Beau L’Amour interview with David Alan Binder
Beau is Louis L’Amour’s son.
It's probably important to start with a description of my career because it's very different from that of a lot of people in the writing business. I've been a writer, editor, ghost writer, screenwriter, TV producer, done marketing, art direction, and run a fiction magazine (Louis L'Amour Western Magazine)... a good deal of it as part of managing the estate of my late father, Louis L'Amour. So, I've had a little bit of experience in many different areas, or a lot of general experience in the field of entertainment, but I'm not any sort of accredited expert in any of them. I have a degree in Film from California Institute of the Arts and I started working part time in both Film and Publishing in the mid 1980s. If someone wants to know more about what I do you can take a look at -- http://beaulamour.com/ -- https://louislamour.com/ -- https://www.louislamourslosttreasures.com/ -- http://www.lawofthedesertborn.com/ -- http://www.thediamondofjeruaudio.com/ -- http://www.sonofawantedman.com/ --.
1. What is the most important thing that you have learned in your writing experience, so far?
Try to trust that the story will tell you what it wants to become. I outline, refer to many structural models, make lots of notes but, ultimately, I've discovered that stories often have a mind of their own. All those guidelines are useful but if you fight where the story wants to go you are a fool. You are also a fool, however, if you use that as an excuse for a lack of discipline. It's bit of a balancing act but the story rarely leads you wrong.
2. What would you say is your most interesting writing, publishing, editing or illustrating quirk?
That's not for me to say. My job is to get the job done, to serve the story, to serve my father, to serve his audience ... in that order.
Here's a comment that is potentially off the subject for some people, but it might apply for others: One of the great qualities of the writers of the Pulp and Paperback Original eras was that they were not writing "literature." They only rarely did stuff that stylistically said "look at me, look how special I am." My belief is that much of the time when you, the writer, draw attention to yourself, you risk pushing the reader out of the imaginary experience.
At its best reading is a cooperative creative endeavor. The writer leads the reader just enough to engage their imagination, and after that the reader's mind takes over. Therefore, the best writing is just hinting, suggesting, guiding ... but not dictating the total experience. A light touch, the right amount of detail, and a minimum of style, gains you the greatest engagement ... otherwise the reader is only there for the writer's way of telling a story, not the story itself. All that said, there are definitely great writers with distinctive styles, styles that were so enmeshed with the content of their writing that the two elements created a positive feedback loop. Ray Bradbury was one. Jim Thompson was another. But all too often how a story is told can overwhelm the story itself, and that's not good. A lot of my work has been duplicating the various styles my father utilized. In the middle part of his career, the late '40's through the early '70s, he wrote with a minimum of style ... and this was his best work when it came to reader engagement. Stylized writing is fun, overwriting is easy (I have to pull myself back all the time) but, regardless of how you choose to express yourself, there is a lot to be learned from the sort of writers who got got out of the way and just allowed a story to unfold.
3. Tell us your insights on self-publish or use a publisher?
My entire life (since well before my "career" started) I have dealt with the people at the Bantam Books/Random House group. I worked down the hall from the then semi-retired Ian Ballantine, one of the men who created the paperback book industry in the 1950s. I knew Oscar Dystel and Saul David, the pair of ex OSS operatives who turned Bantam Books into one of the great publishers of the 20th Century. I also knew Marc Jaffe, the editorial director who guided the company through its early heyday and Irwin Applebaum, the publisher who closed out its powerhouse years in the 1990s and early 2000s. I have a very high opinion of what a publishing company can do when it is actually focused on selling books ... though there can be issues when it becomes a mega corporation with too many agendas on its plate.
So I have had a certain sort of relationship with one particular company from the time it was a scrappy upstart until it became the largest publisher in the world ... but those experiences have been limited to the projects I've been associated with. Most particularly, I've never had to come from the outside and sell them something. They've told me "no" on plenty of occasions, but my experience is not typical of most writers ... it was more like I was one of the Bantam team rather than an outsider.
Some thoughts for writers who are just starting out, or civilians who are examining the publishing industry from a distance:
1) Don't expect too much out of publisher or editor. These are big companies that often throw a product onto the market and let it sink or swim. They publish thousands of titles. That's often all they can do.
Publishers see their customers as being bookstores, not readers. They know the readers are important, but they sell books to book stores ... stores that can return anything unsold for a 100% refund. Understanding the relationship between publishers and their true customers is imperative to understanding the books business.
Editors are only occasionally experienced and wise in the ways of publishing or the art of writing. Much of the time they are young women who have been educated at a few fancy colleges and have seen little of life outside of Manhattan. They live in a bubble and if they last long enough to gain experience they tend to be fairly brilliant and get promoted to the point where you will not get to deal with them on day to day matters. So be patient and, if you feel you need to push back, do it ... as long as you do it politely and with humility. Take responsibility for everything, especially the details of your manuscript. Editors are really "account executives" who manage the relationships of writers with the company, they should not be expected to make indepth decisions or offer sage advice on the specifics of your writing. They might provide these things, but don't expect it, or expect that their advice is automatically good. They are generally overloaded with work and few projects get more than a light once-over.
2) "Self Publishing" is a whole other thing. The typical old-school press concept, basically paying a company to print up some copies for you, is usually a waste of time as a serious, meaning money making, business ... but Kindle and possible future Kindle competitors are different . Now I've never done it, but I did know a number of the pioneers who created the model eventually used by Kindle ... in fact many of them went to work at Amazon when their publisher decided not to develop that approach. A few years ago roughly half of all the money earned by the book business is from Kindle Originals. That's excluding the e-book versions of the major publishers. Only a tiny fraction of Kindle authors sell more than a few copies, but the minority who understand the business and have the talent and drive to make it work are doing very well.
Essentially Kindle is recreating the early 1950s paperback book model. It's genre based. The writers are fast, highly productive, and know how to promote themselves ... like many from my father's era. Few paperback era writers got any publisher support. What the mainstream (hardcover) publishers didn't realize back them, and are still having problems with, is that the fiction market is price sensitive. You don't know that a novel is going to be good or not, so you're not going to pay $30 for a hardback. Publishers of physical books can only reduce their prices so much, even on the paperbacks. Traditional publishers refuse to use direct e-book sales to compete, price-wise, with physical books because to do so would hurt the bottom line of their real customers, the bookstores. They are in a bind and that bind makes it hard for a beginning author to break in. Of course the challenges can be just as great, although different, on the e-book side. You pick your poison.
4. Do you have any secret tips for writers on getting a book published?
You have to love what you are writing, or you won't write it. But you also have to write what people want to read. You can discover that by seeing what is selling well in the specific area you are interested in. I'd suggest looking at a genre and seeing what works for you, and what doesn't, but then trying to discover the subject matter that is missing, the unexploited territory.
I've been involved with a lot of work in the Western genre. To write Westerns you have to understand that the audience is very conservative, and I don't mean politically. While the core audience is hungry for more material, it really doesn't like innovation very much. At the same time you have to do something new to make a name for yourself.
So how do you do that without alienating the typical reader? In the area of movies and TV Taylor Sheridan has recognized that he can play to the traditional audience by bringing issues in the American West into the modern world. At the same time he can compare them to less traditional values, which makes sense given the genre, and make the most of both worlds. Note that he approached this subject gently, the two Sicario films (very modern with only the setting being very much about the west), Hell and High Water, Wind River ... then Yellowstone and only after years of Yellowstone, 1883.
Traditionally, the Western genre mostly exists in a world set after the Civil War but, historically, most of the interesting stuff actually happened before the war ... another area ripe for exploitation. You have to ask yourself: what is a western: Answer: a story that grows out of the friction between civilization and the wilderness. Then you have to say, "What meaningful stories can I tell based on that?" If you are not dealing with one of the fundamental questions of the genre then your story is just sort of adrift, superficially in the genre but not seriously utilizing it.
Science Fiction is another area where we've seen writers searching for new frontiers. Post WWII SF was full of possibilities, exploring new worlds and galaxies and such. There was a lot of "hard science" related to how that might be done. But after the late 1960s, scientific progress ground to a halt (for the reasons why read Where is my Flying Car by Hall) and SF moved on to post apocalyptic fiction (a new and different world because of the destruction of this one) and Cyber Punk (the near future based on the little bits of progress that were actually occurring) but these sub genres were too cynical to truly take over. SF Fantasy or Space Opera (like Star Wars) was more hopeful, but it wasn't based on anything real, just fantasy with space ships, so it didn't fare any better. Now the genre of mid future SF, exploring the moon and mars and the like is making a comeback, because we might actually be able to do those things. Think For All Mankind and The Expanse. Much of the best SF, like the Westerns (with their commentary on civilization and the wilderness) had a lot to say about the human condition. Anyway, with SF you can see how there have been a number of attempts to discover new sorts of stories. You just have to be aware of where the genre is currently going.
The point is that if you want to be successful financially you probably can't just go and create something that is utterly your own thing ... though if you do, and succeed at it, that would be wonderful. Most writers cannot expect to "just write" and suddenly be appreciated by an adoring audience. The audience won't come and find you ... and you certainly can't expect a publisher to find a new and special audience for you. That's not to be pessimistic about innovation, it's just to be realistic. Innovate within controlled circumstances. within things that publishers understand. If you see yourself as an artiste you have to accept the limitations that come with the role ... if you think of the art world remember that even something as eclectic as Cubism was a movement, not the work of just one or two mavericks.
Beyond all that the advice is typical: Butt in seat. Write every day. Power through the stuff that feels like it's not working. Keep trying.
5. Do you have any tricks or tips to help others become a better writer?
It's terribly important to have the humility to learn from your work. If you can train yourself how to listen, it will tell you what it wants to be. That doesn't mean it will be popular, or successful, but it will become what it needs to become in order to be what it is. Very woo-woo, I know!
6. Do you have any suggestions for providing twists in a good story?
I like characters, sometimes the protagonists, sometimes not, who "do it to themselves" ... whose personalities create the complications that come later, whose faults, or quirks, or insecurities, eventually get them in trouble. And not the sort of trouble you see coming right away. Many "twists" are overrated, a Hollywood trope that stands in for good storytelling. But plot or character elements that are important, and that then become more important as the plot develops, allow the audience to become more and more engaged ... not just wowed by the sort of "oh my gosh, how are they going to deal with that" sort of thing.
7. What makes your or any book stand out from the crowd?
Be really good. Duh.
Slightly off the subject but this question made me think of it: Don't sell yourself out in the critical moments ... something too many authors do. Here's a couple of examples, just something to think about, though they certainly didn't "ruin" good books.
In Michael Crighton's Timeline there is a character, a young female archeologist, who's hobby is free climbing. Eventually, one of the bad guys chases her into the rafters in the ceiling of a cathedral. It was an exciting scene but it really missed the mark character-wise. The moment the villain stepped into the rafters he should have been her punk. Without knowing it he stepped into a world that she owned, and, prior to his demise, he should have seriously regretted it. If they have a power, or develop it, let your characters completely inhabit that power. On the other hand be sure let them be the fish out of water when you need to. Most of the time they should face what they most fear.
Another novel, brilliant and intense, was Easter Day 1941. It's about a British tank crew in North Africa, cut off after a disastrous battle with the Germans, and it is one of those few wonderful meldings of writing style and content. The anti-hero, known only as "Peter," is a viscous professional soldier who is likely a terrible person yet is the man you'd want leading you if you were trapped in a survive or die situation. It is very very realistic with lots of technical detail and a fantastic, immediate, stripped down tone. One of its themes is the terrifying hierarchy of weaponry in this desert battlefield. Aircraft dominate all other weapons. With an open field of fire static artillery can kill a tank, but where maneuver is possible the tanks rule anything without armor. The German tanks are far superior to the outdated, and captured, Italian tank our protagonists find themselves in. These rules of what has the power to kill what are presented as existentially fatal ... unless you have a leader like the protagonist who is so hardened, and so feral, he knows how to stay alive even in this hellscape. But finally they are captured and disarmed ... except for a tiny pistol, a gun used as the most minimally efficient means for executing prisoners, hidden on Peter's body. There is a moment where he imagines escaping and stealing a German tank ... and then (if memory serves) the writer dumps the whole idea, abandoning this theme, settling for the realism of a down beat resolution, because he's really made a point of "realism" in this book.
Okay, maybe that's great ... but here's where I come back to the previous lesson: Let the characters inhabit their power! The whole novel has spent its time establishing Peter as the most deadly thing on this battlefield, not a plane, or a tank, or a cannon, or machine gun. He's no superhero, but he's a survivor and he never stops surviving. Even with the smallest weapon in the world he still has a fighting chance because he is a lean mean surviving machine, a total badass (also a character that might have inspired the movie Fury). Would his capturing and escaping in a German tank be "realistic?" I don't know. I do know that this author, G.F. Bordan, could have made it as realistic as possible and that would have created an incredible ending. Did he miss what the story was trying to tell him? I don't know, but if it had been my story I would have thought I'd missed the boat. I've done this occasionally. It's a bummer.
The lesson: Pay It Off. Pay Everything Off. That's why the audience came. Don't sell them short. Even as I write this I'm reminded to go back and check what I'm working on ... I can probably do better!
8. What is one unusual way in which you promote your work?
The best tool was taken away a few years ago when Facebook stopped allowing us from experimenting with all the different advertising parameters and demographics. We could cross correlate our audience and key words associated with it into other demographics and see which ones were beneficial. Interestingly, some killer demos were full of high priced products and thus we could see a lot of possibilities, yet were priced out of the ad market because our products (books) were too inexpensive. A good example of this was Harley Davidson. Not surprisingly there was a good crossover between American motorcycle manufacturers and Westerns ... but when you're trying to to compete with Harley bikes and accessories and you're trying to sell a $10 book it gets too expensive very quickly! I suspect that there are still places, Google maybe, where this sort of marketing can be done. In it's day, however, FB was quick and cheap (often free) to experiment with.