By PJ Parrish

I’m going to tell tales out of school today. About some of the dumbest mistakes I’ve made in trying to write. Some mistakes died sad deaths in my C-drives. Others got fixed before I made a fool of myself in print. Maybe my confession here will help keep you on the righteous path.

Digression alert: I love idioms. I love their silliness, their creativity, their origins, and the slivers of insight within them. As you’ve read here, I’m trying to bone up on my French via online Babbel courses and yesterday’s lesson was idioms. La fin des haricots (the end of the beans) means “Well, that’s over!” And if you want to say someone is knee-high to a grasshopper, it’s haut comme trois pommes. As high as three apples. To have a hangover is avoir la gueule de bois — to have a wooden face.

So, telling tales out of school? It dates back to 1530, appearing in William Tindale’s The Practyse of Prelates: “What cometh once in may never out, for fear of telling tales out of school.”  It used to refer to kids gossiping about what they heard at school, but now we use it mean divulging secret information.

The tales I am going to tell out of school today all involve mistakes my sister Kelly and I made in our writing journey. Digression two: One of my favorite I Love Lucy episodes is “Lucy Writes A Novel.” She sends it off to a publisher, and he shows up with a check wanting to buy her book. But he wants to change the title to “Don’t Let This Happen To You!”

So pay attention, crime dogs. Don’t let any of these mistakes happen to you.

Introducing Too Many Characters Too Soon.

My sister’s first stab at a novel was a long historical family saga set in the Nevada casino world. She was working in the business back then and had tons of stories, great characters, and had boned up on her history of the birth of gambling. Her first chapter set-up was terrific — the offspring and four ex-wives of a rich patriarch (think Steve Wynn) are gathered at his gravesite at dawn as the lights of the Strip blink off in the distance.  Everyone there has a reason to hate the guy and an even better reason to kill him. Kelly’s mistake? She introduced every single one of the family members, giving each a name, thoughts, dialogue. I think I counted 32 characters in the first ten pages.

The lesson: Don’t flood your stage in the opening moments of act 1. It confuses the reader, makes them feel stupid, like they need a family tree. Give your reader a couple characters to digest at most. Please don’t make their names sound alike. And never wait too long to introduce your hero. From the get-go, readers search for characters to invest their emotions in, and you run the risk of them attaching to what I call a “false hero” if you’re not careful.

Nothing Happens

Flash back to 1989. Miami Vice is on TV and I’m trying to make the switch to mysteries after getting dropped as a romance writer. I had a terrific idea for a character — the lone woman detective working in the homicide division of the Miami PD. Lots of sexism, tokenism, testosterone poisoning. And to make her baggage even heavier, her husband and daughter died in a horrible boat crash in Biscayne Bay (that may have been a revenge murder for her busting a bad guy).  My first chapter opens with my heroine fishing at dusk in the Everglades. And she’s thinking. And remembering. And mourning. And thinking. And sighing. End of chapter. My agent, after reading it, told me to go home and read some Michael Connelly and PJ James.

The lesson? We belabor it here, especially James: Get your characters UP AND DOING in the opening moments. The thinking, remembering, musing, pondering, reflecting….save it for later. Please. I’m begging you. Something must happen. Action, then reaction. Oh, and don’t try to follow the zeitgeist — Miami Vice went off the air before I finished my first draft.

Larding In Backstory

Back to the casino…Kelly and I wanted to take a break from our Louis Kincaid series and we had an idea for this crusty-but-lovable character named Bailey. (The crusty-but-lovable bit should have been our first warning.) She’s a housewife who falls into an amateur detective gig at a run-down Nevada casino owned by her crusty-but-lovable father. We had a pretty good opening graph:

It’s not easy starting your life over when people think you murdered your husband and got away with it. Especially in a place like Morning Sun, Iowa.

But then we got mired in backstory. This is what followed:

The folks in Morning Sun — there’s only about four hundred of them — don’t have much tolerance for weird people, especially a rattlebrained housewife who tries to bail out of her marriage after a couple of little marital “tiffs.”

But I was born and bred in Morning Sun, and on that Fourth of July when my husband Brad came at me with the Ginsu knife we had just bought off a late-night infomercial, I didn’t figure I had a lot of options.

The police believed I killed him on purpose. My neighbors believed the police. My relatives believed the neighbors. But fortunately for me, the jury didn’t believe any of them.

So I walked. Actually, I ran. Three thousand miles to be exact, all the way to Las Vegas. I had to get out of Morning Sun and I figured Las Vegas was a good place to reinvent myself. It’s the kind of town where everyone takes big chances. It’s the kind of place where dwelling on the past is about the only thing that’s really a sin.

Okay, it’s not horrible, but it wasn’t good enough to get published. Our publisher passed. Our agent shopped it around and everyone passed. This, after we had made the New York Times list with our regular series. Why? Because it’s all backstory, it’s all telling. And it goes on this way for almost the entire first chapter. Nothing is happening in the present. Bailey is telling us her past rather than letting it emerge organically as the plot — plot? Now there’s a concept! — begins to unfurl. We tried to rewrite and have something happen earlier — a showgirl eventually falls off the casino tower. But it was bogged down with backstory and thus fatally flawed.

Don’t Take The Weapon Out Of Your Hero’s Hand

Thank God this mistake didn’t make it into print. And I owe it all to my sister’s blood lust. We’re racing to the finish line on our fourth Louis Kincaid mystery Thicker Than Water. We’re riding something of a wave because our second book got an Edgar nomination, and our third, Paint It Black was the one that got us on the Times list and got us nominated for the Shamus and Anthony. Thicker is what I call our “quiet” mystery, since it’s about a cold case and no one dies in the present. It’s heavy on character development, awash in nefarious lawyers and twisted family secrets. I treasure the review of it Ed Gorman gave us in Mystery Scene: “The quiet sadness that underpins it all really got to me, the way Ross Macdonald always does.”

So what was our mistake? In the climax, our hero Louis confronts the villain in a cemetery at the grave of the cold-case dead girl. Louis knows the guy killed her but can’t prove it. The guy, being a slimy but slick lawyer, knows Louis can’t prove it. In the first draft, Louis has to let him just…walk away.

Kelly wouldn’t sit for it. I still remember her words: “He’s has to DO something! Louis would never let him get away with this!” She was right, of course. I had taken the weapon out of Louis’s hands. There was no justice done, no circle closed. Yes, it was true to life, but it felt lifeless. We went back into the plot, rewrote the entire book, and finally figured out a twist that allowed Louis to nail the bad guy through some nifty legal machinations. But that still wasn’t enough for Kelly. Here’s how the conversation went when we got to that grave scene the second time:

“Louis can’t just walk away,” she said.

“But he’s got the evidence on the guy now. The guy’s going to prison,” I said.

“I don’t like it.”

“It’s reality.”

“I don’t care. I’m going to have Louis beat the sh– out of him first.”

And she did. We spent 300 pages building intense sympathy for a dead girl. The guy couldn’t walk away untouched. So Louis lost his temper and wailed on him. The scene gave an emotional catharsis that was missing.

The lesson: Never let your hero fall into passivity. You don’t have to do what we did, but always look for opportunities in your plot to make your protag sound clever, find a special clue, make a vital connection or, literally use the weapon. I’ve seen this flaw in many manuscripts I’ve critiqued wherein a writer allows a secondary character, usually a colorful sidekick, to outshine the hero. Yes, your hero needs to be human and make mistakes. But don’t ever let him or her be a bystander in your plot parade.

Postscript. I was originally going to call this Ten Mistakes That Will Doom Your Novel. I have enough material, believe me. I didn’t even get to my awful attempts at erotica. But I’ve flapped my gums enough for today. Good writing!

By PJ Parrish

Good day, crime dogs. We have an interesting First Pager today. I am going in cold with this one so as to not prejudice you with any preludes. Your first impressions are valuable here, so please weigh in for our writer. No title. But the submitter alerts us that we are in the genre of “Historical Romantic Suspense.”

Chapter One. November, 1954

Her picture was in the paper today.

I would have known her anywhere. Fair hair, tucked neatly under her hat. The same pearls around her delicate neck. A chic woolen suit topped by a short jacket. White gloves. A smile of pure joy on her face. She strode forward with the same confident, take-on-the-world step I once admired so much, a woman ready to cast the old order aside and charge into the future.

Once we had charged into that future together. Then it arrived, rotten with terror and torture and murder. Did she truly not see that? Was it possible she still didn’t? Was that why, even now, she could look so proud of the man beside her?

There was no doubt that the world was still fighting a war for the future. There was also no doubt, or at least not much doubt, that I had chosen the losing side.

I no longer fight for the future. Now I fight only for my family.

Aside from our shared lofty goal of changing the world, we couldn’t have been more different. She was American born; we were immigrants. Her family were genteelly Protestant; mine were Russian Jews. She was private schools, Bryn Mawr, and Yale; I grew up in my father’s candy store, helping out behind the counter .

None of that mattered. We were confidantes, soul mates.

Because who else could understand our lives? Who else knew the dreams and the fears, the resolute denial of the sickening rumors? How could any outsider understand what that cost us?

Then everything changed. A chasm opened between us that could never be breached.
For years there was a hole in my heart where Priscilla used to be. Was it still there?
The picture again. There was her handsome husband, towering over his petite wife. The only hint of the years he had been away was he was a shade thinner. Otherwise, he looked the same. The same boyish charm, the same disarming smile he had flashed at the jury at every opportunity during the trial.

He wore a broad-brimmed fedora, a natty tweed coat, a white scarf round his neck; trousers perfectly creased, shoes buffed to a high shine. A gloved hand under his wife’s arm. He could have been walking out of the pages of Esquire.

He was walking out of federal prison.

__________________________________

Whenever I approach a First Pager, I try to do my first read purely as a reader who might have picked up the book in a store and is reading the opening pages to see if I want to buy the book. Yes, I do this in real life. If there’s enough craft and a certain je ne sais quoi I take the book home, always with a hopeful heart.

I’m drawn to characters with damaged pasts, so I liked this at first blush. I thought, well, it’s a little slow and I don’t mind slow, but I’m not sure it has that intangible “I don’t know what” distinctive quality that will make me want to go on. Let me try to be more precise.

The writing here is clean and solid. The opening line is interesting in that it promises at least an emotional reaction from the narrator. But then what follows it essentially backstory. A lot of it. And it’s all in a style of “telling.”  The narrator is telling us what happened — that some major event caused a schism in their relationship, that the narrator no longer feels compelled to “fight,” that there is a hole in his/her heart where his friend used to be — or is there?

More backstory “telling” is slipped in with this paragraph: “She was American born; we were immigrants. Her family were genteelly Protestant; mine were Russian Jews. She was private schools, Bryn Mawr, and Yale; I grew up in my father’s candy store, helping out behind the counter.”

In short, the entire opening is one moment of present-time action: Someone is looking at a photograph in a newspaper of what I think is an ex-lover with her ex-con husband. The rest is all the narrator thinking, remembering, musing, lamenting. Nothing is happening. There is no sense of being grounded in any present-time reality. Everything is past-tense. By the time I got to the line about the man coming out of federal prison, I was losing interest.

There are other issues, I think.

I can’t tell the gender of the narrator. It feels like a man, given the somewhat generic description of the photograph of Priscilla — “chic suit, white gloves, pearls, fair hair tucked neatly under a hat.”  So I am thinking that Priscilla is a lost love. But then we get this line: “She strode forward with the same confident, take-on-the-world step I once admired so much.”  That sounds like a friend remembering a girlfriend. So I then wondered if the narrator was female. Especially since we get this line soon after: “We were confidantes.” Which signals two females.  (It’s confidants if a man is the narrator but this could just be a typo.)

Regardless, the uncertainty about the narrator’s emotions toward Priscilla — not fully romantic, not clearly friendship — confused me. I can tell he/she is unhappy and maybe rueful. But the tone is like a weak radio signal, wavering annoyingly just beyond my ear.

Another thing that confused me. The writer gives us a time tag of November 1954. Then devotes a good portion of the backstory and thoughts to some crisis:

Then it arrived, rotten with terror and torture and murder. Did she truly not see that? Was it possible she still didn’t? Was that why, even now, she could look so proud of the man beside her?

There was no doubt that the world was still fighting a war for the future. There was also no doubt, or at least not much doubt, that I had chosen the losing side.

Terror, torture and murder. That implies war. And what to make of this line: “There was no doubt that the world was still fighting a war for the future. The world is still at war in 1954? The Cold War between the U.S. and Russia? Confusing.

So, the set-up of someone seeing an old flame/friend’s photo in a newspaper isn’t bad. The writing is solid if a bit bland. I’d like the writer to try harder to insert what we here at TKZ call “the telling detail,”  unique description that paints a picture of your characters and your setting. (The latter, by the way, is non-existent. Where are we?) See line edit for examples of this.

Final point: The heavy backstory has your story stuck in neutral gear. Also, the confusion created by the coyness of the style is off-putting to me. Key: what exactly is the relationship between Priscilla and the unnamed narrator? Why withhold this? Your back copy will spill the beans anyway.  As an exercise, try to write your back copy:

Jack Steiner lost the love of his life in the gray chaos of post-war London. But when he sees Priscilla’s photograph in a New York newspaper twenty years later…

Janice Steiner never forgot her first love and the ugly rumors that tore them apart. But when she sees a photograph of Priscilla with her husband….

As we often say here, there is a big important difference between artfully withholding details from the reader to create suspense and being obtuse. And keep in mind, dear writer, even in romantic suspense, something needs to happen to someone soon. Apologies to Joseph Heller.

Let me do a quick line edit. My comments in red:

Her picture was in the paper today. If you had told me what newspaper, you’d do a big favor and tell us where we are geographically. Her picture was in the New York Herald Tribune today. 

I would have known her anywhere. Suggestion: Ten years had passed since I last saw her, but I would have known here anywhere. We need better grounding in time. Fair hair, tucked neatly under her hat. The same pearls around her delicate neck. A chic woolen suit topped by a short jacket. White gloves. A smile of pure joy on her face. She strode forward a photo can’t show a present-tense action. Perhaps: “The photograph had caught her in confident mid-stride….with the same confident, take-on-the-world step I once admired so much, a woman ready to cast the old order aside and charge into the future.

Once we had charged into that future together. Then it arrived, is “it” the future? rotten with terror and torture and murder. Did she truly not see that? What does this refer to? Because you write this in the present tense, it implies the narrator is seeing something in the photograph. Or do you mean to say: “Had she truly not seen what happened? Confusing. Was it possible she still didn’t? Was that why, even now, she could look so proud of the man beside her? I like this line, especially since we later learn hubbie’s been in federal prison. 

There was no doubt that the world was still fighting a war for the future. There was also no doubt, or at least not much doubt, that I had chosen the losing side. Again, I find this confusing. What war? 

I no longer fight for the future. Now I fight only for my family.

Aside from our shared lofty goal of changing the world, This is somewhat of a non sequitur transition. This line about the family is interesting but it feels tacked on considering his/her next thoughts. we couldn’t have been more different. She was American born; we were immigrants. Her family were genteelly Protestant; mine were Russian Jews. She was private schools, Bryn Mawr, and Yale; I grew up in my father’s candy store on Orchard Street (lower east side NYC or wherever it was)…always be alert for places to drop in TELLING DETAILS. Your opening could use some, helping out behind the counter.

None of that mattered. We were confidantes, soul mates. Again, this feels like friends, not lovers. 

Because who else could understand our lives? Who else knew the dreams and the fears, the resolute denial of the sickening rumors? How could any outsider understand what that cost us? Shades of Lillian Hellman’s “The Children’s Hour.” Are we in Martha and Karen territory here?  

Then everything changed. A chasm opened between us that could never be breached.
For years there was a hole in my heart where Priscilla used to be. Was it still there?

The picture again. There was her handsome husband, towering over his petite wife. The only hint of the years how many? We really need a few concrete detailshe had been away was he was a shade thinner. Otherwise, he looked the same. The same boyish charm, cliche. And “charm” isn’t the right word for a photograph. the same disarming smile he had flashed at the jury at every opportunity during the trial.

He wore a broad-brimmed fedora, a natty tweed coat, a white scarf round his neck; trousers perfectly creased, shoes buffed to a high shine. A gloved hand under his wife’s arm. He could have been walking out of the pages of Esquire.

He was walking out of federal prison. Nice kicker line. But you could slip in another grounding location detail by telling us which one. We’re floating in the geographic ether here.  

As I said, I like certain things about this opening. But it could do with some good details to make it feel less generic and more emotionally involving. And, dear writer, I think you’d be well served to not hold your readers at such arm’s length, especially working in your chosen sub-genre. The best definition I’ve heard of romantic suspense is “a story that is driven by the threat of danger and the promise of romance.” In the best ones, there is a tension between the two. The protagonist is in danger (or someone she or he loves). The romance builds at the same time as the jeopardy, until both reach a crescendo. Mystery solved, bad guy defeated and the main characters live happily ever after.

Sound simple? Ha. This is why my own efforts at romantic-suspense have never seen the light of day. I sense you can tell a good story, dear writer. Clear up the confusion, tell us where we are, jump into your story with more heart and gusto and get things moving. Thanks for sharing with us.

By PJ Parrish

Today I want to talk about sex. The dirty deed. The two-backed beast. The Nasty. Le Freak. Riding the Pony. Rock ‘n’ Rolling. Aardvarking. Boinking. Shagging. Doing the No-Pants Dance.

And I want to ask just one question: Why are crime writers such wusses when it comes to sex?

I had to lay aside a nice post I had started for today about settings, and now I have to talk about sex because of the current book I am reading. It’s by a well-known thriller writer and I was having a good time with it until last night. That’s when he got to the sex scene. It was awful. No, worse than awful. I laughed. And now I am having trouble getting back in the mood. So forgive my testiness today.

What the heck happens to some writers when they have to write about sex?

l tell you what I think happens. They get as self-conscious as pimply prom dates. Crime writers can meet murder head on and not flinch, can even render death poetic. But faced with having to describe copulation — especially in the context of — gasp! relationships — they can turn out the most dreadful, unbelievable, embarrassing treacle.

Let’s crack open a page here:

“But the hand was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it has the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns — oh God, it was not just at the border where the flesh of the breast joins the pectoral sheath of the chest — no, the hand was cupping her entire right — Now!”

That wasn’t from the book I was reading last night. That writer shall remain nameless. I might have to face him someday in the Bouchercon bar. That passage above was written by Tom Wolfe in I am Charlotte Simmons.

Otorhinolaryngological caverns? Did this guy EVER get laid?

At the risk of being offensive here, I will suggest that it is usually the guys who fall apart when sex rears its ugly head in their books. Not that women crime writers haven’t turned out some leaden bedroom prose. But I’m thinking it might have something to do with the “guy relationship” thing. Male crime writers tend to get squeamish when they have to write about the emotional stuff. So when the impulses of the heart (or even just loins) propel the hero(ine) into bed, things get icky fast. And guys, especially thriller writer guys, tend to chomp onto the cliches like a rabid Jack Russell. Like: Why is the woman always hot to trot with no warmup? (This was the basic problem with the book I was reading last night).

Believe me, I sympathize with any of you who have problems writing sex scenes. Before I turned to writing mysteries, I used to write what in the Eighties was euphemistically called Women’s Contemporary Fiction. (Big fat sagas about internecine family intrigue with sex scenes). I became pretty good at sex, if I do say so myself. So I know how hard it is to write about it without looking silly. For starters, you have get your folks out of their clothes. And then you have to get the plumbing connections right. And then — and here’s where most writers lose it — you might have to write dialogue that doesn’t sound like two four-year-olds making mud pies.

Okay, I have a confession to make. For six books into our series, we had managed to avoid our hero Louis Kincaid having sex, probably on purpose. Once, I even got a fan letter from a lady in Maine asking me why Louis never had sex. But in A Killing Rain, he fell in love with a woman, Joe Frye, and it was finally time for Louis to get some. My co-author sister Kelly and I knew the scene was coming, and we decided it had to be on camera. No wussy fade to black this time. So there we were, sitting in my office with our Ferrante and Teicher computers. I had drawn duty to write the sex scene, but man, I just couldn’t do it. It just seemed so darn…yucky, given our hardboiled style. But there was Louis and his woman and it was my duty to light their fire. And I froze.

Writing together in my office. Not sure if this was the actual day of the sex scene but from the look on my face, it probably was.

Kelly, hearing no typing, turned and asked, “Okay, what is it now?”
“I can’t do this. I got them out on the dark porch. You take it.”
So we switched chairs and Kelly gave it a go. After a moment, I realized I hadn’t heard any typing. “What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I got their clothes half off. You take it.”
I rolled back and gave it another shot. Nada. Dry as dust. I had lost that lovin’ feeling.

Finally, we sat side by side and sweated it out. It was brutal. But eventually, Louis got laid without us resorting to a From Here To Eternity beach cop-out.

Now, lest I be accused of guy-bashing, I’ll allow some men to weigh in here. Here’s C.J. Box, at the Montana Festival of the Book, talking about how he does it: “My protagonist is married, so there are no sex scenes.”

Wuss…

Here’s Neil McMahon, in an interview talking about his first book, Twice Dying, where his man and woman ended up in a motel room. He tried to slide by with a few sentences. But his editor demanded a full-blown sex scene, saying, “All right. This is it. You’re going to have to write this. It’s going to have to be explicit. This is a deal-breaker.” So I wrote it, McMahon said.

Brave man…

For a more thoughtful take, let’s go to my good friend Jim Fusilli, talking about his book Tribeca Blues: “Sex is a theme in Tribeca Blues — covert sex, back-alley sex, the ramifications of that kind of thing. So there had to be a sex scene between two people who have genuine affection for each other. In the context of the story, I think it works. It’s sensual but not salacious. It wasn’t easy to write. I felt a little squeamish. I don’t know. I’m not a prude, but maybe I had too many years of Catholic school or something. You know, if you’re going to write it, you have to write it well. You’ve got to feel it and make it real. You can’t be saying “wee-wee” and “boobies” any more than you can say “throbbing member” or “heaving love mounds” or some bullshit like that. It’s got to be as believable as when you’ve got him walking down the street.”

At least Jim has the guts to meet the subject head on.

Not all guy crime writers shy away from sex. Some embrace it. Max Allan Collins and Jeff Gelb have produced some sophisticated erotic mysteries. But those are the small exceptions.

In closing, I’ll give the last word to a woman –veteran mystery novelist and Edgar winner Dana Stabenow: “There are a ton of people, critics and writers alike, who say that in detective fiction it should be the classic Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe character who have to be loners. That’s changed a lot with the advent of women writing in the mystery field, because women tend to emphasize relationships. For about 5,000 years that was pretty much all we had, our lives revolved around relationships and our husbands and our families and our children. So there are a lot of women reading mystery fiction and I think publishers are going to publish what they can sell — and if they can sell mysteries that have an element of relationship in them, then that’s what they’re going to solicit writers to produce.”

And damn it, that includes sex.

I don’t know what the answer is. Maybe we need convention panels or workshops to teach this stuff. All I know is I am glad I don’t write romantic novels anymore. Frankly, sex just wears me out. Writing it, that is. I’m too old now. And you know, I am much happier killing people than having sex. But maybe that is a female thing.

By PJ Parrish

I’m a sucker for good settings. Give me a bleak winter woods, a decaying Scotland castle, or a fetid bayou swamp, and I’m a happy-clam reader. Setting, to me, is a character, something to be rendered with great thought and tenderness. Like a good secondary character, it is always there in the background. It is the stage on which your drama unfolds. It is a prism through which you convey mood, tone and even your voice. Most importantly, setting can be an emotional echo chamber for your hero’s inner struggles.

To me, my character’s struggles are almost always reflected in the setting. It goes back to one of my favorite lines from one of the greatest setting novels of all time — James Dickey’s Deliverance:

“I was standing in the most absolute aloneness that I had ever been given.”

But like any good secondary character, setting must assert its presence distinctly but quietly, always in support of the hero and plot, never overshadowing either.

Which brings me to our First Pager today. We’re going to somewhere out in the wilds where a woman is dead in a kayak, with a forest fire raging nearby no less. The writer gives us only two geographic anchors — a village called Forbidden Lake and a large place called Campbell River. Because the cop is called a “constable” I’m guessing we’re in Canada. Google tells me that there is a Campbell River near Vancouver, British Columbia. And near that, an actual place called Forbidden Plateau. Is that the turf our writer is working here? Don’t know. But I’m all in for the ride. See you in a bit…

AT FORBIDDEN LAKE

Smoke from the forest fires had turned the sun into a red dot. In the lake, a faded yellow kayak bobbed gently next to a rotting dock, its occupant slumped over as if in deep sleep.

Detective Kenneth Tingle watched from the shore as paramedics maneuvered a small motorboat toward the kayak. There was no urgency in their movements as they untied it from the dilapidated dock. Even from his vantage point, at least thirty feet away, the gash on the woman’s neck and the blood on the kayak were indication enough: she was dead dead.

Directly behind Detective Tingle, a vacant lot stretched up toward the two-street village of Forbidden Lake. To his left, the Forbidden Lake Resort sprawled along the shore. To his right stood a run-down house that the lake was reclaiming as its own—the roof had more moss than shingles, the paint had peeled beyond recognition. A slight movement in one of the windows was the only indication that the house was occupied. Otherwise, Tingle would have assumed it was condemned.

He tried to scan the faces of the dozen or so people milling around, looking for a guilty expression, an averted gaze, or a perverted smile. But the smoke stung his eyes, so all of the faces were blurred into a mass of homogenous voyeurism. Despite the blur, he liked to think he could tell the difference between the locals and the visitors—the visitors had better posture, their movements more confident. The locals, or at least the ones he assumed were locals—a woman in long, flowing skirts; another woman in a crisp polo shirt and white visor; a few rough-looking men; a teenage girl with her arms tight across her chest—their body language screamed anxious defeat, as if a dead body in a kayak was something they’d come to expect.

Constable Artois appeared at his side, breathless.

“How was the drive?” Tingle asked.

“Slow. Visibility wasn’t great.” Artois’ forehead glistened with sweat. “How was the chopper ride?”

“Visibility wasn’t great either.” Tingle wasn’t a fan of helicopter rides in the best of conditions. He and the paramedics had flown from Campbell River through a dense screen of smoke. His stomach had been in knots, and he’d hated how the paramedics had expressed concern in the chopper—asking him if he was okay, if he needed a vomit bag.

_______________________

First things first. The writing is clean, tight and well-crafted. No overwrought writerly writing. No hiccups or things that made me go, “huh?” I know that sounds like a low bar, but it’s not. Clarity and control are highly underrated qualities. This writer can tell a story.

I love the setting. Murders set in the remote wilderness are almost cliche in crime fiction, as much as neon-lit rain-stained urban streets are. But it works because the plot often transcends hero vs villain to hero also vs nature. Think Craig Johnson, William Kent Kreuger, Nevada Barr…

So this writer is off to a great start, I think. A small, probably insular village (shades of PD James and Georges Simenon!). A bigger-city outsider cop come to play hero. An evocative death scene. And did I mention, there’s a forest fire raging? So kudos, writer. The only thing I would tell you to improve is to find ways at every turn to make that setting work harder for your plot and your character. Your set-up is fine. Pepper in a few more descriptive details so we feel your setting more, especially if you can make it amplify tension. (See my edits that follow).

Now, I do have one issue. I think you need to pay closer attention to your forensics and police procedures. Keep in mind — if your setting is, indeed, not in the States — that readers will need grounding in foreignisms. Tingle, for example, comes from the big town of Campbell River. Is he local cop or Royal Canadian? Find a way to slip this in early. You also need to let us know if we are in Canada or not.

Now to some more detailed points. All we know from your narrative is that a woman’s (girl’s?) dead body is in a kayak with a “gash” on her neck. That’s really not enough information. Consider the time-line for any routine wrongful death discovery:

Someone discovered the body. They were probably able to determine she was dead. They then called 911. Does your village even have 911 or did the person call local constable? As you describe things, the body is close to the village. The constable would not have to come far.

Responding officer (constable) would come first. Your village apparently does not have EMT unit. Constable would find a way to get to the kayak and verify she’s dead. He would then call the larger city authorities and EMTs. Which is why, I assume, you have them helicoptering in.

So that brings Kenneth Tingle on scene. As a homicide detective, he would want to get as close to the body as possible. The kayak is tied to a dock. I like the idea the dock is rotting because it creates tension in accessing the body. Still, he’d get in a boat and go out. By leaving him on land, looking at the local crowd, he comes across as disinterested and even passive. GET HIM TO THE BODY. You can have him thinking about the locals later in a quiet moment.

Other points to consider: I don’t know how much time has passed between the body being discovered and your opening — you should tell us via Tingle’s thoughts. But by now, wrongful death would probably be determined, and there might be other officers nearby in waders and boats, assisting.

I understand your point about bringing in the onlookers now — it sets up your line: “Their body language screamed anxious defeat, as if a dead body in a kayak was something they’d come to expect.” And that creates tension because it implies this isn’t the first murder in Forbidden Lake. Great! Love it. But it comes at the expense, as I said, of making your hero look like a spectator and muser.  Which is death to a hero.

Get Tingle involved. Get him out there. Get him moving and doing. Not just thinking.

Okay, a quick line edit and we’re done. My comments in red.

Smoke from the forest fires had turned the sun into a red dot. In the lake, a faded yellow kayak bobbed gently next to a rotting dock, its occupant slumped over as if in deep sleep. Nice opening image.

Detective Kenneth Tingle watched from the shore passively as paramedics maneuvered a small motorboat toward the kayak. There was no urgency This phrase sort of drains the tension out of your opening. There can be a feeling of urgency even with a dead body in that the hero feels compelled TO ACT. I would have him in an inflatable raft approaching the kayak so he can SEE the body and TELL us what it looks like. Is she young, old? What is she wearing? Dark hair in wet strands like kelp across her face? in their movements as they untied it from the dilapidated dock. Even from his vantage point, at least thirty feet away, the gash on the woman’s neck and the blood on the kayak were indication enough: she was dead dead.  He already knew she was dead; that’s why he was called here. And again, he’s onshore, watching, thinking. ACTION FIRST, REACTION AND SECONDARY THOUGHTS LATER.  Also: a “gash” can imply something minor. Get a little more gritty here. SHOW US what he is seeing. 

Also an important point: If this woman/girl is local, the constable or someone would recognize her. Make that clear. It also increases tension, one way or another.

You need some juicy dialogue in your opening. The exchange between Tingle and Artois is wasted cop banter. What if Artois is with Tingle in the raft and recognizes her? Now, that is juicy dialogue.

The next two graphs are well-rendered as far as setting goes, but I think they come too early in your opening and thus leach tension. Suggest having Tingle examine the body as well as he can from a bobbing raft, maybe with dialogue with Artois. Give him some quick thoughts and maybe directing EMTs to bag her and get her to land. Give him some forensic smarts — he can tell from the wound it was murder. 

Then I’d take Tingle back to shore. Artois can go handle the gathering crowd. Tingle can then watch the conveying of the body and in this quieter moment, can give us a very quick lay of the land of Forbidden Lake, the big resort and the rundown house. ONLY then would I have him turn his focus to the crowd. 

Directly behind Detective Tingle, a vacant lot stretched up toward the two-street village of Forbidden Lake. To his left, the Forbidden Lake Resort sprawled along the shore. To his right stood a run-down house that the lake was reclaiming as its own—the roof had more moss than shingles, the paint had peeled beyond recognition. A slight movement in one of the windows was the only indication that the house was occupied. Otherwise, Tingle would have assumed it was condemned.

He tried to scan squinted through the sting of the smoke to scan the faces of the dozen or so people milling around, behind the police tape. He was looking for a guilty expression, an averted gaze, or a perverted smile. But the smoke stung his eyes, so all of the faces were blurred into a mass of homogenous voyeurism. This line seems a tad overwrought in your nicely spare style. Despite the blur, he liked to think he could tell the difference between the locals and the visitors Is Forbidden Lake a big tourist destination as this implied? You need to make that clear. .  visitors had better posture, their movements more confident. The locals, or at least the ones he assumed were locals—a woman in a long, flowing skirts; another woman in a crisp polo shirt and white visor; a few rough-looking men; a teenage girl with her arms tight across her chest—The only place where you confuse me. A woman in a crisp polo shirt and visor screams tourist to me. their body language screamed anxious defeat, as if a dead body in a kayak was something they’d come to expect. Interesting line that creates a little tension but what comes before it does not support it. Try to be more specific. Something like:

It was July and Forbidden Lake’s tiny population was, as usual, swollen with tourists. Artois was having a time keeping them behind the police tape. Tingle squinted through the sting of the smoke at the faces in the crowd. He liked to think he could tell the locals from the tourists — the man in the crisp polo shirt and visor, the thin woman in the flowing dress focusing her cell phone camera, definitely out of town. The others were different — sun-roughed men in jeans and t-shirts, a teenage girl with arms crossed tight over her chest — locals, he suspected. In their slumped postures and grim faces he could read something strange, like anxious defeat, as if a dead body in a kayak was something they had come to expect. 

Constable Artois appeared at his side, breathless.

“How was the drive?” Tingle asked.

“Slow. Visibility wasn’t great.” Artois’ forehead glistened with sweat. “How was the chopper ride?” This is wasted dialogue. Does nothing to propel plot or increase tension and that is what you need in the opening pages. If you want to make a point of Tingle getting knotty in the copter, have Artois rejoin them and they can talk. But do you really want to waste precious moments on such small stuff so early?

“Visibility wasn’t great either.” Tingle wasn’t a fan of helicopter rides in the best of conditions. He and the paramedics had flown from Campbell River through a dense screen of smoke. His stomach had been in knots, and he’d hated how the paramedics had expressed concern in the chopper—asking him if he was okay, if he needed a vomit bag.

Okay, that’s all. Don’t let the blood all over your pages discourage you, dear writer. As I often say, the more I like your work, the more I want you to try harder. This is really good stuff and you’re off to a fine start. I would read on. Just be more careful with your forensics and take care that Tingle doesn’t become a wall flower at his prom. Well done!

Postscript. About your title. Love it. But I strongly suggest you lose the “AT” and just call it Forbidden Lake. It has resonance and intrigue. There’s good reason Dennis Lehane didn’t call his book “On Mystic River” or William Kent Kreuger didn’t call his book “In Blood Hollow.”

“I don’t know whether every author feels it, but I think quite a lot do — that I am pretending to be something I am not, because, even nowadays, I do not quite feel as though I am an author.” — Agatha Christie

By PJ Parrish

Well, the book is almost done. First draft, that is. I haven’t read it completely through, chapter 1 through 45, since we started the thing, oh, maybe a year ago? Yes, it has taken me that long to get back in the saddle again.

I’m always preaching here that you need to periodically go back and review (and even rework) what you’ve been doing. Sure, you should always be moving forward, but it’s helpful to pause and see if you’re on the right track. I didn’t do that this time.

Why?

I’ve been afraid to. I have this really bad feeling that, having finally reached 110,045 words, what I have created is a heaping, stinking, fetid, rancid mountain of crap. I dream about it now, this mountain of crap, like Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I wake up in a sweat over it.

My only consolation is knowing that I feel this way with every book. And that I am not alone. Here’s John Connelly talking about his own demons: “There is always that fear that this book, this story, is the one that should not have been started. The idea isn’t strong enough. The plot is going nowhere. I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way and now have to try to find the right path again.”

Here’s Lee Goldberg, whose career has been long and varied, with Hollywood-assignations and a fruitful collaboration with Janet Evanovich:  “This happens to me…but less often if I have a strong outline to start with (though an outline is no insurance policy against realizing 35,000 words into your book that it’s crap and you’re a complete fraud). In talking with other writers, I’ve noticed that the ones who hit the wall the most are the ones who make up their plot as they go along, preferring to be ‘surprised’ by their characters and the turns in the story. Of course, this means the turns may lead to a creative dead end.”

And lastly, I give you no less than Maya Angelou: “Each time I write a book, every time I face that yellow pad, the challenge is so great. I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody and they’re going to find me out.'”

My night terrors are especially bad this time out for two reasons. I don’t have a publisher right now and though this is a sequel to our Thomas & Mercer thriller She’s Not There, I don’t know if they’ll want it. Second, this is another new protagonist, so I don’t have the comfort of knowing his heart and soul as I do that of Louis Kincaid, the hero of our long-standing series. Can this new guy, a bit of an ornery misfit,  carry the story or will he put off readers? Will our Louis readers follow us to the new one? Have we run out of good plots? Have we finally hurdled the hammerhead?

I don’t know, maybe there are writers out there who never have any doubts. Maybe Nora Roberts or Joan Didion never broke out in a cold sweat at night. But I suspect there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of you out there who are in the same sweaty boat as I am. There’s a fancy name for this — imposter syndrome. Basically, it is a pattern of beating up on yourself. You have this nagging feeling that you’ll be found out, that people will read your stuff and you’ll be revealed as a charlatan. Don’t look over your shoulder because someone is laughing. Worse, you agree with this.

How do you know if you’ve got IS?

• You constantly criticize your own work.
• You procrastinate
• You focus on rewriting instead of moving forward.

I do all three. Did I mention I am a perfectionist? I sweat every word to the point that it sometimes squeezes the simple joy of creation out of me. If you find yourself at that point, stop, take a deep breath and do whatever you need to recapture the sweet impulse that made you want to write in the first place. For me, this usually means a very long walk in the woods.

A few more pieces of advice before I go and start reading my first draft:

Voice your fears. Feeling like you’re alone is terrifying. Talk to someone you trust. A critique group is really helpful here, as long as it is positive-oriented and not a slash-and-burn tribunal that picks on your scabby semi-colons, or a pity-party where everyone whines about being shut out by the publishing cabal.

Remember where you came from. Recognize and applaud your progress. Sometimes this means re-reading your early unsuccessful efforts and learning from them. Cleaning out my office recently, I found an old partial manuscript on an external storage drive. It was my first effort when I was making the switch from romance to mystery. I didn’t have anyone turn up dead until chapter 12. Everything was back story and my opening chapter was nothing but my heroine, an ex-homicide cop, sitting in a fishing boat in the Everglades thinking about how lousy her life was. It was bloody awful. It made me feel terrific.

Accept that sometimes you’ll suck.  It’s okay to write junk. We all do it. It’s part of the learning process. Some days, you get in that zone and everything you type is spun gold. Yay for you. But most days, you will write a lot of garbage just to get a couple good paragraphs. I took up pickleball a couple years back. I used to be really bad but now I’m pretty good. Why? Because I listened to my coaches, and I am mastering the technique. But this morning, I slid back into suckitude.  Luckily, writing, unlike pickleball, is a private endeavor and no one sees our sucky efforts. Here’s the thing: You have to suck at writing before you get good enough to produce something that readers don’t think sucks.

Keep writing. Don’t let your self doubts corrode your love of writing. The only way to become a better writer is to become a more prolific writer. You will improve your technique, you’ll get better at your craft. But only if you keep going. Like any skill, the more you do it, the better you’ll get.  I promise.

Geez. I just re-read what I’ve written here. It sounds pretty negative, but that’s not really where I am right now. The hard part is over. I’ve finished. That’s something to celebrate, even if my book doesn’t find a publisher. So forgive me for focusing on the cloud instead of celebrating the breakthrough rays of sunshine. Move forward, and always with hope.

As for those night terrors? I won’t lie. If you really want this writing gig, you might have to deal with them on occasion. If, like me, you’ve spent some nights twisting in damp percal, I offer the same three words of advice I give to my youthful female friends about menopause: moisture wicking pajamas. Cool Jams makes great ones.

“The problem with people, as they start to mature, they say, ‘Rap is a young man’s game,’ and they keep trying to make young songs. But you don’t know the slang – it changes every day, and you’re just visiting. You’re trying to be something you’re not, and the audience doesn’t buy into that.” — Jay-Z.

By PJ Parrish

So I’m up at 2 a.m. and it’s 57 channels and nothing on. It’s a choice between Million Dollar Mansions and The Tin Cup, starring Kevin Costner as a washed up golf pro who makes his way to the US Open to play against an insufferable git-in-cleats played by Don Johnson.

The movie is peppered with golf slang. Lines like: “Gimme the lumber.” And: “I want you to caddy for me. I’ll give you $100 for the loop.”

Thanks to my husband, I sort of watch golf. So I figured out that “lumber” was a wood, a club that you can hit far with.  “The loop” is slang for 18 holes. The scriptwriter was savvy with his use of slang, just enough to make me feel I was inside but not too much to trip me up. But, the rewriter in me wanted to ahem…improve things a little. I would have written: “I want you to be on the bag for me. I’ll give you $100 for the loop.”

Be on the bag means to caddy. Okay, okay, maybe that’s one stroke over the line, sweet Jesus, but I couldn’t resist. Slang is pretty seductive for writers, right?

Who among us hasn’t been tempted to slather in the slang to make our dialogue sound more authentic, more human, more…with it? I think mystery and thriller writers are especially vulnerable, because we deal with street thug, cops, lawyers and n’er-do-wells who all use their own argot. So this is my caution for all we crime dogs today: When the urge to use a lot of slang in your story hits you, go lie down in a dark room.

Okay, time out. Let’s test your lit-slang IQ. What books are these excerpts from (answers at end):

1. What clashes here of wills gen wonts, oystrygods gaggin fishy-gods! Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax! Ualu Ualu Ualu! Quaouauh! Where the Baddelaries partisans are still out to mathmaster Malachus Micgranes and the Verdons catapelting the camibalistics out of the Whoyteboyce of Hoodie Head.

2. Flora began to curse Red and Nancy again. But she had pretty much played out that line already. She turned to me.

“What the hell did you bring them here for?” she demanded. “Leaving a mile-wide trail behind you! Why didn’t you let the lousy bum die where he got his dose?

“I brought him here for my hundred and fifty grand. Slip it to me and I’ll be on my way. You don’t owe me anything else. I don’t owe you anything. Give me my rhino instead of lip and I’ll pull my freight.”

3. Third time lucky.  It wis like Sick Boy telt us: you’ve got tae know what it’s like tae try tae come off it before ye can actually dae it.  You can only learn through failure, and what ye learn is the importance ay preparation.  He could be right.  Anywey, this time ah’ve prepared.

Slang in fiction is a two-headed beast. When it’s good, it lends your dialogue verisimilitude and gives your characters unique voice. But when it’s bad, it dates your narrative, frustrates the reader and, as Jay-Z says, makes you look like you’re just visiting.

Slang is not the same as jargon. Both are means of communication between special groups. Slang is the informal language of speech, writing or texting. Think of friends bonding. Jargon is the specialized, often technical, language that is used by people in a particular field. Think of lawyers.

It can underscore your setting. A novel set in the mean streets of 1930s Newport is going to have different slang than one set in the thickets of the rural South of current times.

From The Great Gatsby: “He saw me looking with admiration at his car. ‘It’s pretty, isn’t it, old sport?” Old sport is a term of endearment used among swells of Gatsby’s era.

From Shakespeare’s Henry IV, here’s Falstaff throwing down some major shade:

 ’Sblood, you starveling, you elfskin, you dried neat’s tongue, you bull’s pizzle, you stockfish! O, for breath to utter what is like thee! You tailor’s-yard, you sheath, you bowcase, you vile standing tuck—

Raymond Chandler famously credited Dashiell Hammett with giving murder “back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse … He put these people down on paper as they are, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes.”

In Hammett Red Harvest, the police “take this baby down the cellar and let the wrecking crew work on him.” (Interrogate a suspect). A female character is described as “a soiled dove” (13th-century English slang for a prostitute). And the Continental Op says he is “going blood-simple” from all the killing (which you’ll recognize as the title of the Coen Brothers’ 1984 movie.)

Some writers, especially those toiling in fantasy, often create entire languages filled with made-up slang. JK Rowling peppered the Harry Potter books with so much nonsensical words that she needed to publish a dictionary — Muggle, flobberworm, and my favorite Boggart (a shape-shifter that becomes the likeness of your worst fear)  I often wondered if Rowling weren’t channeling Lewis Carroll, who gave us such words as gallymoggers (crazy), mimsy (a feeling of misery and whimsy) and this gem: scut (an insult based on the actual Brit slang for buttucks.

Robert Heinlein uses made-up slang in Stranger in a Strange Land to great effect, weaving it in so gracefully that the reader never stumbles. He uses the Martian word grok, which means “to drink” but because there is no water on Mars, grok comes to mean something akin to holy communion, with characters grokking to communicate powerful emotions.

So, you ask, what’s a lesser writer to do? What if you’re still working on your first novel, or rewriting your sixth and you’re a little unsure of when to use slang and how much is too much? Well, as we always say here, there are no hard and fast rules. But let me lay down some guidelines that I’ve found helpful.

• Use it sparingly
• Get it right

To the first point, slang is like any exotic spice. A little goes a long way toward whatever stew you are creating. Know that slang tends to go stale very quickly, and does not travel well. As Toby tells Will in West Wing: “When you use pop-culture references, your speech has a shelf life of twelve minutes.” So it is with novels. You might have one of your young characters say something like: “Since the pandemic, I never have to go into the office. It’s so sick.” Sick, of course, means great. Always look for ways to gracefully explain slang that’s esoteric. Like:

“I want you to carry the bag for me.”

What, me caddy for you? In your dreams, man.”

To the second point, make sure your slang is accurate and appropriate. Don’t try to fake Aussie slang, for example. Run it by a friend who is fluent. Make sure the slang you put in a character’s mouth is accurate for his age, background, region, and education. A kid living in Michigan would never ask for a “soda.” It’s always “a pop.” A kid, in parts of the South, would ask for “a Coke” even if he wants Sprite.

Some sites to help you with slang:

Online Slang Dictionary. Updated almost daily. Very comprehensive and sometimes quite racy. http://onlineslangdictionary.com/

A Dictionary of Slang. If you want to say something in New Zealand-ese, this is for you. http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/language-links.htm

Some novels are so thick with slang and invented words that they are near impenetrable. I remember trudging through Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange for a college lit course. It is written entirely in an invented future slang constructed by Burgess called Nadsat. Here’s the opening paragraph. I’ll wait while you wade:

‘What’s it going to be then, eh?’

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither. Well, what they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no licence for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels And Saints in your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, and that was what we were peeting this evening I’m starting off the story with.

Reading this now and remembering how much I worked to finish this book, I am thinking of a scene from Cheers. Sam, desperate to impress Diane, slogs through War and Peace in three days. At the end, Diane is, indeed impressed.

Diane: There’s only one thing more romantic than you reading War And Peace for me.
Sam: What?
Diane: You reading War And Peace to me.
Sam: Oh, yeah? Well, it just so happens that I have a copy right here. You sit down right here, and I’ll read to you. Here we go.
Diane: [takes the book] Let’s go see the movie.
Sam: [shouts] There’s a movie?

Re Clockwork Orange. Take my advice. Skip the book. See the movie.

_________________________

Quiz:

1. Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce.
2. The Big Knockover by Dashiell Hammett
3. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

By PJ Parrish

Our brave writer tells us we are in “mystery genre” with this submission. And yes, indeed, we are. For there are many mini-mysteries to unwind in this spare but evocative opening. Let’s read and then discuss.

A Wolf Near Woman Howling Creek

Andi Wolf escaped hell at eighteen and swore never to step foot in it again.

Yet twenty-five years later, here she stood, back in Texas, wishing she had on her Georgia Giant ranch boots, surrounded as she was by bison excreta. But no. The boots were packed in a box, sitting in a closet at her mom’s house. Which, she supposed, was her house now too.

She stood in the middle of a pastoral scene gone wrong. Bison dotted the land around her, bellies up and bloated, stiff legs poking the air. Bison were enormous creatures, weighing anywhere from 700 to 2000 pounds. But these looked smaller, likely calves and yearlings. When she and Isa, the investigator who hired her, first arrived on the scene, the first few dead bison she saw pinched her heart. When the count rose past a dozen, she inured herself against it to focus on her job.

Andi stationed herself by the heavy-duty inner perimeter fence near the corner at the western edge of an expansive property comprised of a few thousand acres, according to Investigator Bastos. The mid-afternoon sun shone without mercy, glaring off of everything it touched. At least she’d remembered her sunglasses. There were no clouds in hell. The heat baked the fresh manure around her, filling the air with an aromatic stench that made Andi’s eyes water. Behind her stretched the perimeter fence. The three strands of barbed wire on top of traditional cattle fencing made the five-foot-three fence the same height as Andi, entrapping her and the bison. The still-living ones, in any case. It joined with the high-tensile wire fence to her right, splitting the front pasture from the back, where she stood now. It stretched parallel to the road, as far as she could see.

A scratching sound caught her attention. She turned to see a turkey vulture sitting nearby on a post, distinguishable from its black cousin by its wrinkly redhead and two-tone underwing, now visible as it stretched out to peck at something.

“They creep me out.”

She spun around at the sound. Detective Bastos walked toward her, picking her way through the excrement minefield.

___________________________

When I first received this submission, I read it very quickly and you know, I wasn’t that impressed. But days later, I read it again. And then a couple more times, trying to read it both as editor and pure reader. (It is sometimes hard to keep those two entities separate, I confess). I concluded finally that I have some mixed feelings about this one. Not because I don’t like it. I do. Not because I think it has major issues. It doesn’t. It’s because I kept coming back to one big question.

I often talk here about finding the prime dramatic moment to enter your story. Too early and you get throat-clearing. (Example: Cop, usually hung over, gets phone call in middle of night to come to a crime scene and we get him slinging his bare feet onto the cold floor and padding off to look at his sad unshaven mug in the bathroom mirror. No…open at the crime scene).

But if you enter a scene too late, sometimes you miss a golden moment to engage the protagonist (and thus the reader) emotionally.

So my big question: Did this writer come into the opening scene too late?

It’s a heck of a dramatic scene — the protagonist is surveying a prairie-like landscape littered with dead bison. Very young bison. Which is even more appalling and mysterious, of course. And as I said, there are several other small mysteries unfolding here: Why, 25 years later, has Andi Wolf returned to her Texas home, which she tells us is “hell.”  Why, given this history, is she here? What happened to her mother? And of course, what killed the animals? So, kudos, writer, on hooking us with all this in such a small sample. I would definitely read on.

But I have to go back to my big question: Would this submission be even better if the writer had opened with Andi Wolf arriving at the scene. The writer tells us that the first sight of the dead bison “pinched at her heart.”  Why not show us and let it pinch at our hearts? I think by opening with the “escaping hell” idea, the writer drifts into backstory when, in fact, the present story — coming upon a pasture of dead animals — is so very visceral, immediate and yes, heart-pinching.

As much as I like this opening, I really wanted to see, hear, smell, and experience that first sight of the corpse-ridden landscape at the same moment Andi did. That hell, to me, would have been far more powerful than the metaphoric backstory hell.

And consider, dear writer, that “hell” can perhaps mean two things: The hellish deathscape Andi sees before her resonates with her own inner hell. The dead bison become a metaphor, perhaps even of her emotional journey over the course of your story.  There’s a reason you opened with the dead animals. Use it thematically if you can.

And that, folks, is my only issue with this submission. Very quickly, before I do a quick line-edit, let me point out some things the writer did well:

1. Identified the protagonist gracefully. We get her name, gender and age quickly. .
2. We know where we are. Somewhere in rural Texas.
3. There is a pretty major disruption in the norm. Dead bodies everywhere.
4. We know Andi has some issues in her past. Nicely hinted at but not defined yet and thus dragging us down in info-dump backstory.
5. Some pretty darn good description.

Let’s do a quick edit, my comments in red:

Andi Wolf escaped hell at eighteen and swore never to step foot in it again. Again, not a bad opening line at all. Until you get down to the dead bodies, which is more compelling, in my opinion.

Yet twenty-five years later, here she stood, back in Texas, nice and clean way to slip in age and place wishing she had on her Georgia Giant ranch boots, I know this brand cuz my brother-in-law swore by them. They are heavy-duty lace-ups, favored by construction workers. To me, this implied she once had a different kind of job? surrounded as she was by bison excreta. Nit picking here but this strikes me a $50 word when excrement would have been fine. But no. The boots were packed in a box, sitting in a closet at her mom’s house. Which, she supposed, was her house now too. As I said, I like that this iota of backstory was slipped in. 

She stood in the middle of a pastoral scene gone wrong. This, to my ear and eye, is telling rather than showing. You don’t need to TELL us it has “gone wrong.” Let your powerful details SHOW us, and trust the reader to get it. Bison dotted the land around her, bellies up and bloated, stiff legs poking the air. Bison were enormous creatures, weighing anywhere from 700 to 2000 pounds. But these looked smaller, likely calves and yearlings. That got me, intriguing me and pinching at my heart. When she and Isa, the investigator who hired her, first arrived on the scene, the first few dead bison she saw pinched her heart. When the count rose past a dozen, she inured herself against it to focus on her job. This is where I think things could have been better. We are now in PAST TENSE.  By not showing us this powerful first impression ON CAMERA, as it happened, the writer might have missed a chance to really involve us. Try this as an exercise, dear writer: Start with Andi cresting a small rise or something and then, like some awful battlefield revealing itself, she sees the killing field. And don’t forget to bring ALL Andi’s senses into play. What does it smell like? What does it sound like? What sounds are the surviving bison making? (I Googled it and normal bison sound like something out of The Exorcist). And I have to wonder: You say some animals are still alive — are they reacting? Are cows hovering over their dead calves? Don’t just pinch at our hearts, wrench them.  

Andi stationed herself by the heavy-duty inner perimeter fence near the corner at the western edge of an expansive property comprised of a few thousand acres, according to Investigator Bastos. This is a little clunky. Try: Andi stopped at the perimeter fence, three strands of barbed wire atop five feet of heavy wood posts. (“traditional cattle fencing” means nothing to those of us outside Texas)  The mid-afternoon sun shone without mercy, glaring off of everything it touched. We are in a pasture. What is there to glare off of? At least she’d remembered her sunglasses. Make this mean something. Maybe she takes them off, the better to absorb the terrible scene? Or she puts them on, almost to shield herself from it? There were no clouds in hell. The heat baked the fresh manure around her, filling the air with an aromatic stench that made Andi’s eyes water. Behind her stretched the perimeter fence. The three strands of barbed wire on top of traditional cattle fencing made the five-foot-three fence the same height as Andi, entrapping her and the bison. The still-living ones, in any case. It joined with the high-tensile wire fence to her right, splitting the front pasture from the back, where she stood now. It stretched parallel to the road, as far as she could see. I think we get too much time on the fencing. Describe it once above and move on. 

A scratching sound caught her attention. She turned to see made her turn. A turkey vulture sat atop sitting nearby on a post, distinguishable from its black cousin by its wrinkly red head and two-tone underwing, now visible as it stretched out to peck at something.

“They creep me out.” I like this bit of dialogue here to break things up and to intro Bastos. 

She spun around at the sound. Why spun in surprise? She was summoned here by Bastos and Andi knows she’s there. Detective Bastos walked toward her, picking her way through the excrement minefield.

So, in conclusion, I want to emphasize that I really liked this. It is well written and pretty darn polished. I was drawn by the first line because it works, in its own way, by making us wonder what was it that made Texas such a hell that Andi had to escape it. But — and for me, this is a major but — when I got to the dead bison, I was really engaged because I was experiencing something that was real and visceral. I just wish I had seen and felt it as Andi did, not as a memory. Present tense is always more powerful than past.

Keep going with Andi’s story, brave writer. And thanks so much for sharing with us.

By PJ Parrish

Just back from my duties as banquet chair for the Edgar awards. It’s the first time in three years that the event, sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America, has been held live. Three years…

Seems like longer. The Edgars have been a virtual event and it was great seeing men in tuxes and women in heels again. Great seeing old friends. Even greater meeting new ones. I’ve been chairing this event (spearheaded by MWA executive director Margery Flax) for more than a decade now. And it feels like the torch is being passed to a new generation of crime writers.  Our theme this year was “Top of the World” (hat tip to Tom Petty for that inspiration). Because top of the world is how you feel when you’re an Edgar nominee. One of my favorite duties of the night is manning the nominee registration table. Man, I wish I could bottle the fizzy-feeling emanating from the writers as they collected their red-ribbon badges and drifted off in a daze to the cocktail reception. Great books this year, but alas, only one book in each category wins at evening’s end.

Just for fun, I’ve read the first pages or so of all the novel nominees. You can easily do the same — click here for complete list.  But I thought it would be maybe instructive to take a look at how the winners opened their stories. Ahem…I will not be red-penciling their First Pagers. But feel free to weight in with your comments.

Best Juvenile: Concealed

“Your name?” The barista asked, holding the paper cup in the air.

I hesitated. For a moment I couldn’t remember if my name was spelled with one n or two. Not that it mattered much, since by tomorrow I’d have to pick a new one.

“Joanna with two n’s,” I replied.

He nodded, scribbled something on the cup, and passed it down the line to a girl who began preparing the order.

My drink wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. A tall vanilla bean frappé with two pumps of cinnamon syrup, hold the whipped cream. Nothing too easy or too complicated. Something quickly forgotten.

Sort of like me.

Didn’t matter if my hair was dyed blond, red, or even its current shade of brown, I always played the part of some random homeschooled girl from nowhere in particular who usually kept to herself. I was a mix of people you might know, but could never really remember.

That had been the story for when I was called Ana, Beatriz, Carla, Diana, Emma, Faith, Gina, Holly, and Ivette. Joanna was no different. And tomorrow it would continue, except
this time with a name that began with the letter K.

Over the past few years it had all become a game for me. Picking a name while going through the alphabet gave me a sense of order and predictability in my highly unpredictable life. Dad had come up with the idea back when he was still the one choosing my names, but I’d decided to continue the pattern. The question was which K name to choose. It could last me either a couple of weeks, like Joanna, or almost a
year, like when I was Carla.

I never knew.

It all depended on when my parents said it was time to move on and start over.

______________

Me here: I love this concept: A kid whose parents are on the lam so she has to cope with not just the usual angst of pre-teen identity, but the reality of not knowing who she is at any given time. The voice is assured yet vulnerable and very believable. I bonded with this girl at the get-go. I also liked the mix of short and long paragraphs. I don’t read juvie, but I’d definitely read on here.

Best First Novel: Deer Season

Alma held the four-week-old pig against her left hip and pinned him to her side with an elbow. With her right hand she held his ear across his eye as Clyle positioned the syringe perpendicular to the flesh and injected the antibiotics into the piglet’s neck. The pig squealed and Alma’s grip wobbled as Clyle caught the pig by his two back legs, swooped him into the air, and streaked his back with a green Paintstik. On the ground the pig scuttered his hooves against the cement before gaining traction and taking off across the small pen to the rest of the litter.

This wasn’t how Alma wanted to spend a Saturday afternoon. This wasn’t how anyone wanted to spend a Saturday afternoon, but Hal had left Friday with some yahoos to go hunting the first weekend of deer season. She secured another pig across her knee as Clyle gave the shot, marked the piglet with the Paintstik, then moved her to the floor. There were two left unmarked, congregated by the far slatted wall. Clyle grabbed the plywood panel he used to divert the pigs, moving it right to left until one of the piglets was trapped, then reached down and picked him up by the back legs.

_____________

Me again. This is a very leisurely opening. The first chapter is devoted to Alma and her husband marking the piglets and it ends on a note of tension within the marriage. The novel has won raves, including a starred PW review, for its portrait of a small town both severed and knitted together by the tragedy of a missing girl. A little slow for my taste, but I would keep going.

Best Paperback Original: Bobby March Will Live Forever.

It’s Billy the desk sergeant that takes the call. A woman on the phone, breathless, scared, half-crying. She says, “I’d like to report a missing child.”

And suddenly, everything changes.

When news of a call like that comes in, everyone sits up at their desks, stops filling in their pools coupon, puts down their half-eaten rolls. The ones with kids open their wallets under their desks, look at the pictures of Colin or Anne or wee Jane and thank God that it’s not theirs that have gone. The young ones look very serious, try not to imagine pulling some weeping toddler from a cellar or frome under a bed, being congratulated by the boss, thanked by a tearful mother.

Those that are religious cross themselves or say a silent prayer to keep the kid safe. And those that have lived through a case like this before say hello to the familiar dread and fear in their stomach, the knowledge that there is no end to the bad things that men can do to children, that the missing child might be better off dead already.

And like a pebble dropped in water, the ripples start to spread throughout the city. No matter the lockdown, news of a missing child always gets out. Cops come home, tell their wives and girlfriends not to tell anyone but they do. A shilling drops in a phone box across the road from the station, a reporter at the Daily Record answers, and a beat cop earns a tenner for his trouble. Isn’t long before the boys selling the papers outside Central Station are shouting, “Final edition! Missing girl!”

And as night falls and the chatter dies down there’s still one person who doesn’t know what Glasgow is talking about. Alice Kelly. All she knows is she’s got a cloth bag over her head, that her hands are tied and she’s wet her pants. It doesn’t matter how hard she cries for her mum, her mum can’t hear her. Nobody can.

____________

Me again. I really like this opening. It’s omniscient but feels intimate. Nice trick, that. I was drawn in by the rhythm of the writing itself. Note how the writer repeats the triad construction with simple commas. This, this, and then that. This, this, and then that. From the first sentence, we know we have a missing child yet the rhythm induces an almost lulling affect, mimicking the routine of cops coping and doing their jobs. It’s tragic…and normal. How awful. After a double break, the story then moves into the protagonist’s point of view. Well done, I say.

Best Novel: Five Decembers

Joe McGrady was looking at a whiskey. It was so new the ice hadn’t begun to melt, even in this heat. A cacophony surrounded him. Sailors were ordering beers ten at a go, reaching past each other to light the girls’ cigarettes. Someone dropped a nickel in the Wurlitzer, and then there was Jimmy Dorsey and his orchestra. The men compensated for the new noise. They raised their voices. They were shouting at the girls now, and they outnumbered them. The night was just getting started, and so far they weren’t drinking anything harder than beer. They wouldn’t get to fistfights for another few hours. By the time they did, it would be some other cop’s problem. So he picked up his drink, and sniffed it. Forty-five cents per liquid ounce. Worth every penny, even if a three-finger pour took more than an hour to earn.

Before he had a taste of it, the barman was back. Shaved head, swollen eyes. Straight razor scars on both his cheeks. A face that made you want to hurry up and drink. But McGrady set his glass down.

“Joe,” Tip said.

“Yeah.”

“Telephone—Captain Beamer, I guess. You can take it upstairs.”

He knew the way. So he grabbed the drink again, and knocked it back. The whole thing, one gulp. Smooth and smoky. He might as well have it. If Beamer was calling him now, then he was going to be pulling overtime. Which meant tomorrow—Thursday—was going to be a bust. Molly was going to be disappointed. On the other hand, he’d be drawing extra pay. So he could afford to make it up to her later. He put three half-dollars on the bar, wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve, and went upstairs.

______________

I’m back. The era is the Pacific theater of WWII and the golden-age-of-noir style reflects this. The book got raves pre-Edgar, starred PW review, New York Times Best Mystery and glowing blurbs from Lehane, King, Child. The chapter ends with McGrady’s boss saying he’s been working for five years, this is his first murder, don’t blow it. Given the writing, I’d give it more time to get to a full boil. From all I’ve read, there’s a big payoff. Side note: The book was rejected by 25 publishers before being picked up by Hard Case Crime.

Young Adult: The Firekeeper’s Daughter

I start my day before sunrise, throwing on running clothes and laying a pinch of semaa at the eastern base of a tree, where sunlight will touch the tobacco first. Prayers begin with offering semaa and sharing my Spirit name, clan, and where I am from. I always add an extra name to make sure Creator knows who I am. A name that connects me to my father—because I began as a secret, and then a scandal.

I give thanks to Creator and ask for zoongidewin, because I’ll need courage for what I have to do after my five-mile run. I’ve put it off for a week.

The sky lightens as I stretch in the driveway. My brother complains about my lengthy warm-up routine whenever he runs with me. I keep telling Levi that my longer, bigger, and therefore vastly superior muscles require more intensive preparation for peak performance. The real reason, which he would think is dorky, is that I recite the correct anatomical name for each muscle as I stretch. Not just the superficial muscles, but the deep ones too. I want an edge over the other college freshmen in my Human Anatomy class this fall.

By the time I finish my warm-up and anatomy review, the sun peeks through the trees. One ray of light shines on my semaa offering. Niishin! It is good.

My first mile is always hardest. Part of me still wants to be in bed with my cat, Herri, whose purrs are the opposite of an alarm clock. But if I power through, my breathing will find its rhythm, accompanied by the swish of my heavy ponytail. My legs and arms will operate on autopilot. That’s when my mind will wander into the zone, where I’m part of this world but also somewhere else, and the miles pass in a semi-alert haze.

My route takes me through campus. The prettiest view in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, is on the other side. I blow a kiss as I run past Lake State’s newest dorm, Fontaine Hall, named after my grandfather on my mother’s side. My grandmother Mary—I call her GrandMary—insisted I wear a dress to the dedication ceremony last summer. I was tempted to scowl in the photos but knew my defiance would hurt Mom more than it would tick off GrandMary.

I cut through the parking lot behind the student union toward the north end of campus. The bluff showcases a gorgeous panoramic view of the St. Marys River, the International Bridge into Canada, and the city of Sault Sainte Marie, Ontario. Nestled in the bend of the river east of town is my favorite place in the universe: Sugar Island.

The rising sun hides behind a low, dark cloud at the horizon beyond the island. I halt in place, awestruck. Shafts of light fan out from the cloud, as if Sugar Island is the source of the sun’s rays. A cool breeze ruffles my T-shirt, giving me goose bumps in mid-August.

“Ziisabaaka Minising.” I whisper in Anishinaabemowin the name for the island, which my father taught me when I was little. It sounds like a prayer. My father’s family, the Firekeeper side, is as much a part of Sugar Island as its spring-fed streams and sugar maple trees.

When the cloud moves on and the sun reclaims her rays, a gust of wind propels me forward. Back to my run and to the task ahead.

______________

Me once more. I let this one run long because it is yet another slow-build opening, yet I felt connected to the character and interested in the what’s-to-come. The writer is dropping in character backstory early, but notice that she is savvy enough to also tease us. The first graph, for example, feels slow but then we get that last line: “A name that connects me to my father—because I began as a secret, and then a scandal.” And the narrator hints several times that there is a “task” ahead of her. I don’t read much YA, but this feels fresh and engaging to me.

Okay, I’m done. If you are struggling with your openings, I’d encourage you to go to that list of nominees and read the samples online. So much variety there! I think our genre is in good hands.

 “If you write properly, you shouldn’t have to punctuate.” — Cormac McCarthy.

By PJ Parrish

I guess when you win the Pulitzer Prize for literature, you can do whatever you want.  I read McCarthy’s The Road years ago. There are no quote marks to set off the dialogue. There are no commas or question marks. There are periods, but even they are sparse. McCarthy’s pages look as bleak and barren as the story’s apocalyptic landscape.

When I first started the book, the lack of punctuation annoyed me. It wasn’t that the narrative was unclear or that I was confused. It just felt pretentious, as if the author were saying he was above all things mundane. And if you believe his quote at the beginning of this post, you’d say he was just being a….well, you fill in the blank.

McCarthy calls quotes “Weird little marks” and once said:  “I believe in periods, in capitals, in the occasional comma, and that’s it.” After a while, I didn’t care about the punctuation. The story sped along, the characters captured me by the throat and by the heart.

Then there’s the other side of the coin — guys like William Faulkner, who could have used some judicious punctuating. Check out this passage from The Sound and the Fury:

My God the cigar what would your mother say if she found a blister on her mantel just in time too look here Quentin we’re about to do something we’ll both regret I like you liked you as soon as I saw you I says he must be …

Faulkner’s advice to tackling it? “Read it four times.” Gee, thanks, Bill.

I read an interesting post about this subject recently. The author Adam J. Calhoun suggests that simple punctuation goes a long ways toward sign-posting a novelist’s style. He compared passages from two of his favorite novels — McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! taking out all punctuation marks. Guess which book is which?

Says Calhoun: “Yes, the contrast is stark. But the wild mix of symbols can be beautiful, too. Look at the array of dots and dashes above! This Morse code is both meaningless and yet so meaningful. We can look and say: brief sentence; description; shorter description; action; action; action.”

And we can easily tell, just by the choice of punctuation, who wrote what.

So what does this mean for us mere mortals? I think most of us, myself included, don’t think too much about the punctuation we use. We know the basics of periods, question marks and quotation marks. We get a little confused about commas, and when to use dashes or ellipses. And we have banished the poor semi-colon to the grammar dungeon. We put in the symbols quickly and race on, saving our tsuris for the big issues of plot, characterization and theme. But I’d like to suggest today that we give more thought to these fellows:

The symbols we chose to insert among our words can go a long way to establishing not just our unique styles but the kinds of emotions we want our readers to feel. Some of us, especially those working in neo-noir, favor a style a la Hemingway — short sentences with workmanlike punctuation. If you read “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” you see a story rendered with only quote marks, question marks and periods. Oddly, the only comma is in the title. Maybe Hemingway was taking the advice of his friend Gertrude Stein who called the comma “a poor period that lets you stop and take a breath but if you want to take a breath you ought to know yourself that you want to take a breath.”

Some of us, especially those working in historicals, favor a lusher style and will sow commas to force the reader to pause and take in the scenery. Look at this passage:

He moved to his left, circling around the trampled area, stopping every couple of steps to examine what lay before him. He was almost diagonally opposite the point where he’d left the path when he saw it. Just in front of him and to the right, where was a dark patch on the startling white bark of a birch tree. Irresistibly drawn, he moved closer.

The blood had dried long since. But adhering to it, unmistakably, were a dozen strands of bright blonde hair. And on the ground next to the tree, a horn toggle with a scrap of material still attached. 

That’s from Val McDermid’s A Place of Execution. Notice the liberal use of commas. McDermid wants the reader to slow down and absorb, along with her detective, every awful detail of the death scene. When you want your reader to slow down, commas are your friends.

What about the dash and its cousin the ellipses? I use both often in my work. In my mind, a dash signals an abruption interruption in thought or speech. An ellipses, in contrast, is a trailing off of the same. Here’s Reed Farrel Coleman in Redemption Street:

It took many years for my mom not to imagine her only daughter burning up alive. Can you imagine the tortuous second-guessing my parents put themselves through? If they hadn’t let he go. If they had forced her to go to a better hotel. If…If…If…

I’m a big fan of the em dash. It is a useful little bugger. It can indicate an interruption:

“The commissioner phoned the home office. The home office phone the Circus — “

“And you phoned me,” Smiley said. 

Notice that John Le Carre did not feel the need to write “Smiley interrupted.” The dash did the work.

Le Carre also uses dashes in mid-narrative to inject parenthetical info. An example of this is the last part of the sentence: “I had steak last night for dinner (and it was really good!).” But no character thinks or speaks in ( ) so the dash is an effective substitute. Here’s Le Carre again:

The only link to Hamburg he might have pleaded — if he had afterward attempted the connection, which he did not — was in the Parnassian field of German baroque poetry.

Again, depending on your style, a parenthetical dash might be good. Or it can look fussy. And be aware it tends to slow down your narrative. There’s an Emily Dickinson poem called The Brain Is Wider Than the Sky that is stuffed with em dashes.

The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and you—beside—
The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As sponges—Buckets—do—
The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—

I confess I don’t understand the usage here. Poetry is a different animal altogether. I just threw it in here because it’s interesting.

Okay, we need a word about exclamation marks. I know, I know…seems a simple matter. But I’m surprised at how often I see it misused. Many writers throw them in thoughtlessly, as if trying to wring emotion from readers. In my mind, exclamation marks are like adverbs. If you need one, your dialogue is probably flaccid. Think of it as a potent spice — in the right place, it does wonders for your word stew. Trust me!

And what about the colon? Does it have a place in our genre? I’ve seen it used correctly, but it never feels authentic to me, given our love affair with intimate point of view these days. It feels outdated. And try as I might, I couldn’t find one example of its use in a novel after 1890. What about if you need to list things, as in this example, which I made up:

Jack Reacher was afraid of only three things: women wearing red stilettos, men in turbans, and snakes.  

Or this:

Jack Reacher was afraid of only three things — women wearing red stilettos, men in turbans, and snakes.

The second one feels right to me. I say if your colon is acting up, try a dash.

Which brings us, alas, to the dreaded semi-colon. We’ve thrashed this topic to death, and most of us now agree it has no place in modern fiction. (Please use the comment section to argue your case otherwise). I never use one. I don’t like seeing them in print. There, I’ve said it. So sue me. But I will end my post with one of my favorite openings of a novel:

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against the hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

That’s the opening of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. I just love every word of this paragraph. I don’t care that there are three semi-colons and enough commas to choke a ghost. As Random House copy chief Benjamin Dreyer explains:  “Jackson uses them, beautifully, to hold her sentences tightly together…Commas, semicolons, periods: This is how the prose breathes.”

So I guess the bottom line is to know thyself and thine style. Be aware of what punctuation marks can do to slow or speed up your story. Be attentive to the emotions these symbols can impart in readers. And that, friends, is how we end. Not with whimpering ellipses, not with a startling dash, and certainly not with a barking exclamation pointer. With a simple full-stop period.

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” — Margaret Atwood

By PJ Parrish

It’s spring here in Tallahassee. My novel is stalled. But my tomatoes are budding, the ferns are unfurling, and in a week or two, the agapanthus will burst into flaming blue.

It’s hard to concentrate on indoor plots when the outdoor plots call.

I took up gardening only in the last couple years, and now it sustains me in my writing life. I’m not alone in this obsession. Many famous writers were keen gardeners or were heavily inspired by plants and flowers. We writers are, by nature, observers of life. We eavesdrop on conversation, we scrutinize human actions. You can’t write unless you watch, very carefully. As writers you need tools, tenacity, patience, and a touch of faith. So it is with gardening.

Plants and flowers, like human beings, are understood only by moving among them and quietly, slowly, observing them. Every day, religiously, I go out and see how things are going in the garden. Are the herbs flourishing? Do the roses need pruning? Should I move the azaleas to the north side of the house so they bloom better? Every day, I open the laptop and review the landscape of the work in progress. Does this character need more sun? Should I prune this description more? Should I move this scene to a different location? And damn, how did all those weedy adverbs get in there?

If you turn your back for just one day, both your garden and novel go to hell.

It makes me feel good to know so many writers find solace in nature. Here’s Chekov writing to his friend in 1899: “The garden is going to be spectacular. I am planting it myself, with my own hands.”  Thomas Hardy found inspiration for his bucolic Far From the Madden Crowd while walking in his garden. Sir Walter Scott had five gardens, where he would walk every morning before beginning to write: “After breakfast I went out…the rich luxuriant green refreshing to the eye, soft to the tread, and perfume to the smell. Wandered about and looked at my plantations.”

Many famous writers were themselves avid gardeners. William Wordsworth was an early environmentalist. Gardens are prominent in the works of the Bronte sisters and Charlotte is said to have disapproved of “highly cultivated” gardens, preferring things a little on the wild side. Or as A.A. Milne said, “Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.”

Shaw’s Writers Hut

George Bernard Shaw built a “writer’s hut” in his garden. The hut rotates on a central pole axis and castors so that Shaw could always have sunshine and a change of view. His ashes are buried in the garden.

Virginia Wolfe’s first writing room was a converted shed in her garden and when she finally began to make money, she built a writing lodge in her orchard, where she wrote Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and Between the Acts’ Her garden lifted her from periods of deep depression and when she was too ill to work, she would have a chair positioned in her bedroom so she could see the garden. In a letter to a friend, she wrote: “I sleep and dress in full view of the garden.”

Edith Wharton cultivated a lush garden at her Massachusetts home and retreated there to avoid the swells at Newport. She was a serious student of landscaping and wrote a book Italian Villas and Their Gardens. She said of her gardening: “I am amazed at the success of my efforts. Decidedly I am a better landscape gardener than novelist and this place, every line of which is my own work, far surpasses The House of Mirth…”

In her lifetime, Emily Dickinson, born into a family of horticulturalists, was better known as a gardener than a poet. She became a recluse and her world narrowed to her home and gardens. When her sister discovered Dickinson’s secret trove of 1,800 poems after her death, her love of gardening was obvious:  Over a third of her poems rely on images drawn from her garden and the woods where she walked with her dog Carlo, hunting for wildflowers.

I so get that one. I consider growing my own lettuce (three varieties!) every bit as an achievement as my books.

So what have I learned from being out among my plants every day?

You need good tools. When I first started gardening, I bought cheapo shears and a junky plastic rake. It didn’t take long to figure out that without the basics of garden craft, nothing was going to grow, and what attempts I did make were going to be twice as hard. Oh, and you have to keep your tools sharp. (ie. never stop learning, writers).

Prune without mercy. Yes, go ahead and plant with great heart and hope. Move through your first and second drafts with verve and confidence. But when the time comes, walk through what you’ve sowed and see what needs work. Every spring I whack my rose bushes down to ugly nubs. Weeks later, they come back straight and lush, every bloom perfect. You must be as ruthless with your scenes. Learn to recognize what parts of your book have turned leggy and unnecessary. Cut them out.

If you can’t bear to throw them away, store them in a separate place. I have a “hospital” section of my yard where I put the plants that didn’t quite fit. They live there until I can find a good place to put them. See that sad fellow at left? I spent a lot of money on him, planted him in the wrong spot and he almost died. He’s recovering in a pot until I can find out where he truly belongs. So it should be with scenes and chapters. Don’t keep material because you “spent” a lot of effort on it.

Weed every day. Let’s talk about your weed problem. You know, those flabby adjectives, the needless adverbs, the redundant dialogue tags, junky “filler” words. Filler words are the crabgrass of fiction. Look at this passage:

Ted felt felt the hot press of air against his neck and he knew there was nothing he could do about what had happened. He wondered why he had waited so long to pull the trigger. He knew it was his fault that the woman was dead. And he was worried now that her husband was going to come after him.

And this one, filler words weeded out:

The sun burned on the back of Ted’s neck. Or was it the hot press of guilt he felt? It was too late to change what had happened. The woman was dead. And now he was sure her husband was coming after him.   

I find it’s a good idea to go over your last day or two’s work and do some weeding before you move on to new stuff. It helps you get back in the groove and it keeps things under control. I love to weed. It makes me feel like I’m accomplishing a lot when all I’m really doing is cleaning up. Some days I devote only to weeding and that’s okay. As Margaret Atwood says, “At the end of the day’s [writing], you should smell like dirt.”

Leave room for serendipity and whimsy. I’m with Charlotte Bronte on this one. I don’t like my gardens too pat and tidy. I like surprises instead of ho-hum plants. I like paths that wind instead of linear ones. I like a touch of humor whenever possible. I have a section of my yard where I put garden tchotchkes. A solar watering can that lights up at night. Some small statues. A gaudy ceramic gecko. A globe that spews out water when you turn on the hose. No gnomes. But probably too many flamingos. Call me tacky. These things make me smile. If it works, don’t be afraid to let something a little odd, a little off-kilter, into your story. Light is an effective contrast amid darkness.

A few quick final thoughts:

Don’t try to grow things that aren’t really you. I am really good with orchids. But I can’t seem to keep a Christmas cactus or basil plants alive. My writer’s heart is dark. I can’t write humor and have stopped trying. Know who you are as a writer. Don’t follow trends.

Know when to give up. Not with writing or gardening itself. Because both are life-long loves. But if something isn’t working, admit defeat and move on. Sometimes, a plant just exercises its God-given right to up and die. So it is with bad ideas, misbegotten plots and moribund books. Plant new bulbs and start over.

Cultivate friends. I have twelve bird feeders in my garden. The wrens, cardinals, bluebirds and others that visit keep me company and give my garden efforts extra meaning. I just put out a hummingbird feeder, complete with a bright red begonia. (Hummers love red). No one’s showed up yet, but I love waiting. So it is for you as a writer. Seek out and maintain writer friendships, especially those who can help keep you on course, emotionally and craft-wise.  As a writer, you are so often alone and in the dark. These garden visitors bring you light and hope.

The last word goes to Victor Hugo, from Les Misérables: “Sometimes he used a spade in his garden, and sometimes he read and wrote. He had but one name for these two kinds of labor; he called them gardening. ‘The Spirit is a garden,’ said he.”