Friday, July 13, 2007

5 Writing Lessons Learned from Donald Westlake

Link via Roberson's Interminable Ramble.

Old Dog, New Tricks - Smarter Freelance Writing � 5 Lessons Learned from Donald Westlake: "Donald Westlake, screenwriter of “The Grifters, author of “The Hot Rock,” “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” and many other novels, is one of my favorite thriller writers. Pick up any of his books at random, and you can learn something valuable from it, as well as be guaranteed hours of first-rate entertainment.

Under the pseudonym Richard Stark, Westlake also writes about no-nonsense thief Parker. The character has appeared, always with a different name, in a handful of movies, some of them good (”Point Blank”) and some of them not (”Slayground”). There are currently 23 Parker novels, and many of them epitomize what their author does best. They’re fast, lean, gripping and darkly, darkly funny.

Here are five lessons I’ve learned from Westlake/Stark."

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Westlake is a freakin' genius.

Unknown said...

One of the greats. I love those Richard Stark books.

Randy Johnson said...

I'm a big fan of the Parker novels also. Haven't read them all yet(used copies of the middle books are pricey), but I'm working on them one at a time.

Unknown said...

We old guys were around to pick them up when they appeared on the spinning racks.

Anonymous said...

I've had to scrounge around for large print copies when getting them from libraries. Hopefully the old ones will continue to be reprinted.