How To Rewrite Your Whole Darn Book

Posted on by

“There is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time.” — Desmond Tutu

By PJ Parrish

I know many of you will relate to this. You’ve finished your manuscript. {{{cheering from the peanut gallery}}. You set it aside for the recommended two, three, four weeks, as long as you could stand it. Now, you open that file and…

Rewrite time. Black cloud over the head because the task ahead is daunting. Where to start? Is it worth it? What if it stinks?

I have a little rewriting to do this week. Not just polish the chapter I just finished. Not just fix the problems with my muddy middle. Not just tweak the opening. I have to rewrite The. Whole. Darn. Thing. All thirty-four chapters. All 371 pages. All 102,542 words. Well, not every word. I just stuck that in to get the sympathy vote.

And here’s the kicker: This book has already been published. It is our first Louis Kincaid novel Dark of the Moon, which was published in 1999 by Kensington. A while back, the rights reverted to us, along with six others in the series, and we quickly repackaged them with new covers and put them up on Amazon, where they have enjoyed a nice little renaissance and have helped keep my dogs in Fromm’s Chicken au Frommage.

But when we got to working on Dark of the Moon, we decided to put on the brakes.  Why? Well, as we re-read it, we realized that while it was a smacking good plot with lots of twists and cool clues, and it nicely introduced our series character, it had some issues.

So, what to do? Slap on a new cover and get it out there anyway? Or take a second whack at it and fix the things that didn’t quite work the first time?  We chose the latter. Now, lots of folks might think this is not a good thing for a writer to do, that good, bad or ugly, you should just let your early books live as they came into the world. I don’t buy that. I say, with technology now available to alter and republish your work with minimal sweat, why not improve things?

Don’t get me wrong, it is a good book and got some great reviews (except for Kirkus, who hated it) and some sweet blurbs (including one from our own John Gilstrap who said, “this is a novel not to be missed”). For a freshman effort, it was something I remain proud of.  But Kelly and I have learned so much since that first time out, and after a lot of discussion and soul-searching, we decided the story deserved better than we gave it.

Here’s the nutshell plot.

Louis Kincaid, a bi-racial cop raised in a foster home in Michigan, has to return to his birth place in Mississippi to see to his dying mother. A temporary hire with the sheriff, he lands a big case when a skeleton is found in a shallow swamp grave — with a noose around the neck bones. The case plunges Louis into a cold case and a dark past that no one in the small town of Black Pool wants to talk about. The case will tear the town apart even as it impels Louis to question his own biracial identity.

So what were the issues? I’ll lay them out one by one because I suspect some of you might identify with some of the problems we encountered. Maybe this self-autopsy can help you, maybe not. But I think it highlights a couple of the very problems any novice novelist deals with.

Over-Writing.  I wish I had read Stephen King’s On Writing before we wrote this book. He’s brutally eloquent on the subject of editing out flab and affectations. We had all three going, especially with our descriptions.   King says, “The key to good description begins with clear seeing and end with clear writing, the kind that employs fresh images and simple vocabulary.”  What it is NOT is trying to be writerly, larding on the adjectives or straining to poop out a metaphor. “Clear seeing and clear writing.” That’s all it takes.

Okay, an object lesson. Here’s the original opening graph of our book:

Chapter 1

December, 1984

The naked trees snaked upward, black capillaries against a bleached, pre-dawn sky. The ground beneath his feet was a mire of dead leaves and copper-colored mud. A cold December wind wafted through the trees loosening raindrops from the needles of the tall pines.

Now I’m gonna do a First Graph critique of it:

The naked trees snaked upward, black capillaries Why TWO metaphors? Pick one: vipers or veins! against a bleached, pre-dawn Just clutter here because you say it’s after dawn two graphs later. sky. The ground beneath his feet Where else would the ground be, under his armpits? And who is “he”? was a mire of dead leaves and copper-colored I love alliteration! It’s so…writerly. mud. A cold December Ah, you told us it was December in the tagline wind wafted Now here’s some W-alliteration! through the trees loosening raindrops from the needles of the tall pines. Just say it’s sprinkling and move on.

Here’s the new opening graph:

Chapter 1

The sky was a bleached gray, the bare trees rising like black veins against the clouds. The ground was soft and wet, a mire of dead leaves. With every cold breeze, the three men were sprinkled with the remnants of last night’s thunderstorm.

The rest of the book was in pretty much the same over-wrought style. There was a good reason it ran more than 100K words — we didn’t know when enough was enough.

Lesson 1: Fluff and fart all through your first draft (F-alliteration!). But come rewrite, be ruthless with your imagery. As Coco Chanel said, put on all your jewelry, then take off every piece but one.  Not just images; cut all unnecessary words. If you have King’s book, go to page 275 where he shows you exactly how he edited one of his stories.

2. Stereotyping. If you are writing about something controversial, iconic or overly familiar, you have to be on hyper-alert to avoid cliches. We were writing about a small southern town in the early 1980s with a sordid racial history. So many shoals to navigate and we did…okay.  But we decided that we owed this little town better, that our bad guys were too easy to hate, our good guys too self-righteous, and our ideas about the south to glib. (Kelly, for the record, lived in Philadelphia, Miss. for years, the site of the infamous civil rights murders and that was partly her inspiration.) But if you are dealing with such a fraught subject as the south’s racial history, you have to do so with sensitivity and depth. Our sheriff was too bumbling. Our secondary characters too one-dimensional. Our setting was too magnolia-scented. We didn’t look deep enough.

Lesson 2: If your setting is iconic (Paris, Las Vegas) don’t go for the usual visual cliches. Look more closely for what the reader doesn’t expect. Take them to corners  they can’t find in their Fodor’s. This lesson served me well when I wrote our stand-alone set in Paris The Killing Song. The Eiffel Tower is glimpsed only briefly through the trees as our hero is en route to the Gout d’Or Muslim neighborhood where few tourists ever go.

3. Cardboard Characters. I mentioned the sheriff already, but his deputies were even worse. One fellow, Junior Resnick is a plump, lazy good ‘ol boy. And he speaks in dialect. Now, we can do a whole blog titled “Don’t Do Dialects” (and I think we have) but I’m running long, so suffice it to say that if you’re doing Southern, or Cockney, or urban black, don’t try to replicate exact language. Don’t lop off endings like “He was jus’ plum f**kin’ crazy.” (Junior says this). A character can have a distinct regional voice, but do it via syntax and simple word choice and trust the reader to remember it.  Yes, I know about Huck Finn, but you’re not Mark Twain and it’s not 1884.

Now, let’s talk about Southern women. Whee-doggies, did we mess this one up. We have two major female characters, an aging wealthy patriarch named Grace and her beautiful willful daughter Abby. (Paging Miss Scarlett!) We did an okay job with Grace (almost) but we blew it with Abby. She’s a stereotypical prissy belle who throws herself at Louis just to make Daddy crazy. We didn’t understand what made her tick, we didn’t know WHAT SHE WANTED. And if we had asked to go to coffee (see Jim’s Sunday post), she would have sat there like a stump. So Kelly and I did a lot of hard thinking about these two AND their mom-daughter dynamic. Abby is being transformed into a serious somewhat repressed woman struggling to find an identity outside her family’s expectations. (which reflects’s Louis’s own inner struggle as black man). She doesn’t fling herself at Louis but finds in him a porcupine-ish friendship. She is a work in progress right now, but I already like her so much more. And Grace? She’s morphing into a complex character who’s coming to realize she left her true self somewhere in the past and now resents her daughter for being what she herself lacks the guts to be. Which ties into one of our new themes — the painful birth of the new South from the womb of the old.

Lesson 3: When creating a character, whatever your first idea is, stop and question it. Then dig deeper to go for the second or even third incarnation. Pull back their layers until they scream and give up their ugly secrets. That is where the beauty is. That is where your story will spring from. And don’t be afraid of what they reveal. One last quote from Stephen King:

I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing. Dumbo got airborne with the help of a magic feather; you may feel the urge to grasp a passive verb or one of those nasty adverbs for the same reason. Just remember before you do that Dumbo didn’t need the feather; the magic was in him.

Which is a long way to go to finish up my opening elephant metaphor. Now if you’ll excuse me, this post ran longer than I intended and I have a lot of pruning to do.

 

The Secret Language of Vikings

Posted on by

By SUE COLETTA

Old English was originally written in the runic alphabet, named futhark after the first six runes: f, u, th, a, r, and k. The alphabet consisted of 24 letters, 18 consonants, and 6 vowels. Futhark assigned a sound to each character. Runes could be written in both directions—right to left, left to right—and could also be inverted or upside down. The earliest runes consisted almost entirely of straight lines, arranged singly or in combinations of two or more. Later, runes became more complex. Some even resemble modern day letters of the English alphabet.

Side note: Think outside the box as you read. There’s a question at the end to get your creative juices flowing.

According to rune experts, the word “futhark” itself may have been used for ancient Norse magic. An example of this can be found carved into the tooth of a brown bear, found in Orkney in the 1930s. It’s said this amulet was used for protection or fertility magic.

Photo credit (hot-linked):  National Museum of Scotland

In Old Norse the word “rune” means “letter,” “text,” or “inscription.” In old Germanic languages it means “mystery” or “secret.”

For years researchers have tried to crack a runic code called Jötunvillur, a perplexing code found in some inscriptions. Ancient codes prompt associations with treasure hunts and conspiracies as depicted in The Da Vinci Code.

But mysterious codes are not just for fiction.

Real-life Vikings and medieval Norse people carved runic codes into wood, stone, swords, pendants, and other objects. These codes are found in many forms and contexts.

“It was very common to use codes,” said Runologist Jonas Nordby from the University of Oslo. “Much of the population mastered them. That’s why I think they were something people picked up at the same time they learned the runic alphabet. If you had learned to read and write, you had also learned codes.”

Some of the decoded messages showed a playfulness among friends. Others were more romantic, like the 900-year-old cipher code carved into a piece of wood (pictured below). The inscription reads “kiss me.”

Photo credit: Jonas Nordby

These codes exist in many forms and contexts and date back to the 11th or 12th century. But there’s still a lot we don’t know about runes.

Why did Vikings encrypt their messages by using codes? Did they want to keep them secret, or did they have other reasons for encrypting their ruin texts?

Runologist K. Jonas Nordby has made significant progress toward an answer by cracking a code called jötunvillur, which has baffled linguists and historians for years.

Jötunvillur is just one of many different types of runes. This code works by exchanging the rune sign with the last sound in the rune’s name.

For example, the rune for “f” (pronounced fe) would be turned into an “e,” the rune for “u” (pronounced urr) would be “r,” and “k” (pronounced kaun) became “n.” Note: I put the last letter of the pronunciation in bold for clarity in deciphering the code.

Problem is, numerous runes end in the same sound.

“It’s like solving a riddle,” Nordby said. “After a while I started to see a pattern in what appeared to be meaningless combinations of runes.”

Many of the messages in runic codes include a challenge to the reader to crack the code, like “interpret these runes.” The art of writing and codebreaking ensured a certain amount of status among peers. Others bragged about their proficiencies, evident by the inscription below that reads, “These runes were carved by the most rune-literate man west of the sea.”

Photo credit: Bengt A. Lundberg/Riksantikvarieämbetet

“Many think the Vikings used cryptography to conceal secret messages,” Nordby continued. “But I think the codes were used in play and for learning runes, rather than to communicate.”

One of the reasons for his claim is that the jötunvillur code is written in a way that makes the interpretation ambiguous.

“A typical bunch of male adolescents were fooling around and wrote tall tales about treasures and their own sexual prowess. Jötunvillur can only be written, not read. It would be pointless to use it for messages.”

Hence why he’s considered other possible uses for the code. His best guess would be that the Vikings memorized rune names with the help of the jötunvillur code.

“We have little reason to believe that rune codes should hide sensitive messages. People often wrote short everyday messages. I think the codes were used in play and for learning runes, rather than to communicate.”

All runes have names, but their similar sound makes it difficult to figure out which runic letter the code refers to.

The rune codes weren’t just used for learning. Nordby says this also indicates whimsicality within the Viking Era and Middle Ages.

“People challenged one another with codes. It was a kind of competition in the art of rune making. This testifies to a playfulness with writing that we don’t see today.”

Nine of the 80 or so coded runic writings Nordby investigated are written in the jötunvillur code. The others are cipher runes written with the use of Caesar cipher, a system involving a shift to letters spaced a few places away in the alphabet. Researchers have understood cipher runes for some time.

Henrik Williams, a professor at Uppsala University’s Department of Scandinavian Languages and a Swedish expert on runes, said Nordby’s discovery is an important one.

“Above all, it helps us understand that there were more codes than we were aware of. Each runic inscription we interpret raises our hopes of soon being able to read more. This is pure detective work and each new method improves our chances.”

He agrees the codes could have been used as a tool for learning runes. But he’s not certain about how big a role jötunvillur played in the learning process. Rather, he thinks the codes were used for much more than communication.

“They challenged the reader, demonstrated skills, and testify to a joy in reading and writing.”

What better reason could there be?

Have you ever used codes in a story? Please explain.

Get those creative juices flowing, TKZers. In what ways could a writer use runic text?

 

 

Have Shocking Coffee With Your Lead Character

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

In my one-day workshops I do an exercise called “Shocking Coffee.” You, the author, imagine you are seated with your main character over a cup of coffee. She tells you she doesn’t think you’ve quite captured her. That surprises you a bit. I mean, after all, you created her.

So you ask, “In what way?” And your character tells you something that shocks you. What is it? (I have the students write for one minute.)

Then I say: You’ve spit out your coffee. Your character hands you a napkin and then tells you something even more shocking! (Write for one minute.)

I was conducting this at a recent conference, and while the students were writing a voice said, “Wow!”

Another voice chimed in. “Exactly!”

And everyone laughed. When we were done I asked a few people to share what they’d come up with. One woman said this clarified the entire novel for her. Another said this offered a whole new direction she’d never thought of.

But one student, a middle-aged man, seemed troubled. He had explained earlier in the workshop that his story was about a man carrying around a load of guilt because he’d accidentally killed his brother years ago. He fears that if his secret ever gets out it will hurt a number of people.

Now he said, “The more shocking thing he told me was that he intended to kill his brother, because he was jealous.”

There were audible oohs and ahhs throughout the room.

“But,” the man protested, “this would make him totally unsympathetic.”

The oohs and ahhs turned to No! and You’re wrong! 

I asked the students, “Who is more interested in this book now?”

All the hands shot up.

The author still seemed confused.

I told him it doesn’t matter where the character has come from, or what he’s done, so long as he’s got the capacity to change and the will to try. We will follow a character like that, hoping for his redemption. Indeed, it’s one of the most powerful engines of fiction.

What had just happened was that the author, by way of a simple exercise, had gone deeper into his material than ever before. Before, he’d stopped at a “safe place.” Now he had pushed past that, and it scared him a little.

Which, I told him, is a good thing, because that’s where originality comes from. (For more on this, see my post here.)

To push through the safe places, try these exercises:

  1. Have a cup of shocking coffee with your Lead. Shocking and more shocking.
  2. Chair through the window: Imagine your character in a nice room with a big, bay window. She picks up a chair and throws it through the glass. Why would she do that? Come up with a reason. Next, write a crazy reason she’d do that. What is this telling you about your Lead?
  3. Closet search: What does your character have hidden in her closet that she doesn’t want anyone—anyone—to find?

More material like this can be found in my course, Writing a Novel They Can’t Put Down.

So when was the last time one of your characters surprised you? Did you go with it or resist it? What techniques do you use to deepen characters in your fiction? 

A Miss That Should Have Been a Hit

Posted on by

I submit to you that a personal recommendation from a friend with respect to a book, movie, or film is gold. I’ve been fortunate to have had a number of folks who know my eclectic and yes, flat-out bizarre tastes in the various arts and who keep me from becoming staid in my reading, viewing and listening. Chief amongst these good, long-suffering folks is a gent who I have known for well over a half-century. My friend possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of literature and films which runs long and deep. He recently recommended a movie to me that is almost a quarter-century old but is still in some ways ahead of its time.

The movie is Mad Dog Time.  It is worth viewing and studying for a number of reasons, chief among them being the manner in which it adheres to its puzzling yet addicting voice and pace from beginning to end.  You say you’ve never heard of it? Maybe you know it by its other name, Trigger Happy. Still doesn’t ring a bell? I’m not surprised. I had never heard of it either until last week, in spite of it having a stellar cast (Richard Dreyfuss and Jeff Goldblum, among others). It suffered from poor reviews. Actually, that’s not right. The reviews were vicious.  It topped at least one “worst movie of the year” list. Rotten Tomatoes? As I write this Mad Dog Time has a critics’ score of 17 percent based on six reviews against an audience score of 47 percent. It grossed six figures and cost seven to make, proving that you can make a small fortune in the arts if you start with a large one. 

I’m leading with all of the bad stuff about Mad Dog Time because that was the way it was introduced to me before I bit the hook. The sharp end of that is that Mad Dog Time is a gangster/caper film that defies several conventions. 

The opening moments of Mad Dog Time consist of what is kind of a poor man’s Star Wars trailer which informs the viewer that what they are about to see takes place in an alternate reality. Yeah. That’s about right. The plot is right out of the late 1940s. A mob boss named Vic (played by Dreyfuss) who owns a popular nightclub is being released from a mental health facility after several weeks of treatment for what we would now call anger management. A rival mobster who has been plotting to take over Vic’s empire is bringing in hitmen to get the job done, given that Vic has a reputation for engaging in homicidal violence with minimal provocation.  Mickey Holliday (Jeff Goldblum) is Vic’s enforcer and finds himself standing between Vic and the power grab. Mickey, however, has in Vic’s absence been keeping company with Vic’s girlfriend while also seeing her sister, unbeknownst to either of the siblings. Other things are going on, including frequent duels by firearm that take place in the basement offices of Vic’s club. There are other shootouts, as well as fights, double-crosses, and the like, right up to almost the very end of the film.

If all of the above was presented in a straightforward manner then Mad Dog Time might not have gotten the awful critical reception it received. The film has its quirks, however. Mad Dog Time was written and directed by Larry Bishop, the son of comedian Joey Bishop, who was part of what was known as the “Rat Pack” with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr., among others. There are a number of not-so-subtle references to that lineage, including a brief appearance by Joey Bishop. What is more interesting, however, is that the entire film looks like a period piece for which the director never attempted to acquire time-appropriate props. It is accordingly is a 1940s story that looks like it was filmed in the 1990s — which is when it was filmed — and which somehow doesn’t look dated in 2020. That doesn’t make sense, but it is entirely accurate. Bishop also repeatedly uses a plot device that is unsettling and which violates a rule of commercial filmmaking. I’m not going to tell you what it is, but you’ll see it when you watch the film and start saying “What the (heck)” every ten minutes.  I kept thinking, “Wait a minute! He can’t do that!” That isn’t quite accurate, of course. Maybe Bishop shouldn’t have done it, but he could do it, and he did. The result is that the viewer never knows what is going to happen next.

At least one of your favorite old school actors, regardless of who it might be, is more than lkely in Mad Dog Time. What was interesting for me is that it features an actor I can’t stand — Jeff Goldblum — leading the cast. And you know what? Goldblum gives the performance of his life. I never would have pictured Jeff Goldblum as a believably deadly mob enforcer who is also studly enough to be balancing relationships with two women to the extent that neither is the side-piece (or maybe they both are). I almost didn’t watch the movie when I found out that he was in it, but I’m glad I did. He hasn’t looked this good since he played “Freak #1” in the original (Charles Bronson) version of Deathwish. Goldblum is so good in this film that I actually missed him when he wasn’t on screen. 

There’s also an intangible element existing in Mad Dog Time. The entire movie is just a bit off-kilter, which is possibly where the alternate universe thing comes in.  My friend likened it to the manner in which Billie Holliday often sang just a beat or two behind the music. It’s a perfect comparison, so much so that I wonder if Larry Bishop was giving his audience a hint of it with the name of Goldblum’s character. 

You won’t find Mad Dog Time/Trigger Happy on any of the streaming services. There is a print that is accessible on YouTube but the video is totally out of sync with the audio and it is thus unwatchable. You should, however, be able to find it in DVD format (which is excellent, by the way) at your local library though you might have to hunt for it. You should do so. 

Let me give you two more quick suggestions before I leave you to your day: 

In books, Andy Davidson’s newly published The Boatman’s Daughter is the perfect Southern Gothic horror novel and may be the perfect novel, period. If you read it and you like it you will want to read his first book, In the Valley of the Sun, which concerns a pair of vampires on the loose in Texas during the fall of 1980. Fun stuff.

As far as music is concerned, I have recently been listening to a band named 16 Horsepower. They are no longer together. The creative force behind their music, however, is a gentleman named David Eugene Edwards who currently helms a band called Wovenhand. Edwards is considered to be the father (almost, after Johnny Cash) of a music subgenre known as “gothic Americana.” The songs in both bands are darkly religious with a heavy emphasis on the failings of human beings, who will be judged by the angry and vengeful God of the Old Testament. Not surprisingly, Edwards’ music has been rejected by secularists for its religious overtones and by the Christian rock community for hewing too close to fundamentalist beliefs. What’s left? Well, Edwards has a huge following among atheists, believe it or not, especially in Europe. If nothing else, please have a listen to 16 Horsepower’s “Black Soul Choir.”

I hope that you enjoy all of the above and have a terrific and entertaining weekend. And please, feel free to offer some obscure recommendations of your own.

 

 

True Crime Thursday – Slogans that Hit…or Miss

Posted on by

by Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

Today’s True Crime Thursday offers a collection of catchy slogans meant to raise public awareness of various crimes. Some advertising campaigns address crime in general:

 “If you don’t have money for bail you should stay out of jail.”

Wikimedia CC license

 

 

Or specifically, in anti-drunk driving mottos:

“You booze, you cruise, you lose!”

“Drive Hammered. Get Slammered.”

 

 

 

Crimes of violence:  “Let’s cut out knife crime.”

Photo credit: fbi.gov

 

 

Human trafficking:

“Slavery. Still happening today.”

 

 

 

Sexual assault:  “No consent + Sex = Rape”

The war on drugs spawned perhaps more slogans than any other crime. Samples include:

“Just Say No.”

“Drugs cost you more than just money.”

“No drug user grows old; because they die young.”

“Smoke fast and die young.”

“Don’t Meth Around.”

Last November, South Dakota proudly unveiled a new campaign against methamphetamine that cost nearly a half-million dollars:

“METH – WE’RE ON IT!”

The message caused an uproar…of laughter, probably not the effect the promoters hoped for.

Some slogans work. Others, ahh, not so much.

 

TKZers: What crime slogan sticks in your memory? The best? The worst?

Who’s the New Kid?

Posted on by

Who’s the New “Kid”?
Terry Odell

Terry Odell LogoWhen I opened the email inviting me to become a contributing member of The Kill Zone Blog, I was honored. I’ve been reading the blog for years, making comments, but move to the other side of the page? Scary. The other contributors have set a high bar. But I accepted the invitation, so here I am.

Who am I?

I’m someone who did not start out with aspirations of becoming a writer. I did not write my first story in crayon. The one time I thought about putting a story idea onto “paper” (we were well into the word processor age by then), the tedium of getting dialogue punctuated correctly put a halt to that project.

You could say I became a writer by mistake, through a chance introduction to the Highlander television series. You can read that whole misadventure here. I’ll wait.

Back? I’ll continue.

Eventually, punctuating dialogue became automatic, I joined a local writing group (The Pregnant Pigs, and that’s another story), and I looked forward to sitting down to play with my characters. Honestly, I was having fun, and had more of an If someone knocks on the door and asks if I have a manuscript, I’ll say yes mentality. But my fellow Piggies pushed. I found an agent, which meant my rejections came faster and were worded more politely.

My road to publication started with e-publishers back in the day when people were reading on their computers or PDAs. I had some romance short stories published by The Wild Rose Press (I was their first contracted author), and some romantic suspense novels published by the now defunct Cerridwen Press. I had a trio of books published in hard cover by Five Star, which targeted the library market. When my first Five Star book was remaindered and I got the rights back, the Kindle had just come into being, and with it, indie-publishing. I figured I had nothing to lose, and ventured down that road.

And, that’s where I am now. A purely indie-author, and happy to be one. I have 22 novels, 3 novellas, 2 short story collections, plus some bundled works out there. (I had to check.)

What do I write?

Odell booksThis blog is focused on mysteries, and I have a mystery series (Mapleton Mysteries) with 5 novels (the 5th, Deadly Fun, drops on February 24th) as well as three novellas. My collection of mystery short stories, Seeing Red, happened to win the Silver Falchion Award in 2015. (There’s a story there, too, but that’s for another time.)

However, despite thinking I was writing a mystery, my first manuscript, according to my daughters, was a romance. Given I’d never read a romance, that came as quite a shock. I realized that when I read mysteries, I was just as interested in what went on in the “off duty” lives of the characters as I was in solving the crime. Thus, I call all my books “Mysteries With Relationships” even though three of my four series would be classified as romantic suspense, or mystery romance.

My series: the Mapleton Mysteries, Pine Hills Police, Blackthorne, Inc., and the Triple-D Ranch series. Most of them are also available as audiobooks.

That’s the writing side of me.

FeebieThe personal side: I grew up in Los Angeles, graduated from UCLA, taught junior high, moved to Florida, raised a family, and now I live in the Colorado Rockies with my husband and rescue dog, FBI SAC Odell, but we call her Feebie.

 


Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.” Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

 

Rising Star

Posted on by

Hubble Sees the Force Awakening in a Newborn Star-NASA Goddard photo

Fair warning: today’s post is the unabashed crowing of a proud surrogate mom whose “kid” is one of only 20 people on the planet chosen this year to give a TED talk. If you’d rather not listen to me sniffle, skip this.

Here’s how our story started:

My writing group, Authors of the Flathead, sponsors an annual student writing contest. The judging is blind—we don’t know the identities, grade level, or which school.

About 20 years ago, a short fiction entry about the underground railroad blew us judges away with its beautiful writing, realistic characters, compelling tension, and important theme. It was the hands-down winner out of 100+ entries.

The author was a 16-year-old high school junior named Sarah Rugheimer. We invited her to a meeting to read her story and receive her cash prize. Afterward, she and I chatted. She was bright, capable, energetic, determined, and enthusiastic. When she asked if I would mentor her, I couldn’t say Yes! fast enough.

We worked on her writing through high school and her first year of college. Sarah pushed herself hard and excelled in science, Irish dancing, and writing. We spent hours hiking in the Montana mountains or sitting at my dining room table to brainstorm story concepts, characters, and plot lines full of twists and surprises.

Her discipline and drive pushed her up the ranks in Irish dance competitions. My kitchen became a studio where she practiced difficult steps. She also entered and won more writing contests.

Our face-to-face meetings unfortunately dwindled when she moved to the University of Calgary to study physics and Irish dance.

Thank goodness for email. She would send me essays and papers. The subject matter was way over my head. Exoplanets? Biosignatures? Brown dwarf habitability? Chirality? The only words I recognized were one syllable: the, and, is. At that point, the little help I could offer was to insert missing commas.

“When you win the Nobel Prize, I’ll be sitting in the audience,” I often told her, only half joking. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize this young woman was going places.

Then came time for grad school. Her goal: a PhD in astronomy or astrophysics.

On a lark, she decided to apply to Harvard. Despite her brilliant academic record, she suffered from a bad case of imposter syndrome and was positive she would never be accepted.

She even tried to talk herself out of applying, protesting, “The fee is $90. I could buy three nice dinners for that.”

“You’re going to be accepted,” I predicted.

“No way,” she insisted.

“Yes, you will.”

We worked over her essay answers and polished them to a high gloss.

I knew that the judges and scholars who reviewed her application would recognize the drive, focus, discipline, and imagination I saw in her.

Was she accepted?

Of course.

She was amazed.

I wasn’t.

For the next 6 ½ years, she worked her butt off. Despite a full scholarship, her road was not easy. Her father, a retired physics professor at Montana State University, was in declining health. He lived with her in Cambridge while she juggling study with caring for him.

His death, although expected, was still a body blow to Sarah. Other major personal crises piled on top of her and she had to take more than a year off from classes.

But she persevered and was named one of only eight Harvard Horizons Scholars in 2014.

She also took up mountain climbing. We’re talking serious mountains—Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua, Chimborazo. At elevations of more than 20,000 feet, she was climbing closer to the planets and stars she wanted to explore.

In January 2015, she defended her thesis.

I flew to Boston for that momentous event. Sitting in a hallowed hall at Harvard with 60 of her colleagues and professors, I listened to her talk about searching for life on distant planets and her aspirations to explore the universe.

As she was pronounced Doctor Sarah Rugheimer, I used up a package of Kleenex.

Dr. Sarah Rugheimer – photo credit: Ben Gebo

Her post-doctoral proposals and applications for various fellowships contained ever-more-obscure vocabulary. How was I supposed to critique a paper entitled “Quantifying Activity Induced Variability in Spectra of Exoplanets”? At that point, when I edited her articles, I wasn’t even sure where to put the commas!

She also developed a love of teaching and has the rare gift of translating complicated concepts into terms even regular people—like me—can understand. Her students love her.

A couple of years ago, one student she had mentored achieved publication in a prestigious journal. Sarah was button-busting proud.

I told her, “Now you know how I feel.”

In her spare time, she continues to write creatively. We spend hours on the phone, brainstorming plots and building relatable characters for her ambitious sci-fi novels. Writing remains her great love. My crystal ball predicts a Nebula award in her future. 

Two summers ago, she returned to our hometown to give the commencement address at the local college graduation. “Don’t limit yourselves,” she counseled. “Don’t let fear keep you from applying to Harvard or wherever your dreams lead you.”

Where is she now? Teaching and pursuing research at Oxford, another pinnacle of academic achievement. Here’s her website.

A few weeks ago, she called me from England. “Don’t tell anyone yet but I was chosen as a TED scholar for 2020. I’m going to give a TED talk.” That puts her among only 20 people so honored each year.

I was thrilled but, again, not surprised.

Our friendship started with a high school writing contest.

Now I’m standing on the ground, watching a brilliant star rise into the heavens. [Sniffles.]

~~~

Others mentored me. I mentored Sarah. Now she’s mentoring a new generation.

TKZers, whose shoulders did you stand on? Who’s standing on your shoulders?

Are the 1980s ‘history’ yet?

Posted on by

Thanks to Jordan for posting for me while I had to go unexpectedly to Australia (sadly, it was for a family funeral). I have to admit it feels a little strange to be back on the blog even though it’s only a few weeks…Somehow 2020 seems to have started on a bit of an emotional roller-coaster so I think I might need to re-celebrate the new year sometime in March!

Traveling to Australia can be a surreal experience – not only do you clock in at about 28 hours door to door, but going there you literally lose a day and coming back you often arrive before you left…both of which can play havoc on the body’s internal clock. Luckily, I didn’t suffer too much from jet lag this time – though I did experience what I like to call ‘time lag’. Isn’t it funny how going back to the place you grew up often puts you in a bit of a time warp, especially when (in parts of Australia at least) it’s like nothing’s actually changed in the 25 years since you left!

I’ve never written a book set in Australia but this time round a story which has been swirling around in my sub-conscious began to take form. In fact there are two stories circling in my brain – one of which has a definite historical context, the other that would take place (and least partly) in the mid 1980s. As a historical writer who likes to use a particular time and place to ground my stories I’ve been grappling with the question of whether the 1980s can really be considered ‘history’ yet. My memories of that time period are still clear (I’m not that old yet!) but I think I would still have to do research much like I would do for any historical period. If I was setting my story in the 1960s or 1970s I don’t think I’d even ask the question – but the 1980s…hmmm…I’m not so sure.

When I was in Australia, I was struck by how little it had really changed and how easy it would be to mentally transport myself back to my teenage years. But I was also challenged by the prospect of using the recent past as a historical backdrop – especially given how many recent successful franchises have already started to play on this kind of nostalgia (Stranger Things and The Americans anyone?!)…so I’d have to tread very carefully if I was to ensure authenticity and also avoid the usual 1980s cliches.

In some respects it doesn’t even matter (a good story is a good story no matter how you classify it) but it’s funny how in my own head I identify as a historical fiction writer and (if I’m honest) don’t feel all that confident that I could pull off writing ‘contemporary’ fiction (ah, the joys of the angst-filled writer’s mind!). Approaching the 1980s as a historical era would (perhaps) give me the crutch I need to move forward, but then I wonder, if that’s true…then what really is ‘history’ anymore??

So TKZers, what do you think? How do you classify ‘historical fiction? Do the 1980s even qualify???

Mastering the Basics: Point of View and Dialogue

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

We have another first page for critique today. See you on the other side.

THE OIL PATCH PROJECT

1. Slinging Pebbles at Goliath

Southwest National Laboratory
Albuquerque, New Mexico
A Monday in October

Engineering geologist Jim Checkers pushed open the door labeled “GEOCHEMISTRY LAB,” strode across the room to a workbench, and picked up a bulging old briefcase that was sitting among tools, a voltmeter, and a jar of vacuum grease. The place smelled like acetone.

Mattie Hawkins, geochemist at Southwest National Laboratory, locked into Jim’s eyes. “You’ve been spending a lot of vacation time at those oil meetings. Doesn’t your wife care?”

“I suppose, but she’s occupied with her own business.”

“Jim, did it ever occur to you that you can’t save the world?” He stopped to listen. It was pleasant to be around Mattie, the lovely tech who analyzed his samples and generated the data.

“No,” he said, as though answering a question about the weather. “I’ve got the facts … it will force change. I can’t let them continue dumping salt on the land.”

Stuffing another paper into his briefcase, Checkers reached for the old dinner jacket and tie he kept behind the door in case the lab’s brass brought official visitors from the Department of Energy.

“You can’t take on the entire oil industry, Jim.”

“Well, I’ll have to. I registered as a technical witness this time.” He brushed a stray hair from his eyes.

“Jim, you’re playing Don Quixote. The oilmen play for keeps.”

“I’m David facing Goliath, not Quixote fighting a windmill.”

She watched him hurry out and shook her head. “They’ll kill you,” she said to the closing door. “I should know. I grew up in the oil patch.” She wished she hadn’t mentioned his wife.

***

JSB: All right, let’s roll up the ol’ sleeves. I am assuming this is going to be a thriller. Thus, the first thing that needs to change is the title. The Oil Patch Project sounds like a chapter from the annual report of a city council’s energy committee … or a children’s story featuring bunnies. Maybe it’s the world Patch (e.g., Sour Patch Kids). Anyway, it isn’t a compelling thriller title, so I suggest you review this post and come up with alternatives.

I don’t like the chapter title, either. This could be the subject of a whole post, but outside of juvenile lit I’m not a fan of giving titles to chapters. In any event, “Slinging Pebbles at Goliath” is confusing. David grabbed five smooth stones from a stream, suitable for killing. So if your hero is taking on the David role in this book, why is he only using pebbles? You may have an ironic meaning in mind, but it tripped me up. Do you really need it?

Then we come to the location/day stamp (we’ll get to the actual content soon, I promise!) I’m not against these, but I do think you need to be more specific. “A Monday in October” has me thinking, Wait, aren’tyou the author? How come you don’t know the date? I’d thus use “Monday, October 13” or just cut it and indicate the month in the text (if necessary).

We’re writing a thriller here, right? Titles and character names are crucially important. Don’t use the name Checkers. It sounds funny. A clown or a dog (see, e.g., Richard Nixon) might be named Checkers, but not the hero of a thriller.

Okay, let’s get to the content. I want to concentrate on two big areas. We can nitpick sentences here and there, but I’d rater you get your craft in order on these two items before you do anything else.

First is the dialogue. It’s expository. Review my post on the subject. You have the characters saying things not so much to each other as to the reader. In a few short paragraphs you’ve told us all about the high stakes. We need to see them, feel them, as they unfold for the main character. Don’t be in such a rush to tell us everything about a scene. Readers are patient if there is some real action and tension happening.

Don’t confuse the reader with wrong pronoun placement. You have:

“Jim, did it ever occur to you that you can’t save the world?” He stopped to listen.

That is Mattie’s line of dialogue, but you have Jim’s pronoun immediately following. No, no, never, never. It should be:

“Jim, did it ever occur to you that you can’t save the world?”

He stopped to listen.

Also, you have Mattie using Jim’s name three different times in this short segment. Once is enough.

Now on to the second problem—Point of View. The first two paragraphs are omniscient, with the author telling us about each of the characters in the scene:

Engineering geologist Jim Checkers…

Mattie Hawkins, geochemist at Southwest National Laboratory…

Then we drop into Jim’s POV:

It was pleasant to be around Mattie...

But at the end, we switch to Mattie’s POV:

She watched him hurry out…

This is called “head hopping.” The effect on the reader is subtle confusion. Who am I supposed to care about? Whose story is it?

So here’s what I want you to do, author.

  1. Study Point of View

Don’t worry. Many, if not most, new writers struggle with POV. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll find it makes an almost magical difference in your writing. You can begin your studies right here at TKZ. Emeritus blogger Jodie Renner did a great series on POV a few years ago:

POV 101 – Get into Your Protagonist’s Head and Stay There 

POV 102 – How to Avoid Head-Hopping 

POV 103 – Engage Your Readers with Deep Point of View 

  1. Study Dialogue

Get a few novels by dialogue masters and see how they do it. Notice how tight their dialogue is, how there’s no rush to give out information, how it is consistent with their characters, and how it contains tension or conflict. Let me suggest Elmore Leonard and Robert B. Parker (1980s and 90s Parker) as exemplars. Perhaps others will have suggestions in the comments.

And for the definitive text on the craft of dialogue, I humbly suggest this one.

Don’t let this discourage you, author. Craft improvement is hard work. But the rewards are great. Study, write, get feedback, write some more. Do this for the rest of your life. You’re a writer, after all.