Tag Archives: PJ Parrish

Heroic Words of Wisdom

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What is a hero? One answer is a legendary figure, such as Hercules, who accomplishes great deeds. Yet another is an ordinary person who does the right thing, no matter how lonely that might be. This being the Kill Zone, the answer to the above question is the principal character of a story. A character who strives to right a wrong, stop a threat, or protect the weak, who faces and overcomes challenges despite the odds to triumph in the end, sometimes at great personal cost.

We have three excerpts dealing with heroes today. Joe Moore ponders the role of beauty and intelligence in a hero. PJ Parrish looks at the different sort of supporting characters who team up with heroes. Larry Brooks considers how the hero’s role changes over the course of four-act structure.

As always the full version of each post is worth reading as are the original comments, date-linked at the bottom of their respective excerpt. Joe’s original was short enough I included all of it, but it’s worth checking out the comments.

This summer I attended an interesting workshop by a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, who discussed his approach to crafting thrillers. It was his opinion that main characters need to be handsome (or beautiful, if female), intelligent, and successful. As he described his approach, “I write a main character that women want to sleep with, and men want to be. ” In other words, more James Bond than Monk. His reason for his writing main characters that way? “I like to write books that sell.”

It’s an interesting thought. I’d always assumed that a main character didn’t need to be particularly genetically or intellectually gifted. I always assumed that overcoming adversity was what made a hero appealing to readers.  But when I think back about books I’ve particularly enjoyed–SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, COMA–I have to admit that those protagonists were handsome and brilliant. I just never thought of those characteristics as being requirements for popular appeal.

What do you think? Is physical beauty, in particular, central to creating an appealing main character?

Joe Moore—August 19, 2014

If you are considering a series, it’s a good idea to think hard about second bananas. First, they have great appeal. (Sorry, I had to get that out of my system before I could go on). But they are also very useful. More on that in a moment but first, it might be useful to examine the different types of pairings you might create:

The Teammate: This is actually a dual protagonist situation, wherein there are two equally active case solvers. The classic example is Dashiell Hammett’s Nick and Nora Charles. (Maybe Asta the dog was the sidekick?) Modern examples are Paul Levine’s Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord, and SJ Rozan’s Lydia Chin and Bill Smith (who appear in alternating books and sometimes together).

The Sidekick. This character is not an equal to the protag but almost as important in propelling the plot. He or she is a fixture in a series, a reoccurring character. The classic example, of course is Holmes and Watson. But others include Nero Wolf and Archie Goodwin, or Cocker and Tubbs from the old Miami Vice series.

The Confidant: One step lower on the totem, this character might not actively work a case with the hero, but acts as a sounding board for the hero. My fave confidant is Meyer, who sits on the Busted Flush sipping scotch and spouting wisdom about chess and economics as he listens to Travis McGee ponder out the case. (or his latest lady problem) Meyer serves as an anchor of sorts when McGee’s moral compass wanders. More on that later!

The Foil: Some folks use “foil” and “sidekick” interchangeably, but I think the foil deserves its own category. This a character who contrasts with the protag in order to highlight something about the hero’s nature. Hence the word “foil” — which comes from the old practice of backing gems with foil to make them shine brighter. We can go all the way back to the first detective story to find a great foil: In Poe’s The Purloined Letter, the hero Dupin has the dim-witted prefect of police Monsieur G. Some folks might even say Watson is a foil for Holmes because his obtuseness makes Holmes shine brighter.

Or consider Hamlet and Laertes. Both men’s fathers are murdered. But while Hamlet broods and does nothing, Laertes blusters and takes action. And the contrast sheds light on Hamlet’s character. Hamlet himself says, “I’ll be your foil, Laertes. In mine ignorance your skill shall, like a star in the darkest night, stick fiery off indeed.”

PJ Parrish—August 18, 2015

In her book “The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By”, Carol S. Pearson is credited with bringing us life’s hero archetypes, four of which align exactly with the sequential/structural “parts” of a story.  (For those who live by the 3-Act model, know that the 2nd Act is by definition contextually divided into two equal parts at the midpoint, with separate hero contexts for each quartile on either side of that midpoint, thus creating what is actually a four–part story model; this perspective is nothing other than a more specific – and thus, more useful – model than the 3-Act format from which it emerges.)

Those four parts align exactly with these four character contexts: 

Orphan (Pearson’s term)/innocent – as the story opens your hero is living life in a way that is not yet connected to (or in anticipation of) the core story, at least in terms of what goes wrong. 

And something absolutely has to go wrong, and at a specific spot in the narrative.

The author’s mission in this first story part/quartile, prior to that happening, is twofold: make us care about the character, while setting up the mechanics of the dramatic arc (as well as the character arc) to come.  There are many ways to play this – which is why this isn’t in any way formulaic – since within these opening chapters the hero, passive or not, can actually sense or even contribute to the forthcoming storm, or it can drop on their head like a crashing chandelier.  Either way, something happens (at a specific place in the narrative sequence) that demands a response from your hero.

Now your hero has something to do, something that wasn’t fully in play prior to that moment (called The First Plot Point, which divides the Part 1 quartile from the Part 2 quartile).  In this context, and if your chandelier falls at the proper place (in classic story structure that First Plot Point can arrive anywhere from the 20th to 25th percentile; variances on either end of that range puts the story at risk for very specific reasons), you can now think of your hero as a…

Wanderer – the hero’s initial reactions to the First Plot Point (chandelier impact), which comprise the first half of Act 2 (or the second of the four “parts” of a story).  The First Plot Point is the moment the story clicks in for real (everything prior to it was essentially part of a set-up for it), because the source of the story’s conflict, until now foreshadowed or only partially in play, has now summoned the hero to react.  That reaction can be described as “wandering” through options along a new path, such as running, hiding, striking back, seeking information, surrendering, writing their congressman, encountering a fuller awareness of what they’re up against, or just plain getting into deeper water from a position of cluelessness and/or some level of helplessness.

But sooner or later, if nothing else than to escalate the pace of the story (because your hero can’t remain either passive or in victim-mode for too long), your hero must evolve from a Wanderer into a…

Warrior – using information and awareness and a learning curve (i.e, when the next chandelier drops, duck), as delivered via the Midpoint turn of the story.  The Midpoint (that’s a literal term, by the way) changes the context of the story for both the reader and the hero (from wanderer into warrior-mode), because here is where a curtain has been drawn back to give us new/more specific information – machinations, reveals, explanations, true identities, deeper motives, etc. – that alter the nature of the hero’s decisions and actions from that point forward, turning them from passive or clueless toward becoming more empowered, resulting in a more proactive attack on whatever blocks their path or threatens.  Which is often, but not always, a villain.

But be careful here.  While your hero is getting deeper into the fight here in Part 3, take care to not show much success at this point (the villain is ramping things up, as well, in response to your hero’s new boldness).  The escalated action and tension and confrontation of the Part 3 quartile (where, indeed, the tension is thicker than ever before) is there to create new story dynamics that will set up a final showdown just around the corner.

That’s where, in the fourth and final quartile, the protagonist becomes, in essence, a…

Martyr (Pearson’s term)/hero – launching a final quest or heading down a path that will ultimately lead to the climactic resolution of the story.  This should be a product of the hero’s catalytic decisions and actions (in other words, heroes shouldn’t be saved, rather, they should be the primary architect of the resolution), usually necessitating machinations and new dynamics (remember Minny’s “chocolate” pie in The Help?), which ramp up to facilitate that climactic moment.

This is where character arc becomes a money shot.  Because by now everything you’ve put the hero through has contributed to a deep well of empathy and emotion on the reader’s part.  This is where the crowd cheers or hearts break or history is altered, where villains are vanquished and a new day dawns.

Larry Brooks—November 2, 2015

***

  1. As Joe asked, “is physical beauty, in particular, central to creating an appealing main character?”
  2. Do you have a favorite type of supporting character AKA second banana? Personally, I love a great sidekick. Do you have a second banana of any of the type’s Kris listed from your own fiction you’d like to share?
  3. Do you agree that a fictional hero can go through a sequence of roles over the course of a novel or movie? Any thoughts on Larry’s mapping that to four-act structure?

Dual Protagonists

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Dual Protagonists

Terry Odell

two knights with swords facing each other

PJ Parrish did a wonderful post not long ago about secondary characters, and in response to one of the comments, she said “Someone here should do a post about dual protagonists.” Well, here I am, and I’m going to give it a shot.

Early in my writing endeavors, I was talking to another newbie, and he asked about the protagonist in my manuscript. I told him there were two, and he said, “no, your main protagonist.” As I tried to explain that the two characters were on equal footing, and they each had their own arcs, and then there was the addition of a mystery plot, he rolled his eyes, mumbled something, and walked away.

Although I thought I was writing a mystery when I played with creating something resembling a novel, my daughters pointed out it was a romance. I’d never read one, so I didn’t know how I could be writing one. But, apparently I was. Then I discovered romantic suspense, which was closer. Since I was always reading mysteries where the protagonists had lives outside solving their cases, it wasn’t too much of a stretch.

For the record, anyone who thinks that when they have a free weekend, they’re going to crank out a quick romance and make a bunch of bucks—think again.

In a romantic suspense, you’re juggling three stories. The hero and heroine each have their own character arcs, and there’s the mystery plot as well. If you’re writing a straight mystery with dual protagonists, you don’t have to deal with the pesky relationship culminating in at least the promise of a Happily Ever After. But each protagonist has to be developed in the same way you’d develop a single protagonist.

Given my stumbling into romance, I learned from Deb Dixon and her Goal, Motivation, Conflict approach. What does each protagonist want? Why do they want it? What’s standing in their way?

Then, throw in how they’re going to have to work together in the book. Are they working to solve the same crime? Are they in competition? What’s in it for each of them? A reward? Bringing someone to justice? Self-satisfaction? Do their individual goals, backgrounds, life circumstances create more conflict?

I write in deep POV, but there’s no reason you can’t have two POV characters regardless of the POV choices you make. Often there are more than two, but usually those are secondary characters, not protagonists. Since PJ’s challenge said “dual protagonists” I’m sticking with two, which is how I prefer to write.

My preference—and again in a romantic suspense, you’re tied to reader expectations and genre conventions—I will introduce hero and heroine in their own opening chapters. (That means you’re effectively writing TWO Chapter Ones with all the challenges that entails.)

In my earlier books, I wrote two scenes per chapter, alternating protagonists. With the current trend of short chapters, I now write each protagonist’s scene as a separate chapter. As with any scene or chapter, we strive to end it with a page-turning moment.

Now, when the reader turns the page, they’re going to find they’re in another character’s head. My position is that you have to ground the reader in the who, when, and where for every scene or chapter change. Because—heaven forbid—the reader might have put the book down and might be coming back to it hours, days, or weeks later. I’m not fond of chapter headings, because as soon as the reader turns the page, they’re gone.

This holds true regardless of how many protagonists you have, but if there’s a single one, the ‘who’ is generally understood.

If your protagonists are working together and have been in the same scenes, once you set up the reminder of whose head you’re in, you can move the story along.

If they’re apart, it’s more of a challenge, because now you have to make sure the reader gets back into that character’s timeline. The opening paragraphs will have to work harder to establish what’s going on, but without info dumping.

In the spirit of Show, Don’t Tell, here are a couple of examples from Danger Abroad, my most recent release.

Chapter 3 is a Maddie POV scene. She’s arrived at her new lodgings in the Faroes and is having tea and cake with the landlady, who’s asked what brought her to the island. It ends like this:

As Maddie mentally composed her reply—the reasons she’d given when she’d requested a room—a banging on the door, accompanied by “Open up. I know you’re in there,” shattered the moment.

Chapter 4 is a Logan POV scene, and he’s somewhere else, working on his own task, which is finding Maddie, but he’s in San Francisco and she’s in the Faroe Islands. When his chapter ends, how do I draw readers back into Maddie’s story?

Chapter 5 is back to Maddie, and it opens like this:

Maddie’s tea sloshed into the saucer. Who could possibly know she was here? She’d done everything right, covered her tracks. Hadn’t she? She set her tea on the coffee table and studied Hanna, who didn’t seem alarmed—or confused—by whoever was outside.

Same thing goes for the POV chapters/scenes of the second protagonist. Bring the reader back to the who, when, and where.

As for PJ’s concern that readers might find one protagonist more attractive? I say it’s unlikely that every reader will like every character in a book equally. In reality, most romantic suspense books, although they have two protagonists, they’re not completely equal. It’s more like a 49/51 split. One of them will have a slightly stronger role, so yes, it’s quite possible a reader will prefer one over the other. If the reader’s goal, as it usually is when reading a mystery, is to see the crime solved and the bad guy brought to justice, do we care which protagonist they prefer?

In any genre, every time you add a POV character, you risk the reader not liking that character or the plot thread they’re commanding and skimming or skipping those parts. With only two, it’s less likely to happen, but yes, it’s possible.

I hope I’ve touched upon some answers to PJ’s question. If you have more, fire away. Feel free to share your experiences, either as a reader or writer, with dual protagonists. My brother’s visiting, so I might not be around to reply to comments right away, but I’ll check in when I can.

New! Find me at Substack with Writings and Wanderings

Danger Abroad

When breaking family ties is the only option.

Madison Westfield has information that could short-circuit her politician father’s campaign for governor. But he’s family. Although he was a father more in word than deed, she changes her identity and leaves the country rather than blow the whistle.

Blackthorne, Inc. taps Security and Investigations staffer, Logan Bolt, to track down Madison Westfield. When he finds her in the Faroe Islands, her story doesn’t match the one her father told Blackthorne. The investigation assignment quickly switches to personal protection for Madison.

Soon, they’re involved with a drug ring and a kidnapping attempt. Will working together put them in more danger? Can a budding relationship survive the dangers they encounter?

Available now.

Like bang for your buck? I have a new Mapleton Bundle. Books 4, 5, and 6 for one low price.

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

Tropes to the Left of Me

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Tropes to the Left of Me …
Terry Odell

old fashioned key being inserted into a keyhole with white light shining behind it.Kris’s recent post about retiring the Defective Detective followed close on the heels by JSB’s got me thinking. My post is blatantly “borrowed” (and unedited) from tvtropes.org, which is a rabbit warren of fun things to think about. Take a look sometime when you’re not busy.  I did a post about “generic” television tropes (more like cliches) a while back, but this list today is mystery-related..

Whether or not all of these qualify as “tropes” isn’t an issue. Maybe they’re really “plot devices.” Or “reader expectations.” Whatever you call them, they make frequent appearances in mystery tv shows. Here you go:

Absence of Evidence: When the absence of something is a clue.

The Alibi: Someone can prove they were physically incapable of committing the crime.

Amnesiac Hero: When the protagonist has amnesia.

Anachronistic Clue: Something which can’t come from the time period it supposedly came from, which is a sign something is amiss.

Anonymous Killer Narrator: When the serial killer is the narrator of the mystery story.

Anti-Climactic Unmasking: Someone rips off someone else’s face-concealing costume (such as a mask, visor, etc), expecting someone extraordinary, but they get someone ordinary.

Believer Fakes Evidence: A believer plants fake evidence to make others believe in the phenomena of their choice.

Beneath Notice: Disguising oneself as a very plain, regular person.

Beneath Suspicion: When the culprit was never suspected because no one thought it could have been them.

Blood-Stained Letter: A letter or note that has blood on the paper.

Bluffing the Murderer: Someone is pretty sure who committed the crime, so they trick the criminal into revealing themselves.

Bookmark Clue: An important clue is discovered because someone used it as a bookmark.

The Butler Did It: A butler turns out to be the one who committed the crime.

Cast as a Mask: A character and their disguised self are played by separate actors.

Chronic Evidence Retention Syndrome: Bad guys hold onto evidence for no good reason.

Clock Discrepancy: Something seems to have happened at a certain time, but then it turns out it didn’t, for instance because the clock had stopped.

Closed Circle: A plot where the characters can’t leave until it’s over.

Clueless Mystery: A mystery story where the reader/viewer can’t follow along.

Condensation Clue: A hidden message written with one’s finger onto a mirror or window.

Confess in Confidence: The criminal confesses to someone whose job requires confidentiality, such as a clergy member, doctor, or lawyer.

Consulting a Convicted Killer: There’s a dangerous criminal at large, but luckily the investigators can talk to another, incarcerated criminal.

Conviction by Contradiction: A whodunnit mystery is solved by finding a hole in the perp’s story, like a logic puzzle.

Corpse Temperature Tampering: Interfering with natural cooling of a dead body to obfuscate time of death.

Costumes Change Your Size: A disguised figure’s size is somehow different from that of the person underneath. A standard trope for “Scooby-Doo” Hoax mysteries.

Cozy Mystery: A mystery story where there is no graphic violence, sex, or profanity, the murder victims were bad people, the detective is usually a woman with a down-to-earth hobby, the setting is a small community, and the story in general has a lighthearted vibe despite usually dealing with a murder.

Creepy Red Herring: A blatantly creepy suspect is innocent.

Curtain Camouflage: Hiding behind a curtain.

Cut Himself Shaving: A character was attacked, but lies that the injuries are for a mundane reason, such as falling downstairs.

Dame with a Case: Beautiful but untrustworthy woman who hires the Hard Boiled Detective.

Death in the Clouds: A mystery story involving a murder on a plane.

Detectives Follow Footprints: Looking for evidence can solve the case.

Did Not Die That Way: Someone lies about the cause of someone else’s death.

Disability Alibi: A suspect is determined innocent because they have a disability of some sort that makes it impossible for them to have done the crime.

The Dog Was the Mastermind: The villain turns out to be a seemingly harmless and irrelevant character.

Dramatic Curtain Toss: Someone dramatically removes a curtain/tarp/veil, revealing something important.

Driving Question: When the whole story revolves around solving some sort of mystery.

Eagle-Eye Detection: A detective whose main skill is being really observant.

The End… Or Is It?: The story ends with a reveal (or at least an implication) that danger is still present.

“Eureka!” Moment: A character has an epiphany from seeing or hearing something unrelated that reminds them of the answer (e.g. seeing a dog, then realizing the killer was the owner of the hot dog stand.)

Everybody Did It: All the suspects were responsible for the crime in some way.

Everyone Is a Suspect: When the killer in a murder mystery could have been anybody.

Evidence Dungeon: The villain has a lair where lots of incriminating evidence is.

Evidence Scavenger Hunt: A scene about protagonists searching for clues.

Evil Plan: A plan that a villain has.

Exposition Victim: Upon finding out who the killer is, the character speaks to them instead of fighting or running away.

Fair-Play Whodunnit: The opposite of a Clueless Mystery—a mystery story where the reader/viewer can follow along.

Fake Alibi: A suspect claims to have an alibi, witnesses confirm, yet the suspect is actually guilty.

Fake Mystery: The mystery plot turns out to have been staged to prank the detectives.

Fantastic Noir: Mystery and magic mix on the mean streets.

Finger-Licking Poison: Someone was poisoned by licking something covered in poison.

Fingertip Drug Analysis: Testing if a powder or liquid is drugs by sniffing or tasting it.

The Game Never Stopped: Characters take part in a game involving a simulated death, then someone actually dies… or so it seems. As it turns out, the game hasn’t ended yet.

Guilty Until Someone Else Is Guilty: A suspect isn’t proven innocent until the true culprit is exposed.

Hide the Evidence: Hiding the evidence of something wrong or embarrassing is a major plot point.

Hidden in Plain Sight: Something is being searched for, and it turns out it was there the whole time but blended into the surroundings.

Hidden Agenda Hero: The hero’s motivation is never revealed.

Hidden Villain: The villain’s identity is not revealed until much later.

I Never Said It Was Poison: A character accidentally gives themselves away by revealing information that their knowledge of proves they are guilty.

Insists on Being Suspected: The detective counts themselves as a suspect.

Intrepid Reporter: A journalist who actively searches for stories.

Let Off by the Detective: The detective knows who did it, but sympathizes with their motive (or feels they’ve been punished enough) and so doesn’t say so.

Lights Off, Somebody Dies: The lights go out, then when they turn back on, someone has been murdered.

Locked Room Mystery: A crime that seems to have been impossible at first glance (for instance, a murder victim in a locked room.)

Lotsa People Try to Dun It: It turns out that all the suspects tried to kill the victim.

The Main Characters Do Everything: It’s always the protagonists who find the important evidence.

The Meddling Kids Are Useless: The protagonists did all the cool stuff, but ultimately it was some other person, such as the police, who solved the problem.

Mistaken for Evidence: Something looks like a specific, suspicious item but it’s something different.

Mockspiracy: A conspiracy theory which turns out not to be true.

Mockstery Tale: A story that starts out with a mystery, but the mystery turns out to be fake or unsolvable, so the plot goes somewhere different.

Motive = Conclusive Evidence: A motive is treated as incriminating evidence.

Mysterious Stranger: A recurring character who isn’t known by the others, and who’s deliberately set up as enigmatic.

Mystery Episode: An episode in a serial work dedicated to solving a mystery.

Mystery Magnet: Someone who coincidentally seems to attract mysteries.

Mystery of the Week: The protagonists solve a mystery in every episode.

Needle in a Stack of Needles: An object hidden in a bunch of similar objects.

Never a Runaway: Someone who is said to have run away actually befell some other crime.

Never One Murder: Murder mysteries never have just one victim.

Never Suicide: It looks like somebody killed themselves, but it turns out to be murder instead.

Never the Obvious Suspect: Somebody seems to have been the culprit due to having obvious motive and ability to have done it, but it was somebody else who was the real culprit.

No One Sees the Boss: No one, not even his underlings, knows the Big Bad’s identity.

Notable Non Sequitur: In a detective story, every out-of-place line turns out to be important.

Not-So-Fake Prop Weapon: An actor accidentally kills another actor due to a prop weapon being switched for a real one.

Obfuscating Postmortem Wounds: A killer inflicts additional wounds on a corpse to mask the true cause of death.

Old, Dark House: One or more murders happens in an old, poorly-lit house.

Only One Plausible Suspect: A whodunnit where the identity of the culprit is obvious to the viewers.

Ontological Mystery: A story where the characters are locked somewhere and must find out how they got there, why, how to escape, and who (if anyone) is the cause of the situation.

Orgy of Evidence: A criminal plants fake clues, but gives themselves away by the sheer number of fake clues.

Perfect Poison: Killing someone with poison is unrealistically quick and easy.

Placebo Eureka Moment: A character figures out a mystery on their own, but thanks someone near them anyway.

Precrime Arrest: Someone gets arrested for a crime they haven’t even committed yet.

Proof Dare: The criminal dares the detective to prove their guilt.

Propping Up Their Patsy: A culprit proclaims the innocence of another suspect to conceal their own culpability or further their own agenda.

Public Secret Message: Sending a coded message to everyone because only the intended target of the message will understand the code.

Put on a Prison Bus: The culprit is often defeated at the end by being arrested.

Puzzle Thriller: A mystery story where the mystery is “how does it all work?”.

Recorded Audio Alibi: Someone uses a recording of themselves to establish an alibi.

Red Herring: Something seems like a clue, but it misleads the audience.

Reverse Whodunnit: We know who committed the crime, but we don’t know how the detective will solve the case.

Rewind, Replay, Repeat: Somebody finds something that gets their attention in a video, so they rewind and replay it over and over.

A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma: Somebody describes a frustrating mystery as three mysteries in one.

Ripped from the Headlines: A crime story based on a real crime.

Saying Too Much: Someone accidentally says something that reveals plot-sensitive info.

Scary Minority Suspect: An immoral-seeming Token Minority character is portrayed as the obvious suspect of a crime.

“Scooby-Doo” Hoax: The perpetrator disguises the crime as a paranormal or supernatural event.

Secret Identity Apathy: The villains do not care about the true identity of the hero who’s always thwarting them.

Serial Killings, Specific Target: A murderer covers up the murder by killing other people with similar traits as the initial victim.

Shadowed Face, Glowing Eyes: A character has glowing eyes peeking out from a shadowed, usually covered face.

Shell Game: Two or more identical things are shown, one is significant, and we initially know which it is until the objects get mixed.

Sherlock Can Read: Someone thinks someone else used great detective work when they didn’t.

Sherlock Scan: A detective comes to a conclusion about someone they just met from looking at them.

The Seven Mysteries: Mysteries come in sevens.

Signature Item Clue: A distinctive item means that someone must have put it there and that’s a clue.

Spot the Impostor: Someone is seen with their impersonator and their friends have to determine who is the real deal and who is the disguised phony.

The Stakeout: One or more people setting up camp somewhere and watch a location in secret to search for information.

Stranger Behind the Mask: The answer to the mystery is something or someone we’ve never heard of.

The Summation: When the detective does a speech about how they solved the mystery.

Summation Gathering: During the Summation in a murder mystery, all the suspects, including the killer, are present.

Suspect Is Hatless: Someone reports a crime while giving a description of the culprit that is too vague and generic to narrow down who the person responsible could be.

Suspicious Missed Messages: Someone won’t answer their phone? Better find out why!

Ten Little Murder Victims: A group of people ends up somewhere, one of them turns out to be a killer, and they must find out which one before they kill everybody.

That Mysterious Thing: Characters refer to something in ambiguous terms so the audience won’t know what it is.

Thriller on the Express: A crime story set on a train.

Twist Ending: The plot leads one way, but then something happens at the end which changes everything.

Two Dun It: There were two culprits all along.

The Unsolved Mystery: A mystery story without a resolution.

Varying Competency Alibi: A character is proven innocent when they’re shown to be too competent or incompetent to do.

Weather Report Opening: The story opens with a description of the weather.

Wheel Program: A number of TV shows are run in the same slot under one title.

Who Dunnit To Me: Someone survives a murder attempt or comes back from the dead after being killed and tries to find out who it was who killed them or tried to kill them.

Who Murdered the Asshole: An unsympathetic person has been killed, but it is difficult to determine who’s responsible because pretty much everyone who knew the victim hated them.

World of Mysteries: A setting with heaps of mysteries in it.

Writing Indentation Clue: Reading the indentations of notes written on a separate piece of paper.

You Meddling Kids: The villain claims they would have gotten away with whatever they planned on doing, if not for the protagonists.

You Wake Up in a Room: A character wakes up in an unfamiliar location.

You Wake Up on a Beach: A story that starts with a protagonist waking up on a beach.

All right, TKZers. Which have you used? Which would you avoid?

How can he solve crimes if he’s not allowed to investigate?

Gordon Hepler, Mapleton’s Chief of Police, has his hands full. A murder, followed by several assaults. Are they related to the expansion of the community center? Or could it be the upcoming election? Gordon and mayor wannabe Nelson Manning have never seen eye to eye. Gordon’s frustrations build as the crimes cover numerous jurisdictions, effectively tying his hands.
Available for preorder now.

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

Your Book Means Something

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

In her excellent recent post Kris wrote:

I know you’re tempted to dismiss theme as mere enhancement. Le cerise sur la gateau, as the French say. But it’s essential. Try this experiment: Write the back copy for your work in progress — three paragraphs at most. Ha! Can’t do it? Well, you might not have a grip on what your story is about at its heart. Now often your theme doesn’t show itself until you’re well into your plot. Well, that’s okay. But when it begins to whisper, listen hard. Good fiction, Stephen King says, “always begins with story and progresses to theme.”

No matter what you do, your book will have a theme (or meaning) at the end.

Because your characters carry a theme. Always.

Do the good guys win? Justice will triumph.

Do the bad guys win? Justice is a myth. (This is the theme of Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors.)

So: you can set out to say something, or can wait to see what you’re saying. But say something you will.

As Viktor Frankl puts it in his classic book on the subject, “Man’s search for meaning is the ultimate motivation in his life.” It is a subconscious reason readers pick up books. In the fictional search, they also are exploring their own inner territory.

Vision

Develop a vision for yourself as a writer. Make it something that excites you. Turn that into a mission statement—one paragraph that sums up your hopes and dreams as a writer. Read this regularly. Revise it from time to time to reflect your growth.

Root that inspiration in the world—your observations of it, and what it does to you. “I honestly think in order to be a writer,” says Anne Lamott, “you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here? Let’s think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world.”

If you stay true to your own awe, your books cannot help but be charged with meaning. That’s not just a great way to write. It’s a great way to live.

What Theme Is

Theme is a statement about life. It can be implicit or explicit, subtle or overt. But it must come through fully realized characters engaged in a believable plot. Otherwise the book will come across as a thinly veiled essay, sermon, or jeremiad.

Now, there is nothing wrong with “message fiction.” In message fiction an author says to the reader: I have strong, heartfelt beliefs about this issue — and I think I know what the truth is. I’m going to reveal that truth in this novel, through the lives of these characters, and I hope to convince you to believe as I do. It’s not a matter of shades of grey. There is a right and a wrong here, and everything depends on my convincing you to cling to the right.

But the key word here is not message; it’s fiction. If your book doesn’t work as a story, the message will fall flat.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is message fiction. So is To Kill a Mockingbird. The Narnia books of C.S. Lewis are message fiction, but they work as engaging stories with characters we care about.

Donald Maass says:

A breakout novelist believes that what she has to say is not just worth saying, but it is something that must be said… Strong novelists have strong opinions. More to the point, they are not at all afraid to express them.

But the key word here is not message; it’s fiction. If your book doesn’t work as a story, the message will fall flat.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is message fiction. So is To Kill a Mockingbird. The Narnia books of C.S. Lewis are message fiction, but they work first as engaging stories with characters we care about.

Try This:

  • Write down the five things you care most about in the world.
  • Now the five people you most admire.
  • For each of the above, write 250 words about how you feel about each one, as if you had to convince a skeptic of the truth of your convictions.
  • Now pick one of the paragraphs and put that fire and emotion inside your main character. How might your MC show that on the page?
  • Go to the end of your WIP (either as written or as it might be written) and ask your character to explain to you what life lesson he or she has learned through the struggle of the plot. (In mythic structure, this is called “the elixir” which the hero carries back to benefit the community.) There’s your theme.
  • Or look to your character’s “mirror moment” to find what your story really means.

Over to you now. Do you think about theme before you begin to write? Or do you let it emerge as you go? Or do you not think about it at all?

Is there a theme you see recurring in your writing?

This post is brought to you by the audio version of The Mental Game of Writing. I was invited to try Kindle Direct Publishing’s beta of “virtual voice” narration. Since I have narrated a few of my writing books, this is an experiment in saving massive amounts of time. What took me 10-15 hours before (narrating, editing, etc.) now takes 10-15 minutes to set up and go live. You can listen to a sample of the result here.

The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You

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The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You
Terry Odell

scene endingsKeeping readers turning pages is a big thing for authors. Who doesn’t love a message saying “I stayed up all night reading your book”? I’m closing in on ‘the end’ of my first draft of my new book, Cruising Undercover. One of the things I look at on my read through is how I end my scenes. Will a reader be invested enough to turn the page? This is a topic that’s been covered here before, but even though I’m writing novel number thirty-something, it’s a piece of the craft I have to revisit every time. I thought a refresher or reminder might be worthwhile.

I’m a “self taught” author. That’s not to say I never took classes or workshops, but I was a Psychology major/Biology minor in college. I took the requisite English classes—the ones you couldn’t graduate without. I got decent grades, but I learned more about how to string words together in high school than in those few college classes. I never took a “How to Write” class. The writing courses I took were at conferences or online.

Writing began as a whim. Could I do it? When that moved from writing fan fiction to attempting an actual, original novel, I simply sat down and wrote. My first manuscript was my writing class. That manuscript was one long (140K words) puppy. And there were no chapter breaks. That’s not to say I was trying to avoid using chapter breaks. Rather, it was because I didn’t really know where to put them.

Readers look for reasons to put the book down. They have chores, or work. Kids. Schedules. Bedtimes. Chapter breaks are logical stopping points. Long before I started writing, I learned that if I was going to get any sleep, I had to stop reading mid-page.

A former critique partner referred to these endings as landings. Others have called them hooks.

What makes a reader say Okay, I’ll read a little longer?

Cliffhangers are a tried and true way to get readers to keep going. Leave the character with a dilemma. Jump cuts have been discussed here as well. Since most of my books have alternating POV characters, I often leave one character hanging while I shift to the other’s POV. Since these POV shifts mean each scene has to be a mini-chapter, they need their page-turning landings.

They don’t always have to be character in peril cliffhangers.

You can leave readers with a question they want answered. It could be a phone ringing or a knock at the door. (I use these too often in my first drafts and have to go back and mix things up. You don’t want your chapters to be monotonous or predictable.)

Short chapters, or short scenes are another way, which seems to be a current trend. I recall a workshop given by the late Barbara Parker who told of going to the pool in her apartment complex and asking a woman reading there if she liked the book. The answer, after a moment or two of reflecting, was, “Well, the chapters are short.”

**Personal note: I’m not fond of the super-short chapter. To me, it screams gimmick. Not only that, in a print book, it’s an extreme waste of paper. It’s as if the author or publisher is trying to meet a page count quota and all those short chapters make the book seem longer than the story actually is.

Back to my learning the craft of landings. When I went back and added breaks to my endless tome, I discovered that I’d ended every chapter or scene either with someone driving away or going to sleep. They were, to my still learning the craft mind, logical stopping places. But not exactly page-turners.

More often than not, the best exit was behind where I’d put my break. I’d gone too far, feeling the need to wrap things up. Sometimes a sentence or two was all I needed to cut—usually those extras leaned into telling rather than showing. Sometimes several paragraphs. Once I accepted that those words might still be good, they just weren’t good where they were sitting, it was easier to cut them. I hardly ever needed them, but I felt better knowing that hadn’t been destroyed.

An example of a scene ending from a very early version of what ended up becoming Finding Sarah:
Sarah didn’t care; she cried great gulping sobs until exhaustion overcame her and she slept.

A better version of the ‘end with bedtime’ scenario adds a question:
As she drifted off, she heard a man’s voice from the main house. Had Jeffrey come home?

Here are a couple of examples of “non-cliffhanger, non-action-filled” chapter endings:

From Forgotten in Death, by JD Robb:
Kneeling, she pulled off the work gloves, then resealed her hands. And took a closer look at her second and third victims of the morning.

From A Thousand Bones, by P.J. Parrish
He took another drag on his Camel. “Maybe I will have something else for you as well.”
“What?” Joe asked.
He smiled. “A little surprise.”

What about you TKZ peeps? Do you struggle with ending scenes and chapters? Do you tend to overwrite? What tips can you offer for keeping readers turning pages?

Available Now. In the Crosshairs, Book 4 in my Triple-D Romantic Suspense series.

 

 

 

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

Another Dark and Stormy Night

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Another Dark and Stormy Night
Terry Odell

Bulwer-LyttonIt’s time for a fun break. I look forward to the annual announcement of winners and dishonorable mentions of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. For those who might be unfamiliar with it, here’s the skinny from their website.

Since 1982 the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest has challenged participants to write an atrocious opening sentence to the worst novel never written. The whimsical literary competition honors Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford begins with “It was a dark and stormy night.”

The contest receives thousands of entries each year, and every summer our Panel of Undistinguished Judges convenes to select winners and dishonorable mentions for such categories as Purpose Prose and Vile Puns.

Last year, PJ Parrish did an in-depth analysis of several entries. But, as I said, I’m posting this as a fun break. For those who want to work, feel free to look at these openings as if they were submitted for First Page Critiques here at TKZ. Do they meet the criteria? Start with action? Identify the protagonist? Establish setting? Make you want to keep reading?

The 2021 Grand Prize goes to Stu Duval of Auckland, New Zealand.

“A lecherous sunrise flaunted itself over a flatulent sea, ripping the obsidian bodice of night asunder with its rapacious fingers of gold, thus exposing her dusky bosom to the dawn’s ogling stare.”

More winners in other categories

Grand Panjandrum’s Special Award

“Victor Frankenstein admired his masterpiece stretched out on the lab slab; it was almost human, OK, no conscience or social awareness, and not too bright, but a little plastic surgery to hide the scars and bolts, maybe a spray tan and a hairdo, and this guy could run for President!”  David Hynes, Bromma, Sweden

Adventure

“When I asked our novice Safari guide Guy Pommeroy to identify what that roaring sound was he replied (and these were his last words), “It sounds to me like someone with a bad case of bronchitis; I’ll check and be right back.” Greg Homer, San Vito, Costa Rica

Crime & Detective

“The Big Joe Palooka murder wasn’t just another killing, another homicide, another manslaughter, another slaying, another hit, another whack, another rubbing-out, another bumping-off, another assassination, another liquidation, another extermination, another execution—but it was nothing new for Johnny Synonymous, Obsessive-Compulsive Crime Fighter.”  Paul Scheeler, Buffalo, NY

Dark & Stormy

“It was a dark and stormy . . . morning, Gotcha! — this is just the first of innumerable twists and turns that you, dear Reader, will struggle to keep abreast of as I unfold my tale of adventure as second plumber aboard the hapless SS Hotdog during that fateful summer of 1974.”  Louise Taylor, Paris, France

Historical Fiction

“Choking back his frustration at his parents, Marcus Licinius Junius Dextus Sextus Gnaeus Castor Ligantor Germanicus barked his name *again* at the boatman holding the list, certain that the man was toying with him, whilst in the background Mount Vesuvius rumbled like a pregnant woman with severe morning sickness.” Dave Hurt, Harrogate, England

Romance

“Their eyes had met and they’d had coffee, but now Miss latte-mocha-with-a-chai-twist bid a wistful adieu to Mr. black-cup-of-Joe-strong-enough-to-walk-over-and-beat-up-the-cheese-Danish, and they parted.”  CP Marsh, Urbana, IL

Science Fiction

“Believe it or not Ripley refrained from firing her laser at the alien creature lurking in the starship’s ceiling above the crew’s happy hour gathering, its dripping secretions burning through the titanium floor like it was made of cheap wet toilet paper, when she discovered by sheer accident that just one drop of the oozing substance reacted with the contents of her cocktail glass to produce a martini so perfect that 007 himself would have betrayed Queen and country for just one sip, as long as it was shaken and not stirred.”  Reinhold Friebertshauser, Chagrin Falls, OH

Western

“After commandeering the Black Dog Saloon for a day and a half to lay out every map, zoning ordinance, and land deed in the Territory, and after checking and rechecking their cartographic calculations, Tumbleweed Mulligan and Johnny “Trigger” McAllister were forced to admit that there might just be room in this town for the both of them.”  Ben Connor, Wilmington, Delaware

Vile Puns

“One time at the hoagie shop the actress Ms. O’Hara asked what the tiny pimiento-stuffed thing in my cheddar-bread sandwich was and I had to respond: “Wee olive in a yellow sub, Maureen.”  Fr. Jerry Kopacek, Elma, IA

Purple Prose

“She had a deep, throaty laugh, like the sound a dog makes right before it throws up.”  Janie Doohan, Walla Walla, WA

See the complete list, including the “Dishonorable Mentions.”

What say you, TKZers. Want to tackle critiquing any of these?

Trusting Uncertainty by Terry OdellAvailable Now Trusting Uncertainty, Book 10 in the Blackthorne, Inc. series.
You can’t go back and fix the past. Moving on means moving forward.

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

Character Descriptions – Part 1

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Character Descriptions, Part 1
Terry Odell

When I decided to address self-description, I found that it would make for a very long post. Since everyone’s time is valuable, I opted to split it into two posts, so you’ll get more on the topic when it’s my turn again. Today, it’s a few tips for writing character descriptions.

A while back, I started reading a book I’d received at a conference. I’d never heard of the author, and was looking forward to adding this one to my collection. I love discovering new authors and new characters, and since this book was part of a series, I knew, if I enjoyed it, there would be more.

I settled in to meet the characters. The first paragraph immediately punched some of my buttons. I prefer a “deep” or “close” point of view, and if the first time I meet a character, she’s brushing her thick auburn hair away from her face, I get antsy. People don’t normally think of themselves that way. This says, “outside narrator” to me. Not a deal-breaker, but not my taste. I’m a Deep POV person.

These descriptions went on with more self description—shoving white hands into the pockets of her black jeans. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never thought about what color my hands are—unless I’ve been painting.

I moved on to Chapter 2. My twitchiness increased when in the first paragraph, the introduction to the character had her capturing her long raven hair and fastening it into a ponytail. When the first sentence of chapter 3 introduced a new character pulling her long blond hair into a ponytail, I hit my limit.

Yes, understand that readers like to “see” characters, and if you’re not writing in a close POV, you can describe them the way an outside narrator would see them, but readers would like to see that you can get beyond hair—or at least vary more than the color. By now, I’m not seeing different characters, I’m seeing pages full of clones of faceless, shapeless, long-haired women with ponytails.

There’s more to describing a character than hair color. There are other physical features one can mention, as well as emotional states. Here are a couple of examples, all including hair and more.

From “An Unquiet Grave,” by PJ Parrish, where the protagonist is observing another character, one he knows from the past:

“She was standing at the stove, her hands clasped in front of her apron. She had put on a few more pounds, her face round and flushed from the heat of the oven. Her hairstyle was the same, a halo of light brown hair, a few curls sweat-plastered to her forehead.”

Another, this from “Rapture in Death” by JD Robb, who writes in an omniscient POV:

“The man was as bright as Roarke was dark. Long golden hair flowed over the shoulders of a snug blue jacket. The face was square and handsome with lips just slightly too thin, but the contrast of his dark brown eyes kept the observer from noticing.”

Or here, from “Rain Fall” by Barry Eisler, written in 1st person POV, where hair is a major part of the description of the main POV character, but it’s showing more than a simply physical description—and readers haven’t “seen” the POV character before this from page 7—we don’t need to know what he looks like from page 1, paragraph 1.

“When I returned to Tokyo in the early eighties, my brown hair, a legacy from my mother, worked for me the way a fluorescent vest does for a hunter, and I had to dye it black to develop the anonymity that protects me now.”

When I’m writing, I prefer to use very broad strokes and wait until another character does the describing. My editor and I go back and forth about how much time I should spend describing my heroine in my opening paragraphs “because readers like it” versus “it’s not how people think of themselves.” I know we’ll see her through the hero’s eyes in chapter 2, just as we’ll see him through her eyes. So, in my first chapter, in paragraph 1, readers see her emotional state. The only description comes in the second paragraph:

Or (not to put myself in a league with the above quoted authors), a quick sample from one of my books. The character is on her way to a job interview.

“She refreshed her makeup, then finger-combed her hair, trying to get her curls to behave.”

Does it matter what color her hair is? She certainly knows and isn’t going to be thinking of it—unless she’s changed it for a reason, such as in the Eisler quote. We know she cares about grooming because she’s stopped to check her appearance before her interview. She wears makeup, which reveals something about her character, and she’s got unruly curls. That’s enough for page 1.

My tips:

  1. Remember the POV of the character.
  2. Avoid “mirror” type self-descriptions.
  3. Less can be more. Readers like to fill in the blanks.
  4. Don’t be afraid to wait for another character to do the describing.
  5. Have your descriptions do double-duty, such as revealing character.
  6. Don’t show the same traits for every character, and remember to make your characters different!

Do you have any other tips to share? Pet peeves?

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

Deadly Options

Are Gordon’s Days in Mapleton Numbered?

Deadly Options, a Mapleton Mystery/Pine Hills Police crossover.

Cracking The Big Mystery
Behind The Bestseller Lists

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The bestseller list is the tip of the iceberg. — Michael Korda

By PJ Parrish

William Peter Blatty was hot off the blockbuster success of his book The Exorcist when he met the devil he couldn’t defeat — the New York Times best seller list.

Angered that his novel Legion, the sequel to The Exorcist, didn’t make the list, he sued the Times for $6 million, claiming the Times ignored actual sales figures from his publisher and that Legion was kept off the list because of “either negligence or intentional falsehood.”

It gets better. Or worse, depending on your point of view.

The Times, which had always claimed that the list was compiled from computer sales,  countered in court that its list “was not mathematically objective but was editorial content and thus protected under the Constitution as free speech.”  Blatty appealed to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. Thus the ruling stood that the New York Times bestseller list was “editorial content, not objective factual content” and that they had the right to exclude whatever book they wanted.

And that, crime dogs, is pretty much where we still stand today.  How any book cracks the New York Times bestseller list remains, to paraphrase Churchill’s famous quote about Russia, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in fish wrap.”

I used to dream about being a bestseller.  Because this is what happens: Your publisher takes you to dinner at Le Bernardin. You get a new seven-figure contract with cover approval and world tour. Spielberg buys the rights. Your agent starts to return your calls. And you make so much dough your long-lost brother from Bullhead hits you up for a car loan.

Like I said…it’s just dream. We actually did make the Times list, with our third book Paint It Black. It was only what they call the “extended list” which means we didn’t crack the top 15 but hey, we hung on our toenails for a while.  We made the extended list two other times but have not repeated the feat recently. But that’s okay, because it’s sort of like making Eagle Scout. Once you get your badge, no one can take it away and you can wear that badge until your teeth fall out.

So I am not here to tell you that making a bestseller list is a fool’s goal. It doesn’t open doors so much as widen the crack, and it gives you credibility with readers, booksellers, critics and such. But I am here today to ask you not to think about it much. Because the bestseller list game is sort of rigged.

This is not news to many of you. But whenever I am asked about this subject by readers or some newbie writers, I am always shocked at their naïveté. What, you’re telling me it’s not based on real book sales? they gasp.

I don’t think much about bestseller lists anymore. I don’t even look at them when I read my New York Times book review section. But yesterday I did stop and read the paper’s “Inside the Times” article.  It was titled “We Don’t Have to Like ‘Best Sellers’.”  In it, once again, the Times felt compelled to explain to the world how it compiles its lists.

This controversy is not new. A book industry report in the 1940s found that best-seller lists were a poor indicator of sales, since they were based on “misleading data.” Fast-forward to a 2004 report that quoted a senior book marketing executive who said the rankings were “smoke and mirrors,” and a report in Book History found that many professionals in the book industry “scoffed at the notion that the lists are accurate.”

And writers have been trying to game the Times system since before the quill pen.  Jacquelyn Susann and Wayne Dwyer, among others, bulk-bought their own books to get on the list. And until recently, you could hire a company called ResultSource that would contract with you to manipulate lists through “bestseller campaigns.” (I tried to find their website but apparently ResultSource has since gone dark).

Last summer, an unknown book by an unknown author from an unknown publisher rocketed its way to first place on the Times’s young adult hardcover best-seller list. But the YA Twitter community discovered it wasn’t because a lot of people were reading Handbook for Mortals by Lani Sarem. The author and her publisher bought the book’s way onto the list by strategically ordering large numbers of the book from stores that report their sales to the New York Times. The Times quickly removed the book from its list.

So it’s no surprise the Times is still playing defense. Here’s a sample from their Q&A yesterday:

How do authors get on The New York Times best-seller lists? Do their books have to be sold at certain stores?

The New York Times best-seller lists are very competitive, which is what gives them the cachet they have within the book industry and with the public. Our lists reflect the reporting from our confidential panel of tens of thousands of retailers. We do not reveal those sources, in order to circumvent potential pressure on the booksellers and to prevent people from trying to game their way onto the lists.

Translation: The Times has a network of “reporting stores” which include selected independent bookstores and some but not all big-store outlets. The last figure I found was 4,000 stores and “undisclosed wholesalers.” The exact methodology is considered a trade secret. I have been told by store owners that the reporting figures are not even based on actual sales to customers but on the number of books ordered to stock.

How do authors get on The New York Times best-seller lists? Do their books have to be sold at certain stores?

The New York Times best-seller lists are very competitive, which is what gives them the cachet they have within the book industry and with the public. Our lists reflect the reporting from our confidential panel of tens of thousands of retailers. We do not reveal those sources, in order to circumvent potential pressure on the booksellers and to prevent people from trying to game their way onto the lists. A number of variables go into whether a book will rank on a given week. Weeks where there are blockbuster debuts in multiple categories will be different from quieter weeks. Rankings reflect unit sales reported on a confidential basis by vendors offering.

Do the books have to have been reviewed in The New York Times?

Books that get ranked may or may not get reviewed by the Book Review and vice versa. Our best-seller lists and the editorial decisions of The Times’s book editors and critics are entirely independent. This means our lists are not a judgment of literary merit made by the editors of the best-seller lists, who remain impartial to the results. These are best-seller lists, not best-reviewed lists.

Translation: But if you happen to work at the Times, some critics have charged, your book will not only get reviewed but it has a pretty good chance of being “considered” by the panel of folks who watch over the list. Which leads us to…

How do The Times’s ranking methods ensure objectivity?

The best-sellers desk is staffed by three full-time editors who work independently from our news, opinion and culture desks; from the Book Review and the books desk; and from our advertising department. Our nonfiction lists feature books from authors across ideological and political spectrums. In the last year, politicians and commentators who identify as conservative have performed as well as, if not better than, liberal ones on our lists. Trends depend on publishing schedules and what is happening in the cultural zeitgeist.

One question they don’t address, but one I am asked often is: How many books does it take to crack a list?  It depends…

On who else you’re competing against that week. On what time of year it is. On whether someone has a similar book already out there. And on what list you’re aiming for. The general figure these days (way down from the olden days when I started out) is you need to sell at least 5,000 in one week.  But that means from Monday to Sunday if you want to be a Publishers Weekly best-seller, and from Sunday to Saturday if you want to be a New York Times best-seller.

It’s a jungle out there, Martha. Even if you want to aim a little lower, say for USAToday, The Wall Street Journal, a regional list like the Chicago Tribune or maybe Indiebound, you have a whole different set of hoops to jump through for each. Every bestseller list out there is compiled differently. Here’s a breakdown I found at Vox.com:

Publishers Weekly: Compiles data from the Nielsen service BookScan, which is what most publishers use to track their competitors’ sales. BookScan claims it tracks 80-85  percent of the sales of printed books in the U.S. (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, and Walmart, as well as a number of independent bookstores.) But it does not track books sold at independent bookstores that use older systems incompatible with BookScan’s tracking, or books sold outside of the general bookstore ecosystem, ie, at conferences or gift shops or toy stores, or even sales to libraries. It also doesn’t track the sales of e-books.

USA Today: Gets its data from both a handful of independent bookstores and many of the usual-suspect big sellers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, etc. It doesn’t make any claims about what share of books sales it tracks, so it’s a broad sampling of books sold every week from different types of stores. Again, like BookScan, it does not track books being sold outside the bookstore ecosystem.  It doesn’t divide its list into any specific categories, but instead reports the top 150 titles sold across all genres and in all formats except for audio. So your crime novel will compete against Michelle Obama’s Becoming. I know, I know…insane.

Indiebound: This is compiled by the American Booksellers Association. The ABA uses sales data drawn from about 550 independent bookstores to create its list, but it doesn’t rank titles by overall sales volume. Instead, it weights the books on its list according to the sales rank each one reaches at each individual store. I don’t understand that either but there it is…

Amazon: It has two different best-seller lists: Amazon Charts and Amazon Best Sellers. Charts comes out once a week, tracking the books that have sold the most copies in any format (on Amazon, and in its Kindle store, Audible store, and brick-and-mortar storefronts), and the most read or listened-to books on Kindle and Audible. It’s not broken down by category or format, and it only reflects what’s happening on Amazon and its subsidiaries. (Since Amazon has a 65 percent market share, that’s actually a pretty decent sampling.) Amazon Best Sellers, in contrast, is updated once an hour, and it is broken down by categories. This latter one is what we crime dogs fixate on.

Okay, you’re saying, what about us self-published guys? Do we have a chance at getting on any kind of list? Yes, you can crack the Amazon list.  We got to no. 1 briefly in the thriller category when we self-published our back-list title Dead of Winter. And it used to be alot easier before Amazon started messing with their algorhithms. There was a story every week about some self-pubbed phenom. But for reason behind my ken, that has tapered off. (Maybe some of you can explain in comment?) I did see a figure this week that was astonding — that you need to sell between 3,500 to 5,000 copies in a 24-hour period to hit no. 1 on Amazon. But then I also read recently that Lee Child sells a book every eight seconds…

By the way…those three books at the top of this blog today? You might recognize them. You might not know that they were all self-published before they were massive bestsellers.

But what about the Gray Lady? Well, according to their Q&A yesterday, here are the books they don’t track:  “perennial sellers, shopping guides, comics, reference and test preparation guides, required classroom reading, textbooks, journals, workbooks, calorie counters, puzzle books and self-published books.” If if makes you feel any better, this means the Bible doesn’t qualify. Neither does The New York Times Monday Through Friday Crossword Book, even though it is currently #3 on Amazon’s bestseller list.

So, does this matter? Is this something you should you worry about this?

Well, it’s a gold star on your homework, but it isn’t a true gauge of success. And here’s something weird I found:  Hitting the Times list works better for unknown  authors than the Lee Childs of the world.

According to an economics professor Alan Sorensen, who has studied the effect of bestseller lists on sales of hardcover fiction, relatively unknown writers get the biggest benefit, as much as a 57% increase in sales. But for perennial best-selling authors such as John Grisham, being on the list makes virtually no difference in sales. Most sales occur soon after a book hits the shelves and gradually peter out. “If anything, what appearing on the [bestseller] list does is not so much cause your sales to increase from one week to the next, but rather to decrease at a slower rate,” Sorensen said.

Why can’t the bestseller system be fixed?

With the sophistication of software now, you’d think there would be a better way to keep track of real book sales. The model, some say, is the music industry, with its bestseller list in Billboard. The magazine tracks every single album sold at every single music store in the United States. SoundScan, the company that began tracking CD and tape sales with a bar code system, was the force behind the creation of Bookscan.  But BookScan is too expensive for many bookstore owners.

And here’s the bigger rub: The publishing industry really doesn’t want a single list of what’s really selling. They want lots of different lists that they can manipulate to benefit their own bailiwicks.

So…write your book and kept your heads down, crime dogs. The rest will come.

Which brings us back to William Blatty.  Despite great reviews, The Exorcist laid such a giant sales egg at first that Harper and Row reported getting returns by “the carload.” But then sales took off and the book made the New York Times bestseller list for 57 straight weeks and at the No 1 spot for 17 of them.

And years later, not long after Blatty filed his lawsuit against the New York Times, Legion made it all the way to no. 15 the Times list for one week.

 

It’s Election Day! Choose Wisely
For the Sake of Your Novel

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By PJ Parrish

Well, it’s time.  It’s Tuesday, Nov. 8 and you have to make a choice.

No…not that one. We here at The Kill Zone are fiercely apolitical, so what you do today in the privacy of your little curtain or cubbyhole is your business alone. I’m talking about more important choices today -– about your novel.

But first, let’s pause for a short break. I am PJ Parrish and I approve this message:

Shoot, I’d vote for this guy. He makes as much sense as anybody running today. Okay, back to regular programming.

When you sit down to write a novel, you may not realize it,  but you will be — for the next six months to six years it takes you to finish — constantly making choices. Some of these choices will be as big and strategic as picking your characters and plot. Others will be tactical choices like grammar, word choice, use of imagery, punctuation, chapter length, even book length. These latter choices are all really important and we’ve covered all of these topics here at TKZ. But today, let’s hone in on the big choices.

Yes, we’ve covered these a lot here, too. But on this, ahem, really yuge election day, I think it’s a good time for review.

The Ten Most Important Choices You Make About Your Novel

1. Who’s story is this? This sounds simplistic, but you must be clear about who you are going to focus on for your readers to follow. Now usually (but not always), you want to chose a single protagonist, one main person who will be challenged, who will triumph (heroic) or fail (tragic), and who will be the central figure in the story’s plot arc.

Can you have more than one protag? Well, yes. But in my humble opinion, a dual (or multiple protag) book is harder to pull off. Why? Because unless you are really good at weaving the threads of plot and motivation, you will probably understand or even favor one protag over another — and readers will really miss that person when they are “off stage.”

I recently critiqued a manuscript whose author couldn’t make this choice. She had created four equal main characters, but none really captured my interest. I asked the writer why she had done this and she said that her “real” protag was her setting.  I advised her to go read Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

The “region of supernatural wonder” can be the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry or a bar in Cleveland, if you want. But we must have someone to care about, someone we are willing to follow for 300 pages.

2. Where am I? It surprises me how often writers neglect this. Yes, all fiction takes place somewhere, but unless you make that your setting come alive in your reader’s imagination, you are just moving characters against a cardboard backdrop. Do you need to “write what you know?” Not really. You needn’t have lived in Belle Epoque Paris to be convincing, but you need to do your homework and create not reality but verisimilitude (the appearance or being real and convincing). Do your homework (Guest poster Barbara Nickless had a good take on this yesterday.)

And establish your setting very early in your story. Readers need to know where they are from the get-go, and while you don’t want to slow things down in your opening chapter(s) with too much description, you need to begin setting your scene early. And no, hanging one of those pitiful little taglines on chapter one — QUANTICO, VIRGINIA — won’t cut it.

Behavioral Science, the FBI section that deals with serial murder, is on the bottom floor of the Academy building at Quantico, half-buried in the earth.

That’s one of my favorite opening lines from Thomas Harris. He didn’t need a tagline, just those fabulous final five words.

3. What’s your point of view? So who is going to be your narrator? Sometimes, this can be a secondary character. Jay Gatsby is the protagonist of Fitzgerald’s classic, but the story is related by Nick Carraway. Most likely, your narrator will be your protagonist. So do you use first person or third person? Your choice. First-person is more immediately intimate because having your protag relate everything via “I saw”  “I did” or “I thought” you establish a tight bond with the reader. But this is also very limiting as everything must be filtered through one prism. I think first is harder to write than third.  Why? Because if you whiff on motivation, if you don’t grasp every nuance of your protag’s psyche, your narrator will feel flat. And if he’s boring, well, shoot…there goes the reason to turn the page.

Having trouble with this? Switch from first to third or vice versa. You may discover the plot you are dealing with demands the richer variety and complexity of a third-person vantage point. Or you might need multiple third-person POVs. Your protag may be doing a Diana Ross but she might need Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard backing her up.

Time for another break. I’m PJ Parrish and I approve this message:

I’d vote for that guy, too. He’s crazy but at least he’s honest. Back to your book:

4. What’s the best entry point? Let’s start with a premise: A rich teenage girl disappears from in front of a nightclub in London, snatched by a man re-inacting Jack the Ripper murders. A disgraced female cop who’s trying to reconnect with her own estranged daughter gets the case. Where do you start this story?

Bad starts: From victim’s POV: She wakes up, eats breakfast, has testy phone call with mom and later that night goes to nightclub. Cop’s POV: She’s sitting at her desk, thinking about her bad job and her lost relationship with daughter.  From killer’s POV: he is watching girl exit the nightclub thinking about what he is going to do with her.

Why are these bad? The first is throat-clearing. Yes, you might want to establish sympathy for the victim but you can do this after she is gone or even in a few good tense ACTIVE moments in the nightclub. The second example is back story that should be dribbled in as the plot begins to unfold. The third example, while it sounds juicy, it has become a giant cliche.  If you open this way, it must really be original, and you will then need to go back to the killer’s POV at other times in the book or the opening scene feels tacked on and artificial.

When considering where to start:  Get in as late as possible but still be clear in what has already happened. Pick a moment where something is happening or about to happen, where a status quo is changing, where someone is about to be challenged.

Prologues? That’s a whole post in itself. I generally don’t like them because they are almost always mis-used. If you have one, cut it out and see if you can start your story in chapter 1. Betcha it works.

5. What does your hero want? Ray Bradbury said all you have to do is figure out what your hero wants then just follow him. Easy for him to say! Plumbing the depths of motivation is the key to creating characters who live on the page. I’ve written about this often because I think that once you, the writer, can answer this question, everything falls into place. It’s helpful to think of “want” as having many levels.  In Silence of the Lambs, what does Clarise Starling want? Easy — to catch Buffalo Bill.  But go deeper into her psychological basement:

  1. To catch Buffalo Bill
  2. To save Kathryn
  3. To prove she can make it among the boys of the FBI academy
  4. To impress her boss Bill Crawford
  5. To make her dead father proud
  6. To silence the lambs (her demons over being orphaned as an innocent girl)

Do this for your protag, then for your villain and everyone in your book if you can. Remember what Kurt Vonnegut said: “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.”

6. What happened? This is simplistic, too, but needs to restated: Something has to go south fast. As you concentrate on character, don’t neglect story. Your hero needs an obstacle to overcome. As Stephen King says in On Writing: “In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it ‘got boring,’ the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.”  You must create obstacles for your hero to overcome (Sheriff Brody in Jaws has not just a killer shark to hunt down but he has to deal with a dumb mayor, a rift in his team (Quint and Hooper) and he can’t swim. I love what sci-fi fantasy author Nancy Kress says about plot: “Fiction is about stuff that’s screwed up.”

Uh-oh…we gotta break again. I’m PJ Parrish and I approve this message:

I’d definitely vote for that guy, but I think Ted Cruz might gnaw him down to bones. Back to your choices:

7. What are you trying to say? Samuel Goldwyn famously said, “If you want to send a message, call Western Union.” Well, yeah, I sorta of agree with that. Especially since I just finished a mystery that was about meth addiction in Appalachia. It was good but after a while I just thinking, “enough with the drug thing. Who killed that old man?”  The writer was so enamored with his message, it let the story go flaccid.  However…

Great books are always about a theme. Herman Melville said, “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.” So Moby Dick is not just a fish tale. It is about man’s inability to know God. But merely good books also have something to say. You can hear the theme humming soft and steady beneath the clanging machinery of the plot.  At its best, a theme has some sort of meaning to your protagonist, even in genre fiction. Which brings to mind Joseph Wambaugh’s quote, “It’s not how the detective works the case but how the case works on the detective.”  This is a little facile, but here’s an interesting list of common fiction themes — everything from abuse of power to xenophobia.

8. What do I call this? Let’s talk about titles. I know, I know…you don’t want to because titles are hard. And if I know you, you’ve probably slapped something gawd- awful on your work in progress just so you can find it in your computer. But here’s the thing: A good title can make or break your chances out there. I’d go so far to say it’s the single biggest marketing decision you will make. A good title is a neon sign to your readers, not just luring them in but signaling in shorthand what your story is about. And maybe most important, a good title helps you, the writer, understand at a very basic level what your book is about. You need to think about this until your brain hurts. You need to wake up in a cold sweat at night over this.  Don’t settle.

What makes for a great title? It’s pithy, it has promise. It’s a tease and a tell. It’s memorable, original, and easy to say. It boils your entire story down its essence and conveys its heart. This topic needs its own post to do it justice, so for now, just Google and read up on the good advice out there. Good titles: Hunger Games. The Last of the Mohicans. To Kill a Mockingbird. Bad: I can’t print most of them here. Click here.

Another break? Geez. I’m PJ Parrish and I’m getting tired of approving messages.

It’s all a blur but I am pretty sure I voted for that guy. I like his wife. Maybe she’ll run someday…

Back to your own choices:

9. What is my tone? This is important but sort of slippery to grasp. It’s important, however, because if the tone of your book is off, you’re going to have trouble selling it to agents and editors or, if publishing it yourself, finding your target audience. The tone is your attitude or feelings toward your subject matter. You convey this through your style, word choice, and through the personalities of your characters.  If you’re writing for a genre audience, getting your tone right is important because readers have certain expectations. A reader looking for light romance suspense doesn’t want to open your book and discover halfway through that you’ve started out light and descended to a darker place. Likewise, if like me, you prefer darker fare, you don’t want to be misled in the opposite direction.

Your chosen tone can be whimsical, humorous, gloomy, ironic, hardboiled, neo-noir, …you pick it. But you must be honest and consistent.  Years ago, I wrote an amateur sleuth novel that I thought was peachy.  It was roundly rejected, despite the fact I had a good track record with my current series. What happened? My tone started out light and wacky but veered toward the dark about halfway through. Two editors even used the same words in their rejection letters: “Loved the writing but it’s neither fish nor fowl.”  I learned a lesson — I can’t maintain soprano when my true voice is contralto.

10. Do I finish this book or start over? No one can help you with this, but it’s something you have to ask yourself as you move along.  Not every book needs to be finished. Some are exercises of sorts to help you learn. Others might be short stories instead of novels. And then there is the question of stamina and confidence. If you do believe in your story, then yes, you need to finish it. Even if it never gets published, it won’t be wasted effort.  Every successful writer out there has unpublished manuscripts moldering in bottom desk drawers or lurking on old thumb drives. You need to finish something. Just for the knowledge that you can do it.

I’ll leave you with a telling quote from Erica Jong: “I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged.”

Yes, you will. Don’t be afraid of it. It’s called being a professional writer.

And finally, one last break. I’m PJ Parrish, and I think this candidate speaks for all of us very weary voters out there:

Suspense: To Be Exciting,
You Need To Be A Little Dull

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peyton1

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.– Oscar Wilde

By PJ Parrish

Sunday, I picked up the latest by a bestselling thriller writer and about halfway through, I realized it was sorta…unthrilling. So I put it aside and tuned into the Broncos-Colts game. I didn’t expect much in the way of entertainment here either because I knew this old story. I mean, Denver was 4-0 and Indianapolis was 3-5. Denver has Manning and Indy has, at best, a little Luck.

But lo and behold! The Colts were winning 17-0. Well, I thought, this is kinda interesting. So I stuck around. And then, Denver returned a punt 83 yards for TD.

Hmmm.

Then Peyton Manning hit for a TD, Denver got a field goal and suddenly, we were all knotted up at 17-all. Early in the fourth quarter, Andrew Luck threw a TD but Manning answered with one of his own and we were tied again! Until Adam Vinatieri, who is 95-years-old and never misses despite having only seven toes, kicked a field goal putting the Colts ahead by three!

Six minutes left. But I was definitely not turning this one off now because Denver was driving. And how’s this for a twist? Peyton was only 30 yards away from becoming the leading passer of all time, surpassing Brett Favre!

Tick…tick…tick.

OH MY GOD! Peyton is picked off!

Can the Colts hang on? There’s four minutes left and Frank Gore is running the ball but he’s 105-years-old and has a habit of putting the rock on the ground. Denver uses its last time out. But here is the back story that I already know about this drama: Peyton leads the league with 43 fourth-quarter comebacks.

Can he do it again? Will he break the passing record? Will the Broncos stay perfect? Will Frank cough up another hairball like he did last week?

The suspense was killing me.

Frank is tackled on third down. Ninety seconds left! Peyton’s going to get the ball back! Wait! Is that a flag? Some guy named Aqib Talib poked a Colt in the eye and Denver gets flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct!

It’s over. Colts win.

{{{Whew}}}

Now that was suspense. After that, I had no desire to go back to my book. Because despite the book’s stellar blurbs and the reputation of the author as the Master of the Twist, it wasn’t near as good as that football game.

The game was classic David and Goliath with a little Joseph Campbell The Hero’s Journey thrown in, yet it still went against my expectations. It had a good mix of pacing, with zip-fast passing attacks and slow grind-it-out running. It had setbacks and surprises. It had heroes and eye-gouging villains. And just enough twists to keep me guessing.

Think there’s a lesson here?

A good sports game has a lot in common with a good book or movie. Sitting on your barstool watching Daniel Murphy commit that error in game four and wondering if the Mets are doomed. Sitting in the triplex watching The Fugitive and wondering if Harrison Ford is going to jump off the dam. Or turning just one more page to find out if Amy is alive or is the girl gone for good. They are all related.

There’s the old Hitchcock formula: 1. A couple is sitting at a table talking. 2. The audience is shown a time bomb beneath the table and the amount of time left before it explodes. 3. The couple continues talking, unaware of the danger. 4. The audience eyes a clock in the background.

The surprise, Hitchcock said, didn’t come from the bomb itself; it came from the tension of not seeing it.

Speaking of formulas, there actually is one for suspense:

Suspense: t = (E t [(µ¿ t+1 – µ t)²])½

I didn’t make this up, believe me. It was created by Emir Kamenica and Alexander Frankel of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. It is basically an equation about time and expectations: “t” represents the period of time a moment of suspense is occurring, “E” is the expectations at that time, the Greek mu indicates your belief in the next thing to happen, the +1 is your belief in the future, the tilde represents uncertainty, and the subtracted mu is the belief you might have tomorrow.

That made your brain hurt, right? Mine, too. But hey, you sat through my football metaphor, so stay with me a little longer. The Chicago guys also developed a formula for surprise, which is easier to stomach for us math-challenged types. It boils down to this: what your beliefs are now minus what your beliefs were yesterday.

Their paper “Suspense and Surprise” (co-written with Northwestern University economics professor Jeffrey Ely) was published in the “Journal of Political Economy.” It was inspired by their observation that in various types of entertainment – gambling, watching sports, reading mysteries – people don’t really WANT to know the outcome.

What they DO want is a “slow reveal of information.” As one of them put it in an article in the Chicago Tribune: “To be exciting, we found that things need to get dull.”

Information revealed over time generates drama in two ways: suspense and surprise. Suspense is all about BEFORE, ie something is going to happen. (the ticking bomb under the chair). Surprise is about AFTER, ie you’re surprised that something unexpected happened. (the bomb didn’t go off!) If you are led to believe one thing is going to happen (Broncos will win!) but then are surprised by the unexpected (Colts prevail!) that can be pretty powerful.

So how do you translate this to your own writing?

I’ll let Kamenica explain. He goes back to the Hitchcock formula: “Let’s take that idea and ask a mathematical question: How much suspense can you possibly generate?’ Putting that bomb there generates suspense, but how long can you leave it there? Can you leave it the duration of the movie? Or is that boring? Once you put it there, when do you decide for it to go off? One-third of the way through? One-half? If I am invested, as a viewer, how frequently should uncertainty be resolved? You have a threat, information that (a bomb) will explode, then it gets resolved, the movie continues. But will these people survive the next danger? How often can you do that — change an audience view?”

He has the answer, of course: Three times.

“Say you are writing a mystery,” Kamenica goes on in the Chicago Tribune article, “Zero twists is bad. And one thousand twists is also bad — again, for something to be exciting, it must occasionally become boring. So, three. The math delivers surprisingly concrete prescriptions. That number is constrained to a stylized view, characteristic mystery novel: Is it the maid or butler who did it? Does the protagonist live or die? A novelist must lead you in one direction then …”

Added his colleague Frankel: “The thing is, we also found that you can’t really have a definite number of twists. Three is average. Yet if you know there are three twists, those twists are not actually twists — you are now waiting for the twist.”

And that, to me, is the major lesson here. Not that your book must conform to a three-twist formula. Because if your readers know you have three twists, you’ve lost the suspense. The lesson, to me, is less might just be more.

That’s why I gave up on that book I was reading. Its pacing was overly frenetic, with no slow moments for me to catch my breath. And the writer — excuse me, Master of the Twist — was so intent on forcing me through one more complication, one more bend in the road, one more plot gymnastic, that I began to anticipate his next move. I put the book down because the enjoyment was gone. The fun was leached away. The thrill was gone.

If your readers know you will have a dramatic unexpected twist at the end, then your book will no longer have a dramatic unexpected twist at the end.

So maybe it comes down to this: If you want to be thrilling, you also have to be willing to be boring very so often.