Nuts & Bolts: “Rambo” Creator David Morrell Discusses His Mentor

By Tom Joyce

Photograph of Philip Klass taken by Adina Klass, all rights reserved.

Before he could create Vietnam veteran John J. Rambo in First Blood, thriller and horror author David Morrell had to find that pesky “ferret.” That’s how his mentor Philip Klass, aka legendary science fiction author William Tenn, used to describe it.

Professor Klass, who’d taken David under his wing at Penn State University, used to say that if you’re a writer, a dominant emotion fuels your craft. No exceptions. It could be anger or joy. Sorrow or lust. Like it or not, you’re stuck with it because it’s an integral part of you. The professor compared it to a ferret rooting around in your psyche. Elusive. Ravenous. And worst of all, unwilling to be found.

But Professor Klass warned David that until he found his dominant emotion, he’d never find his voice as a writer.

“He was a true teacher in the sense that he wanted to bring out the potential in people,” David said.

When he met Professor Klass in 1968, David was pursuing a doctorate in American literature with the intent of becoming a writer, and fully aware that his attempts to be William Faulkner or Herman Melville were cringe-inducing. Then a friend pointed out a professor he should talk to.

Professor Klass was a grizzled veteran of science fiction’s Golden Age, widely admired among peers such as Fritz Leiber and Theodore Sturgeon for his slyly satirical work under the pseudonym William Tenn. In contrast to his academic colleagues, who tended to look down their noses at commercial genre fiction, he’d dispense tips on reading contracts and avoiding the slush pile, and host poker games where he’d share anecdotes about people like Stirling Silliphant and Rod Serling.

“I used to joke that Penn State had this weird, weird idea,” David said. “They would hire a professional writer to teach fiction writing.”

David was so desperate for guidance that he asked if they could start scheduling meetings immediately, rather than wait for the next term. Professor Klass generously agreed, even though David wasn’t technically enrolled in any of his courses, then put him through a series of ordeals that might make John J. Rambo himself weep. Every week, David had to write a new short story. Every week, Professor Klass would inform him, in no uncertain terms, that it was garbage.

Then David found the dominant emotion that fuels him as a writer — fear, which he attributes to a troubled six months in an orphanage during his childhood in Canada.

It may seem strange that fear and childhood trauma inspired Rambo, a character whose name would become synonymous with Hollywood action thrillers. But the 1972 novel is darker and more harrowing than fans of the Rambo film franchise might expect and contains many horror elements. David would channel that tone again in Creepers, his Bram-Stoker-winning take on the haunted-house novel.

Drawing on his remembered childhood fear, he wrote a short story inspired by The Most Dangerous Game about a desperate struggle for survival in the woods. Professor Klass read it, sensed immediately what David was going for, and introduced him to Geoffrey Household’s lean thrillers.

After reading them, David asked his mentor a question in all seriousness. “You mean you’re allowed to write this way?”

During an intensive series of weekly meetings, Professor Klass helped him rework the basic elements of his short story into a novel. Then the professor invited David to a party and put him on the spot by inviting him to pitch his novel to famous literary agent Henry Morrison and legendary crime writer Donald Westlake.

First Blood would go on to redefine the thriller genre. Its dedication reads: to Philip Klass and William Tenn: each in his own way.

David has enjoyed a successful career since then, with many of his more than 30 novels becoming international best-sellers. But when he sits down to write, he still remembers those early lessons from Professor Klass.

“It was almost as if he had an imaginary editor looking over his shoulder,” David said. “And to this day, I have him looking over my shoulder.”

The following are some lessons from Professor Klass that David said have benefitted him as a writer.

• As the professor used to put it: “Don’t try to chase the market. You’ll only see its backside.”

Slavishly trying to conform to the market’s demands will doom your work to mediocrity. And in the end, it will be no guarantee of success, which is largely a matter of luck anyway. So instead of being a second-rate version of another author, you might as well be a first-rate version of yourself.

“He encouraged you to find a fresh way to say something,” David said. “If something feels familiar, don’t do it.”

• Don’t rely entirely on the sense of sight to convey what’s going on in your narrative. Describe how things sound, smell, feel, and taste. That helps place readers in the story.
• Professor Klass was fanatical about one rule. Never end a page with a period, which might be the point at which editors stop reading.

Sure, that was more of an issue in the days when writers submitted their stories on type-written paper. But you risk losing your readers if you bring your narrative to a screeching halt for any reason, such as inserting a big chunk of description or exposition. Keep the story flowing and always give your readers a reason to turn the page.

• Try to see your manuscript from the perspective of an editor. What might they object to? David said the ability to think like an editor, which Professor Klass encouraged him to develop, has been a big help in his career.

“One of the reasons I lasted so long in the business is I never argued with anybody,” David said. “I had my standards. We could disagree. Sometimes I’d refuse. But it was never volatile.”

The following are more of Professor Klass’s lessons about writing, reprinted with David’s permission from his introduction to Dancing Naked: The Unexpurgated William Tenn.

• Pay attention to your daydreams. They’re the stories your subconscious wants to tell.
• Learn from classical literature, but then forget it and go to your neighborhood bookstore and read the first pages of every new novel. Get in touch with what’s being written now, and then try to take a creative step beyond it.
• Never condescend to a genre. Always write the very best you can, as if you’re competing for the Nobel Prize.
• Never imitate.

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Note: As a beginning writer, I find it comforting to realize that authors I admire were once beginners themselves, with lessons to learn. For the HWA’s monthly Nuts & Bolts feature, I’ve begun interviewing established authors about the mentors and influencers who guided them along the way. If you have suggestions, please contact me at TomJHWA@gmail.com.

– Tom Joyce

Photograph of David Morrell taken by Jennifer Esperanza, all rights reserved.

David Morrell is the award-winning author of First Blood, the novel in which Rambo was created. He was born in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Morrell is a co-founder of the International Thriller Writers organization. Noted for his research, he is a graduate of the National Outdoor Leadership School for wilderness survival as well as the G. Gordon Liddy Academy of Corporate Security. He is also an honorary lifetime member of the Special Operations Association and the Association of Intelligence Officers. He has been trained in firearms, hostage negotiation, assuming identities, executive protection, and defensive/offensive driving, among numerous other action skills that he describes in his novels. To research the aerial sequences in The Shimmer, he became a private pilot, the training for which he describes here. In 2010, he was with the first group of authors to be sent on a USO tour to a war zone (Iraq).

Morrell’s latest novels, Murder as a Fine Art, Inspector of the Dead, and Ruler of the Night are Victorian mystery/thrillers that explore the fascinating world of 1850s London.

Morrell is an Edgar, Anthony, Thriller, and Arthur Ellis finalist, a Nero and Macavity winner, and a three-time recipient of the distinguished Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association. The International Thriller Writers organization gave him its prestigious career-achievement Thriller Master Award. Bouchercon, the world’s largest crime-fiction convention, gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award. He also received an RT Book Reviews “Thriller Pioneer” award and a Comic-Con Inkpot award for “outstanding achievement in action/adventure.” His short stories have appeared in numerous Year’s Best collections. With eighteen million copies in print, his work has been translated into thirty languages.

Tom Joyce writes a monthly series called Nuts & Bolts for the Horror Writers Association’s blog, featuring interviews about the craft and business of writing. Please contact Tom at TomJHWA@gmail.com if you have suggestions for future interviews. For more about what he’s looking for, see here.