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What is your strongest skill as a writer? Which aspect of your writing needs the most improvement?

By Debbie Burke

We might as well confess. As writers, we’ve been known to eavesdrop on conversations.

We wonder, what is that couple at the next table squabbling about? Or we listen over the dressing room partition to young women anticipating their lovers’ reactions to lingerie they’re trying on. Or we’re stuck on a plane beside a gnarly guy with strange tattoos who’s swearing at the unfortunate soul on the other end of his cell phone.

Writers can’t help being incurably nosy, because we’re always on the lookout for the germ of a great story idea.

But what about when a normal person listens in on conversations among crime writers? Those can veer into potentially gruesome territory, especially when we’re doing research with professional experts, like medical first responders, law enforcement, military personnel, and others whose jobs bring them in contact with violence, its perpetrators and victims. Such experts always have colorful stories to share about bizarre cases and unsolved mysteries.

However, those chats can get graphic. If a civilian (non-writer) happened to listen in on such conversations, they might overhear scary stuff they’d rather not know. On top of that, the gory details could ruin someone’s lunch if they’re unlucky enough to sit too close to your table.

GROSS-OUT ALERT: If your stomach is delicate, skip the next two paragraphs.

While hanging out in the hotel bar at a writers conference, an FBI agent told me the story about an obese female who’d died under suspicious circumstances. Because he wasn’t looking forward to observing the autopsy on a body that had been dead for several days, he’d skipped breakfast to avoid the embarrassment of losing it, and stuffed his nose with Vicks to deal with the smell. But he wasn’t ready for the visual about to unfold before him.

Decomposition causes gases to build up inside a body, the reason why drowning victims eventually float to the surface. When the medical examiner made the Y-shaped cut in the woman’s torso, yards of gas-filled intestines billowed up through the incision. According to the FBI agent, they looked “just like balloon animals.” He has not been able to look at balloon animals since without thinking of that unforgettable image. Neither have I.

Okay, it’s safe to resume reading.

One morning, I met for coffee at a local haunt with two mystery writer pals, one of whom is an emergency physician. I often query her about strangulation, gunshot wounds, blood loss, drug overdoses, etc. She’s an indispensable encyclopedia of medical knowledge.

The subject came up about how to kill someone using an IV in a hospital. The learned doctor suggested several drugs that couldn’t be traced in an autopsy. The three of us debated the pros and cons of various drugs, looking for an option that would be easy for a killer to obtain, but wouldn’t show on a toxicological screen.

Suddenly, we noticed other customers had moved far away from our table and were shooting concerned looks in our direction. Thankfully, no one called 911 to report three seemingly harmless, but obviously evil, women plotting the perfect murder.

Then there’s the time my husband and I were on vacation in Florida. We’d become acquainted with an interesting gentleman who was a retired coroner. Since I got up early and my husband slept late, for several mornings, the coroner and I wound up on side-by-side chaise lounges, sunning ourselves by the pool. Naturally we’d get talking. He told me about unusual cases and I’d ask him about various plot devices. At the time, I was working on a short story about a murder committed in a nudist resort. But where do you hide the weapon?

The coroner came up with the ideal solution. Take a bottle of sunscreen lotion. Add a particular lethal drug. The toxin is absorbed through the skin and mimics the effects of a heart attack. Brilliant!

Then we noticed sunbathers on adjacent chaises, suspiciously watching us. I’m sure they thought the coroner and I were clandestine lovers, plotting the murder of my poor, unsuspecting husband.

Nevertheless, this tale had a happy ending: my short story was published and, thankfully, my husband survived unscathed.

Writers get carried away with imaginary characters and imaginary crimes. Maybe we should issue disclaimers to innocent folks at adjacent tables. “It’s okay, we’re not really going to rob a bank. We’re just writers. Pull up a chair and help us plan the perfect crime.”

Debbie Burke wrote a TKZ guest blog several weeks ago about Kindle Scout. She plans to take the plunge soon and enter her suspense thriller, Instrument of the Devil.

By John Gilstrap

I just finished a book that was sent to me in search of a blurb.  It was one of the most thrilling thrillers I’ve read in a long time, and because the publisher was on tight time constraints, I gave the book a rave blurb when I was only about three-quarters of the way through.  I mean, this was a pulse-pounder.

Until the last 30 pages.

“Before you kill me, you’ve got to tell me why you did it, and how all of your compatriots fit into the puzzle.”  Okay, it wasn’t that on-the-nose, but it was close.  Such a disappointment.  I don’t regret the blurb, and I would read the author again because of the exciting 9/10 of the storytelling, but I really felt let down.  And no, I won’t share the book title or the author because I don’t think that would be fair.

Folks, this show-don’t-tell trope holds from the beginning of a story all the way through to the last page.  I think that writers sometimes get tired of their own stories, or they’re leaning face-first into the fan blades of a submission deadline and they sort of eject from the plot and characters, settling for, “Well, it’s good enough.”

And you know what? I get that.  I’ll readily forgive that of an author I’ve followed and whose works I enjoy, provided it’s a one-off.  I’ll write it off as their Mulligan book, their bye.  But at that point, they’re on notice.  The next book better be up to standard, or they lose their spot on the TBR pile.

This is why the bar is set especially high for new writers.  Rookies don’t get a Mulligan on their first swing.  They’ve got to slam that baby three hundred yards straight down the fairway.

“I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.” – Truman Capote

By PJ Parrish

I hate Lee Child.

Well, at least I got your attention.

Okay, I don’t really hate the guy. He’s actually one of the menschiest men in our business. But about once a year, right around the same time, I really really really hate the guy.
Why? He claims he never rewrites. He says he writes one draft and that is what makes it into print. Here is an excerpt from an interview he gave to a reporter for the Independent newspaper in Britain:

“This isn’t the first draft, you know.”

He’d only written two words. CHAPTER ONE.

“Oh,” I said. “What is it then?”

“It’s the only draft!”

Right then, he sounded more like Jack Reacher than Lee Child. More Reacher than writer.

“I don’t want to improve it. When I’ve written something, that is the way it has to stay. It’s like one of those old photos you come across. From the 1970s. And you have this terrible Seventies haircut and giant lapels on your jacket. It’s ridiculous – but it’s there. It is what it is. Leave it alone.”

Okay, let me try to qualify this a little. This week I am starting rewrites on our latest Louis Kincaid thriller. Now, we’re pretty clean writers. We write so slowly that things tend to fall in place as we go along. But this newest book was different. It didn’t chug nicely along, with a little lurch or two along the way. This one was a big Victorian locomotive that would speed ahead for three chapters, hit a hill, careen backwards, smack into a tree and then start groaning forward again, all the while belching out noxious clouds of purple smoke.

But at least it is done. And while we normally now would be going in with a light heart and an Allen wrench to fine-tune, this time we are going back into the manuscript with grim determination and a scalpel in one hand and sledgehammer in the other.

I know the story is solid. In fact, it might be the best book we’ve written. But I also know we have weeks of rewrite hell ahead. How did this happen? Partly because this book came when both Kelly and I had a lot of life stuff going on. For my part, I moved to a new city after living in the same place for 40 years, so I often had to break my vow of writing daily and thus I had to leave my imaginary world and live in the real world of closing statements and cardboard boxes. The main man in my life wasn’t my hero Louis Kincaid but Two Men and a Truck.

Writing tip of the day no. 1: Even when life intrudes, do everything you can to maintain daily contact with your novel. Visit your imaginary world every day, even if it’s just to go back and read what you already wrote.

But that wasn’t the only problem. The story we chose this time was very ambitious, both in plot, characterization and theme. This time out, for book no. 14, we weren’t just juggling with fire torches, we were juggling with chainsaws. And at times, we lost our way in both the arcs of the case (plot) and its people (character).

Writing tip of the day no. 2: Even if you’re a pantser like me, create a road map for your story. You don’t have to stick to the outline or template, but when you get distracted, it can be a path back to the main story road.

Sometimes, learning about how other writers do things – watching how someone else makes their sausage – can help you find your own process. So let me share some things I’m facing as I go into rewrites this week. It won’t be your tao, but it might spark a how.

First, we have to deal with the little stuff. Things like changing a character name or setting up the bread crumb trail of your clues better. Kelly and I deal with these small potatoes by creating Post-It notes. Here’s a typical Skype conversation for us:

Kelly: We need to beef up the FBI dossier on Steele that Emily gives Louis.

Me: Where do you think it should go?

Kelly: How about in the first restaurant scene where they first talk about the team?

Me: Good idea.

Kelly: Make a sticky note or you’ll forget it.

So I scribble out a note on a Post-It and slap it up on a board in my office. But as I packed up my office, I had to stuff all the “sticky notes” in an envelope .

Today, I got them out of the box and spread them on the glass door of my desk so at least now I can see what awaits me.

This is only part of them. I ran out of room. It gets worse. While we were in mid-move, we were still trying to work so I had to resort to making Microsoft sticky notes that I slapped onto my desk top:

Now do you understand why I hate Lee Child?

What’s weird about this is that normally I love rewriting.  At this point for me, the grunt work is done, the sweat has dried, and I am merely redecorating, pulling weeds, repainting, and repositioning the furniture. But this book needs a new entry door, a couple walls knocked down, a massive new support beam around chapter 25, and a new addition built onto the back.  It’s not Property Brothers; it’s This Old House.

Writing tip of the day no. 3: Sometimes you don’t see the real problems until you have finished the whole book.

It wasn’t until we got around page 400 that Kelly and I realized just how much big structural work was ahead of us. We couldn’t see these issues until we had traveled the entire course of the story. We had been in the PLOT trees for so long that it wasn’t until we emerged back out into the open that we could look back and clearly see the CHARACTER/THEME forest.

So what do we need to fix? Here’s just a few things:

Chapter 1: Yeah, I hear your groans. Because if you read our First Page Critiques here, you know how important the opening moments of your story are. Our story starts slowly, with Louis returning to his home state of Michigan to take a job with a new prestigious cold case squad led by the police captain who, eight years before (in book 2), had caused Louis to lose his job.  Okay, that’s a good obstacle for Louis but it’s not a sexy opening for a thriller. So we wrote a “prologue” in which two young boys are running for their lives from an unknown person who wants to seal them in a box.  Well, THAT’S attention-grabbing.  But as we neared the end of the book, we realized the scene felt artificial, like we were desperate to inject action into the opening. We were trying to gin up the story, but the scene was not organic to what came after — Louis on the first day of the job.

So we’ve axed the boys scene and are writing a scene between Louis and his new boss that will play on the tension between the men and stress the high stakes for Louis.

Writing tip of the day no. 4: Don’t be afraid of the slow opening as long as it has tension, hints at a major conflict, or  conveys that something has been disturbed.  You don’t have to throw a boulder into a lake to make waves; sometimes a well-aimed rock creates ripples enough to make the reader want more.

Another thing we need to fix is our characters’s motivations. Okay, I’ve been married for 35 years and just when I think I know my husband, he does something that makes me think, blink or just laugh my ass off. So it should be with your characters. You won’t know everything about them when you start, so don’t expect to. Keep control of them, yes, but be open to their surprises and their growth.  Kelly and I found we didn’t know really know what drove our villain until he was vanquished around page 350.  Now we have to go back and build up his early scenes — putting in that crucial beam or two! — so his final actions make sense. Even the bad guys deserve this respect.

Then there’s the last thing we need to  fix — our theme. This one is maybe the hardest because theme is a slippery thing. I think theme is really important to good books. It is what your book is really about at its heart. It isn’t plot. Here’s Stephen King on the subject:

Writing and literature classes can be annoyingly preoccupied by (and pretentious about) theme, approaching it as the most sacred of sacred cows, but (don’t be shocked) it’s really no big deal. If you write a novel, spend weeks and then months catching it word by word, you owe it both to the book and to yourself to lean back (or take a long walk) when you’ve finished and ask yourself why you bothered–why you spent all that time, why it seemed so important. In other words, what’s it all about, Alfie?

When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest. Not every book has to be loaded with symbolism, irony, or musical language (they call it prose for a reason, y’know), but it seems to me that every book–at least every one worth reading–is about something. Your job during or just after the first draft is to decide something or somethings yours is about. Your job in the second draft–one of them, anyway–is to make that something even more clear. This may necessitate some big changes and revisions. The benefits to you and your reader will be clearer focus and a more unified story. It hardly ever fails

We weren’t sure what this book was about, to be honest. It is about the murder of a mega-church minister — and how that murder ties into the little boys who were nailed into a box and left to die. But that’s just plot. What does all this mean? We knew the theme was loosely about religion. But It wasn’t until Kelly wrote one line of dialogue in chapter 34 that we found the theme. The line came from an atheist whom Louis interviews:

What does a man do with his guilt if he doesn’t believe in God? 

That line made us realize our book’s heart was about how people who are damaged — and people who inflict damage on others — still find a reason to believe in something.  But now we have to go back and carefully calibrate each character, through their actions, thoughts and words, to reflect that main idea. And yes, there is an answer even for the villain.

So, if you’ll excuse me I have some heavy lifting to do. If you are about to finish your book — huzzah, huzzah! — let me leave you with a couple miscellaneous bullet points about surviving rewrite hell.

Don’t get caught in ego-trap that your first draft is great. Hemingway himself said the first draft is always crap. (well, he used a different word).

Sometimes to fix it, you have to break it.

Let your first draft bake. I call this the de-cheesing time. Finish the book, let it sit for at least two weeks, then print it out and read it. The bad parts will stink like bad Brie.

Be courageous but careful. Rewriting is like eating an elephant. It’s one bite at a time.

Take out all the dumb words. Figure out what your writer tic is — mine is an overuse of “then” and “suddenly.” Excise all the flabby physical movements like, “He nodded his head.” (He just nodded.) Don’t keep repeating physical attributes. Once you tell me the lady has sea foam green eyes, don’t tell me again.

Hire an editor if you need one. And most of us need one badly. There is nothing more valuable than a trained reader who will tell you the truth and whose only interest is the quality of your book.

Sometimes you have to add, not subtract. Contrary to what Truman Capote, not every rewrite needs scissors. Sometimes you need to put more meat on the plot bones or inject blood into anemic characters. Stop obsessing about word count. The book will be as long as it needs to be.

Have a plan going in. After you’ve let the draft bake and given it a fresh read, write down the things — big and small — that you have to deal with. Here’s Chuck Wendig on the subject in his usual colorful style:

You write your first draft however you want. Outline, no outline, finger-painted on the back of a Waffle House placemat in your own feces, I don’t care. But you go to attack a rewrite without a plan in mind, you might as well be a chimpanzee humping a football helmet. How do you know what to fix if you haven’t identified what’s broken? This isn’t the time for intuition. Have notes. Put a plan in place. Surgical strike.

And as you eat the elephant, keep an eye out for that theme. Or as Dorothy Parker put it in her book on writing:

I would write a book at least three times–once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.

 

But, after all this, after all this advice I’ve set out here, isn’t it fair to let the King of the Perfect Draft have the last word? Take it, Lee Child…

My honest answer is ignore advice because it’s got to be your product. It’s got to be an organic product with a vital, vivid integrity of its own and you’ll never get that if you’re worried about what other people are telling you to do.

A few days ago I saw an author ‘rant’ posted on social media (for the sake of anonymity I won’t mention the author or the social media platform!). It was a full-blown tirade against insensitive publishers and their treatment of authors and their submissions. I don’t know the author personally but the post highlighted for me the dangers of airing grievances online. While I certainly have a great deal of sympathy – the whole process of writing and trying to get published is not for the fainthearted – but social media is definitely not the place to air your frustration or bitterness.This particular rant seemed to be aimed at the fact that certain publishers had not bothered to even respond to a full MS submission. Now, I know silence is horrible and the waiting to hear back on a submission is nerve-wracking, but unfortunately it’s all part and parcel of the (traditional) publishing process. The online post reminded me of the rules I try to follow when it comes to social media and dealing with the publishing process…because you never know who might read or share your online post. These rules include:

• Maintain Professionalism:  This goes for all online posts related to employment, the publishing industry and the submission process. If you want to be taken seriously, you have present yourself as cool, calm and professional. No agent or editor wants to deal with an unprofessional author. They don’t want tantrums or drama. They want great quality work delivered on time. Equally well, I’ve never met anyone in the publishing industry who doesn’t love what they do and who doesn’t have the utmost respect for the work that goes into writing a novel. This is, however, an industry (hey, publishers want to make money) and, though it can be brutal, if you want to participate in it, you have to deal with rejection and frustration like a professional. Which leads to my next rule…
• Never air your grievances: Even though the publishing process may drive you to drink/despair/chocolate bingeing…never resort to telling the world how awful such-and-such agent/editor/publisher is…unless you’ve encountered truly unethical behavior or a scam. Only then do I feel an author should legitimately alert the online community to what has happened.
• Be careful of venting your frustration online: Not just because you never know who might read or share you post but also because it has a tendency to lead to a downward spiral of comments/reactions/flame ups that never end well. It may seem cathartic at first but I’m not sure it helps. While I admire honesty (I’m certainly not suggesting authors lie or present an unrealistic picture of the publishing process), I think restraint is usually the best policy. Cry, vent and scream all you want in private but don’t do it public.

So TKZers do you have ‘rules’ you follow when it comes to social media and discussing your experiences with publishing or the publishing process? How do you react when you see a post that rants and rails against the industry? Do you agree authors should keep their frustrations to themselves or would you prefer to see more venting for the sake of honesty?

As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?