What IS That Smell?

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We all know how distinct odors can enhance a scene. What does buttery popcorn evoke in you? What about freshly baked apples? Or steamed lobster? Or a campfire?

Those are all wonderful smells that make us feel happy, excited, or content. However, fiction shouldn’t only include pleasant or comforting scenes, or the narrative feels fake. Real life isn’t all rose petals (another great smell). So, why do some writers shy away from rank or offensive odors?

“Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions or will.”

— Patrick Süskind, author of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

I’m one of those strange people who love the smell of blood. When I read “a metallic” or “irony” stench, it doesn’t elicit a shocked or fearful response in me. You know what does elicit a visceral response? Stress sweat.

Stress sweat has a very distinctive smell, which only occurs during times of “flight or fight.”

I heard a reference to it recently in a movie. One character said to another, “Why does stress sweat stink worse than regular sweat?” And I thought, huh, they’re right. Why does it smell worse?

Down the research rabbit hole, I dove. What I discovered blew my mind. Now, I’m sharing it with you because, y’know, that’s what writers do. Perhaps you can use some of this research to add realism to your story.

Stress Sweat

Stress sweat has a unique pungent odor because it’s produced by the apocrine glands (located in the armpits and groin), rather than the standard eccrine glands used for heat regulation. Triggered by adrenaline, this sweat is thicker, milky, and rich in proteins and lipids (fats). Skin bacteria feed on these nutrients, and produce volatile, odorous compounds.

The Science of Sweat

When we are hot or exercising, our body uses eccrine glands to cool down. This sweat is 99% water and salt, with almost no odor. However, psychological stress triggers our “fight or flight” response, which releases hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones activate the apocrine glands, located in areas with high concentrations of hair follicles, like underarms and groin.

The resulting stress sweat stands out due to the following reasons:

  • Nutrient-Rich Fluid: Unlike watery exercise sweat, apocrine glands secrete a thick, milky fluid packed with proteins, lipids (fats), and fatty acids.
  • The Bacterial Feast: The bacteria naturally living on your skin thrive on these fats and proteins. As the bacteria consume and break down these nutrients, they produce volatile organic compounds that emit a sharp, foul odor.
  • Massive Volume Increase: When our body enters “fight or flight” mode, our underarms can secrete roughly 30 times more sweat than when we are at rest. This creates excess food for the bacteria, which intensifies a sudden concentration of body odor.

Several factors, including sex, genetics, age, and diet can influence the type of odor that an individual emits. In fact, it has been suggested that, like a fingerprint, every individual’s body odor is unique and may be partly determined by genetics.

Ever lost a loved one and clung to their pillow, hoping and praying their scent would never fade?

Men have larger sweat glands and generally produce more sweat than women.

Fun Fact: Deodorants contain chemicals that kill skin flora and block production of stinky byproducts. Antiperspirants reduce the amount of sweat by clogging sweat glands. Many contain aluminum chloride, which creates a gel-like substance that forms a plug at the sweat ducts in the skin.

Biological Triggers for Other Offensive Body Odors

Sickness/Infection Odor (Volatile Organic Compounds)

Diseases change body chemistry. Diabetic ketoacidosis smells like rotting apples. Liver failure smells musty or fishy. Infected wounds smell sweet and sickeningly fruity due to specific bacteria. For some reason, I can detect the infection smell quite early. Not sure why I’m sensitive to it, but I’ve helped more than one animal before the infection spread enough to be noticeable. Maybe that’s my superpower. 🙂

In early stages, humans cannot detect the smell of cancer, but dogs can…

Dogs have up to 300 million scent receptors compared to humans’ 5 or 6 million, allowing them to detect scents in parts per trillion. They detect cancer by smelling specific Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) released by bodily tissues when cancer alters the body’s metabolism and cellular chemistry.

Often, what people detect as a “cancer smell” is actually a side effect of chemotherapy. Patients receiving treatment may excrete chemical byproducts through their skin and fluids, leading to odors described as metallic, like burnt hair, or like ammonia/chlorine.

Starvation/Dehydration Breath (Ketones & Decreased Saliva)

When someone’s saliva dries up, anaerobic bacteria multiply, causing a dead, sulfurous breath. If they enter starvation, their body burns fat for fuel. This creates chemical or metallic acetone breath.

Plants & Animals

Flowers produce fragrances as an evolutionary strategy to attract pollinators and ensure reproduction, and many species of insects, fish, and mammals emit peculiar odors to attract mates. In fact, male brown lemmings can tell whether a female has ever mated simply by her odor.

The Evolutionary Purpose

Scientists believe stress sweat served an evolutionary function. In early human history, stress sweat acted as a chemo-signal to warn others of danger. Studies have shown when humans smell the stress sweat of others, their brains automatically become more alert and are more likely to perceive neutral cues as potential threats.

Chemical Signaling (Olfactory Communication)

Humans evolved to unconsciously detect the chemical composition of fear and anxiety. When others detect these specific odors, it triggers increased alertness and vigilance in their own brains, warning them of unseen dangers.

Enhanced Grip for Survival

Sweating on the palms and soles is an evolutionary adaptation intended to dampen the skin, which improves friction and grip when we need to run, climb, or fight for our lives.

Predator Deterrence

Some evolutionary biologists theorize that putting off a sharp, unappealing scent when terrified may have helped startle or deter predators evaluating the vulnerability of prey.

I found more information on how the aging body’s chemistry changes (i.e., the smell of nursing homes), but I had to stop before this post turned into a book.

For fun, what’s your favorite smell? What smell churns your stomach acids? Are there any smells you’re overly sensitive to?

Is This the End of Reading?

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by James Scott Bell

The earliest stories and myths were passed along orally. There were no books or libraries. Most people couldn’t read. That was left to the scholars and monks, who wrote enough down to preserve our developing world (see Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization). The Visigoths weren’t into reading.

Then a guy named Gutenberg invented movable type, and the book business began. The Renaissance bloomed. It was also a bloody time, but as Harry Lime explains in the classic film The Third Man:

Orson Welles as Harry Lime

“Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

All that to say, we paid a price for literacy, but it was worth it. The United States was born by way of a single-page written document (for you kids playing at home, identify the document without Googling or Grokking). We became a land of readers, voraciously gobbling the printed word, set down in everything from cheap wood-pulp magazines to beautifully bound volumes with gilt-edged pages.

Perhaps the height of our reading prolificacy was in the 1950s and its robust market of “middlebrow” fiction, exemplified by the Book-of-the-Month Club. This was a vast realm between mass market and high literary. The books were more “challenging” than the former, and more accessible than the latter. Every middle-class home had a bookshelf. The one in my parents’ house was stocked with hardbacks, one of which was a book called Ulysses (that no one seemed to have finished).

But there was one called Gone With the Wind which I picked up one summer in junior high and was, as they say, transported. I can still feel myself lying on the front-room sofa getting truly “lost in a book.” It was a transformative moment. (Tarzan of the Apes was another such experience.) I had become a dedicated reader of books.

Now, I fear, such transformation may be going the way of the Dodo. A chilling article in The Atlantic has been the subject of much online discussion. Get this:

According to the National Endowment for the Arts, which conducts the most comprehensive survey of the nation’s reading habits, fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022. Only 38 percent read a novel or short story. A study analyzing 236,000 responses to the American Time Use Survey found that the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023. (The study looked at people who had read a book, magazine, or newspaper; listened to an audiobook; or read an e-book.) Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book: Last year, 57 percent of Americans placed a bet.

The decline in reading cuts across age groups, gender, and education levels. Even the demographics that traditionally read the most—retirees, women, and college graduates—have seen a collapse.

And this:

In 2024, in a national test, just 35 percent of high-school seniors were “proficient” at skills such as analyzing complex fictional themes and evaluating the effectiveness of an author’s argument. About the same number scored below “basic,” meaning that they may struggle to draw conclusions from concepts explicitly included in a text, or to use context clues to determine the meaning of an unknown word. Adult-literacy scores have also dropped: Nearly 30 percent of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text. In 2017, that number was less than 20 percent.

More:

Things are about to get worse, and fast. The next generation reads much less than today’s adults did when they were kids. Kindergarten teachers say that many of their students don’t know nursery rhymes or fairy tales, Benjamin Powers, the director of Yale and the University of Connecticut’s Haskins Global Literacy Hub, told me. (In the study of 236,000 American adults, only 2 percent read to a child on a given day.) From 1984 to 2025, the percentage of 13-year-olds who said they rarely or never read for fun rose from 8 to 29 percent. Every year older a child gets, the less they like to read. Robert Townsend, a program director at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, recently ran focus groups asking high-school students how they felt about reading for pleasure. He told me that most thought of it as an alien practice.

Now, with AI taking over all life forms and media, my head spins like Linda Blair’s (can you kids identify this reference without Googling or Grokking?) Every day on X or TikTok or Instagram there is a flood of visually stunning videos created by 13-year-olds in a bedroom without books.

I have no conclusions. I only have a keyboard, and each day I type words for the creation of books. But my back feels like it’s pressed against the gates of Rome circa 410 A.D.

What’s a writer to do? I ask you.

[Note: I’m on the road today, and don’t know when I can check in, but I will. Meanwhile, have a robust discussion amongst yourselves!]

Use the Rule of Three to Triple the Impact

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The Rule of Three is a storytelling technique that makes writing more engaging, memorable, and impactful. (See! I used three adjectives.) It works because three is the perfect balance. One feels incomplete, two feels like a coincidence, but three? Three is a pattern, a rhythm, a satisfying payoff. Why does this work? Because humans are wired for patterns, and three is the smallest number that creates a full-fledged pattern. It builds expectation and then delivers on it.

Let’s dive into the Rule of Three and how you can use it in your writing.

The Power of Three in Story Structure

For screenwriters and novelists, the classic three-act structure (Beginning, Middle, End) is the foundation of storytelling. Act One sets up the world and problem. Act Two complicates everything. Act Three delivers the resolution. It’s storytelling in three neat parts.

💡 Try this: When structuring your story, think in threes. Give your protagonist three major obstacles to overcome. Have their character arc evolve in three key moments. Use three emotional beats to deliver that gut-punch ending.

The Power of Three Protagonists

Storytelling loves a good trio. Three examples:

  • Harry, Ron, and Hermione – Harry Potter Series
  • Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo – Star Wars Original Trilogy
  • The Three Musketeers: Athos, Porthos, and Aramis – The Three Musketeers
  • Buffy, Willow, and Xander – Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • Kirk, Spock, and McCoy – Star Trek: The Original Series
  • Alvin, Simon, and Theodore – Alvin and the Chipmunks
  • The Powerpuff Girls: Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup – The Powerpuff Girls
  • Charlie’s Angels: Sabrina, Jill, and Kelly – Charlie’s Angels
  • The Three Stooges: Moe, Larry, and Curly – The Three Stooges
  • Jerry, Elaine, and George – Seinfeld
  • The Three Bears – Fairy Tale
  • The Three Little Pigs – Fairy Tale
  • The Three Wise Men – The Bible

Trilogies

We see the rule of three in the popularity of trilogies. We love a good story with three parts.

  1. The Lord of the Rings
  • The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
  • The Two Towers (2002)
  • The Return of the King (2003)

2. The Godfather

  • The Godfather (1972)
  • The Godfather Part II (1974)
  • The Godfather Part III (1990)

3. The Dark Knight

  • Batman Begins (2005)
  • The Dark Knight (2008)
  • The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

The Rule of Three in Comedy

Like we talked about with witty banter, comedy loves the Rule of Three because it sets up an expectation—and then subverts it for laughs. The first two items in a sequence establish a pattern, and the third surprises.

  • “I came, I saw, I… forgot what I was doing.”
  • “She’s smart, she’s charming, and she once tried to order a taco at a bank drive-thru.”
  • “For our picnic, we packed sandwiches, fruit, and a live chicken.”

Think about classic comedic sequences: a character tries to do something and fails twice before succeeding—or failing spectacularly. It’s why slapstick works in three beats. The first two build anticipation; the third flips it on its head.

💡 Try this: If you’re writing humor, use a list of three with a twist on the third. Play with expectations and reversals to keep your readers laughing.

The Rule of Three in Dialogue

Ever notice how the best lines in movies and books often come in threes? It creates a rhythm that sticks in the audience’s mind.

  • Jaws: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” (Three parts: You’re gonna / need / a bigger boat.)
  • Julius Caesar: “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
  • The Dark Knight: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

The Rule of Three in Description

In description, three is the magic number:

  • “Her dress was red, flowing, and impossible to ignore.”
  • “He had a voice like gravel, whiskey, and bad decisions.”
  • “The house was rambling, ramshackle, and ivy-covered.”

The Rule of Three in Pacing & Repetition

Repetition is powerful. It’s why speeches, slogans, and mantras use three.

  • “Location, location, location.”
  • “Stop, drop, and roll.”
  • “Blood, sweat, and tears.”

💡 Try this: When writing dialogue or descriptions, test out the Rule of Three. It adds balance, impact, and memorability.

Triple Your Writing Power

The Rule of Three isn’t just a gimmick—it’s a time-tested technique that makes stories more compelling, humor funnier, and messages more memorable. So next time you’re stuck, ask yourself: Can I use the Rule of Three in this moment?

Now go forth and write in threes—because one isn’t enough, two is close, but three? Three is just right.

Check it Out!

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Reader Friday-Mickey Mouse or Hannibal Lecter?

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Scary title this morning, yes?  🙂

Just a quick, non-scary question for this Friday morning.

Who is the one fictional character you relate to most? Can be from your own writing, or another author, or even from a movie. And please tell us why…

 

 

Here’s a few more to get your juices flowing…

 

 

 

 

 

(Fun fact: if you do a search on this morning’s question, there are links to websites where you can take a quiz to find out the character you’re most like.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solo Summer Travel Tips For Females (Or Anyone!): How to Lower Your Crime Risk

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Street-smart solo female travel safety tips to lower your target risk and stay in control.

I’m going to be brutally honest here. We spend an awful lot of our time and attention on employing safety efforts and dwelling on the false belief that we can actually cocoon ourselves in real safety. Helicopter parents and people, take note: the idea of safety is a sham. There is no safe place in the world. Just look at the daily news for proof.

I’m not saying this to alarm you or grab you with a fear-mongering hook. I’m saying it because we have to call a spade a spade. Until we look this problem in the eye, we’ll be kidding ourselves (and our children!) all the way to the grave.

That said, there are ways we can keep ourselves on the low end of the risk continuum. I’m borrowing that term from FBI agent, cold case detective, and personal friend Greg Cooper, who co-authored the book “Predators: Who They Are and How to Stop Them” with Michael R. King.

The risk continuum gauges how a person’s lifestyle, choices, locations, and activities place them on a scale from low to high risk for becoming a target of a predator.

Traveling alone as a woman can push you toward the higher end of that continuum if you don’t pay attention to how you move through the world. You need to notice more. Assess more. Think a few steps ahead. Not out of fear, but so that protective behavior keeps steering you lower on the continuum. You can’t eliminate risk. That isn’t realistic anywhere. But you can be prepared and fully present, because when you understand how environments work and where criminal intent tends to surface, you don’t move through a place as prey.

How To Be More Aware: Not Anxious

Before you step into an airport, set your mind on awareness. Notice who’s moving with purpose, who’s lingering without one, who’s paying attention to you instead of their own environment. To do this well, you have to put that phone away. No eyes glued to your screen.

Pay attention to subtle movements: someone standing closer than necessary when space is available, a person who adjusts their position more than once to stay near you, attention that feels focused rather than incidental. Most of the time, everything is normal. But when something isn’t, this is how it announces itself. When you notice it, you have time to move, to remove yourself, to alert security if needed.

Airports are high-distraction spaces. People are tired and focused on boarding times, and that creates opportunity for theft and deliberate targeting. Keep your belongings close, bags zipped, phone and wallet secured. When your attention is fully on your phone, you’re completely disconnected from your environment. Your safety in a chaotic space is more important than any call, text, or email.

Transportation Safety: Control the Transitions

Some of the most vulnerable moments in solo travel happen during transitions: leaving the airport, entering a vehicle, arriving somewhere unfamiliar. Slow down, pause, keep your head up, look around, and orient yourself before moving from place to place.

Before getting into any ride, pause. Confirm the driver’s name, photo, and license plate against what the app shows before you step inside. Once inside, share your route with someone who can confirm you’ve arrived when and where you’re supposed to.

If something feels off, act early. Even a simple question establishes presence and signals that you’re paying attention. Predators in any context always prefer a target who isn’t watching. Drivers who know their passengers are alert behave differently than those who see a distracted, disconnected passenger. Don’t be that passenger.

Hotel and Airbnb Stays for Women Traveling Alone

Where you stay becomes your base of control. The moment you arrive, take ownership of the space. Check the locks. Understand entry points. Notice where the exits are and how you’d leave quickly if needed.

Airbnb safety for women starts before arrival. Review listings carefully, paying attention to access details, host reviews, and location context. A well-reviewed property in a walkable area with clear security measures is worth prioritizing over a cheaper option that introduces uncertainty.

In hotels, keep your room number private and never repeat it aloud in the lobby. Verify anyone claiming to be staff before opening the door. Use all available security features, not just the main lock. A portable door stop alarm is one of the most practical things you can travel with. You lower your risk when you understand your space and take control of it.

Navigating Public Spaces: Move With Purpose

When you’re walking through a city or using public transit, your presence communicates more than you realize. People read movement. They notice hesitation, distraction, and uncertainty. Predators specifically notice these things, because those signals tell them you aren’t paying attention.

You don’t need exaggerated confidence. You need purpose. Keep your head up. If you need to check directions, step into a store or café rather than stopping in an open area. Choose a well-lit route over a shorter one. Position yourself near others instead of in isolated areas. Create distance early if someone enters your space without a clear reason. Your posture, pace, and awareness signal that you’re engaged and alert. Predators look for the easiest path to a target. Don’t give them one.

Social Interactions: Stay Friendly, Stay Boundaried

Travel is enhanced by the people we meet along the way, and most interactions are genuinely positive. But clear personal limits are a core part of lowering your risk as a solo female traveler.

You don’t need to share where you’re staying, where you’re from, or where you plan to visit next. You don’t need to reveal that you’re traveling alone. You can be warm and engaging without exposing information that raises your risk. Pay attention to how people respond when you redirect or decline. Respect is a signal. Pressure from a predator is also a signal, and it’s one worth taking seriously immediately.

Understanding How Predators Behave in Travel Environments

Predators look for the path of least resistance. Someone juggling bags and chatting on their phone is exactly what they’re scanning for. Someone hesitating in an open area, looking unsure, is exactly what they prefer. Your physical behavior is being read and interpreted. When you move with awareness and intention, you signal that you’re confident and paying attention. It may be the difference between becoming a target and watching a predator move on to someone who isn’t watching. You can’t eliminate the predator. You can absolutely raise the cost of targeting you.

Trust Your Instincts Immediately

One of the most important things you can do for your safety as a solo traveling woman is to listen to your instincts and act on them immediately. If something feels off, it probably is. Leave. Change direction. Create space. Move away from whatever is causing that hair on the back of your neck to stand up.

Instinct is pattern recognition working beneath the surface. It draws from everything you’ve seen, experienced, and processed, and it often registers a shift before your conscious mind catches up. You don’t need proof. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for acting on a feeling that something isn’t right.

Women are trained to override their instincts: stay polite, don’t make a scene, give someone the benefit of the doubt. But that is exactly what predators count on. Trust me, as someone raised in Michigan on Midwest nice, I have to remind myself regularly that I don’t have to be nice if I’m feeling threatened. Neither do you.

Travel Prep for Solo Women

Preparation lowers your risk before you ever leave home. These habits keep you on the lower end of the risk continuum from the start.

  • Know your route, your itinerary, and your backup options if plans fall through.
  • Share your full itinerary with someone you trust, including hotel addresses and check-in times.
  • Write an emergency contact number on a card kept on your person, not just in your phone. Memorize at least three numbers in case your phone is lost or stolen.
  • Keep copies of important documents in a separate location from the originals.
  • Download offline maps before you arrive so you can navigate without cell service.
  • Research your destination before you go: which neighborhoods carry higher risk, what local scams look like, and what the emergency number is.
  • Carry a personal safety alarm that clips to your bag or keychain.
  • Don’t publish your real-time location on social media. Post the beautiful photos after you’ve moved on.

Frequently Asked Questions: Solo Female Travel Safety

Is solo female travel safe?

Nowhere in this world is safe. You have to start with that premise. Think about it: even going to school or church can end in tragedy. But we can’t live paralyzed under that fear. What we can do is increase our awareness, preparation, and situational instincts to keep ourselves on the low end of the risk continuum. Solo female travel can be both rewarding and lower-risk when you take steps to reduce predator opportunity through intentional movement, clear personal limits, and the habit of trusting your instincts the second they show up.

What are the best safety tips for women traveling alone?

The most effective solo female travel safety habits: stay aware of your surroundings without hypervigilance, slow down at transition moments, trust your instincts before you have proof, maintain personal limits in social interactions without apology, and prepare in advance so unfamiliar environments don’t require real-time decisions in the open.

How do you stay safe in hotels or Airbnbs as a solo female traveler?

Take ownership of the space immediately on arrival. Check locks and understand entry points. Know where the exits are. In hotels, keep your room number private and verify anyone claiming to be staff before opening the door. Use a portable door stop alarm. With Airbnb, review access details, host reviews, and location context before booking.

What are the most dangerous moments in solo travel for women?

Transition moments carry the highest risk: leaving airports, entering unfamiliar vehicles, arriving at new accommodations, and navigating new public transit systems. These are the moments when you’re managing unfamiliar territory, baggage, tiredness, and maybe a new language all at once. Slowing down, pausing to orient, and verifying before moving are the most effective actions at each of these points.

How do you stay safe using rideshare apps when traveling alone?

Before entering any vehicle, confirm the driver’s name, photo, and license plate against what the app shows. Don’t get in until you’ve verified all three. Once inside, share your trip with a contact. Stay generally aware of your route. Predators prefer passengers who aren’t paying attention. Don’t be one.

How do you set limits with strangers while traveling without being rude?

You can be warm and still be private. You don’t need to explain that you’re alone, share your accommodation details, or provide personal information to have a friendly interaction. Redirect with brevity: “I’m just exploring” or “I’m meeting people shortly” closes the loop without confrontation. Pay attention to whether the person respects the redirect or pushes past it. That response tells you more than the initial approach did.

What should solo female travelers do if they feel their risk is rising?

Act on the instinct immediately. You don’t need evidence or a rational justification. Leave. Change direction. Move toward more people, a lit space, or a business. The urge to stay polite or avoid making a scene is real, but it’s exactly what criminal predators count on. Your safety is more important than the social comfort of the person who raised your instincts.

Is it safe to travel alone as a woman at night?

With intentional planning, you can significantly lower your risk. Choose well-lit populated routes over shortcuts. Know your destination before you leave. Share your route with someone. Use rideshare over walking in unfamiliar areas after dark. Trust your read of the environment: your instincts will register the difference between a busy neighborhood and an empty street before your logic does.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jennifer Dornbush is an author, screenwriter, and forensic specialist who brings crime stories to life with authenticity and heart. With a background rooted in real-world forensics and a passion for crafting unforgettable mysteries, Jennifer offers readers and viewers a front-row seat to the intersection of science, justice, and human nature. Jennifer’s crime expertise has made her a sought-after speaker, consultant, and educator. Through her webinars and master courses, Jennifer guides writers in melding suspenseful storytelling with forensic realism to the screen and page. Meet her at www.jenniferdornbush.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When A Panster Has to Plot

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When A Panster Has to Plot
Terry Odell

red brick wall with jagged edgesMany authors talk about hitting a wall at about the 30K mark, and I’m no exception. At that point, I usually wonder if I’m going to have enough story for a whole book. Since I’ve finished over 30 of them, the answer seems to be yes, but that doesn’t stop the doubts from creeping in.

person in a yellow raft navigating rapidsI hit another wall somewhere in the 60K neighborhood, which is where I am now in the current WIP. “Wall” is probably the wrong term. Raging river is probably a better term, because now, the nagging question becomes whether the book is ever going to end. This is where I need to get into my version of plotting.

Since I didn’t follow an outline, or much of a roadmap beyond, “They’re going from A to Z and know a few stops along the way, but they haven’t decided exactly which route to follow.” I’ve tried the plotting thing, and 3 chapters is as far into the future as I can go. Maybe if I’d taken writing courses instead of just seeing if I could write a book, I’d be more into plotting and hitting all the plot points at the right spot in the book, but I didn’t.

I’m not recommending my writing process, but it works for me. I have no problems with going back and adding things in earlier chapters because I discovered the one I’m working on needs a piece of information. Or foreshadowing. Or, the opposite. Sometimes I find that I’ve included something that is better cut. Too much mundane conversation. Or just plain too much mundane.

Doesn’t that make for a lot of extra work? I say no. Work yes, extra, no. My first draft can be compared to someone else writing a detailed outline, or a list of scenes, or whatever they need so they can write the book. Jeffrey Deaver spends 8 months doing this. I’ve finished my draft in less time than that.

One thing I strive for is making my chapters end so the reader wants to turn the page. Often, end up sticking something in from out of the blue. A phone call. A character showing who creates a problem for the protagonist. A question. I confess that sometimes these are questions I don’t know the answer to, or a character who shows up out of nowhere. Sometimes my subconscious is laying groundwork. Other times, nothing comes of it and I have to decide whether it’s worth keeping.

Then, because the current WIP is a romantic suspense, I have certain conventions—reader expectations, if you will—that need to be followed. In this case, it’s alternating POV characters. Heroine in one chapter, hero in the next. If both characters are in the scene, then one chapter will flow into the next, and whatever that page-turning (I hope) ending was, will lead to answering the question, or dealing with the problem.

Sometimes, as seems to be happening a lot with this book, my characters aren’t both in the chapter. In that case, that page-turning question won’t be addressed until the characters get together again, or until the reader gets through the alternate POV chapter.

Here, the author hopes that both characters are dealing with whatever I’ve thrown at them and that the reader is sticking with both hero and heroine. Not always easy, but nobody said this gig was a walk in the park. Fun, yes. Easy, not always.

So, here I am, at about 65K, thinking about getting to “the end.” The journey has to be satisfying, which means I can’t rush things, although there are days where it’s tempting. “The bad guy was caught and they decided to try the relationship thing.” Nope, that’s not fair to the reader.

Lined paper with red writingAt this stage of the process, I look at my “notes” file to see if I had any ideas that need adding, fleshing out, or cutting. I also get out my handy legal tablet and make handwritten, almost legible notes of threads that I have to deal with. That means for the last 10-20 thousand words of the book, I’m plotting.

Going back and laying groundwork for things that show up later is relatively easy, operative word being relatively. I write tight, so fitting in the new bits means finding the right place, and then getting out the Spackle so the transitions are smooth. What’s harder is discovering that the character you introduced in Chapter 15 to add conflict to the heroine’s arc, ends up being a good guy and where’s the conflict in that? Cutting that thread means making sure any references to that character are gone. Completely gone. Which can end up messing with chapter lengths, which can end up in a lot of rewriting so there aren’t gaping holes. A lot more Spackle is needed for these types of edits.

And then, because my characters don’t have any official authority, how far do I let them go before they do the sensible thing and let the experts take over? Will it make my “ordinary people” heroes less heroic if they give the cops the evidence they’ve found? There’s a limit as to how much disbelief I think my readers are willing to suspend.

manuscript text laid out in 2 columnsEventually, everything gets addressed. At that point, I’m ready to print the whole thing using my “fool the eye” technique, and see how it holds together.

 

 

 

 

All right, TKZers. I’m now officially on deadline, so this is all for today. Anyone want to offer their process, suggestions, or general comments? The floor is yours.

The Power of a Rant – Guest post by Leslie Budewitz

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Leslie Budewitz wins 2013 Agatha for Best First Novel

 

It’s always a pleasure when my good friend and Agatha-winning author Leslie Budewitz visits TKZ for a guest post. Today, let’s welcome Leslie with her “rant” about “The Power of a Rant.” 

The Power of a Rant, or How Letting My Main Character Cut Loose Powered a Winning First Novel

by Leslie Budewitz

I love me a good rant. In April 2012, I attended Don Maass’s Breakout Novel Workshop in Hood River, OR, a week that changed my writing life. I had a three book contract with Berkley for the Food Lovers’ Village series. The first manuscript was due August 1. I went to the workshop with more than half a first draft, and felt pretty good.

I came home and started over. Death al Dente won the 2013 Agatha Award for Best First Novel.

What changed? I didn’t change the plot. I do outline, and I had created character sheets where I focused on learning what my characters most wanted and what they would do to get it. I knew where the story was going.

But my writing was too passive. Not bold enough. Not enough tension. My main character didn’t drive the story. Don suggested I let Erin go on a rant. Now, he meant that as a character discovery exercise, not as a way to open the story, but that’s what I did with it.

I told this story a few weeks ago at the Writers’ Rodeo in Helena, Montana, and a writer in attendance asked if I could read the original opening—good enough to sell the proposal—and the version I submitted. We didn’t have time then, so I promised to write a blog post comparing the openings. Debbie Burke was presenting at the same conference—here’s her roundup—and kindly offered me a guest spot.

In Death al Dente, a classic cozy mystery, Erin Murphy’s mother, Francesca, has asked her to come home and take over the Merc, the shop she’s been running in the family’s century-old grocery in the heart of the village of Jewel Bay, Montana. Erin, now 32, left home for college months after her father was killed a hit-and-run that has never been solved. She’s had a successful career as a buyer for SavCo, my fictional warehouse grocery chain headquartered in Seattle. Coming home wasn’t in her plans, but when your mother asks, what can you do?

The difference between the two drafts is mainly in attitude and micro-tension. Our main character has a problem, and you know she’s going to find a way to solve it. You know we are going to have a good, old-fashioned mother-daughter tussle in the form of conflict over a family business—two classic situations—and it’s going to matter to solving the murder, which hasn’t occurred yet. All that from the rant on the first two pages.

In the first draft, Francesca—aka Fresca—is more interesting than Erin, the main character. Fresca drives the scene. As revised, Erin takes center stage, and we know we’ll be following a strong, capable woman as she reshapes a struggling business, and solves a crime.

Rants are also a good way to give dialogue subtext, that is, to get at what the characters are saying underneath the words they’re using. In this scene between Erin and her mother, you’ll detect issues of trust, fear of change, and control over family business.

Rants can also be a great way to explore what’s actually driving a character, whether it’s your protagonist or a secondary character. In my standalone suspense novel, Blind Faith (Crooked Lane, 2022, written as Alicia Beckman), I let my main character, a lawyer facing a crisis of conscience, go on a rant about justice. Little of it made the page, but the process helped me get at the heart of her internal conflict and figure out what she would do in response to injustice.

If you are struggling with your main character, if she’s not quite coming alive for you, give her a rant. It may not make the final edit—but it will help you find out who she is, and find her voice.

Death al Dente, draft one:

CHAPTER ONE

“Oh, smell this Genovese basil, darling.” My mother waved a bouquet of fresh herbs about three inches in front of my nose. “Isn’t it heavenly?” She closed her eyes, breathing deeply, an expression that could only be called rapture on her face. Maybe I’d finally discovered her secret for looking youthful at sixty-one.

“You’re making me hungry, Mom.”

“Then eat.” She waved the basil again and the sweet-green scent nearly made me swoon. “Slice up some of those Early Girls from Rainbow Lake Gardens, with that mozzarella from the new Creamery.”

Caprese salad. My favorite. “Mom, there’s too much to do before the Festa opens tonight. We haven’t even started decorating.” The Merc, formally known as The Glacier Mercantile, shared a courtyard with Red’s Bar, the setting for tonight’s kick-off dinner for the First Annual Jewel Bay Festa di Pasta. But Old Ned Redaway–aka Red–didn’t want us to “doll the place up,” as he put it, until his Friday burgers-and-beer lunch crowd had cleared the door. Which would be soon. Which meant I couldn’t give in to my mother’s tempting suggestions, no matter how much my tummy gurgled at the thought.

“Mangia, mangia. All work and no food makes a girl dull and scrawny.”

“Ha.” I’d inherited my late father’s “black Irish” fair skin and dark hair along with enough of my mother’s good genes to avoid most weight problems. But scrawny I would never be, not as the manager of a market specializing in local artisan foods and the daughter of a woman who sold handmade pasta and sauces for a living.

“I’ll wash these up and find a platter and that herbed olive oil,” she said. “You slice a few for each of us.”

“Ah, the truth comes out,” I said, and stepped outside the front door to the produce cart. A cattail reed basket held the season’s first tomatoes–greenhouse, necessarily, in mid June in northwest Montana, but ripe and juicy nonetheless. I plucked two and headed back in. “You want me to eat so you can eat.”

“No good Italian girl ever eats alone,” she called over her shoulder as she headed for the demonstration kitchen at the back of the shop.

Ouch. Okay, I was only half-Italian, but I’d spent too many nights eating alone for far too long. Still did on occasion, though now by choice.

She stopped and turned, gripping the peppery-sweet basil. “What I should have said, Erin, darling, is that when you eat good food, grown and prepared with love, you’re never alone, even if no one else is at the table with you.”

“Nice recovery, Mom.” I grinned.

In the kitchen, I drew out one of the locally-made hardwood cutting boards we sold, honed a chef’s knife on a steel, and started slicing. Working together, we stacked layers into a caprese antipasto appetizer: a thick slice of firm tomato topped with a slab of fresh mozzarella and a large basil leaf, drizzled with a fruity olive oil. Too impatient to grab a plate and fork, I picked one up and savored the smells before taking the first bite, my other hand cupped to catch any stray juices. “Mmm. The taste of summer.”

My mother was too preoccupied with eating to bother chiding me for talking with my mouth full.

Death al Dente, as published

CHAPTER ONE

“Who put these huckleberry chocolates on the front counter?” I grabbed the stack of purple boxes crammed with gooey huckleberry-filled chocolate wannabes swathed in purple foil and shoved them onto an open shelf on the side wall, next to the herbal snoose.

“I did, honey,” my mother said. “Our customers love them.”

“Our customers,” I said, “buy one for seventy-five cents and walk around the store, so preoccupied with unwrapping it and indulging their sweet tooth that they can’t fathom buying Montana-made goat cheese, or buffalo jerky, or your pastas and sauces. Then they grab a napkin that costs us five cents apiece to wipe the drool off their fingers, and half of them drop it on the floor. There goes our profit.”

My mother scowled. “Erin, what on earth has gotten into you? Why do you hate huckleberry chocolates?”

“I don’t hate huckleberry chocolates. I love huckleberry chocolates. But we can’t rebuild this business on fake food and chemical sugar.”

She picked up the boxes I’d just moved and carried them back to the cash register. “We have always had huckleberry chocolates right here, where the customers can see them.”

“Mom, you hired me to run the place, remember? To shake things up.”

“Some things shouldn’t be changed.”

“Mom, we agreed. The Merc will die if it’s just another knickknacky gift shop. But an artisan market for local and regional foods—”

“Those are local. They’re made five miles from here, by a woman you’ve known half your life.”

“With high-fructose corn syrup and milk chocolate that tastes like rancid Hershey’s. If we find a vendor using fresh berries, real sugar, and high-quality fair trade dark chocolate, sixty percent cocoa solids or better, I will build the Great Pyramid of huckleberry chocolates right here.” I jabbed at a spot on the oak floor, ten feet inside the Merc’s front door, little changed in the hundred years since my grandfather Murphy built the place and opened the town’s first grocery. “I will worship at her kitchen stove. I will put an ad in the paper and a post on Facebook offering a free huckleberry truffle to everyone who walks in that door. And if they aren’t wrapped in purple paper, I will even consider raising the price split.”

My mother stared as though she didn’t recognize me. Not for the first time since I’d returned to Jewel Bay, Montana, the hometown I couldn’t wait to leave after high school, fourteen years ago, to take over her struggling business so she could focus on building her own product line.

And not, I was sure, the last.

(Excerpt from Death al Dente, published by Berkley Prime Crime 2013, copyright Leslie Ann Budewitz)

Does Erin ever find the perfect huckleberry chocolate? I’ll let you read the book to find out. And don’t fret over that luscious business about basil. It finds its rightful place later in the scene. Because a Caprese salad made with sun-ripened tomatoes, creamy mozzarella, and basil so fresh it’s practically still growing is—like an honest rant—too good to waste.

***

Thanks, Leslie, for a terrific before-and-after comparison with excellent lessons from a winning first chapter!

***

Leslie Budewitz tells stories about women’s lives, seasoned with friendship, food, a dash of history, and a heaping spoonful of mystery. She writes the Spice Shop mysteries set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market and the Food Lovers’ Village mysteries set in a fictional version of Bigfork, Montana, where she lives. Her latest books are Lavender Lies Bleeding, the ninth Spice Shop mystery, and All God’s Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection, historical short fiction set in Montana. As Alicia Beckman, she writes moody suspense set in Montana. She is a former president of Sisters in Crime.

Find her books in print, ebook, and audio across the US and Canada, wherever you shop for books.

Revisited: How Did I Get Here?

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Kay DiBianca is away from TKZ for a bit longer, so today I am sharing her post on the journey of being a novelist.

How Did I Get Here?

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When I sat down at my desk a few days ago, the room suddenly turned dark, and there was a loud buzzing sound. I realized I had entered a wormhole, and I was being transported back in time to a day several years ago.

* * *

I was running on a dirt trail in a park near my home and I was listening to an audiobook on my iPod Shuffle. The book was one of the Rabbi Small mysteries by Harry Kemelman, and I was enjoying the story. As I jogged by a fence and around a turn, a thought lit a fire in my brain. I could write a mystery as good as the one I was listening to! It would be fun to write a novel just to see what it would be like. I finished my run, returned home, showered and dressed. Then I sat down in a recliner in our living room with my computer on my lap and began to type.

* * *

The wormhole suddenly closed, and I was back at my desk, a relatively new, six-foot-long testimony to my dedication to this writing journey. Desk-reorg day is later in the week, so the desk is messy, piled with papers and post-it notes – reminders of upcoming events and to-dos I shouldn’t ignore.

Two whiteboards sit on the back of the desk, leaning against the wall with lists of books to read and others I’ve read and need to review. A map of the Hero’s Journey is magnetically tacked to one of the whiteboards along with a few inspirational sayings. Reminders to Make Haste Slowly, Be Intentional, Make It Count.

My writing calendar is just inside the middle drawer of the desk. A glance at the page tells me about my obligations this month for blog posts, book promotions, meetings, and everything else that’s writing-related.

The Windows 10 laptop in front of me on the desk houses dozens of directories containing information from branding to short stories, from newsletters to marketing graphs.  This is where I handle email, write articles, post to social media, create jpgs and pngs to market books and share thoughts on writing.

A second laptop, a Mac, sits on the desk’s pullout shelf to my left. It’s owned by the publishing company my husband and I formed in order to publish our own works. I use it to format and publish the final copies.

A third laptop, another Mac, stays on the bar in the kitchen where I can glance over an occasional news story while I eat breakfast. Scrivener lives on that Mac, and it accompanies me to my office recliner, along with a glass of sparkling water when I sit down to spend serious time on my WIP.

A list of writing goals is taped to the back of my office door so I see it every time I close the door to begin work.

Bookshelves against the wall next to my recliner are filled with books on the craft of writing, constant reminders of how much I still have to learn. The bottom shelf contains copies of my three published novels as well as my husband’s recently published debut novel. Three-ring binders contain pages of notes on each of my books as well as several works-in-progress.

Other bookshelves in my office and throughout the house contain favorite tomes. (I really should spend some time reorganizing so I don’t have to go on safari just to find what I’m looking for.)

* * *

How did I get here? I was going to write just one novel. It was going to be fun, an act of exploration, like climbing a mountain. Do it once for the experience.

But then I discovered the craft and the joy of writing.

So TKZers: When did you decide to write that first novel? How did you get to the present moment? Were you surprised by the journey? Are you going to stay the course?

The Wow Factor

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by James Scott Bell

In a 1948 booklet, Pulp Fiction, Robert Turner gave straight-dope advice on what it took to break into the pulp market. In one section he explains what happens to a manuscript when it comes in to an editorial office. What he says here has, I shall in a moment contend, application to writers in the age of AI-slop.

There are, says Turner, two piles in the office. One pile is for authors whose names are “known.” However—

If your name is not known—which makes your stuff an unknown quantity—the script is put at the bottom of the other pile, which is often huge. This is called the “slush” pile. It consists, I’m sorry to say, of about 98 percent junk. This is the fault of the writers, please understand, not the editors. It is also an advantage to you, if you have anything on the ball, because your script will then stand out like a rose on a garbage dump and the editor will make happy little noises.

This is true today, as it has always been true in this game. Most writing is junk. That is an advantage to writers who want to step up their game (which is why TKZ exists!)

The busy editor, says Turner, will always go to the “professional pile” first, as the odds of finding a good story are greater than with the slush. But he adds this note about the pro pile:

The casualties here are often heavier than you would expect them to be. Nearly all of these stories are “useable.” That is, they are professional pieces of work, with not too many outstanding flaws. But the editor doesn’t want merely “useable” stories. He wants damned good ones. He wants to get hold of a yarn that hits him so hard while he is reading it that he can hardly sit still. When he finishes reading he wants to be able to say: “Here’s a hell of a good Smithers story!” This does not happen very often. It takes a wow of a story to get an editor excited. He’s seen them all.

That is true of readers, too. They want a wow story, which is the rarest kind. Add to that all the AI-slop, which is competent. But is it ever wow? Is it ever unforgettable?

Our job is to become the rose in the garbage dump. May I suggest doing a “wow check” at every stage of a project, starting with—

Idea

I have a large file of ideas, things I’ve written down over the years when I’m sparked. I know you get these, too. Don’t ignore them, record them. Revisit them from time to time, seeing what still excites you.

I used to have a box for newspaper and magazine clippings. When something jumped out at me, I’d clip it and toss it in the box. Every now and then I’d go through them, seeing what still had a spark. One of them was a story about cops in L.A. stopping a driver of a convertible. He was a 6’4” guy, had an open container of Jose Cuervo Gold, and was dressed only in a Santa Claus hat and a G-string. This I clipped and threw in the box. Later it became the opening of my Ty Buchanan legal thriller Try Fear.

Development

Idea in hand, I’ll proceed (like a movie studio) to development. My favorite technique is that suggested by the great writing teacher Dwight Swain. I call it “the white-hot document.” It’s a free-form letter to myself, writing down as many plot and character and scene ideas as come to mind, following random threads and rabbit trails. I write without stopping in ten-minute chunks. I rest my brain, then come back to the document the next day.  I highlight the things I like best, and write some more. I do this for three or four days. If I’m still feeling the wow, I move on to—

Structure

I’m a plot and structure guy, so I lay out my “signpost scene cards” in Scrivener, including the “mirror moment.” The mirror moment is, for me, the key to it all. When I nail that—when I feel it—I know what the through-line of the whole book is.

Beginning

Then the day comes when I start writing. The first leg of the journey! This is fun, the scenery is new and fresh. I whistle a tune behind the wheel. But I know at some point I will probably hit—

The Wall

I’ve written before about hitting a “wall” at around the 30k mark. Other writers I know report the same thing. I usually pause here and review my first act, making sure it’s got the death stakes solid and the first Doorway of No Return clear. I make sure my heart still feels the wow factor so I can push on to the finish.

Editing

And then there’s the editing process. I do a read-through in hard copy, make changes, give it to my exacting editor (Mrs. B), incorporate her notes, then off to a beta reader, more changes, a proofreader, then my final polish. What keeps me going at this stage is the opportunity to put in more heart. I know my story now, see the big picture, know the characters, and I look for ways to increase the emotional impact of the whole thing.

So why go through all that when I can just prompt Chat or Claude to do the heavy lifting? Because I need to feel the wow, for myself as a writer and for my readers. Because, as Robert Turner says in Pulp Fiction, “to entertain a reader—in other words, to write a good story—is to play upon emotions, through the things that you make happen to your story characters.”

You don’t get that from a machine, in my (mostly) humble opinion.

Comments welcome.

Words of Wisdom: Risk

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Risk. Your characters have to risk in order to get what they want. Perhaps everything. Writers need to risk failure when they write the next story or book, and when they attempt to grow and improve their skills.

Today’s WoW is features a trio of insightful posts about dealing with risk.

Boyd Morrison lays out what can be at risk for a creative. Jordan Dane’s post isn’t directly about risk, but it is about providing a foundation for success as a writer, which I’d argue is necessary if you are taking creatives. Finally, James Scott Bell breaks down the different kinds of creative risks you can undertake.

When I was in the sixth grade, I desperately wanted the role of the lisping Winthrop in my school’s production of The Music Man. I can’t explain now why I had that inner urge (I’m not sure I had even seen a play before then), but perhaps it was because I shared Winthrop’s shy, self-conscious demeanor and saw myself in his struggle to come out of his shell. I auditioned and got my first taste of rejection. I didn’t even get cast in the chorus. I can still remember the hollow pit in my stomach as I watched the musical, unable to enjoy it the way my fellow audience members did.

It was a whole year before I had the opportunity to audition again, this time for Anna’s son Louis in The King and I. It was a nerve-wracking experience, but I got the part, and the experience on stage was everything I’d imagined it to be. I’ve been in love with acting ever since.

Today, I still act, but I’ve raised the stakes to a level I couldn’t have comprehended when I was that seventh-grader. I’ve just moved to Los Angeles to explore the Hollywood acting business. It’s only temporary, but it means uprooting myself from my wife, who has been incredibly supportive of this venture. I’m also away from the comforts of home, although the discomfort is as minimal as can be because I’m living in my sister’s home and I’m able to continue my writing while I’m here.

Everything I just mentioned involved risk. Of course, it’s not risk in the sense we normally think of it. My life was never in danger; I didn’t fear bodily harm. But a devastated psyche can be even more painful and difficult to recover from. As soon as I auditioned for the first time, I was risking rejection, being told I wasn’t good enough, or at least not as good as the actor who got the role. To get the part of Louis, I had to put myself at risk again.

We constantly face risks. Should I risk leaving the steady job I have now to take a new job offer? Should I ask the cute girl out on a date and risk getting snubbed? Should I get up on stage and risk making a fool of myself? But if I don’t take the new job, I’m at risk of missing a golden opportunity. If I don’t ask the cute girl out, I risk not being with the eventual love of my life. If I don’t go on stage, I risk not exploring a new side of me that will make me more fulfilled.

Being a writer is rife with risk. We face rejection on a constant basis from agents, publishers, critics, and readers. We might spend a year of our lives on a project that ends up being a dismal failure. We may fall on our faces in a very public setting, with Amazon reviews broadcasting the results. If I failed in my old jobs, only my immediate co-workers would know it; now my work is out there for the world to see.

Achieving anything worthwhile requires risk. It means leaving the comfort of the familiar, facing the terror of being judged a failure, and embracing the change, come what may.

Stupid risks don’t count. Don’t mortgage your house to buy lottery tickets. It’s the smart risks that are worth taking. Prepare for the risk by doing your homework. Make it a calculated risk by weighing the pros and cons of each alternative. Minimize the risk by setting realistic goals that you have control over: you can deliver a novel by a certain date at your standard of quality, but you can’t control whether it will be a NY Times bestseller.

Boyd Morrison—February 25, 2013

Just like a good, tried and true recipe is for brisket, we pick up new tips but keep what works. The same goes for writing. There are ways we all use to build upon our craft methods of writing a novel. We try new things to see what works. We discard other methods that we’ve outgrown as we evolve.

Below are some questions I’d like for you to answer if you see anything that fits you. Feel free to add what you’ve learned about writing in your comments. I am a sponge for picking up new stuff.

Writer Questions – Share your Experiences

1.) Are you still finding time to read? Do you read outside the genre you write?Even when life gets busy, reading can be a comfort, but it can also open your eyes to new techniques or interesting POVs or genres. Always be a student when it comes to your writing craft. You will keep growing.

2.) Do you cherish the time you write, where you write and make sure you don’t get interrupted? Life, family/friends and your day job can pile on to add stress in your life. Is your writing the first thing to go? I hope not. Even if you only finish a page a day, that’s progress. I find that once I establish a routine, my body can react in a bad way if I stray from my writing schedule. I can physically get the shakes. Even when I had my day job, I made sure to write every evening and on weekends. It wasn’t easy but it paid off.

3.) How do you capture those big ideas that can spring on you any time of day or night? Do you keep notebooks all over the house or a voice recorder? I get lots of ideas while I’m driving. The best ones, I pull over and reach for my purse where I keep a small notepad and pens. Or better yet, get someone to drive you so your genius is unfettered. Is there a place where you consistently get your big ideas? No pictures if you tell me “the shower.”

4.) Do you have personal rules/discipline when it comes to unplugging from social media and the internet while you are writing? My usual day is writing 9:00 am until 3:00 pm with short breaks to care for my dogs and grab a snack. I try to get up every 3 hours to stretch and walk and replenish the well for a quick change of scenery but I don’t get to emails or social media until after I’ve achieved my word count goal. YES, I have a daily goal. I generally shoot for 1500-2000 words per day and do rolling edits to keep my progress going on the overall project. But social media and emails are a time drain. No sneak peaking as a diversion when you hit a wall. Pick another way to shake out the cobwebs.

5.) Do you read your work aloud? After all these years, I still read my edits aloud. It’s a great way to insure you have a natural cadence to your dialogue and prose. Even if you don’t do this every day, I recommend doing it for important passages/proposals or as one of your final draft processes. This is the best way to find words you’ve left out.

6.) Do you use the first third to a quarter of your book to set up your world building and character introductions? An editor with a large publishing house said something at a writer’s conference about expecting to read the basic set up with characters and conflict within the first 3 chapters. Now it may not be 3 chapters exactly, as I see it now, but he wasn’t wrong about how to establish your world for the reader. Even if you don’t plot ahead of time, expect that readers and editors and agents will expect you to set that foundation for your story and include your cast of characters and their conflicts in the first part of the book.

7.) Do you plan the ending of your book while you’re working on your plot idea or are you willing to let it happen when you get there? If you’re like me, each book can be different. Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night with a new character telling me the ending to his/her story. True. That doesn’t happen with each book, but when it’s that strong that it wakes me, I listen. On the other hand, I am flexible enough to see new ways to add twists. I want to be open to new character motivations too. More times than not, I have found better books by staying open to my endings. How rigid are you? Have you ever been pleasantly surprised with an ending you never expected, just because you followed a rabbit trail or discovered something new about your main character?

Jordan Dane—March 21, 2019

Risk the Idea

I think each novel you write should present a new challenge. It might be a concept or “what if?” that will require you to do some fresh research. My new Mike Romeo thriller (currently in final revisions) revolves around a current issue that is horrific and heartbreaking. I could have avoided the subject altogether. But I needed to go there.

My next Romeo, in development, came from a news item about a current, but not widely reported, controversy. It’s fresh, but I’ve got a lot of learning to do. I’m reading right now, I’ll be talking to an expert or two, and soon will be making a location stop for further research.

I do this because I don’t want to write a book in the series where someone will say, “Same old, same old.”

Admittedly, writing about “hot-button” issues these days carries a degree of risk. Especially within the walls of the Forbidden City where increasingly the question “Will it sell?” is overridden by “Will it offend?”

But as the old saying goes, there is no sure formula for success, but there is one for failure—try to please everybody.

Craft Risk

Are you taking any risks with your craft? Are you following the Captain Kirk admonition to boldly go where you have never gone before?

There are 7 critical areas in fiction: plot, structure, characters, scenes, dialogue, voice, and meaning.

You can take one or all of these and determine to kick them up a notch. For example:

Plot—Have you pushed the stakes far enough? If things are bad for the Lead, how can you make them worse? I had a student in a workshop once who pitched his plot. It involved a man who was carrying guilt around because his brother died and he didn’t do enough to save him. I then asked the class to do an exercise: what is something your Lead character isn’t telling you? What does he or she want to hide?

I asked for some examples, and this fellow raised his hand. He said, “I didn’t expect this. But my character told me he was the one who killed his brother.”

A collective “Wow” went up from the group. But the man said, “But if I do that, I’m afraid my character won’t have any sympathy.”

I asked the group, “How many of you would now read this book?”

Every hand went up.

Take risks with your plot. Go where you haven’t gone before.

Characters—Press your characters to reveal more of themselves. I use a Voice Journal for this, a free-form document where the character talks to me, answers my questions, gets mad at me. I want to peel back the onion layers.

How about taking a risk with your bad guy? How? By sympathizing with him!

Hoo-boy, is that a risk. But you know what? The tangle of emotions you create in the reader will increase the intensity of the fictive dream. And that’s your goal! In the words of Mr. Dean Koontz:

The best villains are those that evoke pity and sometimes even genuine sympathy as well as terror. Think of the pathetic aspect of the Frankenstein monster. Think of the poor werewolf, hating what he becomes in the light of the full moon, but incapable of resisting the lycanthropic tides in his own cells.

Dialogue—Are you willing to make your dialogue work harder by not always being explicit? In other words, how can you make it reveal what’s going on underneath the surface of the scene without the characters spelling it out?

Voice—Are you taking any risks with your style? This is a tricky one. On the one hand, you want your story told in the cleanest way possible. You don’t want style larded on too heavily.

On the other hand, voice is an X factor that separates the cream from the milk. I’ve quoted John D. MacDonald on this many times—he wanted “unobtrusive poetry” in his prose.

I’m currently reading the Mike Hammer books in order. It’s fascinating to see Mickey Spillane growing as a writer. His blockbuster first novel, I, The Jury, is pure action, violence, and sex. It reads today almost like a parody. But with his next, My Gun is Quick, he begins to infuse Hammer with an inner life that makes him more interesting. By the time we get to his fourth book, One Lonely Night, Hammer is a welter of passions and inner conflict threatening to tear him apart. His First-Person voice is still hard-boiled, but it achieves what one critic called “a primitive power akin to Beat poetry.” And Ayn Rand, no less, put One Lonely Night ahead of anything by Thomas Wolfe!

In short, Spillane didn’t rest on his first-novel laurels. He pushed himself to be better.

He risked it for the biscuit.

James Scott Bell—September 24, 2022

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How about you? How do you approach creative risk? What do you do to help yourself prepare?