Category Archives: crime fiction

Forensic Genetic Genealogy: A Crime Writer’s Field Guide

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Marcia King’s mother kept the same telephone number for thirty-seven years.

She kept the same house in Arkansas. She didn’t move. She didn’t disconnect. Marcia had hitchhiked out of town in 1980 and stopped calling, and her mother — like every mother in this position has done since the invention of the telephone — left the line open in case her daughter ever picked up on the other end.

In April of 2018, the call finally came.

It wasn’t Marcia.

It was the Miami County Sheriff’s Office in Troy, Ohio, telling a woman who had waited almost four decades that the unidentified body found beside Greenlee Road on April 28, 1981 — the young woman the press had nicknamed Buckskin Girl for the fringed leather poncho she had been wearing — was her daughter. Twenty-one years old. Strangled and beaten. Buried under a headstone that simply said Jane Doe.

The case had not been solved. Her killer was, and remains, unknown. But her name had come back.

Marcia King’s identification was the first cold case ever solved by forensic genetic genealogy. A blood sample preserved in an unrefrigerated tube since 1981 was processed, uploaded to the public genealogy database GEDmatch, and matched within four hours of computer searching to a first cousin once removed. A team of volunteer genealogists at the newly founded DNA Doe Project built the tree out from there. Two weeks later, a mother in Arkansas got the call.

Three weeks after that, on April 24, 2018, a 72-year-old former police officer named Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested in his front yard in Citrus Heights, California. The Golden State Killer. Caught the same way: GEDmatch, family tree, candidate identified, confirmation DNA pulled from his trash. I remember standing with my cohorts from the Los Angeles Forensic Science Academy and talking about this case and the validity of using discarded DNA and familial DNA databases to find criminals. It was walking a fine legal line at the time.

This case began a change in the way cold case investigations worked in the U.S.

Eventually, it seeped its way into crime fiction. I tackled the topic a few years ago when writing What Darkness Does.

If you write the genre, you can no longer write around forensic genetic genealogy. And if you’re going to write it, you have to write it right.

Why This Matters for Crime Writers

Cold case fiction used to live in a forgiving place. The case had gone cold because the science of the era couldn’t read the evidence. Your investigator’s job was to be present-day-clever about a past-tense problem.

Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy (FIGG) moves the goalposts. Evidence that was useless for forty years is suddenly usable and trackable. Crimes from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s are now solvable in ways the original detectives couldn’t have imagined. Hundreds of cases have been resolved this way since 2018. The U.S. Department of Justice issued formal policy on its use in 2019. CRC Press is releasing the first comprehensive practitioner’s guide to FIGG this month.

That’s not a problem for fiction. It’s a gift. Forensic genetic genealogy gives you a mechanism that finally works the way readers want a cold case to work — the past speaking, after years of silence — without the cheap rescue of a deathbed confession or a buried diary in the attic.

It only works on the page if you understand what FIGG actually does, what it doesn’t do, and where the writer’s instinct toward speed and tidiness is going to trip you up.

What Forensic Genetic Genealogy Actually Is

Plain English: FIGG combines DNA recovered from a crime scene with consumer genetic genealogy databases — places like GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA — to find relatives of an unknown suspect or an unknown victim. A forensic genealogist uses those matches to build a family tree backward and outward until the tree narrows to one viable candidate.

That candidate is a lead. Not a defendant. Not a confirmed suspect. Just a lead.

For a suspect-identification match, investigators then need to collect what is called a surreptitious sample. This is typcially an abandoned or discarded source of DNA sample — for instance a coffee cup, a water bottle, a tissue from a public trash can. This is legal if the sample is taken from public domain. That sample is then tested and compared against the original DNA profile from the case at hand.

For a victim-identification case like Marcia King’s, a relative agrees to give a confirmation DNA sample, and the unknown person becomes a known person again.

Two distinctions matter for fiction.

FIGG is not CODIS. The Combined DNA Index System is the federal database of DNA profiles from convicted offenders, arrestees, and unsolved crime scenes. CODIS hits when your suspect is already in the system. Forensic genetic genealogy works when they aren’t. That distinction is the whole point of the technique. A writer who collapses the two will lose any reader who has paid attention to the last six years of true crime.

FIGG isn’t fast. The lab work to generate a sequenceable profile from old, often degraded evidence takes weeks to months. The genealogy work that follows takes even more time. Difficult cases take months. The famously hard ones take a year or longer. The science moves quickly. The genealogy is patient, careful, and slow.

Where Crime Writers Are Getting It Wrong

After watching the field for the last several years, here are the misnomers that show up most often regarding FIGG.

The instant match. A writer’s investigator submits DNA on Tuesday and gets a name on Wednesday. In the real world, even Marcia King’s case — which made a hit in only four hours of searching — had been preceded by weeks of lab work to extract usable DNA from a 1981 blood sample most labs had already given up on. We have to compress the timeline some, but compress the timeline that much and you lose the texture that makes cold case fiction interesting in the first place.

Skipping the confirmation step. A FIGG match is a candidate. It’s not legal proof. The story doesn’t move from genealogy hit to courtroom. It moves from genealogy hit to a separate, traditional confirmation DNA sample, almost always from something the suspect discarded in public domain. A writer who skips this step is writing a case that wouldn’t survive the first defense motion.

Using the wrong databases. Since the 2019 DOJ policy, U.S. law enforcement is restricted to genealogy databases where users have explicitly opted in to law enforcement matching. That means GEDmatch (with the right setting) and FamilyTreeDNA. It does not mean Ancestry. It does not mean 23andMe. Those companies have refused law enforcement access. A writer who has investigators pulling matches from Ancestry is writing a scene that gets the case thrown out.

Treating the genealogist as scenery. Forensic genetic genealogy is not done by detectives. It’s done by trained genealogists. Not sworn officers of the law. Many of them are civilians. Some of them are former hobbyists who turned professional after the Golden State Killer breakthrough. They are the people who actually build the tree. If your manuscript is about a cold case solved by FIGG and there is no genealogist in the story, you need to go back and add them.

Ignoring the ethical layer. Real investigators, real prosecutors, and real defense attorneys are arguing about FIGG every day. About consent. About whose DNA gets used. About what happens when one family member’s spit kit puts their cousin in prison. That tension belongs in your fiction. It’s exactly the kind of moral territory crime writers were made for.

How I Used FIGG In What Darkness Does

In What Darkness Does, a fourteen-year-old named Flora finds a bone in the woods.

Flora is sharp, stubborn, and exactly the kind of kid who doesn’t let go of a question once it’s in her teeth. The bone goes to a forensic anthropologist, Dr. Samantha Eckhardt, at the University of Michigan. Dr. Eckhardt invites Flora to a two-day workshop where she’ll learn how to use forensic genetic genealogy to try to give the bone a name.

I wrote the workshop scenes carefully. I gave Dr. Eckhardt a line I want every crime writer to internalize before they write a single FIGG scene of their own:

I want you to have realistic expectations. You may not leave here today with a candidate lead.

That’s the whole field guide in one sentence. Realistic expectations. Maybe not today.

One scene I love in that storyline isn’t the moment Flora gets a DNA hit. It’s the scene where her aunt, Emily Hartford, comes back to the lab after a break and finds Flora hunched over the keyboard, fingers moving fast, eyes locked on the screen, refusing to come up for air. Emily asks if she wants a snack. Flora doesn’t hear her. Emily asks again.

Without looking up, Flora answers: What if this were your child or sibling or best friend who had gone missing, never to be heard from again? Wouldn’t you want to know as soon as possible?

That’s the heartbeat of FIGG.

The drama isn’t the technology. The drama is the moral urgency the technology gives a fourteen-year-old at a keyboard, condensed into a single sentence by a kid who has only just learned what the work costs.

Flora’s storyline didn’t come from nowhere. It came from a real program at Ramapo College in New Jersey, the same one I credit in the back of the book — Ramapo runs an investigative genetic genealogy boot camp, and the youngest person ever to help resolve a case using IGG was a high school student who took part in it. The classrooms are real. The cases are real. The kids are real.

What I needed Flora to model — and what I want every crime writer to take with them — is that FIGG is not glamorous. It’s tedious, careful, full of stretches where the only thing happening on the page is a person staring at a screen.

The drama lives in the patience. But the reward is worth the wait. And to illustrate this I stretched Flora’s FIGG storyline into book 6, Walking On White, releasing October 20, 2026. Flora will get her answers!

The Field Guide: FIGG Best Writing Practices

Practical things to do when forensic genetic genealogy enters your story.

  • Write the timeline honestly. Give the lab time. Give the family tree time. Let your investigator be frustrated by the wait. The slowness is the realism.
  • Write the genealogist as a character. Let them have a personality, a method, a doubt. Let your reader watch them work.
  • Show the confirmation DNA moment. The discarded coffee cup, the swab from a hospital, the cigarette in a parking lot. That’s the beat where the candidate becomes the suspect. Don’t skip it.
  • Use the right databases by name. FamilyTreeDNA. Mention the opt-in setting. Get this right and the readers who care will trust you on everything else.
  • Build the family tree onto the page. A scene where your detective sees a name three generations away from a killer and starts to feel the case shift — that’s a scene that didn’t exist in the genre until 2018. It’s yours to invent.
  • Let the candidate be a real person before they’re proven guilty. FIGG often surfaces ordinary people — fathers, neighbors, retired church deacons — whose DNA matched because their nephew did a Christmas-gift spit kit. Sit with that for a paragraph. The moral weight of the technique lives in that pause.
  • Don’t forget victim identification. Most crime fiction uses FIGG to catch killers. Marcia King’s case is a reminder that it also gives names back to the dead. A novel that works the missing person’s side of the technique has a clear field in front of it.

The Ethics Seam Writers Should Rip Into

When a great-aunt sends her DNA to a consumer genealogy site to find out where her ancestors came from, she is not consenting to a future case being made against her grandnephew. The chain of relationship is invisible, intimate, and one-way. She doesn’t know who she is implicating. She can’t know.

That’s the moral seam every crime writer working in this space should put pressure on. Not to take a side, necessarily — only to acknowledge that the technique that brings closure to one family creates exposure for another. A character who has thoughts about that is more interesting than one who doesn’t. A scene where a relative is told your DNA is the reason we found him is one of the rawest moments fiction can offer right now, and almost no one has written it well yet.

That could be you.

Why This Tool Earns Its Place in the Genre

The cases forensic genetic genealogy has solved are the cases that broke families for decades. Children waited their whole adult lives to learn who killed their mothers. Parents died not knowing what had happened to their daughters. The technique can’t undo any of that. It doesn’t give back the years.

What it does is end the unknowing. And the unknowing, as I have written before, is the part of grief no one survives well.

In April of 2018, a mother in Arkansas finally got an answer about a daughter she had never stopped waiting for. The headstone in Riverside Cemetery in Troy, Ohio, that had said Jane Doe for thirty-seven years got a name carved into it: Marcia Lenore Sossoman King. The murder is still open. The killer hasn’t been caught. But Marcia is no longer Buckskin Girl. She is herself again, in death, the way she was in life.

Every crime writer who writes in cold case territory is, in some sense, writing toward that exact moment — the unknowing that finally breaks. FIGG deserves a place in crime fiction. It deserves to be written without shortcuts. It deserves to be written by people who understand that the truth at the end of the family tree belongs first to the family of the victim.

Get the science and technique right. Get the genealogy right. Get the long process right.

The story takes care of itself from there.

Want more on writing forensics that actually holds up? My Crime Writer’s Toolkit and the Master Crime Writing Course at forensicspeak.com walk through the procedures, evidence types, and craft principles that separate the novels readers trust from the ones they put down on page forty.

Jennifer Dornbush is an author, screenwriter, and forensic specialist who brings crime stories to life with authenticity and heart. With a background rooted in real-world forensics and a passion for crafting unforgettable mysteries, Jennifer offers readers and viewers a front-row seat to the intersection of science, justice, and human nature. Jennifer’s crime expertise has made her a sought-after speaker, consultant, and educator. Through her webinars and master courses, Jennifer guides writers in melding suspenseful storytelling with forensic realism to the screen and page. Meet her at www.jenniferdornbush.com

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First Page Critique – Digging Up the Dirt

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by Debbie Burke

Today let’s welcome another Brave Author who submitted a first page for critique, genre described as “Comedic (Cosy – not so cosy) Crime.” Please read and enjoy then we’ll open the discussion.

Title: Digging up the dirt

‘Some secrets won’t stay buried.’ Myrtle’s mouth twitches, not quite a smile; there’s a malicious glee in her delivery.

Some secrets won’t stay buried — and I’m looking at the person most likely to make sure of it.

Her words land like a promise.

She’s itching to unearth what’s been hidden. To watch what crawls out and enjoy the look on everyone’s faces when it does.

She’s insane to believe that by betraying us she won’t expose herself.

Why couldn’t our investor, predator, blackmailer — call her what you like — have been Bob? Someone with the temperament of a Labrador, willing to please for a mere pat on his head.

Myrtle’s opportunistic and slippery as a catfish hauled from our Riviersvalleij river.

‘When did Constable Maritz take Sylvie away?’ I ask.

‘This morning.’ Her smile deepens.

I control the urge to slap her smug face; demand back the purloined shop keys and replace the locks.

She crams a fat wedge of Sylvie’s banana-bread into her mouth, then swigs back the dregs of a cappuccino. Both of which she’s helped herself to after letting herself into our shop.

I look around, spying the basket of homemade nougat wrapped in silvery cellophane, its ends twisted by Sylvie’s deft hands. The nougat has the same stretchiness as the Prestik that glues my scribbled genre labels on the shopworn bookshelves. Our combined distinctive minutiae are everywhere. How dare Myrtle think she’s welcome to claim part of our bookshop cafe.

It’s ours — mine and Sylvie’s.

Her earlier threatening suggestion that Sylvie’s doomed to spend time behind bars and I’ll be grateful for her help has lit an inferno inside me. The old me might have wilted, but she’s underestimated the power of our bond. If we’re going down, I’m bloody well dragging Myrtle with us.

Constable Maritz has carted Sylvie off to confiscate a sample of our dog food. Someone complained food isn’t fit for consumption.

This batch is to have ‘Happy belly – Healthy heart’ as a tagline. Sylvie’d conjured that up based on the resveratrol found in red wine. This time, the, shall I call it meat, lay marinating in a vat of wine for seven days. Let’s pray Sylvie didn’t claim the meat to be pork or horse, or whatever’s usually used in raw dog food. That would be a misrepresentation.

It’s the source of the meat that’s the problem.

It’ll land us in jail.

~~~

Kudos on a flash-bang first sentence! Great job beginning the scene in media res. The conflict is immediately shown without any backstory dump. Myrtle’s character is quickly established as gloating, threatening, and manipulative.

I suggest a slight rewrite:

‘Some secrets won’t stay buried.’ Myrtle’s mouth twitches, not quite a smile; there’s a with malicious glee in her delivery.

Some secrets won’t stay buried — and I’m looking at the person most likely to make sure they’re uncovered of it.

Repetition is not needed and dilutes the impact of the compelling first sentence.

The following line packs a lot into a few words:

“She’s insane to believe that by betraying us she won’t expose herself.”

This describes the situation (an apparent conspiracy), the stakes (if their secrets are exposed, they’re at risk), and a serious rift among characters. Good job! 

The voice is humorous and snarky with high tension lurking just below the surface. The author classified this story as “Comedic (Cosy – not so cosy) Crime” and that accurately nails the tone.

However, the next paragraph lost me.

“Why couldn’t our investor, predator, blackmailer — call her what you like — have been Bob? Someone with the temperament of a Labrador, willing to please for a mere pat on his head.”

Investor, predator, blackmailer is an excellent summation of Myrtle that explains her involvement.

But who the heck is Bob?

That distracted and confused me. My mind went off on a tangent wondering what role Bob plays and even thinking he might be the dog.

Then the focus shifts back to Myrtle who’s as “slippery as a catfish hauled from our Riviersvalleij river.” Wonderful description but it feels overdone, coming right on top of the comparison with the eager-to-please Lab.

At this point, the author needs to slow down a bit and let the reader catch a breath. Give them time to become grounded in this world.

Too much backstory slows pace, but too little confuses the reader.

I suggest cutting the paragraph about Bob and saving it for later. For now, keep the focus on Myrtle and the narrator.

The next paragraphs do a fine job of slipping in the setting without stopping the action, but tend to be a bit too complex in places.

“I control the urge to slap her smug face; demand back the purloined shop keys and replace the locks.”

That requires the reader to shift chronological gears mid-sentence. In the present, the narrator wants to slap her. In the past, it’s implied Myrtle has stolen the keys and let herself in. In the future, the narrator plans to change the locks.

Those details are good because they further build Myrtle’s character, as well as establish the narrator’s resentment. But I had to reread the sentence a couple of times to understand it. I suggest simplifying the chronology and getting rid of the semicolon.

Here’s another sentence that’s hard to comprehend: 

“Her earlier threatening suggestion that Sylvie’s doomed to spend time behind bars and I’ll be grateful for her help has lit an inferno inside me.”

I suggest breaking this into shorter sentences:

Myrtle’s threats light an inferno inside me. How dare she imply Sylvie could go to prison, then expect me to be grateful for her help? 

The next two sentences effectively summarize the narrator’s character, relationships, motivations, and goals:

“The old me might have wilted, but she’s underestimated the power of our bond. If we’re going down, I’m bloody well dragging Myrtle with us.”

Well done!

Then the author reveals a provocative detail: the mystery meat used to make dog food sold by the shop is illegal.

Hmm. I can’t help but think of the barbecue in Fried Green Tomatoes.

I’m curious about the setting. The use of single quotes for dialogue and the spelling of “cosy” signals British or Australian. “Prestik” is a rubber-based, reusable, adhesive putty made in South Africa. Eventually I’d like to know more about the location but the plot is intriguing enough that I’m willing to wait.

A dynamite first sentence grabs the reader’s attention. The situation unfolds quickly with blackmail, betrayal, and potential criminal charges. As a reader, I want to learn answers that may turn out to be gruesome.

Brave Author, I really enjoyed the dark, humorous tone of this page, but I suggest you slow down a bit and simplify some sentences. You pack in so much detail that, at times, it becomes overwhelming and a little confusing.

Overall, it’s well written and intriguing. 

Thanks for submitting!

~~~

TKZers: what is your impression of this first page? Do you want to dig deeper in the dirt?

~~~

 

“Authors of any genre will benefit by using this book to take a deeper dive into the antagonist of their story.” — James Scott Bell

“You will certainly find insight and inspiration to make your villains leap off the page and haunt your readers’ dreams.” – Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers

 

 

Build multi-dimensional antagonists who fascinate and frighten readers in The Villain’s Journey – How to Create Villains Readers Love to Hate. 

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How to Drill Inside Your Villain’s Head

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by Debbie Burke

Today’s post is an excerpt from my new book, The Villain’s Journey-How to Create Villains Readers Love to Hate.  

While a power drill is a gruesome staple in horror and slasher films, we’re going to take a less gory, more surgical approach to drilling inside your villain’s head.

Let’s assume most readers of The Kill Zone are not kidnappers, rapists, or murderers. That makes it difficult for us to imagine the mindset of characters who commit heinous crimes. But to write convincing villains, authors need to delve into dark places of the soul.

Here are several questions to help channel your inner villain.

Warning: don’t write down your answers. Keep them inside your head. You don’t want to incriminate yourself, right?

§  Have you ever wanted something or someone so much you didn’t care about the consequences to have it/them?

§  Have you ever done something you knew was wrong, but you wanted to please, impress, or stay connected to someone else?

§  Have you ever lied or covered up the truth to protect someone else who acted immorally or illegally?

§  Has someone ever terribly harmed you or a loved one?

§  If you could take revenge against the person who harmed you without going to prison, would you be tempted?

A defense attorney friend observed that she often related to her clients’ destructive impulses. She wondered if the difference between regular people and criminals is lack of impulse control. I think she’s right. Most people might want to act in illegal, antisocial ways but they resist the temptation.

As you create a villain, dig deep into your memory. Tap into the powerful emotions you felt when you were in the situations described above.

§  Fear?

§  Panic?

§  Rage?

§  Frustration?

§  Helplessness?

§  Not caring about the consequences?

§  What else?

Why does a particular villain interest you?

Do they remind you of a person in your past? A rotten boss? A horrible ex? A family member who abused you?

What emotions does that person evoke in you?

§  Fear;

§  Helplessness;

§  Powerlessness;

§  Resentment;

§  Jealousy;

§  Hatred;

§  Love.

Yes, love. This often occurs in abusive domestic relationships. A beaten child can love and hate the parent at the same time. A battered spouse can simultaneously love and hate the vicious mate pummeling them.

Love is a complicated emotion with many layers. Exploring those complexities in characters draws the reader in closer to your story. It becomes real because they identify with the struggle.

~~~

Have you ever instantly disliked a person? Chances are good that person reminds you of someone in your past who negatively affected you. Tap into that association to describe your villain.

Here’s another trick to develop villains:

Write down their five worst qualities. What do they think, say, or do that makes you absolutely loathe them? Here are a few examples to get started but expand on these for your character.

§  Selfish;

§  Intolerant;

§  Cruel;

§  Vicious;

§  Conniving.

Now search your memory for times that you yourself displayed any of those five worst qualities, even for a fleeting second.

§  Did you ever say or do something hurtful or cruel to someone that didn’t deserve your wrath?

§  What stopped you from continuing that negative behavior?

Next, write down the villain’s five best qualities. Here are a few starter suggestions but, as above, list additional items to fit your character.

§  Intelligence;

§  Persistence;

§  Drive;

§  Resilience in the face of setbacks;

§  Adaptability to changing circumstances;

Wait a second. Don’t those qualities sound heroic? Yes.

To be a worthy opponent for your hero, the villain should possess positive traits that parallel your hero’s.

Except in the villain, those qualities become twisted. They use their strengths to do wrong.

List specific ways that your villain’s actions harm others.

§  Write down examples of malicious or cruel behavior toward a neighbor, a child, a pet.

§  Write down three examples of malicious acts to strangers;

§  Write down three reasons they use to justify their acts.

~~~

In The Writer’s Journey, Christopher Vogler discusses:

“Facing the Shadow,” an encounter between the hero and “a deadly enemy villain, antagonist, opponent…An idea that comes close to encompassing all these possibilities is the archetype of the Shadow. A villain may be an external character, but in a deeper sense what all these words stand for is the negative possibilities of the hero himself. In other words, the hero’s greatest opponent is his own Shadow.”

 

“There but for the grace of God go I.” Whether or not one believes in higher powers, most people understand the concept. If not for chance, luck, fate, or divine intervention, we could easily be an unfortunate person trapped in tragic circumstances.

In Sympathy for the Devil, the 1968 classic Rolling Stones song, Lucifer boasts of the evil he’s wreaked through history. Yet he also claims saints and sinners are one and the same.

Most people have both good and evil inside their hearts and minds, and are capable of either. Some give into destructive impulses and act immorally or illegally. Others control the impulses and remain inside the bounds of society and law.

Yet, under the right circumstances, a noble, moral person may commit terrible atrocities, while a vicious, corrupt person may show kindness.

When you need inspiration for your villain, listen to the Stones’ song. ~~~

TKZers: How do you get into the mindset of a villain? What are your favorite tricks to drill into your antagonist’s head? 

~~~

 

Want more tips to write memorable villains? Please check out The Villain’s Journey-How to Create Villains Readers Love to Hate. 

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What’s Your Point? Figuring Out
What Goes Into Each Chapter

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By PJ Parrish

I dunno, maybe this is going to sound simplistic to most of you, but I’m going to throw it out there anyway: What should go into a chapter?

I’ve been thinking about this since last week after reading Jordan’s excellent post on narrative drive. In the comments section, BK Jackson wrote this:

The one of these I fumble with the most is having a goal for every scene. Sure, it’s easy when they’re about to confront the killer or it’s about a major plot point or a clue, but what about scenes that just set the stage of story-world and its people? Sure, you don’t want mundane daily life stuff, but sometimes I write scenes of protag interacting with someone in story world and, while I can’t articulate a specific goal for the scene, it seems cold and impersonal to leave it out.

And Marilynn wrote:

Working with newer writing students, I’ve discovered that some write a scene…because they are trying to clarify the ideas for themselves, not for the reader. 

I’ve found writers often struggle with this. It’s as if they just start writing, trying to figure out what the heck is happening, then they just run out of gas. End of chapter. But that’s not how it should go. No, you don’t need to outline, but you really need to stop and ask yourself questions before you write one word: How do you divide up your story into chapters? Where do you break them? How long should each chapter be? How many chapters long should your book be? And maybe the hardest thing to figure out: What is the purpose of each chapter? Or as BK put it, what is the “goal?”

Again, this sounds simplistic but it’s not simple. How you CHOSE to divide up your story affects your reader’s level of engagement.  The way you CHOSE to chop up your plot-meat helps the reader digest it.  The way you CHOSE to parcel out character traits helps your reader bond with people. And the way you CHOSE to manipulate your story via chapter division enhances — or destroys — their enjoyment.

For some writers, this comes naturally, like having an ear in music. But for many of us, it is a skill that can be learned and perfected. So let’s give it a go.

First, do we even need chapters? Marilynne Robinson doesn’t use them. James Dickey’s To The White Sea is one big tone-poem. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road uses a couple dots instead of chapter headings, perhaps to emphasize the in media res feeling of a long journey. (I was so pulled into that book I didn’t even notice it didn’t have chapters!) But most of us mere mortals probably need to break things up a bit.

Why? Chapters give your reader a mental respite. Chapter breaks allow the reader to digest everything that’s happened. They also help build suspense for what is yet to come. If you divide them up artfully instead of willy-nilly.

Maybe it’s helpful to think of each chapter as a dramatic island. (I wrote a whole blog about this a couple years back). Then build bridges (transitions) between them. Or think of each chapter as a mini short-story. Each chapter, ideally, has its own dramatic arc — a beginning to pull the reader in, a middle with meat, and a kicker ending that makes the reader want to turn the page.

But first, ask yourself this about each chapter: What do I want to accomplish?

The first chapter is sometimes the easiest.  We talk about this all the time here, especially in our First Page Critiques. To review: For crime fiction (if not all good fiction, in my humble opinion) an opening chapter should establish time and place, introduce a major character (often the protagonist or villain), set the tone, and at least hint at some disturbance in the norm. (A body has been found, a gauntlet thrown, a character called to action). Yeah, we get all that, right?

But, as BK said, things tend to fall apart after that. The deeper you get into your story, the harder it becomes to articulate what needs to happen within each chapter. For those of you who outline, maybe it’s easier. But I’ve seen even hardcore outliners lose their way. When you sit down to write, sometimes, it just pours out in this giant amorphic blob, until, exhausted, you just quit writing. End of chapter? No, end of energy because you didn’t pace yourself.

So, before you start a chapter, STOP.  Sit there and think, really hard, until blood beads on your forehead. Don’t write a word until you can answer this question:

What do I need to accomplish in this chapter?

Some other things to help you home in on chapter “goals.”

Write a two-line summary before you start each chapter. For a revenge  plot, you might write “In this chapter the reader will find out villain’s motivation for killing his brother.”  Or in a police procedural you might write: “In this chapter, Louis and Joe put together the clues and realize Frank isn’t the killer.”

Look for ways for every chapter work harder, to have secondary purposes. Main purpose: “In chapter four, Louis goes to the UP to find evidence on the cold case of the dead orphan boys.” But also in that chapter: “The reader gets some background on Louis’s years in foster care.”  (character development plus resonates with lost boy theme) Also: “Add in good description of the Upper Peninsula.” (Establishes sense of place and underscores desolate mood.”)

Maybe this is what BK was asking for — how to make those later chapters more muscular. As you go deeper into your plot, keep looking for layers you can add, ways to make each chapter have secondary “goals.”

Use physical tools. Don’t visualize your book as a continuous unbroken roll. Think of it as a lot of little story units you can move around. Think Lego blocks, not toilet paper. Some writers draw elaborate story boards. I’m told there is software for this, but Kelly and I are Luddites. We write the salient points of each chapter on Post-It notes that we color code for POVs and move them around on a big poster board. Vladimir Nabokov wrote chapter notes on index cards and shuffled them until he found a chapter sequence that made sense.

How do you keep your chapters from just petering out? Again, you have to THINK about this before you write. Here’s another tip: Look for logical breaks in your narrative for your endings. Such as:

  • Change of place. Say, you move from New York City to London
  • Change in point of view.  From maybe your protagonist to the bad guy.
  • Change in time. (a couple hours or a couple years depending on your story)
  • Change in dramatic intensity.  Say you just wrapped up a big mano-a-mano fight. The next thing that happens is having your hero recovering and thinking about what just happened. That might be a great place to start a new chapter.  It goes to pacing: Follow up an intense action scene chapter with a slower chapter that allows the reader to catch their breath.

By the end of each chapter, you should resolve at least one thing.  A car chase ends. A victim dies. Two cops figure out a major clue and decide to act. One character tells another something important about their background.  When you end a chapter, you want to send your reader a clear signal that what they just read is important. One trick I love: End a chapter just before the climax of a significant story arc: This is a classic trick of the thriller and mystery novel. You lead your reader right up to the edge of a tense moment then you end the chapter.  They have no choice but to turn the page!

I wish I could remember who said this: A good chapter ending does two things — it closes one door and it opens another one.

Whew. Enough already, you’re saying. I hear you. Okay, let’s move on to some easier stuff.

How long should your chapters be? I wrote a whole blog on this a while back, but if you don’t want to go back and read it, here’s the short answer: As long as each chapter needs to be.

It’s a matter of style — your style.  But, if you are following the idea of a dramatic arc for each chapter-island, the answer should come organically. As you move through your story, you might want to try for a consistency in length — be it 200 words or 2000 words. Why? I think it helps your reader get a sense of your style and pacing. But don’t sweat this too much. If you are moving along at a steady pace of say 1500 words per chapter and suddenly one comes out at 5000 words, you might want to go back in and look for a logical break in your narrative or action.  You might find, with judicious rewriting, that you’ve really got two tight chapters instead of one long one.

Okay, I’m running long again. One more question:

Should you use chapter titles? Lots of writers love these, especially fantasy and YA writers. I’m on the fence about them. I’ve never used them, but for one complex book, we did have three “books” that had titles. When chapter titles are witty, they can be great because they provide hints about what to expect within the chapter. But if they are mundane or obvious, they are just annoying and pretentious.

One story I heard was that before the release of one of her Harry Potter books, JK Rowlings refused to divulge any plot points. But she released three chapter titles — “Spinners End,” “Draco’s Detour,” and “Felix Felicis” — just to tease readers.

Here’s some of my favorite chapter titles:

“Down the Rabbit-Hole.” Chapter 1, Alice in Wonderland. So great it has become a modern metaphor, especially in politics.

“I Begin Life On My Own Account, And Don’t Like It.” Chapter 11, David Copperfield. Didn’t realize Dickens had a sense of humor.

Rick Riordan might be the chapter title king. Here are six from just one novel:

“I Accidently Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher”
“I Play Pinochle with a Horse”
“I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom”
“We Get Advice from a Poodle”
“A God Buys Us Cheeseburgers”
“I Battle My Jerk Relative”

But here’s my all-time favorite from Ian Fleming’s Live And Let Die, chapter 14:

“He disagreed with something that ate him.”

And that is a good place to end.

 

Writing Novels in a Minor Key:Where Are All the Good Tear-Jerkers?

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By P.J. Parrish

Have you ever cried reading a novel?

No, I don’t mean your first draft. I mean, has someone’s work moved you to such a point that you shed real tears? Movies…that’s easy. We all have our favorite cinematic tear-jerkers. Here’s just a few of mine:

Breakfast At Tiffany’s: Holly searches for Cat in the rain.
Roman Holiday: The Princess and the pauper Peck. Hopeless love.
The Vikings: Kirk Douglas gets his Viking funeral.
Field of Dreams: Costner plays catch with his father’s ghost.
Sophie’s Choice: Stingo reciting Dickinson over the death bed.
Spartacus: “Please die, my love… die, die now my darling!”  
The Incredible Journey: Yes, even the old dog makes it home.

But the number of books that have made me cry I can maybe count on one hand. I cried when Jack the dog, reaching old age, had to be put down by Pa in the Laura Ingalls Wilder Books. I cried when Charlotte the spider died (but her babies lived on!) I remember reading Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club on a plane and when I got to the scene where the mother explains why she abandoned her babies by the side of the road, I had to go hide in the bathroom and compose myself.

Are novelists more leery of the “cheap” reaction of tears? I think that is certainly true in crime fiction today. It is rare to find a novel, in these days of neo-noir aping and dick-lit posturing, that appeals to the emotions. We deal with the themes of death and loss all the time. We describe blood and guts with clinical accuracy. Why do we pull our punches when it comes to showing the emotional outfall of death?

I don’t believe it is just because movies are visual. What is more powerful than the blank screens of our own imaginations? I think it might be because today’s crime writers are leery of being labeled as soft when we go into matters of the heart. But to my mind, something very special happens when crime writers decide to write in a minor key.

Time out! Quick music lesson here. There are basically two ways you can compose something — in major and minor keys. And they sound distinctly different. In the western musical tradition, major-key music is played at times of celebration (think of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March or Happy Birthday), and fun times (Celebration by Kool And The Gang). Minor-key music is used to mark mourning (Chopin’s Funeral March), heartache (Back To Black by Amy Winehouse) and despair (Gloomy Sunday by Billie Holiday).

That memorable score to The Godfather, the one that captures the despair, bloody history, horror and complicated family love? It was written in C Minor. Now here is how it sounds when rewritten in a MAJOR key (Listen to just a couple seconds and you’ll be shocked.)

I’ll make him an offer that he…aw heck, on second thought, buy the old man a new horsey. ((Sunshine, lollipops and tommyguns every day…)))

Excepting many cozies, the tone of most crime fiction is minor key. (Although I find it interesting that the haunting theme for Dennis Lehane’s dark classic Mystic River is in C Major. Maybe because director Clint Eastwood wanted to go against grain and convey majesty and hope?) If you want to continue the music analogy, even romantic suspense doesn’t shy away from a darker feel at times. Yet I have found few crime novels that had me reaching for the Kleenex, that elicited from me a genuinely earned emotional response. Here are a couple:

Silent Joe by T. Jefferson Parker. The hero, a victim of child abuse, hunts for a kidnapper but every path leads him right back to uncovering the secrets of his own childhood. Sparse as a haiku but powerful and haunting.

Sandrine’s Case by Thomas H. Cook. Beautifully written like all his works but what starts out as a mundane murder trial with a semi-repulsive protag becomes a wonderfully humane love story. Think Gone Girl with a heart.

Lisey’s Story by Stephen King. Not technically a crime novel but I’m including it anyway here. It took me a while to get into this book, which slides back and forth between the real and woo-woo worlds as it tells the story of a wife coping with the aftermath of her writer-husband’s death. It is slow-building but powerful magic, King writing in B minor, about gently accepting one’s fate.

A pretty short list.

I had a conversation with a high-placed editor at a New York cocktail party last year. She told me she has noticed two trends in crime fiction recently: the decline of hard-boiled “guy books.” And the continued strength of romantic suspense. Now, let’s not kid ourselves. There is some terrific hard-boiled stuff being written right now, books that don’t turn up their noses at emotions. Likewise, there is some utterly putrid romance suspense on the shelves these days, stuff that gets everything about police procedure and forensics wrong and gets really treacly about the romance part. But where are the crime novels that hit you in the heart?

Maybe I am wrong. Or just reading the wrong stuff. What has gotten to you? What has made you cry? Movies are easy. But give me some books as well.

Or am I wrong in my belief that there is still room for well-wrought (as opposed to over-wrought) emotion in today’s crime fiction?