Closing the Great Divide: When Journalism and Mystery Writing Meet: Guest Post by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

Andrew Welsh-Huggins:
Closing The Great Divide: When Journalism And Mystery Writing Meet

One of the most frequent questions I receive about my fiction writing—after, of course, “Where do you get your ideas?”—is what the difference is between the composition I do as a journalist and that as a crime novelist. It’s a fair query, given that I’ve been a reporter for thirty-plus years, including more than two decades with The Associated Press, and have also published six mystery novels and several short stories. But like a lot of questions about writing, the answer is complicated. The work I did editing Columbus Noir, the latest anthology of a city’s dark tales from Akashic Books, helps explain how I balance the two forms of content creation.

Let’s start with the differences. Most of the stories I write for the AP are in the 500 to 600-word range. That’s a little short if you’re accustomed to New York Times or Washington Post articles, but about average for the breaking news and spot investigative stories that I focus on. By contrast, the shortest of my most recently published short stories—“The Most Terrible Thing,” in Over My Dead Body magazine—was about 3,500 words, while my private eye novels run about 65,000 words. As a result, we’re talking the distinction between, say, a 400-meter race on the track vs. the 26.2 miles of a marathon. In addition, depending on the subject matter, it takes a few hours, a couple days or perhaps a few weeks to write an article. On the other hand, a short story requires at least a week to ten days to compose followed by periodic rewrites over several weeks, while a book eats up three to four months minimum, not counting the multiple drafts to follow.

Then there’s the question of craft. It’s common to hear reporters-turned-novelists say that in fiction—unlike in journalism—every word matters. I’d contend that’s true up to a point. Certainly, I don’t rewrite my articles as much as my mysteries. Going Places, my own contribution to Columbus Noir, went through ten drafts alone before it was ready for publication. But in my fiction as in my nonfiction, I pay as close attention as possible to using active verbs, minimizing the use of adverbs and adjectives, avoiding clichés, and showing, not telling. In both forms, nothing drives me crazier than slipping and using the same word twice within close proximity. (I did it in this very essay, until I substituted “frequent” for “common” in the opening sentence a few drafts in.) However, it’s fair to say that my journalism is prose pared down to the essentials, whereas my fiction involves more description, metaphors and observations—a well-constructed sandwich on the one hand, an attempt at a three-course meal on the other, to use another analogy.

When it came to Columbus Noir, my vocation of journalism and my avocation of fiction writing finally met in the middle. To begin with, the discipline of deadline writing that I’ve developed as a reporter served me well when it came to editing the thirteen submissions to the anthology as they rolled in on a staggered basis over several months. Not only did I have to keep track of whose story was due when, I had to schedule my edits of the stories and when I expected authors to return their responses to those edits, all in time to compile the entire manuscript for submission. Missing that due date—Nov. 1, 2018—just wasn’t an option.

When the time came for my own contribution, I turned back to my roots at the AP as a full-time Statehouse reporter from 1999 to 2006. I’d previously set a book in my private eye series in the Statehouse—Capitol Punishment—but welcomed a chance to return to the Greek revival building in the heart of downtown Columbus. (I’m always surprised more mysteries don’t focus on statehouses, with their delectable mix of power, greed, and sexual hijinks.) Drawing on my experience as a reporter, the plot for my story—involving missteps by a governor’s bodyguard—came relatively easily, and on time to boot. Drawing on my side gig as a fiction writer, I polished the prose until I felt sure that, indeed, every word mattered. Finished with editing the anthology, and with my own contribution, I turned the book in on time; always a good feeling no matter what writing cap I’m wearing.

Though my day job as a journalist and my earlier-in-the-day job as a fiction writer overlap regularly, my story—and by extension, Columbus Noir—was an example of the rare alignment of both my worlds. Deadline writing meets deadly fiction: what could be better than that?

***

Andrew Welsh-Huggins is a reporter for the Associated Press in Columbus, and the author of six mysteries featuring Andy Hayes, a former Ohio State and Cleveland Browns quarterback turned private eye. Welsh-Huggins is also the editor of Columbus Noir from Akashic Books, and his short fiction has appeared in publications including Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, and Mystery Tribune. Andrew’s nonfiction book, No Winners Here Tonight, is the definitive history of the death penalty in Ohio. When he’s not writing or reporting, Andrew enjoys running, reading, cooking, spending time with family, and trying to recall why having a dog, three cats and two parakeets seemed like a good idea at the time.

Stop the Presses: The Journalist in Mystery Fiction. Guest post by R.G. Belsky

STOP THE PRESSES: THE JOURNALIST IN MYSTERY FICTION
by R.G. Belsky 

I’m a mystery author who follows the old adage: write what you know. Me, I know about journalists. Not surprisingly then, the protagonist in all 12 of my mystery novels has been a journalist too. The most recent book BELOW THE FOLD comes out this month. It features TV newswoman Clare Carlson who investigates the death of a homeless woman in New York and uncovers long buried dark secrets involving rich and powerful figures.

Now a journalist isn’t that common in the mystery world crowded with PIs, cops, lawyers, amateur sleuths, etc.

One of the reasons for that is writing about a journalist is a lot more challenging than a traditional mystery protagonist. A cop or a PI can use a gun to catch the criminals. A lawyer can haul people into court. But a journalist has to use words to solve cases. And, although it might be true that the pen really is mightier than the sword, well…the sword is a lot easier to make exciting in a book than a damn pen!

But there are other authors out there besides me, most of them also current or former journalists, who have been very successful using journalists as their protagonists. In no particular order, here are a few of my favorites that come to mind:

MICHAEL CONNELLY - This one may be a surprise to some because he’s most well-known for Harry Bosch, his LA homicide detective. But one of his finest books is The Poet, which has a newspaper reporter named Jack McEvoy chasing after a serial killer. Connelly has brought McEvoy back since then, most notably in The Scarecrow. Connelly himself used to be a journalist too, as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times. “I sometimes still think of myself as a journalist who writes books,” Connelly has said.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN - Ryan is another author who really writes about what she knows. She’s a popular TV reporter on Boston television who has won prestigious awards as an investigative journalist, and she’s the author of many terrific best-selling mystery novels set in the fictional world of TV news. Her two series feature Jane Ryland and Charlotte McNally. No question you’re getting the real scoop from behind the cameras when you read a Hank Phillippi Ryan book.

JAMES ZISKIN - I got to know Ziskin when we were on a panel together at a mystery conference talking about this very topic of journalistic protagonists. I was intrigued to find out that he wrote about a female newspaper reporter and did it in the first person, just like I’ve done in several of my novels. He writes a wonderful series about Ellie Stone, a woman far ahead of her time as a tough-talking, hard-drinking reporter for a small upstate New York newspaper in the early 1960s - long before women were taken seriously in the media.

JULIA DAHL - Dahl and I share the distinction of being alumnae of the New York Post, although from far different eras. I was the city editor there for more than a decade during the tabloid heydays of the ‘80s. Dahl worked as a street reporter much more recently, and then used that experience to create a fascinating journalistic character in Rebekah Roberts. Rebekah’s a young reporter at a New York City tabloid paper who investigates crimes in the Hasidic community where her mother came from.

BRAD PARKS – Parks is a former investigative reporter for a New Jersey newspaper who began writing mystery novels about, wait for it….an investigative reporter for a New Jersey newspaper. Parks say his fictional reporter Carter Ross came out of a quadruple murder story he once covered in Newark. I’ve had the pleasure of being on several panels at mystery conferences with Parks where we’ve talked about everything from serious investigative journalism to the origin of the famous New York Post tabloid headline HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR. He’s an interesting guy, and so are his books.

RICH ZAHRADNIK - Zahradnik is a longtime journalist at CNN and other places who writes about a New York City newspaper reporter in the ‘70s. Coleridge Taylor somehow manages to scoop the armies of reporters from all the other big city media on story after story from that turbulent era - which included such legendary events as the Son of Sam crime spree. I have a special affinity for Zahradnik’s books about 1970s New York newspapers - because I lived it as a journalist myself!

There’s a couple of other pretty notable authors out there who are ex-journalists that I want to mention here too - even if their characters aren’t usually working as actual reporters in their books.

Laura Lippman was a reporter at the Baltimore Sun and other newspapers, who created the memorable character of Tess Monaghan, a reporter who loses her job and becomes a private investigator.

And Gillian Flynn wrote for Entertainment Weekly before she got laid off and started turning out mystery thrillers - including the blockbuster Gone Girl. The two main characters, Nick and Amy Dunne, were ex-writers too who had lost their jobs, similar to her own real-life experience. And her book before that, Sharp Objects, did feature a woman newspaper reporter. “I could not have written a novel if I hadn’t been a journalist first,” she has said.

A lot of us feel that way.

***

R.G. Belsky is a longtime journalist and a crime fiction author in New York City. Belsky has worked as a top editor at the New York Post, the New York Daily News, Star magazine and NBC News – and covered most of the big crime stories from Son of Sam to O.J. to Jon Benet to Casey Anthony. He has also published 12 mystery novels, including his current Clare Carlson series – about a woman TV journalist.