When Michael Palmer, M.D., first thought about writing a medical thriller, his sister had a dissenting view. "You're dull," she said.
"One of my younger (I have two of them) sisters' missions has always been to keep me right-sized," Palmer explains. "That hasn't always been easy. When my first book (The Sisterhood) made the New York Times list, one of them had 500 business cards made up for me with my name on them and underneath: MINOR LITERARY FIGURE."Well, this "figure" has only gone on to write a dozen New York Times bestsellers. But he had a lot to learn to get there.
"I have always been many things," says Palmer. "Scattered, distracted, imaginative, goofy, intense, withdrawn, expansive, caring, disciplined, forgetful, adventurous, technophobic, funny, frustrating, and predictably unpredictable.....but never dull. What I have done since that first year is, I have grown as a writer. Except for some English and literature courses at Wesleyan, I never had any formal training in writing--especially creative writing. My agent Jane Rotrosen actually took less money for my first book so that I could work with the legendary editor (now, the late) Linda Gray at Bantam. She line-edited my first four or five drafts of The Sisterhood, and taught me editorial adjectives such as 'mawkish' and its nasty little cousin, 'purple.' She taught me how to use rewrites to choose better words and how to carefully avoid (split infinitive intentional) those passages that I think say to the reader, 'Hey, look what a great writer I am. . . . How inventive and clever.' Samuel Johnson is quoted as saying that the secret to good literary style is to take those words and sentences and paragraphs you are particularly fond of, and get rid of them immediately. Linda and my subsequent editor Beverly Lewis never stopped teaching me that."
Writing high concept thrillers is a challenge, Palmer notes, because great ideas are not easy to come by. So he has consciously developed other aspects of his writing craft.
"I feel like I may never come up with an idea for a book as strong as that for The Sisterhood, so the trick for me has been to write a better richer book about an idea that may not be as strong. I am always looking for medical ethical issues to write fiction about. My newer books have more and stronger subplots, and a number of them have multiple story threads and protagonists. Examples are Fatal and The Fifth Vial, each of which has three main characters and three intertwining plot lines. I also feel as if my writing is getting more clean-edged and less intrusive. Also, I am not afraid to accept evil for the sake of evil, and not merely as a manifestation of overzealous commitment to a cause or ideal. One other change is that I no longer feel I have to explain everything to the reader . Even though it annoys some people to not know whether Jessie and Alex end up together in The Patient, or Natalie and Ben in The Fifth Vial, I'm more happy than I once was to 'encourage' readers to figure those things out for themselves."
On his website, www.michaelpalmerbooks.com, Palmer generously shares writing tips for budding novelists. One of these is the Hitchcockian notion of "The McGuffin."
"The concept of the McGuffin is a fun one to learn about and master. In truth I believe that the next thing a thriller writer needs after a strong 'What if?' and before a 'Whose book is it and why?' is a McGuffin. It is essentially the answer to the 'What if?' and can be changed if a better McGuffin crops up. However, if your What if? is 'What if the president of the United States disappears while giving a speech in front of 100,000 people and a worldwide TV audience of millions?' then you as a writer had better have a damn good explanation as to how that happened. THAT'S YOUR MCGUFFIN. No decent McGuffin, no book. Aliens beamed him up? Well, okay, if that's the best you can do, let's go with it."
I asked Palmer about his typical writing day.
"I start at 5:15 a.m. by flossing (always floss, everyone), then meditating (20 minutes), then spending 45 minutes getting my kid (17) up, breakfasted, lunched and off to the bus for school. Then I clean the kitchen, make coffee, read the paper (15 minutes, mostly the sports), and finally take my second cup of joe up to my study where, by 8:30 I have answered a few e-mails and started writing. The more I know what I am doing, the more time I can spend doing it. Five to six pages a day is my goal. After 5 hours I often begin to get loopy. Then I begin taking breaks and answering more e-mails. By mid afternoon I am asleep in my desk chair, hoping the phone will ring and wake me up."
And anyone wanting to stay awake has only to start reading a Michael Palmer thriller like his latest, The First Patient.
James Scott Bell is the author of Try Dying and Try Darkness (Hachette/Center Street).
"I feel like I may never come up with an idea for a book as strong as that for The Sisterhood, so the trick for me has been to write a better richer book about an idea that may not be as strong. I am always looking for medical ethical issues to write fiction about. My newer books have more and stronger subplots, and a number of them have multiple story threads and protagonists. Examples are Fatal and The Fifth Vial, each of which has three main characters and three intertwining plot lines. I also feel as if my writing is getting more clean-edged and less intrusive. Also, I am not afraid to accept evil for the sake of evil, and not merely as a manifestation of overzealous commitment to a cause or ideal. One other change is that I no longer feel I have to explain everything to the reader . Even though it annoys some people to not know whether Jessie and Alex end up together in The Patient, or Natalie and Ben in The Fifth Vial, I'm more happy than I once was to 'encourage' readers to figure those things out for themselves."
On his website, www.michaelpalmerbooks.com, Palmer generously shares writing tips for budding novelists. One of these is the Hitchcockian notion of "The McGuffin."
"The concept of the McGuffin is a fun one to learn about and master. In truth I believe that the next thing a thriller writer needs after a strong 'What if?' and before a 'Whose book is it and why?' is a McGuffin. It is essentially the answer to the 'What if?' and can be changed if a better McGuffin crops up. However, if your What if? is 'What if the president of the United States disappears while giving a speech in front of 100,000 people and a worldwide TV audience of millions?' then you as a writer had better have a damn good explanation as to how that happened. THAT'S YOUR MCGUFFIN. No decent McGuffin, no book. Aliens beamed him up? Well, okay, if that's the best you can do, let's go with it."I asked Palmer about his typical writing day.
"I start at 5:15 a.m. by flossing (always floss, everyone), then meditating (20 minutes), then spending 45 minutes getting my kid (17) up, breakfasted, lunched and off to the bus for school. Then I clean the kitchen, make coffee, read the paper (15 minutes, mostly the sports), and finally take my second cup of joe up to my study where, by 8:30 I have answered a few e-mails and started writing. The more I know what I am doing, the more time I can spend doing it. Five to six pages a day is my goal. After 5 hours I often begin to get loopy. Then I begin taking breaks and answering more e-mails. By mid afternoon I am asleep in my desk chair, hoping the phone will ring and wake me up."
And anyone wanting to stay awake has only to start reading a Michael Palmer thriller like his latest, The First Patient.
James Scott Bell is the author of Try Dying and Try Darkness (Hachette/Center Street).
