Category Archives: Writing

The So-What

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by John Gilstrap

If you’re around this writing biz long enough, and attend enough seminars or classes, sooner or later you’re going to hear about the three-act structure.  I’m of the belief that there are no hard and fast rules in the world of fiction-writing—that if it works, it works—but it’s pretty hard to tell any story without a beginning, a middle and an end.

Now, the Syd Fieldses of the world embrace a form of the three-act structure that is far more draconian and, frankly, intimidating than mine.  Truth be told, looking back on 17 published novels, I would be hard pressed to identify precise act-to-act transitions in any of them.  I think more in terms of setup, development and climax.  Or, as I wrote above, a beginning, a middle and an end.

A few weeks ago, as I was teaching a two-hour writing seminar in Alexandria, Virginia, I was smitten with the notion that, structurally, there’s another critical element of successful storytelling: the so-what.  It’s a little hard to define, but it goes to the heart of what makes an otherwise well-told story fall flat, and what makes some mundane storytelling very successful.  In my view, it’s the missing element that renders a lot of so-called literary fiction to be under-performers at the cash register.

A successful so-what leaves readers satisfied that the time they invested in the reading was well-spent.  After investing a few hours (or a lot of hours) into reading a story, I need to feel that the characters I’ve bonded with have changed somehow, and that their journey has left their slice of the world somehow changed.  Brilliantly-painted word pictures and navel-gazing angst all have their places, but the absence of a good so-what leaves me, as a reader, a little angry at the author.  Would it have killed the writer to include an identifiable story along with the beautiful words?

Every year at ThrillerFest in New York City, International Thriller Writers Association sponsors an event called Pitch Fest, where attendees can carve out face time with NY literary agents to pitch their book ideas.  Last year, I agreed to participate in Practice Pitch Fest, in which I would sit where an agent would later sit and help writers hone their pitches.  It was a real eye-opener for me, not least because, never having had to pitch, I don’t know that I could do it.

After sitting across from fifteen, maybe eighteen authors, the most common weakness among the pitches I heard was the lack of a solid so-what.  Consider:

My book is based on my mother’s brave effort to conquer cancer. The so-what questions here are, how was your mother’s fight more brave or essentially different than every other mother’s fight to conquer cancer?  Why are you and you alone the right person to write this book?  What will the reader take away that is different from other books about parents’ brave struggles with illness?  Actually, this is the problem with most memoirs.

An emotionally scarred New Orleans detective stalks a serial killer who preys on tourists in the Big Easy.  Emotionally scarred detectives have been done to death.  The New Orleans beat is covered by countless gumshoes already, and serial killers are ubiquitous in crime fiction.  The so-what in a story like this could be the evolution of the detective over the course of the book from good to bad, or bad to good.  Or that the serial killer is of a nature that we’ve never seen before.  But without the so-what, the idea is just another serial killer book.  Been there.  Ho-hum.

Sometimes, the so-what has little to do with plot and everything to do with character.  For some mysteries—but no thrillers I can think of—the so-what is as simple as letting readers spend a fun few hours with characters they have come to love over the years.  But that’s a tough hill to climb for Book One.

So, does this make sense or am I all wet here?  Can you think of a book you disliked yet you thought you were going to love?  No need to name names, but when a book leaves you flat, what is the most likely missing element?

Fair warning: When this post appears, I will be in Las Vegas at the SHOT Show, researching what new toys Jonathan Grave needs to add to his arsenal.  I will accordingly be slow to respond to comments.

The Dénouement: Tying Up
the Yarn Strands of Your Story

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It is the loose ends with which men hang themselves. — Zelda Fitzgerald.

By PJ Parrish

Another sleepless night. But – hazzah! – another idea for a Kill Zone post. Two nights ago, unable to stop the hamster wheel in my head, I took my pillow out to the sofa, hit the remote, and trolled for a good movie. Nothing except…

The last half hour of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. Now I hadn’t seen the movie since it came out in 1989 and while I didn’t remember all the characters and plot points, I did remember that climax. And that is where I came in the other night, right when the tensions and heat in the Brooklyn neighborhood boiled over, leading Mookie to throw a trash can through the window of Sal’s pizza joint. All hell then breaks loose.

Spike Lee choreographs this climax with chilling precision. But what interested me was what came after. The next day, Mookie and Sal, standing in front of the smoldering ruins of the pizza joint, argue then reach a tepid reprochement. But Lee adds a coda of the local DJ (Samuel Jackson) greeting his listeners with the admonishment “Wake up! Up you wake, up you wake, up you wake! It’s gonna be another hot day.” Then before the credits roll, Lee gives us two quotes — from Martin Luther King Jr. on peaceful protest and Malcolm X on violence as self-defense.

That’s when I got up and jotted some notes for this blog. Because I think the ending of Do the Right Thing is a great departure point for a talk here about the dénouement.

De-noue-what?

You’ve probably heard this term bouncing about in craft books or maybe on conference panels. But I’m not sure we really know what it is or how we should use it in our books.
First, let’s learn how to say the sucker: It’s day-new-moh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXbsK7eHirk

It comes from the Old French word desnouer, “to untie” and the Latin word nodus for “knot”. It’s the part of the story that comes after you’ve built up your conflicts in a rising arc of tension and blown up your plot in a giant fireball of gun fights, car chases, lovers’ quarrels, dying zombies or melting Nazis (I also watched Raiders of the Lost Ark this week). The dénouement is what comes after the climax, wherein you the writer have to tie up those loose plot ends, slap on some salve, leach out the suspense and resolve things into a nice satisfying conclusion.

Or maybe not. But we’ll get back to Spike Lee in a second. For now, let’s stick with conventional dénouements.

Above is a slide from one of our workshops. We’re making the point here that a good plot is never a flat line or even a comet-shot straight upward. It is like that fever chart at the bottom — a series of triumphs and setbacks for your hero but its main thrust is always upward toward the climax. And that little downward line out to Z is just the denouement.

Think of the dénouement as a coda to the big movements that precede it. It is a tail on the plot beast, but still important because it is where things are explained (if necessary) and secrets revealed (sometimes). Shakespeare was big on dénouements: In Romeo and Juliet, after the lovers are dead, the Montagues and Capulets gather and Escalus lays a big guilt trip on them all telling them their feud is to blame. At the end of Hamlet, with the stage strewn with bodies, Horatio shows up to remind us that the voices of angels will carry Hamlet to his heavenly rest, meaning his story – and thus he – will live forever.

To use a metaphor: Your climax is well, like a climax. The dénouement is smoking the cigarettes afterward.

Maybe it’s useful to stop here and think about the THREE-ACT STRUCTURE. James and others here at TKZ talk about this a lot, so if you aren’t familiar with it, pick up James’s books on plot structure or go troll through our archives. Here’s the skinny over-simplified: The first act is your set-up wherein you introduce characters and their world, set up your plot, and define the main conflict that is the hero’s call to action. The second act is “rising action,” a series of events and setbacks that build up to the climax. The third act is the turning point and climax that requires the hero to draw on strengths, confront the antagonist and solve the problem at hand. Then we move into “resolution” where conflicts may be fixed, normalcy restored, and anxiety (for the reader) released.

The dénouement is a big deal in traditional detective stories. You will often get at the end of the story Holmes or Poiret laying out the clues and explaining how they figured things out.
One of my favorite detective dénouements is from Psycho. The climax has Norman, dressed up as Mother, trying to stab Lila in the creepy cellar. But what comes next is the scene in the courthouse where the psychiatrist explains what happened to Norman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abAsTTC9puk

It’s hokey, yeah, but we need to understand how Norman got so twisted. Likewise, you might need such a useful scene to help untangle the yarns of your plot at the end.

My sister Kelly and I are struggling with this notion right now with our WIP.  We’re at the climax wherein our hero confronts the bad guy and triumphs, of course. The bad guy has to die. But we realized that while we knew why our antagonist had rotted from within (and you need to know this!) we had no one in our cast of characters to explain it to the reader.  Yes, the hero can surmise things about the bad guy, and you need to sow the clues of personality throughout the story. But sometimes, in the end, someone — like the shrink in Psycho — has to give it context and history.  So we went back and inserted a new character early in the book — hidden in plain sight — who will, in a denouement, give testimony.

There’s a great example of dénouement in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. After the climatic fight between Biff and Willy and Willy’s suicide (to get insurance money) there is a final scene called “Requiem” where the family gathers at Willy’s funeral. Sadly, no one has come to pay their respects. Biff laments that Willy had “the wrong dreams.”  And Willy’s wife, who has been able to cry, breaks down, sobbing that the house is now paid for, repeating “We’re free…we’re free.”

Both Terminator movies have nice dénouements. In the first one, Sara Conner in her Jeep, guns and dog in tow, pulls into a last-stop desert gas station where a young boy points to the darkening sky and says “a storm is coming.” Sara’s last line before she heads off toward the apocalypse — “I know. I know.”  In the sequel, the dénouement is the “good” Terminator lowering himself into the fire pit to destroy his microchip and thus save the world.

Another of my favorites is from The Shawshank Redemption. After Andy Dufresne escapes from prison and disappears, the story is essential over and all is resolved. But no…we are treated to his friend Morgan Freeman’s touching narration about going free: “I hope the Pacific Ocean is as blue as it is in my dreams.”

We can debate this, but I think a denouement is different than an epilogue.  An epilogue is an animal unto its own world, a specific literary device that has a special purpose, often yoked with a prologue.  The denouement usually takes places immediately following the climax and resolution; an epilogue is usually separated by time — week, months or years later. Sometimes it hints at a sequel to come, or it serves as a commentary of sorts on what has happened. It might sum up what happened much later to the characters. Think of way George Lucas used this device in American Graffiti — as the credits rolled, he shows graduation pictures of each character and listed what happened to each i.e. “Curt Henderson is a writer living in Canada.”

A good denouement is subtle. What you don’t want to do is end up with an extended “Now I have to explain why I have to kill you” speech. This is not a true denouement; this is just a bad climax.  The skeins that you weave as you move through your story should come together in a logical and satisfying pattern.  And if you have some little loose threads that might poke out after that — well, that’s what the denouement is for.

But then there’s the big question: Do you have to untie every knot? Do you have to snip off every loose thread? No, of course not. I love ambiguity in endings. I don’t like anal books that clean up everything. And truth be told, I don’t really enjoy those classics mysteries where the detective gathers everyone in the dining car and lays it out there.  I want to figure some things out for myself. And I crave some messiness in my fiction.  Not all stories are neat; not all storytellers color within the lines.

Which brings me back to Spike Lee and his denouement for Do the Right Thing. It doesn’t tie up anything in a pretty bow.  In fact, Lee rejects the whole idea of traditional closure. Mookie and Sal are left in a wary face-off that personifies the unease of race relations in general in this country.  The mayor (Ossie Davis) tells Mookie to “do the right thing” but no one in this story really knows what that is, which is the only thing that is clear at the end.  So what can Spike Lee leave us with except the denouement he offers — two powerful and deeply conflicting quotes from King and Malcolm X.  And a final picture of them shaking hands?

Some knots just defy untying.

 

The Fear Factor

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“Do one thing every day that scares you” – Eleanor Roosevelt

I’m writing this blog post on Thursday in anticipation of a long weekend in which I am (finally!) going to learn how to ski (cue drum roll…) I’m sincerely hoping that come Monday when this blog post will be posted, I will have survived the experience in one piece (no broken bones, smushed body parts, or too many bruises at least). The hardest thing for me will not be the physical aspect (although, to be fair, I am immensely uncoordinated) but the mental ‘fear factor’. I’ve been cross country skiing before and loved it – basically you get to hike with skis on and you don’t have any shrieking speed issues unless you take a wrong turn. Actual downhill skiing, however,  is quite another thing –  something that involves overcoming my fear of speed (or, more precisely, careening out of control).

My husband snowboards and my boys have been taking skiing lessons since we moved to Denver so I’m the last hold out (if you don’t count our collie Hamish, who, to be sure, would love it if he could have skis on his paws).  It seems strange to me that I think nothing of moving continents or taking risks with my writing, but skiing (like bicycle riding) remains a definite ‘fear factor’ to overcome. I managed to combat my fear when it came to bicycle riding (although I’m still a slow poke!) so I’m sure I’ll survive skiing – the question is whether I can overcome fear to actually enjoy it!

I’ll keep you all posted, but, hopefully, by the time this posts on Monday and I can respond to comments, I will have mastered the basics of downhill skiing!

So TKZers, what is your ‘fear factor’ and are you planning on overcoming it in 2017?…If so, how?

 

The Legos Theory of Storytelling as Applied to Turkish Television. Seriously.

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Happy 2017! I spent the holidays reading almost nothing, writing a lot, and engaging for better or worse in self-reflection.  I concluded that the best thing I could do for myself and for my work was to go back to basics.

What follows is aimed more at those folks in our audience who are struggling with getting that first novel done. It is easy enough to explain in the context of childhood: rather than struggling to build a motorized crane using an Eitech Erector Set, I need to grab a box of Legos and start building little cars and and people and such, working my way forward by starting with the small and simple and building gradually, but steadily.

I came to this conclusion after watching two television series. You’ve almost certainly heard of one, and probably have never heard of the other. Our own Kathryn Lilley discussed Westworld on this blog a few weeks back. It was beautifully filmed, intricately plotted, startling, and full of surprises. The major rub against it was that it was difficult to understand what was going on from episode to episode. I still have a little callus on my thumb from rewinding it to pick up certain plot nuances that I missed. There were several — maybe a dozen — plot lines that spun off in different directions, some of which were relevant to the story, others which seemed to have been included simply to create a mood. All of them were interesting, but only a few minutes were devoted to each at any one time. Characters? More characters had been introduced by Episode Three than I could keep track of. I found it to be worth working through it — it raises some stunning and yes, frightening issues concerning reality, mortality, and other areas — but the general consensus seems to be that it arguably is a series that more people heard about than actually watched.

The anti-Westworld, if you will, is a series available on Netflix called Kacak (“The Fugitive”). If Westworld  is the result of the Eitech erector set I referenced at the beginning of this post, Kacak comes from the basic box of Legos, and it is wonderful. Kacak is a genre-blurring television series produced in Turkey, throwing together elements of thriller, suspense, romance, drama, and yes, a bit of comedy to create a slow-boil story that sucks you in and doesn’t let you go. It is subtitled, but the story is simple enough, and the acting is good enough, that one could glean the context without it. It begins in a remote Turkish village where a man named Serhat operates a tea shop. He is loved by everyone around him, and one gets the sense of “why” from his interaction with his clientele and another shopkeeper. For his own part, Serhat is devoted to his wife and their young son, who somehow in a few moments becomes the cutest little guy to ever walk the face of the earth. All of this communicated with a few minutes of interaction here and there over the course of a day or so. Just when you think you’ve stumbled into an episode of Lassie, however, Serhat interjects himself quite forcefully into a dangerous situation. He is immediately hailed as a hero throughout his village; when news of Serhat’s heroism spreads to Istanbul, however, a danger from his past — a past of which even his beloved wife knows nothing — quickly intrudes and irrevocably blows up Serhat’s perfect life. Does this sound familiar? Sure. The movie A History of Violence explores a similar theme, as does Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Kacak goes further, however. Serhat vows revenge. As Serhat carries out his plan — and attempts to put what is left of life back together — the audience learns about his past, in dribs and drabs, not in meal courses but in tapas or dim sum, small portions which are easily digestible and brought out over the course of the very long meal, where the surprises keep coming. To put it another way: just when you think you’ve reached the smallest Russian nesting doll, there’s another one within.

Kacak does all of this without a big budget, or, interestingly enough, without nudity, graphic sex, or (much) gratuitous violence. Some of the acting is a bit stilted, and there are momentary but noticeable lapses of continuity, to the extent that on occasion the series is unintentionally funny. That is part of the charm of it, however. It isn’t subtle or nuanced for the most part. What it does, however, and does very well, is tell a story.

I will be the first to acknowledge that I am not much of a teacher. If I have a strength in the area of education it’s the ability to point people to something that will illustrate, quickly, how something is done. If you are having trouble getting your story off of the ground, or that you are getting bogged down under the weight of your own plot, or are having trouble keeping your characters straight, hijack the family Netflix account from your teenager and watch at least the first few episodes of Kacak. I have watched the first ten — Netflix lists fifty — but you can learn a lot just by watching and studying the first three or four. I think, however, that you will want to eventually watch the whole series, which takes that little box of Legos and slowly builds from it, using just a few parts at a time.

My question for you: is there a television series you use to jumpstart your writing, to clear the cobwebs, whatever? My own answer: in addition to Kacak…True Detective: Season One, which I have practically committed to memory (time, indeed, is a flat circle). You?

 

How Not to Treat a Writer (and a Bonus Guide on Building Good Anthologies)

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Let me tell you a story.

On December 19th, I received an email through my website contact link suggesting that I might submit a story to an upcoming anthology of “dark and speculative fiction.” Okay, I thought. Sounds like me. Reprints were okay (if the work was requested, and it appeared that mine had been), and there was actually money involved. The stated theme of the anthology was vague and used the phrase “we may be looking for…” But I’m always game for submitting work, and women’s sexuality was one of the mentioned subjects. Okay, I thought. That sounds like me, too. Knowing that the publisher was a legit literary fiction house, I clicked through to the open call for submissions page.

I don’t want to embarrass anyone in this story, so I’m not going to get specific about all of the submission details. The story I had in mind was one I had published in Patricia Abbott’s Discount Noir, and I had long thought of expanding it. I was pretty sure it fit the women’s sexuality/female protagonist bill. Except: The deadline was to be December 30th. Yes, twelve days after I received the email, and only eighteen days after the date on the submission page.

Twelve days! It’s madness to think anyone but a few very motivated writers could put out a finished 2-5K word story in that brief amount of time. Still, I had the story on hand and was thinking of adding only a thousand words or so. As I said, I’m game. Christmas got busy, and I put it on the back burner. After a very relaxing holiday, I worked on it on the 29th and 30th. I’ll confess that I submitted it after midnight on the 30th, but it was still the 30th in Alaska, so I figured I was good. And, if not, no big deal. It was a fun exercise to work on the story.

I received the acknowledgement immediately. All was well. Then, later that same day, the 31st, I received a polite form rejection email.

There’s nothing like receiving a rejection for a story on New Year’s Eve. It was disappointing, as all rejections are. I had a lot of confidence in the story, so it was a little surprising. I went through six stages of story rejection grief, and enjoyed the seventh (an extra glass of wine), and decided the story would be a good addition to the ebook short story collection I want to do later this year.

But, wait! Less than an hour later, I received an email that I had been sent the wrong form email. They actually meant to send the one telling me they were considering the story and would get back to me in a month. They were sorry for the confusion, they said.

Ha! Ha! said I. And forgot about it the very next day.

This past Monday, nine days later, I received my response. They “love” the story, but “have since decided on a theme” that this story doesn’t quite fit. Oh, by the way, maybe I have another one that would suit their newly chosen theme? They only need it by January 16th.

*sigh*

There are so many possible responses. But the one that immediately comes to mind is a less lovely version of WTH? (That’s not the one I sent.)

My work has been in quite a few anthologies the past few decades, and I’ve edited five and published two of those myself. Yet I have never been involved in such an unprofessional exchange.

Publishing isn’t, “Hey, kids! Let’s put out a book!” Well, it can be, but the process needs to stay professional. And it would seem to me that a primary tenet of professionalism would be: Try not to alienate prospective writers.

Here’s a handy list for creating an anthology:

  • Define your theme. Make it broad, or make it narrow. Be flexible enough to push the boundaries a bit if you need to. The narrower your focus, the smaller your natural audience will be.
  • Put together a budget. Will you pay the writers in cash or copies or both?
  • Get a few writers on board that you know well so that if you will be going to a publisher, you have committed work from writers they recognize.
  • Write a proposal whether you will be shopping it to publishers or not. It will give you good guidelines against which you can measure submissions.
  • Find a publisher or, if you’re game and have some knowledge of publishing, put it out there yourself. How will it be distributed? Through regular distributors? Online vendors?
  • Decide if you want all original work or reprints or both.
  • Plot out a schedule backwards from your desired pub date. Give yourself three-four months before the actual pub date to assemble, edit, copyedit, and format the stories. Writers often miss deadlines. Build in an extra month for dawdlers or disaster. Allow writers three to six months for writing. It might as well be three because 90% of them will write the story in the last available month.
  • Scheduling six to nine months to put the whole thing together is reasonable. This is variable of course. Using all reprints may be faster—but often the writer will need to get permissions from another, larger publisher. And the larger they are, the slower they are. (It took seven weeks to get permission from one publisher for a Surreal South anthology, and we almost had to drop the story.)
  • Establish who will be the contact for all authors. Who will do the mailings and keep track of the files?
  • NOW open submissions for your slush pile, and give folks a few months to come up with stories and write them. If you have a solid core of committed writers, you have a head start. If you give everyone three months to write and submit, you’ll have plenty of time to read and choose.
  • Acknowledge submissions.
  • Get someone working on the cover art.
  • Draw up a contract. Do you want exclusive, or non-exclusive rights?
  • Choose the stories. Have a couple runners-up in case some submissions get pulled.
  • In the name of all that’s holy, send the appropriate rejection and acceptance emails to all of the writers.
  • Assemble the manuscript. Make sure all the rights are covered.
  • Plan advertising (or work with marketing dept.)
  • Write cover copy.
  • Have someone write an introduction that teases the theme and mentions all the accepted stories by name.
  • Make any necessary edits and okay them with the writers.
  • Copyedit the stories, send the manuscripts back to the writers for approval. Give them a deadline for getting back to you.
  • Get a blurb or two if you can. Put galleys up on NetGalley, etc. to encourage reviews.
  • Format, print, distribute.

NOTE: This is not a hard and fast schedule for every anthology. Big ones will take longer. Working with inexperienced writers will take longer. If you’re doing an ebook anthology of reprints or one that is very small, you may be able to do all this stuff in a few weeks.

Lisa Morton, Carolyn Haines, and I all wrote our stories for Haunted Holidays: Three Short Tales of Terror and had the book out in paper and ebook on multiple platforms in three months.

 

The point is, take your time. Think it through at the beginning of the project. Be friendly but professional in your communications with your writers. Admit it if you screw up, but don’t set yourself up for failure by setting unrealistic expectations for yourself and everyone else involved.

As a writer, what’s the worst submission experience you’ve ever had?

Have you ever put together and anthology? How did it go?

 

Laura Benedict is the author of the Bliss House trilogy of novels. She blogs daily at her website. Visit her on Twitter, too.

Writers Dish On The Topic Of Being “Almost Famous”

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A few years ago, I took an LA-to-Tokyo flight. Upon deplaning, I was met by something totally unexpected: a group of smiling Japanese ladies. They surrounded me and shook my hand, while handing me pieces of paper and pens. They kept smiling, while repeating something which sounded like “Ba-ba.” So of course I smiled and nodded back at them, which made the ladies beam twice as enthusiastically.

It eventually became clear that the Japanese women thought I was an American celebrity–some blondish middle-aged celebrity, I guess, whose name sounds like “Ba-ba”. Later my friends and I tried to figure out the name of my mystery-celeb doppelgänger.

I was reminded of that experience yesterday after reading an article about the subject of being “almost famous.” Because let’s face it–we writers seldom become famous, not in that celebrity-level, red carpet read, paparazzi-magnet kind of way. I think Ernest Hemingway might have been the last fiction writer who could legitimately claim celebrity pop culture status.

Imagine yourself as an A-list celebrity. What would that experience be like, do you think? Share with us!

A Checklist For Writing A Great Ending

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Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

I don’t always write a “happy” ending. In the romance genre, that’s called HEA, or happy ever after. My main goal is to stay true to my character(s) and motivation. The plot can spring from the flaws of a character or be influenced by those imperfections. Since I like conflict between my main characters, that can mean their happy ending doesn’t neatly happen by the end of the novel. I don’t want to force it or contrive an ending that doesn’t remain true to my character’s story arcs.

“Happy ever afters” are popular and even if you’re not a romance reader, a satisfying ending can be important, especially if it makes the reader feel good at the turn of the last page. But there’s nothing wrong with an ambiguous ending if it fits with your character and your world. An author writes the story he or she wants to tell.

A Checklist For Writing A Great Ending

1.) Tie up the loose ends – One of my final edit reviews is when I search for subplots and key elements to tie up to make a satisfying ending. If I introduced a DNA lab result earlier in the plot, did I bring the results in later? Are all my subplots resolved? Are all my character motivations justified enough? Nothing make a more hearty meal than a good, solid ending. Don’t leave loose ends.

Word of caution – Don’t tie up everything in one long character dialogue scene. This reminds me of the cheesy Charlie Chan movies or older Sherlock Holmes films where the hero regurgitates all the clues with answers. Try to be more subtle or break up the loose end tie-ins so it doesn’t feel too contrived. Another pet peeve of mine is the villain who feels compelled to answer all the detective’s questions on his motives, gloating. Break apart these disclosures and don’t turn your diabolical villain into a chatty girlfriend who wants to bear his or her soul. Find a more realistic way for these disclosures to come out in subsequent scenes when the investigators are closing their case.

2.) Restore the world even if it’s not perfect – Redemption at the end of a book can be good as well as uplifting. I like the idea of restoring the world that an author creates, but it doesn’t always have to be the same world. Crime affects people in a bad way and it radiates out like ripples on still water with many people affected—from the victim to the family survivors to cops investigating the case. Don’t be afraid to show the aftermath. A story can feel positive if the protagonist survives, but don’t be timid in portraying how much your character has been affected.

3.) Consider your series endings – There are many ways to end individual books within a series. You can have a major cliffhanger. You can hint or foreshadow something coming in the next installment. Or you can have each book end completely, yet have the growth and story lines of the characters weave a tapestry through your series. How an author develops a series (and the books within it) can be a conundrum. A key decision element might be if you plan on releasing each book back-to-back with a short period between book launches. Your readers won’t have to wait too long for each installment. But if you’re a new author and want a traditional house to consider your work to publish, unless the house is interested in buying the whole series, it might be better to write a more conservative ending without a major cliffhanger (in case the publisher doesn’t not buy the whole series).

4.) Do not clutter your ending with last minute conflicts – I would consider a last minute distraction or entanglement to be a cheat for the reader. When such a beast springs from the pages, a reader might sling your book at a wall with the contrivance. Give the reader an ability to solve the case on their own. They can’t do that if the author springs unexpected characters or plot twists that haven’t been introduced earlier. Many times I will have a certain twist in mind, but go back and lace in different clues in several spots so the reader can decipher the puzzle before the big reveal, but I never make it easy.

5.) Foreshadow a realistic future to come – If you don’t want to write a blatant romantic happy ever after, you can “hint” of a future for your characters. Often a forced romance or a contrived relationship can end with a marriage proposal that doesn’t “feel” real. But if the author foreshadows a more realistic relationship with the promise of a tomorrow, that might be enough for a reader to get the idea and feel positive about the ending.

 

6.) Stay true to your voice – If your author’s voice through the story is dark or starkly realistic, don’t explode pink glitter and unicorns all over your ending. A reader will feel betrayed by this. Whatever ending you choose for your character, make it realistic for the vibe of your book.

7.) Know your ending by genre or choose to be different – There’s always the exception to a general rule, but certain commercial genres have endings readers will expect. For example, an amateur sleuth will be expected to find who the killer is, or a romance relationship story will have the lovers together or with a future by the end. A thriller story will have the maniacal villain thwarted and the world restored. Not all successful stories follow this idea. I’ve written endings where the bad guy gets away with his crimes (Evil Without A Face & No One Left to Tell & No One Lives Forever), but if you dare to do this, you must have a reason (a potential teaser for a series) or a villainous character that the reader might accept such an ending.

8.) Don’t be afraid to explore ambiguous endings – If you’ve written a carefully plotted book that’s stays true to your character study, don’t be afraid to explore an ambiguous ending. A favorite book I read called The Piano Man by Marcia Preston is a women’s fiction book that has a realistic yet ambiguous ending. At first I wanted the ending to mean an HEA for the two main characters but that would’ve been a cheat. After I thought about it, the way it ended was perfect for the nature of the two characters and it was a beautiful story of two people whose lives crossed in a moment of tragedy. If the author gets the emotion right and the character motivation, there could be a variety of endings possible. Don’t be afraid to explore more than one ending that can add depth or a thought provoking conclusion.

 

Discussion:

1.) Have you ever written a forced ending that didn’t feel right to you? Did you correct it?

2.) What makes a good ending for you (as a reader or an author)?

3.) What are some of your favorite (most memorable) book endings? Were they happy endings or not?

Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!

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by John Gilstrap

With all that holiday frivolity behind us, I’m going to continue my quest to help writers understand some of the technical aspects of weaponry so that their action scenes can be more realistic.  Today, we’re going to talk about some practical applications for high explosives.  It’s been a while since we last got into the weeds of things that go boom, so if you want a quick refresher, feel free to click here.  We’ll wait for you.

Welcome back.

When I was a kid, the whole point of playing with cherry bombs and lady fingers and M80s was to make a big bang.  Or, maybe to launch a galvanized bucket into the air.  (By the way, if you’re ever tempted to light a cherry bomb and flush it down the toilet, be sure you’re at a friend’s house, not your own.  Just sayin’.  And you’re welcome.)  As I got older and more sophisticated in my knowledge of such things, I realized that while making craters for craters’ sake was deeply satisfying, the real-life application of explosives is more nuanced.

Since TKZ is about writing thrillers and suspense fiction, I’m going to limit what follows to explosives used as weapons–to kill people and break things.  Of course, there are many more constructive uses for highly energetic materials, and while the principles are universal, the applications are very different.

Hand grenades are simple, lethal and un-artful bits of destructive weaponry.  Containing only 6-7 ounces of explosive (usually Composition B, or “Comp B”), they are designed to wreak havoc in relatively small spaces.  The M67 grenade that is commonly used by US forces has a fatality radius of 5 meters and an injury radius of 15 meters. Within those ranges, the primary mechanisms of injury are pressure and fragmentation.

For the most part, all hand grenades work on the same principles. By pulling the safety pin and releasing the striker lever (the “spoon”), the operator releases a striker–think of it as a firing pin–that strikes a percussion cap which ignites a pyrotechnic fuse that will burn for four or five seconds before it initiates the detonator and the grenade goes bang.  It’s important to note that once that spoon flies, there’s no going back.

Claymore mines operate on the same tactical principle as a shotgun, in the sense that it is designed to send a massive jet of pellets downrange, to devastating effect.  Invented by a guy named Norman MacLeod, the mine is named after a Scottish sword used in Medieval times. Unlike the hand grenade, which sends its fragments out in all directions, the Claymore is directional by design.  (I’ve always been amused by the embossed letters on the front of every Claymore mine, which read, “front toward enemy.”  As Peter Venkman famously said while hunting ghosts, “Important safety tip. Thanks,Egon.”)

The guts of a Claymore consist of a 1.5-pound slab of C-4 explosive and about 700 3.2 millimeter steel balls. When the mine is detonated by remote control, those steel balls launch downrange at over 3,900 feet per second in a 60-degree pattern that is six and a half feet tall and 55 yards wide at a spot that is 50 meters down range.

The fatality range of a Claymore mine is 50 meters, and the injury range is 100 meters.  (Note that because of the directional nature of the Claymore, we’re noting ranges, whereas with the omnidirectional hand grenade, we noted radii.)

Both the hand grenade and the Claymore mine are considered to be anti-personnel weapons.  While they’ll certainly leave an ugly dent in a car and would punch through the walls of standard construction, they would do little more than scratch the paint on an armored vehicle like a tank. To kill a tank, we need to pierce that heavy armor, and to do that, we put the laws of physics to work for us.

Shaped charges are designed to direct a detonation wave in a way that focuses tremendous energy on a single spot, thus piercing even heavy armor.  The principle is simple and enormously effective.

The illustration on the left shows a cutaway view of a classic shaped charge munition. You’re looking at a cross-section of a hollow cone of explosives. Imagine that you’re looking into an empty martini glass where the inside of the glass is made of cast explosive that is then covered with a thin layer of metal.  The explosive is essentially sandwiched between external and internal conical walls.  The open end of the cone is the front of the munition.

The initiator/detonator is seated at the pointy end of the cone (the rear of the munition), and when it goes off, a lot happens in the next few microseconds.  As the charge detonates, the blast waves that are directed toward the center of the cone combine and multiply while reducing that center liner into a molten jet that is propelled by enormous energy.  When that jet impacts a tank’s armor, its energy transforms the armor to molten steel which is then propelled into the confines of the vehicle, which becomes a very unpleasant place to be. The photo of the big disk with the hole in the middle bears the classic look of a hit by a shaped charge.

Now you understand why rocket-propelled grenades like the one in the picture have such a distinctive shape. The nose cone is there for stability in flight, and it also houses the triggering mechanisms.

The picture on the right is a single frame from a demonstration video in which somebody shot a travel trailer with an RPG.  The arrow shows the direction of the munition’s flight. There was no armor to pierce so the videographer was able to capture the raw power of that supersonic jet of energy from the shaped charge.

How to Take a Great Author Photo
Rule No. 1: Be True to Yourself

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A lot of writers, especially crime writers, have an image that we think we’re trying to keep up with. You’ve got to be seen as dark and slightly dangerous. But I’ve realized that I don’t need to put that on. People will buy the books whether they see a photo of you dressed in black or not. — Ian Rankin

By PJ Parrish

I wish I had read that quote from Ian Rankin before I had my first author photograph done. It would have saved me a lot of embarrassment and the phone call I got from an old friend who I hadn’t seen in a couple years (call paraphrased here due to aging memory cells):

Him: “Are you…okay?”
Me: “Okay? What are you talking about?”
Him: “I saw your book in Barnes and Noble.”
Me: “Did you buy a copy? Tell me you bought a copy.”
Him: “I did. But it made me worried about you.”
Me: “Good lord, it’s not that bad, is it?”
Him: “I haven’t read it yet.”
Me: “But you’re worried…”
Him: “Yeah. You look so, so…angry.”
Me: “Angry? Why would I be angry? I finally got published!”
Him: “Or maybe you’re sad. I can’t really tell. What are you so depressed about? Did you get a divorce? I can give you the name of my shrink.”

That’s when it hit me. My friend had seen my author photograph on the back of my book. I knew the picture was bad. I knew it the moment the photographer sent back the contact sheet with all those mini-me’s scowling out at the world. But I was in denial and he was a pro who had taken many author photos, so I chose one and ordered the prints anyway. But I’ll let you be the judge. Here’s the photo:

It’s okay. You can say it. I look awful. I got my hair and makeup done, yes. And I wore my black leather jacket and my best frown because I was a woman writer in the hard-boiled world where the men who came before me and those who now crowded around me smoked Camels, drank scotch and wrote things like, “I won’t play the sap for you, angel.”

I wanted to look serious.  I ended up looking mean.

I’m not mean. Or sad or angry. Below left is my very first author, from 1984, way back when I was writing romance and family sagas. Who would you rather buy a book from? That hopeful wry writer in white at left or that crabby miscreant in black above?  What happened to me?

I’ll tell you what happened. I really thought, when I switched genres, I needed to look tough and distant, like I could chew glass. I didn’t realize that what I really needed to do was just be myself. Which is actually what I was doing when my photographer and I went out for beer and pizza at John’s in the Village and he captured this candid moment that became my official author photo.

What can you learn from my experience?  Lots, I hope. Because whether you are published or still trying to get there, this isn’t just about getting a good author photograph. It’s a lesson in being true to yourself.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, an author photo is worth oh, maybe a million? Readers buy books for myriad reasons. They heard from a friend that the book was good. They read the reviews on Amazon or Good Reads. A clerk in a bookstore recommended it. Or very often, they picked up the book, read the blurb, maybe the first page. And maybe they looked at the picture of the person who wrote the book. Now I’m not suggesting that the wrong author photo can make or break a sale.  I’m with Ian Rankin on this one, believing that if you continually produce good stories, looks don’t matter. But in this competitive market place, it’s not a bad idea to get a good author photo. Here’s why:

  • You’ll need one for publicity purposes. Unless you’re a star at a large publishing house, you probably won’t get the photo done for you. But you will be expected to provide one for publicity and promotion. If you are self-publishing, you must have a website and that means you must have a good photo of yourself on it.
  • It engages the reader in a sub-conscious way. The right photo can send a positive signal to a potential reader. First, that you are a professional. Second, that you are approachable i.e. the Consciousness behind the characters they will be spending the next couple weeks or months with.
  • It establishes you as a recognizable “product.” I know this idea is repugnant to some folks, but the most successful authors make themselves sell-able with a consistent image. Think Mr. Peanut or Colonel Sanders. Think of this guy:
  • It conveys the tone of your work. This is important. We have talked often here at TKZ of the importance of tone consistency in your work. Many elements — cover art, type-faces, and of course the writing style itself — help readers grasp what kind of writer you are. Are you writing YA or adult? Are you hard-boiled or lighthearted? All of this needs to show in your own face in that author photo. But don’t make the mistake I did and put on a leather coat and a sneer, thinking that will help. It’s more subtle than that.

Here are some examples of conveying the right tone in author photos. Chris Grabenstein started out writing his adult Ceepak mysteries loosely set around a carnival theme but branched out to a children’s series. Below are his two author pics. Guess which one goes with which series:

And then there’s Nora Roberts aka J.D. Robb.  Nora has written more than 200 romances. But when she puts on her thriller cloak as J.D. Robb, she has a different look. Same woman, yes, with a definite brand. But with a subtle difference in the photos that appear on the back on her books:

I think it might be easier for guys in crime fiction to come up with a good pic. They just have to slap on a shirt, maybe a blazer and good jeans and lean up against a brick wall. (See below).

Women who write hard-boiled or more serious crime fiction have it a little harder, what with the make-up, hair, and the expectations of the genre. Where is the sweet spot for us between serious and…mean? I think these two found it:

Regardless of gender or sub-genre, getting the right photo isn’t easy, and there are plenty of bad ones out there, even when they are done by professionals guided by publishing house promotion staffs. My favorite blogger, Chuck Wendig, just ran his Awkward Author Photo contest Click here to go see the entries and the winner, but don’t get any bright ideas, okay?

There are also some pretty bad author photo cliches:

  • Hand under the chin, at side of forehead or anywhere in vicinity of face. It worked for Oscar Wilde but now looks silly.
  • Manual typewriter in the picture. Who are you kidding?
  • Big shaggy dog to soften image or distract from author.
  • Soft focus. You really want to look all Vasolined like Doris Day?
  • Cigarettes. I think Ian Fleming was the last guy to pull this one off successfully but that didn’t stop photographer Szilvia Molnar from getting a great Twitter feed off the subject “The Man, The Writer, and his Cigarette.” 
  • The vacant stare into space. Jack Kerouac did this a lot but maybe he was writing this line in his head: “I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”

Given my bad experience with author photos, I am probably the last person who should be giving you advice on what to do with your own. But I am going to give it a try, based on some research I did and some tips I got from some author friends. First off, there’s the big question: Hire a pro or do-it-yourself?

Hire a professional, if you can. Yeah, it can get expensive. And you don’t always get what you pay for (see my experience above). But you will get a basic level of quality and selection that you won’t get doing it yourself or having your brother take a pic of you with his iPhone. Ask fellow authors for recommendations. I ended up getting a photo done by my late great friend Barbara Parker, who when she wasn’t writing mysteries was a professional photog.

Take your own pic. Yes, it can be done but it’s a giant pain, and there’s a good chance the results will look amateurish. But if it’s all you can afford at first, so be it. Click here for  some good tips I found on line.

Get both black and white and color versions. Or make sure the quality is good enough that you can convert color to gray tone prints. VITAL: The original must be high-resolution. Let’s say you get a gig at a library and they need your mug. If that little image you put on your website can’t be downloaded and blown up for a flyer or poster, you’ve lost out. And if you ever meet my sister Kelly in a bar at a writer’s conference, don’t get her started on the topic of author photos. She does a lot of program books for conferences and has been sent blurry snapshots, high school portraits, and family group shots wherein she has to figure out which one is the writer. One guy just told her to photoshop out the family dog he was holding. This is how the guy appeared in the program book:

Portrait or environment? You can do a simple head and shoulders photo. But you might want to consider a second photo of you in some kind of environment that matches the tone or content of your book(s). And that don’t-do I mentioned about dogs? Well, if you write a series about a dog or maybe a cozy series that suggests a softer tone, including your pet can work for you, make you look accessible to your readers.

Here are two photos of my friend Reed Farrel Coleman. One is a portrait but the second reflects the New York setting of his books.

If you can’t afford a stylist, take along a friend who has a good eye. I am getting ready to put my condo on the market and I hired a professional photographer to come take photos for Zillow, Realtor.com and the MLS listing. He was amazing, right down to repositioning electrical cords and hiding my bath mats. Don’t do less for your own face. You don’t want a plastic plant growing out of your head, your tie askew or lipstick on your teeth. A good photographer should be helpful here but don’t count on it.

Be careful what you wear. Stay away from prints and fussy clothes. Keep your look simple so readers notice your face, not your fashion choices. I don’t care that Dan Brown has sold a zillion books. Someone should have told him dad jeans are ugly.

Don’t over-photoshop. Yes, you can retouch some because even if you look like her, you don’t want to come off like Norma Desmond. But you’re not a super-model so don’t over-do it with erasing wrinkles and taking out that double-chin. You’re trying to sell books not link up on Match.com.

Don’t wear weird jewelry or any variation on lingerie. When Anne Rice was starting out, she was often photographed looking like a cross between Stevie Nicks and Morticia. Now she has this elegant-mystery vibe going in her pics, with black tops, one great necklace, and a smart bob. And even if you write romance, keep the pink and pearls under control until you have published 722 novels like the woman pictured below did. Then, like George R.R. Martin, you can wear whatever you want.

Consider getting a third horizontal format photograph that includes some negative space. Position yourself to one side and leave the rest blank. This negative space can then be used by you or a designer in your website header. You can insert type easily into the photograph. I love this photo below of Walter Mosley, not just because it conveys his personality but also for its negative space. And yes, he’s staring off into space but I don’t care.

And speaking of personality…how much is good and how much is over the top? It depends on you as an author, how good your photographer is, what kind of books you write, and what mood you want to present to the world.  Sometimes, going against what is expected can work wonders. When Kareem Abdul Jabbar began writing books, he didn’t do the standard author head and shoulders VERTICAL shot. Look at this gorgeous horizontal photograph. Look at those hands.

Speaking of hands, I love this photograph below by romance writer Maya Rodale. It’s glamorous and sexy, probably like her books. But notice those wire rim glasses she’s holding…what a nice touch!

And then there is this author photo…

That’s YA author Maggie Steifvater who has some stunning photos on her website. Click here to see more. But oddly, she doesn’t have one photo of herself that you can download, so if someone needs a publicity picture, they have to hit the internet and search for one. Rule No. 2 about author photos: Never make someone who is selling your book work harder than they have to.

So, that’s it. I know, I know…you don’t want to think about this. You have too much on your author plate already and you don’t like having your picture taken anyway. Well, it goes with the turf. You don’t have to get a Annie Liebovitz-quality portrait when you’re just starting out. Just get a good, clear, high-resolution head shot that tells the reader what kind of person you are and what kind of books you write. The rest is gravy.

I will leave you with two final images that should give you hope.

If this guy’s author photo went from this:

To this…

Well, maybe yours can, too.

_________________________________________

P.S. Chuck Wendig just posted the winners of his bad author photo contest. Click here to see them but don’t have a mouthful of coffee when you do.

 

Welcome 2017!

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Welcome back TKZers!

Hope you all had a safe and happy holiday season and are ready to tackle all your writing resolutions in the year ahead. As always, I have a few resolutions after all my holiday eating, drinking and writing slackness, but in 2017 I want to focus on what I’m calling ‘deep writing’. For me, 2016 was definitely the year of ‘distracted writing’. It may have been all the politics or just the overwhelming onslaught of news, social media posts etc.,  but whatever the cause, I have now (thanks TKZ’s own James Scott Bell) purchased Cal Newport’s book ‘Deep Work, Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World‘ and intend to fully embrace the concept of ‘writing deeply’ this year.

Rather than calling this a New Year’s resolution, I’ve decided ‘write deeply‘ will be my mantra for 2017. I will be chanting it in my sleep by the end of January and, hopefully, I will notice an improvement in focus, concentration and maybe even the quality of my writing (!) by the end of the year.

So what about you? Do you have a mantra you would like to adopt for 2017?

Also any tips on how I can ensure mine gets through the post-holiday thickness of my skull, will be gratefully received….