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The Plot Thickeners 
Brand-Name Authors Hire Writers to Flesh Out Their Bare-Bones Stories 
      
   
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By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 24, 2002; Page C01 



Remember when only celebrities and CEOs hired novelists to write their
books? Now the novelists are hiring novelists. 

In this everyone-works-for-me era of personal trainers and personal
shoppers, personal writers make perfect sense. Especially since many writers
nowadays aren't really poets -- they are plotters. They aren't artists,
they're engineers.

Tom Clancy, for instance, oversees a vast farm of fiction writers who crank
out stories that he imagines. Check the covers of certain bestsellers and
you'll notice that though Clancy's name may be emblazoned across the tops of
the books, someone else did the writing. "Mission of Honor," part of "Tom
Clancy's Op-Center" series, was written by Jeff Rovin. "Bio-Strike," a
volume in "Tom Clancy's Power Plays" series, is by Jerome Preisler.
"Runaways," one of "Tom Clancy's Net Force" young-adult series books, was
written by Diane Duane.

Like Pepsi or the Gap, "Tom Clancy" has become a brand. He still writes his
Jack Ryan books. His next, "Red Rabbit," will be out next month. He treats
other books, however, like fast-food franchises.

Other popular and prolix writers have followed Clancy's suit and taken on
co-writers to become even more prolix. In his "Dreamland" series, Dale Brown
collaborates with Jim DeFelice. Clive Cussler has developed the "NUMA Files"
series, which he writes with Paul Kemprecos. James Patterson has hired a
couple of co-writers to work with him: Andrew Gross helped Patterson with
"2nd Chance," and Peter De Jonge worked on "Beach House."

In the marketing world such profit-seeking forays are known as brand
extensions -- like Pepsi Twist or GapKids.

In order to get away with such sleight of hand, writers need three things: a
fruitful imagination, a total lack of personal style or voice, and a
reputation as a rainmaker.

Clancy, according to his publisher, Penguin Putnam, "has established himself
as an undisputed master at blending exceptional realism and authenticity,
intricate plotting, and razor-sharp suspense."

So if Clancy can provide these elements -- and his hall-of-fame name -- and
somebody else can do the heavy lifting of linking subjects to verbs to
objects, who cares?

S. Griffin, a reader from California, doesn't. "This is the first time I
have read a Tom Clancy book," Griffin writes on Amazon.com about "Breaking
Point," a volume in the "Net Force" series. "I was interested because of the
computer angle. I really enjoyed this! Lots of characters and sub-stories,
although most of the characters are not delved into very deeply. That was
O.K. with me because I was looking for action, not emotions. This book has
lots of action!"

Griffin is raving about a Tom Clancy book that Clancy didn't even write.
Steve Perry wrote it.

Receiving help on a fiction project seems to be a particularly modern
phenomenon. It's hard to imagine Leo Tolstoy writing "War" and someone else
writing "Peace." Most great writers don't even get along with themselves.

Why then are there so many collaborations today? Publishers believe that
reader appetite for certain list-topping writers is insatiable. "A sideline
series is an opportunity to give readers more stories in the style of their
favorite authors -- which are written and produced under their guidance,"
says Adam Rothberg of Simon & Schuster, Cussler's former publisher.

One best-selling writer who wishes to remain anonymous isn't so generous.
"It's like buying celebrity clothing at Kmart," the writer says. "Still, if
people want to buy co-authored stories, they presumably know what they're
getting into."

Not always. Though Lawrence Sanders died in 1998, his publishing company,
Putnam, continues to issue books under his name. For a while, Putnam
neglected to make it clear to readers that someone else was writing the
thrillers. These days Vincent Lardo gets a small byline at the bottom of the
cover. Lardo's "McNally's Alibi" came out this month. The name Lawrence
Sanders is still plastered in big type across the cover.

V.C. Andrews died in 1986. Pocket Books keeps publishing books -- written by
Andrew Neiderman -- under her name. As further proof that publishers know
exactly what they're doing, Neiderman has also written books under his own
name. Never heard of him, have you?

Now it's Robert Ludlum's turn to enjoy a literary life beyond all mortality.
The popular mystery writer died in March 2001. In his last years he
collaborated on several books. One of his co-writers, Gayle Lynds, explains
the process. "What Bob did," she says, "is come up with the general idea, a
fascinating main character and a story arc. My job was to fill in the gaps."

In other words, to write the damn thing.

Lynds says she wanted to work together using e-mail, but "Bob didn't type.
He was a real mastodon."

She adds: "We had to do everything by hard copy. It worked really fine."

When Ludlum died, his publisher, St. Martin's Press, announced that he had
left behind several outlines that could be fashioned into novels. Those will
eventually be published as Robert Ludlum novels -- written, of course, by
others.

Lynds says she plans to write one of them. "This is an icon for me," she
says of Ludlum, "someone who had a huge impact on my work. It is a great
honor."


© 2002 The Washington Post Company