HOUSE — Pictured: Hugh Laurie as Dr. Gregory House — NBC Photo: Timothy White

By Elaine Viets

Dr. Gregory House is a creature of fiction. Real doctors aren’t that insensitive, are they?
Oh, yes they are. I had a brain surgeon who made Greg House look like Marcus Welby.
Dr. Jeb Travis Tritt is the brain surgeon who saved my life after I had six strokes, including a hemorrhagic stroke, in April 2007. That’s not his real name, and he doesn’t look or act like the brain surgeon in my new mystery Brain Storm. But Dr. Tritt, as I baptized him, was a real character. I couldn’t make up what he said – I’m not that creative.

In fiction and reality, Dr. Tritt is a brilliant surgeon with a lousy bedside manner. He saws open skulls for a living, so I expected him to be a little strange. But hey, so am I.

Brain Storm, the first Angela Richman, Death Investigator novel, is set in mythical, ultrawealthy Chouteau Forest, Missouri. Angela and I had blinding headaches and other classic stroke symptoms that sent us to the ER. There we were misdiagnosed by the neurologist on call, who said we were “too young and fit to have a stroke.” This comment is staggeringly stupid, though I didn’t know it at the time. Babies can have strokes. Dr. I. M. Incompetent told Angela and me to come back in four days for a PET scan.

We never got that scan. Instead, we had a series of strokes, brain surgery, and a coma, and encountered Dr. Jeb Travis Tritt. After brain surgery, Angela and I were in a coma for a week and spent three months in the hospital.

That’s where Angela and I parted company. When she came out of the coma, she learned that the doctor who nearly killed her had been murdered. The chief suspect was Dr. Tritt. Angela, still drugged and hallucinating, was determined to save the doctor who saved her. I can’t kill the doctor who misdiagnosed me. Except in fiction.

But I did experience Dr. Tritt’s midnight monologues, and put them in Brain Storm.
When Dr. Tritt got off work at midnight, he’d stop by my room. First he’d check my healing wound – a hideous cobblestone of a bump. Then he’d settle in for a monologue, talking nonstop for two or three hours. I was a captive audience – I couldn’t walk yet. He’d make jaw-dropping comments. I was heavily drugged and still talking to imaginary friends. But I knew I had a real find. Dr. Tritt’s visits were a gift. It took me nine years to use it.
One night Dr. Tritt said, “Do you remember anyone talking to you while you were in a coma?”
“No,” I said. “No tunnel of light, no relatives waiting on the other side. I didn’t see or hear anything.”
“Thank God,” he said. “I used to stop by every night and say, ‘Elaine! This is God! Wake up!’ But the nurses made me quit.”

Why did a surgeon spend hours talking to me instead of going home? He answered that question in another monologue.
“My wife is divorcing me,” he said. “She likes to shop and I don’t make enough money. She thought brain surgeons would be rich, but I don’t get that much. I only got three thousand dollars for your surgery. She wasn’t that good in bed, anyway. She just laid there, like you did, except you were in a coma.”
Huh? It didn’t occur to the doctor that perhaps his performance might have something to do with his wife’s lack of enthusiasm. The doc wasn’t coming onto me. My face was swollen, my skin was bright red thanks to an allergy to some medication, and half my hair was shaved off.
I’d always been proud of my long hair. I was shocked when I saw it had been partly shaved off for the surgery. Late one night, Dr. Tritt said, “I’m sorry about your hair.”
“In the grand scheme of things, it’s not the end of the world,” I said.
“I burned your hair because I knew you were going to make it,” he said. “If my patients are going to die, I save their hair because they like to look good in their coffins.”

I was speechless. But then I thought: What would he say if I was going to die? Would he come by one midnight, hand me my hair and said, “Elaine, you’re screwed. But here’s your hair. You’ll look great in your coffin.”
Good old Jeb Travis Tritt. This real life character saved my life. Now I hope he can help me pay off those hospital bills.

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Brain Storm is on sale as a trade paperback, audio and e-book amzn.to/2awPsIe

Win an autographed hardcover of Elaine’s seventh Dead-End Job mystery, Clubbed to Death. http://elaineviets.com/index.php?id=contests

By Kathryn LIlley

According to some writing gurus, there are somewhere between seven to 36 basic plot lines in fiction (depending on which expert you believe) that structure most works of fiction. Here is a list of some of the  plot lines that are often described as basic elements comprising all works of fiction:

Happy Ending/Comedy

Tragic Ending

“Literary” Ending (Plot revolves around a question or sense of fate, rather than actions or decision)

Other sources break down the Big Three plot lines into more specific categories:

Overcoming the Monster

Quest

Rags to Riches (Or Riches To Rags And Back To Riches)

Voyage And Return

Mystery

Crime Pursued By Vengeance/Prevention of Bigger Crime  (a plot line that would define most thrillers)

I have to admit, I started looking into the notion of basic plots because I once took a Hollywood screenwriting seminar delivered by one of the better known screenwriting teachers in LA. He first introduced me to the idea that there were only a limited set of original plot lines in fiction, most of which harked back to classic Greek drama.

Check out this link to a summary of some of the prevailing notions of a limited set of fundamental, archetypal plot lines in fiction, and let me know–are people getting carried away with the idea? I think a story’s plot itself is less Important than the way that story is told–the plot, however basic and fundamental, must be told in a way that is fresh, original, and compelling. And making a stale plot seem fresh and new (aka rags to riches==>Cinderella==>Pretty woman): that is the hardest part of writing.

But I suspect I my story structure and story coach colleagues (and everyone else) might have some thoughts about this topic. Please share yours?

by Larry Brooks

It’s amazing that nobody has compiled such a list, at least that I know of. Sometimes a little morsel of writing wisdom is so rich, so illuminating and powerful, it doesn’t require a lecture or a blog post or a book.

I’ll try to hold to that here, after I lay one on you.

I bet you, too, can think of a handful of powerful writing tips just from this prompting.

Often I kick off my writing workshops by asking folks to jot down their all-time favorite writing tip, and then open things up for a lively discussion.

Almost all of the tips offered are powerful–except the one that says there are no rules or principles, just make up  your story as you go along… that one can be downright lethal–so the discussion focuses on the context of why these tips work, and what brought the writer to that particular career-changing realization.

Not all writing tips are golden, though,

Some require a deeper discussion to be fully understood. Not because they are overwhelmingly complex, but because at a glance they can be misleading. (Too many writers operate from that at a glance context.) I can think of at least one popular writing book with a title like that, suggesting “truth” that is, in fact, context-dependant and nothing other than a risky opinion (“hey kids, do it like I do it!”). The book itself is actually fine (in fact, it contradicts the title; it ends up being more about process than what makes a story work), adding to the confusion even with the best of intentions.

There is another tip, though, that transcends opinion to become holy writ. I’ve seen it work wonders for writers who have struggled to move forward without ever really wrapping their head around it. With a more open mind, though (and yes, it’s a shame that we sometimes need an open mind to see that which is simply, obviously and always true, in writing and in life), it can change your writing journey the moment you see it, provided it parts the curtain of your understanding.

This one is especially true for genre fiction, so us Zoners should paste it onto our monitors, because it will never fail us. It is this:

It isn’t a story until something goes wrong.

This connects to so many principles of storytelling.

And yet, newer writers in particular get stuck writing about something–a character, a place, a time, an issue, all without plot-driven conflict or antagonism other than the hero’s inner issues–rather than writing about something happening in the context of something gone wrong for your protagonist, launching the hero on a dramatic quest that unfolds under escalating pressure from antagonistic opposition, threat, urgency and emotionally-resonant stakes.

You can start with something going wrong, and add character, setting, theme and structure from there.  Of you can start with character and/or there and look to add conflict–something has gone wrong–to it.

But no matter how you start, you can’t finish until something really does go wrong.

What is your favorite writing tip? id you hear it because you needed to (one of those when the student is ready the teacher shall appear moments), or is it a baseline truth from which you have always written?

Did you hear it because you needed to (one of those when the student is ready the teacher shall appear moments)? Or is it a baseline truth from which you have always written?

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On another note… I’ve launched a new website in support of my new relationship-salvage book, Chasing Bliss. You can check it out HERE (including an in-depth author interview).