True Crime Thursday – John Bozeman’s Unsolved Homicide from 1867

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John Bozeman

By Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

Bozeman, Montana is known for Montana State University, world-class outdoor recreation, expensive homes (median price is $845,000), and the unsolved homicide of the city’s founder more than 150 years ago.

John Bozeman was a pioneer who blazed the Bozeman Trail as a shortcut from Wyoming to the Montana Territory gold fields, although he was unsuccessful at gold prospecting.

In 1867, he became a murder victim.

In the Montana Territory, tension existed between white settlers moving west and Native tribes who, despite treaties, were displaced.

In April, 1867, Bozeman and mill owner Thomas Cover were on their way to Fort C.F. Smith to secure a flour contract for Cover. They spent a night at a cattle ranch belonging to wealthy Nelson Story, Sr.

For unknown reasons, Bozeman was concerned for his safety and expressed his worry in a letter. That night, he shared a room with W.S. McKenzie and “begged” McKenzie to take his place on the journey, even offering his clothes and boots.

Thomas Cover

One possible reason for Bozeman’s fear is that he evidently had made advances on Cover’s wife, Mary, according to this article from The Sherman Room. 

However, the next day, Bozeman and Cover resumed their journey together. According to Cover, when they stopped for a meal near the Yellowstone River, five Native men approached.

A shootout ensued in which Bozeman was struck twice in the chest, killing him. Cover claimed he had been shot once in the shoulder from the rear. He also said Blackfeet men stole their horses. He escaped and returned to the ranch for help.

The next day, Nelson Story arrived at the ranch and sent a trusted guide to study the murder scene. Story examined Cover’s wound, noticed powder burns indicating a shot from close range, and was suspicious that the bullet had entered from the front, contrary to Cover’s claim.

The guide returned and said he’d found Bozeman’s body, along with his valuables, undermining Cover’s claim that theft was the motive for the murder. He found tracks of only Bozeman’s and Cover’s horses, with no indication of five Native men Cover claimed had shot them.

However, soldiers from Fort C.F. Smith later encountered a camp where five outcast Natives bragged that they had killed Bozeman and had his horse.

Shortly after Bozeman’s murder, Cover moved to California and, for a time, successfully raised navel oranges in San Bernardino. In 1884, while searching for gold in the desert between Los Angeles and Yuma, Cover disappeared and was never found.

Years later, Nelson Story’s son said his father told him Cover had killed Bozeman then shot himself in the shoulder to disguise his guilt.

Another version of the murder surfaced when a man named Thomas Kent claimed Nelson Story, Sr. hired him to kill Bozeman.

Hearsay, rumors, and gossip promoted various theories but none of the possible scenarios could be proven with evidence.

John Bozeman’s murder remains a fabled but unsolved mystery.

Renee Carlson’s well-researched article about the homicide was published in Distinctly Montana magazine. Here’s a link to her story.

 ~~~

TKZers: Any theories about this very cold case?

~~~

 

A young Native inmate shouldn’t have gone to prison. Now he’s dead and video evidence is overwhelming against a female guard who swears she’s innocent. Investigator Tawny Lindholm plunges into the sinister world of deep fakes where “proof” isn’t truth.

Available at Amazon and major online booksellers. 

Tips for Distant Settings Redux

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Tips for Distant Settings Redux
Terry Odell

Map showing a Norway Cruise RouteIf all goes as planned this time, when you’re reading this, I should be somewhere in the skies between Frankfurt and Oslo. Or Bergen, where our cruise begins. Therefore, I won’t be able to respond to comments, but I trust you’ll play nice and keep things going.

One of my retirement goals is to travel, and even though Antarctica didn’t (and probably never will) happen, I’ve been fortunate enough to see parts of the world I’d never thought I’d be visiting. A lot of this is because our son is a photographer and his “specialty” is leading photo safaris all over the world. This current trip is to Norway and beyond. I’m revisiting a post I did some time ago, with my tips for writing about distant settings, based on a trip to the British Isles.

When the Hubster and I decided to celebrate our 50th anniversary with a trip to the British Isles, of course I had “book” in the back of my mind. However, an international setting wouldn’t have worked with any of my existing series, and since I never plot in advance, I decided to enjoy our tour, taking pictures and notes of what we were seeing and doing and just wait and see what might bubble to the surface.

When we got home, I decided I’d write a short and sweet romance. Write it quickly, understanding that it’s not my true “brand” but that I had to publish something to justify writing off at least part of the trip.

Well, I soon discovered I’m not a short and sweet romance author, and mystery elements insisted on working their way into the story. What I ended up with is Heather’s Chase: an International Mystery Romance which is closer to my brand, although it’s a stand alone and still a bit of a one off. Nevertheless, it was an educational experience. Since then, I had another major trip, this one to Croatia, which led to the book Cruising Undercover.

Things I’ve learned about setting a book in real places, especially distant ones.

Less is more. My first drafts went into phenomenal detail about absolutely everything. Airports. Train stations. Hotels. Food. All the places we stopped, what we saw on the drives. Given we were traveling for well over two weeks, that would have been a LONG book. A sense of place is good. Overwhelming readers is not. I had to keep reminding myself to make sure everything related to the plot and characters. I wasn’t writing a travelogue.

Stay true to time. Readers familiar with the area will know that you can’t get from A to B in two hours, or that when you’ve had your characters on their bus for five hours, it’s really a twenty-minute drive.

You’ll always miss something. Unless you’ve got your plot mapped out before your trip, once  you start writing, you’ll have a scene to write and—lo and behold—you missed taking a picture, or didn’t take the right notes. I spent a LOT of time on the internet rechecking facts, looking at maps, and refamiliarizing myself with some of the attractions we visited. If I couldn’t find exactly what I needed, I reminded myself I was writing fiction—another reason not to name real places. On the occasions where my characters were eating in real, named places, I made sure I had pictures and menus. Same for attractions.

Don’t make up real stuff. One of the reasons I made this book a stand alone was because our trip didn’t include visits to police departments (although I snapped a picture of a vehicle in Ireland, “just in case”). Also, it would be unrealistic for my American characters to have any access to law enforcement in several different countries.

Be nice. I also opted not to name the specific hotels or restaurants (mostly). For one thing, it gave me the freedom to change the décor, layout, amenities, or the restaurant menus. And, if something “bad” happened, I wasn’t going to incur the wrath of those establishments.

It’s about flavor. Although my characters didn’t visit Northern Ireland, I did include a character from the same town we’d visited when we stayed with my daughter. I made sure she vetted all his dialogue. For example, people in Northern Ireland use the word “wee” as a meaningless adjective. I was asked for my wee credit card, given a wee receipt, offered a wee bag for my purchases. My British critique partner was very helpful with vocabulary as well.

All in all, I had a great time ‘revisiting’ my trip to the British Isles while I was writing the book, and being able to incorporate my experiences into Heather’s Chase. I did a little better with the Croatia trip, although there were lapses in my note-taking. At least, since it was a photography trip, I had plenty of pictures to nudge my memories.

Any tips to share, TKZers?

And a little BSP. I’m going to be teaching some writing craft classes via Zoom, hosted by my editor.
12 Steps to Intimacy on June 17th

Creating Armchair Adventures on July 15th

Into the Heads of Your Characters, on July 29th.

The links will provide more details.

Please spread the word. Friends, writing groups, libraries … wherever you think there might be people interested in learning more about the craft.

Cover image of Deadly Relations by Terry OdellAvailable Now
Deadly Relations.
Nothing Ever Happens in Mapleton … Until it Does
Gordon Hepler, Mapleton, Colorado’s Police Chief, is called away from a quiet Sunday with his wife to an emergency situation at the home he’s planning to sell. A man has chained himself to the front porch, threatening to set off an explosive.

Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”

How to Measure Writing Progress

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Photo credit: Eskay Lim – Unsplash

By Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

Recently my computer spent a couple of days in the shop. No social media? No problem! But no internet and no email—that was difficult.

Unable to write or research, I cast around looking for a project to fill normal writing hours. My gaze fell upon the two-drawer filing cabinet crammed with writing stuff.

For years, I’ve invented delays to avoid going through those files: I’ll organize them as soon as I finish this book; as soon as I finish beta reading a colleague’s manuscript; as soon as I give that PowerPoint presentation; as soon as I meet this article deadline; and so on and so on…

Embarrassing confession: The last time I purged writing files was in 2003. Twenty years ago!

Lately, though, it had become increasingly difficult to stuff even one additional sheet of paper into the crammed Pendaflex dividers. Searching in the folders not only caused bleeding paper cuts but bruises on the back of my hand. The two drawers of the filing cabinet haven’t been able to close completely for quite a while.

With the computer in the shop, it was finally time. No more excuses.

I yanked out a stack of files and spread them across the dining table. The top drawer was supposed to contain current work that I need easy access to—ISBN numbers, income and expenses, marketing, recently published articles, WIPs, classes I teach, etc.

Also priority items in the top drawer are Merriam-Webster’s Pocket Dictionary, Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, and printouts of Jodie Renner’s editing tips.

Each book in my Tawny Lindholm Thriller series has its own folder of research, notes, beta feedback, etc. I’ve finished eight books—why are there only seven folders? Oh yeah, #8 is on the kitchen counter because it couldn’t fit in the drawer. Also on the counter are marketing to-do lists for #8.

Farther down in the pile were files from classes and conferences I attended. For 30+ years, I’ve been involved in planning our local Flathead River Writers Conference. Did I really need to keep notes of organizational meetings for all those years? Flight schedules of guest speakers I picked up from the airport? Menus and budgets? Nope. Into the trash.

But then I started reading the copious notes I took from the presentations.

And remembering.

That’s where this cleaning-out business gets tricky.

Pretty quickly I wandered down memory lane into a twisting rabbit warren of education and experience. Easy enough to discard handouts of social media tips from 2013 because that’s changed so much. But what about the 2016 Pikes Peak Writers Conference, a major turning point in my writing career?

For sure, I had to save my notes from Kevin J. Anderson, bestselling author of spin-offs for Star Trek, Dune, and X-Files. He gave a fabulous talk about world-building and illustrated the process with vivid sensory details about growing up in a little Wisconsin town that’s the sauerkraut capital of the world. His descriptions of smells are still imprinted in my memory. In a one-hour presentation, he literally revolutionized the way I work setting into my stories.

That triggered another recollection from later during the same conference. In a room packed with 100 attendees, there was a first-page read-aloud session. Kevin, along with another author and an agent, read the first page of my then-unpublished novel, Instrument of the Devil. Kevin heaped glowing praise on it.

THE Kevin J. Anderson, mega-million bestseller, was intrigued by my first page. I still remember sitting in a chair in the third row, overcome by feverish blushing that made me feel as if I were melting.

Also in that same folder was the certificate awarded at the banquet that night. IOTD won the best thriller/mystery category.

Gotta keep that and the warm memories from the conference that led to my first published book.

Next was a folder marked “TKZ.” It contained emails starting in 2015 between Kathryn Lilley and me where she invited me to guest post for the first time. More emails and more guest posts. Then, while we were at a vacation condo in Florida, I remember breathlessly reading Kathryn’s message out loud to my husband when she asked me to be a regular TKZ contributor.

Another major turning point in my career.

Gotta save those emails.

I time-traveled deeper into the past, uncovering drafts from 2007 of my tenth “practice” novel (the previous nine “practice” novels went out in the 2003 purge). Nice comments from my critique group but I barely remembered the mystery and tossed it without a twinge. Not compelling then and even less so today.

Found a stack of different-colored index cards from an even older mystery. The manuscript was gone so why did I keep the cards? Then the memory came back—I’d struggled with that timeline. A wise teacher suggested the index card system: write a single scene on each card then lay the cards out on the floor. Rearrange, add, or subtract scenes until the timeline makes sense. This was long before the invention of software that allows scene rearrangement onscreen. Wish I could remember who taught me the trick because I owe them thanks.

Buried even deeper in the pile were pages of 13-column ledger paper from the 1990s where I tracked submissions. Hundreds of them. To agents, editors, magazines, newspapers. One column recorded the dates of rejections. Early on, those outpaced acceptances tenfold. Later, acceptances increased, and rejections decreased.

Other columns logged dates of publication and payments, if any. Sometimes payments were simply copies of the magazine, if it survived long enough to publish. I personally take credit for putting at least 20 little literary magazines out of business in the ’90s.

Back in snail mail days, the process moved slowly. From the time of submission to the magazine hitting the stands could stretch six months, a year, or even longer. Payment was sometimes upon publication, other times after publication.

But gradually the acceptances increased. I found emails from editors who contacted me offering assignments that paid $25, then $100, then $400 plus mileage.

In the back of the drawer were three-ring binders full of published clips also dating back to the early 1990s. In those days, you saved “tear sheets”—actual pages of published articles torn from magazines or newspapers. When querying, you’d send them as samples of your work for the editor to judge.

By now, you’re wondering if I’ll ever get to the point of this post.

This is it.

Writing has never been a profession that delivers immediate gratification.

Measuring one’s writing progress is tough to quantify. In a regular job, a paycheck every week or two proves the worker’s worth and skills.

In writing, months and years may go by without a “paycheck.”

Even when your career reaches a point where you receive advances and royalties, the income probably won’t support you in the style you’d like to become accustomed to.

If you can’t measure your writing progress in a tangible monetary way, how do you know if you’re improving?

Your best yardstick is yourself.

Look back at what you wrote six months ago, a year, five years, or 20 years ago. Have your skills improved? Have you learned new craft techniques?

Did a class or workshop change the way you create characters, or handle action scenes, or infuse emotion into your stories? Has your pacing improved? Did you head-hop in the past but now you’ve finally mastered point of view (POV)?

Do readers and other writers notice improvement in your work?

Do you waste less time floundering around trying to find a story? Do you have more focus and better concentration when you write? Do you feel more confident about showing your writing to others?

Do you have goals? Have you achieved some of them? Then do you set higher goals?

Writing is a ladder without end. No one knows everything about writing. We all need to work continuously to improve our craft, master more complicated skills, and produce more words.

When I finished clearing old stuff from the file drawers, the discards in the wastebasket weighed about 50 pounds. I filled one banker’s box with conference highlights, published articles, old references I might someday need, and mementoes. That box went into storage in the spare bedroom.

The bottom drawer of the file cabinet now contains only the past three years of published articles and the first seven novels in my thriller series. Deep Fake Double Down, #8, is in the top drawer while I’m actively marketing and promoting. The top also contains daily business files and current to-do projects like uploading my books to Ingram Spark.

No more writing files on the kitchen counter. Whew.

Now the cabinet has plenty of room for new projects, including a nonfiction book proposal I’m working on. I can slip my hand between folders without tearing off layers of skin.

Cleaning out the files gave me the chance to reassess the progress of my writing career. I reviewed lessons learned during this never-ending apprenticeship.

photo credit: Vincent Van Zalinge, Unsplash

My goals back then were different. Did I achieve my dream of winning an Edgar for “Best First Novel”? Nope. A few friends earned six-figure advances for debut books. Did I? Nope. And that’s okay because, sadly, their careers went downhill after their initial one-hit wonders.

Today’s goals? Would I like to publish as many books as Nora Roberts? Sure. Make as many sales as James Patterson? Absolutely.

Photo credit: Aron Visuals, unsplash

Will I ever achieve those goals? Probably not. But I’ll keep plodding along like a tortoise, creating more words and stringing them together in better sentences and stories.

Those old files showed slow, steady progress through the decades.

That’s not glamorous or exciting but it is satisfying.

 

~~~

TKZers: How do you measure your writing progress?

What are your goals for the next year?

~~~

For my new thriller, Deep Fake Double Down, Steve Hooley created a custom Deep Fake Sapphire collector’s pen. Visit my website to enter a free drawing for the pen and a signed book.

Deep Fake Double Down is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Miscommunication

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“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” –George Bernard Shaw

* * *

I was born and raised in Georgia. When I graduated from college (also in Georgia), I had the good fortune to be hired by IBM to work as a software developer on the National Air Traffic Control project. I was only twenty years old, nerdy, and extremely shy when I headed off alone into the strange world of corporate America hundreds of miles from home. I wonder now where I got the courage.

The Air Traffic Control project was being developed at the National Aviation Facilities Experimental Center (NAFEC) in New Jersey. New Jersey? I had rarely been out of the state of Georgia! I was vaguely aware that my southern accent might be a problem. Little did I know.

Driving my father’s Dodge Dart that he had lent me until I could buy a car of my own, I crossed the state line into New Jersey and stopped to get gasoline. That was before the days of self-service stations so an attendant came out to help.

“Fill ‘er up?” he asked.

I nodded. So far, so good.

When he had topped off the fuel, he appeared again at my window. “Anything else?”

In my most polite, Southern-laced voice, I asked, “Would you please check the awl?”

He looked at me like I was from another planet. “Huh?”

I thought maybe he was hard of hearing, so I repeated myself, slower and louder. “Would   You   Please   Check   The   Awl?”

He responded a little slower and louder. “H-U-H?”

Somehow we managed to bridge our communication gap. I can’t remember – maybe we used sign language – but he figured out what I was saying. He checked the oil, gave me a thumbs-up, dropped the hood, and came back to my side of the car.

“Anything else?” He looked a little wary.

Now, when I was growing up, my father owned an electrical contracting business. The business had a small fleet of trucks that the employees used, and my father had all the trucks serviced and fueled at one particular service station. We took our personal cars there as well. The people who owned that service station were very nice and obviously wanted to keep Dad’s business, so they always checked everything, whether you asked them or not. One service they provided was vacuuming the floor of the cars, so I asked the NJ attendant, “Would you please vacuum my car?”

In my insulated youth, I didn’t realize other parts of the country may not have the same devotion to customer service that I had experienced. The man standing by my window responded with a phrase I’ve heard on a few occasions since then, but that was the first time.

“Lady,” he said, “are you kidding me?”

I paid him for the gasoline and drove away from that first New Jersey encounter with a realization that understanding the world was going to be a whole lot harder than I had imagined.

* * *

A few years later, still in New Jersey and still very shy, I met the man who would become my husband. Our first meeting was not an example of love at first sight. As a matter of fact, it may be a primary illustration of miscommunication so total that only Providence could have overcome it to bring us together again. (Well, that and the fact that I had just bought a Jaguar XKE convertible.)

If you ever meet Frank, ask him about that first meeting. He loves to relate the story, and he embellishes it with new details on each re-telling so that I hardly recognize who he’s talking about anymore. But it’s such a great example of two people so completely misunderstanding each other that I used a variation of it in my first novel, The Watch on the Fencepost.

* * *

And that brings me to the point of this blog post. Miscommunication can add spice to a story. We often talk about conflict as a way to keep a reader’s attention, and misunderstanding between two people is an excellent way to introduce conflict into a story.

There are a semi-infinite number of other ways miscommunication can enhance a plot. A detective might misinterpret a clue. Directions could be misconstrued. Characters can make assumptions about each other that are simply wrong. And then there’s the unreliable narrator or a character who deliberately misleads others. Anything that creates confusion, misdirection, or conflict can be great story-telling elements.

And of course, miscommunication is a great source for humor. Just ask Abbot and Costello.

* * *

So TKZers: What ways have you experienced miscommunication in your life? Do you have any humorous anecdotes you’d like to share? How have you used miscommunication in your novels? 

Unfortunately, I’ll be traveling on Monday and will only have access online periodically. I look forward to reading everyone’s comments, and I’ll respond to them all as soon as I can.

* * *

 

The Watch on the Fencepost – Can Kathryn and Phil overcome their misunderstandings to solve the mystery behind her parents’ recent deaths?

 

 

 

 

Little Cuts Bring Big Benefits

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Here’s a first page for critique. The title is Savage Gunman. Genre: Western. Have a look:

Matt Benson, a lefty, hit the massive Mexican, Juan Cortez, in the jaw with a hard right jab. Cortez’s eyelids fluttered and he took a few long steps backward on the hay-covered floor.

           The crowd in the packed back room of the saloon roared. A drunken cowboy hollered above the rabble: “That was a lucky shot, hombre. You still got this.”

           Benson crouched as soon as Cortez sprang back, charging at him. Whiffs of air swept by his ears as he imagined Cortez swinging high above his head in vain. He gripped his opponent’s tree-trunk thighs in a bear hug and used his body weight to shake the fighter until he tumbled onto his back. The thump was like an old oak thundering down from the final swing of a sharp axe.

           “Get up, you bastard,” Milligan, the saloon owner shouted. “I got a fortune on you. Now ain’t the time to lose.”

           Benson stood in a dizzy haze. It had been the longest fight of his life, and Cortez had worked him over pretty good for what had to have been at least a half hour at this point. His eyes couldn’t focus properly, but he took in the blurry crowd and wondered how much money in total they’d bet against him. He was half Cortez’s size and, once the men stripped shirts to fight, clearly had none of the etched muscles of the younger Mexican farmer. Years of hard work and probably even more fighting had carved those from stone.

           Cortez bent his knees to arch his legs. He shifted his arms about the straw stained with blood and mud and lord knows what else. But he showed no signs of rising.

           “Call it,” Benson said. “He’s knocked out. I won.”

           A bald man in the crowd put spectacles on his face and hustled into the improvised ring. Down on one knee, he pinched Cortez’s cheeks and checked the eyes and face.

           “His legs are up,” Milligan said. “He’s awake. Get on up now, son.”

           Benson found his shirt on the ground, pulled it over his head, and started to button it.

           “Not so fast,” Milligan said. “The doc hasn’t called the fight. Well, Doc?”

           The bespectacled doctor stood. “He’s not out cold. He’ll be alright.”

           “I’m no doctor,” Milligan continued, “but it sounds like the Mex can go another round. Hold your bets, gentleman!”

           Another roar erupted.

***

JSB: There is much to like about this page. It opens with action. There’s no backstory dump to slow us down. (One bit is nicely woven in by inference: …the longest fight of his life.) The opening follows one of my axioms: Act first, explain later. It closes with the fight still in doubt, so I definitely want to turn the page to find out what happens.

Thus, my critique today is about one simple thing: cutting what Sol Stein called “flab.” Watch how a few simple cuts gives greater momentum to the scene.

Matt Benson, a lefty, hit the massive Mexican, Juan Cortez, in the jaw with a hard right jab. Cortez’s eyelids fluttered. and h He took a few long steps backward on the hay-covered floor.

The first tip here, especially for a genre like Western (or hardboiled), is that shorter sentences pack a greater punch. This goes double for a fight scene.

Now, it may be important that we find out Benson is a lefty, and I presume the author mentions it because his jab is with the right. But how essential is it to know that from the jump? Act first, explain later.

Further, that info takes us out of a close 3d Person POV (Benson wouldn’t be thinking about being a lefty. He already knows that) into Omniscient. Please note, there’s nothing “wrong” with opening in an Omniscient POV and then “dropping down” into 3d Person. It’s just that it seems more popular today to get in close and stay there.

I should also point out that a jab, hard as one may be, usually doesn’t back an opponent up a few, long steps. True, this could be a defensive maneuver by Cortez, but the way it’s presented feels like cause-effect.

The crowd in the packed back room of the saloon roared. A drunken cowboy hollered above the rabble. “That was a lucky shot, hombre. You still got this.”

I like this. The words roared, hollered, rabble are vivid. I cut the colon because I don’t like ’em in fiction. It’s not needed here where a simple period will do. A comma is also acceptable. (Just don’t get me started on semicolons!)

Benson crouched as soon as Cortez sprang back, charging at him.  

Here’s a little thing, but crucial. This violates the stimulus-response equation. (See my post on the subject here.) We have Benson crouching before we know Cortez is charging. Simple to fix. Just put the stimulus up front:

Cortez sprang back, charged at Benson.
Benson crouched.

Notice I changed charging to charged. Be very careful about violating the laws of physics by putting in simultaneous actions that don’t go together in real time. Springing back up is one action; charging ahead is another. (Yeah, I see the semicolon. Very helpful in nonfiction.) This is a common mistake and one you should train yourself to spot.

The above also offers another tip about short sentences in an action sequence: you can occasionally make separate paragraphs out of them. That conveys fast motion. 

Whiffs of air swept by his ears as he imagined Cortez swinging high above his head in vain.  

I’m having a little trouble picturing this. If whiffs of air are by his ears, plural, that implies at least two missed punches. I can’t see one missed punch followed by another, especially “high” above Benson’s head. And I don’t get the whiffs being by the ears unless Cortez is punching up and not over Benson’s head. Fight scenes like this can benefit by the author walking through the action physically.

I’m also not sure Benson, in the moment, would be imagining anything. Further, we don’t need to be told the punches were “in vain.”

So my advice is to rework this sentence with stimulus-response in the right spots. E.g.,

Cortez threw a right at Benson’s head. Benson ducked. A whiff of air swept the back of his neck.

Next:

He gripped his opponent’s tree-trunk thighs in a bear hug and used his body weight to shake the fighter until he tumbled onto his back.

Every style needs variety, a changeup from time to time. So a compound sentence every now and again is a good thing. The only thing I’d say here is that the he is ambiguous. It could refer to either fighter, so just change it to until Cortez tumbled onto his back.

The thump was like an old oak thundering down from the final swing of a sharp axe.

I’d like to see a little more work on this simile. I get what you’re going for. It just seems a bit cumbersome to get there (e.g., do we really need to be told the axe is sharp)? With metaphors and similes, it’s important to tweak them to get them “right.” So play around with this one. Maybe try some alternatives for the same effect. What else thumps?

“Get up, you bastard,” Milligan, the saloon owner shouted. “I got a fortune on you. Now ain’t the time to lose.”

I’m not against exclamation points in dialogue. So if this is the guy shouting, make it “Get up, you bastard!” Milligan, the saloon owner, shouted. “I got a fortune on you Now ain’t the time to lose!” [Note the grammatically required comma after owner. Also note that technically shouted is redundant in light of the exclamation point, thus said is fine. But I’m not going to call a foul.]

Benson stood in a dizzy haze. It had been the longest fight of his life, and. Cortez had worked him over pretty good for what had to have been at least a half hour. at this point. His eyes couldn’t focus. properly, but He took in the blurry crowd and wondered how much money in total they’d bet against him. He was half Cortez’s size and, once the men stripped shirts to fight, clearly had none of the etched muscles of the younger Mexican farmer. Years of hard work and probably even more fighting had carved those from stone.

I took out the last line because carved from stone is a bit of a cliché. And Benson, in the condition described, wouldn’t be wistfully pondering how Cortez got his abs.

Cortez bent his knees to arch arched his legs.

Choose one or the other. The latter is more specific.

He shifted his arms about on the straw stained with blood and mud and lord knows what else blood-and-mud soaked straw. But he showed no signs of rising.

We’re in Benson’s POV, so lord knows what is a bit much. And also the wrong tense. Plus, it takes away from the image of blood and mud, which is vivid enough.

          “Call it,” Benson said. “He’s knocked out. I won.”
           A bald man in the crowd put spectacles on his face and hustled into the improvised ring. Down on one knee, he pinched Cortez’s cheeks and checked the eyes and face.
           “His legs are up,” Milligan said. “He’s awake. Get on up now, son.”
           Benson found his shirt on the ground, pulled it over his head, and started to button it.
           “Not so fast,” Milligan said. “The doc hasn’t called the fight. Well, Doc?”
           The bespectacled doctor stood. “He’s not out cold. He’ll be alright.”
           “I’m no doctor,” Milligan continued said, “but it sounds like the Mex can go another round. Hold your bets, gentleman gentlemen!”

This section is fine. Continued isn’t quite right, because Milligan addressed the Doc, and now the crowd. Again, no foul, but once again said does its job and gets out of the way.

Another roar erupted. The crowd roared.

 A change from passive to active tense here.

So, author, I hope you take all this not as picking nits, but showing the value of small cuts at the sentence level. I hope it will help make your story a knockout.

Comments welcome.

Thriller Words of Wisdom

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In the spirit of today’s Words of Wisdom, we’re cutting to the chase to talk about thrillers: defining them, the qualities of a thriller hero, and a few truly classic examples. The full posts for each excerpt are well-worth reading, and are linked via the listed dates.

First, let’s define a thriller and how it differs from a mystery?

Although thrillers are usually considered a sub-genre of mysteries, I believe there are some interesting differences. I look at a thriller as being a mystery in reverse. By that I mean that the typical murder mystery usually starts with the discovery of a crime. The rest of the book is an attempt to figure out who committed the crime.

I see a thriller as being just the opposite; the book often begins with a threat of some kind, and the rest of the story is trying to figure out how to prevent it from happening. And unlike the typical mystery where the antagonist may not be known until the end, with a thriller we pretty much know who the bad guy is right from the get-go.

So with that basic distinction in mind, let’s list a few of the most common elements found in thrillers.

  1. The Ticking Clock. Without the ticking clock such as the doomsday deadline, suspense would be hard if not impossible to create. Even with a thriller like HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER which dealt with slow-moving submarines, Tom Clancy built in the ticking clock of the Soviets trying to find and destroy the Red October before it could make it to the safety of U.S. waters. He masterfully created tension and suspense with an ever-looming ticking clock.
  2. High Concept. In Hollywood, the term high concept is the ability to describe a script in one or two sentences usually by comparing it to two previously known motion pictures. For instance, let’s say I’ve got a great idea for a movie. It’s a wacky, zany look at the lighter side of Middle Earth, sort of a ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST meets LORD OF THE RINGS. If you’ve seen both of those movies, you’ll get an immediate visual idea of what my movie is about. High concept Hollywood style.

But with thrillers, high concept is a bit different. A book with a high concept theme is one that contains a radical or somewhat outlandish premise. For example, what if Jesus actually married, had children, and his bloodline survived down to present day? And what if the Church knew it and kept it a secret? You can’t get more outlandish than the high concept of THE DA VINCI CODE.

What if a great white shark took on a maniacal persona and seemed to systematically terrorized a small New England resort island? That’s the outlandish concept of Benchley’s thriller JAWS.

What if someone managed to clone dinosaurs from the DNA found in fossilized mosquitoes and built a theme park that went terribly wrong? You get the idea.

  1. High Stakes. Unlike the typical murder mystery, the stakes in a thriller are usually very high. Using Dan Brown’s example again, if the premise were proven to be true, it would undermine the very foundation of Christianity and shake the belief system of over a billion faithful. Those are high stakes by anyone’s standards.
  2. Larger-Than-Life Characters. In most mysteries, the protagonist may play a huge role in the story, but that doesn’t make them larger than life. By contrast, Dirk Pitt, Jason Bourne, Jack Ryan, Jack Bauer, James Bond, Laura Craft, Indiana Jones, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, and one that’s closest to my heart, Cotten Stone, are all larger-than-life characters in their respective worlds.

Joe Moore—June 29, 2011

 

I’ve come up with this list of desired qualities for the hero or heroine of a page-turning suspenseful mystery, romantic suspense, or thriller novel.

Heroes and heroines of bestselling thrillers need most of these attributes:

~ Clever. They need to be smart enough to figure out the clues and outsmart the villain. Readers don’t want to feel they’re smarter than the lead character. They don’t want to say, “Oh, come on! Figure it out!”

~ Resourceful. Think MacGyver, Katniss of The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Jason Bourne, or Dr. Richard Kimble of The Fugitive. The hero needs to be able to use ingenuity and whatever’s at his disposal to get out of any jams he finds himself in and also to find and defeat the bad guy(s).

~ Experienced. They’ve done things and been places. They’ve had a variety of tough life experiences that have helped them grow. They’ve “lived” and are stronger and more resilient for it. They’re definitely not naïve.

~ Determined. Your hero or heroine needs to be tenacious and resilient. They keep going. They don’t cave under pressure or adversity. They have a goal and stick to it, despite personal discomforts like fatigue, hunger, injuries, and threats.

~ Courageous. Bravery is essential, as readers want to look up to him/her. Any heroes who are tentative or fearful early on should soon find courage they didn’t know they had. The challenges and dangers they face force them to be stronger, creating growth and an interesting character arc for them.

~ Physically fit. Your heroine or hero needs to be up to the physical challenges facing her/him. It’s more believable if they jog or work out regularly, like Joe Pike running uphill carrying a 40-pound backpack. Don’t lose reader credibility by making your character perform feats you haven’t built into their makeup, abilities you can’t justify by what we know about them so far.

~ Skilled. To defeat those clever, skilled villains, they almost always have some special skills and talents to draw on when the going gets rough. For example, Katniss in Hunger Games is a master archer and knows how to track and survive in the woods, Jack Reacher has his army police training and size to draw on, and Joe Pike has multiple talents, including stealth.

~ Charismatic. Attractive in some way. Fascinating, appealing, and enigmatic. Maybe even sexy. People are drawn to him or her.

~ Confident but not overly cocky. Stay away from arrogant, unless you’re going for less-than-realistic caricatures like James Bond.

~ Passionate, but not overly emotional. Often calm under fire, steadfast. Usually don’t break under pressure. Often intense about what they feel is right and wrong, but “the strong, silent type” is common among current popular thrillers – “a man of few words,” like Joe Pike or Jack Reacher or Harry Bosch.

~ Unique, unpredictable. They have a special world view, and a distinctive background and attitude that sets them apart from others. They’ll often act in surprising ways, which keeps their adversaries off-balance and the readers on edge.

~ Complex. Imperfect, with some inner conflict. Guard against having a perfect or invincible hero or heroine. Make them human, with some self-doubt and fear, so readers worry more about the nasty villains defeating them and get more emotionally invested in their story.

Jodie Renner—February 6, 2013

 

Last month I read Anna Karenina for the first time. Truth to tell, I had mixed feelings about the novel. Many chapters were glacially slow. The descriptions of Russian rural politics couldn’t have been more boring. Worse, none of the main characters — Anna, Vronsky, Levin — was particularly likeable. Still, I got caught up in the soap-opera plot, the whole nineteenth-century aristocratic mating dance. And the book’s climax blew away. Every thriller writer can learn something from seeing how Leo Tolstoy handled Anna’s suicide.

It’s not really a spoiler to reveal that Anna kills herself, is it? It’s like the crucifixion in the New Testament — everyone knows it’s coming. In fact, the only thing that kept me going through the boring chapters was the anticipation of seeing Anna throw herself under that train. And Tolstoy didn’t disappoint me. The chapter showing Anna’s nervous breakdown in the hours before her suicide is brilliant. I loved her nihilistic, stream-of-consciousness observations as she rides in her carriage through the Moscow streets: “There is nothing funny, nothing amusing, really. Everything’s hateful. They are ringing the bell for vespers — how carefully that shopkeeper crosses himself, as if he were afraid of dropping something! Why these churches, the bells and the humbug? Just to hide the fact that we all hate each other.”

And then the fatal act itself, six pages later, described so pitilessly: “Exactly at the moment when the space between the wheels drew level with her she threw aside her red bag and drawing her head down between her shoulders dropped on her hands under the train car, and with a light movement, as though she would rise again at once, sank on to her knees. At that same instant she became horror-struck at what she was doing. ‘Where am I? What am I doing? Why?’ She tried to get up, to throw herself back; but something huge and relentless struck her on the head and dragged her down on her back.”

After finishing the book I tried to think of other classic novels that offer useful lessons for thriller writers. Here are four more canonical works that made a big impression on me:

Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Mr. Ringel, my sixth-grade teacher, read this book out loud to our class over a period of several weeks. Reading a Dickens novel to a class of unruly eleven-year-olds was a pretty ballsy thing to do. I remember several occasions when Mr. Ringel had to yell at the miscreants in the back of the classroom who were whispering insults at one another instead of listening to his narration. But no one whispered when he read the scene in which Charles Darnay and his family make their perilous escape from Paris. It’s the great-granddaddy of chase scenes, and thriller writers have been unashamedly imitating it for the past 150 years: “O pity us, kind Heaven, and help us! Look out, look out, and see if we are pursued! The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far, we are pursued by nothing else.”

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. This novel is long. It has a whole miscellany of odd things that got left on the cutting-room floor when the book was turned into a Broadway musical. There are learned disquisitions on medieval monastic orders, the sewers beneath Paris, and the nature of quicksand. And though I wasn’t terribly interested in these subjects, I didn’t mind wading through those chapters. I was so desperate to find out what was going to happen to Jean Valjean, there was no way I could stop reading. Hugo was a master of the cliffhanger.

 Mark Alpert—February 22, 2014

***

  1. Which elements of a thriller are essential, to you?
  2. What other qualities of character are necessary for a thriller hero?
  3. What is a classic novel you feel has thriller-like qualities?

Eavesdropping and Writers’ “Research”

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When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen

The Addiction Joy of Eavesdropping

How many of you can remember when the phone was a wooden box that hung on the wall, with a tube to speak into, a crank on the side to ring up the operator, and a lonely old lady who listened to all the calls on the party line? I was kindergarten age when our phone was modernized. But the joy of listening secretly to others’ conversations will probably never end.

We writers are instructed that eavesdropping is essential to learning how to write dialogue, an interchange that is often so fragmented and illogical as to make our heads shake and our brains wonder how people ever really communicate. We are told we need to “research” the local dialect by listening. And of course, what better way to pick up juicy tidbits that might help build a plot than to open our ears to those sitting beside us in public. The truth is stranger than fiction. These are all great excuses for what we would love to do anyway.

The psychology of eavesdropping

 An interesting article in WIRED, The Science of Eavesdropping, discusses an interesting paradox – it’s harder to NOT listen to a conversation where the speaker is on a phone, or we’re hearing only one side of the conversation, than it is to NOT listen when both speakers are physically present. “Although the phone conversation contains much less information, we’re much more curious about what’s being said.”

I would add that it is still interesting, depending on the topic, when both sides of the conversation are audible and the speakers are not aware that someone else is listening.

Why do people eavesdrop?

Writer, Maddie Cohen, lists three reasons:

  1. “Eavesdropping Is Primal. We’re all doing our best to go after the things we want. To this end, being hyperaware of what’s going on with other people can help us stay vigilant and protect the things we have.”
  2. “It’s live entertainment!”
  3. “I’m a full-time writer, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I find eavesdropping pretty exhilarating.” In other words, if we’re writers, it’s in our DNA. Good enough for me.

So, let’s discuss this juicy topic:

  1. Where is your favorite place to eavesdrop?
  2. What is your favorite technique for listening in?
  3. What is the juiciest tidbit you have ever gleaned by eavesdropping?
  4. What electronic device for eavesdropping would you like to own (for “research” of course) and how would you deploy it? Invent one, if you wish.

Mindset, Motivation, and Tchotchkes

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Writer’s block.

I had writer’s block.

I’d sat down, opened a blank page, and stared at the screen. I’d realized, on short notice, that I had a Kill Zone post due the next morning and it was four in the afternoon. I knew I had limited time to do a decent job as I skipped through my Kill Zone idea list.

Storytelling in Totem Poles   Nope, too long.  The Pareto Principle for Writers   Same. Uh-uh.  Multi-Tasking vs Mono-Tasking   Can’t do it justice.  The Psychology of Neckties for Homicide Investigators.   Not today.  Neurodivergent Authors   Phhh…  Sturgeon’s Law of 90%   Not possible.  Do You Read Your Reviews?   Naw.  Effective Book Covers with Elle J. Rossi   Geeze, I haven’t even started Elle’s questionnaire.

I sat with the blank page open, leaned back, and looked around my writing room for alternative ideas. My space is full of sayings for stimulus as well as tchotchkes for mindset and motivation. I’m a big believer in the muse, and my muse (since rehab) shows up sober, dressed, and ready to help when required.

Not this afternoon.

I got up and searched for a topic I could bang out fast and still provide value to whomever might so read. Nothing came. Yet I knew it was out there—not far out there—actually very close by.

I’m a nostalgist… if there is such a word. I have a nostalgic yearn for things old and bygone. Like the 1920s, for instance. Part of my studio is set up like a 1920s private detective office. (See the pic)

It’s got authentic props or tchotchkes like a rotary phone, an Underwood No. 5 typewriter in perfect working condition, a suspended metal warehouse lamp with a brown Edison bulb, a blown-glass ashtray and a fired-clay, Sears Roebuck coffee cup dated 1924, a corkboard pinned with relevant stuff, and a framed photo of some floozie who’s my idea of the perfect femme fatale.

Above and to the left are other motivational tchotchkes to set the mindset. A 1920s Electrohome tube radio that sort of works. (I can only dial a Vancouver traffic station on it, and I promise you the zoo-on-wheels in this place is not like a calm and orderly ‘20s road.) A bunch of flash cameras. Leather-cased binoculars. A violin case containing a Thompson .45 machine gun, or at least a reasonable facsimile. A prized, original silkscreen Maltese Falcon movie poster. And vintage neckties. I swear I have 500 ties, and there’s a profound psychological secret for that which I’ll reveal to you in some future piece.

I sat at my 2020s workstation and stared at the screen. Nothing was on it. I looked to my left at three framed affirmations I read every morning. One is deeply personal, and it reflects why I do this stuff. Words like financial, sense of purpose, sense of accomplishment, recognition, learning, opportunity, and legacy—leaving something behind when I’m gone.

The second affirmation is a quote on commitment by Johan Wolfgang von Goethe that’s supposed to bust through the ice of writer’s block like a massive polar bear snatching a fat little seal. It mentions Providence moving when one commits. But this afternoon, it appeared Providence was working at St. Elsewhere.

My third framed factoid is The Muse from Stephen King in On Writing. I won’t bore you with the entire thing ‘cause most of you writers know it by heart. I re-read it for the second time this day and came to the guy with the cigar and the little wings has a bag of magic part.

“Come on, buddy. Open the bag, man.” I said it out loud. “Help me out, O Twisted One.”

And then it happened. Out of nowhere, my muse said, “Just write about what you’re seeing around you and thinking in the moment. Experiencing. Call it Mindset, Motivation, and Tchotchkes or something like that.”

So, this post appeared, and it took me under an hour.

I’m a big believer in mindset, motivation, and tchotchkes. I think my muse pulled something of value from the magic bag and got its point across this afternoon, but I’d like to leave you with something from hardboiled & noir crime writer, Megan Abbott. She said this in a CrimeReads Shop Talk interview:

“Tchotchkes are stuff I look at to stimulate my imagination. When I look at all the tchotchkes above and around my desk—it’s weird. Writing is weird. You have to trust that you’re going to create this mental path so that readers can tunnel into your brain and experience this thing. So, for me, that’s really weird on its own. Deep down, though, I know I need discipline, mindset, and motivation in order to produce. Tchotchkes help me do that.”

Kill Zoners—Does this ring true to you? Do you have certain props or tchotchkes to help stimulate your imagination? Please share how you get into the right mindset and get motivated.

BTW, tchotchke is pronounced ‘chach-kee”. Sort of how a New England crime writer  😉  would say “church key”.

Research Resources

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By John Gilstrap

Google is nice and convenient and all, but I miss the multi-volume encyclopedias of my youth. I used to take a volume down and read it like a book–okay, it was a book, but work with me here. So many fascinating facts to learn, people to meet and places to visit, all from the comfort of the living room.

But that was different than what’s required to research a book. When you’re telling a story that is outside the real world of what you already know, you’ve got to find the way to inject the verisimilitude necessary to make the story resonate for the reader.

HEADS UP: At the end of this post, I’m going to ask the members of my TKZ family to help out. I know we have folks here who write about topics that are completely alien to me. In the comments, please share the sources and websites that help you with the details of the worlds you create.

Consider faking it–making stuff up.

Research and writing are two different tasks, though for research junkies they can feel very much the same. In reality, especially if you’re on a deadline, unnecessary research is an advanced form of procrastination. As you approach the opening to the rabbit hole, ask yourself this question: Does this part need to be real?

Many of my books are set in and around the areas where I grew up, in the suburbs of Washington, DC–Fairfax County, Virginia, to be exact. Given the nature of the stories, though, where local politicians are corrupt and incompetent, I decided to create Braddock County, Virginia, which, if you know the area and pay close attention, you’ll recognize to be parts of not only Fairfax County, but also of Prince William and Fauquier Counties.

Think of the burden I’ve lifted from my shoulders. If I wrote about the Fairfax County Police (as opposed to the Braddock County Police), I’d need to know their command structure, the weaponry they use, their shift schedules and the details of their uniforms. The Braddock County cops wear whatever I tell them to put on.

Remember, that you’re writing fiction. By definition, it’s okay to make stuff up if it doesn’t ruin the story.

Wikipedia and YouTube

Your novel is not a doctoral dissertation. The sources you use to write your fiction don’t need to stand up to academic scrutiny. Keep it as simple as possible. For the subject matter I write about–weaponry, military tactics, machinery operation, etc.–Wikipedia and YouTube do for me everything that needs to be done. Almost.

Develop your stable of experts

Nearly everyone is an expert at something. As a Type A extrovert, when I meet someone, I chat them up and get to know what they do. If their life’s work is in an area relevant to what I write, we exchange business cards. When I’m back to my desk, I send them a brief email telling them how much I enjoyed our conversation and promising/warning that I will be giving them a call if I ever need assistance in research. No one has ever said no. Not ever.

My virtual Rolodex is filled with the names and contact information for people I’ll probably never speak to again, but they’re there if I need them.

It’s hard to replace real exposure

“Hey, Loo, just got a call from EOC. They’re detailing the wagon and crew to Twenty-Seven.”

Translation: “Excuse me, Lieutenant. Just got a call from the Emergency Operations Center and their sending the pumper and its crew to Fire Station Twenty-Seven.”

Every group, like every geographic region, develops a patois that is unique to them. The only way I know of to actually learn those speech patterns and traditions is to immerse yourself in that world. How do you do that?

You make a phone call and ask. Whether it’s the police station, the local hospital or an Air Force base, there’s someone on staff whose job it is to give you a tour and answer your questions. While you’re there, you trade business cards with as many subject matter experts as you can find.

Write around what you don’t know

Jonathan Grave has access to vast amounts of intelligence data that is collected by his right-hand-gal, Venice Alexander. Venice is a master computer hacker, with cyber skills that rival any expert in the world. Like Jonathan, I don’t understand how she does what she does, but she’s able to take an order from her boss and return vast amounts of information. And she does it all off the page, presumably between the chapter breaks.

I’m not a technology guy. As such, I know that the deeper I research the topic and present my research on the page, the greater chance that I’m going to get a very important something wrong. So, I write around the holes in my knowledge.

Okay, your turn

It’s a big world out there, and we’re all chasing different research rabbits down different holes. Please share your tricks and sources and websites for the topics near and dear to you. Consider them to be virtual business cards to help other writers find the information they’re looking for.

Protagonists Who Come
Out Of Nowhere

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“I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It’s so f–n’ heroic.” — George Carlin

By PJ Parrish

One of the most important decisions a novelist faces is: Who is going to tell this story?

Well, that’s easy, you say. That’s the job of the protagonist, right? Well, it isn’t always that simple, I am here to plead today. This is on my mind lately because I’m watching an excellent TV series called A Small Light, which is the retelling of the Anne Frank story.

The story of the teenage diarist is ingrained in our culture. What’s the point of rehashing it? But A Small Light is told entirely from the point of view of Miep Gies, a young Dutch woman who risked her life to shelter Anne Frank’s family from the Nazis.

Miep is just an ordinary girl trying to grow up in hard times. She’s a twentysomething slacker with no husband and no job prospects. She charms her way into a job working for Otto Frank at his company. But as the Nazis advance, Miep finds herself smuggling the Franks to the annex above Otto’s Amsterdam offices one at a time.

Anne is relegated to the margins as the story focuses on the growing relationship between Miep and Otto Frank. By shifting the spotlight to a secondary character,  the story comes alive and feels very fresh, even though we know the tragic outcome.

We mystery and thriller writers often use the word “protagonist” as a synonym for “hero.” The protag is the person who gets the call to action, solves the murder, rescues the missing child, saves the world from the incoming comet. But it’s often more complicated than that, especially given how much genre-bending and style experimentation is going on these days. The standard old blond with the great gams who asks the private dick to find her missing husband just isn’t the standard anymore.  We’ve grown beyond that.

I’m not even sure I even know what a protagonist is anymore. So let’s try some definitions. From Stephen Koch’s Writer’s Workshop: The protagonist is the character whose fate matters most to the story. I definitely buy that.

But the writer’s website Dramatica takes it one step further:

  • A Main Character is the player through whom the audience experiences the story first hand.
  • A Protagonist is the prime mover of the plot.
  • A Hero is a combination of both Main Character and Protagonist.

Confused? Yeah, me too. Let’s go to an example most of us know — the movie The Shawshank Redemption. But let’s look at it through its source, Stephen King’s novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.  In King’s iconic book, Andy Dufresne’s story of injustice and escape is narrated entirely by fellow inmate Red (Morgan Freeman in the movie). The book opens with a long recitation by Red on how he got to prison and ends thusly:

I have enough killing on my mind to last me a lifetime. Yeah, I’m a regular Neiman-Marcus. And so when Andy Dufresne came to me in 1949 and asked if I could smuggle Rita Hayworth into the prison for him, I said it would be no problem at all. And it wasn’t.

And later, Red summarizes Andy’s opaque character:

I knew him for close to thirty years, and I can tell you he was the most self-possessed man I’ve ever known. What was right with him he’d only give you a little at a time. What was wrong with him he kept bottled up inside. If he ever had a dark night of the soul, as some writer or other has called it, you would never know. He was the type of man who, if he had decided to commit suicide, would do it without leaving a note but not until his affairs had been put neatly in order.

So in the book, who is the protagonist? I would vote for Red. Andy Dufresne is the story-driver, but Red, even though he is a “secondary” character, is the one whose heart and mind we are living in. More important, he is the one who changes the most over the course of the story. At the end, we shed tears not for Andy, but for Red.

A couple more prime examples of secondary characters who act as narrator-prisms for main characters and thus almost become “main” characters in their own right:

  • Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes books are written from his point of view, all observations of Sherlock solving the crimes. Witness:

“You have brought detection as near an exact science as it ever will be brought in this world.” My companion flushed up with pleasure at my words, and the earnest way in which I uttered them. I had already observed that he was as sensitive to flattery on the score of his art as any girl could be of her beauty.”

  • Chief Bromden. In Key Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the primary conflict is between McMrphy and Nurse Ratched, but the chief is the consciousness through which we view this and Kesey’s views on mental illness.

I been silent so long now it’s gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you think the guy telling this is ranting and raving my God; you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But, please. It’s still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.

  • Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird. The true “hero” of the story is her father, Atticus, who defends an innocent man, confronts a lynch mob, and faces retaliation against his family. But the story emerges from the emotional prism of the narrator Scout. Like Red in Shawshank, Scout is the one who changes over the story. Thanks to Atticus’s heroism, she learns that evil can be lessened by compassion.

Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

While researching this post, I found out screenwriters have a name for this type of character — Supporting Protagonist. Some writers chose someone who does NOT have a central role to narrate the story. A Supporting Protagonist is someone who would normally be a secondary character but is actually the main character. It can, as in A Small Light, put a fresh spin on what’s expected.

There’s another type of protagonist that I love — what I call The Hero To Be Named Later. This is a character who emerges out of the pack or obscurity and is called upon to save the day. The reasons might vary:

Shlubb turn savior (Chief Brody in Jaws who can’t even swim)

I Didn’t Raise My Hand! (Han Solo in Star Wars, essentially a jerk who wants nothing to do with anything where he might get hurt).

Default Diva. (Ellen Ripley in Alien, who just wants to collect her paycheck and go home with her cat)

Not So Innocent Bystander. (Michael Corleone in The Godfather who sulks in the shadows until the Sonny sets).

Let’s look at the last two (two of my favorite movies, by the way). Alien opens with an ensemble cast — the crew aboard the salvage freighter Nostromo. We assume the protagonist is Captain Dallas, given his cool stewardship. But as the xenomorph picks off crewmen one by one, Ripley emerges as the badass leader.

I’ve saved the best for last. The Godfather trilogy, taken as a whole, is about Michael taking over the family business and losing his soul. But in the first movie, Vito Corleone is vividly the protagonist, with his sons in orbit around him. Sonny dismisses Michael as “that sad thing over there.” It’s not until halfway through the movie that it becomes clear that Michael is the protagonist. His father shot, abandoned in the hospital, Michael whispers: “Just lie here, Pop. I’ll take care of you now. I’m with you now. I’m with you.”

Michael has looked in mirror. A protagonist is born.