Keeping Track

Right now I’m looking for a sentence. Not just any old sentence—the first sentence of my WIP. Sometime when I was working on the final edits to A Palette for Murder I thought of the perfect sentence for the next book. I wrote it down in a safe place so I wouldn’t lose it. Trouble is, I don’t remember where that “safe place” is. It could be anywhere.

I tend to write down my thoughts in random places on pretty much anything—Post-it notes, envelopes, travel brochures, stray pieces of paper. I’ve even written a short note on my hand when nothing else was available. (Hey, it’s washable!) I always intend to transfer these gems somewhere more permanent, but they don’t always make it. I’m a lot like my amateur sleuth, Aurora Anderson, in this respect. She learned her lesson in Fatal Brushstroke when a Post-it note she’d written something on ended up where it shouldn’t. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet learned mine.

So now I’ve started writing everything to do with a story in blank notebooks I pick up all over the place. Okay, mostly at Disneyland. I’m hoping I’ll lose less that way.

I may have problems keeping track of notes, but I don’t have a problem keeping track of the timeline for my books. I’ve got a system for that.

In a past life, I worked as a script supervisor on a handful of student films. That’s the person responsible for preserving continuity while filming—within a scene as well as between scenes. As you might guess, there’s a lot to remember so script supervisors use all kinds of forms to keep track of important information. When I started writing mysteries, I realized some of those forms could be repurposed to do the same for a book.

One of my script supervisor duties was to create a list of “one-liners”. Essentially, these are one line descriptions of what happens in each scene. In the course of working on those, I also noted down the time within the story, i.e. when a scene takes place in relation to other scenes.

I modified the Story Breakdown/Chronology form I used on those films, substituting ‘chapter’ for ‘scene’ and voila! I have a way to keep track of the timeframe of each chapter and its contents.

I fill out the form as I’m writing. Whenever I have a question about when a scene takes place, I have a ready reference. It only takes me moments to find the answer. Or if I’m looking for when an event takes place, like the finding of a body, I can easily look that up as well. I also use it for a final review of my manuscript, making sure what I’ve written on the page matches the timeline I mapped out.

The form I use is a table with three columns labeled ‘Chapter’, ‘Time’ and ‘Description’. ‘Chapter’ is the chapter number. ‘Time’ is the day number on which the chapter takes place in the story. ‘Description’ is a one-line, barebones description of what happens in the chapter, something that will jog my memory about its contents. By the time you’ve finished a draft of a book, you’ll have all of the chapters listed with the time they occur and a short description.

Entries in the time column are in the format D or N followed by a number, e.g. D1 or N1 for day 1 and night 1, respectively. Chapters that take place during the day use the D designation; those that take place at night use the N designation. D1 is the first day in story time, D2 the second day and so on. D1 and D2 don’t have to be consecutive days, they could occur days, weeks or months apart. But, in terms of story chronology, D1 comes before D2. If there’s a gap in time, add a plus sign to the time designation. e.g. D1+ indicates a chapter that takes place on day 1, but there’s a gap in time from the previous chapter.

If a chapter spans more than one time designation, you can split it onto two lines or leave it on one line and put a slash between the times, e.g. D1/N1 denotes a chapter that takes place during the day as well as at night. Do whatever works best for you.

So, for the first chapter of my book, Fatal Brushstroke, the columns in the first line on the form were filled in as follows: Chapter: ‘1’, Time: ‘D1 (Tues)’, Description: ‘Rory discovers body in garden and police come to investigate.’ (I like to keep track of the day of the week in the time column since that’s important to me; if you’re writing something where the actual date is important, put that there also.)

I don’t generally use flashbacks in my books, but if I did I’d probably use an FB designation for those to indicate they’re taking place at a different time. I generally have one line for each chapter though, if two chapters cover the same event such as a memorial service, I might combine them on one line.

That’s it. I hope you find this interesting and useful. It’s pretty easy to set up the form in Word or any other program you want to use. Now, back to seeing if I can find that sentence...

Traditional and Cozy Mysteries

The pies are in the oven. Plans are set for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving celebration. Time to talk mysteries, cozy and traditional.

I’ve always considered my own books to be solidly in the cozy camp. Then someone commented to me that they thought they tended more toward the traditional. That got me thinking. What makes a book a cozy?

I’ve been mulling over this for a while now. Aline’s recent post on cozies brought it to the forefront once again.

For the last few years, I’ve attended the Malice Domestic conference in Bethesda, MD, a celebration of traditional mysteries. The Malice website loosely defines this genre as books having no explicit sex, excessive gore or gratuitous violence. Think Agatha Christie.

I think everyone pretty much agrees that cozies are a subset of traditional mysteries. So the above definition applies to cozies as well. Beyond that, though, what pushes the book over the edge into the cozy camp? I have my own thoughts, but I decided to query a group of people who read a lot of them to see what their take was.

The following came up in the discussion:

- Traditional mysteries are grittier and have more of a police presence.
- Cozies tend to be more humorous.
- In cozies, the main character is usually an amateur sleuth. And that sleuth is often involved in a hobby/craft and/or runs a business centered around a hobby/craft. Cooking mysteries are extremely common in the cozy world, so I’d add that the sleuth might have a business involving food, like a bakery. I don’t think either is a requirement for a cozy, though. I can think of series that feature college professors or columnists for newspapers.
- Historical mysteries fall in the traditional camp and aren’t cozies.
- Having a romantic interest in the story also came up. Pretty common in cozies, but not required, I think.
- And there are often pets in the stories. Cats, dogs... I wrote a post about that once on National Cat Day on my take of why that’s so common. Here it is, if you want to read it. http://typem4murder.blogspot.com/2014/10/national-cat-day.html
- Cozies often have “cute” titles in which puns are pretty common.

In addition to all of that, the crime often takes place in a small community of some kind. That might mean a small town, but it also might mean a community of people interested in the same thing like knitters, tole painters, etc. And what I think is most important, the bad guy is always revealed at the end and they get their comeuppance. I think that’s probably true of traditional mysteries as well, though I’m not sure it’s really a requirement.

So where does that leave my books? First, look at those covers. They look pretty cozy with their bright colors. And the titles are pretty cozy-like in my opinion. My protagonist is a freelance computer programmer (amateur sleuth, check) whose hobby is tole/decorative painting (craft, check). She lives in a Los Angeles county beach city, which has a small town feel. The books do involve the tole painting community so I’d say check on the small community. The bad guys are always revealed in the end and they get their comeuppance, so there’s a check on that as well. No sex, but there’s a bit of romance (check). There’s a bit of humor (check). And neighborhood cats and dogs play a role in my stories (pets, check).

So what might take me out of the cozy camp? While I don’t have gory scenes or gratuitous violence, I do occasionally have a scene where my main character, Aurora (Rory), is hit on the head or finds herself shoved into traffic. (Poor thing has been hit on the head too many times. I’m beginning to worry about her.) That may be where the idea that my books tend toward the traditional comes from. I can see that.

This has been a fun exercise, but it doesn’t really matter to me how my books are categorized as long as people read and enjoy them.

Cozies transport you into another world where you can forget about your own problems for a while. And, in the end, the case is solved, the bad guy is punished in some way, and order is restored. Rick wondered in a recent post if, with the discord in the world today, if more people would start reading more cozies. I wouldn’t be surprised.

That’s my two cents for today. I think I’ll go read a cozy right now. Those pies aren’t ready to come out of the oven yet.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

Happy Book Birthday to Me!

Yesterday was the official book launch day for my second book, Paint the Town Dead. This book was incredibly difficult for me to write and for a while there, I didn’t think I'd ever finish it, but publication day finally arrived and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

Now starts a couple weeks of an intense round of promotional activities, mostly online this time around. For my first book, Fatal Brushstroke, I went on a bookstore tour with fellow Sisters in Crime member, Diane Vallere. This time I’m concentrating on online venues. I have a 14-day blog tour through Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours as well as a few posts on other blogs. Full details are on my website if you're interested.

Saturday I’m holding my launch party at Mystery Ink in Huntington Beach, CA. If you happen to be in the area, stop by.

Details: Saturday, December 12, 2015, 4 pm, Mystery Ink 8907 Warner Ave. #135, Huntington Beach, CA 92647

The first 40 attendees get one of these beauties that turn the lights on your tree into reindeer, snowmen, etc. This is the reindeer one. I have an assortment of various kinds.

Back to celebrating and working on Book 3!

Here I Go Again...

It seems that several of us TypeMers are starting new projects right now, including me. So I read with great interest Vicki’s post on believing in yourself and Barbara’s post on creating characters.

All the changes for my second book, Paint the Town Dead, have been made. Other than looking over the ARC, it's essentially done. So I'm now moving on to my third book, which I've tentatively titled Tromp l'oeiled to Death.

Starting a new project is both exciting and daunting. I have all of these ideas floating around in my brain, but no plan or outline yet. So I've started writing down as much as I can, including partial scenes, hoping that I'll be able to make sense of it all very soon. Things are ever so slowly coming into focus.

At times like this I feel like I'm not accomplishing much, that I'm going nowhere. I liken it to the design phase of a software project. You've got lots of stuff written on whiteboards and in documents, but since no code has been produced, it doesn't feel like you're getting anywhere. You find yourself wandering hallways, hoping the movement will trigger something in your brain. (Or in the case of writing, surfing the web researching some aspect of the book in hopes something will come to mind.)

Just as I did with software design and coding, I have to keep on reminding myself that I need to believe in the process. To believe that I can produce a good and interesting story people other than family members will want to read. And do it in a fairly short time frame. (That last part is what I have trouble with!)

I’m fairly new at this writing game so I’m still refining my process. I come up with a basic premise (for Fatal Brushstroke that was “a woman finds the body of her painting teacher in her garden” and for Paint the Town Dead it was “Rory’s friend collapses in a class at a tole painting convention and dies.”)

From the premise I move on to working on the characters that will inhabit the story since I believe that out of the characters comes the story. Since this is the third book in the series I already have half a dozen I’m going to reuse, so it’s a good start, but I still have a lot of work to do. Once I have the basic characters and understand something about them, I write a short description of the murder and the cover-up from the murderer's point of view and come up with the main turning points in the story. Then I’m pretty much off to the races. This time around I think I'll write a one to two page synopsis of the story, which I think will help me focus my writing better.

I have no idea if this is the best approach, or even if it’s the best approach for me, but you have to start somewhere. So, I’m interested in how everyone else starts a new project. Do you start with creating characters? Or do you just start writing? Any words of wisdom for me?

Only 150 Words

Writing 150 words. No big deal, right? Most of the time that’s true, but I’m talking about back of the book copy. The words potential readers use to decide whether or not your book is worth purchasing.

They are the hardest 150 words I’ve ever written. Well, actually, it turned out to be more in the neighborhood of 120.

When I signed my publishing deal, I didn’t realize I’d have to write those all important words. I figured there were people who did that, people who knew how to write copy that would inspire a reader to buy a book. Turns out for my publisher that person is...me.

Once I stopped hyperventilating and got down to business, I discovered I rather enjoy doing it. (Remind me of that the next time you see me banging my head against the wall in frustration.)

There are positives about writing your own back of the book copy. First, you know what your book’s about so the text will actually match the story. (I’ve read copy on books where that wasn’t true or, at least, was misleading.) Second, it’s nice to have control over what’s on the back cover. The only negative is that it takes time. Lots of it.

I wrote the back copy for my first book, Fatal Brushstroke, but that was much easier. Mostly because I already had some text I’d written as an exercise for a mystery writing course I took years ago so I had a good start. I think the copy turned out pretty good. Or, at least, I’m not embarrassed about the result. Here it is:

A dead body in her garden and a homicide detective on her doorstep...

Computer programmer and tole-painting enthusiast Aurora (Rory) Anderson doesn’t envision finding either when she steps outside to investigate the frenzied yipping coming from her own backyard. After all, she lives in Vista Beach, a quiet California beach community where violent crime is rare and murder even rarer.

Suspicion falls on Rory when the body buried in her flowerbed turns out to be someone she knows—her tole painting teacher, Hester Bouquet. Just two weekends before, Rory attended one of Hester’s weekend painting seminars, an unpleasant experience she vowed never to repeat. As evidence piles up against Rory, she embarks on a quest to identify the killer and clear her name. Can Rory unearth the truth before she encounters her own brush with death?

For my second book, Paint the Town Dead, I had to figure out once again how to write words that fairly portrayed my novel, while at the same time, would convince someone to consider reading more. So here’s how I went about it.

First, I thought about what I wanted to see in back of the book copy. As a reader, I really just want to get a sense of the type of book (cozy, thriller, private eye), to know who the protagonist is , where the story is set and what the main problem is. That’s all I want to know. I get irked when the back copy tells me too much about the story. Really irked.

This kind of copy has a particular style so I immersed myself in reading the backs of dozens of books similar to my own. The text on the back of a thriller is different from that on the back of a private eye novel or a cozy so reading the right kinds of books is important here. That wasn’t terribly hard since I have an extensive library of mystery books, most of them in the cozy vein. All I had to do was walk down the stairs and start reading. I also checked out Amazon and read the descriptions of other books similar to my own.

Then I checked online to see if anyone had any words of wisdom about writing back of the book copy. These two posts were the most helpful to me:
http://jamigold.com/2012/04/tips-for-writing-back-cover-copy-guest-roz-morris/
http://marilynnbyerly.com/blurb.html

Finally, I started writing. Or, should I say, staring off into space thinking about what to write. I wrote a sentence here, another there, and finally I had text I found reasonable enough to submit to my publisher. Here it is:

The Ocean Painting Society invites you to join the painting wave...

It’s June in the quiet Los Angeles County city of Vista Beach, the place computer programmer and tole-painting enthusiast Aurora (Rory) Anderson calls home. Decorative painters are flocking to the newly built Akaw hotel to attend the Ocean Painting Society’s inaugural convention.

During the weeklong event, Rory plans on shopping the trade show floor, working in her mother’s booth, taking classes and connecting with other decorative painting fans. She doesn’t expect to witness her childhood friend collapse in class and die.

When the police find no evidence of foul play, Rory embarks on her own investigation. Can she brush aside the lies to uncover the truth and bring the killer to justice?

It’s not the most wonderful text in the world. It could probably be better, but I think it fairly portrays the book I wrote and sounds cozyish.

I’ve submitted the copy to my publisher. I have no idea if they’ll deem it acceptable or if I’ll have to go back to the drawing board. I’m hoping it’s the former, but I'm prepared for the latter.

Has anyone else written back of the book copy? Any tips? ‘Cause I’ll have to do it again for book 3...

Computer Programming & Writing Mysteries, Kindred Spirits?

Rick’s post yesterday about some of the comments he’s received when people find out he writes crime fiction made me laugh and shake my head at times. I haven’t been writing long enough to get a lot of comments from people I meet. The only one I fairly consistently get is something along the lines of: “You used to be a computer programmer? That’s quite a change to writing mysteries.”

I’m here to say it’s really not that much of a change. Sure, there are differences, but there are more similarities than you might think.

• Both writing and programming require you to sit in front of a computer for long periods of time. They’re both fairly solitary activities. But, since I worked on fairly large projects that required over a hundred programmers, I had more interaction on a day to day basis with people when I was programming than I do writing. I can also program for many more hours at a time than I can write.

• They both require you to create something from nothing. A writer starts with a blank page; a programmer starts with a blank file.

• They both start with an idea. My novel, Fatal Brushstroke, started with the image of a young woman finding the body of her painting teacher in her garden. A program starts with the idea of what that program should do. Should it allow the user to create and edit documents? Should it be a game? Should it allow you to read e-books? You get the idea.

• They both have a set of requirements. Programs have a list of features or things that they’re supposed to do, more specific than the general idea of the program. e.g. in a document editing program, those developing it need to know/decide the very specific tasks that a user can do. Should the user be able to edit an already created document? Add graphics? Add pictures?... Mysteries have a set of expectations/requirements that a reader has of them. If you’re writing a cozy, that expectation is somewhat different from what a reader expects from a P.I. novel or a thriller.

• They both involve a period of design. Programs, especially large projects, require a period where you design algorithms, decide on data structures, decide how each element is to be partitioned into work for the programmers assigned to the project. In writing, if you’re an outliner (as you might have guessed by now that I am), there’s a period where you’re deciding on the crime, the victim, the general plot points. Even if you’re a pantser, I still think there’s a period where you’ve thought about the crime and the characters involved. It’s just not written down or formalized.

• They both (can) involve deadlines. If you’re writing to a contract, it definitely involves deadlines. If you’re writing for yourself, not so much unless you impose your own deadlines. Programming also involves getting tasks done by some specified period of time. (I feel like programming deadlines were a lot more flexible, though.)

• They both have artistic elements. I consider programming to be an art. Sure, it’s basis is in science, but writing a program can be a very artistic endeavor. There are a lot of ways to write a specific program, some more elegant than others. Creating an elegant piece of code is as satisfying as writing a good story.

One big difference between the two is the word count requirements. The equivalent of that in programming would be number of lines of code. The number of lines of code is an interesting statistic in programming, but it's never a requirement. But, when it comes to writing, a contract specifies the word count requirements. Since I tend to write short, this is always a challenge for me to get to the specified count.

The biggest difference in my mind: In programming, the judgment of the finished project is a lot less subjective. If the software you’ve written meets the requirements, it’s good. Sure, someone may grumble about how messy your code is but, if it works, it’s okay. But, even if you’ve written a book that meets the mystery expectations/requirements, that doesn’t necessarily mean people will think it’s good.

I find programming to be a much easier activity than writing. (A lot less angst-ridden, as well.) I may feel that way, though, because I programmed for a lot of years and haven’t written for as many. Maybe twenty years from now I’ll feel differently. I think I’ll tuck this article away somewhere so I can revisit it years from now.

On a different note, I was at Malice Domestic recently where I got a chance to see my editor in person. Always a good thing. Here we are. (That's me on the right):

What Tole Painting Taught Me

I’m back from a week in Vegas where I attended the Creative Painting convention. Had a great time. Came back to discover that fellow Type Mer, Vicki Delany, and I are going to be on the same panel at Malice Domestic. Pretty cool! 

While I was painting away at the convention, I was reminded of what painting taught me about writing. The post below originally appeared on Michele Lynn Seigfried's Blog as part of the Fatal Brushstroke blog tour last November.

One of the projects I painted at the convention

Like Rory Anderson, the main character in my book, Fatal Brushstroke, I’m a tole/decorative painter. (Decorative painting seems to be the preferred term these days, though I still often use tole.) I started painting in the early 90s, several years before I started writing. I’ve gone to conventions, taken classes, and worked on projects on my own.

Over the years I’ve learned a lot from painting that I can apply to my writing life. Whenever I get discouraged, the following bits of wisdom keep me moving forward.

• You can only paint/write based on your ability at the time. Be patient. Don’t expect to be perfect right off the bat. It takes time and practice to learn a new skill. The more projects you work on, the better you’ll become.

• Don’t constantly compare yourself to others. There will always be someone who paints better or writes better. That doesn’t mean what you’re doing isn’t valid. Just do the best you can. We’re often not the best judges of our own work, anyway.

• You won’t know what a project looks like until it’s finished. Don’t fret over it while it’s in progress. About halfway through every painting project I’ve ever worked on, I look at it and think it’s not turning out as I’d hoped, so why bother? The same is true of every writing project, be it short story or novel. But I keep on plugging away and, at the end, I like the final result and feel it was worth spending time on.

• You can always start over. Wood can be sanded, paint can be removed from most surfaces. In writing, chapters can be rewritten, characters can be changed. Just because you put it down on paper or typed it into a Word document doesn’t mean it’s permanent. We tend to think if something is written down or already painted it can’t be modified. Why? You started the project in the first place. You have control over it, you can change it.

• Periodically look at a project as a whole. One of my painting teachers told me this when I complained about how a project was turning out. She held the project a few feet away from me and told me to look at it again. It looked better than I’d thought. Don’t dwell on every brushstroke, don’t dwell on every word and sentence. Look at the project as a whole. Sure, details are important but, in my eyes at least, the overall effect is more important.

• You don’t have to do everything the way the instructions say. You can change paint colors if you want. You can omit part of a design if it doesn’t suit you. You can ignore writing rules as long as you understand them and know why you’re ignoring them.

• Don’t give up. You never know what’s going to happen or how something is going to turn out until the end. A painting project looks better after it’s varnished. A writing project looks better after it’s polished.

And most important of all

• Be proud of what you’ve accomplished. Take a moment to celebrate your achievement. You finished a painting project! You finished a book or short story! If you’ve never painted or written a book or short story before, wow! you did it! If this is your second, third or nth short story/painting project/book, wow! you did it again! Remember to take time to celebrate your accomplishments. Lots of people say they want to write or paint. How many actually sit down and do it?

The Adventure Begins

Life is a series of adventures, some of them more exciting than others. At least, that’s how I like to look at it. Today marks the beginning of a new adventure for me, my first blog post on Type M. I’ll be here every other Wednesday, taking over Hannah Dennison’s spot. (Thanks to Hannah for suggesting I do this!)

Let me introduce myself. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and now live in Southern California. After years in the computer industry, designing and writing code, managing programmers and projects, I turned to a life of crime writing. Maybe you’ve read one of my short stories. My work has appeared in Mysterical-E and Spinetingler Magazine as well as several other online mystery magazines.

The big adventure for me this year is having my first novel published. Fatal Brushstroke, the first book in the Aurora Anderson mystery series set in the world of decorative painting, will be released by Henery Press Nov 18. I’m now learning about Goodreads, blog tours, author pages, book contracts . . . all the stuff you need to know to be a writer today.

Like most writers, I love books. I remember clearly the day my adventure in reading began. I was five. I’d just started kindergarten. I found a book on the classroom shelf that had pictures in it of pigs and a wolf. I wanted to know what was happening, what those black marks on the pages said, but I couldn’t yet read. (At that time you learned the alphabet in kindergarten and how to read in first grade.) I didn’t want someone to read it to me, I wanted to read it myself! I wanted to know what those three little pigs and that wolf were doing. Sure, I could figure out the basic story from the pictures, but it just wasn’t the same. Those marks on the page were saying something important. I could tell. I remember being so frustrated.

Out of that frustration a reader was born. I’ve had my nose in a book ever since, pretty much reading everything in sight. The library was my favorite place growing up. Like so many before me, from the comfort of a chair I traveled to mysterious places and spent time with historical figures. I learned about hot air ballooning, falconry, and Esperanto. I cracked the case along with Encyclopedia Brown and fell through the rabbit hole with Alice.

Now I’m happy to have the opportunity to write stories for others to enjoy. Which reminds me, that second book is due in a few short months. Better get back to it.

See you in a couple weeks,

Sybil