There's a good reason why James Ellroy is known for his "telegraphic" writing style -- a style that omits words other writers would consider necessary, and often features sentence fragments. He writes in longhand on legal pads, rather than on a computer.

Sore and cramped hands are an excellent way to hone telegraphic writing styles.

Another possible reason he writes in longhand is because early in his career, Ellroy drank heavily. Most likely, he needed one hand on a solid table and the other on a solid writing instrument. Ever tried to type while drunk?

Ellroy didn't start life as a pampered individual trying to make up fiction. It's often told to aspiring writers to write about what you know about. Ellroy does just that. Much of the exciting action that occurs in his books is based on facts from his life.

For example, his mother was murdered in 1958. He was 10 years old. The former Geneva Hilliker was killed in El Monte. She and Ellroy had moved there three years after her divorce from his father, Armand. The unsolved killing, and a birthday present from his father a few months later, The Badge, by Jack Webb (a book of sensational cases from the files of the Los Angeles Police Department), were pivotal in his life. He write about them in his memoir, My Dark Places.

Starting a life of crime at an early age is another good way to gather material for future crime novels. Done. He engaged in shoplifting, house-breaking, and burglary. Being homeless helps also. Done. After serving time and pneumonia, Ellroy stopped drinking and began working as a golf caddy while writing. He later said, "Caddying was good tax-free cash and allowed me to get home by 2 p.m. and write books ... I caddied right up to the sale of my fifth book."

Not surprisingly, caddying turns up frequently in his books. If you've ever caddied, you KNOW that caddy shacks are a good place to learn even nastier things to do with your life. No. Watching Bill Murry in CaddyShack more than 5 times doesn't count. (I personally learned how to hot-wire cars in 1963 at my local caddy shack. Never stole a car. Promise. Learned lots of other niceties too. Like small-scale extortion on the local paper boys, affectionately known in those days as blackmail.)

Sometimes I even caddied.

Had more fun in the caddy shack though.

Getting a sense for telegraphic writing and sentence fragments yet?

Oh yeah, another good way to gather seamy material for novels is to sexually lust for your mother. Read his novel, The Black Dahlia. Ellroy confessed later that he felt sexually attracted to his mother and, among other things, that he tried to spy on her when she was having intercourse. His inability to come to terms with or understand these feelings led him to transfer them onto another murder victim, Elizabeth Short. During his youth, Ellroy used Short as a surrogate for his conflicting emotions and desires. These confusions led to a period of intense depression, which he only gradually recovered from.

If you've EVER written for pay, you know how necessary it is to be depressed. It puts that edge into your work.

How about some facts and then I'm outta here --

James Ellroy Bibliography

1981 Brown's Requiem
1982 Clandestine
1986 Killer on the Road (originally published as Silent Terror)

 Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy

1984 Blood on the Moon
1984 Because the Night
1985 Suicide Hill
1998 L.A. Noir (omnibus edition)

L.A. Quartet

1987 The Black Dahlia
1988 The Big Nowhere
1990 L.A. Confidential
1992 White Jazz

American Underworld Trilogy

1995 American Tabloid
2001 The Cold Six Thousand
2009 Blood's a Rover

Short Stories and Essays

1994 Hollywood Nocturnes (UK title: Dick Contino's Blues and Other Stories)
1999 Crime Wave
2004 Destination: Morgue!

Autobiography

1996 My Dark Places

Guest Editor

2002 The Best American Mystery Stories 2002

Guest Programmer

2007 Turner Classic Movies (TCM) with Robert Osborne. (Seeing him introduce four classic films here is what got me interested in reading his material.)

Documentaries

1993 James Ellroy: Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction
2001 James Ellroy's Feast of Death

Films

1988 Cop
1997 L.A. Confidential
1998 Brown's Requiem
2002 Stay Clean
2002 Dark Blue
2006 The Black Dahlia
2008 Street Kings
2008 Land of the Living
2009 White Jazz

This guide was assembled by booksuncommon.  Any errors are mine. For those I apologize.