Turning Facts into Fiction
by Ron Lovell
A talk before the Fiction Writers of Salem, September 21, 2002,
1-3 p.m.
I came to my career as a fiction writer—if one published novel
qualifies yet as a career—by way of magazine journalism and journalism
education. That background gave me advantages some fiction writers
may lack:
- the absence of fear about submitting manuscripts to publishers
- an appreciation of meeting deadlines
- a comfort level about weaving into my stories material about subjects some might consider journalistic
- a belief in the old advice to “write what you know”
- the importance (to me anyway) of having one main character that I can go back to for each book—easier to do than to write “stand-alone” novels—readers like it too, I think. You can also bring back other characters you like. This way I can look to my own life for ideas and not have to invent everything each time I write a book
I deliberately made my protagonist, Thomas Martindale, a college
journalism professor who used to be a magazine investigative reporter.
I have done both so I thought I could use experiences from my
own life in both the academic world and the word of big-time magazine
journalism. I have never to my knowledge solves a murder, however.
Many situations arise in a big university that could lead to murder.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, people on campuses think murderous
thoughts, but do not actually do the deed. It is a rarified world
in which people take their little part of—say an academic specialty
they are expert in—very seriously. I have been in or heard about
hundreds of situations in my 24 years at OSU that involve conflict
of one kind of the other. I have also come into contact with people
I might hazily pattern a character after, because of something
that happened to them or because they have certain personality
traits. I would never write about a real person by just changing
a name, however, because that would not be fair in that they could
not defend themselves against such an invasion of their privacy.
The reason for the journalism tie-in was my feeling that that
experience would allow Martindale to know something about finding
out information and solving puzzles. On most stories, reporters
begin with only a scrap of information and then go on a hunt to
find out the truth—one call leads to another and people tell you
things and give you things and suggest other sources. It is really
fun. Criminal detection is somewhat the same—although the stakes
are much higher and the subject being investigated—the loss of
one life or more—very tragic.
Before talking about my first book, “Murder at Yaquina Head,”
let me go over the kinds of real subjects I wove into the first
two manuscripts I wrote for the series. You see “YH” was not the
first mystery I wrote; it is the first to be published.
At several points in my career, I have free-lanced. That means
I have long been a collector of information about subjects that
interest me and subjects I might sometime write about. I also
saved stuff to use in my classes. So I now have three filing cabinets
of material which I clean out only when I need to fit something
else in. I usually keep projects I am working on on my writing
table in those old-style wire baskets. When something is done,
I must get it off the desk to make way for something else but
I can’t throw it away just yet. I might need to use it in the
future.
I have also done several book projects that I could not sell.
I have published 13 textbooks but have never been able to sell
a non-fiction trade book.
In 1981, I got an assignment to do an article on whale research
in the Canadian Arctic for the Exxon magazine. Got me interested
in whales in general and Bowhead whales in particular. I also
gathered a lot of material I could not put into the relatively
short article. Another failed book project despite good material
and good sources.
But, as is my habit, I saved all the material. And when the time
came to write my first mystery, I knew it would revolve around
whales. That is to be “Dead Whales Tell No Tales’ out next April.
I set the story against an IWC conference at the marine science
center and worked in some of my material from the old book idea.
Caution: in doing this, you have to be careful that the stuff
doesn’t read like a speech or, horrors, a textbook! But it is
still compelling stuff and I am pleased with it.
For the second mystery, “Lights, Camera…Murder,” I used more of
my campus experience than any of the other books. Set against
the production of a series of ads to recruit students to a university.
I played that role. Also added the exploitation of student athletes
and a grade scandal for good measure. The last part does not happen
at OSU but it worked into my story.
Another caution: Be sure not to malign a person or institution
you are portraying. I love OSU and sent 24 years of my life there
but I chose to call it “Oregon University” to cover myself a little.
Everyone can guess where it is by building names and having it
set in Corvallis and my connection, but I just felt more comfortable
in not calling it OSU.
Another caution about using real things: you can take a lot of
artistic license about even moving geographic locations, for example,
but it you cite a provable fact—like statistics about a building
or a year or a real product, you need to be accurate. [More about
this later]
That brings me to the book I hold here today and the excerpts
from which I would like to go over in some detail, “Murder at
Yaquina Head.”
The idea for the novel came from my interviewing OSU faculty members
who had fought in World War II for an issue of the liberal arts
magazine I edited. I augmented that by doing research on the war,
particularly about its effect on Vichy France and also about French
lighthouses. I wanted to use the device of a memoir from that
era as both a way to convey information and as a main clue to
the identity of the killer.
A character who we see but not hear from much is a mildly retarded
young man who I use as what Alfred Hitchcock called the “Maguffin”
the thing everyone is after—a secret formula, some jewels, a non-existent
person. Adam Edwards and his job in the cemetery is based on something
that happened on the coast in the mid-1980s—the discovery of bodies
not buried or buried more than one to a grave by the mortician
in Lincoln City. I had heard that a retarded man working at the
mortuary had disappeared and was never found. It didn’t make the
news but I remembered it and decided to use that kind of character
here. Anther device was people at a brunch which allows you to
bring in a number of suspects. I also used the longstanding OSU/U
of O rivalry. And I made a villain out of a person from that institution
who my lead guy had a run-in with in a previous book.
Another word about my earlier caution about real places: the details
of the lighthouse had to be right—dates, dimensions, etc. But
I changed the way my character got there—I had him walk in from
the north along the cliffs but that was not possible without crampons!
Writing this and my other mystery novels is the most fun I have
had since I began to write in high school—a long time ago. It
is stimulating and challenging and gratifying to see your name
on the cover of a book and a story you cooked up in your head
on the pages. It is also rewarding to have people like all of
you give up part of a Saturday to come out to hear what I have
to say. Thank you for coming.
I will be glad to answer any questions and, of course, sign books.