A Writer’s Inspiration – subtitle – John Lescroart Rocks

At some point in every writer’s career, they’re asked from whom they drew their inspiration, their writing style. I’ve seen many hum and haw for an answer. Mine’s a snap. John Lescroart rocks my literary world.

Ever since John hit the bookstores, I’ve been right there snapping up every book he cranked out. I’ve lost count of how many he’s written, and who cares? It all comes down to the fact that I’m a loyal fan.

When I began my own writing career I thought about what elements go into making a fan. It’s impossible to answer because reader tastes and criteria are too vast to put it into a nice package with a pretty bow.

For me, however, it’s all about the story and characters. I love lawyer books; Grisham, Tanenbaum, Martini, etc. After reading a bucket load of these books, the stories can sometimes run into each other. Their only saving grace is their character development, and Lescroart takes this to a higher art form. It’s a given that his plots are intriguing and sophisticated, but it’s his characters that keep the story alive. It’s what keep his books fresh, too.

I’ve seen many authors whose series begin to flatten out, as if they’ve tired of the game and their characters. Lescroart allows his main characters Dismas and Abe to mature, to grow, to evolve. This is a very shrewd move because the reader remembers those two characters long after they’ve finished the book. If you’ve read as many of John’s books as I have, you tend to even forget the plot. But it’s his characters that keep you coming back for more. Of course I care about the story, but I also care about whether Dismas will ever spend a little more time working on his marriage and making sure The Beck grows up to be unafraid about life. This is what stays with me long after I’ve finished one of John’s books. And this equals the loyal fan.

Even though we write in completely different genres, I’d analyzed what made me love John’s books and mapped out my own characters to have that same sort of appeal along with an intriguing plot. We oftentimes don’t know whether we’ve hit or missed with our intentions. But a while back I was having a discussion with our distributor and their lead sales rep who had just finished reading my book. Here’s how it went down:

Rep: I read your book. Twice.

Me: Wow, pretty impressive considering it’s over 400 pages

Rep: I know. A 400 page book is usually enough to make me cross eyed, but this read extremely fast. It’s because of how you weave your plot with your character development. You have great dialog and your characters are so three dimensional that they come to life.

Me (extremely flattered): I’m blushing here. Please don’t let me stop you from further gushing.

Rep: Your dialog is a huge asset and is very reminiscent to John Lescroart.

Me (fainting): You – you’ve just compared me to John Lescroart? Excuse me while I die a happy and fulfilled woman.

It just doesn’t get better than that. Well, okay, perhaps if I sold as well as he does. John, wherever you are, just know that we dialogers have to stick together.