Last week I admitted to an ailment no writer likes to have or admit he or she has: writer's block.

The good news, particularly for fellow scribes who have happened upon this week's column, it's not thought to be contagious; it should be safe to continue reading with no adverse effect on your own literary output.

No, the bad news is all mine – unless, that is, you count the legions of fans waiting with baited breath for my next opus. I’m not sure an angry mob with pitchforks and flaming torches storming my front lawn would necessarily push me over the wall but at this point I’m willing to give it a try.

The internet is rife with sites dedicated to the topic. I’m not sure I take comfort in the knowledge that writer’s block is not only a real thing but real enough that the first google search turns up over fifty-one million hits. It's difficult to imagine there can be that much written with so many obviously suffering from the affliction.

Earlier I mentioned Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, an immensely successful book, website and seminar groups-based program that purports to have unblocked untold thousands from their creative block (it doesn't limit itself to only writer's block - apparently painters and other creative types can get blocked too). It didn't work so well for me but it must work for many, at least based on sales; the book is ranked 1,324th on Amazon's Best Seller's ranking. Last Dance, by comparison, is ranked 3,290,128th. Again, not wildly comforting so many artists are so creatively constipated they're buying Cameron's book in droves. Sure it took over twenty years to make those numbers but that just tells me writer's block isn't something for which modern science has found a cure.

To be fair, I didn't make it through Cameron's entire tomb. Call it commitment problems; maybe if I had I would be writing a different column this week.

The web seems to divide its writer's block discussion into two key groups: those with the 'practical tips' only and those that see writer's block as such a complex phenomenon as to encourage in-depth diagnosis before advocating particular cures. What most have in common is a level of ambiguity that severely limits their effectiveness.

In "The 10 Types of Writer's Block (and How to Overcome Them)", one of the better help sites I've encountered so far, the author attempts to break down the creative blockage into ten distinct categories. Some of the descriptions sound familiar, at least for some of the blocked time, but many of the tips and tricks to break through the wall are resoundingly over simplified. Like many of the fellow sites, much of the advice is of the "just walk away from it for a few days" variety.

Even "famous" writers interviewed about their struggles with creative blocks offer words more of encouragement than treatment, 'just believe in yourself and your story' platitudes that while nice sounding haven't found me increasing my output in front of the computer.

Among the most practical advice sites - at least in utilitarian terms - I encountered offered simple solutions I hope could prove to be fruitful. Some of them have less directly to do with writing but more to do with behaviours to break me out of my routine: stretching, taking a walk, establishing a non-writing ritual behaviour like drinking a glass of water exactly every twenty minutes.

Of course, one of the key parts of my writer's block stems, I think, from a decided lack of a writing routine of late. Indeed, other than this weekly column, my time creative time has been in such sporadic little bursts there really is no routine out of which to break.

One suggestion that's been repeated in quite a number of sites from which I've sought help is to try writing in a different location. Moving out of my office, a coffee shop, outdoors, etc. Perhaps having a different creative atmosphere can really stir the creative juices.

I know there is something to be said for establishing a regular, consistent writing routine. For some time, it involved getting up very early in the morning and writing for an hour or two before the craziness of the day job workday began. Of late, that hasn't been happening, principally because my sleeping abilities have deteriorated in the past number of months (yes, that does sound like Winston Patrick). The challenge of sleep may be caused, in part, by my lack of writing and what that's doing to my psyche. It's kind of a vicious cycle.

Still, it may be worth the push. If I'm not sleeping anyway, I may as well force myself out of bed early and see what, if anything, I can get accomplished. Perhaps I'll even make myself more tired in the process and reverse the cycle. One can hope.

For now, I'll set a goal to achieve by next week's column: I will complete the scene on which I am currently working in W3.doc. Be nice to see if I can push this snowball downhill for a change.

Next week: what makes for the best writing space?

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PDT

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I don't normally do politics on this blog but I used to write a regular column on Canadian Politics for Suite101, an early online magazine and article publisher. I wrote this piece about then Alberta premier Ralph Klein in 2004. Given Mr. Klein's passing last Friday, I thought I'd re-post it. Hope you enjoy. 

Not to worry - my regular writing column will appear this Thursday as usual. 

The Tao of Ralph 

 He's done it again.

For the fourth consecutive election, on November 22 Premier Ralph Klein of Alberta brought his provincial Tory party to a resounding majority in the Alberta Legislature.  Oh sure, the size of the majority has been reduced - slightly.  But that's quibbling: the fact remains 'Rowdy Ralph' has led his party to four victories personally, while his party is celebrating its tenth consecutive electoral victory in the nation's most prosperous province.

Naysayers may argue the Albertan Tories have primarily cashed in on the electoral dearth of serious strong alternatives and there's an element of truth to that notion: can  you name the current Liberal or New Democrat leader in the province?  For that matter, can you name any Grit or NDP member of the Alberta legislature for the past ten years?  Twenty?  Ever?

Fair rhetorical comment but ask yourself the similar question of Mr. Klein's own party: other than its legendary leader can how many other Conservative MLA's stumble immediately off the tongue?

What is it about Mr. Klein that endears him so to the electorate?  What is that je ne sais quois quality - though he'd never call it that - that makes him so compelling a figure not only in provincial politics but also influential on the national stage?

On the surface it may be a cinch to define.  Straight-talking to the point of boorishness, its easy to assert that Klein's willingness to say what he's thinking - or speak when he clearly hasn't been thinking - appeals to a populace, tired of the ethos of the eastern intelligentsia, who want their politicians to cut to the chase, eliminate the bull and say what they mean.

But that's an oversimplification not only of the man but also of the Albertan.  To much of the rest of the country, Alberta is viewed through a Bonanza lens as some kind of wild west, comparatively lawless, cultureless wasteland.  Klein, with his swaggering, bravado style (who can forget the talk of building a metaphorical wall around the ranch...er...province) and occasional apparent alcohol induced pronouncements - once making an impromptu stop at a homeless shelter on the way home from a dinner event and loudly slurring to a shelter's inhabitant to 'get a job!' - often does little to assuage the stereotype.

But Alberta is more than tumbleweeds and people who drive only really large vehicles and view Shania Twain as a serious artist.  This is also the province of figure skater Kurt Browning, renowned Royal Ballet dancer Lynn Seymour, journalist Arthur Kent, folk singer Joni Mitchell, writers as diverse as W.P. Kinsella and Sharon Pollock, Emily Murphy and the rest of the Famous Five who blazed the way for women's rights in Canada.

Hardly a hillbilly haven.

In national politics, Klein's confrontational style has often earned him the scorn of political parties of all opposition stripes.  In the last federal election, KIein's unannounced, hypothetical plans for reforms to the interpretation of the Canada Health Act in Alberta - putting aside the fact the Act is a federal jurisdiction - became a platform in the Paul Martin's campaign.  The NDP's Jack Layton and the Bloc's Gilles Duceppe even went out of their way to attack Klein, despite the fact Klein wasn't even running.

Even the media couldn't resist attaching itself to the Albertan leader, dogging him for his thoughts on how Canada's health care system needed to be fixed and pestering him to see what kind of advice he was offering to federal Conservative leader Stephen Harper, as though Klein was the grand old sage every Conservative politician turned to for electoral advice. 

Yet Klein, often portrayed by the rest of Canada as the chief cowboy, has consistently won the confidence of Albertans for nearly a quarter century since first being elected mayor of Calgary in 1980.  And immediately upon being elected to the Alberta Legislature under Peter Lougheed  he headed the environment ministry where, contrary to the pistol shooting oil baron he is often the described as, enacted some of Alberta's most progressive environmental legislation it had seen to date or since.

Clearly Klein has much more under his Stetson than that for which he is given credit.  Unlike politics in, say, British Columbia, where the ideological swings are enough to make one seasick , Klein and his Tory party have navigated the much more varied constituencies of the province with more political savvy than most. 

To the conservative base: focus on business expansion and being the first to eliminate the provincial debt.  To the more centrist: as the profits have increased from booming oil and gas sectors, an increased commitment to funding public schools and universities and permitting some of the greatest freedom for educational innovation in the country.  

Still, longevity in office does tend to breed complacency.  It's part of the reason the Americans are such fans of term limits at almost all levels of government.  Klein's pathetically lackluster performance during the campaign showed a leader whose political acumen was in need of a shakeup, and the loss of sixteen seats in this government over the last sends a message to the Tories the needs of the electorate were not being met by a party that may have drifted too far to the right for an increasingly diverse population. 

And most importantly, in the next couple of years, the Tories need to find someone with as much charisma, cachet and political sharpness to capture the imagination of Albertans and the rest of the country in the same way, as Ralph Klein prepares to ride off into the electoral sunset before his final term is done.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 8:32 PM PDT

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Last week I talked about my original intention to write screenplays and television scripts. Eventually, they led me into writing my first novel.

I may not be telling you anything that comes as a complete surprise but publishing novels in Canada is not a...uhm...how shall I put it?....terribly lucrative way to earn a living. Of course, what it lacks in income it more than makes up for in glamorous lifestyle, what with the onslaught of invitations to upscale cocktail parties.

But for sheer glamour coupled with the moola, movies and television are the places to be. Also, the drinks at the cocktail parties are probably higher end.

Looking at our scribing brethren to the south, for example, one could expect to make around $70,000 for the story and script for a two-hour television movie.

Sure, it’s not all about the money, but having a movie version of one’s story out there gets your story in front of a whole lot more people, which, of course, has the effect of having more people wanting to read your work. It’s the circle of life for written work.

Shortly after the release of Deadly Lessons, it was suggested to me that the book would make a good movie. Given that the genesis of the story was from an attempt at pitching an episodic television script (I keep planning a posting on the Deadly Lessons origins- I’ll get to it), I agreed, at least, the story was transferrable from paper to celluloid. In my head, both Deadly Lessons and Last Dance seemed more suitable for television movie than feature film. My surely-too-many years of watching too much television probably cause me to write the books with chapter endings more or less where commercial breaks ought to be. It should be a snap.

There were a couple of examples of mow’s that were suggestive to me of the style of film I could envision my books becoming. I know my admiration for Robert B. Parker has come up in previous posts. The Spenser novels were made into both into a television series with Robert Urich in the title role. It was the series that introduced me to Parker’s work in the first place.

More in line with what I think my books could become was Small Vices and Thin Air, mow versions of two of Parker’s novels starring Joe Mantegna, and the mow versions of Parker’s Jesse Stone series starring Tom Selleck, who also wrote the teleplay for a number of the movies.

Closer to home, local author Don Hauka wrote a series with intrepid crime reporter Mister Jinnah, that was made into Canadian television movies. Thus, I looked for production companies having made that type of movie and contacted them.

They expressed interest and accepted the first book to consider. One of their first questions was “will this be a series?” Recognizing the correct answer was obviously ‘yes,’ as I had when first asked by a publisher the same question, I replied in the affirmative. Clearly, production companies want to know that if they successfully produced a tele-film that turned out to be successful, there are more stories coming with the same characters.

In fact, the production company I approached initially passed on Deadly Lessons but was quite interested in what was then simply an outline for Last Dance.

First rejection in hand, I then did nothing further. Writers are often by their nature, lazy. At least this one is. Now that Last Dance has been out a year and been positively reviewed I really ought to get in touch with them again. With W3.doc well under way (well…under way) and the story ideas for two more in the wings, certainly a series of television movies is not beyond the scope of possibility.

And the whodunit nature of the novels, I think, lends itself more to the episodic nature of television movies than the grander scope of a feature film. Of course, if someone wants to make a feature film of one or more of my books, who am I to argue?

The challenge with which I’m faced now is do I approach production companies (yes, I should probably consider more than one) with a completed teleplay in hand or do I pitch the novels as potential movies with the hope they have a screenwriter in mind who can do the magic to ready the books for movies? I’m torn: on the one hand, I still enjoy the prospect of screenwriting; on the other, I’m not sure how well I’d handle converting the novels I wrote into the much trimmer screen version.

I’m open to suggestions: if you know a screenwriter who might want to take a crack at adaptation or a production company just looking for their next project, do tell.

Next week: how do we love the victim?

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PDT

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Long before I was in the novel writing game I fancied myself something of a screenwriter. In a previous post I shared an early experience more or less forcing my way onto the Columbia Tri-Star lot in Culver City, California, trying to convince Bob Heath and Danny Jacobson that I could write for their then hit NBC series, Mad About You.

It wasn't my first time.

One of my earliest spec script attempts was actually for the CBS sitcom, Murphy Brown, starring Candice Bergen as the feisty title character who anchored a Dateline NBC type show. My premise had Murphy broadcasting an episode of the fictitious FYI newsmagazine from a war zone with her frumpy co-anchor Jim Dial with the ensuing chaos of war momentarily leading them to each other's arms. Sure it had been done to great effect with Hawkeye and Hot Lips Houlihan on M*A*S*H but surely mine would be funnier if only because, well, I wanted it to be.

I'm confident my desire to write scripts has something to do with my upbringing in what would become known as Hollywood North. The television bug bit me around the time the Fox Television Network went on the air when I landed an unexpected stand-in role on Fox's premiere series, 21 Jump Street. It was a small local biz at the beginning but in no time it seemed every waiter you met had an agent and could tell you about the next big part just around the corner. It didn't take long before the lot of us graduated to scriptwriting, if not for its artistic merits alone then surely at least in part because we figured if we weren't getting hired in other people's work we could just write our own.

I worked on some local, low-budget projects, a few of which saw some limited (thank goodness) local play, so local that to the best of my searching ability I can't even find clips floating around the web (again, thank goodness). But the road to riches and celebrity must, I figured, lay in the big American projects. And some of the writing on them was so bad it seemed logical if I just wrote something of higher quality I would be in.

Turns out I wasn't alone.

It took me awhile to catch on that my methods were not the accepted norm, as an agent in Los Angeles explained to me long after the fact. By that time I'd already penned a Murphy Brown, a couple of Mad About You's, a Frasier and a West Wing, among others.

I've also dabbled in the feature film category, writing my first full-length feature a good ten years ago. It was about - wait for it - a high school teacher in his first year of teaching who takes in a runaway student in his first year of teaching. I wrote it, let's see, when did I start teaching…?

Oh, and the teacher was a wannabe film and television writer. Let me tell you, watching the movie Sideways still hits painfully close to home.

For now, those scripts sit quietly tucked away gathering digital dust in electronic drawers. Some day, when I get around to building my new and improved website on a new platform I have been assured can handle pdf documents for viewing and/or download, I'll post those scripts, if for no other reason than I wouldn't mind a few people seeing them since producers haven't been chomping at the bit. I'll probably post my masters thesis and a paper I just had published in a journal for the study of the law in education - there's gotta be insomniacs out there in need of help.

Though my focus in the past ten years has been almost exclusively in the novel genre, I still have a yearning to go back to the scriptwriting genres. Television is a young man's game and while I still consider myself a young-ish writer, television scribes in the know will tell you if you're over forty - hell, if you're over thirty - you're pretty much considered out of touch with what viewers are seeking and essentially not hirable. I have two or three series I'd love to develop - never mind just episodes of existing ones. Of course one should never give up hope but I'm not willing to hold my breath either. One of the best tickets into the television door, of course, is having already had a movie made. I've got a few of those percolating as well.

Which means, of course, I need to get a whole lot more creatively productive than I have been these past six months. It's not enough that I'm woefully behind where I'd like to be on W3.doc; I've got scripts needing to be written too.

Next week: Winston Patrick in the movies?

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PDT

Updated: Thursday, 21 March 2013 9:54 PM PDT

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There are job advertisements that call for candidates to be ‘multi-taskers'. It’s a skill, the theory goes, that is supposed to demonstrate an effectiveness working in what are typically described as ‘fast paced’ or ‘rapidly changing’ environments.

Writing is not one of those vocations – or so it seems.

But there may be a parallel to creative writing yet – or at the very least, multi-tasking is a viable excuse for why principal projects aren’t being completed.

As many different types of stories are written there are likely as many methods and approaches to writing by its creative practitioners. At every writers’ conference, authors will tell all who will listen – often they’re talking primarily to fellow scribes and those who aspire to be – about the specific methods for delving through a story. Whether thorough outlining is a precursor to the written word or a more organic process is the norm, most often I don't hear writers expressing what they do in multi-tasking terms.

And yet, I cannot help but think there might be some value to it.

Julia Cameron, guru of The Artist's Way, talks about writing three pages - longhand, no less - in order to unblock creatives who are struggling in their work. The three pages are supposed to help the artist unload and free up creative energy and space to commit to the work at hand.

I've tried it - more about that later.

What I wonder more about it is if trying to narratively multi-task can actually assist in unblocking me and help direct me back to the story I'm supposed to be working on. For the purpose of this piece, I'll define multi-tasking as essentially working on more than one story at a time.

Many are the early morning I've arisen to face the screen and find myself scattered, emotionally, creatively, whatever the case may be. I'll have that early morning hour that's my very limited productivity time slip by because I've gotten myself into a funk of writer's block and I'm no further ahead than when I arrived.

Cameron's modus operandi would have me not only use a significant portion of that time writing (did I mention longhand?) three pages of whatever happens to spill out of my head, every day, in addition to working on specific exercises designed to unblock the creative spirit (Julia Cameron's program is worthy of an entire post at a later date). I haven't entirely found those exercises to be fruitful in unleashing the creative spirit.

But I wonder if actually having two, three or several story projects on the go at one time could be a more useful tool toward unblocking the muse than simply journaling or completing 'unblocking exercises.' Certainly, the likes of journalists often have many stories on the go, particularly in smaller publications where requirements for daily publishing are interspersed with ongoing, in-depth research on longer feature pieces. At least it always keeps them writing.

To be sure it makes sense that one of the projects, in my case, W3.doc, ought to be my first priority. But those other stories that I want to write are just sitting there, as equally not getting written as my priority project and perhaps spending some attention to them might at least have me writing something productive. I have at least one other novel, a script or two and a non-fiction book that also need my attention.

My fear, of course, is that by re-directing my energies towards alternate project, I may scratch at the surface of any variety of projects and near completion on none. Thus, for now, I've been kind of avoiding working on my other projects - other than this column, of course.

Next week: I ought to be in pictures.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PDT

Updated: Wednesday, 13 March 2013 7:30 PM PDT

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A necessity of our genre is our hero needs a counterpoint to keep the story going. It is, to be sure, one of the nasty little pleasures about crime writing: getting to create characters who do the terrible things we dare not do ourselves.

Disclaimer time, lest you be inclined to report me to the police for harbouring nefarious leanings or desire to kill, maim, kidnap or any host of other things about which we crime writers write: just because we write about them does not necessarily we secretly desire to commit them.

Although there are times...

A truly good villain - and 'good' can mean a variety of things - can really make the difference between a good and a great story, whether in books or in film and television. Sure we like Bruce Willis but would Die Hard have been nearly the quintessential action flick were it not for Alan Rickman? The web is replete with top ten, top twenty and top one hundred lists of favourite bad guys, villains and anti-heroes.

For me, both as a reader and a writer, the villain in the story is one of the most interesting challenges. How many books, movies and television shows have I experienced where the potential for a really terrific story is marred by a villain who has no relateability, no redeeming qualities or is just plain uninteresting? A flat, one-dimensional villain is such a let down because a key component of any good bad guy is that I have at least some sort of empathy for him. I've read countless stories where the hero is an interesting character but the villain is so purely evil as to be cartoonish. It's difficult for me to be as invested in the outcome when there's no hook for me to that bad guy, however small.

In all of our characters we try to find something of interest and usually something about him or her that I like. People ask me all the time if Winston Patrick is really me. "No," I always reply. "He's taller." Of course a little bit of me goes into every character I create, even the ones committing a crime. To me, the most interesting bad guys are the ones about whom we actually have some fondness. Deadly Lessons' premise is that a teacher is accused of killing one of his students in order to cover up having an affair with her. Essentially, having once been a high school teacher, I figured to myself, about the worst things a teacher could do to students would be to sleep with them or hurt them physically.' Okay, what if I did both?

This is the point in the description that I reiterate not all writers aspire to those actions they have their criminals commit.

What was interesting to me, and hopefully to my readers, was making this 'villain' (and there are other villains in Deadly Lessons) as sympathetic a character as I possibly could. This was especially challenging for me as a teacher knowing that the actions I wanted Carl, the teacher in the story, to take were absolutely anathema to how we know a teacher should act. With a lot of teacher friends I knew would be reading the book, I knew they too intutitively would find the very thought of Carl's actions reprehensible.

All the more reason I wanted him to be a character that on the surface anyway, people would like. And it couldn't be superficial either: for this story it wasn't interesting to me to have a psychopath who could act the part of nice teacher but was simply covering for his ulterior motives. I felt some satisfaction when some readers told me they didn't like what happened with Carl in the story because they quite liked him and felt sympathy - or at least not outright hatred - for his character. That's fun.

In fact, the actions of one of the other villains in Deadly Lessons were so morally complex (that's the nice way I like to frame it in my memory) that my publisher, upon acceptance of the manuscript, required that I go back and spend signifcant time trying to find a way to make the character's actions understandable, if far from acceptable.

Similarly, in Last Dance it was enjoyable to play around with a reprehensible act - ostensibly a hate crime, committed against a student because he was gay - by a character or characters hopefully readers find sympathetic (notice how I'm trying to not give away too much of the story - one of the purposes of the blog after all, is to drive readers to buy my books!).

This is a significant problem I've been experiencing with W3.doc. I have a very good idea of where the story will end up, whodunnit, so to speak, and even why. My challenge is so far I'm not all that fond of my bad guy(s). It's the ethical dilemmas, the moral ambiguity in villains that I often find so fascinating. If they're just cut and dried evil, well, where's the fun in that?

Thus this week I've been doing a lot of thinking about how my key bad guy got to where he is and I'm hoping I can grow to like him more than I currently do. I'm hopeful the more I like him the more my readers will too.

Yippee-ki-yay.

Next week: multi-tasking and the procrasatinating writer.

Sidebar: Who's your favourite bad guy? Leave your comments.

Sidebar 2: Last week I reported a bit of a bigger breakthrough in W3.doc output. Okay, it wasn't totally sustained. But I'm not letting myself get down. This week promises to be better. At least that's what I'll tell myself to get myself out of bed at the crack of dawn to steer W3.doc back on track.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 6 March 2013 5:26 PM PST

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I once read an interview that sticks with me to this day. If I were better at this blogging business, I would insert a link to this interview now so as to lend credibility to the fact it actually exists. But I can’t find it. This likely just means I’m not writing precise enough search parameters but I guess I can’t rule out the possibility I imagined it; fiction is, after all, a game of imagination.

That said, I’m pretty sure it happened.

The interview was with the late Nora Ephron and the piece I remember had her recalling a conversation she had had with the still very much with us Steve Martin. The gist of the interview, or at least the portion of it I recall, is that Steve (I feel like I can just call him Steve) once gave Ms. Ephron (I don’t feel I knew her as well) the advice that every character in every story ought to be interesting. Even if he’s the waiter taking the order and we never see him again the writer ought to endeavour to make that character interesting enough the writer would want to meet him.

I’m either paraphrasing or completely imagining this.

My point - and I do have one - is that in addition to our protagonists and our sidekicks, who I talked about last week we writers have the burden of having to use an assortment of lesser characters to further our plots and develop our characters.

But in addition to our good guys and our bad guys, we need any number of other people to help tell the story and they can provide unique challenges.

Certainly we have recurring characters beyond just our sidekicks. In both Deadly Lessons and Last Dance I created characters like Sandi, Winston's ex-wife and Teri, the sarcastic but occasionally sage-like server at Winston's favourite Italian eatery (I was queried by a book club why a number of my female characters' names end with 'e' sounds - something that was coincidental or at least not conscious on my part). And while I arrived at them rather organically - I didn't deliberately determine I needed to have an ex-wife and a waitress/confidante - they principally serve to develop depth to Winston's life rather than driving the crime elements of the story. Admittedly I essentially killed off Teri in Last Dance when I closed her restaurant, an homage paid to an actual favourite restaurant of ours, Chianti.

But into every life come plenty of people. Winston Patrick is a high school teacher. If we don't at least occasionally encounter some of his students then why place him there in the first place? At the same time, schools are full of kids - and that's a whole lot of people for whom to create interesting character traits. Sometimes, they serve little purpose but to reinforce and create mood in the setting - and hopefully a little credibility.

But Martin's words of wisdom stick in my craw, especially because I don't think he said them with an arrow through his head. I really don't want anyone who gets introduced on the page to be just a blur of a person about whom we wouldn't be at all interested. I find that can be challenging when I only need a character for a very limited purpose. He or she may simply need to provide a snippet of information. He or she may be needed to break up a routine occurring in a scene. It can be tough to find the balance between not having a completely bland character indistinguishable from any other and exerting a whole lot of energy and page space developing a character not likely to be with us for long.

Setting my books in a school - and thus far the crimes or mysteries in all three involve the lives of students - is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, there's a rich vein of story potential to mine with so many characters and their lives. I confess to occasionally feeling guilty, working in a school and with students as a day job, hearing their stories with one ear attuned to the potential story developing inside my head.

On the other, students as characters necessarily have limited shelf lives because they naturally graduate and move on to other things. To play them realistically, they need to be, well, lacking a certain amount of sophistication. Thirty year-old high school students may have worked for 90210 but they have the potential to seriously jeopardize credibility of the setting. And certainly I've met and worked with sophisticated and smart teenagers but they're generally not the majority so one can only expect so much complexity from them.

Furthermore, there's a danger in investing too much in wide character development of my teenaged characters - at least as a whole - when I'm not targeting my books towards an adolescent audience. Readers who aren't teachers or don't have kids of their own may have a limited interest in following their exploits. It's one of the failures of nearly every school-based television series: make them too smart and no one finds them believable, make them too real and no one wants to watch.

There were other bit players that surfaced in the first Winston Patrick adventures. In Deadly Lessons, Derek Cuffling is Sandi's brother and an actual competent lawyer Winston rather admires. I benched him in Last Dance but I'm planning for him to return in W3.doc in a meatier role than he was originally created for. Winston's church pastor, who was alluded to in Deadly Lessons and had a small role in Last Dance is a character I'd like to dig deeper into but I have yet to find enough of interest in him to know what to do with him.

Still, there's something to be said for Martin's maxim. Find something interesting about each of your bit players and they may be worthy of a reappearance down the road, either for another cameo or as a further fleshed out character. I know from plenty of improvisational experience how much the audience appreciates re-incorporation of an idea later on - as long as the character or idea being reincorporated is worthy of making a comeback.

Next week - how do you love a bad guy?

Sidebar: bonus marks to anyone who can find a link to the interview I referenced with Nora Ephron above.

Other sidebar: for those of you still interested, I mentioned a bit of a breakthrough last week in that I finally wrote some new content. Typically, these past few months have been a struggle of a sentence here, a sentence there. This week, I've risen early and am having writing sessions in the hundreds of words at a tiime. Progress, to be sure, that I hope will continue.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PST

Updated: Thursday, 28 February 2013 8:40 AM PST

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In my genre in particular - not that I want to forever limit myself to the crime genre - more about that in another post - our heros tend to fall into one of two categories: the lone wolf solving the world's problems without consistant recurring secondary characters, roaming the country or the world like a heavily armed Littlest Hobo. The other is more of a dynamic duo approach, a principal crime fighter/detective/mystery solver with a partner, sidekick or at least recurring buddy that helps get the job done.

At times, the sidekick simply serves as a foil for the hero's idiosyncracies or a regular character against who he or she can bounce ideas. Other times, the sidekick has a critical role not only to the narrative but to the development of the character of the protagonist. He or she - and still it seems most often to be a 'he' - comes in a variety of forms.

In one corner, is the sidekick as comic relief, or at least a release in the story's inherent tension. Sometimes he is the affable but clumsy wannabe, who seeks to emulate the protagonist and is prevented from doing so by his own inabilities. Other times he provides the ethical clarity - or at least sounds the cautionary horn to the hero whose passion for solving the crime is pushing him into morally ambiguous territory. By the end of the story, we often learn along with the sidekick that despite his cautions, the hero's virtue was never really in question but juxtaposed against the sidekick's concerns we see the value in the unorthodox approach he has taken. The sidekick, in essence, is the voice that tests reason for the hero, and often does so while making us smile. This is often the sidekick relationship we see in television crime shows, for example, often, one suspects because it's easiest for the writer, forced to tell the story in just forty-seven minutes, to portray the differences in the characters juxtaposed so clearly against one another.

Sometmes, the sidekick forms a significant part of the brains of the operation. The sidekick often provides the technical support for the protagonist, possessing those skills the hero not only lacks but does almost as a badge of honour. Again in television, these so often appear as the computer geek, the scientist or other high keeper of high tech wizardry. They also seem designed to break the heavy tone of the story for a few moments with lighthearted banter or clumsy social awkwardness. In television, lest the viewers can't figure out we're supposed to experience comic relief, these characters are usually accompanied by plinky-plunky, cartoon-esque music so the viewer is hammered over the head with the 'lighten-up' moments in the narrative.

The other corner often has the sidekick as the muscle, the brawn to the protagonist's brain. To be sure, the hard-boiled detective is not immune from the action and violence of the story but the sidekick is the character who is often more prone to violence, sometimes even to wanton violence, and less likely, on the surface to be troubled by it. Robert B. Parker's Hawk comes to mind and certainly was influential to my understanding and appreciation of the genre. The reader, it seems, is supposed to admire the sheer unflinching courage and ability of this sidekick, while at the same time remaining most loyal and drawn to the hero. Ask Parker and he likely would have told you he would rather the reader aspire to be Spenser than Hawk.

The sidekick's bravado and physical prowess can often be shrouded in mystery not even the protagonist understands or knows of. Robert Crais developed this sidekick to great effect. His Elvis Cole detective hero is aided by Joe Pike, the mirrored sunglass wearing mercenary, always ready with firepower and military experience, unquestioningly coming to Elvis' aide in his pursuit of the bad guy. So effective has this secondary character been that Crais has now written books with Pike as the protagonist in his own right and Elvis making crossover appearances, in effect reversing roles and becoming Pike's sidekick.

In Deadly Lessons, Last Dance and W3.doc (still working on the title), Winston's sidekick is Detective Andrea Pearson, a Vancouver Police Department homicide cop Winston has known since childhood. I try to portray Andrea as the best of both major sidekick types. Certainly she provides the brawn for Winston; friends since chidlhood, she is fiercely protective of him the way a big sister might be, particularly as Winston, a high school teacher, is the reluctant amateur sleuth not known for his physical toughness. Sometimes too she is the brains of the operation, as Winston bumbles his way through the crime in question, Andrea helps to provide the detecting skill.

Ultimately, I'd like to develop the character further, perhaps even writing a book from her point of view as I expand my knowledge of who she is and get readers to want more of her. For now, it's a careful balance: the stronger and more prevalent I try to make her, the more potential she has to detract from the central character, who really was the nexus around which the stories developed. Even in Last Dance, my editor and I did occasional battle over the direction in which I was taking her character development. I like to think he was concerned because he sees a bright future for her too.

Feel like sharing? Who are your favourite sidekicks and why?

Next week: ex-wives and other recurring characters. How much do you use them and when do they wear out their welcome?

Sidebar: One of the principal purposes for writing this blog about writing was to get me writing again. After ten weeks, a minor breakthrough: while I had been re-reading and reviewing the work in progress, finally, this past weekend, I began writing new content in W3.doc. Baby steps to be sure but I'm hopeful this is an indicator that if I'm not over the writer's block wall I might at least have begun scaling it.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PST

Updated: Thursday, 21 February 2013 8:39 AM PST

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