Why Are Great Writers Great?

Because They're Great

Walter Mosley is a great writer. He has sold over three million books and won many distinguished awards. His crime fiction is tight and provocative, layered with institutional racism, corruption, and morality. Characters live and breath on those pages. They struggle to right wrongs and pay the rent. Characters like Easy Rawlins, Mouse, Fearless Jones, and more recently Joe King Oliver have codes of justice that clash with the law, but always remain on a course guided by the rudder of truth.

We meet Socrates Fortlow in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned. He’s an ex-con trying to live, committed to find finding redemption by improving his Watts neighborhood. He’s direct. Honest. Loyal. Fearsome. Disciplined. He learns to love his friends, and ultimately learns the pain of letting go.

Spoilers follow.

Socrates befriends Right Burk, a veteran dying from cancer. Socrates and friends take Right out for one last night on the town. They eat, drink, and flirt with a waitress. The night comes to an end. Socrates and Right sit on a bus bench, predawn. Facing immediate death, Right is ready to go. To preserve his dignity, he wants to die alone.

Right begs Socrates to go, to leave and to let him die. Socrates refuses. He’s not ready to let him go. Glancing over Right’s shoulder, Socrates notices a traffic light change from red to green. He leaves Right, granting his friend’s final request.

I love that scene. It’s brilliant. The bus bench symbolizing the beginning of the next journey. Dawn is an ending, and the sun is about to rise. They’re alone, it’s intimate. And of course, there’s the green light. Socrates can go.

My Favorite Easy Rawlins Novel

Years ago, I met Walter Mosley at a book signing at Eso Won Books in Leimert Park. I could not wait to meet Mosley and discuss this scene. Alas, I arrived late. The event had ended. Mosley was still there. He graciously took the time to chat about Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned. He asked if I had seen the move, and we discussed the casting choices. But really, all I wanted to discuss was Right and Socrates at the bus bench.

I recited the details of Right’s last night out on the town. And that bus bench. Socrates not wanting to let his friend go. And the traffic signal turning green. I asked Mosley how he wrote it. What inspired him? Did he sit at a bus bench early one morning and see a traffic light turned green?

Mosley paused for a moment. Then shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.

I don’t know.

That’s genius. That’s great writing. That scene is beautiful and potent because it’s beautiful and potent. No book on the craft of writing fiction can teach anyone how to write like that. No weekend author retreat can explain it. It’s art.

I’m not a genius. I’m not a great writer. In the years that passed since my conversation with Mosley, I have tried to divine some lesson from that scene and my brief chat with Mosley. I realized I had to learn from the result, not the process.

Here’s what I have learned. Character matters more than plot. A character’s honesty and truth matter more than my “shoulds.”

Socrates leaving Right behind could feel like an abandonment. Oh my goodness! He’s leaving a poor old man to die alone on a bus bench! He should not do that! But, Mosley knew Socrates had to leave Right behind. It was honest. It was poignant. It was the only thing Mosley and Socrates could do.

I’m 82,000 words into my current WIP. Story elements emerge as I write. I’m pleased to say I do not know how many of these elements have happened.

Thank you, Mr. Mosley.