Category Archives: #WritingCommunity

Immersion Technique #WriteTip

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Every character is the hero of their own story. Even the villain.

We’ve talked many times about the importance of fleshing out characters. This time let’s reframe the narrative for those who may not grasp the finer details of crafting a compelling villain.

It’s easy to tell a fellow writer to slip into the villain’s skin and view the world through their eyes—I’ve given the same advice—but for those who haven’t mastered characterization, it may not be enough.

  • How does one craft a killer when they’ve never committed a crime?
  • How can we champion a villain’s efforts with no real-world experience?

Sure, we can draw conclusions and make assumptions. Is that enough for readers?

  • Is there a way to pull from life experience, to really feel what it’s like to transform into somebody else?

Yes, there is. And it’s called immersion. Method actors use the same technique.

The dictionary defines immersion as “deep mental involvement.” It can also mean engagement, as in a mixture of how much you’re paying attention, how submerged you are in an experience, and how it affects you emotionally.

Immersion, whether real or imagined, taps into fundamental psychological principles like perception, emotional engagement, and the sense of presence. It involves a combination of sensory stimuli, cognitive engagement, and emotional resonance that creates a feeling of being completely absorbed in the experience.

Immersive experiences are rich and complex, drawing upon personal experiences, and engage with emotions through the manipulation of the five senses. They’re described as transformational, intense, sometimes hectic, and provoking.

What we see tells us a lot about the world around us, but what the body experiences is much more powerful.

How we immerse ourselves in a life unlike our own starts with walking in their shoes. Listen to the villain’s favorite music. Eat their favorite foods. View the world through their eyes.

  • What’s their culture like?
  • What’s their theme song?
  • What’s their religion, politics, and views on other hot topics?
  • Do they like the rain? Cold weather? Scorching hot sun?
  • Are they happy with where they live? Or have they been trying to escape the area for years?
  • What do they do for a living? Do they have buddies at work?
  • Are they body conscious and drink water all day? Or do they drink black coffee till noon, then switch to scotch?
  • Do they smoke? I’m not proposing you start smoking but you can pretend.

Even if the character’s actions rub against your values and beliefs, you must find at least one redeeming quality, or at least be able to empathize with a part of them.

Take Ed Kemper, for example. His mother was a severe alcoholic who favored his two sisters and never missed the chance to belittle him. Ed’s father, a World War II veteran, hated his wife. The couple divorced when Ed was still in grammar school.

Living with his mother was no picnic. She locked him in the cellar for days and/or weeks at a time—alone—a bare lightbulb hanging from a wire in the center of the dark and creepy space. Since the door locked from the outside, the only way out was through a trap door beneath the dining room table.

Trapped, Ed lay on the cold cement floor staring into the flame of the furnace. And it was then, he later told an FBI profiler, he saw the face of the Devil for the first time. That period of his life exacerbated his already fractured mind.

Later, at age 14, his father sent him to live with his grandparents in California. Interestingly, Maude (grandmother) was an extra in Gone with the Wind and a writer for Redbook McCall’s. Even so, Ed hated living there, calling his grandfather “senile” and his grandmother, well, this is how he described her…

“She thought she had more balls than any man and was constantly emasculating me and my grandfather to prove it. I couldn’t please her. It was like being in jail. I became a walking time bomb, and I finally blew.”

And blew he did, with the murder of his grandparents. Authorities sent him to Atascadero State Hospital, a maximum-security facility where doctors subjected him to various tests. One of which illuminated his genius IQ. They also diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic.

In the six years he spent at the institution, he became one of the doctors’ favorite patients. They even allowed him to assist in conducting tests on other inmates, until 1969 when they released him into his mother’s care.

Big mistake. At 6 ft. 9 inches tall and 250 pounds, Ed was a mammoth with a genius IQ and a rage inside him.

After killing and decapitating six young women, he finally turned his wrath on Mother—the true source of his hatred—murdering, decapitating, and using her head as a dartboard. He also tore out Mother’s vocal cords and shoved them down the garbage disposal. When the disposal spat the gristly innards back out, he said to himself,

“That seems appropriate as much as she’d bitched and screamed and yelled at me over so many years.”

With his personal monster dead, Ed turned himself into police. He had no reason to kill anymore. He’s lived at California Medical Facility in Vacaville ever since. As a model inmate, he’s allowed to work as an audiobook narrator.

If Ed Kemper was a fictional villain, how would you make him the hero of his own story?

We’d need to focus on the abused little boy, alone and frightened, that still cried inside him and the personable guy who doctors adored. Does that mean I agree with what he did? Absolutely not. But as writers, we must find a way to justify his actions. We must. Otherwise, the villain will fall flat.

Now, don’t tell the reader what redeeming qualities you clung to while writing. Show them a tidbit here and there—just enough to pique curiosity and drive the plot—that make him feel more human. Or let the hero figure it out on their own.

If the villain is a series character, only reveal enough to intrigue and drive the plot. I did this with my serial killer named Mayhem. In three books, I showed him as a merciless serial killer. I also showed his love of animals, especially his sidekick Poe, the crow, and how tender he could be when caring for a wife stricken with ALS and his close relationship with his daughter and grandson.

Mayhem loves fine wine and is an expert chef, but he’s offended by bad language and numerous other things, especially rapists, cannibals, and child killers. Readers fell in love with Mayhem. Deeply in love. So much so, I had to transform him into an antihero in later books.

Readers understand, even champion, why he kills.

We did the same with Dexter. Who didn’t love to watch him murder other serial killers? Genius on Lindsay’s part.

Find a different angle for your villain. Copycats aren’t unique or memorable. Villains are some of the most difficult characters to craft because they do bad things. I also find villains and antiheroes the most rewarding to write.

The next time you craft a character vastly different from yourself, try immersion. It works for the entire cast, including heroes, sidekicks, foils, secondary characters, etc.

Chiastic Structure

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Chiasmus – noun – a reversal in the order of words in two otherwise parallel phrases, as in “He went to the country, to the town went she.”

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I recently encountered an episode of Thomas Umstadt Jr’s Author Media podcast entitled How to Write Enduring Best Sellers with the Two-act Chiastic Structure. I wasn’t familiar with the term “chiastic”, so I listened and learned a lot.

According to Umstadt

Western storytelling is typically based on the three-act structure. … However, the three-act structure is not the only story structure. There is an ancient story structure that dates back to the time of oral storytelling. This ancient structure is still popular in the East, yet it appeals to modern Western readers.

This two-act concept is the chiastic structure, and it can be used for sentences, poetry, stories, or even series. A famous example of a chiastic sentence was used by President John F. Kennedy in his inaugural address:

“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

No matter what length, the chiastic structure follows an ABBA model and can be illustrated by two lines crossing like this:

In the Kennedy example, A = “your country” and B = “you.” The second part of the statement is a mirror image of the first.

* * *

But chiastic structure gets really interesting when it’s applied to stories. Check out this example from Wikipedia that shows the Biblical narrative of Noah and the Ark as it moves from A to the midpoint and then resolves from the midpoint back to A’.

Amazing!

* * *

I tend to think of story structure more as an arc. Rising action, crisis and midpoint, falling action and resolution.

However, after I read about chiastic structure, I realize I’ve used a modified form of it a couple of times in my books. In my first novel, The Watch on the Fencepost, the story begins when a young woman finds a mysterious watch on a fencepost which propels her on a quest to find the truth about her parents’ untimely deaths. Their deaths represent the loss of her closest relationships. The book ends when she finds another watch on the same fencepost that solidifies her relationship with a man who will become a special part of her life.

I always thought of this kind of writing as bookends to a story, but there’s a lot more to chiastic structure. I suppose the internal chapters have to mirror each other. I haven’t tried anything close to this, but it would be interesting to outline a story with that structure.

* * *

So TKZers: Are you familiar with chiastic structure? Have you used it in your own writing? Is it something you think you may want to use in the future?

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Coming Soon!

Another Side of Sunshine
A Reen & Joanie Detective Agency Mystery

Spunky ten-year-old Reen and her shy nine-year-old cousin Joanie go on a quest to find a treasure hidden by the mysterious Mr. Shadow. Along the way, they discover new insights into friendship and fair play.

 

How Well Do You Sleep, Writers?

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Every morning for two solid weeks I woke at 3 a.m. Not 3:05 or 3:10, exactly 3:00 a.m. sharp. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why.

One or two mornings could be a fluke. Fourteen? No way was that a coincidence.

Like any good writer when faced with a mystery, I researched possible reasons why. More importantly, I needed a solution so I didn’t join the walking dead.

What I learned fascinated me.

Because self-care is vital for writers, I thought I’d share my discovery in case one of you may be experiencing the same thing. This, of course, applies to everyone, not just writers, but I like to make us feel special.

While searching for a cause, I stumbled across an interesting discussion on Quora. An older gentleman mentioned his body had acclimated to waking at the end of each sleep cycle for a bathroom break. After which, he immediately fell back asleep.

Men tend to have an easier time falling asleep after waking due to higher levels of testosterone, which greatly enhances sleep. Hence why so many older women have difficulty sleeping through the night. Testosterone levels and prostrates start to wane as men age, hence the bathroom breaks, but it plummets in women, as we only start with a fraction of what they have.

Could decreasing hormones cause my 3 a.m. wake-up call? And if so, how can I fix it?

When I read the Quora discussion, more questions arose:

  • How long is a normal sleep cycle?
  • How many sleep cycles do we have per night?
  • How can I cancel the 3 a.m. wake-up call without pharmaceuticals?

Whenever possible, I prefer natural remedies. Not only is it healthier but all pharmaceuticals in their infancy stem from nature. Why not skip the middleman?

My.ClevelandClinic.org describes sleep basics as:

“Sleeping doesn’t mean your brain is totally inactive. While you’re less aware of the world around you, you still have plenty of detectable brain activity. That brain activity has predictable patterns. Experts organized those patterns into stages. The stages fall broadly into two categories: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM (NREM) sleep.”

During a normal sleep cycle, the brain enters four stages.

When we first fall asleep, we enter stage 1 NREM (non-REM). The lightest stage of sleep, this stage only lasts a few minutes, about 5% of our sleep time. After that, we fall deeper asleep and move into stage 2 NREM, where brain waves slow and have noticeable pauses between short, powerful bursts of electrical activity. Experts think those bursts are the brain organizing memories and information from the time we spent awake.

We then enter stage 3 NREM, the deepest sleep. Brain waves are slow but strong. Our bodies take advantage of deep sleep to repair injuries and reinforce the immune system. We desperately need stage 3 NREM to feel rested upon waking. Without enough of stage 3, we’d feel tired and drained even if we stayed in bed for eight hours.

After the most beneficial stage of sleep, we return to stage 2 NREM, the gatekeeper of REM sleep. REM (rapid eye movement) cycle is where we dream; it makes up about 25% of total sleep time. The first REM cycle is the shortest, around 10 minutes. Each one that follows is longer than the last, up to an hour.

After REM, we start a new sleep cycle and go back into stage 1 or 2 NREM. One full cycle lasts 90 – 120 minutes. If we get a full eight hours of sleep, we should go through four or five cycles per night.

Though fascinating, it still didn’t explain why I kept waking at 3 a.m.

I dug deeper into sleep cycles and possible reasons for an abrupt disruption. Again, I leaned toward a possible decrease in testosterone. He wasn’t the culprit. Only one hormone is released at 3 a.m.—serotonin. But I thought serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins were our friends. They’re our feel-good hormones. How could serotonin be responsible for such an evil act?

Evidently, our bodies release small amounts of serotonin at that ungodly hour to prepare us to wake in a few hours.

Here’s the rub…

Stress can switch the trickle of serotonin, which keeps us from feeling sluggish and groggy during the day, into a massive flood. This surge wakes us immediately rather than acting like a gentle nudge toward wakefulness.

I didn’t think I was stressed. Upon reflection, my endless to-do list had been weighing on me. I’d lost so much writing time (packing, moving, unpacking, acclimating) that I let that negative voice whisper horrible things about me. A writer’s inner critic is a feral beast worthy of a firing squad. Or a public hanging. I usually have an easier time silencing her, but the lack of sleep weakened my fighting spirit.

Regardless, I refused to accept my fate. I don’t mind waking at 4:30ish but 3 a.m. wrecked me.

How did I combat the influx of serotonin?

The answer is so simple. We do it every day, all day. Anyone? Anyone? We’ve talked about this before.

Deep breathing exercises. Specifically, what’s known as box breathing, commonly used by Navy SEALs and other Special Forces.

As soon as I crawl into bed, I take a moment to inhale through my nostrils for a four-count, hold for four, exhale out my mouth for four, and hold again. Four or five rounds works for me. You may be different. Try it. You’ll know when to stop.

The box breathing technique helps to regulate breathing, reduce stress and anxiety, and improve focus and concentration.

By reducing stress at bedtime, my body doesn’t trigger serotonin to flood my system at 3 a.m. Ever since I implemented this nightly routine, I’ve slept till 5:30 – 6 a.m.

Sometimes, the easiest solution is the right one.

So, TKZers, how well do you sleep? Have you tried deep breathing exercises to combat stress and/or improve focus?

Reader Friday: TV Mystery Series

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The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery. —Francis Bacon

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Some of my favorite TV shows to watch while I’m running on the treadmill are old mystery series. I like Murder, She Wrote, Columbo, Midsomer Murders, and a few others. My favorite is Endeavour starring Shaun Evans as the young Detective Endeavour Morse.

Recently, I decided it was time to watch newer mystery series (ones that aired starting in the year 2020 or later.) I found a lot of them. Here are a few I thought sounded interesting:

Adolescence – When a 13-year-old is accused of the murder of a classmate, his family, therapist and the detective in charge are all left asking what really happened.

Severance – Mark leads a team of office workers whose memories have been surgically divided between their work and personal lives. When a mysterious colleague appears outside of work, it begins a journey to discover the truth about their jobs.

High Potential – A single mom with three kids helps solve an unsolvable crime when she rearranges some evidence during her shift as a police department cleaner.

Grace – Brighton set crime drama following Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, a hard-working police officer who has given his life to the job.

Dark Winds – Follows Leaphorn and Chee, two Navajo police officers in the 1970s Southwest that are forced to challenge their own spiritual beliefs when they search for clues in a double murder case.

Ludwig – While seeking to unravel the mystery of his twin brother’s disappearance, reclusive puzzle-designer John ‘Ludwig’ Taylor takes on his twin brother James’s identity as DCI on Cambridge’s major crimes squad.

Grosse Pointe Garden Society – Follows four members of a suburban garden club, as they get caught up in murder and mischief, as they strive to flourish.

Only Murders in the Building – Three strangers – who live in the same New York City apartment building and share an obsession with true crime – suddenly find themselves embroiled in a murder.

I don’t have any data on the series beyond the taglines above.

So TKZers: Help me find a new series. What Mystery Series are your favorites? Have you watched any of the newer series? Which would you recommend?

Meta Stole Copyrighted Work from Millions of Authors

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On December 9, 2024, I wrote about Meta’s new terms of service, effective January 1, 2025. This month, I’m even more disgusted by what I learned. An email from one of my publishers told me Meta stole 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers to train their new AI model, Llama 3.

For those who haven’t heard the news yet, Alex Reisner first broke the story in The Atlantic…

“When employees at Meta started developing their flagship AI model, Llama 3, they faced a simple ethical question. The program would need to be trained on a huge amount of high-quality writing to be competitive with products such as ChatGPT, and acquiring all of that text legally could take time. Should they just pirate it instead?”

Meta employees spoke with multiple companies about licensing books and research papers, but they nixed that idea, stating, “[This] seems unreasonably expensive.” A Llama-team senior manager also said it’d be an “incredibly slow” process. “They take like 4+ weeks to deliver data.”

Offended yet? Not only has Meta and others stolen copyrighted work but they’ve reduced authors’ blood, sweat, and tears to nothing more than “data.”

“The problem is that people don’t realize that if we license one book, we won’t be able to lean into fair use strategy,” said the director of engineering at Meta in an internal memo.

If caught, the senior manager claimed the legal defense of “fair use” might work for using pirated books and research papers to train AI…

“[It is] really important for [Meta] to get books ASAP. Books are actually more important than web data.”

How did they solve this problem? Meta employees turned to LibGen (Library Genesis), a digital warehouse of stolen intellectual property, neatly stacked with pirated books, academic papers, and various works authors and publishers never approved.

As of March 2025, the LibGen library contained more than 7.5 million books and 81 research papers. And Meta stole it all, with permission from “MZ”—a reference to CEO Mark Zuckerberg—to download and use the data set.

Internal correspondence were made public this month as part of a copyright-infringement lawsuit brought by Sarah Silverman and other celebs whose books LibGen pirated. If that’s not bad enough, the public also discovered OpenAI used LibGen for similar purposes. Microsoft owns a 49% equity stake in the for-profit subsidiary OpenAI LP. It is not yet known whose idea it was to download the LibGen library to train its AI model.

Does it matter? They still used copyrighted material without obtaining licensing fees or giving authors the option to opt-out.

“Ask for forgiveness, not for permission,” said another Meta employee.

Even when a senior management employee at Meta raised concerns about lawsuits, they were convinced to download the libraries from LibGen and Anna’s Archive, another massive pirate site.

“To show the kind of work that has been used by Meta and OpenAI, I accessed a snapshot of LibGen’s metadata—revealing the contents of the library without downloading or distributing the books or research papers themselves—and used it to create an interactive database that you can search here:

https://reisner-books-index.vercel.app”

~ Alex Reisner, The Atlantic

Meta and OpenAI have both claimed the defense of “fair use” to train their generative-AI models on copyrighted work without a license, because LLMs (Large Language Models) “transform” the original material into new work. Work that could directly compete with the authors they stole from—by duplicating their writing voice and style!

This legal strategy could set a dangerous precedent: It’s okay to steal from authors. Who cares if they worked for months, even years, to write the pirated books and/or research papers?

The use of LibGen and Anna’s Archive also raises another issue.

Alex Reisner stated the following in one of The Atlantic articles:

“Bulk downloading is often done with BitTorrent, the file-sharing protocol popular with pirates for its anonymity, and downloading with BitTorrent typically involves uploading to other users simultaneously. Internal communications show employees saying that Meta did indeed torrent LibGen, which means that Meta could have not only accessed pirated material but also distributed it to others—well established as illegal under copyright law, regardless of what the courts determine about the use of copyrighted material to train generative AI.”

Not only has Meta and OpenAI stolen copyrighted material from authors, but they’ve distributed it to others.

By now, you must be wondering if your books are included in the LibGen library. I found six of mine, including my true crime/narrative nonfiction book, Pretty Evil New England, which took me a solid year to research—driving around six states to dig through archives—and then submit the finished manuscript to the publisher by the deadline, never mind the weeks of edits afterward. Each one of my stolen thrillers—HACKED, Blessed Mayhem, Silent Mayhem, Unnatural Mayhem, and HALOED—also took months of hard work.

Click to Enlarge

By stealing six books, they robbed me of years—years(!) of pouring my soul onto the page to deliver the best experience I could—and I’ll continue to put in the time for my readers. I suspect you’ll do the same. But authors still need to eat and pay bills. It’s difficult to write if you’re homeless.

What message is Big Tech sending to the public?

If Meta and OpenAI prevail in the lawsuits, authors everywhere are at risk.

Quick side note about pirate sites: Sure, you can read books for free. Just know, most sites include trojan horses in the pirated books that will steal banking and other personal info from your network. Every pirated book steals money from authors. If you want us to keep writing but can’t afford to buy books, get a library card. Or contact the author. Most will gift you a review copy.

Care to read Meta’s internal correspondence?

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.415175/gov.uscourts.cand.415175.449.4.pdf

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.415175/gov.uscourts.cand.415175.417.6.pdf

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.415175/gov.uscourts.cand.415175.391.24.pdf

And here’s a court document regarding OpenAI:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.414822/gov.uscourts.cand.414822.254.0.pdf

Disgraceful, right?

The Authors Guild is also reporting on the theft and closely monitoring the court cases.

If your work is included in the LibGen library, your name will automatically be included in the class action (there are many filed), unless you opt-out. However, if you prefer to contact the attorney handling the case against Meta, contact Saveri Law Firm HERE.

Did you find any of your work in the pirated libraries?

Scars Tell a Story #WriteTip

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Close-up of a scarred male lion

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While watching my wildlife gorge on peanuts, bread, almonds, dates, and raisins one morning, an impressive male bluejay caught my attention. Tall, well-built, and mysterious. The moment he landed on the food table in front of my window, the scarring on his face came into focus, and I wondered what happened to him.

Scars tell a story, an undeniable truth of the past. Perhaps “Scar” had a run-in with a hawk in his youth. The scars looked old, as though they’d formed during his development years or changed him as a young adult. The feathers atop the usual bluejay markings were much darker — midnight black — the skin obviously disrupted by a traumatic experience.

What was Scar’s wounding event? Did he fight this battle alone? Or did a predator kill his entire family in the nest?

I can only speculate. The answers died long ago.

All in all, Scar is a happy little dude, but also more cautious than the others, which adds some validity to my hypothesis as to how he received the scars. I’m intrigued by Scar, and pray a human didn’t hurt him. He piques my interest. Keeps me guessing about his past.

If Scar was a character in a novel, I could never stop flipping pages until I’d unraveled the mystery behind his scars. The author would have hooked me simply by showing me his face. What seems like a minor detail like a scar adds to the hero’s characterization. And you can bet an emotional scar lurks behind the physical disruption. All species, including humans, are affected by past events.

bluejay on snow

Not Scar. I cannot photograph him while we’re building trust.

Take Scar, for example. He waits for others to sample the food before he takes a bite. He watches how I interact with the other bluejays before he approaches.

He’s careful.

Reserved.

Suspicious of humans or new food sources.

The rest of the party (my favorite collective noun for a group of bluejays) scream with excitement and joy.

Not Scar. He’s quiet. Hangs back. Learns. Only after he’s gathered enough intel to satisfy his inquisitive mind does he feel safe enough to fly closer. I admire that about him. It shows he’s intelligent.

As writers, we’re told to include emotional scars but we also shouldn’t avoid physical scars. And not only for villains. Heroes wear scars, too.

Tattoos are often reminders of a special time in one’s life or symbolize what the wearer loves, embodies, or believes in. They can also help the wearer regain control over a trauma or cover, even enhance, a physical scar.

Years ago, I knew a young woman who was born with a cleft palate and left with scars from the corrective surgery. She never felt beautiful. All she could see were her scars. But she was beautiful, inside and out. Since few could make her see herself through their eyes, she turned to drugs and alcohol and eventually lost her life.

Some say, it’s more difficult for women to deal with facial scars than men. I know from personal experience that isn’t necessarily true. Both men and women try to hide scars public. It’s easier than having to retell — or relive — the story behind them.

Back in 1995, I was involved in a car accident that threw me into the windshield. Half conscious, I opened my eyes while stuck in the glass and tried to break free. The movement tore off my left eyebrow, eyelashes, upper eyelid, a chunk of my nose, split open my upper lip, and cracked all my teeth. The hospital called in a plastic surgeon to repair the damage to the left side of my face. Doctors told me I’d never regrow my eyebrow or eyelashes. For a girl in her twenties, it was devastating news.

I’ve never been one to follow the norm, or listen to doctors who think they can predict the future. Instead, I prayed for a miracle. Little by little, as I picked glass shards out of both eyes for several weeks, tiny hairs filled in my eyebrow and my lashes sprouted new growth. The doctors couldn’t believe it. My progress from the accident to full eyebrow and lashes is now in medical journals.

The emergency plastic surgery left me with scars on my eyelid, nose, and above my left upper lip. If you and I met in person, you might never notice. I only allow those closest to me to see my scars without makeup. When I’m tired, they pop right out. Not sure why scars get more visible then, but I’m not alone…

A dear friend for the last 30+ years got badly injured on a motorcycle when his gas tank exploded. The melted skin covering his right armpit looks like it belongs to Freddy Kruger. And the deep scarring on his forehead and zipper-like indent in his skull are still prominent 40 years after the accident. I love his scars. He wouldn’t be the same man without them.

Not only are scars reminders of past trauma but how one dealt with the injury and pain, then and now.

Like me, my friend also covers his scars in public. Only those closest to him are allowed to see the extent of his old injuries (2nd dimension of character = the person family and friends know). Neither of us regret our scars. They remind us that we’re lucky to be alive, along with all our other physical scars. Doesn’t mean we want to share them with the world (1st dimension of character = one’s public face).

See how a detail like a scar can inform one’s character? Keep it in mind while crafting your hero or secondary characters. Just remember to note them in your story bible, so a scar on the left cheek doesn’t move to the right in subsequent chapters and/or books. LOL

Would anyone like to share their scars and the story behind them? Have you ever seen a scarred bluejay or other backyard bird? I don’t dare photograph Scar until he gets to know me better, or the trust we’ve built may crumble.

Designated Writing Space

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It’s incredible how a designated workspace triggers the mind. For years, I had an office. As soon as I sat at my desk — headphones on, music cranked — my mind knew to write.

I imagine many who work from home have a similar routine, and it all comes down to having a designated workspace.

When I moved three weeks ago, I lost my office. It threw me off my game, and I couldn’t fathom why. Had my office contributed that much to my productivity? Or maybe I needed to find a new writing routine.

I tried writing with my MacBook in my lap on the recliner. Squeaked out some words, but nowhere near my daily norm.

I tried the couch. Still didn’t work. My mind kept drifting, my thoughts scattered.

I even tried writing in my bedroom. Still nothing.

As I mentioned, I had an office in my former house. I also had a thinking chair used only for times when I needed to wiggle out of an unexpected plot twist, or how to get from A to B when I zigged instead of zagged. Nature walks aren’t possible during a snowy New England winter, so I couldn’t do that, either.

Not once did I ever use either spot for anything else. I didn’t relax in my office, nor did I unwind in my thinking chair. Separating the two helped my productivity tenfold.

That’s when it hit me—my Ah-ha! moment, if you will.

After thirteen years of the same writing routine, why would I expect the same output when I’d been mashing up my designated spaces? Could I be flexible in how I approach my writing life? Sure, but not before I had a set routine in place.

For me, I needed:

  • Designated thinking spot
  • Designated workspace
  • Designated place for R&R

The above helps to keep me on track and moving forward. Does that mean I can’t write anywhere else once I had a regular writing routine? Of course not. But having a daily routine and designated workspace helps fuel my creativity.

Sure enough, once I separated my writing space, with my wide monitor and headphones in place, the words flowed. Since I can be a bit set in my routine, I also designated a thinking spot in front of a window that faces the woods where wildlife plays.

Am I the only one who needs structure? Do you have a designated workspace? What about a separate thinking spot? Tell us about it in the comments.

***Just FYI: We’re on the tail end of a blizzard, with heavy ice on power lines and trees. I hope we don’t lose power but… who knows?

Reader Friday-Can You Say “Chocolate”?

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Image courtesy of Pixabay

Valentine’s Day is important to me.

Why? you ask.

Because of chocolate, of course! No, just kidding . . . sort of.

From Wikipedia:

Valentine’s Day, also called Saint Valentine’s Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine,[1] is celebrated annually on February 14.[2] It originated as a Christian feast day honoring a martyr named Valentine, and through later folk traditions it has also become a significant cultural, religious and commercial celebration of romance and love in many regions of the world..[3][4]

(Heavy on commercial, I think.)

The question I have for you, burning in my soul this morning, is this: What is your favorite Valentine’s Day memory?

For me, it was and still is all of the Valentines my ankle biters made throughout their school journeys. Precious, every one. Here’s one of my favorites:

This is still on my desk in my office. Created circa 1980.

 

To be honest, I’m not certain it was a Valentine’s Day gift for me, but I think it was. She was about five.

So, over to you, TKZers!

What’s your favorite memory surrounding Valentine’s Day? Is it a story? A gift? Do tell…

And I hope you all have a sweet one today to add to your memories!

 

 

 

Let’s Talk Turkey #WriteTip

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I moved into my new place last week. Hence why you haven’t seen me in the comment section. It took two weeks to pack. I’m now unpacking. I found a cozy little abode on the New Hampshire seacoast, near the Massachusetts border. It’s the best of both worlds — two minutes from anything I might need, yet a quiet country setting with plenty of wildlife.

As I gazed out my kitchen window for the first time, five huge male turkeys stood sentinel in the yard. Soon, twenty-five more joined them to socialize, feast, and play. The original five Toms guard the property all day. There’s also an adorable opossum and three albino skunks — stunning all white fur — who come nightly to eat alongside the resident stray cat. All four share the same bowl.

Why can’t humans put aside their differences like animals can?

For my fellow crow lovers out there, a murder of crows arrived on day two. Or Poe and the gang followed me. Sure sounds like Poe’s voice, but I can’t be certain until I set up their feeding spot and take a closer look. My murder has white dots, each in different spots, which helps me tell them apart. Plus, Poe has one droopy wing.

As I watched the five Toms this morning, it reminded me of a post I’d written back in 2017 (time flies on TKZ, doesn’t it?). So, I thought I’d revamp that post a bit, and tweak for our pantser friends.

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Clare’s recent post got me thinking about craft and how, as we write, the story inflates like a Tom turkey. If you think about it long enough and throw in a looming deadline, Tom Turkey and story structure have a lot in common.

Stay with me. I promise it’ll make sense, but I will ask you to take one small leap of faith — I need you to picture Tom Turkey as the sum of his parts, constructed by craft. And yes, this light bulb blazed on over the Thanksgiving holiday. We are now having spiral ham for Christmas dinner.

But I digress.

Story beats build Tom’s spine. Think of each milestone as vertebrae. Pantsers, let the story unfold as it flows. You can always check the beat placement after the drafting stage.

The ribs that extend from Tom’s spine liken to the equal parts that expand our beats and tell us how our characters should react before, during, and after the quest.

Broken into four equal parts, 25% percent each, this is the dramatic arc. It’s a natural progression that many writers do instinctually. If you want to check your work after the drafting stage, pantsers, the dramatic arc should look like this…

  • Setup (Page 1 – 25% mark): Introduce protagonist, hook the reader, setup First Plot Point through foreshadowing, stakes, and establish empathy (not necessarily likability) for the MC.
  • Response (25% – 50% mark): The MC’s reaction to the new goal/stakes/obstacles revealed by the First Plot Point. MC doesn’t need to be heroic yet. They retreat, regroup, and have doomed attempts at reaching their goal. Also include a reminder of antagonistic forces at work.
  • Attack (50% – 75% mark): Midpoint information/awareness causes the MC to change course in how to approach the obstacles; the hero is now empowered with information on how to proceed, not merely reacting anymore.
  • Resolution (75% – The End): MC summons the courage, inner strength, and growth to find a solution to overcome inner obstacles and conquer the antagonistic force. All new information must have been referenced, foreshadowed, or already in play by 2nd Plot Point or we’re guilty of deus ex machina.

Tom Turkey is beginning to take shape.

Characterization adds meat to his bones, and conflict-driven sub-plots supply tendons and ligaments. When we layer in dramatic tension in the form of a need, goal, quest, and challenges to overcome, Tom’s skin forms and thickens.

With obstacle after obstacle, and inner and outer conflict, Tom strengthens enough to sprout feathers. At the micro-level, MRUs (Motivation-Reaction-Units) — for every action there’s a reaction — establish our story rhythm and pace. They also help heighten and maintain suspense. If you remember every action has a reaction, MRUs come naturally to many writers. Still good to check on the first read through.

MRUs fluff Tom Turkey’s feathers. He even grew a beak!

Providing a vicarious experience, our emotions splashed across the page, makes Tom fan his tail-feathers. The rising stakes add to Tom’s glee (he’s a sadist), and he prances for a potential mate. He believes he’s ready to score with the ladies. Tom may actually get lucky this year.

Then again, we know better. Don’t we, dear writers? Poor Tom is still missing a few crucial elements to close the deal.

By structuring our scenes — don’t groan, pantsers! — Tom grew an impressive snood. See it dangling over his beak? The wattle under his chin needs help, though. Hens are shallow creatures. 😉 Quick! We need a narrative structure.

Narrative structure refers to the way in which a story is organized and presented to the reader. It includes the plot, subplot, characters, setting, and theme, as well as techniques and devices used by the author to convey these elements.

Now, Tom looks sharp. What an impressive bird. Watch him prance, full and fluffy, head held high, tail feathers fanned in perfect formation.

Uh-oh. Joe Hunter sets Tom in his rifle scope. We can’t let him die before he finds a mate! But how can we save him? We’ve already given him all the tools he needs, right?

Well, not quite.

Did we choose the right point of view to tell our story? If we didn’t, Tom could wind up on a holiday table surrounded by drooling humans in bibs. We can’t let that happen! Nor can we afford to lose the reader before we get a chance to dazzle ’em.

Tom needs extra oomph — aka Voice. Without it, Joe Hunter will murder poor Tom.

Voice is an elusive beast for new writers because it develops over time. To quote JSB:

It comes from knowing each character intimately and writing with the “voice” that is a combo of character and author and craft on the page.

That added oomph makes your story special. No one can write like you. No one. Remember that when self-doubt or imposter syndrome creeps in.

If Tom hopes to escape Joe Hunter’s bullet, he needs wings in the form of context. Did we veer outside readers’ expectations for the genre we’re writing in? Did we give Tom a heart and soul by subtly infusing theme? Can we boil down the plot to its core story, Tom’s innards? What about dialogue? Does Tom gobble or quack?

Have we shown the three dimensions of character to add oxygen to Tom’s lungs? You wouldn’t want to be responsible for suffocating Tom to death, would you?

  • 1st Dimension of Character: The best version of who they are; the face the character shows to the world
  • 2nd Dimension of Character:  The person a character shows to friends and family
  • 3rd Dimension of Character:  The character’s true character. If a fire breaks out in a crowded theater, will they help others or elbow their way to the exit?

Lastly, Tom needs a way to wow the ladies. Better make sure our prose sings. If we don’t, Tom might die of loneliness. Do we really want to be responsible for that? To be safe, let’s review our word choices, sentence variations, paragraphing, white space, grammar, and how we string words together to ensure Tom lives a full and fruitful life.

Don’t forget to rewrite and edit. If readers love Tom, he and his new mate may bring chicks (sequels or prequels) into the world, and we, as Tom’s creator, have the honor of helping them flourish into full-fledged turkeys.

Aww… Tom’s story has a happy ending now. Good job, writers!

For fun, choose a name for Tom’s mate. Winner gets bragging rights.

The Art of Misdirection

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“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” — Soren Kierkegaard

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One of the most interesting aspects of mystery novels for me is the author’s ability to construct a story that leads the reader “down the garden path.” Then when the truth is revealed, the reader smacks him/herself on the side of the head in recognition that they picked the wrong person as the villain. They should have seen it coming.

When I told a friend of mine about my interest in constructing novels that use this technique of misdirection, she was astonished. “It sounds like you’re deliberately manipulating what the reader is thinking.”

“Right,” I said. “That’s the point. If the author can present information to the reader so they react to the scenes in the story in a predictable way, it will produce an entertaining and satisfying experience for the reader.”

My friend said she didn’t like the idea of being fooled, but I think she’s fooling herself.

At its heart, a mystery novel is a game, a challenge to the reader to see if they can put the puzzle together correctly. The reader has all the necessary information, but the author uses several devices to misguide the reader into putting their trust in the wrong characters or the wrong clues.

Foreshadowing, Clues, and Red Herrings

In his article in Writer’s Digest,  Robert McCaw put it well:

“Misdirection also requires subtlety. The reader will feel crassly manipulated if the surprise ending arrives without sufficient hints or foreshadowing. Ideally, good misdirection makes the reader look back at various telltale clues peppered throughout the story, hopefully leading them to admire the author’s skill in setting up and obscuring the ultimate surprise.”

Perhaps the cleverest red herring of all time was created by Agatha Christie in her novel And Then There Were None, in which ten people on a remote island are being killed off one by one in a way that mirrors the nursery rhyme Ten Soldier Boys. When they get down to three people left alive, one of them (Vera) says

“You’ve forgotten the nursery rhyme. Don’t you see there’s a clue there?” She recited in a meaning voice: “Four little Indian boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.” She went on: “A red herring—that’s the vital clue. Armstrong’s not dead… He took away the china Indian to make you think he was. You may say what you like—Armstrong’s on the island still. His disappearance is just a red herring across the track…”

A clue that references the very words “red herring” is clever. But it turns out the clue itself was a red herring. Now that was really clever.

The Unreliable Narrator

In a novelsuspects.com article, Emily Watson writes

The term “unreliable narrator” was introduced in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in his book The Rhetoric of Fiction. Typically, for a narrator to be unreliable, the story needs to be presented by a first-person narrator. And since first-person accounts of stories and events are often flawed and biased, you could argue that all first-person narrators are by nature unreliable. But Booth explains that for a narrator to be unreliable, they must either misreport, misinterpret, misevaluate, underreport, under-interpret, or under-evaluate.

Once again Agatha Christie claims preeminence in misdirection with the unreliable narrator Dr. Sheppard in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

The False Ending

Robert McCaw also addressed the topic of false endings in his article in Writer’s Digest.

“Another of my favorite techniques is the false or penultimate ending. In this case, the narrative comes to a neat close. The protagonist solves the mysteries and identifies the culprit. There are no loose strings. The story is over, except it’s not. Instead, another chapter surprises the reader with a new and different take on the ending, often creating the opportunity to begin a new story, perhaps in another book.”

An example of this is the French film He Loves Me… He Loves Me Not directed by Laetitia Colombani. While not exactly a mystery, the movie’s unusual structure is a good example of misdirection, unreliable narration, and a false ending.

The movie was released in 2002 and starred Audrey Tautou, the actress who had previously been best known for her performance as the main character in the movie Amelie. Casting Tautou as Angelique in He Loves Me was a brilliant way to manipulate the viewers into immediately trusting the adorable girl.

In this movie, Angelique is an accomplished young artist in love with a married man, Dr. Loic Le Garrec (Samuel Le Bihan). The movie begins in a flower shop where Angelique is sending a pink rose to Le Garrec on his birthday, and it tracks the plot through scenes where Angelique appears to get closer and closer to her goal of breaking up Le Garrec’s marriage so the two of them can go off together.

Then something goes awry. Angelique realizes her plan has failed, and she decides to commit suicide. It seems this will be the sad end to a young woman’s life, but that’s the false ending. The movie is only at the halfway point.

As Angelique lies down on the floor in front of a gas stove, everything changes. It looks like the movie is rewinding in Fast Backward mode, and suddenly we’re all the way back to the beginning at the flower shop.

But this time, the movie presents the actual events, not just Angelique’s fantasy, and the viewer comes to understand Angelique was suffering from a mental illness called “erotomania.” The first half of the movie showed only a partial truth, but one that convinced the viewer of a lie.

In the actual ending, Angelique has survived her suicide attempt and is incarcerated in a mental institution. The final end of the movie is yet another false ending that I won’t spoil for you.

* * *

So, there you have it. Red herrings, unreliable narrators, and false endings. All devices to trick the reader into enjoying a wonderful story.

“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

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So TKZers: There are many ways to lead the reader astray. Have you been fooled by misdirection? Have you used misdirection in your books? What books or movies would you recommend that gleefully mislead the audience?

* * *

Was it a clue to murder? Or just a small child’s fanciful note? Private pilot Cassie Deakin must find her way through the labyrinth to solve the puzzle.

Available at  Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, or Apple Books.