Vonnegut’s Rule #5

Posted on June 22, 2016 by Joe Moore

A topic I’ve seen on forums and blogs is Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules of writing fiction. They’re worth reviewing and taking to heart. But his rule number 5 is the one that made the biggest impression on me. Rule number 5 is: Start your story as close to the end as possible. This is relevant for both the entire book and a single chapter. We often hear that the most common mistake of a new writer is starting the story in the wrong place.

Well, it happens to published writers, too. Lynn Sholes and I are guilty of drafting whole chapters that either occurred in the wrong place, or worse, weren’t even needed. Usually they turn out to be backstory information for us, not the reader. We go to the trouble of drafting a chapter only to find it’s to confirm what we need to know, not what the reader needs to know.

So if we apply Vonnegut’s rule number 5, how do we know if we’ve started close enough to the end? Easy: we must know the destination before we begin the journey. We must know the ending first.

To me, this is critical. How can we get there if we don’t know where we’re going? And once we know how our story will end, we can then apply what I call my top of the mountain technique. In my former career in the television postproduction industry, it’s called backtiming—starting at the place where something ends and working your way to the place where you want it to begin.

But before I explain top of the mountain, let’s look at the bottom of the mountain approach—the way most stories are written. You find yourself standing at the foot of an imposing mountain (the task of writing your next 100K-word novel), look up at the huge mass of what you are going to be faced with over the next 12 or so months, and wonder what it will take to get to the top (or end).

You start climbing, get tired, fall back, take a side trip, climb some more, hope inspiration strikes, get distracted, curse, fight fatigue, take the wrong route, fall again, paint yourself into a corner—and if you’re lucky, finally make it to the top. This method will work, but it’s a tough, painful way to go.

Now, let’s discuss the top of the mountain technique. As you begin to plan your book, even before you start your first draft, imagine that you’re standing on the mountain peak looking out over a grand, breathtaking view feeling invigorated, strong, and fulfilled. Imagine that the journey is over, your book is done. Look down the side of the mountain at the massive task you have just accomplished and ask yourself what series of events took place to get you to the top? Start with the last event—the grand finale— make a general note as to how you envision it. Then imagine what the second to the last event was that led up to the end, then the third from the last . . . you get the idea. It’s sort of like outlining in reverse.

This takes it a step further than Vonnegut’s rule number 5 by starting at the end and working your way to the beginning while you’re still in the planning stage. Guess what happens? By the time you’re actually at the beginning, you will have started as close to the end as possible. And you will see the logic and benefit of rule number 5.

Naturally, your plan can and probably will change. Your ending will get tweaked and reshaped as you approach it for real. But wouldn’t it be great to have a general destination in mind even from the first word on page one of your first draft?

__________________________

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What We Can Learn From
Ballet and ‘The Big Sleep’

Posted on June 21, 2016 by PJ Parrish

“The average detective story is probably no worse than the average novel, but you never see the average novel. It doesn’t get published. The average — or only slightly above average — detective story does…. Whereas the good novel is not at all the same kind of book as the bad novel. It is about entirely different things. But the good detective story and the bad detective story are about exactly the same things, and they are about them in very much the same way.” — Raymond Chandler

By PJ Parrish

Okay, it’s time to talk about the F-word.

But before we do, I have to back up a little and first talk about ballet.

Back in my newspaper days, I spent 18 years as a dance critic. I was privileged to see every great ballet company in the world, and interview wonderful dancers. I also took a lot of classes, starting when I was a tubby little 12-year-old to around 35 when I finally hung up the toe shoes. I didn’t know it at the time, but ballet was really good training for becoming a crime novelist. Because both are based on finding magic within the formula.

A quick primer for all you ballet-adverse types out there. Bear with me, because you will need this when I get to Raymond Chandler:

Everything in ballet can be boiled down to five positions. There are only five ways to position your feet, five ways to hold your arms. But…

Everything in ballet -– from the classical precision of Swan Lake (1875) through the sassy sweep of Twyla Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs (1982) — flows out of this. Think about that for a second: Within one strict formula can be found myriad unique opportunities for self-expression.

One of my favorite ballets is George Balanchine’s Serenade. Balanchine was a genius. He sort of did for dance what Raymond Chandler did for the detective novel, building a bridge between the 19th and 20th centuries, finding new permutations within the old formula, and changing everything that came after forever. Serenade was the Rosetta Stone for a new kind of dancer. Philip Marlowe, likewise, held the DNA for a new kind of hero.

The opening of Serenade is breathtaking in its simplicity and promise. Seventeen dancers stand motionless on stage, one arm raised, feet parallel. Then, slowly, their arms come down together in first position, and a beat later, their feet turn out. With that one motion, they mutate from mere women into dancers, standing in the first position from which all movement flows. Go watch it and come back. It will only take 53 seconds.

Now, here’s the opening of Chandler’s The Big Sleep.

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

Like Serenade, this opening is breathtaking in its simplicity and promise. Right away, we know we are beginning a journey with a very special guide. And oh, those telling details. Who but a man who’s been on too many benders would point out that he was sober this time? And that last line? A lesser writer would have been content with: “I was going to see a rich guy.” Such delicious sarcasm and attitude!

Both Serenade and The Big Sleep are exemplars of two master artists working within the confines of their genres even as they explore and expand the formula.

So back to the F-word. Let’s talk about formula. I think it’s become a dirty word in our crime writing world, tossed around as a pejorative by folks who want to put us in our place. Some want to draw distinctions between genre fiction and literature. (“Her novel transcends the blah-blah-yada-yada.”) And some, even within our own circle, want to diminish writers who hew too closely to the bones. (“He’s working the tired old formula.”)

Years ago, I was on a panel about the future of the PI novel. There was a strange undercurrent to it, like it was put on the program almost as an apologia. It was like the conference organizers were accommodating the private eye novelist as the goofy cousin you seat at the kid’s table at Thanksgiving. Chandler himself, in a great interview with Ian Fleming put it this way: “In America, a thriller, a mystery writer as we call them, is slightly below the salt.” (Click here to hear the entire fascinating exchange.)

But I think the PI formula — and indeed, the entire crime fiction blueprint — has much to recommend it. Mainly because, as with ballet, once you master its fundamentals, once you understand the underlying structure and learn the basic “rules,” you are freed to swing for the fences.

I guess we should stop and take a hard look at that word “rules.” It’s a scary word because some of us think we don’t know the rules and others think the rules are there only to be broken. There have been a lot of rules doled out over the years regarding crime fiction. S.S. Van Dine’s “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories,” written in 1928, might be the most famous. Van Dine prefaced his rules thusly:

The detective story is a kind of intellectual game. It is more—it is a sporting event. And for the writing of detective stories there are very definite laws—unwritten, perhaps, but nonetheless binding; and every respectable and self-respecting concocter of literary mysteries lives up to them.

My favorite Van Dine-ism: “There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better.”

A year later, Ronald Knox wrote “The Ten Rules of Detective Fiction” My favorite Knox sin: “No Chinaman must figure into the story.”

T.S. Eliot was a big fan of detective novels, and was compelled to publish his own set of rules, in 1927 in his literary magazine The Criterion:

The story must not rely upon elaborate and incredible disguises.
The criminal’s motives should be fairly predictable. “No theft, for instance, should be due to kleptomania (even if there is such a thing).”
The solution should not involve the supernatural or “mysterious and preposterous discoveries made by lonely scientists.
Elaborate and bizarre machinery is an irrelevance. Detective writers of austere and classical tendencies will abhor it.
The detective should be highly intelligent but not superhuman. We should be able to follow his inferences and almost, but not quite, make them with him.

Even Raymond Chandler himself couldn’t resist laying some laws. Here are his Ten Commandments For the Detective Novel:

It must be credibly motivated, both as to the original situation and the dénouement.
It must be technically sound as to the methods of murder and detection.
It must be realistic in character, setting and atmosphere. It must be about real people in a real world.
It must have a sound story value apart from the mystery element: i.e., the investigation itself must be an adventure worth reading.
It must have enough essential simplicity to be explained easily when the time comes.
It must baffle a reasonably intelligent reader.
The solution must seem inevitable once revealed.
It must not try to do everything at once. If it is a puzzle story operating in a rather cool, reasonable atmosphere, it cannot also be a violent adventure or a passionate romance.
It must punish the criminal in one way or another, not necessarily by operation of the law….If the detective fails to resolve the consequences of the crime, the story is an unresolved chord and leaves irritation behind it.
It must be honest with the reader.

Now of course you can see that Chandler’s “rules” are more in tune with our own modern sensibilities. He, like ballet’s Balanchine, pointed the way to the future. He, like Balanchine, took the old formula and made it new. Which is why we still read him today and we don’t read S.S. Van Dine or Ronald Knox.

It’s often said that we writers only recycle the same plots over and over. There are, in fact, only seven stories in the world, according to the writer Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch. Here they are:

man against man
man against nature
man against himself
man against God
man against society
man caught in the middle
man and woman

So Romeo and Juliet is reborn as West Side Story. Moby Dick resurfaces as Jaws. King Lear becomes A Thousand Acres in the hands of Jane Smiley. And don’t get me started on what Bram Stoker unleashed on us.

This post was inspired by Larry Brook’s post here last week on concept vs premise. Go back and read it if you haven’t already. As I said in my comment there, the current hit movie The Martian is really just an old plot, one Sir Arthur himself would recognize as Man vs Nature but transported to Mars. Before The Martian, we had Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Family Robinson, PD James’s Children of Men, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, which was recycled into the cheesy Charleston Heston movie Omega Man.

Formulas are not, in themselves, bad things. And given the long and glorious history of the crime novel, it is something we should honor, not disdain. The “trick” for us is to find within the universal human experience, fresh things to say about our own times and situations.

The ballet Serenade ends on a mournful note, a man borne off by a female dancer who, to my mind, is a symbolic angel.

And then, there is the equally elegiac ending paragraphs of The Big Sleep.

I went quickly away from her down the room and out and down the tiled staircase to the front hall. I didn’t see anybody when I left. I found my hat alone this time. Outside, the bright gardens had a haunted look, as though small wild eyes were watching me from behind the bushes, as though the sunshine itself had a mysterious something in its light. I got into my car and drove off down the hill.

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn’t have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.

On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn’t do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver Wig, and I never saw her again.

There is nothing new. Just new ways of making us feel.

Social Media Etiquette

Posted on June 20, 2016 by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

When it comes to social media, as a general rule, I try to avoid the contentious issues of politics and religion, but, amid the relentless (and often horrific news) these days it seems increasingly hard to find a way of navigating the online world without encountering (for me at least only third hand) a polarizing level of animosity and aggression on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve I seen people posting that they have to ‘disconnect’ for a while, simply to avoid the online fray which shows no sign of abating.

Even relatively innocuous posts in support of a victim or sharing a news item, can seem to provoke prolonged, overly aggressive – even (dare I say it) crazed responses in the comment section. Flame wars erupt and, as far as I can tell, people who (I assume) are rational, reasonably tolerant people in person, engage in public brawls and name-calling with a level of belligerence that belies all hope of reasonable discourse. So how is someone supposed to navigate the social media minefield in an online culture where anyone and everything is fair game?

As an author, I try to follow what I thought was basic social media etiquette. Beyond avoid religion and politics, I try not to be overtly self-promoting, self-aggrandizing or generally annoying. My main aim is to present myself as an authentic person who readers find accessible and (hopefully) engaging. When it comes to my personal online persona, I follow pretty much the same rules – just with photos and fun (I hope) added into the mix. But now I feel stymied in many respects – increasingly uncertain and unwilling to post items that could inflame some kind of inadvertent comment war. All too often I read the comments on friend’s posts with a growing sense of alarm and incredulity as people rip into one another and engage in behavior that (I hope) they never display in real life. I’m not sure how we got to this place, but it’s certainly one in which I tread very, very carefully…

In light of this, I feel like we need to create some new rules for online etiquette – rules which others may not adopt but ones which I feel balance common sense, good manners and basic norms of rationality. Here’s my list so far and I’d love to get TKZers input and feedback

Remember you’re a grown up. Act accordingly.
Pretend the online world is the real world. If you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, then don’t say it in an online comment.
When posting on a potentially contentious issue, recognize it might have a polarizing effect (so think first!) and be prepared. If commenting on an issue be respectful and follow rule number 1 or 2 especially if you feel your passions getting the better of you…
When posting about TV, movies, books etc. be mindful of spoiler alerts but also, if commenting on these posts, don’t go crazy. If someone inadvertently tells you the ending of a show that began five years ago and you have yet to binge watch on Netflix, give them a break.
Don’t be a troll.
Don’t be a stalker.
If posting a review, make it a genuine review. Don’t pretend to be someone other than who you are.
If posting something that promotes your work/book do it a way that engages as well as markets you as an author.
Think of marketing as connecting with readers rather than selling. Don’t post 100 times something that screams ‘buy my book!’ – it’s annoying. If in doubt, follow rule 2 – would you promote or market like this in real life? If not, then don’t do it online. And finally…
If in doubt, don’t tweet it, post it, or make the comment.

So that’s my list so far. How about you? What would you add? How do you feel about online etiquette (or lack thereof) these days? How do you currently navigate the social media minefield?

The Doctor Will See Your Novel Now

Posted on June 19, 2016 by James Scott Bell

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

My doctor is a sharp young guy. He seems impressed that I’m a writer of fiction who manages to make a living that way. He once wistfully mentioned he would like one day to write a book.

I told him he should do it. Then I asked him if one day I could take out a gallbladder. He said, “Probably not.”

I guess the barriers to entry into the medical profession are a bit higher than it is for would-be scribes. Too bad. Just once I’d like to say to a surgical assistant, “Scalpel … Sponge … Junior Mint.”

In any event, I go in yearly to get checked, even if I feel in the pink. I talk to the doc, get my blood drawn, then wait for the reports. Every now and then he makes a suggestion and I try to follow it, unless it involves red meat.

Your novel needs a checkup, too. I like to schedule mine at around the 20k word mark. I’m not so far in that I can’t do some remedial work if necessary. There are some tests I like to run. Let me commend them to you.

Blood Test

Is your story’s lifeblood healthy? Here’s how you can tell: Your Lead is facing an issue of life and death –– physical, professional, or psychological. That raises the stakes to the highest level. That keeps the blood flowing and the reader reading. Even if you’re writing a comic novel, the characters have to believe the central question is of the utmost importance.

Heart Rate

Are you connected emotionally to the story? I don’t mean you have to end up like Joan Wilder finishing her book at the start of Romancing the Stone (for more on that, see Rob’s post from last Wednesday and especially P. J.’s comment.)

What it does mean is that you must have some connection to the characters that makes you, the author, care about what happens to them. If you haven’t got that, find it before you move on. Feel something before you write anything.

Character Endoscopy

Those little endoscopes (“viewing tubes”) enter your body via … through a … just take my word for it, in they go, to get a picture of what’s inside you.

You need something going on inside each main character, too, under the surface. We usually refer to this as motivation. Often that’s enough, but I like to know what’s behind it, what created it.

I don’t do extensive character biographies. Those never quite worked for me. But I do want to know a few key things, including a “wound” from a past trauma that haunts the character in the present (sometimes we call this “the ghost.”)

Joint Pain

Are your scenes working? They are the connections, the things that hold your story together. Having a dull scene is like having a knee go out on you. Everything stops. You can’t move forward.

Pain, the doc will tell you, is a good thing when it tells you Hey! You gotta take care of this, buddy!

And that’s what dull scenes are telling you.

Now, it’s true that you sometimes are too close to your story to know what’s dull. Often, it’s not until someone else looks at your manuscript that the pain is revealed to you.

I think it’s best if you know what to look for and fix it yourself, and soon.

First, do you have a feeling that a scene you wrote isn’t quite right? Go there and ask:

Do the characters in this scene have conflict, even if it’s subtle, with one another?

Is there anything surprising in the scene? Unexpected?
If the character is alone, is there some form of fear inside him? (From simple worry to outright terror?)
Does the scene drag on too long?

Second, if the scene still doesn’t work treat it like a tumor and cut it out.

Hearing Check

How does your dialogue sound?

If the characters sound too much alike, no good. Each character deserves a distinct voice.

If your dialogue is always in complete sentences, you’re missing the power of compression.

If your dialogue attributions (said, asked) are being propped up by adverbs (he said haltingly; she asked imploringly) you’re diluting, not adding to the emotion of the scene.

(I will modestly hype my book, How to Write Dazzling Dialogue, because I believe dialogue is the fastest way to improve a manuscript.)

Eye Exam

Do your descriptions paint a vivid picture that pulls a reader into the story world? We are a visual culture, so you need to think and write cinematically. Like this:

The sun that brief December day shone weakly through the west-facing window of Garrett Kingsley’s office. It made a thin yellow oblong splash on his Persian carpet and gave up. (Robert B. Parker, Pale Kings and Princes)

Sol Stein counsels, “Have something visual on every page.” We’re weaving a dream, after all, and dreams are movies in the mind.

So what about you? Is your manuscript in pain? Where does it hurt? The medical staff of TKZ is here to help!

A Dreamless Summer Night

Posted on June 18, 2016 by Joe Hartlaub

Just to be blunt: I’m not a teacher. Unlike my goombahs here at TKZ most of what I offer every other Saturday is not going to help you to write your best seller or even your mid-list seller. I’m still struggling with that myself. I will offer advice from time to time, but today isn’t one of those times. I have another unusual story for you today, and I hope that at the least you enjoy it and at the most it burrows under your brainstem for a few days and maybe inspires you to delve back into your own respective histories and spin some random thread from your past into gold.

A bit of housekeeping first: I have heard nothing further from the person who sent me the cryptic text two weeks ago, warning me not to play with their grandchild. I’ll advise if something occurs but for the moment it appears to be a case of mistexting or mistaken identity.

Onward. I was blessed mightily with a childhood in which I lived in an upper middle class suburban neighborhood. It was quiet, peaceful, and the police were primarily used to fill a few float spots in the annual Fourth of July parade. Cue the music to The Andy Griffith Show, move the show up north and triple the average household income, and you’ll get an idea of what it was like. Nothing ever happened. It was 1960, I was nine years old, and the only times my pulse really quickened was when the new comic books came out on Tuesday and Thursday. I happened to awaken very late on a warm and perfect summer night. I sat up in bed, listened to the sound of the attic fan — this was before air conditioning was as common as it is now — and got out of bed. Lassie, our collie — if you had a collie back then it was named Lassie — half-heartedly wagged its tail in the hallway but otherwise didn’t stir as I walked past my parents’ room on the one side and my sister’s on the other. We had a spare bedroom that my dad used as sort of a half-assed office that had a back yard window and for some reason I headed back there to look out the window, but not for any particular reason that I can remember now.

There were three men standing at the far corner of our yard, looking at our house. They each wore coats, ties, and, for some odd reason, overcoats. I couldn’t hear them but they were gesturing at each other and toward the house. I could see them clearly in the moonlight and they frightened me like I have never been frightened before or since. The villain featured in the Dick Tracy newspaper comic strip at the time was a character named Rhodent (sic) and one of the men looked almost exactly like him. I was frozen in place; I would probably still be sitting there, but one of the men suddenly looked directly up at the window where I was watching. I turned around and ran back to my room, jumped into bed and laid there awake for the rest of the night.

The following morning brought what seemed to be clarification. I thought that maybe I had just dreamed what had happened, the result of a little too much Dick Tracy. The main thing was that Lassie, whose territorial domain consisted of a three block radius and which required that she bark at everything, never made a sound. I accordingly didn’t say anything to my parents. Later that day, however, I happened to run into a kid in the neighborhood who was what we would now call a backdoor neighbor. The kid, who we will call “B” and was my age, came up to me with uncharacteristic somberness. He said that during the night he had looked out of his bedroom window, which was in the back of his house, and had seen three men standing and gesturing in our backyard. B said he watched them for a few minutes until one of them pointed at one of our upstairs windows, at which point the three of them turned and walked away in between B’s house and his next door neighbors. B thought he was dreaming, too, but thought the dream was interesting. He never told his parents either. For my part, I didn’t look out of that back window for the remainder of the time that we lived in that house.

I hadn’t thought of that story until last night, when I happened to wake up at 2 AM and for some reason thought of it, and also thought of B, with whom I hadn’t seen or spoken in over fifty years. I wondered about it and fell back to sleep. This morning, I saw B’s obituary in the morning paper. He died early yesterday, unexpectedly.

If you have an odd story like this and would like to share it I would love to hear it. I don’t know how to describe how I feel. I’m wondering who those three men were and why they were standing in my backyard and what happened to B and how people drift apart for no good or bad reason. Talk to me.

READER FRIDAY – Five Most Inspirational Places for Authors to Write

Posted on June 17, 2016 by Jordan Dane

Purchased from iStock by Jordan Dane

An author can write anywhere with the help of a tablet or laptop or even a low-tech pad of paper and pen. But there are some places that can be more inspirational if you’ve hit a dry spell.

In no particular order, here are my five favorite places to write:

1.) Graveyard at Dusk – People watching would be interesting AFTER dusk but reading headstones or taking in the quiet at a cemetery during the dying light of the day can stir the storyteller in anyone.

2.) Hotel Lobby Bar – If you’re ever at a writers’ conference, the place to be is the hotel bar. Everyone turns up there, but there are stories in the many travelers’ faces, not to mention the fun of eavesdropping on dialogue inspirations.

3.) Coffee House – The faces and the dialogue might be different in a coffee house, but the caffeine keeps the creative juices flowing.

4.) Scenic Forest – Getting closer to nature can stir the imagination and get the blood moving. Try it.

5.) Swamp – I have to admit that I’ve never done this, but I really want to. The sounds and the potential for danger in a swamp could be titillating. Let the vastness swallow you whole.

FOR DISCUSSION:
What are YOUR five favorite inspirational places to write? When your creative juices run low, where do you go or what do you do?

Evocative Suspense Author Sue Coletta on VOICE

Posted on June 16, 2016 by Jordan Dane

Jordan Dane
@JordanDane

I’m proud to have longstanding TKZ member, Sue Coletta as my guest today. This is her first time here as a featured author. Not only is she usually one of the first to comment on each post, but I’ve seen her grow as a writer. I enjoyed her first book MARRED, with its strong voice and dark eerie tone, and I’m currently reading WINGS OF MAYHEM and thoroughly enjoying the voice of her protagonist, Shawnee Daniels. Take it away, Sue, and welcome!

Sue Coletta on VOICE

When we first begin our writing journey voice is one of things that’s nearly impossible to define, never mind discover. For years I kept hoping to find my writer’s voice, but I had no idea where to look. Deep within myself? Through hours and hours of practice would it suddenly appear? What was this mysterious “voice” everyone spoke about? And why didn’t I have one?

Perhaps what agents and editors were referring to was that perfect blend of style, rhythm, and cadence that make up the mysterious writer’s voice. Maybe it’s like trying to define the difference between graffiti and street art. I may not be able to put it into words, but I’ll know it when I see it.

When I look back on those days I wish someone would’ve told me, with a clear definition, how to develop my voice. And then one day something magical happened. I was reading the most amazing craft book I’d ever encountered, the book that transformed my writing life in an instant. I’m referring to Story Engineering by TKZ’s own Larry Brooks.

When I learned about the three dimensions of character I found my writer’s voice. I couldn’t believe it. Why didn’t anyone tell me this before?

Today, I would describe voice as the combination of syntax, diction, punctuation, dialogue, sentence rhythm, and character development within one story or across many novels. It’s unique to you. Just as a flute doesn’t sound like a clarinet, neither does one writer from another.

How awesome is that?

We all use the same 26 letters, and yet, no two authors will write the same scene the same way. One writer might use run-on sentences that go on for miles. Whereas another loads the story with short, punchy fragments. Neither is wrong; it’s a matter of personal style.

But style isn’t the only thing that makes up the writer’s voice.

By knowing our characters intimately, by understanding their hopes, their dreams, their backgrounds, scars, flaws, nervous ticks, religious beliefs, world views, what they fear, what they strive for, what they want more than anything else…we can slip into their skin and write using their voice. Not only in dialogue, but in the narrative as well—also known as narrative voice.

Take, for instance, my protagonist in Wings of Mayhem. Shawnee Daniels is a wise-cracking, snarky chic who was raised on the city streets. The way she views the world is much different than her librarian best friend, Nadine. Shawnee is overly cautious. She swears, has huge trust issues, and in a lot of ways, she’s her own worst enemy. Where Shawnee might see danger, Nadine, who was raised in a loving and often sheltered environment, would see an opportunity. Nadine never swears. Instead, she uses words like “ship” and “fleakin’”. She’s a glass-half-full type of girl. Shawnee’s glass barely has a drop in it.

Nadine’s dialogue is filled with words like “Woot!” She waves jazz hands and bounces on her toes when she’s excited. Shawnee is her polar opposite. She would never be caught dead waving a jazz hand in the air and she certainly would never use the word “Woot.” Because she’d never do these things in the dialogue, I can’t let her do it in the narrative, either, or the story would lose its narrative voice.

In Wings of Mayhem I alternated chapters between Shawnee, Detective Levaughn Samuels, and Jack Delsin, my antagonist. Each have their own way of viewing the world around them and, more importantly, the situation they’re in. I couldn’t write the narrative in the same way or it wouldn’t be unique to each character.

Where Shawnee believes everyone is after her, Detective Levaughn Samuels is more level-headed. In his narrative I used contractions like I did with Shawnee, but the tone is different. He views the world with a calm, rational, detective’s perspective. When he looks at a crime scene his stomach doesn’t scream in protest. But Shawnee’s does.

While examining a murder victim, Levaughn would narrate the facts, the wounds/injuries, his theory of the case, etc. Shawnee would be too distracted by the blowflies. She might gape at the victim’s smeared mascara, or narrow in on the thick, bluish film veiling the victim’s eyes. But Levaughn wouldn’t mention that because all corpses develop corneal clouding. It’s a natural occurrence that develops 2-3 days after death, depending on the environment in which the body is found.

By remaining true to our characters in dialogue as well as narrative we breathe life into the story. Thus, filling it with voice.

For Discussion:
Over to you, TKZers. What tips have helped you develop your writer’s voice?

Suspense Author Sue Coletta

BIO – Member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and International Thriller Writers, Sue Coletta is always searching for new ways to commit murder…on the page. She’s the author of Wings of Mayhem, Marred, Crime Writer’s Research, and 60 Ways to Murder Your Characters. She’s published in OOTG Flash Fiction Offensive, Murder, USA anthology, InSinC Quarterly, and in the upcoming dark fiction anthology, RUN. The founder of #ACrimeChat, which takes place every Wed. on Twitter, Sue also runs a popular crime resource blog, where she shares her love of research…forensics, police procedures, serial killers, and true crime stories. You can learn more about Sue and her books at: www.suecoletta.com

Buy links:
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Print and audio coming soon from Crossroad Press!

Social Media links:
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Against the Wind

Posted on June 15, 2016 by Robert Gregory Browne

Imagine this scene from a story:

It’s 1983. A woman sits behind a typewriter, finishing up a page. When she’s done, she types THE END, pulls the page out and adds it to a large stack next to her on the desk.

She smiles, then goes to a liquor cabinet, pulls out a bottle, and pours a drink to toast a job well done.

All is good in her world.

Now imagine this one instead:

It’s 1983. A woman sits behind a typewriter, crying her eyes out as she finishes up a page and types THE END. She pulls the page out, adds it to the stack on her desk, but she’s crying so hard that she has to blow her nose. She reaches for a tissue, but the box is empty. So she gets up, still sobbing, and goes to the bathroom, looking for some toilet paper. The roll is empty.

Moving about the house, she steps into the kitchen and grabs a post-it note off the refrigerator—one that says BUY TOILET PAPER—and uses it to blow her nose.

Then, moving back into her living room, she opens a cabinet, pulls out a tiny bottle of “airplane” liquor, intending to use it for a toast to celebrate finishing her book, but when she tries to get the cap off, it won’t budge. It takes all of her strength to get the cap loose and she finally makes her toast.

And despite this celebration, it’s quite obvious that this woman is a complete and utter mess.

Okay.

Now, tell me, which of these scenes would you rather watch?

Me, I’ll go with the second one. In fact I have, in a wonderful movie from the eighties called Romancing the Stone. And I think most people would be much less inclined to fall asleep during version two than they would if subjected to version one.

Version one just sits there. Lays there, in fact.

Why?

Because it has no conflict.

Conflict is the cornerstone of good storytelling. Conflict is what grabs our interest, makes us want to continue reading. And this isn’t just limited to movies and novels.

How many of us would watch the news if all we saw were happy, feel-good stories? People thrive on conflict, and anyone who thinks a story doesn’t need it, is completely out of touch with what good, solid storytelling is all about.

Your basic plot line—no matter what kind of book you’re writing—always centers around characters in conflict. There’s usually both an internal conflict and an external one. And the external conflict should challenge or contribute to the character’s internal conflict (and probably vice versa).

If you give me a story about two people sailing through life without a care in the world, then I might as well watch paint dry. I need something in that story to grab me by the heart or the throat. To give rise to my emotions. To make me laugh and cry and root for the hero. And if all the hero is doing is contemplating his or her navel, then, please, get me the hell out of there.

Your characters must have a goal—no matter how trivial it might seem—and they must have strong opposition to that goal.

Even the simple act of searching for a way to blow her nose makes the second scenario above the more compelling one.

I can’t say this enough. Conflict is one of the most essential elements of telling a good story. And sharing that moment when a character overcomes conflict is what lifts us. What thrills us. What sends us soaring.

As Hamilton Mabie once said, “A kite rises against, not with, the wind.”

First-page Critique: UNTITLED

Posted on June 14, 2016 by Kathryn Lilley

By Kathryn Lilley

Another brave author has submitted the first page of a work-in-progress anonymously for critique. Read and enjoy. See you on the far side with my comments. Then, please join us with your feedback.

UNTITLED

March, seventeen years earlier.

The car ahead of Noah Webb vanished.

He eased to a stop on the shoulder and stared into the soup beyond his headlights. He had followed the car for twenty minutes, two lone drivers trying to negotiate the fog. This road lulled a driver to sleep for eleven miles of straight blacktop. Then it snaked through a series of wooded curves and deep ravines. Under a full moon, this road was a challenge. Tonight, it was deadly.

The other driver never saw the curve coming. Noah shut his eyes. Memories from another distant fog shrouded night, on another lonely road, washed over him. A tear oozed from the corner of his eye and crawled down his cheek. Why was I the one following him?

Webb exhaled, flicked at the tear and mustered the strength to move. He released his grip on the wheel and shook blood back into his fingers. He fished a flashlight from under the seat. As he opened the door, cold, damp air slithered in and licked his face. He pulled himself from the car and stood still, staring where the headlights dissolved into the fog. He dug his nails into his palms and called, “Anybody out there?”

No answer. As he crept around the car, gravel and frosted grass crunched under his feet. He turned and looked back into the glare of his headlights. He checked his watch. Almost midnight. His breath froze and shimmered in the light. He shivered, pulled up his collar and then faced the darkness before him and approached the curve.

He followed the gravel to where the ground spilled over an embankment into the woods. He searched the darkness then stopped. From the bottom of the ravine, two red lights glowed in the fog like squinting eyes. He aimed his light at the car, but the mist swallowed it. “Hang on, I’m coming.”

Webb dug his heels into the slope and sidestepped down. Halfway, his foot slipped. Groping for balance, he fumbled the flashlight and it clattered away. He crashed on his hip then slid over rock and wet grass until he thudded against the bumper of the car.

My Notes:

I am impressed by the way the writer of this page quickly incorporates several important story components:

An inciting incident takes place (the car in front of Webb’s vehicle careens off a fog-shrouded curve)
Tension is introduced (Webb must decide to act in order to rescue the other driver)
The tension level is raised (Webb has to overcome a reluctance to act due to a previous accident experience)

It’s hard to check off all those story points in just 400 words, and I think it was done quite deftly here. I was drawn in by the setup on this first page–kudos to the writer!

I have a few suggestions for edits.

Keep the focus on the fog

The fog in the second paragraph is such a strong element, and the offset rhythm of the last two sentences is great.

Under a full moon, this road was a challenge. Tonight, it was deadly.

But before I reached the end of that paragraph, the focus had shifted from the fog to the road itself (lulling the driver to sleep, snaking around curves). I would suggest revising the paragraph slightly to maintain a constant sense of the menacing fog.

How do we know?

When did Webb first become aware of the crash, exactly? In the first sentence?

The car ahead of Noah Webb vanished.

During my initial reading, I didn’t get a clear sense of the crash as it was supposed to be taking place. The first sentence is too nonspecific (The car vanishes–where? Into the fog? Over the side of the road?) I first assumed that the car had simply vanished into the fog. I later deduced that it had crashed from the narration and flashback. As the standard advice goes, it’s better to “show” the crash clearly as it takes place, rather than “tell” it after the fact.

Flashback note

I like the information about Webb’s previous crash because it raises his tension level, but the flashback device itself is a bit clunky. It slowed down the story, especially when we got to the part about the tears rolling down Webb’s face. I’d suggest trying to weave in the information about the previous crash without bringing the present-day action to a full stop. Perhaps Webb could struggle with his memory and tears as he’s stumbling down the ravine toward the victim’s car. (At least he’d be moving.)

Speaking of flashbacks, the chapter frame puzzles me (in retrospect).

March, seventeen years earlier.

Is the entire scene supposed to be taking place in the past? In that case, it suggests something of a flashback within a flashback, doesn’t it?

Repeated words, format

As I was reading I felt like there were a few too many instances of the word “he”. Try to vary the sentence structures to pare down the repetition.

Also, at one point the name used to refer to the character changes from Noah to Webb. Once you settle on the name you want to use, keep using the same same name for consistency.

Overall

You can file all of my comments today under the “easy to fix” category. Overall, I think the page is a great start. Thanks to our writer today for submitting this first page!

TKZers, can you add more feedback for the writer in the Comments? And don’t be shy if you disagree with any of my notes. The more, the merrier!

The Secret Key to Breaking Big

Posted on June 13, 2016 by Larry Brooks

by Larry Brooks

First off… it’s not a secret at all.

It’s just something that isn’t often talked about. It is rarely hit head-on in the vast oeuvre of fiction craft, where there exists a tacit assumption that anything you choose to write about is okay… that it’s how you write a story, rather than what your story might be in a conceptual, dramatic context.

This gets tricky, perhaps confusing, because that is half true.

Nobody will suggest your story idea isn’t strong enough. Even when they should. At least, not before you write it. No, they’ll wait until you’ve spent a year gushing 100,000 bloody words onto the page from the open wound of your best intentions…

… and then they’ll tell you: meh, I’ve read this before… or… well, it’s okay, good even, but we have enough good out there, give us something great, something that stops my heart.

The true half: how you write your story absolutely matters.

Because a killer idea, poorly written, will tank every bit as fast as a mediocre idea written really well.

There exists a list of qualitative criteria (what I call the six realms of story physics), applied to another list of six story elements and skills (what I refer to as the six core competencies) that you must do well. As in, really well.

As in, you need to go six-for-six.

That’s always been true. It’s truer than ever today, in a market that is orders of magnitude more crowded with titles vying for the same finite readership, and glutted with stories and authors that are good, but not quite great.

Great is reachable. But you have to find a special story, told in an especially competent way. The sum of those two high bars is… rare. I can tell you, as a story coach who has read many hundreds of story summaries over the past few years, “rare” is the softest word I can come with here. Unremarkable – even when it’s just fine — is everywhere.

That other half… determined by your choice of concept and premise (which are different things) is less emphasized in the writing conversation. Frankly, it is where the writing community has lost its balls. More polite conversation and acceptable workshop narrative steps right over the need for premises that are conceptually compelling and dramatically rich, rich enough to allow a well-drawn character to shine.

So let’s all wake up to this truth.

Often, perhaps as much as half the time, stories are either rejected or perform poorly, in spite of the author really writing the heck of out it, because the story isn’t amazing at its core conceit level. Writing the heck out of a vanilla, too-familiar idea will get you precisely… nowhere.

Or at least, wherever it takes you, it will be slow going.

Take a closer look at the stories that break-out. At the bestsellers.

A huge percentage of them are from the same familiar names, the ones you’ve been seeing there for years. I just checked: of the current top-20 New York Times best sellers, thirteen come from writers you’ve heard of, who have been there before (one of whom created the TV hit Fargo, which disqualifies him from being a newbie). One is from an author you’ve heard of because her current title is the runaway breakout hit of the last two years (Paula Hawkins slid into that spot when Gone Girl faded a bit)…

… and the others are less known.

So how did they get there? It’s not just because they can really write. It’s because the premises they’ve written from are on fire with upside.

I promise you, as well, that it wasn’t because they tweeted and Facebooked and pimped themselves onto the list. It’s because of word-of-mouth, which is more often the outcome of reviews than it is from social media. It’s because of quality storytelling, sure, but it’s more because of… wait for it…

… amazing, fresh, conceptual rich story premises.

Among that list, from those seven new names, consider these concepts:

– A woman defies her controlling husband’s retirement plans for the both of them. (What woman doesn’t want to defy a controlling husband?)

– A spectacularly wealthy and dysfunctional family implodes, murder ensues. (A train wreck we cannot look away from.)

– Viruses bent on wiping out humanity are vanquished… and then they return. (Some concepts never go away, they simply recycle.)

– Young girl comes to New York to make her way in the big bad city, and meets a “devastatingly handsome” bad-boy bartender. (Those two words – devastatingly handsome – will sell a million copies by themselves, in the right hands.)

Notice these aren’t end-of-the-world Hollywood blockbuster type concepts. “High concepts” as they are know. Rather — and this is a subtlety that will serve you, once you get it — it is because these concepts, and those like them, play into the dramatic evocation of emotional resonance from readers.

These concepts intrigue. They are vicarious, they suck us in, they push our buttons. They pose frightening, intriguing questions. They work before you know about the author or the characters, because they are conceptual.

If you need the premise itself to get someone excited, chances are you haven’t tapped into the full potential of something conceptual yet. Wife fakes her own death to avenge her crappy marriage to a man she loathes… that’s not a premise yet (no hero, no plot, no villain, no stakes… no premise), but it is a concept that will make an agent, editor or a reader sit up and take notice.

All of these books are on the list because, primarily, at least as much because the writer is really good, because they are well conceived.

The opportunity is right there: in the conceptual.

Narrative skill is actually more an ante-in than it is a deal-maker these days. It is a commodity. Truth be told, there are people sitting in every writing conference you attend who can give those A-list brand name authors a run for their significant money.

We can take a page from Hollywood in this regard. Most of the movies we pay to see that aren’t based on novels come from the minds of producers, directors, and even actors. Those are the people with the story ideas — some of which they get from writers they quickly pay off to go away — at least the ones the industry will pay attention to. After which they hire-out the writing itself, where anonymous craft brings those story ideas to life.

That’s not the business we are in as novelists. But don’t miss the gold in that model.

As authors, we need to function as producer, director, actor and writer of our stories. ANd we need to realize that we are selling an idea as much as we are selling our narrative skill, via a manuscript. Unless you are writing in literary fiction, the conceptual idea itself needs to glow in the dark, to show up in a dark sky chock-full of exquisitely well written mediocrity.

And then, of course, you need to write the hell out of it.

An example to show how obvious this is, once you look for it.

Let’s look at the romance/women’s fiction genre. One of those names on the NY Times list is Jo Jo Moyes, whose title After You is (at this writing) #5 on that list.

Now look closer. After You is the sequel to her bestseller, Me Before You, which in addition to selling five million copies, is currently a front-line motion picture tear-jerker, receiving good if not great reviews. This explains the sequel’s presence on the bestseller list: because a quality sequel to a legitimate bestseller — film or no film — will always be, at least for fifteen minutes, another bestseller.

Because a sequel to a bestseller IS the concept being sold.

Now let’s look deeper. Let’s look at the earlier novel (which came after ten previous Moyes titles, all successful, but none to this degree), Me Before You.

And therein we find the proof of the concept/premise pudding.

At a glance, Me Before You is a commodity tear-jerker. A doomed love story. A life-is-unfair, let’s-make-the-most-of-the-time-we-have vicarious ride through glorious, courageous heartbreak and the triumph of love itself.

Always a good bet. There have been, quite literally, thousands of such novels written.

So what made this one work? Other than the quality of Jo Jo’s writing and storytelling?

It’s because something that resides at the core of the story idea itself. Something that is highly conceptual. Not earth-shakingly original, per se… no, that’s not always required (though it certainly can help). What made this particular love story work is the fact that the novel, in the words of Miami Herald reviewer Connie Ogle, has some bite to it. A “juicy, ripe red apple of a romance with a razor blade embedded under its skin.”

That razor blade is the concept. The love story that covers it is the premise.

The bite of that novel is something conceptual that separates it from the crowd.

Here it is: What if the hero/protagonist, whom we love (because she’s from a working class family, and she deserves to be happy, damn it!) falls in love with a handsome, wealthy, yet bitter young man…

… so far, this is as familiar as a bagel for breakfast…

… a young man who is… wait for it… a quadriplegic.

Damn. Didn’t see that coming, did you.

But here’s where Moyes demonstrates her conceptual chops. Instead of a trite HEA ending to an otherwise production line premise, she flips that on its dramatic ear and gives us… wait for it…

… a stunning, heart-wrenching didn’t-see-that-coming, take out her heart and stomp on it ending. A razor blade of a concept, hiding there under the skin, all along.

Concept is a framework for a story, within which premise is explored. That framework, in Me Before You, is how it is all destined to end.

All of this, by the way, was solidly in her head before she sat down to actually write the manuscript (this I know, because Moyes is an avid if not completely confident outliner, she doesn’t move to the draft stage until she has the story nailed… a lesson there for us all). This is a highly conceptual story idea, because it grabs us even before we encounter the story. Even before we meet these characters.

But that Jo Jo… she’s a clever one, indeed. In giving us that ending, she doubles down on the conceptual appeal of the story. Ever since Erich Segal broke our hearts in Love Story, readers have lined up to pay good money to have their emotions put through a wringer and then driven over by a funeral motorcade. Moyes actually one-ups Segal in that regard, never flinching at the ending she knew would work…

… and not backing down when Hollywood suggested she lighten up the ending of the film version. Moyes actually wrote the script for that, too, and in sticking to her original ending, the movie is doing big business precisely because of the Machiavellian manner in which it toys with our emotions before destroying them.

And now, she has the sequel on the Times bestseller list. All because of concept colliding with narrative talent. Separate those two parts of the craft puzzle, and these two home run novels don’t happen.

Dan Brown did it in The Davinci Code, and again in Inferno (the film of that novel hits theaters this summer). Gillian Flynn did it in Gone Girl. Paula Hawkins did it in The Girl On The Train. The list goes on and on in this regard.

Big ideas, delivered with big concepts, fueling big premises.

And then, written with stellar craft.

The latter, standing alone as your sole strategy, is a long and crowded road that rarely takes us where, in the quiet of our dreams, we truly want to be.

Look closely at what what’s in the literary news.

Chances are, if there isn’t a famous author name on the cover, there’s an astoundingly conceptual idea at the heart of the story. If nothing else, than by virtue of the emotional buttons it pushes.

All that stuff… the learning, the principles, the examples of great technical execution across six realms of story physics and six realms of writing core competencies… they’re all as valuable and necessary as they’ve ever been.

But despite what you don’t often read or hear out here in craft-land all that much, they aren’t all that is needed to blast your career to another level, via a story that makes your bones in a graveyard full of well-crafted skeletons.

Don’t rush your story into being. Nurse it at the conceptual level, ask more of it. Go deep into the dark and swirling well of human emotion and empathy to give us something that grabs us and won’t let go… even before we’ve read a word of it.

What is conceptual about your premise? What will make someone say, “Wow, now THAT is a story I want to read,” even before you hit them with the premise itself.

Answer that one, and answer it well… and you may find you’ve dealt yourself a hand worth doubling down on, as well.