Chris Coppel: Varied creative writing styles open up markets

Author Chris Coppel has written numerous screenplays as well as the novels Lifetimes, Lingering, Logistics, Double Down (as C.J. Axelrod), Liner, Lucy, Lakebed, Legacy, Lodge and Luck.

Author Chris Coppel

His most recent novel is Lingering, published by Cranthorp Milner. Chris followed in his father’s footsteps (Alec Coppel wrote the screenplay for Vertigo, among other successful screenplays), and can use varied creative writing styles.

He has written gentle fable-like adventures (Lucy) as well as dark and terrifying stories. Born in the U.S.A, he spends his time between the U.S., Europe, and the U.K. Chris held the position of Director of Operations for UCLA’s Film School where he also taught advanced screenwriting.

On Creative Writing: What life experiences have shaped your writing style?

Following in father's writing footsteps

Chris Coppel: My father was a well-known writer and was able to live wherever the urge took him (and us). I spent my formative years living in different parts of France, Spain, Switzerland, Los Angeles, New York and the UK. This almost constant nomadic existence gave me a wonderful pallet of locations and people from which to draw from while writing.

On Creative Writing: Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Chris Coppel: Pantser. I usually (but not always) have an opening and a general story

arc in mind, but other than that, I somehow wing it. Every time I sit at the computer and start to write I have no idea what’s going to materialise. Often, an initial concept gets tossed as the story seems todevelop itself in a new direction as I look on in wonder!

On Creative Writing: If you’ve been published, how did you find your first publisher?

My first book, Far From Burden Dell (re-released as Lucy) was my first novel and was published by Little Brown Books in the U.S.A. I was working at the time at UCLA and paid a student to make 50 photocopies of the first three chapters and send them to every publisher I could find (there was no internet back then). I received eight requests for the balance of the manuscript and one of those, Little Brown Books, agreed to publish it.

Keep writing, and try varied creative writing styles

On Creative Writing: What advice/guidance would you give to writers?

Chris Coppel: Keep writing. No matter how despondent you may become, keep at it.

Also, do not wait for a story idea to fully develop in your head before writing it down. That just doesn’t happen and leads to a perfect excuse for not actually sitting down and writing. As mentioned earlier, there are days when I have no idea what I’m going to write yet once I’m glued to the screen and keyboard the words appear.

That’s not to say there aren’t times when you truly can’t seem to progress with your story. What I do is write something completely different for a few days. This always seems to get the juices flowing again and I am able to continue on with the main project. A benefit of this process is that, over time, you will accrue enough short tales to create your own book of short stories. (mine is called Last Light).

On Creative Writing: Do you see generative AI as a benefit or a threat to writers?

AI: the market will become flooded with a new diluted form of manuscript

Chris Coppel: I think AI is going to be as detrimental to writing as auto-tune was and is to music. If anyone can enter the right series of prompts into an app and have it spew out a 60,000 word novel in a matter of minutes, the market will doubtless become flooded with a new diluted form of manuscript. Let’s face it, AI ‘s entire function is to parse past examples in whatever format the user wants. That means, the originality factor will vanish in favour of speed and ease-of-use.