It can be very difficult to transition from stage 2 to stage 3. At that point, you may want to consider a professional critique. Always make sure the person you purchase these services from has traditional publishing credits to their name so that you know they've gone through a professional editing and revision process and are giving you valid information.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
How to handle feedback
by Kristi Belcamino
Receiving criticism and feedback is a crucial part of my writing process.
In fact, with all five of my books, I couldn't imagine sending them out into the world without my writer's group weighing in on them. It took me several writers groups to find the one I'm in, so keep that in mind. But here are my rules of thumb about receiving and using feedback, in case it helps.
* Find the right people to give you feedback. There is a HUGE difference between someone pointing out something that doesn't work and someone giving you feedback on WHY it doesn't work. Some people aren't very good at understanding or explaining why something doesn't work, which is fine. What isn't fine, is people who arbitrarily give some incorrect idea on fixing what doesn't work.
I read somewhere that when someone points out something is wrong with your writing, they almost always are right, but when they try to explain what is wrong, they almost always are wrong.
In addition, some people are just soul-crushing, insensitive jerks when it comes to feedback. They aren't going to help you either. (Although I had an early beta reader who was harsh but helpful. He'd give comments such as "this whole chapter is boring, cut it." And while he was right, his delivery was so awful I couldn't deal with him for another book)
* Read (or listen) to the feedback, but then let it sit for at least a week. Hearing constructive criticism is almost always difficult during those first moments. Let it rest. Then go back to it after a few days or a week and re-read and see if the following rules apply then:
* Use these rules:
Only take feedback seriously if:
1. At least three people say the same thing.
2. Less than three people offer this feedback BUT it resonates with you.
This is what has worked for me. What works for you?
Receiving criticism and feedback is a crucial part of my writing process.
In fact, with all five of my books, I couldn't imagine sending them out into the world without my writer's group weighing in on them. It took me several writers groups to find the one I'm in, so keep that in mind. But here are my rules of thumb about receiving and using feedback, in case it helps.
* Find the right people to give you feedback. There is a HUGE difference between someone pointing out something that doesn't work and someone giving you feedback on WHY it doesn't work. Some people aren't very good at understanding or explaining why something doesn't work, which is fine. What isn't fine, is people who arbitrarily give some incorrect idea on fixing what doesn't work.
I read somewhere that when someone points out something is wrong with your writing, they almost always are right, but when they try to explain what is wrong, they almost always are wrong.
In addition, some people are just soul-crushing, insensitive jerks when it comes to feedback. They aren't going to help you either. (Although I had an early beta reader who was harsh but helpful. He'd give comments such as "this whole chapter is boring, cut it." And while he was right, his delivery was so awful I couldn't deal with him for another book)
* Read (or listen) to the feedback, but then let it sit for at least a week. Hearing constructive criticism is almost always difficult during those first moments. Let it rest. Then go back to it after a few days or a week and re-read and see if the following rules apply then:
* Use these rules:
Only take feedback seriously if:
1. At least three people say the same thing.
2. Less than three people offer this feedback BUT it resonates with you.
This is what has worked for me. What works for you?
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