A Conversation With Don Bruns on Writing by Ear (Killer Writers)
Clay Stafford has a conversation with author Don Bruns on writing by ear, co-writing, re-writing, and more.
Don Bruns has been a friend of mine for more than 20 years: a storyteller, a musician, and one of the most generous creative spirits you’ll ever meet. Before crime fiction came calling, Don wrote and performed music, ran his own advertising agency, and mastered the rhythm of persuasion and performance. That same sense of timing, melody, and audience awareness runs through every page he writes. He’s the author or editor of more than 20 novels and short story collections, including the Caribbean series (Jamaica Blue, Barbados Heat), the Stuff, and the Quentin Archer series. His career has spanned genres, tones, and even mediums, from writing and performing songs to co-writing crime novels with author Heather Graham.
What’s consistent is the sound of his voice: authentic, funny, lyrical, and alive. In this conversation, we talk about rhythm, rewriting, collaboration, and how storytelling, like music, is all about feel. Don doesn’t just write mysteries; he composes them.
“Don, you’ve lived in both worlds: music and mystery. Since you and I both have backgrounds in music and mystery, I thought it might be fun to combine the two processes. Sometimes we have a tune in our head and a song comes; sometimes we have the idea for a song and then the melody arrives. When you sit down to write, do you hear the story first, or do you see it?”
“I see it, mostly. But it depends. I have written songs since I was five years old. My parents still remind me of those silly songs. So, I always had a story in a song. When I write songs, I hear a story inside the melody that sometimes grows into a novel. I think I see a novel as a story, but I hear a song as a story, too. They overlap.”
“There’s rhythm in both, right? So how do you translate rhythm into the pacing of a scene in a crime novel?”
“You’re right about rhythm. There are chord progressions, strumming patterns, time signatures; it’s all rhythm. I feel that pulse when I’m rewriting, not so much in the first draft. The rewrite is where I start to feel the atmosphere, the character, the beat of the place. I think that comes from my advertising background. I owned an ad agency for 35 years. I had to take 4,000 pages of information and boil it down to a brochure or a 30-second commercial, and still keep the romance, the excitement, the message. I learned to write concisely and then expand again to find the rhythm within the economy of words. I start sparse. Some writers, like Jeffery Deaver, Sue Grafton, write long and then compress. I go the other way. I start tight and build.”
“So they’re writing in whole notes, and you’re writing in quarter notes?”
“That’s a great way to put it. You’ve been around long enough to know no one writes the same way. There are pantsers, there are plotters, but everyone eventually develops their own rhythm. I write short first, then expand. It’s my tempo.”
“Is there a time signature when you write? Like staccato beats for action, slower legato for emotion?”
“If I had to choose, I’d say three-quarters. I like waltz time. Three beats to the bar. Everything’s coming in threes for me.”
“Improvisation is central to jazz and blues. Do you stick to the sheet music when you write, or do you improvise as you go?”
“I improvise. Always. I loved something Charlaine Harris once said. I interviewed her at a Bouchercon in Cleveland and asked whether she knew how her stories ended. She looked at me and said, ‘When I open that door, I want to be surprised who’s on the other side.’ That’s exactly how I feel. It’s not fun if I already know what happens. I want to be surprised, too.”
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“How do you use that same sense of improvisation to create suspense?”
“In the rewrite. I’m co-writing right now with Heather Graham, and it’s fascinating because we’re working long distance. She writes her sections, then I go in and reshape. I’ll keep a lot of what she did, but rewrite until the rhythm fits. That’s where suspense comes in. It’s in the reworking, then layering. When I first started writing, I met Michael Connelly. He had maybe five books out then, The Concrete Blonde era. I asked him, ‘Explain rewrite.’ He said, ‘Whatever I wrote yesterday, I read it and rewrite it.’ That was it. So simple. I almost felt stupid asking. But that’s where it is: every day, reading the day before, fixing, smoothing. You go back and say, ‘Oh my god, I can do this, or the character could say that,’ and it starts to flow. The rewrite gives the book its pulse.”
“When you’re writing with someone like Heather Graham, you’ve each got a unique sound. How do you preserve your voice while blending with hers?”
“I’ll tell you when the book is finished. It’s been interesting. I don’t know how she feels about what I’m doing half the time. We complement each other, we criticize each other. We’ve been on the phone a few times. I’ve never collaborated like this before. It’s like playing in a new band; you’ve got to listen differently. It’s a whole new experience.”
“Do you structure your books, or do you just sit down and go?”
“I have no structure in my life, so why would I in my books?”
“Fair enough. One time when I was talking to Joyce Carol Oates, she told me a novel of hers was structured like a sonnet or some other poetic form; I can’t remember the specifics. That’s form taken to the extreme. Do you ever do that? Think of form as musical structure?”
“Not really. In fact, one of my editors once told me, ‘You didn’t write this.’ She said, ‘Be honest, did your wife write it?’ My wife, Linda, was an English teacher, brilliant woman, but she doesn’t write. The editor said, ‘This sounds totally different from you.’ And she still loved it. Sometimes I write differently. I finished a new standalone I sent to my agent. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever done. In my earlier books, the protagonist always attacked the problem. This time, I put him in jeopardy. There’s no way out; everything says he’s guilty. I had to defend him against impossible odds. It’s the opposite of my usual structure. I don’t outline. I chase ideas. They come fast, and they’re all different.”
“How does your life as a lyricist feed into your fiction? Do you consciously go for musicality in your prose?”
“I don’t think about it consciously, but I love prose that sings. People say they can’t read when they’re writing because they’ll ‘steal.’ Hell, I steal all the time. I borrow everything. I read James Lee Burke. The man writes poetry disguised as crime fiction. I want that lyricism, the phrasing that makes a reader say, ‘I can taste that, I can smell it.’ That’s what I aim for. I once had an editor tell me I couldn’t use song lyrics in a novel because of copyright. I said, ‘I wrote the damn song.’ It was in South Beach Shakedown, I think. There were maybe four or five short verses scattered through the book. He said, ‘You can’t do that.’ I said, ‘They’re mine.’ I use lyrics the same way I use dialogue. They move the story.”
“When you’re writing, do you feel a sense of timing, like a conductor shaping tempo, knowing when to speed up, when to slow down?”
“Oh, yeah. The book I’m writing with Heather had this one chapter that went 20 pages. Way too long. It turned into an explanation instead of a story. So, we rewrote it, two or three passes, until it had movement again. Writing is like composing: You’ve got to vary tempo, dynamics, tone. You can’t stay on one note too long. Every book is its own song. You never have the same rhythm twice. And if you do, you’re in trouble. That’s when you’re a one-trick pony: same melody, new names, same story. I don’t ever want to write the same book twice. I’ve got 22 published novels, and I still want each one to challenge me. I want to find new chords, new ways to tell the story.”
“When you write dialogue, do you think of it like instruments in an orchestra, each voice with its own tone?”
“Exactly. I always look for a catchphrase, something that identifies a character’s voice. I write a lot of dialogue. Early on, editors told me I needed more ’he said, she said,’ because readers might lose track. But I found that if I stylize the speech enough, three words here, five there, interruptions, rhythm, you don’t need to tag every line. A character says ‘dude’ or ‘you know’ or has a certain cadence, and the reader knows who’s talking. That’s the oboe, that’s the clarinet. You start hearing the orchestra.”
“What can emerging writers learn from studying not just great novels, but great musicians and songs?”
“That’s a tough one. I don’t know that there’s a formula. I know Michael Connelly listens to jazz while he writes. I can’t do that. Too distracting. But I think musicians and writers share the same storytelling instinct. You hear a song like Stephen Stills’ ‘Treetop Flyer,’ that’s a whole novel right there. My brother plays slide guitar. I played him that song a couple of years ago. It’s about a Vietnam pilot who comes home and starts flying marijuana across the border, skimming the treetops to avoid radar. Six weeks later, my brother sends me four chapters of a book inspired by it. It’s called Rule of Four. It’s like a Don Winslow book, only better, in my opinion. He self-published it because we couldn’t sell it, but it’s brilliant. That song became a novel. That’s how music feeds fiction. I’ve done the same thing with Jimmy Buffett. My Caribbean series—Jamaica Blue, Barbados Heat—those books live in that Buffett world. I didn’t use his lyrics, but I used the vibe, the storytelling, the island rhythm. And look, I don’t listen to Taylor Swift, but she’s a hell of a storyteller. Great ideas about love, loss, revenge, reinvention. If you’re writing about relationships, listen to her albums. Pick a song and imagine the short story behind it. To me, it’s all the same muscle. I can take four hundred pages of information and boil it down to a thirty-second commercial, or I can take a three-minute song and expand it to a four-hundred-page novel. It’s compression and expansion, rhythm and release. It’s all storytelling.”
“You’re writing by ear.”
“Exactly. I write by ear. I feel it before I see it.”
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Don Bruns is a USA Today bestselling author and musician whose career spans comedy clubs, crime scenes, and Caribbean sunsets. He’s written three acclaimed mystery series, including the Caribbean, Stuff, and Quentin Archer novels, all praised for their wit, rhythm, and heart. Once a touring guitarist, he still writes with a musician’s ear. https://donbrunsbooks.com/
