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

Guiding the string

Aline's Monday post made me smile, especially the "pounds, shillings, and ounces" in Winnie the Pooh's poem. But she poses a serious question; how long is the book you're writing at the moment going to be? Do you know?

This has always been a source of wonderment for me. As I am writing a book, I don't know where it's going, how long it will take to get there, or indeed, most terrifying of all, will it get there at all? As a modified "pantser", I set off on the book's journey with only a few guideposts and a blind trust that others will come into view as I draw nearer to them. I travel this unknown, uncharted road with the thrill of adventure and discovery, as well as the terror that I might never get to the end of it.

And yet, I always do get there, and in my case, almost always within roughly 90,000 to 100,000 words, coincidentally the word count specified on my contracts. How do I do it? What magic guides me? I don't know, nor do I want to put my creativity under a microscope, because I'm afraid it would fly the coop. But I do keep in mind a few crucial guidelines while I'm writing, and one of them is to keep the ounces out of the pounds and shillings. We want complications in our stories. They are the heart of tension. Without throwing obstacles in the protagonist's path, the story would be over in thirty pages. But an irrelevancy is not a complication; it's a distraction, and as Aline says, it pulls the reader away rather than pulling them forward. Sometimes a cool sidetrack pops into my head as I'm writing, and I feel like exploring it, but all the while I am trying to see if I can fit it into the main storyline. If it can add tension or intrigue to the overall question of the book, then I keep it. Otherwise, sadly, I kill it.

There are a few other guidelines that I use to keep my story moving forward and on track. I call myself a modified pantser because as I am writing, I try to see at least three or four scenes ahead. Since in my current Amanda Doucette series I have three main point-of-view characters each pursuing their own story lines, which have to be braided together into one story with proper pacing, tension, and timelines, I have discovered I need to plan ahead a bit.

Usually the idea for the next scene comes out the scene I am writing. I ask myself one or two of the following questions: "What would logically happen next?" Or "What would this character do next?" And in some cases, "What is the worst thing that could happen?" The first question helps to keep the plot on track, the second keeps the story character-driven, so that characters are not doing things they'd never do just for the sake of the plot. And the third - it's where the spice of the story comes from. It creates the twists, which are often as much a surprise to me as they are to the reader. In FIRE IN THE STARS, for example, I had Amanda's dog running up the path ahead of her, on their way to visit a hermit with some information. I hadn't figured out what Amanda would discover, so I asked myself "What will the dog find?" Followed by "What's the worst thing she could find?" And presto ...

But use the spice sparingly. Otherwise it will lose its punch. I once read a book which had a car chase or fire or explosion in every chapter. After awhile I thought, Oh yawn, not another explosion.

I agree with Aline. Life is too short to spend time on a 500-page novel that meanders and rambles. Some long novels are spell-binding and draw the reader deep into a fascinating world that we never want to leave. But the more I read and write, the less patience I have for padded verbiage and precious literary devices that leaves me feeling as if I'm spinning off-kilter. As writers we have to be ruthless with ourselves and our prose. That's what rewrites (and rewrites and rewrites) are for – to ask ourselves Do I really need this? Does it add to the story? Is it predictable? Boring? Irrelevant? Sometimes ounces are useful in a mystery novel, as red herrings that lead the reader down the garden path, but they need to do that in a way that is tied to the resolution of the story.

I don't need the story to be all neatly tied up in a bow at the end. Life is not tidy. I like ambiguity and even loose ends, especially in a series, where some questions remain to be answered in the next book. But the central question of the book has to be answered somehow, and I would find a tangle of irrelevancies and loose ends utterly unsatisfying. So the final job for a pantser is to hunt down all the loose threads and make sure you've tied them off.

He's Alive!

My eighth Alafair Tucker novel, All Men Fear Me, comes out in November, which means I have two months before the merry-go-round of promotion begins in earnest. I'd like to at least finish the first one hundred pages of the ninth book before that time. This means that I'm letting a lot of things go in my regular life that ought to be taken care of, because I feel like I ought to be writing. As I wrote in my last entry on this blog, two weeks ago, occasionally things arise that have to be dealt with RIGHT NOW. Like my husband's kidney stones or the big tree in the front yard that was busted up in the storm a while back and had to be taken down before it fell on the house. But dusting and sweeping, not so much.

The latest distraction

I'm not a fast writer. I do the best I can. I do preliminary research and sketch out a plot and cast of characters before I start, so I do have a direction mapped out. I have a strict writing schedule and force myself to sit down and type words whether I'm in the mood or not. Miraculously, this seems to work for me. Stories do reveal themselves to me and books do come about. I just can't make them come about any faster than they do. I have great respect for and envy of writers who can knock 'em out and not only do it in three months but do it well. For me, the book just comes when it comes.

He isn't dead!

I have perhaps 80 usable pages out of 120 written thus far on book nine (Working title: Book Nine).The story is finally beginning to take a recognizable shape in my mind, but just in the past day or two a new problem has arisen that I can see is going to complicate things. It seems that I don't know who is going to get killed. I knew who the doomed party was before I started writing, but as I proceed, it begins to dawn on me that said victim may not be the victim after all. And if Party A is not the victim, I don't know who could have killed Party B. Was it the same person who was supposed to have murdered Party A? The original killer (Killer A) doesn't seem to have a compelling motive to off Party B.

I wish I could write faster, and not just because I'd like to be able to put out two or three books a year. I really would like to see how this story is going to turn out. Who IS going to die, and for heaven's sake, who is the murderer and what is the motive?

The art of story weaving, by Peggy Blair

My guest this weekend is friend and fellow Ottawa author, Peggy Blair. Peggy is a former lawyer and author of three books in the award-winning Inspector Ramirez series. She lives in Ottawa where she works in real estate. Her latest, HUNGRY GHOSTS, has just been released by Simon & Schuster, and in this post, she talks about how that novel came together

Check out her blog at www.peggyblair.com.

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My third book in the Inspector Ramirez series, Hungry Ghosts, started with a kernel of an idea. I wanted to write about an art heist. The idea of someone breaking into a museum or gallery to steal art seemed kind of romantic and very few of those thieves are caught. An art heist in Cuba, with the difficulty getting stolen art out, would be a challenge for any thief. And I like creating characters who are smarter than I am.

So that's where I started. But I got stuck at around 25,000 words. It was an interesting work-in-progress, but I didn't have enough for a novel. I needed 80,000 to 100,000 words.

Since I wasn't making any progress on that front, I turned to writing an entirely different story involving my Aboriginal detective, Charlie Pike, who is introduced to Inspector Ramirez (and readers) in my second book, The Poisoned Pawn.

I've always thought Charlie Pike should have his own series and since the issue of missing and murdered Aboriginal women is one I care about greatly (I was an Aboriginal lawyer for decades), I decided to write about him investigating a few of those cases. But once again, I got stuck at about 30,000 words and couldn't figure out where to take the plot.

Then my daughter Jade came home for a visit, and somewhere in our conversation, we began talking about entomology. I loved the idea of having a forensic entomologist who could help Hector Apiro, my Cuban pathologist, determine a time of death for murder victims by using blowflies recovered at the scene. When I looked up these remarkable insects, I discovered just how beautiful these shimmering iridescent insects are: they are absolutely gorgeous! (How macabre is that!?)

A little more research about these amazing creatures and I had a whole new character: a Chinese entomologist visiting Cuba who can tell when someone died almost to the second but who is also wildly eccentric. (She loves her bugs too.)

And then I realized I could put all of this together. There was no reason why Inspector Ramirez couldn't investigate an art heist and have a cold case involving a murdered woman at the same time. After all, cops usually have more than one investigation on the go and there's always the one that got away that haunts them. (In Ramirez's case, literally.)

Meanwhile, Charlie Pike could be involved in his own investigation into missing and murdered Aboriginal women up north. The reader would know that the cases were connected, but not the characters. And sure enough, it worked! Within a few weeks, I had finished a first draft that I was happy enough with to send to my agent. And now it's actually a book: pretty amazing, really, when I think about randomly the story line developed.

Hungry Ghosts is my favourite of the Inspector Ramirez series. It's complex and layered with lots of humour, just like life in Cuba and on First Nation reserves.

The Exciting Climax

I’m in the midst of writing the climax to All Men Fear Me, my latest Alafair Tucker novel. It’s the big reveal, when the reader finds out whodunnit, and more importantly, when Alafair finds out whodunnit. Maybe she confronts the killer. Then what does she do? When I begin writing a new mystery novel, I usually know who the murderer is, and sometimes I know how and why s/he did it. I may also have an idea how the killer went about trying to cover up the crime. I’m pretty good about doling out clues at appropriate intervals throughout the story. But here’s the hard part: Alafair, my protagonist, has to figure out who did the deed.

And that is not easy, my friend, because I have to do it in such a way that is realistic and makes sense.

Alafair is not a law enforcement professional or a private investigator. She doesn’t do this for a living, nor does she have any official authority to compel people to answer her questions. She also lives in an era when people are constrained by fairly rigid gender roles. In fact, question number one is: what is she doing trying to solve a murder, anyway? The first thing I have to do is give her a really compelling reason to get involved at all.

Then I have to give her the means and the opportunities to uncover information and make connections, and I can’t force the action to fit the outcome I want. In other words, I can’t have Alafair doing things that a woman with the resources she has couldn’t do. I can’t have her act against her own nature, either, just to advance the plot or create tension in an artificial way.
This is the reason I’ve been known to stare at the screen for an hour when I’m at a critical juncture, thinking “how can I get Alafair off the farm and into that office in town to search for the gun, before sundown, when she has a bunch of kids and a husband, all of whom want dinner?”

I could just have her up and leave and let everyone fend for himself, or I could contrive to have all the children and the husband go out to eat at whatever the 1917 equivalent of McDonald’s was. But if I did that, I have a feeling I’d hear about it from disgruntled readers. Not to mention a horrified editor. Sometimes I just can’t come up with a plausible way to do it, and I have to go at it from a totally different angle or rework the scene altogether.

This is one of the things I like about writing an amateur sleuth. She has to be sneaky, persistent, smart, and clever in order to find her answers. And sometimes, she’s smarter than I am. In fact, there have been occasions where Alafair came upon a clue that I was not aware of myself until it appeared on the page. Toward the end of my fourth book in the series, The Sky Took Him, Alafair was sitting in a hospital corridor, having a nice, normal, conversation with the family, when she noticed something at exactly the same time I did, an observation which provided both of us with a vital piece of information. It surprised the heck out of me, but it was plausible, very much in character for Alafair, and worked like a charm. Moments like this are why writing a mystery can be such fun.