This is a great interview, with a highly receptive audience, like you’d expect from the World’s Mystery Conference. They hung on every word. I shot this video. It’s not perfect, but, as far as I know, it’s the only record of the event.
Dutch went through his litany. How he wrote on an unlined yellow-pad in long hand. He talked about his dialogue-driven scenes, his devotion to point-of-view, where even an alligator has one in Maximum Bob as he smells his little dog prey. He descibed the influence of Hemingway, Bissell, and Higgins on his work. He explained how names unlock characters, how walk-ons can hijack the plot, and how my field research grounded the books. He skewered Hollywood—and declared that he swore off of writing screenplays in the early Nineties. Finally, he lectured about his explicit rules for clean prose and rhythmic dialogue. In just sixty minutes he gave a master class on process, craft, character, research, and adaptation.
That evening, at the Awards Banquet, as Guest of Honor, Duch gave a speech where he recited the Ten Rules for the first time. That video is coming soon.
