Emotion, Beginnings, and Anti-heroes

Ladies’ Day at TKZ

Emotion in fiction

Why doesn’t fiction evoke the same response as film? I don’t believe it is because movies are more visual. What is more powerful than the blank screens of our own imaginations? I think it might be because today’s crime writers are leery of being labeled as soft when we go into matters of the heart.

I had a conversation with a high-placed editor a while back. She told me she has noticed two trends in crime fiction recently: the decline of hard-boiled “guy books.” And the continued strength of romantic suspense. Now, let’s not kid ourselves. There is some terrific hard-boiled stuff being written right now, books that don’t turn up their noses at emotions. Likewise, there is some utterly putrid romantic suspense on the shelves these days, stuff that gets everything about police procedure and forensics wrong and gets really treacly about the romance part. Maybe I’m just reading the wrong stuff. What has gotten to you? What has made you cry? Movies are easy. But give me some books as well.

Or am I wrong in my belief that there is still room for well-wrought (as opposed to over-wrought) emotion in today’s crime fiction? – P J Parish – February, 28, 2017

Beginnings

Which brings us to today’s topic: Great Beginnings.
For an example of a great beginning, let’s reach WAY back to a sort-of thriller, Rebecca, and its simple but great first line:
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”
That line launches the spellbinding tale of its protagonist, who is haunted by the ghost of her husband’s dead wife. And there are many other great openers we could cite.
Here’s a link to the best 100 opening lines of novels, as chosen by the editors of American Book Review.
But those are mostly first lines of…ahem, “literary” novels. For Right now, let’s limit our discussion to the first lines of thriller novels.
You know ’em when you read ’em. They’re the ones that make the hair stand up on the back of your neck on page one and you don’t go to sleep until THE END.
So I’m wondering…what is the BEST grab-you-by-the-throat opening line (and para) you ever read in a suspense book? And what made it so good for you? – Kathryn Lilley Cheng – February 23, 2017

Why are we drawn to anti-heroes?

For me, I see them as flawed. They’re not perfect, like classic heroes in Hollywood or in literature were portrayed. I can relate to them better because it makes me feel as if, given the right circumstances, anyone can rise to the level of hero if they have a cause worth fighting for. We also want to see if they are redeemable. Give your anti-hero a chance to grab at redemption in your book and see if he takes it. Or will he find love from a strong woman? Once we get hooked on an anti-hero, we root for them and feel their pain more when they fall. We want them to get back up, because they’re “every man.” And the fact they are not cookie-cutter, and do surprising things and are unpredictable, they make the storytelling fun.

Who would have rooted for a high school teacher turned drug dealer if we hadn’t learned of his cancer, his concern for his family in the face of his financial meltdown, and his rising medical bills. He’s bucking a broken health care system like David standing before Goliath. He’s more worried over his family than his own recovery. He’s got nothing to lose.

Anti-heroes change our way of thinking about confrontation and empowerment. The right anti-hero can give voice to our frustrations and give us an alternative reality to find justice. – Jordan Dane – March 2, 2017

Please comment. What are your thoughts on emotion, beginnings, and antiheroes?

When it comes to pure entertainment, it’s hard to top Top Gun — Maverick. The 2022 sequel to the 1986 blockbuster, Top Gun, is one wild ride from start to finish, and it achieves what great storytelling sets to achieve. That’s keeping the audience glued throughout and coming back for more.

Top Gun — Maverick released on May 27, 2022. My wife, Rita, and I saw it three times. First was out of curiosity. Second was with our adult kids. Third was for self-indulgent escapism. It’s that friggin’ good.

It’s friggin’ good for a lot of reasons. Action… tension… thrills… flashbacks… old-fling romance… interpersonal drama… humor… sorrow… redemption… compassion… fulfillment… oh, and the music. Plus 6 crashed planes, 5 ejections, 2 stolen jets, dogfights galore, Ray Bans, bar scenes with bottled beer piano sings, and the obligatory high speed tower buzz in a Tomcat.

It’s got an excellent plot (and subplots), fascinating characters, believable dialogue, and twists you’ll never see coming. It’s got fast jets, cocky pilots, hard bodies, and a leading lady to die for. It’s got good guys and bad guys, friends and foes. And, it’s got box office numbers in the stratosphere.

Top Gun 1 cost $15 million to produce and grossed $357 million. Maverick cost $170 million to make (including $11,374 per hour paid to the US Navy for F-18 Super Hornet flight time) and—so far in under a month—raked in $748 million. Forbes predicts Top Gun — Maverick will be the first billion-dollar film.

Outside of huge numbers and equally large thrills, the show is outstanding storytelling. I’m not going to give spoilers, but I’ll tell you the screenplay follows the classic 3-Act structure.

In Act 1, we see Captain Pete Mitchell, call-sign Maverick played by Tom Cruise, going about his normal world of test-flying a Mach 10 Dark Star hypersonic airplane. His day disrupts when he’s unexpectedly called back to the Navy’s Fighter Weapons School (Top Gun) at Miramar air base in San Diego. Act 2 has Maverick teaching an elite group of the best-of-the-best Top Gun fighter pilot graduates to execute a secret mission of destroying a fiercely guarded enemy uranium enrichment facility. Act 3 is the tactical, all-is-lost attack, and I can tell you this part has stuff you can’t imagine.

Not giving the ending away, but I’ll leave you with the closing song by Lady Gaga. Hold My Hand.

How about you Kill Zoners? Who’s seen Top Gun — Maverick, and how do you rate this movie as storytelling?

Bonus: Listen to 4 real Top Gun instructors review the show.

By John Gilstrap

Well, it’s official. My deadline for submitting my manuscript for White Smoke, the third book in my Victoria Emerson thriller series was today, and for only the second time in my career, I will not be able to answer the bell. There’s never an excuse for not meeting one’s business obligations, but in my case, there were a number of contributing factors. Not complaining, just explaining.

The Pandemic

We Gilstraps lost the month of December to Covid-19. We got hit hard. I started it with my 14-day run of sickdom, but by the time it ran its course, my wife had spent 8 days in the hospital, including the span from Christmas Eve through January 3. Everyone is well now, but there’s definitely a brain fog that comes with it.

A Two-Stage Move

Last July, we sold our house in Virginia in anticipation of moving into our dream home in West Virginia. The anticipated move date was December 15 (good thing that didn’t happen!). We moved into a 1,200-square-foot apartment with the thought of staying five months. Seven months later, the new place was finally done-ish. Essentially, we moved into a working construction site on March 12. But that was nearly a month after we took possession of . . .

(Fair warning: This could be the sappiest thing I’ve ever written.)

Kimber

In her own words . . .

My name is Kimber. I am a Cavaston–a mix of Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and Boston Terrier. My new parents drove all the way up to Pennsylvania to pick me up on February 15. It was cold and I was scared.

I really had two new homes. I had my apartment, and I also had my crate, which I didn’t mind until nighttime came and then I’d get lonely. John told me that I shouldn’t bark for attention because we were in an apartment with neighbors really close. For the first couple of nights, he slept on the floor next to my crate to keep me company, but then he said it was more comfortable to let me sleep with them in their bed. I liked that better. That’s where I sleep every night now. John takes up a lot of room, though.

I had to go to the doctor for a checkup during my first week at the apartment. The doctor was nice, but there’s not a lot of privacy. They stuck me with needles and squeezed me a lot, but they let me eat spray cheese out of a can while they did it, so I didn’t mind all that much.

Not everybody recognizes the origins of my name. John tells me it’s the same as one of his favorite pistols. One day, when we were visiting the new house before we moved in and the heat wasn’t turned on yet, I got cold and climbed inside of his vest. After this picture was taken, John called me his quick-draw puppy.

These days, we’re all moved into the new house and the construction is over with–well, mostly. John complains that the master bedroom closets still aren’t finished. I like living in the country more than I liked living in the apartment. Out here, I get to pee and poo outside instead of on the little pads that I never really hit. (Apparently, you’re supposed to have your back legs on the pad, too. Who knew?)

Country living can be scary. I was playing in the woods just a few days ago and I saw something that looked like it wanted to play with me, but not in a good way. It kept hissing and trying to bite me. I’m really fast, though. I barked and barked, and finally, John came out to see what was happening. The stranger hissed and tried to bite him, too. He got very stern and told me to go back into the house. A few minutes later, I heard a really loud noise. I haven’t seen the stranger since.

I think John’s really happy that I’m around the house. All day long, he sits in a chair in front of a folding thing with buttons on it, but I’m tall enough now that I can jump right up onto the buttons and help him push them. He pretends not to like me doing that, but he always ends up playing with me. Maybe not the first time I jump up, or the second, but sooner or later, he gives in and plays. He said something about not being able to say no to my face.

“The problem with people, as they start to mature, they say, ‘Rap is a young man’s game,’ and they keep trying to make young songs. But you don’t know the slang – it changes every day, and you’re just visiting. You’re trying to be something you’re not, and the audience doesn’t buy into that.” — Jay-Z.

By PJ Parrish

So I’m up at 2 a.m. and it’s 57 channels and nothing on. It’s a choice between Million Dollar Mansions and The Tin Cup, starring Kevin Costner as a washed up golf pro who makes his way to the US Open to play against an insufferable git-in-cleats played by Don Johnson.

The movie is peppered with golf slang. Lines like: “Gimme the lumber.” And: “I want you to caddy for me. I’ll give you $100 for the loop.”

Thanks to my husband, I sort of watch golf. So I figured out that “lumber” was a wood, a club that you can hit far with.  “The loop” is slang for 18 holes. The scriptwriter was savvy with his use of slang, just enough to make me feel I was inside but not too much to trip me up. But, the rewriter in me wanted to ahem…improve things a little. I would have written: “I want you to be on the bag for me. I’ll give you $100 for the loop.”

Be on the bag means to caddy. Okay, okay, maybe that’s one stroke over the line, sweet Jesus, but I couldn’t resist. Slang is pretty seductive for writers, right?

Who among us hasn’t been tempted to slather in the slang to make our dialogue sound more authentic, more human, more…with it? I think mystery and thriller writers are especially vulnerable, because we deal with street thug, cops, lawyers and n’er-do-wells who all use their own argot. So this is my caution for all we crime dogs today: When the urge to use a lot of slang in your story hits you, go lie down in a dark room.

Okay, time out. Let’s test your lit-slang IQ. What books are these excerpts from (answers at end):

1. What clashes here of wills gen wonts, oystrygods gaggin fishy-gods! Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax! Ualu Ualu Ualu! Quaouauh! Where the Baddelaries partisans are still out to mathmaster Malachus Micgranes and the Verdons catapelting the camibalistics out of the Whoyteboyce of Hoodie Head.

2. Flora began to curse Red and Nancy again. But she had pretty much played out that line already. She turned to me.

“What the hell did you bring them here for?” she demanded. “Leaving a mile-wide trail behind you! Why didn’t you let the lousy bum die where he got his dose?

“I brought him here for my hundred and fifty grand. Slip it to me and I’ll be on my way. You don’t owe me anything else. I don’t owe you anything. Give me my rhino instead of lip and I’ll pull my freight.”

3. Third time lucky.  It wis like Sick Boy telt us: you’ve got tae know what it’s like tae try tae come off it before ye can actually dae it.  You can only learn through failure, and what ye learn is the importance ay preparation.  He could be right.  Anywey, this time ah’ve prepared.

Slang in fiction is a two-headed beast. When it’s good, it lends your dialogue verisimilitude and gives your characters unique voice. But when it’s bad, it dates your narrative, frustrates the reader and, as Jay-Z says, makes you look like you’re just visiting.

Slang is not the same as jargon. Both are means of communication between special groups. Slang is the informal language of speech, writing or texting. Think of friends bonding. Jargon is the specialized, often technical, language that is used by people in a particular field. Think of lawyers.

It can underscore your setting. A novel set in the mean streets of 1930s Newport is going to have different slang than one set in the thickets of the rural South of current times.

From The Great Gatsby: “He saw me looking with admiration at his car. ‘It’s pretty, isn’t it, old sport?” Old sport is a term of endearment used among swells of Gatsby’s era.

From Shakespeare’s Henry IV, here’s Falstaff throwing down some major shade:

 ’Sblood, you starveling, you elfskin, you dried neat’s tongue, you bull’s pizzle, you stockfish! O, for breath to utter what is like thee! You tailor’s-yard, you sheath, you bowcase, you vile standing tuck—

Raymond Chandler famously credited Dashiell Hammett with giving murder “back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse … He put these people down on paper as they are, and he made them talk and think in the language they customarily used for these purposes.”

In Hammett Red Harvest, the police “take this baby down the cellar and let the wrecking crew work on him.” (Interrogate a suspect). A female character is described as “a soiled dove” (13th-century English slang for a prostitute). And the Continental Op says he is “going blood-simple” from all the killing (which you’ll recognize as the title of the Coen Brothers’ 1984 movie.)

Some writers, especially those toiling in fantasy, often create entire languages filled with made-up slang. JK Rowling peppered the Harry Potter books with so much nonsensical words that she needed to publish a dictionary — Muggle, flobberworm, and my favorite Boggart (a shape-shifter that becomes the likeness of your worst fear)  I often wondered if Rowling weren’t channeling Lewis Carroll, who gave us such words as gallymoggers (crazy), mimsy (a feeling of misery and whimsy) and this gem: scut (an insult based on the actual Brit slang for buttucks.

Robert Heinlein uses made-up slang in Stranger in a Strange Land to great effect, weaving it in so gracefully that the reader never stumbles. He uses the Martian word grok, which means “to drink” but because there is no water on Mars, grok comes to mean something akin to holy communion, with characters grokking to communicate powerful emotions.

So, you ask, what’s a lesser writer to do? What if you’re still working on your first novel, or rewriting your sixth and you’re a little unsure of when to use slang and how much is too much? Well, as we always say here, there are no hard and fast rules. But let me lay down some guidelines that I’ve found helpful.

• Use it sparingly
• Get it right

To the first point, slang is like any exotic spice. A little goes a long way toward whatever stew you are creating. Know that slang tends to go stale very quickly, and does not travel well. As Toby tells Will in West Wing: “When you use pop-culture references, your speech has a shelf life of twelve minutes.” So it is with novels. You might have one of your young characters say something like: “Since the pandemic, I never have to go into the office. It’s so sick.” Sick, of course, means great. Always look for ways to gracefully explain slang that’s esoteric. Like:

“I want you to carry the bag for me.”

What, me caddy for you? In your dreams, man.”

To the second point, make sure your slang is accurate and appropriate. Don’t try to fake Aussie slang, for example. Run it by a friend who is fluent. Make sure the slang you put in a character’s mouth is accurate for his age, background, region, and education. A kid living in Michigan would never ask for a “soda.” It’s always “a pop.” A kid, in parts of the South, would ask for “a Coke” even if he wants Sprite.

Some sites to help you with slang:

Online Slang Dictionary. Updated almost daily. Very comprehensive and sometimes quite racy. http://onlineslangdictionary.com/

A Dictionary of Slang. If you want to say something in New Zealand-ese, this is for you. http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/language-links.htm

Some novels are so thick with slang and invented words that they are near impenetrable. I remember trudging through Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange for a college lit course. It is written entirely in an invented future slang constructed by Burgess called Nadsat. Here’s the opening paragraph. I’ll wait while you wade:

‘What’s it going to be then, eh?’

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither. Well, what they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no licence for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels And Saints in your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, and that was what we were peeting this evening I’m starting off the story with.

Reading this now and remembering how much I worked to finish this book, I am thinking of a scene from Cheers. Sam, desperate to impress Diane, slogs through War and Peace in three days. At the end, Diane is, indeed impressed.

Diane: There’s only one thing more romantic than you reading War And Peace for me.
Sam: What?
Diane: You reading War And Peace to me.
Sam: Oh, yeah? Well, it just so happens that I have a copy right here. You sit down right here, and I’ll read to you. Here we go.
Diane: [takes the book] Let’s go see the movie.
Sam: [shouts] There’s a movie?

Re Clockwork Orange. Take my advice. Skip the book. See the movie.

_________________________

Quiz:

1. Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce.
2. The Big Knockover by Dashiell Hammett
3. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

Writing is fun, and that’s why we do it. Personal deadlines, self-imposed daily word counts, locking yourself alone in a room for hours at a time with your invisible friends, those hard deadlines that loom at the same time you have other things to do, and less than impressive paychecks aren’t roadblocks to most of us.

Staring at the flashing cursor on a blank screen seems to be a challenge to some, but I blow through page after page without a tingle of fear or apprehension. Then comes the day I hit Send and the manuscript is on the way to becoming a real book. That’s a huge satisfaction.

But then comes the fun and interesting part that I never expected as a novice writer. Those moments when memories are made.

Only a couple of weeks after I finished one of the Red River novels, my oldest aunt called from her assisted living apartment. “Reavis Zane!”

Dammit! I immediately became ten years old again when she used both names. “Howdy Aunt Billie. I’m sorry I haven’t been by to see you lately…”

“That don’t matter none. I called ‘cause I have a bone to pick with you, young man.”

I figuratively toed the carpet, chastised by one of those old gals who likely whacked my rear a time or two when I was a kid. Our family believed in that village theory of child raising to the point there were eyes everywhere.

I sighed and sat down at my desk. “Well, go to picking then.”

“I just read that book you wrote and I can’t believe you’re telling family secrets to the whole wide world.”

Uh, oh. I flicked through mountains of memory files, trying to figure out what she was talking about. Though a few of my characters are based on living people, I’m careful not to describe them in detail. Even family members in this litigious society can take you to task on such characterization.

Clearing my throat, I tried not to sound worried. “Well, Ned Parker’s based on Daddy Joe, and Top is me in a sense, but I don’t…”

“It’s not them. I’m talking about those two people who ran away with one. They’re Tommy and Gertrude as sure as shoot’n. I don’t see why you got to drag family into them stories.”

“Wait. What?” Tommy and Gertrude were family members who were banished from the family when I was little, but I never knew why. “You mean they…”

“Yessir. You know as well as I do that they were married to Bob and Elizabeth.”

Puzzle pieces clicked into place. Bob and Elizabeth were brother and sister, married to Tommy and Gertrude.

Her voice became stern. “So young man, you don’t need to be telling them secrets in any more books.”

“Uh, that’s news to me. Exactly what happened between them?”

“Well, my lands. I’m not gonna talk about that gossip!”

And she hung up on me without another word.

I was signing copies of still another book when I described a scene based on a real story my grandaddy told me. He was constable of Precinct 3 in Lamar County, Texas, that’s made up of several small rural communities. One day he got a call on his Motorola (son, they can outrun my car, but they can’t outrun my radio) that a suspicious individual was seen on a county road. When the highway patrol officer stopped, the teenager ran away into the woods.

The young trooper radioed back and organized a manhunt that was forming up when Grandad pulled up in his pickup. The trooper described the outlaw in great detail and my more experienced grandfather put a halt to the proceedings.

“You boys just settle down. I think I know who that is. Give me ten minutes and I’ll be right back.”

He drove off down a gravel road and turned down a dirt drive to a house back in the woods. A farmer’s wife came outside when she heard the car. “Hey, Ned. What brings you out here?”

“Is Leroy around somewhere?”

“He’s in the barn. He run again?”

“He did.”

Grandad called Leroy out, put him in the front seat of the truck, and returned to the building manhunt. He pulled up and called the trooper over. “Is this your suspect?”

He bent down and peeked through the window. “That’s him! You caught him already?”

“I knew who you were talking about. Leroy here runs from every lawman he sees, but he’s never done anything wrong. So y’all can go about your business and we’re gong to the store to get some ice cream.”

So there I was at the signing, enjoying the long line of fans holding my book with that story when a tall, gray-haired man handed me his copy. “I read this already, but I’d love to have your signature.”

“Honored. Just a signature, or would you like it personalized?”

“Personalized. Sign it, To Judge John Smith, That Young Trooper Who Had a Lot To Learn From An Old Constable.”

I glanced up to meet his eyes. “You’re that young highway patrol officer I wrote about.”

“Yep, your grandaddy taught me a lot back when I was full of piss and vinegar, and you wrote it exactly as it happened.”

“Uh, should I apologize, Judge?”

“Nah. It was the truth.”

No one told me what to expect after a book comes out, but I swear it’s always fun. Enjoy the experience, because only a small percentage of potential authors ever get published. It’s that carrot at the end of the stick, and it’s a helluva ride.