Author Archives: Dale Ivan Smith

About Dale Ivan Smith

Dale Ivan Smith is a retired librarian turned full-time author. He started out writing fantasy and science fiction, including his five-book Empowered series, and has stories in the High Moon, Street Spells, and Underground anthologies, and his collection, Rules Concerning Earthlight. He's now following his passion for cozy mysteries and working on the Meg Booker Librarian Mysteries series, beginning with A Shush Before Dying and Book Drop Dead.

Two Kinds of Cats

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Today’s post is a call back to “Pet Words of Wisdom” from March 2024, posted just after we had to say goodbye to our beloved cat, Mittens, who was nearly eighteen when he passed. He was the last of the six cats in the many years my wife and I have lived in our little house. All of them brought great joy and liveliness to our home. After he died, we decided we needed a break.

That break ended last Saturday when we adopted Maeve and Moxie, pair of nine-month old kittens, who were part of the last litter born to an outdoor colony. The two were very underweight when they went into foster care, but now are glowing with life, love and energy.

Maeve in a rare moment of rest.

Moxie imitating a work of art, with the window frame serving as a faux picture frame.

Suddenly our quiet house has returned to an earlier time, with cat toys strewn about and the thundering of small paws down the hallway at 2AM when the wee furry ones have zoomies in the wee hours.

Now, despite being a lifelong “servant to cats” as well as a friend to dogs, I hadn’t included a pet in any of my books until my second Meg Booker mystery, Book Drop Dead, which sees Meg adopt a stray kitten she finds outside the library. However, little Honorius does not help solve any murders.

Writing a cozy featuring pets that are involved in solving a mystery is enticing, but of course there are already many such mysteries out there. Not that that’s ever stopped me before when an idea takes hold, but, just as I did with cozies in general, I’d want to read a stack of pet mysteries.

I’m already huge fan of Jeffrey Poole’s Corgi Casefiles series which give much inspiration for a potential pet-centered mystery, with his clue-detecting corgis Sherlock and Watson.

Now if I were to write a “pet helps solve mystery” novel it would of course have to star a cat or cats.

With that in mind I have Rita Mae Brown’s Mrs. Murphy cat mysteries, Shirley Rosseau Murphy’s Joe Grey series, Lillian Jackson Brown’s Cat Who books, and Miranda James’ Cat in the Stacks series on my to-be-read list of cat mysteries.

In honor of cats in mystery fiction, today we have an excerpt a from 2024 post by Elaine Vets on including pets in mysteries, as well as a 2016 post by James Scott Bell, on herding very different kinds of “CATS.”

Both post are well worth reading in full.

We all know that getting a reader inside a lead character’s head is one of the keys to compelling fiction. But it has to be done seamlessly so it doesn’t jerk us out of the narrative and put a crimp in the fictive dream.

Which means we have to learn to handle what I call “Character Alone Thinking Scenes” (CATS) in a deft manner.

The first issue is whether to begin the book with a CATS. As last Wednesday’s first-page critique demonstrated (in my view, at least) the answer should almost always be No. 

Why? Because we have to have a little personal investment in someone before we can care deeply about their feelings.

Imagine going to a party and you’re introduced to a fellow with a drink in his hand. You say, “How are you?” and the guy says, “I’m really depressed, man, I wake up every day and the room looks dark and the sun never shines, even though it’s out there, and I don’t see it because of the dark dankness in my soul, and life has lost its meaning, its luster, whatever it was it once had for me when I was young and ready to take on the world. Ya know?”

AHHHH!!!!

Well, the beginning of a book is like walking into a party. The reader wants to meet interesting people. And interest is aroused by what people do. The way you catch readers from the start is through action and disturbance, not feeling and expounding. 

I can’t tell you the number of manuscripts I’ve read over the years that did not begin with a real scene, but instead opted for the inside of a character’s head. What I usually do in such cases is flip the pages until I get to some dialogue, because that automatically means we’re in a scene. And 98% of the time that is the best place to start. (Sure, an argument can be made that a great style might be enough to carry the opening pages. But it better be truly great and truly brief.)

So, re: the opening—save your CATS for later.

Once you’re into the novel there are two types of CATS to herd—active and reactive.

In an active scene, the character is alone but with a major scene objective (something that materially relates to the plot), and thinks while trying to overcome whatever scene obstacles are in her way.

In a reactive scene, the character is alone with a chance to reflect. She may be thinking about what’s already happened in the story, or her current psychological state, or the other characters. When done well, reactive scenes strengthen our emotional bond with the character.

James Scott Bell—October 1, 2017

 

I’m writing a new mystery series set in South Florida. Here’s one of the hairiest problems I considered: did I want my protagonist to have a pet?

I like pets, and they’re popular with mystery readers. Especially cat and dog mysteries.

Many cozy readers are familiar with Laurie Cass’s Bookmobile Cat series. And that’s just the start of the good felines. There are series with Cat Cafes, Klepto Cats, Magical Cats, witches’ cats, library cats, bookstore cats and more.

Cats who talk and solve mysteries aren’t my cup of tea – my cats can’t even open a can of food for dinner. But what do I know? Readers love felines who can perform semi-human feats.

I could also give my new protagonist a dog. Dog mysteries are definite people pleasers. There’s a pack of them, including David Rosenfelt’s series, featuring work-avoiding, dog loving lawyer Andy Carpenter and his golden retriever, Tara.

Tara is a lovable companion. Other mystery series feature working dogs, such as FBI special agent Sara Driscoll and her search and rescue Labrador, Hawk.

Here are more good reasons to have pets in mysteries:

Walking a dog is a good way to meet people.

Animals are good judges of character. Dogs (and some cats) can rescue or defend you, warn you with a timely bark or hiss, even uncover a clue.

A pet in your mystery can be plus. Readers identify with pets. “Your cat reminds me of my orange tabby, Ginger. She loves to . . .”

But there are major downsides to consider. Pets need care. Your detective can’t be on the track of a killer and suddenly stop the investigation to make a phone call. (“Psst! Mark. I’m staking out the killer’s house. Will you walk my corgi? I just got a new living room rug.”)

Dogs also have to be fed and groomed. Cats are a little more easy care. Your detective can open a big bag of dry food and leave out a bowl of water, but sooner or later the litter box has to be cleaned.

Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series has a unique, easy-care animal, a hamster named Rex. Rex lives in a cage on her kitchen counter. Rex sleeps in a soup can and runs on his hamster wheel. Stephanie occasionally tosses him a grape for a treat.

But she’s such a good writer, Rex seems real. Once, some thugs held Rex for ransom, and I genuinely hoped the little critter would survive.

For this new series, I decided to go pet-free.

Elaine Viets—August 8, 2024

***

  1. Do you enjoy reading mysteries about pets? Any favorites?
  2. Have you included pets in your fiction? If so, what sort and in what fashion?
  3. How do you herd JSB’s “CATS” when you write?

Words of Wisdom from January 2010

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For my first post of 2026 I decided to look for KZB posts published sixteen years ago this month. It was hard winnowing it down to three excerpt, but choose I did.

First is a post by Claire-Langley Hawthorne about meeting the challenge of writing a short story by laying out the structure first. Next is an evergreen post by James Scott Bell dealing with the structure of a novel. Last is a touching post by John Ramsey Miller on experiencing death and how that can deeply inform our writing.

I view a short story as having a single transformative story arc – one told in the most concise and most powerful terms possible. All fine and dandy in theory but no sooner do I start than I fall prey to an overabundance of backstory and plot complications – and these little buggers have an annoying habit of multiplying, so by the time I reach around 4,000 words I realize what I really have is, you guessed it, chapter one of a new novel. Characters have already started taking control, offering me a range of complexities that I can’t help but want to explore, the setting demands detailed description which I cannot resist providing and the story arc takes on a much grander scale that will inevitably fail as a short story.

With this particular short story (which I’m hoping will pass muster and be published in the Kill Zone collection you’ll be hearing much more about) this dilemma created both opportunities as well as challenges. I had to rise to the challenge of paring everything down so it would succeed as a short story and I realized I had the seeds for a new series set in Australia which was quite exciting (oddly enough I’ve never written anything actually set in the land I grew up in).

My first step to transforming my piece into a ‘proper’ short story was to think about structure. I focused on the four main elements I thought I needed:

  1. Establishment of setting
  2. A trigger for action
  3. A build up of suspense and conflict
  4. A critical choice
  5. Resolution

When I found I basically had all these elements (albeit muddied by too much dialogue, description and backstory!) I knew my main focus had to be on paring everything down to its essential elements. This included character, setting, as well as plot and once I started this process I also found that I could focus on what the story was really all about.

Last Friday I took my short story to my writing group for their critique and they helped me identify areas of improvement and further ‘pruning’ – hopefully I’m now close to the final product and, more importantly, I feel like I’ve grappled with a new challenge that has improved me as a writer.

I can’t say I like the short story as a medium – I am a novelist at heart – but I do appreciate the intensity and power it can bring. I may not have enjoyed the process but as compensation I do have a new (male) protagonist that intrigues me. So who knows, this particular challenge may spur me on to develop a whole new series of books!

Claire-Langley Hawthorne—January 11, 2010

 

Now, the first doorway is an event that thrusts the Lead into the conflict of Act 2. It is not, and this is crucial, just a decision to go looking around in the “dark world” (to use mythic terms). That’s weak. That’s not being forced.

A good example of a first doorway is when Luke Skywalker’s aunt and uncle are murdered by the forces of the Empire in Star Wars. That compels Luke to leave his home planet and seek to become a Jedi, to fight the evil forces. If the murders didn’t happen, Luke would have stayed on his planet as a farmer. He had to be forced out.

In Gone With the Wind it’s the outbreak of the Civil War. Hard to miss that one. No one can go back again to the way things were. Scarlett O’Hara is going to be forced to deal with life in a way she never wanted or anticipated.

In The Wizard of Oz, it’s the twister (hint: if a movie changed from black and white to color, odds are you’ve passed through the first doorway of no return).

In The Fugitive, the first doorway is the train wreck that enables Richard Kimble to escape, a long sequence that ends at the 30 minute mark (perfect structure) and has U. S. Marshal Sam Gerard declaring, “Your fugitive’s name is Dr. Richard Kimble. Go get him!”

The second doorway, the one that closes Act 2 and leads to Act 3, is a bit more malleable, but just as critical. It is a clue or discovery, or set-back or crisis, one which makes inevitable the final battle of Act 3. It is the doorway that makes an ending possible. Without this, the novel could go on forever (and some seem to for lack of this act break).

In The Fugitive, at the 90 minute mark (the right placement for a film of just over two hours), Kimble breaks into the one-armed man’s house and finds the key evidence linking him with the pharmaceutical company. This clue leads to the inevitable showdown with the “behind the scenes” villain.

In High Noon, the town marshal reaches the major crisis: he finally realizes no one in the town is going to help him fight the bad guys. That forces him into the final battle of Act 3, the showdown with the four killers.

By the way, this structure works for both “plot driven” and “character driven” stories. It’s just that the former is mainly about outside events, and the latter about the inner journey. But that’s beyond the scope of this post.

Now, there is always some well meaning literary genius howling in protest at the idea of structure. Too rigid! I don’t write by formula! I am a rule breaker, a rebel! An artist! Away with your blueprints and let me run free! The 3 act structure is dead!

Let me say, first, I understand this artistic impulse. A good writer is a rebel, someone out to make waves.

But let me also say that the literary waters are littered with the works of those who ignored the basic principles of the suspension bridge. Unreadable novels with pretty words that didn’t sell.

You want to write an experimental novel? Go for it. Just be aware that not a whole lot of people are going to care.

What they care about are characters, dealing with trouble by fighting their way over a bridge—meaning, through a plot that matters and is laid out in the right way.

Structure is “translation software” for your imagination. You’ve got a great story in your head. The characters, the feeling, the tone, the gut appeal, the thing you want to say. But it means squat unless you can share it with other people, namely, readers.

Structure allows you to get your story out with the greatest possible impact.

James Scott Bell—January 16, 2010

 

Like Gilstrap wrote on his blog, I also think and write about death and destruction and it’s a subject I know better than I’d like. I have seen death and the destruction guns and knives and cars can do to human beings and it made quite an impression on me starting at an early age. We lived across the street from a funeral home when I was ten or so, and that was where my experience began. Our neighborhood kids used to lie on our stomachs and watch Mr. Barry embalm people in the basement. He always had the louvered-glass windows open and he never saw us as his back was usually to us. It was like watching horror movies. We used to run when we heard the ambulances heading for the hospital and we’d stand, an audience of innocents, watching as some unfortunate victim was wheeled in on a gurney. Often the ambulance (again Mr. Barry) would often make a quick stop before putting the vic back into the ambulance (it doubled as the hearse for black funerals at the other Barry home in another part of town) and it had red lights in the grill and a howling siren. The lights were covered with black cloth baggies for funerals. It showed me a side of death I’ve carried with me since.

I have a problem in that I never know what to tell kids about death, how to explain it without instill fear and worry in them. I told Sasha that the old moves aside so the young can have room to grow up, that it was true with every living thing. I told her that dying was just like being born into this world but in another place. I’m not sure about that but I don’t mind lying to children about that.

Before my funeral home days in Starkville, Mississippi, when I was five or six, my eighty-four-year old grandfather died, and I remember how empty I felt and how sad it made me. I took little consolation in people telling me he was in heaven. I only knew he was never coming back and that I’d never sit in his lap and use his pocket knife to carefully cut cubes of tobacco for him to chew. I’d never hear him tell me stories about his life as a cattleman, about gunfights in downtown Hazzlehurst, about driving cattle in storms, of lean times, of being gored by a bull and thrown by horses into bad places. Although I took no consolation in the idea of Papa in heaven, I did in the fact that he died of a stroke while cheering the Friday Night Fights on TV in the nursing home. I am so glad that I knew him for the years I did, and how he called my mama, “baby” and I thought she was truly old.

As I’ve grown older I’ve seen a lot of people I knew and loved die, and it’s never easy. Never. But it has given me feelings to run my fingers over and to put into my words.

John Ramsey Miller—January 30, 2010

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  1. How do you meet a writing challenge?
  2. What helps you with structuring you novels?
  3. Experiencing death is one of the most emotional aspects of being human. Has it deepened your own writing? If so, how?

Thematic Words of Wisdom

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Theme confronts Brody in “Jaws.”

Theme is something writers can wrestle with in their novels, or ignore entirely and just focus on creating a cracking good read. I aim to write engrossing novels, but I also want to deliver a story with a deeper meaning. Becoming aware of a potential theme in a novel I’m working on can help with that.

I’ve been reading screenwriter Jeffrey Schecter’s My Story Can Beat Up Your Story, and his take on theme hit home. He sees the hero asking a “thematic question,” while the confident villain states a “thematic argument.”

One of the examples he provides is from Jaws. Sheriff Brody wonders if he and his family will ever fit in Amity while the great white shark embodies the argument that “an outsider will never be accepted on the island.” The question and the argument do battle in the second half of Act II (or Act III if you’re a four act structure writer), climaxing in the final act in what Schecter calls a “thematic synthesis.” In Jaws, that synthesis is Brody realizing “that he can be accepted into a community only if he is willing to sacrifice all for the community.” Schecter’s laying out the thematic arc for a story was a light bulb moment for yours truly.

With this in mind, today’s Words of Wisdom looks at three posts from the TKZ archives for more insight about theme, courtesy of Kathyrn Lilley, Nancy Cohen and James Scott Bell.

Before there was story structure–before there were even novels—there was theme. A story’s theme is the fundamental and universal idea behind its plot. In King Lear, for example, one of its themes is authority versus chaos.

But to me, a novel’s theme is not merely the abstract principle behind the plot; I believe that you have to bring a story’s theme to life through its characters. Ideally, several of the major characters should portray a variation on the underlying ideas that inform the story. Those characters will reflect the light and depths of your theme, the way the facets of a diamond show off its hidden fire.

In A Killer Workout, the second installment in the Fat City Mysteries, I created a “Mean Girls” theme. I wrote several different characters to illustrate that underlying idea. One character had been victimized by bullies in her youth–another was herself a bully. Still another character had grown up to become a protector of abused young women. Through each of these women’s stories and backgrounds, I explored the ideas of bullying, emotional abuse, and “mean girls” in various ways.

I use my characters to do a “360” exploration of the theme of each of my novels. The secondary characters’ experiences in terms of the theme are usually more intense and extreme than my protagonist’s. They act as “theme foils,” and they also propel her journey through the plot.

Kathryn Lilley—April 20, 2009

Another book club member, an English teacher, had this to say:

“On our tests, students are given a passage to read and then asked to explain the author’s intent. I once asked an author if they knew the theme of their story before they wrote it, and their answer was no. They write the story as it comes. How about you?”

“My intent is to entertain,” I said. “That’s it. I want to give my readers a few hours of escape from their mundane routine and all the bad news out there. My goal is to write a fast-paced story that captures their attention.”

And this is true. I’ve had a writer friend who is a literature professor look at my work and find all sorts of symbolism. Excuse me? I had no idea it was there. Must have been subconscious. I do not set out to sprinkle meaningful symbols related to a theme into my story content. I just write the book.

However, I do know what life lesson my main character has to learn by the end of the story. This is essential for character growth and makes your fictional people seem more real. Usually, I include this emotional realization in my synopsis or plotting notes. It doesn’t always turn out the way I’d planned. Sometimes, this insight evolves differently as I write the story. Or maybe a secondary character has a lesson to learn this time around.

For example, in the book I just finished, I have a couple of paragraphs in my notes under the heading, “What does Marla learn?” Now maybe these lessons could be construed as the book’s theme, but I did not consult these going forward to write the story. To be so analytical would have stopped me dead. Fine arts grad students can pay attention to these details, but I have to write the book as it unfolds. So did I meet the intent that I’d originally set out for my character? Yes, in some respects I covered those points. But do they constitute the main theme of my work? Only my readers will be able to tell me the answer to that question. I can’t see it for myself.

Nancy Cohen—January 28, 2015

I can’t recall who it was, but one novelist said, “A writer should have something on his mind.”

That something is the theme, or meaning, of a story. It is the moral message that comes through at the end. The noted writing teacher William Foster-Harris believed that all worthy stories can be explained as an exercise in “moral arithmetic.” In The Basic Formulas of Fiction he expressed it thus:

            Value 1 vs. Value 2 = Outcome

For example, Love vs. Ambition = Love. In other words, the value of love overcomes in the struggle against ambition. If one were writing a tragedy, the outcome would be the opposite, with ambition winning out at the cost of love.

This is true even if you write without a fleeting thought about theme. Your story willhave one, whether you’re conscious of it or not.

Each story has only one primary theme, which can also be stated as “Value X leads to Outcome Y.” James N. Frey says in How to Write a Damn Good Novel: “In fiction, the premise [or theme] is the conclusion of a fictive argument. You cannot prove two different premises in a nonfiction argument; the same is true for a fictive argument. Say the character ends up dead. How did it happen? He ended up dead because he tried to rob the bank. He tried to rob the bank because he needed money. He needed money because he wanted to elope. He wanted to elope because he was madly in love. Therefore, his being madly in love is what got him killed.”

So, “mad love leads to death” is the theme.

It is crucial, however, to realize that theme is played out through the characters in the story. In high school my son was tasked with a book report. He read (at my suggestion) Shane, the classic Western by Jack Schaeffer. One of the questions on his report sheet was to state the theme. He asked me for help, because he had never thought about books this deeply before.

With a little prodding, he was able to see that the homesteaders represented civilization, while the ranchers who hire gunmen represent brutality and lawlessness. Shane, of course, is the enigmatic figure who helps this moral equation become: “Civilization (a community of shared values) can overcome the forces of lawlessness.”

Look to the characters and what they are fighting for, and you will find the theme of your story.

But there is a common problem writers face when they have “something on their minds.” And that is simply that they often begin with a theme and try to force a story into it. This can result in a host of issues, among them:

  • Cardboard, one-dimensional characters
  • A preachy tone
  • Lack of subtlety
  • Story clichés

The way to avoid these is to remember: Characters in competition come before theme.

Always.

Develop your characters first—your hero, your villain, your supporting cast—and set them in a story world where their values, aims, and agendas will be in conflict. Create scenes where the struggles is vivid on the page.

Yes, you can have a theme in mind, but make it as wispy as a butterfly wing, and subject to change without notice. If you write truly about the characters, following the wants, needs, and desires, you’ll begin see the theme of your story emerge. At first it may be like the faint glow of a miner’s lamp deep in a dark cave. You may not have full illumination until the end, but it will be there.

So give your characters full, complex humanity, and then a passionate commitment to their own set of values. Even the villain. No, especially the villain. All villains (or antagonists) think they are right, and they are the drivers of the plot.

James Scott Bell—August 13, 2023

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  1. Do you think about your novel’s theme?
  2. What’s your approach to theme? Do you discover it before beginning your novel, or after you’ve drafted it?
  3. How much does your theme grow out of your characters?

***

This is my final post of 2025. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season filled with light and life. I’ll see you in the new year.

Building a Mystery

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For years, my library colleagues would ask when I was going to write that library mystery. Afterall, I read mysteries, was a writer, and worked at library, so it seemed like a natural fit to them. While I thought about it I continued writing fantasy and science fiction.

Finally, in 2020, after I’d retired from the library, the desire to write a cozy library mystery novel grabbed me. As I finished the final novel in my Empowered series, I read a bunch more mysteries of all sorts, from Matthew Scudder to more Agatha Christie to Sara Rosett’s Murder on Location cozy series.

I also read books on writing mysteries: Mystery Writers of America’s How to Write a Mystery, How to Write Killer Fiction by Carolyn Wheat, our own KZB alum Nancy Cohen’s Writing the Cozy Mystery, Sara Rosett’s How to Outline a Cozy Mystery Workbook, as well as her Teachable course on writing cozies. Sara’s course also included interviews with cozy mystery authors like Lynn Cahoon and Anna Castle. I discovered very useful handouts at Castle’s website from a workshop she gave on mystery writing.

I read more mysteries, and watched mystery TV series like Midsomer Murders, Elementary, Monk, the new Father Brown series, Perry Mason, and Columbo.

My published fantasy novels had crime and mystery elements, so writing an actual murder mystery should be a snap, right?

I wasn’t surprised it wasn’t that easy. I consider actual mystery novels to be one of the hardest types of fiction to write, and took the challenge seriously, which was a good thing. From the time I began outlining my first library cozy mystery, then called Death Due, until I published the final version, A Shush Before Dying, over two years had passed. I wrote three different versions, with numerous outlines. I did a deep dive into upping my revision game after finishing the first draft.

The second book in the series, Book Drop Dead came faster, being completed in year.

I’m an outliner, who, once upon a time, discovery wrote (AKA “pantsed”) his novels. For me, figuring out story structure was the secret that unlocked being able to create a story that worked. Mysteries were no different.

Cozy mysteries, like other mysteries, usually center around a murder. For me, that meant learning who the murderer was, and why they committed the crime, before outlining the book. I began each book by creating an electronic document file which became a novel journal where I could brainstorm about the mystery, the killer’s shadow story (something I learned from our own James Scott Bell), spin out the web of suspects, background notes, and simple outlines I could flesh out later.

***

Mystery foundation

These make up the foundation of the mystery I’m building, and key to my process is asking myself questions about each.

Killer: Who and why? What lead them to kill, and why did they murder the victim? How do they react when they learn they are being investigated by our sleuth-hero?

The Victim: Often someone who is despicable in at least some of the time, and often at the center of a conflict, but they can be something other than a jerk—quirky perhaps, misunderstood, or even a good person who ran afoul of a killer. What was their relationship with the killer?

The setting: the location and community where the murder takes place. For my own cozy mystery, the setting was easy: the public library. I wanted the era to be the 1980s, when I began my at-first accidental career. This was the library before the Internet, when the card catalog ruled and staff used “dumb” terminals to check out books, stamping the date dues on a label on a page at the front of the book.

The public library then and now is a community in its own right, as well as a meeting ground for other communities, which provide opportunities for all sorts of situations and characters. How does the setting shape the murder, and the investigation?

The sleuth-hero: What pushes them to investigate the murder instead of leaving it to the police? Amateur sleuths are often nosy, curious, driven to solve puzzles. This describes my librarian-sleuth Meg Booker. The hero may be motivated to solve the crime because of personal concern if a friend is the suspect or survival if they themselves fall under suspicion.

In other cases, it may be the sense that thing about the murder doesn’t fit the facts as the police see them. The hero must have a reason to investigate and discovering that reason is vital. In cozy mystery the reason is often personal. The sleuth may have a connection to the victim, or to the person the police believe is the killer, as is the case in my first Meg Booker mystery.

The Web of Suspects:  For me an ideal number of suspects is five to seven. The motivations can be similar, but it helps build the mystery if at least some have different motives for murder. For instance, two suspects might both be rivals with the murder victim for a job promotion, while three more have possible motives unrelated to the day job.

***

Plotting

The next thing I like to tackle is my story structure. I’m a fan of our own James Scott Bell’s signposts, such as the opening Disturbance, the Doorway to Act II, and especially the Mirror Moment. I brainstorm how the murder plays out, how the sleuth’s investigation begins and progresses, and what the killer does in response.

I’m an outliner, so I began putting the mystery into a beat outline, with sign posts marked and key scenes laid out. I’ll do additional brainstorming in a novel journal, a separate electronic document.

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The Arc of Suspicion

I also work out what I call “the arc of suspicion,” which is the sleuth-hero and readers progression in who they suspect committed the crime. I posted about this here. I’m going to crib from that earlier post and share the beats of the suspicion arc. I don’t necessarily write all these out, but keep them in mind as the story progresses, brainstorming as needed:

  1. The arc begins with noticing something is off about someone’s behavior, or a set of circumstances.
  2. Doubt ensues.
  3. Then, discovering “evidence” which increases suspicion. This can be an overheard conversation, reading a note or email, seeing a meeting without hearing what is being said, looking at a pattern of behavior, perhaps behavior out of character for the suspect, etc.
  4. Discovering a lie, or a false alibi can heighten suspicion.
  5. There can be a deepening fixation on a suspect’s behavior, words, deeds, and trying to figure out what they were thinking, why they did what they did, etc.
  6. Acting on that suspicion to the point of taking risks and putting yourself in potential jeopardy. This often precedes the confrontation/reveal in the final act of a mystery.
  7. Given that mysteries usually have multiple suspects, there will be a point where the sleuth (and the reader) rule out a person because of evidence, alibi, or learning what the secret was that made a particular individual act suspicious to the main character.
  8. Of course, heroes and readers often suspect more than one character at the same time, so the arcs can overlap. Sometimes the behavior or evidence is one thing, which leads to doubt about a particular person. Doubt which might deepen to suspicion or might simmer in the background. Or, even forgotten for the moment, until the end, when new evidence makes the sleuth suddenly suspect that person with a cold-in-the-bones feeling.
  9. Finally, the sleuth’s suspicions lead to the actual killer and/or can lead the killer to them.

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Drafting

As I write the first draft, I’ll come up with new ideas, clues etc., and, if they make the grade, will add them to my outline.

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Revision and feedback

Revision is where I work to fix plot holes, add missing clues, clarify motives if needed, along with the usual revision tasks of improving scenes, pacing, characterization, setting details etc. I then send the revised novel to my beta readers, who give me invaluable feedback on whether the mystery worked for them, where they were surprised, if they guessed the identity of the murderer, etc. I then make any additional changes based their feedback.

***

The resources which helped me learn how to build a mystery

Nancy Cohen’s Writing the Cozy Mystery. Nancy’s book provides an instructive break down of the elements of a cozy mystery.

Sara Rosett’s How to Outline a Cozy Mystery. Rosett  gives the building blocks of a cozy mystery, as well as different outlining methods, tips on clues and red-herrings, conventions of cozies etc. While Rosett’s online course on writing a cozy mystery appears to be no longer available, the book still is.

Carolyn Wheat How to Write Killer Fiction. Wheat looks “the funhouse of mystery” as well as the “rollercoaster of thriller,” and reading the book gives a useful comparison between the two as well as the elements of each.

Hallie Ephron Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel. Ephron’s book is a deep dive into the elements of mystery, looking at plotting, characters, mystery, sense of place, revision, as well as advice on publishing, both traditional and self-publishing.

Mystery Writers of America How to Write a Mystery. A collection of essays by mystery masters also covers the different aspects of mystery fiction.

***

So, this is how I build a mystery. If you write mysteries, what tips you do have?

Mental Words of Wisdom

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Last time I wrote about suffering from what I call “revision block”, and discussed some possible solutions to this particular writing conundrum.

Writers can face a number of other mental challenges, to put it mildly. Today’s Words of Wisdom examines a trio of potential roadblocks, courtesy of three excerpts from the Kill Zone archives.

Clare Langley-Hawthorne considers how digital distractions can make you lose focus. Laura Benedict deals with a bane for many of us, procrastination. Sue Colletta discusses how “multi-tasking” can make writing harder.

All three excerpts are worth reading in full. Each excerpt is date-linked to its respective full version.

For writers, digital distractions are everywhere. At the moment my personal bugbear is my inability to wean myself off mindlessly checking the internet whenever I lose steam in my writing – the result? At least ten minutes of Daily Mail, Facebook and Gmail distraction resulting in – you guessed it, a complete loss of focus. Over the last week I’ve been paying greater attention to my writing habits (or lack thereof) and have realized that checking the internet has become a sort of ‘default’ setting whenever I’m stuck on a sentence or unsure of a passage of dialogue. I worry that my brain has lost the ability to focus for more than an hour at a time without craving some sort of distraction when the going gets tough. The answer to my problem is clearly weaning myself off the distraction itself but I’m surprised at how difficult this has become. I know I’m going to have to retrain my brain somehow as well as impose much stricter limits on succumbing to these distractions. My fear is that my ability to focus for long periods of time is already slipping away from me (can you hear the screams?…)

As readers, digital distractions allow ourselves to fulfill our craving for something new and more interesting whenever our focus wavers. Recently, I’ve found it is much harder to keep my focus on a book when my interest starts to wane. Whereas in the past I would plough on for a bit, hoping that a book would regain my interest, I now find myself turning to digital distractions much quicker than I ever would have put a book down before. It would be amazing to be able to create a safe room, look into options such as Soundproofexpert, and have that room as a digital hideaway, away from what ever distractions you may find on a day to day basis, or unfortunately even an hour to hour basis now.

I’m sure lack of focus has always been an issue for writers and readers, but I do feel that the increasing levels of digital ‘noise’ that surrounds us is making it much harder (at least for me) to keep the level of sharp focus I need on my writing. It certainly makes me less efficient and productive – although, thankfully, I still manage to pull off bursts of fear-induced focus which means I am completing my writing projects on time. I just feel that I need to develop techniques to sharpen my focus, increase my attention span, and spurn the digital ‘siren’ call that is all too easy to heed.

So what about you – do you find the digital world is making you lose focus? Have you developed strategies to overcome this while writing (or reading). Although disconnection is always an option for periods of time, it’s hard for this to be a permanent ‘default’ setting when so much of our world revolves around digital communications.

Clare Langley-Hawthorne—February 1, 2016

 

Even some of the most productive bestselling writers I know sometimes procrastinate. Personally, when I’m in my deepest procrastination moments, I forget that. It feels lonesome, and I become my own harshest judge. (That whole comparing oneself to other writers is deadly too, but we can consider that another time.) Being judgy while procrastinating is doubly unhelpful.

Procrastination offers an escape from tension. If I have a project (or chapter or paragraph or phone call or chore) that makes me feel anxious, I sometimes literally walk away from it. It might be for five minutes. It might be for an hour. It might be for weeks. Eventually I’ll return to it–or, if it’s some kind of chore or event–my lack of action will mean it expires and goes away.

Avoidance. It’s embarrassing to admit that I’m sometimes guilty of it. Ouch.

I’ve read many, many books to try to improve my productivity, shape my behavior, and, yes, fix my procrastination habit. Because it is a habit, not a disease or fatal flaw.

Here’s the latest book I’ve read on the subject:

I listened to it on audio via Overdrive and liked it well enough that I bought the ebook. (I often do that, anecdotal proof that library reads influence consumer book purchases.)

Notice that appealing subtitle. “A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play.” How sexy is that? I couldn’t resist checking it out when I was browsing available audiobooks. The subtitle worked on me exactly the way I’m sure it was intended: put the focus on the positive, not the procrastination.

KillZone is not the place for book reviews, but is about the writing life. So I’ll be brief.

THE NOW HABIT

  1. Helps you identify when and why you might be procrastinating.
  2. Doesn’t judge you for procrastinating–and even explains how it becomes an active coping tool.
  3. Doesn’t prioritize work over pleasure (a real revelation for me).
  4. Offers some compelling client stories.
  5. Has focus exercises and talks about the process and importance of flow.
  6. Helps you create your own “unschedule.”
  7. Has a good section about dealing with the procrastinators in your life.
  8. Explores goal setting.

The “unschedule” is my favorite piece of the process because it turns one’s schedule upside down. After blocking out the time you require for life’s necessities like eating, cleaning, sleeping, and tending dependent creatures, you mark out time for things that give you pleasure and put you in a state of play or creative play. Working out, practicing hobbies, spending time with friends. It might happen daily, weekly, or bi-weekly. Whatever you choose. It becomes a priority. A reward to work toward.

Work (or writing or publishing business for most of us here) can become more energizing. More efficient. I confess that on the days I’ve managed to put this into serious practice, I’ve found myself happily working overtime, sometimes working well into my scheduled pleasure time–but not feeling a bit deprived because I know I’ll get to play again soon. Also, I’m getting a huge amount of pleasure from my work hours.

Laura Benedict—July 11, 2018

 

Writers need to multitask. If you struggle with multitasking, don’t be too hard on yourself. The brain is not wired to complete more than one task at peak level. A recent study in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience showed when we’re concentrating on a task that involves sight, the brain will automatically decrease our hearing.

“The brain can’t cope with too many tasks: only one sense at a time can perform at its peak. This is why it’s not a good idea to talk on the phone while driving.” — Professor Jerker Rönnberg of Linköping University, who conducted the study.

The results of this study show that if we’re subjected to sound alone, the brain activity in the auditory cortex continues without any problems. But when the brain is given a visual task, such as writing, the response of the nerves in the auditory cortex decreases, and hearing becomes impaired.

As the difficulty of the task increases—like penning a novel—the nerves’ response to sound decreases even more. Which explains how some writers wear headphones while writing. The music becomes white noise.

For me, once I slide on the headphones, the world around me fades away. I can’t tell you the number of times my husband has strolled into my office, and I practically jump clean out of my skin. Don’t be surprised if someday he kills me by giving me a heart attack. But it isn’t really his fault, even though I’ll never tell him that. 😉 I’m in the zone, headphones on, music blaring, my complete attention on that screen, and apparently, my brain decreased my ability to hear.

Strangely enough, I don’t listen to music while researching. When I need to read and absorb content, I need silence. This quirk never made sense to me. Until now.

Have you ever turned down the radio while searching for a specific house number or highway exit? Instinctively, you’re helping your brain to concentrate on the visual task.

Research shows that our brains are not nearly as good at handling multiple tasks as we like to think they are. In fact, some researchers suggest multitasking can actually reduce productivity by as much as 40% (for everyone except Rev; he’s a multitasking God). Multitaskers have more trouble tuning out distractions than people who focus on one task at a time. Doing many different things at once can also impair cognitive ability.

Shocking, right?

Multitasking certainly isn’t a new concept, but the constant streams of information from numerous different sources do represent a relatively new problem. While we know that all this “noise” is not good for productivity, is it possible that it could also injure our brains?

Multitasking in the brain is managed by executive functions that control and manage cognitive processes and determine how, when, and in what order certain tasks are performed. According to Meyer, Evans, and Rubinstein, there are two stages to the executive control process.

  1. Goal shifting: Deciding to do one thing instead of another
  2. Role activation: Switching from the rules for the previous task to the rules for the new task (like writing vs. reading)

Moving through these steps may only add a few tenths of a second, but it can start to add up when people repeatedly switch back and forth. This might not be a big deal if you’re folding laundry and watching TV at the same time. However, where productivity is concerned, wasting even small amounts of time could be the difference between writing a novel in months vs. years.

Sue Coletta—July 12, 2021

***

  1. What’s your biggest digital distraction? How to you avoid it?
  2. Does procrastination hinder you in getting to the keyboard? If so, what gets you writing?
  3. Do you multitask when writing? How much of a hindrance or a help is that to your own process?

Revision Block

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The proverbial brick wall.

Every writer has heard of writer’s block. Whether they believe in it or not, it’s been part of the conversation and lore around writing for a very long time. One of my favorite movies about fiction writing, Throw Momma From the Train, opens with Billy Crystal’s character blocked on the opening of his next novel. “The night was…moist,” he types. He crumbles up the paper and tries again, but remains stuck.

I believe writer’s block is either caused by genuinely not knowing where to begin or where the story goes next, or by fear—fear of exposing yourself, fear of failure, fear of simply screwing up, etc.

It turns out, for me at least, there’s also “revision block,” which I define as an inability to begin revising and/or being unable to finish a rewrite.

Perhaps you don’t know how to fix the issues you’ve found in your draft. Maybe you don’t know  where to start a revision. Maybe you don’t feel like you are making any real progress in rewriting your novel, or the revision seems to go nowhere.

Usually when I revise a novel, I dive in and begin immediately rewriting. With the five books in my Empowered urban fantasy thriller series, revision was a fairly straight-forward process, mostly fixing continuity errors, making sure things were clear, and keeping the tension mounting.

The first novel in the series, Agent, did require a complete voice edit at the direction of my developmental editor, Mary Rosenblum. Her observation that my hero’s voice was completely wrong gave me revision block for all of two minutes, but I recognized the problem she had identified, and set out to deal with it. Over five weeks, I went through the novel word by word to get the first person narrator’s voice right.

It was time well spent.

The rest of the series, as well as my two stand alone novels, didn’t require nearly that level of revision. There was usually a point during each where I felt stymied, but I always worked out what the problem was and finished the revision.

Things became more tangled when I turned to revising my first mystery, A Shush Before Dying, in 2021. I knew the first draft had serious problems. It was my first mystery novel, after all. The mystery storyline was clearly not ready for prime time. The red herrings, the suspects with secrets, the narrative head-fakes, the planted clues, I needed to work all these out, as well as learn how to layer in them into the narrative with subtly and misdirection. It took time, lots of time.

Progress on the second draft slowed until, in late 2022, I realized I was stuck.

The solution: I wrote a new high-level outline of the book. I took out everything in the manuscript save for the cozy subplot, and then began writing a third draft, which came together quickly. After revising that draft, I sent it to my beta readers, who gave me feedback, which was largely very positive. The final edits were mostly of the continuity and clarity variety, along with of course copy edits.

Book Drop Dead, the second novel in the series, took seven months to draft. By that point my writing process for mysteries was to work out the killer’s “shadow story” and the murder, followed by mapping out the investigation, and sketching a cozy subplot, all of which go into a detailed outline. As I drafted, I came up with more ideas, connections, clues etc., which could cause me to repeatedly pause as I worked out those ideas and any problems which arose.

I began the revision shortly before my annual writer’s retreat, Rainforest, in February 2024. It was work, and involved a several new scenes, as well as some rejiggering of the storyline but came together fairly quickly It was also fun in an intense, up against a deadline sort of way. I finished it, sent it to my betas, who had some great feedback. I rewrote the book one last time and then had it copy edited, and proofed. It was published in June 2024.

The third Meg Booker mystery, Fine Me Deadly, turned out to be a different beast.

The book also took seven months to draft, again in a halting start-stop fashion. The storyline was complicated, to put it mildly.

Granted, mysteries are always complicated, at least for me, and involve a great deal of skull sweat. My first two mysteries had passed muster with readers, including a former library colleague who had been our branch’s “mystery maven,” who possessed a deep knowledge of the genre, but I’d also heard how complex each was.

As with Book Drop Dead, I reoutlined Fine Me Deadly in a rolling fashion while drafting and kept a novel journal where I brainstormed as needed, outlined new plot twists, etc. I finished the draft in mid-January, and decided, for the first time, to put the book aside for several weeks, and then come back to it with fresh eyes, advice many writers have discussed here at the Kill Zone.

When I returned to it while at Rainforest in late February of this year, I read through a printed out copy of the novel in two days, and wrote a detailed chapter-by-chapter outline of the drafted novel, as well as lots of margin and in line notes. I returned home, unfortunately with Covid, which interrupted the revision.

When I recovered, I realized the book needed a great deal of work. The plot had logic holes and worse, the mystery storyline itself didn’t work.

So, I began working on outlining the second draft. This stretched for months, also in a start-stop fashion.

It became obvious by late summer that I was blocked on the revision. So I spent more time trying to figure out why. I finally wrote a new, high-level “major plot points” outline, along with making some major changes to a few relationships, including my sleuth now having a friendship with the murder victim. I was all set to begin revising the actual manuscript.

I decided to try an idea suggested by author Matt Bell in his book on novel writing, Refuse to Be Done. The advice, he notes, is the one thing people never want to hear: retype the whole draft into a fresh document. The idea is you’ll make changes as you retype, with your new outline for the revised version at hand. I did this for the first couple of chapters, writing a whole new scene at the opening, and then another new couple of scenes as well as changing existing ones.

Then I hit a wall. Revision block returned in full force. Despite all my work on re-outlining the book during and after the draft, after the draft the book’s narrative still felt forced and my brain just couldn’t get going on writing new material.

Why did revision block return, and so powerfully? While I knew the storyline, it remained extremely complicated and very twisty, especially for a cozy mystery. There were many moving parts. Too many. True, as readers had noted, the first two novels in the series also had complex mysteries, but this one went much further, into a bewildering, intricate puzzle box, which exceeded my own ability to fix.

The solution would be to cut out a lot of the complication, focus more on the cozy. Really, rework the novel into something simpler.

However, I realized there was another reason I was blocked:

I had run out of creative energy for this novel.

I came to realize, for me at least, there’s a finite amount of creative energy to be spent on a book.  I’d expended all of mine on Fine Me Deadly. I’d also created a storyline that sounded compelling in outline, but didn’t work out in practice. Yes, I had the elements of a mystery, including a cast of suspects, the head-fakes, secrets etc., but I’d put a lot of espionage elements into this cozy mystery, and created my own writer’s wilderness of mirrors adding further  the complexity.

All of this caused me to lose interest and burn out on the book.

So, this week, after considerable thought and separate discussions with two author friends, I decided to put the book a drawer for the time being, and move on to a new project.

As with writer’s block, the first step in solving revision block is to figure out why. It could be something as simple as a plot hole that needs fixing, and a high-level outline will do the trick. It might be because you’re afraid to make changes, and getting past that fear will get things moving again.

Then again, it might be that taking a break and writing a different novel will give you the distance you need, and also the chance to rekindle your love for that particular book.

Certainly I need some time to clear my head. I’m now writing something different, in a different genre, and giving myself the chance to play with a simpler storyline.

After I finish the new novel, I’ll see where I’m at. It could be I’m done with Meg Booker. Or it could turn out that all I needed was to write a new, different book to refresh my creativity energy and desire in order to finally revise Fine Me Deadly. Time will tell.

Have you ever encountered revision block? If so, how did you get past it?

Movie Words of Wisdom

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Today we dive into the TKZ archives for some wisdom from the silver screen. P.J. Parrish gives us lessons for writers from several movies, Joe Hartlaub discusses two flicks available on Netflix at the time of his post, and James Scott Bell dives into the film The King’s Speech.

All three posts are well worth reading in their entirety, and are date-linked from the bottom of their respective excerpts.

As Good As It Gets: Write what you know

When the poor secretary asks romance writer Jack Nicholson how we writes such great women, he delivers one of the greatest comebacks in all of moviedom (above clip). The lesson here is that yes, the chestnut “write what you know” is useful but only to a point. A fiction writer MUST be able to write outside her gender, race and limited world. But unless you have deep empathy and acute powers of observation, and, maybe most important, the ability to take a specific experience (especially if it’s your own) and make it universal so it connects with Everyman, you won’t succeed. I am not sure this can be learned. It might just be the special province of talent.

Adaptation: Know when to quit

Not quit writing. Just what you are writing. “Adaptation” speaks to all of us writers on many levels, but its most gut-wrenching lesson is about the despair of trying to be passionate about a book you don’t really care about. I’ve had to make the hard choice to abandon a book in midstream. But I’ll let my friend Sharon Potts tell you about this valuable lesson:

“For the past year, I’ve been struggling with a book that frequently feels like more than I can handle. Too many subplots that are all tangled up and I can’t seem to bring them to a satisfying resolution.  And then I realized, my problem is more than plotting. It’s my protagonist.  I don’t ‘feel’ her anymore.  I don’t care if she saves herself and the world. So how can I write if I’m not passionate?  And if I don’t feel it, will readers care when I finally finish the book?  In the meantime, another story has been poking at me.  A story that ties to my mother’s past and to historical events I’ve always cared about.  Even before I write a word, I can already see my protagonist clearly. She’s so real to me that she overpowers the heroine in the book I’ve been struggling to finish.  So I made a decision.  After a full year and over 100,000 words, I’m putting aside my ‘frustration’ novel.  I’m going to write the story my heart wants to tell.”

Deconstructing Harry: Know when to keep going

This is not my favorite Woody Allen movie; it’s a vulgar uneven portrait of a self-serving user who turns everyone in his life into fictional fodder. (Sorry, can’t get this video link to work!) One character tells him, “This little sewer of an apartment is where you take everyone’s suffering and turn it into gold.” Tough to watch. But I like the ending because it strikes the only note of light when Harry Block realizes “his writing, in more ways than one, had saved his life.”

Not a bad lesson, all in all. What are your favorite writer movies and what did you learn from them?

P.J. Parrish—July 23, 2013

If you’re going to watch Netflix but you want to justify paying the time bandit instead of following your Muse you can actually learn quite a bit by judiciously choosing what you watch. I’m going to briefly discuss a couple of movies that you can find in Netflix’ nether regions that you either may not have heard of or which flitted across your attention due to not being your type of movie. I’ll also mention another that just hit theaters (remember theaters? Those big cavernous places that you stopped going to because half of the audience thinks they’re on Facebook, and can yell out everything they want?) yesterday. Without further ado:

— Train to Busan: I quit watching Walking Dead when Rick’s son lost his eye and then pretty much gave up on the zombie horror sub-genre altogether. Someone recommended Train to Busan on Netflix as a zombie movie for people who were tired of zombies or hated the genre. My friend was right. Train to Busan, a South Korean horror film, hooks you in the first three minutes, giving you a hint of what is to come, stepping back and featuring a bit of human drama, and then putting you on the edge of your seat for an hour and a half or so. The set up is that an overworked hedge fund broker takes the morning off to accompany his young daughter (who is the cutest little kid who ever walked the face of the earth) on a high-speed train to visit her mother. The zombie apocalypse breaks out on the train and off we go. These zombies, by the way, aren’t the usual shambling dodos that can be taken out with a well-placed arrow. They are fleet of foot (they can somehow stumble and run like hell at the same time) and extremely aggressive. My favorite line of the film occurs when a passenger gets on the train intercom and says, “Conductor, we have a situation!” No kidding, Sherlock. The film itself features an excellent example of how to hint at a problem at the beginning of a work, let the problem percolate off-screen (or off the page), and then bring it back with a vengeance. It also is a reminder that light rail, buses, trains, boats, or planes are to be avoided at all costs.

Hell or High Water: This contemporary western finally made it to Netflix and will cause you to trade in your bird box or whatever. A man gets out of prison to find that the family farm has gone into foreclosure during his absence. He and his brother embark on a scheme to rob the branches of the regional bank which holds the mortgage and then use the money to pay off the loan on the farm. It could have been a comedy — and yes, as an exercise you could rewrite it as a comedy — but it isn’t. Things don’t go exactly as planned and the brothers soon find that law enforcement is after them. Jeff Bridges, in what might be the performance of his life, plays a Texas Ranger who is just weeks away from retirement. His investigation into the robberies will certainly be his last case and he wants to retire on top by identifying the robbers and bringing them in dead or alive. There is plenty of moral ambiguity to be had all around, a few quirky characters, and an ending you won’t see coming. There’s a bit of action and plenty of drama, all of it perfectly placed and paced,  but you will want to take notes on the dialogue, which is first class from beginning to end and which is just as important for what is not said as for what is.

Joe Hartlaub—January 26, 2019

The King’s Speech (2010) won Oscars for Best Picture, Actor, Director, and Screenwriter. How did they pull that off?

Through the power of character bonding and the magic of story structure. You can do just about anything with your novel so long as you have a reader intensely and emotionally invested in your Lead and put him through the beats of a well-crafted tale.

Let’s talk about emotional investment first. In Plot & Structure I discuss various ways a writer can join reader and character in the bonds of holy storytelling. One of the strongest bonding agents is hardship—at the beginning we are introduced to a character who faces a physical or emotional challenge.

In The King’s Speech, the hardship is both physical and psychological. Prince Albert, the Duke of York (Colin Firth) has a severe stammer which not only prevents him from delivering a simple speech; it also keeps him locked in a prison of self-doubt.

As the movie opens we see Albert nervously stepping up to a microphone to speak to a crowd. His stuttering talk bombs. People look embarrassed and disappointed. Prince Albert’s hardship has caused him massive public humiliation.

We’ve all been embarrassed, though not on so grand a scale. So we have immediate sympathy.

But that’s not all. There’s another powerful bonding agent I call the Care Package. This is a relationship in place before the story begins, showing that the Lead is not merely self interested. If we see someone who cares about someone else, it gives us hope for his ultimate redemption.

Early in Act 1 there is a lovely scene that gets me every time. Prince Albert, all done up in a tux, comes to say good-night to his two daughters. They want a story! “Can’t I be a penguin instead?” he asks. Clearly, he doubts even his ability to tell his children a simple bedtime tale. But they insist!

And so, out of love and fatherly duty, he makes the attempt. He tells a story about two princesses whose papa was changed by a witch into a penguin. This made him sad, for a penguin does not have arms to embrace his children. Not only that, the witch banished him to the South Pole. It’s obvious he is talking, metaphorically, about himself. The story ends with a restored father hugging his daughters. We can’t help but wonder if Albert will be healed, too. By now we hope so, because we are firmly invested in him.

The Duchess (Helena Bonham Carter) arranges a meeting for Albert with an eccentric speech therapist named Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). Here we get another structural beat: The Argument Against Transformation. Unconvinced Lionel can help him, Albert is about to leave when Lionel asks him to try something. He puts headphones on the prince and plays classical music while having the prince read the famous soliloquy from Hamlet. After a minute or so Albert rips off the headphones and shouts, “Hopeless!” Then: “Thank you, Doctor. I don’t…feel this is for me.”

This sets up the arc of transformation that pays off at the end. (In Casablanca, Rick argues against his ultimate transformation by saying, “I stick my neck out for nobody.” At the end, of course, he does that very thing.)

James Scott Bell—December 1, 2019

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There you have it, wisdom from the movies.

  1. Do you have a favorite movie about writing and writers? What lessons does that movie give us?
  2. In the spirit of Joe’s post, is there a movie, good or bad, on the streaming service of your choice (including the library) that has “goosed your muse” and given you food for creative thought?
  3. What favorite movie of yours invests the reader emotionally right off the bat, like The King’s Speech? Do you have a cinematic favorite argument against transformation?

First Draft Words of Wisdom

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Whether we begin our story with the first draft, or outline before starting, we all have the first draft of our novel waiting for us. Today’s Words of Wisdom has three excerpts from posts giving advice on first drafts. Tosca Lee provides writing mindset help with her “#1 Rule of First drafts.”  Steven James lays out “Fiction Writing Keys for Non-Outliners” as one way to approach writing first drafts. Debbie Burke discusses “Outlining in Reverse” to help with revising your completed first draft.

The three posts are well-worth reading in their entirety, and, as always, are date-linked at the bottom of their respective excepts. I hope you’ll weigh in with your thoughts on these tips.

Eight novels in (ten, if you count the unpublishable ones), I have an instinct about the basic material I need to get down, more or less in order. More importantly, I have trust in the writing and editing process and faith that I can patch up the leaks—later.

For now, in the early stages, I’m only interested in one thing: getting the clay on the wheel. I trust that there are seeds in there—of things real, from me, that will resonate in another soul in months and years to come. I don’t know what they are yet and it’s not my business to force them into shape.

I have a few rules for this process but the first is the one I go back to every time, and it is this:

Write like no one will ever read it.

“But what about the audience? You have to think about them!” Forget them. Everything you do from your edits on will be about them. But for now, write with the candor you would in a secret journal. This isn’t about pantsing or plotting. It’s about capturing the grit you need without worrying that it’s pretty or eloquent or clean enough. Don’t be pretty. Be raw.

If you are an aspiring writer whose end goal is to be published, let me tell you something: you will never be as bold and daring as you are in those first years before your work gets published. Before critics post public reviews of your work and readers rank it alongside blenders on Amazon. Before even accolades usher their own kind of doubt into the next endeavor. This undiscovered period in your life is an advantage you won’t have twice. Use it.

These days, I have to trick myself into following this rule. I know my agent, editor, and a movie producer are waiting for my first draft. I want them to like it. Oh, who am I kidding—I want them to tell me it’s the best thing they’ve ever read, that they wept, told their therapist, and pre-ordered 100 copies for friends and distant acquaintances.

But the only way I will touch one cell of their soul is if I banish their faces from my mind. No one will read this. It is my mantra. This is me, writing secret stuff, dealing some audacious literary badassery in private. Time to edit, censor, and make coherent later. The good stuff happens now.

Tosca Lee—October 28, 2015

When people outline their stories, they’ll inevitably come up with ideas for scenes that they think are important to the plot, but the transitions between these scenes (in terms of the character’s motivation to move to another place or take a specific action) will often be weak.

Why?

The impetus to move the story to the next plot point is so strong that it can end up overriding the believability of the character’s choice in that moment of the story.

Read that last sentence again. It’s a key one.

Stated another way, the author imposes the plot onto the clay without letting it be shaped by the essential forces of believability, causality, and context.

You might have had this experience: you’re reading a novel and it feels like there’s an agenda to the story that isn’t dictated by the narrative events. This is a typical problem for people who outline their stories. Instead, listen to the story, and respond to where it takes you.

You can often tell that an author outlined or “plotted out” her story when you read a book and find yourself thinking things like,

◦ “But I thought she was shy? Why would she act like that?” 

◦ “I don’t get it. That doesn’t make sense. He would never say that.” 

◦ “What?! I thought she was . . . ?” 

◦ “Whatever happened to the . . . ? Couldn’t she use that right now?” 

◦ “I don’t understand why they’re not . . . ”

This happens when an author stops asking, “What would naturally happen next?” and starts asking, “What do I need to have happen to move this story toward the climax?”

The first question grows from the story itself, the second places artificial pressure on the story to do something that might not be causally or believably connected to the story events that just happened.

As soon as your character doesn’t act in a believable way, it’ll cause readers to ask, “Why doesn’t she just . . . ?” And as soon as that happens, they’re no longer emotionally present in the story.

As you learn to feel out the direction of the story by constantly asking yourself what would naturally happen next, based on the narrative forces that shape all stories, you’ll find your characters acting in more believable and honest ways and your story will flow more smoothly, contingently, and coherently.

Here’s one of the biggest problems with starting by writing an outline: You’ll be tempted to stick to it. You’ll get to a certain place and stop digging, even though there might be an awful lot of interesting dinosaur left to uncover.

Follow rabbit trails.

Forget all that rubbish you’ve heard about staying on track and not following rabbit trails.

Yes, of course you should follow them. It’s inherent to the creative process. What you at first thought was just a rabbit trail leading nowhere in particular might take you to a breathtaking overlook that far eclipses everything you previously had in mind for your story.

If you’re going to come up with original stories, you’ll always brainstorm more scenes and write more words than you can use. This isn’t wasted effort; it’s part of the process. Every idea is a doorway to the next.

So, where to start? Put an intriguing character in a challenging situation and see how he responds. Sometimes he’ll surprise you in how he acts, or demand a bigger part in the story.

And sometimes a random character will appear out of nowhere and vie for a part in the story.

Steven James—November 3, 2014

Like a building, a finished story almost never corresponds to the initial idea. That’s why I don’t outline before writing that initial draft of discovery.

However, once the first draft is finished, I create an outline in the form of as-builts. That’s where the pantser’s errors and oversights show up. And, believe me, there will be plenty.

Oops, I forgot to install reinforcing bars before I poured the slab. Without rebar, the foundation cracks and sags. Gotta jackhammer up the concrete and start over.

Darn, I forgot to include a door that connects the kitchen and the dining room. Better get out the reciprocating saw and cut an opening in that solid wall.

Wow, the shingles on the roof look beautiful…except some of the trusses underneath are missing. The first snowfall causes the whole thing to collapse. Drat.

You get the idea.

Dennis Foley, novelist/screenwriter/educator extraordinaire, introduced me to the concept of “as built” outlines in fiction. He recommends writing in three steps:

  1. Think it up;
  2. Write it up; 
  3. Fix it up.

Pantsers feel strangled if we try to adhere to a formal outline during the initial draft. We’d much rather give free rein to our imaginations during Steps 1 and 2.

But, eventually, all that unfettered creativity needs to be organized. Step 3, the “fix it up” stage, is the time to create an “as built” outline.

Outlining in reverse points out structural problems with the plot: events that are out of order, a character who shows up simultaneously in two different places, missing time periods that must be accounted for, lapses in logic, etc. Once those glitches are repaired, the story becomes a coherent sequence of rising complications that ultimately delivers a satisfying climax.

My WIP, Lost in Irma, takes place in Florida during Hurricane Irma in September, 2017, a catastrophe that left 17 million people without electricity. The story covers a two-week period during and after the storm and had to adhere to actual events in the order that they occurred.

The main characters, Tawny Lindholm and Tillman Rosenbaum, are visiting Tillman’s high school coach, Smoky Lido, in New Port Richey when Irma hits. During the height of the storm, Smoky disappears. Tawny and Tillman spend the rest of the book trying to find him. Is he dead or alive? Did he flee because of gambling debts? Was he abducted by thugs he owed money to? Or did he vanish into the storm to commit suicide?

Hurricane-related emergencies overwhelmed law enforcement, leaving Tawny and Tillman on their own to look for Smoky. Power blackouts, gasoline shortages, and unreliable cell service were integral to the plot. They couldn’t make phone calls or search the internet. If they drove, they risked getting stuck in floodwaters or running out of gas.

To pin down significant events on the dates they actually happened, I printed out a blank calendar from September 2017.  I filled in the squares with factual information like: what time did Irma hit New Port Richey (late Saturday night, early Sunday morning); what time did the power go out there (around midnight); when did the Anclote River flood (Tuesday)?

What goes into the as-built outline?

Timelines: The chronology of events is important to nail down correctly which is why I use the calendar technique above.

Scene by scene outline – This traces major characters and plot developments. What day is it? What time is it? Where are they? What action happens?

Debbie Burke—March 3, 2020

***

  1. What’s your own #1 rule when writing a first draft?
  2. What do you think of Steven James’s advice? Do you follow “rabbit trails” when drafting?
  3. Do you outline your completed first draft to help with revision? If so, do you have any advice?

Words of Wisdom: About Control

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For us writers, knowing what is outside of our control, and what lies within, can help with stress and anxiety when it comes to publication. Writing lies within our control, but over controlling our writing process can cause stress and anxiety as well.

Today’s Words of Wisdom tackles the issue of control. Michelle Gagnon shares a few of the many things outside of your control when it comes traditional publication. James Scott Bell looks at more things in publishing outside of our control, including whether we become “A-list” writers, and offers a crucial piece of advice. Finally Sue Coletta looks at a powerful part of our mind that is outside of our conscious control, but which we can work with in flow state, and shows how to create that state.

All three posts are well-worth reading in their entireties and can be found linked to the original publication date at the bottom of their respective excerpts.

Typos: I’m not saying I’m perfect, but occasionally glaring typos appear in the text that were in no draft of the manuscript I submitted. My book club read The Tunnels, and when I walked in for our meeting three people shouted out, “Page 67! What happened there?” Half of the night was consumed by a discussion of some of the typos in the book. Somewhere between my final edits and the typesetting process, new typos appeared. Again, beyond my control (also the reason why I never crack the spine to read the final product. I have never once read one of my books after mailing off the line edits, because if I spot a typo it drives me nuts).  

Missing Pages: I received emails from a few people who purchased Boneyard, only to discover that fifty pages were missing from the middle of the book. After talking to other authors, I learned that this is not that unusual. A glitch at the printing plant can ruin a whole batch of books. Fortunately, publishers are wonderful about shipping out a replacement copy, if it ever happens to you.

Print Runs: This can be make or break for an author. Say your initial print run was 20,000 books. Sell 15,000, and your book is a success story. But if the publisher printed 100,000 copies, and you sold 15,000, your book would be considered a dismal failure and you would be facing an uphill battle to get the next one published. Not fair, right? But as an author, you have no say in whether your print run is five thousand books or five million. You have to just keep your fingers crossed that your publisher’s sales projections are right.

I will say that in book publishing, I still have far more control than I ever did as a magazine writer. Back then, I’d hand in an article and six months later, something came out with my name on it that was virtually unrecognizable. Not always, but frequently enough to be depressing. In book publishing you are definitely allowed a firmer hold on the reins.

Michelle Gagnon—May 6, 2009

 

Not every writer who is good enough to be on the A List makes it to the A List. There’s an element built into nature that leaves some things to pure chance.

The trick in life is not to stress about those things.

That is the essence of the Stoic philosophy. Epictetus put it best: “There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.”

You got that right, Epic. Most writers worry about every single aspect of every single book release.

Will it sell? Will it be seen in bookstores? Will the critics/reviewers hate it? Will it land on a major bestseller list? Will I get that literary award I’m lusting after? Does Oprah have my phone number?

None of these things can you control.

Thus, the writer determines to do everything within his power: bookmarks, swag, panels, bookstore signings, blog tour, Facebook ads, Amazon ads, Bookbub ads, tweets, ’grams, howling at the moon—all the while stressing over the results.

But when the dust settles down, down to the lower depths of the Amazon rankings, what then? If the author has too much emotional investment in great expectations, he will suffer needless inner turmoil. It can hamper or even end a writing career. Many a writer has called it quits after a third or fourth book got remaindered within a month and the publisher did not offer another contract.

To repeat: Not everyone who should be a star becomes a star.

Not every writer who should be on the A List makes it to the A List.

But anyone who keeps writing is a writer. And that very act—the writing, falling deeply into a scene, getting into “the zone”—turns out to be the only real antidote for writerly anxiety.

So put this on a sign or sticky note on your desk:

James Scott Bell—March 15, 2020

 

The conscious you, or conscious awareness, makes up the smallest part of your brain. The conscious brain believes it’s in full control of the body, when nothing could be farther from the truth…

When our conscious awareness relinquishes control to our unconscious brain, we enter the flow state—a form of brain activity experienced by different kinds of people, from elite athletes and meditation experts to professional writers and musicians. Many of whom call this state “the zone,” which arrives during total emersion in a task. In flow states, neural circuits run without conscious mind interference. Our perception clears, our unconscious awareness heightens, and feel-good chemicals flood the brain, which allows for intense focus and gratification…

Tips to Achieving Flow

  1. Balance challenge and skill.

If you’ve never written nonfiction, for example, you may find it difficult to enter the zone because your conscious awareness is stressed out. You’re too afraid of making a mistake to enter flow.

If something isn’t challenging enough, you’ll get bored easily. In turn, so will your reader. Not only will adding plenty of conflict improve your plot, but you’ll enter the zone quicker while writing.

1. Establish clear goals.

I will write for three hours. I will write at least 1000 words today. I will write two scenes or one chapter. By establishing a daily writing goal, it relieves the pressure of having to finish the entire first draft by a certain date. How you choose to establish those goals is up to you.

2. Reduce distraction.

You will never enter the zone if you’re checking for social media notifications or email every ten minutes. When it’s time to write, write. Save play time and the inbox for later.

3. Stop multitasking.

Have you ever turned down the radio while searching for a specific house number or highway exit? You’re instinctively helping your brain to concentrate on a visual task. For more on why multitasking is so difficult and why we should avoid it before a writing session, see my 2021 post entitled Can Multitasking Harm the Brain?

4. Don’t force it.

Some days, you’ll enter the zone. Other days, you won’t. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. You’ll still produce words and make progress.

5. Enjoy the process.

You won’t enter flow unless you’re enjoying yourself. Simple as that. If you view writing as a chore, it may be time to step away from the WIP for a while. Yes, penning a novel is hard work, but it also should be enjoyable. If it’s not, you may want to ask yourself why you do it.

Sue Coletta—January 8, 2024

***

  1. What are some things you see as outside of your control in writing/publishing?
  2. How do you deal with these?
  3. Do you work with your unconscious to help get into flow state? Any tips?

I’ll be on the road for much of today, and will check in when I can. In the meantime, please feel free to comment.

Heroic Words of Wisdom

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What is a hero? One answer is a legendary figure, such as Hercules, who accomplishes great deeds. Yet another is an ordinary person who does the right thing, no matter how lonely that might be. This being the Kill Zone, the answer to the above question is the principal character of a story. A character who strives to right a wrong, stop a threat, or protect the weak, who faces and overcomes challenges despite the odds to triumph in the end, sometimes at great personal cost.

We have three excerpts dealing with heroes today. Joe Moore ponders the role of beauty and intelligence in a hero. PJ Parrish looks at the different sort of supporting characters who team up with heroes. Larry Brooks considers how the hero’s role changes over the course of four-act structure.

As always the full version of each post is worth reading as are the original comments, date-linked at the bottom of their respective excerpt. Joe’s original was short enough I included all of it, but it’s worth checking out the comments.

This summer I attended an interesting workshop by a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, who discussed his approach to crafting thrillers. It was his opinion that main characters need to be handsome (or beautiful, if female), intelligent, and successful. As he described his approach, “I write a main character that women want to sleep with, and men want to be. ” In other words, more James Bond than Monk. His reason for his writing main characters that way? “I like to write books that sell.”

It’s an interesting thought. I’d always assumed that a main character didn’t need to be particularly genetically or intellectually gifted. I always assumed that overcoming adversity was what made a hero appealing to readers.  But when I think back about books I’ve particularly enjoyed–SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, COMA–I have to admit that those protagonists were handsome and brilliant. I just never thought of those characteristics as being requirements for popular appeal.

What do you think? Is physical beauty, in particular, central to creating an appealing main character?

Joe Moore—August 19, 2014

If you are considering a series, it’s a good idea to think hard about second bananas. First, they have great appeal. (Sorry, I had to get that out of my system before I could go on). But they are also very useful. More on that in a moment but first, it might be useful to examine the different types of pairings you might create:

The Teammate: This is actually a dual protagonist situation, wherein there are two equally active case solvers. The classic example is Dashiell Hammett’s Nick and Nora Charles. (Maybe Asta the dog was the sidekick?) Modern examples are Paul Levine’s Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord, and SJ Rozan’s Lydia Chin and Bill Smith (who appear in alternating books and sometimes together).

The Sidekick. This character is not an equal to the protag but almost as important in propelling the plot. He or she is a fixture in a series, a reoccurring character. The classic example, of course is Holmes and Watson. But others include Nero Wolf and Archie Goodwin, or Cocker and Tubbs from the old Miami Vice series.

The Confidant: One step lower on the totem, this character might not actively work a case with the hero, but acts as a sounding board for the hero. My fave confidant is Meyer, who sits on the Busted Flush sipping scotch and spouting wisdom about chess and economics as he listens to Travis McGee ponder out the case. (or his latest lady problem) Meyer serves as an anchor of sorts when McGee’s moral compass wanders. More on that later!

The Foil: Some folks use “foil” and “sidekick” interchangeably, but I think the foil deserves its own category. This a character who contrasts with the protag in order to highlight something about the hero’s nature. Hence the word “foil” — which comes from the old practice of backing gems with foil to make them shine brighter. We can go all the way back to the first detective story to find a great foil: In Poe’s The Purloined Letter, the hero Dupin has the dim-witted prefect of police Monsieur G. Some folks might even say Watson is a foil for Holmes because his obtuseness makes Holmes shine brighter.

Or consider Hamlet and Laertes. Both men’s fathers are murdered. But while Hamlet broods and does nothing, Laertes blusters and takes action. And the contrast sheds light on Hamlet’s character. Hamlet himself says, “I’ll be your foil, Laertes. In mine ignorance your skill shall, like a star in the darkest night, stick fiery off indeed.”

PJ Parrish—August 18, 2015

In her book “The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By”, Carol S. Pearson is credited with bringing us life’s hero archetypes, four of which align exactly with the sequential/structural “parts” of a story.  (For those who live by the 3-Act model, know that the 2nd Act is by definition contextually divided into two equal parts at the midpoint, with separate hero contexts for each quartile on either side of that midpoint, thus creating what is actually a four–part story model; this perspective is nothing other than a more specific – and thus, more useful – model than the 3-Act format from which it emerges.)

Those four parts align exactly with these four character contexts: 

Orphan (Pearson’s term)/innocent – as the story opens your hero is living life in a way that is not yet connected to (or in anticipation of) the core story, at least in terms of what goes wrong. 

And something absolutely has to go wrong, and at a specific spot in the narrative.

The author’s mission in this first story part/quartile, prior to that happening, is twofold: make us care about the character, while setting up the mechanics of the dramatic arc (as well as the character arc) to come.  There are many ways to play this – which is why this isn’t in any way formulaic – since within these opening chapters the hero, passive or not, can actually sense or even contribute to the forthcoming storm, or it can drop on their head like a crashing chandelier.  Either way, something happens (at a specific place in the narrative sequence) that demands a response from your hero.

Now your hero has something to do, something that wasn’t fully in play prior to that moment (called The First Plot Point, which divides the Part 1 quartile from the Part 2 quartile).  In this context, and if your chandelier falls at the proper place (in classic story structure that First Plot Point can arrive anywhere from the 20th to 25th percentile; variances on either end of that range puts the story at risk for very specific reasons), you can now think of your hero as a…

Wanderer – the hero’s initial reactions to the First Plot Point (chandelier impact), which comprise the first half of Act 2 (or the second of the four “parts” of a story).  The First Plot Point is the moment the story clicks in for real (everything prior to it was essentially part of a set-up for it), because the source of the story’s conflict, until now foreshadowed or only partially in play, has now summoned the hero to react.  That reaction can be described as “wandering” through options along a new path, such as running, hiding, striking back, seeking information, surrendering, writing their congressman, encountering a fuller awareness of what they’re up against, or just plain getting into deeper water from a position of cluelessness and/or some level of helplessness.

But sooner or later, if nothing else than to escalate the pace of the story (because your hero can’t remain either passive or in victim-mode for too long), your hero must evolve from a Wanderer into a…

Warrior – using information and awareness and a learning curve (i.e, when the next chandelier drops, duck), as delivered via the Midpoint turn of the story.  The Midpoint (that’s a literal term, by the way) changes the context of the story for both the reader and the hero (from wanderer into warrior-mode), because here is where a curtain has been drawn back to give us new/more specific information – machinations, reveals, explanations, true identities, deeper motives, etc. – that alter the nature of the hero’s decisions and actions from that point forward, turning them from passive or clueless toward becoming more empowered, resulting in a more proactive attack on whatever blocks their path or threatens.  Which is often, but not always, a villain.

But be careful here.  While your hero is getting deeper into the fight here in Part 3, take care to not show much success at this point (the villain is ramping things up, as well, in response to your hero’s new boldness).  The escalated action and tension and confrontation of the Part 3 quartile (where, indeed, the tension is thicker than ever before) is there to create new story dynamics that will set up a final showdown just around the corner.

That’s where, in the fourth and final quartile, the protagonist becomes, in essence, a…

Martyr (Pearson’s term)/hero – launching a final quest or heading down a path that will ultimately lead to the climactic resolution of the story.  This should be a product of the hero’s catalytic decisions and actions (in other words, heroes shouldn’t be saved, rather, they should be the primary architect of the resolution), usually necessitating machinations and new dynamics (remember Minny’s “chocolate” pie in The Help?), which ramp up to facilitate that climactic moment.

This is where character arc becomes a money shot.  Because by now everything you’ve put the hero through has contributed to a deep well of empathy and emotion on the reader’s part.  This is where the crowd cheers or hearts break or history is altered, where villains are vanquished and a new day dawns.

Larry Brooks—November 2, 2015

***

  1. As Joe asked, “is physical beauty, in particular, central to creating an appealing main character?”
  2. Do you have a favorite type of supporting character AKA second banana? Personally, I love a great sidekick. Do you have a second banana of any of the type’s Kris listed from your own fiction you’d like to share?
  3. Do you agree that a fictional hero can go through a sequence of roles over the course of a novel or movie? Any thoughts on Larry’s mapping that to four-act structure?