Author Archives: Elaine Viets

About Elaine Viets

Elaine Viets has written 30 mysteries in four series, including 15 Dead-End Job mysteries. BRAIN STORM, her first Angela Richman, Death Investigator mystery, is published as a trade paperback, e-book, and audio book. www.elaineviets.com

Naming Your Baby

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By Elaine Viets

I’d rather write an entire mystery than come up with a title for it. So much depends on choosing the right name for your baby: Will your title grab the reader? Describe your book? Boost your sales?
If you’re writing for a traditional publisher, your contract will probably call your mystery Untitled Work. It’s your job to give it a snappier name. You’ve lived with this book for months, even years. Maybe you’re too close to think of a good title. It’s time to step back and take a look at tips for mystery titles.
Ask your family and friends. I originally wanted to call my Angela Richman mystery about the murder of an aging Hollywood diva, Death Star. My editor said the title sounded too much like science-fiction. My husband Don came up with a play on a classic movie title. The new book was christened A Star Is Dead.
Keep Your Title Short. Yes, I know The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo wasn’t hurt by its long name. But short, snappy titles sell well. Consider Michael Connelly’s mysteries, starting with Black Echo. His titles are short and to the point. Stephen Cannell was another master of titles. My favorite is The Vertical Coffin, which he said was a cop term. When the first law enforcement officer rushes the door in a takedown, that doorway can quickly become a vertical coffin. Especially if firearms are used.
Early in my career, I wrote a collection of humor columns called The Viets Guide to Sex, Travel and Anything Else that Will Sell This Book. Lots of laughing readers didn’t line up for that title. Instead, drooling old men infested my signings, saying, “I want that book on sex travel.” Apparently the old boys missed that comma between Sex and Travel in the title. My mystery novels with titles like Killer Cuts attracted a better reader.


Search Shakespeare. Some authors, including Marcia Talley, find titles in the Bard’s work. My favorite Talley title is Unbreathed Memories, a phrase from “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” You can hunt for titles in OpenSourceShakespeare.org
Hymns and the Bible. Julia Spencer-Fleming has found a number of titles in hymns, beginning with In the Bleak Midwinter. They are perfect for her Rev. Clare Fergusson series.

Want to go trendy? For a while every third book had “Girl” in the title. That trend started with novels like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train, not to mention  The Girls With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. None of these women were the girl next door, but their books sold. By the way, The Girl Next Door was used by a wide range of writers, from Brad Parks to Ruth Rendall. It’s even a horror story.

There were also a raft of “Daughters,” as in Leslie Welsh’s The Serial Killer’s Daughter. Now I’m seeing lots of “Wives,” including Daisy Wood’s debut novel, The Clockmaker’s Wife, and Alice Hunter’s The Serial Killer’s Wife.
One word titles can sum up the book. This works well for thrillers, such as Jeff Abbott’s Panic and Aaron Elkins’ Loot. I had a one-word title for a Dead-End Job mystery. I wanted to call the book Catnapped, but there was another mystery with the same name that year.

My editor added an exclamation point to the title and made it Catnapped!, leaving me with a punctuation nightmare. How would you end this sentence: “I hope you like Catnapped!”
Should I add a period at the end of this sentence: “I hope you like Catnapped!.”
Or keep the exclamation point and look like a hyper-excited ditz?
Some words have a mystery mystique. Currently on the Pub Alley Fiction Mystery Bestsellers list are titles with words that seem to grab readers:
Paris. Gets them every time. At the top of the list is The Paris Detective: Three Detective Luc Moncrief Thrillers by James Patterson and Richard Dilallo.
Curse. Another intriguing word. Curse of Salem by Kay Hooper made the list.
Midnight. Two titles with “Midnight” are on the list: The Midnight Lock by Jeffrey Deaver and The Midnight Hour by Elly Griffiths.
Book Title Generators are another tool for clueless mystery writers. You can find several of them here: https://kindlepreneur.com/free-book-title-generator-tools/
I sampled the Mystery Book Title Generator, which claims to be the “Ultimate Bank of 10,000 Titles” that will “generate a random story title that’s relevant to your genre. You can pick between fantasy, crime, mystery, romance, or sci-fi.” http://blog.reedsy.com/book-title-generator/mystery

I clicked on “I’m just starting to write” and got this title: “The Mystery of the Three-Inch Stranger,” which struck me as a bit personal. It’s not the size of the stranger, it’s what you do with him.

Series titles: Sue Grafton has her alphabet series, beginning with A Is for Alibi and ending with Y Is for Yesterday. Mary Higgins Clark and her partner-in-crime Alafair Burke have a song title series, starting with You Don’t Own Me. Stephanie Plum uses numbers. Her latest is Game on: Tempting Twenty-eight.
I’d wanted to call my first novel for Penguin The Dead-End Job. My editor thought that would make a good series title, so that book became Shop Till You Drop.
When you write for a publisher, potential titles are batted back and forth. My fourth mystery in that series featured the murder of an overbearing mother of the bride. I wanted to call it One Dead Mother.
My publisher nixed that title as “too urban.” The novel was named Just Murdered.

Enter to win a free copy of Life Without Parole, my latest Angela Richman, death investigator mystery. Stop by Kings River Life magazine: https://www.krlnews.com/2022/01/life-without-parole-angela-richman.html

 

Short Stories: Small and Twisted

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By Elaine Viets

Did you ever say this? “I’m trying to write a short story, but I’m blocked. I’m getting nowhere.”

That happens to every writer. It certainly happens to me. Short stories are hard to write. In some ways, they may be harder to writer than novels. Here are a few tips for when you feel blocked working on your short story:

Think small – and think twisted.
There are good reasons why you can’t continue your short story. You could be blocked because you have too much going to on. In short, you may be writing a 5,000-word novel instead of a short story.
In a short story, you don’t need long, dreamy descriptions of the scenery.
You don’t need six subplots.
You don’t need to tell us your character’s awful childhood – unless it’s vital to the plot.
It’s a short story.
Think small.

Here’s another reason why your short story may be blocked: How many characters does it have?
If your short story has more than four major characters – you may — accent on may –have too many. It’s like being in a small room with too many people. You can’t move.

The short story is a small world.
Don’t make work for yourself. Giving all those people something to do is hard labor. Think small. Cut back on your characters.
If your story is going nowhere, consider some pruning. Clear out all the extraneous details, the unnecessary characters, the descriptions of the weather.
If you’re still not sure, read the story out loud. Read it to your spouse, or your dog, or your wall. But tell the story instead of looking at it on the page.
That’s a good way to find out what works – and what doesn’t.
Lawrence Block is a master of the traditional short story.
Let me show you what he does in one paragraph – one – in a short story called “This Crazy Business of Ours.” It’s in Block’s anthology called Enough Rope. If you’re interested in traditional short stories, I recommend this anthology.

“This Crazy Business of Ours”
The elevator, swift and silent as a garrote, whisked the young man eighteen stories skyward to Wilson Colliard’s penthouse. The doors opened to reveal Colliard himself. He wore a cashmere smoking jacket the color of vintage port. His flannel slacks and broadcloth shirt were a matching oyster white. They could have been chosen to match his hair, which had been expensively barbered in a leonine mane. His eyes, beneath sharply defined white brows, were as blue and as bottomless as the Caribbean, upon the shores of which he had acquired this radiant tan. He wore doeskin slippers upon his small feet and a smile upon his thinnish lips, and in his right hands he held an automatic pistol of German origin, the precise manufacturer and caliber of which need not concern us.

See how Block establishes a character in one paragraph? That is true economy of writing.
Make sure your story is about what it’s about. In a novel, you don’t have to get to the story right away. You have time to develop it. Time to build. Slowly.
In a short story, you have to hit them and run.

This is one of my favorite short story leads. It’s by Maria Lima in the Chesapeake Chapter Sisters in Crime anthology called Chesapeake Crimes I. Here it is:

“The telegram said it all: AUNT DEAD. STOP. BUTLER DID IT. STOP. FLY SOONEST. STOP. GERALD.”

That’s short and to the point. The writer has hooked you and she’s ready to move on to the story.


That takes me to the second requirement of a good short story. It needs a twist. It needs a surprise – either in the beginning or the end. But get that surprise in there.
Here’s the lead to my short story, “Red Meat,” which was nominated for an Agatha and a Macavity. It was in Blood on their Hands edited by Lawrence Block, and now in my own anthology, Deal with the Devil and 13 Short Stories.

“Ashley has a body to die for, and I should know. I’m on death row because of her.
“You want to know the funny thing?
“My wife bought me Ashley. For a present.”

There’s your twist – in three sentences.
Maybe your short story has all those things, but so what? It still feels lifeless.
You can’t make it get up and walk. You need something to liven it up. Ask yourself what specialized knowledge you have that could make your short story unique, and then build the story around it.
I was asked to write a short story for a gambling anthology. I panicked. I was going to tell my editors no. I don’t know how to gamble. I don’t play poker or blackjack. What am I doing in a gambling anthology?
Then I realized I did know gambling. My aunts used to take me to bingo. I was brought up Catholic – and I learned how people can cheat at bingo, and especially, how they can cheat at cruise ship bingo. Do you know what the prize is for cruise ship bingo?
Twenty thousand dollars on some cruises. That’s major money. That’s big-time gambling. Bingo! I had a short story.


The result was “Sex and Bingo,” which was nominated for an Agatha Award.
At a short story seminar in New York, I heard top editors talk about what made a good short story, what they buy, and what they won’t buy.

Here are some things editors DO NOT want:

– No more stories about husbands who kill wives, or vice versa.
– No more stories ending, “And then I woke up.”

What do they want?
A fresh voice.
An unusual location.
An offbeat character.
An opening that grabs them.
That was the most important part. You have one sentence – maybe two – to catch an editor’s eye with a short story.
Make every word count.
***
Elaine Viets was nominated for a 2021 International Thriller Award for her short story: “Dog Eat Dog” in The Beat of Black Wings, edited by Josh Pacher. Crippen & Landru has published Elaine’s own collection, Deal with the Devil and 13 Short Stories Stories. Buy it here:  https://www.amazon.com/Deal-Devil-Elaine-Viets/dp/1936363275

The Man With the Gun

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By Elaine Viets

Most mystery writers know this quote by Raymond Chandler: “When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.”
Like most mystery writing advice, this “man with a gun” needs more explanation.
According to author Louise Tondeur, Chandler was talking about “the demand … for constant action” and how “this could get to be pretty silly.”
“In other words, he was NOT issuing a tip for budding crime writers. He’s saying something closer to: there’s a demand for constant action in detective fiction, men are always rushing in with guns, there’s no time to look around, that’s sort of a shame, but that’s what you’ve got to do to get published these days (these days being 1950).”

So let’s look at that man with a gun metaphorically, as a constant need for action. Chandler’s quote is really about pacing and surprises in your writing.
You can’t have guys with guns running around loose in your novel and surprises popping up like Whac-A-Mole. Here are some points to consider:


Why not a woman with a gun?
Even Chandler had his femme fatales. For this discussion, the man with the gun could also be a woman. Your surprises are not bound by gender.
Is the man with the gun threatening or killing someone?
That threat can lead to several spicy chapters: your protagonist may manage to persuade the man with the gun not to kill him, or somehow overpower him. The man with the gun could become an ally or remain a deadly enemy. Either way, you’ve gained some plot points.


What if the man with the gun kills someone?
That’s good, right? I mean, it’s good for your story, not your victim. It moves the plot along.
Maybe. But this man could create more problems. Consider this.
Who is he killing and why?
Is he shooting a witness? Will that complicate the plot? Is he killing someone he’s always hated? Or a lover who betrayed him? Think about it. This can’t be a random murder. Ask yourself, do I need this surprise/killing here? Or should I use another way to pick up the pace?

Murder thoughtfully and with restraint.
When I first started writing mysteries, I killed like a serial killer on a spree. Unfortunately, I killed one of my better characters, Lee the Rehabber, in my first mystery, Backstab. As the series went on, I realized I could have used the chatty home renovation expert in other books, but it was too late. I couldn’t even claim he had amnesia and returned from a long trip. I’d already autopsied him. Consider your character’s future usefulness before the bullets start flying.

If you’re writing a cozy, for heaven’s sake, don’t let him shoot anyone.
Not in front of your readers, anyway. They don’t want to see all that blood.
Cozies are a delicate balance of family, friendship and murder. You can’t let the corpses start piling up.
Murder according to your genre. You may want more murders in an action-packed thriller or noir mystery.
Finally, if you’re going to have a second (or third, or fourth) murder in your mystery, tie the murder into the plot.
The killing could be a red herring or a clue, a friend of your protagonist or an enemy, but the murder should be tied to the story in some way. I got this advice from one of my editors, and it’s served me well. She did not like random murders showing up in my books.
Just remember: You are the god of this world you’ve created, and in your world, all murders (and surprises) must happen for a reason

This Friday, Nov. 12, I’m appearing in-person 7:00 PM, at Murder on the Beach Mystery Bookstore to sign my new Angela Richman mystery, LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE.
Murder on the Beach is at 104 West Atlantic Ave., Delray Beach, FL 33444. This will be a free and safe event, with masks and social distancing. You can Zoom, too. Email Murder on the Beach for your free Zoom link. StaceyMOB@gate.net.

The Proper Use of Improper Words

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By Elaine Viets

CAUTION: Pearl-clutching zone. This blog contains R-rated language. If you’re offended by off-color words, please don’t continue.

Hah. I knew you’d keep reading this.
When I was a kid, my mother would wash my mouth out with soap if I used bad language. I can tell you from personal experience, Dial soap does not taste good.
Now that I’m grown up, those same forbidden words are in the dictionary. Yes, sometimes I mourn the good old days, when no one dared to use these words in public. But we can’t go back.
So why am I writing about offensive words?
Because if we want to write realistic stories, that’s how some people talk.
When I lived in a rough neighborhood in Washington DC, I was approached by would-be purse thief. He didn’t say, “Madame, hand over your reticule, please.” He said, “Give me your money, bitch.” (He didn’t get it, but that’s another story.)
In our novels, offensive language can be in indication of character (or lack of), social status, and age. Younger people are more likely to use these words than older ones.
Here are some cuss words from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary.

Badass. One word, no hyphen.
This is my favorite off-color word. Often used for men, lately it’s been describing strong women (see kickass). Gal Godot in Wonder Woman, Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, and Michelle Yeoh, in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, are all examples. Dania Gurira, the all-women army leader in Black Panther, is the epitome of badass.

Webster says badass can be an adjective and both usages are “chiefly US, informal and sometimes offensive.”
Badass means “ready to cause or get into trouble.” Or, “of formidable strength or skill” as in “a badass guitar player.”

As a noun, badass is “a person who is badass.”

Badassery. Noun, one word.
It means “the state or condition of being a badass.”
This example in the Village Voice would have had Mom buying a case of Dial.
“The Seattle quartet, hailed as godfathers of emo back when that word made you think of something other than ‘eyeliner,’ indulged the distorted guitar badassery of their grunge-era brethren …”

Bitch. Noun.
We all know that bitch is a female dog. That’s excuse I used on Mom when she was brandishing that soap bar. She wasn’t fooled.
Like Webster, Mom knew that word was “informal and often offensive” and meant, “a malicious, spiteful, or overbearing woman.” It was also “a generalized term of abuse and disparagement for a woman.” And finally, “something that is extremely difficult, objectionable, or unpleasant.”
Or, as the novelist Harold Robbins wrote: “July and August were always a bitch in the subway.”
Bitch also means “complaint,” and is both a transitive and intransitive verb.
“They bitched up their lives.”

SOB. Noun, capped with no periods.
Webster downgrades this cuss word to “slang, sometimes offensive” and gives this example: “. . .. A guy who brought two dozen roses to a first coffee date and told you he felt like the luckiest SOB on the planet in the first five minutes.”

Asshat. Here’s a word that seems to be gaining in popularity in novels.
Webster says it’s a noun and “vulgar slang. A stupid, annoying, or detestable person.” See, asshole.
The first known use of this was in 1999. Then Webster has this odd “History and Etymology for asshat.”
“The seemingly nonsensical linking of ass and hat has a curious prehistory. Examples of the linkage can be found in dialogue lines from late-twentieth-century films: ‘Anyone found bipedal in five wears his ass for a hat!’ (addressed to the employees of a bank as the robbers leave, in Raising Arizona, 1987, script by Ethan and Joel Coen). . . .”
Webster wonders: “If we have been calling people assheads for almost 500 years now, why did it take so long for ass and hat to get together in similarly pejorative fashion? One reason may be that while ass lends itself well to the beginning of an opprobrious compound, hat leaves something to be desired in terms of mordant wit.”
Amen. Few of these words can be considered witty, and most are a blight on the language.
Now we get to the cuss words I really dislike.

Asshole. A noun, “usually vulgar.”
The first meaning is “anus,” but Webster also says it can mean “a stupid, annoying, or detestable person,” and “the least attractive or desirable part or area —used in phrases like asshole of the world.” This is an ancient word, first used in the 14th century.
But not by Mom.

We can skip “shit” – we know too about that word and its variations. I hate that word, though I’ve used it occasionally. Mostly in traffic.

Let’s go to a fairly harmless phrase:
WTF. Harmless, that is, until you see what the abbreviation stands for.
Now if Mom was around with her bar of soap, I’d try to weasel out by quoting the Acronym Finder.
“Hey, Mom, WTF stands for Well and Truly Freaked, or What’s This Foolishness? Where’s the Fudge?, or heh, heh, Welcome to Florida. In fact there are 105 definitions of WTF, so put down that soap, Mom, and let’s talk.’”
Webster authoritatively says the phrase is all caps and “informal.”
“WTF means ‘What the f– ’” Webster uses the actual f-word and says WTF is “used especially to express or describe outraged surprise, recklessness, confusion, or bemusement.”
Mom would not be bemused. Or amused.

LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE, my new Angela Richman mystery, is out. Publishers Weekly says, “Colorful characters match the crafty plot twists. Viets consistently entertains.” Read the review and order your copy here: https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780727850287

Questions of Life and Death

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By Elaine Viets

I like researching a mystery. I get to ask the wildest questions in the pursuit of facts.
A helpful homicide detective answers mundane question like these:
Does my cop have enough to get a search warrant? How about an arrest?
A poison expert shares her arcane knowledge of death. I was surprised how many perilous hazards lurked under the kitchen sink or in the garage.
Sure, I can look up some of these questions online, but it’s not as much fun. I like hands on research.
Here are a few of my favorite research questions.

Can a body fit in your car trunk?
I sprung this question on a sweet, silver-haired couple who owned a Lincoln Town Car, the same car as Margery Flax in my Dead-End Job mysteries. They were in a shopping center parking lot when I asked that question. Maybe I have an honest face. Or, since they were Florida residents, they were used to crazies. For whatever reason, they obligingly opened their trunk.
Yep, the Town Car trunk was definitely big enough for a body. Two, if the bodies were small.

How do you open a locked door with a credit card?
My cousin showed me how to do this. I’m not using her name because she is definitely light-fingered. She’s especially good with cheap button locks. She demonstrated her skill repeatedly, but I belong to the fumble-fingered side of the family. I did learn that “loiding” a door is a lot harder than it looks on TV.

Can you kill a person with a wine bottle?
“Empty or full?” the pathologist asked me. She was used to my crazy questions.
“A full bottle is a better weapon,” she said. Then she gave me another tip. “If you’re looking for another way to kill a person, please don’t use the old ‘hit-their-head-on-the-coffee-table’ to murder someone. That’s harder than it looks.”

How do you defrost a dead body?
This question for Ice Blonde stumped several pathologists. I finally found one who’d defrosted an intoxicated woman who ran out the door of her home and froze to death.
He told me, “You’ll need two body bags. Use a white one if you can, and then the heavy black bag. The white makes it easier to see the hairs and fibers when the decedent defrosts. Put the person in the white body bag first, then in the heavy black bag. Keep the decedent at room temperature, about 72 degrees, so the body will thaw naturally.
“What does your victim weigh?”
“About a hundred-fifteen pounds,” I said.
“The person will take about thirty-six, maybe forty-eight hours to defrost.”
I have a fairly high tolerance for forensic details, but defrosting someone like a piece of meat made my stomach do a backflip.

There was more. While the person was defrosting, the pathologist has to check the body every two hours. The hands and feet would probably defrost first, and then the pathologist could get scrapings from under the nails. As the defrosting progressed, the pathologist would draw blood and get fluids, including ocular fluid from the eyes, and if the person was a woman, check for seminal fluid in the vaginal vault.
Had enough information? Yeah, me, too.

How do you hot-wire a car?
A friendly mechanic spent an hour giving me lessons until I could describe the process. Don’t worry. Your vehicles are safe – nothing sparked no matter how many times I tried.

What off-beat questions have you asked for research, TKZers?

Now in audio! All my Angela Richman mysteries and the first three Dead-End Job novels. Listen to them during your 30-day free trial with Scribd.
https://www.scribd.com/audiobook/490552091/Death-Grip

First Page Critique

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By Elaine Viets

Today’s Brave Author gave us an intriguing story with a touch of the supernatural. Take a look, and then I’ll make my comments:

A Delima worth Millions

The man that just walked in the bakery to buy a lotto ticket is destined to win… but die the same day. If he plays. He stood in line. Waiting his turn. Like everyone else, he wished to wake up tomorrow as the mega lotto prize winner of 25 million. On an empty table to his left, a newspaper had a headline that caught his attention: LOTTO WINNER FOUND DEAD with the victim photograph and name-Pascual Montenegro. “That’s me,” he said. The hair on his body bristled as he walked slowly to the table and grabbed the paper. It was him. Short black hair, shaved, blue eyes. “What the hell is this?” he whispered.

A slight chill quivered his chest. The published date was two days from today. He scrutinized every word. According to the article, the police found him dead without a clear cause the same day he won. No further details revealed.

“Do you mind giving me back my paper,” said a voice. Pascual lowered the newspaper. There sat an old man he never seen before, dressed in a black suit with a fedora hat. “Do you mind?” the old man asked again. Pascual slammed it against the table. “Why is my picture here?” He looked at him.

The old man remained unrattled and sneered back with his dark eyes on a stone face. “Can’t you read? That is Sunday’s headline. You play, you win millions, you somehow die and its newsworthy,” he said. Pascual shook his head and pointed his finger at the old man’s face. “I don’t know who think you are. I do not appreciate this joke, scam or whatever bullshit lie you trying to pull with here” he said.

The old man sneered again. Then he leaned forward, the chair squeaked “buy the ticket and you will find out,” he hissed. Pascual shrugged his shoulders and grabbed and crumbled the paper. “Go to hell old man” he said and dropped it in front of him. He returned to the line. The old man smiled as he unwrinkled the paper with thump sounds like a judge gavel. Louder than the cracking sound of eggs being fried in the kitchen. “Go ahead, buy the ticket, you can’t stop what’s coming” he said. Pascual grabbed his cross necklace and kissed the image of Christ, a habit since childhood whenever he shivered in distress.

ELAINE’S CRITIQUE: I saw real possibility in this first page – and an author that needs help with some awkward phrasing and spelling. My changes are in bold. The problems start with the misspelled title:

A  Dilemma Worth Millions

The man that just walked in the bakery to buy a lotto ticket is destined to win… but die the same day.

ELAINE: That opening grabbed me, but Brave Author, please use it to tell us where we are. For example: The man that just walked in the San Antonio bakery to buy a lotto ticket is destined to win… but die the same day. If he plays.

BRAVE AUTHOR: He stood in line. Waiting his turn. Like everyone else, he wished to wake up tomorrow as the mega lotto prize winner of 25 million.

ELAINE: Twenty-five million what? Dollars? Pesos? Euros?

BRAVE AUTHOR: On an empty table to his left, a newspaper had a headline that caught his attention: LOTTO WINNER FOUND DEAD. He stared at the victim’s photograph and name – Pascual Montenegro. “That’s me,” he said. The hair on his body bristled as he walked slowly to the table and grabbed the paper.
There was no mistake. It was him. Same short black hair, shaved, blue eyes.

ELAINE: That “shaved” is puzzling. Do you mean “clean-shaven”?

BRAVE AUTHOR: “What the hell is this?” he whispered.

A slight chill quivered in his chest.

ELAINE: “A slight chill”? This is a man who just read that he was dead. He’ll need more reaction than that.

BRAVE AUTHOR: The published date was two days from today. He scrutinized every word. According to the article, the police found him dead without a clear cause the same day he won. No further details were revealed.

“Do you mind giving me back my paper?” said a voice. Pascual lowered the newspaper. There sat an old man he’d never seen before, dressed in a black suit and a fedora hat. He had dark eyes set in a stone face. (This phrase is moved up from below.)

ELAINE: You don’t need that “hat.” We know what a fedora is.

BRAVE AUTHOR: “Do you mind?” the old man asked again.
Pascual slammed the paper against the table. “Why is my picture here?” he demanded. He looked at him.

ELAINE: Cut the line in italics. It adds nothing.

BRAVE AUTHOR: The old man remained unrattled and sneered back: “Can’t you read? That is Sunday’s headline. You play, you win millions, you somehow die and it’s newsworthy.” he said.

ELAINE: Yikes! The dreaded “it’s” contraction was without an apostrophe. This mistake alone will send an editor screaming into the night. Also, you don’t need that “he said.”

BRAVE AUTHOR: Pascual shook his head and pointed his finger at the old man’s face. “I don’t know who you think you are. I do not appreciate this joke, scam or whatever bullshit lie you’re trying to pull with here,” he said.

ELAINE: We don’t need the word “lie”  or “with” and the punctuation is wrong for “he said.”

BRAVE AUTHOR: The old man sneered again. Then he leaned forward, and the chair squeaked. “Buy the ticket and you will find out,” he hissed.
Pascual shrugged his shoulders, and grabbed the paper and crumpled it. “Go to hell, old man,” he said and dropped it in front of him. He returned to the ticket line.

ELAINE: Again, there are some punctuation errors and the italicized “and” can be cut.

BRAVE AUTHOR: The old man smiled as he smoothed the wrinkled paper, the sound louder than the crack of a judge’s gavel.

ELAINE: “With thump sounds like a judge gavel” is an interesting image, but it doesn’t quite work. And it should read “with a thump that sounds like a judge’s gavel.” The same goes for “louder than the cracking sound of eggs being fried in the kitchen.” And do you mean “cracking” or “crackling”?

BRAVE AUTHOR: “Go ahead, buy the ticket, you can’t stop what’s coming,” the old man said.

Pascual grabbed his crucifix necklace and kissed the image of Christ, a habit since childhood whenever he was shivered in distress.

ELAINE: Cut “shivered.

ELAINE’S CONCLUSION: I was impressed with this first page. I want to know what happens to Pascual: does he win his fortune and cheat death? Will his faith help save him? And who is this mysterious old man – the Grim Reaper in a fedora? The devil? Or a nameless charlatan?
However, this first page presents a real writing dilemma: numerous misspellings and grammatical mistakes, starting with the title. No editors worth their red pencil will read this novel, and that’s a crying shame.
A writer has to know grammar and spelling. These are the tools of our trade. If we don’t, we’re like builders who can’t use a nail gun or a circular saw.
So what can our Brave Author do?
Take an adult education course in grammar and spelling.
Have someone who understands grammar and spelling read your manuscript.
Hire an editor to correct your grammar and spelling before you send out your manuscript.
I teach English as a second language, and judging by some of these errors, I suspect our Brave Author is not a native speaker. But I believe our Brave Author is a natural storyteller. Keep writing.

This Saturday, August 14, 10 AM to noon, I’m teaching “Dead Write: Forensics for Writers” a Zoom workshop at the Florida Authors Academy.
I passed the Medicolegal Death Investigators Course for forensic professionals at St. Louis University’s School of Medicine. I’ll discuss the proper methods and pitfalls of body identification, and other tips that will give your mysteries authenticity. Handouts are included. Contact Murder on the Beach Bookstore. Registration is required. It’s $25. Call 561-279-7790 or email murdermb@gate.net.

 

The Pain of Killing Your Darlings

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You know your prose will stun your editors with its brilliance. When you reread that passage, it brought tears to your eyes. The emotion quivers on the page.
So why are your editors asking you to cut and rewrite your favorite section? Why do they see your fiery passages as deep purple?
I don’t know about you, but I have the most problems when I’m starting a novel.
Once it gets going, I’m okay – sure, I have to watch for sagging middles.
But here is a problem I had with a rough beginning, when the murder came too late in Brain Storm.

The first book in my Angela Richman, Death Investigator series was hard to write:
I was starting a new series, and it was hard-boiled, not cozy, a change for me.
Also, the plot used my actual experience. In 2007, I had six strokes, brain surgery and a coma. It took seven years to get up the nerve to write about this, and another year for my agent to sell this story.
Here’s the plot: Death Investigator Angela Richman has a series of blinding headaches. She goes to the ER and Dr. Porter Gravois tells her she’s too young and fit to have a stroke. He sends her home, and she has six strokes and brain surgery. She’s saved by Dr. Travis Tritt, a brilliant surgeon with a lousy bedside manner. Dr. Tritt hates Porter Gravois, and when Porter is murdered, Tritt is the main suspect. Angela, still sick and drug-addled, has to save the man who saved her life.
When Brain Storm sold, my manuscript went to Bryon Quertermous, a freelance development editor.
Here’s what Bryon wrote:

Plot-wise, I think you have a good motive and solid characters and a nice arc. That said, I think the arc starts too late and needs to encompass more of the first half of the book as well. You do a good job of starting strong with the character and with Angela’s job and readers will forgive a little slow burn to get into this cool world, but we need to see some plot development sooner than almost halfway through as it is now.
The biggest note I have is that Dr. Porter’s death scene needs to come sooner in the book, ideally a quarter of the way in or so. For Angela to really work at her best as a character she needs to be actively investigating a death, not just playing armchair detective with her friend, the pathologist Katie, as she does now. I think there are some great interactions between the two of them and I don’t want those to go away, but I think you can kill two birds with this.

First, you need to make a list of all of the scenes that come before Porter’s death. Next, write a little bit about each scene. Then figure out which ones can be reworked to come after that scene and which can’t, and then go from there.
I think a lot of the discussions with Katie about the Angel of Death can come after. I love the idea that you briefly toy with of having Angela obsessed with the perfect Hobie as the killer and, better yet, as a vigilante killer. I think Angela needs to come to this obsession sooner and it needs to coincide with her talks with Katie about the Angel of Death murders.

You need to build her paranoia here and really play around with it as she wonders in her head if what she thinks about Hobie really is true. I think you need at least one more big set piece hallucination (like the fake hospital one which I though was brilliant) and I think as Katie realizes more and more that Angela isn’t playing devil’s advocate that she actually thinks Hobie is the Angel of Death and that he killed Porter this can create some nice tension between the two friends. Part of this will come from a line of investigation I think you need to develop where Angela starts digging into the backgrounds of the other Angel of Death victims to see if they have anything in common or if they were bad people who needed to die like Porter did.

Bryon gave me good advice: I don’t believe the murder should always be in chapter one – but if someone isn’t dead by the first third of the book the writer is making the fatal mistake of slowing the pace.

But how could I cut those wonderful scenes?
Bryon had the answer: List all the scenes.
See which ones can be combined or relocated to another section of the book.
Kill the ones that slow it down. Be brave. If you want your book to live, you’re going to have to kill – or at least transform – those darling scenes.

Have you had to kill your darlings? Tell us about it.

 

Here’s how Brain Storm turned out. https://tinyurl.com/7kwezp3t

Creating Likeable Villains

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By Elaine Viets

This month got off to a pleasant start. My short story, “Dog Eat Dog” was nominated for two awards: the Macavity and the International Thriller Writers.
The story was in The Beat of Black Wings, an anthology based on the songs of Joni Mitchell. I chose “Dog Eat Dog.”

This story was difficult to write, because my protagonist was so dislikeable. We learn straight out that Tiffany Yokum is a gold digger – and a calculating killer.
Here’s her introduction:

“The first time I tried to kill my husband, I failed. Miserably. I gave him a little push at the top of the stairs and Colgate tangled himself in his walker and fell down twenty-seven marble steps, just as I hoped. And he cracked his head – but not hard enough.
“Now he’s in a coma. The doctors say there’s still brain activity and he could wake up at any time, so I can’t pull the plug. He could live forever this way. As I sit by his bedside, I watch the fluid drip through his IV, and imagine each drop is a dollar. Even his immense fortune will be drained away.
“I want desperately to finish him off, but I don’t want to get caught.”

Greedy Tiffany put a nice old man into a coma, and now she wants him to die. How do I make readers root for this little moneygrubber?
Unlikeable protagonists are extremely popular, thanks to Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Before Gillian, there was the disgusting pedophile Humbert Humbert in Lolita. And Rabbit Angstrom in John Updike’s Rabbit, Run and other novels in this series. Books I pretended to read in college but couldn’t finish because I found Rabbit, the protagonist, self-absorbed and dull.
Short stories don’t have time to create the subtleties of a novel. Which gets us back to Tiffany and how to make readers root for this crafty killer. Here are some ways to do it.
Give your villains a minor illness.

The award-winning Evan Hunter – a.k.a. Ed McBain – made that recommendation. It works if your villains aren’t too evil. McBain had a lot of sniffling and sneezing detectives in the 87th Precinct. But I could give Tiffany pneumonia – heck, Covid-19 – and she still wouldn’t be likeable.

Give your villains a sympathetic background.


Tiffany is by no means her rich husband’s social equal. She’s an 18-year-old clerk at a hardware store in Festus, Missouri. “Colgate Osborne was a randy seventy-two when he first spotted me behind the cash register, falling out of my tank top,” Tiffany says. She grew up in a trailer park. So she’s at the bottom rung of the ladder, looking to climb. Readers like to root for a rags-to-riches scenario.

Make your villains smart. Or at least crafty.

Tiffany quickly becomes the fourth wife of rich old Cole Osborne and they live in luxury in Fort Lauderdale.
“I never went to college, but I wasn’t stupid,” Tiffany said. “I knew now that Cole had tied the knot with me, my struggle had just begun. Cole was very, very classy, and I had to fit in with his rich friends.”

Make your villains self-aware.

The Joni Mitchell song was Tiffany’s anthem, and she recognized herself in the lyrics of “Dog Eat Dog.” Especially the part about slaves. Some were well-treated . . .
And some like poor beasts
Are burdened down to breaking
Tiffany said, “This was a dog eat dog world – more so than the trailer park where I used to live. I was a well-treated slave, and I’d sold myself into slavery, but I knew that.”
Our villain has knows she’s living in comfort, but she can’t get comfortable.
“One misstep, and I’d be one of those poor beasts, working again at the local hardware store or greeting people at Walmart. I had a prenup that would give me a measly hundred thousand dollars if we divorced, but if I could hang on until Cole died, I’d get half his fortune.”

Make your villains work for their success. That way, readers can root for them.

Cindy knew she’s landed her pretty derriere in a tub of butter, but she knew her work has just started. Among other things, Cindy changed her name to a classier “Tish.”
She also “made friends with his housekeeper, Mrs. Anderson. She’d been with him for twenty years and three wives. I slipped her a little extra out of my mad money account that Cole gave me, and Mrs. A told me where to shop on Las Olas, the local Rodeo Drive, and which saleswoman to make an appointment with. She also advised me to ditch my long fake nails and get a nice, refined French manicure, then sent me to a salon where I had my long hair tamed into fashionable waves and the color became ‘not so blonde’ as the tactful stylist said.”

Make your villains aware of the stakes if they fail.

Now readers have more reasons to root for them.
“As I got into my mid-twenties, I had to work hard to keep my girlish figure,” Tiffany said. “My trainer was worse than a drill sergeant, and I endured endless runs on the beach. Awful as it was, it beat standing on my feet all day on a concrete floor, running a cranky cash register for nine dollars an hour.”

Create a conflict – and an even worse villain.

Tiffany says, “I thought I could sail smoothly into Cole’s sunset years and collect the cash when he went to his reward. But then that damn preacher showed up. The smarmy Reverend Joseph Starr, mega-millionaire pastor of Starr in the Heavens.”
As much as we may dislike money-hungry Tiffany, the bloodsucking TV preacher is even worse. He plays on Cole’s fear of death and walks off with a check for a million dollars on his first visit – and the Reverend has his sights set on more.
“Starr would work on Cole’s guilt and milk him for every dollar – my husband was one big cash cow,” the practical Tiffany said.
Now that her husband was in the hospital on life support, Tiffany has to find a way to kill her husband and put the blame on the Reverend Starr.
Does Tiffany succeed? Or does the Reverend Starr walk off with the money? You’ll have to read “Dog Eat Dog” to find out – and see if I made you root for her.
Tell us, TKZers. How do you humanize your villains?
***

The Beat of Black Wings, edited by Josh Pachter, is an anthology of 28 crime writers who wrote short stories inspired by Joni Mitchell’s lyrics. The award-winning authors include Art Taylor and Tara Laskowski, Kathryn O’Sullivan, Stacy Woodson, and Donna Andrews. A third of the royalties will be donated to the Brain Aneurysm Foundation in Joni Mitchell’s name.
Order your copy of Beat of Black Wings here: https://tinyurl.com/38x2cyar

Do You Need Hygge?

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By Elaine Viets

The English language is expanding faster than waistlines during quarantine. This year, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary has added another 520 new words.
English is a living language, so growth is good. Or as Webster says:
“The words we use—if they are new or relatively new—are the words we need to express and explain our world. If these words then also become widely used, it becomes the dictionary’s job to explain this use.”
The new crop includes words and abbreviations I’ve never used – including “hygge” and “ASMR.”
And words I hope we’ll never use, like the clunky “decarceration.”
Plus words that we’ve been using long before Webster got wise to them, including “silver fox.” (George Clooney, anyone?)


So what’s “ASMR”? It’s short for “autonomous sensory meridian response.” Uh, right. That clears it up. This example from Webster explains it better:
“It might sound like a bafflingly bizarre way to spend time on the internet. But for Maria’s viewers, her voice and movements hold a certain magic: they can instill tranquility, overcome insomnia—and induce a mysterious physical sensation known as … ‘ASMR’, wherein the body is flooded with waves of euphoric tingles.”
“Hygge” sounds like a type of Scandinavian salt fish. It’s actually a Danish word, meaning “a cozy quality that makes a person feel content and comfortable.”
Here’s how the dictionary says it’s used: “During the long, dark winters when Danes retreat inside their homes, ‘hygge’ is what brings them a great sense of comfort and joy.” It’s sort of pronounced like “hugh-ga.”

“Hygge” and “ASMR” were used a lot in the past year, when we needed comfort. At least, that’s what Webster said. My friends used other comfort words, such as “Ben & Jerry’s” and “Johnnie Walker.”
Thanks to Covid, old words have taken on new meanings. “Long hauler” is not just an over-the-road trucker. Webster says it’s now “a person who experiences one or more long-term effects following initial improvement or recovery from a serious illness (such as COVID-19).”


“Pod” and “bubble” both gained new meanings. A “pod” is a small group of friends, relatives or co-workers that we can safely socialize with and avoid spreading COVID. Now that all my friends are vaccinated, my “pod” had an indoor party without masks.

Any sports fan knows the new meaning of “bubble.” Sports Washington wrote:

“To avoid COVID-19 infection, the NBA and NHL instituted strict ‘bubbles’ where players, coaches, media and staff are sequestered away from the general public. Major League Baseball . . . instead is asking its players to be responsible as they travel the country for games. It’s not working well, and in the case of the Miami Marlins, it’s been awful.”
Most of us are aware of the new words in corporate speak:
“Hard pass” is a firm refusal.

“‘Makerspace’ is a communal public workshop where makers – including artists, painters, jewelry designers – can work on small personal projects.
But don’t confuse “makerspace” with “coworking.” That means people are working in a building with many different kinds of tenants, including new start-ups, entrepreneurs, and nonprofits. These tenants rent their work space and use communal facilities.

I don’t have to explain “crowdfunding” or “gig worker.” You already know those words.


“Decarceration” is a new word that I wish would go away. It means “to release from prison” or to reduce the number of people housed by the “prison industrial complex” – and those three words are another new term. “Decarceration” ranks right up there with “deplane” as one of my most hated words.

“Second Gentleman” has been around since 1976, but Webster finally made it official after the 2020 election, when Kamala Harris was elected Vice President and her husband, Douglas Craig Emhoff, became the first Second Gentleman of the United States.
Wanna know my favorite new word?
“Sapiosexual.”
That means you’re attracted to smart people.

Love words? Logophiles can sign up for Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day. It’s free.

Enjoy forensic mysteries? Kirkus says this about DEATH GRIP, my new Angela Richman mystery: “Viets produces chills with a murder hunt turned on its head.” Buy it here: https://tinyurl.com/ya9q9tfm

Out With Them!

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By Elaine Viets

I was listening to a talk radio show when I heard something like this:

“You’ve given us a lot to unpack here, Bill,” the host said. “Destructive weather events are becoming the new normal in these uncertain times.”
The guest blathered, “Yes, we’re all in this – ”

No! I switched off the radio before he finished saying, “We’re all in this together.”
I’ve learned to live with many of the old cliches and misused words. I no longer cringe when someone says, “Irregardless.”
But these uh, uncertain times have spawned a new and even more annoying crop of cliches. They’re infesting our language like termites. My husband Don is tired of listening to me gripe. But I can tell you, can’t I, dear reader?

Here is my list of words and phrases I’d like to see banned. I hope they don’t creep into our conversation – or worse, our writing.

UNPACK. Usually suitcases are unpacked – we remove the contents and put them away. But lately unpack has been used in another way: to consider, to analyze, to reveal. Webster says that use is legit, but it rubs me the wrong way. Never mind that Shakespeare himself used it, during Hamlet’s rant (uh, soliloquy):

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder’d,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab

PROCESS. After you unpack something, you need time to process it. “After my mother died, it took a long time to process her death.” What the heck? Are you a computer?

EVENT. Here’s another one that gets me. A tornado trashes an entire town, killing innocent people and destroying their homes. And what does the media call it? “A weather event.”
Why? Do you sell tickets to a tornado?


LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL. Something we’re not seeing these days, but the media keeps saying it’s there. This phrase has been around for maybe two hundred years. Some sources say it goes back to the 1800s and was used “in a letter by English novelist George Eliot.” John F. Kennedy made it popular in the mid-1960s when he talked about Vietnam. The phrase can be either one of hope – or despair.

 

GIVE 110 PERCENT. Mostly said by corporate types. Can you folks even add?

BAD OPTICS. PR speak for “this looks bad.” For instance, “Widgets Inc. cut ties with their foreign supplier when they found out the supplier used child labor.” Did Widgets care about those toiling tots? Heck no. But they were worried what their customers would think.

EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON. Usually said after some especially senseless tragedy. Often followed by another favorite phrase: “thoughts and prayers.”

Covid has spawned a crop of cliches:

IN THESE UNCERTAIN TIMES. A euphemism for “in these hopelessly screwed-up times.” And unless we’re fortune tellers, almost all times are uncertain. We can’t see the future.

IT IS WHAT IT IS. A mental shrug. An annoying way of saying, “I don’t want to do anything about it.” Politicians as far back as George Bush have used it and it’s the favorite excuse in sports. Your Dictionary says, one famous example was when the coach of the US hockey team at the 2006 Winter Olympics excused his team’s “lack of rest by saying, ‘We’re going to do the best that we can. It is what it is.’”
If it will make you feel any better, other languages also have versions of this, according to Your Dictionary: “In Persian, ‘Fihi Ma Fihi’ means the same thing and was the title of a famous work by Rumi, a 13th century writer. In Spanish, the phrase ‘Que será, será’ means ‘what will be, will be.’ This is a somewhat more optimistic twist on the idea.” Doris Day made that phrase into a song.

LESS THAN. In mathematics it means smaller. Four is less than six. But the term is less than satisfactory when it strays in to everyday language. It’s wrong to make people feel “less than.” Less than what?

LIVING MY BEST LIFE. Oh? You get more than one? Lucky you. Like it or not, I’m already living my best life – now.

NEW NORMAL. The new normal not only isn’t normal, it’s not even new. Wikipedia, for heaven’s sake, points out that every time we have a major crisis, we dig up that term and dust it off. It seems to have appeared the first time in 1918, right after World War I. Henry A. Wise Wood spelled it out for us: “How shall we pass from war to the new normal with the least jar, in the shortest time? In that respect should the new normal be shaped to differ from the old?”
Pundits have been working variations on that theme after the 1990s Dot-Com Bubble, the financial crisis of 2007-2008, September 11 attacks, the aftermath of the 2008–2012 global recession, and now – the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The New Normal” was a TV show and country singer Cooper Alan even has a love song called “New Normal.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poBwXChcvCY

So which words or phrases are driving you nuts in these . . .um . . .difficult times? Go ahead. You can tell us.

**********************************************************************
Now out! DEATH GRIP, my new Angela Richman, Death Investigator mystery. Kirkus magazine says, “Viets produces chills with a murder hunt turned on its head.” Buy it here: https://tinyurl.com/ya9q9tfm