The devil's in the details

Barbara here. Aline's Monday post about setting serves as a springboard to mine. Great minds think alike! I too want to talk about setting, and more specifically about the setting of my Inspector Green novels, which are set in Ottawa, Canada's national capital and my adoptive home.

Write what you know, we writers are advised when we first set pen to paper. Really? What a bore that would be. I’ve led an uneventful life. I grew up in Montreal – not in the exotic, fast-paced downtown but in a nice, safe, leafy suburb – went to university, married, had three kids, worked for a few decades... There were a few heart aches, but not much drama or conflict that is the meat of good stories. Moreover, I live in Ottawa. Not London, or Rome, or even the Virgin Islands. Ottawa is a great city if you want to raise a family but not if you want to plot murders. It has roughly 12 murders a year; Baltimore has 350. In Ottawa, a sink hole is the lead news story for over a week.

Although Ottawa readers love the Ottawa setting, whenever I do events elsewhere, I have to downplay it. Canadians sometimes joke that Ottawa is the place that fun forgot, the city of gray civil servants scurrying home at 5 pm before the sidewalks are rolled up. I didn’t know this when I blundered into the Inspector Green series. I was just finishing eight years of graduate school at the University of Ottawa and I was ready to kill someone, so I bumped off a graduate student. What better place to set it than the place I knew so well – the University of Ottawa.

 Then two amazing things happened.

First, I realized how important setting was to the telling of a story. It’s more than just a static backdrop to the ongoing plot; it’s part of the drama. It’s the autumn leaves crunching underfoot, the sunset in your eyes as you drive down the Queensway, the musty smell and dark shadows in the library stacks where I put my first body. Writing is about drawing the reader into a story, making them feel they are walking in the footsteps of the characters. In a film, we see these details through the camera lens, but in a book, we see them through our own imagination.

I discovered that although I thought I knew Ottawa well and could use my memory for many details, I had to revisit all the places I was describing. When I wrote Do or Die, I prowled the library stacks (again!), I walked through the lobby of the Chateau Laurier and into Wilfred's Restaurant so that I could describe the sound of shoes on the marble floor and the smells of garlic and wine.  I took copious notes and photos. I needed all these details to bring the scene to life for me, even if I only chose to put a few into the actual book. Readers don’t want a whole page of detail; they want a few choice hints so they can imagine it themselves. The sparkle of candles on wine glasses, the soft murmur of conversation.

The second amazing thing that happened was that readers were surprised at the Ottawa I had brought to life. I got emails from readers who commented they didn't know the city was so diverse, or beautiful, or multi-textured. 

  

If you scratch beneath the surface, Ottawa actually has everything you need to create dramatic stories. It has a spectacular physical setting – three major rivers, a canal, and a lake in the centre. It has lots of parks to hide bodies in, ravines and bluffs to toss victims over. It has all the diversity of a big city - biker gangs, immigrants, rich, poor – but it also has farmers, cows and little river villages with secrets as old as time. Ottawa also has diversity in weather and seasons. It’s never predictable. Snowstorms, bodies buried by snow ploughs, floods, sweltering heat, blinding downpours. Even fog! I’ve used them all.

So over ten books I’ve explored just about every nook and cranny of Ottawa, in all its seasons. Mystery writers are a really nice, friendly bunch of people but we have some peculiar quirks. We’re always noticing interesting ways to kill people and interesting places to put bodies. Ottawa is filled with such places, and they have inspired the start of many of my books. The spark for Fifth Son began with a particularly spectacular country church that I drove by all the time on my way to the cottage, and each time, I thought; that needs to be in a book. That tower is a great place to toss a body from. And every time I stood at the edge of Hogs Back Falls and stared into the roiling water, I thought, boy, what would happen if you fell in. Thus Dream Chasers was born.

So in the end, I’ve come full circle back to the advice “write what you know”. Setting does not have to be flashy and world-renowned. Every family, every street and village has the seeds of intrigue and hidden secrets around which to spin a story. Every city, even one that on the surface appears grey and dull, has its nuances of colour and texture if you shine a clear enough light on it. Get up close and personal with the neighbourhoods, the geography, the changes of weather and season. The power is in the details; if they are vivid and specific enough, the story will come to life as the reader walks through it. Our own neighbourhoods, our streets, our schools and workplaces– none of these places are dull. They can all serve as settings for the very human stories we choose to tell. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details.

The Lark Ascending

by Rick Blechta

This is where we encountered the lark (before the dog arrived).

This past Saturday, CBC radio had a special Remembrance Day show mostly featuring music composed during the First World War. One of the pieces played was “The Lark Ascending” by Ralph Vaughan Williams, arguably the most famous of all of them, and an especial favourite of mine and coincidentally the title of my second novel.

Listening to it brought back a lot of memories, both of our several visits to the UK and also to writing my novel. I’d like to share one memory that joins both.

First, though, a story — but be warned: it may be apocryphal.

“The Lark Ascending” was originally a poem by George Meredith which in turn provided the inspiration for Vaughan Williams’ composition for solo violin and orchestra. In fact Vaughan Williams quotes some of the poem on the flyleaf of the published version.

The composer began the composition on the eve of the war, although it wouldn’t make its debut until 1921.

“What is known, however, is that Vaughan Williams was holidaying on the coast in Margate in Kent on the day Britain entered the first world war (4 August 1914). The resort was not an embarkation point, but ships were engaging in fleet exercises. The composer later told the story that the tune came into his head as he walked the cliff, at which point he jotted down the notes. A young scout then made a citizen's arrest, assuming he was scribbling details of the coastline for the enemy.” (From The Guardian)

Another musician suffering for his art. (But fear not! Vaughan Williams was immediately released by the authorities once they realized he was writing music and not secret code — although I suppose it could have been both.)

Being from this side of the pond, I had no familiarity with the bird in question, and since the internet was in its early days, it wasn’t easy to find out information, so everything I knew about (British) larks came from Meredith’s poem. On one of our visits, we were walking on Hathersage Moor in Derbyshire when someone with a dog approached us.

A small bird shot up maybe 100 feet in the air and began singing a mellifluous song filled with trills and utterly lovely. My wife and I knew immediately what it was and stopped, completely enchanted. Vaughan Williams had captured the song amazingly well. (We were also amazed at the bird’s ability to hover in the air.) Not only was the dog distracted, but we were too. I wish I’d had that experience before my novel was published because it would have made a difference. However, I was certainly satisfied by how well I’d chosen my title.

The Vaughan Williams composition was a huge part of my novel on a plot level since the protagonist plays it at the climax of the story, but in my mind, she'd also become the lark, so its tendrils weave deep in the book.

Several people, including a bookseller went out to buy my recommended recording (The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields with Iona Brown playing the solo violin) so that they could more fully enjoy the story.

And that is the nicest compliment I have ever gotten for one of my novels.

___________________
Sidebar: That’s my wife the flutist on the cover. She’s the only one I could think of who’d be perfect to stand in for Victoria Morgan, the novel’s protagonist. We had a violinist-friend off-camera who would set her up to look like she knew what she was doing and then step back as the photo was taken. While she looked great and very convincing as a concert virtuoso, the sound she made on the violin was pretty horrendous!

July Weather in December

It's a fine, crisp autumn day as I write this. The sky is clear, azure blue and the recent early morning frost has turned the leaves still on the trees to vivid shades of bronze, red and yellow. The Japanese maple outside my window is working on producing the extraordinary shade of pink it likes to treat us to just before the leaves fall.

The only slight problem is that the book I'm working on is set in July with weather that is really hot, humid and unpleasantly sticky.  It was fine when I started it, in summer, but now I have to keep thinking myself back into what that felt like and since I'm cold enough to have an extra heater on in my study today and even then the tip of my nose feels chilly, this is a constant feat of imagination.

To make things more difficult, that is also the time of year in the north when there is light almost all the way through the night, so I can't have anyone commit their nefarious deeds under cover of darkness, or talk about anyone watching a sunrise or sunset - unless it's between 11pm and 2 am.

Because my books have rural settings, there's another problem too when it comes to the scenery.  I always do research visits to the area I'm writing about, taking copious notes on the scenery to help me in describing it for the reader, but of course it constantly changes.  When, exactly, does the heather start blooming on the hills and when does the bracken  turn from green to brown?  Are the kittiwakes still nesting in July or are there only herring gulls on the cliffs?  How long is the flowering season for pink thrift or harebells?  Which is the prevailing wind at that time of year?  What sort of cloud formations are usual in high summer?  Questions, questions.

At least, in northern and western Scotland you can be quite sure of one thing - if the sun's out, so are the midges.  In fact, you can be pretty sure about insects generally if you're looking for that sort of local colour, so that's a help.

I love writing about the countryside, but there are times when I think it would be very restful to have a city setting and just say it was raining or it wasn't raining, or even that the sun was shining.  Grey buildings in July are still grey buildings come November!

Retreating

By Vicki Delany

In the past I’ve jokingly written that my friends and I have been to a writers retreat at someone’s vacation home or cottage. I say jokingly because although we might have good intentions to write, and we might even manage to get an hour or two of work in, the real purpose is to read and walk and swim and eat and drink and most of all talk.  Fun, but not really an occasion for serious writing.

I had never been to a real writers retreat until last weekend. I was invited to be the guest author at Turning Leaves, a weekend retreat put on by the incredible author/editor/teacher/broadcaster duo of Gwynn Scheltema and Ruth Walker of Writescape. (http://writescape.ca/site/)

As the guest author, my job was to give a Saturday morning workshop on writing effective and realistic dialogue, and leading a discussion on Friday night. Otherwise, my time was my own.

The weekend was organized as a mixture of free writing time and planned classes or exercises. Participants were encouraged to do as much or as little private writing as they wanted. Some buried their heads in their projects, others participated in all the group efforts.

I loved meeting the 12 enthusiastic, keen, and very talented writers at different stages in their writing process. I sat in on some of Gwen and Ruth’s creativity sessions and think I learned a thing or two. I got a lot of writing done as well, and also spent some time thinking up ideas for a forthcoming book. 

It was great fun to start that process out loud, in front of a group at the dinner table.

One of the highlights of the weekend was the meals. Yes, the food was good, but that's not what I mean. Simply sitting around the dinner table together gave everyone a chance to exchange news, discuss tricky plot points, get ideas for submissions, and learn some tricks of the trade. 

The retreat was held at Fern Resort, on Lake Couchiching, north of Toronto. It was cold and rainy (it is November in Ontario, after all), but I got in one nice walk in the woods.  My room overlooked the lake and had a fireplace, which was lovely.  The food was fabulous!

All in all, I enjoyed the weekend very much, but what’s more it gave me an insight into the concept of a retreat. I don’t have a busy life outside of my writing, but many people do. These women were able to take three days away from their families and their jobs to simply write and (perhaps most important of all) talk about writing.  They all left inspired and eager to dive back into their writing.

I was too.

Vicki Writing (not exactly as shown)

Vicki Reading (not exactly as shown)

Sharing what "wisdom" I have at the fireside chat

Giving a workshop

Gwen (L) and Ruth (R) with Lori Twining

With some of the enthusiastic writers

The Plot Thickens . . . and Thickens

I got some interesting feedback from my agents this past week when I sent them a novel I recently finished. The writing process was different this time around –– as I worked, I received feedback along the way –– and my agents noticed a difference in the finished product, liking some things, but the major criticism was unexpected: they found the plot to be too complicated.

It got me thinking about the process I used to write the book. I have three dear friends who read the book as I wrote it. I had assembled a dream team of advanced readers. One is an avid reader, who offers excellent feedback regarding the overall storyline; one is a former writing center director, who line edits as well as anyone I’ve worked with and calls me on any and all grammar bluffs; and the third is a librarian, who knows my work and falls somewhere between the other two in terms of the feedback she offers. As I wrote –– on a live Google document –– I noted their feedback in the margins and their running commentary, including guesses at what might happen in the text next.

When I got my agents’ feedback –– noting the complexities of the plot and wondering if I’d gone too far for readers –– I had second thoughts, not about the advance readers and their respective talents, but doubts about the way I used them.

I worked hard on the book. It was a much slower process than any book I have written: 18 months, total. Too long for a 75,000-word manuscript. Stephen King in On Writing says three months is his max. (I do, however, have a day job.) But I think I did spend too much time on the draft. I also think that was due to my decision to ask for feedback as I worked. I noted the commentary and the guesses at where the story was headed. Admittedly, there was a lot of going back and widening the web and adding subplots.

And the plot in this opening draft probably got away from me.

The book is the first in what I hope to be a new series. I thoroughly enjoy the characters, a husband and wife team, and the setting. As I go at the second draft, I’m working alone. No one will see it until it’s done.

The Responsibility of Writers

Last weekend I participated in a cozy mystery panel with Sue Ann Jaffarian, Jane DiLucchio and Diane Vallere at the La Mirada Library in La Mirada, CA. We’re all members of the Los Angeles chapter of Sisters in Crime and have all known each other for quite a while. It was quite a fun panel to be on.

Several of the attendees didn’t know what cozy mysteries were so we talked about some elements they usually include. When asked why they read cozies, one audience member said it was for the escapism, another because justice always prevails in the end, something that doesn’t always happen in the real world.

The phrase “the lighter side of mystery” was bandied about. People who read extensively in the mystery genre know what this means, but I admit that it is kind of an odd phrase to use. After all, someone was murdered or some other crime occurred that affected characters lives permanently.

As writers, we have to remember there are people in the real world who are murdered. This was driven home to me recently when someone in a cozy group I’m a member of told us a friend had been murdered and they couldn’t face reading mysteries, even cozy ones right now. I suspect I’d have the same reaction if someone close to me was murdered. I hope they’ll eventually be able to enjoy reading cozies again, but I’d understand if they couldn’t.

While we, as writers, have fun devising plot points and ways to “creatively” murder someone on the page, we have to remember in our creative zeal that people actually are murdered in the real world. We need to treat the crime respectfully. I can’t really think of a book I’ve read that doesn’t, but I still think it’s important to remind ourselves of this every time we sit down to write.

Weasel words

by Rick Blechta

I have a good friend (and excellent editor), Cheryl Freedman, who is kind enough to look over the final versions of my novels and novellas before they’re hustled off to the publisher. Early on she took me to task for my use of what she calls “weasel words”, meaning words or phrases that add a “waffle factor” (my term) to my writing.

“First, come out and say what you want to say. Do it directly. There’s no reason to beat around the bush. Second, this tendency you have gets irritating after awhile.” That last part really caught my ear. The last thing any writer wants (except for internet trolls) is to be annoying.

In looking over her page-by-page remarks, I had to agree Cheryl was 100% correct. I did weasel far more than I should, and it would get irritating after awhile. But I also pointed out that sometimes ambiguity is needed in a novel, especially in a crime novel. “If you actually wish to inject some ambiguity into dialogue or description, there are better ways of doing it,” were Cheryl’s wise words.

Overnight I became a convert (zealot?) and now I ruthlessly throw this junk out of a manuscript long before Cheryl gets a peek at it. Example: the minute I see the words “sort of”, I know I’ve done it again.

But because I’m more attuned to weasel words, I notice them more in day-to-day life. As you might expect, politicians are champions at using them, closely followed by corporate heads, PR flacks, journalists, etc.

However society as a whole has succumbed to this sorry trend, as well.

Take death, for instance. People seldom “die” anymore, they “pass on”, “pass away” or just “pass”. What’s wrong with saying someone died? Someone dying is not a pejorative. Face it, “pass away” is just a euphemism for dying, so why not come out and say that in the first place?”

People who work in stores are now known as “sales associates”, likely in an attempt to make them feel more important in the company. They’re not. Work at a big box store and you suddenly become a “team member”. You’re not. In both cases you’re likely a low-level employee who’s generally expendable, underpaid, and probably not full-time, either.

Those are just two examples of how “weaseling” has become part of everyday speech. In the end it doesn’t make anything clearer or even more kind.

Be like Cheryl. Don’t weasel!

Step away from the keyboard!

I love walking. Not your power or ultra extreme stuff, just your straightforward amble in a wood or meander along a shore. But until not so long ago, I used to feel guilty whenever I set off. If I was walking, I wasn't writing. This meant valuable creative time was being wasted. Now I know this was the thinking of the ill-informed. 

Let me explain. As you all probably know, walking makes the heart pump faster. The faster the heart pumps, the more blood and oxygen is sent to the muscles and the organs, including the brain. This helps keep us fit and healthy, and fit is always good. But guess what? Regular walking also promotes new connections between brain cells. These connections stave off the usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age and increase the volume of the hippocampus (a brain region crucial for memory), elevating levels of molecules that both stimulate the growth of new neurons and transmit messages between them. What’s not to like about preventing brain tissue from withering at any age, but especially if you are a tad older, like me?

And there's more. As we saunter alongside that murmuring brook, or stroll through that wooded glade, our mind is free to float from one sensory experience to another and our “attention” is replenished. You see, it turns out that “attention” is a limited resource. It drains throughout the day, and especially after concentrated effort, like writing a book for six hours. Sleeping helps replenish attention, of course, but so does walking, especially walking in a park or forest. In Japan they call walking in green spaces ‘Shinrinyoku’ or ‘forest bathing’. It’s a recognised relaxation and stress management activity. 

Better still, allowing our mind to wander and drift, or daydream, is also believed to stimulate our slumbering creative subconscious, the place where ideas come from. It's got to be one of the great paradoxes of being a writer that while it involves hard work and concentrated effort, the light bulb moments tend to come when we are are not focusing on being creative. Ray Bradbury explained this rather neatly in his book, Zen in the Art of Writing, when he said you have to treat the finding of ideas in the same way you treat cats: “If you try to approach a cat and pick it up, hell, it won’t let you do it. You’ve got to say, ‘Well, to hell with you.’ And the cat says, ‘Wait a minute. He’s not behaving the way most humans do.’ Then the cat follows you out of curiosity.” 

So, it turns out that stepping away from my keyboard and going out for a walk is as helpful for my writing as keeping the seat of my pants to my writing chair. To be honest, I'm not surprised. I've always known that if I go for a walk, especially when I'm stumped, ideas will suddenly appear. As Henry David Thoreau once famously said, “Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.”

What about you?  Do you turn to walking for inspiration or do you prefer to stay put and daydream, or something else?

Guest Post: Nancy Cole Silverman

Please welcome Nancy Cole Silverman back to Type M. Nancy and I share the same publisher, Henery Press, and are also both members of the Los Angeles chapter of Sisters in Crime. We've had many wonderful and interesting conversations over the years. Take it away, Nancy...

UNLEASHING THE FURY OF ME TOO

by Nancy Cole Silverman

I live in Hollywood, and when allegations film producer and former top studio exec Harvey Weinstein had sexually assaulted a number of Hollywood stars, women started talking. And not just about Harvey Weinstein, but about a cadre of studio execs and men in power in various industries who viewed women as fair game.

Women, particularly those of us who came of age during the civil rights movement, understood that our jobs and access to better positions with more money and power depended upon our not only doing a good job but pleasing those at the top as well. And sometimes that meant keeping our mouths shut.

If that sounds surprising to a younger generation of strong, independent women, consider this: A smart woman didn’t rock the boat. She didn’t have a human resources department to complain to. If a man insisted she have dinner with him, offered her a promotion in exchange for intimacy or locked the door to his office and chased her around his desk, she was on her own. If she complained, more often than not, the old boys’ club would rally ‘round the accused man and suggest she must have asked for it. After all, for the most part, those at the top viewed women in the workplace as an expendable commodity. In short, they could be removed, transferred or fired with little or any backlash to the man.

Simply put, women had to go-along-to-get-along. Or seek employment elsewhere.

I must have been channeling this when I sat down to write Room For Doubt, book four of The Carol Childs Mysteries. Women, the choices they make, their strengths in the workplace and their balancing act are a core aspect of all my novels. As a former talk radio exec, I pull a lot of my stories from headlines and those radio stations where I worked. But the theme for Room For Doubt, while very real was unlike any I’d ever read about or witnessed first hand because those stories are deeply buried. Yet I knew it innately. I felt as though I heard the hushed voices from another group of Me Too women. Women whose stories were even darker.

In Room For Doubt, my protagonist, Carol Childs, is called to the scene of a murder. A man’s body has been found hanging from the Hollywood Sign. The police have ruled the man’s death a suicide. But Carol doesn’t think so, and neither does Chase, an unruly private investigator. Chase’s theories run the gamut from an extraterrestrial killing to a gangland-style hit, and he wants to use Carol’s late night radio show to encourage listeners to call-in and talk about it. Carol refuses. She’s not about to open her show to a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists. But when an anonymous caller named Mustang Sally calls in and confesses to the murder, things change, and so will Carol’s understanding of right and wrong.

The theme for Room For Doubt was a familiar one. A story that we as women all know. A story that has become part of our psyche. A story about a friend or relative who had disappeared, been murdered or was estranged from friends and family. Abuse takes many forms and is deadly.

I applaud those women who have found their voice and joined the Me Too Movement, and I hope those sisters whose stories are even darker, who hide in the shadows afraid to speak, will find their voice as well. Because, like Mustang Sally said, “Women are mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore!”

Nancy Cole Silverman credits the fact both she and Edgar Allen Poe share the same birthday, along with her twenty-five years in talk radio, for helping her to develop an ear for storytelling. After writing everything from commercial copy to news Silverman retired from radio in 2001 to write fiction. Today, Silverman has written numerous short stories and novelettes some of which have been produced as audio books. Silverman's new series, the Carol Childs Mysteries (Henery Press) takes place inside a busy Los Angles Radio station. Silverman lives in Los Angeles with her husband, four adult children, and thoroughly pampered standard poodle.

Writing Different

As I mentioned, this year I'm taking part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I'm not sure if I'm going to reach the 50,000 words, but I am now looking for time when I can write each day. I do write every day, but — because I'm trying to finish a nonfiction book — I haven't carved out a time each day to work on my historical thriller. Instead, I've been doing research.


I've done research on the mood of America in the 1930s. Research on fashion and houses and Gone with the Wind. Research on the 1939 New York World's Fair, J. Edgar Hoover, Eleanor Roosevelt, the Great Depression, and the cost of living. I've done research on train schedules and the details of the tasks performed by sleeping car porters. I've watched films released in 1939 and listened to popular music. I've watched video tours of Washington, D.C., New York, and Atlanta. I've also watched a video showing how to drive a 1936 Ford. I know a lot about some things and a little about others.

The question — the real test — is whether during this month of focused writing I know enough to make it through the first draft without stopping to do research. Can I insert a question in brackets to remind myself to fact-check later and keep moving? That is not the way I normally write. I don't like to fill in information later. But this is my month of challenging myself to write different.

Writing different means that instead of working on my novel on weekends, I will get up a couple of hours earlier and start writing. I will write the entire two hours, not go back to read what I wrote the day before and edit. I will keep moving forward, working toward a first draft that is sure to be horrible.

But writing a horrible first draft may be what I need to do with a thriller. I need to feel the forward motion.

Right now, I'm going to bed. Getting up at 7 am is a shock to my system. I will keep you informed about how my attempt to write a novel in a month goes. If nothing else, I think it will force me to stop researching everything that crosses my mind, and instead focus on what I need to know.

Is anyone else doing NaNoMoWri? How did you prepare for the month of writing?

Awards, love 'em or hate 'em?

Recently the Globe and Mail published an article about the plethora of literary awards springing up in Canada, often with a large amount of money attached. Large, that is, for writers, who often labour below the poverty line. Topping the list at $100,000 is the Scotiabank Giller Prize, but many of the lesser prizes also run into the five digits, and the Ottawa Book Award gives $10,000 to the winner and $1000 to each shortlisted (at least it did when I was nominated). The more money, the more the media hype. They may not be the Oscars, but they're the literary jackpot.

Some of the awards are regional or limited to a particular subject or genre, such as political writing, but most rarely include genre fiction on their shortlists, except when it's dressed up as "literary". Thus crime writers are shut out of the big awards and the associated media attention. The Arthur Ellis Awards are juried awards given out in seven categories by Crime Writers of Canada, but with the exception of nominal honoraria in a couple of categories, there is no money attached to the award. No $100,000, even for Best Novel. And media coverage, despite all the efforts and press releases of CWC? Virtually none.

Instead, we get this quirky statue to startle guests who come to the house.

We crime writers are fond of grumbling about the "lack of respect" afforded us by the CanLit establishment (other genres receive even more distain), but after reading this article, I'm left wondering - is this such a bad thing? The more money and publicity attached to an award, the greater the competition and the more devastating the fall-out if your precious book, to which you devoted years of your life, is not on a single shortlist. Sales of your book may sink like a stone, while those of the shortlist soar. Authors may begin to second-guess their talent, play it safe, write an "award-worthy", probably derivative book, or give up altogether. Publishers may select books based on their potential to please the CanLit juries, thus ignoring unique or edgier stories. Or they may choose not to pick up the next book by an author who failed to make the all-important shortlists the last time. Yet we all know that agents and publishers often fail to recognize talent and turn down a book that later becomes an international hit. JK Rowlands, anyone? Or closer to home, Louise Penny?

With so much riding on these nominations, there can't help but be competition and backstabbing among both authors and publishers. And an overarching anxiety among authors about their fate in a process over which they have no control. In such a toxic environment, how can creativity soar free and full of promise?

It is certainly an environment I would not want to write in. There is precious little to encourage us to write a book in the first place, beyond the desire to tell the story in our heads and the joy of finally seeing it in print, that I'd hate to have that joy crushed as soon as the award chatter begins. In this sense I'm grateful for being a crime writer, writing under the radar and enjoying the emails and reviews from fans and fellow writers who like my books. The mystery community is a supportive, friendly community. Both readers and writers like one another and share recommendations freely. We laugh at our "black sheep next to the kitchen at the literary banquet" status, knowing that's where all the fun and the best jokes are.

This is not to say awards are of no importance to us. I think we Canadian crime writers do think about the Arthur Ellis Awards and hope to make the shortlist when our work is eligible, and there's no doubt making the shortlist is a thrill and an affirmation of our skill. But we recognize lots of other good books did not make the shortlist because of the essentially subjective tastes of the judges. Athough winning the Best Novel award adds credibility and gravitas to a writer, it does not really affect sales and it does not end careers.

And as far as I know, no writer has ever stabbed another writer in the back to get their hands on that statue.

What is a novel’s most essential ingredient?

by Rick Blechta

Lately I’ve been starting crime fiction novels, reading around 50 pages and then putting them down. This is not usual for me, but having just attended Bouchercon, the books I’ve been putting down were handed out, and not necessarily ones I would have purchased. As well, I’ve never read any of the authors.

So what caused me to put these books down (4 out of 5)?

Quite frankly, one of the characters in each really got up my nose. In three cases, it was the protagonist or co-protagonist. Usually I’ll let something like that slide, figuring that maybe I need to grow into the story and the characters’ development, but these people really got up my nose. In the case of the fourth novel, it was the fact that the character who appeared to be the antagonist was wholly unbelievable. It was like one of those Bond villains but the story had no Bond to counterbalance the bad guy. (I did look to the book’s end and I had spotted the antagonist correctly.)

There is no sub-genre of crime fiction books I won’t consider reading. I don’t tend to like cozies, but if someone I trust tells me that one is really good, I’ll happily read it. I find macho male thrillers to be generally tedious, but here again, if it comes with a recommendation, I’ll at least give it a good chance. As a matter of fact, I generally finish at least 90% of all books I start. It has to be a real stinker for me to put a book down before I even get halfway.

So why did these particular four books from Bouchercon have this effect on me? I had to think about that a bit since there were multiple reasons for all of them. But the standout reason for all of them is that I did not like a major character in the story. Let me clarify even further, I really disliked these characters.

Now we get to the question of why. In the case of the three protagonists, they were either fatally two-dimensional and cliché (and I’ve been guilty of that on at least one occasion) but the overall thought going through my head as I got to the 50th or so page of each book was “This book would be vastly improved if the character was the next one murdered.”

Maybe the problem is me. In one case, the book got several lovely reviews and none from major reviewers mentioned the thing that was bothering me. Another was well into a series, so I’m assuming sales had been good enough for the publisher not to cut it off after the third book, which is generally the case.

I make it a policy not to call authors or books out when I haven’t enjoyed them. I could never be a book reviewer. I also don’t like lying. If I have something I didn’t like, I just won’t say anything. So I’m not going to identify the books here.

The point of my post is this: I can’t get past a major character not resonating with me in some fashion. The crux is that the person doesn’t have to wonderful or have flaw with which I can identify, but there has to be something that causes me to form an emotional bond with them. They have to make me feel something. They have to make me want to find out what happens to them — for good or ill.

I can get past somewhat weak writing (the nuts and bolts stuff), outlandish/unbelievable plot points, and even some huge clichés. What will stop me in my tracks it seems are main characters with whom I cannot believe/understand/sympathize.

Is there anyone out there who feels the same? Or is there some other deal-breaker for you?

CWA Daggers Dinner

I'm just back from the Daggers Dinner, the big event of the Crime Writers Association year when the celebrated Daggers are awarded for the best crime in a range of categories – historical, thriller, non-fiction, international, debut, short story – and then the Gold Dagger for the best crime book overall.
This year the winner was  Jane Harper for The Dry, published by Little Brown.

But the highest honour of all is the famous Diamond Dagger, presented for a career of ‘sustained excellence’ in writing crime and it is, of course, the most coveted. The first winner, in 1986, was Elmore Leonard and he has been followed by writers such as PD James, Eric Ambler, Ruth Rendell, Ed MacBain and more recently Lee Child and Peter James. It's a beautiful trophy, designed originally by Cartier.

This year's worthy winner was Ann Cleeves. Her two series, one set in Shetland and featuring Jimmy Perez, and the other set in the north of England and featuring Vera Stanhope, are hugely popular on TV as well as on the printed page.

The occasion itself was very stylish. Two hundred and fifty guests gathered in one of London's hotels – authors, publishers, agents, journalists, publicists – for fizz, a dinner and an excellent, entertaining and very self-deprecating speech by the man who wrote Death in Paradise. I don't know if you get it in America and Canada but it's a delightful, tongue-in-cheek TV series where an old-fashioned British detective, who still believes in gathering all the suspects together at the end for the denouement, finds himself in a tropical island where the police service isn't run in quite the same way as it is here in Britain. I'm addicted to it for Sunday evening viewing.

I've never been in the happy position of being on a Dagger shortlist – or is it unhappy? Getting the award is obviously wonderful, but oh dear, the nerves before the envelope is opened and the horrible necessity of appearing a good sport afterwards when it's not your name that comes out must make it a miserable evening.

So much for fame and glory! The rest of us could just raise our glasses to the winners and enjoy the evening.

Generation NaNoWriMo

Lately I was invited to speak, along with two other local authors--Cheryl Carpinello and Jerry Fabyanic--about our experiences as professional writers to students at the Rocky Heights Middle School. My sons are in their thirties, and so I have little recent experience with young teenagers. I was curious about our audience and before the talk I shared my thoughts with Judi Hoist, their teacher and faculty advisor. Obviously, things have changed since I was an adolescent. Demographers and sociologists like to group populations by age and tag them with attributes to differentiate them from their predecessors--BabyBoomers, Generation X, Y, Millennials, etc., Though the students at Rocky Heights fall outside the scope of Millennials (born between 1983 and 2000) but since they share many of the same cultural traits--access to the Internet, cell phones, social media--they are for the moment classified as Millennials.

My perceptions were framed by the whining I've heard from older generations about Millennials--that they're helpless without a connection to the Internet, that they're spoiled and feel eminently entitled, and they're clueless about the world. However grownups have been complaining about the younger generation since ancient times.

The children now love luxury.

They have bad manners, contempt for authority; 

they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.

Socrates

Plus I've seen how my sons and their peers have stepped up to their responsibilities and challenges as have all generations before them.

This particular group of students was from the school's NaNoWriMo club. What impressed me was that they not only knew about National Novel Writing Month, but they actively participated in the event and in writing year round. Before the talk, Hoist proudly showed me a dozen books written and published by her students. The examples were indie-published by Amazon and showed a level of craft and application that eludes many adult wannabe writers that I've met.

The session began with Hoist counting noses and briefing the group about our visit. They then filed into the library and took seats. Hoist handed out snacks the students munched on and this seemed to have calmed them down. I counted 40 students with only five boys among them, and while it might be easy to draw the conclusion that boys are not as academically oriented as girls, in fact, the robotics club was going on at the same time, and there the boy/girl ratio was reversed.

Carpinello, Fabyanic and I were allotted an hour and a half, and beforehand we worried that the session would drag along. But once the Q&A began, the students proved eager to ask detailed questions and quiz us about our takes on various aspects of writing and publishing. What we didn't do was talk down to the students since they had a surprisingly keen grasp of the subject. The Q&A further deepened my impression of what these young scribes were capable of. Their questions focused mostly on the technical aspects of writing: asking about when and why would you use 3rd POV versus 1st person POV, what should go into a prologue, when is too much exposition?

The time quickly passed and at the end we sold a few books. The girls were especially drawn to Carpinello's high fantasy stories. On the way out we passed a rehearsal for the school play, and those students were every bit as serious about their craft as were ours in the NaNoWriMo club.

My takeaway from all this? Anecdotes about slackers and losers among the next generation make for interesting but misleading news stories. The next wave of leaders and movers are diligently at work and getting ready to take control when their time comes.

Surprise!

 

Actually this meet the author poster from Poisoned Pen Press is the way I looked and felt by the time I finished my Kansas Tour this week. I gave five presentations and although the people are wonderful and easily some of the most attentive audiences anywhere--I always forget about the wind. The drive back to Colorado was just beastly.
It's been a whirlwind of a month. I went to Bouchercon in Canada and had lunch with all the Type M'ers who could make it to the conference. This trip was way too short. We were in Toronto and I didn't have time to do any sight-seeing.

And I'm still running around! I'll be on a plane tonight headed for Tucson for the Women Writing the West conference. My short story, "The Bucket" is a finalist for the Laura award. They will announce our places tomorrow at a special luncheon. I'm honored to be included with these amazing authors.

Monday night I learned that my book, Nicodemus: Post-Reconstruction Politics and Racial Justice in Western Kansas placed second in the Westerners International contest. I'm thrilled and frankly, quite amazed.

Now to get my head out of the clouds and settle down. I need to work on plot problems with Silent Sacrifices.

What’s My Back-Story?

John, here. On the heels of Donis’s insightful Oct. 19 post, I’m going to follow with a discussion of a technical aspect of fiction writing, one that took me years to grasp.

I was teaching a creative writing class, maybe a decade ago now, in Presque Isle, Maine, at the local community college. I had designed the course schedule to discuss characterization and dialogue early in the semester and then move on to structure and narrative tension. I used the exercise below, therefore, late in the semester and will never forget one student staying after class one night (we met on Wednesdays from 6 to 9 p.m.) to tell me the activity below was the exercise that brought everything together for him. And he insisted, “You need to begin the course with this. This is what beginners need to know.”

It’s been a long time since that conversation, but I never forgot it. And I’ve worked with enough novice writers over the years to know they’ll eventually grasp dialogue and characterization, but pacing and narrative tension may be the most nuanced skills of fiction writing. So if I can teach this early, I can save beginning writers a lot of time.

The exercise is below. If you try it, I’d love to see what you write. Feel free to email me at jcorrigan1970@gmail.com.

What’s My Back-Story? A Plotline Activity

Must every story be told in a linear narrative style? No way. Readers want a scene that allows them to figure out the story on their own. So how do we tell stories cinematically? By using scenes to convey the storyline. This allows the writer to use flashback sequences while starting in the middle of the action and continuously pushing the story forward.

Read the following plotline and determine which numbers (there are several, after all) at which you can begin. How will you include the information that came before your starting point? Must you include all of it?

Write a first- or third-person opening scene (narration and dialogue) beginning at one point on the line and dropping in the necessary previous material as the scene moves forward.

1. Mary Howard grew up in Readfield, Maine, the daughter of a doctor.
2. She went to UMaine at Orono, where she studied history, graduating with a 3.5 GPA, and met Steven Smith, a political science major, whom she married following graduation.
3. After graduation and one year of marriage, Mary dutifully helps Steven launch his political career.
4. Mary, now in her mid-30s, helps Steven becomes a Maine State Legislator and raises their three kids.
5. Unbeknownst to Mary, Steven begins an affair with a fellow Maine State Legislator.
6. Mary gets a phone call from an intern in Steven’s office, who tells her of the affair.
7. Mary confronts Steven. This takes every ounce of courage she has. In 15 years of marriage, she has morphed from the confident, bubbly Mary Howard, to the housewife of powerful Maine State Legislator Steven Smith. As his career has taken off, her identity somehow got lost.
8. Mary listens as Steven tells her the affair is just “a sideline” that “this is how some political marriages are.”
9. Mary packs her bags, grabs her kids (now ages 11, 9, and 7), and walks outside, determined to start a new life.
10. She drives to Santa Fe, New Mexico, a place she’s only seen on TV.
11. In Santa Fe, she enrolls the kids in school, gets a job in a bookstore, and hires attorney Phil Rogers, who is 35 and single.
12. Mary doesn’t know what to do when Rogers asks her to dinner six months after she’s been in Santa Fe and following what was a surprisingly easy out-of-court settlement with Steven. She wonders what message a date would send to her kids. Would her acceptance tell them that they are all starting over? That it’s okay to move on? Or would they think she’s callus?     

# # #

Halloween in My Neighborhood

I'm in the middle of writing a story set around Halloween in my fictional town of Vista Beach. (Aurora Anderson #4) Whenever I walk around my own beach city, I look for little things I can put in that add verisimilitude to my story. Recently, the husband and I took a tour of the neighborhood and looked at the Halloween decorations. Here are some of the ones we found.

The first thing I noticed: giant spiders have invaded the city! They are super popular as decorations. I’m not terribly fond of spiders and, sure as heck, wouldn’t want to encounter one of these.

Skeletons are prevalent as well, but this is the first time I’ve seen a dog skeleton.

This guy is just hanging around. He has a friend who usually sits on the back of a golf cart that’s parked on the street. Alas, the friend was off on a drive so I couldn’t get a pic of him.

And the usual ghosts and ghoulies.

Will the real writer stand up?

I used to think that ghost writers only wrote for people who were not writers, such as footballers, reality TV stars, celebrity chefs and the like. But I recently realised this was the understanding of the uninitiated. James Patterson, for example, no longer writes his own novels. He hands a plot outline and a bunch of character biographies to a team of writers who do the line-by-line stuff. Presumably, this is how he's able to produce a book a month. Other big names, such as Stephen King and Peter Straub, are apparently at it too. Oh yes, and Wilbur Smith. Just the other month Mr Smith signed a contract for eight books with Harper Collins. He will contribute the plots for said books but a team of ghost writers will “flesh” the stories out.

I am disappointed. This smacks of cheating and, as my sister always says, no one likes a cheater. Being untruthful about who is the real writer of the words demeans both the author and the ghost writer and treats the reader with contempt. But when I told a writer friend this she said I was being harsh. After all, the big named writers still produce the golden acorns from which the story tree grows. Without their diamonds in the dust heaps there would be no stories. She has a point. As we writers know, having an original, fresh idea is worth its weight in gold. Or at least, it's worth as much as someone is prepared to pay for it, because guess what? Some famous writers can't even be bothered with plot ideas. Ideas take time, so why wait for one when you can buy a bunch instead? It seems the latest development in the book world is for big named writers to buy up the plots of existing novels by not-so-famous writers and pass them on to their writing teams to rewrite. Voila, a novel is born – again and again and again.

Now I am doubly disappointed. Surely, putting your name to a novel that you haven't contributed to creatively in any way, contradicts the very thing we writers are supposed to be about ie: the revealing of a truth? This is breaking the unspoken rule between the writer and the reader and at what cost? As more and more plot ideas are bought up and recycled by anonymous writing teams, isn't there a danger that the novels will become the same? What of us lesser-famous writers? How can we compete? It's hard enough to earn a living from our writing with our royalties being slashed to a small percentage of the book “sale” price, who out of us can afford to buy a plot line and writing team, even if we wanted to? 

What do you think? Is this the beginning of the end of choice for readers? Will we not-so-famous writers be out of a job sooner than we think? Or am I being a tad melodramatic? Would you sell the plot line to one of your successful novels (after withdrawing it from the market, of course) to a big name? Would you care if a famous writer took credit for a novel you painstakingly wrote with love? What if you found out that your favourite writer is in fact a bunch of other writers, would you carry on reading? 

Why We Write

On Tuesday evening, I was honored to be the guest author at the Literacy Volunteers of Rensselaer County Authors Night. This is an annual event when learners and tutors share the stories that they have written. I was asked to speak for 10-15 minutes before they came up one by one to read their true stories or poetry that had been collected in a small volume. My challenge was to come up with a short talk that would be relevant.

I decided to talk about why writers write. I did a Google search for comments from writers and surveys, looked at a few journal articles, and thought about why I write. Those of us who write often have a variety of reasons for picking up a pen or sitting down in front of a computer -- or these days -- dictating into a device connected to our computer. The reasons we give vary in how they are ranked by each of us.

In general, those who write speak of:
a. the need to share thoughts, ideas, or feelings
b. being compelled to write because it is a part of their identity
c. wanting to inform and/or educate
d. wanting to influence opinion and/or debate
e. wanting to share the world of their imaginations
f. giving voice to those who have no voice
g. writing because they are required to do so by work or school
h. writing because of ego, feeling they have something important to share
i. using writing to establish themselves as experts in their field
j. using writing to memorialize people and events
k. using writing to discover who they are
l. writing to win recognition, and/or fame and fortune

I didn't mention all of these reasons in my talk. Many of them overlap, and I was more interested in the roles of writing in self-discovery, sharing ideas and feelings, educating and informing, giving  voice, and sharing the worlds of our imagination. I saw some nods in the audience, so I hope I was speaking to what the learners and their tutors had experienced.

The real stars of the evening shared where they had come from (as adult learners, some of them immigrants). After they had read, the moderator asked each a question about their experiences or their goals for the future. Their stories reminded me again of the power of words to transform lives and connect people. 

Then She Said...

Since mid-September, I, Donis, have been facilitating a creative writing workshop for emeritus professors at Arizona State University. This is the second time I’ve done this workshop, and it’s been an eye-opener for me. Professors know all about the rules of grammar and spelling and the like, but people who have spent their lives writing scientific treatises and keeping a professional, unbiased distance from the reader have a hard time letting go and putting action and emotion into their writing. Not to say that they don’t have some clever story ideas! Wrangling students for thirty years will give you plenty of material.

For the past couple of weeks we’ve been discussing effective ways to write dialog. Hemingway said that dialog is not real speech, it’s the illusion of real speech. I’m sure, Dear Reader, that you’ve read Elmore Leonard’s admonitions that one should try to never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue, or that one should never use an adverb to modify the verb “said”.

On his website, Tim Hallinan suggests that instead, the writer “use body language: Dialogue broken up by description of what characters are doing provides context and also projects an image. When someone other than our protagonist is speaking in a scene, what is our protagonist doing? Are her hands at rest? Does she listen intently? Does she squirm in the chair. Drum her fingers? Twist her hair? We convey a lot without saying a word.”

I like that idea.

For instance:
"Nonsense," Martha interjected, is a perfectly acceptable sentence, but if I were a fly on the wall, I might see what Martha is doing when she says this. One might try something like, Martha straightened, indignant. “Nonsense."

Rather than "Question?" Beth offered, try, Beth held up a finger (or leaned forward, or tapped the table). “Question?"

And rather than "Okay, Beth. Ask it," Joel replied, consider having Joe sigh, roll his eyes, flop back in his chair, then, "Okay, Beth. Ask it."

You can come up with better examples, but you get the picture.

Of course the "rules" are really only suggestions.

As far as the current popular idea in publishing of only using "said"...I use "noted" and "agreed" and "asked" and the like plenty of times myself. But I do think that the take-away points are: 1) don't use descriptors that draw attention to themselves, like, "he asservated", because that puts the author in the picture, and 2) if you can describe the situation, body language, etc., in lieu of a dialog tag, that's the best way to let the reader see what's going on and draw her own conclusions rather than having the author tell her.