TAKING THE MYSTERY OUT OF WRITING MURDER, SHE WROTE: Guest post by Jon Land

Jon Land:
Taking the Mystery Out of Writing Murder, She Wrote

“Have you ever heard of MURDER, SHE WROTE?”  

Ask any one hundred people that question and, chances are, ninety-nine will answer with an unqualified, “Yes!” In addition to being one of the most successful television dramas of all time, and continuing to draw big audiences for its reruns and marathons, the TV show spawned a book series of which my fist effort, A DATE WITH MURDER, is number forty-seven.

Think about that for a moment. I have recently had the privilege and pleasure of taking over a brand that enjoys nearly 100% name recognition and remains so popular that all these books actually followed the television series. While that’s not unprecedented (It happened with The Walking Dead and The Killing, among others.), it’s never happened to this degree of success over such a long period of time.

And now I have the chance to contribute to this classic series. From the moment I first started working with Don Bain, I formed certain parameters for myself, boundary markers I resolved to adhere to as much as possible to assure a smooth transition toward making the book series even more popular. Thought you might be interested in seeing a few.

FINDING JESSICA’S VOICE: Fortunately, Don had worked with his grandson Zach, who’d go on to become a crucial collaborator for me, on the first 60 or so pages of A DATE WITH MURDER. Enough to give me a notion as to the story and, more importantly, a direct link to Jessica’s voice. Finding that voice myself, in my own head, became the first challenge. But it was one that came to me with surprising ease and in true organic fashion. Getting into Jessica’s head became as simple as channeling Angela Lansbury from the classic TV show. I pictured her behind every page, speaking every line. See, I was far more familiar with the show than the books. So I set out to make A DATE WITH MURDER read like an extended episode, containing all the character staples fans continue to welcome into their homes in the hope more of them would gravitate toward the books as well.

THRILLER, MYSTERY, OR BOTH: Okay, I’m a thriller writer. Prior to A DATE WITH MURDER, I’d never penned a book where the focus was more on who did it instead of what bad thing is someone planning to do. So finding Jessica’s voice might’ve been my first challenge, but the next one was blending it with my own. My style makes great use of hooks, cliff-hangars, and plot twists—often so many of them you have to stop to catch your breath. Almost overnight, A DATE WITH MURDER transformed into a hybrid mystery-thriller. A mystery because Jessica is trying to solve the murder of a trusted friend; thriller because she ends up risking her own life to expose a nefarious plot connected to a sinister Internet dating service. I wasn’t going too far out on a limb here because Don Bain’s books had often cast her in the role of crusader, solving a murder that hits close to home.

SECURE THE BASE: I went into the series knowing that first and foremost I needed to capture the series’ core audience that loves the bucolic setting of Cabot Cove and the regular, established cast of characters Jessica interacts with and plays off of. For the dialogue, I relied on the quick, tart and witty exchanges between Angela Lansbury and the late, great Jerry Orbach as Harry McGraw or Ron Masak as Sheriff Mort Metzger. I wasn’t out to reinvent the wheel, you see, just make it churn a little faster. I’m not sure what was more amazing: How swiftly I took to the process or how naturally Jessica’s words and thoughts started to flow for me. The legendary Toni Mendez, my agent for 20+ years, often said, “If you know the characters, you can write anything.” Never before had that edict been put more to the test and I hoped I passed!

EXPAND THE AUDIENCE: Jessica Fletcher is almost without question America’s most famous detective. She could be more well-known than Hercule Poirot, Perry Mason and maybe even Sherlock Holmes, never mind the slew of wonderful modern-day sorts from Robert Parker’s Spenser to Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone to Patricia Cornwall’s Kay Scarpetta. Moving the needle in my mind starts with making the tens of thousands of fans who regularly devour Murder, She Wrote reruns realize the books are just as much fun. I read somewhere that a million people a week watch those reruns on Hallmark Mystery. If I can encourage just some of those fans to enjoy the books, then I’ve contributed to the series’ success.

A SLICE OF HUMBLE PIE: I wanted to make the series mine, put my stamp on it. But MURDER, SHE WROTE doesn’t belong to me and never will. It belongs to the tens of millions of readers and viewers who’ve come to cherish the stories, watching or reading them over and over again while trying to keep up with Jessica Fletcher. Like all great fictional heroes, she’s timeless, ageless, eternal. After me, someone else no doubt will take the reins of this series. While they’re in my hands, though, I’m grateful for the opportunity enjoy the ride at the same time I give you and all readers the best one I can.

***

Jon Land is the USA Today bestselling and International Book award-winning author of 43 books, including the Caitlin Strong series. Land was thrilled to write A DATE WITH MURDER with Donald Bain before his passing in 2017. Land said, “Taking over MURDER, SHE WROTE is one of the greatest opportunities I’ve ever had as an author, if not the greatest. This isn't just a series of books, it’s a brand that enjoys near universal recognition, both because of the fabulously successful TV show and the long string of terrific books that followed by the great Donald Bain. I look forward to living up to both those traditions…. Having grown up relishing the likes of Agatha Christie, Earl Stanley Gardner, Rex Stout and Ed McBain, this opportunity allows me to go back to my roots and find the same joy in writing as ‘Jessica Fletcher’ that I did in reading those classic mysteries.” Donald Bain’s grandson, Zachary Bain, will serve as an early reader and consultant for future books in the series.

Donald Bain: R.I.P.

Donald Bain: R.I.P.

From the New York Times: 

Donald Bain, the pseudonymous author of the “Murder, She Wrote” novels, Margaret Truman’s “Capital Crimes” mysteries and “Coffee, Tea or Me?,” the supposed memoir of two saucy airline stewardesses, died on Saturday in White Plains. He was 82.

Over five decades as a ghostwriter he published novels, biographies, westerns and historical romances, mostly under fictitious names or credited to more marketable bylines; vanity memoirs attributed to corporate executives; and even long articles disguised as excerpts from nonexistent books.

His more than 125 books included 46 “Murder, She Wrote” mysteries, inspired by the television series of the same name starring Angela Lansbury. Many were written in collaboration with his second wife, Renee Paley-Bain.

He began secretly collaborating with Margaret Truman, the daughter of former President Harry S. Truman, in the early 1980s; the first book they wrote together was “Murder on Capitol Hill” (1981). Ms. Truman — she was otherwise known as Margaret Truman Daniel — died in 2008, but the series continued with two dozen books under her name followed by six, in collaboration with Bob Gleason, under Mr. Bain’s.

“With the ‘Margaret Truman Capital Crimes’ series,” Mr. Bain explained, “I operate from the standpoint that there is absolutely nothing that I can make up that is far-fetched when it comes to Washington, D.C., and the political climate there.”

Read More here.

Donald Bain & Renée Paley-Bain: Partners in Crime

Our series Partners in Crime (authors who write together) continues today with a guest post by mystery author Renée Paley-Bain who writes the Murder, She Wrote mysteries with Don Bain.

The "Murder, She Wrote" original mystery novels are bylined by Jessica Fletcher, who exists only as a fictional character, and Donald Bain, who is a real flesh-and-blood character. For the past ten years, Bain has been writing the books with his wife, Renée Paley-Bain. Their latest collaboration, Skating on Thin Ice, will be out in hardcover in April as will the paperback version of Nashville Noir. More information may be found at www.donaldbain.com

Renée Paley-Bain:

Love, Honor and … Edit

For a husband and wife, writing as a team can be fraught with danger. Like many other writing partners, the big questions have to be addressed: Who has the upper hand in a quarrel over plot points? Who writes first and determines the style? Who gets the last word if a disagreement over the manuscript remains unresolved? But the little questions also worm their way to the fore: Who’s still reading the morning newspaper when the other sits down at the computer? Who gets to end a chapter, leaving the beginning of the next one up in the air? Who has to start dinner while the other is beavering away? Those are the kinds of issues you confront when a “night-time is my time” owl and an “I’m up with the birds” lark both cohabit and embark on a book together.

I have the good fortune to be married to Donald Bain, who happens to be a prolific author. In a writing career that spans more than 40 years, Don has 110 books under his belt at last count. He’s written in myriad genres: mystery, romance, westerns, true crime, biography, autobiography, investigative journalism, comedy, and some that are hard to define. For the past twenty-two years, however, in addition to numerous side projects, he has devoted his attention—and I’ve joined him—dreaming up the adventures of a television sleuth I’m sure you’ve heard of.

“Murder, She Wrote” debuted on CBS in September 1984. The show was conceived by another pair of writing partners, Richard Levinson and William Link, Hollywood writers and producers, who were also behind such great television series as “Mannix” and “Columbo.” Together with their frequent collaborator Peter S. Fischer, they came up with the idea for an amateur sleuth modeled not on Agatha Christie’s popular Miss Marple, but rather on Ms. Christie herself. And thus Jessica Fletcher, a widowed mystery writer, bicycled onto our small screens and charmed us for a dozen-plus years’ worth of episodes and another dozen-plus years’ worth of reruns, simultaneously assuring eternal fame and a legion of devoted fans for her portrayer, the great Angela Lansbury.

Midway through the life of the series, Universal, which produced the show, agreed that mystery books about Jessica Fletcher were a good way both to promote the show and to create a lucrative brand extension. Thus the “Murder, She Wrote” books were born, and Don who had ghosted a mystery series for a well-known author was offered the gig.

Thirty-six books later, he is still sharing the byline with the fictional Jessica Fletcher. For a ghostwriter, having his name on the cover of a book is a rare treat, and while some readers still think Jessica Fletcher is a real-live person, and a few think Angela Lansbury is behind the computer, most understand that it is Don who brings Jessica to life on the pages of the “Murder, She Wrote” mysteries.

Exactly how we came to write together is a story more of evolution than revolution. As a former English teacher, newspaper editor, and public relations professional, I was never shy about voicing my opinions on writing. Initially, I would read Don’s drafts and make comments on sticky notes attached to the margins. When he encouraged me to make edits directly on the manuscript, I considered it a great honor. (In our business, everyone knows there is nothing those-who-consider-themselves-writers love more than correcting, editing, altering, embellishing, tweaking another writer’s work.) Eventually, I offered Don a specialized service, arguing that as a man writing as a woman he needed a few more feminine touches. Since he doesn’t know a camisole from a Chippendale, I began adding in those details of clothing and furniture women usually find not only entertaining, but revealing. From there I moved up to inserting whole paragraphs, then pages, not all of this focused on decorating, of course. The day finally came when, after long discussion on the scene in progress, Don told me to write the chapter as I saw it. I wrote one, and then another, and before we knew it, we were writing a book together.

Every writer needs a good editor and we serve each other in that capacity. One time, on a book Don was writing, which was not in the “Murder, She Wrote” series, I pointed out what I thought was a particularly awkward description of a character, and suggested he rewrite it. He declined. It was a turn of phrase Don had labored over and was really pleased with; he didn’t want to change it. Yet, when the book came out, one critic pointed to that phrase as an example of “clunky writing,” and Don pointed to me and said, “You called it.”

Critiquing each other cuts both ways of course. When I was working on the first full book we wrote together, Murder in a Minor Key, I set a scene at the New Orleans Jazz Fest. I was so enamored of all the musical acts that appear in this annual event that I went on for pages, describing the musicians and their instruments and the pieces that they played. Don came into my office after reading the chapter and handed it back to me. He shrugged. “It’s boring,” he said. This from a part-time musician and jazz lover! I edited out five pages and the chapter was greatly improved.

These days, we brainstorm together, often during a dinner out, preferably over cocktails, with a pad and a pen next to the fork and knife. Afterward, we take turns being writer and editor, depending on each other’s workload, and whether or not one of us possesses an area of expertise required by the plot. Regarding plot, we find that even though we submit a detailed outline to our editor and to Universal, the storyline is a moving target. Both of us are pantsers. (In writing jargon pantsers are people who improvise on the page, or write by the seat of their pants.) That quality can make the story take sharp turns or cause a character to behave in unanticipated ways. While it creates an exciting twist, it also challenges whoever is in the writer’s seat to weave it smoothly into next chapter and figure out how it impacts the resolution of the mystery.

Not having a clear path to “what happens next” can make for some nervous days in front of the empty screen, but it also allows for a lot of creative flow. I always say writing a book is like sewing a back stitch. You move forward one stitch and go back over what you’ve done before moving forward again.

That’s essentially how our books get written. Whenever we get a bright idea late in the writing, we go back through the manuscript to weave in clues so that by the time we reach the conclusion, the reader has the same information we do.

We have been very lucky in how well we collaborate and in having such a wonderful character to work with. Aided by separate offices with a conference room in between—Don likes the TV on or music playing while he writes; I don’t—we invent Jessica Fletcher’s latest challenges and live vicariously through her exploits, although we have been known to join her in her travels, especially when it’s a place we’re dying to go to.

Speaking of dying, it’s my turn to write about Jessica’s latest case, a Jack-the-Ripper-type murder on the beautiful island of Bermuda in Blood on a Pink Beach. Don is waiting for the next chapter, so I’d better get back to work.