Chili Palmer died the other day. So did Karen Sisco, Stick, Raylan Givens, Carl Webster, Karen DeCilia, the Zip, and so many other fictional but indelible characters from the pen of Elmore Leonard. We’ll never again have that little thrill of finding out he’d published a new book, wondering who we were going to meet this time: an ex-nun, a daredevil diver, a U.S. marshal, a Marine who survived the explosion on the U.S.S. Maine, or any one of a raft of lowlifes and wiseguys who were often anything but wise.
His rules for writing, which were already well-known, got a lot of replay after his death. To me, what may have been his most important one was something he said in an interview with AARP a few years ago: “At the time I begin writing a novel, the last thing I want to do is follow a plot outline. I think of characters who will carry a story.”
By taking this approach, he might just have saved crime fiction from itself. For a long time, it was populated by Philip Marlowe and Mike Hammer wannabes, a bunch of hard-boiled, hard-drinking PIs who could pull a gat faster than a hot blonde could say “Sure,” and would come down on you like a brick dropped off the Empire State. I started reading this stuff years ago, poring through the boxes and boxes of paperbacks my dad had collected, especially Perry Mason and Nero Wolfe. That formula got old pretty fast, but once I started reading Leonard, I found it impossible to stop. Why? Because he gave us real people with real voices, like this Belle Glade, FL couple in “Maximum Bob.”
Dicky, looking out the kitchen window with a glass of water in his hand, said, Inez?”
“What?”
“They’s deputies in the yard with shotguns.”
“Well, you’re the talker” Inez said. “Ask what they want.”
You can see the whole thing in your mind, you get to know these folks a little better, and you want to know what happens with those shotguns. Perfect.
I could give you lots more examples, but it’d be easier and more fun for everybody if you just read (or re-read) the books. Besides, I need to wrap this up. Fuckin’ endings, man, they weren’t as easy as they looked.*
*From “Get Shorty”