Mappers and Muddlers: Mappers

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There are many ways to write fiction, but mappers anchor one end of the spectrum and muddlers anchor the other. Most writers fall somewhere between, but most would acknowledge they adhere to one school or the other.

The most famous mapper was James Joyce, not only because he produced the most famous novel, Ulysses, but because he is reputed to have papered the walls of his office with maps and charts and timelines to account for every character’s locations, actions, thoughts, and dreams in relation to those of the other characters during one 24-hour period in 1904 Dublin.

While not as meticulously oriented to detail, screenwriters, by virtue of the conventions of their craft must follow a precise timeline: one minute equals one page of writing, the first crisis must come on or about page x, and so on. It’s much like a crossword: three down has to be exactly six letters, starting with a C.

My guess—in the novel-writing world—murder-mystery writers are most often mappers. The writer, for instance, reads Robert Frost, thinks about the world ending in fire or ice, and decides ice is nice and would suffice. Then the writer ponders how to do “ice.” Stabbed with an icicle has been done as has the body locked in a freezer. The writer has a vague recollection of some hapless victim shot with an ice bullet, another killed with a frozen leg of lamb, which the killer fed to investigating police. Something different then. How about strangulation? Certainly the autopsy would reveal the victim died from lack of oxygen, but it wouldn’t reveal how, as the ice would have melted. Research would suggest the size and shape of the ice lozenge. More thought would offer ways to introduce the weapon to the victim’s esophagus without allowing the victim to remove it and without leaving a physical trace on the victim. The key is everything is already worked out before the first word hits the page. One method of accomplishing this is writing the last chapter first or writing the first chapter, the last chapter, and then writing to the last chapter.

Another variation of mapping is the template. One suspects that a writer, whether of romance or another genre, who can crank out a novel every month or so, is somehow “cheating.” True and not true. Writing is a business, but not a business that can be outsourced to Bangalore. It took Salinger ten years to write Catcher in the Rye, which an avid reader might consume in one day. Tom Clancy (can’t say for sure he deserves the credit) came up with another idea. Let someone else do the dirty work of actually writing a novel based on your idea. Let ten someone else’s simultaneously write novels from ten of your ideas. One precedent for this collective writing is James A Michener who reputedly employed an army of researchers and “helpers” and worked from his own template. I have no inside knowledge, but James Patterson may have borrowed from Michener’s model. If you find a successful template, you’d be foolish not use it.

An additional variation of the template is what occurred in the James Bond franchise. Ian Fleming wrote the James Bond books. Hollywood picked up the franchise. All well and good, but Fleming went and did a stupid and unprofitable thing. He died. Ultimately, Hollywood ran out of books. It ran out of books, but not screenwriters. I remember sitting on the St. Thomas ferry on its forty-minute run to Charlotte Amalie. I picked up a book left behind on the seat next to mine. Five pages in, I understood why it was left behind. Ten pages in, I was ready to stick my head over the side and puke my guts out. I realized that the book was not only based on the movie, it was merely a recitation of the movie’s action.

I’ve always adhered to Günter Grass’s proposition that even bad books are books and therefore sacred, but a line has to be drawn somewhere. Many years ago, the Economist printed an article about how many good trees were killed to produce bad books. If you’ve ever been a devotee of that weekly, you know it’s clever and sophisticated, and its tongue is firmly attached to its cheek. One issue featured an obituary of a well know writer. There was an image of the man. “So Long” was the headline. A pertinent quote from The Power and the Glory followed. Nowhere in the obituary was the name of the deceased mentioned. If the reader didn’t recognize the obituary as Graham Greene’s, the reader was ignorant beyond salvation.

Back to the killing of trees. The article’s conclusion was that the line had to be drawn somewhere. The line was drawn. It was drawn at John le Carré, As you might guess, it didn’t reveal whether the line was drawn above or below his name. Because he elevated the spy novel to literature, just as Hammett and Chandler elevated the detective novel, his name is far, far above any line weeding the publishable books from the unpublishable. Hollywood and the BBC have turned many of his books into movies. I’ve always liked le Carré’s comment: Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.