Story Logic—Spell It Out

Posted on December 18, 2008 by Joe Moore

Today The Kill Zone is thrilled to host the lovely and talented L.J. Sellers, author of The Sex Club, which I recently read and thoroughly enjoyed. Without further ado…

For the last two days, I’ve been filling in the details of my outline, working out the timeline, and crafting a sizzling ending that brings it all together. I’m already 50 pages into writing Thrilled to Death, and it felt like to time to solidify some plot points. I know many writers don’t do this; they prefer to wing it and see where the story takes them. (Stephen King, for example) I rather envy that style.

But I write complex mystery/suspense novels, and the outline/timeline has become more critical with each novel. In a police procedural, so much happens in the first few days of a murder investigation that a timeline is essential. For complex, parallel plots with multiple points of view, mapping the story in detail is the best way to avoid writing yourself into a dead end or writing 48 hours worth of activity into a 10-hour time frame. I speak from experience.

Then yesterday for the first time, I put in writing what I termed story logic. I’ve always done this in my head to some degree, but this was the first time I put it on the page in summary form. In a mystery/suspense novel, some or much of what happens before and during the story timeline is off page — actions by the perpetrators that the detective and reader learn of after the fact. Many of these events and/or motives are not revealed until the end of the story. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to convey to readers how and why it all happened.

So I mapped it out—all the connections, events, and motivations that take place on and off the page. Bad guy Bob knows bad guy Ray from prison. Bob meets young girl at homeless shelter. Young girl tells Bob about the money she found . . .

It was an enlightening process, and I highly recommend it. Summarizing the story logic forces you to think specifically about character connections and motivations. It points out holes and inconsistencies and gives you an opportunity to tighten and improve your plot. It may even force you to rethink and rewrite your outline. But it also may keep readers from getting to the end of your novel and thinking, How did he know that? Where did that come from?

I mentioned the process on a Twitter/Facebook update, and another writer asked me about it. So I explained it to her (in 140 characters!). She got back to me with this message: “I wrote the foundation of my book and did the ‘story logic’ for the rest before writing the book to fill in details. It led me in a completely different direction. I took some risks in the outline and a lot fell into place. I’m psyched!”

I admit, all of this takes some of the spontaneity out of the writing process. But for me, writing isn’t magic. It’s work, and it needs the same detailed planning as any other project. Of course, I’m flexible. If better ideas or connections come to me as I write, I will modify my outline and resummarize the story logic.

Do you map the story logic? Do you outline? Can any of you wing it with complex crime story?

L.J. Sellers is an award-winning journalist, editor, novelist, and occasional standup comic based in Eugene, Oregon. She is the author of the highly praised mystery/suspense novel, The Sex Club, and has a second Detective Jackson story, Secrets to Die For, coming out next year. When not plotting murders, Sellers enjoys cycling through the Willamette Valley, hanging out with her extended family, and editing fiction manuscripts.

Rules for Writers

Posted on December 17, 2008 by Joe Moore

By Joe Moore

Who said there are no rules for writers? Of course there are:

1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid clichés like the plague.
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
14. One should NEVER generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
16. Don’t use no double negatives.
17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc. . .
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be ignored.
21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
22. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
23. Kill all exclamation points!!!
24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
25. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
26. Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.
27. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
28. If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
31. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
32. Who needs rhetorical questions?
33. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
And finally…
34. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

Did we miss any?

We have a winnah!

Posted on December 16, 2008 by Joe Moore

We have a winner of last week’s blog post: Male or female author? You vote!

We had a couple of people to post the correct genders, but JJ was the first person to post:

1: Male (Stephen White, In Harm’s Way)

2: Female (Carla Damron, Keeping Silent)

3: Female (Jan Burke, Bones)

4: Male (James Crumley, Hostages)

5: Female (Joyce Carol Oates, The Skull)

6: Male (Robin Cook, Coma)

7: Female (Christa Faust, Money Shot)

So JJ, if you’ll send me your mailing address, I’ll send you the Indie tee shirt. I will send everyone who posted a bookmark, if you’ll send me your mailing address to keslilley at yahoo dot com.

If I made any errors in the excerpts or entries, I blame deadline exhaustion!

Doom! Gloom! and Critique Groups

Posted on December 15, 2008 by Joe Moore

by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

http://www.clarelangleyhawthorne.com/

I’ve been in the same critique group for over five years now and although it’s been reconstituted in various forms there has been a constant core group of people who have provided me with considerable and (often) much needed support…But as 2008 draws to a close my writing group has started to feel decidedly disenchanted, jaded and (dare I say it) depressed…and I’m starting to fear it’s partly due to me.

As the only published writer in the group I used to at least provide a bit of hope and some inspiration but now, given all the doom and gloom in the publishing industry, the group is starting to view the road to becoming and staying a published author as an insurmountable obstacle course. Sure I may have cleared the first few hurdles but now, as they watch me continue to traverse the mine field they are starting to ask – when does it ever get to be easy? I confess that I suspect it never does…that the obstacle race is never over, the hurdles just change…and then the group sinks back into despair once more.

Some members have said jokingly it’s time we started writing erotica (okay, I confess I was one of them!) because hey, maybe we’d actually make money if we did…but then we all give ourselves a reality check and realize we cannot change what we write. As for most writers we tell the stories that need to be told – that well up from within and pour on to the page. We can’t write to the market or try and pretend to be a different kind of writer (damn, damn, damn!).

My writing group meets every second Friday and, up until June this year, people were battling on but upbeat and determined. Now the group is teetering on the edge of despondency. While ruminating on this week’s blog I visited despair.com, thinking there might be some funny one-liners from their spoof on the inspirational posters we’ve all seen gracing corporate America’s walls. But while lines such as “Limitations – until you spread your wings, you’ll have no idea how far you can walk“, raised a smile I realized that the LAST thing we needed was more ‘demotivation’ for our work!

I keep thinking of that hilarious sci-fi spoof Galaxy Quest and I feel like I’ve turned into the Tim Allen character who cries “Never Give Up; Never Surrender!” from the bridge of his ridiculous spacecraft just as he faces probable annihilation…

So I’m turning to you all for advice. How can a writing and critique group support one another in these challenging times? What is the single best thing you have come away from this year, in terms of your writing, that might buoy the hopes of both the published and the unpublished writer?

One Week of Life Has All the Raw Material I’ll Ever Need.

Posted on December 13, 2008 by Joe Moore

John Ramsey Miller

This week we learned that the Big 3 automakers bailout package included pay raises for Federal judges. I’m sure there’s lots of other pork in there as well. And it failed, and I’m not sure how I feel about it, but only because three million jobs are at stake. Everybody but the auto company’s executives knew where they’ve been screwing up for decades. All week long they pumped out cars by the thousands to ship out next week so they can sit rusting in lots across the country because nobody is buying. Less demand, fewer cars produced. Easy. Bad mileage, high gas prices, who wants them? High drama from the idiots we elected, as usual. There is NO leadership in DC. I pray that isn’t true after the 20th of January.

The governor of Illinois (a man who looks like Bob’s Big Boy) was arrested by the FBI for trying to sell Barak Obama’s Senate seat. Jesse Jackson’s son may or may not have been willing to buy it. He says he wasn’t going to buy it, but when has any politician admitted to doing anything on the first pass? Nothing ever changes in politics except the faces, and President elect Obama has so far made the campaigning-for-President Obama a pipe-dreamer at best and a skilled liar at worst. Not that there’s anything new in candidates lying, but a lot of people who are idealistic and believed the hype, are disappointed already, and they should be. I had an uncle who said the only thing under heaven worse than an attorney was a lawyer elected to an office.

A lady saw the Virgin Mary in an X-ray this week.

One of the pillars of Wall Street has been running a financial Ponzi scheme that cost his investors $50,000,000,000.00. Some of his clients were respected charities, and I suppose they’ll be bailed out along with the rich investors. Enron only lost a few billions more than this one guy.

In Greece thousands of Anarchists (mostly young people) burned the entire country, or large sections of it because some kid who’d been throwing Molotov cocktails at cops was killed by a ricocheting warning shot. The cop was put in to prison to placate the mobs, but yet they rage on and are still burning buildings and businesses. Call me old fashioned, but any kid who is threatening cops with death can catch a bullet and I won’t lead any riots. And it’s spreading across Europe like a plague. I’m not looking forward to the same here in the near future, but I smell it in the wind.

Caylee Antony’s corpse was found ½ mile from her home. Everybody in the United States, except the unfortunate child’s grandparents, knew the party gal killed her daughter, and that no mother who isn’t in a coma waits a month after the babysitter fails to return a child to tell someone about it. Just don’t happen.

Here’s a few headlines from this afternoon:
Canadian Man Builds Himself Robot Girlfriend, Clues found at Caylee kin home, Rapid-Fire Killer Robot Passes Flight Test, Muslim Scientists Prepare for Battle With Creationists, water vapor detected on distant planet, Who Needs the Big 3? Atlanta Company Plans New Police Car, Failing U.S. automakers popular in Europe, Teacher reveals Santa’s identity, Woolies’ facing bankruptcy, John Ramsey Miller’s dog Buddah run over by a gas truck…

I’m sure I’ve missed something huge, but the point is the world is feeding us plots and sub-plots and characters. Could you have not spotted something this week to put into your newest project?

Between the Covers

Posted on December 12, 2008 by Joe Moore

By
John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

With the publication of No Mercy looming in just six months, I finally saw the cover art for the first time last week. If I knew how to insert pictures here, this would be the perfect place to do so, but alas, there lies the limit of my technical ability. So, please indulge me and visit my website via the link above. You don’t have to linger, but the new cover is proudly displayed there.

Sure, now’s fine. We’ll wait.

Thanks for that. Welcome back. Pretty cool, huh? I love the creepiness of it. When you consider that the primary purpose of a cover is to get a potential reader to pick it up off the shelf, I think it accomplishes its goal.

But I haven’t always been so lucky. In fact, early in my career, my covers ran the gamut from kinda weird to just plain boring. At All Costs, for example, featured a cityscape in the background, which I probably would have liked better if the book had taken place in a city. As it was, it was mostly set in remote, rural America. When I asked my editor at the time why they did the city thing, he told me it was because they couldn’t come up with anything better. Does that breed confidence, or what?

Nathan’s Run is a story about a 12-year-old boy on the run for murder, even as an assassin is on his heels to do him in. HarperCollins at the time saw fit to create a hardcover jacket that featured a sepia-colored image of a curve in the road. That’s it; just a road with stripes on it. It was certainly artistic, but I vastly preferred my British cover, which showed the image of a bad guy in whose sunglasses we could see the reflection of a boy running for his life.

The point where I am right now with No Mercy defines the stage of book-writing that I find most frustrating. From here forward, I am virtually powerless to affect the future of my labor of love. The manuscript is done, and with that final edit, I’ve handed the process over to the team of professionals who have to make all the other parts of the puzzle fit together. If the past is a predictor of the future, I’m in good hands; but it’s still hard to surrender control.

One of the great clichés of all time is that you can’t judge a book by its cover, yet all of us do it every day. So, what do y’all think? We’ve talked gender bias and age bias. We’ve touched on genre bias. What about cover bias? I confess that I’m a practitioner. Are you?

Fear and Loathing in San Francisco

Posted on December 11, 2008 by Joe Moore

I’ve actually been dreading this post for a few days now. Not because I don’t enjoy blogging, or the debates and discussions it fosters: those I love. But I’m rapidly approaching my least favorite part of the writing process: the deadline. And I am way, way behind.

I start each day optimistically. I’ve completed a rough draft. A very rough one, if I’m being honest, riddled with typos and writing of the lowest caliber imaginable. But hey, the bones of the story are there, right? And some of my research has been completed. Of course, not the parts that might actually change the bones of said story–those I’m still working on. So I have minor panic attacks periodically, terrified that one of my experts is going to answer a question with, "Oh no, that won’t work at all. You’ll have to change all that."

I mentioned this to a friend the other night, a "literary" writer, who scoffed and replied, "Deadlines?! Haven’t met one yet. My last book was a year late." Lovely, if that’s the sort of thing your publisher tolerates. Mine does not. And so here I am, with two weeks remaining until I have to hand something to my editor that she’ll read without raising any alarms.

And therein lies the fear.

I realize this can seem like a shallow complaint. I’m lucky to even have a contract, and remain thrilled that my publisher accepted my proposal and wants to publish the book. It’s hardly fair to look back on those days when I was writing The Tunnels, spending weeks on a single chapter, as halcyon days. Because now, at least, I labor under the certainty that I will actually see those chapters in print. But still–nostalgia has a way of seeping in, usually when I’m at this stage of the writing process. What a luxury that was. I really wish I’d appreciated it more at the time. It took me a little over two years to write that book. For this one, I had four months.

I’m trying to edit 30 pages a day. Doesn’t sound like much, but I spent seven straight hours working on the manuscript today, and when I checked: 19 pages. Argh. Even if I work every night and through the weekend (a near impossibility with family commitments), I probably won’t make it. And somewhere in there I’m supposed to tour preschools, shop for the holidays, and decorate a Christmas tree. Everything else has fallen by the wayside, which includes answering emails, exercising, preparing healthy meals (or any meals). Lately every night is pizza night in our house. Even my husband is starting to complain about it, disproving my theory that he would happily eat pizza daily for the rest of his natural life (note: harkening back to our recent gender discussions, this has not motivated him to actually cook a meal).

And if I don’t meet the deadline? It won’t be end of the world, but it means less time on the next, even more critical draft. Our turnaround window is already fairly tight, and losing another week or two would probably mean pulling a few all-nighters in February. I shudder at the thought.

So forgive me for the abbreviated post. I’m off to cry quietly in the corner.

Male or female author? You vote!

Posted on December 9, 2008 by Joe Moore

Okay, so Clare’s post about male versus female writing inspired me to put it to a vote–contest time! You vote whether the the authors of some writing snippets are male or female. You have to post a comment to win. The prize will be my favorite Indie Bookstore tee shirt:

If it’s a tie, the tee shirt goes to the first person to guess the most correctly. Everyone who posts will get a Kill Zone bookmark, if you send me your address! I’ll announce the winners next Tuesday. (Please–No spoilers if you know the author!)

A warm Friday night in April, the air still and perfumed by lilacs.
Emily had to pee. I fingered her leash as she circled and sniffed the ground for whatever peculiar scent would tell her she had found the right spot.
Peter was on his way out the lane. He slowed his old Volvo and thrust his left arm through the open window in greeting. “Hi, Em,” he called.
I returned his wave and watched the wagon’s lights trail away. Emily cocked her ears as she squatted in the dust.
She would have preferred that we continue on for a walk but I was eager to get back inside, where my wife waited for me with chilled pepper vodka, a video-cassette, and a cozy spot on the couch.

Captain Frank Bentille leaned against the door jamb and stared at them. Gray and black tweed pants and a gray shirt hung loosely on his gangly frame, making him look like a greyhound long retired from the track. The striped tie had a red spot from some recent meal. His close-set eyes were dwarfed by the dense brows that nearly met each other over his nose.

The sound came at us like a prizefighter’s punch—a thundering, out-of-nowhere explosion tha shook the earth and nearly deafened us.
I stood frozen, unable to comprehend what had happened. A cloud of dust and debris suddenly billowed over the meadow as the echoes of the explosion continued to rattle and roar through the mountains, until soon the sound seemed to come from every side. There were other sounds too—screams and the quick crack of shots fired.

Mabel wanted to follow the sleepy kiss—even cupped Em’s tiny, pert breasts with the rosehip nipples—but she had business to take care of. Baby Emma was twenty but easily passed for ten or eleven. The girl-child seemed built of warm and creamy vanilla scoops, and the blond ringlets curling in a tangle around her face looked like thick caramel drippings. Mable touched her lips again, softly, not wanting to wake the young woman too quickly.

The hair! It was fair, sun-bleached brown with shades of red, still showing a distinct ripply wave. Six swaths had been gathered at the crime scene and brought to the his laboratory. Kyle placed them on a windowsill, where, when he glanced up from his exceedingly close work with tweezers and bits of bone, he could see them clearly. The longest swath was seven inches. The victim had worn her hair long, to her shoulders. From time to time, Kyle reached out to touch it.

Gerald Kelley was as Irish as one could be and still live in Boston and not Dublin. His hair was reddish blond and thick and curly despite the fact that he was fifty-four years old. His face had a ruddy hue, almost as if he wore theatrical makeup, especially over the crests of his cheekbones.
Kelley’s most notable feature and by far the dominant aspect of his profile was his enormous paunch. Every night three bottles of stout contributed to its awe-inspiring dimensions. For the last few years it had been pointed out that when Kelley was vertical, his belt buckle was horizontal.

So once I figured out I was in the trunk of a car, I remembered the blue Civic and from there it was a swift re-connect the dots to Jesse and Sam and the girl with the briefcase.

I also remembered that I had been shot, or thought I had. It obviously hadn’t been by a very good shot, since I was still around to worry about it, but it did seem fairly pressing that get some sort of medical attention. I felt like someone was digging a fork around my right side just below the arm pit and it hurt like hell if I took a deep breath.

Examine your own writing for male vs. female “traits”

While I was looking for excerpts to try to trip you all up, I found a site where you can enter your writing and find out whether your writing is more “male” or “female.” The site runs your writing through an algorithm of some sort to determine your score:

http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php

I ran a section of my own writing through it, and my score was slightly more “male” than “female.” Who’d a thunk it? Try running your writing through it and let us know the results!

Do men and women write differently?

Posted on December 8, 2008 by Joe Moore

By Clare Langley-Hawthorne

http://www.clarelangleyhawthorne.com/

Inspired by Michelle’s blog post last week on gender bias I decided to tackle the question of whether women and men write differently and, if so, can authors write convincingly from the point of view of the opposite sex.

In my latest writing project I tackled the issue head on – having multiple ‘voices’ in the book including a male character. I have to confess I was worried initially as the female characters came very easily to me – their voices (though quite different to one another) rang true and clear. Once I was about a third of the way through my first draft however I found myself thinking that something was lacking and I realized I needed to get the perspective of my lead male character. I hesitated – would I really be able to write it convincingly? Would the voice sound authentically male?

Of course that question opens up a whole range of others but fundamentally my concern was whether I could write from the point of view of a man? Was that even possible? When I asked my husband he said he thought the whole issue was a non-issue. My female characters went far beyond my own experiences or personality so why would I not be capable of moving beyond gender? He didn’t seem to think it mattered whether the writer was male or female and I admit that, as a reader, I thought many writers (both male and female) have managed to write from the opposite gender perspective – but it’s always different when it’s your own writing!

I was worried that I would make my male character too ‘soft’ – a feminized ideal of a man – capable of articulating his feelings and noticing elements that quite frankly a man would not – like the color of someone’s eyes or their clothes. I got about half way through my second draft and had my writing group give me feedback and they told me that my male character seemed to be a bit of a bastard. I realized that in worrying about making him too idealized I had actually succeeded in making him sound like a shit. So back I went – refining and editing the voice until finally a real person began to take shape. It took a while but I found his voice emerging and then the writing flowed so much easier. I had the character in my head now and gender no longer mattered.

But the real question is should it matter at all?? Should the gender of a writer change the way a reader perceives the POV or character in a book? Do you think it makes a difference?

Have you ever read a book and been surprised to discover the writer was a man because you had assumed it was a woman (or vice versa)? In short, does gender even matter when it comes to writing effective characters?