HOW TO BE A CRIME VICTIM… PAINLESSLY

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By Debbie Burke

The Scene of the Crime

Last year, I became the victim of an attempted sexual assault in broad daylight.

An assailant stuck a gun in my back, dragged me into a dark, deserted barn on the county fairgrounds, and tried to rape me. When he put down the gun as he tried to tear my clothes off, I kicked him where no man wants to be kicked. He escaped out the back of the barn.

I survived completely unscathed…because, fortunately, I was not a real victim, but a role player in a law enforcement training scenario.

Alumni of the local Sheriff’s Citizens Academy get tapped from time to time as role players in training sessions for reserve officers, the posse, and search and rescue. Since I completed the Citizens Academy, I’ve walked heel-to-toe in a mock traffic stop for drunk driving. I portrayed the hysterical mother of a child injured in an accident. I played a victim of a medical emergency, which turned into a bona fide emergency when a swarm of yellow jackets stung me!

 

Photo by Lynette Schimming, Thompson Falls, MT

 

 

 

The sexual assault scenario mentioned above was part of the training for posse and reservists who respond to emergencies at the county fair. Each trainee team answered mock radio calls from a 911 dispatcher about various crimes, in addition to lost children and heart attacks. Trainees rotated through stations staged around the fairgrounds, while deputies and police officers observed and evaluated how they handled each situation.

A deputy staged the scene beforehand: drag marks in the dirt, signs of a struggle in the stall, a fake gun left on a shelf by the attacker, and footprints leaving the barn. Then each team would rotate in turn to our station.

The lead instructor had already briefed trainees about their duties. In the sexual assault scenario, they were supposed to interview the victim (me), call for medical assistance, and broadcast the assailant’s description on the radio. Then they would secure and preserve the crime scene until regular officers relieved them.

Cops love to tell stories. My favorite part of the exercise was during down time between rotations. That’s when the story-telling began—a great opportunity for me as a writer to pick up details, nuances, and subtleties that lend authenticity to crime novels.

Since the county covers 5000+ square miles with only four deputies on duty each shift, stories abound of the resourcefulness required when responding alone to calls in remote locations.

A CSI related the tale of an overweight officer who’d taken a lot of kidding about his size. Late one night he arrested a rambunctious suspect who, despite being handcuffed, kept trying to run off. With backup seventy-five miles away, the deputy had to find a safe way to further restrain him until help arrived. So he spent the next forty-five minutes…lying on top of the suspect.

 

His fellow officers still kidded him, but with respect for a guy who used the tools at hand to solve a problem.

Because of a rash of ambushes on law enforcement, most officers were wearing a black band over their badges. In a lowered voice, a veteran deputy with fifteen years’ service confided, “My six-year-old just told me, ‘Dad, I don’t want you to be a police officer anymore.’” That poignant sentence spoke volumes about the family life of cops. It will stay with me for a long time.

Back to the training session. One trainee earnestly wrote down my description of the would-be rapist. Another reassured me that I was safe. Others took the initiative to clear the barn and search for the suspect.

After each team completed the exercise, the evaluators critiqued their responses. One team did not enter the barn at all. When the evaluator asked why, the answer was: “We could see the gun from where we were outside, we didn’t know if the perpetrator was still around, I wanted to keep my partner in sight.” They received a nod of approval from the evaluator.

Another team split up—one talked with me, while the other cleared the barn, checking stalls with a flashlight, careful to avoid the footprints and drag marks. Again, a nod of approval.

According to the evaluator, both approaches were appropriate since trainees took their individual limitations into account and did not compromise safety.

And then there was the posse volunteer who proved the adage, you get what you pay for…

This trainee had clearly never watched a single episode of CSI. Upon arriving at the scene, he immediately rushed into the barn and stomped on the footprints and drag marks. Then he grabbed the gun, obliterating the attacker’s prints.

The evaluator took him aside…for counseling.

After training ended, we ate lunch and reviewed the volunteers’ performances. Feedback from the 911 operator was especially useful. She cautioned if a responder didn’t answer a radio call, the operator might assume trouble and dispatch assistance, when, in fact, the responder simply forgot to acknowledge a call. Big oops.

Taking the course can broaden your education and add verisimilitude to your novels.

Besides, it’s not often one becomes a “victim” without suffering any trauma. Role-playing is far preferable to the real thing!

TKZers, what are your favorite tools to lend authenticity to your stories?

 

When she’s not playing a crime victim, Debbie Burke writes about them. Her new thriller Instrument of the Devil is available on Amazon.

 

 

Engineering A Brand

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By John Gilstrap

This past Sunday, I returned from Indianapolis, Indiana, where I spent the weekend at the always-wonderful Magna Cum Murder conference.  As often happens at such events, the panels I participated in got me thinking more introspectively about my writing than I ordinarily do.  In one such panel, I heard myself refer to a book as “an engineered product,” and I realized that I’d landed on the topic of this week’s TKZ post.

When we buy anything from a car to a cheeseburger, we expect it to meet certain engineering specifications.  We expect less luxury from a low-end Kia than we do from a top-of-the-line Mercedes, but irrespective of price and name recognition, we expect our chosen vehicle to get us from here to there without burning up, and in the event of a wreck, we expect the seat belts to work.  The perfectly-cooked fast food burger is of no lesser quality than the perfectly-cooked Porterhouse at a 5-star restaurant, but the expectation is different.

When people buy a John Gilstrap book (yes, it’s a little creepy to refer to myself in the third person), I presume they expect a different kind of ride than what they’ll get from, say, a Danielle Steele book.  Our stories are engineered differently, from the ground up, with the result that a Venn diagram of our respective fans would likely reveal a tiny shared area.  Different readers have different tastes, and my job as a professional storyteller is to deliver what my readers have come to expect.

No, that’s too passive.  My job as a writer is to deliver what I have promised fans for over two decades, attracting new readers who could just as easily have chosen a different book and different author.  Those who sample my work and like it are willing to try me again and again, so long as I hold up my end of the bargain.  I offer a tacit promise that there will be violence without gore-porn, there may be romance, but there will be no graphic sex.  My good guys will always be principled, and when the ride is over, justice will reign over my little corner of the fiction universe.  That’s the deal.  That’s my dining menu.

If I let my fan base down even once, I risk losing them forever.  Some will give me a bye if I fall short, but others won’t.  I worked my butt off for every set of eyes, and to risk losing even one is unacceptable.

Of course, the flip side of this is the risk of my stories becoming too predictable—too formulaic—which has its own negative consequences.  So, while providing a trustworthy reading experience, it’s incumbent on me to mix it up a little.  In Scorpion Strike (July, 2018), Jonathan Grave’s team endures their first fatality.  It was a hard scene to write, and it’s a scary thing to do.  Fingers crossed that I won’t drive readers away.

A lot of cyber ink gets spilled in the blogosphere talking about platform building, social media marketing and the like.  It occurred to me this weekend that platform-building and trust are closely related.  As authors’ careers grow, I think it’s important for them to think two or three books ahead—not regarding plots, but in terms of what kind of product they want to addict their readers to.  I believe marketers would call this thinking about their brand.

The harsh truth is that writing and getting read are two entirely different, though related transactions.  Without doubt, every writer is free to write whatever he wants, and publish (or not) by whatever means he desires.  But if said writer wants to maximize his ability to build a readership, he needs to teach his readers what to expect, and then dependably deliver on the promises he makes.

I know too many talented writers who finally achieve the dream of publication only to sabotage their own careers through literary ADD.  One very talented self-published friend of mine cannot constrain his creative impulses.  In quick succession, he’s pushed out a cozy, a thriller, a PI novel and a couple of horror books.  I get the need to flex the creative muscle, but there’s a reason why we don’t see Pepsodent pistols or Smith & Wesson toothpaste.  Branding matters.

What say you, Killzoners?

The Rituals of Writing

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By PJ Parrish

This one is going to be shorter than my usual Michener-esque meanderings, because two things have happened this week:

  1. We finished the book
  2. Rewrites are needed — bad.

So I thought maybe, for a change, we could talk about something that doesn’t cause us writers angst — the positive little rituals that help get us through our days.  I thought about this today because whenever my sister Kelly and I finish a first draft, we have a special ritual.  First I type a word

THE

Then she types a word

END

Then we crack open an unshabby bottle of wine, preferably champagne, hug each other and get smashed. We started this ritual way back in 2000 after we finished our second book Dead of Winter.  It came about because back then, as we were nearing the finish line, Kelly would routinely come down to visit me in Fort Lauderdale and we would work together in my office, back-to-back on our computers.  Sort of like Ferrante and Teicher, except that Kelly’s two-finger hunt-and-peck key pounding tended to sound more like Keith Moon.

We kept to our ritual for a couple years, but then life started to intrude. Kelly’s life became peripatetic and hectic.  She couldn’t easily get down to Florida.  So we had to resort to ritual-by-email.  I would type THE on the Word Perfect doc and then send it to her.  She would type END and send it back. We’d then get on the phone and toast each other from our respective corners of the world.  It wasn’t as much fun.

Then around book six or nine — I forget — Skype came into being. Now, this was a god-send for our partnership because I could call up a chapter on my screen, share, and she could see it on her screen thousands of miles away while we talked about it. And we were able, when we were finished, at least see each other as we raised our glasses.

This is also how we opened Christmas presents. Better, but it still wasn’t the same.

A couple years ago, Kelly finally made it back to our home state of Michigan, settling finally, after a couple false starts, in beautiful Traverse City.  I was secretly envious because I really didn’t like living in South Florida, but I had put down deep roots. Then last year, my husband Daniel gave me the best gift he’s ever given me — he agreed to leave the place where he had lived for 40 years so I could be happier. We sold our Fort Lauderdale condo and bought a little house in Tallahassee, where we are very content. But then, came the icing on the cake.  Because of the move to Tally, we had enough left over to buy a small condo in Traverse City.  So I’m officially a snowbird.  A very happy one. So’s the husband.  He told me the other day, “Thank you for making me do this. I needed a kick in the ass.”

So for the first time in ten years, Kelly and I were in one place when we finished the book.  We bought a bottle of SEX pink champagne from Mawby vineyards here in TC, typed out THE END, hugged and uncorked.  The wine is only $15 a bottle but tasted like Veuve Clicquot Brut Rose.

I love rituals, especially when they involve family. Like opening presents on Christmas Eve instead of morning.  Deviled eggs for Thanksgiving dinner. Celebrating our sixth-month anniversary every year with my husband because we never thought we’d make it that far.  Rituals are important.  They are the bonds, born of our memories, that keep us from spinning away into the lonely void.

Most of my writer friends have rituals, some silly, some serious. One of my favorite scenes from the movie Misery is the opening, where Paul Sheldon types THE END and then indulges in his own writer-ritual — gently tucking his finished manuscript to bed in his old briefcase, setting out one cigarette, one match and a bottle of Dom. Here’s the scene if you want to watch:

I can relate. Can you? Rituals help us establish a sense of continuity in a business that can make us feel ungrounded and unguarded. And if you think your rituals are weird…

Roald Dahl, when he wants to write, gets into a sleeping bag, pulls it up to his waist and settles into a faded wing-backed armchair. He puts his feet up on a battered traveling case full of logs. This is roped to the legs of the armchair so it’s always at a perfect distance.

Joan Didion holds her books close to her heart—literally. When she’s close to finishing one, she’ll sleep beside it in the same room. “Somehow the book doesn’t leave you when you’re asleep right next to it,” she said in a 1968 interview with The Paris Review.

The great Greek statesman Demosthenes, to get himself in the writing groove, would shave one side of his head so he wouldn’t be tempted to leave the house until he was finished.

John Steinbeck, who wrote his drafts in pencil, always kept twelve perfectly sharpened pencils on his desk. He wore them down to nubs. His editor started sending him round pencils instead of normal hexagonal ones, because Steinbeck had developed such bad callouses.

So…whatever your ritual, wallow in it. It makes you special. It is part of your style, and I hope that something of that uniqueness, that weirdness, shows up on the page every day.

Gotta go. Rewrites await. I’m considering that if I don’t get serious about them pretty quickly here, I might have to go shave half my hair off.  But that might be just the Sex talking.

 

Books to Remember

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With any luck by the time this posts I’ll be on a plane bound for Tokyo and Typhoon Lan hasn’t totally disrupted my plans. This means I won’t be able to respond immediately to comments, but I’m hoping some TKZers will join in and comment nonetheless.

I’ve been thinking about those reading moments that become etched in your mind – where you remember the exact time and place you read a particular book so that the memory itself is almost as potent as the book. This has happened to me on a few occasions – usually while I’m traveling – and it’s amazing just how vivid the recollections can still be. Like the late night flight to NYC where I read the first Harry Potter book. I distinctly remember the moment I got to Diagon Alley and just how magical that seemed. The memory is so strong I can visualize the pages of the book in the pool of overhead light.Then there was also a train ride from London to Manchester when I first read Philip Pullman’s The Northern Lights (or as it was called here in the USA, The Golden Compass) and how it felt being transported to an alternate Oxford while the English scenery whizzed past out the window. (NB: I’m hoping to reclaim this sense of exhilaration reading Philip Pullman’s latest – The Book of Dust – on the flight to Japan (or to be more accurate I will be fighting over it with one of my twins who has already disappeared off with the book to start it!).

I’ve had many flights where the book I was reading so totally consumed me that I was still  voraciously reading it after landing – gripping the book until the very last moment when I had to get out of my seat and deplane. This happened to me with both Tana French’s novel In The Woods and Elizabeth Wein’s Code Name Verity. What is surprising is why only some books provide such vivid ‘reading’ memories and yet others, just as equally good, seem to slip by – where I recollect the book but not the moment of reading it. Perhaps it’s the mark of an amazing book or maybe it’s the confluence of circumstances that make the reading part so memorable – but still it’s amazing how certain readings stay with you, while others just seem to fade away.

So TKZers what is your most vivid memory about reading a particular book? Why do you think some books inspire such strong recollections of the moment they were first read?

 

What is Originality?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Whenever my wife and I travel to the Bay Area, we try to pop over to Berkeley and nosh at the noted bistro Chez Panisse. Overseen by its co-founder, executive chef Alice Waters, it is credited with popularizing the style of cooking known as California cuisine.

I’m no specialist in things culinary, but I know what I like. And I like California cuisine. It takes familiar foods and spices and combines them in a way that is not overpowering to the palate. It’s sort of like being in a park on a sunny California day, the temperature not overpowering, and lots of happy things going on around you.

Which brings me to the subject of originality. I connect it to Alice Waters by way of this passage from Theme & Strategy (Writer’s Digest Books) by Ronald Tobias:

We say we prize originality above all else in art. Originality is the artist’s brilliance, that indefinable something that is distinctly the artist’s and no one else’s. What gets lost in all that praise of individuality is that originality is nothing more than seasoning added to stock. Seasoning gives distinct flavor, its character or charm, if you will, and seasoning gives the distinct taste that immediately identifies the dish as unique. But we forget that the foundation remains the same, and that the chef and the diner both rely on that fact.

A chef’s genius is not to create a dish from original ingredients, but to combine standard ingredients in original ways. The diner recognizes the pattern established in the foundation of a baked stuffed turkey, and we look for the variation, the twist that will surprise and delight us. Perhaps it’s in the glaze or in the stuffing, something that makes that turkey different from all the other turkeys that came before it.

As you develop an idea for a story, start with the foundation, the pattern of action and reaction that is plot.

In my workshops I’m sometimes asked how to keep plot and structure from devolving into formulaic writing. My answer is similar to what Tobias says above. And what Alice Waters would say. You don’t cook an omelet with a watermelon. If I want an omelet, I want it made with eggs in a pan with some ingredients and spices. What those add-ons are and how they are proportioned make up the distinctiveness–the originality if you will–of the dish.

In the same way, structure is the eggs. It’s what readers expect from a story. They don’t want to be confused or frustrated. Of course, an author is free to write experimental fiction, which is also known by its unofficial name, Fiction That Doesn’t Sell.

But if you’re in this to make some dough, you’ll use familiar ingredients but you’ll spice them up with your unique brand of characterization, dialogue, and voice.

The late, great writing teacher Jack Bickham wrote the following in Scene & Structure (Writer’s Digest Books):

Mention words such as structure, form, or plot to some fiction writers, and they blanch. Such folks tend to believe that this kind of terminology means writing by some type of … predetermined format as rigid as a paint-by-numbers portrait.

Nothing could be further from the truth

In reality, a thorough understanding and use of fiction’s classic structural patterns frees the writer from having to worry about the wrong things, and allows her to concentrate her Imagination on characters and events rather than on such stuff as transitions and moving characters around, when to begin or open a chapter, whether there ought to be a flashback, and so on. Once you understand structure, many such architectural questions become virtually irrelevant — and structure has nothing to do with “filling in the blocks.”

Structure is nothing more than a way of looking at your story material so that it’s organized in a way that’s both logical and dramatic.

Don’t get ensnared by the ruinous idea that structure is the enemy of originality and this thing we call “story.” In fact, the opposite is true.

So become a great chef. Know your ingredients. Cook up a delicious tale by mixing the familiar with your unique blend of spices.

Your readers will eat it up.

What is your view of originality? What are some examples from writers you admire?

First Page Critique: THE ARCANISTS

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Artwork by Jean-Louis Grandsire, courtesy pixabay.com

Good morning, my friends, and thank you for visiting us at The Kill Zone today. Please join me in welcoming Anon du jour, who has bravely offered a submission entitled The Arcanists to our irregularly scheduled First Page Critique!

The Arcanists

“Remember, this isn’t a bust, so no ruckus,” he said.

“Sure.”

“I mean it.”

“Sure.”

“If things get tight, drop out.”

Grim waved behind her and strode toward the Gasping Grouse.

Not far off, a foghorn warded ships into port. A train rattled, tracking, like a harried squirrel, along the rails overhead.

Grim hunched her shoulders, shoved her hands in her deep pockets.

As she pushed past the wooden doors, a sulfur cloud of smoke and unwashed flesh wormed into her nostrils, wringing water from her eyes. She should have been used to this by now, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to cover her face with her sleeve.She kept her eyes low as she snaked between the bar and the tables, past rows of cardsharps and washed up sogs who didn’t know when to give in.

She found the informant gazing into a full tankard at the end of the room.

 

Grimhorn liked to settle her accounts with a lamb’s smile and a loaded spell deck in her overcoat pocket. The smile came free of charge. The deck was insurance.

You could never know many aces an informant was hiding in his vest, and Grim didn’t give two lashings if things got messy when they refused to pay up.

She leaned into the shadow of a brick wall and turned her collar up against the cold. Across the road, smoke and steam poured from the gaslit hub of the Gasping Grouse. Tonight’s quarry was a dream merchant with a penchant for fraud.

Grim’s partner, Gravehound, stood by as Grim flexed her mechanical left arm. He tossed his cigarette onto the cobblestone and stamped it out with his boot.

“Rusty gears?” he asked.

Grim shook her head. “Steelshifter’s metal. It don’t rust.”

“That isn’t cheap. How’d you get your hands on it?”

Grim smiled.

“You’re a piece of work,” Gravehound said.

“Don’t I know it.” Grim pulled a leather glove over her metal fingers. The steelshifter had fitted her just a week ago but the arm suited her almost as well as if she’d been born with it. And it had only cost her one month’s pay—after she’d bartered him down a little.

“I’m going in,” she said, patting the deck beneath her wool coat.

Gravehound clutched her arm.

She glanced back. His hair shone silver in the darkness, making him look far older than his twenty odd years.

 

Anon, The Arcanists appears to me to be aimed at the steampunk audience. Steampunk is not a genre that I reflexively reach for when looking for something to read, but a good story is a good story. Unfortunately, there are what I consider to be a couple of major flaw in your first page.

— Your story structure needs some work. You need some transition between the first section and the second sections of your story on this page. The transition 1) will connect them the sections and 2) advance the story.

Specifically, your first page is divided into two sections by a large paragraph break. These two sections appear to me to be alternative beginnings in a way.  They don’t really seem to connect and thus the story does not really advance. The first section begins with a person who we eventually learn is named “Grim” talking to… someone…for a few moments before Grim goes into a tavern called the Gasping Grouse and approaches an informant. Like Achilles chasing Zeno’s tortoise, however, they never quite meet up, at least on the page. We don’t know what the informant told Grim either generally or specifically in this section, and we don’t learn later. 

There is a paragraph break and things resume.  The second section has Grim, who we learn is also known as “Grimhorn,” and her companion, who we are now told is named “Gravehound,” once again standing outside of the Gasping Grouse. Grim is about to re-enter the establishment (apparently) with the intent of getting her quarry, who is referred to as the “dream merchant.” The section ends.

The first section should include some interaction between Grim and the informant, where the latter reveals where the dream merchant is, as well as a sentence or two indicating that Grim is leaving the premises. This will help you to advance the story to the second section. You can begin the second section with Grim and Gravehound discussing what she is going to do to apprehend the dream merchant and proceed accordingly.

— The second major flaw — and to my mind, the larger — is that what you have Grim doing makes no sense at all. If you go into a place to talk with an informant — particularly a crowded bar (you don’t go into a crowded bar to talk to an informant, by the way) — and the informant tells you that your target is at the bar, you don’t leave and then go back inside to get your target. If I go into a bar and talk to an informant who tells me, “Aye, the dream merchant is sitting at the bar, right over there, and is well into his cups!” and  then I leave, re-enter, and  grab the dream merchant, everyone, including the dream merchant, will know that my informant told me that he was in there. That’s a good way to lose an informant, not to mention one’s own eye. For your story’s sake, either put the dream merchant at another location (as revealed by Grim’s informant) or have Grim wait outside of the Gasping Grouse for the dream merchant and follow him for a couple of blocks before nabbing him.  

—  A third problem: when you begin a piece with two major characters having a conversation with each other you should name them both immediately. That way you get both characters established so that the reader will 1) have a better idea of who is saying what to whom and 2) begin to form a picture of those characters. You can then begin fleshing the characters out in the opening pages of the story.  You might also mention Grim’s  mechanical arm (even though you can’t flesh it out, heh heh) in the introductory paragraph. It sets Grim up as a badass from the jump.

There are a few other problems but those items are the story killers. All is not lost, however. I like the names and descriptions of your characters and the tavern (the Gasping Grouse is a terrific name for a dive bar) as well as your manner of describing the scenery. You set up mood and tone very well. It’s your substance and structure that need some work. Keep plugging away, Anon!

I will now attempt to remain uncharacteristically quiet and open the floor to all who are assembled and inclined to comment. Thank you, Anon, for your submission.  Keep moving forward.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is Your Inciting Incident Strong Enough? – First Page Critique – The Edge

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Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

For your reading pleasure, we have the first 400 words of a novel submitted by an anonymous and brave author. It takes guts to share your baby with others on a public forum. I’ll provide my feedback below. Please share your constructive criticism in your comments.

The Edge

Naomi white-knuckled her steering wheel, working to stave off a panic attack as she drove eastbound on Route 50 toward Annapolis and the sanctuary of home. She’d flicked off the radio, as there was nothing but hurricane talk, so she didn’t even have that to distract her.

Where is the person I used to be? Or did I just think I was once someone different?

She focused on calming her breathing. The last thing she wanted was to have an all-out panic attack in full view of other post-work commuters while hurtling down the highway at seventy miles per hour. Her mind conjured a vision of losing control of the car and sailing off the side of the road into the trees. Then it skipped to crossing the median and into oncoming traffic, a reversal of what had happened to Wolfe’s late wife. Such thoughts and visions had to be beaten off with all the will she could muster.

“Get… a… grip,” she hissed, teeth clenched. Picture home.

She steered by rote, brushing aside more creeping mental images of passing out or having a heart attack—which only served to feed the anxiety. Inhaling, exhaling, one breath at a time, she slowly recovered some sense of control. Tension eased and her shoulders dropped. Calmer, her thoughts now turned to mulling over the day’s biggest challenge: the point at which she’d had to put on a neutral face while quashing down her humiliation.

Her phone rang, interrupting her thoughts. She tapped her hands-free device. “Hello?”

“Hey. How’s it going?”

Despite the blasting artificial chill of the car’s AC, warmth flooded her face and neck at the sound of Wolfe’s voice—and the news she had to tell him.

“I’m okay,” she answered, keeping her tone even.

“Uh oh. What happened?” His laconic voice belied an intensity and intelligence she admired, and which she believed many people didn’t immediately appreciate.

“I didn’t get it. I guess they just don’t see me as a leader. Sorry I didn’t call you earlier. I confess I was licking my wounds.”

He was silent a moment. “I’m sorry to hear that. You know they made a mistake in not giving it to you, right? Did you at least throw something at the person who got your promotion?”

“Clint got it. I guess they think he’s more qualified. Things work out like they’re supposed to, I hear.”

GENERAL COMMENTS

Before I give my feedback, I wanted to share my thoughts on where to start a novel. Since I am a thriller/crime fiction writer, I tend to start with a body or an act of violence or action that will change my protagonist’s life and tip it like a first domino colliding with others. An inciting incident disrupts the status quo and stirs things up in an intriguing way for the reader. It jump starts the story arcs and kicks off the plot to take its course.

An example of this is found in the first Hunger Games book where the inciting incident is a ‘district’ lottery drawing that forces Katniss into taking the place of her little sister in a fight to the death broadcast on a futuristic television show. That incident is a punch to the emotional gut of the reader who MUST turn the page to find out what happens.

But what if your inciting incident isn’t that dramatic? What can you do to strengthen your opener? 

Point of No Return – One benchmark for a solid inciting incident is that the protagonist can’t retreat once it starts. There should be a point of no return where the hero/heroine is forced to step out of his or her comfort zone and head into the abyss, to take a risk they hadn’t seen coming or that forces them into confronting their worst fears. It’s the author’s job to set the stage for the reader to discover why the hero or heroine deserves a starring role.

HERE is a link to a plotting method I’ve posted on my website under my FOR WRITERS section. It features the “W” plotting method and mentions the point of no return.

To Go Forward, You Sometimes have to Step Back – Ask yourself, what is my story about, the main thrust of the plot? Let’s call that a demarcation line. Now step back to a point where you find your protagonist, living in relative obscurity. What will drive him or her into stepping toward that demarcation line? What will stir, incite, or force them into making a move they might not otherwise? Then ask what would make that move a one-way trip? What is their point of no return, line in the sand moment? Picture a burned out mercenary, living as a hermit in the jungles of Venezuela, when a nun running an orphanage crosses his path. Their meeting may not be the point of no return, but when the villain in your story makes it his business to force the mercenary’s hand (threatening the children or the nun), the anti-hero takes action and can no longer live in obscurity. He’s forced to give up his life of anonymity and face his demons in order to do the right thing.

Questions to Ask About Your Inciting Incident to Make it Stronger:

1.) Review your current WIP for your inciting incident. Does it propel your protagonist (or even your antagonist) into your plot arcs?

2.) Is the inciting incident big enough to sustain a novel or propel it forward in a meaningful and realistic way? Are there enough building turning points to make it a journey?

3.) Are the stakes high enough to make the reader care?

4.) Does the inciting incident influence or jump start the main story question for your plot?

5.) Can your hero or heroine retreat from the inciting incident or is it significant enough to force a change into a new direction? In other words, do you have a legitimate point of no return where they are forced to cross that proverbial line in the sand?

FEEDBACK

I generally liked that the author started with Naomi white-knuckled behind a steering wheel, knowing there is a hurricane headed toward Annapolis (although Naomi quickly deflates that tension by wanting the distraction of the radio over ‘hurricane talk’). I looked up the area and hurricanes have hit this part of the country with devastating results in loss of lives.

But the minute Naomi retreated into her head, asking where her old self had gone, it was a head fake into a different direction that stutter-stepped into the next paragraph. In paragraph 3, there is more faked or forced emotion that takes place in her head, with an emphasis on “telling” what she’s feeling. The fabricated suspense of imagined car accidents and panic attacks are quickly deflated when Naomi gets a call and she says, “I’m okay.” The imaginary incidents reminded me of Calista Flockhart in Ally McBeal where her inner thoughts were more exciting and dramatic than her real life, but those were done with dark humor and dancing babies as her biological clock ticked down.

I had to wonder, as an aside, where Naomi could drive 70 mph on a packed commuter highway. It’s hard to tell if the other cars are stopped and she’s the only one careening across the lanes and through trees, since the action only takes place in her head.

I don’t know if the author intended for the reference to the death of Wolfe’s late wife by car accident is intentional and a foreshadowing. Let’s hope so, but I was confused by the description “a reversal of what had happened…,” deciphering between Naomi’s imagination and what might’ve happened to his wife. That description forced me to reread and I still didn’t understand.

In the dialogue we learn that she has lost a job promotion to someone else, Clint, and she seems to accept it like a worn welcome mat. The reader doesn’t know what she does for a living either. It’s hard to relate to Naomi or get invested in her life with an opener that is more about misdirection.

The author is capable of writing a suspenseful scene. There are good parts to this submission if the author can stay focused on visualizing the fictional world through Naomi’s eyes and how her emotions manifest in her body or her senses (showing rather than telling), but when the narrative drifts to imagined car accidents, fake heart attacks or passing out at the wheel, these descriptions read as ‘over the top’ and forced emotions as more of Naomi’s story is revealed about her losing a promotion to Clint, a co-worker.

Since we don’t know from this limited 400 word submission which direction the plot will go or what genre this is, we won’t know if Naomi is a mild-mannered woman capable of hiring a hit man to take out Clint to get her promotion or doing that job herself with hours spent at a gun range. Or did the author intend for this to be a taste of Naomi’s world until the hurricane hits and she discovers what’s really important in her life? We simply don’t know.

I think the author would have a more compelling start if the contrived emotions were stripped from this intro and we get to know more about Naomi and care about her. There’s a lot of pressure to getting a lot packed into 400 words, but this intro could orient the reader into Naomi’s world with the hint of foreshadowing where the story will go. It doesn’t have to be all action and suspense when the story is a drama about a woman’s struggle to find balance in her life and how she makes a dynamic change to make to happen. How would that story look?

Maybe Naomi has been hit in the teeth by losing another promotion to a better candidate because she is overlooked at every turn, but the impending hurricane forces her out of her comfort zone and she confronts her demons that change her forever. I would read that story.

 

DISCUSSION

1.) What feedback would you give this author, TKZers?

2.) What tips do you have for finding the right place to start your story? 

First Page Critique: The Root of Atlan

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photo by Laura Benedict

It’s a veritable feast of First Page Critiques this week here at Kill Zone. No one planned it this way, but it sure is fun. Today, we have a Fearless Writer and the opening of The Root of Atlan. The actual submission is just below, then my comments.

I hope you’ll weigh in as well.

The Root of Atlan

Day One

I woke to an excruciating headache and shouting. The last thing I remembered was walking through the airport after my flight and then what seemed like a bolt of lightning. When I pried my watering eyes open I found it was twilight or predawn and there were torches all around me. It hadn’t felt like I was unconscious but I definitely wasn’t where I had started and I was a bit groggy. I was surrounded by a number of other people, all of us lying on a circle of odd black stone ringed by tall stone pylons and mud.

My breath steamed in the chill air. Surrounding us were about fifteen men holding torches. They were dressed in brown leather armor and looked like they had stepped out of a fantasy novel. Looking closer at them I could see that they weren’t, strictly speaking, men. At least, not like men from home. Their faces resembled a cross between human and gorilla with dark ash-brown skin, receding chins with heavy jaws, and short, pushed-in noses surmounted by bald heads. Their faces were tattooed heavily.

They were armed with short, heavy swords and they were all heavily muscled. Overall, they made Neanderthals look elegant and poised in comparison. They were shouting at us incomprehensibly and I could see from the faces of my fellow travelers that they didn’t understand either.

A new group of the ape-men came into the circle of torches and began tying our hands behind us. When one of them got to me I fought back as best I could. I had been raped once and refused to be a victim again. Since I had spent the years since the rape learning how to defend myself, my best was actually pretty good despite my weakness and grogginess. It eventually took three of them working together to get me pinned so they could tie me up. I was not going to go along quietly with whatever they had planned.

Being tied up was never a start to anything good unless safe words and mutual consent were involved. I ended up wrapped up almost like a mummy and bruised over a significant portion of my body.

I wasn’t the only one who fought back, or even the most successful. One guy actually managed to get away, the last I saw of him was with a couple ape-men in hot pursuit, but I didn’t think he was going to make it. They moved pretty fast for their bulk and they looked angry. The rest of us were herded out of the muddy clearing we were in and down a path through some woods. The light grew as we headed out, but we missed the sunrise due to the heavy cloud cover.

We hiked for a couple hours until we came to an encampment. Off to one side, there were lines of what were almost horses if you could picture them with horns and split lips like a springbok. Their hides were brown and tan with barring or stripes in black and medium brown.

We were herded to the center of the encampment and ropes were tied around our necks. The ropes were then staked to the ground so that we couldn’t stand. Since our hands were still tied behind our backs it was almost impossible to get a grip on the stakes. We weren’t fed or given any water and those on the edges of the group were the targets of a kicking or cuffing as soldiers passed by. I had been heartened when I saw my pack and duffel along with a few other bags that were clearly from my fellows unloaded and put in a tent. If I could just get to them I had some stuff that might give me an edge in getting away.

My Comments

Dear Fearless Writer.

Please, take a breath. I feel like I’ve just read twenty pages of an action screenplay in 400 words. Relax. You have a whole novel to write.

This is what seems to be happening:

A traveler (male? female? transgender?) experiences some kind of time/place shift after a bolt of lightning, and “wakes” surrounded by shouting, tattooed, non-human creatures. Other travelers have been transported as well, and they all attempt to fight off the creatures. The creatures are determined to tie up the travelers, and lead them out of a muddy clearing and to an encampment. At the encampment, the travelers are staked to the ground with short ropes, then starved and beaten.

The Root of Atlan has an energetic, rather exciting premise, but there’s both too much and too little going on at once for a reader to get a good handle on the numerous scenes. Even though the storytelling is done in first person, the narration feels way too distant. Too dispassionate and detached, yet immediately observant of the scene. (i.e. facial details, numbers of men, black stone, pylons, mud, swords, etc.)

First person is, well, personal. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the past tense—it still needs to feel a bit raw and immediate. There’s pain and noise, but where is the confusion and terror? This traveler has come through a hole in the universe. Where’s the shock? The traveler is almost immediately attacked, and we get an explanation about this person having been raped, instead of the sweat and dirt and pain of the immediate fight. Treat the rape with the seriousness it’s due. It’s a great revelation that explains the character’s toughness, but let’s have a few demonstrations of that extraordinary toughness first. Then deepen the character.

(Get to know your character. Here are Proust’s 35 Questions, a survey of your character’s personality. I’m not saying you have to use all that you come up with or even fill it all out. But the more you know about your first-person character, the better grip you’ll have on their view of the world.)

“Being tied up was never a start to anything good unless safe words and mutual consent were involved.” Clever and amusing, but a weird aside for someone whose life is obviously in danger. Unless this is intended to be satire or comedy—and it doesn’t feel like it’s meant to be.

I count no fewer than three scenes in this opening:

–Traveler awakens in a strange place, surrounded not only by fellow travelers, but tattooed, angry locals who are joined by more locals, bent on tying them up. Travelers unsuccessfully fight back.

–Travelers go on a forced march (hike seems too tame a word).

–Travelers arrive in a camp, where they are tied down and starved.

Here’s a bit of practical advice. An exercise, if you will. Take one of these three scenes and work the heck out of it. Put yourself in it. You are the person fighting for your life. You’re the one waking up in a strange place, surrounded by angry, combative creatures. You’re the one who was on the way to the bathroom before you got transported, and you really had to pee, and you’re so freaked out you notice it happened without you realizing it but you barely notice because you’re being attacked by tattooed human/gorilla creatures brandishing swords!

Who are your fellow travelers? Do they count at all, or are they simply redshirts who will all be dead by the time you escape the encampment and go on with your adventures? Is there someone who fights bravely beside you that you will want to stay close to?

Your single traveler is not going to see everything at once. The forced march is a good time to observe more details about our fellow travelers, and the creatures—single one or two out that are especially frightening or you think might help you.

Write long. Indulge in the scene. Then come back and tighten it up and edit. You may not even use everything you write, but you will have observed it. Keep the vital, most visceral parts. Write the experience, not an overview of the experience.

Dialogue?

As I read through this the third time (I’m slow on the uptake, I guess), I realized there’s not a word of dialogue! Creatures are shouting unintelligibly, but the travelers don’t even offer a grunt. No one is screaming? No one is crying for her mother? No one is saying, “Get your hands off of me, you damned dirty ape!”? (Sorry, I have zero idea how to punctuate that sentence.) The lack of dialogue is a big part of the narrator’s detachment from the story.

Mention the duffel or the absence of the duffel sooner. I really like the idea that it exists and that the traveler wants the stuff inside it. We can already see what the traveler’s first action mission will be.

Think about opening the book with your character already escaped from the encampment and living in this strange new world. You don’t need to start at the very beginning of the traveler’s arrival—surprise us.

Go and read the beginning of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend to see how he immediately immerses the reader in the story. The scenario—that the world is now inhabited by zombies and Robert Neville is the last man—is not the story. It’s a masterful tale of humanity and hope and survival.

Then show us what you know about your protagonist. It’s a fascinating premise and has great potential to be a terrific tale. Take your time. Enjoy the ride. Have fun with it.

TKZers, what are your thoughts on this submission?

First Page Critique: A Raging Need To Kill

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Photo purchased from Shutterstock.

Today we’re critiquing the first page of A RAGING NEED TO KILL, which was submitted anonymously by a reader. I’ll add my comments at the end, and then please give your feedback in the Comments.

A Raging need to Kill

Lilli missed her mom and she hated her dad, Henry, but she still cooked dinner just for him. Lilli opened the oven door and ducked over the golden brown turkey to check if it was done. When she poked the turkey with the fork, a piece fell off, she picked it up, and threw it in the trash bin. A smile spread on her face. “Perfect,” she whispered. She stirred in rosemary seasoning, butter, and garlic salt into the cubed potatoes. Thanksgiving dinner was ready when Henry walked into the living room with a beer in his hand.

Lilli’s mom, Kaitlin, had insisted on having the dinner each year and Lilli was determined to honor her tradition even though Kaitlin was dead. Henry walked closer to Lilli and rested his back against the wooden cabinet. The mouth-watering smell of turkey and cranberry sauce was overpowered by the smell of beer mixed with nicotine, wet hay, and manure.

“Did you prep the girls for the auction?” he asked Lilli, making her neck tense up.

“Not yet, sir. I’ll do it after dinner,” Lilli said while she stared at the yellow stains on the backsplash. She resisted moving even if every cell in her body wanted to step a couple feet away, instead she clenched her jaw to steady her uneasiness.

“Are you hungry, Dad?” she asked trying to remind him that she was his daughter.

“She’s not here anymore. Don’t hold on to the past, Lilli. It’ll be easier,” he said in a calm voice but she still noticed his irritation. He took a step closer to her and she grabbed a plate, served the potatoes and turkey, walked to the table, and back to the kitchen.

After serving two dinner plates for the two of them, she sat at the small wooden table. Henry ate the dinner and after a few minutes, he put down the fork and looked at Lilli with suspicion. “What did you put in the food? You haven’t touched yours. What, you poisoned me?”

“No, Dad,” she said and looked down with a small smirk.

He got up and tried to steady himself with the table. His eyes looked disoriented and he reached out for her but she staggered backwards. He threw a punch at her but Lilli ducked and he missed her.

My comments:

Whoa, talk about a dysfunctional family! I felt the bleakness of the narrator’s world as I was reading this page. I appreciate the way the writer used small details to put the reader inside the Lilli’s POV, such as her staring at the yellow stains on the backsplash.

This scene definitely made me want to learn more about Lilli’s world. I would suggest doing an editing pass to tidy up some punctuation and break up sentences for rhythm and flow.

I would also suggest rearranging the dialogue between Lilli and Henry to increase the tension in the following exchange.

Henry ate the dinner and after a few minutes, he put down the fork and looked at Lilli with suspicion. “What did you put in the food? You haven’t touched yours. What, you poisoned me?”

I suggest breaking up the something like this:

Henry ate the dinner. After a few minutes, he set down his  fork.

 

“You haven’t touched your dinner.”

 

“No, Dad.” Lilli stared down at her plate and stifled a smirk.

 

”You put something in the food?” Henry staggered to his feet, then tried to steady himself against the table. “What, you poisoned me?”

In general, job well done! I’m hoping we will find out in the next page whether Lilli did in fact poison Henry. (Sounds like he deserved it).

Our thanks go out to today’s brave writer for submitting this first page! TKZers, how did you react to this first page? Please share your feedback in the Comments.