[♪♪♪] -♪ Every day every day Every day ♪ ♪ Every day I write the book ♪ [♪♪♪] -Welcome, I'm Rose Martin, and we are Write Around The Corner in Roanoke with Ted Blain.

His Edgar nominated book, Passion Play, is set in an all-boys school.

Isn't that the perfect setting for a little whodunit and a little Othello ?

I'll let him explain.

Hi, Ted.

Welcome to Write Around the Corner .

-Thank you, Rose very much.

-And congratulations on the Edgar nomination.

You know, I was reading that you were in some pretty good company with, I don't know, Patricia Cornwell and Walter Beasley?

-Walter Mosley.

-[Rose] Walter Mosley.

-Yeah.

Their careers and mine went in very different directions after that night at the ceremony, but I have no regrets.

-Well, and I love this book, and we'll get into all the details of it, but there's a story about when you were a young boy and you had the flu and you're bored in your bedroom, and all of a sudden, something happened, and reading was just a spark that ignited everything.

-That's true, yeah.

My aunt gave me a copy of one of the Hardy Boys books, and I started reading it.

It was the first time I'd ever read a book that had more text than pictures.

And I started reading it, and suddenly I forgot about being sick.

I forgot about everything.

I was completely caught up in this world of this book.

And I was thinking about that when, when I read the last Harry Potter book.

And there's a moment in that story where Harry Potter wakes up and he's in the middle of a cloud.

He's in this white mist, and out of this mist, Dumbledore appears.

We know Dumbledore has already been dead, from a previous book, but he and Harry have a conversation and finally, Harry says, "Is this all real, or is it just happening inside my head?"

And Dumbledore says, "Well, of course, it's just happening inside your head, but that doesn't mean it's not real."

And that, I think, captures the whole essence of reading fiction.

Those emotions that we feel, that tension, that exhilaration, that fright, that sadness, those are all real emotions.

And that's the magic of reading.

-I agree with you because you get swept up in the story, and you get to know the characters, and you're cheering for them, or you're sad for them, or you're excited for them, or you're grieving with them.

-Absolutely.

-And you're right in that story.

You started writing... what, around age eight?

-Yeah, around that.

I ripped off a skit I'd seen on the old Red Skelton TV show, and I asked my father to type it all up for me.

And I had misspelled the names of the characters.

He wanted to correct the spelling, and I said, "No, you have to do it exactly the way I wrote it."

I just wanted to have it there in print.

-It was the very first manuscript.

-The very first manuscript, and I was a terrible author because I wouldn't allow for any kind of editorial improvement.

-Oh, but now look at how much you've grown and changed, right?

-Yeah.

I really appreciate editors.

-So, the other thing you've appreciated is theater.

That seems to have been a part of your life since an early age.

What specifically about theater do you think grabbed you along with storytelling?

-I guess it's similar in that in both, you get to become somebody else.

I know that Charles Dickens, for instance, started off writing plays.

And this is, I think, a valid theory; he stopped writing plays and turned to fiction because he could be in total control of what the set was like, who the actors were, how they read their lines.

There were too many variables in the theater, but still, he was a man of the theater his whole life.

He put on plays when he was, you know, all the way up 'til the time of his death, and he would act them out with his family and his friends.

So, I think there's a crossover there.

You get to inhabit another person.

-Well, and you have quite an experience directing plays also through your tenure at the Woodberry, and throughout the course of your career.

What types of plays did you like to direct?

-All of them.

Everything from Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1 to Spamalot , the musical.

The last show we did before I retired was The Music Man , but we also did things like The Drowsy Chaperone , Equus , The Merchant of Venice .

It was a really eclectic run, and it was a lot of fun.

-Do you think you coached any prodigy children along the way?

Like a similar character in your books?

-Tons, yes, yeah.

They have gone on to great glory, and I like to keep up with them if I can.

-That's wonderful.

Now, how about your acting prowess?

Do you also like to find yourself on stage in the plays?

-I do not.

I really like to be out in the audience, watching.

I like to be able to anticipate what's going to happen.

It's fun to do rehearsals, but no, I would rather not be on stage, though I will say that I have appeared on Broadway with James Corden.

-Now, I was gonna talk about that.

So, 2012, James Corden calls you up on stage.

What was that like?

-It was mortifying.

He was doing a show called One Man, Two Guvnors , which is set in the 1960s.

He called another guy and me up onto the stage and he had us moving a trunk, only he would stand on the trunk or sit on the trunk, so we couldn't move the trunk.

And he was abusing us, all good-naturedly, about our clothes.

The guy that I was with was wearing a t-shirt and shorts, and he said, "You know, this show is set in the 1960s."

But then he turned to me, and he said, "You fit right in."

-[laughs] -So, it was all fun but I do get to say that I've been in a Broadway play.

-You have, and you were brought on stage by James Corden.

-Yeah.

-That's pretty cool.

-Yeah.

Back before he embarrassed himself with bad behavior at a restaurant, but I think he'll redeem himself.

-[Rose] Yeah.

-I'm still a fan.

-Well, think about your teaching career, your time that you were at the all-boys school.

So, you have 44 years as an English teacher.

-Right.

-I read somewhere that one of the ways you were able to hook them into reading was, tell them that you're like an eavesdropper for the book.

You know, think about yourself as an outsider.

You weren't necessarily the audience this was intended for, but think of yourself as, you know, an eavesdropper.

How did that work?

-I think that made sense to these boys.

You know, we're reading All the King's Men , or we're reading Hamlet, and Shakespeare did not write Hamlet for schoolboys, but that doesn't mean that schoolboys can't understand it... -Or girls.

-Or girls, but yeah, since I was at an all-boys school... yeah, I don't wanna mean to be gender exclusive there, but it's something that appeals to them.

And in fact, it appeals to their intellects.

We would subscribe to the New Yorker Magazine .

Again, I would say, this movie review by Anthony Lane is not for you, but you can understand it.

But let's talk about the parts that you don't understand.

When he's alluding to Ingrid and Cary... do you know who those people are?

And if they don't know who Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant are, we can talk about Lane's assumptions about his audience.

So that gets us thinking, as writers, about how we need to anticipate what our audiences need in order to follow our own argument, our own story.

-And I love that because you describe that whole process of knowing your audience and constructing the story as a well-constructed puzzle.

And I think we can all associate that and, say, "Okay, we all know what a puzzle looks like with all the interlocking pieces and some, you know, the puzzle as a whole, all the pieces go there, but not in a certain order or they have to have a certain place, a certain meaning."

And I think that's a carefully constructed puzzle.

Now, does that, does that apply to your plot, your characters, your language, sentence structure, or all of it combined?

-It's all of it, combined.

And I think the hardest part is just to get started.

And then, once you have a complete thing, you can decide whether it starts in the right place or not.

You can manipulate, cut, add, trim, elaborate, whatever is necessary.

But what you have to do is go back and start reading it as if you've never seen it before.

You have to pretend that you're that nalïve reader who has no idea of what the next sentence is going to say.

-And I loved something you said about being vulnerable when you're first starting, and when you're writing, and you likened it to a story you told about "being a writer is like standing on a table and taking off all your clothes."

-Well, that is an analogy that comes from real life.

I have a friend who, at one point of his life, was somewhat notorious as a cheapskate, and he would look for ways to economize whenever he could.

So, when he was living in Columbus, Ohio, he would go to the Ohio State Medical School and get free examinations if med students were allowed to watch the procedure.

He had a skin rash.

They asked him to take off all his clothes and stand up on a table.

And about 15 medical students came in and walked around and watched as the professor was pointing out various blemishes on his skin.

So, I thought, you know, that's what you have to do.

You have to be willing to reveal whatever is there.

-And that's true because it is... and then, when people begin to read it, you're also in a very vulnerable spot because, you know, you've set out your characters, your story, where you've controlled every part of it.

And it has to be kind of a raw feeling to wonder, are they gonna like it, you know?

I've exposed myself and my inner thoughts and my work, and that judgment about, people like it or don't like it, can be a little harrowing sometimes.

-Yeah, that's true.

And the old cliché is "write what you know," but if you're writing murder mysteries, you are writing from your imagination.

I don't know any mystery writers who have actually committed murders.

-I'm glad about that.

-Yeah, me too.

Mystery writers are actually very nice, friendly, warm, fun people.

But you simply have to be willing to let a reader infer what that reader is going to infer from what you've said.

So, I've had people come up to me and say, "Well, this character in Passion Play was obviously based on this person."

And I would say, no, but it didn't matter; they didn't believe me.

And, that's just... that's the reality.

That's what I live with.

-I think that's important.

And the other thing that I read about you was that the truth in characters, that personality, that whole idea of the essence of a character to make them truthful and believable, how do you build that into all of your characters?

Because they're not based necessarily on real people, so you're creating them.

-Yeah.

And they're sometimes composites, or they're inspired by somebody, and then they take on a life of their own.

But, for me, the most interesting thing about writing is to watch a character go from A to Z, and to see that development.

So, you put a character into a position where the character has a problem and then has to solve it.

And we used to do that in class, too.

I would assign fiction to my students and say, I want you to pick a place that you know well, you have to be able to render this place well.

Put a character there.

The character doesn't have to know the place at all.

The character could be stumbling around, that's okay, but you've got to give the character a problem, and then just see what happens.

You don't have to know what the solution to the problem is.

It can appear organically in the course of the story.

-And I think that's such a gift to give people and students the, almost the pass or the okay to say, "Just let it happen."

Let's see what your imagination brings forward as you get to know this character you've created, you know the space, and give yourself the creativity and the freedom to explore that.

-Absolutely, yeah.

And when I first started writing fiction, I thought that I had to be like Peter Taylor or John Updike or Ann Beattie, or one of these New Yorker writers.

And I would read those stories in the New Yorker and think, I can't do that.

I cannot do that.

I don't understand how they know the story was over.

I really don't get this, though I'm trying hard.

And eventually I just said, "You know, I can write a mystery.

I can do that.

So, let me just lower my expectations for myself.

I'm not going to win the Nobel Prize for literature.

I'm not going to win the National Book Award, but I can have fun writing a mystery."

And that's what I did.

And I got a book about how to write novels, and this book said, you get a loose-leaf notebook, and you get 20 pages in it, and on each page you write chapter one, then chapter two, et cetera.

At page seven, chapter seven, you have something big happen.

At page 14, chapter 14, you have something else big happen.

And by page 20, you've wrapped everything up.

And that's what I did.

I had this outline, and I wrote this book, which I finished, I got to the end of it.

I've never shown it to anybody, and I don't even have the manuscript now.

It was really just a terrible piece of work, but it showed me that I could go the distance.

So then, the next time I wrote a book, I was really proud of it.

I did all the amateur things that you do.

I photocopied it.

I gave it to everybody for Christmas.

And then, a terrible thing happened.

I was watching my family, and my brother picks up the manuscript and he reads about half a page, and he says, "Oh, UNC is playing basketball today."

Puts it down.

My sister picks it up.

She reads about half a page, and she says, "I forgot to call Scotty."

My mother, my mother picks it up... -[Rose] Oh, no!

-...she reads half a page, and she says, "Oh, I forgot to put the broccoli in."

-Oh, Mama.

-So... that was one that didn't get published either, but the next time around was Passion Play .

And I said, "I don't care what happens with this book.

Nobody is going to be thinking about the broccoli at the end of paragraph one."

-Did you give them copies?

-Of Passion Play ?

-[Rose] Yes.

-Not until it was all finished.

-[Rose] Published, okay.

-Yeah.

-Well, and it's interesting for Passion Play , instead of those chapters like you originally put out in the notebook, they're in scenes, and I was fascinated by that.

So, acts and scenes, playing off Othello and playing off your playwriting and directing experience.

-Right.

-What was the creative impetus behind of that?

-Well, and part of it was, of course, echoing Shakespeare, but also, there were acts of murder.

And every time there was an act of murder, that was a new act of the story.

And the outline for Passion Play totally changed.

What I learned from that was, I started writing it, and immediately the characters wanted to do other things.

So, I just went with that.

And I knew generally where I was going, but it's like having a reservation at a resort in Florida, and along the way, you find out about a better place to stay, so you switch your reservation.

And it's a much better way to write, as far as I'm concerned.

-When you talk about the characters, one is somewhere and wanted to go a different direction, is that an intuitive feeling?

Or do you actually like see it playing out in your head, or what's that experience like?

-Well, I've got it planned for this one thing to happen, but from the conversation or the circumstances that have been going on, it just doesn't make any sense that they wouldn't do that.

And you don't want to get into improbability.

That's the worst thing that can happen in fiction that a reader will think, "I don't believe this."

So, you can have a story about a magic ring and a couple of hobbits who want to throw it into a volcano, that's okay as long as the reader believes in that world.

But if you... oh, you know, if you contrive things so that there's some deus ex machina that shows up at the end that sets everything right, then you're going to lose the reader.

-I love the fact that Passion Play was originally done in 1990, and then you kind of retooled it a little bit, but you didn't want to discount your younger voice to totally rewrite it.

-Yeah.

-And it is as appropriate today and believable today because that was pre-cellphone, pre-social media, you know, all of the things that technology we've come to rely on today.

Introduce the viewers to th e characters of Passion Play.

[Ted] Well, there's several.

It's set in a boarding school that has a lot of resemblance to Woodberry Forest School, which is where I was working at the time.

Main character, Benjamin Warden, a poet, who is married to Cynthia Warden.

And I would say that my character of Benjamin Warden is probably the character that I'd most like to change if I were to allow myself to go back in and change it.

He's a poet who's good enough to be reading at the 92nd Street Y in New York, but I've got him worrying and self-conscious that he doesn't have a PhD.

I know lots of poets, and they wouldn't care at all about some kind of doctorate or some kind of degree if people are reading and liking their poetry.

It just wouldn't matter.

It would be completely extraneous, so I got that wrong.

But another main character is a student named Thomas Boatwright, who I think survives pretty well.

The students, the boys in the novel, are real.

They have aged well.

-Thomas Boatwright captured my heart.

And even throughout the course of the story, so it's interesting for, you know, this is a murder mystery.

You've got Othello quotes and Shakespeare built into the text, and it totally makes sense to me.

As I'm reading this, I feel like I'm almost in two places.

I'm in their lives, and I'm in the play, and I'm transitioning back and forth and, you know, it opens up with a murder, and you're thinking, "Where is this going?"

-Well... good, I appreciate that.

Thank you.

As I said, I didn't want anybody thinking about the broccoli or the basketball game or calling Scotty at the end of the opening of the book.

Thomas was a character in that second novel, the broccoli novel, and he was 26 years old, and he was working in London.

And I wanted to go back and visit him in high school.

So that's how he ended up in Passion Play .

But I had originally set the book in the 1970s, because the other book was set in the 1980s.

The editor at Putnam said, "I want you to change two things about this book."

When she accepted the book, we're all ready to go.

She said, "I do want you to make two changes, though.

I want you to change the setting, and I want you to change the murderer's motivation."

-Okay.

So, we're at Montpelier School.

-Yeah.

-And we know we open up with the murder.

And so, it's pretty nice, and you would think the parents are trusting their children, this boarding school environment, all of the teachers, all of the staff, and then you have this, growing up, coming-of-age story in a way to where the boys experience the dances, the social aspects of it.

What are the things about Montpelier School that you wanna share with the viewers before we have you read a little section of the book for us?

What do you wanna share about the book?

-I would say that this book has become a quaint historical novel now.

It's no longer what it was when it was published, which was an up-to-date modern story of what was going on in schools.

There are payphones on the walls for boys to connect with their friends and family.

There are no laptops.

There are no cell phones.

There are no social media.

-It was set before that.

-It was set all before that.

And so, a boarding school becomes as isolated as one of Agatha Christie's islands, or, you know, some mountaintop retreat.

It's quite, quite isolated from the rest of the world.

And you can have this kind of locked room mystery.

I mean, it's a locked campus mystery.

But one thing that I probably should say is that this book was written and published before Columbine.

So, the whole idea of killings in schools was the matter of crime fiction.

And I think... -Well, and we should say for the viewers, this isn't a mass shooter situation.

-No, no, no.

It's not.

-Where someone comes in... there are hidden tunnels, there's intrigue, there's mystery, there's a little romance and budding love.

And there's all kinds of amazing things that as you go through the pages of the book, you're getting in touch with the characters, you're endearing yourselves in their lives, in their struggles.

Would you read something for us?

-Sure...sure yeah.

Yeah, yeah, no, I'm glad you said that.

This is definitely not anything but a whodunit.

-[Rose] Right.

-This is just an old-fashioned whodunit, and it does have its light moments.

And I'm going to read one of, I hope, one of the lighter moments.

A lot of things have changed, the cell phones, et cetera, but high school boys sitting in English class, I think, will endure forever.

-Oh, this is one of my favorite parts.

I'm glad you chose this.

-This is Thomas Boatwright when we meet him for the first time.

"Thomas Boatwright was sitting in English class and dying.

"He knew this must be what it felt like to die of boredom, "because he was doing it.

"He looked at his watch again, 8:17.

"An entire minute had passed since his last look.

"They'd been back exactly 17 minutes "from Thanksgiving vacation, 17 minutes of class "for the first time since last Wednesday, "and he was dying, dying of boredom, "wondering why in the hell "he'd ever agreed to attend boarding school, "wishing that something would happen "to make Mr. Farnham shut up and leave the room.

"There were 11 other boys in the class.

"Their desks were arranged in a semi-circle "around Mr. Farnham's old wooden desk "with GRATEFUL DEAD carved in little, tiny letters "on the front.

"Thomas had been staring at the GRATEFUL DEAD for months-- "it seemed more like years-- "ever since he'd started school in September "and had entered Mr. Farnham's class in fourth-form English.

"They wouldn't call it sophomore English "here at Montpelier School for Boys.

"That sounded too American, "even though the school was American "and everybody sitting here was American.

"And they were, in fact, about two hours away by car "from the American capital, "which was where Thomas's family lived, "and where he'd spent his Thanksgiving vacation, "and where he ought to be right now, "going to Cathedral Academy and getting home at night "and away, away, away from this unbelievably boring class.

"8:19.

His watch had to be broken.

"Time could not possibly move this slowly of its own volition.

"They were smart not to put clocks in these classrooms.

"Sometimes if you didn't look at a watch, "you could just go into a sort of hypnotic trance, "and the time would slip away from you.

"Thomas promised himself that he wouldn't look at his watch "for at least another 20 minutes.

"How would he know when 20 minutes had passed?

"He would be dead, that's how.

"He would be dead of boredom.

"Just before he keeled over, he would look at his watch to see what time he'd expired."

-I love that you selected that passage.

It's been a delight, Ted, and thank you so much.

I really, really enjoyed the book and your hospitality for having us here.

-Thank you so much, Rose.

It's been my pleasure.

-My special thanks to Ted Blain for sharing Passion Play with us and inviting us here to his home in Roanoke.

Make sure that you get a copy.

You won't be disappointed.

Please check us out online, and tell your friends all about us.

And until next time, I'm Rose Martin, and I'll see you next time Write Around The Corner .

-♪ Every day every day Ev ery day every day every day ♪ ♪ Every day I write the book ♪ ♪ Every day every day Every day ♪ ♪ Every day I write the book ♪ ♪ Every day every day Every day ♪ ♪ Every day I write the book ♪