Wm. F. (Bill) Sattelmeyer

Writer

Interactive Designer

Interview

You're writing novels? Really?
Sure. Why not? It's just another form of storytelling, and that's pretty much what I've been doing all my life. Filmmaking: just telling stories. Multimedia: another way of doing the same thing.

But no pictures.
That's what makes it interesting. The pictures all have to be in the reader's mind. I get to take them half the way; they get to imagine the rest. It's far more collaborative than any films or interactive projects I've created. In some ways it's more difficult; writers have to create complex images and characters using only words.

"For the love of God, Montressor!"
Exactly. You can feel the dampness of the cellar, see the nitre clinging to the walls, feel Fortunato's madness. Don't get me wrong; film is a fantastic medium, and I've created some documentaries I'm very proud of – that are still strong decades later.

So when did you start thinking about writing, instead?
Actually, I was a writer before I was a filmmaker. I shot my first feature film when I was a senior in high school, but I wrote my first radio drama a year earlier and my first short stories years before that. In my freshman year in high school I even wrote and published my own weekly "newspaper."

It was all for fun; I didn't think of any medium as being a career when I went off to college to become an engineer. But while I was studying physics by day, I was writing short stories and hacking away at novels by night.

And that didn't tell you something?
I was enormously dense. I took a series of psych tests in college that were supposed to determine what I was most adept at. One part of the tests was to look at a picture–a lighthouse on a storm-tossed rock, for example–and then write what you see. They gave me twice the number of images as normal because they thought my stories were interesting.

Later, when I had switched to broadcasting, I wrote for the campus newspaper and adapted other writings for the stage.

Like what?
Catch-22. After Joseph Heller gave me permission, I spent a summer condensing the book into a two and a half-hour play.

The mind boggles.
Soon I was directing theater, and the next thing I knew, I was a filmmaker... first shooting news stories for a television station, then documentaries for state and federal government. And still, in my spare time, I wrote and produced my own screenplays. I was interested in a lot of things – light, motion, pacing, and all the elements of storytelling – but under it all, I suppose I was really honing my ability to write dialogue.

How is dialogue different from writing description?
Action and setting fill the senses with visuals and sounds and smells. In order to put the reader in the scene, the writer has to create it all: the rough-cut stones, sharp beneath the palm of your hand, mortar crumbling under your fingers as the thick vapors, rich with salt and rotting seaweed settles around you. Dialogue is about people, about character.

Our speech patterns are part of who we are, what make us unique. The words characters speak, the length of the sentences, how they put subjects and verbs together – even how they use or don't use contractions can tell you a lot about who that person is and how they see the world.

Tell me about the characters in your novels. How do you go about creating them?
The first thing for me is the situation. A kind of "wouldn't it be interesting if..." Then I try to think what kind of person might get themselves into that kind of a fix. And how would they react?

Give me an example.
When I first started to seriously tackle a novel, I experimented with science fiction. I've read SF as long as I can remember – all the way back to "The Spaceship Under the Apple Tree." I experimented with short stories and novellas, playing with different characters. I learned two things: one, I was more interested in the characters than the science and, two, my characters were sad, maudlin, two-dimensional artifices.

Ouch.
It was really a good thing. I got a lot of embarrassing triteness out of my system. I do feel sorry for the friends I asked to critique them, though. I finally created a character I liked, but the story didn't have a lot of depth.

And the character?
Female. A scientist. Smart but gullible. A little over-trusting, and a little too focused to realize what kind of trouble she could get into. Clear-headed, though, and able to make tough decisions quickly.

So what happened to her?
The story was part of a time-travel universe I was tinkering with, and it was intended as a writing exercise, so she didn't get the length of story she deserved. Consequently she wasn't as rich a character as I hoped she'd be. Once I'd created her she was pretty much stuck in that one short story.

It was an interesting experience, though, because I felt that I was finally creating characters that needed a bigger canvas than I was painting. That's when I figured I was ready to trying writing a real novel.

Which was what?
Like I said, the situation usually comes first. So, what was I going to write about? I didn't really have any over-the-top science fiction stories that I felt I really had to tell. So I stepped back from that genre and thought about what kind of stories I really liked to read. Who was on my bookshelf that I couldn't put down? Aside from Robert Heinlein and Jack McDevitt, there was Robert Parker and Tony Hillerman.

Ah, mysteries.
Character-based mysteries. Deep, long-term relationships. Spencer, Susan, and Hawk. Jim Chee and the legendary lieutenant Leaphorn.

And dead bodies.
Yeah. That was an interesting problem. Who was I going to kill and why? For a moment there I thought about a nun in a trunk full of ice, but fortunately that was only a moment's madness.

So, who did you decide to kill?
Everybody.

Well, that ought to be a pretty short story.
I was on a long drive with the radio off, wondering what kind of murder I could create that wasn't something that had already been done, and I realized I was going about it the wrong way. How did Spencer or Anna Pigeon or Kay Scarpetta get involved in a mystery? It had to come out of who they were and who – and what – they knew. Jim Chee wasn't going to be solving a multiple homicide on the streets of New York.

Write what you know.
Right. Really good advice. But more than a pile of facts, it has to be something that you are intimate with. Tony Hillerman clearly understands the Southwest and the Navajo culture. Here I was in Ohio. Did I really want to write about Columbus or Cleveland?

Not long before, though, I'd moved from Santa Cruz, California, after ten years. Sun, sand, sea, surf... back to cornfields, ice-storms, and endless gray skies.

Good thing you aren't writing travel brochures for Ohio.
There are plenty of worse places than Ohio, but I really, really loved living in Santa Cruz. I can see it in incredible detail. It was a wild and rich time. Sometimes it hurts to think about it. And I thought that it would be interesting to write about that sense of loss.

But, of course, as a writer, I wanted to ramp up that feeling. Really make the loss tangible, like losing a loved one. And I thought, wow, what could be worse than being dead and never being able to go back.

I guess that would be pretty terminal.
Actually, I thought there could be something worse. What if you could see it, but couldn't touch it? Couldn't feel it. Close, but forever apart. A great love lost forever. Your best girl marries someone else. Your wife divorces you. Your dog dies.

Sounds like a country western song.
Worse. You lose your job. Your home. Your fiance. Your parents. Your child dies.

Are you sure this is a murder mystery we're talking about?
But nothing has really happened to them. It's you who is dead.

A story from the point of view of the victim. Like "The Lovely Bones."
Alice Sebold's novel came out about the time I finished the first draft of "Once Dead." There are parallels: both of us have dead protagonists, both of whom are female. Mine, however, hasn't been murdered and she isn't in heaven. She's dead, but isn't really sure she's dead. No pearly gates. No flames of hell. She still feels like herself, but no one else can see her. At least no one still alive.

A ghost then? Walking through walls? Rattling chains?
No, Maggie is still just Maggie. Or the essence of what she was... her personality, her spirit, her soul if you will.

So she can't walk through walls?
No. Why should she be able to?

Because she's a ghost?
What is a ghost? How do you detect one? In the real world, I mean. How do they show up in photographs? Why don't they talk to you?

Don't they appear at the top of stairs in haunted houses?
Most ghosts – if there are such things – are more ephemeral than that. Which raises the question why different kinds of ghosts? And how is it they react with the "real world?" And if they're dead, how is it they're still wearing clothes?

Sounds as if you thought this through pretty thoroughly.
I did my research like any other writer. I looked at as much material as I could find on ghosts, from folk tales to books written by paranormal investigators. And then I extrapolated: what if ghosts were real? Could I take these stories and observations and create a plausible scenario for life after death? Suppose you weren't instantly ghostly. How would you learn the rules of the afterlife? What would it be like to become aware that you were dead, but that it wasn't anything at all like you expected?

So, what is it like?
Well, I guess you'll have to read the novels to find out.

Tantalizing.
Thanks. I'm a writer. That's my job.