10 Ways to Goose the Muse

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Calliope, the muse of epic poetry and story, is a fickle goddess. She drops in depending on her mood, tickles the imagination, and then takes off to party with Aphrodite. Homer famously called on the muse at the beginning of The Illiad and The Odyssey, and she deigned to answer the blind poet. But many another author, cold and alone in his garret, has cursed her for not showing up at all.
So what do you do, scribe? Wait around for a visit? Implore Zeus to flex some muscle and order his daughter to your office or Starbucks?

No! You haven’t got time to waste. You’ve got books to write. So I suggest you take the initiative and set about to prod the capricious nymph out of her scornful lethargy. 

How? Play games. Set aside a regular time (at least one half hour per week) just to play. And the most important rule is: do not censor yourself in any way. Leave your editorial mind out of the loop and record the ideas just as they come. Only later, with some distance, do you go back and assess what you have.  
Here are ten of my favorite muse-goosing games:
1. The “What if” Game
This game can be played at any stage of the writing process, but it is especially useful for finding ideas. Train your mind to think in What if terms about everything you read, watch or happen to see on the street. I’m always doing that when waiting at a stop light and looking at people on the corner. What if she is a hit-woman? What if he is the deposed president of Venezuela?
           
Read the news asking “What if” about every article. What if Tim Tebow is a robot? What if that Montana newlywed who shoved her husband off a cliff eight days into their marriage is a serial husband-killer? Or a talk show host?

2. Titles
Make up a cool title then think about a book to go with it. Sound wacky? It isn’t. A title can set your imagination zooming, looking for a story.
           
Titles can come from a variety of sources. Go through a book of quotations, like Bartlett’s, and jot down interesting phrases. Make a list of several words randomly drawn from the dictionary and combine them. 

           
3. The List
Early in his career, Ray Bradbury made a list of nouns that flew out of his memory and subconscious. These became fodder for his stories, often drawn from his childhood. 
Start your own list.  Let your mind comb through the mental pictures of your past and quickly write one- or two-word reminders. I did this once and my own list of over 100 items includes:
THE DRAPES (a memory about a pet puppy who tore my Mom’s new drapes, so she gave him away the next day. I climbed a tree in protest and refused to come down).
THE HILL (that I once accidentally set fire to).
THE FIREPLACE (in front of which we had many a family gathering).
Each of these is the germ of a possible story or novel. They are what resonate from my past. I can take one of these items and brainstorm a whole host of possibilities that come straight from the heart.
4. See it
Let your imagination play you a movie.  Close your eyes. Sit back and “watch.” What do you see? If something is interesting, don’t try to control it. Give it a nudge if you want to, but try as much as possible to let the pictures do their own thing. Do this for as long as you want.
             
5. Hear it
Music is a shortcut to the heart. (Calliope has a sister, Euterpe, goddess of music. Put the whole family to work).
           
Listen to music that moves you. Choose different styles–classical, movie scores, rock, jazz, whatever lights your fuse–and as you listen, close your eyes and record what pictures, scenes or characters appear.
           
6. Steal it
If Shakespeare could do it, you can too. Steal your plots. Yes, the Bard of Avon rarely came up with an original story. He took old plots and weaved his own particular magic with them.
So did Dean Koontz. He amusingly winks at us in Midnight about combining Invasion of the Body Snatchers with The Island of Dr. Moreau.
Listen: this is not plagiarism! I once had a well-meaning but misinformed correspondent wax indignant about my tongue-in-cheek use of the word steal. There are only about twenty plots (more or less depending on who you talk to) and they are all public domain. You combine, re-work, re-imagine them. You don’t lift exact characters and setting and phrases. That’s not kosher. Reworking old plots is.
In Hollywood, they do this all the time. Die Hard on a boat becomes Under Siege. Die Hard on a mountain becomes Cliffhanger. 
7. Cross a Genre
All genres have conventions. We expect certain beats and movements in genre stories. Why not combine expectations and turn them into fresh plots?
           
It’s very easy to take a Western tale, for example, and set it in outer space. Star Wars  had many Western themes (remember the bar scene?). The feel of Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man  characters transferred into the future in Robert A. Heinlein’s The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. The classic TV series The Wild, Wild West  was simply James Bond in the old West. 
When zombies got hot a few years ago, I pitched my agent the idea of a legal thriller series with a zombie as the lawyer-hero. I figured most people think lawyers and zombies are the same anyway. Kensington bought it and it became the Mallory Caine series under my pen name, K. Bennett.
           
8. Research
James Michener began “writing” a book four or five years in advance. When he “felt something coming on” he would start reading, as many as 150 to 200 books on a subject. He browsed, read, checked things. He kept it all in his head and then, finally, he began to write. All the material gave him plenty of ideas to draw upon.
           
Today, the Internet makes research easier than ever. But don’t ignore the classic routes. Books are still here, and you can always find people with specialized knowledge to interview. And if the pocketbook permits, travel to a location and drink it in. Rich veins of material abound.

9. Obsession
By its nature an obsession controls the deepest emotions of a character. It pushes the character, prompts her to action. As such, it is a great springboard for ideas. What sorts of things obsess people?
•      ego
•      winning
•      looks
•      love
•      lust
•      enemies
•      career
Create a character. Give her an obsession. Watch where she runs.

10. Opening Lines
Dean Koontz wrote The Voice of the Night  based on an opening line he wrote while just “playing around”–
“You ever killed anything?” Roy asked.
Only after the line was written did Koontz decide Roy would be a boy of fourteen. He then went on to write two pages of dialogue which opened the book. But it all started with one line that reached out and grabbed him by the throat.
           
Joseph Heller was famous for using first lines to suggest novels. In desperation one day, needing to start a novel but having no ideas, these opening lines came to Heller: In the office in which I work, there are four people of whom I am afraid. Each of these four people is afraid of five people.
These two lines immediately suggested what Heller calls “a whole explosion of possibilities and choices.” The result was his novel, Something Happened.
           
Well, I could go on, but this post is already too long. If

you’re interested, I have 10 more of these games in my book, Plot & Structure (from which this post is adapted).

The main lesson: don’t let the inconstant Calliope rest on her mythic derriere. She’s a muse, after all. This is what she’s supposed to do. 
So what do you do to get creative? 

Showing and Telling and Reading and Signing

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This past Thursday evening, September 12, I met fellow TKZ blogger Joe Moore for the first time at a reading and signing in Baton Rouge. The event was held at the Shaw Center for the Arts, a beautiful facility a block away from the Mississippi River. The event was a gallery exhibit for a new short fiction collection entitled Show & Tell. Photographer William Greiner commissioned short stories from twenty-eight authors, including Joe and myself (and Julie Compton, the rose between the two thorns pictured above) (photograph by Andre Chapoy; all rights reserved) by sending each author a different set of three photographs and asking each of us to write a story based upon one of them.  The photographs and accompanying stories now constitute a traveling exhibit, and also have been published in hardcover. Joe, Julie, Pat Piper, and I read our stories as part of the exhibit’s opening reception and then signed copies of the book afterward. Show & Tell in hardcover book form is available for purchase at: http://www.ulpress.org/catalog.php?item=142
A wonderful time was had by all. I decided after participating that it might be time to review (for those of us fortunate enough to be in the position that Joe M. and I were in the Thursday last) what we as authors need to do to make such an event a success. Let me hasten to tell you that I simply followed Joe M.’s lead: he is as genuinely a courteous a person as you are ever likely to encounter.
1) Show up on time. Woody Allen has famously stated that ninety percent of everything is showing up. How true. If you’re early, you’re on time; if you’re on time, you’re late; and if you’re late, you’re too late. You don’t want to disappoint people who are coming to see you. How fortunate we are, that we can do something that people will actually come to bear witness to. The least we can do is show our appreciation by appearing early.
2) Stay later. If the program/signing/reading has an end time, plan to stay at least five minutes later than that. You can visit with people who came to see you, or, if nothing else, engage in Number 5, below.
3) Be expressive. If you’re doing a reading, practice it a few times before the time appointed. Be expressive. Change your tone of voice and your facial expression while you read to reflect what is going on at the point in your story that you are reading. Reading by rote in a monotone can ruin even the best passage. An expressive reading, by contrast, can make good work better. Harlan Ellison is terrific at this, by the way. He can hold a room full of fans spellbound, making them roar with laughter at one point and silencing them the next. Which brings me to
4) Adapt. Nothing goes as planned. Jack Rea…er, Helmuth von Moltke famously said that “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” Just so. There were significant problems with the microphones at Show & Tell; a portion of the audience, well-lubricated by the top shelf libations which William provided, was a bit loud during the readings. What to do? Keep reading, with a smile. Some people were actually listening, and those are the folks you are reading for. Things will go wrong. Plan on it. Go around, over, under, or through the difficulty and do whatever you need to do. It’ll work out.
5) Thank everyone individually. You cannot thank too many people. Thank your friends who attended (O’Neil & Debb De Noux; Carl & Toni McGee Causey; Doug Wollfolk; Jason Furrate; and Andre Chapoy: thank you again, one and all); each person who buys a book; each person who asks you to sign a book; and the folks that got you there and propped you up (thank you again, William, and you as well, John Miller). I particularly include in the latter group the seemingly invisible people who restock the refreshments and run the cash registers. I thanked one of them last night and she told me that I was the first person attending any of the center’s events who had thanked her for being there. That’s plain wrong. It only takes a second.  They’ll remember you, particularly if you’re ever asked back.

I am sure that there are things I have forgotten. John Gilstrap has hilarious stories about things going wrong at signings (his visual accompaniments are priceless) so John, if you’re lurking out there please chime in, and I would ask each and all of you to do the same. And if you’ve attended a signing or a reading as an audience member what happened that you liked? Or that you didn’t?

Talking Trailer Trash

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By Elaine Viets

    All the cool kids have book trailers. If you’re lucky, your publisher will pop for one. If not, should you spend your money for your own trailer? If you’ve never done an exhibition trailer hire for one of your projects before, now may be the right time to make a call like this.

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    I think it’s good advertising.
     A book trailer is an animated version of the elevator pitch. It’s fun to show off your trailer on your Web site and Facebook page, like tooling around in a new car. Of course, you have to Tweet it.
    Then what?
    The book trailer is just starting its work. I have four trailers now and find new uses for them with each book.
STL Public Library Central

    –  Signings at bookstores and libraries. Most bookstores and libraries will run book trailers on their Web sites and Facebook pages. Unlike author photos, which seem to feature identical “Is the ordeal over yet?” smiles, book trailers look fresh and different. Nobody ever says, “You don’t look like your book trailer.”
    – Media interviews.  Send the station your book trailer for their Web and FB pages. Some TV stations will use it on air. Others will post it on their Website, promoting your book after your interview. Newspapers use them, too. 
   – Special events. I do a number of charity events when my mysteries debut.  Some of the e-vites feature the book trailers.

   – Sites that show off book trailers. My favorite is Shelf Pleasure www.shelfpleasure.com. More free publicity. (That’s its name. I’m not pulling your leg, or anything else.)
    How much does a book trailer cost?
    A one or two-minute trailer can run $5,000 to $7,000 and up, especially if it has original video and a professional  announcer. Even with stock footage and photos, book trailers can quickly rack up price tag between one or two thousand dollars.
    If you’re clever, like TKZ’s Nancy Cohen, you can make your own book trailer. Nancy described how she made her trailer for “Shear Murder” here:
http://nancyjcohen.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/book-trailer-how-to/

gallery-kellywritinglife4
    I use EZ Book Covers. Kelly Nichols, one-half of the mystery duo PJ Parrish, is easy to work with, partly because she’s also a writer. Over the rumbles of rolling logs, I hope you’ll hear this: She’s good. I wouldn’t recommend her just because she’s a friend. I’ve paid less than $500 for all four book trailers, including music and photos.
   Pumped_for_Murder My first trailer, for “Pumped for Murder,” a Dead-End Job mystery about extreme body building, was  nearly two minutes long: 1:58. http://www.elaineviets.com/new/misc/trailers.asp
Kelly had to really search to find photos of women body builders, but she got some doozies.
    Then mystery author James Swain told me that book trailers don’t have to be so long. He recommended short pitches to get the message across. He’s right. Here are the short trailers for “Final Sail,” set aboard a yacht: http://www.elaineviets.com/new/misc/trailers.asp

FinalSail_approved[1]
    And “Board Stiff,” a paddleboarding mystery. http://www.elaineviets.com/new/misc/trailers.asp

BoardStiff

Thankfully, there’s no video of me taking standup paddleboard lessons.
    I have a show on Radio Ear Network, so I narrated my videos.  I also assembled a focus group of writers and friends to look at the rough cuts. That’s essential. Sometimes, I got so wrapped up in the video, I lost track of the story.
FixingToDie 

My new trailer is for “Fixing to Die,” my November Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper mystery. This short trailer was different from the Dead-End Job mysteries, which are set in anything-goes South Florida. Josie is a St. Louis single mom who’s newly married and renovating her first house. The trailer and the music needed a sitcom feel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7B8_GR0WIo&feature=youtu.be
    Six months worth of work and seventy thousand words reduced to 57 seconds: That’s the art and the goal of the book trailer.

Book Production

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Nancy J. Cohen

What happens after you sell a book to a publishing house? Despite what you may think if you’re a new author, your work is far from finished. In case you haven’t had experience yet with this stage in the writing process or if you are an interested reader, let me describe it for you.

First you’ll hear back from the editor with line edits. Usually we get these as Track Changes in Microsoft Word. The editor will write comments in the margins relevant to the story and will delete/add sentences in the body of the work. You may or may not have a deadline for returning revisions, with your corrections also done in Track Changes.

editing

Assuming your editor accepts this version, next you’ll receive the copy edits. If you’re unsure about the difference between line or story edits and copyediting, see my article here: http://bit.ly/18zyJbj. You make corrections again and send them back. Often I’ll find problems like sentences that should be bumped ahead to the next paragraph, missing punctuation or dialogue attributed to the wrong character. These are formatting errors.

copy edit

Next come the page proofs or galleys. This is your last chance to make changes and to proofread your work. Again, you’ll have a deadline, often a week or two, in which to respond.

Sometime along the way, you may be lucky enough to receive an advance peek at the front cover design. Recently I got the one for my next mystery, and I immediately sent back two corrections and some color preferences. I’m lucky my publisher is so accommodating.

You may also get a glimpse at the inside cover flap (for a hardcover) and back cover copy. Once I felt the wording was too revealing about the suspects and requested changes. It’s nice when you have a chance to give your approval.

Naturally, if you are self-publishing, you have to hire people to do all these tasks. But you’ll still have the proofreading and corrections regardless of which route you take.

At the moment, I am working on four books. Three are already written. On Book 1, I’m waiting for page proofs and final cover design. This one already has a scheduled publication date. On Book 2, I am hoping for an offer followed by line edits. These will take me a while since the story is a long one. On Book 3, I’m working with an editor toward self-publishing my first original title.

As for book 4, I’m only at the synopsis and research stage, but I need to start writing it soon to finish by my  editor’s requested date. Add in various trips and holidays within the next few months, and I’ll be lucky to have time to breathe. This requires prioritizing. The books that come in with edits or page proofs from my publishing houses will be first on the list.

So you see, until a book is actually on the virtual (or real) bookshelves, your work isn’t finished. When the book finally is  for sale, then you’ll be jumping on the marketing bandwagon. And that starts a whole new ride.

How many of you have several works in production at the same time?

First Page Critique: THE CIRCLE

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Today we have a first page from a story called THE CIRCLE. My comments follow.

***

Leigh looked up from her mum’s casket, concentrating on the slatted, pitched ceiling of the church. The familiar voice of the chaplain droned on from the pulpit and she focused not his words, which would surely undo her, but to the soothing and steady cadence. She held the back of her forefinger to her nose, wincing as she touched the swollen, chapped skin.

Reaching in her handbag for a tissue, her searching fingers settled on the age-softened newspaper article her mum had given her just two days ago. A jolt fired through her stomach and she yanked her hand out and clenched her palms in her lap, her fingers twining together until her knuckles blanched.

What had they been like?

The unspoken question itself felt traitorous. A glance to her left confirmed that her dad—that is, the only man she’d ever known as a father—was sitting upright, only the sparkling reflection on his cheeks belied his stoic figure.

Leigh took a steadying breath. Today she would ask Uncle Pete about the article. She cast a quick glance over her shoulder to see if she could spot him in the pews but her attention was caught by a man near the door in plain green Barrack Dress, staring at her.

She turned around to face forward again, her brow puckered. The military uniform must mean he was a friend of her dad. But surely the man was too young? Her dad had retired from the service when she was a baby. And the man had rudely not looked away when she’d held his gaze.

She turned to look again, but now there was only empty space where he’d stood.

###

Leigh found Uncle Pete at the reception back at the house. He was loading a plate from the buffet of casseroles and cakes in the dining room. When he saw her, he set it down and held out a hand. As she hugged him, he tucked her head under his chin.

“Hey little bit,” he said. “I’m so sorry. Your mum was one of a kind.”

Leigh relaxed into his embrace, hitching in a stuttering sigh. Though they weren’t related, she’d called him uncle as long as she could remember. And now he might be the only one who could help her. “Can I talk to you alone?”

***

My comments: I like the premise the writer establishes in this first page. We immediately know that the narrator is going through multiple crises–her mother has just died, and she just learned that the parents she has always known are not her real parents. There’s also a hint of military intrigue to come. This is a good opening situation.

In general, the writing here is strong enough to keep me reading. I would suggest some tweaking to make it even stronger. I put my specific suggestions in bold red.



Leigh looked up from her mum’s casket, concentrating on the slatted, pitched ceiling of the church. The familiar voice of the chaplain 
(Perhaps mention the chaplain by name, if he’s familiar?) droned on from the pulpit. She  
(I think this sentence is stronger if broken up) focused not on 
(Missing preposition inserted here) his words, which would surely undo her, but to the soothing and steady cadence. 
(After inserting the missing ‘on’, the combination with ‘to’ doesn’t read well. Might need to rewrite this sentence)
 She held the back of her forefinger to her nose, wincing as she touched the  swollen, chapped skin. 

(This sounds stronger to me without the ‘the’. Also, the first sentence of the paragraph already has a gerund clause. Try to vary the structure of sentences in every paragraph as much as possible, to punch up the rhythm.)

Reaching in her handbag for a tissue, her searching fingers settled on the age-softened newspaper article her mum had given her just two days ago. 
(Another gerund clause, plus there are two “ing” words in the same sentence. As writers, we all tend to overuse one type of structure, punctuation, or phrasing in our first drafts. This writer might want to check for the overuse of ‘ing’ throughout the manuscript.)
A jolt fired through her stomach and she yanked her hand out and clenched her palms in her lap, her fingers twining together until her knuckles blanched.  
(Here, there are too many actions in one sentence: jolt, yank, clench, twine, and blanch. Consider breaking this sentence up to strengthen the flow.)

What had they been like?  
(I put this in italics to indicate inner thought. This sentence was a bit jarring to me as I read it. It might have worked better if we’d gotten some clue about what was in the newspaper. Perhaps the narrator could glance down and register a word from the headline, a picture, or something that would set up her internal question.)

The unspoken question itself felt traitorous.  
(This sentence felt slightly awkward to me.)   
A glance to her left confirmed that her dad—that is, the only man she’d ever known as a father—was sitting upright. Only the sparkling 
(ING Alert. Break up this sentence to make it stonger. Also, ‘sparkling” didn’t convey tears to me on the first read) reflection on his cheeks belied his stoic figure. 
(“Belied his stoic figure” seems stiff, somewhat Churchillian. It doesn’t match the tone of the rest of the piece.)

Leigh took a steadying breath. Today she would ask Uncle Pete about the article. She cast a quick glance over her shoulder to see if she could spot him in the pews but her attention was caught by a man near the door in plain green Barrack Dress, staring at her.  
(ING Alert. And again, there are too many actions in one sentence. Separate the man’s action to distinguish it from hers.)

She turned around to face forward again, her brow puckered.  
(This might just be me, but I don’t like the word ‘puckered’. I think it’s because I read so many manuscripts that overdo facial and hand tics.) 
The military uniform must mean he was a friend of her dad. But surely the man was too young? Her dad had retired from the service  when she was a baby. 
(It might be stronger to mention the name of the Service. Specific descriptions give the reader hints about your characters’ backgrounds, and adds authenticity to your writing) 
 And the man had rudely not looked away when she’d held his gaze.
(Why is this  rude? Wasn’t she staring at him as well? “Rudely not looked away” is slightly awkward, as well. )

She turned to look again, but now there was only empty space where he’d stood.

###

Leigh found Uncle Pete at the reception back at the house. He was loading a plate from the buffet of casseroles and cakes in the dining room. When he saw her, he set it down and held out a hand. As she hugged him, he tucked her head under his chin.

“Hey Little Bit,” he said. “I’m so sorry. Your mum was one of a kind.”

Leigh relaxed into his embrace, hitching in a stuttering sigh. 
(ING Alert) 
Though they weren’t related, she’d called him uncle as long as she could remember. And now he might be the only one who could help her. “Can I talk to you alone?” 
(The formatting of the paragraph detracts from the tension of the scene, and it’s slightly unclear who is asking the question.  It might be stronger if you show her voicing a muffled question into the wool of his jacket, or something like that.

***

Overall: I made a lot of suggestions for this page, but the fixes are all fairly minor, and easily made. This is a manuscript that seems very promising to me. It just needs a polish and some tweaking to get it to the next level. The writer should examine the rest of the manuscript for some of the issues we’ve discussed.

Thank you for submitting this page, Writer! Well done, and keep going with this story!

TKZ’ers, do you have any suggestions or anything you’d like to add?

To Review or Not to Review

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by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

I was at a presentation recently on ways authors can use social media and the dreaded issue of ‘reviews’ came up – with the presenter advising many would-be authors that a great way to engage future readers is to use social media to review other people’s books that occupy the same ‘space’ as your own. 

Fair enough…perfectly reasonable…why not…except I always feel a panic attack coming on when it comes to the whole issue of reviews. Perhaps it’s my English heritage but I’m very, very wary of offering any kind of on-line commentary on books that have been published that are of a similar genre to mine (and even those that are not) because:

  • What if I hate the book but I’ve met the author and he/she seem very nice…
  • What if I think the book was so-so but it’s a major bestseller and so my opinion might look like nothing more than sour grapes…
  • What if I love the book but my review seems like little more than vanity or pandering…
  • What if an on-line opinion starts a flame-war? 

Now in person I am more than happy to air my opinion on almost any topic:) My concern is always that once out there on the internet (via social media, blog posts or other review forums) it’s out there forever and it has an unlimited potential to come back and bite me. 

Of course, good reviews are rarely the problem, but I think your credibility gets called into question if the only reviews you ever write are of the gushing, over the top ‘I love it!!!!!’ variety. If I’m going to present my opinion on-line I want it to be authentic, informative and interesting…which isn’t going to happen if I only report on the books I totally loved. 

So I’m wondering what other writers do when they approach the issue of reviews in the online world. Do you:

  • Only review books you love?
  • Be honest, and just put your opinion out there? or
  • Avoiding reviews all together? 

I’m not sure how many TKZers post reviews on sites like Goodreads or Amazon (again I’m pretty reluctant to do either) or whether you express your opinions on social media like Google+, Facebook etc. On the one hand I think writing reviews can establish an authors credibility in terms of knowing their genre and being enthusiastic and involved in the writing world. On the other hand  I think reviewing other people’s work can open up a whole can of worms (especially if it’s not a glowing endorsement) and so I still hesitate…

So what do you do when it comes to reviews?

Don’t Kill Your Thrills With Premise Implausibility

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Last week I wrote about the most important rule for thriller writers to follow, namely:
Never allow any of your main characters to act like idiots in order to move or wrap up your plot!
I think I spoke to soon. There is a second rule that is of equal import: the overall premise of the thriller must be justified in a way that is a) surprising, and yet b) makes perfect sense. 
This is not easy. Otherwise, everybody would be writing The Sixth Sense every time out. Not even M. Night Shyamalan is writing The Sixth Sense every time out! 
So what can we do to up our chances of getting our thriller ending right?
1. Think About Your Contractual Obligation 
Thriller readers will accept almost any premise at the start. They are willing to suspend their disbelief unless and until you dash that suspension with preposterousness. In other words, the readers are on your side. They’re pulling for you. You have entered, therefore, into an implied contract with them. They suspend disbelief, and you pay that off with a great ending. 
I often hear writers say things like, “Oh, I’ve got a great premise. I don’t know how it’s going to end, but it will have to end sometime. And if I don’t know how it’s going to end, then surely the readers won’t guess!” 
That is called, in philosophical discourse, a non-sequitur (meaning, “it does not follow”). I can name one big-name author right now whose last book was excoriated by readers because it had a great set-up, and hundreds of pages of suspense, and then was absolutely ridiculous at the end. I won’t name said author because I believe in the fellowship, and I know how hard this thriller stuff is to pull off. 
Nevertheless, I’ve heard said writer say (he/she/it) does not worry about how something’s going to end until (he/she/it) gets there. And said author has paid the price for it. 

2. Build the Opponent’s “Ladder”
A thriller or mystery does not begin with the hook, the body, or the Lead character’s introduction. In your story world, it always begins in the past with the Opponent’s scheme. (NOTE: this is not where you begin your book. It’s what you, the author, should know before your book begins). 
Erle Stanley Gardner plotted his mysteries with what he called “The Murderer’s Ladder.” It starts with the bottom rung and runs up to the top. There are 10 rungs:
10. Eliminating overlooked clues and loose threads
9. The false suspect
8. The cover up
7. The flight
6. The actual killing
5. The first irretrievable step
4. The opportunity
3. The plan
2. The temptation
1. The motivation
So what you, the writer, need to work out is, first, the motive for the scheme. This is in the heart and mind of the opponent. He is then tempted to action, makes a plan, looks for opportunity, etc. When Perry Mason gets on the case, with the help of detective Paul Drake, they look for clues along the rungs of the ladder, the place where the opponent might have made a mistake. 
The point of all this is, when you build your own ladder for the opponent, it will not only help your premise makes sense, it will give you all sorts of ideas for plot twists and red herrings.
3. Write the Opponent’s Closing Argument 
This is an exercise I give in my writing workshops. It’s simple yet powerful. At some point in your plotting, whether you are an outliner or a “pantser,” pause and put your opposition character in a courtroom. He is representing himself before a jury, and must now give a closing argument that attempts to justify why he did what he did. 
This step rounds out your opponent, gives him added dimensions, perhaps even a touch of sympathy. It also keeps you from the dreaded moustache-twirling villain. No stereotypes, please. 
I see a pantser in the back row, raising her hand. “Yes, ma’am?” 
“I just can’t write that way! I have to discover as I go along!” 
“And you know what you’ll discover? That you have to force an ending onto all that material you’ve come up with. So you’ll go back and try to change, mix and match, but will then discover there are too many plot elements you can’t alter without changing everything else around it, so you’ll end up compromising at the end. Sometimes you’ll make it, but even popular writers who do it this way only bat around .400 on their endings. But if you follow the three steps above, your pantsing writer’s mind will still be able to play, but play with a purpose.” 
“But . . .but . . .” 
“But me no buts! This isn’t easy, you know. If it was, celebrities wouldn’t hire ghost writers when they try to cash in on the thriller market!” 
Make sense? Have you ever found yourself backed into premise implausibility? What did you do about it? 

The Old College Try

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By Mark Alpert

Monday’s the first day of school in New York, and both my kids are nervous. My son is starting high school and my daughter’s going into seventh grade. They’re worried about all the usual things — making new friends, dealing with new teachers, resuming the nightly struggle with homework. (Frankly, I’m worried about that too. I hate cracking the homework whip.)

I try to empathize with my kids by telling them how nervous I got on my first day of college. I remember it so clearly, the sick feeling in my stomach as I drove with my parents down Route 1 in New Jersey and saw the Gothic spires of Princeton on the other side of Lake Carnegie. But that feeling vanished as soon as I met the other kids in my dorm. By dinnertime I was laughing my ass off. (And I hadn’t even drunk my first beer yet.) College turned out to be the best four years of my life. Well, at least the most amusing four years.

And those old college ties can be very useful for a novelist. Over the decades since graduation I’ve stayed in touch with my thesis adviser, Professor Richard Gott of Princeton’s astrophysics department. Dr. Gott is one of the world’s leading authorities on time travel. In his book, Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe, Gott describes how a spaceship could travel back in time by maneuvering around a pair of rapidly moving cosmic strings (infinitely long strands of high-density material left over from the Big Bang). He’s a brilliant, fascinating man, so when I was writing my first novel — a science thriller titled Final Theory — I decided to add a fictional version of Dr. Gott to the cast of characters. And when I finished the first draft I asked my old prof to look over the manuscript and tell me what he thought of it.

His first reaction: “Well, I recognized me.” He also recognized some of the other characters who were based on real scientists. Better yet, he fact-checked the manuscript, pointing out a multitude of scientific errors. If not for his help, I would’ve come off like a real dunce.

I also reached out to Princeton’s alumni magazine, which gave the novel a nice review. The book got some additional exposure when I wrote a cover story for the magazine about the latest advances in cosmology. And whenever I have a new book coming out, I make sure to send an advance copy to the magazine’s editor.

In a world of limited attention spans, this kind of resource is invaluable. Making the connections sometimes requires a bit of work, but it’s worth it. Although I attended Columbia for grad school, until recently I hadn’t made much of an effort to maintain ties with the place. But now I’ve signed up to participate in an alumni book fair that’ll be held at the Columbia campus on Saturday, October 12th, from 11 am to 5 pm. So if you happen to be in New York that weekend, drop by the alma mater and say hello!

Reader Friday: Quote Respond

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Occasionally we’ll run a quote from a provocative post and ask you, dear readers, to respond to it. Today’s comes from author Lara Schiffbauer:

“Now, as we know, some writers have (what appears to be) lucky success. I’m not saying they don’t work hard, or aren’t talented. But, how many hard-working, talented writers do you know? That’s right. Quite a few, huh? And what makes any one writer who has that crazy-good success better than any of the others that you know? See what I mean? For every one lucky hard-working, talented writer there are many hard-working, talented authors who just didn’t have the stars align in quite the same way.”

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