Vital Crime Fiction: All the Way Down by Eric Beetner
Thrilled and honored to have a chat with Eric Beetner, the hardest working writer I know. He’s into double digits with the number of books he’s written, he’s co-creator with SW Lauden on the best crime fiction-focused podcast on the planet (Writer Types), and he kicks ass as one of the main emcees and organizers for Noir at the Bar-Los Angeles. Plus, he’s a family man and slices and dices film/tv for his day job. Beetner has long been one of the lynchpins in the crime writing community (matter of fact, he invited me for my first ever Noir at the Bar reading) and I wanted to ask him how in the hell he gets so much energy. His output as a creative is phenomenal, but the thing is this: He writes and creates GREAT shit. He’s DIY, but he’s DIY with class and style. Beetner has a new novel out called All the Way Down (from Down & Out Books) and that means it’s a great time to bend his ear for a bit. So here it is, folks: The Beetner lowdown on plot and pacing, making it happen as a storyteller, and turning a kid’s passion into a grown man’s expertise.
Eric Beetner has been described as “the James Brown of crime fiction — the hardest working man in noir.” (Crime Fiction Lover) and “The 21st Century’s answer to Jim Thompson” (LitReactor). He has written more than twenty novels and his award-winning short stories have appeared in over three dozen anthologies. He co-hosts the podcast Writer Types and the Noir at the Bar reading series in Los Angeles where he lives and works as a television editor.
Your books — I’m thinking most specifically here of Rumrunners and All the Way Down — are so well-paced. They’re action-packed, but the action always drives the story. It seems to me that your sense for pacing isn’t just rare, but rather expert. How have you developed that craftsmanship over the years? Is it natural, or have you constantly worked to refine pacing as one of your core craft tools?
Thank you for saying so. Pacing is key to me and it’s something I deal with daily on my day job as a TV editor. My whole brain is wired toward pace and rhythm. In cutting unscripted material, which is most of what I do, I’m creating the pace entirely in the edit. There’s little natural rhythm since it’s not dialogue and actors who drive much of that stuff. So my whole day is structure, pace and keeping things tight to fit within a run time that is inflexible. So when I get home and get around to writing at night I’m already thinking of trimming all the fat I can and building to moments like act breaks in a TV show.
I grew up a film nerd much more than a book nerd. And screenplays, which I wrote for years, are so dictated by pace and structure (sometimes to an absurd degree that it sucks some of the life and surprises out of them).
So if there is an expertise to my pacing it’s drilled into me in that “10,000 hours to become an expert” way. I’ve logged way more hours than that in an edit bay.
You are so ingrained in the crime fiction community with Writer Types, Noir at the Bar-LA, and all the work you’re doing as a writer. Much has been made of your prolific output, but I’m wondering about your younger years. Were you always a big consumer and producer of stories and media? What kinds of stories led you to your work as a storyteller? I’m wondering — when you look back at your youth — whether there are some points on the roadmap to now that you can reveal for your readers?
I grew up with a single dad who worked so I was what we called back then a “latchkey” kid. I spent quite a bit of time alone or in front of a TV. So, yes, I consumed an inordinate amount of TV and film from a young age. One good thing is that I was omnivorous in my consumption. I watched normal stuff like The Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island, but I also watched silent comedies like Buster Keaton or Laurel & Hardy which we had on Super 8 film. When I started getting really interested in the artistry of film I watched everything I could get my hands on. I equally loved slasher horror films and subtitled foreign films. I’d go see the latest John Carpenter film in the theater and then seek out Bergman and Fellini at my job working in a video store.
I loved finding filmmakers who worked across different genres. I admired someone who could tell different types of stories. In the end, I think one of the things that inspired me, oddly enough, were some of the bad things I saw. Bad movies that would still entertain me, or at least reach my radar, were inspiring because I knew I could do, even if not better, at least that good. To know it wasn’t all so unattainable that only geniuses from on high could do it was freeing.
It’s weird because you don’t get that so much with books. A “bad” book is so subjective. But a movie can be more objectively poor technical quality, and yet so many of those films still entertained me, especially in genre films. It was a great lesson in storytelling that if you had a good story you told with gusto, you can get past the glossy exterior of it all and plug directly into someone’s brain, in a way. That I do think applies to books. We don’t all have to sling prose like Cormac McCarthy to be entertaining to a reader. Sometimes the most direct, visceral needle to the heart is what gets the adrenaline pumping.
And as I grew up with so much free time I started to learn how to entertain myself. I’ve never been a drinker or partier. I channeled that suburban boredom into learning to play guitar and writing stories and making videos and painting and trying anything I could to get my creativity out, whether I was good at it or not. So the relative ease with which I can work now is the result of years of practice by doing.
Speaking of output, can you give us some Eric Beetner rules for creativity? How do you integrate and balance your community commitments, family life, day job, and writing? I want to know how many hours a night you sleep. Seriously. How the hell do you do it?
I think the key is to be very focused when I write. I generally only have an hour or maybe 90 minutes at night with which to write. Part of it is knowing I only have a short window and wanting to be focused and ready to go when I get there so I don’t waste time. I outline, which helps, and I like to finish a thought each day so I’m not trying to pick up a thread from the night before when I start. I hit the ground running.
And I always work forward, always moving toward the end. I don’t look back or edit at all as I go. I push forward toward the end and only then do I look back at what I made.
That said, I hate editing so I try like hell to make it as finished as possible in the first draft. Not that it always works out, but I strive for that. I don’t spend weeks and weeks editing. My first drafts are always pretty tight, if I do say so. I don’t change all that much. Hard to say that without sounding like I’m bragging, but it’s just because I despise rewrites so much.
I think the commonly accepted idea that first drafts are “supposed to be shit” is a bad precedent to put into a new writer’s head. I believe first drafts should be as close to final as you can make them, that way you’re not reinventing your whole narrative during rewrites, but you are truly refining small stuff and focused on prose.
But hey, whatever works for you.
What led you to take a leadership role (yes, you’re a leader…just admit it) in the indie crime community? Have you always been one of those people who leads a ‘scene’?
It’s more that I’m not someone who waits around to get invited to the party or who asks permission. Steve Lauden, my Writer Types co-host, and I talk about this a lot in regard to our influence growing up as punk rock DIY kids. You wanted to have your band play a gig? Set up your own show. We approach the book world with the same attitude. I’ve been publishing for ten years now, but always on the fringes of the industry. But I’m sure as hell not going to sit idly by and wait for the big overlords to anoint my work with their approval. I want my work out there and I’ll create my own opportunities to make that happen wherever I can.
You hear the word hustle a lot when it comes to indie authors and it does take quite a lot of that. If you also add the fact that I’m not afraid to step in front of a microphone or go on stage, then I’ll gladly host your event or moderate your panel. I’m happy to be that guy an organizer can count on to do a good job.
It’s funny, on Twitter the other day I was remarking that my recent article in Mystery Scene Magazine made me feel like I was being invited into the clubhouse for a rare appearance. Alafair Burke tweeted back at me: “Dude, at this point, you’re basically the party host at the clubhouse.” I’ll take that mantle and run with it. The only down side is that you get too known for all the other stuff and not enough for your writing. Sometimes I feel like I need to remind people that I’m also an author.
Talk to us about All the Way Down. What tradition is this novel working within and why did you choose to write a story of this nature?
It’s definitely a thriller. Very “cinematic,” I’ll admit. I like all my books to drive forward always and, with this one, once I had the structure of this fortress-like office tower for the characters to navigate I knew it would be fun to play with that…both to come up with crazy things for characters to encounter and also to work within the restrictions on the story. Often times setting yourself some barriers makes you really think beyond what you might normally come up with. Trapping characters in a tight space limits what you can do so it forces you to be creative.
Then when I wrote the chapters outside the building I got to do what I really love in a good book which is to show a scenario from all angles. We not only see what’s going on inside the tower, but also the ramifications of that all across the cast of characters who are affected by it.
I’m glad people are responding with all the right adjectives I had in mind: relentless, fast, propulsive, crazy. I wanted readers to never know what was next. So far, I haven’t heard from anyone that they could predict what was going to be on the next floor down as Dale and Lauren descended.
That means I did my job.
As always, it’s a pleasure to talk with you, Eric. It’s been a joy to have my hands and eyes on this book. I’m sure many others feel the same way.
Buy the book: Pick up All the Way Down on Amazon or via the Down & Out Books website. Get ready for a thrill ride…
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