What’s at Stake?

“More danger,” my agent said, after we’d been discussing a draft of a novel I sent her, two weeks ago.

We’d spent 30 minutes on the phone, discussing what I hope is the first book in a new series –– reviewing the setting, the family of characters, and the plot, which hinges on an event that takes place 5 years before the book opens.

How far would you go to clear your name? Can revenge be justified? These are the questions that drive the book.

Danger is hard to define, at least for me it is. I don’t write thrillers. I write mysteries. “Danger” need not be omnipresent to keep me going as a reader. In fact, I like ebb and flow, as a reader. So “tension” makes sense to me. Something tugs me along. It could be a single question. “I want to see how it will end,” I told my daughter the other day when she noticed I wasn’t listening as she talked over the movie.

Physical danger doesn’t interest me as much as the threat of it does. I don’t need a fight scene or a shoot out. I enjoy the puzzle and the sense of impending danger more than the actual event. Robert B. Parker said the compelling thing about westerns is when the cowboy chooses not to draw his gun. Why not draw the gun? What does s/he know that I do not?

I just started reading The Chain and, yes, there is a murder early in the book and, yes, the book moves very fast, but what has me hooked is this question: How far is a parent willing to go to get their child back? One single –– albeit a very compelling one –– question is enough to carry me through the book.

So I want to replace the phrase “need for more danger” with the question “what’s at stake?”

Isn’t that really what narrative tension is all about?

*

As an aside, I'm wondering, Where the summer went? I left Massachusetts at 3 a.m. on June 6 for our new home in Michigan and arrived 15 hours later, U-Haul and dog in tow. Two days later, I visited a surgeon, began a new job June 16, had (minor) stomach surgery July 26, and revised the novel mentioned above. After the craziness of the past 6 months, I want fresh eyes on it before we submit, so I'm having an editor review it. This is something I've never done before. In fact, my ego wouldn't have allowed it. I've published nine book, right? But I want as much feedback as I can get before my agent shows it to the world, so I'm eager to see what this retired publisher says. I'll keep you posted.