Monthly Archives: April 2010

Opening with action: Today’s critique

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Today we have the first page of a story called CRYSTAL WHITE. My comments follow in the bullets.


PROLOGUE

Warehouse District

Ontario, California

Assistant Special-Agent-in-Charge Nick Lafferty swore at his vibrating cell phone, trapped in the breast pocket of his suit jacket, trapped under his DEA-issued body armor. He ripped open the top Velcro strap. The noise reverberated through the warehouse. Then he contorted to fish his hand under the vest trying to reach the damn thing before it rang again.
A passing police sergeant, in gray urban fatigues, body armor and carrying an assault rifle slung over his shoulder, let him know, “Sharp shooters are in position, Agent Lafferty. Ready when you are.”

He nodded thanks. With the cell phone firmly in hand, he flipped it open. “Lafferty here.”

“Lafferty here too,” his wife, Renee, said, mimicking his stern, gruff voice, then laughing. “Except for us here is on the boat. We’re missing you. Any chance you’ll be able to join us?”

It was Sunday morning. He’d promised to take Renee and Vicki, their seven-year-old daughter, out for the day on their 32-foot Chris Craft Catalina, the YOU CAN RUN. They kept it docked at the marina off Harbor Drive in San Diego Bay. By now the sun would be full up, warm, baking the dry, gray wharf and the teak aft decking of the boat. Gulls would be circling and cawing, begging for handouts from the boaters and fishermen hanging off the piers.


A light breeze gently snapping the harbor flags, carrying with it an intoxicating aroma of salt water, wet rope and diesel fuel. He could practically hear the lapping of waves, the thump of fiberglass hulls against rubber bumpers, the creak of straining ropes.

He glanced around at the warehouse his team had commandeered for the morning’s impromptu operation. It was a far cry from the sunny marina where he wanted to be, on the water, with his family.

Instead he was here, with his Mobile Enforcement Team. They wore black fatigues and heavy bullet resistant vests under blue DEA windbreakers. With them was a Special Operations Team from the Ontario PD and the County Sheriff’s Tactical Services Team. Decked out in urban camouflage and full tactical gear and body armor, waiting, they stood around talking and checking their equipment, loading weapons and laughing at old war stories or politically incorrect jokes. Rifles and semi-automatic pistols clicked loudly as slides snapped closed. Metal clips clanged against plastic stocks, the musty air sharp with the smell of Hoppe’s No. 9 gun oil.

“I don’t know, honey,” Lafferty said into the phone. “I need to see how this thing plays out.”

***
My comments:

  • This first page seems to be a promising story–I like the sense we’re getting of the main character. I would keep reading, but I did get frustrated by the fact that the opening scene lacks action and suspense. We open on an armed officer, and he’s at a stakeout. This setup should be suspenseful. But then: 1) his cell phone rings; 2) his colleagues are seen standing around joking; 3) he has a conversation with his wife; 4) we get a description of his boat, which is docked someplace else, gulls circling, etc. All of these things drain the drama from the opening scene.
  • I think it would be more effective to open later into the action–open big, provide some drama and suspense, and then you can add the personal background, the wife, etc.
  • I’m not a big fan of prologues, in general. But if you do use a prologue, it should draw the reader in faster than this one does.
  • I don’t think you need to have “Assistant Special-Agent-in-Charge” in the first sentence. We’ll  get an idea that this character is an agent through the dialogue and action.
  • I would like to see more about the goal of the “impromptu operation,” and less about the things that distract from the suspense. So I would suggest that the writer tighten the scene.
  • There’s a lot of description of what everyone is wearing (vest, camouflage, body armor), but nothing that conveys what they’re trying to accomplish. 
  • Is there supposed to be any tension in this scene? The fact that the men are joking and telling war stories conveys an air of relaxation, not suspense.

What do you guys think?

Propelling the Plot

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by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

I’m in a bit of a slump today as my planned trip to London this evening has been thwarted by a volcano in Iceland (one which, BTW, my husband and I saw on our trip to Iceland a few years ago – though it was dormant at the time). I don’t react well to disappointment (a trait which I need to overcome as a professional writer!), but I can hardly complain given how many people are stranded far from home. Still, I’m mourning the fact that I won’t be able to spend time with my folks over a pint, a bag of crisps and a pork pie..:(

Instead, I get to work through some plot changes to my current WIP based on the terrific insight of my agent (who always seems to know exactly what is wrong with my drafts). Now plot is not one of my strong points…that’s not to say nothing happens in my books (I don’t suffer from that particular literary pretension), it’s just that I often fail to ensure that my characters propel the plot forward. Despite being an outliner, sometimes I allow my characters to get swept up in the events that envelop them, reacting to the situation rather than creating and shaping the story themselves.

So how do I approach fixing this? After I have gone through the initial phase of despondency, hair-pulling and chocolate binging I approach the issue systematically (with my usual dose of neurosis).

These are the steps I plan to take this week to address my latest case of ‘plot deficiency disorder’.

  • First, revisit the fundamentals. What are the motivations of all the key players? How do these and their desired objectives conflict? I then ask myself – how can I up the stakes in order to heighten this conflict and thwart those objectives? Given that most of my issues arise in the dreaded ‘sagging middle’ these questions help me focus on what needs to be accomplished.

  • This step enables me to start brainstorming plot ideas and situations that can heighten these stakes and which ensure the characters drive the action forward. In this second step I try to remain wide open to all options and constantly ask myself ‘what if?’…leaving open almost all possibilities (except those that are inconsistent with the characters I have created).

  • Up until this point I make absolutely no edits to the manuscript – because usually (and this is the case at the moment) the bones of the story are solid and the characters are well developed. I usually start and end a book strongly (small comfort) but the last thing I want to do is start tinkering with the middle until I know exactly what I’m going to do. This is a delicate time as I have to ensure that any plot alterations do not destroy what is currently working well in the story.

  • Before I start editing I draw up a detailed plot map of the revised story and check that the new course of action is true to the characters motivation and that the stakes, now heightened, haven’t become ludicrous or comical…

  • Then and only then do I start rewriting…hoping, of course, that the new plot permutations propel my story to a successful denouement!
So how do you approach plot issues? What steps do you take to remedy a ‘sagging plot’? (All and any tips greatly appreciated as I have a long week of thinking ahead of me!)

I also strongly recommend reading the book Plot & Structure by my fellow blogger, James Scott Bell – it has some great advice which I only wish I followed more often!

Did You Just Use Italics?

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James Scott Bell


Controversy? You want controversy? You thought Michelle’s post about F-bombs was controversial? John’s post about offending readers?

Well, step right up, cause I’ve got your controversy, right here: How about the use of italics?

That’s right! I said italics!

I love the way writing “rules” sometimes get floated around the internet, become a meme, then move to “accepted wisdom” or even “non-negotiable truths from on high” – while, all along, it may be wrong for an across the board regulation.

Sometimes there’s a kernel of truth. For example, there’s a “rule” that says, No Prologues! Part of that may be simply because agents see so many bad ones. Maybe we’ll discuss that in a future post.

Today I want to discuss the use of italics for rendering the inner thoughts of a character. You know how that’s often done:

Susan walked into the room and saw Blake. Back in town! I don’t want him to see me like this!

That’s the shortest possible route to showing us the inner thought. Another alternative is to not use italics, but put in an attribution:

Susan walked into the room and saw Blake. Back in town, she thought. I don’t want him to see me like this!

A third way is to use 3d Person, but filtered in such a way that we know it is Susan thinking it.

Susan walked into the room and saw Blake. So he was back in town. She didn’t want him to see her like this.

That last two renderings are probably the preferred type these days. Or at least the fashion cops seem to think so. But does that mean italics should never be used for thoughts?

Never say never, especially when it comes to writing “rules.” I think italics are still perfectly acceptable when used in moderation.

Note that word: moderation. The overuse of italicized thoughts gets a bit wearying.

But an italicized thought may be the best, most economical way for a character to recall a key point or phrase uttered earlier in the book. And to set it off for the reader, too.

For example, early in the book your Lead character is given a clue about the villain by someone, who says, “Baxter will be wearing cheapie shoes that squeak.”

Near the end of the book, the character hears someone enter the room with squeaky shoes. You could write it the clunky way: She listened to the sound of his shoes on the tile. And she remembered what Clive had told her about Baxter, that he would be wearing inexpensive shoes that squeak.

Or you could do it quickly and easily with italics:

She listened to the sound of his shoes on the tile.

Baxter will be wearing cheapie shoes that squeak . . .

If you have a scene that is mostly interior dialogue, using italics can be a means of variety. In Lisa Scottoline’s Courting Trouble, lawyer Anne Murphy has to process some shattering news. First, Scottoline uses no italics:

Could this be? Could this really be? Was Willa dead? Anne’s heart stalled in her chest. Her eyes welled up suddenly, blurring the busy boardwalk . . . . She struggled against the voice and the conclusion, but she couldn’t help it. Willa, dead? No!

But then, as Anne continues to try to “wrap her mind” around it, there’s this:

Kevin got out, but how? Why didn’t they tell her?

The switch to italics, for one line, adds a certain immediacy to the thought process. I don’t think Scottoline should be arrested for using it. I don’t even think she should get a ticket.

In The Hard Way by Lee Child, a man in a hooded sweatshirt who takes money off drunks is walking down the street, and sees: A big man, but inert. His limbs were relaxed in sleep.

As the hooded man moves closer, Child inserts a series of quick thoughts, between paragraphs of narrative:

His hair was clean. He wasn’t malnourished.

Not a bum with a pair of stolen shoes.

[more narrative]

A prime target.

And so on. It’s just an efficient way to get the point across and get out of the way. Could the same thing be done without italics? Perhaps. Should it? That’s up to you.

Another jab against italics is that they are “hard to read.” I don’t buy that. That’s why I didn’t mind that Robert Crais has whole chapters in italics in L.A. Requiem. He has a reason for it, and I’m not going to call the Style Felony Hotline to report him.

Here’s my pragmatic conclusion: yes, there may be some prejudice against italics. But if they’re used judiciously and for good reason, I see no problem.

Do you?

Do you?

Trouble Shooting

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A First Page Critique by

John Ramsey Miller


Before I was published, I wrote several novels that I thought were awfully good. Looking back I see how wrong I was. But I kept on, seeing every manuscript as practice, and I read a lot and listened to the criticisms I received, naturally giving more weight to those flaws pointed out by people who knew what they were talking about. And I persevered and kept right on plugging away. Perhaps, due to my advertising background, I have a thick skin and I want only blunt honesty from my readers so I can make my work better. I always say, “Tell me what you really think.” I mean it. It is far better to hear something from another author or agent than it is from an editor who is turning your book down for some reason I wish I’d have known about and could have fixed.

At some point all authors are handed someone’s writing to evaluate, often believing we will (or can) hand it to our agents who will take it on, or that we can send it to our publisher with a demand it be on shelves forthwith. This is a hard business, and years ago I went out of my way to encourage everybody who presented me with their babies. A lot of them (perhaps buoyed by my encouragement) went on and had their teeth kicked in by agents and publishers. A lot of them deserved writing careers, but so far have yet to have a house agree. Even some with talent had their teeth kicked in. Only a small fraction of those who think they can write, can or should. While I hate to give people false hope, I don’t like the idea of shooting at dreams. Sometimes I am too negative (ask my children or friends) and I’m trying not to be a curmudgeon. The truth is that, as with all endeavors, not everybody can perform them as well as they think they can. Some people cannot drive a nail, rebuild a carburetor, or create a painting worth looking at. Some people cannot tell a story, and some may just need encouragement, practice and they will get it and can write professionally. But criticism should always be constructive. While I am not an expert on writing, I have learned some things the hard way.

Before I get into the anonymous page I’ve been given, let me say that there’s nothing that turns off readers––and editors are the most critical readers––than too much information presented too soon (or too little too late), under-drawn settings, under-defined characters, choppy or confusing choreography, telling instead of showing, shocking transitions, clichés, stilted dialog, defying logic, using coincidence to solve problems, typos, unorthodox formatting, or misused words. As a writer you’d better know much more than you put on a page, and you should think about what the reader is seeing or may be missing because of something you knew and didn’t bother to put in. Not that I found all of those “avoidable” problems here, they are just things to look for and to avoid.

Without further foreplay, I present…

Buried Trouble

By An Anonymous Author

From the tip of the peninsula you could see the entire bay and the surrounding metro areas. Hugh had bought the property for a song. Opportunity awaits for those who have ready money in a bad economy. As he looked side to side he could take in the high-rise buildings downtown contrasting with the water. What a perfect development site. Turning and walking back towards his Lexus, he could see the company black SUV speeding his way in the distance. Even though the windows were heavily tinted, he knew it was Bill.

“Mr. Garnet I think you need to see this report,” said Bill.

“We’ll tell me about it, god dammit. That’s what I pay you for.”

Bill revealed the details over lunch. They had to be careful not to talk too loud above the crowd noise. After the waiter had picked up their plates, the conversation continued.

“So, who else knows about this report?” Hugh asked.

“I can’t say for sure. I had to do a lot of digging to find it,” Bill said. “But, as they say, its open source. You know, publicly available. So it’s out there on the internet.”

“Would anyone else do the same digging?” Hugh asked.

“I doubt it. Right now everyone wants the development to go forward. It’s not in their best interest to find out anything like this. It would blow everything.”

“Well, make sure you burn that copy,” said Hugh.

Hugh excused himself from the table as the waiter returned with the check. Bill knew the routine. Hugh never paid for anything he didn’t have to.

*

Growing up in Tampa, Travis had known all of the great fishing spots in the bay since the fourth grade. But today fishing was the farthest thing from his mind. Looking at the project on the Garnet Property Development website, he could take in the whole picture.

“See what I mean, Sam,” he said. “There’s no way out.”

“What do you mean?”

“If a storm came towards the bay like Elaine in 1985, this land floods. And there wouldn’t be enough egress roads to move the population in time,” said Travis.

“We’ll that’s nothing new. Throw a dart at the map of Florida and it’s the same everywhere,” said Sam.

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” said Travis. “But not quite like this, though. The SLOSH model for a Cat 2 storm shows the entire peninsula under water.”

“Excuse me for asking, but what’s a slosh model?” Sam asked.

Travis motioned Sam to come over to his desk. “Take a look.”

They both looked at the computer screen. Travis clicked the mouse and in slow motion the Interbay Peninsula became a collage of blue, green and yellow.

“It stands for Sea, Lake and Overland Surges from Hurricanes. It’s a computerized model run by the National Hurricane Center to estimate storm surge heights. If it’s colored…it’s under water.”

“So why aren’t the developers paying attention to this?” asked Sam.

“As always,” said Travis. “Money. It doesn’t pay to see it. Besides, the property used to be an air force base with only 3,000 people living there. Then it didn’t matter so much. This development will have 30,000 residents.”

The page opens with “Hugh” surveying his land, which is on a peninsula across the bay from an unnamed major city. He bought this piece of prime real estate for a song because he had cash money in hard times. How this prime parcel was invisible to other developers for decades (and while a city was springing up right over there) is not explained in this opening paragraph. Where are we? I need more. know that Hugh has a Lexus (I’m wondering if he had his accelerator fixed) and that a black “company” SUV with blacked-out windows is approaching with “Bill inside”. “Hugh” is either psychic, or only Bill drives around in hiding. Without opening the window or stepping out of the SUV, Bill opens the dialogue with a message that he has a gloomy-doomy report. Hugh demands to know what is in this report, but before Bill can tell him, they go to a crowded restaurant, and wait until after they have eaten to tell the reader that Bill had to “dig hard” to find out something that explains why Hugh’s primo location is a dog of epic proportions. Bill assures Hugh that nobody else knows about the BIG problem with the land because they have not dug it up––hence the title of the book, BURIED TROUBLE? We get that Hugh is so evil and powerful that he leaves the restaurant before the check comes, and Bill is left to pay …as always. It seems that Hugh is perhaps able to buy land because he never pays for anything but land and the occasional Lexus.

*

In the second segment we meet “Travis” whom I suspect will be the protagonist. This individual had known the greatest fishing spots in the bay since the fourth grade, which perhaps is when “Our greatest fishing spots” was taught in Tampa’s schools. Seriously, this intro needs a lot of work, but it is fixable.

The author does not tell us where Travis and sidekick Sam are, or immediately whether Travis is looking at a computer screen, a chart on a wall, into a shallow hole Bill forgot to cover up after digging out the report, or gazing into a crystal ball. We do find out later that the two men are at desks and that Travis is looking at a computer screen. Still there is far too little information and there is no physical description of the characters or their actions to allow us to form a picture of them in our minds.

Here we learn that Bill’s report detailing his uncovered secret about the land is in fact known by the National Weather Service and probably everybody with a developer’s license except Hugh. The problem is that the secret that threatens Hugh’s deal needs to be more of a secret. It’s buried and hard to find but Travis found it easily. So others could as well.

Keep it believable. If the peninsula is a death trap, and the military kept 3,000 people in until they abandoned it, there would be no secret as to why they left and it wasn’t developed immediately, and why it went for what Hugh felt was a song. If the parcel, located across the bay from Tampa, was never developed there’s a reason. I think the author needs to reexamine the logic right here, because the deeper you go using a flawed premise, the farther the story goes into the unbelievable. As it appears to me, unless Travis and Sam can somehow stop Hugh, 30,000 people who somehow don’t discover what the world can know {and should know) will rush buy homes from Hugh and be trapped with no way out when a hurricane (they can’t be aware of) hits and they perish en masse, unable to get to safety …in Tampa. And the reader wonders, “why the developers aren’t paying attention to this “buried trouble” Bill and Travis have uncovered.


“So why aren’t the developers paying attention to this?” asked Sam.

“As always,” said Travis. “Money. It doesn’t pay to see it. Besides, the property used to be an air force base with only 3,000 people living there. Then it didn’t matter so much. This development will have 30,000 residents.”

One additional note:

“We’ll tell me about it, god dammit. That’s what I pay you for.” I think there should probably be a capital “G” in God. I think either dammit, damnit, or damn it are fine, but with the “god” attached I’m not sure. “We’ll” instead of “Well” crops up twice in the page, which makes me wonder if the author knows the difference. Again, don’t depend on spell-checking. Use your eyes when you are fresh and focused.

I would suggest that the author see this opening page as a story possibility and examine it and mull it over looking for the holes in the story before they write the novel. Think long and hard on your story premise and examine it from every possible angle. Play the “What if” game. Then play the “why or why not” game because you can bet your readers will.

There are problems here. I think story line feels all too predictable, but many successful novels (Louis Lamour is a good example of predictable working for his audience) are just that and are enjoyed for other reasons than being stunned and surprised. Not that this effort couldn’t have twists and turns later in the book. It needs a lot of things I’m not seeing to get me to want to know more than I do at the end of the first page.

Most of us have written a book filled with mistakes, or came to a grinding halt at a solid wall, because we didn’t take the time to think everything through to make sure the logic holds before we wrote ourselves into corners. It can be avoided by taking the right steps.

Would I keep reading this book?

In its present form, I would not.

Is it fixable?

Most things are. I wish the author good luck.

Okay, Guys and Gals, what did I miss?

Insulting Your Audience – And Today’s Critique

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By John Gilstrap

My next book, Hostage Zero (July, 2010) features a new character who happens to be a veteran of the Battle of Fallujah, a 2004 gulf-war maelstrom that evolved into one of the great U.S. Marine urban warfare victories of all time. In relating a story from that time to another character, this very likeable guy refers to his Iraqi insurgent enemies as “Hadjis”—this war’s equivalent of Kraut or Nip. Hey, when you’re trying to kill them, insulting them doesn’t seem like such a big deal. At least I didn’t think so.

My copy editor, however affixed a yellow sticky with a rather passionate note that the H-word was offensive, and that if my character used it, the readers would stop liking him. She suggested that I eliminate all uses of the term. We agreed to disagree.

In a previous book, an early draft included a line of dialogue in which my protagonist (a cop) showed disrespect for the gay community via a throwaway line that dealt with slip-on shoes and reduced gravity. My then-agent’s assistant, himself openly gay, told me that that was a truly offensive reference within the community—I had no idea—and that the line changed his whole opinion of my character. I was stunned, and I deleted the reference without a fight.

The difference between the two instances was that the gay reference truly was a throwaway line that I probably would have trimmed anyway, just during the normal course of editing. Besides, I know a number of really fine people who happen to be gay, and I try not to make anyone uncomfortable.

On the other hand, the remark in Hostage Zero actually plays a part in the course of the story. And if readers don’t understand the honest place from which the epithet arises in my character, then they’re either way too sensitive, or I’m not as good at my job as I need to be.

My question to the blogosphere today is how far are you willing to go to appease readers’ sensitivities, especially when in the POV of a character? Is it possible in today’s literary environment for a good guy to retain the moral high ground even after he makes an insensitive remark?

Okay, now on to today’s anonymous writing sample:

AN EMPIRE LADY

I don’t usually poison someone on the first date, but this time I’m willing to make an exception. Dame Blanchard always said improvisation is a necessary part of espionage and, as Monsieur Hugo crosses the room to the mahogany sideboard, I sense the danger I’m in. His tall, taut frame appears sinewy and strong beneath the immaculately pressed evening suit – he could easily overwhelm me with his physical strength and so I reach out for the beaded purse dangling from the arm of the chair, ready to draw out the vial of arsenic I always keep on hand. Monsieur Hugo turns before I can extract it and I draw out a silver cigarette case instead. I place a Gauloise cigarette to my lips, staining the end with deep red lipstick, before offering him one with an arched look, designed to convey the kind of brazen audacity I hope masks my fear.

“Champagne, ma cherie?” he inquires, dark toad-like eyes bulging.

“Oui, merci,” I reply with my most calculated-to-charm smile. I wonder, was it my accent that tipped him off? Had I inadvertently betrayed the fact that I grew up in the gutters of Le Havre rather than the gilded drawing rooms of Paris? Dame Blanchard had cautioned me that, as a military attaché, Monsieur Hugo, had an uncanny ear for dialect. Had he suspected me all along?

I shift in my exquisite, hand sequined gown to reveal a peek of ankle, the merest flash of a jewel-encrusted silk shoe. Perhaps lust will entice him to draw out this little charade of ours. His eyelid’s flicker even as his traitorous smile remains rigidly in place.

Our glasses clink in a toast. “To the King,” I murmur, seeing my own blue eyes reflected in his black gaze. We may as well feign loyalty to King George – the French are supposed to be our allies after all.

“To the King,” he echoes, watching me closely.

The battle of wits – and my survival – begins.
===

This piece is a living example of a story with good bones under a heavy layer of fat. I enjoy the setting and I enjoy the character and her voice, but it’s all way too thick and chewy for me. Sentences meander and compound too much. The simple declarative sentence is a writer’s most important tool.

For me, the present-tense telling is a crippling burden here. When used even by experienced journeymen, the present tense is a contrivance; here it’s an albatross, made even albatrossier by the fact that it’s a historical piece.

At the risk of being presumptuous, I’ve taken a stab at a full re-write of the submission to illustrate some tightening and stylistic changes that I think make the piece more engaging. I kept to the original skeleton, and I tried hard not to screw up the voice. This just seemed like the most efficient way to offer constructive criticism and trim over 100 words in the process:

I don’t usually poison someone on the first date, but tonight was a night of firsts.

As military attaché Monsieur Hugo crossed the room to the mahogany sideboard, I sensed danger. Sinewy and strong beneath his immaculately pressed evening suit, he could easily have overwhelmed me.

I reached below the arm of my chair to draw the vial of arsenic from my beaded purse, but when he turned unexpectedly, I withdrew a silver cigarette case instead. I placed a Gauloise to my lips, staining it with red lipstick before offering him one. I hoped my arched look masked my fear.

“Champagne, ma cherie?” he offered. His dark toad-like eyes bulged.

“Oui, merci,” I replied, praying that my accent did not betray my origins from the gutters of Le Havre. Dame Blanchard had cautioned me that Monsieur Hugo possessed an uncanny ear for dialect.

I shifted in my chair to reveal the merest flash of a jewel-encrusted silk shoe beneath my sequined gown. His eyelids flickered even as his traitorous smile remained rigid.

Our glasses clinked. “To the King,” I murmured. The French were supposed to be our allies after all.

His eyes remained locked on mine. “To the King.”

The battle of wits – and battle for my survival – had begun.

Pardon my french

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by Michelle Gagnon

During our first page critiques, we discussed the danger of incorporating strong language on page 1 of your manuscript. Encountering an f-bomb at the outset of a novel can turn off a lot of readers, so editors are understandably leery of acquiring works with it.

However, I think that strong language does have a place in novels- at least in mine. I frequently get emails or reviews from people who say things like, “I loved this book, but wish that someone had gone through and crossed out all the f-bombs for me.” Equally perplexing to me are the people who claim that they “didn’t mind the f-bombs, but at times Gagnon takes the name of the Lord in vain.”

Here’s the thing: I’m not the one doing it. My characters are, and they’re doing it because in real life, that’s how people in their particular professions and circumstances talk.

I understand that we don’t all approve of strong language- I certainly don’t use it frequently. But then, I’m rarely chasing serial killers, or trying to stop a domestic terror group from destroying Phoenix. When my characters are staring at the timer on a bomb, I don’t think “gosh” is going to be the first word to leave their lips. I try to be judicious with the swearing, but it’s most important to me to remain true to the characters spouting it. From my admittedly somewhat limited exposure to them, gang members and ex-con skinheads tend to have foul mouths. So do many law enforcement officers, especially when they’re talking to each other. I strive for accuracy in every other facet of my books. So why should I be expected to compromise on this one?

Maybe I’ve simply become inured. The places I’ve lived (including San Francisco), it’s rare to get through the day without hearing random swearing (and now that people are constantly talking loudly into their cell phones, they really seem to have lost their filter). I’ll join in on any bemoaning of what that means for us as a society. But since that experience informs my work, I can’t pretend it’s not the current reality, allowing my characters to speak as though they just stumbled off the Leave it to Beaver set.

I was raised a Unitarian, which is a religion that promotes tolerance of all beliefs. So I empathize with people who don’t condone taking the name of the Lord in vain. And yet, I can attest that my characters harken from a wide range of religious beliefs. Because of that, chances are they’re going to use such terms from time to time. And in the interest of realistic dialogue, I believe in letting them. If I were writing Inspirational thrillers, it would be an entirely different story. But I’m not.

I’m curious to hear what people think about this. Does strong language have a place in thrillers? Does it bother you, or not?

Writing For A Living

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We’re taking a break from our first-page critiques today to welcome my friend and fellow thriller author Mark Terry as our guest blogger. Mark and I shared the same publisher for a number of years and on many occasions we’ve discussed the ins and outs of this writing life. As a matter of fact, Mark maintains his own blog by the same name; This Writing Life. It’s worth your while to drop by and read his latest thoughts on life and literature.

fallenThis month Mark celebrates the publication of his latest thriller in his Derek Stillwater series, THE FALLEN. James Rollins said it was “blisteringly paced and unrelenting”. And Paul Levine called Stillwater “tougher than Jason Bourne and smarter than Jack Ryan”. If you like action and suspense all wrapped up in a tightly written bundle, grab a copy of THE FALLEN today.

——————–

Writing For A Living by Mark Terry.

For probably a decade now I have been on a quest. That quest is to get the answers to a two-part question. This question is one I have, off and on, directed at published novelists or, just as likely, guessed at. Here they are:

  1. Do you make a living writing novels?
  2. How much money do you make annually writing novels?

mark-terryThis is a question mostly dodged by novelists, I’ve found. I believe the rationale goes like this: readers want to believe in the mystique of the rich novelist, of the novelist who makes a lot of money writing their books; if a writer is not making a living from his novels, then he/she must not be a very good novelist, the books must not be worth reading, and hence, I’m going to lie and say yes.

Something like that.

From time to time someone really lets it all loose. Lynn Viehl, who writes under a number of pseudonyms and in several different genres, actually published one of her royalty statements for all to see, and discussed the print run and her advance ($50,000).

There are a number of things that shocked me, starting with her $50,000 advance. She’s a New York Times bestseller, so I expected a much larger advance, despite the fact she’s a paperback original author. Moreover, although I would welcome a $50,000 advance (with open arms, c’mon, I dare you, lay it on me!), after my agent took 15% and the federal government took 24% and the state took 4% (your mileage may vary), I wouldn’t exactly be rolling in money. I’d be looking to bring in some more income somehow.

Lynn Viehl brings in more. She publishes multiple books a year, she undoubtedly has foreign sales, and she has a nice backlist that continues to bring in income. So she’s doing fine.

Which brings me to another thing. Periodically someone invites me out to lunch so they can pick my brain about writing for a living. In fact, I’m going out to lunch next week on just such an occasion, and it’s happened 3 or 4 other times as well. A lot of times the individual wants to know how to either make a living writing or supplement their income writing. I invariably ask, “Well, how much money do you want to make?”

That’s an important question, because someone making $30,000 a year is going to have different goals and needs than someone already making $100,000 a year.

Okay, let’s back up a minute. For the last 5-1/2 years I’ve made my living as a full-time freelance writer, editor, and novelist. I make a good living, which is to say, usually somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 a year. (Last year sucked, by the way; this year’s looking good). My wife has a good job and has excellent healthcare benefits, which is definitely helpful. The vast majority (a phrase I don’t like much) of my income comes from things other than novels.

Now, Ms. Viehl aside, I have over the years gotten to know a lot of novelists and even to get some idea of how much money they make a year (sort of). In 2007 SF novelist and freelance writer John Scalzi wrote an enormously honest blog entry about income. It’s illuminating. I have another writing friend, Erica Orloff who writes in several different genres in several different names and although she has not gone so far as to post a royalty statement that I know of, has been quite honest on her blog about bringing in somewhere over $100,000 a year annually. Joe Konrath recently posted on his blog about how much money his books have made and how much his e-books are bringing in and I’ve been sort of surprised by some of the numbers there, too.

So after talking to a lot of authors over the years and questioning my own assumptions about writing income, I’ve come to a couple conclusions. Your conclusions may be different.

  1. Just because a writer gets published doesn’t mean they make a living as a writer. It may just be one of the ways to make a bit of extra money when you retire.
  2. Many writers who write full-time as novelists have:
    • A well-paid, supportive spouse
    • Retired from a job and are on pensions and social security
    • Made a lot of money somewhere along the line and are now living on it
    • Write more than one novel a year
    • Supplement their novel-writing with other types of writing
    • Are lying.
    • Are Top 10 bestselling authors
  3. Just because their books says “bestselling author” does not mean they’re making tons of money. Point in fact, my for-Kindle novel, DANCING IN THE DARK, recently jumped onto two or three of the Amazon Kindle bestseller lists, allowing me for the rest of my life to call myself Mark Terry, Bestselling Novelist. Yay me! And with the money I’ve made so far off that novel, I can take you out to dinner—one of you and one of you only. Maybe in a couple more months you can bring a friend and we can afford appetizers.
  4. There’s money to be made, but it’s not very reliable.

My friend Erica and I had an interesting discussion a couple weeks on this very topic. Erica noted that she’s been steadily publishing novels for about 20 years now and that with her various pseudonyms and multiple genres, she could make a good living just writing fiction. But the nonfiction she writes—ghost writing, commercial copywriting, etc.—provides a level of stability and reliability that the fiction writing doesn’t.

Amen, sister. I don’t know if my novels will ever make so much money that I’m willing to stop writing nonfiction (and I honestly don’t know what that figure would have to be). One, I like writing nonfiction. And two, in my experience it’s been a hell of a lot more stable (not to mention lucrative) than my fiction. Not as much fun, certainly, but more dependable.

Anyway, for anyone interested, on my blog (on the right side) is a 12-part series I wrote titled Freelance Writing For A Living.

Thoughts?

Mark Terry is a freelance writer, editor, and novelist. The author of The Devil’s Pitchfork, The Serpent’s Kiss, Dirty Deeds, and a collection of mystery novellas entitled Catfish Guru, Mark lives in Michigan.

Keeping everything in balance: Today’s first-page critique

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For a scene to work well, there are so many elements that need to be kept in balance: a sense of place, tension, pacing, characterization. It can sometimes seem a little overwhelming to new (and even old) writers.
I think today’s first page is a good example of the writer doing a lot of these things right. My comments follow the asterisks.
Trouble Shooter by Largo Chimp

Chapter 1: The Death of Arthur



Monday, 7 January

California, United States of America

Turgenev rested his elbows in the tall, brown grass of the hilltop and propped his chin in his hands. The sky was blue and empty except for the dark speck of a distant bird. He sucked in a deep breath of warm air and smiled. In Moscow it would be freezing. Grass tickled his throat. Turgenev yawned. “You see him?”

Sally lay an arm’s length away, adjusting the focus on a fat Leupold spotting scope. “Not yet,” she whispered. Then her shoulders tensed. “There!”

Turgenev raised his binoculars. Four hundred meters away, a man carrying a rifle knelt at a chain-link fence outside a compound of cinderblock buildings and sixty-year-old Quonset huts. The chunky man wore a tan sport coat.

“He is stuck. He does not know how to work the bolt cutters,” Turgenev said.


Sally squinted through her scope. “He’s a scientist. I think he can manage the bolt cutters.”

“Don’t be so sure. My father knew a man once, a cyberneticist, who electrocuted himself because he did not know how–“

“Hush. There he goes.”

The man folded back part of the fence and crawled through. He trotted to the nearest building, zipped a card through a wall-mounted reader beside a door and ducked inside.

“Why didn’t you send him through the gate? He has a security card.”

Sally’s soft sleepy eyes hardened. “This is my operation. I want to see what he can do while under the influence. The fence is safer. If I sent him through the gate, he’d talk with the guards and they might notice his behavior.”

Turgenev sipped from a warm bottle of water. “Perhaps safer is better.”

* * *
I have to say I really like this first page, starting with the name “Largo Chimp.” I want to read anything by someone named Largo Chimp.

I immediately get pulled in because the location is California, and yet the first person being presented is Russian. The dialogue starts briskly, with clear tension between the two characters, who are at odds over the action that is unfolding.  Their dialogue is nicely differentiated so that you can tell the difference between the two people’s voices. One way the author accomplishes that  differentiation is through the use/nonuse of the contractions. Turgenev says, “He is stuck.” Sally comes back with an American-sounding contraction, “He’s a scientist.” It’s just what you’d expect from a non-native speaker versus an American. Very nice!

It’s taut, it’s lean, it’s compelling. I can’t think of a goshdarned suggestion to make. Except maybe it would be good to move Sally’s remark, “The fence is safer” to the end of her block of dialogue, so that it more strongly mirrors Turgenev’s comeback, “Perhaps safer is better.” It took me a second reading to realize that he was agreeing with her.

Based on this first page, I really want to read more. This one gets a gold star from me!

Establishing a Strong Sense of Place

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Today our first page critique raises an important aspect in making many a good mystery or thriller – a strong sense of place. I always think the challenge in creating a sense of place is to make it instantly fully realized as well as believable. A reader truly needs to ‘be there’ and to have full confidence that the author has done their research.

A strong sense of place can be a tricky prospect for a first page: too much and the reader starts to yawn; too little and the story can seem generic and bland. If the set-up seems too contrived or deliberate, a reader starts to feel awkward; if the writer gets crucial facts wrong, the reader immediately disconnects from the story.

I think the first page we are reviewing today manages to instantly capture a great sense of place. Although I might tighten it up a wee bit (see my comments after the piece) all in all this first page grabs me – in part because the place itself resonates and intrigues.
So here it is – the first page of the novel, 65 below.
Richardson Highway
East of Fairbanks
Alaska
17 December 1600 hrs
“Damn! When it gets dark out here, it is dark as death.”

Eugene Wyatt drove as fast as conditions allowed down the Richardson highway in his big beige Ford F250 Crew Cab Diesel pickup, with the brown and white Tanana Valley Electric Cooperative logo emblazoned on the doors. It was only four o’clock in the afternoon but the late December sun had already long descended, leaving the land in total inky blackness. His three-year-old golden retriever Penny sat on the passenger side of the wide bench seat. She ignored her master’s Oklahoma drawl and stared out the window as they drove along. The dog’s breath shot a burst of steam onto the frigid glass a few inches away every time she exhaled. Her tongue hung limply over the teeth of her open mouth.

On any typical evening, there would have been brightly lit signs atop tall poles in front of the gas stations, or neon beer advertisements pulsing blue, red, and yellow from within the windows of busy bars as he passed through the small city of North Pole then the even smaller town of Moose Creek. Tonight though only the glow of candles and oil lamps flickered dimly between the curtains of the handful of homes along the highway. The power was out, everywhere.

Eugene looked at Penny who stared transfixed at the truck window. The frost from her breath created a ring of ice crystals on the glass that she seemed to be studying. The area had warmed up significantly in the past few days though after an unseasonal cold snap that held the land at negative fifty for several weeks. The red mercury line on the thermometer now hovered at a livable zero degrees Fahrenheit.

Eugene remembered a line a comedian had said on TV the night before.
If it is zero degrees, does that mean there is no temperature?

The humor of the line dissipated fast. There had never been an outage like it in his thirty years in Alaska’s electricity business. At first, the authorities thought it was a local failure within the Tanana Valley Cooperative area. It was not long though before they discovered it was much bigger. The phone company went out at the same time. Cellular towers failed. The whole of the Interior region of Alaska, an area the size of New York State, was thrown back into the 19th century in an instant.

My comments:

  • First off, I liked how the author started the book with dialogue – it instantly set the tone and introduced us to the character.

  • The details (car type/age of dog) on the first paragraph might (perhaps) be tightened up but I thought this and the second paragraph set the scene really well. The success I think in this first page is that it establishes the scene with a minimum of backstory and explanation – we know all we really need to know at this stage: It’s Alaska, the power is out, the main character (an outsider from Oaklahoma) is out on the highway with only his dog and there is a sense of foreboding that promises much in the way of suspense.
  • I thought the final two paragraphs set up the problem well – that there had never been a power outage like this, that Alaska was now a total ‘frontier’ land, and the reader now gets a strong sense that something awful/shocking is probably about to happen – Just what you want the first page of a good mystery/thriller to set up!

So what do you think? Did you get the immediate, visceral feel of Alaska like I did? Did you feel the set up was there and, more importantly, would you read on?

I know I would.

How to Write Your Last Page

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James Scott Bell

It’s been a heady couple of weeks doing first pages here at TKZ. So I thought, just to catch our breath and balance things out, maybe we should go the other way for a moment.

What about your last page?

I love the Mickey Spillane quote: “The first page sells your book. The last page sells your next book.”

How true that is. How many times have we begun a novel or movie, only to be let down when the book is closed or the credits roll?

I love beginnings. Beginnings are easy. I can write grabber beginnings all day long. So, I suspect, can you.

But endings? Those are hard.

Why? First, because with each passing day another book or movie has come out, another ending has been rendered. So many great endings have already shown up. We who continue to write have the burden of trying to provide satisfactory surprise at the end when so much ending material is already out there.

Second, our endings have to tie things up in a way that makes sense but is also unanticipated. If the reader can see it from a mile away, the effect is lost.

I like what Boston University writing teacher Leslie Epstein said in a recent Writer’s Digest piece (“Tips for Writing and for Life,” WD March/April 2010). When asked if a writer must know the ending before he starts, Epstein says, “The answer is easy: yes and no. One must have in mind between 68 and 73 percent of the ending.”

Epstein’s having a bit of fun here, but his point is solid. If you have the ending 100% in mind, you’re in a straitjacket, unable to let your story sufficiently breathe, or twist, or turn.

OTOH, if you don’t have any idea where you’re going, you could easily fall into the meander trap, or the backed-into-a-corner trap.

There are some very helpful techniques for writing a great ending. Joe Moore discussed some of these last month. Type “endings” in the search box in the upper left of the blog, and you’ll get other thoughts by my blog mates. And I’ll humbly mention that I have also treated the subject in Plot & Structure.

But rather than focusing on principles, today I want to offer you my own personal approach to writing endings. It’s called Stew, Brew and Do.

Why is it called that? Because I made it up so I get to name it.

Here’s how it goes:

Step 1: Stew.

I spend a lot of time at the end of a manuscript just stewing about the ending. Brooding over it. I’ve got my final scenes in mind, of course, and have written toward them. I may even have written a temporary ending. But I know I won’t be satisfied until I give the whole thing time to simmer. I put the manuscript aside for awhile, work on other projects, let the “boys in the basement” take over.

I tell myself to dream about the ending before going to bed. I write down notes in the morning.

Step 2: Brew.

When I am approaching the drop dead deadline, I continue to outline ending possibilities. I will have files of notes and ideas floating in my head. When I know I have to finish I use Brew in both a practical and metaphorical way.

I take a long walk. There is a Starbucks half an hour from my office. (In fact, there is a Starbucks half an hour from anyplace in the world). I put a small notebook in my back pocket and walk there and order a brew—a solo espresso. I down it, wait a few minutes and then start writing notes in the notebook.

Then I walk another half an hour, to another Starbucks (I’m not kidding). There I make more notes. If I have to, I have another espresso. I am a wild-eyed eccentric at this point, but I do have ideas popping up all over the place.

Step 3: Do.

I go back to my office and write until finished.

Well, it works for me. I like most of my endings, but they were very hard work to get to. But hey, that’s good. If this gig was easy, everybody’d be doing it, right? Be glad it’s as hard as it is. Your efforts will pay off.

So what works for you? Do you find endings hard? Or do they roll out of your imaginary assembly line fully functioning and ready to go?

What are some of your favorite endings? Or better yet: what endings, to movies or books, would you change?