Guest Blogger Warren Easley

Type M is thrilled to welcome Warren Easley this weekend. Warren is the author of the wonderful Cal Claxton Oregon Mysteries, featuring compassionate, guilt-ridden, crusading lawyer Cal Claxton and his precocious Australian shepherd, Archie.

My Kingdom for a Plot!

To paraphrase one of Shakespeare’s kings—you know, the one they found under a parking lot in Leicester a few years back—A plot, a plot! My kingdom for a plot! I love to write, always have. Give me a scene, any scene, and I’ll flesh it out for you. Give me two people caught in a face to face encounter, and I’ll capture their dialogue. Show me a setting, and I’ll bring it alive, replete with sights, sounds, smells and touch. But put all the elements of a novel together in a coherent, believable plot? That’s a task that gives me pause.

Plotting a mystery, you might argue, is easier than plotting, say, literary fiction. After all, there are some pretty clear rules in the mystery genre. For example, unless you’re a Louise Penny or a James Lee Burke, you had better kill someone off in the first fifty pages of your book, since the patience of your readers (and publisher) is notoriously short. And you also need to build-in an event that signals the approaching climax, and ensure that, in fact, you end with a bang, not a whimper. This leaves the “slushy middle”, which must never be slushy, so all manner of clever devices should be inserted to not only drive the plot but keep the pace brisk, the tone engaging.

Easy, you say?

One school of thought says outlining is the answer. Achtung! What we have here is a need for discipline, we’re told. Put your mind to it, and the plot will seamlessly unfold in an orderly sequence. This group of writers proudly refer to themselves as Outliners. I tried outlining in my early writing without much success. The experience was a little like driving in a dense fog. I could see a small distance ahead and very little from side to side. Sure, I could get something down on paper, but after a short burst of writing, the outline would have to be rewritten. Those pesky, unruly characters of mine kept asserting themselves in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

The other school of thought says that the plot is an organic element that must be allowed to evolve as the story progresses. In other words, the plot builds outwardly, informed primarily by what has already been written. Enter the Pantsers, an equally proud group that flies by the seat of its pants, metaphorically speaking. This laissez-faire approach may sound appealing, especially to those like me who dislike planning ahead. But the other side of that coin is that the story can easily bob and weave itself into chaos, a kind of literary proof of the law of entropy. And I can tell you from experience, there is nothing more painful than backing out of a corner into which you have written yourself. It invariably involves trashing a lot of good work.

Of course, authors should adopt a strategy for plotting a novel that works best for them. I land somewhere between the extremes of rigid outlining and unfettered evolution, although I admit to being a Pantser most of the time. I didn’t plan on using a hybrid strategy. It turned out that was the only way I could get a book written and keep my sanity.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to figure out how the book I’m currently writing is going to end…

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Warren C. Easley is the author of the Cal Claxton Oregon Mysteries published by Poisoned Pen Press. Coming in October, book 7, No Way to Die.
https://www.warreneasley.com
facebook.com/WarrenCEasley
poisonedpenpress.com/WarrenCEasley

A day in a writer's life

It's that time in a writer's life– at least in my writerly life– when I am trying to inhabit two worlds. I have been researching THE ANCIENT DEAD, the fourth book in the Amanda Doucette series, for a few months now, and am at the stage where I have written the first three tentative scenes as well as created a vague outline of a few more to follow. And this morning, I am embarking on a two-week location scouting trip to the badlands and prairies of Alberta, where the book is set.

I've often said there is no substitute for standing in the spot where the characters stand, breathing in the scents, listening to the sounds, and seeing how the sun plays across the land. As well, by talking to locals and visiting museums and towns, you uncover all sorts of tantalizing ideas and details that can take the plot in unpredictable directions. It's one reason why I need to go now, while the story is still in its infancy and essentially unformed. (The other reason is called winter). I am really looking forward to figuring out what this book is going to be about at its core! I have the setting, some conflicts, and a buried body waiting to be discovered, but not the mystery behind it all.

But for the past month I have also been trying to line up fall promotional plans for PRISONERS OF HOPE, the third Amanda Doucette novel, due out in three weeks. I've been on the phone to potential launch and book signing venues and emailing back and forth to my publicist about posters, etc. And today the whole enterprise felt much more real when the UPS driver delivered my box of author copies to the door. Yay! The book is in one piece and they spelled my name right!

Switching gears between creative writing and promotional planning is a challenge. Therefore, as much as possible, I try to split up my day. The mornings, when the brain is hopefully fresher, I devote a few hours to writing. I write longhand, and make a right mess while doing it, but it's the most powerful way I know to call up my muse. Curling up in a chair with a cup of coffee at my side, pen in hand and pad of paper in my lap, seems to connect me to my familiar writer self who's been doing this for over sixty years, long before word processors and computers came on the scene.

I usually try to complete at least one scene every morning, so that I can fully engage in the scene and imagine it from beginning to end. Often by the end of that scene I have a good idea of what scene will come next. But I put the writing on the shelf and leave that for the next day.

Instead I celebrate that accomplishment by taking a break. I eat lunch, walk the dogs, swim, or whatever, before settling down in the afternoon to deal with social media, emails, phone calls, and PR writing. This can often take several hours. Then it's unwind and glass of wine time! Of course, there are often other obligations, family and friends, or commitments, but on a day without outside commitments, that's what I aim for. While I am on my research trip, this schedule will blown apart and I'll be lucky to get any scene writing done. But my mind will be churning and storing things up. All to the good.

Now for a little bit of BSP at the end of this blog - part of my PR activities. Here are the dates of the two launch parties I have set up for PRISONERS OF HOPE:

Ottawa launch: The Clocktower Brew Pub in Westbooro, October 16 at 7 - 9 pm, shared with Vicki Delany, who's launching THE CAT OF THE BASKERVILLES

Toronto launch: Sleuth of Baker Street, November 3 at 2:30-4 pm

Those of you within driving distance of either place, come on down to the celebration, and bring a friend! It's free and fun.

Maybe how to write a novel?

Aline's posts usher in the week at Type M and they always get me thinking. This week's post about Muriel Spark's writing process was no different. Writing a novel is damn hard work, and lonely as well. Novels are not written by committee, or in brain-storming sessions, or in support groups. They are written by one lonely soul sitting down in front of a blank page, taking a deep breath, beating back the doubts, shoving aside the distractions, and getting down to work. This will be repeated day after day, at times with ease and at other times with hair-pulling frustration, until the story is finished.

For most of us, it's an imperfect process. Some of us outline, some prefer to wing it. Some plunge ahead to the end, leaving a trail of loose ends, plot holes, and non-sequiturs in our wake to be fixed once the story figures itself out. Others tidy up as we go along, re-reading and editing the work from yesterday before moving on to today. Many of us do a little of this and a little of that, depending on our mood and on the flow of ideas at the time. Writing a novel sometimes feels like travelling down a river. Ever-changing, full of surprises, and scary and exhilarating at different times. Waterfalls, rapids, eddies, whirlpools, lazy meanders, logjams... And and always the inexorable tugging of the current that is the story in our head.

Along this journey, most of us run aground or get swept off course many times, and end up spinning around until some idea catches us and pulls us forward again. It's a rare writer who sits down and writes a story from beginning to end with barely a hesitation or false step. So I was astonished to learn Muriel Spark's technique. She spent a year thinking about the story, and presumably when she's got it all thought out, she opened her notebooks and wrote the whole story in about six weeks. With barely any need for revision.

The only think she and I have in common is that in the end, we both take just a little over a year to write a book. I could not imagine delaying the start of writing for a whole year while I thought up the whole story. Once I get the initial idea for a story and can picture the opening few scenes, I'm itching to dive in. Furthermore, I don't think I could visualize the whole story while standing on the riverbank far upstream. Ideas come to me as I am writing, and as I get closer to each scene, the ideas sharpen and often change shape. The unexpected happens. Characters change and grow richer. A element of setting which I had thought was minor suddenly changes the outcome of a scene.

For this reason, I can't imagine finishing the story with no loose ends to tidy up and no characters to reshape. Rewrites all enrich the book. They deepen the story, cut out the extraneous, and bring the story into clearer focus. A book without rewrites would be incomplete. It's certainly easier for us to do revisions in the age of computers than in the days of notebooks, and perhaps now we writers are guilty of too much editorial fiddling and fussing. But rarely do the words flow so cleanly and smoothly as to require no improvement. I write my first draft longhand on yellow pads of paper, and each page is a nearly indecipherable mess of crossed out words, arrows, "insert next page", scribbled additions in the margins, and so on. I rewrite on the fly.

Muriel's method sounds much calmer and easier on the nerves. But we all find the method that works best for us. It's likely much messier and more torturous than hers, but in the end, it's the only way we know.