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.

More Villainous Words of Wisdom

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Today’s Words of Wisdom returns to an evergreen topic: villains. We love to hate them.  Our fiction needs them. They help drive the plot. Understanding the importance of villains can be the key to writing more engaging and gripping mysteries and thrillers.

Clare Langley-Hawthorne, James Scott Bell and Debbie Burke give advice and tips on creating better villains in your fiction. Afterwards, please give us your take.

It can often be all too easy to fall for the ‘psychotic’ serial killer or other sort of evil cliche without trying to provide for the reader a solid grasp of what lies behind this. Villains rarely consider themselves villains. Sometimes they feel justified (in their own perverted way) or compelled by something to do what they do. Unlike in real life, in fiction, we can often provide the reader with a rationale for someone’s behaviour.

So how do you create a believable villain? How do you ensure that, when it comes to the battle between good and evil, neither side slides into caricature? I’ve been thinking about this a lot in my current WIP and I have some to a few conclusions (or observations, at least) as I go through this process:

1. Characters don’t think they are dumb so don’t make them do ‘dumb’ things just because they are (cue manic Dr. Evil laughter) the bad guy.
2. Don’t fall into the trap of making evil generic. For every character there needs to be a specific reason, cause or motivation for his or her behaviour. The more specific and believable this is, the more believable a character will be.
3. Give you villain a clear objective. I’m not a big fan of the psycho who just seems to do stuff because he is, well, ‘psycho’ – this always seems to the to dilute the power of having an antagonist.
4. Think as much about the back story for your villain as you do for the protagonist of the story – this will ensure the character behaves consistently and with clear purpose. It also helps you avoid falling into a cliche if you have a fully realized back story.

Clare Langley-Hawthorne—July 23, 2012

 

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

All this to say that the best villains in fiction, theatre, and film are never one-dimensional. They are complex, often charming, and able to manipulate. The biggest mistake you can make with a villain is to make him pure evil or all crazy. 

So what goes into crafting a memorable villain?

  1. Give him an argument

There is only one character in all storytelling who wakes up each day asking himself what fresh evil he can commit. This guy: 

But other than Dr. Evil, every villain feels justified in what he is doing. When you make that clear to the reader in a way that approaches actual empathy, you will create cross-currents of emotion that deepen the fictive dream like virtually nothing else.

One of the techniques I teach in my workshops is borrowed from my courtroom days. I ask people to imagine their villain has been put on trial and is representing himself. Now comes the time for the closing argument. He has one opportunity to make his case for the jury. He has to justify his whole life. He has to appeal to the jurors’ hearts and minds or he’s doomed.

Write that speech. Do it as a free-form document, in the villain’s voice, with all the emotion you can muster. Emphasize what’s called “exculpatory evidence.” That is evidence that, if believed, would tend to exonerate a defendant. As the saying goes, give the devil his due. 

Note: This does not mean you are giving approval to what the villain has done. No way. What you are getting at is his motivation. This is how to know what’s going on inside your villain’s head throughout the entire novel.

Want to read a real-world example? See the cross-examination of Hermann Goering from the Nuremberg Trials. Here’s a clip:

“I think you did not quite understand me correctly here, for I did not put it that way at all. I stated that it had struck me that Hitler had very definite views of the impotency of protest; secondly, that he was of the opinion that Germany must be freed from the dictate of Versailles. It was not only Adolf Hitler; every German, every patriotic German had the same feelings. And I, being an ardent patriot, bitterly felt the shame of the dictate of Versailles, and I allied myself with the man about whom I felt perceived most clearly the consequences of this dictate, and that probably he was the man who would find the ways and means to set it aside. All the other talk in the Party about Versailles was, pardon the expression, mere twaddle … From the beginning it was the aim of Adolf Hitler and his movement to free Germany from the oppressive fetters of Versailles, that is, not from the whole Treaty of Versailles, but from those terms which were strangling Germany’s future.”

How chilling to hear a Nazi thug making a reasoned argument to justify the horrors foisted upon the world by Hitler. So much scarier than a cardboard bad guy.

So what’s your villain’s justification? Let’s hear it. Marshal the evidence. Know deeply and intimately what drives him.

  1. Choices, not just backstory

It’s common and perhaps a little trite these days to give the villain a horrific backstory and leave it at that. 

Or, contrarily, to leave out any backstory at all.

In truth, everyone alive or fictional has a backstory, and you need to know your villain’s. But don’t just make him a victim of abuse. Make him a victim of his own choices.

Back when virtue and character were actually taught to children in school, there was a lesson from the McGuffey Reader that went like this: “The boy who will peep into a drawer will be tempted to take something out of it; and he who will steal a penny in his youth will steal a pound in his manhood.” 

The message, of course, is that we are responsible for our choices and actions, and they have consequences. 

So what was the first choice your villain made that began forging his long chain of depravity? Write that scene. Give us the emotion of it. Even if you don’t use the scene in your book, knowing it will give your villain scope.

James Scott Bell—October 26, 2014

 

I wrote mysteries like I read mysteries, from a state of ignorance, constantly trying to figure out what was going on.

I had a general idea of the bad guy’s motive, but never paid much that attention to the schemes and machinations happening offstage. All action took place onstage because the first or close third POV required the sights, sounds, smells, and emotions be filtered through the protagonist only. My focus stayed stuck on the hero.

The bad guy hid in the shadows behind the curtain until the big reveal at the end. Unfortunately he’d been hiding from the writer too!

Finally, thanks to the wise folks at TKZ, I recognized the big fat blind spot in my books.

Here’s the epiphany:

In crime fiction, the antagonist drives the plot. Unless a crime has been committed, or is about to be committed, there’s nothing for the protagonist to do. The antagonist acts, the protagonist re-acts.

I’d been following the wrong character around all these years! 

My realization probably seems like a big DUH to many crime authors. But I’m sharing it in hopes of helping others like myself who overlooked the obvious.

It’s fun to think like a villain! When I started writing from the bad guy’s POV, a whole new world opened up—a world without conscience, constraints, or inhibitions.

Jordan’s great post from last May says, “The best villains are the heroes of their own stories.” 

Actor Tom Hiddleston says, “Every villain is a hero in his own mind.” Most actors would prefer to sink their fangs into the role of a great villain than play the good guy.

The baddies in my earlier books had been flat and dull because I’d never gotten inside their heads. Finally, the missing element became clear and…my book won a publishing contract!

Why is the villain willing to steal, cheat, and kill? What rationalizations justify the harm done to others? 

A sociopath comes up with perfectly logical justifications and excuses for abhorrent actions.

Irresistible influences like greed, power, and lust can seduce an ordinary person over to the dark side.

Misguided righteousness can lead to horrendous consequences.

A law-abiding citizen may be forced into a corner where he commits acts he would never do under normal circumstances.

If an author roots around in the antagonist’s brain for a while, background, reasons, and rationalizations for antisocial behavior bubble up. Armed with such knowledge, it becomes impossible to write a two-dimensional character. Jim Bell offers a great technique—try to imagine the villain delivering the closing argument to the jury that will determine his fate.

Do you show the villain’s POV in the story or not? That choice is contingent on subgenre.

In a whodunit mystery, the identity of the villain is typically a surprise at the end. Therefore, that POV is generally not shown to the reader, although some authors include passages from the villain’s POV without revealing the identity.

Suspense and thriller novels often are written from multiple POVs, including the villain’s. When the reader knows early on who the bad guy is, the question is no longer whodunit, but rather will s/he get away with it?

The author can choose to show the antagonist’s POV or keep it hidden. But either way, you need to be aware of it because that’s what’s driving the story forward.

Even if you never show the villain’s POV, try writing scenes inside his/her head.You don’t need to include them in the book, but the act of writing them gives you a firmer grasp on that character’s deep desires and how those desires screw up other people’s lives. Once you really understand what the antagonist is striving for, that provides a solid framework from which the story hangs.

If you’re in a corner and your hero doesn’t know what to do next, check in with the villain. While the hero is slogging through steps A, B, and C to solve the crime, the bad guy is offstage setting up roadblocks D, E, and F to keep from being caught.

Debbie Burke—September 28, 2017

***

There you have it, advice on writing villains. Today the authors of our three excerpted posts pose the questions to help jumpstart our discussion:

  1. So how do you approach the process of creating villains? Are there any ‘evil doers’ in novels that strike you as the ‘dumb and dumber’ of their kind? What about the most chilling, compelling and believable villains in fiction?
  2. What’s your approach to villain writing?
  3. What is your villain doing right now? Do you prefer to show the antagonist’s POV or keep it hidden?

 

Subconscious Words of Wisdom

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While writing Book Drop Dead it became obvious I wasn’t letting my subconscious have a much of say in the process. When I realized this and opened back up to my inner collaborator, the narrative became richer and more surprising and the writing flowed more easily. It’s a lesson I’ve taken to heart as I work on the next book in my mystery series.

Today’s Words of Wisdom takes a deep dive into the power of the subconscious in writing and how to set the scene for it to work its magic, with excerpts from posts by Laura Benedict, James Scott Bell and Debbie Burke.

There are so many theories on what dreams are. Just a few:

Subconscious problem solving.

Wishfulfillment

Random neuron firing

Emotional cleanup using dream symbols

Messages from the future or past

I don’t know about you, but my dreams tend to be a mix of the above, with the exception of messages from the future or past. As an adult, I’ve had some very comforting dreams about my grandparents, but I put those in the emotional cleanup category.

Dreams are as entertaining to me as a good book, and sometimes even more so because I’m participating. I go to sleep hoping the dreams are good. The only time I fear them is when I’m home alone overnight and have paralyzing night terrors about strangers in my bedroom. But most of my dreams contain vibrant colors, vivid situations and storylines, and people I don’t often see. I couldn’t enjoy them more if I made them up myself. Which, in a way, I suppose I do. It’s my subconscious at work—that part of the brain from which I suspect my best writing material comes.

But how to access that material in the waking world? As writers, we are essentially creating dreams for our readers. Stories that are like reality, but just that much better. Just that much less predictable, like any good dream.

Some ways to access the dreaming part of your brain:

Lucid dreaming: Lucid dreaming is dreaming when you know you’re dreaming. You won’t necessarily control your dreams, but you’re likely to remember them. Here’s a comprehensive list of ways to make it happen.

Dream journals: This is one of my favorites. As soon as I wake, I jot down the details of all the dreams I can remember. The exercise of writing it out makes me feel like I have a jump on my creative day.

Music: Do you listen to music as you write? It can quickly put you in the writing zone, but music with lyrics can be distracting. When I wrote Charlotte’s Story, I had this adagio on a loop for weeks. Repeated music is a great self-hypnosis tool.

Rituals: Same Bat Place. Same Bat Time. If you’re in the habit of doing deep work in the same place every time, your brain will begin to relax once it’s in sight.

Silence: I used to brag a lot about how I could write just as easily in a noisy cafe as I could in a silent room. While it’s still true, silence settles me much more quickly. You can almost hear the doors in my head opening.

Do you have trouble recalling your dreams? It’s common.The reason it’s sometimes difficult is because the brain may shut down its memory-recording functions while we’re in REM sleep.

Here’s what I find so fascinating about recalling dreams—or even having them. What if they really are simply random discharges of neurons firing up images in our brains while we sleep? That doesn’t make them any less interesting or less vital. It’s what we do with the connections between those images that makes a dream a dream. Even while we are sleeping, we are constructing narratives. How cool is that? Storytelling is so elemental to our being that we may be compelled to do it unintentionally, while we’re asleep.

That means that we are all storytellers. But to be writers, we have to externalize those narratives.

Laura Benedict—February 22, 2017

 

In an article in the Harvard Business Review, “Your Brain Can Only Take So Much Focus”, Dr. Srini Pillay writes about our over-emphasis on focus. We have our to-do lists, timetables, goals. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But it turns out we also should be practicing “unfocus.”

In keeping with recent research, both focus and unfocus are vital. The brain operates optimally when it toggles between focus and unfocus, allowing you to develop resilience, enhance creativity, and make better decisions too.

When you unfocus, you engage a brain circuit called the “default mode network.” Abbreviated as the DMN, we used to think of this circuit as the Do Mostly Nothing circuit because it only came on when you stopped focusing effortfully. Yet, when “at rest”, this circuit uses 20% of the body’s energy (compared to the comparatively small 5% that any effort will require).

The DMN needs this energy because it is doing anything but resting. Under the brain’s conscious radar, it activates old memories, goes back and forth between the past, present, and future, and recombines different ideas. Using this new and previously inaccessible data, you develop enhanced self-awareness and a sense of personal relevance. And you can imagine creative solutions or predict the future, thereby leading to better decision-making too. The DMN also helps you tune into other people’s thinking, thereby improving team understanding and cohesion.

Dr. Pillay recommends building “positive constructive daydreaming” (PCD) into your day. I do this very well at my local coffee house. I stare. Out the window. Sometimes at people. I’m really working, though. That’s PCD time!

Another tip from the good doctor: power naps. “When your brain is in a slump, your clarity and creativity are compromised. After a 10-minute nap, studies show that you become much clearer and more alert.”

But the technique that really jumped out at me was this:

Pretending to be someone else: When you’re stuck in a creative process, unfocus may also come to the rescue when you embody and live out an entirely different personality. In 2016, educational psychologists, Denis Dumas and Kevin Dunbar found that people who try to solve creative problems are more successful if they behave like an eccentric poet than a rigid librarian. Given a test in which they have to come up with as many uses as possible for any object (e.g. a brick) those who behave like eccentric poets have superior creative performance. This finding holds even if the same person takes on a different identity.

When in a creative deadlock, try this exercise of embodying a different identity. It will likely get you out of your own head, and allow you to think from another person’s perspective. I call this psychological halloweenism.

This is close to something I’ve done on occasion. I may have finished a draft and am doing the first read through. Something’s not working. I don’t know what.

I set it aside for awhile and do something unfocused: like pleasure reading, eating a Tommy Burger, or riding my bike. Then when I go back to it I think of a favorite author and pretend he’s looking over my shoulder at the draft. I have him say, “I think you need to ….” and just imagine what he would advise. It’s amazing how often this can break the logjam.

In light of all the science, then, I’ve determined to take a little more unfocus time on weekends.

I’ve also gotten more specific about how I spend my focus time. I’m a morning person. I like getting up while it’s still dark and pouring that first cup of java and getting some words down. I can write for two or three hours straight. But I’ve stopped doing that. I am forcing myself to take a break after 45 minutes of writing, to let the noggin rest a bit. Ten minutes maybe. Then back to work.

James Scott Bell—May 28, 2017

 

What is the subconscious? Novelist/writing instructor Dennis Foley reduces the definition to a simple, beautiful simile:

The subconscious is like a little seven-year-old girl who brings you gifts.

Unfortunately, our conscious mind is usually too busy to figure out the value of these odd thoughts and dismisses them as inconsequential, even nonsensical.

The risk is, if you ignore the little girl’s gifts, pretty soon she stops bringing them and you lose touch with a vital link to your writer’s imagination. But if you encourage her to bring more gifts, she’s happy to oblige.

Sometimes the little girl delivers the elusive perfect phrase you’ve been searching for or that exhilarating plot twist that turns your story on its head.

At those times, she’s often dubbed “the muse.”

The trick is how to consistently turn random thoughts into gifts from a muse. Here are eight tips:

#1 – Be patient and keep trying.

Training the subconscious to produce inspiration on demand is like housetraining a puppy.

At first, it pees at unpredictable times and places. You grab it and rush outside. When it does its business on the grass instead of expensive carpet, you offer lots of praise. Soon it learns there is a better time and place to let loose.

Keep reinforcing that lesson and your subconscious will scratch at the back door when it wants to get out.

#2 – Pay attention to daydreams, wild hare ideas, and jolts of intuition. Chances are your subconscious shot them out for a reason, even if that reason isn’t immediately obvious.

Say you’re struggling over how to write a surprise revelation in a scene. Two days ago, you remembered crazy Aunt Gretchen, whom you hadn’t thought about in years. Then you realize if a character like her walks into the scene, she’s the perfect vehicle to deliver the surprise.

#3 – Expect the subconscious to have lousy timing.

That brilliant flash of inspiration often hits at the most inconvenient moment. In the middle of a job interview. In the shower. Or while your toddler is having a meltdown at Winn-Dixie.

Finish the task at hand but ask your subconscious to send you a reminder later. As soon as possible, write down that brilliant flash before you forget it.

#4 – Keep requests small.

Some authors claim to have dreamed multi-book sagas covering five generations of characters. Lucky them. My subconscious doesn’t work that hard.

Start by asking it to solve little problems.

As you’re going to bed, think about a character you’re having trouble bringing to life. Miriam seems flat and hollow but, for some reason you can’t explain, she hates the mustache on her new lover, Jack. Ask your subconscious: “Why?”

When you wake up, you realize Jack’s mustache looks just like her uncle’s did…when he molested Miriam at age five.

Until that moment, you didn’t even know Miriam had survived abuse…but your subconscious knew. That’s why it dropped the hint about her dislike for the mustache. She becomes a deeper character with secrets and hidden motives you can use to complicate her relationship with Jack.

#5 – Recognize obscure clues.

This tip takes practice because suggestions from the subconscious are often oblique and challenging to interpret.

You want to write a scene where a detective questions a suspect to pin down his whereabouts at the time of a crime. You ponder that as you drift off to sleep. The next morning, “lemon chicken” comes to mind.

What the…?

But you start typing and pretty soon the scene flows out like this:

“Hey, Fred, you like Chinese food?”

“Sure, Detective.”

“Ever try Wang’s all-you-can-eat buffet?”

“That’s my favorite place. Their lemon chicken is to die for.”

“Yeah, it’s the best.”

[Fred relaxes] “But not when it gets soggy. I only like it when the coating is still crispy.”

“Right you are. I don’t like soggy either.”

“Detective, would you believe last night I waited forty-five minutes for the kitchen to bring out a fresh batch?”

“Wow, Fred, you’re a patient man. About what time was that?”

“Quarter to eight.”

“So you must have been there when that dude got killed out in the alley.”

[Fred fidgets and licks his lips] “Um, yeah, but I didn’t see anything. I had nothing to do with him getting stabbed.”

“Oh really? Funny thing is, nobody knows he got stabbed…except the killer.”

Lemon chicken directed you to an effective line of questioning to solve the crime.

Debbie Burke—February 5, 2019

***

  1. Have you tapped your dreams for you writing? If so, in what way?
  2. Do you give yourself a break and let your subconscious work it’s magic while you’re mentally elsewhere? Is there a particular activity, like talking a walk or a shower that helps in this?
  3. Do you listen to your inner “seven-year-old” and accept the gifts it has to offer your writing? Any tips on doing so?

***

There’s a sign above the library book drop: NO TRASH OR VIDEOTAPES. Meg never thought she’d have to add: NO DEAD BODIES.

It’s May 1985 and Meg Booker already has her hands full, what with running the busy Fir Grove branch library, helping her flaky actor brother with his latest onstage project, and caring for an orphaned kitten that shows up outside the branch.

Then a rare bank note goes missing at a library event, igniting a feud between two local collectors, and Meg thinks her life couldn’t get any more complicated… until a dead body turns up in the book drop room.

Racing against time, Meg must use all of her librarian skills to discover the real killer’s identity, before the police arrest her for the crime.

Book Drop Dead is the second title in the 1980s Meg Booker Librarian Mysteries series.  It’s available at the major ebook retailers via this universal book link.

Cozy Words of Wisdom

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Today Words of Wisdom takes a slightly self-indulgent turn to look at a personal favorite mystery sub-genre: the cozy.

I’m a fan of cozy mysteries, everything from Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers to books by authors like Joanna Fluke and Sara Rosette, and also greatly enjoy TV cozy mysteries such as Murder, She Wrote and Mrs. Sidhu Investigates.

I also write cozy mysteries, and in fact, just this week, I published the second book in my 1980s Meg Booker Librarian mystery series, Book Drop Dead.

With that that in mind, I present three excerpts from the Kill Zone archives dealing with different aspects of cozy mysteries. Kathryn Lilley discusses how she found her cozy voice. Elaine Viets differentiates between cozies and cutsies. Finally, Debbie Burke asks cozy mystery author Leslie Budewitz about dealing with difficult themes in cozies as well as differences in settings in cozies.

Those of you who have been hanging around this blog for a while may know that I became a fiction writer somewhat by accident. Back in the 90’s, I started writing Nancy Drew mysteries when a college buddy-turned-editor invited me to submit a story proposal for the series. When my editor friend moved on in her career, I stopped writing. I remember having vague notions back then about trying to write a manuscript on my own, but the idea seemed too intimidating. Without my editor friend as a Spirit Guide, I was at sea.

In 2003, I got RIF’ed from my job as a corporate writer. In retrospect, being laid off was the best thing that could have happened. With the blessing of a supportive spouse, I used my copious spare time to write the manuscript I’d been dreaming about.

I had a main character in mind for my story and a rough outline, but I struggled to find a “voice.” Writing in the Nancy Drew voice had been relatively easy, because Nancy already had a voice. My first attempts at finding my own voice failed miserably. Everything I produced sounded dry and flat, like it had been written by the journalist I once was. My main character came across as angry and slightly bitter. Completely unappealing.

For inspiration I started binge reading mysteries. Like Ariel’s song in The Little Mermaid, I hoped to hear a voice that would rescue me from the sea. One day I pulled a mass market mystery off the shelf and started skimming. This book sounded different, I discovered. It sounded funny. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had just discovered the world of cozy mysteries and “chick lit”.

I can write like that, I remember thinking. From that moment on, writing in a brand new voice flowed smoothly. My character Kate became a little bit like Nancy Drew, if Nancy had gained weight and developed a potty mouth.

Kathryn Lilley—January 20, 2015

First, what is a cozy?
A cozy is usually a mystery with no graphic sex, cuss words or violence. Generally, the murder takes place offstage. Dame Agatha is the queen of cozies, but Miss Marple is no pushover. “I am Nemesis,” the fluffy old lady announces, and relentlessly pursues killers.
Conan

Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries are not cozies, though they have many of the same elements. Sherlock has a hard edge to him, and some of his stories, like “The Man With the Twisted Lip,” border on noir. Doyle, like Grafton and Sayers, writes traditional mysteries, but they aren’t considered cozies. You’ve lumped a lot of traditional novels together under the cozy umbrella. Traditional mysteries play fair – they give readers all the clues, though they may be cleverly disguised. You may be writing a traditional mystery. The “cutesies” that you object to are simply one branch of the cozy sub-genre.

The so-called “cutesies” exist for one reason: They sell.
Amazon does not waste space on books that don’t move. Many readers love to read about knitters, cookie bakers, candy makers and florists who solve murders. In fact, the more arcane the sleuth’s profession, the better. There are cozies about pickle shops, jam shops, antique shops, plus tea, chocolate and coffee shops galore.
The readers for these cozies are primarily women.

And that leads us to another issue: Books by women cozy authors are often relegated to the pink ghetto. They are given a cute title, a cartoon cover featuring high heels, lipstick, or maybe a cat (and never underestimate the importance of cats in cozies) and sent out into the publishing world with little or no support – and I’m not talking about lingerie. Some of the cozy mysteries published by major houses don’t even rate their own press release. They get a “group release” with three or four other similar cozy authors.

This problem exists for many books written by women. The Boston Globe wrote about a Radcliffe alumni panel on women’s fiction. The article said: “Women of letters have been marginalized since the dawn of Western literature. It is nonetheless surprising that this predicament remains so entrenched. In a yearly study VIDA, an organization for women in the literary arts, reliably finds that major publications still carry more male bylines and cover more books authored by men.

“Although their impact is unquantifiable, book covers certainly have something to do with this disparity. Marketing affects the way readers of both genders perceive the artistic merits of a book. Stereotypically feminine signifiers— a lipstick tube, a woman’s naked back — can inadvertently disqualify a novel from the world of serious literature.”

Elaine Viets—April 16, 2018

 Question: Although you write cozy mysteries, you also tackle serious themes. How do you balance the lighthearted tone of a cozy with grim issues like homelessness and family dysfunction?

Leslie: Any mystery—any novel—depends on conflict, some internal, some external. Those conflicts often arise from the world around us, whether it’s family tension or a dispute over whose turn it is to beg on a particular street corner. Other cozy authors have tackled social justice issues as well—Cleo Coyle, Elaine Viets, and Diane Mott Davidson among them. The trick in a cozy, I think, is to explore the emotions and motivations that the issues raise and make sure that the external actions flow from those internal tensions, because a cozy is ultimately about the personal impact of a crime and the community response to it.

I tend to use an ABC plot structure, with the murder the A or primary plot, the protagonist’s relationships the B or main subplot, and life in the shop or community the C or secondary subplot. That keeps the balance, I hope, and allows me to sneak in some humor and lighter moments while giving the murder the respect it deserves.

Question: The Spice Shop series is set in Seattle; the Food Lovers’ Village series takes place in a tiny Montana town. Can you talk about the differences in handling urban vs. rural settings? Do the personalities of your big city characters differ from those in a small town? 

Leslie: To me, the heart of a cozy is community, and the role of the amateur sleuth is to probe and protect it. That makes a small town a natural setting. An urban cozy works when it is set in a community within a community—the Pike Place Market and Seattle’s restaurant community, or Coyle’s Greenwich Village coffee house and the coffee business in NYC.

On the flip side, small-town series are prone to Cabot Cove Syndrome—after a while, there’s no one left to kill! You can root the conflict in the town, bring it in from outside, or create a clash between locals and visitors. An urban setting makes a high crime rate more credible, and allows you to move around the various neighborhoods of a city, although you have to simplify geography and keep the protagonist’s home or shop at the center.

As for differences in personalities, that’s a great question and not one I’d considered. Both my main characters grew up where they now live and identify deeply with their communities. Erin Murphy in the Village series left for 15 years before returning; that’s a common story, especially in Montana; it’s my story, and I’m enjoying exploring it through her eyes

Debbie Burke—December 11, 2018

There you have, three aspects of the cozy mystery genre.

  1. Do you read cozies? If so, what are some of your favorites?
  2. How do you arrive at a voice for your characters, whether that’s cozies or something gritter?
  3. What do you see as the appeal of cozies? Do you see cozies as beginning to break out of the “pink ghetto” as described by Elaine?
  4. What do you think of Leslie’s A-B-C plot structure? Do you agree that the heart of a cozy is community (spoiler: I certainly do)?

***

There’s a sign above the library book drop: NO TRASH OR VIDEOTAPES. Meg never thought she’d have to add: NO DEAD BODIES.

It’s May 1985 and Meg Booker already has her hands full, what with running the busy Fir Grove branch library, helping her flaky actor brother with his latest onstage project, and caring for an orphaned kitten that shows up outside the branch.

Then a rare bank note goes missing at a library event, igniting a feud between two local collectors, and Meg thinks her life couldn’t get any more complicated… until a dead body turns up in the book drop room.

Racing against time, Meg must use all of her librarian skills to discover the real killer’s identity, before the police arrest her for the crime.

Book Drop Dead is the second title in the 1980s Meg Booker Librarian Mysteries series.  It’s available at the major ebook retailers via this universal book link.

Tracking Your Writing: Words of Wisdom

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The first time I participated in National Novel Writing month, I actually wrote a novel the month before writing my NaNo novel. The pre-NaNo novel was right on the word count edge of novella at 40,000 words. It had been three years since I’d drafted my first novel and I wanted to get back in the game by doing NaNoWriMo 2006, and thought, why not write a shorter book in October as a warmup?

So, I created a simple Excel spreadsheet that tracked my daily word count, as well as the running total of my WIP, and also listed daily word count and overall running count goals. It worked like a charm. I did the same thing for November, aiming for 1667 words a day to reach 50,000 words total by November 30. What I learned was that my word count fluctuated, but averaged out to close to the daily goal. It worked. However, I did not track the time I spent grinding out those words. Instead, I loosely scheduled writing time.

I drifted away from tracking my word count, but now want to return to it. I like JSB’s practice of setting a weekly word count, but even simply tracking how many words I draft each day can be helpful. It’s something I’d like to start doing when I begin drafting Meg Booker Librarian Mystery #3. Also, while rewriting the previous book, I began tracking pages revised as well as setting goals for daily pages revised which helped get me through multiple editing passes, especially the last one.

One thing I’ve never been successful at is tracking my time spent writing. Instead, I schedule writing time.

Today’s Words of Wisdom presents a grab bag of excerpts on time and words. Joe Moore gives tips for how to track your time spent writing. James Scott Bell shares two tactics to unstick your story and begin increasing your word count again. Laura Benedict discusses why word counts are important in her own creative process.

Most writers live and publish by a quota, a magical number of words or pages of work they produce each day. Supposedly, Stephen King writes ten pages a day, every day, no matter what. Hemingway was a little more reasonable, at 500 words per day.

The truth is, I don’t actually have a quota, not if one insists on the notion of measuring effort in terms of something solid and concrete, like numbers of words. My quota is more elastic, more ephemeral if you will: it’s time spent writing. I write for two hours each day in the late morning, no matter what. (Okay, sometimes I’ll write for 45 minutes a day, or 20, but those days are rare.)

The problem with my type of quota is that I’m a word worrier. I can spend the entire two hours nibbling around the edges of a single paragraph. The next day, I might strike that paragraph and start over. With this method, productivity, as you might imagine, is quite the wild card.

I do have occasional spells when the writing flows–I bound through the pages effortlessly, like Emily Dickinson’s frigate on a following sea. But those happy periods of clear sailing are inevitably followed by a dead calm, and I get bogged down on a single page for days. Or a single sentence,

“Just keep going!” When we’re stalled, this is the sage advice we get from most writing teachers, critique groups, and professional writers, But so far I’ve been incapable of doing that.  Sometimes I do leave a placeholder, something like, “Brilliant description of character goes here, but don’t do a generic description dump. Must be something fresh that will make the reader’s eyes widen in recognition.” One can take that kind of thing too far, however. You can wind up with an entire novel of placeholders, and then where would you be? Exactly where you started.

Joe Moore: October 19, 2010

Today, I want to offer a couple of tips for that fearful moment when you’re 10 – 20k in and you have absolutely no idea what to write next.

One tip was in my recent post about asking what the bad guy’s doing. If you’re stuck in the middle, take half an hour to think about what your antagonist is up to off stage. Have him planning his next few moves. Then go back to your protagonist who will feel the permutations of those moves.

The other tip I have for you when you get stuck is to do a variation of Raymond Chandler’s advice about bringing in a guy with a gun.

Yep, introduce a new character.

But what character? How do you choose?

Here are a couple of suggestions:

Open up a dictionary at random. Find a noun. What kind of person pops into your head who you would associate with that noun?

Spin the Writer Igniter. You can also use this cool app to choose a scene, a prop, or a situation.

Now you’ve got a new character ready to enter the fray. Before he or she does, ask yourself how this character will complicate the lead character’s life. Hopefully, you know enough about writing a novel that your Lead is facing a matter that feels like life and death–– physically or professionally or psychologically.

This new character will be the carrier of a subplot. A subplot needs to intersect with the main plot in some significant way––and a way that complicates matters for the Lead.

A new character like this is good for another 5k words at least

Bada-bing! You’ve added to your NaNo word count.

But what if you’re in the final act of your book? The hard part, where you have to figure out how to tie up the loose ends?

Add another character! A loose-ends tier-upper!

But won’t that seem out of the blue? A Deus ex machina?

Not if you go back to Act 1, or the first part of Act 2, and introduce the character there. You’re the writer, remember? You can go back in time in your own book!

This exercise works for NaNo, but also for any novel where you feel that long middle is starting to sag.

Introducing one complicating character gives you lots of plot possibilities. And I love plot possibilities.

James Scott Bell: October 16, 2016

One of my best friends, an enormously successful writer, has kept track of her words on spreadsheets for well over a decade. But I also know a writer who has been writing for a half-century and couldn’t tell you precisely how many stories she’s published, let alone the number of words.

The subject of word counts comes up frequently when you’re an emerging writer. Agents only want to see a certain number of pages, and competitions, magazines, and writing workshops all set limits. When you sell that novel, there will be a word count mentioned in the contract, and when it comes time for delivery, it better be close: if there aren’t enough, it won’t meet the contract; if there are too many, it could negatively impact the production schedule and projected costs. Word counts are relevant.

But should word counts have a place in your creative life? What do word counts mean to you?

This might sound a little crazy, but keeping track of my words satisfies the voice in my head that says, “use your time well.” Word counts are by nature quantifications. Proof that I’ve written. It doesn’t matter if I’ve written badly. It doesn’t matter if I throw them out later. It doesn’t matter if I don’t even like them. I’ve written. I’ve worked. It sounds a little cold, but sometimes you have to feed the voice. (Now, these are only my thoughts. If you don’t have that scary neurosis voice in your head telling you she’s watching how you use your time, good for you.)

The softer, more right-brained view is that the more words you write, the more practiced you become. A friend of mine is fond of saying, “Writing begets writing.” This is so true. When I write, I work things out on the page. The more words I get down on paper, the more room there is in my brain for birthing new ideas. My brain feels larger, happier when it’s planning new words.

At the end of December, I started tracking my word counts in my daily blog. The person who asked me why I tracked words wondered if I was in some kind of competition. The answer is yes. I am in competition with myself. I like to know how much I’ve written, and it keeps me motivated—not just to improve the numbers as I go along, but to have some markers along the way.

Laura Benedict: January 25, 2017

***

  1. Do you track the time you spend writing? If so, how do you do it, and does it help you stay on track as a writer?
  2. Are there specific word count points, like at the 10K, 20K or 30K word marks where you tend to run out of steam. Any tips or tactics you use to get the words flowing again?
  3. Do you track the words you write? If so do you keep daily or weekly word counts? Do you set word count goals? Do you track scenes or chapters written instead?
  4. Do you track the revising you do? If so, what metric do you choose-words, pages, scenes, chapters or something else?

Novel Writing Words of Wisdom

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Writing a novel is a big undertaking, especially at first. It took me years before I discovery-drafted my first novel. Three more novels followed, all written by the seat-of-my-pants.

However, it wasn’t until I began studying the craft of novel writing and getting feedback on my novels, as I had done earlier for short fiction, that I began to make actual progress. Learning how to write a novel took time, as did learning how to write a fantasy novel which worked, and later still, how to write a mystery novel that spun a convincing mystery.

Today’s Words of Wisdom looks at three diverse aspects of writing novels. First, James Scott Bell gives us the three rules of writing a novel. Then, Elaine Viets shares succinct advice on how-to-write a mystery, given by a fictional detective. Finally, Robert Gregory Browne looks at the idea of knowing how to write a best-selling novel.

RULE # 1 – DON’T BORE THE READER

Can anyone disagree with that?  Doesn’t it make sense that this should be emblazoned across the writer’s creative consciousness as the most foundational of all rules?

If you bore the reader, you don’t sell the book. Or, at least, if the reader does manage to make it to the end, you don’t sell your next book.

It’s a rule. In fact, it’s a law, just like gravity.

Which leads to:

RULE #2 – PUT CHARACTERS IN CRISIS

Novels that sell are about people in some kind of trouble. Conflict is the engine of story. You can create “interesting” or “quirky” characters all day long, but unless they are tested by trial they wear out quickly (here I will issue a confession: I’ve never been able to get past the first 50 or 60 pages of A Confederacy of Dunces, and I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve tried).

Now, trouble can be generated in many ways. The narrator of Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine is simply trying to get from the lobby of his office building to the next level via an escalator. That’s the whole story, and the trouble is inside his head.

At the other end of the spectrum are the commandos in The Guns of Navarone. 

The point is, every novel must have some fire, not just a layout of kindling and logs. That’s a rule.

RULE #3 – WRITE WITH HEART

I admit this rule is somewhat difficult to define. It’s a bit like what a Supreme Court justice once said about obscenity: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”

The novels that not only sell, but endure, have something of the author’s beating heart in them. We could run off a list of such novels, from To Kill A Mockingbirdby Harper Lee to the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly.

In my seminars, when we work on voice and style, I mention two novels that were publishing in 1957. They were as different from each other as Arbuckle and Keaton, and challenges for the publishers. Yet they both became bestsellers and, more to the point, continue to sell thousands and thousands of copies today.

They are Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and On the Road by Jack Kerouac. No matter how you ultimately come out on the merits of either book, what can’t be denied is that every page pulsates with the author’s voice and vision.

So put your heart in every scene of your novel. It’s a good rule.

Now, when a writer says, “There are no rules,” I suspect what he’s really saying is there is no one way to do the things we’ve been talking about here. And that is mostly correct.

I say mostly because, over time, it has been demonstrated that there are fiction techniques that generally work better than others. A good teacher (or editor) is able to help students learn the things that tend to work and avoid the things that tend not to.

And then it’s up to the writer to make choices. If a writer decides not to follow a tried and true method, at least she should know why.

For example, we talk a lot about starting a novel off with a hook (or, as I like to put it, a “disturbance.”) But what if you want to start your historical with ten pages of setting and description? Well, you’re certainly allowed to. And maybe you’ll manage to make those ten pages so interesting that readers will wish they’d go on and on.

But the odds are you’ll bore them, as they keep on asking Who is this story supposed to be about? Why should I care about any of this?

You might then decide it’s better to use the technique of starting with a disturbance and dropping in details within the action. A technique you can learn and practice.

James Scott Bell—September 23, 2012

How do you write a mystery?

    There are whole books on this subject.

    But the best short advice is in Grafton’s new Kinsey Millhone novel, “W Is for Wasted.”

    Private eye Kinsey Millhone talks about how she started investigating two mysterious deaths. One victim was a sleazy PI and the other was a homeless man.

     Kinsey was drawn into the mystery by a call from the coroner’s office. The coroner was “asking if I could ID a John Doe who had my name and phone number on a slip of paper in his pocket,” Grafton wrote. “How could I resist?”

    That had me hooked. But then Kinsey explained how to write a mystery:

    “Every good mystery takes place on three planes – what really happened; what appears to have happened; and how the sleuth, amateur or professional (yours truly in this case) figures out which is which.”

    There it is. The art of mystery writing in one succinct sentence. We writers are supposed to set up the story for the readers, help them find out what really happened, and tell it, giving enough clues to play fair but not give away the ending.

    Grafton gives us another dollop of advice in Kinsey’s next sentence:

    “I suppose I could put everything in perspective if I explained how it all turned out and then doubled back to that phone call,” she wrote, “but it’s better if you experience it just as I did, one strange step at a time.”

    New writers and experienced ones need to remember Kinsey’s advice: Tell the story, one strange step at a time.

    Many newbies try to be too clever. They don’t have the skills to deliver a twisted tale. They get lost in the maze they created.

    Experienced writers get bored with the format after writing book after book. We try to start in the middle, or start at the end, or switch narrators, often to amuse ourselves. Too often, it simply confuses our readers.

    Following the straight path, in Grafton’s footsteps, can be far more difficult.  But she kept me interested for 496 pages.  She also made me care about two people society considers worthless: a crooked PI and a homeless man who doesn’t even have a name.

Elaine Viets—January 16, 2014

But here’s the thing…

EVERYONE WANTS TO WRITE A BESTSELLER,

BUT MOST AUTHORS NEVER WILL

Because it’s completely out of your control.

If you sit down to write a “bestseller,” you are taking a wrong-headed approach to writing. Writing great fiction has nothing to do with writing bestsellers. Bestsellers are, by and large, flukes. Right place, right time. And not all bestsellers are created equal.

I can name a dozen of my friends who do everything right and should be on the bestseller lists, and authors who are and don’t belong there.

When I wrote Trial Junkies, I just wanted to write a great book. I had no idea it would go on to be an indie bestseller. Sure, it was something I hoped for, but I certainly wasn’t rubbing my hands together in anticipation of mega-sales. I just wrote the book I wanted to read and decided to let fate take care of the rest.

So don’t put all your energy into trying to write a bestseller. You should simply write the best book you can possibly write. A book you’re so excited about that you don’t care if you ever make a dime off of it.

I spent many years writing stuff that I knew would never sell. In fact, I didn’t even try to sell it, because I knew it wasn’t good enough. But I kept at it for several years. I wrote story fragments and screenplays and teleplays and partial novels and while I knew what I was producing was not quite there yet, I also knew, with great certainty, that it would be one day.

Sure, I had dreams of being Stephen King or Dean Koontz. We all do. But the reality is that most writers never make it to the lists, yet they still manage to have wonderful careers.

Should you forget about your dreams?

No. Sometimes they’re all you have.

But any thoughts of bestsellerdom should be relegated to the back part of the brain. You have a story to write. And that’s all you should be thinking about.

If you publish it and it manages to reach one of the bestseller lists, that’s just gravy.

So there is no How to write a bestseller.

Robert Gregory Browne—May 4, 2016

***

There you have it, three pieces of advice on different aspects writing novels. Now we’d like to hear from you.

  1. Do you have any “rules” to share for writing a novel?
  2. What do you think about Kinsey Mallone’s advice for writing a mystery? What advice would you add?
  3. Do you have dreams of bestsellerdom? What keeps you writing your novel?
  4. What is the most challenging part of writing a novel, for you? What is the most enjoyable?

Finding the Right Title: Words of Wisdom

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Titles. We all need them for our books. I enjoy coming up with titles for my novels and stories but it can be a lot of work. Just like writing.

My first library cozy mystery was originally called Death Due. I changed it to Due Death, an attempted play on “due date,” but decided I didn’t like that and changed it back to Death Due as I worked on the first draft.  Later, I realized that was too generic, and didn’t jazz me, so I brainstormed a new title.

Almost at once a play on Ira Levin’s A Kiss Before Dying sprang up in my mind: A Shush Before Dying. The novel was set in the eighties, when silence was still enforced at a public libraries. One of the shushers winds up dead.

The second title for book 2 in my library cozy mystery series came almost at once: Book Drop Dead. Sometimes coming up with a snappy title is a snap. However, most of the time for me there’s a lot of skull sweat involved.

Today’s Words of Wisdom tackles titles, giving advice and examples on coming up with ones that will help catch a reader’s interest. We have excerpts from PJ Parrish, Mark Alpert and Ruth Allen. As always, it’s well worth reading the full posts, which you can find linked from the bottom of the respective excerpt.

In twelve years of teaching workshops and doing critiques I’ve have seen maybe one title that I thought really captured the book’s tone. (It was our own Kathryn Lilly’s Dying To Be Thin.) So I know how hard this is. Here is my advice on titles, for what it’s worth:

  1. Capture your tone and genre. Go on Amazon and look up books similar to yours (cruise the genre bestseller lists). Words have inflection, mood and color. Choose them carefully.
  2. Grab the reader emotionally. Two titles that do it for me: The Unbearable Lightness of Beingand The Spy Who Came in from the Cold 
  3. Don’t settle for clichés. Yes, it’s hard to come up with fresh permutations on old standby words (especially in genre fiction where we rely on “dark” “blood” “death” etc.) But you have to find words that are unique about your story and draw upon them. Here’s a great title that twists a cliché word: Something Wicked This Way Comes.
  4. Don’t use empty arcane words that you think sound cool. Examples of bad titles: The Cambistry Conspiracy. (about world trade) The Hedonic Dilemma(about psychology ethics).  Penultimate to Die. (the second-to-the-last victim).  Don’t worry…I made these up.
  5. Create an expectation about the story. You know why I love this title: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius? It makes me say, “Oh yeah, buddy? Show me!” and he does.
  6. Be brief and punchy. Okay, I know I just gave you a bunch of long titles I love but there is something wonderful about short titles and studies show most bestsellers have short titles: Gone Girl  So doesTell No One, Lolita and Jaws (original title A Stillness in the Water).
  7. Make the title work on other levels. This is hard but worth the brain-sweat if you can do it. Consider what these titles come to mean once you get deep into the stories: Catch 22, Silence of the Lambs. But don’t get too clever. I love Louise Ure’s book Forcing Amaryllisand the title is brilliant because it is about a rape and murder. But do most understand that the title is from a gardening term about forcing a plant to bloom early? Not so sure.
  8. Make a list of key words that appear in your book. Is there something you can build on? For our book A Killing Rain, the title came when I heard a Florida farmer describe that drenching downpour that can kill off the tomato crop and we used it in the book. The title was there all the time and we didn’t see it at first.
  9. Search existing works — the Bible, poetry, Shakespeare. I found our title An Unquiet Gravein an 17th century English poem.
  10. Write 20 titles and let them sit for a week or so. Go back and read them and something will jump out. Find some beta-readers you can test with. Titles usually evoke visceral immediate responses. You will know immediately if they connect.

And last: Never get emotionally attached to a title. It’s the worst thing you can do because it probably will be changed. Or needs to be. Because your first title is usually, as T.S. Eliot said, a prosaic every-day thing. You can do better. It’s there. You just have to dig deep. Sweat out that great title that Eliot called the “ineffable, effable, effanineffable deep and inscrutable singular name.”

PJ Parrish—April 16, 2013

 

Choosing a title for your novel should be fun, right? So why is it often so frustrating?

I think it’s because there are so many requirements for a good title. It has to tell the reader, in a general way, what the book is about. It also has to convey the tone of the book — a light, amusing title for a lighthearted novel, a heavy, ominous title for a dark, creepy thriller. It can’t be too similar to titles of other recently published or very well-known books. And it shouldn’t carry the baggage of unwanted associations. Above all, it has to be catchy.

One could argue that novelists shouldn’t worry so much about titles. This is an area where the publisher has the final say, because the title is so important to the marketing of the book. The author can make suggestions, but the publisher has veto power. And I’ve learned that the best titles often come out of brainstorming sessions between the author and editor after the book is finished. But I can’t start a novel without giving it at least a working title. I can’t just call it a work-in-progress. Would you call one of your kids a work-in-progress? (Although that’s what children are, really.)

I’ve written four published novels, and each had a working title that was different from its ultimate title. When I started writing the first book I called it “The Theory of Everything” because it was about a dangerous secret theory developed by Albert Einstein to explain all the forces of Nature. (Einstein himself called it Einheitliche Feldtheorie, the unified field theory.) But that wasn’t such a great title for a thriller. It seemed better suited to a literary novel. (And, in fact, there are several literary novels titled “The Theory of Everything.”) So my editor and I put our heads together and came up with “Final Theory.” That seemed more compelling and yet still true to the subject of the book, because physicists believe that if they ever do discover a theory of everything, it will also be a final theory (because they will have nothing fundamental left to discover).

Mark Alpert—May 17, 2014

 

Meaning before details.

According to John Medina of the University of Washington, the human brain requires meaning before details. When listeners doesn’t understand the basic concept right at the beginning, they have a hard time processing the rest of the information.

Bottom line for writers: The title and the cover—image plus title—have to work as a unit to explain the hook or basic concept first. Wrong image and/or misfit title confuse the would-be buyer and you lose the sale. On-target image plus genre-relevant title and the reader/agent/editor will look closer.

Your cover indicates visually by color, design and image what the reader can expect inside—a puzzling mystery, a swoony romance, futuristic scifi, or scary horror—but the first words the prospective reader/agent/editor sees are the ones in the title.

Your title tells readers what to expect.

You’re unpublished but your title is awfully close to Nora Roberts’ newest or…ahem…a clone of James Patterson’s most recent? Come on. Get real. Please. For your own sake.

Your book is about a modest governess in 19th Century London who falls in love with the maddeningly handsome Prince who lives in the castle next door, but your title promises hotter-than-hot, through-the-roof sales like, oh, maybe, 50 Shades Of Grey? Really? 51 Shades of Grey is the best you can come up with? Seriously?

If you’re in a quandary about choosing a title for your book here are Anne’s 10 Tips for Choosing the Right Title for Your Book.

You can also research successful titles in your genre for inspiration. Whether your genre is romance or suspense, you will find that certain words recur. Just be aware that most publishing contracts give the publisher the right to change the title. Sometimes the author is pleased.

Other times? Not so much. (Don’t ask me how I know, but horror stories abound.)

If the title you’ve chosen for your book is your idea of the one and only, check your contract to make sure you have the last word on title. The reality, though, is that few author have this right and, if you’re just starting out, you won’t. Sorry about that, but it’s the reality.

If you’re self-pubbing, you control the decision about titles. And, if you think of a better title in the future, you can easily change a title later.

Ruth Allen—May 3, 2021

***

  1. Do you like coming up with titles? Is doing so easy or hard?
  2. How do you brainstorm your titles? Do you have any particular technique, like finding a famous quote as a starting point?
  3. Do you research titles of other books in your genre when you work on your own?

Suspicious Minds

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In lieu of my usual Words of Wisdom post today I have a theory to share about mystery fiction.

Namely, that mystery fiction can also be considered suspicion fiction.

Mystery is often considered a highly intellectual genre, given that it focuses on solving the puzzle of a baffling murder. Any discussion of mystery plotting will hone in on clues, red herrings, misdirecting the reader, and laying out the pieces of the puzzle for the sleuth and reader to put together. Mystery writers are like stage magicians, practicing misdirection while setting up the reveal. The puzzle can be deep, intricate and twisty.

The goal is for the solution to be surprising, and if we readers figure it out beforehand, we do it in a way that makes us feel satisfied for having figured out the identity of the killer. The satisfaction we feel can be part of the emotional payoff at the end of a mystery.

But mystery is also about another emotion.

Suspicion.

Suspicion defined: 1. The act of suspecting, especially something wrong or evil. 2. The state of mind of someone who suspects; doubts; misgiving.

The Emotion Thesaurus defines suspicion as “intuitively suspecting that something is wrong,” and goes on to list external and internal manifestations of this emotion. Your body language, such as darting glances or furtive looks or movements, might indicate your suspicion. Or, perhaps your stomach is roiled, your heart is beating faster, your palms are sweating, or your chest feels tight.

In a mystery novel, who does the sleuth suspect? Who do the police suspect? Most of all, who does the reader suspect?

How do you behave when you are feeling suspicious?

Doubt is a key part of suspicion. The sleuth begins to wonder who they can trust, and who they can’t. The reader begins wondering about the truthfulness and trustworthiness of a character, often suspecting more than one character at the same time. Doubt in the main character, or supporting characters, can lead to distrust, secrecy, and furtive behavior.

Suspicion can easily become obsession.

The sleuth can come to suspect even friends or family, and others can do the same with the sleuth. Adding to this is the often furtive nature of characters in a mystery. Suspects often have something to hide, such as a secret, or a different crime.

Suspicion can also be focused on an event or absence of something. For instance, the curious case of the dog that didn’t bark in the night.

If you suspect someone, you don’t entirely trust them, and that mistrust can deepen your suspicion as you draw conclusions about what they’ve been up to, and what you may have learned. The obsession deepens, both for the sleuth, and the reader, as they are drawn further into a web of deception, suspecting someone, only to discover they have an alibi, while learning that another character did something unusual or mysterious.

Thus suspicion has an arc. Moreover, there is synergy going on here—someone acts or acted “suspicious” which causes the sleuth to suspect them, creating a kind of feedback loop.

  1. It 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.

Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, A Shadow of a Doubt, does this superbly. It’s really a suspense movie with strong mystery elements, but it shows the progression in our heroine Charlie’s suspicions, and her behavior as her suspicion deepens about a beloved uncle. Our own James Scott Bell recommended this movie to me, and not only is it gripping entertainment (and fun, with a pair of supporting characters who love murder mysteries) it’s also a perfect example of a suspicion arc.

I’d love to see Jim do a JSB Goes to the Movies featuring it, so have refrained from saying too much here. Thanks, Jim for recommending the movie. It delivered on every level.

Suspicion goes hand in hand with another emotion, suspense, especially suspense for the reader. As our suspicion of someone or something deepens, we feel increasing suspense over what could happen, especially since we usually lack proof / evidence of guilt until the end. We feel suspense and tension over wondering if we’re right, and also if we overlooked something, which heightens our involvement in the story.

What does this mean for writing mysteries?

It means being aware of the reader’s own building suspicion and keeping that in mind as your hero investigates the mystery at the heart of your novel.

I’m outliner, both before, during and after drafting, so in my case, I include the suspicion arc in my outline(s). For a discovery writer, I think being aware of how suspicion can build and play out is still important, and something you can internalize by thinking about this aspect of a mystery before writing your story. It can also be added in revision, just like clues and red herrings.

I find possessing a kind of multi-level awareness about your characters and how they are perceiving what is going on is important in writing fiction in general of course, but also with this issue of who suspects what when. Especially for the sleuth, the police, and the murderer.

As JSB discussed in this 2015 post there is a shadow story taking place off screen from your hero with the other characters.

Suspicion is a part of that shadow story. Being aware of who the killer suspects is investigating the murder can set up the confrontation with the hero. This confrontation is a crucial part of many modern mysteries.

Also, how will others react when they realize the hero suspects them? Do they become more forthcoming? Or do they clam up? Even become angry?

In a mystery featuring an amateur sleuth or a P.I. if the police begin to suspect that the hero is investigating, they’ll likely have words with the investigator, so knowing when they might suspect that and how much is important.

There you have it, my possibly crackpot theory on mysteries also being suspicion fiction.

I’ll give the King the last word on suspicious minds

What do you think of this “mystery is also suspicion fiction” theory of mine? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Moving Forward: Words of Wisdom

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I believe all writers have an inner critic, also known as Resistance and the inner troll, which does its best to sabotage your writing. Getting past that inner critic is crucial to your writing success and happiness.

Today’s Words of Wisdom looks at outwitting the inner critic, how to attain flow state when you write more (take that, inner critic!), and how to overcome demoralization which happens to many writers for a variety of reasons, with excerpts from insightful posts by Joe Moore, Brad Morrison and James Scott Bell.

In an experiment, scientists measured the brain activity of jazz musicians as they performed a memorized piece of music, and then measured it again when the musicians did an improvised piece. Different brain regions lit up, according to the type of performance being given. During the improvisation, the medial prefrontal cortex–the part of the brain that allows self-expression–was more active. During the memorized piece, the dorsolateral prefrontal and lateral orbital regions–the brain areas that monitor and correct performance–were more active.

In other words, in order to be creative, we’ve got to silence our brain’s inner critic.

For a writer, it’s not always easy to silence an internal critic. Take me, for example. I’m perfectly capable of stalling for days over a single paragraph, even a particular sentence. I’ll rewrite and rethink, tweak and prune, until I’m practically clawing at the walls of our house.

Recently I’ve developed a coping strategy for my internal critic, which I’ve named Harpy Harriet. When Harpy starts whispering in my ear, telling me things like, “Man, your writing sucks. You suck. Whatever made you think you were a decent writer?”,  I merely type a little placeholder, and move on. Inevitably, when I return to that spot after having forged ahead in the manuscript, it’s much easier to write the revision.

But Harpy is a sly, cunning opponent, always scheming to get the better of me. She keeps changing tactics. Recently she’s tried to convince me that my medical issues have done a Flowers For Algernon number on the creative parts of my brain, rendering it incapable of producing decent prose. The only way I’ve been able to reassure myself is by going to my critique group. My group members don’t know anything about Harpy–they just tell it like it is about my prose. And so far, everything seems normal.   I’m not like Charlie, regressing to a creative IQ of 68. I’m okay (at least as far as the writing is concerned). I can tell Harpy to take a hike.

Joe Moore—January 25, 2011

 

Flow is a concept first proposed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow describes a state of euphoria and intense focus that is achieved when you are fully immersed in the task at hand. You tune out the world because you’re so absorbed in what you’re doing. For me it’s easy to remember times when I was reading a good book or playing an immersive video game and my wife had to call my name several times before I could pull myself out of the experience. It was like I was really there. I was in flow.

Writing can produce the same experience for me, but it’s more challenging to produce the flow state. However, when it happens, it’s a sweet feeling. For musicians it’s called being “in the groove.” Athletes talk about being “in the zone.” You’re in the flow state when you’re teetering on the edge of competency, when your ability is perfectly matched to the challenge.

Flow has three prerequisites:

1)    The goals must be clear. – I think this is why it’s so hard for writers to get started on a book. My characters’ goals aren’t clear to me at the beginning, so it’s hard for me to write down what’s happening to them. On the other hand, at the end of the book I usually get in the flow and write very quickly because I know where the characters are going.

2)    The feedback must be immediate and clear. – I’m also a stage actor, and the feedback when I’m performing couldn’t be more immediate. You can sense how an audience is perceiving you, particularly with a comedy. But with writing the only feedback we get is from our editors and online reviewers days, months, or years after we’ve typed the last word. That’s why the feedback writers require to continue is not the readers’ kudos, but their internal drive to find out what happens in their own story. I often hear that concept expressed as someone’s “need” to write.

3)    You should have the proper balance between the perceived high challenge of the task and your perception that you have the high skills to complete the task. – This prerequisite could be the problem for many new writers; the challenge often exceeds the perceived skill level for a newbie. Writing a 100,000-word novel is a daunting task if you’ve never done it before. That’s why I think in terms of scenes instead of a whole book when I’m actually writing. If I know what’s happening in that one scene, I can get in the flow.

It’s not surprising to hear that the list of character traits Csikszentmihalyi lists as most important for achieving flow are the traits you’d expect to find in successful writers: curiosity, persistence, low self-centeredness, and a high rate of performing activities for intrinsic reasons only.

If you can find the flow when you are writing, you probably won’t have any problem producing novels. The key is setting up your environment so that you minimize distractions that will keep you from entering the flow state. Checking email and Facebook will take you out of flow, so turn those apps off or write somewhere where you can’t access them. And I highly recommend listening to wordless music.

Boyd Morrison—August 19, 2013

 

For a writer, demoralization is always lurking, waiting to be a soul killer. We can’t let that happen.

We’re talking here about the mental game of writing. (Someone should write a bookabout that.) It’s every bit as important as the craft. Without the right brain settings our writing will stall, drift, flame out or otherwise suffer. All writers must be ready to meet the challenge of demoralization.

The main cause of which, the philosophers and theologians tell us, is expectations unfulfilled. We set ourselves up to desire a result, and want it so deeply, that when it doesn’t happen devastation is inevitable.

Buddha figured this out and proposed a solution: get rid of all desire!

The Stoics, on the other hand, accepted that we all have desires and dreams and worries and fears. Their key to happiness is learning how to focus your thoughts onlyon what you can act upon, and forget the all the rest.

As Prof. Massimo Pigliucci puts it in his course Think Like a Stoic:

The Roman writer Cicero explained the Stoic position by considering an archer who is trying to hit a target. The archer can decide how assiduously to practice, which arrows and bow to select, and how to care for them. They also control their focus right up the moment they let go of the arrow. But once the arrow leaves the bow, nothing at all is under the archer’s control. A sudden gust of wind might deflect the best shot, or the target—say, an enemy soldier—might suddenly move.

Hitting the target is what you’re after, so it’s what you pursue. But success or failure does not, in and of itself, make you a good or bad archer. This means that you should not attach your self-worth to the outcome but only to the attempt. Then, you will achieve what the ancients called ataraxia: the kind of inner tranquility that results from knowing you’ve done everything that was in your power to do.

For a writer, then, what is out of your control is how your book does in the marketplace. What you can control are your work habits, study of the craft, and interactions with editors and beta readers. On a daily basis, it’s you and the page. You control what words you put down, and how many.

When the book is published, you control what marketing methods to pursue. You can spend money on ads, put out the word on social media, notify your email list, and beg your mom to buy copies for the entire extended family for Christmas.

But after that, it’s out of your hands. The Stoics would say: Don’t give any thought to outcomes. Eradicate such musings from your mind as a good gardener kills weeds. 

James Scott Bell—May 23, 2021

***

Bonus resources for today’s Words of Wisdom, three books I’ve found very helpful in overcoming the inner critic and focusing on what is within your control as a writer:

The Mental Game of Writing by our very own James Scott Bell

Writing in Overdrive by Jim Denney

Breakthrough by J. Dharma Kelleher

***

  1. Does your inner critic create problems and obstacles for your own writing? What strategies do you use to outwit this foe?
  2. Is flow state something you actively seek to create for yourself? What has worked for you?
  3. Have you faced demoralization as a writer? How have you overcome it?
  4. Bonus question: is there a book or resource you’ve found helpful in overcoming the inner critic, creating flow state, or improving your own morale as a writer?

Dealing with Doubt Words of Wisdom

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In my experience doubt is one of the greatest obstacles writers face. Doubt that you have the chops to finish your latest book. Doubt that you have the skills to even start. Doubt when you find yourself stuck, whether you are an outliner or a discovery writer, or a hybrid of both.

Doubt and I are old acquaintances—it wasn’t until I had been studying and practicing the craft of fiction writing that I began to overcome it, but, even then, doubt continued to get in my way.

My late friend and mentor Mary Rosenblum told me in no uncertain terms I needed to figure out a way to vanquish the inner “demon” of self-doubt or I would never progress as a writer. She told me one of the most talented writers she ever knew had been crippled by intense self-doubt after initially writing some promising work and had not written anything since. I took her advice to heart.

It took me several years after her urging to finally begin to get a handle on overcoming doubt, but I did.

I learned you never banish doubt completely, but rather, you figure out how to write and finish despite the doubt. Today’s Words of Wisdom looks at doubt and how to overcome it before and during writing, as well as when you are stuck not knowing what happens next, with excerpts from James Scott Bell, Joe Moore and PJ Parrish.

Another reason excellent writers experience doubt is, ironically, excellence itself. Because these authors keep setting their standards higher, book after book, and know more about what they do each time out. That has them wondering if they can make it over the bar they have set. Many famous writers, unable to deal with this pressure, have gone into the bar itself, and stayed late.

Jack Bickham, a novelist who was even better known for his books on the craft, put it this way:

“All of us are scared: of looking dumb, of running out of ideas, of never selling our copy, of not getting noticed. We fiction writers make a business of being scared, and not just of looking dumb. Some of these fears may never go away, and we may just have to learn to live with them.”

Yes, you learn to live with them, but how? The most important way is simply to pound away at the keyboard.

You write.

As Dennis Palumbo, author of Writing from the Inside Out, put it, “Every hour you spend writing is an hour not spent fretting about your writing.”

If a writer were to tell me he never has doubts, that he’s just cocksure he’s the Cheez-Wiz of literature, I know I will not want to read his work. That’s why I think doubts are a good sign.

They show that you care about your writing and that you’re not trying to skate along with an overinflated view of yourself.

The trick is not to let them keep you from producing the words.

Don’t ever let the waves of doubt stop you. Body surf them back to shore, let the energy of them flow through your fingertips. That’s the only real “secret” to this game.

James Scott Bell—July 10, 2011

 

So when you get stuck, what can you do? Here are some suggestions that I’ve used. Perhaps they’ll help you, too.

  • Change your writing environment. I have a home office with a desktop PC. I also have a laptop. Sometimes I need different surroundings so I grab my laptop and move to another room or outside. Just the act of breathing fresh air can fire up your brain.
  • Listen to music. Often I write to background music, usually a movie score (no distracting lyrics). But sometimes setting down in front of my stereo and rocking out to my favorite group can clear my head and refresh my thoughts.
  • Get rid of distractions. TV, email, instant and text messages, phone calls, pets, and the biggest offender of them all: the Internet. Get rid of them during your writing time.
  • Stop writing and start reading. Take a break from your writing and read one of your favorite authors. Or better yet, pick something totally out of your wheelhouse.
  • Don’t decide to stop until you’re “inspired”. I’ve tried this. It won’t work.
  • Open a blank document and write ANYTHING. It’s called “stream of consciousness”. It worked for James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust. It can work for you.
  • Write through it. Beginners sit around and hope for a solution to come to them in their dreams. Professionals keep writing. The solution will come.
  • Finally, do something drastic. Bury someone alive. Works every time.

Joe Moore—July 20, 2016

Maybe there are writers out there who never have any doubts. Maybe Nora Roberts or Joyce Carol Oates never break out in a cold sweat at night. But I suspect there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of you out there who are in the same sweaty boat as I am. Because getting published is the easy part. (I know, those of you who aren’t don’t want to hear that, but it’s true.) Staying published is what’s tough. That means consistently writing good books that people want to read. And did I mention trying to always become a better writer?

Here’s Chuck Wendig on the subject of self-doubt. He’s my favorite go-to-guy when I am feeling alone and fraudulent:

You’re sitting there, chugging along, doing your little penmonkey dance with the squiggly shapes and silly stories and then, before you know it, a shadow falls over your shoulder. You turn around.

But it’s too late. There’s doubt. A gaunt and sallow thing. It’s starved itself. It’s all howling mouths and empty eyes. The only sustenance it receives is from a novelty beer hat placed upon its fragile eggshell head — except, instead of holding beer, the hat holds the blood-milked hearts of other writers, writers who have fallen to self-doubt’s enervating wails, writers who fell torpid, sung to sleep by sickening lullabies.

Suddenly Old Mister Doubt is jabbering in your ear.

You’re not good enough.

You’ll never make it, you know.

Everyone’s disappointed in you.

Where are your pants? Normal people wear pants.

You really thought you could do it, didn’t you? Silly, silly penmonkey.

And you crumple like an empty Chinese food container beneath a crushing tank tread. 

There’s no easy way to cope with this. But here are some things I have found that have helped me over the decades. If you have some remedies, pass them on. We can all use the help.

  1. Talk to other writers. Be it through a critique group or at a writer’s conference, or just hanging out at blogs like this — make human contact with those who understand. One of the hardest lessons I learned was that, although writing is a solitary pursuit, it’s not a good idea to go it alone.
  2. Get away from your WIP.  Which is NOT to say you should abandon writing for days or weeks because it you do that you lose momentum and risk being exiled from that special universe you are creating in your head.  But it is a good idea, when you a stuck or in deep doubt, to feed your creative engine. Go for a good hike (leave early and take the dog). Read a good book or better yet some poetry. Go see some live theater  or a concert. You will come back refreshed. It’s like doing a crossword puzzle: You can sit there and stare at 19-across for days and not get it, but if you put the puzzle down for awhile then pick it up, you see the pattern and can move on.
  3.   Stay in the moment.  Don’t project your fears forward or your regrets backward: What if I spend the rest of the year working on this story and it turns out to be a heaping pile of poop? What if no editor ever buys it? What if I only sell four copies on Amazon? If only I had started doing this when I was younger or before I had kids (or fill in the blank) I might be successful by now.  As a therapist friend of mine once told me: If you stand with one leg in the past and the other in the future, all you’ll do is piss on your present.    
  4. Don’t be afraid to fail.  Because you will, at some time and at some level. If you spend all your energy worrying about this, you will never be a writer. Failure can often lead you in new directions. Margaret Atwood took a vacation to work on her novel but six months later, she realized the story was a tangled mess with “badly realized characters” and she abandoned it. But soon after that, she began her dystopian masterpiece The Handmaid’s Tale. As she put it:

Get back on the horse that threw you, as they used to say. They also used to say: you learn as much from failure as you learn from success.

PJ Parrish—March 14, 2017

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  1. Is doubt an obstacle you face as a writer?
  2. Do you feel doubt when starting or finishing a project?
  3. If you get stuck while writing, is doubt part of your creative struggle to unstick your writing? What techniques do you use to overcome doubt and unblock your writing?
  4. How do you overcome overcome self-doubt in general regarding your writing?

Pet Words of Wisdom

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Tuesday my wife and I said goodbye to our beloved cat Mittens, who we’d adopted along with his brother Simba when they were ten-week-old kittens. He finally succumbed to multiple health challenges after being our constant companion for over seventeen years. He and Simba were also my writing buddies, barely fitting together on the cat bed mounted to the window sill in my writing office, spending many hours there over the years while I wrote. If I put a printed outline or manuscript on the writing desk below their cat bed, one of them would often decide to offer editorial input by laying on it.

After Simba passed in 2019, Mittens continued as my writing pal. He lost his hearing as he became elderly and meowed loudly when hungry or craving my attention, which sometimes interrupted my flow and other times reminded me that I’d gone down a distraction rabbit hole away from my writing. He would often watch me from the patio window when I was outside stargazing at night. I’m very grateful he was a part of our lives, and a wonderful writing companion, especially for so long.

Pets have a special place in the heart of many writers and readers. While I’m a “cat person” I also love dogs, and enjoy greeting them and their owners on walks, as well as visiting those that live with family and friends. I also love encountering pets in fiction.

Today’s Words of Wisdom looks at pets in fiction, with excerpts by Elaine Vets, Sue Coletta and Terry O’Dell. The full posts are well worthy reading, and are linked from the dates below their respective excerpts.

I like most cat mysteries, too. But some are so cutesy they make my teeth ache. Cats are not sweet. They’re funny, they’re beautiful, they’re elegant. But I never forget that under a cat’s soft fur beats the heart of a killer. So I persuaded my editor that I should write my 13th Dead-End Job mystery about another subject. I sent her the outline. She was underwhelmed. “You really should write about cats,” she said.

“But they’re so girlie,” I said.

“They don’t have to be,” she said. “Write the Elaine Viets take on cats.”

That’s when it dawned on me. Cats are the new vampires. They’re a subject that’s eminently portable and ever changing. Cats are whatever you want them to be: cuddly, ruthless, aloof, loveable – or all four.

Each generation reworks the vampire myth. The classic Bram Stoker vampire was the rich preying on the poor. The ’70s Frank Langella vampire was sex without responsibility – or pregnancy. Charlaine Harris brilliantly reworked the vampire myth, and I’m not saying that just because I know her.

Charlaine was already a successful New York Times mystery writer with several series when she got the idea for her Sookie Stackhouse  Southern Vampire series.
Charlaine added a fresh twist. Her vampires, like gay people, lived unrecognized among us. Then the Japanese blood substitute let the vamps come out and northern Louisiana was overrun with the undead.

When other writers tell me they’re going to write a vampire mystery, I congratulate them. But I wonder if they’ll write a different vampire mystery, or simply another variation on one of the timeworn themes.

I wrote a vampire story called “Vampire Hours,” about a woman who becomes a vampire to escape the trials of middle age – an unfaithful husband, constant dieting, fading beauty. People asked me if I was going to make that story into a novel. No. My idea was different, but not universal.
But cats are universal. So I agreed to do the cat book. I’m owned by a defrocked show cat, Columbleu’s Unsolved Mysterie. She bit a judge at her first show. I would write my new Dead-End Job mystery about the world of show cats and the people who love and care for them. I’d report on a culture.

And so Catnapped! was born. Helen Hawthorne and Phil Sagemont, my husband and wife PI team, are the in-house lawyers for a Fort Lauderdale attorney. The lawyer’s client, Trish Barrymore, is divorcing her husband, financier Smart Mort,  and the only thing the couple can agree on is custody of their show cat, Justine.

When Mort fails to return the cat on time, Helen and Phil are sent to collect the cat. They find Mort dead and Justine kidnapped and held for half a million dollars. Helen goes undercover to work for a show cat breeder.

Judge Tracy Petty, Cat Fanciers’ Association southern region director, helped with the cat show details.

Did you know that long-haired show cats have to be bathed – and they learn to like it? Their fur is so thick they are slathered in Goop, the mechanic’s hand cleaner, and then the cats get two shampoos, a conditioner and more. Their fur is dried with a special blow dryer. There’s more.

Much more. But you’ll have to read the book to find it out.

Elaine Vets—May 8, 2014

 

A few things to keep in mind when writing pets into fiction…

If you kill the pet, you better have a damn good reason for it, a reason readers will understand.

For example, not long ago my husband and I watched John Wick. [SPOILER ALERT] I fell in love with the Beagle puppy his dead wife sent from the grave. When the bad guys murdered the dog I almost shut off the movie. If my husband hadn’t begged me to keep watching, that would’ve been it for me. Turns out, this moment kicked off the quest (First Plot Point in story structure). Not only is it an important scene, but if it didn’t happen there’d be no story. See? Understandable reason why he had to die. John Wick would not have gone ballistic over a stolen car. The puppy was the only thing left he cared about. It had to happen.

The safer option is to not harm the pets.

Why Does the Character Have That Specific Pet?

As I mentioned earlier, you need to know why the character chose that pet. Is he lonely? Does a couple use their pets to fill a maternal/paternal need? Are you using that pet as a way to show the character’s soft side? Does the pet become the only one who’ll listen to their fears, sorrow, or hidden secrets? In other words, for an introverted character, pets can assume a larger role in the story so your character isn’t talking to him/herself.

As the writer, you need to know why that dog, cat, bird, lizard, or bear is in the story and what role they play. Does a K9 cop track criminals? Did your criminal character train a horse to be the getaway driver? Does the killer feed his pet hogs or gators human flesh? Knowing why that fictional pet exists is crucial.

What’s the Pet’s Personality?

Animal lovers know each pet has his/her own personality. If you’ve never owned the pets you’re writing about, then I suggest doing a ton of research till you feel like you have. For example, while writing Blessed Mayhem I needed to know how crows communicated and how people could interpret their calls. What separated a crow from a raven, what they felt like, what they smelled like, what foods they enjoyed most. In order to make the characters real I spent countless hours of research into the life of crows. I even went so far as to befriend a crow of my mine. Turns out, Poe was female. It didn’t take long for her to bring her mate, Edgar. When they had chicks, they brought them too. It’s turned into a very special experience (story for another time).

What Does the Pet Look Like and How Does S/he Act?

First, you must know the basics … their markings, voice, breed, habitat, diet, etc. Then delve deeper into the expressions they make when they’re happy, content, sleeping, aggravated, and downright pissed off. Every animal has their own unique personality, mannerisms, and traits. Evoke the reader’s five senses. Don’t just concentrate on sight. By tapping into deeper areas, our fictional pets come alive on the page. A scene where the hero or villain cuddles with a pet can add a nice break from the tension, a chance to give the reader a moment to catch their breath before plunging them back into the suspense.

Plus, pets are fun to write.

Does the Basset Hound snore so loudly he keeps the rest of the family awake? Is he now banished to the garage at night? Does the German Shepherd’s feet twitch when he’s dreaming? Does the Mastiff throw his owner the stink-eye when he can’t reach his favorite toy?

Let’s talk dogs. They do more than bark. Use their full range of grunts, moans, groans, happy chirps, and playful growls when your character plays tug-of-war. For cats, nothing is more soothing than a purr rattling in their throat as your character drifts asleep. Soft claws can massage their back after a brutal day.

Years ago, I had a pet turkey who used to love to slide his beak down each strand of my hair. This was one of the ways Lou showed affection. I’d sit in a lounge chair with a second lounge Papa Bear lounge chair behind me, and Lou would work his magic till I became putty in his beak. He knew it, too. After all that hard work, I couldn’t deny him his favorite treats.

Sue Coletta—January 8, 2018

[B]ecause saying “No” has always been a monumental task for me, I agreed to go along with my editor’s request.

I was reading along, some hiccups due to my internal editor refusing to shut up, but overall, the writing was clean and easy to read. It was a little slow-moving for my taste, as the suspense element wasn’t brought in until later than I would have expected, but then … about ¾ of the way through the book …

The protagonist, who by now had received threatening emails and phone calls, came home to find a box on her doorstep. Upon opening it, she discovered the mutilated body of a cat. Not just any cat, but a stray she’d semi-adopted.

Mind you, this was not a serial killer, dark mystery/thriller type book. This was, overall, a romance with some suspense elements. And a mutilated cat.

Very early in my writing career (2004 according to my files), I attended my first writer’s conference. At a workshop given by the late Barbara Parker, she said she’d made the unforgivable mistake of having a mutilated cat show up in a box on the doorstep at the protagonist’s house. And, even worse, the protagonist had a young daughter. Parker said readers sent hate mail, and warned that killing a pet was an absolute no-no. Her book was a legal mystery, so her audience wasn’t romance-oriented, yet they still screamed.

I told her my manuscript for the as of then unpublished Finding Sarah included a character with 2 cats, and I had poisoned them (you’ll never know the delight you can light up in someone’s eyes until you holler between your office and the Hubster’s and say, “I need a way to poison a cat.”) My plan was to have one survive. The incident would 1) force my character to deal with emotions he’d denied; and 2) provide a critical clue for solving the overall mystery.

She gave me an emphatic “NO.” — Spoiler Alert— So, in the final version, both cats survived.

I passed this information on to my editor, who said she was warned against harming children or dogs, but nobody’d ever mentioned cats, and that she would bring it up with the author. Whether there are any changes remains to be seen.

Terry O’Dell—August 4, 2021

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  1. Do you have a pet as a writing companion?
  2. Have you written about pets in your fiction? If so, how do you balance a unique take with a universal appeal?
  3. What do you think of Sue’s advice on writing about pets?
  4. How do you feel about depicting harm to pets in fiction?

***

Mittens, having claimed a manuscript for editorial review, with appropriate super-villain under lighting.