By PJ Parrish

The easy part is done. The book is finished. The rewrites are complete. We’ve even got the cover designed. Now comes the hard part…

Writing the back copy.

I’ve been working at this publishing thing since the early 2000s. First with three different traditional publishing houses — Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster and Thomas and Mercer. Most of my career, I’ve had great copy writers who created the back copy. Often, my editors ran the finished copy by me for approval or suggestions. Thomas and Mercer even let us write a first draft for our book She’s Not There. This is how the finished back copy read.

 A past she can’t remember. 

A killer she can’t recognize.

And they’re both catching up with her.

They say it’s better to battle the devil you know. But what if you don’t recognize him until it’s too late?

She knows her name is Ameilia, but after waking up in a hospital battered and bruised with just the clothes on her back, it’s all she knows. Unable to piece together her shattered memory, she’s haunted by a vision: menacing faces and voices implying her nightmare is far from over,

Relying only on her wits and her will to live, Amelia becomes a fugitive frm a mysterious man, and a life she can’t even remember. But the past she’s fleeing has no intention of letting her go.

But it wasn’t until I branched out into self-publishing (original works and back-list repubbing) and was all alone with no back-up that I learned how darn hard it is to write really good back copy.

Ha! You try it. Take your 350 word manuscript and crystalize it down to maybe 300 words that will capture the attention of a would-be reader.  Have you ever watched folks browsing in a bookstore? Let’s pretend they didn’t come in for the latest Connelly or whatever is topping the current charts. They’re hunting and gathering, searching for someone new to fall in love with. They pick a book off a shelf, maybe enticed by a good cover and lively title. Then usually, the turn the book over and read the back copy. And if your copy is crisp, they might open to read the first page. And you are lucky, they take a chance on you.

Yes, this holds true on Amazon listings as well, You have to supply back copy if you want to sell your books there. And like a good cover that can capture a reader’s eye in a thumbnail, a snappy distillation of your story is what is going to help snag new readers.

The cover is your first impression across the crowded room. But the back copy is your introductory conservation. All good back copy does key things:

Takes readers on an emotional journey—a sort of miniature version of your story. You’re creating a series of emotional beats that guide readers from:

Curiosity > Interest > Action

If this progression is missing, your blurb will feel flat and directionless. Your blurb should move through three stages:

• Who is your protagonist?
• What is going on with the plot?
• Why should I turn the page?

I’m quoting Morgan Lee Clasper there. He’s a copywriter, book sales strategist, and author of The Blurb Puzzle. (publishers call back copy “blurbs” — not be be confused by the quotes you elicit from fellow writers). Clasper has worked with New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling authors, writing 4,000 blurbs. More from him a moment, because he’s worth listening to.

Back to my dilemma. I’m pretty good at writing back copy. But it’s a real effort, and always entailed several rewrites as I try to boil down my story’s heart and soul. My first drafts are always bad, because I try to get everything pinned down and then I go at it with a razor to pare it down to its essence.

Here’s the raw first draft of the back copy of our WIP, Lucky Lady. Bear with me…

Bailey Cassell has had a difficult life. After spending eighteen months in jail for the murder of her abusive husband, she is acquitted and heads to Las Vegas, where she hopes to start over and reconnect with her estranged father, the owner of an aging casino called Paul’s Palace.

But Bailey’s plans for a fresh start take an unexpected turn when a showgirl falls seventy-two stories from The Monolith, a huge casino next door, and lands near Bailey’s office. When Bailey learns that Scarlett may have had connections to her father’s past, she begins asking questions.

Her search for answers leads her to Bullhead City, a dangerous suspect, a wealthy Florida gambler, and JB Mitchell, the powerful owner of The Monolith. Along the way, Bailey crosses paths with handsome homicide detective Morgan Finn. Bailey finds herself fantasizing about Morgan but he rebuffs her advances, leaving Bailey to wonder if she’ll ever break through his professional exterior—or if their relationship will remain strictly business.

But Bailey has more important things to worry about. As she gets closer to discovering the truth about Scarlett’s death, she realizes that Las Vegas is a city filled with secrets, and some people will do anything to keep those secrets buried.

Can Bailey uncover the truth before she becomes the killer’s next victim? And will she finally get the handsome detective who keeps turning her down?

Gag, gag, gag…It’s okay, I know it’s awful. It’s too long, too wordy, and boring as hell. But it’s a starting basis. Now all I have to do is make it sparkle. I’m still working on it but here’s where I am so far:

Las Vegas is where you go to reinvent yourself. And that’s exactly what Iowa-born Bailey Cassell needs to do after getting acquitted for murdering her abusive husband. She tries to reconnect with the father who abandoned her when he gives her a job at his fading casino. But when a showgirl falls to her death from the Monolith casino next door, Bailey finds herself captivated by Scarlett Nightengale’s past — especially when she learns she woman was once involve with her dad.

Bailey crosses paths with the handsome homicide detective assigned to the case distracts her. But Bailey is deternined to find out who killed Scarlett, despite her father’s shady past, the threats of the Monolith’s shady owner, and her attraction to the detective.   

The closer Bailey gets to discovering the truth about Scarlett’s death, the more she realizes that Las Vegas is a city filled with secrets, and some people will do anything to keep those secrets buried. Including kill her.

Better. But not quite there. Just not enough zing. And still too long. I’ll report back.

Meanwhile, let’s talk about what makes good back copy. I’ve written extensively about this in the past here, but I’ve read enough poorly written cop that I think we need to revisit this. What are the main sins? The main one is most writers feel compelled to include WAY too much biography about their protags. Go back to the copy for She’s Not There. It tells you almost nothing about Amelia’s background. But it focuses dead-center on her fear, her dilemma and the emotional core of the story.

I’ll let a pro talk to you now. Back to Morgan Lee Clasper. Here’s his advice in a nutshell:

Lead with emotion, not biography
Your protagonist is usually the central point around which everything else in your blurb revolves. That’s why it’s important to make readers care about them without wasting words by over-explaining.

Sounds like an impossible situation, right? How can you make readers care about someone if you’re not able to paint a complete picture of them? Your protagonist is a multifaceted character with a personality, backstory, desires, flaws, hopes, and dreams… but most of that can’t fit into the blurb.

But there’s one secret to instantly making readers like your protagonist. That secret is leading with emotion….[not] a colleciton facts.

Not every detail belongs
You may still be struggling to figure out what information to include. Here are some handy questions to ask yourself when you’re stuck deciding what deserves to make the cut:

• Is it essential to the premise?
• Is it necessary for understanding the stakes?
• Does it make readers more emotionally invested in the story?
  A cool world-building detail might add depth and flavor to your story, but it doesn’t belong in the blurb unless it can’t be removed without making the plot difficult to understand.

Include both internal and external conflict
Just as a good book has external and internal obstacles for the protagonist to overcome, a good blurb uses both of these elements for maximum effect. While the plot answers the question of what’s happening (defeating an enemy, solving a mystery, or achieving a goal), the protagonist’s internal conflict explains why this is difficult (fear, trauma, or personal flaws). The best blurbs combine both elements.

Establish narrative momentum
Maybe you’ve written a blurb with some of these things in mind before, but it still feels flat. The missing ingredient in many otherwise effective blurbs is a sufficient sense of momentum. The trick is to make sure that each sentence builds on the one that came before it. Every line should add pressure, throw a wrench into the protagonist’s plan, heighten the stakes, or build toward a crescendo. For example:

• Sentence 1: Who is this person?
• Sentence 2: What changed about their situation?
• Sentence 3: What danger or trouble are they facing?
• Sentence 4: What happens if they fail

A simple trick that can help you do this is to use transition words like: but, when, after, and.

Remember that last sentence. Those simple transition words are the keys to unlock a catchy and snappy back copy for your book. Click here to go to Morgan’s full post. It appeared in Jane Friedman’s must-read blog

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some pruning to do.

And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray…when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea. — Proust, In Search of Lost Time

By PJ Parrish

Morning crime dogs. Today, our submission writer is taking us to a far off place with a strange sounding name. Actually, they don’t tell us exactly where we are, but that’s okay because I can sense we’re not in Kansas, Dotty. The genre, our writer says, is international political thriller. Take a look and then let’s talk.

Light In the Kingdom Of Sand

Ari Edri woke to the heat and stink of his apartment, mouth sour with the taste of alcohol and cigarettes. His bed, little more than a cot, was drenched with sweat. The clamor of morning traffic outside the open window was all horns and chaos. His clock said it was nearly noon – another Monday and no reason to care or stir from bed.

He lay there for a moment, trying to find a comfortable position, but age, abuse, and arthritis made that impossible. Disgusted, he swung his legs off the bed and rose painfully to his feet.

In years past, he might have found a more accommodating home, but this was really all he could afford. He limped across the room to relieve himself. He winced at the pain and his reflection in the faded mirror. It was older, sadder, and more worn than he remembered.

Splashing water on his face, he looked around the room. The chair was still wedged firmly under the door handle. His old Luger lay on the bedside table. Unnecessary precautions, but habits die hard.

Long retired, he had done so without a single citation in his personnel file. Dozens of missions to support his country, and yet he was a cipher to them.

The lady downstairs must be cooking from Yael’s cookbook again. The smell from below and the thought of his ex-wife cooking a recipe she thought he loved brought a smile to his face unbidden. He looked at the picture of his daughter and granddaughter on the dresser. The smell and the picture were momentarily overpowering. Ari found his vision blurring, and he wiped a tear from his cheek too late to stop the next one. Tough guy, yeah.

He remembered his ex-wife and daughter confronting him about his drinking, telling him he couldn’t be around his granddaughter if he was going to be drinking. Not believing them led to not being able to see any of them. I should have believed them. How do you come back from that?

He moved the Luger to the small kitchen table and stared at it. Will today be the day? Will I finally have nerve enough? Not strong enough to stop the booze, why would I be strong enough to pull the trigger?

______________

I’m back. I enjoyed reading this submission. It has a good flow and I immediately felt sympathetic toward Ari Edri. (I like his name, btw, easy to remember as it trips off the tongue). But because this is pretty darn good, I am going to be a little hard on you, dear writer.

About Ari: We don’t know if he is the protagonist, the would-be hero whose journey we will follow for three hundred pages or so. The writer could be setting him up as a victim. Which is a fine entryway into a plot. Your story doesn’t always have to open with your protag; sometimes creating a scenario around a victim can be a really effective set-up. Done it many times myself. (Note to writer: If Ari is a victim, make sure you intro your hero very soon.)

But let’s assume Ari is the main man here. There is much I already like about the guy, thanks to judicious backstory insertion. Notice that the writer does NOT lard in paragraphs of backstory. They give us just enough to entice us about his circumstances — once an effective “warrior” of some kind, but now broken (tortured?) and forgotten. I sense bitterness, which will work well in Ari’s character arc, leaving me to wonder if this is, themactically, a story about redemption.

An aside: Redemption is a powerful theme. And never forget, writers, that THEME is what your story is really about. Yes, it’s about action, plot, car chases, a fight to save a person or a country. BUT your story is, at its deepest depths, about what is happening inside your character’s heart. Never forget that.

Now, about plot. Not much is happening in these first pages. It’s a slow build opening. I don’t mind that. I am willing to go along for a slow ride, BUT only to a point. Dear writer: I suggest you get Ari out and doing something fairly quickly. Too much remembering, musing, thinking, pondering and moping isn’t sustainable for long.

I will ask this to you all out there: Do you think the writer got into the scene too early? I often see mysteries and thrillers begin this way — the protag (usually a PI or cop) gets a phone call to come to a crime scene. We then get him swinging his tired legs over the bed, “padding” across the ratty apartment, hungover, staring at his gun, moping and thinking…

When…

It might be more effective to get the protag OUT into the world actively doing something. I really dislike cop stories that begin with the cop getting a phone call to come to a murder scene. Rather: Put him (and us) there and then go back and fill in the backstory of booze and broken homes. As James said in his great Sunday post on backstory: ACT FIRST, EXPLAIN LATER. Click here to read. Dear Writer: I suggest you go back and read James’s post.

Some other things about the submission. Given Ari’s name and the book’s title, I am assuming this takes place in the mideast. I don’t need you to slap a place tag on your chapter ie:

CHAPTER ONE

KABUL, JANUARY, 2023

That’s lame. But do find a way soon to tell us where we are organically. You’ve already hinted at it.

One last thing. And this is important….

I don’t get much sense of place. I don’t see you, the writer, using your sense, to bring Ari’s world to life. I think you can make this even better. Place is a character. You have to give it as much care as you do your characters. You are working with a good basic grasp of scene-building, but you’ve missed many chances to TAKE US TO YOUR PLACE.

This is a fault I see in many submissions, an underdeveloped sense of place, and no use of the senses in description. You’ve told us it is hot, sweaty and chaotic outside.  You’ve told us his apartment “stinks.” You’ve told us he looks worn and old. You’ve told us there is photo of his daughter and granddaugher. You’ve told us he can smell something cooking downstairs. 

Now SHOW us. What does “chaos” sound like? What does “hot” feel like? What does his apartment “stink” of? What does “old and worn” look like exactly? What does that family photo look like? And most powerfully, you set up this evocative memory of his wife’s cooking! What does it “smell” like? You must use your senses when you write. THAT is what takes us to your fictional world.

A sudden, brassy blast tore through the heavy air, a sharp and angry shriek of metal and electricity. Another horn joined in close behind—a long, heavy drone of pure frustration.

Note: The cacaphony of cars in say Chennai sounds completely different than it does in Chicago. And note that the noise can reflect the emotional noise in Ari’s head. Connect and reflect.

The world seemed to die each afternoon and nothing moved any longer. At last the summer was like a green sick dream, or like a silent crazy jungle under glass. — Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding.

Note: Trying to nail down weather description can make fools of us all. Tread lightly.

There is an invalid fug in the room – the faint animal scent of the furs, a vegetal stench of undrained cooking water, and the sour reek from a bowl with which a girl hurries away: containing, he suspects, the evacuated contents of the dowager’s stomach. — Hilary Mantel, Bring Up The Bodies

Note: Of course, your room isn’t historic and this isn’t your style. I offer it only as an example of how you must use your senses, especially smell. Which brings me to what you wrote:

The lady downstairs must be cooking from Yael’s cookbook again. The smell from below and the thought of his ex-wife cooking a recipe she thought he loved brought a smile to his face unbidden. He looked at the picture of his daughter and granddaughter on the dresser. The smell and the picture were momentarily overpowering. Ari found his vision blurring, and he wiped a tear from his cheek too late to stop the next one. Tough guy, yeah.

What what did you miss? The utterly golden opportunity to SHOW us what it smells like and more important, to link it to Ari’s emotional state. Some examples:

She smells of her cooking and the perfume Eau d’Hadrien. My mother wore it, too. She used to cook, like Lili. Our house smelled of garlic and thyme instead of sadness.― Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution

And of course:

As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans. — Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast.

I am bringing these passages about food in for a main and final reason. Ari is a deeply troubled man, with a strangled present and a tortured past. He is estranged from his family and deeply lonely. You instinctively chose to put in that smell coming from an apartment below. Not just any smell — the divine scent of his wife’s cooking. How wonderfully Proustian! Yet you didn’t SHOW us what it smelled like. And worse, you missed the opportunity to link it to Ari’s memories and emotional state. Yes, you had him tear up, but it feels distanced and unspecific. Details! Details! Details! This should be a coda, bringing us out of his backstory past and back to the present as he looks at that Luger.

Here’s a clip from one of my favorite movies, The Hundred Foot Journey. It is about a young Indian man who leaves his family to become a famous chef in Paris. In the most touching scene, he shares an after-hours meal sitting on the floor of his famous bistro, with a waiter, who is eating the Indian dinner his wife has made for him. It brings the chef to tears and to the realization he must go home to find himself again. I can’t find that clip, alas. But, dear writer, please find a way to connect Ari to his past through taste and smell.

Good start, writer. I enjoyed this. Now, back to work….

“I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.” — Dix Steel In A Lonely Place.

By PJ Parrish

I was sleepless in unsettlement — it had been a rough week what with apocalyptic smoke-sulphuric skies and gut parasites — so as usual I turned to my private Ambien — Turner Classic Movies. Eddie Muller was just coming on to introduce In A Lonely Place.

Two hours later, I was still wide awake and in awe. How in the world had I missed this movie? I devour old noir films yet this one had somehow always eluded me, even though it’s considered a classic. I come to you today, fedora in hand, deeply ashamed.

Humphrey Bogart, in what might be his finest performance, sheds his heroic armor to play the boozy, trigger-temper screenwriter Dix Steele, suspected of murder and captivated by his failed-starlet neighbor Gloria Grahame (who can say more with one raised eyebrow than most of today’s actresses can do with their lines.)

This isn’t your conventional noir. It’s more a psychological thriller and a heartbreaking love story. There’s no happily-ever-after, just what one writer called “an epitath for love.” It’s also a meditation on movies and screenwriting, and male cruelty. In the end, it also has an oddly feminist undernote.

I was so entranced by the movie that the next morning, I hied over to my library where I found the source material — Dorothy B. Hughes’ 1947 book. (It was re-issued three years ago by Penguin Modern Classics). Okay, again I confess shame, as I had never read the book. I’ve been making my way through the oldies for years now, But this one…wow.

I’m not alone here in my ignorance. The critic John Powers wrote:

It’s something of an axiom that good novels make bad movies, but one of my favorite exceptions is In A Lonely Place. For years, I lazily assumed that [director Nicolas Ray] had turned a lousy pulp thriller into a silk purse. Then one day, I finally read it. And I discovered that the novel is more groundbreaking than the film. And that Hughes belongs in the crime writing pantheon with male icons like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

Now I have to turn to crime novelist Megan Abbot, who wrote the afterword for the re-issue::

Reading In a Lonely Place for the first time is like finding the long-lost final piece to an enormous puzzle. Within its Spanish bungalows, its eucalyptus-scented shadows, you feel as though you’ve discovered a delicious and dark secret, a tantalizing page-turner with sneakily subversive undercurrents. [Its]  influence on crime fiction is unsung yet inescapable. From Patricia Highsmith and Jim Thompson to Bret Easton Ellis and Thomas Harris, nearly every “serial killer” tale of the last seventy years bears its imprint—both in terms of its sleek, relentless style and its claustrophobic “mind of the criminal” perspective.

But its larger influence derives from Hughes’s uncanny grasp of the connection between violence and misogyny and an embattled masculinity. And its importance extends beyond form or genre and into cultural mythos: the birth of American noir.

That last part about toxic masculinity is important. Because while that aspect is present in the movie in the form of Bogart’s seething anger, the book is where the violence really boils over.

I was taken by how different the film is from the book. (Yes, we can name dozens of cases where this is true in crime fiction — and please feel free to weigh in here). But it’s really striking here.

In the book, Dix Steele is an actual serial killer, but in the movie he is a mere suspect in one hat-check girl’s death. In the book Steele is a true psychopath, who fakes being a crime novelist so he can sponge off a wealthy uncle. An ex fighter pilot, Steele is frustrated that his post-war life is so lifeless and emasculating, Steele turns to stalking and killing women for kicks. “They were all alike, cheats, liars, whores,” Steele says in the book. “Even the pious ones were only waiting for a chance to cheat and lie and whore.”

In the movie, Steele is still hot-headed but more as a screenwriter poisoned by temper and his desperation for another hit. And he is fatally capable of falling in love.

As Megan Abbott sagely noted, Hughes has always been fascinated by the loners who lurk on society’s edge. Hughes’ 1963 thriller The Expendable Man tackled American racism. With In A Lonely Place, she plunges us deep into Dix’s warped psyche. It reminds me somewhat of Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, in that we almost want to root for the guy because he’s so damaged.

Then there’s that feminist note I mentioned. The book, unlike the movie, is a scathing indictment of toxic masculinity.  And while the movie ends on plaintive note, the book is a twisty paen to post-war girl power. Again, I’ll quote Megan Abbott:

Dix’s story reveals the essence of being a violent hater. He tries to control his feelings of sadness and powerlessness, not through self-knowledge or personal change, but by finding someone to blame and erase — in this case, women. But far from bringing him salvation or even relief, his hatred turns out to be the loneliest place of all.

To his mind, the enemy is not the war, its trauma, but what men face upon their return: staid domesticity, the strictures of class, emasculation. And these threats are embodied wholly in women. Women, whose penetrating gazes are far mightier than his sword.

In case you haven’t seen or read either, I won’t give them away the two endings. I’ll leave that for you enjoy.

So, which is better — book or movie? I loved them both, for different reasons. The central theme is there in both, that the lonely place is not without, but within. Well, let’s let Hughes, via Dix Steele, tell you what that feels like:

Fear wasn’t a jagged split of light cleaving you; fear wasn’t a cold fist in your entrails; fear wasn’t something you could face and demolish with your arrogance. Fear was the fog, creeping about you, winding its tendrils about you, seeping into your pores and flesh and bone. Fear was a girl whispering a word over and again, a small word you refused to hear although the whisper was a scream in your ears, a dreadful scream you could never forget. You heard it over and again and the fog was a ripe red veil you could not tear away from your eyes.

In A Lonely Place. Watch it. Read it. You’ll thank me.

By PJ Parrish

I have to vent. I hope you all don’t mind. Maybe this has happened to you.

You crack open a new book. It has stellar reviews. It has been nominated for a couple awards. The author isn’t an established bestseller but has some good bonafides. It has a jazzy cover and great buzz. A good and trusted friend recommended it.

It starts out great. A killer opening line. Snappy dialogue, a likeable flawed protag, great pacing. It’s an amateur sleuth, which is not my favorite cuppa, but I was willing to go for a ride.

Then…

Around page 50, it stalled in mid-air. I gave it another 25 pages, thinking maybe it could glide into to a good landing. Nope. It got worse. I gave up. I was in bed, reading, and threw it across the room, scaring my dog. I think I am most angry at the author for that, waking my chihuahua out of his deep-dog sleep.

What happened? How did a story with such promise fail? I’ve given this a lot of thought because often we as readers focus on what we enjoy about a book, why it entertained us or moved us emotionally, why we remember the characters long after we’ve finished the last chapter. (Gus McCrae lived in my head long after I closed Lonesome Dove). And as writers — and we can’t help ourselves here — we also tend to analyze why a book doesn’t work.

This book, as I said, was well written. But it failed, I finally realized, because the writer was dealing with an amateur sleuth who lacked all the basic, vital elements needed to make the plot succeed. Now, I’m not here today to diss amateur sleuths. I don’t write cozies or amateur sleuths. All of my books, save one, have dealt with private eyes or cops. My stand alone She’s Not There featured a skip tracer but he was a failed private investigator.

My lone amateur protag was my other stand alone, The Killing Song. The protagonist, Matt Owens, is a seasoned investigative reporter who tries to unravel the gruesome murder of his kid sister. I learned a lot about writing an amateur sleuth when dealing with him. It was, in many ways, the hardest book I wrote. That book gave me great respect for those of you who attempt to write an amateur sleuth mystery or thriller. Why? Mainly, because you can’t rely on the usual police procedural process and the oft threadbare tropes.

Here is what I learned about amateur sleuths. Maybe it can help some of you who might be struggling with this.

1. Give them a relevant job or hobby. Unlike a cop or PI, an amateur can’t just stumble upon bodies without a logical reason. You have to ground them in a profession or avocation that grants them access and freedom of movement within the world you’re building. They have to talk to towns people and uncover secrets without raising suspicion. Classic examples — hair salon owner, baker, bed and breakfast owner. Or as Michael Connelly did so splendidly in The Poet, a newspaper reporter.

2. Give them a good reason. Mere curiosity isn’t a strong enough motivation. Without a badge or professonal training, the amateur has to have some sort of invested stakes. In my case, Matt Owens is trying to find his sister’s killer. Maybe your sleuth is a primary suspect and must solve the crime to clear themselves. Maybe someone close to them is wrongly accused. There has to be credible motivation or you’re just being cutesy. Oh, look…the local vicar figured out who killed old Maud! Praise the lord and pour the G&Ts!

3. Give them credible secondary skills. Without law enforcement training, an amateur can look just silly. You have to give them something extra — a grasp of human nature or a background in psychology. The owner of a nursery might know about poisonous plants. Our own Elaine Viets wrote a popular Dead End Job series and got great mileage for her protag Helen Hawthorne, on the run for an ex while she grinds out a living in lousy jobs. (Helen is the main reason I over-tip hotel maids and never use the coffee pots.)

4. Give them a supporting cast. This one’s important because an amateur needs some access to law enforcement, forensics folks, and other crime specialists to be credible. The amateur cannot operate in a vacuum. Maybe your protag has a business partner, or is close friends with the local police chief. And don’t forget to give your hero a sidekick or foil whose prime role in the story is a sounding board for the amateur’s investigations and plain old figuring out stuff.

Back to my character Matt Owens. Yes, he was grounded in the basic skills of any investigative reporter. But I found it wasn’t enough. His deep grief and guilt over his sister’s gruesome murder was blinding him emotionally. Plus early in the story, he realizes the killer might be in France. In my ardor to set a story in Paris, I had painted myself into a real corner. (I am a rabid pantser). He was truly a poisson out of water. So I had him pair up with a biracial Parisienne police woman, who, subject to chauvinsim and racism within her department, has her own demons to tame. Their friction — and then prickly friendship — made for what I consider one of my best stories.

So…back to the book that I threw across the room. Where did it go wrong?

• First, the main character’s motivation is never well defined and when the reason for her wanting to snoop is finally revealed, it comes so late in the book that it makes the protag seem dumb as a bag of rocks. Hello, Marty McFly!
• Second, the protag has no acess to anyone in police work, and in fact she is fatally antagonistic toward law enforcement, especially those leading the murder investigation. She is isolated by her own stubborness and social anxiety.
• Third, she’s unemployed, whiny and a little too concerned about finding a man to bed and to right her life ship.
• Fourth, she is operating in a near emotional vacuum. When she does finally trust a friend to help her solve the murder, the friend comes across as the more vivid character, who gets all the great lines and insights.

Normally I feel bad when I don’t finish a book. But not this time. Life is short, my bookshelf is full and I have miles to go before I sleep. So does my dog.

Postscript. Thanks for letting me vent. I hope those of you who write amateur sleuths will weigh in.

By PJ Parrish

We’re gonna talk a little heresy today. I am here to try to convince you NOT to show but to tell.

I know, I know. We preach here constantly that the ideal method is always to show your character being active, doing something, saying something significant, In our First Page Critiques, we are always harping on this — don’t tell us what is happening. Show us!

To quote Chekov: Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Here’s a bad example of telling:

It was their first date and they had great conversatons at the restaurant. She had barely touched her food, fascinated by his stories about his days working as a chef.

Good rewrite of showing:

“You’ve barely touched your steak tartare,” he said. “I know it’s not –”

“No, no,” she said quickly. “I really like it.” She paused. “It’s just…”

“Go on,” he said. “You won’t hurt my feelings.”

She smiled. “I just hate first dates. They alway feel so weird.”

“I know,” he said, refilling her wine glass. “That’s why I picked Julien’s for ours. I’ve known him for years, so I feel like it’s home here. Julien gave me my first job…as a waiter in a small bistrot in Aix. I was broke, a kid hitching through Provence.”

“I’ve never been to France. I’ve never been out of Michigan.”

“You’d love it there.” He paused. “I’d love to show it to you.”

She laughed. “I trusted you to order me raw steak. I guess I could trust you on that.”

They’re not moving. But dialogue is action. It’s a lot longer. But dialogue is showing. And character is revealed.

But…

Sometimes, it’s better to just tell things. It’s commonly called using narrative. You need to tell (narrate) for various reasons: To bridge scenes more efficiently, summarize irrelevant transitions, speed up time, or to deliver some backstory. And it is an effective tool for pacing beause an entire story written only in dialogue and action scenes doesn’t give your reader a chance to catch their breath.

I realized this recently while doing a rewrite on one of our old unpublished manuscripts. I told you about this a couple weeks ago, that my sister Kelly and I unearthed one of our attempts to get out of our hardboiled lane and try our hand at romantic suspense. We weren’t able to sell that story back then. We thought it still had good bones. But we had made some rookie mistakes. One of them, oddly enough, was not knowing when to TELL instead of wasting precious pages SHOWING. Here’s an actual example from our old manuscript. The first-person protag is an amateur PI, trying to find an abusive husband-suspect of a murdered showgirl named Scarlett. Bear with me, it’s a little wordy. I won’t be offended if you skim-read.

I stopped at the Circle K on Highway 95 and parked beside a pickup truck with a cracked windshield. Inside, the air-conditioning hit me in the face. I walked past a display of beef jerky and potato chips, opened the cooler door, and grabbed a Diet Pepsi.
Back in the car, I twisted the cap off the bottle and took a drink. Then I dug my cell phone out of my purse and called 411.
“Information. What city please?”
“Bullhead City.”
“What listing?”
“Jason Anderson.”
The operator gave me an address on Palm Breeze Drive. I wrote it on the back of an old gas receipt with a pen I found in the glove box.I pulled out of the parking lot and turned left at the first intersection. Two blocks later I realized I’d missed a street and had to double back. I found Palm Breeze Circle first. I drove the entire length of it before realizing none of the addresses matched. I checked the receipt again.
Palm Breeze Drive. Not Circle. Drive.
I made a U-turn and headed back toward the entrance. Five minutes later I found Palm Breeze Lane.
Wrong again.
I drove slowly past mailboxes, reading house numbers. Three hundred. Three hundred twelve. Three hundred twenty-six. None of them were right.
Eventually I found Palm Breeze Court. Not Drive. Court. I smacked the steering wheel.
After another wrong turn and two more loops through the neighborhood, I finally found a faded street sign that read PALM BREEZE DR.
I followed it around a bend and started checking addresses. 431. 432. 433. 459. I pulled to the curb and put the car in park. The trailer was a double-wide with beige aluminum siding. One section of chain-link fence leaned outward as if somebody had backed into it. Plastic toys lay scattered across the dirt yard. A faded tricycle rested on its side near the front steps. A window air-conditioning unit rattled loudly from one wall. I sat there for a moment looking at the place. Then I turned off the engine and got out. Gravel crunched beneath my shoes as I walked up the short path to the front door.
The door was white once, though it had long ago turned gray. Children’s handprints covered the lower half. I raised my hand and knocked. Nothing happened.
I knocked again. A television played somewhere inside. A few seconds later footsteps approached.
The door opened. A woman stood there wearing denim shorts and a Harrah’s Hotel & Casino T-shirt. Her blond hair looked damaged by a bad perm. One side of her face was swollen and purple with bruises.
“Are you Mrs. Anderson?”
She nodded warily.

That’s a heck of a lot of showing. Yeah, it all action. She’s doing something. But it’s long and boring and too descriptive on irrelevant details. Here is how we rewrote it:

I stopped at a Circle K and got a Diet Pepsi. Sitting in the parking lot, I called 411 on my cell, got an address for Jason Anderson on Palm Breeze Drive, and headed out. The blacktop streets circled and twisted and never went anywhere you thought they would. There was a Palm Breeze Circle, a Palm Breeze Lane and a Palm Breeze Court. No palms or breezes though. I cursed myself for being too cheap to have GPS or Internet on my cell. It took me almost thirty minutes to locate the right street in the maze of mobile homes.
I came to a stop at 459 Palm Breeze Drive. It was a dumpy double-wide with a sagging chain-link fence and a dirt yard full of toys. A window unit AC clung to side of the trailer.
I didn’t want to go up there. It looked pretty scary to me, not to mention unhealthy. But I needed to know if Jason Anderson was Scarlett’s Mr. Anderson and there was only one way to find out.
I knocked on a door smeared with children’s hand prints. A woman answered. She wore denim shorts and a T-shirt that said Harrah’s Hotel & Casino. Her hair was blonde, fizzed from a bad perm. She had friendly blue eyes. The entire right side of her thin face was swollen with ugly purple bruises.
I knew I had found the right house.

Better, huh? By condensing her drive, cutting out needless description, and TELLING you what’s happening, it reads more smoothly. Plus her final thought is a great kicker.

So, when should you settle for telling instead of showing? Here’s a few guidelines. Consider using telling to deal with:

1. Passage of Time. Use narrative summary to bypass uneventful gaps, such as a character taking a long trip (like my character), getting over an illness, doing routine stuff, not making progress. TELL us your cop spent three fruitless days on an investigation. Don’t waste time showing us. TELL us a week passed before the suspect was finally nabbed.

2. Change of location. Often you have to move your character around physically. Unless it advances your plot or illuminates character, just tell us it happened. Don’t waste time showing us your girl getting excited, packing hersuitcase, Ubering to the airport, getting on the plane.

Chapter Five

She flew to Paris. He was there, waiting for her in the arrival hall, wearing a funny cap and holding a hand-written sign with her name on it, like he was a taxi driver picking up a fare.

Then return to showing mode, concentrating on the heart of what needs to happen on camera.  Maybe they go to a nice bistrot, share a steak tartare and fall into bed.

You know who’s really grand at telling? Toni Morrison. Check out this condensing of time paragraph from Beloved.

Men and women were moved around like checkers. Anybody Baby Suggs knew, let alone loved, who hadn’t run off or been hanged got rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up, mortgaged, won, stolen, or seized. So Baby’s eight children had six fathers. What she called the nastiness of life was the stock she received upon learning that nobody stopped playing checkers just because the pieces included her children.

3. Delivering backstory. Now, you all know you don’t want too much backstory too early. But it is useful to judiciously drop it in the narrative. Here’s the opening of one of my favorite novels, Middlesex. Jeffrey Eugenides uses telling masterfully thoroughout the entire book.

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenaged boy, in an emergency room near Petosky, Michigan in August of 1974. 

4. Dealing with minor characters. As I often advise in critiques, never give the spotlight to spear carriers. These are the poor souls in operas who stand in the back while the diva belts out the aria. Never waste time or paragraphs describing these folks. Don’t even give them names, unless they will somehow later figure into your plot.

Don’t do this:

The waiter sauntered up to the table. He was reed thin, his black vest hanging on his sunken chest, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled just far enough to reveal a koi fish tattoo.

“Vous avez choisi?” he said flatly.

“We’ll have the steak tartare, please.”

“Non, non,” you do not want that,” the waiter said in broken English. “It is not for Americans”

“I’m Canadian. Bring us the tartare. S’il vous plait.”

Just go with:

After ten minutes arguing with the waiter, their steak tartares finally arrived.

5. Letting the reader fill in the details. Now some of you will disagree with me on this one. But I think it is sometimes quite effective to tell some things via narrative and allow room for the reader’s imagination to fill the gaps. Ernest Hemingway was very good at this. His main tenet was to pare the story down to bare essentials. One of his famous telling opening lines:

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.

The rest of the story is, essentially, showing the reader what this simple narrative opening means, what the old man’s journey was like.

So, in summary, I guess all I am saying is that we shouldn’t be afraid of telling. We shouldn’t allow the drum-beat of show-not-tell to drown out all other possible techniques. Telling — or some might call it exposition — can be very useful. Put simply, exposition is writing that explains. We use it to quickly fill in background information about characters or circumstances. It’s not exciting. Too much and the reader will tune out. But it can be an effective sketching pencil when used with your flashier showing paint brush.

And that, crime dogs, is all I’m going to tell you today.

By PJ Parrish

As many of you regulars know, I have retired from fulltime novel writing. Still keeping my toes in the short fiction waters but the demands of turning out a novel per year (or more) in today’s market just isn’t for me anymore. (No pity sought. I am very happy with this decision!)

But…

My co-author and sister Kelly has talked me into re-looking at an unpublished manuscript we wrote several years ago. It wasn’t part of our series, and was also a departure from our usual hardboiled style. I’d say it was more tilted toward romantic suspense with a high humor quotient. We offered it up to our then-publisher, who turned it down. They said they didn’t know how to market it — that it was “neither fish nor fowl.” It didn’t really fit their definition for what then qualified as romantic suspense. The editor said, “Your heart is too dark.”

Which I took as a compliment. So we filed it away. Until this week, when Kelly opened it up.

Guess what? It didn’t smell. You know, like that chunk of brie that you forgot you had and it turned into an alien life form in the sliced turkey meat refrigerator drawer. In fact, when I started reading it, I thought it was pretty darn good.

Good enough to sell? Who knows? But we’re gonna give it a go. Mainly because I think the market has become more flexible in recent years. I get this notion mainly from the books I have been reading, and because I just finished my 20th year as banquet chair for the Edgar Awards, I have a front row seat to what is fresh in our genre. I’m getting the sense that changes are afoot in crime fiction, a mini-revolution of sorts. The old barriers between hard and soft fiction have become more blurred. I get the impression that readers nowadays are not so hung up on where exactly a title has to be shelved at a bookstore. And the advent of online publishing has created more space for those quirky books that don’t fit easily into categories.

I’ve been doing a lot of research on trends this week and found some interesting commentary. Our genre has long been a fiction cornerstone, but it’s undergoing an evolution. The classic tropes are still with us, but authors now are pushing boundaries, cross-breeding influences and finding new audiences willing to take chances on edgier suspense.

Some new trends I found in my digging:

• Cross-Pollenization. Today’s mysteries now blend with other genres — “mystery-horror,” mystery-sci-fi” and especially mystery-fantasy. The old labels feel stifling. Readers seem to be hungry for richer, more complex books.
• Psychological depth. Modern mysteries appear to be tiling focus more toward character than plot. Writers are plumbing the depths of motivation and the gray areas of morality. Modern mysteries and thrillers explore the human psyche, and feature deep backstories, and complex interpersonal relationships.
• Dark Crozies. Sure, the village amateur sleuth is still popular, but now we’re seeing even cozy writers dealing with more serious themes — family secrets, personal demons, and heavier societal topics such as institutional racism, mental health, and non-traditional chosen families.These new shadows provide compelling contrasts to the lighter settings.
• The Rise of Tech. Another trend is the incorporation of technology in crime narratives, mirroring its pervasive impact on our lives. Tech-savvy detectives and cybercrimes are increasingly featured in plots.
• Fusion of Fact and Fiction. True crime has found a new home within the realm of crime fiction. Inspired by real-life events, these narratives are blurring the line between fact and fiction, giving readers a blend of authenticity and imagination.

I guess this can be scary to us Luddites, purists, and traditionalists. But I think it’s exciting. Our genre, from Poe through Hammitt to Connelly, has undergone change and tumult before. Maybe we are due for another new wave.

As author Valerie Webster puts it, “The landscape of crime fiction has become delightfully unpredictable, reshaping the genre’s expectations and norms. The once rigid boundaries of classic whodunits, thrillers, and noir have transformed into a fluid arena, thriving on audacious experimentation.”

She suggests that crime fiction has evolved from linear “whodunits” to complex psychological narratives that prioritize “whydunits.” The focus has shifted from just solving the puzzle to delving deep into motivations and psychology of the human mind. “Consequently,” she says, “crime fiction’s palette has grown richer, delving into the perpetrator’s psyche and blurring the lines between villain and victim.”

So maybe my book — “niether fish nor fowl” — is actually akin to a turducken. A little weird, not traditional, but definitely juicy and fit for an adventurous palate.

Who knows? Maybe everything in life is just about good timing.

I’m not going to overthink this. I’m going back into the old manuscript this week for some strenuous rewriting.  I’ll keep you posted on what comes out of the oven.

By PJ Parrish

We’ve got an interesting First Page submission this morning. One caveat about your critic here: I am pretty inept when it comes to new technology. If they gave out certificates for technophobia, I’d have one framed on my wall. So I will need you nerdo-types out there to help me out with this one — let me know if I’m being too hard or too soft with our dear writer.

Here’s our submission. BRB FLASH. (I trying…I really am).

UNTITLED

Monday hit like bad coffee: bitter, necessary, unavoidable. Steam curled off my mug and threaded through the air. Across the kitchen, Zach leaned against the sink, tie loosened, expression caught between amusement and dread, the face before a meeting that’ll eat your soul.

“Ready to charm another nest of executives?” He crossed the kitchen, moving like he owned half my life already.

“I was born ready to confront middle management about trust exercises and weaponized slide decks.”

His mouth twitched. “Workplace Solutions. Nobody calls us when things are healthy.”

We’d been partners, professional and otherwise, for a year and a half. Corporate threat assessment paid the mortgage. Noticing what people tried to hide came with the job.

Our bungalow smelled of coffee and deadlines. Tug, our small golden retriever, snored at my feet like a broken motor.

For once the week started without a fire to stomp out. No terrified client calling at dawn, no red-flag emails waiting to detonate. Zach brushed his knuckles along the back of my shoulder on his way past, a small touch that carried the weight of every night we’d fallen asleep in our clothes after a crisis debrief. I leaned into it without thinking, grateful for a morning when my pulse didn’t sprint ahead of me. Maybe we’d earned a stretch of easy cases. We might even sleep in the next weekend, no alarms, no threat assessments, blankets tangled around our legs while Tug nosed in for space.

My phone lit up on the table. Carly. Windblown hair, fierce grin, camera strap slashing across her shoulder. The photo punched light straight through my chest before the ring even finished.

“Morning, sweetheart—”

Her voice came raw, splintered. “Mom, turn on the TV. I’m on my way.”

The air went brittle. I grabbed the remote.

The screen flickered, then locked onto a news crawl:

BREAKING: TIERNEY ROURKE, FOUNDER OF PIVOT POINT NETWORK, SHOT OUTSIDE DOWNTOWN HOTEL.

My heart slammed hard enough to skid my vision.

Sirens bled through the speakers. Police tape snapped in the wind. A reporter leaned into the gale, shouting over it.

Zach set his mug down hard. Coffee sloshed.

The feed rolled clips: Tierney onstage at Northwestern, then on a Milwaukee dais. A tall woman moving with a commanding glide that silenced a room. Then laughing softly on a late-night couch, calm eyes, measured voice, coppery hair caught the light…

_______________

BAK! I’ve made my return. Now, again, I usually don’t like stories that are heavy on tech-stuff. Computers and everything connected with them are like cars to me — I like them user-friendly, devoid of bells and whistles and I just want them to get me where I need to go. BUT…

That shouldn’t be a deterent to me liking a tech-oriented book. I am reading Andy Weir’s The Martian right and man, this thing reads like a NASA launch manual. Does that negate my enjoyment? No, because first, Weir makes me care about the hero and his perilous circumstance. And second — and this is key to my critique here today — Weir is very good at explaining the technical stuff, translating scientific gobbledigook into terms I can grasp.

This is a craft sleight of hand for any writer who is dealing with any kind of arcane subject matter. It’s like handling foreign languages in your book. Yes, you can use French dialogue but you have to find a way to make the reader understand it in context. Example:

“Tu vas me manquer,” she said.

“I’ll miss you, too,” he said.

Thus, if you are writing a story dealing with any kind of modern technology, with jargon, situations, and procedures, you have to be really careful how you handle it. So how did our writer today do?

This is a good submission overall. And the writer does three things well: Gets the dramatic ball rolling quickly with a break in the norm — the phone call about a dead woman who has some connection to the narrator, who I assumed is the main character. Second, the writer doesn’t overwhelm readers too early with information about the character’s tech job. Thrid: In just 400 words or so, the writer gets in a lot of basic plot information:

• The (unammed) narrator is working hard lately on some kind of project to please the corporate suits.
• She is in a relationship with Zach but it is implied things aren’t all lovey-dovey.
• She has a daughter she loves who is a photographer.
• Someone important whom she knows well just got whacked outside a hotel.

Not a bad start. No throat-clearing or background info-dumps. So I think the writer is on the right track. But, as with all of us, there are some things that could be better. Let’s start with the opening paragraph — the coffee metaphor.

You guys know how much a love metaphors. But they are the nail gun of the craft toolbox. They must be handled with the greatest care or you get bump-firing (too many metaphors), uncontrolled recoil (cliches and mixed metaphors) or maybe a barbed rivet in your ring finger (the dreaded tortured metaphor).

I don’t mind that the writer used bad coffee as a metaphor for her mood. We can all relate to that. But the metaphor here goes awry because it is impersonal and confusing.

Monday hit like bad coffee: bitter, necessary, unavoidable. Steam curled off my mug and threaded through the air. Across the kitchen, Zach leaned against the sink, tie loosened, expression caught between amusement and dread, the face before a meeting that’ll eat your soul.

The coffee metaphor needs to relate directly to the character. And can coffee be “unavoidable?” Then we get steam curling and threading, which is soothing, a contradiction of the first line. Also confusing mood: The first paragraph compares this Monday to bitter coffee. Yet later, the heroine thinks that for once, it has been a nice quiet Monday.

Then we get Zach coming out of nowhere with an expression that is amused and yet dread-filled. Again, confusion. Plus, in this CRITICAL OPENING PARAGRAPH — who gets named first and thus steals the spotlight? Not our heroine.

I took a whack at writing a coffee metaphor opening that roughly follows what I think is happening in this scene:

The coffee looked like I felt. Bitter and dark.

And what were all those black flecks? I flipped open the Mr. Coffee lid. Zach had used a paper towel as a filter and the pot was filled with grounds. What a way to start this Monday morning.

I dumped the paper towel of grounds in the sink, put in a real filter and grounds and  stabbed the the brew button. Coffee in my morning — especially this morning — was not a luxury. It was a neccessity. Work at had been overwhelming lately, my days as a cyber threat assessor filled with talking clients off cliffs and ironing the suits in the boardroom. Zach and I had started Work Solutions five years to protect some of biggest companies in the world from data breaches, ransomware, and hacking. Today, I couldn’t even get a damn cup of coffee going.

Zach came into the kitchen, and I could see from his slack face he hadn’t slept.

Now this might not even represent the mood the writer wants to convey for both the heroine and her relationship with Zach. I only show this to demonstrate that the coffee metaphor HAS TO MEAN SOMETHING. Michael Connelly, quoting Joseph Wambaugh, calls this THE TELLING DETAIL. One image, one small thing, can tell volumes about your character. And second, I delayed Zach’s entrance so we could start empathizing with the heroine first.

Small but important aside, dear writer: You must find a way to tell us her name in these first pages. This is a common problem in first person POV. Maybe you do it with dialogue from Zach wherein he addresses her by name?  Maybe her job requires a name badge? Or she can have a thought about it?

The box of business cards was still on the counter where Zach had left them last night, beside our empty champagne glasses. I pulled a card out and stared at the embossed text:

WORK SOLUTIONS

Zach Phillips

Kendra Bradley

The champagne had been to celebrate our first anniversary going into business together. The business cards? That had been my idea. It still bothered me that my name was second.

Again, this is just an example. But note that this sort of “telling detail” of the order of names also illuminates character and her relationship.

One more thing before I shut up. As I said, I am tech-challenged and it took me too long to try to figure out what this woman does for a living. I figured “corporate threat assessment” probably had someting to do with cyber-security. But when I looked it up, I found out it’s an incredibly varied profession. Schools have threat assessments to create active shooter drills. Police departments have threat assessment people to deal with hostages and even domestic abuse. Personnel departments have threat assessment teams to look for potential workplace violence.

So, dear writer…take a moment to go into her thoughts and tell the reader, a little more explicitly, what exactly she does in her work. Nothing long or drawn out, no info-dump. Just a line or two that clues us in.

There’s a new good book called Dead Money by Jakob Kerr. It is about a woman who is an “unofficial solver” for Silicon Valley’s most ruthless venture capitalists. She’s an expert at wrangling rich tech bros but the hotttest CEO has just been murdered, leaving behind billions in “dead money” — frozen in his will. The investigation is going nowhere so the heroine has to step up and find the killer from a suspect list that reads like a who’s-who of Valley players.

I started reading it this week and it reminds me a little of this submission. The murder is handled in a prologue and the heroine is introduced in Chapter 1 with this line:

In MacKenzie Clyde’s experience, there were exactly two ways of dealing with a rich asshole.

Dead Money won the Edgar last week for best first novel.

Addendum: For the writer, I am tacking on a quick line edit (my comments in red). Not alot of line editing is needed. But my takeaway, dear writer, is that you’re on the right track. Lots of good stuff there. So keep going!  And thanks for letting us read your work.

Monday hit like bad coffee: bitter, necessary, unavoidable. Steam curled off my mug and threaded through the air. Across the kitchen, Zach leaned against the sink, tie loosened, expression caught between amusement and dread, the face before a meeting that’ll eat your soul. Bring Zach in later after we’ve connected with your heroine. Never let a named character hog the spotlight. And you have to pin down the MOOD of this scene better — Zach is imparting both casualness, affection AND dread. (of what?) 

“Ready to charm another nest of executives?” He crossed the kitchen, moving like he owned half my life already.

“I was born ready to confront middle management about trust exercises and weaponized slide decks.”

His mouth twitched. “Workplace Solutions. Nobody calls us when things are healthy.” This is your first use of dialogue. Dialogue is precious. Don’t use it for idle morning chitchat, especially this early in your story. And I don’t understand this line: moving like her owned half my life already.  Is she pissed off? Resentful? Again, the mood feels oddly unfocused.

We’d been partners, professional and otherwise, for a year and a half. Corporate threat assessment paid the mortgage. Noticing what people tried to hide came with the job. Use her thoughts to be more specific about what exactly she does for a living. TEACH your readers about what threat assessment is. But keep it short. You can SHOW us in later chapters what it means thru her actions.

Our bungalow smelled of coffee and deadlines. Tug, our small golden retriever, snored at my feet like a broken motor.

For once the week started without a fire to stomp out. So it’s so far so good Monday? No terrified client calling at dawn, no red-flag emails waiting to detonate. Zach brushed his knuckles along the back of my shoulder on his way past, a small touch that carried the weight of every night we’d fallen asleep in our clothes after a crisis debrief. I leaned into it without thinking, grateful for a morning when my pulse didn’t sprint ahead of me. Maybe we’d earned a stretch of easy cases. We might even sleep in the next weekend, no alarms, no threat assessments, blankets tangled around our legs while Tug nosed in for space. Not a bad personal graph here. So things are GOOD between them? Then why earlier did you give her that strange thought that he moved like he owned half her life already? Again, inconsistent mood.

My phone lit up on the table. Carly. Windblown hair, fierce grin, camera strap slashing across her shoulder. The photo punched light straight through my chest before the ring even finished.

Good job upcoming on jacking up the pace of your writing — short punnchy — to match the action!

“Morning, sweetheart—”

Her voice came raw, splintered. “Mom, turn on the TV. I’m on my way.”

The air went brittle. I grabbed the remote. The screen flickered, then locked onto a news crawl:

BREAKING: TIERNEY ROURKE, FOUNDER OF PIVOT POINT NETWORK, SHOT OUTSIDE DOWNTOWN HOTEL.how about HILTON MILWAUKEE CITY CENTER. Or wherever this takes place. That way you’ve gracefully slipped in where this book takes place. 

My heart slammed hard enough to skid my vision. Not sure what “skidded vision” looks like.

Sirens bled through the speakers. Thru the TV? Police tape snapped in the wind. A reporter leaned into the gale, shouting over it.

Zach set his mug down hard. Coffee sloshed. Keep the focus on the TV for now. He can come up to TV later.

The feed rolled clips: Tierney onstage at Northwestern, then on a Milwaukee dais. A tall woman moving with a commanding glide that silenced a room. Then laughing softly on a late-night couch, calm eyes, measured voice, coppery hair caught the light. Nice…good way to tell us the narrator knows this victim, not just professionally but personally. Ups the ante. Well done.

By PJ Parrish

Morning, crime dogs. I’m up in Manhattan today, helping out at the Edgars again. My main duties as banquet chair don’t kick in until Wednesday night. As part of this gig — been doing it for more than 20 years now — I put together the Powerpoint of all the nominated book covers that are then projected on the ballroom’s big screens.

And I gotta tell you, from the reactions I’ve noticed from the nominees, seeing your cover six feet tall can make you feel six feet tall.

I love this job because I get to see all the covers ahead of time. It’s given me, over all these years, a unique viewpoint on trends in design. And there are some really stunning covers this year. So, as usual, I’m here today to share some of the goodies with you.

Some caveats.

• I’m no graphic design expert. Just an old art major who couldn’t get a job.
• This is only a broad sampling.
• And it’s only for mysteries and thrillers, so that might create some distinctions from, say, romance, fantasy, sci-fi and…ahem…literary fiction. (Go ahead. I can take your best shot).

But I can identify some trends within our genre that seem to be sustaining over the recent years. And maybe this is helpful to you if you are designing your own cover or hiring someone to do it. It’s good to know what is working in the market these days.

One is the use of really bold san-serif type faces. This has been strong for a couple years now, but it seems really cemented now. Very few books are using lighter serif fonts. Maybe it arises from the need to stand out graphically on the book shelf and the Amazon pages. Filigree is passe. It feels like books are “shouting” more than ever.

Second: graphics are tending to be simpler, more easily scan-able. Graphics and photos are more stylized or manipulated for greater eye appeal.

Third: Colors are intense and highly saturated. Even when the cover’s mood is noirish or bleak, it is countered with “hotter” type faces. Some examples from Best First:

A sidenote: For All The Other Mothers Hate Me, I like the way the designer carefully positioned each word around the graphic so you focus on the woman’s face and those red shoes.

Here are a few samples from Best Paperback Original:

Note how the colors suggest different moods. I haven’t read any of these but to me the turquoise cover suggests a lighter story tone. Broke Road screams thriller. And The Backwater suggests, to me at least, a quieter, character-driven story. I could be wrong but that is what good cover design is all about — it conveys at a glance the mood, the tone, the themes of your story.

The Best Novel covers, to a one, all adhere to the bold sans-serif look. Here’s a few:

Fagin The Thief is interesting in that it is obviously a historical. In recent years, historicals tended to use softer, less in-your-face type, adhering to the idea that archaic looking type faces signaled the book took place in the past. Looks like that’s now “old hat.” Of course, if you’re a mega-bestseller like Robert Crais, well, your name gets star treatment. I like the quiet yet foreboding ambiance of The Inheritance. If you look closely, something is clearly not right between that trio sitting at the window. To my eye, an effective conveyance of mood.

Another on-going trend is the use of bold fonts that mimic free-drawn type faces. This was strong in Young Adult this year:

In the Best Juvenile nominees, however, the covers are staying traditional, with the busy, joyful and decidedly candy-store styles we’ve come to expect:

With one exception:

I have to confess, this is one of my favorites. Such graphic impact. And again, that bold san-serif font. More “young adult” looking than I’ve seen in this category.

In non-fiction categories, trends seem to be more static. Often because the titles are so darn long (many with subtitles) that there’s not much room for graphic flights of fancy. Plus, the subject matter is mood-serious. A few standouts from True Crime, again all sans-serif.

And some examples from Best Critical/Biographical. Again, note the lack of serif, the boldness. And how much title/subtitle type they’ve managed to get on those covers!

BUT…again, there is always an exception. It comes out of the Best Critical/Biographical, where normally, the designers must cram a title, a subtitle, author name and some kind of graphic onto very limited space. This gets my nod for the most striking cover of any nominated book this year:

Such mood, such simplicity. Edgar Allen Poe preached what he called “unity of effect.” Every sentence, every detail has to be used to create a single, intense emotional effect. That’s a good rule for any of you out there who are designing your own covers or hiring someone to do it for you.

I think Poe himself would have liked this one.

I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? — Terry Pratchett

By PJ Parrish

A while back, I blogged here about a writer from one of my workshops named Jess who was having trouble taming her backstory. It was engulfing her main plot and you guys weighed in and helped her straighten things out. Heard back from her this past week and while things are going better, she still is having a hard time getting a firm grip on her plot.

I told her to go back in our recent archives and read Lindsey Hughes’ excellent post on Cause and Effect. In a nutshell, to quote:

Cause and Effect: The Story Chain Reaction

A story is not just a string of things that happen. A story is a chain reaction.

This happens, therefore that happens.

• A character makes a choice, therefore something changes.
• A secret is revealed, therefore a relationship blows up.
• A plan fails, therefore the hero has to try something riskier, scarier, or stupider.

I thought Lindsey’s post was very revealing for helping anyone who is struggling to get their plot under control. Click here to read the whole thing. But it got me to thinking about back copy. You know, the pithy summary of a book that usually appears on the dust jacket,

So let me ask you today: Can you boil down your story in three or four graphs?

But why should I? (I can hear you taunting me.)

Well, if you’re self publishing, you have to come up wtih a succint and tantalyzing summary of your book to post on Amazon or on the back of your tree book. Or maybe you’re going to a conference and want to do a five-minute pitch to an editor. Or you’re querying an agent and you want to seduce him into reading your manuscript.

BUT…more to the point of this post today: You’ve driven your plot ball into the fescue and can’t see a clear path out. You need to re-focus your story. There is nothing more eye-opening than trying to condense the essence of your story down to a couple paragraphs that employ cause and effect. And as Lindsey suggests in her post, it can help you stop just ambling around and set you on the true plot path again.

I’m actually good at boiling down a story, probably because I once made my living writing newspaper headlines. It’s no accident that some pretty good novelists — Fay Weldon, Joseph Heller, Don Delillo — started out in the ad industry. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote streetcar sign slogans for $35 a week. Dorothy Sayers made a name for herself writing a mustard slogan before she got hot with crime novels. Salman Rushdie, who wrote ad copy while trying to finish his first novel, recalls taking a test for the J. Walter Thompson agency where, “they asked you to imagine that you met a Martian who mysteriously spoke English and you had to explain to them in less than 100 words how to make toast.”

So whenever I read good back copy, I get all a-tingly. Like this one:

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones and when the snow falls it is gray. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food – and each other.

That’s on the back of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It’s good because it captures not just the plot but also mimics style and mood of the novel.

On the flip side, there’s a lot of bad back copy out there. In the New York Times book review yesterday, there was an ad for a DIY “publisher.” Some sample “back copy”:

In the summer of 1863, an eighteen-year-old Amish farm boy feels trapped between his religious heritage and his fascination with the world outside his small Pennsylvania town. His solution is to leave home. And so begins his unforgettable adventure that will change his life forever.

 

Abused and mistreated, Jane grew up in the field of restraints which she calls a prison. And she hopes there is still an ounce of sanity left in her which leaves her with the choice of breaking away from the [title redacted].

 

[Name redacted] returns from the war minus a a leg and discovers that his wife has left him and his engineering business has shut down. Forced to re-invent his life, he and his family battle to overcome war’s damage.

None of these entice readers or capture the tone or mood of the books. They are wordy (“feels trapped”), filled with cliches (“unforgettable adventure”), vague on plot points, filled with generalities (“struggle to cope”), confusing, and devoid of any hint of conflict or suspense. And I suspect, that if I read any of these novels, they might all suffer from unfocused, meandering plots.

There’s no therefore there.

So, let me ask you again. Can you boil your book down to three or four graphs? Does your back copy reflect CAUSE AND EFFECT?  Again, to get a grasp on your plot, as Lindsey said, you must:

• Think dominoes, not beads on a string. A weak plot is often a bead necklace. Pretty scenes, one after another, threaded together because they all belong to the same story.
• A strong plot is a domino line. Each piece knocks into the next.

In back copy, you’ll often see certain trigger words used to set up the domino effect. Therefore is a fine word — nice for Descarte and Shakespeare — but a little high-falutin for us mere crime dogs. But…

BUT is a good alternative: Look at all the BUTS I have highlighted here in back copy I found on my shelf:

The Reverend Ronald Kemp came to the East End of London with definite ideas of right and wrong, which was only fitting for a minister of God. BUT the people of the East End had a few ideas of their own and the Rev. Kemp quickly finds his world torn asunder. — John Creasey’s Parson With a Punch:

FBI agent Kelly Jones has worked on many disturbing cases in her career, BUT nothing like this. A mass grave site unearthed on the Appalachian Trail puts Kelly at the head of an investigation that crosses the line…Assisted by law enforcement from two states, Kelly searches for the killers. BUT as darkness falls, another victim is taken and Kelly must race to save him before he joins the rest…in the boneyard. — Michele Gagnon’s Bone Yard:

Mickey Haller gets the text, “Call me ASAP – 187,” and the California penal code for murder immediately gets his attention. Murder cases have the highest stakes and the biggest paydays, and they always mean Haller has to be at the top of his game. BUT when Mickey learns that the victim was his own former client, a prostitute he thought he had rescued and put on the straight and narrow path, he knows he is on the hook for this one. — Michael Connelly

Here’s back copy for Sherrilyn Kenyon that’s corny as all get out but it it sets up some nice dominos:

He is solitude. He is darkness. He is the ruler of the night. Yet Kyrian of Thrace has just woken up handcuffed to his worst nightmare: An accountant. Worse, she’s being hunted by one of the most lethal vampires out there. And if Amanda Devereaux goes down, then he does too. BUT it’s not just their lives that are hanging in the balance. Kyrian and Amanda are all that stands between humanity and oblivion.

The buts set up the dominos.

As I was finishing this up, my student Jess emailed me. She read Lindsey’s post on CAUSE AND EFFECT and is excited to go back and give it another go. She is looking to jettison distracting subplots, But more important, she’s looking for missing buts.

It isn’t easy. But it can mean the difference between a meandering muddy brook and a clear swift-flowing river. Thanks for the piggyback ride, Lindsey.

Postscript: It took me a while but I found the story behind Dorothy L. Sayer’s mustard slogan.While working for S.H. Benson’s agency in the 1920s, Sayers created the hugely popular “Mustard Club” campaign for Colman’s Mustard. Her campaign featured the ubiquitous slogan “Has Father Joined the Mustard Club?”. She also created the “Three Mustardeers” for the brand.

By PJ Parrish

It’s awards season! Sunday was the Oscars. Won’t give you any opinions on winners and losers here. Just wanted to say I loved Jessie Buckley’s (Hamnet) acceptance speech: “Mom. Dad, thank you for teaching us to dream and to never be defined by expectations.”

Well said.

I’ve been thinking about awards this week because I am gearing up for my annual gig as chairman of the Edgar Awards banquet for Mystery Writers of America. I edit the program book every year, and we always come up with a theme. This year we’re paying tribute to the Best First Novels.

Why? Well, this year is the 80th anniversary of the Edgar. The only category that first year was Best First and the prize was taken home by Julius Fast for Watchful At Night.

Many freshman writers went on to become best-selling authors. Among the big names who hit a homer at their first at-bat are Patricia Highsmith, Ira Levin, Donald Westlake, Jonathan Kellerman, Stuart Woods, Martin Cruz Smith, Gillian Flynn, C.J. Box, Janet Evanovich, Michael Connelly, Patricia Cornwell, Walter Mosley, and Tana French. But if you go back and read all 80 winners (click here), you’ll find many more names that were never lit up in neon. Or those writers whose careers never even made it to cruising altitude.

Such is the capricious nature of winning an award. It can mean everything. It can mean nothing.

For our program book, we asked first novel winners to tell us what it meant to them. What it felt like. What it did for their careers. I wish I could share their answers here (can’t devulge pre-banquet night) because they are poignant and sometimes very funny. What each shares, however, is a humility and very human-ness. As one winner put it, getting that Edgar felt personal and communal all at the same time.

One of my favorite episodes of the TV show Frazier is the one where Frazier is nominated for the Seebee Award, given out to Seattle’s best broadcasters. Frazier tries to be above it all, but he just can’t. He wants to win, dammit! But at the banquet, he finds out he is up against the aging icon Fletcher Grey. Fletcher has been nominated 11 times in a row and always lost. Fletcher’s date is his 84-year-old mother who has flown in from Scottsdale — for the 11th straight year. Fletcher is also retiring. Frazier tells his producer Roz, “if we win, they’ll string us up.” Roz says, “I don’t care. I’d crawl over his mother to win this award!”

Frazier loses, of course. His agent Beebee deserts him. Roz gets drunk on Pink Ladies.

Sounds like a couple award banquets I’ve been to. My sister Kelly and I have been lucky to have been nominated for some awards over the decades, and we’ve won a couple. Yeah, yeah, It is always an honor to be nominated. But I can’t lie — it bites to lose. I once saw a nominee’s wife burst into tears when her husband lost.

In 2002 we were nominated for the Edgar. We went to the banquet at the Hyatt. Got our hair done and put on sparkly dresses. Kelly’s son Robert rented a tux. I stayed stone-cold sober in the bar before. As soon as they didn’t call our name, I grabbed the wine bottle out of my editor’s hand.

Fast forward five years to the International Thriller Writers banquet. I went with no expectations. I sat between my agent and Ali Karem but I was filled with dread. Kelly couldn’t make it, so I felt pretty alone, despite all the good vibes from fellow authors. We might write hardboiled, but I am not. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I bolted for the lobby.

Jim Fusilli was standing there and barred my way and put an arm around my shoulders.  Each nominee was announced by reading the first line of their book. Ours is “The Christmas lights were already up.” I remember thinking, “God, that sucks.”

I heard the title of our book announced as the winner. I started crying. I don’t remember what I said on stage. This is what SHOULD have said:

“Thank you so much for this great honor. First, I want to thank the ITW judges who put their careers on hold for months to read hundreds of books. Second, I want to thank my fellow nominees. I am honored to have my book mentioned among their fine works. Third, I want to thank my editor who….”

This is what was REALLY in my head:

“God, I can’t believe I am crying! How pathetic and needy! Where’s the friggin’ stairs? I can’t see! Who is that man at the podium? Shit, I forget his name! THE LIGHTS! I CAN’T SEE ANYTHING! Do I have lettuce on my teeth? Agent…mention her name. My bra is showing, DON’T PULL AT YOUR BRA!! He’s handing it to me. Jesus, it’s heavy…don’t drop it…don’t drop it…don’t drop it. Say something nice about the other nominees! Can’t…can’t…can’t remember their names. YOU TWIT! You just sat on a panel with TWO of them this morning! Wait, wait…is it Paul LeVEEN or Paul LeVINE??? Forget it…buy them a drink later. I should have gone to the hairdresser before I left home. My roots are showing. JESUS! THE LIGHTS! Stop talking now…you’re rambling, you ass…Okay, leaving now. TAKE THE AWARD! Good grief…I’m here in New York City wearing Nine West because I was too cheap to spring for those black Blahniks at Off Fifth. Dear God, just let me just off this stage so I can get to the john and pull up my Spanx….

I made it off the stage okay. Here is the photo to prove it:

Did it change things for me? Not really. I put the award on my shelf, next to my ribbon for winning an ax-throwing contest in Maine. My career continued on its nice glide path. I wrote more books, I made a little money. But I do remember one thing very distinctly that night. I was at a low point in my writing back then, feeling a little discouraged because the WIP was stalled and I wasn’t getting much joy from the writing process itself. I wasn’t feeling that feeling James wrote about this past Sunday. (click here). The world wasn’t burning through me.

But my peers gave me a gift that night — a nudge to keep going. So maybe that’s what this award thing is — just a kick in the Spanx of simple validation.

Keep going, crime dogs. Get that book out of you and out there. Somebody out there will like you. They will really like you.