Category Archives: writing

Writing What You Know: Missing People

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Today, our guest blogger is Julie Kramer, a freelance network news producer. Her debut thriller, STALKING SUSAN, won the RT Reviewers Choice Award for Best First Mystery, the Minnesota Book Award for genre fiction, and was a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award. It’s also been nominated for Best First Novel in both the Anthony and Barry Awards.

Her second book, MISSING MARK, is available now from Doubleday.

by Julie Kramer

kramer-julie If authors are going to take readers inside a fictional version of their own world, it helps if that world holds some natural intrigue to outsiders.

That’s where I lucked out, working as a career producer in the increasingly desperate world of TV news. By coming clean about some of my profession’s flaws, my debut, STALKING SUSAN, (recently out in paperback) takes a little of the mystery out of the media. And my readers seem to appreciate the insider knowledge on how news decisions are made to how hidden cameras work.

Of course, some of my news colleagues wish I hadn’t been quite so candid. They ask: Did you have to tell them all that stuff about ratings? Did you have to tell them “If it bleeds it leads?”

In my sequel, MISSING MARK, my TV reporter heroine answers a want ad reading “Wedding Dress For Sale: Never Worn” and is drawn into a dangerous missing person case during sweeps month.

susan1bAs a journalist, I’ve covered numerous missing people and I never know how the cases are going to turn out. Some victims, heartbreakingly, end up dead (Dru Sjodin – North Dakota). Others, miraculously, turn up alive. (Shawn Hornbeck – Missouri) Some, hauntingly, are never found. (Jodi Huseintruit -Iowa) Some are abducted. (Jacob Wetterling – Minnesota) Others stage their own abduction. (Audrey Seiler – Wisconsin) I used MISSING MARK as an opportunity to show readers how newsrooms decide which missing people get publicity and which don’t. It can be a provocative discussion.

When a child disappears, the media goes into action. And those actions, from broadcasting Amber Alerts to interviewing sobbing parents, are fairly predictable. Children should never be missing, so missing children are news.

It’s when adults go missing that the situation gets tricky because grownups are allowed to leave without sharing their plans with friends and family. And hey, often enough they do show up just days later. Back from Vegas. Sheepish. So without signs of foul play, there’s some controversy in how long the police wait to investigate a missing adult. Often journalists take their cues from law enforcement. If the cops don’t appear to be taking a case seriously, the media might not either. Some states, such as Minnesota have recently passed legislation like “Brandon’s Law,” requiring police to more aggressively investigative missing adults deemed to be “endangered.”

Whether a missing person gets news coverage can depend on how slow the news day is, or if a holiday is approaching and other news events come to a standstill. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that lots of missing people who became household names disappeared near holidays. Remember Lacy Peterson and Christmas?

I’ll never forget the time a friend of mine decided to enlist the help of a Denver Private Investigator to solve a missing person case. There are lots of reasons why people go missing and often the mysteries are never truly solved, but a private investigator may be able to use surveillance techniques to help.

How accessible the victim’s family is for interviews and photographs can also make a difference in publicity. That’s content. And newsrooms seek content. Without a family pushing the police to search and the media to broadcast descriptions, the missing tend to stay missing. And until someone reports them gone, the missing aren’t even considered missing. That’s why serial killers who target prostitutes or the homeless tend to stay under the radar longer.

One of the most controversial aspects of missing people and the media is why attractive, white women seem to get the most national media attention. There’s no good answer for that. I know for a fact, news managers don’t consciously decide coverage based on the victim’s appearance. But if you look at the faces of the missing who have gone viral, that seems to be a common denominator.

stalking-susan Certainly it’s more understandable that missing women get more coverage than missing men because, historically, missing women are more likely to be in jeopardy. But as for appearance, it might be one of those chicken vs. the egg quandaries. Are attractive victims more likely to get publicity because that’s who viewers watch and that’s who draws ratings? Is the media merely giving the public what it wants? Or is the media deciding what the public wants? As a journalist and as a viewer, I don’t know the answer to that debate. But I know newsrooms are troubled by it.

When I started writing what eventually was titled MISSING MARK, I had in my mind that the bride was the missing character. But after my neighbor, a West Point cadet home on leave, went missing, I decided to make my victim a man to discuss some of the challenges missing men face.

So instead of Here Comes The Bride, my story became There Goes The Groom.

A MISSING MARK case in the headlines recently involves South Carolina governor Mark Sandford going AWOL to visit his Argentina mistress. If you dropped that kind of plot in a novel, critics might call it improbable. But that’s just one example of truth being stranger than fiction.

What do you think about how the media covers missing people? What do you think about how they’re portrayed in fiction?

The life and death of Teresa Castillo

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By Joe Moore

My co-writer Lynn Sholes and I had to kill one of our children. Her name was Teresa Castillo and she was born about a year ago. Now before you get concerned and call the police, Teresa was a supporting character for the antagonist in our newest thriller, THE PHOENIX APOSTLES. We developed her right from the start as his personal assistant. Not only did she know almost all his secrets, but as she developed in the story, she became jealous of the secrets he didn’t share with her, the ones that would have elevated her to a higher level of importance.

kill1Teresa also had some competition. His name is Carlos, and he does the dirty work for the antag. Carlos is strong-willed and wants to advance in the story as well. He and Teresa worked closely with the antag and with each other. And they both did things that rubbed our heroine the wrong way. But Carlos did some really bad things. And in the eyes of the reader, he definitely had to get his just rewards in the end. Not so much for Teresa. And therein was the problem.

Lynn and I write thrillers with complex plots, and THE PHOENIX APOSTLES is turning out to be the most complex of all. Because of the complexity, we have some really intense brainstorming sessions, especially as we approach the end of the book and must tie all the loose ends together so they are resolved for the reader. Our conference calls go on for hours as we play “what if”, argue, plot, and strategize. Since we live over 300 miles apart and only meet once or twice a year, we rely on unlimited long distance calling to work out the details.

Recently, we were discussing how each of our characters would resolve at the climax of the book. We both like big Hollywood endings, and this one is shaping up to be a whopper. We were going down the list of ever character, either signing their death warrants or letting them live another day. We knew what should happen to Carlos, but when we got to Teresa, we came up short. As a matter of fact, we couldn’t even justify placing her in the final scene. Normally, we assign all our characters “jobs” in each scene, and she was pretty much unemployed by the time the shit hit the fan.

There was a long silence on the phone. Then Lynn asked that dreaded question no self-respecting fictional character ever wants to hear. “Do we really need her?”

“You mean in the climax?”

“No, in the book?”

After another long pause, I had to admit she was right. If Teresa vanished from the pages of our novel, would it make any difference? The reluctant but honest answer was, no.

We came to the conclusion that we could convert all of Teresa’s “jobs” into the Carlos character and the result would be a tighter, crisper story with fewer heads to hop between.

And so the killing began.

Within a few hours, I had gone through the entire manuscript, found every instance of Teresa’s character, rewrote each one and shifting her responsibilities, motivations, and character development to Carlos. By sundown, Teresa was pronounced dead. Worse than dead; like some former Soviet government official who fell out of favor, she simply ceased to exist.

I had lived with Teresa for over a year. I knew her wants and needs. I liked her. But I had to sacrifice her to make for a better story. I mourned her passing, drank some whisky, and moved on.

R.I.P Teresa Castillo.

Have you ever had to kill any of your children? What forced you to do it? Were they main characters in your book or part of the supporting cast? Did it hurt or did you take pleasure in reducing them to the recycle bin?

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ThrillerFest is coming.


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Watch for Sunday guest blogs from Julie Kramer, Anne Hawkins, and Grant Blackwood. And coming July 26. James Scott Bell joins the Kill Zone as our new fulltime Sunday blogger.

The Soundtrack of Suspense: How Music Influences My Words

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Our guest today is best-selling author Robert Liparulo, a former journalist with over a thousand articles and multiple writing awards to his name. His novels include COMES A HORSEMAN, GERM, DEADFALL, and this year’s DEADLOCK, as well as the young adult series, DREAMHOUSE KINGS (the latest of which is TIMESCAPE, releases July 7). He is currently writing, simultaneously, an original screenplay and novel, with the director Andrew Davis (THE FUGITIVE, THE GUARDIAN).

By Robert Liparulo

Liparulo Pace. Rhythm. Tension. It’s no coincidence these terms describe both stories and music. In fact, for me, music has always helped me create stories. When someone mentions a favorite scene from one of my novels, more often than not, I immediately remember the music that was playing in my headphones when I wrote it: Olaf’s attack on Brady and his son in Comes a Horseman (“Elk Hunt” from Last of the Mohicans); Stephen’s confrontation with the killer Atropos in Germ (“The Battle” from Gladiator); Hutch’s apprehensive readiness to rise from charred ground and fight at the end of Deadfall (“Death is the Road to Awe” from The Fountain). Music gets me in the mind-set to write specific scenes—its rhythm reminds me of the pace I’m looking for as I work to find just the right words; its mood holds me in a sort of suspended animation within the scene, regardless of outside distractions or the time it takes to write it.

Years ago, as movie critic, I’d sometimes see films before they were finished, without a musical score. At one screening, the director stood in the aisle humming the music that would accompany each scene. That was more distracting than the film’s symphonic nakedness, but I understood the poor man’s panic over having his film seen that way: music can make or break a movie. It not only adds a rich layer of enjoyment to the viewing experience, it cues the audience to the filmmaker’s intentions—“OK, time to get scared” or “In case this guy’s mask made out of human skin isn’t enough to let you know, he’s the bad guy!” That’s why the tracks of musical score are called “cues.”

Timescape (I’ve dreamed of including a playlist—even the actual music in digital form—with my novels. Readers could then start a soundtrack with each chapter, heightening their experience of the story. Of course, individual reading speeds make that impractical; few things are worse than out-of-synch audio tracks. And, yes, I realize it’s part of the author’s job to create the same emotional response in readers that music does, using only words. Still, I sometimes imagine myself acting like that director: leaning over a reader’s shoulder, and at the right moment going, “Da-da-da!”)

It’s hard for me to experience a story, in any medium, without musical accompaniment—whether in my ears or my head.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve listened to music as I wrote—through years of writing magazine articles and intermittent screenplays. It started as a way of deadening the sounds of screaming kids, vacuum cleaners, and when I rented an outside office, the shouts coming from the divorce attorney’s office next door. Then I started writing novels, and the type of music I played suddenly mattered.

Faster tempos do help keep the pace up—if not within the story, then at least with how fast my fingers move over a keyboard; but then, volume helps with that as well. The louder, the better. More important than tempo is how a piece of music makes me feel. A cue that starts off slow and builds to a triumphant crescendo can carry me through a fast-paced action sequence as well as any nonstop, staccato rhythm. “Chevaliers de Sangreal” from The Da Vinci Code, for example: a hero’s theme if ever there was one.

Over time, I’ve built a library of music categorized by the mood it puts me in when I write. Take, for instance, Clint Mansell’s haunting music for Requiem for a Dream. Its cues seem to be teetering on the edge of something, without relief or execution. No wonder several of the titles have the word “Tense” in them. When I launch into a suspenseful scene, I’ll often queue up my Requiem playlist.

Here’s a specific example of a partial scene and the music I was listening to when I wrote it:

“With the speed and fluidity he had practiced a thousand times, Hutch drew back on the bowstring and released it, all in one, smooth two-second motion. He held still for another beat to make sure the arrow cleared the bow. Then he dropped his right arm to a second arrow rising from the ground beside him. His bow arm never moved. His head never moved. His eyes never came off of Bad. As the arrow sliced a groove through Bad’s skin at the temple, Hutch was already nocking the next arrow.”

Most likely, Quentin Tarantino would go with something fast and exotic, like NEU!’s “Super 16” from Kill Bill. Because the scene is a mix of suspense and action, I powered up “Betrayal” from Enemy at the Gates—from the scene in which they discover a young boy murdered and hanging from a crane. It’s emotive and heart-wrenching, and prior to the “discovery” almost painful in its anticipation.

My writing-music of choice is almost always film scores. It seems to me that movie moguls are the benefactors of today’s great composers, Hollywood the new Vienna. I also like that the structure of a good story—with its cycle of tension and relief, despair and triumph—forces a wide variation in music within one recording. I used to think the strong bond between a movie’s images and its music would cause me to think only of those images while listening to the score—Russell Crowe plucking his violin in Master and Commander. However, I’ve found that the spirit of the music takes over and I can claim it for my own. That’s why filmmakers often listen to other movies’ scores while on set. They’re not trying to imitate another movie’s scene; they’re letting the music help them get in the mood for their own scene. The director Ridley Scott is known for doing this.

Thankfully, most movie scores don’t have lyrics. I’m too much of a word geek to write with lyrics pounding into my eardrums: I’m always trying to listen to them. Every now and then, however, a song with lyrics is perfect for getting me into the groove of a scene (though usually it’s something in its rhythm, tempo or melody, rarely its words that attracts me to it). When that happens, I play it over and over until my mind stops Deadlock trying to catch every word and hears the vocals as it does any other instrument. Felix da Housecat’s remix of Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman” comes to mind; I listened to it while writing the scene that introduced Brendan Page, my latest novel Deadlock’s villain, a true sinnerman with a penchant for “cool,” which the song captures.

It’s all about what works for the individual writer. When writing action scenes, Meg Gardiner (The Memory Collector) says Gladiator, The Day After Tomorrow, Jarhead and 300 “get me in a fightin’ mood.” David Dun says he listened to “the womb-like sounds of a whirlpool hot tub with all the jets running” while writing The Black Silent. Whatever works.

When I write to music, it does more than nudged me into a specific pace or help me with atmosphere. It reminds me of quality, that musical notes, played on varied instruments in a specific order and speed can touch people in ways that are mysterious and wonderful. It can lift heavy spirits and wring tears from long-dry eyes. It can unsettle sad memories and tickle a laugh out of you when you need it most. It stirs the listener and paints unimaginably vivid pictures—exactly the things I want my words to do, as well.

Do you listen to music while you write? What are your favorite tunes?

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Watch for Sunday guest blogs from Julie Kramer, Anne Hawkins, and Grant Blackwood. And coming July 26. James Scott Bell joins the Kill Zone as our new fulltime Sunday blogger.

A boy and a dog

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By Joe Moore

boy-dog I got an email the other day from a beginning writer who was working on her first book. She had read some of my novels and enjoyed them, and she asked if I had any advice on helping her strengthen her writing. I could have given her many answers to that question including creating an outline, researching carefully, developing strong characters, accuracy, compelling plot, etc. But what I decided to tell her was that the best way to strengthen her writing was to choose the right words.

I know that may sound almost too basic. After all, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the right words in the right order can make for good writing. But I suggested that once she completed her first draft and started the rewriting process, she spend time considering if she needed an alternative to her action and descriptive words. I’m not advocating a thesaurus-intensive approach to writing, just a conscious effort to consider if there’s a better, stronger, more visual alternative to power and descriptive words.

If you strip away all the words that you can’t change such as proper nouns, character’s names, conjunctions, prepositions, and other necessary parts of speech, what’s left are words that the writer can consider changing to strengthen the story.

And here lies the true craft of storytelling: choosing the right word.

Mark Twain once said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is like the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

Choosing the right word helps create a stronger visual image in the reader’s mind that should closely resemble the image in the writer’s mind. And the closer those two visions synchronize, the more intimate, meaningful and thrilling the experience can be for the reader. The first words to fall target for change are descriptive words.

Here’s a short exercise in choosing the right descriptive words. It’s a one-sentence story I call A Boy and A Dog. As the writer, I see the action clearly in my mind, but do you see the same scene?

The dog ran toward the boy.

Pretty simple, right? Do you have a clear image of the dog? The boy? Do you see what’s happening with the action? Maybe, but there’s a great deal of room for interpretation. Our collective visions are not synchronized because the descriptive words—dog, ran, boy–are vague and general. Let’s try again.

The big dog ran toward the small boy.

Any better? Do you see the same dog and boy in your mind that I do? Are we talking about a poodle or a collie? Boxer or Doberman? Does small mean that the boy is short or young? Let’s revise.

The big black dog ran toward the small frightened child.

OK, now we’re using some better descriptive words. Are you starting to get the same picture in your mind that I am? Can you see the big black dog? Is it the same dog and child I envision as I write the story?

OK, let’s get serious about using descriptive words.

The pit bull charged the screaming toddler.

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Watch for Sunday guest blogs from Robert Liparulo, Julie Kramer, Anne Hawkins, and Grant Blackwood. And coming July 26. James Scott Bell joins the Kill Zone as our new fulltime Sunday blogger.

Why Bother with Bookscan?

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by Michelle Gagnonbook

So here’s something I didn’t find out about until after my first book was published: Nielsen, the same company that ranks TV shows, is responsible for maintaining records of book sales. And, as with the TV ratings, there’s a vast disparity between what those numbers say and what the reality might be (does anyone honestly believe that many people are watching the “Ghost Whisperer?”) Among all the industry people I’ve spoken with, it’s generally acknowledged that Bookscan tends to be wildly inaccurate.

Case in point: I know for a fact that, when compared with my royalty statements, Bookscan only counts about a third of my sales (and that’s a year after the fact). Despite their claim to “provide weekly point-of-sales data with the highest possible degree of accuracy,” there are a number of sales venues they simply don’t factor in. Amazon, for example. Or Walmart. Or airports, drugstores, supermarkets; in other words, pretty much anywhere paperbacks are sold. I’ve heard that the numbers come closer with hardcovers, but with mass market paperbacks they’re way off the mark.

So why, then, do these numbers matter? For the sad truth is that they do. During my agent search, one agent looked up my Bookscan numbers right in front of me. And few people seem to know exactly how far off they are. From various editors I’ve heard that they double, triple, or even quadruple the Bookscan numbers to approximate actual sales.

In this day and age, why isn’t a better system in place? My publisher produces “velocity reports” the first six weeks of a book’s release–they know by the end of each week exactly how many copies have sold. So where do those numbers come from, and why aren’t those reported to Bookscan?

Big box stores like Barnes and Noble and Borders also know exactly how many books they’ve sold, almost on a minute to minute basis. If they stock eight copies of a book and sell five, they’ll only buy five copies of that author’s next release (or even fewer; sad but true. Which is why, as Joe noted yesterday, so many authors adopt pseudonyms these days in an effort to beat the system). So now that all of this information is computerized, why is the one “central clearinghouse” so wrong? A friend who works as an editor in Germany claims that they can get an accurate tally at the end of each and every day. Granted, Germany is a much smaller market than the U.S., but still. There has to be a better way.

Mind you, most authors don’t have access to their Bookscan numbers- publishers and distributors pay a fee for that information. I’m a big believer in transparency, and one of the most maddening aspects of being a writer is that getting a sense of where you stand is a constant uphill battle. This is why some authors become compulsive about checking their Amazon ranking, or trying to get feedback from their publisher regarding how sales are progressing. I’m not sure why that information is in short supply, but the Bookscan monopoly can’t be helping.

Coming up on Sunday, June 14, our guest blogger will be New York Times bestselling author and ITW co-president Steve Berry discussing the impact of Dan Brown’s new thriller THE LOST SYMBOL on the publishing industry.

And watch for future Sunday guest blogs from Robert Liparulo, Paul Kemprecos, Linda Fairstein, Julie Kramer, Grant Blackwood, and more.

Success is a 4-letter word

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By Joe Moore

Okay, it’s really a 7-letter word. But I know a lot of successful authors that would use a 4-letter word when asked what it’s like to be successful. Why? For a couple of reasons. First, success is impossible to obtain. You can obtain “better”. You can achieve “improved”. But you’re always working to be successful. Success can be nothing more than a carrot on a stick just beyond your nose.

Second, success means something different to everyone. It’s a lot like describing an object as being green. Are we talking forest green, lime green, Irish green, puck green, or foam green? How about that green on the Beatles Apple logo or Kermit the Frog green?

I’ll bet if you asked any author who just sold a million copies of his last book, did it make him feel good? The answer will probably be, “Absolutely!” Does he consider himself a success? 4-letter-word no! Why? Because now his publisher expects him to sell 2 million copies of that next book he hasn’t finished writing yet. No pressure there. That’s not success. That’s a problem, albeit one we would all like to have. Now his sales are a bold number on the publisher’s ledger sheet. Now employees’ jobs rely on his success. It’s not just good enough to write another great book that sells lots of copies, he has to worry about the folks that are counting on him for their salary, their jobs, and their future.

So what is success in the publishing industry? Is it when you sell 25,000 copies, 50,000 copies, a million, become a New York Times bestseller? When can a writer kick up his or her heels and declare, “Mission Accomplished”?

Here’s a tip. Success is what you predetermine it will be. It’s what you decide before it comes. If you don’t approach success in that way, you are destined for disappointment. For some, being successful is walking into a bookstore and seeing their novel on the shelf. For other’s it’s the rush of holding a book signing and seeing the line of fans snaking out the door. And for many, it’s money.

But even if it is money, try to remember that it’s more important to predetermine what you’ll do with it, rather than wanting to be “rich”. For instance, determine the amount you’ll need to quite your day job. Or to pay off your mortgage. Or to move to Cape Cod or Palm Beach, or just a bigger house.

The point is, you determine what will make you successful. Be specific, not vague. And if you achieve it, relish it, celebrate it. Because everything after that is the sauce on the steak. And if you do achieve your predetermined success, always say the two most powerful words in the English language: Thank You.

When do you consider a writer to be a success? Have you predetermined your Mission Accomplished criteria? Have you already achieved it?

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Coming up Sunday, June 7, our guest blogger will be New York Times bestselling author Sandra Brown. And watch for Sunday guest blogs from Steve Berry, Robert Liparulo, Paul Kemprecos, Linda Fairstein, Julie Kramer, Grant Blackwood, and more.

Start at the end

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By Joe Moore

A topic I’ve mentioned here in the past is Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules of writing fiction. They’re worth reviewing and taking to heart. But his rule number 5 is the one that made the biggest impression on me. Rule number 5 is: Start your story as close to the end as possible. This is relevant for both the entire book or a single chapter. We often hear that the most common mistake of a new writer is starting the story in the wrong place.

Well, it happens to published writers, too. Lynn Sholes and I are guilty of writing whole chapters that either occurred in the wrong place, or worse, weren’t even needed. Usually they turn out to be backstory information for us, not the reader. We go to the trouble of writing a chapter only to find it’s to confirm what we need to know, not what the reader needs to know.

So if we apply Vonnegut’s rule number 5, how do we know if we’ve started close enough to the end? Easy: we must know the destination before we begin the journey. We must know the ending first. To me, this is critical. How can we get there if we don’t know where we’re going? And once we know how our story will end, we can then apply what I call my top of the mountain technique. In my former career in the television postproduction industry, it’s called backtiming—starting at the place where something ends and working your way to the place where you want it to begin.

7691695But before I explain top of the mountain, let’s look at the bottom of the mountain approach—the way most stories are written. You stand at the foot of an imposing mountain (the task of writing your next 100K-word novel), look up at the huge mass of what you are going to be faced with over the next 12 or so months, and wonder what it will take to get to the top (or end).

You start climbing, get tired, fall back, take a side trip, climb some more, hope inspiration strikes, get distracted, curse, fight fatigue, take the wrong route, fall again, paint yourself into a corner—and if you’re lucky, finally make it to the top. This method will work, but it’s a tough, painful way to go.

Now, let’s discuss the top of the mountain technique. As you begin to plan your book, even before you start your first draft, Imagine that you’re standing on 9944522the mountain peak looking out over a grand, breathtaking view feeling invigorated, strong, and fulfilled. Imagine that the journey is over, your book is done. Look down the side of the mountain at the massive task you have just accomplished and ask yourself what series of events took place to get you to the top? Start with the last event, make a general note as to how you envision it. Then imagine what the second to the last event was that led up to the end, then the third from the last . . . you get the idea. It’s sort of like outlining in reverse.

This takes it a step further than Vonnegut’s rule number 5 by starting at the end and working your way to the beginning while you’re still in the planning stage. Guess what happens? By the time you are actually at the beginning, you will have started as close to the end as possible. And you will see the logic and benefit of rule number 5.

Naturally, your plan can and probably will change. Your ending will get tweaked and reshaped as you approach it for real. But wouldn’t it be great to have a general destination in mind even from the first word on page one of your first draft?

Do you know your ending before you start writing? Or do you have a general idea for the story and just wing it? Remember that there’s no right or wrong answer here. But what works for you?

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Coming up on our Kill Zone Guest Sundays, watch for blogs from Sandra Brown, Steve Berry, Robert Liparulo, Alexandra Sokoloff, Thomas B. Sawyer, Paul Kemprecos, Linda Fairstein, and more.

A Challenge from Across the Pond

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Today we welcome our guest James Scott Bell to TKZ. Jim is the author of the Ty Buchanan thriller series – Try Dying, Try Darkness and Try Fear (July 09). His latest standalone, Deceived, was called a "heart-whamming read" by Publishers Weekly. He has taught novel writing at Pepperdine University in Malibu, and at numerous writers conferences. In July he’ll be conducting a workshop on suspense dialogue for the International Thriller Writers CraftFest portion of ThrillerFest in New York. Jim is also the author of two bestselling books in the Write Great Fiction series from Writers Digest Books: Plot & Structure and Revision & Self-Editing. A former trial lawyer, Jim lives and writes in L.A. His website is www.jamesscottbell.com

By James Scott Bell

jim-bell Perhaps you saw the challenge a group of British thriller writers laid down last month. In The Guardian (UK) , Jeffery Archer, Martin Baker, Matt Lynn and Alan Clements declared they are out to end "the reign of the production-line American thriller writers, such as James Patterson, John Grisham and Dan Brown" and return British thrillers to their "rightful prominence."

Talking a little English smack, Archer said, "The tradition of thriller writing should never be allowed to die. Not least because we are better at it than anyone else in the world."

My thought upon reading that was, We whipped ’em in 1781, and we can do it again.

But I set my musket aside and continued reading. Here’s a clip:

Lynn, author of the military thriller Death Force, said that authors such as James Patterson – who writes, with the aid of a team of co-authors, up to eight books a year – have "drained a lot of the life out of the market". "Look at Fleming, look at Len Deighton – they had a quirkiness to them. Yes they were very popular, and had elements of the formulaic, but there was an edge of originality to them," he said. "All the writers in this group believe in bringing that back … Too many of the American thrillers are just being churned out to a rigid formula. Good writing is never a production line."

"We’re trying to say ‘why would you want to read fairly cynical, ghost-written books which are being pumped out by publishers when there are a lot of good new British writers you could be reading?’" explained Lynn. "We feel the genre has been quite neglected in the last seven to eight years … There haven’t been any new writers coming through. It might be because there aren’t any very good writers, or maybe it’s because publishers and booksellers have been neglecting it – they’ve become obsessed with the big names, and because they’ve got a new James Patterson or John Grisham four to five times a year to put at the front of the bookshop, it crowds out all the new British authors who are coming through."

These writers, who call themselves The Curzon Group, have come up with "five principles" for writing a thriller. They believe–

1. That the first duty of any book is to entertain.

2. That a book should reflect the world around it.

3. That thrilling, popular fiction doesn’t follow formulas.

4. That every story should be an adventure for both the writer and the reader.

5. That stylish, witty, and insightful writing can be combined with edge-of-the seat excitement.

Let’s take a closer look.

1. That the first duty of any book is to entertain.

Check. Without that, nothing else matters, because no one is reading you. And note that entertainment does not mean fluff. Being "caught up in the story" can happen in many ways and in myriad genres.

Our top thriller writers clearly entertain. Look at what’s being read on any given plane on any given day. For a read that gets you caught up in the fictive dream, we Americans are certainly holding our own, wouldn’t you say?

2. That a book should reflect the world around it.

TRY DARKNESS final cover I’m not sure what this means. Social comment? Message? Verisimilitude? You can take it a number of ways.

I do think a thriller has to "reflect" the world to the extent it establishes the feeling of reality, that the events in the story could happen. How well you do this is a matter of individual style, and avoiding things that could pull readers out of the story.

But this is SOP for any fiction writer, not just those who do thrillers. I’m not sure this principle moves the debate along.

What do you think it means?

3. That thrilling, popular fiction doesn’t follow formulas.

Here, I disagree a bit. There is a reason we have formulas in this world: they WORK. Try making nitroglycerin out of egg whites or lip balm out of sandpaper. We use formulas every day. We’re lost without them.

What most critics mean by this jab is "formulaic," which is a euphemism for "by the numbers" or otherwise without original content and style.

And we’d agree. Thrillers need formula, but should never be formulaic.

So what’s the formula?

For one thing, somebody has to be in danger of death. (I’ve talked elsewhere about the three types of death—physical, professional and psychological. For most thrillers, physical is on top).

Another ingredient: an opposition force that is stronger than the Lead. If not, the reader won’t care about the stakes.

And the Lead has to be a character we care about deeply. Not perfect, and not necessarily all good (think: Dirty Harry). We just have to care, and there are things you do and don’t do to forge that reader connection.

What keeps a thriller from being by-the-numbers is the freshness you bring to it by way of character, voice, style, and the arrangement of plot elements.

Take A Simple Plan by Scott Smith. A tried and true formula: innocent man finds forbidden treasure, succumbs to greed, disaster results (the death overhanging this novel is psychological death, which the Lead and his wife suffer by the end). That story’s been done over and over. But Smith brought to it compelling characters in complex relationships, and a style that drives you relentlessly from chapter to chapter.

Or the film The Fugitive. Innocent man on run from the law. Formula! But what they did with both Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) and especially Sam Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) turned it into a classic thriller. We’ll never forget Sam’s line, "I don’t care!" Or the beat where Kimble, trying to get out of Cook County Hospital without being recognized, puts his own troubles on hold to help a kid in the emergency ward.

When the film was over, and Sam does care, we’ve been taken on an almost perfect thrill ride.

4. That every story should be an adventure for both the writer and the reader.

Check. For the writer of thrillers, that means taking a risk in each book, somehow. Stretching the muscles. For example, I love that Harlan Coben has taken Myron Bolitar international in his latest. I’m sure you have your favorite examples, too (what are they?)

No adventure in the writer, no adventure in the reader.

5. That stylish, witty, and insightful writing can be combined with edge-of-the seat excitement.

Who is going to argue with that?

deceived I’d aver, however, that style cannot overcome a weak story construct. So while I’m at it, let me put in a good word for Patterson, who has been castigated by so many. His concepts are terrific. He knows story at the fundamental level. His books wouldn’t do nearly so well without the solid scaffolding of the basic premise.

Before I can start outlining or writing, I have to have a logline that excites me, that calls up all sorts of possibilities in my mind. That’s something Patterson, Grisham and Brown also have as the baseline of their books. And so do all successful thriller scribes, as far as I can see.

Our team, the American thriller writers, do pretty well after all. So if the Brits want to have a contest, I say: Bring it.

I’m in.

Any other takers?

And what do you think of the five principles?

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Coming up on our Kill Zone Guest Sundays, watch for blogs from Sandra Brown, Steve Berry, Robert Liparulo, Thomas B. Sawyer, Paul Kemprecos, Linda Fairstein, Oline Cogdill and more.

Circumstances Beyond Our Control

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by Michelle Gagnon

I just handed in the final page proofs for my next thriller, which is always an exhilarating/terrifying moment for me. Exhilarating because I’m finally completely done with the book. And terrifying because from here on out, it’s beyond my control. I have to keep my fingers crossed that the myriad small changes I made are inserted into the final manuscript (since the final few drafts are actual paper copies that get mailed back and forth, sometimes things slip through the cracks. Sad but true, and the best argument I can see for switching to electronic editing across the board).

In line at FedEx, I started thinking about all of the things that are beyond our control as authors (many of which people assume we do control). Here’s my list:

Covers: I always fill out a lengthy form detailing characters, scenes, and plot points. I attach images that I think would look great on the cover, forward jpgs of covers that I loved from other people’s books, and pitch a few concepts. Now, so far I’ve been fortunate enough to receive covers that were vastly superior to anything I could have conceived. But still, there are always a few little things I’d prefer to change. This time, after some back and forth my publisher incorporated a few of the changes I requested into the final design. Here’s the original:

gatekeeper one

I felt the background color was too drab, and all of the text was at the bottom, so you barely noticed anything above the center of the page.

Now here’s the final version:

gatekeeper cover3

Better, right?

Typos: I’m not saying I’m perfect, but occasionally glaring typos appear in the text that were in no draft of the manuscript I submitted. My book club read The Tunnels, and when I walked in for our meeting three people shouted out, “Page 67! What happened there?” Half of the night was consumed by a discussion of some of the typos in the book. Somewhere between my final edits and the typesetting process, new typos appeared. Again, beyond my control (also the reason why I never crack the spine to read the final product. I have never once read one of my books after mailing off the line edits, because if I spot a typo it drives me nuts).

  • Missing Pages: I received emails from a few people who purchased Boneyard, only to discover that fifty pages were missing from the middle of the book. After talking to other authors, I learned that this is not that unusual. A glitch at the printing plant can ruin a whole batch of books. Fortunately, publishers are wonderful about shipping out a replacement copy, if it ever happens to you.

  • Print Runs: This can be make or break for an author. Say your initial print run was 20,000 books. Sell 15,000, and your book is a success story. But if the publisher printed 100,000 copies, and you sold 15,000, your book would be considered a dismal failure and you would be facing an uphill battle to get the next one published. Not fair, right? But as an author, you have no say in whether your print run is five thousand books or five million. You have to just keep your fingers crossed that your publisher’s sales projections are right.

I will say that in book publishing, I still have far more control than I ever did as a magazine writer. Back then, I’d hand in an article and six months later, something came out with my name on it that was virtually unrecognizable.Not always, but frequently enough to be depressing. In book publishing you are definitely allowed a firmer hold on the reins.

Off the top of my head, this is what I came up with (my brain is officially mush after spending the past week muttering sentences aloud over and over again). But I’d love to hear of more circumstances beyond our control, if they occur to you.

Slice and Dice your work

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by Joe Moore

The writing process is made up of many layers including outlining, research, first drafts, rewriting, copy editing, proofing, more editing and more proofing. One of the functions that sometimes gets the least amount of attention in discussions on writing techniques is editing.

There are a number of stages in the  editing process. Starting with the completion of your first draft, they involve reading and re-reading the entire manuscript many times over and making numerous changes during the process. It’s in this phase that you need to make sure your plot is seamless, your story is on track, your character development is consistent, and you didn’t leave out some major point of importance that could confuse the reader. Pay close attention to content. Does the story have a beginning, middle and end? Does it make sense? Is the flow of the story smooth and liquid? Do your scene and chapter transitions work? Is everything resolved at the end?

Check for clarity. This is where beta readers come in handy. If it’s not clear to them, it won’t be clear to others. Don’t assume that everyone knows what you know or understands what you understand. Make it clear what’s going on in your story. Suspense cannot be created by confusing the reader.

Once you’ve finished this first pass searching for global plotting problems, it’s time to move on to the nuts and bolts of editing. Here you must tighten up your work by deleting all the extra words that don’t add to the reading experience or contribute to the story. Remember that every word counts. If a word doesn’t move the plot forward or help develop the characters, it should be considered for the slicer-dicer.

Some of the words that can be edited out are superfluous qualifiers such as “very” and “really.” This is always an area where less is more. For instance, you might describe a woman as being beautiful or being very beautiful. But when you think about it, what’s the difference? If she’s already beautiful, a word that is considered a definitive description, how can she exceed beautiful to become very beautiful? She can’t. So I suggest you search for and delete instances of “very” or “really”. They add nothing to the writing.

Next, scrutinize any word that ends in “ly”. Chances are, most adverbs can be deleted without changing the meaning of the sentence or your thought. In most cases, cutting them clarifies and makes your writing crisper.

Next, go hunting for clichés and overused phrases. There’s an old saying that if it comes easy, it’s probably a cliché. Avoiding clichés makes for fresher writing. There’s another saying that the only person allowed to use a cliché is the first one to use it.

Overused phrases are often found at the beginning of a sentence with words like “suddenly,” “so” and “now”. I find myself guilty of doing this, but they don’t add anything of value to my writing or yours. Slice and dice them.

The next type of editing is called line or copy editing. This covers making sure you used the right word. Relying on your word processor’s spell checker can be dangerous since it won’t alert you to wrong words when they are spelled correctly. It takes a sharp eye to catch these types of mistakes. Once you’ve gone through your manuscript and performed a line edit, have someone else check it behind you. A fresh set of eyes never hurts.

On-the-fly cut and paste editing while you were working on your first draft can get you into trouble if you weren’t paying attention. Leftover words and phrases from a previous edit or version can still be lurking around, and because all the words might be spelled correctly or the punctuation might be correct, you’ll only catch the mistake by paying close attention during the copy edit phase.

Line editing also covers grammar and punctuation. Watch for incorrect use of the apostrophe, hyphen, dash and semicolon. Did you end all your character’s dialogs with a closed quote? Did you forget to use a question mark at the end of a question?

The many stages of editing are a vital part of the writing process. Editing your manuscript should not be rushed or taken for granted. Familiarity breeds mistakes—you’ve read that page or chapter so many times that your eyes skim over it. And yet, there could be a mistake that you’ve missed every time because you’re bored with the old stuff and anxious to review the new.

Spend the time needed to tighten and clarify your writing until there is not one ounce of fat or bloat. And once you’ve finished the entire editing process, put the manuscript away for awhile. Let it rest for a week or even a month if your schedule permits while you work on something else. Then bring it back out into the light of day and make one more pass. You’ll be surprised at what you missed.

One more piece of advice. Edit on hardcopy, not on your monitor. There’s something about dots of ink on the printed page that is much less forgiving than the glow of pixels.

Any other editing tips or techniques out there? How do you approach editing; on the fly or after the first draft is complete?

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Coming up on our Kill Zone Guest Sundays, watch for blogs from Sandra Brown, Steve Berry, Robert Liparulo, Paul Kemprecos, Linda Fairstein, Tim Maleeny, Oline Cogdill, Alexandra Sokoloff, James Scott Bell, and more.