{"id":8112,"date":"2019-08-07T06:37:26","date_gmt":"2019-08-07T10:37:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8112"},"modified":"2019-08-07T06:37:26","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T10:37:26","slug":"deadly-ink-everybody-wins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8112","title":{"rendered":"Deadly Ink: “Everybody Wins”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"draft\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The annual Deadly Ink<\/a>\nconference held in northern New Jersey last weekend was loads of fun. Guest of\nHonor Wendy Corsi Staub was a lively presence and toastmaster Dick Belsky\ncharmed. I saw a number of old friends, met authors I admire, and was delighted\nto be included on several panels. Yesterday\u2019s post reviewed some of the\ndiscussion about \u201ccharacter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Dark Side
<\/strong>The panel on noir stories and hard-boiled characters \u00a0risked bogging down in semantics but clearly demonstrated the many shades of black actually out there. Apologies if you\u2019ve read this here before, but I offered Dennis Lehane\u2019s definition of noir: In a tragedy, a man falls from a great height (Macbeth, the Greeks, Chinatown<\/em>); in noir, he falls from the curb. Panelist Rich Zahradnik<\/a> provided another good one: \u201cIn noir, nobody wins.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hard-boiled stories usually involve a detective who is not emotionally\ninvolved or is struggling not to be. Humphrey Bogart\u2019s portrayals of Sam Spade (written\nby Dashiell Hammett) and Philip Marlowe (Raymond Chandler) epitomize the genre.\nCynical and street-smart, not reliant on the intellectual powers of Sherlock Holmes\nor the \u201clittle grey cells\u201d of Hercule Poirot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hard-boiled character nevertheless gets the job done. Occasionally\ncrossing my path are books that are too dark. They feature down-and-out characters\nliving in filthy apartments who smoke and drink too much; some of them can\u2019t think\nbeyond their next fix. I don\u2019t find them interesting. With four strikes against\nthem already, whaddaya know, they make (more) bad decisions. Give me a\ncharacter who at least has the opportunity to make choices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With me on this panel were Charles Salzberg<\/a> (whose Swann\ncharacter operates on the fringes of society, but has plenty of agency), Al Tucher<\/a> (whose work features\na smart and tough prostitute), and moderator Dick\nBelsky<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Location, Location, Location<\/strong>
In the session on story setting, historical mystery author Annamaria Alfieri<\/a> said she chooses her location first (British East Africa, for example), then the time period in which that place offered the most interesting fictional possibilities. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Panelists\u2019 strategies for establishing a strong sense of\nplace included attention to the small details and local idiosyncrasies (lots of\nresearch here, including site visits for contemporary works), plus making sure\nto describe the character\u2019s emotional reaction to the location. If you could\npick a San Francisco story up and move it four hundred miles south to Los\nAngeles, you should end up with a different story. New Orleans isn\u2019t New York,\nand South Carolina isn\u2019t South Dakota. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, panelists and audience alike thought Al Tucher is onto something with his new book set in Hawai`i. \u201cIt\u2019s a research trip.\u201d Yeah, right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This and yesterday\u2019s post<\/a> about \u201ccharacter\u201d are a small sample of the conference\u2019s varied and interesting program. Whether you\u2019re a writer or a fan, be there in person in 2020! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Sebastien Wiertz, creative commons license<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The annual Deadly Ink conference held in northern New Jersey last weekend was loads of fun. Guest of Honor Wendy Corsi Staub was a lively presence and toastmaster Dick Belsky charmed. I saw a number of old friends, met authors … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Deadly Ink: \"Everybody Wins\" - notes from the Deadly Ink conference on \"the Dark Side\" and story location.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[62,40,174,60,29],"tags":[588,1619,472,321],"class_list":["post-8112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog","category-storytelling","category-writing","tag-deadly-ink","tag-hardboiled","tag-noir","tag-setting"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-26Q","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8113,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8112\/revisions\/8113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}