Motive, justice, and the many shades of gray

 Douglas's Monday post resonated with me, as do many of the varied posts on this blog. Having a collection of authors from different countries and writing in different sub-genres (all while murdering people) makes for an entertaining and thought-provoking commentary on the creative life.

Douglas talked about the compulsion to write. Even if we won the lottery and could travel the world or retire to a tropical paradise, the writing muse would eventually find us. Possibly thinking up a story about death on a cruise ship or transcontinental train. Ideas come to us from everywhere, all the time. Most will be discarded, and others will find themselves as small scenes or subplots in our larger novel. 

But some, like the poignant story that John Corrigan described in last week's blog, Kernel of Truth, are made to form the cornerstone of a powerful story. So many stories could be told from that short, emotion-laden snippet. So much human tragedy, so much good, evil, and moral ambiguity to be explored. And that is what good storytelling does at its heart. It mines the powerful depths of human experience and pushes those insights to their limit. There would be heroes and villains in that story, often in the same person. There would be cruelty, despair, desperation, frustration, and outrage. There would also be moments to rise above that, to explore compassion, hope, and redemption.

Many crime novels make short shrift of the motive behind the murder in their story. It might be drugs, turf wars, intimidation, or impatience to get at Great Aunt Mabel's millions. But to me, the motive is the core of the story, and the most powerful motives are the ones we can relate to because they stem from primal human emotion. Jealousy, revenge, fear, despair. These are universal whether you live in a wealthy enclave or a tent city. I want readers to care about what happened, to care about the victim, the killer, and those who are left behind. Even the sleuth. I want them to question the moral ambiguities and to walk in the characters' shoes. Ask themselves "What would I do?"

Most crime novels also aim to provide justice of some sort, to bring order back to the world disrupted by the murder. There is satisfaction in seeing justice served at least in fiction, when it sometimes fails us in real life. I am not a fan of "tie it all up neatly in a bow". Life is messy and complex. Most of the time, there are no easy answers. In my books, I near the climax of the first draft without a clear sense of how it will end, or even of whodunit although the why has slowly emerged from the mess and complexity. And I sometimes waver over the "what is justice" question for some time before finding a resolution that reflects justice of a sort, or the best possible justice under the circumstances.

And so I have already started thinking about John's story of the eight-year-old boy and wondering what that justice would be, and what the path towards that outcome would look like. 

Now here’s a truly chilling story…

…and a grand plot idea for a novel.

by Rick Blechta

Many of us are using AI devices in our homes. “Oh,” you say, “I don’t have any of that stuff!”

If you own an Amazon Alexa or have an Apple product and use Siri, not to mention Google Assistant, you’ve got AI in your house. Have a smart thermostat, smart anything for that matter and you’ve got AI. Bet some of you didn’t know that.

Now here’s where it gets truly frightening. All of those devices are transmitting the data they collect to the corporations that produce them.

Don’t believe me? Read this: “Alexa has been eavesdropping on you this whole time”

Pretty frightening, isn’t it? The really scary thing to me is you can’t turn off the data collection if you want to keep using these products. Convenient how they built in that functionality, isn’t it? And we’re supposed to blindly trust these corporations. “We only use the data to improve our products, to help them learn!” Yeah, and I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might like to purchase. What’s to stop individual employees to overhear something valuable and then use if for nefarious purposes? This could well be the basis of “the perfect crime”. If that’s the case, it may well have taken place.

So it doesn’t take much imagination to see how all this collection of data could form the basis of a strong plot for a thriller, cozy, police procedural, whatever. This stuff is just made for crime fiction.

Okay, everyone! Scenario time. Work up an “elevator pitch” for your proposed novel and share it with us.

As for me, they can keep their smart houses. I’m perfectly happy living in a stupid one.

An Idea Worth Pursuing

I have a good idea for a story. One of the cliche questions authors are often asked is where the story ideas come from. After Bob Dylan received his Nobel Prize last week, 60 Minutes (click on to see the interview) showed a brief clip from an earlier interview with Dylan in which Ed Bradley asked him that very question. The answer is: who knows? Dylan said it was rather like magic, and I can’t argue with that. I think sometimes you just achieve the right state of consciousness, and the ideas are bestowed upon you out of the aether. In my series, I’ve used ideas that have come to me in every conceivable fashion.

A recurring character in the series came to me in all his fully realized glory several years ago when I was at a concert of the Black Watch and Cameron Highlanders Massed Bagpipe Bands and watching a very young, very serious, athletic, rose-lipped, red-cheeked Scottish sword dancer with dewy black eyes and a shag of black hair.

The murder in The Drop Edge of Yonder is based on an actual incident that happened to one of my great-great-grandfathers on my mother’s side during the Civil War. (A lot of the incidents in my books are inspired by my own and my husband’s wild and wooly family backgrounds.)

The Sky Took Him began with an idea that came to me while I was on the Oklahoma leg of a book tour for Hornswoggled in 2006. I had set up an event in Enid, OK, which is my husband’s home town. I was sitting with my husband and his sister in a restaurant called Pasttimes, the walls of which are covered with historic pictures of Enid. I was facing a 1915 print of a street scene showing two women going into Klein’s Department Store on the town square. You know how they sometimes do the opening of a movie by starting with a still photograph that dissolves into a moving scene? As I sat there and looked at that picture, those two women became Alafair and her daughter Martha on a shopping spree. What, I asked myself, are Alafair and Martha doing in Enid, of all places?

One great thing about writing historical fiction is that when you do your research, you discover that what really happened is often better than anything you could make up. I decided to set the sixth Alafair Tucker mystery, The Wrong Hill to Die On, here in Arizona, where I live, rather than in Oklahoma, where Alafair lives. I figured this would be a nice little diversion for Alafair, and for me as well. But Alafair has ten kids and a large farm, so there are a couple of problems I had to solve before I even begin: 1. Why on earth would Alafair go to Arizona in the first place? 2. Once she gets there, what is going on that she could get herself involved in, how, and why?

So I hied myself off to the Arizona State University library here in Tempe and begin perusing the files of the Arizona Republican newspaper for March of 1916, the date I intended to set the novel. I knew I’d find something really good, for after five previous novels set in the 1910’s I’ve learned that life in the early Twentieth Century Southwest was nothing if not action-packed. Was I ever right. Plot points and atmosphere galore, and all I had to do was spend an afternoon unspooling microfilm.

Hell With the Lid Blown Off  is about a tornado. Because, I thought, I can’t write a series set in Oklahoma and not write about what life is like in tornado alley. I didn’t need to make anything up. I used some incidents from my sister’s experience in the Joplin tornado and some very strange tornado experiences from other relatives and even some pretty odd ones of my own. But it’s impossible to exaggerate reality when it comes to what a big tornado can do.

My upcoming book, The Return of the Raven Mocker (January 2017), revolves around the flu epidemic of 1918. No one knows for sure how many died in the flu pandemic, but modern estimates put the number at somewhere between thirty and fifty million people worldwide. More than six hundred thousand of those were Americans. Twelve times as many Americans died from flu in 1918 than died in battle during World War I. In early 20th Century America, every housewife had her arsenal of remedies for common ailments, and many of were quite effective. Even so, it is likely that more than a few people died from unfortunate home remedies such as turpentine, coal oil, and mercury. Some scientists think that many who died during the epidemic were killed by aspirin poisoning rather than the disease. In the book, I used a story about the curative power of onion, told to me many years ago by the person to whom it happened. My friend was a young boy, he developed such a severe case of pneumonia that the doctor told his mother to prepare herself for his imminent demise. In an act of desperation, his mother sliced up a raw onion and bound it to the bottoms of his feet with strips of sheet, then put cotton socks on him. In the morning, his fever had broken, his lungs had cleared, and the onion poultice had turned black. Is that what saved him? I don’t know. But that didn’t keep me from using the idea.

In Search of an Idea

Donis here. In truth I am not filled with inspiration today, which is ironic since over the past few days my blogmates have been writing about the Muses and where ideas come from.

My Muse is taking a nap. This is not an unusual occurrence for her since this is what she does every time I finish a book. So, as I have done at the completion of every single book I have written over the last decade, I admit that I am, at least for the present, brain dead.

Eventually my Muse will slowly stir and an idea will begin to form. When the writing-muscles start to engage again, I become hyper-aware of what is going on around me, of what other people are saying, of what is in the news, of the weather, but especially of what I'm thinking. Most of the time, my thoughts float around in my head like fluffy little clouds that I pay no attention to, but when I'm in this state, I stare at them until I find interesting shapes.

When I was in college, I was a crammer. I never studied much for tests until a day or two before, then I'd study until my eyes fell out. I'd never recommend this process to anyone, though it seemed to work all right for me. Even at the time, I was aware that in order for cramming to work I had to have a literal change of consciousness, and become almost hyper- aware. When I look back on it, I think it was just a matter of paying close attention.

Ideas come to me from the oddest places–from something I’ve read, or some off-hand comment someone says within earshot of me (be careful what you say around a writer). Once or twice from a dream I’ve had. In any event, the idea gets in my head one way or another and wiggles around in there for a while. Eventually it begins to coalesce and I think, “That might make a good story.”

And I'll begin again.

Eavesdropping

I, Donis,  am supposed to be finishing up the edits on my latest manuscript right now. My editor wants the corrected MS by the end of next week. I should be correcting away. Instead I'm taking care of every item on my to-do list for the next month. I never accomplish as many random tasks as I do when I am facing a deadline.

I blame part of my difficulty on summer, or as Charlotte so appropriately called it, the "dog days", when it's too hot to do anything, all your energy is sapped right out of you, and you can't even think coherently. It's the perfect time for reading, the perfect time for observing. And as we know, the ability to observe critically is one of the top requirements for a successful artist of any sort.

One thing that I like to do when I am in observation mode is go to a restaurant or coffee shop and blatantly eavesdrop on my fellow diners. Listening to people talk is a great way to study speech patterns, slang, dialect, as well as a great way to come up with interesting plot lines. I mean, what did s/he mean when she said that! Walking around in the mall is a good eavesdropping technique. I particularly enjoy the walking eavesdrop because one generally only gets snatches of conversation, and if one is in writer mode, one immediately begins to fill in the blanks. I often carry a small notebook with me in order to immediately write down comments that intrigue me. Following are a few actual snatches of conversation that I overheard on several mall walking occasions:

What a sweetheart. It was so horrible I didn't want to ask. Devastating, you know?

I may go out tonight just because I'm so depressed.

Do you think he saw a ghost?
You might do well to check it out...

Oh, my God, I would not share that with anyone!

I don't want to give them too many of my emotions. (either a poet or in need of a vocabulary lesson- D.)

When I was a detective, they tried to get me to take a course in Forensic entomology, but I decided that one of the two homicide detectives on the squad ought to go instead of me. (I tried to follow this guy and listen in some more, but he eluded me.- D.)

I had to kind of become a Nazi to get it back.

He looks kind of like the Hamburgler but not so happy.

My check covers utilities, rent, car payment and the f-ing plane ticket. Never mind clothes or belly dance lessons. (I call this First World Problems - D.)

John, if I wanted to be you, I would be you.

Like Spiderman, but without so much angst. He's so angsty.

The only reason he said that is because he thinks my mom is hot.

Find me an avocado. (Overheard by my husband at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, 1967, and indelibly stuck in his mind.)

The dreaded middle

Barbara here. So we are two weeks into the new year, or more specifically, two weeks past the overindulgence of December. Overwhelmed by a feeling of sloth, we are frantically making promises – to exercise more, to eat less, to drink less, to cleanse and purify and meditate our way back to balance. And if you're a writer like me, to dig out that long-neglected work in progress and get back into the groove. For me, the deadline for my next novel, once blissfully away, is creeping inexorably closer. During December I laughed off the small niggles of pressure and the sheer blankness of my mind and the paper before me. I assured myself I had all the time in the world to figure out where the novel was going and to pull a brilliant plot out of a hat.

I don't plot ahead of time, nor do I outline. I provide the publisher with a vague synopsis of "this is what I think the novel is about, these are the characters that will probably be in it, these are a few things that might happen, and somehow it will all work out in the end, even though I don't yet know how." And then I pick up my pen and pad of paper, and I jump into the first scene. This 'by the seat of my pants' approach has served me adequately over the past eleven books, and is as entertaining as it is terrifying. I like not knowing what is coming next. I like the suspense, and the delicious surprises that my subconscious springs on me mid-book.

I guess I like the terror too. Like an actor about to go on stage, a doctoral student facing her thesis defence, a courtroom lawyer about to address the jury, there is a thrill in that adrenaline rush that makes all my senses come alive and my neurons go into overdrive. Some of us do our best creating when we are perched on the edge of the abyss. I was a crammer all through school, and I guess the habit dies hard.

As always, however, there can be too much pressure and too little preparation. A courtroom lawyer who hasn't even read the brief will face disaster, an actor who hasn't memorized her lines will fall on her face. An author who has only a hundred pages written one month before deadline is in big trouble. No amount of brilliantly firing neurons and flooding adrenaline can pull a perfect novel out of a hat in that time. Now I am not one month from my deadline, but I am staring at a very saggy, dismally out of shape novel. The myth of the dreaded middle is very real. Usually at the halfway mark of a first draft, the writer hits a wall. She's no longer sure how the novel will end, or how she's going to get there. She needs a new direction and a new sense of drama. Characters have to make unexpected changes or move in surprising ways. They need to stand on their heads.

Cliches abound about midway twists. Throw in another body, have someone confess, threaten the main character's nearest and dearest... The only thing worse than a flabby middle is a predictable twist. So when you're staring at that blank page and trying to brainstorm that EXCITING NEW TURN, you have to reject the numerous cliches that crowd helpfully into your mind and wait until that little gem pops up. You will know it when it comes to you– that ureka moment that cries out 'brilliant!'.

My flabby middle problem in this novel has some peculiar qualities. First of all, I'm only one third of the way through the book, not halfway. This is disconcerting. Will there be another flabby middle moment at the two-thirds mark? Or God forbid, more than one? Secondly, not all the plots in the novel are flabby. My work in progress is a braided story with three POVs; although Amanda Doucette is my main character, she has two sidekicks who have their own stories to unfurl. I have a lot of ideas about what those two sidekicks will be doing for the next hundred or so pages. They will be digging into the story, uncovering evidence, and pushing the intrigue forward.

Amanda, however, is stuck. Not only is she the main agent of the story, she's also physically right at the centre of the intrigue. She's a passionate, resourceful, independent woman who would jump in at the first sign of trouble or injustice, but right now in the story, I can't think what she should be doing. She, like me, is stalled. I have spent hours daydreaming about it while driving on the 401 and walking the dogs, so far without that ureka moment. I know she and I will eventually figure out what she should do. Maybe during that four-day winter camping excursion I am taking next week. Amanda is winter camping, too; perhaps she will speak to me.

So stay tuned!