By Kathryn Lilley

Another year, another virus panic. Last year the news media were sounding the alarm bells about the Ebola virus. This year, we’re slowly ratcheting up toward a full-blown freak-out about the Zika virus. Compared to Ebola, Zika is a milder, gentler virus, but its implications for humanity may be much more serious.

ZIka virus, which is spread by mosquitos, causes a mild fever or rash in most people who become infected. Pregnant women who are exposed to Zika, however, can give birth to newborns suffering microcephaly–abnormally small heads and underdeveloped brains. There is no vaccine for Zika virus, and no reliable prevention method (except to avoid getting bitten by mosquitos).

US health officials recently advised women who are pregnant to avoid traveling to 22 countries where the virus is already circulating. The travel warnings include many popular tourist destinations: Mexico, Puerto Rico, parts of the Carribbean (Barbados, Martinique, Saint Martin), and most notably Brazil, where the summer Olympics are to be held. (Nearly 4,000 afflicted babies with malformed heads were born in Brazil in 2015, up from only 150 such births in 2014). According to the World Health Organization, Zika virus is expected to spread to every country in the Americas, except for Canada and Chile. Officials in some countries where Zika virus is present, such as El Salvador, have taken the drastic step of advising women to delay becoming pregnant until at least 2018.

Just don’t get pregnant, ladies. Really? If that’s how officials are responding to this health crisis, then I think we’ve crossed a line into an area known previously only in science fiction. Zika virus is like Contagion meets Children of Men. In Children of Men, the women of earth had  become infertile for some mysterious reason. The rest of the story was a thriller, with a group of people trying to protect the last remaining pregnant woman on earth from the clutches of an evil mob.

Regarding Zika virus, to paraphrase a line from Contagion: “We don’t need to weaponize the virus. The mosquitos are doing it.”

***

Meanwhile, I’m updating my list of medical thrillers to add to my TBR pile. Here are some medical thrillers I’ve already read, and recommend:

GRAY MATTER by Gary Braver (Highly intelligent children are being kidnapped and “harvested” for their brain tissue)

HARVEST, by Tess Gerritsen (another excellent thriller involving an organ harvesting plot)

THE HOT ZONE, Richard Preston (truth is scarier than fiction in this tale of virus hunters tracking down virulent viruses in the lab, and on the ground)

What else? What other medical thrillers should I add to my TBR pile?

http://youtu.be/bdzWcrXVtwg

This just happened.

In the January issue of Writers Digest magazine, the cover article interviews a bestselling author on how she writes her novels.  She’s billed as an “overnight success,” which of course is a deliberate irony, because that really never happens when you throw in the unheralded years before a breakout novel takes wing.

As the visuals illustrate, if not the copy.

There are ten of her previous book covers – from before the overnight success breakout – featured on the first page of the article, spanning ten years.  Thus proving this to be true.

A great talent, no question.  Delightful and humble, too.  If I said she was also quite pretty I’d get hate mail from the misogynist police (I’m not that guy; hey, David Baldacci is pretty cute, too), but I will say this about that: her agent would undoubtedly say she’s the perfect storm from a PR standpoint.

Her first novel was published in 2002, but her “breakout” hit didn’t happen until 2013, which sold five million copies worldwide.   For her, “overnight” took eleven years.

She must have learned a few things along the way.

So we should listen closely to what she has to say about the writing process, right?

Here are a few highlights from just that:

… she is “relearning to write a novel with every story…”

… “I wrote the first three chapters again and again…”

… “frequently I write chapters that I end up having to ditch…”

… “I think it gets harder…” (after you’ve published your first novel)

… “I do outline.  I’m always amazed by these people who say that they just start and see where    the story takes them… I couldn’t do it…”

“… then I had to replot the entire book…”

… “Every time I start a book, I think, I have no idea how I did this the last time.  No idea…”

…  The words “What is this really about?” are taped over the top of her monitor…

… The Interviewer suggest this: “It seems fortunate if a writer can hit on concepts from which to   grow a story rather than a single plot idea, or even a character, because there are so many ways you can approach them.”  (This one gets a massive gold star from me.)

… Her response: “Since I’ve really been thinking it through in that way – and in quite a calculated way – before I start, either my books have really improved or people have just responded better to or people have just responded better to them, I’m not sure.”

“Fortunate.”  Perhaps the understatement of the writing year.

My money is on the improvement option.  Maybe she has learned something along the way.  Maybe she just has trouble summarizing what that might be.

What will writers learn here, and adopt as their own process?

We can be sure that some writers will believe they’ve learned something from this interview.  They may accept and try to emulate this author within their own writing process… because hey, this multi-million-copy bestselling author says so.

In my opinion much of she says is indeed good stuff, worthy of attention (because we can learn from both sides of an equation, especially if we take the time to really dissect it).  And yet some of it is inexplicable, because while this author acknowledges what works for her, she goes on to say she hasn’t really learned much of anything from her writing experience, even when most of it occurs as a published author.

Scary.  Do this for ten years, publish ten novels… and you still aren’t sure how this is done.

Broad statements and truisms about process are everywhere in the writing conversation, many of them fuzzy, just as many contradictory.

Leaving us with only one conclusion (so glad this works for them) and a seductive lie that manifests as self-delusion (oh, THIS is how it’s done, I’ll do it just that way).

Consensus is nowhere on the horizon.  And yet, we are faced with these choices every time we stare down a blank page.

Good thing that horizon is peppered with plenty of bonafide knowledge about craft, specific principles and tools that apply to and stand ready to help any and every writer.

Because it’s about what the story must be, not about how you get there.

You think all the elephant versus donkey noise is loud and obnoxious out there? 

Put your ear to the writing rail, and you’ll hear an equally biased and under-informed blah-blah-blah on the issue of how a novel should be written.

That’s the wrong question, in my opinion.  The better question is this: what are the criteria and benchmarks for a story that works?

There are answers to that, too.

I keep posting about it, it seems (here and on my own website), because just when I think I’ve contributed something to this clarity, I’ll find myself referred to on various corners of social media as “the formula guy” or “the guy who hates pantsers.”

Story structure and formula… NOT the same thing.  I’ve never heard a professional make this claim, though I have heard a lot of under-qualified writers make the converse assertion.

And that’s the problem with the writing conversation out there.  A significant percentage of it – at workshops, in forums, even in keynotes and interviews with bestselling authors – is toxic, because it is misleading for newer authors and stubborn authors who can’t whittle through the proper context.

For example – when Diana Gabaldon tells you she begins her novels without knowing what the ending will be (which she has, many times, in magazine interviews) – sounds great, doesn’t it? Just keep going and the ending will save you – know that the drafts she writes early-on are there to search for and discover that best ending… and then when she finds it, the subsequent draft that works, the one she submits, is written in the full and functional knowledge of what the ending will be.

Because the ending is one of the things that informs and empowers all the narrative that precedes it.

This is true for almost any and all published novels, regardless of the writer’s process.  This isn’t process, this is outcome.

And despite my best efforts across three (and counting) popular writing books, there is always some highly credible bestselling author completely confusing the issue in an interview or behind a microphone.

Not because they are confused – on the issue of what works for them versus what other writers should do – as much as because they aren’t telling you the whole story of how their book came to be.

But rather – and this is worse – because they don’t seem to be confused at all.

It is the pinnacle of hubris to say you don’t really understand how you do what you do, and say it in the wake of some huge success, thus leaving us with only one unspoken conclusion: Gee, this writer must be a natural-born freaking genius!  They just sit down and magic happens, what a gift!

And so the star-struck crowd buys what they are selling.

To be honest, I used to be pretty hard on one end of the process continuum. 

Not on pantsers, per se – though this was the perception – but on a story development preference that urges you to just start with very little, write what you feel and follow your instincts toward a gloriously functional outcome, without knowing or caring how it compares to the accepted standards of craft.  If you are a literary genius, then you can have abundant fun with this… but if you’re not a practicing prodigy or learned master of the form, then there are less-than-mysterious principles and tools that will help you write a book that is – get ready for it – just as good.

Just listen to your characters and don’t worry about structure or arc or anything that smacks of, well, the dreaded “formula.”  Do this long enough and sooner or later you will find your story, and hopefully, it will resemble what the market expects from your chosen genre.

That’s certainly one way to go about it.  And a wildly popular one, at that.  Due in no small part because some really big names say this is what they do.

I’ve never said this doesn’t work, or that it can’t work.

It’s just one end of the process continuum. 

One that pre-destines you to a longer story development process.  If you can’t do any planning of your story ahead of time, which is the antithesis of pantsing, that means one of two things: for whatever reason you actually can’t, in the same way that some people can’t learn by reading, they must learn by doing… or… you aren’t aware of and honoring of the principles by which a story that words is assembled.  The more you know about that, the more likely you will be to engage in some level of story planning.

All perhaps because you heard some author you admire claim to do it this way.

Rest assured, those highly skilled authors who lay claim to being a punster are informed pantsers, and they actually do engage with story planning in their minds, leveraging an advanced sense of story to lead them quickly to what works while avoiding what doesn’t.

Which is impossible if you don’t know these aspects of craft in the first place.

This is irrefutable: when you face the blank page, be it waiting for your narrative or your outline, you are engaged in a search for story.  And your story won’t work, at least as well as it could and should, until you find it.

Not everyone agrees.  And so the debate is launched.  And so some careers advance while others remain fixed and flat.

There came a point in my own journey when I realized that it isn’t a debate at all.

Because neither side is talking about their novels, from a context of how they end up.  No…

They are talking about their process.

It’s a bit like losing weight.  You can diet, or you can sweat off the pounds.  Both approaches have their advocates, their success stories, and an assumption of pain.

Truth is – for the pantser/planner brouhaha and the exercise/diet trade-off – each becomes a sum in excess of the two colliding parts, both of which offer many options and variables, which in itself can complicate the whole proposition.

Both sides depend on the manner in which either approach is undertaken.  And manner is informed by knowledge.

Ultimately, pretty much everybody who ends up succeeding adopts varying degrees of both processes – pantsing, and story planning.

Bottom line: avid and vocal pantsers – like Stephen King – succeed at it precisely because those principles and tools and models… the very thing that lesser pantsers decry as formula or simply don’t know at all… reside in their head.  And they actually use them as intended.

It’s called instinct.  Story sensibility.

It isn’t pantsing or planning that makes or breaks you… it is the level of your story sense.

Let me make this clearer though a hypothetical example. 

Two writers begin with the exact same story concept.  One is clear on the premise, as well (yes Virginia, they are different things), the other not so sure.  The former sketches out the nature of the story’s arc, knowing precisely where and why the story will take a turn.  Because that writer understands this is how and why stories work, and that there are infinite ways to get there… some quicker and more efficient, if not effective, than others.

The other writer, the one who doesn’t know this, just writes. Waits to see what happens, where the characters will send the story  And it turns out, as it often does when an author hasn’t yet nailed down their core story, that their setup takes up the first half of the novel.  The other writer already knows this is too long, but the less informed writer doesn’t… he is making it all up as he goes along.  Yet soon, as soon as someone else reads it, he will be told the story doesn’t work, because it takes too long to get off the ground.

And he will be surprised.  Because that’s what felt right when he did it.

The other, more informed writer… that’s the difference: he would know it wouldn’t work as well that way.  And so he wouldn’t ever write a draft that took that long to achieve dramatic flight.

The “planning” for this story, the process that works best, would manifest as an extension of instinct.  And the lack of that planning, resulting in the mistake, would manifest from either the ignorance of that point of craft, or the rejection of it.

Depends on who you are listening to and believing, right? 

It doesn’t matter which one of these is the pantser and which is the planner.  It doesn’t matter if the more successful author of this story knew it by instinct, of if he learned it from books and workshops and other informed writers… that’s how he will plan it (even if that planning takes place strictly in his head, or with a 40-page outline), and how he would write it.  And it will be closer to working from the very same draft.  Within such a pansting process, the writer knows where and how that story turn must take place.

The other writer either doesn’t know, or doesn’t believe.

And here’s the dirty little secret promised in my title today:

There are just as many successful authors who know their entire story before the write a draft, and then use the draft to polish and optimize that story, as there are those who have no clue where the story is going.  And they are just as talented and artful as their pantser peers.

Process isn’t the point.  Knowing craft is the point.  And when you don’t know or accept craft, then the default process is pantsing, and doing it from an under-informed context.

Once you do know, you can choose your most comfortable and rewarding process and get there nonetheless.

Again, it’s not a debate.  It’s a choice.

Until you can claim a command of all the nuances and elements of story craft (the sum of all those principles and tools and stuff that bumps right up against formula in the name of dramatic arc), then you will benefit from studiest a list of them posted on your wall in great big letters.

Pansting vs. Planning/Outlining: Neither approach can or should claim superiority.

Just like the familiar fortune cookie thing, in which you add the words “in bed” to the end of every fortune (“your dreams will soon come true… in bed” – hilarious, right?)… add the words “for her/him” to anything a writer puts forth as universally true about either pantsing or outlining.

Do that, and what they say, whatever it is, becomes irrefutable truth… for him… or for her.

Stephen King tells you to just sit in a chair and write whatever comes to you… that’s what works for him. Know the whole truth of this, though, before you sign up for this.

Diana Galbaldon tells you that she never knows how her stories will end when she begins… that’s how it works for her.  What you won’t hear?  The draft that works was written with a solid notion of how it ends.

Jeffrey Deaver boasts that he does 22 drafts of every novel… I guess that’s how it works for him.  What may be true, though, is that the last 18 of them were polishes to a solid story arc built upon his knowledge of craft.

Phillip Margolin tells you he writes an idea and then the ending and then a 50 page outline… truly this is how it works for him.  He searches for his story, he finds it, then he develops it with an outline, followed by a polish/revision in his drafts.

James Scott Bell and I present stuff that will lead you to a better story… that’s how it works for everybody.  Process isn’t the issue for either of us, though we both have strong opinions based on what works – wait for it – for us.

When writers (famous or otherwise; beware non-famous ones telling you anything at all is dangerous on both sides of the full or empty needle) tell you that outlining robs the process of spontaneity and limits your options… that’s only true for them.

But maybe not for you.

And if you adopt a story development approach early in your career – perhaps precisely because some big name author you admire said that’s how she/he does things – before you truly know what you’re doing, you may or may not have discovered what is true for you.

Nobody is lying to you.  Nobody is trying to send you down a rabbit hole.  Because truly, when they tell you how they do it, it does work for them.

The trick then, the holy grail of our avocation, is to discover what actually does work for you. 

And that’s much trickier, often a product of trial and error that can take years, than hopping on to someone else’s band wagon.

At some point you’ll find that what does work for you aligns with those very same principles and tools that you perhaps once rejected as formulaic.  Or as antithetical to art.

It’s all just process.

Because however you proceed – pantsed or planned and outlined – your process ends up sharing the exact same purpose with what you may believe is the exact opposite.  Because both approaches, no matter how close to the center of the continuum they are, are a means of doing the very same thing:

The discovery of your full story… leading to the execution of it over the dramatic and character arcs of that story.

How you discover it… whatever works for you.  How it needs to play and what criteria are in place to ensure it works… that’s not something you can make up (pants) at all.

The unspoken fact is, some writers pants their stories – make it all up as they go along – because they can’t do it any other way.  They simply can’t visualize a whole story in their head.  Doesn’t make the stories they end up with any lesser in quality – though that is indeed a possible outcome if they settle for the drafts in which they were still searching for the story – it’s all just a process.

And every writer, famous or not, has one.

*****

If you’d like to go deeper into this discussion, may I recommend my new book, “Story Fix: Transform Your Novel from Broken to Brilliant.”

If you’d like to attend a major workshop that delivers the fundamentals of craft in context to your story, read about that HERE.

Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

My latest release, THE LAST VICTIM, is a featured book for February 2016 on the Goodreads Psychological Thrillers Book Club. A great group. I’m honored. I’ve contributed a few ideas for discussion questions, submitted giveaways for those who participate in the discussion, but when it came to coming up with interesting tidbits about the book, I had fun remembering what I’d put into this one (and other books). The personal stuff keeps me entertained. It’s a big part of my passion for writing and my natural curiosity gets fed regularly, whether I use a factoid in a book or not.

Here are 5 Ways I keep it real:

1.) Walk the Streets with Yellow Man – If I use a place in my fiction book that criminal activity happens, I tend to make up a name, but maybe model it after a real place, if it fits. But when I can mention a real place, anyone from that city might think I lived there or my use of real places might make them feel like my characters are walking the streets of their hometown. In my latest novel, I used a real restaurant in Seattle called Palace Kitchen. I researched how the place looked outside and picked real items from their menu to use in the book. (Someone please invent a scratch and sniff app to properly research menu items. STAT)

Have you ever wanted to “walk the streets” of a town if you can’t afford to go there? Try using Google maps and look for the little yellow man icon. You click and drag him to where you want to go and let him do the walking for you. You have 360 degree views. I’ve walked the ugly streets of some big cities to find the creepiest places to kill people. Try it. (Not the killing part. The yellow man click and drag part.)

2.) YouTube & Vimeo Put You There – I’ve been researching sniper training. I’ll get a weapons guy to help fine tune the details, but YouTube or Vimeo is a good place to start. In one of my YA novels, ON A DARK WING, I watched videos of the many climbers who tackled Mount Denali in Alaska. I had a friend who climbed the mountain more than once, but you never know what choice morsels you can find from someone’s video while they are “in the trenches.”

3.) No One is Safe – In THE LAST VICTIM, I added my nephew and made him an Alaska State Trooper. Almost all of my books have relatives hidden in their pages. I don’t warn them ahead of time, but they crack up when they see their names or familiar habits in print. Some might be only a voice on a recorded message or another might be a detective walking the streets looking for hookers.

4.) Pets Are Fair Game – In my last book, I added my rescue dog Sancho and my yellow tabby Pinot Grigio (RIP little man). Since I’m writing a work of fiction, I can make them smarter than they are, have them catch a Frisbee, or flash their furry butts in indignation.

5.) Bleed on the Page – In the novella I just finished, I explored grief through my character, Rafael Matero in HOT TARGET, my Omega Team novella series that will launch under Amazon Kindle Worlds February 18th. I lost someone very special to me in 2014 and it ripped my heart out. I’ve only just started back to writing with this Omega series, so I had to bleed on the page with my experiences. It makes this book very personal for me. I struggled for every word and every image to make it feel real. It’s given me a measure of peace and has become my first step toward a new future. I’m so glad I wrote this book. It will always be special to me for that reason.

On the lighter side, I am researching funny military slang or phrases that my former Navy SEAL, Sam Rafferty, might use in my Omega Team Book #2 – TOUGH TARGET, coming out in May 2016. (The third novella in the series will be out in July 2016.) My older brother had a long career with the Air Force and he’s still involved as a contractor for the military. It’s been fun picking his brain, especially with his humor. The more I infuse some handpicked phrases, the more this character is coming alive in my mind for this series. There are plenty of online resources, but the slang or phrases that are the funniest come from the comments written below the posts on slang.

For Discussion:
1.) If you know any fun military slang or phrases, please share them or any links you think would help. (I’ve adapted some of these phrases or slang into my dialogue with Sam Rafferty and it’s been a blast.)

2.) Share some examples how you make your writing personal. I’d love to hear.

HOT TARGET – An Omega Team novella series, created by Desiree Holt for Amazon Kindle Worlds, coming February 18.

When Rafael reaches out to his sister for a job, Athena Matero—a founding member of the private security agency the Omega Team—can’t help be protective of her younger half brother. After the brutal murders of his wife and baby girl, Rafael Matero turned into a solitary loner, only surfacing to fulfill his duties as team leader for an elite SWAT sniper unit with the Chicago Police. Athena decides to fast track his application by vetting him on the job—a mission to Havana Cuba to investigate a cold case murder.

But when the old murder is linked to the shadowy death of a powerful drug cartel leader, Rafael is burdened by a terrible secret from his past—and an unrelenting death wish—that puts him at dangerous odds with Athena and her team. He believes he’s beyond saving, but that doesn’t stop Jacquie Lyles from trying.

Jacquie sees something in Athena’s mysterious brother that touches her heart. Chivalrous and brave, Rafael is as rare as a unicorn in her life as techno computer geek and white hat hacker for the Omega Team. After she joins the team on its mission to Cuba, she uncovers Rafael’s shocking burden and it breaks her heart.

Rafael stands in the crosshairs of a vicious drug cartel—powerless to stop his fate—and his secret could put Athena and her team in the middle of a drug war.

Writing a novel is gathering smoke. It’s an excursion into the ether of ideas. There’s no time to waste. – Walter Mosley

By PJ Parrish

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. Too much pressure heading into February, a month that’s usually so dismal that they limited it to twenty-eight days. But this year, I relented.
I made a vow to myself to change my evil ways. This is not easy to do when you have a Medicare card in your wallet.

I made a vow to write every day.

And I owe it all to Walter.

Now, if you’ve read my posts here, you’ve heard me try to defend the idea that you don’t have to write every day, that you can get away with taking a day or week — or even a year off — and still be successful.

Who was I kidding?

Maybe it’s because the older I get the harder the writing is coming. Maybe it’s because -– and I so want to believe this – that you don’t ossify as you age but stay open to new ways of running your life. But I have reformed. I now work every day on writing. And here is the thing that changed my thinking.

Every January, I start working on the Edgar Awards banquet. Kelly and I have chaired this event for ten years now for Mystery Writers and we love doing it, mainly because as our reward for volunteering, we get to mingle with some of the best in our business every April in New York. I’ve got to meet Stephen King, Donald Westlake, Sara Paretsky, James Ellroy, Robert Crais, Ken Follett, and countless other writers who’ve been nominated or won the Edgars. You don’t breathe the same air as the Grand Masters without coming away with a few insights.

At 2014 Edgars with Reed Farrel Coleman, Jess Lourey and Walter Mosley

This year, the MWA Grand Master is Walter Mosley. I’ve been a fan of his books for years, and got to finally meet him two years ago when his book All I Did Was Shoot My Man was nominated for Best Novel. I also had the honor to be on an Edgar Symposium with him on the future of the PI, and he was very kind to this starry-eyed acolyte. As part of my chair duties, I have to help Kelly prepare his video tribute, so this month I’ve been researching everything he has to say on the subject of writing.

He’s got some great advice. Some of it comes in his 2009 book, This Is the Year You Write Your Novel. But the best stuff can be found in his videos. And it all boils down to his one credo – you must write every day.

Sure, I’ve heard this before, often from my long suffering co-author Kelly. We all have heard this before. But here is what finally made me realize I had to change:

“Writing is almost a place of dreams for me.”

That is Mosley talking about the subconscious. He goes on to talk about how the act of creating fiction necessitates that the writer enter a dream world and inhabit it fully. Not just visit whenever the kids are quiet and the dishes are done. Not just swing by for a quickie when the husband is off playing poker. And not just deign to show up if you feel like it.
If you want a reader to live in the world you create, you the writer can’t just rent that space. You have to own it.

Mosley believes that only through daily contact with your novel can you maintain the subconscious threads that will keep it alive. The constancy of entering that fictional world every day will force not just the process along (Yea! I just wrote THE END!) but will engender a richness and authenticity in your fictional universe that you won’t otherwise achieve.

I used to go days without writing then burn myself out writing in furious 12-hour sprints. I thought it was working, but what I didn’t realize was that in those days I was away, my characters’s voices were dimming to whispers, my settings were fading like old pastels, and my plot was drifting off into the blackest bayous.

Here’s how Mosley describes this stasis:

The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do every day. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting to the unconscious mind. The process of writing a novel is like taking a journey by boat. You have to continuously set yourself on course. If you get distracted or allow yourself to drift, you will never make it to the destination. It’s not like highly defined train tracks or a highway; this is a path that you are creating discovering. The journey is your narrative. Keep to it and a tale will be told. Nothing we create is art at first. It’s simply a collection of notions that may never be understood. Returning every day thickens the atmosphere. Images appear. Connections are made. But even these clearer notions will fade if you stay away more than a day.

“Thickens the atmosphere.” God, I love that.

Now I am no angel. Decades of procrastination die hard. Sometimes old dogs can’t hear the call for new tricks, let alone do them. You guys undoubtedly have your own ideas on how to keep a daily pace and I’d love to hear them. Here are some of the things I do to force myself to return each day to my fictional world.

Just open the book

Sometimes just seeing your work on the screen gives you a jolt of confidence. Read that word count ticker-thing down in the left corner. Wow…I’ve made it to 43,034 words? Next thing you know, it’s an hour later and you’re up to 43,306.

Read yesterday’s work

Okay, your brain is bone-dry and you can’t face that sucky chapter 12. Open the damn file anyway. Do some rewriting. Even if you ignore sucky chapter 12 and go back and repave a pothole in chapter 6. Just the act of setting foot back in the fictional world will get you moving again. Or, as Mosley puts it:

One day you might read over what you’ve done and think about it. You pick up the pencil or turn on the computer, but no new words come. That’s fine. Sometimes you can’t go further. Correct a misspelling, reread a perplexing paragraph, and then let it go. You have re-entered the dream of the work, and that’s enough to keep the story alive for another 24 hours. The next day you might write for hours; there’s no way to tell. The goal is not a number of words or hours spent writing. All you need to do is to keep your heart and mind open to the work.

Do Some Research

I know, I know…this is a siren call. But I have found this works wonders for me as a pump-primer. My WIP is about two unrelated cases: the discovery of two boys’s remains found in a box in an abandoned copper mine in Michigan’s U.P. and the murder, decades later, of a mega-church pastor hundreds of miles downstate. Stuck on a plot, I started researching religious ephemera about saints and discovered St. John Bosco – patron saint of lost boys. Bingo…the plot thickened. But don’t let research become a detour. Here’s Mosley on that:

There will be moments when you will want to dally over details. Do Georgia geese fly south in April or June? Is it physically possible for Bob Millar to hear the cult leader yelling from a mile away — even in a desert? Would the police arrest Trip if the women were allowed into the bar and were served by the owner? All of these questions are valid. Before the book gets into print, you should have the answers. But many writers allow questions like these to help them procrastinate. They tell themselves that they can’t go on until these questions are answered. Nonsense. Put a red question mark next to the place where you have questions and get back to it later.

Go for a  walk

Yesterday, I was working on a chapter where my hero Louis goes to the house of the dead pastor, after the place has been cleared by cops, just to see what vibes he can pick up on. My first draft was listless, filled with drab description. So I went to Google Street View, walked around Grand Rapids Michigan for an hour, and happened upon this house on Lake Reed. It was a modest clapboard Cape Cod cottage but it was dwarfed by the McMansions around it. Suddenly, I knew not just where the pastor lived – but how. The chapter now has a purpose, the scene has verisimilitude — and I have momentum. This technique worked for me best in our thriller The Killing Song, which is set in Paris. I had been to Paris ten times before writing it but I had never set foot in the city’s northern immigrant neighborhoods. A Street View tour of the shadowed streets of the 18th arrondisement gave me the insights I needed.

Write something else
Which is what I am doing right now. I am a daily runner, have been doing it for two decades now. But as I get older, my body is starting to object, so I make do with a long walk. So it is with writing. When you can’t face the run of your novel, open the laptop and start a short story, write a poem, start a journal. Work on your outline, if you use them. Just stay in the realm of the imagination somehow. Mosley again:

The only thing that matters is that you write, write, write. It doesn’t have to be good writing. As a matter of fact, almost all first drafts are pretty bad. What matters is that you get words on the page or the screen — or into the tape recorder, if you work like that.

 

It is now Monday, almost three in the afternoon. On this laptop, on an alternate screen, sits my work in progress. I haven’t touched it yet, haven’t even looked at it. But at least I opened it. So, if you’ll excuse me, I have somewhere to go now.

Thank you, Walter. You can have the last word:

How can I create when I have to go to work, cook my dinner, remember what I did wrong to the people who have stopped calling? And even if I do find a moment here and there — a weekend away in the mountains, say — how can I say everything I need to say before the world comes crashing back with all of its sirens and shouts and television shows? “I know I have a novel in me,” I often hear people say. “But how can I get it out?” The answer is, always is, every day.

… when you throw in the popcorn.

Not all novelists are movie fans, and some don’t recognize or appreciate the parallels between what we do compared to what screenwriters do with the same objective.

Story is story.  As novelists we also provide the lighting, set design, and the musical score… because nothing says background music than the way we open and execute our scenes with the voice of our narrative.

I contend that all serious authors of commercial genre fiction are missing the boat if they don’t consider the majority of mainstream films (with the caveat that there are certainly more than a few that don’t qualify, especially screwball comedies and sequels) as an example of storytelling at its finest.

In fact, if you know what to look for, and if you view and study such movies from a story development and narrative perspective – precisely the same stuff you hope to find at writing workshops – you can get as much value from your two hours in front of a screen as you can from most writing books and conferences.

Of course, that’s not really possible if you don’t know what, specifically, to look for.  When the guy from your car pool hears an Aaron Sorkin monologue he might hear blah blah blah, but you… you hear poetry and the heart of character itself.

Just as a semester as an intern in the O.R. can bring a medical textbook to relevant life for a med student, writing craft books and workshops may be precisely what equips us to gain writerly value from watching a movie from within the context of craft.  What you see can cement your understanding and validate your acceptance of basic principles of craft, perhaps as much or more than reading the scenes in a novel.

Two such richly-crafted films are out now, waiting to show us how it’s done.

Both films are a clinic in the craft of storytelling.  My hope for you this week is… watch and learn.  (Use the links to both films to learn more about the story, it’s journey to the screen, and production notes.)

The first film is The Revenent, which just tonight won Golden Globes for Best Dramatic Film, Best Director (Alejandro G. Inarritu) and Best Actor (Leo DiCaprio).

The story… I’ll leave that to you, to preview as you will.  The point for us, as writers, is to see how the story is handled, in what order, in what context, in terms of narrative and exposition, as well as how things are setup and foreshadowed, and then put into play and later resolved.  These are the same challenges we face every day staring at the blank page… but here they are perfectly demonstrated as working dramatic arcs that will light the observing writer’s creative mind on fire.

The value here for us, as writers, beginning with the dramatic concept itself, is to notice how the Act I/Part 1 setup launches immediately with deep dramatic implications, while firmly grounding the film within a thematic context of racism.

The entire story is set-up in that opening sequence of scenes, defining motivations for the key characters within a context of racial hatred, and then quickly, beginning a descent into the darkness of what quickly surfaces as the primary dramatic arc, with a thematic focus that gives the story its dark emotional resonance.

Notice, too, that this is not an arbitrary dramatic launching point.  This is consistent with movies — a novelist can view each and every scene and ask why, relative to content and placement… and the answer will always be there, easily and clearly defined.  There are no pantsers in the movie business — we novelists own that risky process of story development — everybody involved knows how each scene connects to the next, and how it all plays within the macro context of a clear vision (via the script itself) of where it all is headed.

And then, the story’s three major structural milestones – the First Plot Point, the Midpoint and the Second Plot Point — are unmissable, with perfect placement and dramatic depth that flip the story into a higher gear, not to mention veer it toward a shifted hero’s path… all of it becoming a clinic in these essential elements of story architecture.

The other amazing film, also out now…

… offers a completely different story experience.  Youth stars Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel as seniors vacationing at a swanky Swiss resort.  Caine is a famous but retired orchestra conductor and composer, while Keitel is a fading film director taking his cast and crew on a retreat to nail the ending of the film they are on the cusp of shooting.

Geriatric and emotional hijinks ensue, as pasts and futures collide in unexpected ways.

As a writing workshop for you… this story leans more to a literary sensibility, with elements of mysticism and imagination applied within an episodic narrative sequence (showing you how to pull off such a structure in your story), yet leading toward a powerhouse of emotion in the final act with amazing creative courage and beauty.

While reliable generic structure and character arc offer us models and targets to get us there, thematic power is more elusive as a sum that exceeds the parts themselves, and as such is almost impossible to teach.

Youth shows you how it’s done.

Because while hard to reduce to a roster of narrative principles, it is possible to observe, and to feel.  When it penetrates your own writer’s heart you will find yourself clear on how to summon these essences within your own story, how to move your readers toward Epiphany and revelation.  That’s what this film does so well, and in doing so becomes an opportunity for writers to immerse in this clinic in the power of thematic characterization.

Give these two films a try, then come back here to weigh in. I promise you, the price of the ticket will become an investment with far great value relative to the craft of advancing storytelling in any genre.

They will make you want to write.  Not just the next thing, but something amazing that reaches for a higher bar, and with an expanded tool chest of ways to get there.

What films have you seen that helped inspire you or expand your tool chest as a novelist?

Welcome to my first TKZ post of 2016! What better way to start off the year than with a pop quiz?

Can I hear a Yea?

Oh, I see. You feared and loathed them in school, eh? Well relax, this one is self-graded. Just remember: no gum chewing!

Below is a bit of writing I made up based on errors I see all the time in manuscripts and published (even traditionally!) books. Heck, I’ve been guilty at one time or another, especially in my early years. Some of these are technically not “errors,” as they may be grammatically correct. But they’re what I call “little writing speed bumps.” They disturb the reader’s fictive dream, usually in a subconscious way. The more bumps, the less enjoyable the reading experience.

Learn to spot them in your own writing, however, and you can smooth out the road.

So here we go. Read the following and jot down all the speed bumps you can find. Don’t look ahead to the answer sheet yet. You’re on the honor system!

John Harper gazed out the window at his Christmas present.

He gazed at a beautiful boat.

“How do you like it?” his wife said. Carol was dressed in a red sweater.

Carol luxuriated in the softness of the sweater. Her smile was soft and warm.

John turned from the window and embraced his wife.

“I can see you do,” Carol laughed.

Kissing Carol full on the mouth, John whispered, “I like you even more.”

Carol Harper was forty-two. A graduate of Bryn Mawr, she had studied folklore and mythology, before finally deciding to major in business. Her first job out of college was with an advertising firm in New York.

“I like you too,” Carol said lovingly.

“I like you so much,” John repeated, “that I want to take you out to a nice dinner tonight.”

“A nice dinner, John?” Carol expostulated. “Tonight?”

“Yes,” John winked. “Tonight.”

How’d you do, class? Now, take this quiz home to your parents and return it with a note saying they’ve seen it …

… or not. Below is the excerpt with my answers provided. Some of them have footnotes that you can read below the excerpt. Have a look, then open up a discussion in the comments.

John Harper gazed out the window at his Christmas present.

He gazed [ECHO. SEE NOTE 1, BELOW] at a beautiful boat.

“How do you like it?” his wife said. Carol was dressed in a red sweater. [POV PROBLEM. WE’RE IN JOHN’S HEAD. HOW CAN HE SEE HIS WIFE’S OUTFIT IF HE’S LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW?]

Carol luxuriated [POV SWITCH TO CAROL] in the softness of the sweater. Her smile was soft [ECHO] and warm. [POV PROBLEM. WHO SEES THIS? NOT HER. SHE’S NOT LOOKING IN A MIRROR, AND NOT JOHN, WHO IS LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW]

John turned from the window and embraced his wife.

“I can see you do,” [HOW? HE’S EMBRACING HER] Carol laughed [YOU DON’T LAUGH DIALOGUE. SEE NOTE 2]

Kissing Carol full on the mouth, John whispered [HOW CAN JOHN WHISPER ANYTHING IF HE’S FULL ON THE MOUTH? SEE NOTE 3], “I like you even more.”

Carol Harper was forty-two. [POV SWITCH. THIS IS AN OMNISCIENT VIEW]. A graduate of Bryn Mawr, she had studied folklore and mythology, {MISPLACED COMMA] before finally deciding to major in business. Her first job out of college was with an advertising firm in New York. [ALL THIS IS INFO DUMP AND EXPOSITION. IT CAN WAIT!]

“I like you too,” Carol said lovingly. [ADVERB IS unnecessary. SEE NOTE 4]

“I like you so much [ECHO IN DIALOGUE],” John repeated [REDUNDANT], “that I want to take you out to a nice dinner tonight.”

“A nice dinner, John?” [UNNECESSARY USE OF NAME. SEE NOTE 5] Carol expostulated [I HOPE I DON’T HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS. BUT SEE NOTE 2 AGAIN]. “Tonight?”

“Yes, [UNNECCESARY FILLER. SEE NOTE 6]” John winked [DIALOGUE DOESN’T WINK!]. “Tonight.” [ECHO]

[FINAL AND MOST IMPORTANT COMMENT: NO CONFLICT OR TENSION ANYWHERE! SEE NOTE 7]

NOTES:

1. An echo is when a descriptive word (an adjective or verb) is used more than once in close proximity. Here, gazed is used in back-to-back sentences. It’s not “wrong” to do this, but it’s a bump in the reader’s mind.

2. For attributions in dialogue, use said as your default. Its job is to clue the reader in on who is speaking and nothing more. It’s virtually invisible. If you are tempted to use another word to indicate a manner of speaking, look to the context and seek to make things clear. For example: Sgt. Trask clenched his teeth. “Fall in!” he growled. We know he growled from the context and the exclamation point. We know he is speaking, too. So: Sgt. Trask clenched his teeth. “Fall in!” is enough.

3. This kind of sentence construction is called a participle phrase. It begins with a word ending in –ing. What you have to watch out for are two actions that defy the laws of physics. In other words, can the two actions take place at the same time? Full-on kissing and whispering cannot (unless you speak fluent French. Ahem). But these two actions can coexist: Getting out of his car, John heard a woman scream. While some writing instructors hold that you should never use a participle phrase. I think they’re just fine if they a) pass the coexistence test; and b) are used sparingly.

4. Adverbs propping up dialogue attributions are almost always unnecessary. If it’s not clear how something is being said from the dialogue itself, or the action surrounding it, see if you can make it clear. The occasional adverb is fine, but only if you truly need it.

5. Avoid having characters tell each other things they both already know. The other character’s name is one of these. Unless, of course, the character is trying to be adamant, as in, “John, how many times do I have to tell you not to kidnap the neighbors!” But when you try to slip in exposition in dialogue, it can sound truly phony if it’s information both characters already possess: “Oh hello Arthur, my family doctor from Baltimore. Please come in.”

6. One of the best ways to make dialogue crisp is to cut needless filler words. Look for these at the start of dialogue, especially Yes, No, and Well. The sentence in the piece would have been much better this way: John winked. “Tonight.” (Why is tonight not an echo? Because John is using it as an echo. It’s intentional.)

7. The scene is dullsville because there’s no conflict. There should be some tension, any kind, even if it’s only an emotional knot inside one of the characters. Anything that takes the scene south of normal.

John Harper gazed out the window at his Christmas present.

“How do you like it?” his wife said.

John turned from the window and faced Carol.

“I can see you do,” Carol said.

“What’s wrong with your eyesight?” John said.

So what about you? Did you see anything else? How would you improve the scene?

***And say, kids, for a chance to win a FREE book by yours truly, and be the first to know when the new ones come out, take a moment to check out this page.