What It's Like to Hire a PI

 By Catherine Dilts

This summer, I hired a Private Investigator. The experience had little in common with what I’ve seen in movies or read in novels. This being a rather mundane missing person’s case, there were no late night stake-outs and absolutely no gun play.

Me, being the customer, didn’t fit the classic mold of a glamorous redhead puffing on an opera-length cigarette holder with gloved fingers. I was wearing baggy sweats when I contacted the PI via email, and my mousey hair was pulled back into a messy bun with a cheap plastic clip.

Nope, no glamour. Just my family needing to locate a person none of us had heard from in years. My father passed away in March. His second wife preceded him in death by several years. In his will, Dad left a bequest to his estranged step-son. Before my brother, the executor of the estate, could finish the legal paperwork, we needed to find our step-brother. Let’s call him “James.”

Step One: DIY investigation. We began with my brother requesting a paralegal in his law office attempt to track down James. That quickly reached a dead end. My brother decided since I write mysteries, I could find our step-brother. So I tried. I started by contacting James’ aunt. She hadn’t heard from him in a couple years.

I was very concerned about throwing out a “you’ve inherited money” message to potential strangers. Aren’t we warned constantly to beware the dangers of the internet and social media? In fact, this may be why my brother’s and my efforts failed. Would you open an email or respond to a social media message promising you an unexpected, if modest, reward? What if the wrong person answered? Would I end up with creepy stalkers demanding money from me?

Step Two: Hiring a PI. I told my brother I was uncomfortable with the idea of contacting sketchy potential strangers, and my efforts to connect with who I thought was the real James went unanswered. But I did know a Private Investigator from my mystery writing group. Anxious to close the estate, my brother gave me the go-ahead.

Enter Steve Pease, aka author Michael Chandos, our own Type M for Murder contributor, and an honest-to-goodness licensed PI. He quoted me a retainer price my brother approved. We hoped the case wouldn’t become too lengthy or complicated. 

My first lesson in hiring a PI was that the more info you already have, the less time it will take to track down the missing person. Less time = less money. I did mention the bequest was modest? My family didn’t want to spend our entire inheritance trying to find James. “Oh great, we found you. But we spent what all of us would have inherited on locating you. Oops. Our bad.”

Thankfully, we had some info. His last known couple of addresses and phone numbers. His mother’s sisters’ contact info. What we didn’t have was James’s social security number or employer. We were reasonably certain he was in Colorado. If he was still alive. Or maybe (sorry James) in prison.

The hunt began.

Middle Age & The Madness of Art

At the Bangor Pubic Library in Bangor, Maine 

It’s the first of November, and I’m in Maine watching orange and bronze leaves carpet the scraggly grass of the front lawn. Maine’s seasons come in distinct palettes. Cold, white winters. Mud-brown and tender green springs. Blue skies and lakes and florals of summer. And the warm reds, bronzes, and yellows of fall. 

As I head into the middle-aged, downward slope of my fifties, I’m all too aware of the changing seasons of life, as well. The writing goals of young to mid-adulthood, once seeming so achievable, have either mellowed or have become greatly tempered by reality. Time, which used to stretch so deliciously into the future, shortens. I realize that since I haven’t hit those big goals by now, it’s more than likely I never will. Yikes. 

Fortunately, with age also comes perspective. Wisdom, even. Things change. Life gives you opportunities you never expected but also throws up roadblocks couldn’t anticipate. You learn to take things as they come. 

I’ve decided to approach this time of life as an opportunity not only to take stock of my accomplishments but also come to terms with my youthful goal of being a professional writer. 

I mean, I AM a professional. I’ve been published and paid as a short story writer, a journalist, a memoir ghostwriter, and a novelist. However, I have not achieved my goal of “making a living” by the pen. It’s harder to do so since the advent of the ebook and Amazon/KDP, and if you don’t believe me, check out the recent Write-Minded podcast with Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner interviewing Michael Castleman whose new book, The Untold Story of Books: A Writer’s History of Book Publishing, gives all the stats (plus wonderful historical perspective on the industry.) https://podcast.shewrites.com/optimism-and-pessimism-in-book-publishing/

My dream of being a financially-successful author probably would have come to fruition by now if it was going to, so now I’m forced to contemplate what, if anything, I can hope to accomplish, writing-wise, in the second half of my life. 

As often happens, a book I happened upon addressed this issue exactly when I needed it. While visiting my parents in the central part of the state, I went to the cellar to look at some old books stored down there and rediscovered a first edition of May Sarton’s Plant Dreaming Deep I’d picked up somewhere and forgot about. What a treasure! I devoured it over the course of two days and came away feeling refreshed.

Sarton wrote the book in 1968 (the year I was born!) when she was 55 years old and was going through a similar mid-life shift in perspective. She’d just upped and bought an old farmhouse in New Hampshire. Reading her musings on middle age and writing was like reading my own thoughts only in a 1950’s poetic syntax. 

She writes, “The crisis of middle age has to do as much as anything with a catastrophic anxiety about time itself. How has one managed to come to the meridian and still be so far from the real achievement one had dreamed possible at twenty?” She goes on to say, “One does not give up if one is a writing animal, and if one has, over the years, created the channel of routine.”

Aha! I think. I, too, am a writing animal! Perhaps with a little dredging of the routine channel (which to be honest is a little clogged these days), I can continue, like Sarton, to be “happy while I’m writing.” The poet, essayist, and novelist then muses about how her writing falls somewhere in between the critically-acclaimed literary and the popular fiction of her day, which she thinks hampers her success, and concludes that she’ll just hold out hope that her entire body of work will one day be seen and esteemed as a whole. 

Sarton also quotes Henry James: “We work in the dark–we do what we can–we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” [from The Middle Years]

Oh, May Sarton! Oh, Henry James! Thank you for writing, for sharing your gifts with those of us who came to this writing life behind you. I’ll take comfort in your words and dig my channel of routine and stop worrying about financial success. I’ll build my small body of work. I’ll be that writing animal, burrowing along, doing what comes natural to me as breathing. I’ll revel in the madness of art, and that will have to be reward enough.

Read more of Shelley’s thoughts on art, writing, and life in her author newsletter, Pink Dandelions, on Substack. https://shelleyburbank.substack.com/about

Why do we write what we write?

Happy Halloween! I have some scary questions for you today.

What leads us to write what we write? And in an ever-shrinking market, what should lead us to write what we write?

These are a couple of a handful of questions I've pondered for a while.

I wrote five books set on the PGA Tour. They were published by a university press, and the sales figures indicated as much. Then I wrote three books featuring a female U.S. Border Patrol agent. The Peyton Cote series was published by a small mystery house that went out of business shortly thereafter (not entirely due, I hope, to me). I’ve had a starred review in PW, but my sales numbers will tell you “high concept” is not my bread and butter. Character- and setting-driven novels are what I write. And it’s getting harder and harder to publish them, which leads me back to my questions.

What drives us to write what we write?

And what should drive us?

My wife, a human resources specialist who sometimes sees the world very differently than I do, said to me the other day, “Figure out what sells.”

“Um,” I said, “it doesn’t work that way.”

Right?

It was a short conversation. I couldn’t explain it to her.

Am I right?

“Writing doesn’t work that way” sounds like pretentious artist-speak. I live outside Detroit. This city has gotten very wealthy by figuring out what people want and giving it to them. I once did a book signing next to a NYT best-seller and heard them ask a reader what they wanted to see happen in the series. Maybe the writer was being conversational; maybe they were planning to incorporate the reader’s ideas. I never followed up to ask.

But, as the market shrinks and fewer people are reading, the questions linger for me: What drives us to write what we write? And how do we make that determination?

Happy Halloween!

 by Sybil Johnson

I can’t believe tomorrow is Halloween! The year has sped by. 

When I was growing up, Halloween wasn’t as big a deal as it is now. Sure, kids went out trick or treating and there were Halloween parties at my grade school. I swear, though, that people didn’t decorate like they do now. 

I really enjoyed the pictures in Charlotte’s post yesterday. I have seen decorations around here, but I don’t think anything as complicated as those pics. Here are a couple I encountered this year. I’m pretty sure these 3 ladies are up to no good. 

And just how big would this skeleton be if it came out of the ground!? 

 

We don’t decorate the outside of our house, but I do have my decorations inside. They consist mostly of items I’ve painted or crocheted or macramed... You get the idea. They all tend toward the cuter side. I am not fond of gore. As you can tell, I have a thing for gnomes.

 

 

In the cozy mystery world, there are a lot of books set around Halloween. I love reading them. I wrote one myself for my Aurora Anderson series called Designed For Haunting. Since my series takes place in a fictional LA County beach city, I looked for what’s happening around Halloween in the real LA beach cities for ideas on places to set scenes. We have a silent movie theater in El Segundo, not far from where I live, that plays the silent 1925 version of The Phantom of the Opera pretty much every year. There’s also a pumpkin race in Manhattan Beach every year. I created my own versions of each of these for my book. When I was looking for a ghost legend I could use in the book, I researched local legends and found something I could use. If you're writing a holiday mystery of any kind, it's always good to find the unique things that happen in the place it's set.

I hope you all have a fun and safe Halloween. Why not try your hand at writing a Halloween story?

Try Seasonal

 by Charlotte Hinger

I have a neighbor who goes all out for Halloween. Their display is enormous. I'm intrigued by the figures every year. A lot of them are motion activated. For instance this dead woman holding a dead baby begins to rock. It's hideously frightening. 

It's a funny thing how people love to be scared. Steven King has written a wealth of books that are based on the occult or issues that scare the daylights out of people. The first scary book I remember reading was Washinton Irving's Ichabod Crane. And my Halloween neighbor has an image for that.

And don't trust this bar tender. He offers you a drink when you approach, but don't risk it. Rumor has it that he's up to no good. 

If you would like to write westerns with a specialized appeal, how about this dude for your cover?

Editors love stories that are appropriate for a special event or a season. If you have one in mind, go to work. Submit to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine or Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine right away for consideration for next year's fall issue. Yes, magazines work that far ahead. In fact, now is a good time to polish up a story for new year's Christmas issue. 

Submissions timed for a particular holiday just might tickle the editor's fancy

Hemingway’s Rules for Writing

 By Steve Pease writing as Michael Chandos

"My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way."

 

Earnest Hemingway developed his writing style writing for the Kansas City Star newspaper.  Their editorial style stressed short, concise and efficient writing, that made the best use of limited page space and minimized costs.

 

His Rules:  1. Use short sentences.  2. Avoid the use of adjectives, especially such extravagant ones as splendid, gorgeous, grand, magnificent, etc.  3. Eliminate every superfluous word.  4. Try to preserve the atmosphere of the speech in your quotation.  5. Both simplicity and good taste suggest home rather than residence and lives rather than resides.  6. Never use old slang.  7.Use revolver or pistol, not gun, unless a shotgun is meant.  8. Don’t say "He had his leg cut off in an accident." He wouldn’t have it done for anything.  9. He died of heart disease, not heart failure - everybody dies of heart failure.  10. Use vigorous English.

 

Newspaper ideals, yes, but fiction can learn from them. Use the right, best word. Short sentences. Don’t flaunt your English "weaving" skills with half-page long sentences and complex phrases. Write with vigorous, emotional language, and you won’t need an adjective or (shudder) an adverb. Be clear what your sentence says. Don’t get cute with your use of slang. Hammett uses some street slang, but it’s in the cadence of the sentence, not in spelling school "skul".

Other Hemingway quotes:

"Write the best story that you can and write it as straight as you can." A Moveable Feast

"Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the baroque is over." Death in the Afternoon

“Find what gave you the emotion; what the action was that gave you the excitement. Then, write it down making it clear so the reader will see it too and have the same feeling that you had." Monologue to the Maestro

"Try and write straight English, never using slang except in dialogue and then only when unavoidable."  From a letter to his sister

"Never confuse movement with action." Advice to Marlene Dietrich

“You see I’m trying in all my stories to get the feeling of actual life across - not to just depict life - or criticize it - but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing." Letter to his father

“Keep them people, people, people, and don’t let them get to be symbols.” Letter to John Dos Passos

“Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over." Advice to a writer

“On the Star you were forced to learn to write a simple declarative sentence. This is useful advice to anyone." Paris Review interview

 

“Write as long as you can live.” Green Hills of Africa

The Call

Twenty years ago this month, I got "The Call," meaning the phone call I received from my agent informing me that HarperCollins had offered a contract on my manuscript. For a work like mine, an urban fantasy, they wanted a series and could I write that? Even though I had no idea where to take my character from this first book, I answered, "Of course!"

I had been primed for this moment from my experience in Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, listening to their pros share anecdotes of triumph and caution after receiving their Call. I knew this contract was but one step forward on my path as a writer, an important step but a single step nonetheless. I knew more work waited: establishing a website, making inroads on social media (MySpace back then), contacting bookstores, reaching out to cons to get on panels now that I was a published writer!

I'd heard other writers explain how "The Call" had changed their lives. However, for some, all was not good, because after receiving the call, the deal fell through, which painfully delayed and detoured their writing journey. At the time, I didn't see The Call as altering my life much since I was in a holding pattern waiting for the chance to break free. I was living in the basement of an ex-girlfriend's house, having been laid off during a reduction-in-force (the second time in my professional career, the third time if you count being mustered out of the Army), and earning my keep by hopscotching from job-to-job. Fixing forklifts, delivering lost luggage, newspapers, pizzas, working in a car dealership. The offer was a three-book contract for a "Nice Deal." It wasn't a big pile of money but enough to rent a place of my own and pay the bills for a while. My life was back on track.

Because of changes in publishing, The Call has since lost much of its significance. Self-publishing has evolved to the point that allows writers to find success without the need for a NY publisher or an agent. Even those traditionally published often opt for a hybrid model to survive.

Considering my single-minded focus on finishing that first book, I saw the forthcoming contract as inevitable, but looking back, it had definitely changed my life for the better, and I have to acknowledge that for me, the stars had aligned and it was the Universe that had given me The Call.

Link Arms and Dance

Donis here today. As I've mentioned more than once on this blog, I'm in the middle of acting as Writer in Residence for the Glendale, AZ, Public Library system through the fall. This coming Monday, Oct. 28, from 6:30 p.m. until 7:45, I'll be conducting a workshop on Characters and characterization (come by and see me if you're in the area). These workshops and consults, plus trying to finish a new book, are all very time consuming, which is my excuse for having not spent a lot of time thinking about what I'm going to write for this blog today. Instead, I'm going to share a couple of important realizations that have struck me recently.

My husband Don is an old* movie aficionado, and we have two-person film festivals at our house with some regularity. This week we rewatched all the Godfather movies over three nights. I've lost count of how many times I've seen these movies. They are like any great art in that they can be indulged in over and over and you can find something new and profound in them every time. This time I noticed that in Godfather II, Michael's bodyguard is also his valet. The man serves Michael tea, then goes off to commit a murder for his boss. I think it would be very handy to have your own personal valet/assassin. That's when you'd know you've really made it.

My second and more important revelation came yesterday. I was relating to Don the latest email I'd received from my sister, who is traveling in Europe. She and her husband had just gone through Sarajevo, and she made it sound like a beautiful and haunted place.

"I went through there on the train in '69," Don told me. "In fact that's where I saw the people dancing on the platform."

A family was at the station to see their young man off on the train. He went around and kissed them all, then the family linked arms in a circle and danced him on his way.

This is a tradition that should be revived and universally spread. It would be a much better world if it were. So I'm serving notice right now to anyone I drop off at the airport in the future. Prepare to be danced on your way.

_________________

*old movies, not old Don

Leaping into the void

 As usual, recent posts by my fellow Type M'ers contain so much food for thought and inspiration for posts of my own. What a wealth of writing wisdom and experience we have in our group!

One theme that runs through many of the posts is how our writing constantly evolves. We are always striving for excellence and innovation. The same old same old is death to a writer. How soon before readers talk about "phoning it in" and "repeating herself"? Ideas and writing styles that we previously rejected, like omniscient point of view and present tense,  are revisited and add a fresh excitement to our work. I am no exception. I am always searching for new twists and perspectives, particularly for my police procedural series which by its nature has a certain structure and is confined to a specific setting. Inspector Green can't go running off investigating a murder in Botswana, and he's unlikely to get involved in a jewelry heist instead of a murder. Murder is his domain. Whenever readers playfully suggest I take him off to Italy (tax credit!) where he gets himself in the middle of an international theft ring, I've always said the police don't operate that way.

But recently I've been asking myself why not? Why not leap outside the box? I actually did just that when, after a series of standard murder cases set in Ottawa, I decided to throw Inspector Green to the wolves, literally. Green is a city boy who's most comfortable in the dusty back alleys of the teeming inner city, so I sent him up into the wilderness of the Northwest Territories to brave the legendary Nahanni River on the trail not of a murderer but of his missing teenage daughter. I had a lot of fun writing THE WHISPER OF LEGENDS, and now I am once again wondering how I can shake things up, not just for Inspector Green but also Amanda Doucette. A certain predictability has crept into the Doucette series as well, even though each story is set in a different place and has a different set of characters and challenges.

My next book, SHIPWRECKED SOULS, is in the final printing stage, and it's time to turn my thoughts to the next project I try to make each book better than the last, but I feel myself at a crossroads, looking for an idea that will take one or both of them in a exciting new direction.

I have an idea, which I'm not yet ready to commit to public view, but I'd love to hear from readers and writers alike about their reaction to well-established series being taken in a new direction. What have you tried? What works? What lands with a thud?

The End

 by Catherine Dilts

The first killing freeze is late to arrive this year. My garden, lacking access to weather apps, has already slowed way down.

The tomatoes have quit producing, not realizing they could have gone on another couple weeks. The cucumber vines shriveled, the leaves turning dry despite regular watering. Instead of one sudden death in the form of a hard frost or early snow, things are winding down. The garden stumbles gradually toward The End.

In writing, two projects reached The End recently. That moment is glorious. Finally completed! Time to sell the books to an eager publisher, make a fortune, and move on to write the next bestseller!

Not exactly. Both novels were brutalized by beta readers. Am I being too sensitive? Maybe just a little. Like the garden, I'm not ready to give up yet. I received the most incredibly helpful comments on the big novel-of-my-heart from my critique partner. I’m getting a grasp on how to do revisions that will convince the rest of the world what a magnificent story I’ve created.

The second project is an ambitious YA co-authored with my daughter. After beta readers didn’t seem to grasp our brilliance, she became depressed. Almost ready to give up. Almost. Then something snapped. She’s coming up with amazing ideas that are giving life to characters, and placing them in ridiculously perilous situations. All the plotlines are weaving together with the strength of a bridge cable.

There’s hope these books will make it into the marketplace eventually. Soon? This rewriting and polishing is a hard task. The goal is in sight. Hope is reborn.

New life when you’ve just about given up. Like my two potted miniature cherry tomato plants. They are the only tomatoes still pushing out blossoms. They might create one last crop for me.

The End in gardening involves harvesting the produce, and doing something with it. Drying, canning, or freezing. (Canning jars ready for pickle relish.) Cleaning up the beds and containers before they're covered with the eventual blanket of snow.

The End in writing frequently results in realizing you’re not finished. There remains more editing, polishing, and review by trusted critique partners or beta readers. The absolute final step is doing something with it: sending it out into the world.

Each phase of gardening and writing is its own special season. Each requires a different kind of energy. And the courage to keep watering that bed if it promises to produce one last crop.

Look at Me! (But I Don't Want to be Famous)

Hi, I'm Shelley! Nice to meet you. 

If there’s one aspect of this writing life that wickedly grins and winks it’s baleful eye at me, it’s promotion. Some authors might dream of being invited to appear on Good Morning America or give a keynote address at a mystery convention, but the idea leaves me cold as Maine frost on a tomato vine in October.  

There are authors who play around on Tik Tok with wild abandon, revel in each new trend on Instagram, and joyfully post to Facebook in hopes of scoring a big viral hit with a reel or meme, even if it’s off-topic, in order to gain name-recognition and maybe a following. They fantasize about big-time fame along the lines of Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. 

I get it. When I was younger that kind of recognition appealed to me, as well. I enjoyed “sharing” my life with people. I didn’t mind being an open book. In my 40s, I took to blogging with abandon. It felt like writing in my journal, only in public. Facebook was fun. I liked connecting with my friends and family and meeting new people to “friend.” Even Instagram seemed enjoyable with all those photos and slick aesthetics.

Eventually, as I became more focused on a writing career, gaining a following seemed a feasible way to make sales once I had books to sell. I thought it might be fun to be a little famous, to be a little bit Stephanie Meyers walking the red carpet after her books-turned-movies shot her into the stratosphere. 

But now? I just want to write. And get paid for it.

That’s the rub, isn’t it? In order to make any sort of living as a novelist (even a substandard living that doesn’t even compare to working the counter at a fast-food joint) we must promote ourselves. Most of us can’t hope to find our readers if we don’t put ourselves out there in some way, and the most cost-effective way to do that is to set up free social media accounts and post madly day after day after day. 

So I do it. 

I talk into my phone to make videos to share on Instagram and Facebook. I create little graphics on Canva to hopefully draw eyeballs to my “uplifting and encouraging” Monday Motivation posts. I share photos of my trips hither, thither, and yon in hopes of “engaging” my audience. I add music to snaps of pretty flowers and foliage. I share my book covers, review quotes, even photos of my “outfits of the day” because my female sleuth character, Olivia Lively, is a private investigator with a closet full of fashionable clothes and accessories. 

LOOK AT ME!” I scream with the rest of them online. Inside, however, I’m whispering, “But I don’t want to be famous.” 

Maybe it’s time I start honoring the whisper more than the scream.  

____

Note: Thank you to the Type M for Murder community for inviting me to share my thoughts on the writing life. I’ve been working on my craft for 40 years, since about age 16, when I decided writing books for a living sounded pretty sweet. The industry, meanwhile, has gone through a huge transition to ebooks and indie publishing, aided and abetted by the rise of social media companies, and the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve come to understand how publishing works and for whom. I’m happy to share what I know, what I’m thinking about it all, and my ideas for navigating the waters. If there’s a topic you’d like to know more about, drop me a line at shelley@shelleyburbank.com and I’ll take a stab at it. 

To learn more about me in the meantime, check out my Substack newsletter, PINK DANDELIONS and at my website ShelleyBurbank.com

Present Tense?

First, apologies. I have been away far too long. My day job got very demanding, leaving me two free hours a day, which I have spent writing fiction –– and becoming delinquent to my Type M commitment. But I am back.

Now onward.

About a year ago, I wrote a post considering when the present tense was suitable for novel-length fiction. I want to return to that topic. Last spring, I was 50 pages into a novel when I started reading "The Maid," by Nita Prose. The novel features the first-person voice of Molly Gray. It is written in present tense. (I had toyed with present tense previously when working on a script, and I love to read the screenplay to the pilot for Breaking Bad.) But I had never written anything in a sustained present-tense voice.

However, Nita Prose got me thinking.

So I went back to my opening 50 pages and reworked them to present tense. Immediately, I liked the writing. I had always heard that present tense asks too much of readers. They can’t sustain it. Yet I liked the voice. Liked the pace. Found it wasn’t too much (for my advanced readers anyway). My agent read it and liked it. So I continued.

One thing I liked immediately: present tense cuts out the fat –– fewer to-be verbs (“had” is almost completely wiped out. I’m 170 pages in (40,000 words), and I think it’s working.

I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on using present tense in fiction.

Welcome Back, Suspense Magazine!

 by Sybil Johnson

You may remember that I did a post a few weeks back about Mystery Magazine ceasing publication after the September 2024 issue. They might not be around anymore, but another magazine that closed down publication of its pdf version is now coming back!

Welcome back, Suspense Magazine!

According to their Facebook page, “...starting in January 2025, Suspense Magazine will be producing a digital magazine for FREE! The magazine will run quarterly. We will have more educational articles from bestselling authors, with tips and tricks to make you a more successful writer. Reviews, features and so much more will be included. Also Suspense Radio is back on the air, interviewing the authors you want to hear from! We post the interviews on our website and also you can subscribe on Spotify, Apple Music and many other podcast sites, simply by searching Suspense Radio!”

They are also open to submissions for short stories and their publishing company, Suspense Publishing, is now open to submissions. For details on submissions and anything else to do with the magazine see their website. They are also looking for reviewers. 

It’s nice to see something coming back instead of going away.

Tell, Don't Show

by Charlotte Hinger

One of the most misunderstood "rules" in writing successful novels is the instruction to "Show, don't tell." Sometimes a story moves more quickly when the writer uses the limited omniscience viewpoint. An engaging narrative voice using descriptive details can jump start mysteries. 

One of my favorite book about the craft of writing is The Successful Novelist by David Morrell. It includes an excellent chapter on viewpoint. He describes his struggles with the beginning of his novel, First Blood. The book is a literary novel, by the way. He warns readers it's nothing like the movie. And it isn't.

He tried limited third person through Rambo's eyes. It didn't work. He tried alternating third person between Rambo and Teasle, the relentless policeman. He still wasn't happy with the beginning. Then he came up with this:

His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew, standing by the pump of a gas station on the outskirts of  Madison, Kentucky. He had a long heavy beard, and his hair was hanging down over his ears to his neck, and he had his hand out trying to thumb a ride from a car that was stopped at the pump. 

Other best-selling authors begin books with limited omniscience.  

Consider this beginning from Tana French's best seller, In the Woods:  

Picture a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film set in a small-town 1950s. This is none of Ireland's subtle seasons mixed for a connoisseur's palate. . . ." 

Of the beginning of Elizabeth George's novel, A Place of Hiding:

Santa Ana winds were no friends of photography, but that was something you could not tell an egomanical architect who believed his entire reputation rested upon capturing for posterity--and for Architectural Digest--fifty-two thousand square feet of unfinished hillside sprawl today. 

In my historical novel, Come Spring, one of my early paragraphs began:

She was a frail watercolor of a woman, very slight, with yellow hair and pale, sensitive blue eyes that could become pridefully unreadable in an instant. In another setting she would have been lovely but the prairie sun was too strong for her. It bleached her out--her hair, her skin, her very soul--with its harshness.  

Morrell recommends experimenting with different points of view. 

One rule that I consider set in stone is this: If something works, it works.