KN Magazine: Articles
Fiction: Dark & Light / John Hegenberger
These days, there’s a heavy-weight emphasis on dark fiction. You can go to any number of “Noir at the Bar” events in major cities across the country. It’s as if the criminal element of popular fiction has won the battle against the dogged or clever detectives, and we all might as well lay down and die. It’s grim, gritty, occasionally gory, and heavy as sixteen tons. “Another day older and deeper in debt,” as the lyric goes.
Maybe it started with Jim Thompson. Perhaps it’s a mutation from Stephen King’s popular horrors. Or we can blame James Ellroy. Whatever the case, it doesn’t matter.
Noir is only a sub-genre of mysteries, and not even that of fiction, itself. It’s the single black crayon in a rainbow box of Crayolas. Thus, a good story, more often than noir, can and should be based on the more colorful aspects of reality. Optically, black is the absence of all other colors; the opposite of light.
And what’s wrong with light? I like light. I like the Funhouse more than the Chamber of Horrors. I like Superman more than Batman. I like Arsene Lupin, Simon Templar, and Indiana Jones over Hannibal Lector or some soiled, addicted, vengeful ex-cop or ex-con. Let’s have a little fun in this house. Open the windows, switch on the lights. “Come on baby, light my fire!”
This is not some crazy pipe dream. Detective Stan Wade is a sort of realistic, self-deprecating, and average guy who is inspired to figure things out and help other people. Sure, he gets in over his head and there are dark moments in his life, but he doggedly goes on (with a lot of help from his friends) and cleverly finds the truth, justice, and the nostalgic 1950s version of the American way.
In those days, which you still can watch play out on multiple TV channels, everybody worried about Sputnik and the Bomb, smoked outstanding and mild cigarettes, loved Walt Disney, learned to surf and sing folk songs, watched color television and wide-screen westerns, drove finned gas-guzzlers while sneering at VW beetles, read trashy paperback books and gaudy ten-cent comics. Who does that today?
The Stan Wade stories are always bright and share a fondness for a time long gone too soon in a place that existed partly as a Hollywood fantasy and somewhat of a secret history of a hidden reality. Throughout it all, the tone is light, warm, yet much more jolting, bouncy, and dangerous than cozy fiction.
The events in Stan’s stories are, in fact, light enough that we can confidently and comfortably believe they actually might have happened; certainly could have happened; definitely, absolutely, positively should have happened . . . give or take a lie or two. Just remember, Stan’s #1 client is Uncle Walt, so his world and stories originate from “the happiest kingdom of them all.”
Nonetheless, I’m currently writing a short story to appear soon in a proposed anthology, “Columbus Noir.” Who does that? But a new Stan Wade book, Shortfalls, will be out this summer. So, light or dark, I’m buying the first round. Cheers!
Award-winning author, John Hegenberger has produced more than a dozen books since mid-2015, including several popular series: Stan Wade LAPI in 1959, Eliot Cross Columbus-based PI in 1988, and Tripleye, the first PI agency on Mars. His latest novel, The Pandora Block, is a high-tech, international thriller. Several of his short stories have appeared in Black Cat Mystery Magazine. His Stan Wade, LA PI novel, SPYFALL, won a 2016 Silver Falchion at Killer Nashville. Discover more at www.johnhegenberger.com
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Column, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
The Joy and Heartbreak of Changing Series Characters / R.G. Belsky
Gil Malloy has been my best friend for the past several years. We’ve been through a lot, Gil and me. Happy moments, sad ones, career success, scandal, near-death escapes from killers, Gil’s broken marriage, a second try at that marriage and a few torrid romances for Gil with other women along the way too.
But its time for me to move on and say goodbye to Gil Malloy—at least for now.
Because I have a new BFF named Clare Carlson.
Okay, maybe this all seems a bit melodramatic for an author who’s only talking about a damn character in his mystery novels. But the relationship between a writer and his series character is an intense, complex one. We writers live with the character many hours a day; we direct what the character will do and say; and, more often than not, we wind up putting a good deal of ourselves into that character.
I wrote four books about Gil Malloy, a hard-driving New York City journalist who’ll do anything to break a front-page story. Gil is smart, talented, hard-working, outspoken (to a fault at times), irresponsible about most everything except his work and frequently can be a real pain in the ass. (I leave it to people who know me to guess which qualities of my own I put into Gil).
My new series character Clare Carlson—who makes her debut May 1 in Yesterday’s News—is a New York journalist too. But she’s a much more complex character. A onetime Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who is now the news director of a TV station, Clare tries to balance her old reporting instincts with the demands of being a high-powered media executive. She also has secrets buried in her past that come to light when she begins pursuing new evidence in the case that won her a Pulitzer 15 years ago—the disappearance of an 11-year-old girl from the streets of Manhattan.
Clare is slated for a second adventure with The Cinderella Murders in 2019.
The challenge for me of creating a new series character like Clare Carlson is to make sure she has some of the same qualities that made my readers like Gil Malloy. But not so many of Gil Malloy’s qualities that people feel she’s a kind of version of Gil in a dress. There were moments when I was writing Yesterday’s News when I decided to delete lines of Clare’s dialogue because I realized they were things Gil Malloy would likely say—not Clare Carlson. Then there’s the challenge for me too of writing a female character instead of a man and making that sound authentic. (No, I’m not just talking about sex scenes here, people!)
Of course, the good thing is that a fictional series character never really has to die. Lawrence Block wrote a series of Matt Scudder books early in his career that didn’t sell very well, went on to write other stuff—then brought Scudder back a few years later as a regular series character in A Stab in the Dark and the classic Eight Million Ways to Die. Robert B. Parker departed from his successful Spenser series to also write the Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall mysteries. Dennis Lehane started out by writing four mystery novels starring Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro before moving on to bigger stand-alone thrillers like Mystic River (although he did later bring Patrick and Angie back in another mystery novel years later).
My own first mystery novel featured a female reporter named Lucy Shannon. I then published four other mysteries without her before bringing Lucy back in my sixth novel. I also wrote a series of mystery novels in the early 90s about a TV reporter named Jenny McKay. Amazingly, I still get queries from fans who want to know why I don’t write about that Jenny McKay woman again. Of course, in real life, Jenny would probably be close to retirement age by now. But that hasn’t stopped me from working on a new project featuring the Jenny McKay character.
So, as I say goodbye to Gil and hello to Clare, I find myself overwhelmed by a lot of conflicting and mixed emotions.
I look forward to many exciting times in the future solving murder mysteries with Clare Carlson.
At the same time, like with any old friend, I look back with fondness on the wonderful moments I’ve spent with my pal, Gil Malloy.
Of course, like I said, nothing is forever.
Who knows …maybe one day Clare and Gil will even meet.
But that would be another book for another time….
R.G. Belsky is an author of crime fiction and a journalist in New York City. His newest mystery, Yesterday's News, will be published in May 2018 by Oceanview. It is the first in a series featuring Clare Carlson, the news director for a New York City TV station. Belsky's last book, Blonde Ice, was published by Atria in October 2016. It is the third in a series of books from Atria about Gil Malloy, a hard-driving newspaper reporter with a penchant for breaking big stories on the front page of the New York Daily News. The first book in the Gil Malloy series—The Kennedy Connection—was published in 2014 and Shooting For The Stars came out in 2015. Belsky himself is a former managing editor at the Daily News and writes about the media from an extensive background in newspapers, magazines, and TV/digital news. At the Daily News, he also held the titles of metropolitan editor and deputy national editor. Before that, he was metropolitan editor of the New York Post and news editor at Star magazine. Belsky was most recently the managing editor for news at NBCNews.com. His previous suspense novels include Playing Dead and Loverboy. Blonde Ice was nominated as a finalist for the David Award at Deadly Ink and also for the Silver Falchion at Killer Nashville in 2017. He was the Claymore Award winner at Killer Nashville 2016 and also a Silver Falchion Finalist in both the mystery and thriller categories. Visit him at http://www.rgbelsky.com/
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Column, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
Finding Your Voice / D.P. Lyle
So, you’ve sent your manuscript to an agent or an editor, and now you wait. Will they like it? Will they take you on as a client or publish your work? What makes them decide? Is it the unique premise or clever plot? Maybe the colorful characters? Or the snappy dialog and wonderfully-rendered setting?
No, the one thing agents/editors look for more than anything else is the voice. When they say they are searching for something fresh or something that speaks to them, they mean the narrative voice.
What is voice?
You’ll see many definitions. Mine is: voice is your distinctive way of telling your story. It comes from three things: knowledge, experience, and confidence. Here are some things you can do to help you acquire those tools:
Knowledge
Most things we learn along life’s journey come from others—an apprenticeship, of sorts. For sure medical school was that. So is writing. To write, you must read. Constantly. That will teach you what others are doing and how they’re doing it. Some writing will speak to you, other writing might not. You will gravitate to word choices, sentences structures, and the sound of some writers’ voices, but not those of others.
Your assignment: go to the library, your local bookstore, or even use online previews to read the first few pages of 50 books. Some will work for you—the operative phrase here is “for you.”
Take what speaks to you and embrace it in your own writing.
Experience
The great Australian writer Bryce Courtney often said that the secret to writing was “bum glue.” Glue your bum to the chair and write. So true. Write every day. Write your way. Copy the styles of the writers you like. Not that you will write exactly the same way but, rather, elements of their writing that work for you will creep into your own prose. This will evolve over time and before long—like riding a bicycle—you will be off and writing in your own voice.
Confidence
This, to me, is the key. Be fearless. Tell your story in your own words—your own voice. Don't worry about what others might think or whether it fits the so-called rules. Tell your story your way. Knowledge and experience breed confidence.
Art, Then Craft
Writing is an art and a craft. The art is the storytelling and the craft is making it cleaner and more publishable. Don’t let the craft kill the art. Don’t over-edit as you go. Write the story fast, write it your way, in your voice, then go back and clean it up. As Hemingway said: write drunk, edit sober. Get drunk on your writing, spill it on the page, then take a sober assessment and fix what needs fixing. Write fast, edit slow.
Repeat
Repeat the above steps throughout your career. Continue reading, writing, experimenting. Novels often seem so big that authors get tied up in the plotting, the juggling of characters and dialog, and this kills the creativity. Write shorter things. Start a journal and write scenes that come to you. Be fearless. Write your way. No filters. No critiquing. Just writing, and storytelling. Before long, what you learn will infest all your writing. It will become your voice.
In the end, your voice is yours. It’s personal. No one else has it. Only you. Let it out. Don't handcuff it or kill it. Let it guide you through your story. In the end, you will have your story, told your way. That’s always the goal, and it’s what agents and editors and, most importantly, readers are looking for.
D.P. Lyle is the Macavity and Benjamin Franklin Silver Award-winning and Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, Scribe, Silver Falchion, and USA Best Book Award-nominated author of 16 books, both fiction and non-fiction. Along with Jan Burke, he is the co-host of Crime and Science Radio. He has worked with many novelists and with the writers of the TV shows Law & Order, CSI: Miami, Diagnosis Murder, Monk, Judging Amy, Cold Case, House, Medium, Women's Murder Club, The Glades, and Pretty Little Liars. You can visit D.P. Lyle at his website www.dplylemd.com You can read his blog at writersforensicsblog.wordpress.com.
(To become a Killer Nashville Guest Columnist, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
5 Tips to Understanding Genre in the Publishing Industry / Sydney Mathieu
Genre can be a tricky subject for authors. What categories of genre exist? Which one should I choose for my book? What if I’ve already decided on my book’s genre, but someone else disagrees? Does it even matter at all?
From most writers’ perspectives, the genre is secondary to writing the book they have in their head. Authors write books based on their ideas for character and plot—and that’s absolutely normal. However, genre becomes important when an author begins looking for an agent, finding a publisher, or starting a publicity campaign
Genre gives you a way to find an agent and gives agents a way to pitch books to publishers. Many publishers and divisions of publishers (imprints) specialize in publishing specific genres, and agents often have better connections with publishers in certain genres. Some agents specialize in children’s books, some mysteries, some romances. When you are trying to find an agent to work on your book, it’s helpful to know what kind of book you’ve written so that you can choose the best agent. When an agent specializing in your genre matches you with a publisher, you can be assured that the publisher will have a team of editors, publicists, and designers with a great understanding of how to produce a novel in your genre. This specialized approach ensures your title matches reader expectations.
Readers decide to read books based on their genre labels. Readers are used to books being categorized by genre, and each of those categories means something to a reader. For instance, a cozy mystery isn’t going to have gratuitous violence, and a thriller isn’t going to be a slow-paced character study. This makes it easy for readers who like certain types of books to easily decide if the book is right for them. This may seem like it simply narrows the audience and pushes people away, but it actually helps readers who will like your book find it, read it, and hopefully review it. There’s no benefit to having a reader who likes thrillers but hates cozy mysteries read a cozy mystery just to trash it on Goodreads because it wasn’t at all what they expected.
Your publicity and marketing teams can better target your market. There are plenty of publications (like Killer Nashville) that focus on single genres or groups of similar genres. If your book is incorrectly categorized or nebulously labeled “contemporary fiction” without further specificity (if further specificity is appropriate for your title), your publicity team may find it hard to convince niche genre outlets to cover the book, thereby missing a huge sector of your potential audience.
But my book is a “literary novel.” Some authors finish their books completely convinced they know the genre: literary. This may or may not be true, but more importantly, it’s typically not the complete truth. For instance, “Pride and Prejudice” is a literary novel, but it’s also a novel with a strong romance. “1984” is a literary novel, but it’s also a dystopian novel. These kinds of subcategorizations help your publicity team find readers. Unless you’re already established as a literary author, that label typically comes after one of your titles has gone through vetting by readers and publishing professionals who have declared your work “literary.” Most books and authors don’t start at that point; they grow to it.
Trust the professionals helping you. Sometimes authors write books, and they really just don’t know what genre it’s in. That’s 100 percent okay. That’s what your agent, editors, and publisher are for. They can help you either decide what genre it is or shape it into a genre that it’s already trending toward. Of course, not every book is going to perfectly fit into a single genre, and that’s okay. If you’re aware of how your book compares to similar titles, it can even be a unique distinction. It’s okay to write a “cozy mystery that’s a little edgier than usual” or a “dystopian novel with a private investigator–style mystery.”
At the end of the day, a genre isn’t “what your book is.” Instead, it’s a tool for editors, publicists, and readers to describe your book to others to ensure that the readers who will love the book find it, and that’s what every author wants!
Sydney Mathieu is a digital marketing expert who creates innovative campaigns for author and publisher clients for JKS Communications. She is a well-respected book publicist with a graphic design background that makes authors' visual promotions and social media pop. She focuses much of her time on promoting authors through social media, Amazon SEO, Goodreads support, and creatively getting promotional material into the hands of tastemakers.
(To become a Killer Nashville Guest Columnist, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
Building Characters the Hard Way / Roger Johns
Before I turned to mystery writing, I spent nearly twenty years teaching in collegiate schools of business. During those years, I had literally thousands of career-oriented conversations with my students. In the beginning, I often asked them “So, what do you want to be?” Eventually, I realized that question focused on academic ambitions to the exclusion of other legitimate considerations, so I began asking, instead, “Who do you want to be?”
This question provoked a lot of thoughtful and very interesting responses. Intuitively, the students grasped that their fortunes as a something would hinge greatly on their fortunes as a someone. We were all aware of the stories about one professional or another whose life became chaotic and miserable because their character, or lack thereof, made them unsuited to the demands of their job. And we were also aware of the people who seemed to effortlessly withstand the rigors imposed by their chosen path.
The message in the question and the lesson of experience was easy to grasp: Who you are matters.
After I retired from the academy and took up mystery writing, I was several years and a lot of false starts down the road with my stubbornly unfinishable first novel before I realized that, as a writer, I had been ignoring the focus on who that, as a teacher, I had so relentlessly tried to cultivate in my students. It was a humbling moment. As a writer of plot-driven fiction, I had unconsciously decided that plot was everything and my characters deserved only second-class status.
Consequently, my characters were mere plot devices––hand-waving, dialogue-spouting, paper cutouts tricked up with collections of traits, and quirks, and occupations. But they were lifeless, and they were not up to the task of carrying the plot. The light went on when I eventually remembered those long-ago “Who do you want to be?” conversations.
Lesson learned: As it is with actual people, so it must be with fictional people––who they are matters.
Even after this evolution in my thinking, and despite all the writing classes, how-to books, and many hours spent with critique groups––all of which moved me closer to where I needed to be––I still struggled. Even though I spent a great deal of time and effort constructing what appeared to be complete characters with integrated, functioning personalities, the characters and the story didn’t play well together. The problem, as I ultimately discovered, was that I was creating the characters and the story more or less independently of each other. And once a character was created, it became impossible to see her or him as anyone other than the person I had already meticulously assembled and described in my character write-up. If the story didn’t call for that character, things tended to grind to a halt.
Eventually, the insights that all the classes and books and critique partners had been building toward finally hit me: (1) fictional people are built the same way actual people build themselves—one experience at a time, and (2) the authenticity of a character’s action in the present is determined by how that character was shaped by experiences in their past.
Lesson learned: Instead of populating my story with prefabricated characters, I would let the demands of the story call their personalities into being.
Things began to work much better at that point. Whenever a major character needed to act in a particular way, I created a corresponding experience in the character’s backstory––something that would make that action in the story’s present seem credible and authentic. Every important present action was paired with a character-shaping past experience. Eventually, I accumulated a critical mass of backstory and the characters’ personalities ignited and were strong enough to undergird an entire story’s worth of action. At that point, the characters were able to authentically carry the narrative forward.
Building as you go, however, is neither fast nor easy. It requires delving into the psychology of your characters and finding new and inventive ways to portray their past. You will have to get to know them as if they were real people.
And, as it is with so many things in life, the solution to one problem can also be the foundation for another. And such was the case here. With so much backstory, the problem became when, how, and whether to reveal it––how to keep the character’s action authentic-feeling without disrupting the momentum of the story.
The answer to this problem is, simultaneously, simple but not so simple. It turns out that backstory can be revealed in any amount and at any time, as long as you are careful to make sure that it serves the story but doesn’t become the story. This, I learned from reading a lot of books, by paying very close attention to what worked and what didn’t, and from the many mistakes I made as I dragged my own characters into existence. Here are some examples.
ACTION NOW, BACKSTORY NOW
Revealing the backstory as the action unfolds can be tricky because unloading the past as the character acts or experiences an emotion can easily sabotage the flow of the narrative. However, if done correctly, this process can produce a fully-fledged character very quickly, and pull the reader deep into the story.
In the first six pages of her debut novel, The Black Hour, Lori Rader-Day delivers a master class in action-now-backstory-now. Amelia, the character who emerges from those pages is so clear and her story so compelling, that putting the book down becomes impossible.
We see a physically damaged woman who cycles through panic, pain, dread, embarrassment, joy, irritation, anger, defiance, despair, determination, a fleeting sense of accomplishment, and ultimately fear––all within the confines of a short walk from her car, into a nearby building, up a daunting flight of stairs, and then along a hallway.
As Amelia makes this short journey, the author ties each of her physical actions and emotional responses to a bit of backstory. Cleverly, as the character moves forward in time, the snippets of backstory move backward in time. And as the character propels her hurting body along its excruciating journey up the staircase, the author reveals the backstory by going further and further down the memory hole.
From the outset, the reader is left to wonder at the source of Amelia’s physical pain and her seemingly endless pageant of emotions. Each short description of action and its corresponding physical or emotional response is paired with a brief but perfectly calibrated piece of Amelia’s history, and each pairing works as a self-contained mini-drama all its own.
The effect is mesmerizing, and by the time the seven-word revelation of the source of Amelia’s troubles is given at the opening of the second chapter, readers will feel as if Amelia is someone they’ve known forever.
It seems that the secret to success, here, was in keeping the action-backstory pairs short and perfectly matched, having the character experience a multitude of emotional responses in a very short period of time, and withholding the critical piece of backstory––the piece that explains Amelia’s seemingly bewildering blizzard of emotions––until the end of the sequence.
ACTION NOW, BACKSTORY MUCH LATER
Sometimes a character’s actions and the revelation of the critical piece of backstory that supports it can be at opposite ends of the book. Such is the case with the All the Missing Girls, by Megan Miranda. The reader learns early on that Nic Farrell, the main character, has made a puzzling decision before the book even began––a decision that ended a once promising career and spun her life into a lower, harder, and mystifying orbit. The reader, along with other characters in the book, wonders why she has done this. The critical piece of backstory that makes this decision make sense is not revealed until near the end of the book. That’s a long time to keep a reader in suspense, but Ms. Miranda pulls it off perfectly.
At every turn, Nic is portrayed as likeable, self-sacrificing, a bit tragic-seeming, and a little haunted. As an underdog trying to begin life anew, we root for her. But forces from her old life begin to intrude and we resent that. Nevertheless, she persists in trying to make the best of her new life. Then new forces rise against her and we resent that too.
From beginning to end, Nic is portrayed as a very sympathetic character, someone who is easy to care about and bond with and, most importantly, someone whose struggle looks familiar enough that we feel the need to know her, and are willing to stick with her until we discover what it is that caused her to make the decision that so dramatically altered her life.
As the story progresses, Nic’s backstory begins to invade her present in the form of someone she used to know or thought she knew. This continually reminds the reader that one of the main impediments to Nic’s new life is her old life. Every new revelation from the past serves to increase the tension she is feeling in the present. We experience with her that paralyzing fear that comes from being suddenly reminded of something bad we’d rather forget, or the dread that rises when old events seen in a new light reveal some unsettling truth.
While there are surely many ways to bridge a book-length gap between a character’s action and the justifying piece of her backstory, I found this one very compelling. The character was easy to strongly identify with, and other elements of backstory were added in a way that aggravated the character’s present troubles while building toward the critical revelation at the end.
BACKSTORY AS MISDIRECTION
Sometimes, backstory can serve double duty. It can justify a character’s present actions while it accomplishes some other story objective at the same time. In
Dark River Rising, my debut mystery, I needed a credible way for Wallace Hartman, my police detective main character, to miss the fact that she was being followed. This was going to be difficult because up until this point the reader had seen her as someone with exceptionally high situational awareness. So I had her fall under the spell of a long-ago memory. A drive through a neighborhood filled with personal history triggers a recollection from her childhood when her two brothers played a mean-ish trick on her. Wallace is in such complete thrall to the memory that she fails to notice something she ordinarily would have. The memory is brief but it’s the kind of transporting reminiscence that we all experience from time to time, and because it involves Wallace being the victim of a prank, the memory evokes sympathy and the reader feels what Wallace feels. The reason for this bit of backstory is revealed when the reader is made aware of the follower but Wallace is not.
This double-duty use of backstory worked because both Wallace and the reader experienced the misdirection. It also makes use of the fact that all adults were, at one time, children, and childhood is an endlessly fascinating time of life. And, for better or for worse it was, for most of us, the period that had the greatest impact on who we have become. Consequently, it can also be the richest source of material out of which to construct a character.
There are, undoubtedly, many other creative ways to present backstory that work just as well as the ones explored above, and you will surely find them, either in your own writing or that of others. But, as with any creative endeavor, there is a bit of art to go along with the science. Trial and error is inevitable and must be embraced. And not all of a character’s backstory needs to be revealed. But a character’s response to a challenge of any significance will eventually have to be justified by something from the past. Otherwise, the reader will be baffled as to why the character acted as she or he did. Why does one character, faced with a home invader, calmly aim and fire at the invader while another character cowers or flees or calls 9-1-1? The reader will want to know.
As an academic, I developed the capacity to go on forever about, literally, anything––fictional character creation, included. So, if you’re inclined to share your thoughts and experiences on this topic, I would love to continue the conversation. Please write and let me know about your journey to discovering the characters that propel your fiction.
Roger Johns is the author of the Wallace Hartman Mysteries—Dark River Rising (2017) and River of Secrets (2018)—from St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books. Please visit him at www.rogerjohnsbooks.com, and email him here.
(To become a Killer Nashville Guest Columnist, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
How Writing Nonfiction Made Me a Better Storyteller / Charles Salzberg
I honestly can’t remember the first time I decided I wanted to be a fiction writer. Maybe it was soon after I learned how to read. Or maybe it was the first time I realized the magic of the written word, that it could take you places you’d never been, and take you away from places where you didn’t want to be. But of one thing I’m sure: as a shy kid, I took refuge in books like The Winning Forward Pass andThe Adventures of Robin Hood, and later, novels like Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day,The Adventures of Augie March, and J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and Bernard Malamud’s The Natural. They saved me by showing me there were other worlds and other people with problems to overcome. It was all very dazzling and I wanted to be able to create a world I wanted to live in, instead of the one where I did.
I was an English major in college, and after a short detour that took me to law school for a year, I found myself needing a job. A friend suggested, because I read a lot and because I could write, that maybe I ought to become a magazine editor.
Sure. Why not? And so I managed to get a job in the mailroom and New York magazine, in its heyday, with writers like Tom Wolfe, Nick Pileggi, Nik Cohn, Gail Sheehy, Pete Hamill and John Simon, writing for a magazine edited by the legendary Clay Felker.
It didn’t take long to realize I did not want to be an editor. They were overworked, and seemed chained to their desks, while the writers, who popped in and out at odd hours, seemed to be having all the fun. That’s what I wanted to do, and so after three months I quit to become a freelance magazine writer.
The choice was odd, because I’d never wanted to write nonfiction. In fact, I looked down on it. What was so hard about going out and interviewing people, or watching an event, and then writing down what you heard or saw? That wasn’t very creative. Now writing fiction, that was the real accomplishment. But writing fiction wasn’t going to pay the rent, and so, somewhat reluctantly, I became a magazine journalist.
It turned out to be the best thing I could have done, because I learned so much about writing fiction from writing nonfiction.
The first and most important thing I learned was that fiction and nonfiction writing aren’t much different. Nonfiction, especially in those heady days of the New Journalism, used fictional techniques. Scenes had to be created. Dialogue had to be spoken. And, a cohesive story, with a beginning, a middle and end, had to be told. And so, writing magazine articles allowed me to sharpen my fiction writing skills.
Another important thing I learned as a journalist was to scrupulously keep to a word count. That means, making every word count. It means going over your copy numerous times to make sure there’s no “fat.” It means looking critically at every word, every phrase, and every sentence, to make sure it’s necessary. This, as it turned out, became a very valuable skill to have as a novelist.
Another unexpected bonus was having to go out there and meet new people, people with interesting jobs, people different who thought different from me, people who were different from me. And so, for instance, there was the time I had to write a story about a skip tracer, a profession I knew nothing about. But once I did, I decided to give that profession to Henry Swann, the protagonist of the Swann series.
I also learned important research and interviewing skills, which came in handy when I’d research novels. For Swann Dives In, I interviewed a rare book dealer. For Swann’s Way Out, I learned about the art business and the movie business. And for my latest novel, Second Story Man, I learned burglary techniques by reading about the subject and interviewing cop friends.
In the end, I developed a well-earned respect for journalists and I’m pretty sure I’m a much better writer for my experience not making stuff up.
Charles Salzberg is the author of the Shamus Award-nominated Swann’s Last Song, Swann Dives In,Swann’s Lake of Despair,Swann’s Way Out, and Devil in the Hole, named one of the best crime novels of the year by Suspense magazine. His latest novel, Second Story Man, was just published. He teaches writing the New York Writers Workshop where he is a Founding Member, and he is on the board of MWA-NY. Visit him at www.CharlesSalzberg.com.
(To become a Killer Nashville Guest Columnist, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
Character Naming: A Very Important Process / D.P. Lyle
How important are character names? Do they make or break a story? Can a name suggest a character's personality? To answer these questions, let me share something I learned from a master of crime fiction—-Elmore Leonard. It was many years ago at the now-defunct Maui Writers Conference that I met Elmore. He was one of the featured speakers. As fate would have it, I had the opportunity to sit and chat with him about writing for about 45 minutes on two separate occasions. I used that time to not only get to know this gracious and funny man but also to pick his brain.
He is known as the master of dialogue, and for good reason. Every writer should read his work as each is a textbook for dialogue writing. But, I was more interested in his characters. They are always deep and complex and so well drawn. So I asked him if he did character sketches or exactly how did he create such wonderfully flawed people. His response was that, no, he didn't do character outlines or anything like that but rather he would spend weeks, sometimes months, thinking about a character. At some point, the character’s name would evolve. And once he had the name, he knew the character.
The beauty of this struck me instantly. What he was saying is that he lived with these characters for those weeks and months until he knew them. And once that familiarity was established, the name appeared. Basically, he mentally created character sketches. The results were classic crime fiction. I mean, could Chili Palmer be a neurosurgeon? No, only a loan shark. Linda Moon is, of course, a lounge singer, and Raylan Givens is the perfect name for a US Marshall from the coal mines of Kentucky.
So what's the take-home message? Live with your characters, get to know them, and the name that fits will come. I'm sure, like me, you've named characters and began writing a story only to realize halfway through that the name you chose just simply didn't work. The reason? You didn't know the character well enough yet to know what that character's name must be. But, if you live with the character for a time, a better name will appear, one that fits the character like old jeans.
I’ve always believed that your protagonist should have a short, clean name. One that pops. One that’s easy to say, and type.
You’ll likely type it more than any other name in the story, so don’t make it long and complex. Mort works better than Mortimer. Unless, of course, the character is a Mortimer. A longer, tongue-twisting name might even annoy your readers. So, keep it simple, if possible
Also, it’s wise to have only one name per character. For example, let’s say Admiral Adam Jones, Commander of the Pacific Fleet appears in your story. If you call him Adam, Jones, Admiral Jones, the Admiral, the Fleet Commander, etc., you risk confusing the reader particularly early in the work while they are trying to sort everyone out. So call your protagonist Jones and maybe Admiral Jones and stop at that. Obviously, in dialog this might change as one or more characters might know him as Adam, but in the narrative keep it simple. Choose one name and stick to it.
Same goes for your main characters. Are you going to use their first or last name to identify them? Will you choose Adam or Jones, in the above example? This choice might be determined by the type and tone of the story, by local and cultural norms of the setting, and by the time period of the story. For example, in the South, we tend to call folks by their last name. In the end, it’s up to you, but whichever you decide, be consistent.
In medicine, blood type O-negative is termed the “universal donor” because it’s least likely to cause a reaction and, if in an emergency situation where blood must be given quickly and without going through the matching process, it’s the safest choice.
Is there a “universal” character name? You bet. Elizabeth. Think of all its iterations: Bette, Beth, Betty, Betsy, Liz, Lizbeth, Lizzie, Lisa, Liza, Libby, Lea, Lettie, Bee, Bess, Bessie,
Eliza, Elise, Elsa, Ellie, Etta, Ilsa, Izzy, and others. Each of these evokes a different feel for the character.
Choose your character names carefully. You’ll be living with them for many months, even years.
D.P. Lyle is the Macavity and Benjamin Franklin Silver Award-winning and Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, Scribe, Silver Falchion, and USA Best Book Award-nominated author of 16 books, both fiction and non-fiction. Along with Jan Burke, he is the co-host of Crime and Science Radio. He has worked with many novelists and with the writers of the TV shows Law & Order, CSI: Miami, Diagnosis Murder, Monk, Judging Amy, Cold Case, House, Medium, Women's Murder Club, The Glades, and Pretty Little Liars. You can visit D.P. Lyle at his website www.dplylemd.com You can read his blog at writersforensicsblog.wordpress.com.
(To become a Killer Nashville Guest Columnist, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
"Based On" or "Inspired By" a True Story? / Manning Wolfe
When I give my PowerPoint presentation, “Legal Issues for Authors,” I’m often asked if my legal thrillers are based on actual events that happened to clients in my law firm. I always stutter a bit when answering this question because the answer is yes and no. Attorneys already get a bad rap for qualifying every answer, so I try to slip in an explanation without too much legalese.
While all of the books in the Texas Lady Lawyer Series are based on true stories, they are not the factual series of events that actually occurred in each case. Is that “inspired by” or “based on”? Where is the line?
Terms Defined:
A story that was “inspired by” actual events is primarily fiction, but the writer gets the idea from something that took place in reality. The resulting novel takes its inspiration from the true events without claiming to represent anything that may have actually happened. The characters are usually original to the novel or only vaguely resemble the real-life participants.
A story “based on” actual events is more exact. Sometimes the names of the people and places are retained. Unlike a biography where some degree of accuracy is expected, the story is based on reality, but liberties are taken. The core elements, such as events, themes, and main characters serve as representations of themselves, but time may be compressed or secondary characters pressed into an amalgamation for efficiency.
Examples from Published Books:
With these standards in mind, my legal thrillers are inspired by truth and launched from actual events. I use the legal facts that are in the public records or media and stop short of revealing anything that was confidentially shared by a client. In other words, I use the truth as a jumping off place to tell the story of re-named characters that are fictional when the novel is finally published.
In Dollar Signs, my clients were two brothers who signed a billboard lease without realizing there was an option in the fine print to purchase the land under the billboard. In reality, the brothers didn’t bring the lease to me until the sign company sued them to obtain ownership of the land through a technicality in the law. In a meeting one day, the younger brother said, “Why don’t I just burn the damn thing down!” Of course, he didn’t, but the idea stuck with me and when I wrote the novel, it begins with the brother burning down the huge billboard and hanging off the catwalk dangling above the cars below. Merit Bridges, the Austin attorney in the Texas Lady Lawyer series takes over from there to take on the Goliath corporation and defend the brothers.
In Music Notes, the second in the series, Merit Bridges represents a down-and-out guitarist, Liam Nolan, who’s slain near the Lady Bird Lake with his own Stratocaster. The probate that develops after his death involves a young University of Texas student who believes that Liam is his father. In comes the villain, a music manager out of Los Angeles, and trouble ensues. In real life, my client, in this case, was the estate of the musician who had died. I changed the name of the famous guitarist and disguised his illegitimate son. The court records are public and used in the plot, but the majority of the story is fiction. The battle over the assets is exaggerated from the true story, but the law used to solve the probate issues is similar.
In the upcoming Green Fees—to be released in the Spring of 2018—Merit Bridges represents a young golf pro who dreams of playing the PGA tour. I won’t expand on the legal issues here, as the book is not yet published, but the true story involved a contract between a golf sponsor and the young pro as the jumping off point.
Bottom Line:
In all three books, the stories “inspired by” true events are developed “based on” a true story. The jumping off points and settings are true in all three cases, but the development of the story, characters, and resolution are all created in my imagination.
Manning Wolfe is an author and attorney, with one foot in the business world and one foot in the creative realm. Her business experience, combined with her vivid imagination, manifests in quality services for clients, as well as compelling storytelling for readers.
Manning writes cinematic-style, intelligent, fast-paced action-packed legal thrillers with a salting of Texas bullshit. She is writing a series of Texas Lady Lawyer novels based on her main character, Austin attorney Merit Bridges. Manning’s background as an attorney has given her a voyeur’s peek into some shady characters' lives and a front row seat to watch the good people who stand against them. Visit her at www.manningwolfe.com.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Column, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
Killer Nashville Interview with Sara Blaedel
Sara Blaedel is the author of the #1 international bestselling series featuring Detective Louise Rick. Recently, Ms. Blaedel took a bit of time out of her busy schedule to answer a few questions for Killer Nashville about The Undertaker's Daughter, the first novel in her new triology. Thanks to Bree Goodchild for conducting this interview.
Clay Stafford
Founder of Killer Nashville
An Interview with Sara Blaedel
by Bree Goodchild
KN: The reader is taken through the process of being a funeral director as Ilka experiences it; from picking up the body to embalming, reconstruction and makeup to the funeral itself. What kind of research methods did you utilize to create this sense of realism for your character?
SB: Research is an essential part of my writing process. It always has been, and that only intensifies as the years and titles go by. I place absolute importance on achieving authenticity. Readers are clever and savvy; they know their stuff and aren’t going to buy into anything (in this genre) that doesn’t ring true or feel possible.
As has been the case with all of my books, my research for The Undertaker’s Daughter entailed everything from reading to traveling to becoming an apprentice. When I decided to use the US as the setting for the first time, I studied the various regions until I zeroed in on Racine, Wisconsin, a city which has the nation’s largest number of Danish-Americans and Danish immigrants. I dug into the funeral home industry in the States, comparing and contrasting its laws and regulations and traditions to those in Denmark. I was really struck by how differently this extremely sensitive and reverent work is handled from one country to another. I was fascinated to learn that there are varying laws even from one state to another within the US.
I spent weeks in Racine, living amongst and getting to know the lovely people there and how they navigate. What a wonderful experience- I can’t wait to visit again. I was incredibly fortunate to be able to intern at a funeral home, which proved enlightening, compelling, and so informative.
KN: Ilka seems to miss bits of information and the subtleties of interaction between other characters. What was your thinking behind this dramatic decision?
SB: I’m so glad you caught this. Ilka is a newcomer to the US; this is her first time visiting the country. A Danish citizen, she’s an outsider when she arrives in Racine, and she’s alone and dealing with a death in the family. Being out of her element in so many ways, she struggles, at first, as anyone would, to keep up and to understand the nuances of another language and culture.
KN: Ilka seems more of an observer than a detective in this book - compared to Louise Rick. What was the creative process behind developing Ilka’s character?
That’s an interesting question. Ilka is absolutely more of an observer; at least at first. She’s not a detective. When we meet her, she’s leading a quiet and modest life as a school photographer. She is summoned to the States after the death of her long-estranged father, an undertaker, who lived and worked in Racine. Ilka, while trying to tend to her father’s estate, business, and tax issues, takes some time to try to connect with the man she barely remembers. It is while she is living in Racine and laboring in her father’s funeral home that Ilka finds herself needing to search for information and dig for clues. She’s, at most, an amateur sleuth, with no expertise or experience in detective work.
KN: Reading this book, I was surprised when at the end I did not experience the sense of closure between Ilka and her father as expected. Can you talk about what you hoped readers would get out of The Undertaker’s Daughter?
That’s another fascinating question. The Undertaker’s Daughter is the first in a trilogy, and so, while I had intended to bring to completion many of the storylines in this book, full closure wasn’t part of the plan. Yet.
For me, this series is about familial relationship and the bond between fathers and daughters. It’s about second chances and the many ways in which we can start again. It’s about the ways secrets and lies can devastate, and how love and acceptance, and the truth can be so redeeming.
KN: Do you see this as the beginning of a new thriller series, like Louise Rick, or a stand-alone?
The Undertaker’s Daughter is the first in a trilogy. All three volumes will be set in the States, which is a super exciting first for me.
Many thanks to Sara Blaedel for so graciously taking time to answer our questions and to Caitlin Mulrooney-Lyski from Grand Central Publishing for facilitating this interview.
Strong Heroine or Weak Woman? / DiAnn Mills
Whether my source of entertainment is a novel, movie, or vibrant play, I want to experience a strong heroine. Who wants to get involved in the life of a weak, whining woman who never changes or grows and needs someone (usually a man) to rescue her? Readers want to slip their feet into the experience, and that means providing them with a superior adventure.
I write romantic suspense, and a strong heroine guides my stories. In High Treason, CIA Operative Monica Alden was assigned to help protect a Saudi Arabian prince. She battled bad guys and cultural differences todo her job. Determining who she was and what mattered to her took time and patience. Because of what Monica learned in critical life experiences, she changed and grew into a survivor who was strong and independent.
What characteristics make a strong heroine? Let’s start with what it’s not:
It’s not brains or beauty.
It’s not an ivy-league education.
It’s not her skills as a crack shot or a master of self-defense.
It’s not her profession.
Instead, she must possess a tight grip on tenacity to solve a problem or reach a goal.
So how do we writers expand beyond cardboard characters into women who step off the page with real courage?
The following are ten ways to create a heroine who leaves a dynamic legacy that makes readers want to return to your novels again and again.
Build a heroine who has a credible backstory that motivates her into action. Show how her past experiences shaped her mentally, physically, and spiritually, propelling her into a remarkable main gal. She’s the true heroine in chapter one, line one.
Establish a feminine heroine and assign her a meaningful name that fits a startling story world. She’s not a woman in a man’s clothes. A cutesy name may have fit when she was three years old, but not as an adult who is ready to beat down the doors of hell to solve a crime or save someone from a vicious crime.
Incorporate a heroine’s physical attributes into her character. Include how the physical world affects her behavior, goals, strengths, weaknesses, and flaws. For example, a heroine who is seen as inferior may have a difficult time proving her value. Her sacrifice to prevent a crime may be her own life.
Place her in a setting that is totally antagonistic. Every scene should have the setting working against her. The result forces her to be a stronger heroine. For example: Heroine is in a working environment where she must team up with a person she detests.
Discover her physical problem or goal and why it matters to her and the world around her. Ask yourself, why is my heroine the only person on the planet to step into this role? What does she have to lose? What does she have to gain? What will it take for her to accept the problem and put her skills to the test?
Create a psychologically well-rounded character. This means developing a distinct personality and ascribing great communication skills. She’s a character who experiences realistic emotions and uses the lessons of the past to form who she is today. The heroine’s not perfect, nor does she have complete control of her emotions. Give her thick skin and a soft heart.
Unearth her internal struggle and how she will triumph over the issue. The struggle must be faced head-on in the climax and overcome to reach her goal. For example: Heroine was betrayed in her backstory and innocent people were victims. Now she’s hesitant to trust. Force her into a situation where she must trust or not survive.
Provide reasons why your reader will care about the heroine. What is it about her starring role that is endearing? Create sympathy for her in the first sentence and build on it throughout the story. Drop your heroine into a story in which her goals—and the way in which she achieves them—captivate readers.
Ensure your heroine is never a victim. She may have been victimized in the past, but she survived, and now she’s on guard with anyone who exhibits harmful traits. The heroine is focused on the world around her.
Show how the heroine uses her skills and acquires new ones to journey through her story with success. She is constantly filling her brain with new information and striving to improve her mental and physical skills.
The heroines in today’s novels must have the ability to ride the winds of peril while entertaining us with a powerful story.
What traits do you believe are essential for a strong heroine?
DiAnn Mills is a bestselling author who believes her readers should expect an adventure. Her titles have appeared on the CBA and ECPA bestseller lists; won two Christy Awards; and been finalists for the RITA, Daphne Du Maurier, Inspirational Readers’ Choice, and Carol award contests. Firewall, the first book in her Houston: FBI series, was listed by Library Journal as one of the best Christian Fiction books of 2014.
DiAnn is a founding board member of the American Christian Fiction Writers, a member of Advanced Writers and Speakers Association, Suspense Sister, and International Thriller Writers. She is co-director of The Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference and The Mountainside Marketing Conference with social media specialist Edie Melson. She teaches writing workshops around the country. DiAnn is active online and would love to connect with readers on any of the social media platforms listed at www.diannmills.com.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Column, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
Killer Nashville Interview with Alan Bradley
Alan Bradley is the New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning Flavia de Luce mystery series. His first novel, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie received the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger Award, the Agatha Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, the Macavity Award and the Spotted Owl Award. Recently, Mr. Bradley took a bit of time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions for Killer Nashville. The author discusses his protagonist and the unique choices made in creating her, his writing process, and offers advice to those who—like Bradley—began their writing careers a little later in the game. Thanks to Liz Gatterer for conducting this interview.
Enjoy!
A Killer Nashville Interview
with
ALAN BRADLEY
KN: When I first looked at the press release for The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place and saw that the story was about a 12-year-old girl, I assumed this was a children’s book, or a middle-grade book and was intrigued that was not how it was categorized. Who do you write your books for?
I write my books for people who are interested in the same kind of things I’m interested in. I dote on curiosities and wonder, and I have been accused of possessing a magpie mind. Fortunately, there are vast numbers of readers of all ages who share my enthusiasms. I have heard of a four-year-old girl who insists upon having the books read aloud to her, then acting them out with herself as Flavia, her father as Dogger, and her mother as Mrs. Mullet.
KN: I must admit, I am a new Flavia fan. I enjoyed The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place so much I have now binge read/listened to the entire series from the beginning. By the way, the narrator, Jayne Entwistle is just fantastic! There is an incredible amount of information in each book. How long does it take to research one of your books? Do you squirrel away factoids for use “at some point” or is it a more focused practice?
Yes, Jayne is incredible. I recently had the opportunity of speaking to her “live” during an internet broadcast. I think we were both in tears of laughter and recognition!
Some of the facts in the Flavia books are titbits I’ve been saving up for years, while others come to light during research. Because I’m a great fan of ancient and outdated reference books, it’s often harder to decide what to leave out than what to put in. In general, it takes about nine months to a year to write each book, a substantial amount of which is research. It’s not always easy to find out, for instance, what the weather was like in England at a certain hour of a certain day in 1952, or whether the 10:32 from Waterloo ran on Sundays in November.
KN: I have read at first you thought this would be a six-book series, and then a ten-book series. Well, The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place is book 9… Is book 10 in the works? Will that be the end of the series? (Please say no) Are there any plans for your next series?
In spite of reports to the contrary, I’m presently working on a tenth book. Beyond that? I don’t know. I’m sure my lovely publishers would be happy to continue, but, as Sherlock once so wisely remarked, “It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the facts.”
KN: Although the character of Flavia de Luce has certainly developed over the series, she has not really aged. She was 11 in Book 1: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and now in Book 9: The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place she is 12. It has been quite a year for the young girl! Is Flavia destined to be a pre-adolescent forever?
Flavia at 18, for instance, would be a completely different person than she is now, and perhaps not half so interesting. At any rate, there’s still much to be told about her present circumstances, and I’ve never been one for rushing things.
KN: As an author that really began to write in earnest after retirement and who published an award-winning novel after 70, what advice or words of encouragement (or words of warning) would you give to others who are just beginning their writing later in the game?
First of all, my heartiest congratulations to anyone who manages to get published at 60 and beyond! At that age, it seems unlikely that you’ll be changed: your life will be, but you won’t.
My best advice would be, as has been said so many times before, never give up. I was once told that real success takes ten years, but in my case, it took fifteen. To summarize: apply bottom to chair, write, and keep writing.
As Philip Van Doren Stern (author of the book that inspired the film “It’s a Wonderful Life”) once said, “The only thing that’s important is the manuscript. All the rest is just bubbles on the horse-piss.
Many thanks to Alan Bradley for taking time to answer our questions and to Sharon Propson from Random House Publishing for facilitating this interview.
Context and Character in Fiction / R.J. Jacobs
Motive is the intersection of fiction writing and psychology. Authors and psychologists are interested in it for the same reason: we want a basis for understanding human behavior, particularly when it contradicts our expectations of the way that people might normally act. To construct a plot, an author must devise credible characters who behave plausibly. There must be reasons why characters do the things they do— without sound motives, the story suffers. It lacks the resonance of authenticity. It feels untrue.
This is especially the case when characters act aggressive or violent. Outside of literature, psychologists often are asked to speculate about the reasoning or mental state of criminals, particularly after a highly publicized crime. They’re asked to verify that someone was “crazy”, not only to better understanding the event in question but for reassurance, as if a binary distinction between “crazy” and “not-crazy” could make malicious intent easier to spot.
If only such distinctions were possible. It turns out that we all (authors, too) commonly commit what is referred to as The Fundamental Attribution Error, which means we tend to underestimate situational influences upon others’ behavior while overestimating the contribution of their traits or disposition. In other words, we focus on who someone is, rather than on their circumstances. A wealth of social science literature suggests that this process, while intuitive, is inaccurate.
So why does it continually happen? A lot of data exists on that as well. Essentially, this tendency exists because we tend to observe others from a different perspective than we observe ourselves. When judging our own behavior, we observe the situation, not our own person. We might say, “Everything was happening at once,” because our attention focuses on our surroundings.
At the same time, an outside observer would see things differently. Their attention is centered on the person causing the action. They might say, “He seems like an angry person.”
Each person’s behavior tells his or her story, and behavior is contextually elicited. But conceding the influence of circumstance is not to disregard the potential for an individual to be pathological. To be sure, some mental health conditions are characterological. Certain people, for example, harm others for their own benefit. Some people have no moral directive. The vast majority of violent behavior, however, is not executed in so wanton a fashion.
***
Is explaining behavior through situational dynamics the same as making excuses? What about personal accountability?
Feeling states and behaviors are natural consequences of our environment. In therapy, I’m sometimes surprised when people expect to feel good despite the circumstances of their lives. Sometimes, I want to ask, “How did you think you could live that way and not feel anxious?”
In some ways, the notion of a person adapting to the environment is so apparent that it’s taken for granted. One simple example is the shift in style between a person’s home and work environments. If an effective litigator, for example, maintained a professional style with her children or in a leisure setting, most people would view her as socially inept. Given the role expectations of each environment, her behavior would naturally shift. The pace of her speech, her body language, and tone of voice would all adjust without her thinking about it.
A patient recently told me about going through with her wedding despite numerous reservations: “I was twenty-one. What does anyone know at that age? Three years before, I was in high school. I should have known that taking two Xanax meant that I shouldn’t go through with it. I was such a zombie, two of my bridesmaids were making bets on whether I would fall over. I knew I wasn’t in love with him the way that most people are when they get married.”
Her tremendous insight into her own feelings, even at the time, couldn't dissuade her from proceeding. When I asked what made her go ahead with the ceremony, her response was clear and immediate: “I didn’t want to disappoint everyone. Growing up, I’d told my family that I wanted a big wedding and they had gone out of their way to make everything perfect. There were five bridesmaids, a huge reception already paid for; people from all over the country had made travel arrangements. There was no way I could back out.”
She knew the wedding was a bad idea, but the situation dictated her behavior.
Understanding the external pressures on a person in her position is easy. What would be harder to understand, for example, would be the preternatural self-possession of a twenty-one year old halting her wedding in the face of extreme expectations.
Perhaps the study most notable for investigating the power of situation versus character is the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Phil Zimbardo in 1973. (Social psychologists have a reputation for playing tricks on people and then publishing research). By randomly assigning participants either to play the role of prisoner or guard, Zimbardo hoped to shed light on the nature of brutality. Was it the product of evil, sadistic people, or were the institutional roles responsible for the behavior? Or, put another way: Did people make the place violent, or did the place make people violent? He converted the basement of the psychology department’s building into a mock prison and simulated a penal environment where the “guards” were instructed to treat the “prisoners” with standard criminal procedure. They were fingerprinted, booked, stripped naked and deloused while the guards carried whistles and billy clubs. Prisoners were given prison clothes and bedding. Zimbardo found that almost immediately, each group adopted behavior stereotypical for its role. Everyone, including the experimenters themselves, became caught up in the situation. The students assigned to be guards began to taunt and act imposingly, while those assigned to be prisoners began to break down and to rebel. This became something like a feedback loop, in which submissive prisoner behavior seemed to further elicit aggression from the guards. Originally planned to last two weeks, Zimbardo concluded the experiment after six days as a result of extreme behavior on the part of the participants (several left the study even earlier) and because of ethical questions raised by colleagues.
So which specific factors increase the likelihood of aggression?
Aversive experiences such as pain, uncomfortable heat, an attack, or overcrowding all heighten arousal. When hostility is sensed within a group, the group is seen as even more hostile when the space is crowded. In stressful circumstances, aggression cues (the presence of a gun, or witnessing a violent image) can function to ignite hostility. When people’s motivations are strong, and they expect to meet their goals, they become frustrated when their wishes are blocked. Add in an aversive experience and an aggression cue, and a stage is set for violence.
It’s comfortable to believe we are in control of ourselves. We all maintain a self-concept and we tell ourselves that while we might be capable of some things, some behavior is beyond us. Writers develop our characters in the same way: by focusing on their traits. Then, we develop histories to explain them. We ask ourselves: Given who this person is, what would they do in this situation? But the opposite question may be more correct: Given the dynamics of this situation, what would anyone do? Would a “good” person be capable of aggression? Violence? An atrocity? As writers, we have a chance to create resonant plots when we can hold character constant for a moment and consider how an accumulation of circumstances bears upon a particular opportunity to act.
R.J. Jacobs has practiced as a psychologist since 2003. He maintains a private practice in Nashville, focusing on a wide variety of clinical concerns. After completing a post-doctoral residency at Vanderbilt, he has taught Abnormal Psychology, presented at numerous conferences, and routinely performs PTSD evaluations for veterans.
His novel, tentatively titled: Broken Surface, is scheduled to be published by Crooked Lane in 2019.
He lives with his wife Rebecca and their two children.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Column, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
Killer Nashville Interview with Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
Clay StaffordFounder of Killer Nashville
An Interview with Preston & Childby Liz Gatterer
KN: City of Endless Night is the 17th book in the Pendergast series. How do you plot out such a long-running series? Do you plan the next book(s) in advance, or are they conceived one at a time? How do you keep the storylines straight?Doug: We conceive them one story at a time. When we wrote RELIC, we thought it was going to be a one-off and didn’t think that Pendergast would be (or should be) the main character. He took over the books on his own. We didn’t know his first name until four books later. As for keeping the storyline straight, we often find ourselves re-reading our old books and taking notes, to make sure we’re picking up the right threads. Sometimes we even consult our most passionate fans about various arcane details we ourselves have forgotten. I recall once wracking my brains trying to recall what Pendergast thought of Italian opera, and finally consulted a fan who said, “He hates it.”KN: The first two novels in the series, Relic and Reliquary were published two years apart–1995 and 1997 respectively. The third novel, Cabinet of Curiosities, came along 5 years later in 2002 and since then you have averaged a new Pendergast novel every 12.5 months with each novel comprised of an average of 417 pages. Keeping up that pace is amazing–especially when you take into account the research that goes into each book, the fact that you have written over 2 dozen other books (collaboratively and individually), have book tours, speaking engagements and families that I assume like to see you occasionally. How do you manage it? 
Linc: We’re pedaling as fast as we can! Joking aside, it really helps having a writing partner on the case—Doug and I have both written numerous solo novels as well as our joint books, so we know. Also, the fact that we now are so familiar with the Pendergast universe—although not necessarily with Pendergast himself—means that the foundation for new novels is already well in place. But the bottom line is that we love what we do: writing about Pendergast and his various adventures remains always fresh and exciting to us both.Doug: Linc does the pedaling; I stand behind him and bark out orders like the coxswain of a rowing crew. Seriously, it is great having a writing partner whose taste and intelligence you trust implicitly, and who thinks like you do.KN: You excel at blending the natural and supernatural in your books. Which comes first? Is the supernatural a bridge between the events you want to happen, or are the natural events a product of the supernatural? Is there a secret to finding the balance?Linc: This was perhaps particularly evident in the earliest books of the series, RELIC and RELIQUARY, although it’s been a factor in numerous Pendergast and non-Pendergast books of ours as well. I’ve always been a fan of ghost stories, and when I was an editor at St. Martin’s Press I put together numerous supernatural anthologies. The idea of trying to mix a straight-ahead thriller with potentially supernatural elements (although with a fair amount of science underpinning everything) was more revolutionary when RELIC first appeared than it is today. In fact, at the time our publishers and booksellers weren’t quite sure what genre to classify it as. Ultimately RELIC was called a “techno-thriller,” but I’m not sure even that quite encompasses it.Doug: We have always been attracted by the hints of the supernatural, because it adds a certain mystery and Gothic flavor to the series. Too much mystery has been taken out of the world and we want to put a little bit back in.KN: As a fan, I LOVE that in City of Endless Night Pendergast returns to NY and teams up with Detective D’Agosta again. And (I don’t want to give anything away) the Epilogue really warmed my heart. However, these events hint at a certain amount of closure for Pendergast which terrifies me a bit (and not in a fun way). I am almost afraid to ask, but, are these harbingers of an end to the Pendergast series?Doug: Not at all. We’re quite fond of Pendergast and hope to see him in many books to come, provided he doesn’t get killed along the way. (Nobody is safe in our books.) We plan to launch a new series starring Nora Kelly, in which Pendergast might, from time to time, make a cameo appearance—if he’s still alive by then.KN: You have been quoted as saying that you try to write thrillers that you yourselves would like to read. This aligns well with the Killer Nashville mission to help writers write books that we would like to read. Do you have advice for new authors on how to accomplish this feat?Linc: I can only speak from my own experience, but with that proviso: I’ve found that writing a book about a subject that I personally find fascinating, either that I know something of already or would like to learn more about, not only makes the research and writing process more enjoyable, but it results in a more compelling and credible story. Readers can tell the difference between a book written from the heart and one written simply in hopes of selling lots of copies. Also, writing a novel can be a difficult and at times even disheartening process—it’s not uncommon to have to rewrite passages or even whole sections of prose along the way, especially when starting out—and writing about a subject of great personal interest can sometimes make that easier.Doug: I couldn’t agree with Linc more. It’s a huge mistake to think you can figure out the formula and write a bestselling book. The “formula” in my opinion is to write about what fascinates you, populate it with characters that you know and love (or hate), and set it in a place you know well.
Many thanks to Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child for taking time from their book tour for City of Endless Night to answer our questions and to Caitlin Mulrooney-Lyski from Grand Central Publishing for facilitating this interview.
The Cognitive Benefits of Reading / Jane Sandwood
We all know that Nashville is bursting with songwriters, but it's also home to many outstanding novelists, poets, and screenwriters. It’s a place where creativity abounds, making it a great place for writers to come together and form a literary community. But, in order to become a great writer, one has to be an avid reader, which is why it is essential to know how reading can impact our ability to create.
There are many advantages to reading—especially for the benefit of your brain. Readers will recognize the way that a good book makes them feel, and these good feelings are ultimately a result of the brain responding to your reading in a positive way. Just as routine writing habits are rewarding, so, too, is developing a reading habit that gives you the power to fuel your mind each and every day.
Here are 3 important ways that reading benefits your mind and imagination:
1. Spikes Brain Connectivity and Function
According to a neurological study at Emory University, reading a novel affects the brain’s function in a healthy, constructive way. Reading a novel stimulates the left temporal cortex, which is the section of the brain that allows you to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Reading, therefore, improves embodied cognition in the brain, as a good book produces a heightened connectivity in brain function that can last for hours.
2. Engages You In Deep Focus—Like Meditation
A second benefit is the ability of books to help you relax. Having a similar effect to meditation, reading helps to reduce stress—even more so than listening to music, taking a walk, or drinking a cup of tea. Reading for just 6 short minutes can lower your heart rate and ease muscle tension, making it a great way to focus deeply and relax your brain.
3. Improves Emotional Intelligence
A third effect that reading has on the brain is its improvement of our emotional intelligence—or our ability to be compassionate and empathize. Researchers have found that people who spent time reading fiction showed an increase in empathy one week later. These findings conclude that reading stimulates the area of the brain that allows you to emote and to interact more positively or empathetically with other human beings.
Thus, in its ability to facilitate brain connectivity, inspire you to relax the mind, and improve your emotional intelligence, reading is an all-around beneficial tool to keep your brain healthy and functioning to its fullest emotional and mental capacity.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Joseph Borden, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
The Joys and Challenges of Writing a Series Character / Joe Clifford
I write the Jay Porter thriller series (Oceanview Publishing). With three in the bag (Lamentation, December Boys and Give Up the Dead), and numbers four and five under contract, I am preparing to dive back into the bleak wintery world of Lamentation Mountain.
Oftentimes when I tell someone I write a series character (usually at Christmas parties I don’t want to be at), I get one of two responses. Well, I get a lot of different responses, but two of note. The first is “Hey, I’ve got a great idea. How about I tell you, you write it, and we split the money?” As tempting as that offer is, I pass. The second, more interesting question is whether I find it stifling, artistically speaking. Whereas many of my responses in uncomfortable social situations tend to be standard, here my answer is always authentic and unique.
Like the books and characters in the series, the answer evolves; and like most of life’s compelling examinations, a great deal of conflict presents itself. There are parts I find stifling, but not for the reasons most think. Generally, I get asked this question by other artists, other writers. We are, after all, in this game to forge new ground. How many Jack Reacher books can Lee Child write? As many as he wants! I’d kill for his career, as I am sure most writers would, at least those of us who write genre. And that is where I’ll start.
Part of writing genre is ascribing to a template. I will avoid the word “formula” because it has such nasty connotations. I started out as a literary fiction writer before making the switch to the Dark Side. Even now I retain enough of those sensibilities that I can get slapped with the “literary thriller” label, which I love but drives bookstores mad.
When one says something is contrived, what they mean is he or she can see the strings. Readers don’t want to see the strings. They want to be submerged, lost, whisked away in the fantasy. But all art, by definition, is contrived; we make something out of nothing, create an illusion. One wrong move and it can all fall apart, exposing the machination behind the curtain.
But I like having that map, knowing I am not flying blind; I like a flight chart that gets me from Ashton to Arizona.
In the Jay Porter books, I get to chronicle the life of a man I care very much about. As crazy as it sounds, Jay has become as real to me as most of my friends. I certainly spend more time with him than I do most of my friends. Jay began as part me, part my half-brother, but now, after three books, he has grown into a wholly original creation. Deeply flawed, self-sabotaging, good intentioned but often perverted by anger, rage, and misunderstanding a dream that is just out reach, Jay resonates because of these conflicts (or so I’ve been told). I think it was Mailer who said our heroes need to be larger than life. I counter Norman that they need to be slightly less than. Because that rings truer for me. We all know the life we want. How many of us get it?
To this end, no, there is nothing stifling about watching a creation come into this world, and not unlike parenting a child, having to surrender ownership to allow that child to become what he needs to be, not what you want him to be. When I begin a Jay Porter book I have a loose idea of a plot, and then I see where Jay takes it. This is the very opposite of stifling. It’s exciting, unexpected, and I am often just as surprised (and infuriated) by Jay’s choices. But I find the ride richly rewarding. I hope my readers do too.
But there is a stifling component to writing a series. And like I said it’s not what most think. The hard part is that when you write a series, it becomes harder to write outside that world. Your style becomes immersed and associated with that one character and series, which makes it tougher to write different books. I’ve written several standalones, books I think are just as good as the Porter books, but it’s been harder to find them homes. I’ve heard if I “made them a Jay Porter book” . . . But that is what I am trying not to do in those situations.
Still, this is a minor gripe. I work as a professional novelist. How many writers would love to say that? I am humbled and honored by the opportunity.
Joe Clifford is acquisitions editor for Gutter Books and producer of Lip Service West, a “gritty, real, raw” reading series in Oakland, CA. He is the author of several books, including Junkie Love and the Jay Porter Thriller Series (Lamentation, December Boys, Give Up the Dead), as well as editor of Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Stories Based on the Songs of Bruce Springsteen. Joe’s writing can be found at joeclifford.com.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
KERRIE DROBAN / DOING TIME FOR THE CRIME
As a criminal defense attorney (by day) my clients often complain they are “doing time for the crime” (as if that’s unfortunate). After writing five true crime books that primarily focus on the one percent of crimes (motorcycle gangs, mafia and deep cover investigations) no sane author should explore, I too have done “time for the crime” and have learned a few things: First, everyone has a story, not everyone has a voice; second, it’s the storyteller’s job to investigate Truth (the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me!!) But what is the Truth, and whose Truth is it? How the author derives at that Truth steeped in a world of sociopaths, violent subcultures, unpredictable sources, hidden identities, deep cover investigations and subjects whose norm it is to distrust everyone including the storyteller, involves tenacity and guts. The author is cast in a dual role, as both journalist and novelist.
And unlike typical true crime books (like my own, A Socialite Scorned: The Murder of a Tucson High Roller) that center around a brutal murder, the pathology of the killer(s) and the subsequent investigation, most of mine have involved first-hand accounts with limited (if any) court records or other documentation and corroborating sources who, for safety reasons, cannot ever be divulged.
In my latest book, The Last Chicago Boss, the story is written from the perspective of Peter James, the “Boss” of the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club, one of the most violent biker gangs in the world and a chief rival of the Hells Angels. His was an extraordinary rise to power and, like every book I’d written before, his presented unique challenges. For starters, we lived on opposite coasts. I had never been to Chicago. He was dying (which meant I had to build rapport quickly and obtain all the information I needed in less than six months) and disliked the idea of being recorded (his survival in the club, after all, as a “Boss” relied on his ability to avoid government surveillance).
So I improvised and implemented the following: Rule #1: make the subject comfortable. Rule #2: Let the subject guide the disclosures. Rule #3: Listen. Listen. Listen. Rule #4: Interview often (the Boss and I spoke every Sunday for three hours for over six months). Rule #5: Keep everything (you never know what will make it into the final manuscript or what might fill in the gaps). Rule #6: Respect the Subject’s boundaries, if he tells you it’s “off the record” keep it “off the record.” Rule #7: Don’t worry about organization when information gathering, that will come later.
After six months of interviews and hundreds of pages of notes I had a compilation of fascinating, funny and at times terrifying tales; I needed a Hook and a way to organize the material into a compelling narrative. I looked for repetition, themes and significant secondary characters. The Boss loved board games: Risk, Go, Chess. He manipulated the Chicago Outlaws and 38 additional clubs like game pieces; he occupied territories and “captured” enemies. The idea of “games” and “players” provided the structure for the Story. And since The Boss was “larger than life” the narrative had to be written in first person. All I needed now was “The Hook” (or what I like to call, the “Why”).
In The Last Chicago Boss, the real Sons of Anarchy were actually “gangster conformists”, with more rules than a corporate entity. They weren’t rebels. They weren’t even free. And, maybe after all, their “terrifying public persona” was really just part of a more private game. That’s the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth…. according to The Boss (as told to me, the story teller).
Droban is an award-winning author of five best-selling true crime books, one of which (Vagos, Mongols and Outlaws) was made into a miniseries called "Gangland Undercover" initially produced by the History Channel. Her true crime books, Running with the Devil: The True Story of the ATF's Infiltration of the Hells Angels, won the USA News National Book Award for best True Crime in 2008 and Prodigal Father, Pagan Son: My Life Born Into Madness, is a two-time winner of the USA News National Book Award for Best True Crime and Best Memoir. Her book, A Socialite Scorned: The Murder of Gary Triano, was featured on American Greed, Dateline and in "Murders and Mansions" produced by La Brea Entertainment. Her most recent book is The Last Chicago Boss: The True Story of Big Pete and the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club. Kerrie has written articles for TIME and has appeared on national television on CNN, CNBC's American Greed, "A Widow's Web." "A & E's "Gangland" "Behind Enemy Lines", the American Hero's Channel, "Codes and Conspiracies," Investigation ID and the Discovery Channel's "Deadly Devotion," and in a series entitled, "Deep Undercover." Her website is www.kerriedroban.com
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Shawn Smucker / The Day the Angels Fell
It’s 8 o’clock, a perfect summer night, and the sky is fading to steel blue. A middle-aged man, my next fare, comes out of the bar and holds up his index finger, then sidles up next to two women talking to the bouncer. He flirts with the older woman. Meanwhile, I wait.
“Don’t you leave me!” he shouts at me. It is the voice of someone used to shouting, used to getting his way.
“I’m going to head out soon!” I say, laughing, only half joking. He storms over towards me. My blood pressure rises. I consider driving away, waving goodbye through the sunroof.
“What did you say?” he asks, squinting his eyes. “You are not f***ing leaving me!” He throws his phone into the passenger seat, pulls out his wallet, leafs through a deck of bills, and tosses a twenty on to the passenger side floor. I do not pick it up.
* * * * *
I am not so good at waiting in the tension. I tend to avoid conflict at all costs and do anything to move towards speedy resolution of the story.
Does this feel like a counseling session?
Avoiding conflict may not sound like a life-destroying personality trait, but it sure makes for terrible fiction. Imagine if Scrooge looked up at the charitable gentlemen who entered his office in scene one and said, “Why, of course! Here’s a donation. And Merry Christmas.” End of story. Or if Bilbo Baggins looked up at one of the dark riders and handed him the ring straight away, muttering, “I’m not really into jewelry anyway.”
As writers, we have to allow our characters to sit in the conflict until it has worked its course in them.
I sometimes drive for Uber. The beginning of this piece? A real-life example of a conflict. In that moment, when the customer threw the bill in through the window, I wanted to leave. But if I would have fled, I would have ruined the story.
* * * * *
He goes back to his conversation. The $20 is still on the floor. He nudges his body up against the younger woman, puts his arm around her shoulders. She shifts. His hand drops, catches her waist on the way through, a passing glance, a pressure point impossible for her not to feel.
Nearly ten minutes later he finally comes back to the car.
“I need to make a pit stop,” he says. He bends over and picks up the $20 bill off the floor and hands it to me. “Here, this is yours.” I shrug and take it. He directs me to another bar. We arrive, and again he wants to control the situation.
“I need you to wait here,” he says. “I’m just having one beer. I will make it worth your time. Do not f***ing leave me!”
Ten minutes later he comes out of the bar alone and climbs into the car. I confirm the address and we start driving.
“I can’t believe you were going to leave me,” he says, starting in on the same old topic. He asks me how often I drive.
“Fifteen to twenty hours a week,” I say. “Sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on my other work.”
I ask him what he does.
“I’m a business man,” he says. “I’ve made a lot of money.” He is not bragging. He says it as a statement of fact, the same way someone might say, “I could stand to lose some weight,” or “I had salmon for dinner.”
“I’m on my way home to my girlfriend. I was married. I have some kids. They won’t have anything to do with me, not now.” Now he is back again, chuckling, but in between each laugh is a tiny spark of something. I realize what it is: disappointment. I have never heard someone trying so hard to convince themselves they are happy. Talking to him is like being the lion tamer in the circus – circling, constantly assessing, now firm, now retreating. We pull up outside his house.
“Thanks for waiting,” he says, standing up out of the car. The street is tree-lined and dark and someone in the distance is mowing their yard. I can hear the mower. I can smell the grass.
“I can’t believe you were going to f***ing leave me,” he says. He pulls out a $100 bill and throws it onto the passenger seat. He slams the door.
* * * * *
So, that’s a true story about me staying in the conflict, not running away, not trying to shorten it. Just letting it play out.
As story-tellers, we’d do well to let our characters experience the conflict. Slow down. Let them live the entire story. Because that’s where the real story is hiding.
Shawn Smucker lives in Lancaster, PA, with his wife and their six children. He can also be found at shawnsmucker.com. The Day the Angels Fell is his first novel.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Patricia Bradley / Ten Clichés to Avoid in Writing
I’ve been writing for a lot of years and there are several things I wish I had known early on. You know, those things that make an agent or editor’s eyes glaze over. Like don’t start your story with a dream, or the weather. Do you know how many times they have seen that kind of opening? The only thing worse than an editor or agent seeing these things is if you Indie publish and your reader sees them.
Here is my personal list of what not to do. It’s personal because I’ve either done these things in a first draft or thought about doing them.
Speaking of dreams, at the end, don’t let your hero wake up and the reader discovers everything that has happened since the opening was a dream.
Your antagonist is pure evil. Give your antagonist redeeming qualities of some sort, especially if you don’t reveal he’s the antagonist until the end. Remember that even the worst villain cares about someone or something, so give him that. If you can make the reader want him to change, you’ve done a great job. Another thing, be sure to make him worthy of your hero. This applies to “the other love interest” in a romance, too.
An incompetent superior. While it can be very satisfying to make the boss look stupid, resist the urge. He didn’t get to be in charge by being dumb. And along that line, don’t make every Southern sheriff overweight, red-necked and a bully.
Character descriptions. Don’t have your characters look in the mirror (or see their reflection in water) and describe themselves. This has been done so many times. If at all possible, have another character describe your hero or heroine. Or have the heroine compare her looks to someone else. It takes a little work, but well worth it.
And please, when you are in a character’s point of view, don't let her flip her long blonde hair, or think about unfolding her long, tanned legs from the car. When you flip your hair, do you think about the color? In thinking of your body do you ever think that you have long, tanned legs?
The alcoholic or former alcoholic detective. Unless you can put a new twist on it, give your detective another flaw.
The waitress with a heart of gold. Or a kindly grandfather. Go against the grain. Let them be grumpy. Downright mean, even.
I’ve heard readers complain there must be an amnesia virus running rampant in the romance genre. I’m not sayinga character can’t block a memory, but for your protagonist to wake up and their whole life is gone is getting a little stale.
Don’t let your story hinge on a problem that can be solved by a good discussion unless you have a really strong reason they can’t have this discussion. I realize your characters are going to misunderstand each other since it happens even in real life. Let them have the discussion and let that discussion make a bigger problem for your protagonist.
The ingenious serial killer who is smarter than the cops. There will never be another Hannibal Lecter. Let your hero/heroine outsmart the killer on smaller levels before the final scene.
You can use the clichés to jumpstart your brain while you’re letting the story jell in your mind. That’s okay, but when it comes time to write, try this. Set a timer for ten minutes and free write whatever plot ideas come to your mind. Then set the timer for ten more minutes and repeat the process. You’ll be surprised with what you come up with.
Winner of an Inspirational Readers’ Choice Award in Suspense, Patricia Bradley lives in North Mississippi with her rescue kitty, Suzy. Her romantic suspense books include the Logan Point series and the Memphis Cold Case Novels. She also has written sweet romances for Harlequin Heartwarming available as ebooks.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
ROBIN FOX’S SECRETS OF INTERROGATION / Charles Kowalski
From the detective coaxing a confession out of a suspect, to the counterterror operative racing to find a ticking bomb, interrogation has always been a key part of mystery and suspense fiction. Today, Killer Nashville welcomes a special guest: master interrogator Robin Fox, hero of Mind Virus, a 2013 Claymore finalist. Thank you for joining us, Captain Fox.
Just “Robin,” please. I’m not in the service anymore, and that’s a time in my life I don’t care to be reminded of.
Sorry. But you were a military interrogator, and a Bronze Star winner at that. That’s quite an unusual career move for a peace-loving academic like you.
I joined the service just because it was expected in my family, and my father wouldn’t have paid for my education if I’d refused. I didn’t expect to see much action, but as soon as I was commissioned, 9/11 happened. I spoke some Arabic – I was a Foreign Service brat, and had picked up a smattering of several languages – so they sent me to the “Schoolhouse,” the interrogator training facility at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. After that, Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Iraq…you name it, I’ve been there. If you can’t name it because it’s top secret, I’ve probably been there too.
What would you say is the most important part of interrogation?
Building a relationship with the subject. The most important questions in any interrogation are the ones you don’t ask aloud. Who is this person? What does he want most? What does he fear most? Once you know the answers to these questions, you have the key that opens any door.
You’ve often said that “interrogation is theater.” Could you elaborate?
A good interrogator is as skilled as a good actor at improvising himself into a role. If you learn that the subject had a traumatic experience in his past, for example, you can create a character for yourself that had a similar experience and can empathize.
That all sounds like more than Jack Bauer would have time for.
Don’t get me started on Jack Bauer. Yes, it takes time, and no, it doesn’t play as well on TV, but it works. If you scare a subject into cooperating, he’ll only cooperate as long as you can keep him scared. But if you can earn his trust, he’s yours forever.
And they say confessions extracted under torture aren’t reliable anyway.
Getting confessions isn’t even the point. Military interrogation is a different game than police interrogation. You aren’t trying to solve a past crime, you’re trying to plan your future strategy. The question isn’t “Whodunnit?” but “What are they going to do next?”
And what strategies do you use to find that out?
The Army has its playbook of approaches with names like Fear Up, Fear Down, Pride and Ego Up, Pride and Ego Down…One example is Establish Your Identity. If the subject refuses to talk about one incident, you accuse him of involvement in another, much worse one. He’ll usually cop to the lesser charge.
That assumes the subject still has some instinct for self-preservation. Would it work on terrorists who’d happily blow themselves to oblivion as long as they could take some of us with them?
That doesn’t describe everyone who joins a terrorist group. Some join out of fear; they see a choice between being on this group’s member list or their hit list. Some were deceived by the group’s leader, and some join because of plain old romantic love. It’s never as simple as “We love freedom and they hate freedom.”
But you must get some who are die-hard ideologues.
Then you let them talk about ideology. Let them rant all they want. When they pause for breath, you can interject something like, “Oh, I read something similar in so-and-so; did you get some inspiration from him?” All human beings have a basic need to be listened to, understood, taken seriously. If you provide that for the subject, you instill a subconscious sense of indebtedness. You lower his psychological defenses, so when his lecture is over, he’s much more likely to tell you what you need to know.
Can you recommend some books for people who’d like to learn more?
There are many books by former military interrogators out there. Here are some of the ones that were most useful:
Alexander, Matthew: How to Break a Terrorist (2008).
Lagouranis, Tony: Fear Up Harsh (2007).
Mackey, Chris: The Interrogator’s War (2005).
Navarro, Joe: Interviewing Terrorists (2011), and many other books about interrogation techniques.
Saar, Erik: Inside the Wire (2005).
Thank you very much, Professor Fox. I hope everyone enjoys reading about your adventures in Mind Virus!
Robin Fox, professor of comparative religions at George Washington University, is a fictional character. Charles Kowalski, whose debut thriller Mind Virus won the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Colorado Gold Award (Action/Thriller) and was a finalist for the Claymore Award, the Clive Cussler Grandmaster Award, and the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association Literary Award, is real as far as he knows. Both of them have spent a large part of their lives abroad and studied several languages; Charles now divides his time between Japan and Downeast Maine.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Vanishing Point / Lisa Harris
Confessions from a Wannabe Perfectionist
I’ll admit it. I’m not the most organized person in the world. I have hundreds of family photos just waiting to be organized, junk drawers that need to be cleaned out, and my desk is way too cluttered. I could throw out all the familiar excuses, of course. I don’t have enough time, or space, or even that life holds too many urgent things for me to handle besides stopping and organizing things. I’m guessing you probably have one or two of your own excuses as well.
I discovered early on, though, that if I wanted to be an author, I had to find a way to organize my stories. I write complex romantic suspense novels that take place over a very tight timeline. This means I can’t just hope my stories come together smoothly in the end. I needed a way to keep up with my chapters that included both a detailed timeline and running word count. There are many tools to help authors like Scrivner, which I love, but I always find myself going back to one program for a quick overview of my story. And that program is Excel.
If you’ve always assumed the Excel is just for numbers, this might come as a surprise for you. But it’s not. And while my husband uses Excel charts for all his accounting needs, it can be used for so much more. You can use if for lists, addresses, inventories, and even for your next grocery store run. For me, it’s become the key to organizing my novels.
I have a new book, Vanishing Point, that’s getting ready to come out in November. It’s the perfect example as to why I have to stay organized. When I started this book, I had just concluded writing my Nikki Boyd Series, which is a three-book series about a Missing Person Task force. One of the story arcs throughout the series deals with the disappearance of Sarah, Nikki’s younger sister. Sarah’s vanishing ten years ago is important to the storyline, primarily because it becomes the motivation behind Nikki joining law enforcement. My publisher came to me last year and asked me to write a fourth book to go along with the series—Sarah’s story.
In writing Nikki’s sister’s story, I had a new challenge. Instead of the storyline taking place over a few short days, I needed it to take place over an entire decade, beginning with her disappearance. To do this—and to keep the story moving—I broke up the action into four different time periods, and kept each of those time periods short. But on top of the different time periods, I had to make sure that the facts—from the characters, to every mention of Sarah in the Nikki Boyd series, and the detailed timeline—meshed with book four. Thankfully, I’d been using excel spreadsheets for years to organize my books and could go back to them for a clear look at the storyline. With Vanishing Point, this was going to be essential.
The wonderful thing about using a spreadsheet to organize your books is both the quick flexibility of changing the order of chapters or adding a new one as you write. You can also add as many columns as you need for your particular project. And because Excel is primarily for numbers, you can incorporate a running total of your word count.
All of my spreadsheets have a basic layout in order to keep track of my chapters. I include my word count, a detailed timeline, chapter description, a note on when a chapter is incorporated into the final manuscript, and the chapter hook. On top of listing my chapters and my timeline, I also use the sides and bottom of my spreadsheet to take notes. This includes keeping track of physical traits—so my heroine’s eye color doesn’t change from chapter to chapter—characteristics, and an ongoing list of anything I might need to double check on at the end. In addition, I add a section for things like the seasons, weather, sunrise/sunset times, as well as a list of minor character names and descriptions.
So while my photos and junk drawer might never be organized, at least I’ve found the solution for my writing. And the other added bonus to this is when I come back to the story months later for my publisher’s edits, I have every I need right at my fingertips, all on one handy spread sheet.
Happy writing!
Lisa Harris is a bestselling author, a Christy Award winner, and the winner of the Best Inspirational Suspense Novel for 2011 and 2015 from Romantic Times for her novels Blood Covenant and Vendetta. The author of more than thirty books, including Vendetta, Missing, Pursued, and the Southern Crimes series, Harris and her family have spent fourteen years living as missionaries in southern Africa. Learn more at lisaharriswrites.com.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
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