Death to Prologues?

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James Scott Bell


“First thing we do, let’s kill all the prologues.” ––Shakespeare (hack writer Chip Shakespeare of Schenectady, NY)


Last week we discussed one of those “fiction rules” that begins to get trumpeted about until it gets chiseled in a tablet as an unbreakable command. Here’s one that seems to be developing: No prologues!

You hear this occasionally from agents and even readers. So it behooves us to ask if there’s something to this mushrooming new “rule.”

I think there is––and isn’t.

Let me explain.

First, a definition. A prologue is a scene (or sometimes a group of scenes) that precedes in time the main plot. So the question to ask yourself is, if it isn’t part of the main plot, why am I including it? And why should a reader bother with it?

Some reasons you might include a prologue:

• To start the book with intense action that hooks the reader.

• To set up an intriguing mystery that will pay off later in the book.

• To show a significant incident in the Lead’s life that haunts him in the present.

• To demonstrate the evil deeds of the bad guy, setting up the stakes for the Lead.

What a prologue should not be is merely an excuse to give us backstory, the sort of information about the Lead that can wait to be revealed later. Only if the material in the prologue is absolutely essential, riveting and has real impact on the story, should it be used.

Maybe that’s why agents are suspicious. They see too many prologues that don’t need to be there.

Some readers report that they skip prologues. Why would they do that? Perhaps because it seems to them that it’s just setup information and they want to get right on to the story.

So what should you do if you’ve got a great prologue that makes sense? That accomplishes just what it’s suppose to?

Should you give up and bow to the blanket rule that you should never use a prologue? I don’t think so.

Instead, be deceptive.

That’s right. I said deceptive. You’re a fiction writer, after all. That’s what you do.

So here is a simple strategy: never label a prologue as “Prologue.” That’s an invitation for a reader, not to mention an agent or editor, to skip this part or toss aside the manuscript.

Instead, if it’s in the long past, you can start with a date stamp, like this:

November 22, 1963

Or you can simply decide to call it “Chapter One.”

Another option is simply not to put anything at all. I like this move. You just go halfway down the page and start your scene. Then, you can number the next scene as Chapter One. This was the strategy used by Harlan Coben in Tell No One. There is no call out that the book opens with a prologue. It simply gives us a riveting scene about a husband losing his wife and getting knocked out. Then, the next scene is headed:

1

Eight Years Later

But Coben wrote such a great opening scene that you don’t stop and say, “Hey! He fooled me! That was a prologue! I want my money back!”

So here’s my bottom line advice. Don’t start with a prologue unless you have an absolutely clear reason for doing so. Make it short, too, unless you can justify the longer opening––as in, say, Mystic River, where the opening scenes, in the long past, are essential to understanding the plot as it unfolds. Dennis Lehane knew what he was doing.

Make sure you do, too, and then just don’t call it a “Prologue.” Problem solved.

Or is it? Do you tend to be let down if you see the word Prologue at the beginning of the book? Do you care? Is “Kill the Prologues” one “rule” we should nip in the bud?

I’m enjoying this critique thingie…

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John Miller


I dropped the Ramsey this week because it seemed pretentious all of the sudden. I may put it back, but I don’t ever use it in my day-to-day life. My friends and neighbors call me Miller, and I prefer it to Mr. Miller, John or John Ramsey Miller. Out of a sense of boredom and thinking I should make some money for a new hen house and bullets, I applied for a job as a census worker. It’s really a funny story and I did a truly shitty job on the written test, and I left the testing center (a small county library branch with none of our books in it) laughing because the guy said I could take the test as many times as I liked. I told him I didn’t like taking his test the first time. Long and short is I’m getting trained Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at $15.00 an hour. So I won’t be writing or authoring for a few weeks while I bother my sometimes touchy (and anti-whatever you’ve got) neighbors in the quiet evenings and on weekends, and no doubt will be seen as a gov’ment agent. I like honest work, especially gardening, chicken chasing, and cutting trees, etc… I have always seen writing as good hard work, but I like to get in the ditches, move dirt, rip things apart, and put things together.


Anyhow, today’s page gets very little criticism from me. Other than the first line about 1918, I can live with it and I’d keep reading.




Chapter One


Atlantic City, New Jersey


“The 1918 has gone: a year momentous as the termination of the most cruel war in the annals of the human race; a year which marked, the end at least for a time, of man’s destruction of man; unfortunately a year in which developed a most fatal infectious disease causing the death of hundreds of thousands of human beings. Medical science for four and one-half years devoted itself to putting men on the firing line and keeping them there. Now it must turn with its whole might to combating the greatest enemy of all–infectious disease,” (12/28/1918).


American Medical Association final edition of 1918




He wanted it all to be over; the war in Iraq, the terrorism, the death, the killing. But it wasnít going to stop. Not anytime soon.


Explosions rocked a large market in Iraq disrupting a diplomatic visit by two senior House of Representative leaders. The in-country reporter glanced nervously over his shoulder as he searched for something to say. The scene played out on the plasma television above the bar, caught on tape by CNN cameras. Details on the forty-something U.S. soldiers killed that day scrolled along the bottom of the screen. The image changed. Visiting Representatives Jackson and Levey, draped in body armor, were being rushed from the scene by a tight knot of amour-clad soldiers.


Pete Robinson teetered on the bar stool contemplating the grizzly scene. Those political idiots were probably second-guessing their decision to parade around Iraq in support of the President and his claims that things were improving. The more he thought about the war, the more he drank, and the more he drank, the angrier he got. Heíd been perched on the bar stool for the last two hours. He was hammered and pissed-off. Just nuke the bastards.



Starts off like my kind of book. I’m along for the ride. What do you think?

The Smelly Tulip

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By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

A few hundred years ago, some English guy named Willy said, “If you call a rose a tulip, you’re not gonna change what it smells like.” Something like that, but in British.
Willy’s point was that sometimes labels don’t mean all that much. I tend to agree with him. I’d bet that most people who give it any real thought would agree, at least in principle. But only until egos get involved. Once you start messing with people’s sense of identity, labels can matter a lot.

A couple of weeks ago, I was silent witness to a writers’ board flame war that erupted over the assertion that writers and authors are different species, the definitions split by publication status. A “writer,” said one side of the conflict, may not call himself an “author” until the product of the writer’s efforts have been published. This ultimately led to a full-scale assault on the legitimacy of self-publishing as a form of “real” publishing, and it all got really ugly really fast.

There’s a reason why I don’t engage in flame wars: they’re ultimately damaging to everyone involved. But, oh, they can be fun to watch. (Contributing factor number 10,497 to why I’m running behind on my current manuscript.)

Just for grins, though, I thought I’d do a little research. Okay, a very little research. I turned to my new favorite reference, Dictionary.com, and looked up the offending words. What I found surprised me:

Writer: “a person engaged in writing books, articles, stories, etc., esp. as an occupation or profession; an author or journalist.”

Author: “a person who writes a novel, poem, essay, etc.; the composer of a literary work, as distinguished from a compiler, translator, editor, or copyist.”

It would seem by this definition that both camps of the flame war were wrong from the outset. Dictionary.com says that “author” is the generic term, while “writer” implies payment as a professional. Who knew?

Is it okay if I don’t care?

Let’s be honest: as humans, we all like to differentiate ourselves from our respective packs. Even among published authors of books, there’s a good bit of ring-knocking based on everything from print run size to publication format, but among professionals, those distinctions actually mean something, if only in terms of commercial clout. In a news room, I would imagine that there’s similar significance to differentiating a beat reporter from an investigative reporter from a web reporter.

I guess my point is that I’m not anti-label; I am anti-meaningless label. Am I missing something here? Do any of you get wrapped around the axle on whether you’re a writer or an author?

For our Killzone denizens who are not yet published, when you’re in the company of other like-minded people—say, in a writers’ conference environment—do you hesitate to call yourself a writer or an author?

What am I missing?

Lost in Translation

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by Michelle Gagnon

I’ve been fortunate enough to have my books translated into five languages. The other night my sister asked if I had read the French editions of any them yet. I shuddered at the very thought.

Let me explain why. I recently gave my Norwegian friend an edition of THE TUNNELS in her native tongue. She started reading the bio–the BIO, mind you–and burst out laughing. When I asked why, she translated it for me. Turns out that the Norwegian editors didn’t use my official book bio, they lifted the one off my website, which is fairly tongue-in-cheek. And a lot of that humor doesn’t translate.

Things like, “To the delight of her parents, she gave up all these occupations for an infinitely more stable and lucrative career as a crime fiction writer,” became: “Her parents were beside themselves with enthusiasm at her new career since she was finally making a fortune.”

And:

“In her spare time she runs errands and indulges a weakness for stale cinema popcorn and Hollywood blockbusters,” turned into, “whenever she gets the chance she races off to the cinema to the neglect of everything else.”

Not good. It reminds me of discussing Kathleen Turner’s voice with a French friend, who said, “What are you talking about? She sounds just like everyone else.” Turns out only a handful of actors and actresses dub the movies into French, so George Clooney, Tom Cruise, and Steve Buscemi comes across as having the exact same voice.

As writers, all we can do is hope that our translators do us justice. That being said, on the off chance that mine didn’t, I don’t want to know about it.

Which brings us to today’s anonymous first page submission.The author originally wrote THE UNTOUCHABLE in Portuguese, but translated the page for us. I’ve placed her original below, followed by an edited version for clarity.

The Untouchable

Police know a lot of things. But between knowing, proving and making it official, there is a huge distance.

That declaration had been credited to José Carlos Lino, one of the commissaries at the 89º district in São Paulo. It was among the notes of Jair Silvestre, a journalist murdered with five shots to the chest almost two years ago. And at the top of the notebook page, in a very round handwriting: THE UNTOUCHABLE.

The crime was never solved.

I don’t know why I had remembered that. An agent from another team came to talk about the frustration his colleagues felt when they found out this guy they had taken to justice was declared innocent on court. Common thing.

Then I thought it was quite an awry declaration, that from the 89º district commissary. We knew well that not even proving was enough. I stopped believing in justice after the first two months studying at law school. I still got it wrong trying to figure out in what I should believe.

It dawned.

We arrived at the crime scene around five-thirty in the morning. It was a quiet street. A few commercial buildings and houses. All the shops were closed. A man and a woman that had been walking their dogs were standing at the corner. A biker stopped across the street to watch what was going on. The police cars parked alerted those that are used to wake up early.

Commissary Daniel went first. He made his way through the military police. He greeted the district commissary and asked for the scientific police. The man pointed ahead and we walked past the entrance to a construction site. They were preparing the foundations of a building. I noticed a chain thrown on the ground in the inside. A broken padlock.

The terrain was an L and the neighbor house still covered the crime. I recognized on of the 15º district detectives ahead, and he was looking up as if waiting for rain to fall. The sky was clear. It had rained overnight and there was a cold wind blowing.

I could hear the sound of our footsteps on the dirt ground. A hard ground. A few superficial truck tire marks. I felt an uneasiness in my stomach, and remembered I hadn’t eaten for over six hours. I stopped by the commissary’s side and followed everyone else’s eyes. Because it was already impossible to pay attention to anything other than the body in a large hole they had started digging.

Daniel put a hand to his mouth and my partner looked away.

“Holy shit.”

One of the CSI stopped his movement to look at Daniel and offer an uncertain smile. It was certainly the most appropriate at that situation. I kept staring. This morbid curiosity that we build after all these years facing two or three dead a week. Least. But the scene was indeed a bit worse then I was used to. It was a scene to remind us that we never should have gotten used to any of that.

One couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. The body was deformed. The head a shapeless mass of blood, brain and hair. His guts were torn and formed an impossible angle with the rest of the thorax. I could see the jeans and a shirt that once probably had been of a light color. It was covered with blood, mixed with pieces of his bowels and dirt. He was barefoot, without socks. It was the only thing that still reminded a human being. Very white feet.

Had it been a city in the countryside, I would be sure it had been an attack by a wild animal. But it was São Paulo, in the Itaim Bibi neighborhood, about five blocks from the police district.

My empty stomach rolled. I looked at one of the CSIs standing by the district detective. She was staring at the victim. The expression was disgust, sleepiness and resignation. It was too early and she had to touch that rotten body. The coroner was talking to another CSI. No one seemed very happy.

The Untouchable

Police know a lot of things. But there’s a huge gap between knowing something and officially proving it.

That declaration by José Carlos Lino, one of the commissaries from the 89º district in São Paulo, was found among the notes of a journalist murdered almost two years ago. Jair Silvestre had taken five shots to the chest. At the top of his notebook page in very round handwriting: THE UNTOUCHABLE.

The crime was never solved.

I don’t know why I remembered that. An agent from another team expressed the frustration his colleagues felt when they found out a guy they knew was responsible was declared innocent on court. It happens all the time.

I thought Lino’s declaration was odd. We all knew that sometimes even proving a thing was not enough. After two months of law school, I stopped believing in justice. I’m still trying to figure out what to believe in.

We arrived at the crime scene around five-thirty in the morning. Dawn was breaking. It was a quiet street with a mix of commercial buildings and houses. All the shops were closed. The parked police cars alerted the early risers. A man and woman stood at the corner with their dogs, and a biker stopped across the street to watch what was going on.

Commissary Daniel went first, making his way through the military police. He greeted the district commissary and asked for the scientific police. The man pointed, and we walked through the entrance on to a construction site where they were laying the foundations of a building. On the ground inside, a chain lay beside a broken padlock.

The terrain was an L and the neighbor house still covered the crime (?). I recognized one of the 15º district detectives, he was looking up at the sky as if waiting for rain to fall. A cold wind was blowing.

The sound of our footsteps on the hard dirt. We were careful to avoid a few superficial truck tire marks. I felt queasy, and realized that I hadn’t eaten in over six hours. I stopped by the commissary’s side and followed everyone’s eyes. It was impossible to pay attention to anything other than the body in the large hole.

Daniel put a hand to his mouth and my partner looked away.

“Holy shit.”

One of the CSI techs looked at Daniel and offered an uncertain smile (?). I kept staring. After all these years of facing at least two or three bodies a week, we tended to be inured. But this scene was much worse than what I was used to. It was bad enough to remind us that we should never have gotten used to any of it.

The body was so deformed it was impossible to determine gender. The head was a shapeless mass of blood, brain and hair. The guts were torn and formed an impossible angle with the rest of the thorax. I could see jeans and a shirt that had probably once been white. It was covered with blood, mixed with pieces of bowels and dirt. The corpse was barefoot. Those pale feet were the only thing that still called to mind a human being.

Had it been found in the countryside, I would have categorized it as an attack by a wild animal. But this was São Paulo, in the Itaim Bibi neighborhood, about five blocks from the police district.

My stomach rolled. The CSI tech standing by the district detective was staring at the victim with an expression of disgust, sleepiness and resignation. It was too early and she had to touch that rotten body. The coroner was talking to another CSI. No one seemed very happy.

Notes:

I’m intrigued by this storyline. I think the bones of an interesting character and plotline are here in spades. I like some of the descriptive passages quite a bit.

Still, there were a lot of things I found confusing. Some of that was due to the translation, I suspect, but some might be endemic to the story itself. Firstly, why start off with the quote? It’s not a particularly powerful one (at least in the English translation). I also was confused as to how the murder of the journalist played into things- does it have anything to do with the body we encounter further down the page? Does it enter the story later, and if so, why include it at the outset? At this point, I know that the main character is a lawyer, but why is she present at the scene? She also appears to be a cop, or at least sees a lot of corpses in her line of work.

Introducing a character is a tricky thing. You want to provide enough information to make them intriguing and to give a reader something to latch on to, without falling into the “information dump” trap. Here, the author has made an interesting choice. I’m told that the main character doesn’t know what to believe in before I find out anything concrete about her. This could work, but I’d need more to be sold on her first.

Dialogue could be used to address some of these issues. For example, instead of having everyone standing around looking at each other, let them discuss what they’re seeing.

“Nasty one,” said Daniel.

I nodded but didn’t respond. The only thing identifying the bloodied mass before me as human was the pair of pale feet, oddly untouched by the carnage.

The CSI tech wrinkled her nose, taking it in. “Why do the bad ones always come in when I’ve been up all night?”

What do the rest of you think of THE UNTOUCHABLE?








One-page critique of Bullet’s Name

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By Joe Moore

We continue our one-page critique project at TKZ with an anonymous submission called Bullet’s Name.

August, 1937

It was just after eleven on a Sunday morning when God-fearing people were in church and reprobates were sleeping in from reprobating all night.

Jasper Green was waiting for me in a rundown colored roadhouse a few miles outside Salisbury, North Carolina. I parked the well-worn Ford sedan that I’d rented three days earlier for ten bucks a day from a less-than-honest car dealer in Charlotte. I parked just shy of sparkling Dodge coupe with a Carolina plate.

The front door stood open so I crossed the porch and walked into the dim interior. The water-stained ceiling undulated gently like the surface of the ocean. The pine floors were worn paper smooth and the place smelled of spilled beer, cigarette smoke and a hint of a shallow piss pit out back. Some of the dark-brown floor stains looked like residue from blade work.

Green sat like a king with his back in a corner, his black hair pomaded to his narrow skull like sun-baked paint. His right hand was under the table, his dusty brown eyes reflected amused disinterest. A young negress, with a lithe body that gave turned a simple cotton shift into an elegant gown, was delivering a bottle of whiskey to his table when I came in and she looked at me like I was tracking in a dog turd.

In a welcoming gesture, Jasper Green smiled disarmingly and raised his chin to invite me over. When I got to the table, he pointed at the chair opposite and said, “Sit down and take a load off, buddy.”

I would recommend that the writer proofread the work before submission. Even if this is a rough first draft, the writer could have taken a few seconds to make sure this single page was clean and devoid of errors. There are words missing: “the” or “a” before the word “sparkling”, and extra words that don’t belong: “gave” just before “turned”. We are told twice in a row that “I parked”.

Regarding the writing, there’s nothing wrong with using metaphors, similes and strong description to create atmosphere and sense of place. But in this example, there are way too many. Some are confusing and some just don’t work. I don’t think using the verb “undulated” is a good way to describe a ceiling unless you’re drunk on your back staring up at it.

I would bet that beer drinkers love the smell of beer. I would even bet that they would have no issue with the aroma of spilt beer. I think what the writer meant was the odor of spilled beer from a week or a month ago—the smell of stale beer.

I assume the dark stains resulting from “blade work” mean blood spilled from past knife fights. That almost works, but for me it was too obscure.

I would suggest changing “colored roadhouse” to “negro roadhouse”. In today’s politically correct mindset, colored does not have the impact that negro would.

I’ve heard of people described as having a narrow face or even a narrow head, but a narrow skull doesn’t quite put a vivid picture in my mind. Word choice is so important. The word skull, for me at least, has a totally different connotation than head. And is pomaded the right word choice for this setting? The first page may not be the best time to send your reader running for a dictionary or the writer trying to exhibit an extended vocabulary. Remember that you are establishing your voice from page one.

From across the room, the main character could see that Jasper’s eyes were a “dusty brown”, a description I find somewhat attractive for a person the writer is trying to paint as a dark or questionable character.

The sentence that starts with “A young negress” lacks proper punctuation. It also paints a contradiction. This “lithe” girl who turns rags to royalty when it comes to her wardrobe suddenly is assumed to think in terms of turds. A complete turn-off for me.

An overall comment: you cannot describe a character into being good or bad. This can only be done through their actions and reactions. This submission tries to use description to do the job. It may be a sign that the writer doesn’t “know” the characters well enough yet.

Summary: proof read, use economy of words—less is always more, use proper punctuation, and start a story at the moment of impact where the main character is tossed out of his or her comfort zone. Chances are, an agent would not read beyond this page.

What about you? Would your read on?

Download FRESH KILLS, Tales from the Kill Zone to your Kindle or PC today.

Opening with action: Today’s critique

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Today we have the first page of a story called CRYSTAL WHITE. My comments follow in the bullets.


PROLOGUE

Warehouse District

Ontario, California

Assistant Special-Agent-in-Charge Nick Lafferty swore at his vibrating cell phone, trapped in the breast pocket of his suit jacket, trapped under his DEA-issued body armor. He ripped open the top Velcro strap. The noise reverberated through the warehouse. Then he contorted to fish his hand under the vest trying to reach the damn thing before it rang again.
A passing police sergeant, in gray urban fatigues, body armor and carrying an assault rifle slung over his shoulder, let him know, “Sharp shooters are in position, Agent Lafferty. Ready when you are.”

He nodded thanks. With the cell phone firmly in hand, he flipped it open. “Lafferty here.”

“Lafferty here too,” his wife, Renee, said, mimicking his stern, gruff voice, then laughing. “Except for us here is on the boat. We’re missing you. Any chance you’ll be able to join us?”

It was Sunday morning. He’d promised to take Renee and Vicki, their seven-year-old daughter, out for the day on their 32-foot Chris Craft Catalina, the YOU CAN RUN. They kept it docked at the marina off Harbor Drive in San Diego Bay. By now the sun would be full up, warm, baking the dry, gray wharf and the teak aft decking of the boat. Gulls would be circling and cawing, begging for handouts from the boaters and fishermen hanging off the piers.


A light breeze gently snapping the harbor flags, carrying with it an intoxicating aroma of salt water, wet rope and diesel fuel. He could practically hear the lapping of waves, the thump of fiberglass hulls against rubber bumpers, the creak of straining ropes.

He glanced around at the warehouse his team had commandeered for the morning’s impromptu operation. It was a far cry from the sunny marina where he wanted to be, on the water, with his family.

Instead he was here, with his Mobile Enforcement Team. They wore black fatigues and heavy bullet resistant vests under blue DEA windbreakers. With them was a Special Operations Team from the Ontario PD and the County Sheriff’s Tactical Services Team. Decked out in urban camouflage and full tactical gear and body armor, waiting, they stood around talking and checking their equipment, loading weapons and laughing at old war stories or politically incorrect jokes. Rifles and semi-automatic pistols clicked loudly as slides snapped closed. Metal clips clanged against plastic stocks, the musty air sharp with the smell of Hoppe’s No. 9 gun oil.

“I don’t know, honey,” Lafferty said into the phone. “I need to see how this thing plays out.”

***
My comments:

  • This first page seems to be a promising story–I like the sense we’re getting of the main character. I would keep reading, but I did get frustrated by the fact that the opening scene lacks action and suspense. We open on an armed officer, and he’s at a stakeout. This setup should be suspenseful. But then: 1) his cell phone rings; 2) his colleagues are seen standing around joking; 3) he has a conversation with his wife; 4) we get a description of his boat, which is docked someplace else, gulls circling, etc. All of these things drain the drama from the opening scene.
  • I think it would be more effective to open later into the action–open big, provide some drama and suspense, and then you can add the personal background, the wife, etc.
  • I’m not a big fan of prologues, in general. But if you do use a prologue, it should draw the reader in faster than this one does.
  • I don’t think you need to have “Assistant Special-Agent-in-Charge” in the first sentence. We’ll  get an idea that this character is an agent through the dialogue and action.
  • I would like to see more about the goal of the “impromptu operation,” and less about the things that distract from the suspense. So I would suggest that the writer tighten the scene.
  • There’s a lot of description of what everyone is wearing (vest, camouflage, body armor), but nothing that conveys what they’re trying to accomplish. 
  • Is there supposed to be any tension in this scene? The fact that the men are joking and telling war stories conveys an air of relaxation, not suspense.

What do you guys think?

Propelling the Plot

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by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

I’m in a bit of a slump today as my planned trip to London this evening has been thwarted by a volcano in Iceland (one which, BTW, my husband and I saw on our trip to Iceland a few years ago – though it was dormant at the time). I don’t react well to disappointment (a trait which I need to overcome as a professional writer!), but I can hardly complain given how many people are stranded far from home. Still, I’m mourning the fact that I won’t be able to spend time with my folks over a pint, a bag of crisps and a pork pie..:(

Instead, I get to work through some plot changes to my current WIP based on the terrific insight of my agent (who always seems to know exactly what is wrong with my drafts). Now plot is not one of my strong points…that’s not to say nothing happens in my books (I don’t suffer from that particular literary pretension), it’s just that I often fail to ensure that my characters propel the plot forward. Despite being an outliner, sometimes I allow my characters to get swept up in the events that envelop them, reacting to the situation rather than creating and shaping the story themselves.

So how do I approach fixing this? After I have gone through the initial phase of despondency, hair-pulling and chocolate binging I approach the issue systematically (with my usual dose of neurosis).

These are the steps I plan to take this week to address my latest case of ‘plot deficiency disorder’.

  • First, revisit the fundamentals. What are the motivations of all the key players? How do these and their desired objectives conflict? I then ask myself – how can I up the stakes in order to heighten this conflict and thwart those objectives? Given that most of my issues arise in the dreaded ‘sagging middle’ these questions help me focus on what needs to be accomplished.

  • This step enables me to start brainstorming plot ideas and situations that can heighten these stakes and which ensure the characters drive the action forward. In this second step I try to remain wide open to all options and constantly ask myself ‘what if?’…leaving open almost all possibilities (except those that are inconsistent with the characters I have created).

  • Up until this point I make absolutely no edits to the manuscript – because usually (and this is the case at the moment) the bones of the story are solid and the characters are well developed. I usually start and end a book strongly (small comfort) but the last thing I want to do is start tinkering with the middle until I know exactly what I’m going to do. This is a delicate time as I have to ensure that any plot alterations do not destroy what is currently working well in the story.

  • Before I start editing I draw up a detailed plot map of the revised story and check that the new course of action is true to the characters motivation and that the stakes, now heightened, haven’t become ludicrous or comical…

  • Then and only then do I start rewriting…hoping, of course, that the new plot permutations propel my story to a successful denouement!
So how do you approach plot issues? What steps do you take to remedy a ‘sagging plot’? (All and any tips greatly appreciated as I have a long week of thinking ahead of me!)

I also strongly recommend reading the book Plot & Structure by my fellow blogger, James Scott Bell – it has some great advice which I only wish I followed more often!

Did You Just Use Italics?

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James Scott Bell


Controversy? You want controversy? You thought Michelle’s post about F-bombs was controversial? John’s post about offending readers?

Well, step right up, cause I’ve got your controversy, right here: How about the use of italics?

That’s right! I said italics!

I love the way writing “rules” sometimes get floated around the internet, become a meme, then move to “accepted wisdom” or even “non-negotiable truths from on high” – while, all along, it may be wrong for an across the board regulation.

Sometimes there’s a kernel of truth. For example, there’s a “rule” that says, No Prologues! Part of that may be simply because agents see so many bad ones. Maybe we’ll discuss that in a future post.

Today I want to discuss the use of italics for rendering the inner thoughts of a character. You know how that’s often done:

Susan walked into the room and saw Blake. Back in town! I don’t want him to see me like this!

That’s the shortest possible route to showing us the inner thought. Another alternative is to not use italics, but put in an attribution:

Susan walked into the room and saw Blake. Back in town, she thought. I don’t want him to see me like this!

A third way is to use 3d Person, but filtered in such a way that we know it is Susan thinking it.

Susan walked into the room and saw Blake. So he was back in town. She didn’t want him to see her like this.

That last two renderings are probably the preferred type these days. Or at least the fashion cops seem to think so. But does that mean italics should never be used for thoughts?

Never say never, especially when it comes to writing “rules.” I think italics are still perfectly acceptable when used in moderation.

Note that word: moderation. The overuse of italicized thoughts gets a bit wearying.

But an italicized thought may be the best, most economical way for a character to recall a key point or phrase uttered earlier in the book. And to set it off for the reader, too.

For example, early in the book your Lead character is given a clue about the villain by someone, who says, “Baxter will be wearing cheapie shoes that squeak.”

Near the end of the book, the character hears someone enter the room with squeaky shoes. You could write it the clunky way: She listened to the sound of his shoes on the tile. And she remembered what Clive had told her about Baxter, that he would be wearing inexpensive shoes that squeak.

Or you could do it quickly and easily with italics:

She listened to the sound of his shoes on the tile.

Baxter will be wearing cheapie shoes that squeak . . .

If you have a scene that is mostly interior dialogue, using italics can be a means of variety. In Lisa Scottoline’s Courting Trouble, lawyer Anne Murphy has to process some shattering news. First, Scottoline uses no italics:

Could this be? Could this really be? Was Willa dead? Anne’s heart stalled in her chest. Her eyes welled up suddenly, blurring the busy boardwalk . . . . She struggled against the voice and the conclusion, but she couldn’t help it. Willa, dead? No!

But then, as Anne continues to try to “wrap her mind” around it, there’s this:

Kevin got out, but how? Why didn’t they tell her?

The switch to italics, for one line, adds a certain immediacy to the thought process. I don’t think Scottoline should be arrested for using it. I don’t even think she should get a ticket.

In The Hard Way by Lee Child, a man in a hooded sweatshirt who takes money off drunks is walking down the street, and sees: A big man, but inert. His limbs were relaxed in sleep.

As the hooded man moves closer, Child inserts a series of quick thoughts, between paragraphs of narrative:

His hair was clean. He wasn’t malnourished.

Not a bum with a pair of stolen shoes.

[more narrative]

A prime target.

And so on. It’s just an efficient way to get the point across and get out of the way. Could the same thing be done without italics? Perhaps. Should it? That’s up to you.

Another jab against italics is that they are “hard to read.” I don’t buy that. That’s why I didn’t mind that Robert Crais has whole chapters in italics in L.A. Requiem. He has a reason for it, and I’m not going to call the Style Felony Hotline to report him.

Here’s my pragmatic conclusion: yes, there may be some prejudice against italics. But if they’re used judiciously and for good reason, I see no problem.

Do you?

Do you?

Trouble Shooting

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A First Page Critique by

John Ramsey Miller


Before I was published, I wrote several novels that I thought were awfully good. Looking back I see how wrong I was. But I kept on, seeing every manuscript as practice, and I read a lot and listened to the criticisms I received, naturally giving more weight to those flaws pointed out by people who knew what they were talking about. And I persevered and kept right on plugging away. Perhaps, due to my advertising background, I have a thick skin and I want only blunt honesty from my readers so I can make my work better. I always say, “Tell me what you really think.” I mean it. It is far better to hear something from another author or agent than it is from an editor who is turning your book down for some reason I wish I’d have known about and could have fixed.

At some point all authors are handed someone’s writing to evaluate, often believing we will (or can) hand it to our agents who will take it on, or that we can send it to our publisher with a demand it be on shelves forthwith. This is a hard business, and years ago I went out of my way to encourage everybody who presented me with their babies. A lot of them (perhaps buoyed by my encouragement) went on and had their teeth kicked in by agents and publishers. A lot of them deserved writing careers, but so far have yet to have a house agree. Even some with talent had their teeth kicked in. Only a small fraction of those who think they can write, can or should. While I hate to give people false hope, I don’t like the idea of shooting at dreams. Sometimes I am too negative (ask my children or friends) and I’m trying not to be a curmudgeon. The truth is that, as with all endeavors, not everybody can perform them as well as they think they can. Some people cannot drive a nail, rebuild a carburetor, or create a painting worth looking at. Some people cannot tell a story, and some may just need encouragement, practice and they will get it and can write professionally. But criticism should always be constructive. While I am not an expert on writing, I have learned some things the hard way.

Before I get into the anonymous page I’ve been given, let me say that there’s nothing that turns off readers––and editors are the most critical readers––than too much information presented too soon (or too little too late), under-drawn settings, under-defined characters, choppy or confusing choreography, telling instead of showing, shocking transitions, clichés, stilted dialog, defying logic, using coincidence to solve problems, typos, unorthodox formatting, or misused words. As a writer you’d better know much more than you put on a page, and you should think about what the reader is seeing or may be missing because of something you knew and didn’t bother to put in. Not that I found all of those “avoidable” problems here, they are just things to look for and to avoid.

Without further foreplay, I present…

Buried Trouble

By An Anonymous Author

From the tip of the peninsula you could see the entire bay and the surrounding metro areas. Hugh had bought the property for a song. Opportunity awaits for those who have ready money in a bad economy. As he looked side to side he could take in the high-rise buildings downtown contrasting with the water. What a perfect development site. Turning and walking back towards his Lexus, he could see the company black SUV speeding his way in the distance. Even though the windows were heavily tinted, he knew it was Bill.

“Mr. Garnet I think you need to see this report,” said Bill.

“We’ll tell me about it, god dammit. That’s what I pay you for.”

Bill revealed the details over lunch. They had to be careful not to talk too loud above the crowd noise. After the waiter had picked up their plates, the conversation continued.

“So, who else knows about this report?” Hugh asked.

“I can’t say for sure. I had to do a lot of digging to find it,” Bill said. “But, as they say, its open source. You know, publicly available. So it’s out there on the internet.”

“Would anyone else do the same digging?” Hugh asked.

“I doubt it. Right now everyone wants the development to go forward. It’s not in their best interest to find out anything like this. It would blow everything.”

“Well, make sure you burn that copy,” said Hugh.

Hugh excused himself from the table as the waiter returned with the check. Bill knew the routine. Hugh never paid for anything he didn’t have to.

*

Growing up in Tampa, Travis had known all of the great fishing spots in the bay since the fourth grade. But today fishing was the farthest thing from his mind. Looking at the project on the Garnet Property Development website, he could take in the whole picture.

“See what I mean, Sam,” he said. “There’s no way out.”

“What do you mean?”

“If a storm came towards the bay like Elaine in 1985, this land floods. And there wouldn’t be enough egress roads to move the population in time,” said Travis.

“We’ll that’s nothing new. Throw a dart at the map of Florida and it’s the same everywhere,” said Sam.

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” said Travis. “But not quite like this, though. The SLOSH model for a Cat 2 storm shows the entire peninsula under water.”

“Excuse me for asking, but what’s a slosh model?” Sam asked.

Travis motioned Sam to come over to his desk. “Take a look.”

They both looked at the computer screen. Travis clicked the mouse and in slow motion the Interbay Peninsula became a collage of blue, green and yellow.

“It stands for Sea, Lake and Overland Surges from Hurricanes. It’s a computerized model run by the National Hurricane Center to estimate storm surge heights. If it’s colored…it’s under water.”

“So why aren’t the developers paying attention to this?” asked Sam.

“As always,” said Travis. “Money. It doesn’t pay to see it. Besides, the property used to be an air force base with only 3,000 people living there. Then it didn’t matter so much. This development will have 30,000 residents.”

The page opens with “Hugh” surveying his land, which is on a peninsula across the bay from an unnamed major city. He bought this piece of prime real estate for a song because he had cash money in hard times. How this prime parcel was invisible to other developers for decades (and while a city was springing up right over there) is not explained in this opening paragraph. Where are we? I need more. know that Hugh has a Lexus (I’m wondering if he had his accelerator fixed) and that a black “company” SUV with blacked-out windows is approaching with “Bill inside”. “Hugh” is either psychic, or only Bill drives around in hiding. Without opening the window or stepping out of the SUV, Bill opens the dialogue with a message that he has a gloomy-doomy report. Hugh demands to know what is in this report, but before Bill can tell him, they go to a crowded restaurant, and wait until after they have eaten to tell the reader that Bill had to “dig hard” to find out something that explains why Hugh’s primo location is a dog of epic proportions. Bill assures Hugh that nobody else knows about the BIG problem with the land because they have not dug it up––hence the title of the book, BURIED TROUBLE? We get that Hugh is so evil and powerful that he leaves the restaurant before the check comes, and Bill is left to pay …as always. It seems that Hugh is perhaps able to buy land because he never pays for anything but land and the occasional Lexus.

*

In the second segment we meet “Travis” whom I suspect will be the protagonist. This individual had known the greatest fishing spots in the bay since the fourth grade, which perhaps is when “Our greatest fishing spots” was taught in Tampa’s schools. Seriously, this intro needs a lot of work, but it is fixable.

The author does not tell us where Travis and sidekick Sam are, or immediately whether Travis is looking at a computer screen, a chart on a wall, into a shallow hole Bill forgot to cover up after digging out the report, or gazing into a crystal ball. We do find out later that the two men are at desks and that Travis is looking at a computer screen. Still there is far too little information and there is no physical description of the characters or their actions to allow us to form a picture of them in our minds.

Here we learn that Bill’s report detailing his uncovered secret about the land is in fact known by the National Weather Service and probably everybody with a developer’s license except Hugh. The problem is that the secret that threatens Hugh’s deal needs to be more of a secret. It’s buried and hard to find but Travis found it easily. So others could as well.

Keep it believable. If the peninsula is a death trap, and the military kept 3,000 people in until they abandoned it, there would be no secret as to why they left and it wasn’t developed immediately, and why it went for what Hugh felt was a song. If the parcel, located across the bay from Tampa, was never developed there’s a reason. I think the author needs to reexamine the logic right here, because the deeper you go using a flawed premise, the farther the story goes into the unbelievable. As it appears to me, unless Travis and Sam can somehow stop Hugh, 30,000 people who somehow don’t discover what the world can know {and should know) will rush buy homes from Hugh and be trapped with no way out when a hurricane (they can’t be aware of) hits and they perish en masse, unable to get to safety …in Tampa. And the reader wonders, “why the developers aren’t paying attention to this “buried trouble” Bill and Travis have uncovered.


“So why aren’t the developers paying attention to this?” asked Sam.

“As always,” said Travis. “Money. It doesn’t pay to see it. Besides, the property used to be an air force base with only 3,000 people living there. Then it didn’t matter so much. This development will have 30,000 residents.”

One additional note:

“We’ll tell me about it, god dammit. That’s what I pay you for.” I think there should probably be a capital “G” in God. I think either dammit, damnit, or damn it are fine, but with the “god” attached I’m not sure. “We’ll” instead of “Well” crops up twice in the page, which makes me wonder if the author knows the difference. Again, don’t depend on spell-checking. Use your eyes when you are fresh and focused.

I would suggest that the author see this opening page as a story possibility and examine it and mull it over looking for the holes in the story before they write the novel. Think long and hard on your story premise and examine it from every possible angle. Play the “What if” game. Then play the “why or why not” game because you can bet your readers will.

There are problems here. I think story line feels all too predictable, but many successful novels (Louis Lamour is a good example of predictable working for his audience) are just that and are enjoyed for other reasons than being stunned and surprised. Not that this effort couldn’t have twists and turns later in the book. It needs a lot of things I’m not seeing to get me to want to know more than I do at the end of the first page.

Most of us have written a book filled with mistakes, or came to a grinding halt at a solid wall, because we didn’t take the time to think everything through to make sure the logic holds before we wrote ourselves into corners. It can be avoided by taking the right steps.

Would I keep reading this book?

In its present form, I would not.

Is it fixable?

Most things are. I wish the author good luck.

Okay, Guys and Gals, what did I miss?

Insulting Your Audience – And Today’s Critique

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By John Gilstrap

My next book, Hostage Zero (July, 2010) features a new character who happens to be a veteran of the Battle of Fallujah, a 2004 gulf-war maelstrom that evolved into one of the great U.S. Marine urban warfare victories of all time. In relating a story from that time to another character, this very likeable guy refers to his Iraqi insurgent enemies as “Hadjis”—this war’s equivalent of Kraut or Nip. Hey, when you’re trying to kill them, insulting them doesn’t seem like such a big deal. At least I didn’t think so.

My copy editor, however affixed a yellow sticky with a rather passionate note that the H-word was offensive, and that if my character used it, the readers would stop liking him. She suggested that I eliminate all uses of the term. We agreed to disagree.

In a previous book, an early draft included a line of dialogue in which my protagonist (a cop) showed disrespect for the gay community via a throwaway line that dealt with slip-on shoes and reduced gravity. My then-agent’s assistant, himself openly gay, told me that that was a truly offensive reference within the community—I had no idea—and that the line changed his whole opinion of my character. I was stunned, and I deleted the reference without a fight.

The difference between the two instances was that the gay reference truly was a throwaway line that I probably would have trimmed anyway, just during the normal course of editing. Besides, I know a number of really fine people who happen to be gay, and I try not to make anyone uncomfortable.

On the other hand, the remark in Hostage Zero actually plays a part in the course of the story. And if readers don’t understand the honest place from which the epithet arises in my character, then they’re either way too sensitive, or I’m not as good at my job as I need to be.

My question to the blogosphere today is how far are you willing to go to appease readers’ sensitivities, especially when in the POV of a character? Is it possible in today’s literary environment for a good guy to retain the moral high ground even after he makes an insensitive remark?

Okay, now on to today’s anonymous writing sample:

AN EMPIRE LADY

I don’t usually poison someone on the first date, but this time I’m willing to make an exception. Dame Blanchard always said improvisation is a necessary part of espionage and, as Monsieur Hugo crosses the room to the mahogany sideboard, I sense the danger I’m in. His tall, taut frame appears sinewy and strong beneath the immaculately pressed evening suit – he could easily overwhelm me with his physical strength and so I reach out for the beaded purse dangling from the arm of the chair, ready to draw out the vial of arsenic I always keep on hand. Monsieur Hugo turns before I can extract it and I draw out a silver cigarette case instead. I place a Gauloise cigarette to my lips, staining the end with deep red lipstick, before offering him one with an arched look, designed to convey the kind of brazen audacity I hope masks my fear.

“Champagne, ma cherie?” he inquires, dark toad-like eyes bulging.

“Oui, merci,” I reply with my most calculated-to-charm smile. I wonder, was it my accent that tipped him off? Had I inadvertently betrayed the fact that I grew up in the gutters of Le Havre rather than the gilded drawing rooms of Paris? Dame Blanchard had cautioned me that, as a military attaché, Monsieur Hugo, had an uncanny ear for dialect. Had he suspected me all along?

I shift in my exquisite, hand sequined gown to reveal a peek of ankle, the merest flash of a jewel-encrusted silk shoe. Perhaps lust will entice him to draw out this little charade of ours. His eyelid’s flicker even as his traitorous smile remains rigidly in place.

Our glasses clink in a toast. “To the King,” I murmur, seeing my own blue eyes reflected in his black gaze. We may as well feign loyalty to King George – the French are supposed to be our allies after all.

“To the King,” he echoes, watching me closely.

The battle of wits – and my survival – begins.
===

This piece is a living example of a story with good bones under a heavy layer of fat. I enjoy the setting and I enjoy the character and her voice, but it’s all way too thick and chewy for me. Sentences meander and compound too much. The simple declarative sentence is a writer’s most important tool.

For me, the present-tense telling is a crippling burden here. When used even by experienced journeymen, the present tense is a contrivance; here it’s an albatross, made even albatrossier by the fact that it’s a historical piece.

At the risk of being presumptuous, I’ve taken a stab at a full re-write of the submission to illustrate some tightening and stylistic changes that I think make the piece more engaging. I kept to the original skeleton, and I tried hard not to screw up the voice. This just seemed like the most efficient way to offer constructive criticism and trim over 100 words in the process:

I don’t usually poison someone on the first date, but tonight was a night of firsts.

As military attaché Monsieur Hugo crossed the room to the mahogany sideboard, I sensed danger. Sinewy and strong beneath his immaculately pressed evening suit, he could easily have overwhelmed me.

I reached below the arm of my chair to draw the vial of arsenic from my beaded purse, but when he turned unexpectedly, I withdrew a silver cigarette case instead. I placed a Gauloise to my lips, staining it with red lipstick before offering him one. I hoped my arched look masked my fear.

“Champagne, ma cherie?” he offered. His dark toad-like eyes bulged.

“Oui, merci,” I replied, praying that my accent did not betray my origins from the gutters of Le Havre. Dame Blanchard had cautioned me that Monsieur Hugo possessed an uncanny ear for dialect.

I shifted in my chair to reveal the merest flash of a jewel-encrusted silk shoe beneath my sequined gown. His eyelids flickered even as his traitorous smile remained rigid.

Our glasses clinked. “To the King,” I murmured. The French were supposed to be our allies after all.

His eyes remained locked on mine. “To the King.”

The battle of wits – and battle for my survival – had begun.