Category Archives: Kathryn Lilley

When it comes to writing, what’s your point of view?

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God, how I hate having to deal with point of view. Whenever I’m writing, POV feels like a technical constraint that limits expression. It forces me to make choices, to rein myself in and be disciplined. I really hate that.
And yet it’s critical that you set up POV correctly for your story. When you lose control of POV, you lose control of your story. And that’s when you lose your reader. (For an earlier discussion about POV, see our February Sunday writing blog.)
At one of my writing groups this week, we spent some time debating how to handle point of view in one of our member’s stories.

This particular story jumped in and out of the point of view of two characters within the confines of a two-person scene. On first reading, nothing seemed really wrong with the scene; I had to reread it several times to figure out why it lacked suspense and kept the reader at a distance. I finally decided that the real problem with the scene was its POV. In other words, there was way too much head-jumping going on.

So here’s a general guideline to help you avoid a POV trap:

Use only one POV per chapter or section (Sections separated by asterisks or a space).

The story we were reading in group had a POV that shifted between paragraphs (aka omniscient POV). That constant shifting created a confusing overall effect. I think it may be possible to present POV this way, but it probably takes an extremely skilled writer to pull it off. So why even play with POV fire?

Omniscient

The omniscient POV lets the writer enter each character’s head during a scene, and even lets the narrator provide direct observations. The story in my writing group is an example of a story that used an omniscient POV. It suffered from the same fate that omniscient POV stories usually do–the reader failed to engage with the characters or the story. Suspense was nonexistent.

Now that I’ve dissed the omniscient POV, however, I will admit that I’m considering using an omniscient narrative opening for my WIP thriller. In this case, the omniscient POV will function as a garnish, like the paprika sprinkled on top of the baked chicken to draw in the eye and make the dish look tasty.

First Person

Favorite of detective novel series (to the point of being cliche), the first person POV has decided pluses and minuses. It’s a very intimate POV (you know everything going on in the character’s head), but you can only know and see what that character learns and sees throughout the entire story.

It’s tempting to use first-person POV, but trust it from a writer of first-person POV mysteries, it’s incredibly awkward to try write your character into every single scene.
It’s also awkward to make sure that your character doesn’t “know” anything in the story that he or she hasn’t seen, read, or been told.

Limited Third Person

Similar to the first person POV, only it uses he/she instead of “I”. My sense is that this POV is getting less popular, but it may just be me.

Multiple Third Person

Lets the writer switch from character to character. This is probably the best choice for most thrillers. This POV lets you roam free on the range with the buffalo.

Mixed

This is a mixture of first person with multiple points of view. For example, some thrillers use a first-person POV for the bad guy while everyone else is presented in third person. This approach can help build suspense.
Second
This POV is so rare I forgot about it until Joe Moore reminded me about it in the comments just now, so I’m adding it back in. Second person POV is where the writer talks directly to the reader. No wonder it’s an unusual POV–I find it completely annoying.
To wit:
You’re walking along and then you realize someone is following you. You spin around and then…Blam-o!
Bleah.
So I’m wondering how you make your POV choices for your novels, and are there any POVs that you love? Loathe?

Thriller writing 101: Creating an atmosphere

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Every successful thriller begins with a distinctive atmosphere. The thriller writer must establish an atmosphere at the beginning of the story, to ground the reader in the story’s place and time.

Note: Atmosphere, while related to setting, is not the same thing as a setting! The atmosphere is what draws the reader in until he or she has time to engage with the characters and plot.

As an example of atmosphere, let’s say your story starts off at a hotel. Is the hotel located along the strip in Las Vegas, is it a no-tell motel along I-95 in South Carolina, or is it a beachfront motel in a party town in Southern California? Each locale would provide an opportunity for a completely different atmosphere. It’s your choice as the writer to create an atmosphere according to the needs of your story.

What works: Trilateration (I have no idea where I came up with this term; probably Star Trek)

One check list I use when creating atmosphere is the five senses. Of the five senses, writers tend to seriously overuse sight and hearing. We forget all about smell, taste, and touch. When creating atmosphere, it’s helpful to roam back through your paragraphs, weaving in references to the other senses. That’s what I call trilateration.

For what it’s worth, here’s a link to an ehow article about creating atmosphere.

What doesn’t work: Generic settings, laundry lists, overdescription

Introducing characters with description dumps is boring, and so is introducing settings with laundry lists of description. You need to bring the setting alive by infusing it with mood, in the same way that you inject your characters with life and attitude (For the how-to about that, see Robert Gregory Browne’s post about bringing characters to life).

So I’d love to know, how do you go about creating atmosphere in your thrillers? What techniques or tricks of the trade can you share with us today?


TARP times, hard times, a ring of death

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The national economic meltdown was brought home to me this week. Uncharacteristically, my local Big Bank put a seven-day hold on a large out-of-state check I wanted to deposit.

Seven business days? Big Bank had never done that to me before. Those bastards. That meant it would be a week and a half before I could use my funds. So in a fit of financially ill-advised pique, I snatched back my check.Then I set off with the goal of finding a Cash America, or a Paycheck America, or wherever it is America goes these days to get a check cashed instantly (for a fee, of course).

As it turns out, none of those places are located near where I live, which is by the beach in Southern California. They are all, shall we say, inland.

I finally located a check cashing place. Inside the sterile-looking, cheerless lobby, the clerks were sequestered behind bulletproof Plexiglass. While I was waiting for my paperwork to be approved, I noticed a small coffee can on the counter. It had a picture of a man and two young girls on it. “Help the Masons”, the can said. “Every penny counts.”

“Who are the Masons?” I asked the clerk.

Mason was their coworker, she explained. He’d been gunned down in the parking lot. Five bullets. Now he was paralyzed from the waist down. He’d been raising those two little girls by himself, and now… her voice trailed off.

“The streets right around here are real bad,” she said, then named four streets, gesturing with her hands. “It’s like a shooting circle. Things are getting worse. Everyone around here’s out of work. Everything’s bad.”

I asked some more questions about Mason. He has no health insurance. Pretty soon, he’ll probably get kicked out of the rehabilitation facility he’s been recovering in. Right now his mother is in town from Wisconsin, looking after the little girls. After that, no one’s sure what will happen.

I shoved five bucks into the donation jar.

As I drove away from the check-cashing store in my “rob me” Z4, I pondered a sense of unease has settled over my hometown of Los Angeles. People are losing their jobs, all over. I read last weekend that the unemployment rate in this city is over ten percent. It seems to be getting worse by the week.

In the immediate wake of hard times like the ones we’re having right now, the circles of violence like the one that swept up Mr. Mason inevitably grow and invade into new territory. There was much wringing of hands in my beach city community recently about a string of robberies that had been committed by perpetrators from–quote–outside the community. In my own postage-stamp-sized town, we’ve started to have home invasion robberies. I used to worry about frat boys stumbling up from the bars on Pier Avenue at 2 a.m. on Saturday night. Now I’m worried about desperados seeking cash.

And violence is only the dark underbelly of the recession/depression/liverwurst, whatever it is we’ve got on our hands. Little stores are closing all around in my community, one after another.

What about you? Where you live, do you see any visible signs of economic hard times? Does it make you nervous? Do the incidents that take place around you impact or inform your writing?

Shifting genres: From mystery to thriller

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A new journey begins today–I’m starting a brand new book. I’m even switching genres, from serial mystery to standalone suspense thriller.

This is going to be a huge style shift from my previous work in serial cozies. So to get prepared, I’ve taken myself back to “writing school.”

Right now I’m reading T. Macdonald Skillman’s Writing the Thriller. Her book provides a good nuts-and-bolts overview of the craft of writing thrillers. I like the way Macdonald breaks thrillers down into the various subgenres. Here’s a sampling from her list:

Action-adventure
Legal
Medical
Political
Psychological
Romantic relationship

MacDonald purposefully doesn’t include paranormal as a subgenre in her list. I don’t mean vampires or werewolves–those bore me. I’m thinking about paranormals like Dean Koontz’s The Followers. Those are the types of stories in which you’re not sure whether some of the characters are crazy, or whether something paranormal really is at work.

So after the day’s reading, here’s my take-away lesson:

In a suspense thriller, my main character might die.

In a series mystery like the Fat City Mysteries, you never worry too much about the main character. After all, Kate Gallagher is telling you her story in the first person. You know she’s alive to tell the tale, and she’ll have to survive to tell you the next one.
But in a thriller, the main character might actually die. I think this has to be the case. Consider for example The Lovely Bones. The fourteen-year-old victim in that story is dead before the story even starts.

Can you think of other suspense thrillers where you were really worried about the main character? As a writer, are you willing to actually kill your protagonist before the story ends? Is that going too far in a thriller?

How scared–and scary–do you have to be to write suspense versus mystery?

Lost in outer-writer space

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Speaking of Writer Hell, as Michael Haskins was in our Sunday funny, I had one of those days in Hell yesterday. It was so bad that I completely forgot to write my blog. I have no excuse except that I’m in the final throes of Draft Two of Makeovers Can Be Murder, the third installment of the Fat City Mysteries. This is the time when my brain becomes a bowl of guacamole, littered with random creative-chip debris. I am literally walking into walls. People who encounter me on the street probably think I need to be committed, or at least routed into some kind of 12-step recovery program for the fuzzy-brained.

But no, it’s just me during the last-gasp phase of the creative process. It’s final deadline.

I’m working my way through my editor’s notes right now. How do like your editor’s notes? I love my editor, but I always wait for her notes with nervous anticipation. I feel like I did when I was sixteen years old and waiting for the college acceptance letters. When it does arrive and I read through it, I usually do a little dance because it’s inevitably far kinder than I could have reasonably anticipated. Then I settle down and address the notes one by one. They’re always right on.

What kinds of experiences have you had with editors in your career? And hey, if your an editor, what kind of experience do you have with writers? Are we a bunch of whiners? You can post as Anonymous and tell us the real scoop.

Can we dish?

Survivor: Writer’s Island

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By Kathryn Lilley

No, the Killers at the Kill Zone aren’t taking a vote by tiki-torch circle to kick someone off our little blogger island.

I put the word “Survivor” in the heading because I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how I am going to survive as a writer in the coming years. I’m also wondering how the book publishing business is going to survive in general.

Here’s my conclusion: we could learn a thing or two from our new President.

As a candidate running for election, President Obama (Like the sound of that name? It’s official now) turned political conventional wisdom on its head. He ran his campaign from the bottom up, in a grass roots, internet-savvy way.

I think that’s what we writers have to do. Social networking, viral marketing–we have to take the marketing reins for our books in our own hands, and make it work.

Easier said than done. After a dismal fall in which I evaded many of the usual marketing chores, I recently decided to try to brainstorm ways to approach marketing from a bottom-up direction. I decided to start by creating a book trailer for A KILLER WORKOUT and posting it on YouTube

Michelle blogged about her trailer for The Tunnels that’s been up on YouTube for awhile. It’s a very good one, but I wanted to create mine for no money. So I spent hours over the weekend, reading how-to articles and seeking advice from my social networking sites. The results have been interesting. I first posted a video that included a shot of a woman who was completely naked except for a thong. I thought the picture was artistic, but some of my friends thought it was a bit too much. Anyway, I’ve reworked the trailer and put it back up on YouTube. Next I’m going to work up a new trailer for Dying to be Thin.

One interesting statistic from the book trailer got my attention: In the first day it was posted on YouTube, the video got 17,000 impressions–an “impression” is a video that was displayed in front of the viewer, but was not clicked for viewing. Sure only a fraction of those people clicked on the video and watched it but still…seventeen thousand!

I did an analysis of who was actually viewing the video: The vast majority of people who watched the book trailer for A KILLER WORKOUT were kids (I have to assume girls) who had searched on the word Twilight.

Uh, as in Twilight the book and movie? Aka Vampire love.

You probably need to have an adolescent daughter in the house to have heard of this movie.

I threw the word Twilight into the search terms when creating the metadata for my trailer thinking, “Aw, hell, Twilight is selling a gazillion copies. Couldn’t hurt.”

And evidently it didn’t. I got fourteen thousand Twilight-generated impressions, plus some kind of miniscule click-through percentage that I don’t understand yet because I refuse to understand math.

I have no clue whether this translates into any sales of books. A friend of my adolescent daughter took a look at the trailer and went, “A book trailer? But isn’t it already out?”

Uh, yeah. Movie trailers come out before they’re released, I explained. Book trailers…well, they’re different. But good point. Should we call them book videos to avoid confusion?

So anyway, viral marketing is one of my goals for 2009. Do you have any marketing goals to add for the year?

Hey! How about a Book TV channel for FICTION?

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I’m tired of being snubbed by Book tv.

Oh sure, over the holidays I spent lots of time over there at C-Span2, listening to their earnest book discussions, and hearing interesting interviews with new-to-me authors.

But most of that time I spent watching in a state of–I admit it–jealous twitchery.

Book tv, as most of you know, showcases nonfiction books and authors.

Nonfiction books and authors.
Which means that novelists need not apply. Which means that the likes of me et tu waste our time sending in our cunning little media packets and promotional postcards and magnets as pay-for-play. Because even if C-Span is a quasi-governmental organization, bribes will buy us nada much airtime on Book tv.
But honestly–would it kill those serious folks over at C-Span to invite us fictionistas over for some play-dates at Book tv? We might help them sprout another Span or two! They could consider it a service to the dwindling public literary sphere. Or look at is as another government bailout. The publishing industry and authordom: we’re too big to fail. C’mon, Book tv! Give us airtime!!
Or maybe C-Span and Book tv don’t want novelists sullying up the public airwaves with BSP-antics, as we imaginative types are wont to do. So here’s my scathingly brilliant idea: I want to start a cable TV station, one that will be for fiction only. The new book TV channel will include book shows, discussions and reviews. We’ll start off small, by sticking the new station way out in the cable-viewing solar system (this is mostly where the people who watch the History Channel and the Crime & Investigation Network lurk). I predict that my Fiction Book tv cable channel will take root and thrive there.
So has anybody got some spare change to start up a new cable TV channel in 2009? This one will be strictly for works of fiction. The only nonfiction works we’ll take will be discards from Oprah’s memoir pile, the ones that didn’t make the Smelly Cat cut.
But her little stinkers will always be welcome on my Book TV Channel as long as I’m running the show. We’ll just slap a disclaimer on them: “Hey, Dude–it’s fiction. We make shit up over here. Get over it!” (And that ‘tude is probably exactly why you’ll never see me on C-Span).

Meanwhile, I’m getting really excited about my new book cable TV idea. All I need now is someone with business vision and money. Lots of money. To wit, I need me a venture capitalist. Are there any of those left after the crash of ’08? Every day another bazillionaire seems to be biting the dust, so there seem to be fewer to go around.

Hey, is Ted Turner looking for a new investment? He’s a survivor. Can someone please ask his people to give my people a call? Heck, he can call me personally. I just saw him over at C-Span. And let me tell you–at 72, he’s still got it.

Wait–does Ted even still have money? Oh heck, it doesn’t matter. Ted can call me anyway. He sounds totally cool. Or if he doesn’t want to invest in my new Book TV channel, maybe we can just chat about his latest nonfiction book, Call Me Ted. I think he’d like that. Even though it might make me more jealous than ever.

Male or female author? You vote!

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Okay, so Clare’s post about male versus female writing inspired me to put it to a vote–contest time! You vote whether the the authors of some writing snippets are male or female. You have to post a comment to win. The prize will be my favorite Indie Bookstore tee shirt:


If it’s a tie, the tee shirt goes to the first person to guess the most correctly. Everyone who posts will get a Kill Zone bookmark, if you send me your address! I’ll announce the winners next Tuesday. (Please–No spoilers if you know the author!)
#1
A warm Friday night in April, the air still and perfumed by lilacs.
Emily had to pee. I fingered her leash as she circled and sniffed the ground for whatever peculiar scent would tell her she had found the right spot.
Peter was on his way out the lane. He slowed his old Volvo and thrust his left arm through the open window in greeting. “Hi, Em,” he called.
I returned his wave and watched the wagon’s lights trail away. Emily cocked her ears as she squatted in the dust.
She would have preferred that we continue on for a walk but I was eager to get back inside, where my wife waited for me with chilled pepper vodka, a video-cassette, and a cozy spot on the couch.

#2
Captain Frank Bentille leaned against the door jamb and stared at them. Gray and black tweed pants and a gray shirt hung loosely on his gangly frame, making him look like a greyhound long retired from the track. The striped tie had a red spot from some recent meal. His close-set eyes were dwarfed by the dense brows that nearly met each other over his nose.

#3
The sound came at us like a prizefighter’s punch—a thundering, out-of-nowhere explosion tha shook the earth and nearly deafened us.
I stood frozen, unable to comprehend what had happened. A cloud of dust and debris suddenly billowed over the meadow as the echoes of the explosion continued to rattle and roar through the mountains, until soon the sound seemed to come from every side. There were other sounds too—screams and the quick crack of shots fired.

#4


Mabel wanted to follow the sleepy kiss—even cupped Em’s tiny, pert breasts with the rosehip nipples—but she had business to take care of. Baby Emma was twenty but easily passed for ten or eleven. The girl-child seemed built of warm and creamy vanilla scoops, and the blond ringlets curling in a tangle around her face looked like thick caramel drippings. Mable touched her lips again, softly, not wanting to wake the young woman too quickly.
#5

The hair! It was fair, sun-bleached brown with shades of red, still showing a distinct ripply wave. Six swaths had been gathered at the crime scene and brought to the his laboratory. Kyle placed them on a windowsill, where, when he glanced up from his exceedingly close work with tweezers and bits of bone, he could see them clearly. The longest swath was seven inches. The victim had worn her hair long, to her shoulders. From time to time, Kyle reached out to touch it.

#6

Gerald Kelley was as Irish as one could be and still live in Boston and not Dublin. His hair was reddish blond and thick and curly despite the fact that he was fifty-four years old. His face had a ruddy hue, almost as if he wore theatrical makeup, especially over the crests of his cheekbones.
Kelley’s most notable feature and by far the dominant aspect of his profile was his enormous paunch. Every night three bottles of stout contributed to its awe-inspiring dimensions. For the last few years it had been pointed out that when Kelley was vertical, his belt buckle was horizontal.
#7
So once I figured out I was in the trunk of a car, I remembered the blue Civic and from there it was a swift re-connect the dots to Jesse and Sam and the girl with the briefcase.
I also remembered that I had been shot, or thought I had. It obviously hadn’t been by a very good shot, since I was still around to worry about it, but it did seem fairly pressing that get some sort of medical attention. I felt like someone was digging a fork around my right side just below the arm pit and it hurt like hell if I took a deep breath.
Examine your own writing for male vs. female “traits”
While I was looking for excerpts to try to trip you all up, I found a site where you can enter your writing and find out whether your writing is more “male” or “female.” The site runs your writing through an algorithm of some sort to determine your score:
I ran a section of my own writing through it, and my score was slightly more “male” than “female.” Who’d a thunk it? Try running your writing through it and let us know the results!

Take Two: Ghost brides, aka “The Bride Wore Bones”

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Note: I’m inspired by Clare’s post on the paranormal yesterday (that, plus the fact that I’m way behind on a deadline) to repost my thoughts about the strange things that people do with dead bodies. Including, it turns out, the ancient art of marrying corpses.

The original post appeared over at our sister mystery blog, Killer Hobbies.

Call me morbid (which you kinda have to be when you’re a mystery writer), but I was fascinated to read an article put out by CNN, which describes all the strange things people do with dead bodies.

Corpse brides and ghost marriages

In China, there is an old practice of providing “ghost marriages” between women and deceased bachelors. I gather the practice got started so that no woman would have to die as a spinster (no way to verify the rumor that some women preferred to marry dead guys so that they’d escape a fate of faked headaches and arguments over the dinner table with breathing spouses.).

After nearly dying out during the cultural revolution, “ghost marriages” have recently come back into vogue–but evidently with a new, more prurient purpose. In a country that’s chronically short of women in a patriarchal society (Thank you, one-family, one-child policy), the ghost-marriage practice is now aimed at making sure that dead bachelors are…ahem…satisfied in the afterlife.

Tales have been told of people killing prostitutes and other unfortunate women so that these men will get some nooky in the netherworld.

Got some cold cream for that freezer burn?

The much-ballyhooed experiments into cryogenics have evidently run into a snag—frozen bodies are developing wicked cases of freezer burn. I mean, seriously–who wants to be revived in 200 years if you’re doomed to walk around looking like Night of the Shriveled-green Dead?

Here’s a link to the article on CNN, for further reading on the strange things that people do with dead bodies:

I’ve worked one of these macabre practices into my third book, MAKEOVERS CAN BE MURDER. (Won’t reveal which one, though—stay tuned for the book in ’09).

Now I’m getting obsessed with the subject of ghost marriages and corpse brides. The practice sounds so macabre. But it makes for a killer subplot, doesn’t it?

Talk me down—is the book biz doomed?

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Clare’s post yesterday about the demise of publishing sent me scurrying around the Web. I was
searching for signs of hope that the book publishing industry is not modeled after a Model T or a dinosaur, doomed by an era of digital entertainment to be consigned to the museum or bone yard.

What I’ve found so far is not encouraging. For example, I stumbled across a piece by Boris Kachka in New York Magazine, “Have We Reached the End of Book Publishing As We Know it?” Per the well-researched, well-argued article, the book publishing industry as we know it is doomed, as evidenced by the following:

  • Upheavals in the corporate executive suites
  • The mad rush to e-book publishing
  • The continuing woes of midsize publishers
  • The declining fortunes of in-store booksellers, including Borders
  • A “vertical market grab” by Amazon

Kachka’s article contains a scary message for publishers and authors. Everyone in the industry that he interviewed seems to agree that the old business model of publishing is going away, but no one has a lock on how the future will look. Kachka posits that the new “big thing” in commercial publishing might be—I kid you not—true-life stories about heroic pets who teach humans lessons about being human. The rest of the publishing landscape might consist of reduced advances for authors (not an adjustment for most midlist writers, whose advances are already paltry), some form of POD and e-book distribution, and an uncertain future for everything else, including so-called “literary” fiction.

I hope the article exaggerates, but just in case, I’m getting prepared. Did I mention I have a great story about our newly adopted cat? Her name is Bianca–she’d a lovely blue-eyed Siamese who is teaching me how to be more human. Tie-ins include a lovely “Wisdom of Bianca” cat calendar. Details to follow.

Now, about that million dollar advance…


Please someone, talk me down. Is the publishing business model really broken? Is there no hope?

If you can’t reassure me, then tell me about about a heroic puppy who teaches a cat how to be more human.

Otherwise I’ll have to order the e-book version from Amazon.

It’ll be here in ten seconds.