The glamorous life of a writer

[e_moon60]

Before I was published, I had pretty much the same romantic vision of the writing life that I'd had in high school and college and after, based on books and TV shows like _Murder She Wrote_ (or, more recently, _Castle_) in which a writer had a nice house or apartment, always "interesting" in its location, design, or decoration, lots of friends, and

Comments

[geekmerc]

To be fair, aren't the perfect dressed up writers also supposed to be the extremely successful and overflowing with money types? I don't think _Murder She Wrote_ actually discussed it. It would have been improper at the time, I think. _Castle_ definitely implied that he had money to spare.

Even writers have their 1% that takes more money than the other 99%. Such things usually have little to do with the books themselves.

[e_moon60]

If you want to have your fictional writers do things other than write, then they need to have enough sales success or inherited wealth to make that work for readers. For escapist entertainment, the rich are a more popular topic than the poor. (This is not a slap at escapist entertainment, just a comment on the practicalities thereof. Aristotle pointed out thousands of years ago that stories about kings and princes do better in the theater than stories of the common man

[geekmerc]

Well, in this day and age, movie and merchandise rights can often eclipse book revenue. Certain types of stories adapt better than others to the screen. I was definitely going to avoid the quality argument. The market has long dictated that "quality" is variable.

[e_moon60]

I don't think of mine as particularly screenable, though I can vividly imagine them in my head and "watch" as if they were a movie. Private screening in its strictest form...

[geekmerc]

I tried and tried to figure out how to convert some of your novels to a screenplay. Unfortunately, the story loses too much in my opinion. There is a huge separation between books and the big screen. It concerns the fact that books often allow you access to a character's thoughts. You lose a lot if you strip that from the screenplay. However, narrating thoughts doesn't work so well, either. In novels that have a huge focus on character thoughts, it becomes almost impossible to properly convert them. I find you to be that type of writer.

It's what I love about your writing. Sadly, it makes it impossible for me to convert it. Perhaps someone better will succeed someday. Perhaps when we have future VR systems where you can see the story through the eyes of the characters and hear their thoughts. Hopefully someone will kindly black out the screen and just go to narration for some parts. The new era of entertainment is coming, though. :)

[paulliver]

Mystery writing is a logical choice if you want the writer to be both rich and capable in those TV shows. Only people writing thrillers and romances make more money (on average).

[e_moon60]

An advantage mystery writers have is the name recognition that comes with writing series--get people interested in your detective and setting, and people will come back for more over and over and over. And that generates sales.

Other series writers (including SF/fantasy) also have that advantage, but while you can do dozens and dozens of mysteries in a detective-based series, SF/fantasy readers want an ending and closure of an overall story arc, whereas mysteries have the advantage of a satisfying ending (assuming well-written) in every book.

[geekmerc]

Dresden(while fantasy, it is told in mystery format), Drizzt. Nuff said. :)