The Occult Thrill of Research by Mike Suave

Norman Mailer called writing “The Spooky Art.” It is spookiest for me when I type a word without overt knowledge of its meaning, and upon Googling that word it makes perfect sense in the context I’ve used it. Presumably, I have either read or heard that word when I was paying scant attention. While there’s nothing spooky about the subconscious encoding of information, that information’s eventual reassertion at the conscious level can certainly feel that way. It goes beyond words: entire concepts and situations I’ve read about years ago often fortuitously reappear at the crux of narrative pressure. This is not luck. Those words and concepts would never be available to me as outputs if they hadn’t once been inputs.

If maximizing these inputs sounds like the domain of the non-fiction writer, or like a homework assignment, or too far afield from the creative life you’ve chosen, this article will show how research doesn’t have to be the domain of the poor-postured fellow burning the midnight oil at the library, glasses forever sliding down the crook of his nose, attractive members of the opposite sex knocking books out of his hands in the hallway—rather, it is the domain of the active and engaged individual who is trying to get the most out of life.

I’ve always been a fickle reader. I’ll never understand people who must finish a book once they’ve started. There are far too many significant books to read for even the most curatorially-discerning reader to possibly get to. Stanley Kubrick would choose books from his library at random because of this very understanding. He knew that he wasn’t going to read all the books he wanted to in his life, so why waste any extra time picking and choosing. Look around you and notice the world is full of books. They sit in massive institutions, some untouched for decades if not centuries. They are in your grandmother’s attic. They abut the large doily departments in the massive chain bookstores. This may be sacrilegious to tell a readership of writers, but I often go to Indigo (the Canadian equivalent of Barnes and Noble), and after resting briefly in the bedware section, I take pictures of interesting books so that I can I order them from the library. My money tends to go to used book stores. I have a hypothesis that all the books you’re meant to read in a lifetime are waiting to manifest themselves in the dollar bin. If you go to the bookstore or Amazon with a subject in mind, you’ll never get too far outside the boundaries of what you already know. Let fate play its hand and you will be taken in new and strange directions.

Even for those with the time to read, phone-based distractions alone make it increasingly difficult to physically read for extended periods. Here’s where audiobooks come in. Some audiobook consumers complain that they struggle to maintain focus. I’d counter that, for my purposes, it doesn’t matter if I catch everything. Much like the arcane dollar bin offering, relevant passages have a way of grabbing my attention, while what’s superfluous is mere background noise that keeps my negative thought cycles down to a dull roar. More importantly, audiobooks make quotidian daily life feel like a part of the writing routine. Commuting to work is no longer a tedious thief stealing time from your writerly pursuits. Now this otherwise dreary process is contributing to them. Some of the more pencil-necked variants of the writerly species have a natural antipathy towards the grunting meatheads at the gym, but I can assure you there is nothing more rewarding than pursuing gains while learning the things you need to learn to make your novel as good as it can be.

Traditional research can feel like muh gains in its own right. I feel pretty darn self-actualized with a stack of books a dozen-high at the reference library. Don’t get me started on the ego-salving pleasures of requesting a roll of microfiche or making a stacks request. And it probably doesn’t need to be said that a giant reference library is the most mysterious dollar bin in the world. I believe these simple acts of apprenticeship build more confidence for novice writers than all the fraudulent #amwriting hashtags in the world. I’ve got a status update for you: if you’re tweeting #AmWriting you aren’t writing. You are tweeting.  

 The book I recently finished, The Many Fentanyl Addicted Wraiths of Sault Ste. Marie, contains a number of subjects I was not well-versed in: from broad areas like local history and the opiate epidemic to more specific details involving the scientific process of erosion. With the opiates and the history, I was happy to dive as deep as possible. I listened to Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic and Dopesick and read New York Times features on the opiate epidemic that were closer to non-fiction novel than magazine article. This never felt like work. I was writing a book about the opiate epidemic because I am concerned and angered by the opiate epidemic. It’s set in my hometown because I am unhealthily fixated upon my hometown. Every gap in understanding presented a challenge that I was eager to meet. I didn’t know where I’d find all the answers because I didn’t even know the questions. But whenever I found the right spool of microfiche or a dusty old pamphlet on Sault Ste. Marie in the Depression, I felt like I’d done some “high level problem solving with dire physical consequences” as erudite meathead Joe Rogan is fond of saying, even if the consequences never really amounted to anything more than embarrassing myself by getting something wrong or leaving something out. With the erosion, yeah I just Googled some stuff about erosion. That’s cool too.

Of course there is a danger of relying too heavily on your research. If I quoted every statistic I came across on the opiate epidemic, every captivating quote from a musty old volume, not only would it be wonkish and boring, but it would be the most dreadful type of arrogance—that of the windbag. However, I did occasionally come across words or concepts so interesting, such as nociceptive pain in The Many Fentanyl Addicted Wraiths of Sault Ste. Marie, that I can’t help but include them, even if it’s not worth devoting extra paragraphs to explaining all the nociceptional ins and outs. I’ve always hated when editors or beta readers say, “I had to look this up. The reader wouldn’t know what this means.” That’s kind of the point here. I read stuff all the time and I don’t know what it means. Then I read more about it. Then I know what it means.

But hopefully, the reader won’t think too much about the sausage being made. They probably won’t care that I got the erosion details correct. Or hopefully they’ll think something subconsciously themselves, such as, “Boy that guys knows a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff.” I can recall thinking this when I first read Infinite Jest, which, despite its co-opting by the unwashed hipster masses, remains no less towering an accomplishment twenty years after its publication. And so but then I learned more about David Foster Wallace and realized that he basically spent his life in libraries. He begins that book with the words:

“I read," I say. "I study and read. I bet I've read everything you read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it." 

In other words, even encyclopedic novels aren’t written by people with encyclopedic brains. They’re written by people with encyclopedias in front of them. And the bygone encyclopedias of yesterday behind them.

Remember I told you about words popping into my head that had the exact meaning I required of them. My next novel will address the thought experiment of Roko’s Basilisk, which in good conscious I must encourage you not to Google. The line that popped into my head was Non-Linear Causality is the Demon of this World. At the time I must have half-known how non-linear causality would be defined, but upon Googling it, Complexity Labs defined it as, “a form of causation where cause and effect can flow in a bidirectional fashion.” In other words, the future is capable of influencing the past. This is essentially what Roko’s Basilisk is all about. And it’s perhaps what was happening when David Foster Wallace was reading about game theory as an undergraduate. That future Eschaton scene in Infinite Jest was writing itself years before it would ever be written. The thrill of research is that its fruits manifest themselves by means of the writer’s accumulated knowledge. The occult thrill of research is that this knowledge appears to have an acausal desire to manifest itself.

---

Mike Sauve has written non-fiction for The National Post, Variety, and elsewhere. His short fiction has appeared in McSweeney's and many other publications. He is the author of three books with Montag Press: The Wraith of Skrellman, The Apocalypse of Lloyd, and most recently I Ain't Got No Home In This World Anymore, which Publisher's Weekly called "A Philip K. Dick plot as channeled by a delirious Hunter S. Thompson." 

Don’t Forget the Mood Music

Have you ever seen a movie you would have enjoyed more if the music hadn’t fallen flat? Music plays a vital role in the emotional impact of a movie. It creates atmosphere and emotion. For the music to work effectively with the movie, it must be in the background and almost imperceptible to you as you’re caught up in the story.

Music can make or break a movie. The same is true for your novel.

Music in a movie lets you know when to be afraid or sit on the edge of your seat in a tense scene. It increases the force of the action. The right music creates meaning and is just as important as the cinematography and other elements of a movie. That’s true for your novel, too. I’m not talking about listening to music while you write, rather I’m drawing a parallel to how music can set mood, and your writing choices can do the same for your novel. You can create “music” with your words. As a novelist, it’s up to you to choose the right tools from your writer’s toolbox to create the perfect mood music within your stories.

Set your novel to the wrong music and you’ll miss the mark.

Mood is an often-forgotten important element in your story and is as vital to the life of your novel as plot, tension, character development, and setting.

But what exactly is mood in literature?  

Simply stated, it’s the emotional response or the feelings your writing creates in the reader. It’s easy enough to see how music creates various moods when it comes to movies. For instance, the kind of music that accompanies a horror flick creates a sense of terror in us. Music that accompanies romantic comedy makes us laugh or smile. Action packed movies meant for the man cave make us tense and chick flicks can require boxes of tissues. The eerie music that accompanies science fiction creeps some of us out. The point is that you somehow have to create the background music—the mood—in your novel.

Why is mood important?

Your novel means nothing if you don’t hook your readers on the deepest emotional level. It’s all about making that emotional connection. Once readers are hooked they’re in it for the whole ride. If your characters aren’t relatable on an emotional level and the right mood isn’t created, then you’ve lost the reader.

Mood is key to hooking and keeping them.

How do you create “music” that sets the mood for your story?First, know where you’re going. Know what emotional reaction you’re aiming for with the novel as a whole, and then also in each scene. For example, are you going for suspense, fear, hope, desperation, or joy?

Once you know what mood you’re trying to create, take advantage of basic writing tools to create the right mood music.  

Setting is the first crucial element in creating the mood you want in your story. For example, to create mood for a suspense novel you could use a curvy mountain road on a stormy night. A gloomy, crumbling mansion set on a cliff with crashing waves below. A cold empty warehouse. Place your protagonist in any of these settings and your reader will feel the sense of foreboding.

If you’re going for a light-hearted romance, you’ll want a bright internet café set in a small town. Or you could use a beautiful beach on a bright sunny day. You get the picture.

Then use the right words for the mood you’re creating. Of course, you’re a writer so you always strive to use the right words. When creating the right mood, word choice is a major player. Choose more menacing words for a suspenseful scene, adding to the suspenseful setting you’ve already selected. On the contrary, use light-hearted and fun words for a more playful mood. 

Next, pacing is essential to mood. Pacing is tied to using the right words in the appropriate types of sentences. Short, snappy sentences quicken the pace and coupled with the right word choices, can create a thrill ride or terror. Excitement or fury. On the other hand, long, flowing, and lyrical sentences can produce feelings of wonder or desperation.

In your novel, you’ll use different pacing throughout, much like the movements in a symphony—fast-paced or allegro, or slower, andante or adagio.

These are only a few of the tools from your writer’s toolbox. Use them well and you’ll have a symphony at your disposal to create the right “music” that will set the mood and effectively hook your reader until the satisfying finale.

---

Elizabeth Goddard is the bestselling author of more than thirty books, including the Carol Award-winning The Camera Never Lies. Her Mountain Cove series books have been finalists in the Daphne du Maurier Awards and the Carol Awards. Goddard is a seventh-generation Texan and can be found online at www.elizabethgoddard.com.

Crime Writer Resources by Patricia Bradley

We are told to write what we know. If I did that, it would be BORING. So I write what I want to learn about. Wait, that’s not exactly accurate. I write romantic suspense that includes murder, and I really don’t want to experience murder.

Often, writers deal with topics and situations that some people might not call normal. Things like how to blow up a house, or poison someone, or how a silencer sounds, or even how to write a fight scene. I’ve accumulated a few sites and resources that I’d like to share with you.

While writing my latest Memphis Cold Case novel, Justice Delivered (releasing April 2, 2019), I needed information on human trafficking and discovered the CDC has an excellent site. Most states have organizations dedicated to eradicating human trafficking and if you’re writing about the subject, get in touch with an organization close to you. Here in Mississippi, Advocates for Freedom works tirelessly to get victims out of trafficking, and they provided me with firsthand knowledge of the subject.

Lee Lofland has a great blog to help writers get their facts straight—https://www.leelofland.com/the-graveyard-shift-blog/. Before I was published I entered my first chapter in a contest. Here’s a sentence from what I submitted: “The smell of cordite burned her eyes.” No, it wasn’t a historical mystery (cordite is no longer used in bullet-making). Thank goodness one of the contest judges told me about Lee’s blog. I have learned so much from his writing. He also has a great conference—Writer’s Police Academy. If your story deals in any way with law enforcement, this is a great conference to attend. You can find out more about it on the Facebook page.

Another favorite resource is the Crime Scene Writer forum. https://groups.io/g/Crimescenewriter2/

This forum has the best of the best and everyone on the forum is willing to help writers. Have a question about a body? Submit it to the forum and you’ll get your answer. Same thing with questions about guns, arrests, even whether police officers can keep their personal cell phones with them while on duty. Sample topics have been things like the rate the body absorbs GHB, toxicology reports, and a murder board.

The murder board brings me to another resource. Actually two. I first read about creating a murder board at The Killzone blog. There are some heavy hitters on this blog and like Lee Lofland’s blog and the Crimescene forum, the posts each day are geared to help writers. This is where I first heard about a murder board. I was floundering in my WIP and someone on the blog mentioned the board. Wow! Creating a murder board literally solved my plot problems. I was able to “see” my victim and the suspects and move them around as I needed.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention YouTube. A writer can learn anything on YouTube! I’ve watched videos showing how loud a silencer is. (Not like it’s depicted on TV, for sure!) I’ve learned about different guns and to never call a magazine a clip!

Another great resource is Carla Hoch, who is a self-defense expert. She has a great blog called Fight Right. Since I’m not an expert in fighting, it’s great to know someone who is. She has several great blogs on how to write fight scenes along with tips on terminology and footwork. In June her Writer’s Digest book, How to Write Believable Fight Scenes, releases.

Last, but not least is the Killer Nashville conference. It is awesome! Their mock crime scene is worth the cost of the conference! But beyond that, for me just rubbing elbows with people who “get” me is great. Everyone is so helpful and willing to share their knowledge. A writer can make lifelong contacts here!

I hope these resources will help you as a writer. None of them were available when I first started writing. If they had been, it would have made my writing journey easier. And remember—there has never been a better time to write and gain the knowledge you need for your stories. Now go write something wonderful!

---

Patricia Bradley is the author of Justice Delayed and Justice Buried, as well as the Logan Point series. Her latest title, Justice Delivered, releases April 2, 2019. Bradley won an Inspirational Readers Choice Award in Suspense, was a finalist for the Genesis Award, won a Daphne du Maurier Award, and won a Touched by Love Award. She is co-founder of Aiming for Healthy Families, Inc., and she is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and Romance Writers of America. Bradley makes her home in Mississippi.

Visit her at https://ptbradley.com/

Place in Fiction by Peter Gadol

Every author has aspects of narrative that he or she looks forward to in writing a book, and also areas he or she may wish to ignore (I’m thinking of the way, say, Joan Didion will ignore basic stage management in any given scene; no one ever crosses a street or sits down at a table in her fiction). For my part, I love writing about place. Setting is something I think about pretty much nonstop while moving through a first draft and subsequent revisions. It’s no surprise then that novelists whom I admire likewise seem extra-sensitive to the landscapes in their books. For me, the ancestral home at the center of Tana French’s new novel The Witch Elm becomes a lively secondary character in the narrator, Toby’s, story, a backdrop certainly, but also a foil. A certain elm tree on the property emerges as a vivid centerpiece around which the thriller turns.

I’m not sure where my interest in literary place comes from except to say I always thought AA Milne could have done more to describe Hundred Acre Wood. I’ve been very fortunate as an adult to travel abroad, but books afforded me my first explorations (actually my favorite book was the Atlas). Whenever I do travel now, I find I’m hyperalert, absorbing what details come my way, the stone streets, the faces in a market—and I want to instill in my readers the same wonder about the setting, even if I’m writing about a place they might know well.

If this resonates for you and narrative place is something you, too, are keen on, there are some essential principles I think you can keep in mind while writing:

1. Setting is dynamic.

Too often writers think about setting in the way they do about exposition as if it’s all about information that once dispatched can be filed away so the reader can barrel into the main action. It’s true that a reader will want to be located and perhaps understand what broadly lies within the perimeter of a central place, but as the chapters unfold, new areas within that space can be drawn. I’m thinking of the first section of Ian McEwan’s Atonement; readers are continually brought into different rooms in the manor, various cottages on the estate, and quite significantly to various dark gardens on the grounds.

The way I think of it, the work of depicting setting is never done, and sometimes when we go back to certain spaces we’ve already read about, they are renovated in ways that deepen the plot. I’m thinking of another Ian McEwan novel, The Comfort of Strangers, wherein lovely, mysterious Venice becomes disturbing, violent Venice.

2. Setting can function like a secondary character.

I’m less interested in idyllic, perfect fictional places than I am in places that propose conflicts for protagonists in the way secondary characters might. Mystery and thriller writers know this well. You can pick up any novel by Arnaldur Indridason and see the way the contained city of Reykjavík is like Detective Erlendur’s old friend; he knows its every street, its every trick. And yet the city again and again presents complex puzzles and, as is the case in Jar City, reveals its sinister history, hitherto opaque for our hero. Detective Erlendur will never really know Reykjavík completely, no one can.

3. Weather can deepen the tone—and climate is also dynamic.

When I define melodrama for my students, I like to refer to the classic Douglas Sirk film in which a woman is feeling melancholic and leans against a window; outside it is raining; the mood indoors and out is the same. But one needn’t descend into Sirkian expressionism to paint the mood—although rain works, certainly! Look at Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost, set in Sri Lanka, for some good monsoon/fever manipulation. I like to point to Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan as a great example of the way the dynamic climate can relate to plot: How long will snow cover up a wrecked plane? And when will a thaw reveal it? Speaking of snow, over twenty-five years later I still recall needing to wrap myself in an extra blanket when reading Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow.

4. The way one draws setting will create useful constraints.

Every aspect of writing is variable, and every writer consequently designs the internal rules for a book, the constraints necessary to give it shape. In choosing a certain point-of-view, we recognize we may be closed off from limning certain characters’ thoughts. Similarly, we make choices about setting that guide us. Is our depiction of a fictional place accurate to a real place? Are we being true to an actual map? And if the work isn’t set in the present day, are we following an appropriate historic map? Or maybe we want to wholly invent the location for our work. Although even then, there will be the question of whether our invented town or canyon or street sits in proximity to known places in the real world of the reader. Then again, some authors choose to create new worlds with new architecture and new physics (see Renee Gladman’s Ravicka trilogy).

I’m very interested in books like Jim Crace’s Harvest, which would seem to be set in the agrarian English countryside at the advent of industrialization. Yet that’s never stated explicitly, and within the hermetic world of this bleak novel, we’re left to contemplate how outsiders in small communities are blamed, demonized, and tortured. Or there are works like José Saramago’s Blindness, a nameless state wherein the population mysteriously becomes sightless and descends into anarchy—or JM Coetzee’s Childhood of Jesus series, another invented place that seems topographically and linguistically to resemble an Iberian state but not explicitly so. Crace, Saramago, and Coetzee all stay within a familiar earthly realm (unlike Gladman), yet we’re never sure where exactly we are—but we inevitably see in these invented places our own world universally reflected.

5. Setting can generate plot.

Sometimes when we plan our novels, we know where we’re going; more often we don’t, or perhaps we have a general direction, but how exactly we’ll write out the chapters remains unknown and we make discoveries along the way. And when that happens, I’ve found that setting can generate plot. When I was first writing The Stranger Game, I took my narrator Rebecca on a hike in the park north in a city not unlike Los Angeles and had her come up on a house abandoned during its construction; because of something she hears in the house, she explores and witnesses some people who might be playing the eponymous game wherein people are randomly following strangers. I knew that the book would wind toward a criminal twist, but didn’t know where exactly to stage what I wanted to happen. It worked out well to take Rebecca back to the abandoned house. And then, well, without giving too much away, I’ll just say that for yet another plot turn, I decided to take the narrator and the reader back there again.

About the vital importance of place in fiction, maybe Eudora Welty articulated it best: “Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable as art if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else. …Fiction depends for its life on place.”

---

Peter Gadol’s seventh novel The Stranger Game was recently published by Hanover Square Press / HarperCollins and listed as a Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2018. FX is developing The Stranger Game as a television series. Gadol’s other novels include Silver Lake, Light at Dusk, and The Long Rain. His work has appeared in foreign editions and in journals such as Tin House, StoryQuarterly, and the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal. A past NEA fellow, Gadol is Chair of MFA Writing at Otis College of Art and Design and lives in Los Angeles.

www.petergadol.com

Plotting or Pantsing? Which is better? by Lynette Eason

Getting from POINT A to POINT B isn’t always in a straight line

Do you ever sit down to start a new project and stare at your screen with equal parts anticipation and fear? I’ve written right at 50 books, novellas, etc. I’m traditionally published, which means when I sit down to write a story, I’ve already been paid for half of it. That, in turn, means I have to write the story or I have to give the money back. And since the money’s usually already spent…well, you get the idea. There’s no turning back at this point. Somehow, I have to start this story and finish it. And, in the end, it has to be phenomenal. Or at least publishable.

Last month, I turned in the last story in the Blue Justice series. So, while that series has come to an end, it was time to start the first book in the next series. I’ll be honest. The first book always terrifies me. Why? Because I put so much pressure on myself to get it right and that’s generally a crapshoot because, by nature, I’m not a huge plotter. So what does that mean? It means that I don’t really get it right the first time and I have to go back and make changes as the story unfolds.

But wouldn’t it be easier to simply plot the story out?

Maybe, but since I write on such tight deadlines, I don’t always have the time to spend plotting and thinking, thinking and plotting. I have to get the words on the page and then fix them later. However, that’s not to say that I don’t have a process that works for me. And it’s usually a route that takes me around my elbow to get to my rear.

I tend to start out with a character sketch then I figure out the first scene—and sometimes the last— then jump into the story without any real idea of where I’m going. Sometimes I struggle my way through it and swear that with the next book, I’m going to plot everything in advance, and then in the end, it just works out. Sure, I have to go back and add in red herrings or foreshadowing or tweak a character’s reaction to a situation or whatever, but again, in the end, the story works. Other times, those rare times, the story just flows. Like a gift, the words come as the scenes play out in my head and the characters do what they’re supposed to do. Code of Valor, book 3 in the Blue Justice series was one of those stories. I struggled with it a bit in the beginning, but as soon as I got the first few scenes done, I knew the rest of the story and where it needed to go.

Because I don’t use storyboarding or mapping or any of those really creative, cool devices, I get asked a lot of times how I do it.

“How can you just sit down and write and, in the end, have a story that not only works, but has all of the loose ends tied up in a way that makes sense?”

Aside from having fabulous editors that catch mistakes, I think it comes down to characterization. For me, I have to know my characters. I have to know how they think, how they react to life in general, their strengths and weaknesses, etc. Then I put them in situations where they have to draw on their strengths and overcome their weaknesses in order to grow and become a different person by the end of the story—a better person. And sometimes they have someone in their lives that helps make that happen.

In Code of Valor, my heroine comes from a very abusive past, but, thanks to counseling and someone in her life who graced her with unconditional love, she was able to overcome a lot of her issues. She learned her self-worth doesn’t come from what other people think of her and that just because she made some mistakes in the past, doesn’t mean she has no hope of a successful, happy future.

And, in the end, I wind up taking these characters on a life altering journey. A journey that allows me to experience the ups and downs and surprises along with them. A lot of people argue that you can’t have a really great story unless you plot it out in detail, but I know a lot of people who’d argue with that statement. Lee Child is one of those. I was at a conference and he stated that often he didn’t know what he was going to write in the next paragraph, much less the next scene. I wish I could have told him how much I appreciated that! Then there’s Jeffrey Deaver who said he takes eight months to plot out his novel then writes 110,000 words in six weeks. I might have been a bit jealous, but I’m sticking with what works for me.

And that’s my point. There’s no wrong way to write a novel. Plotter, pantser, or plantser. There’s only the right way—and that’s the way that works for you.

What about you? What’s your system? What works for you?

---

Lynette Eason is the bestselling author of Oath of Honor, as well as the Women of Justice series, the Deadly Reunions series, the Hidden Identity series, and the Elite Guardians series. She is the winner of two ACFW Carol Awards, the Selah Award, and the Inspirational Reader’s Choice Award. She has a master’s degree in education from Converse College and lives in South Carolina. Learn more at www.lynetteeason.com.

How to Write a Killer Query Letter by Ellie Alexander

You finished your first manuscript—congratulations! Now what? How do you start the process of finding an agent and how do you write the (gasp) dreaded query letter?

My first piece of advice for writers beginning the querying process is to take a minute to celebrate the success of writing a novel. It’s no small feat. You should feel proud of your accomplishment. Go ahead and toast with a glass of champagne or take yourself out to dinner. After you’ve reveled in the moment, the real work begins.

Step One—research. It’s time to hit the bookstore or library. Spend an afternoon perusing the shelves to see where your book fits best. Nothing will get you a rejection faster than sending a query letter to an agent who doesn’t represent your book’s genre. Is your book fiction? Nonfiction? Where does it fall within sub-genres? For example, if you’re writing a mystery is it a traditional mystery, true crime, noir, historical, or cozy? Figure out exactly where your book will be shelved once it’s published. Believe it or not, this is one area where many new writers stumble. I recently reviewed a query letter of a writer who opened by saying, “My book appeals to all readers in all genres.” She was surprised when she got rejected by every agent she had queried. Publishing is a business and agents and editors need to know how to position your book in order to sell it.

Step two—complementary titles. While you’re on your research mission, pick a handful of titles that are similar in tone and style to your book. Read them! Don’t skip this step. Trust me. If you find that the books you’ve chosen aren’t a good match, go back and get another stack until you find five to six titles that are complimentary. Scour the acknowledgments section. Did the author thank their agent? Wahoo! You got lucky. Make a note and move on to the next book. If not, you’ll have to use some sleuthing skills online to see if you can find out who represented each author.

Step three—your dream list. Using the information you’ve learned, begin compiling a dream list of agents. This should include the agents who represent similar titles. It can also expand to agents you’ve met at a writing conference, discovered on Twitter, or who were recommended by a friend. Agent query (www.agentquery.com) is a great resource to find agents who are actively seeking new clients. You can search by genre and keywords. Your dream list should include fifteen to twenty agents to start.

Step four—cyberstalking. This is the one time when a little cyberstalking is acceptable. Visit the website of each agent on your dream list. Read their profiles. Learn what kind of books they’re interested in and what their submission requirements are. Some agents accept email queries. Some want sample chapters. Some request book proposals. Take extensive notes. Do NOT send agents perfumed packages or promises of chocolates and your first-born child. This “stalking” exercise is to ensure that each agent on your list is a good match for your project and that when you’re ready to start the query process you’ll know the exact requirements for each agent.

Step five—time to write. Start with a one to two sentence introduction that includes why you’re querying this agent, the title of your book, genre, and word count. Something like this, “I know that you represent one of my favorite writers, Author X, and I thought you might be interested in my 76,000-word cozy mystery which is similar in tone and style, but different in that it is set in the world of craft beer.”

After a brief intro, write three to four paragraphs summarizing your book. Make sure you include who your protagonist is, the hook, and why you think it will resonate with readers.

Include a final paragraph about your writing experience. This can be that you write for your community newspaper, a magazine, or a blog. You can talk about any professional writing organizations you belong to or the fact that you’re active on social media.

Close the letter by thanking the agent for their time and consideration.

Step six—important notes. Personalize each query letter. You’re going to need to go through your dream list one letter at a time and address each agent personally as well as re-write the introductory paragraph to reflect your research. This attention to detail and professionalism is going to set your query apart from the slush pile.

Keep your query letter to one page. Short and simple is the name of the game. Use your query letter to entice the agent to want to read more.

Track your queries on your dream list. Make note of when you sent each letter. Then, make additional notes when you receive responses from each agent.

Good luck and happy querying!

---

Ellie Alexander writes the bestselling Bakeshop Mystery series and the Sloan Krause Mysteries for Macmillan Publishing.

Ellie is a Pacific Northwest native who spends ample time testing recipes in her home kitchen or at one of the many famed coffeehouses nearby. When she’s not coated in flour, you’ll find her outside exploring hiking trails and trying to burn off calories consumed in the name of research.

You can find her online at:

Web: https://www.elliealexander.co

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellie_alexander/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwd80ruKbz98VZQGT2I23-Q/featured

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elliealexanderauthor/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BakeshopMystery

The Impossibility of Historical Fiction by James R. Benn

Readers of crime fiction know the drill. Most often there’s a protagonist, some sidekicks, various obstructionists, a murder, and a murderer. The search for truth kicks in and the game is afoot.

This fictional construct in a historical mystery offers readers something extra; a lagniappe within the plot and the drive toward resolution, the joy of experiencing a time gone by. The understanding of the standard elements of (most) crime fiction provides a reassuring platform which lends familiarity to what might be new territory in terms of time or place.

Reading historical fiction, we are forced to think of the past not as simply a sequence of large-scale events, but rather to understand the patterns, causes, and consequences surrounding those events and how they impact characters we have come to know and care about. Intertwining the personal narrative of a fictional protagonist as an actor within the historical context can provide for a powerful historical understanding. We don’t just read about a battle, we feel the weight of a pack digging into a soldier’s sweat-stained back. Historians such as Bruce Catton and Douglas Freeman, among others, have written excellent volumes on the American Civil War, but it is Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage that today still stands as a defining description of what those terrible battles were like.

But there are challenges and pitfalls, because the past itself does not have the same shape or coherence as does the present which we inhabit. The past is filled with countless people, places, and conflicts which we turn into something called history to impose order upon chaos. As the 19th century historian John Lothrop Motley said:

"There is no such thing as human history. Nothing can be more profoundly, sadly true. The annals of mankind have never been written, never can be written; nor would it be within human capacity to read them if they were written. We have a leaf or two from the great book of human fate as it flutters in the stormwinds ever sweeping the earth. We decipher them as best we can with purblind eyes, and endeavor to learn their mystery as we float along to the abyss; but it is all confused babble, hieroglyphics of which the key is lost".

If that’s the opinion of a distinguished historian, how can writers properly represent history? Motley’s point was that modern readers cannot hope to understand the past, the motivations and worldviews of those people who are so profoundly different from us. The historian knows when and on what ground a battle took place, but historical fiction demands much more—a window into the soul of those who fought, killed, suffered, and died in that battle. The dominant challenge for me is always to remember that the men and women who grew up in the Depression and went off to war in the 1940s are deeply different people from us. Their environment created them, just as ours informs us.

Their world is not ours.

Their life expectancy was about 53; ours is 79. Their economy ran on agriculture and manufacturing; ours runs on service industries. There was no social security or universal medical care for them; we live with a life-long safety net in comparison. Travel, as we experience, understand, and expect it today, was unknown for most people (until the war changed all that). A twenty-year-old in 1940 would fully understand Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln, historical figures 70 or 80 years in their past. They would be totally unable to comprehend Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, 70 years in the other direction.

There’s another line of demarcation which separates us. We know what happens next. The Spanish Armada does not invade England; The Union prevails in the American Civil War; The Allies liberate Europe and win the Second World War.

The people who lived through those climactic events did not know how things would end. It seems obvious to us now, but the trick is to create fictional characters who do not know what the future holds—to portray them on the razor’s edge of time, when defeat and disgrace are as likely as life, victory, and a return to normalcy—when the fear of the unknown is as palpable as the fear of whatever obstacle they face.

There was one time in my life when I understood what that must have been like for my fictional characters. I began to write my second book the weekend after 9/11. The skies were empty, and I had no idea what was going to happen next. Much like my protagonist must have thought after Pearl Harbor; I knew only that an unspeakable event had occurred and there was no sense of a knowable outcome. I cling to that memory, trying always to imbue my characters with the sense of being adrift in history, as indeed we all are. It’s critical that writers cleave to that notion and keep their characters from a clear-eyed vision of the future. For them, there can only be a ‘now’, whether that is 1066, 1863 or 1962.

How to accomplish this? For me, research is a total immersion in time and place, whether through reading, walking the ground, listening to music of the day, or watching movies my characters would have seen. I fill notebooks with jottings about the people and places in the story until I feel stuffed with facts, possessed with an overload of data that will allow me to envision how my characters would have interacted with their environment on every level; political, physical, emotional, and spiritual. Then I begin to write; and I hardly ever look at those notes again.

That information overload is there to give me the confidence to write, to construct characters as reliable simulacrums for their times. It’s hard work. As Arthur Schlesinger Jr. said in his essay “History and National Stupidity”:

“History is not self-executing. You do not put a coin in the slot and have history come out. For the past is a chaos of events and personalities into which we cannot penetrate. It is beyond retrieval and it is beyond reconstruction.”

It’s the novelist’s challenge to prove him wrong about ‘beyond reconstruction.’ Research goes far beyond learning the historical timeline. The historical novelist conveys a sense of the period through small ‘throw-away” details about clothing, food, transportation, dialect, and social customs.

Writer Thomas Mallon said it well: "Only through tiny, literal accuracies can the historical novelist achieve the larger truth to which he aspires namely, an overall feeling of authenticity. It is just like Marianne Moore's famous prescription for the ideal poet. He must stock his imaginary garden with real toads."

Or, as literary critic Logan Pearsall Smith said: “What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers."

We need to whisper the truth of the time in which we write. Too many facts poorly presented can kill a story. Too few, and we may fail to bring alive the characters and their times, leaving the reader with a limp presentation that could take place anywhere, anywhen.

I always thought he was joking, but now I understand what Oscar Wilde meant when he said, “The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”

---

James R. Benn is the author of the Billy Boyle mystery series, set during the Second World War. He has been nominated for the Dilys and Barry awards, long-listed for the 2015 Dublin IMPAC Literary Award, and was awarded the 2018 Al Blanchard Short Story Award. His most recent novel is Solemn Graves.

The Catharsis of Writing by Matt Johnson

I came to writing quite late in life and through a series of unusual circumstances. Twenty-five years as a soldier and cop, a diagnosis of PTSD, a counselor who asked me to try writing therapy, and then an attempt at turning the notes I made into a work of fiction.

It has surprised me how many people are now trying out writing as a contributory means to help treat PTSD. Questions leveled at me, as to how writing helped me have prompted me to write this article now.

PTSD - The Chemistry

In examining PTSD, one of the known factors is that an instance of overwhelming terror can alter the chemistry of the brain, making people more sensitive to adrenaline surges even decades later.

This sensitivity to adrenaline surges is a major factor in post-traumatic stress disorder, in which people can experience normal events as repetitions of the original trauma. PTSD affects combat veterans, crime victims and millions of others. Its cause has a biological basis in its effect on the brain.

New studies in animals and humans suggest that specific sites in the brain undergo these changes. Scientists say the findings may allow development of medications to blunt the biological changes present in post-traumatic stress disorder.

For the brain changes to occur, scientists now say that people usually have to experience the stress as catastrophic, an overwhelming threat to life or safety and one over which they have no control. Less severe stresses, such as the death of a loved one or relentless financial problems, do not seem to trigger the biological changes.

When I started receiving counseling, it was explained to me like this.

When you are working in a high-stress environment such as a war zone or any work where you are subject to regular, frequent and high adrenalin surges the brain is slowly, cumulatively, affected by this regular level of adrenalin in the body. Whilst adrenalin is an incredible aid in the preparation for and enactment of the flight and fight response, it has a side effect in that it 'eats up' a chemical called serotonin.

Serotonin is a naturally produced chemical that works in the body as a neurotransmitter. It is widely thought to be a contributor to feelings of well being and happiness. What it does is smoothly transmit thought processes so that the brain operates in an organized and structured way. Serotonin also has some cognitive functions relating to memory and learning. Its presence in the body is essential to the regulation of mood, appetite, and sleep.

So, when exposure to a work environment or a series of events causes the body to regularly produce adrenalin, the effect is that serotonin levels drop.

As a result, the brain starts to operate less efficiently. Thought processes become less clear, sleep is interrupted, memory confused, etc.

Then a major catastrophic event causes a massive adrenalin and chemical surge in the brain. A hormone called cortisol is released into the amygdala section of the brain, the section that handles memory. This hormone release acts as a memory enhancer. Thus, an incredibly detailed and indelible memory of the catastrophic event is retained by the brain.

This enhanced memory explains, to an extent, why victims of PTSD struggle to 'forget' the event and move on and also why they suffer flashbacks and dreams about the event.

PTSD Symptoms

Most folks reading this will have heard of PTSD, some—those not familiar with the condition—may have wondered exactly how victims are affected. How many will have seen veterans talking on TV about experiences and see that brave people become emotional and unable to talk any further, the surge in feelings overcoming their ability to talk?

In fact, symptoms are far more wide-ranging than a lot of people realize and can vary widely between individuals. They may develop during the first month after a person witnesses a traumatic event. However, in many cases, there may be a delay of months or even years before symptoms start to appear.

This is a summary, it is not exclusive, as I am not an expert—only a victim.

A person with PTSD will often relive the traumatic event through nightmares and flashbacks and have feelings of isolation, irritability, and guilt.

Problems sleeping and concentrating are symptoms that are often severe and persistent enough to have a significant impact on the person's day-to-day life.

Some people with PTSD experience long periods when their symptoms are less noticeable. This is known as symptom remission. These periods are often followed by an increase in symptoms. Other people with PTSD have severe symptoms that are constant.

Re-experiencing is the most typical and widely publicized symptom of PTSD.

A victim may involuntarily and vividly relive the traumatic event in the form of flashbacks, nightmares, or repetitive and distressing images or sensations. Being reminded of the traumatic event (the trigger) can evoke distressing memories and cause considerable anguish.

Trying to avoid being reminded of the traumatic event is another key symptom of PTSD.

Reminders (triggers) can take the form of people, situations, or circumstances that resemble or are associated with the event.

Many victims of PTSD will try to push memories of the event out of their mind. They do not like thinking or talking about the event or events in detail. Think of those WWII veterans who we’ve seen in tears when being interviewed for documentaries, a display of emotion repeated by Iraq and Afghan veterans who appear to talk about their experiences in more recent programs.

Some victims repeatedly ask themselves questions that prevent them from coming to terms with the event. For example, they may wonder why the event happened to them and whether it could have been prevented. Often, they may blame themselves and many feel guilt that they survived when others didn't.

Someone with PTSD may be very anxious and find it difficult to relax. They may be constantly aware of threats and easily startled. This state of mind is known as hyperarousal. Irritability and anger may be a clear indication of this arousal state.

Some victims try to dampen down their feelings by trying not to feel anything at all. If you know an ex-cop or a veteran who you might describe as a 'cold fish' then what they may be showing is emotional numbing, a way of coping.

Someone with PTSD can often seem deep in thought and withdrawn. They may also give up pursuing the activities that they used to enjoy.

Other possible symptoms of PTSD include depression, anxiety and phobias. Drug and alcohol misuse are common as a means to dealing with the symptoms experienced.

PTSD often leads to the breakdown of relationships and causes work-related problems.

Surprised at the range of symptoms? There’s a lot of them isn’t there? Imagine trying to cope with them and you will have a handle on the challenges facing victims.

Writing

Many victims, me included, find that counseling helps them to understand what is going on within their own minds and bodies. It helps to appreciate how a simple chemical imbalance in the brain has been triggered and how the physical and psychological effects that follow are a result of that imbalance.

But counseling doesn't fix the symptoms on its own. Anti-depressants can be a great help and they worked for me. The pills help the body restore chemical balance so that the brain can then start to regain control.

For me, writing started as a way of helping the counseling. Like many victims, I became emotional when prompted to talk about experiences and describe what had caused the PTSD in the first place. Like many, I was advised not to worry and to try and make notes to bring back to counseling session that I could use to refer to and which might help the counselor to help me. I made the notes at times when I felt up to it, writing down what had happened, how I had felt, how it had affected me. I recorded dreams that I had, flashbacks and imaginary. Over the weeks and months, I found that writing things down helped my brain to get things focused, to get my thoughts back in order and to regain structure and control.

It helped immensely.

And it had an unexpected benefit when my counselor was moved to comment on how much she enjoyed my writing.

So, as I mentioned at the beginning of this article, one day I followed her advice and started to weave the notes jotted down into a novel. The more I wrote, the better I felt. There were several dips, several times when I found myself reliving things in a way that I preferred to avoid, but, despite the low points, the overall direction was onwards and upwards.

PTSD affects people in many ways, so what works for one will not necessarily work for another, but the fact that so many people have had such enjoyment out of reading a book that came about in such an unexpected way has given me immense reward. People have contacted me, some have described me as inspiring. That may be. I now have three published crime thrillers, so what I can say is that the feedback did inspire me to carry on writing and, for the future, we'll just see if it continues to help keep the demons at bay.

And, if you’re minded to read the result, I hope you enjoy reading it.

---

UK national, Matt Johnson served for 25 years as a soldier and Metropolitan Police officer. His debut novel Wicked Game – a crime thriller - was published by Orenda Books in March 2016. The sequel Deadly Game, was published March 2017 and the final part of the trilogy, End Game, came out this March.

Wicked Game was listed for the UK Crime Writers Association Dagger award, has topped Amazon and KOBO charts in several categories and in 2018, Matt was voted at #22 in a UK national poll of the world’s top 100 best-ever crime writers.

Peter James, the international best-selling novelist said of Matt’s work - "Terse, tense and vivid writing. Matt Johnson is a brilliant new name in the world of thrillers."

Kevin Maurer, co-author of No Easy Day wrote “ … has the authenticity I look for in a thriller. While the plot kept me turning pages, the characters made me care. Matt writes like a man who has lived it.”

In 1999, Matt was retired from the police with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Whilst undergoing treatment, he was encouraged by his counsellor to write about his career and his experience of murders, shootings and terrorism. His novels are the result of that process.

Can I Start Writing Now? Plotting Your Novel by David P. Wagner

Every author has a different way of starting work on a new book. Here's one.

I've always wondered how some authors can just sit down and begin writing without having any idea where their book is going, and especially if they write mysteries. Such writers are called “pantsers” in the literary lexicon since they write by the seat of their pants. Tony Hillerman was a pantser, and did pretty well, so it certainly can be done—just not by me. Instead, I want to have as much of the book planned out as I can before starting to write the first chapter. So, if you're a pantser, move to another blog entry. But if you are a “plotter” like I am, read on.  Not that you can't make changes as you write—of course you will, and lots of them. In one of my books, when I was close to the end, I decided to switch the murderer from one character to another. But as a general rule, before I start writing the first word, I have to know who did it, where and how the crime happened, the identities of all the suspects, and how it's all going to come together. Because I recently turned in the final draft of book number six in my series, I am well into the process right now for starting number seven. So, this is the perfect time to take a break and write about it here.

First things first

The hard part is right off the bat: deciding on a setting and a murder. To get there I create a document in my computer, cleverly named “ideas,” and begin to write down stuff. It's a stream-of-consciousness kind of writing, putting down quickly what comes into my head, and wiping it out just as quickly when it doesn't sound right. This takes a while, with a lot of breaks, and throughout I am constantly bouncing ideas off my wife. Usually, the setting comes first. All my books take place in Italy, so I have to decide in which wonderful Italian town my protagonist Rick Montoya will find himself this time, and what kind of work or play brings him there. Then I think about crime and a motive, usually tied in some way to the setting. An idea pops up, I write it down. The next day, I may get rid of it and come up with something else. Somehow, forcing myself to sit at my laptop and write down what comes to mind works for me. I talk to myself as I do it, though not out loud; that would be weird. Once I have a setting and a crime, Rick has to be pulled into the investigation somehow and in a way that makes sense. More pounding away at the keyboard, with lots of deletes when the ideas don't work. When that hook is made between my protagonist and the murder, and I know exactly why and how the crime took place, I start working on characters.

Characters next

Time for another new document, this one named—you guessed it— “characters.” Since my books are stand-alone, Rick will be meeting most of these people for the first time, though occasionally some face from a previous adventure appears. At this point in the preparation for my next book, I have a wealthy art collector (the victim), his assistant, his wife, an art dealer, a museum curator, and a local cop since Rick is an amateur sleuth and can't arrest people. Once I started to flesh out characters, I gave them each a name. I find it is easier to envision a person if I know their name, though names can be changed at any time, and often are, thanks to “find and replace.” Once they're named, I write down what they look like, so I will have an image in my head. Then I invent background, family, personality, life story, and, very importantly, what makes them a possible suspect in the crime. Such details can evolve or even change dramatically once I start writing. One time, a planned nasty personality became a nice guy after just a couple of sentences. But usually, these folks are required to accept what they were given on the “characters” page and be happy they made the cut. As you create your characters, remember that they are the most important aspect of your book. Readers may forget the plot, and even who committed the murder, but good characters will stick in their minds and bring them back for the next book.

Now you write?

Not yet. At this point, it's time to start thinking about the big picture, so the next document to create will be a synopsis of the plot, since by this time I should have a general idea of what's going to happen. I already have a number of storylines from my “ideas” document, and as I invented the characters other plot lines came to mind. This synopsis will be a couple of pages at most, and it will force me to think of the story and how it will flow. Pace is very important, you don't want your reader to get bored and fall asleep. Besides flowing well, it also has to make sense and be believable. Sometimes after reading a synopsis I sit back and have to tell myself, no David, that just doesn't make it, try again. So, I wipe it off the screen and begin anew. (Throughout each step of this process, in fact, you should not be afraid to do just that.)

“Scenery”

All right, now I've got the characters and the general plot of the story, it must be time to start writing. Not so fast. The next step is creating scenes. (New document: “scenes.”) Like a movie, a book is a collection of scenes, and they, not chapters, are its real building blocks. One good paragraph is all I need at this point to describe a scene, giving the essence of its action. Every scene must serve one of two purposes: move the storyline along or develop the characters. If it doesn't do at least one of those things, dump it. Later, after the scene has been written in the actual manuscript, I will go back and give each scene summary more detail and record any changes made during the writing process. In this way, it becomes a reference document, useful when I forget where something was dropped into the story and don't want to read through the whole manuscript to find it. In general, I create the scene summaries in the order they will appear in the book, but sometimes I jump ahead and do the climactic scenes before those that will fall in the middle. This can be helpful, since knowing how the book finishes assists me in building up suspense and tension before the climax. It also helps me decide what kind of red herrings I can drop along the way. Concocting the scenes will be a piece of cake since you have written a good synopsis and you know your characters. There will be a natural progression from the end of one scene to the start of the next.

Now?

Yes, you finally can begin writing—and aren't you glad you did all that work to prepare? You're sick and tired of weeks of outlines, plans, and summaries, and dying to write real sentences and dialog. Open up a new document—call it “manuscript”— and begin.

---

David P. Wagner, a retired foreign service officer, is the author of five Rick Montoya Italian Mysteries. David lived in Italy for nine years, during which time he learned to love things Italian, many of which appear in his books. The latest in the series, A Funeral in Mantova, was published in March by Poisoned Pen Press. To find out more about his books, you can visit his website at davidpwagnerauthor.com.

Making Your Inner Writer Stand Out by Seven Jane

It’s a well-known fact: most writers—myself included—are introverts. We spend a lot of time with our faces either buried between the pages of books or awash in the glare of our laptop screens. We have an affinity for cats—just ask Neil Gaiman, Ernest Hemingway, or Charles Dickens—and probably drink a startling amount of coffee, tea, or perhaps something stronger (and sometimes we mix them, ahem). We have exceedingly strong opinions on things like literary classics and Oxford commas. We are either early birds or night owls and never both. Sometimes we wear tweed.

And while some of us are pros at things like social media and blogging, many of us—maybe most of us—are not. After all, our passion is developing other people’s stories, not necessarily doing a great job of sharing our own. Point of fact, some of the most incredible writers I know barely maintain a functioning author website. Others aren’t visible online at all.

No matter if you’re a social media recluse or an avid Tweeter; or if you’re a newbie, an aspiring author, or a veteran; if you’re self-published or traditionally represented, it’s important to consider the importance of branding yourself. Besides your stories, it’s the single most valuable asset you have—and unlike your next book, if you don’t write it, it will write itself.

Branding isn’t just for companies. It’s for people, too, and we—as authors—need to think what our brand is, or is not, saying about us. Brand, in case you’re wondering, isn’t limited to things like logos and social media handles, either. It’s connection—the lasting, emotional impact your readership has when they hear your name, see the cover of one of your books, or talk about one of your characters. And in a very loud, very competitive, and very prickly publishing market, it’s an integral part of building customer—or in our case, reader—loyalty. Likewise, and more practical, it could be an important component of your next query, too. Today, beyond showing your writing chomps in your actual writing, publishers are looking for authors who know how to sell themselves in addition to writing their books. Some are even considering asking authors to submit marketing plans alongside their manuscript submissions and quantifying your platform is part of that. It sounds scary, I know, but like going to med school before becoming a doctor, it’s kind of a big deal.

Luckily, there is some low-hanging fruit you can pluck from the tree of opportunity to get started cultivating your brand. Start by thinking about what sets you apart from other authors and makes you a consistent source of literary creativity that readers need to get their nose into. That’s what brands are: distinct, intentional, engaging, and consistent.

First things first, before you begin thinking about yourself, consider your audience. Who are you writing for? Who reads your books? Are these the same people? Put your audience in the role of a character if it helps. Flush out their interests, motivations. Once you know who you’re talking to, then you can start talking to them in a way you’re sure they’ll hear.

Next, develop your voice—your writing style for readers, so to speak. Think about your values, your opinions, your sense of humor…and then be consistent about how you share it with others. Remember, your branding yourself, not your books. Be you, or the best version of you—the you in your author bio. And be authentic.

Now, add some color. Literally. Choose your look, and apply it consistently. Make a logo, if you don’t have one. Build a website. Get on social media. You don’t have to do the same thing everywhere—in fact, you shouldn’t—but you should be consistent in each place and have a cohesive image everywhere you touch your audience. Different platforms reach different audiences—readers, media, agents, and so forth—so just like we want to write books that pique our reader’s interests, we want to build our brand in ways that pique the interest we’re looking for. There’s no one best way, but, for the sake of example, here’s what I do:

• Website: information about my books, characters, events and media updates, bio, and contacts for myself and my agent, publishers, and my publicist. Most importantly, this is where I keep a weekly blog as well as updates on other articles and editorial contributions. Don’t be static. Make sure you’re updating your website regularly to keep visitors coming back.

• A subscriber newsletter: monthly writing updates, giveaways, and sneak peeks. Fan club!

• Instagram: a daily photo journal of my writing life, often with pictures of coffee and my cats, using colors and images that support my brand—dark and mysterious, like me.

• Twitter: where I maintain my own writing and reading community, chatting daily with other authors and readers, bloggers, and other bookish folk. Follow like-minded authors, journals, publishers, editors, agents, and readers who share your interest. Use hashtags to build your brand and find your tribe.

• Facebook: I’m bad at Facebook, but my friend Rue Volley is amazing—check her out.

• Goodreads: when I’m not writing, I’m reading…and talking about it. You should be, too.

Cultivating an author brand doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, practice, and more than a little adaptation along the way. My best branding advice? Tackle building a brand like writing a new book: outline it, identify the characters, sort out your settings and story plot, and then get busy filling in the lines with the things that make you brilliantly you. Be your introverted self, safely at home with your coffee and cats and tweed (or whatever your writing heart fancies), and make your brand start working for you.

---

Seven Jane is an author of dark fantasy and speculative fiction. Her debut novel, The Isle of Gold, was published by Black Spot Books in October 2018. She is represented by Gandolfo Helin & Fountain Literary Management and supported by Smith Publicity.

Seven is a member of The Author's Guild and Women's Fiction Writing Association. She writes a weekly column for WFWA's Industry News newsletter and is a regular contributor to The Nerd Daily.

Website: http://www.sevenjane.com

Social: on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @sevenjanewrites

8 Tips for Writing Authentic Historical Mysteries by Erin Lindsey

So, you want to write a historical mystery. You want it to be authentic and meticulously-researched enough to please the pickiest pedants. But dammit, Jim, you’re a novelist, not a historian! Where do you start?

I have no idea. Or at least, I didn’t when I sat down to write Murder on Millionaires’ Row, a mystery set in Gilded Age New York. I’d never written historical fiction before. I cut my teeth writing fantasy, so while I was used to some light research on things like medieval architecture and technology, nothing I’d tackled up to that point prepared me for the rigours of setting my novel in a real place and time—let alone one as well-documented, and well-loved, as New York City.

But somehow, I blundered through, and two novels and half a dozen convention panels later, while I still wouldn’t consider myself an expert, I have accumulated a few tips and tricks for making your historical novel as accurate, authentic, and immersive as it can possibly be.

I’m going to skip the obvious ones – nonfiction books about the era, movies and television, visiting historical sites and so forth – and go straight to a few that might get overlooked.

1. Pick a setting you’re passionate about. It’s always a good idea to write what you love, but when it comes to historical fiction, you’re going to need that passion to sustain you through many long hours of research. Ideally, you have such a nerd crush on your setting that background reading doesn’t even feel like work.

2. Nose through the newspaper. Even if you don’t plan to include a specific historical event, browsing through local newspapers is a great way to get a feel for the day-to-day concerns of people living at that time, as well as the overall historical and political context. Since we’re talking historical mystery here, stories about crime are especially helpful. They give you a sense of what sorts of nefarious deeds the baddies of the day were up to, as well as helpful tidbits about policing and the justice system. Don’t pass over the advertisements, either. They’ll teach you a lot about what household items were in use, complete with brand names. Little details like that—what your heroine might find lying around her kitchen, say, or in her medicine cabinet—add wonderful texture.

3. Read autobiographies and memoirs. This is obviously important if you’re writing about real-life historical figures, but even if you aren’t, autobiographies and memoirs and a great way to get a feel for what it was like for people living in that time. What they worried about, how they spoke and wrote, who was important to them in their communities. Chances are you’ll find yourself drawing upon some of their experiences, however mundane.

4. Curl up with a good novel. Nonfiction is well and good, but I’m convinced there’s no better way to learn about the little things—etiquette, transport, clothing, food, dialect—than reading novels written in the era you’re writing about. Be careful with class and geography, though. If you’re writing about a housemaid in New York City, Madame Bovary is only going to get you so far.

5. Zoom out. Don’t forget to take account of the major social and technological developments of the day. For example, if you’re writing about 1870s America, the country is dealing with the aftermath of the Civil War. A hundred years later, it’s Vietnam and the civil rights movement. In the 1840s and 50s, the telegraph was changing the way humans communicated; by the 1880s electric lighting was igniting a revolution of its own. Even if you don’t refer to these big-picture issues directly, understanding them—and how they shape the worldviews and daily experiences of your characters—will add depth to the setting and the people living in it.

6.Add Etymonline to your favourites bar. If you’re keen to have your characters use only period-accurate words, this website is a goldmine. My New York City copper couldn’t have a “hunch” in 1886, because that word didn’t show up (at least in that way) until 1904. But my besotted heroine was safe referring to her “crush”, since that one’s been around since 1884. If you can pick up a book on period slang, so much the better. (For 19th century New York, I recommend The City in Slang: New York Life and Popular Speech by Irving Lewis Allen.)

7. Grab a guidebook. Credit for this one goes to Tasha Alexander, who turned me onto Baedeker guides. Think of these like a sort of historical Lonely Planet. Just like modern travel guides, they cover hotels, transport, restaurants, sightseeing, and so forth – complete with amazing details like how much things cost and what sort of clientele you’re likely to encounter in a particular establishment. My personal favourites are the warnings – places ladies shouldn’t go, for example, or gentlemen wishing to be considered respectable. Baedeker specialized in Europe; for the US, I suggest Rand McNally & Co. Admittedly, these particular ones are specific to the 19th century, but I’d be willing to bet there are analogues for earlier periods as well.

8.Find your people. One of the best things about the internet and social media is that it’s easier than ever to connect with your fellow enthusiasts. Bloggers, podcasters, Facebook groups, Pinterest boards—chances are someone out there is busily collecting exactly the sorts of resources you’re looking for. Browse their collections—and don’t be afraid to reach out, either. In my experience, when people are passionate about something, they’re only too happy to share it.

Et voila – these are my best trade secrets so far, though I’m learning all the time. I hope you find them as helpful as I did!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to researching the various accents of Missouri, to make sure I do justice to a certain famous gentleman who figures in the next Rose Gallagher mystery. Suggestions are, of course, welcome.

---

Erin Lindsey has lived and worked in dozens of countries around the world, but has only ever called two places home: her native city of Calgary and her adopted hometown of New York. She is the author of the Bloodbound series of fantasy novels from Ace. Murder on Millionaires' Row is her debut mystery. She divides her time between Calgary and Brooklyn with her husband and a pair of half-domesticated cats.

A Plot to Publish by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

In my entire writing life, I have only met one writer who didn’t want to be published. A member of the writing group I belonged to, she wrote small gems, her stories short and stunning. I suspected she’d tried agents and traditional publishers with no luck and had given up. But what if she’d come up with a plan? What if she’d got in on the Flash/Sudden Fiction phenomenon? What if she’d found little markets, magazines, and developed her genre? Wasn’t it worth a try?

Watching this woman take great pleasure in reading a new story each week, I vowed I wasn’t going to be her. I wouldn’t stop trying to publish my mysteries, go as big as I could go, not until those final flames got me and I went down still waving a manuscript in my hot little hand.

The PLAN began with what I was writing. It had to have a little more to it than the mass of other published stories—I concentrated on making my female characters a little quirky, a little deeper, having trauma in their lives—nobody perfect but all of them pretty damned special. I love my female characters. They are me—at my worst and best; all the friends I’ve cried with and laughed with over the years. They are the women I decry and those I admire. I wanted strength, individuality, and a past I could call on to fill in the ground beneath their feet. I didn’t even agree, always, with what they did in the novels—as long as they were true to who they’d come to be and were interested in creating a great story—no matter what I put them through.

Okay, I wrote the first of these female mysteries and finally—after a few years—was satisfied. Many drafts. More to come. I fell in love with nothing. If an editor would ask me to consider changing this or that—I would consider anything —and never find a hill worth dying on.

I sent the novel to five agents I’d researched closely. For me, each had to be a woman. Each had to have a decent client list—some of them writers I had heard of before. Each had to publish a lot of work by women. Each had to be listed almost monthly in Publishers’ Weekly with solid sales. Each had to have a great, client-friendly website with advice for writers on how to approach her, and often be quoted in articles about what agents want.

All five of these agents turned me down, but one said to send her my next novel and to stay in touch. This was the one I wanted most from the lot, so I started a file and began to send her any mention of me in media and news of what I was working on—always reminding her she said to keep in touch.

Never did I stalk her, as one writer did. She asked what they could do if she just came to their office and sat until they took her on. The answer was “Call the police.”

I only sent word of what I was doing when I had something to report—an article published, where I was on the new novel, conferences, seminars, and appearances.

I stayed friendly and kept my tone light.

All of this became the next part of my Grand Plot to Get Published!

I sold that first novel to a small, but solid, publisher on my own—listing articles I’d had in magazines and stories in newspapers. (This is a little like making it off-Broadway—not easy to do either). I included a local article on me in The Detroit News—as being president of a local writers’ organization (all things I’d done on my way to learning how to write and to connect with writers). I wrote about the famous writers I’d taken classes with and those I’d met while helping put on a writers’ conference.

I worked tirelessly at becoming a well-published writer, whether I was ever going to get anywhere or not. Actually, I never let myself entertain a single thought that I wouldn’t finally get where I wanted to go.

After that first book came out—very small thump in the publishing market—it did get me an offer of a contract on three more novels. I wrote these and with each got a little more attention, but not much. Smaller publishers give you credence, some bragging rights. Any kind of attention—newspaper, magazine, online; any good reviews (you ignore any other kind—though there won’t be many. People are starting to read you and will write nice things).

With each published novel, I let kept my Ideal Agent up to date with pub date, reviews—anything and everything. I told her where I was speaking, she had my website. If she was going to ignore everything, I’d give up eventually (but I doubt it). She began to answer—always congratulating me.

I wrote the contracted-for novels and then wrote a different series, with this agent in mind. I sent off exactly what she asked for on the website, no taking advantage of a make-believe friendship but still with very strong reminders of my contacts—and news of a call from a different New York Agent, asking to represent me (one not on my ideal list and definitely not this special woman I was after).

And then came the phone call. We already knew each other. It was fun talking and agreeing on what would be done with the new book. Now we are eleven books into our relationship. The relationship is all I wanted it to be. I’m being called an ‘emerging’ writer now (after all these books better to be ‘emerging’ than receding).

My plan wasn’t an easy one. Nothing was guaranteed. I listened to no one but myself, kept what I wanted at the front of everything. Never questioned what I was doing, nor asked advice. Maybe it’s the old thing about making a mental image of what you want and going after it. I have no magic mushrooms, no amulets, no secret book of phone numbers. All I’ve got is the best novel I could write and a plot, or plan, that I believed in. After all, if we can spend so much time writing the perfect plot for a mystery, why not for our own lives?

---

Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli lives on a small lake in northern Michigan where crows and bears give her ideas for novels.

With three series out now, she has just turned in the fourth of the Little Library Series, due out next summer: AND THEN THEY WERE DOOMED. Her novels include: GIFT OF EVIL, the Emily Kincaid series, a Texas series, SHE STOPPED FOR DEATH, A MOST CURIOUS MURDER, and IN WANT OF A KNIFE (Just out). Having written fiction all of her life; having five children, ten grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren, her life is not only full but bursting with mystery and surprise.

Getting the Word Out by L.C. Blackwell

I spent more than eighteen months writing For Sale Murder. Draft after draft—researching, editing, formatting, designing a cover, finding beta readers, choosing an Indie distributor, prepping the book for upload, and more. I thought I was ready to release my very first mystery baby, all 85,000 words of it.

Wrong!

My domain, AuthorBlackwell.com, was locked up but I had no functioning website. I hadn’t plumped up my Facebook connections, either. Ditto for Twitter, LinkedIn. What’s more, I hadn't cleaned out my email contact list or beefed it up—I was too busy writing.

Developing a basic marketing plan was not a particularly challenging assignment; I was an advertising exec in an earlier life. My history, however, did not help me avoid making marketing mistakes.

Choosing to market my own book, I contracted with a print-on-demand distributor. My book is on all the right websites, but that doesn’t ring up sales. And hiring a publicist or paying a distributor to be your marketing arm doesn't take the burden away. You are still the captain of your sales force.

You must create noise about your book, and your name. You can’t be shy or apologetic. You must be brave, wear a mantle of courage. And most important, believe in yourself. Remember, not everyone will like your book, but if no one hears about it, those who could love it may not get a chance to read it.

Marketing to your target

My target was easy to define; it was integral to writing For Sale Murder. And that was a major advantage. I knew the who, the what, the where, and the how to direct my marketing efforts. It was easy to focus my message on postcards, email templates, bookmarks and everything else.

My first mistake: Not starting my marketing efforts sooner.

Developing a plan is vital. Initiating it in waves, I discovered, is critical.

A smart, early move: Creating a voting ballot for my book cover.

An L.A. Creative Director, a close friend, helped me. He recreated my rough cover design into three outstanding versions, which I sent to all my email and social media contacts for a vote. The ballot accomplished three things: 1. Great press. It announced to thousands of my contacts that I had written a new book; 2. A winning cover. I had a clear winner—by a landslide; 3. More press. In emails and posts, I announced the winner and included a teaser video.

Next Mistake: Not advertising my cover posts on social media.

I've since learned the value of a timed Facebook boost.

Catching up

Recognizing the need for more intel, I googled indie marketing tips, marketing groups, websites, et al. It was as though I was back at MSU cramming for finals. I downloaded free eBooks, articles, anything available to grasp publishing changes that could help fast-track my plan.

The results were formidable. And whittling down the number of resources and guides to a manageable list was a worthwhile task. I got new marketing directives and ideas I could put in place with little effort.

I also searched Google for mystery associations and mystery reading groups and websites. That search brought me a national list of Indie bookstores, mystery book clubs, mystery bloggers, book fairs, and shows. With slight changes to email templates, I was able to market to these groups. The result: an email response rate of 34% that equated to strong upticks in sales.

I am surprised and encouraged at the reaction to For Sale Murder. I was able to get a Publishers Weekly review, which I link to every email template I send. I’ve been interviewed and invited to guest post on wonderful blogger sites (DrusMusings.com is one of them). And, I’ve received invitations to join other mystery authors on mystery panels.

My marketing is not finished. My focus now? Libraries. What’s more, as I continue to build my brand, I’m writing my second book in the Peter Dumas series aiming for a late spring release. Marketing to start shortly!

My first mystery has been a learning journey in marketing. The websites and resources I discovered have contributed to my efforts and continue to do so. It is a time-consuming process to filter the best resources and the advice they offer, but the lessons learned are invaluable and will be a blueprint for my next book.

Every author competes with millions of books—on the shelf, online, in libraries, in bookstores.

And almost every sale depends on much more than just wonderful words between a front and back cover. The story description, the cover image, and how you present your book come into play. So, write your heart out. But don’t ever forget to strategize, target, and plan.

Some resources to help you on your writing and marketing journey:

GoCentral.com—GoDaddy’s sweet and easy website builder that anyone can manage. Plus, a support team that is unbelievable.

Blog.Reedsy.com—A British company with great info and an impressive list of available professionals—worldwide editors, artists, publishers and more.

The Self-Publishing Tools of Trade Every Author Must Know –by Lama Jabr.

Free Kindle download.

ttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LJS6TPQ/

A wonderful directory of tools and websites complete with description.

SistersinCrime.org—a supportive group with benefits for published and unpublished authors.

---

L.C. Blackwell began a career in Chicago advertising agencies writing and producing Radio-TV and print advertising in a variety of industries that included Fashion, Food and Food Service, Consumer Products, Automotive, Children's Products and Retail. Among the client brands represented: Brown Shoe Company, Johnson's Wax, Armour (Dial Soap), Goodrich, Quaker Oats, Oldsmobile, Sportmart, Echo Housewares and American Dairy. A growing interest in programming saw Blackwell become an independent writer-producer developing creative for a select group of projects. Among them: "Belleza Latina," a 13-week package of daily short-form beauty programs written, produced and licensed to the Spanish Entertainment Network for a double run; A bull-riding documentary airing on ABC and Univision affiliates in Phoenix, Arizona; A multimedia promotion that included creative, jingle and presentation production for the National Fitness Foundation presidential appointee, George Allen. Additionally, L.C. Blackwell is the author of 2 children's books as well as a licensed Managing Broker in Illinois

What's the Point? by Mark de Castrique

A friend of mine was standing in line at the sales register of a local bookstore. The woman in front of her was checking out, and the clerk made a suggestion for a novel. She handed her customer a display copy and the woman quickly thumbed through a few pages. “Oh, this is written in first-person. I don’t read first-person.” She pushed the book aside.

“What?” I exclaimed when my friend related the incident. “She just threw out Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, and The Sun Also Rises, not to mention that icon of all mystery detectives, Sherlock Holmes.”

What was the point for making such a sweeping, excluding statement? The point was for some reason the first-person point-of-view kept this woman out of all first-person stories. She refused to allow herself to believe that a character could be talking to her, the reader. As a writer, I believe point-of-view should have the opposite effect. It draws the reader into the story through the connection established between the narrator and reader. For me, first-person is the most intimate and personal form of storytelling because a character is inviting the reader to share his or her experiences.

But point-of-view should always be chosen for its contribution to the impact a story has on the reader. Thus, there are objective reasons for choosing from a variety of subjective perspectives. As a writer of a particular story, do you want your reader to know more than your protagonist or discover revelations along with her or him? Going back to my English grad school days, I learned point-of-view is a distance set between a narrator and the story and thereby a distance set between the reader and the story. It provides a place for both the narrator and the reader to stand. That place should be consistent and not make the reader feel unfairly manipulated.

First-person in a traditional detective novel puts the reader inside the head of one character and one character only—usually the detective with great exceptions like the ever-faithful Dr. Watson. The reader discovers evidence and corresponding solutions along with the detective. As a writer, I’ve found first-person provides an easier entry into my character’s world, and I hope the entry is as easy for the reader, especially in my two series where a bond can be created between reader and character-narrator across multiple novels.

I realize first-person point-of-view isn’t the only and certainly not the most prolific narrative device. Third-person opens up limitless options for taking the reader into multiple minds and locations not privy to the protagonist. For the thriller, third-person sets up the suspense when the reader knows more than the protagonist and is well aware of the danger lurking ahead. For that reason, I chose third-person for my thrillers, The 13th Target, and The Singularity Race.

Yet, there is not just one point-of-view labeled third-person. This plurality of viewpoints is both the strength and potential weakness of third-person. To keep me immersed in the story to the desired extent that I forget I’m reading, the narrative perspective needs to be consistent. Otherwise, the perspective becomes overly manipulative and frustrating. Information and character thoughts are inconsistently revealed and withheld. For example, when a narrative omniscient voice describing, not only the actions but thoughts of each character suddenly and arbitrarily withholds vital information like the message the detective reads on the bloody note clutched in a murdered man’s hand, then the reader has a right to scream foul. The writer didn’t play fair. It might be a good cliffhanger for the end of a chapter, but not if it’s kept from the reader until the end of the novel.

Third-person can also be a close third-person. The story stays with the view of one character, but no thoughts are revealed for any characters. This point of view is used masterfully by Dashiell Hammett in The Maltese Falcon. Sam Spade appears in every scene, but the narrative style is one of objective description only, like a camera following Spade throughout the whole story. If you read the novel with point-of-view in mind, you’ll become aware of how often the descriptions are of characters’ eyes. These “windows of the soul” are as close as Hammett gets to revealing internal thoughts. Why? Because Hammett played absolutely fair with his readers! At the dramatic conclusion, the culprits come to realize they had misjudged what was motivating Sam Spade. But by keeping Sam’s viewpoint free of his thoughts, Hammett surprised the reader as well. The impact was heightened because Hammett not only wrote a great novel; he knew how to tell it with the most powerful point-of-view and he kept that view consistent.

So, point of view isn’t arbitrary. Whether it’s close third-person like Hammett’s, or limited to the thoughts of certain characters, or omniscient in all regards including narrator opinions, the choice should be made in service to the story and in service to the reader. How a story is told is inseparable from the story itself.

Which brings me back to the woman in the bookstore. In my opinion, she separated point-of-view from the potential power that the author’s narrative style brought for the most impactful way to experience the story. She built the first-person point-of-view into a wall and refused to accept it as the author’s gateway into the world he or she created.

And that, my friend, was the author’s point to begin with.

---

Mark was born in Hendersonville, NC, near Asheville. He went straight from the hospital to the funeral home where his father was the funeral director and the family lived upstairs. The unusual setting sparked his popular Barry Clayton series and launched his mystery-writing career.

Mark is the author of eighteen novels: seven set in the fictional NC mountain town of Gainesboro, six set in Asheville, two in Washington D.C., one science thriller in the year 2030, and two mysteries written for Middle Graders.

His novels have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist. The CHICAGO TRIBUNE wrote, “As important and as impressive as the author’s narrative skills are the subtle ways he captures the geography – both physical and human – of a unique part of the American South.”

Mark is a veteran of the broadcast and film production business. In Washington D.C., he directed numerous news and public affairs programs and received an EMMY Award for his documentary film work.

Mark lives in Charlotte, but he and his wife Linda can be often found in the NC mountains or the nation’s capital.

Adding a Supernatural Element to Your Thriller by Nicholas Kaufmann

Growing up, I was a Monster Kid through and through. One of my favorite memories from my youth is how every Sunday morning at 11 AM, WPIX-TV out of New York City would show an old, black-and-white Abbott and Costello movie. It seemed like they showed every film the comedy duo ever made, and week after week I watched and laughed along with their classic mix of physical comedy and wordplay. I enjoyed all the films, but my true, whole-hearted devotion was reserved for the movies in which Bud Abbott and Lou Costello encountered monsters, haunted houses, and mad scientists, movies like Hold That Ghost, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott, and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, and of course their greatest film and one of my all-time favorite movies, the incomparable Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. In a similar vein (haha), I enjoyed swashbuckling adventure films, but if you wanted to keep my attention you needed to add some monsters to the mix, which is why young me would happily flip right past an Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks movie on TV to watch a Ray Harryhausen Sinbad movie. (Flynn might have been a greatsword-wielding sailor in The Sea Hawk, but he never fought a giant cyclops!) And needless to say, if the gang on Scooby Doo, Where Are You! was just solving regular mysteries instead of investigating monster sightings and hauntings, it probably wouldn’t have become my favorite Saturday morning cartoon.

I’m still a Monster Kid at heart, even though my youth is long behind me. (Long, long behind me. Don’t ask me how long, I won’t tell you.) I still love monsters and ghosts—anything supernatural. I love writing about them too, and have been doing so ever since I was a daydreamer in grade school scrawling stories of aliens and zombies in my notebook instead of paying attention to the teacher. In truth, I don’t feel any different from that schoolboy now, even with six novels and two story collections under my belt. That childhood love of all things supernatural has followed me into adulthood and played an enormous role in my writing. In fact, I can’t seem to write anything without adding the supernatural in some form or other!

For example, my Bram Stoker Award-nominated novelette General Slocum’s Gold isn’t just a heist story about a crew looking for a missing treasure trove on New York City’s abandoned North Brother Island, it also features ghosts, curses, and a thief with the supernatural ability to see through walls and doors with just a touch of his hand. My Thriller Award-nominated and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated novel Chasing the Dragon isn’t just about a heroin addict trying to get her life together; she also happens to be the last living descendant of St. George and is tasked with the same mission as her famous ancestor—to kill a very real and very deadly dragon. My urban fantasy novels, Dying Is My Business and Die and Stay Dead, are crime thrillers that take place in a contemporary New York City where all manner of magic and supernatural creatures hide in the shadows. And now my latest novel, 100 Fathoms Below, co-written with Steven L. Kent, is a Cold War submarine thriller with a supernatural threat onboard.

Adding a supernatural element to a thriller can do more than simply fold a fun, new ingredient into a recipe. It can also keep things fresh. There are lots of thrillers out there in which our heroes are chasing after a thumb drive with important, world-changing information on it, or rushing to stop a super virus from being unleashed or to stop a terrorist organization from detonating a bomb. These are classic plots for a reason, of course—readers still respond to them and are eager to see how particular characters deal with these threats—but sometimes the formula can feel stale. For better or worse, there can be a feeling of “been there, done that.” Adding a supernatural element can be a great way to shake things up. What if the ghost of the terrorists’ previous victim is what brings their new, insidious plot to our heroes’ attention? What if it’s not a super virus that’s in danger of being released but something more ancient, more malevolent? What if it’s not a thumb drive everyone’s after, but a powerful, cursed object?

Granted, the supernatural isn’t for everyone. Some authors prefer to keep things as strictly realistic as possible. In writing 100 Fathoms Below, Steve and I found what I think is just the right balance between the supernatural and the realistic. In the novel, everything about life in US Navy and life aboard a nuclear submarine was meticulously researched and kept utterly realistic. Into this verisimilitude, we threw a supernatural threat that is stalking and killing the submariners one by one. And perhaps that’s the key to successfully adding the supernatural to a thriller: keeping everything else as realistic and grounded as possible. Otherwise, you risk straining the suspension of disbelief.

So if you’ve been considering adding a supernatural element to your latest thriller but have found yourself on the fence about it, I wholeheartedly recommend giving it a try. As I mentioned, it’s a great way to shake things up and keep your readers on their toes. And who knows? You might even find yourself attracting a whole new audience of grown-up Monster Kids like me, who are always looking to discover new authors. Decades ago, it was those old Abbott and Costello movies that showed me how fun supernatural elements can be in an otherwise grounded story. Perhaps one day it will be a novel of yours that does the same for someone else.

---

Nicholas Kaufmann is the Bram Stoker Award-nominated, Thriller Award-nominated, and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of two collections and six novels, the most recent of which is the horror novel 100 Fathoms Below, co-written with Steven L. Kent. His short fiction has appeared in Cemetery Dance, Black Static, Nightmare Magazine, Dark Discoveries, and others. In addition to his own original work, he has written for such properties as Zombies vs. Robots and The Rocketeer. He and his wife live in Brooklyn, New York.

Character Flaws and the Unpardonable Sin of 12 Angry Men by Tom Seigel

Some inconsistency in a fictional character is usually a good thing. Who wants to read about stereotypes, caricatures, or robots? We want complex, emotional, fallible, impetuous, and occasionally hypocritical types populating our fiction. They are the most human, the most interesting. Angels and demons have their places in thrillers and YA fiction—and I love books in both categories—but as a general rule, contradictions and imperfections give a character needed dimension. When a work of fiction, however, seeks to exalt an ideal through the actions of an idealized protagonist, that character cannot, in service of the principle, undercut its very essence. Ideological inconsistency, in such case, would be a fatal flaw. To Kill a Mockingbird, for example, would not work if Atticus Finch were to coach Tom Robinson to lie under oath or to blackmail the jurors. Sherlock Holmes could not take bribes to twist facts or to place blame on innocent bystanders.

Among the heroes of 20th century American literature few stand taller than Juror No. 8 in Twelve Angry Men, a play that resides deep in the secondary school canon, so deep it’s extraction would be unthinkable. Generations of middle and high school teachers have used the play as a civics lesson, holding up Juror No. 8 as a paragon of democratic virtues. I first read Reginald Rose’s gripping drama in an eighth grade English class, an abridged version in a weekly periodical. After we had read it, we watched the original movie in class. There was Henry Fonda, Juror No. 8, plain white suit, austere black eyes. With the other eleven jurors eager to condemn the young defendant for killing his father—just to make it home for dinner or to a ball game—Fonda stands firm, bracing himself upon the Constitution and the judge’s legal instructions against the impatience and prejudices of a surly majority. His brave not guilty vote forces the majority into unwanted but necessary deliberations.

For the remainder of the play, we watch the meticulous Juror No. 8 retry the case—asking questions not asked by defense counsel, scrutinizing inconsistencies, biases, and gaps in witness testimony. Fonda appears to be the model juror, demonstrating both a colorblind respect for the rights of every individual and a commitment to the deliberative process enshrined in our statutes and constitutional framework. Despite their initial antipathy toward Juror No. 8 and their certainty of the defendant’s guilt, the other jurors, one-by-one, eventually change their minds. The young defendant goes free. Whether guilty or innocent is beside the point. What matters is a process free from passion and prejudice steadfastly bound to the rule of law and its presumption of innocence. Juror No. 8’s identity, background, and status are irrelevant—just a law-abiding citizen holding true to his oath. A judicial lone ranger of sorts.

Except it ain’t necessarily so. Not even close. Juror No. 8 is fatally flawed. He knowingly and blatantly corrupts the process, introducing a taint so severe that only retrial before new jurors could offer any hope of a fair and lawful proceeding. This realization came to me years later, after graduating from law school and becoming a prosecutor. When watching the movie again, I noticed a flagrant violation of the juror’s oath by none other than Juror No. 8. It is a gross transgression in a moment of high drama. And it saps the play of moral authority.

A supposedly unique switchblade knife found buried in the victim’s chest is, not surprisingly, a key piece of evidence. There was no dispute at trial that the defendant had purchased an identical knife at a neighborhood store the night before his father’s murder. The majority of jurors rely heavily on this piece of damning circumstantial proof. Frustrated with Juror No. 8’s persistent doubts, Juror No. 4 stabs the knife into the conference table. Juror No. 8 then reaches into his pocket, pulls out a second switchblade knife, and stabs it into the table, right next to the murder weapon. They are identical. Juror No. 8 explains that the night before he had gone for a walk in the defendant’s neighborhood and picked up the duplicate knife for six bucks in a pawnshop three blocks from the victim’s apartment. With this stunning revelation, we see the icy confidence of the other jurors beginning to melt away. It is a pivotal exchange.

As a trial lawyer, I was in shock. Among the standard jury instructions judges give in all criminal cases is the admonition that jurors may consider only the evidence presented in court. They may not conduct their own external investigations, searching for additional evidence or interviewing other witnesses. It is an absolute rule. This prohibition is meant to ensure that any evidence—whether testimony, documents or objects—can be examined by both sides, objected to if potentially violative of the rules of evidence, and admitted or excluded as proof based on the judge’s interpretation of applicable law. Juror No. 8, however, gathered extra-judicial evidence and then gave testimony (not under oath or in open court) in the deliberations room as to his investigative efforts—all with the hope of persuading his fellow jurors. Lone wolf more than lone ranger.

The problems with a renegade juror are self-evident. How do we know where Juror No. 8 actually bought the knife? How much he paid? How many shops he went to? In which neighborhoods? How do we know what the shopkeepers may have said to him? Who will cross-examine him? In short, Juror No. 8, more interested in result than in purity of process, took the law into his own hands. He is, therefore, no better than the manipulative, opportunistic juror in Grisham’s Runaway Jury. Had any juror reported Juror No. 8’s misconduct to the judge, the court would have immediately declared a mistrial. There is no other remedy for such an egregious breach of the court’s rules. The jurors would have been sent home. A new trial with new jurors would have been ordered. Juror No. 8 would be lucky to get off with a firm tongue-lashing for what was nothing less than contempt of court.

Although, as a writer, I am a staunch defender of literary license, such license is not tantamount to carte blanche. In a quasi-allegorical work about the importance of due process, the hero-protagonist cannot choose which court instructions he will follow and those he will disregard in order to comport with personal standards of justice. Juror No. 8’s hypocrisy, far from making him a more interesting character, only enfeebles the play’s message. In a perverse way, Juror No. 8 actually represents a very anti-egalitarian Machiavellian philosophy. He thinks he knows better than the judge, the lawyers, and the other jurors; thus, getting the “just” result through unlawful means apparently causes him no moral heartburn.

If this were a character-driven story where we got to know Juror No. 8—his backstory, his family and financial circumstances, his yearnings, his frustrations—such hypocrisy might ring true and more fully illuminate a very complicated man, someone torn between a belief in democratic institutions and a superiority complex. But that is emphatically not Twelve Angry Men. We do not even know Juror No. 8’s name. He is an allegorical character, and in his representative capacity, he simply cannot be a hypocrite. So, next time you’re crafting a plot-driven book or short story with a human stand-in for Truth, Justice, or the American Way, you might want to think about how contradictions in character may diminish or even destroy your hero’s emblematic value.

---

Tom Seigel has served as both Deputy Chief and Chief of the Justice Department’s Brooklyn Organized Crime Strike Force, prosecuting members and associates of La Cosa Nostra. After twenty years as a litigator, Tom earned an MFA in fiction writing. THE ASTRONAUT’S SON, published in September,is his debut novel.  For more information, visit his website: tomseigel.com

Vision and Betrayal by Ginger Bolton

Like almost everyone else, I started my first novel with “What if?”

There were really two what ifs.

One: What if that real-life woman didn’t return my call because she had mysteriously disappeared?

Two: What if I started writing, you know, just to see what happened, both to my character and to me? Could I actually stick to writing an entire novel, or was that idea as imaginary as my fictitious character and her search for a missing woman?

I started writing.

That, I’m sorry to say, was the end of my relaxed and comfy existence. My character moved into my brain and took over my life.

I knew what had happened to the real woman. She not only turned up, she brought me an enormous chocolate-chip cookie. I also knew what had happened to the imaginary woman, but my protagonist didn’t, and she was trying very hard, no matter how many obstacles I threw at her, to find out. She nagged and nagged at me to finish her story. Eventually, with my writing-obsessed early mornings and weekends, I did.

But I wasn’t done. I had drafted the original manuscript as a pantser. I started revising. I added scenes. I moved scenes. I embellished scenes. I trimmed them. I polished the entire manuscript and then tore it apart and had to polish it again, over and over . . .

Pantsing was exhilarating and fun.

It also took years.

One of my hobbies (if I can drag myself away from writing and revising) is sewing. Mostly, that means that I like to shop for fabrics. I often find one or several that I cannot possibly resist. I might not know how exactly I want to use the fabrics, so I stash them away and wait for inspiration. That’s kind of like the pantsing version of sewing, which is not to be confused with sewing up a pair of pants, in case you wondered.

Frequently, I know exactly what I want to sew, and I plan it all, complete with pattern, thread, buttons and zipper. Right. That’s like plotting.

So, back to writing. As I said, the manuscripts that I pantsed took a verrrrrry long time.

I was offered contracts for manuscripts that I had not yet written. I couldn’t take years to write them. I had deadlines. I continued pantsing, but in a more organized, structured, and, I have to admit, panicky fashion.

And then I got a new editor. He didn’t mind long outlines, he said. Like twenty pages, he said. I had already written a twenty-page synopsis for the first book in the series when he said that. . .

I had, somehow, edged into more plotting than panstsing.

Now, back to sewing.

There’s a problem. After I’ve planned exactly what I’m going to make with that fabric, that pattern, that thread, those buttons, and that zipper, I often simply stow the ingredients for the project with the other, unplanned fabrics. Unfortunately, visualizing the finished project can be enough. I might never construct it.

Uh-oh. You know where this is heading, right? The more I run my characters and their adventures through my head like a movie, the less I think I need to complete the manuscript.

Plotting was supposed to help, but my imagination had betrayed me.

However, if I actually want to wear a garment I’ve planned, I have to buckle down and finish it.

I definitely want to meet my deadlines, so I do what I do with sewing (when, that is, I actually sew.) I complete the project in logical (for me) steps.

Would I ever just start cutting into fabric with a firm mental picture of the finished product but only a hazy idea of how I would get from yardage to garment? Gulp, yes, I have done that, with dismaying results.

Would I ever just start writing to find out what path I’ll take to the end? I’ve done it and I might do it again, but for now, I have to admit that I’ve transformed myself, more or less by necessity, from a pantser to a plotter. Careful planning can, for me, yield speedier and more satisfying results—who knew?

Besides, I was never that crazy about making pants.

---

Ginger Bolton writes the Deputy Donut Mysteries—coffee, donuts, cops, danger, and one curious cat . . . SURVIVAL OF THE FRITTERS and GOODBYE CRULLER WORLD have already been published. JEALOUSY-FILLED DONUTS will appear in September 2019, and three more Deputy Donut mysteries are in the works.

Ginger writes surrounded by unfinished knitting, sewing, and crocheting projects. She lives near a yummy donut and coffee shop which she avoids while walking her two rescue dogs, but maybe not other times. As Janet Bolin, she wrote the Threadville Mysteries—murder and mayhem in a village of crafty shops.

Imagine Me As A Little Old Lady / By Parnell Hall

Dropped. Desperate. Never going to write again.

Been there. Done that.

The scariest thing for a writer is to be dropped by your publisher. There you are, on top of the world, one of the chosen few, and suddenly it's snatched out from under you, and you find yourself in a Road Runner cartoon realizing you're standing on thin air.

When your publisher drops you, no one wants you. It's not a good job recommendation. "Why did I leave my publisher? They looked at my royalty statements."

When Warner Books dropped my Stanley Hastings series I was devastated. There I was, thirteen books into the series, with Edgar and Shamus nominations, getting reviewed regularly by the New York Times. Suddenly no one would touch me. I huddled with my agent to see what we could do.

No one wanted a private eye series by Parnell Hall. The problem was to get a publisher to publish something else. We decided to get as far away from Parnell Hall territory as possible.

Stanley Hastings was a New York City P.I. So, how about a little old lady who lived in a small New England town and solves crime? Fine, but it sounds like Jessica Fletcher. What would make it different?

Enter the gimmick.

My little old lady needed something that set her apart, made her special, made her someone people would want to read about.

We hit on crossword puzzles. It seemed a natural. A crime is a puzzle, so if you threw a crossword puzzle in it you'd have puzzles within puzzles. It was perfect.

I still wasn't happy. I would be writing about a sweet, little old lady with a nationally syndicated crossword column who solves crime on the side. The whole idea was so sugary sweet it made me sick.

So I twisted it. While Cora Felton looks like your favorite grandmother and even does breakfast cereal ads on TV for schoolchildren, she is actually a loopy old hellion who's been married so many times she's not sure exactly how many husbands she's had, only recently gave up drinking and can't remember much of the seventies and eighties, smokes like a chimney and swears like a sailor.

She is also the Milli Vanilli of the crossword puzzle community and couldn't solve a crossword with a gun to her head. Her niece Sherry constructs the puzzles, and Cora Felton is just the name on the column. This arrangement was initially to allow Sherry to hide from an abusive ex-husband. Now Cora can't admit to being a fraud without destroying her commercial career.

With those few tweaks, I liked the character a lot. I started in on the manuscript.

I had one problem.

I didn't know much more about crossword puzzles than Cora did. Sure, I'd done them as a kid, but not for over twenty years, and I wasn't good then. My Stanley Hastings books were based on my two years working as a private eye in New York City. I had never been a little old lady presumed to have an unusual talent for crosswords.

So I entered the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the national tournament held in Stamford, Connecticut. I practiced for it by doing the daily puzzles in the New York Times, and by the time of the tournament I felt pretty good about it.

The first puzzle was easy. I flew right through it. I got about halfway done, I looked up, and the room was empty. Everyone had finished and left. Out of 254 contestants, I finished 250th, just ahead of the four people who failed to turn in a paper.

With this practical experience, I wrote the manuscript and gave it to my agent.

He liked it a lot, but we were still worried. Would an editor read a manuscript with the name Parnell Hall on it? The odds were not great.

So we put the name Alice Hastings on the manuscript and sent it around.

Bantam immediately snapped up this book by an unknown woman for more money than anyone had ever paid me. I did not take that as an insult. I took the check to the bank and cashed it.

Of course, we had to tell them I wrote it. That didn't worry them. They were happy to publish the book under the name Alice Hastings. They even asked me for her bio. I wrote, as I recall, "Alice Hastings was raised in a small New England town by English lit teachers with a fondness for Agatha Christie and the Sunday Times crossword. When not writing, Alice enjoys tennis, swimming, and co-ed softball."

Bantam was all set to go. Then they heard I was planning to take the author photo. At that point, they chickened out. They decided to put my name on the book.

I argued against it. Alice, I thought, would sell better. But we went with my name and the book did all right.

Still, I wonder what I might have made as a woman.

---

Parnell Hall is the author of the Puzzle Lady, crossword puzzle mysteries, the Stanley Hastings private eye novels, and the Steve Winslow courtroom dramas. With Stuart Woods, he is the co-author of the New York Times bestselling Teddy Fay series. His latest Puzzle Lady book is The Purloined Puzzle. His next, Lights! Camera! Puzzles!, will be out in April.

When Mystery is Out of This World / by Claire Gem

Even in a world where people are suffocating under stress, many consciously and deliberately seek even more. Fans of mystery, thriller, and suspense novels not only want their reads to bring more tension into their lives, they demand it. Unless these books raise their blood pressure and deliver that rollercoaster ride of adrenalin, they will put them down, disappointed.

The difference, of course, is that the tension and anxiety, the stress and worry—none of it belongs to the reader, but to other people: characters in a world entirely apart from their own.

Ah, but there are different flavors of mystery, thriller, and suspense novels, each with its own nuance. I’d like to talk about the difference between these categories, as well as reader expectations for each. These expectations are the hurdles an author needs to pay particular attention to. Unless their stories fulfill these reader expectations, the book will not satisfy.

In a mystery, a crime has been committed. Reminiscent of Hasbro’s age-old board game, Clue (I’m dating myself here, but it’s still around), players (in this case, readers) are presented with a dead body, or a disappearance of a living body, or some other horrendous crime that is baffling and unexpected. An investigator, whether it be a police detective or simply a curious grandma (as in cozy mysteries) is determined to find out who did it and why. Then, just like the board game, clues begin to surface, and it’s up to the investigator (along with the reader) to figure out which clues are simply dead-ends, and which will lead to justice.

A mystery is a journey. The reader tags along with the protagonist to uncover a secret that isn’t revealed until the end.

A thriller novel differs from a mystery in that the tension we experience takes place largely inside the hero or heroine’s head. We become intensely emotionally invested in the protagonist from the first pages. They are in dire danger—the reader oftentimes knows even more about the threat than they do. Thriller novels combine elements of mystery and horror to immerse the reader inside a world of trouble, worry, and self-doubt. The themes? We live in a dangerous world. We are all vulnerable in some aspect. The unknown is the scariest threat of all.

A thriller differs from a mystery in that the danger—the bad guy or force—is usually known to the reader right from the start. Also, there is action. Twists and turns. Unlike the quiet, methodical journey of following clues in a mystery, the reader never knows what’s going to happen next.

So how do these genres differ from suspense? Aren’t they both suspenseful? Here’s where the lines become blurred. You can categorize your novel as a mystery/thriller, or as a mystery/suspense.

Once you throw the label “suspense” into the mix, you open up yet another realm, one where the danger or threat becomes all the more elusive. The pacing is also different. A suspense novel promises the reader an agonizingly slow build-up of tension. Not as much action. Clues are vague and not as obvious. As www.libraryjournal.com describes a psychological suspense, it’s not the inciting event, the “rock” or big splash (murder or other crime), but the “focus is on the ripples that rock makes.”

Now, all of these types of stories are titillating enough when they’re set in the real, normal world we live in. What happens when we throw in elements that are out of this world?

I’m not referring to the paranormal or fantasy genres. These are deliberately set in worlds entirely different from our own. Think Harry Potter, where wizards live at a magical place called Hogwarts. Or a world that looks like our familiar hometown until the guy with the fangs rises out of his coffin. Think Twilight, where falling in love with a vampire isn’t exactly a bad thing.

No, what I’m referring to is a story that takes place in the real world but carries definite elements of the supernatural.

And yes, before you ask, I do believe in ghosts. In poltergeist activity. In haunted houses. In psychic ability. If I didn’t believe in those things, I couldn’t possibly write stories about them with passion.

This raises the stakes, as well as reader expectations. What I write is supernatural suspense. The important difference, as I see it, between supernatural and realistic mystery/thriller/suspense is getting the reader to suspend disbelief.

It's easy to get a reader to buy into a mystery. Watch the news lately? There are plenty of human villains, crimes committed, and the eternal quest for who did it and why. In a thriller, we know the threat to the protagonist from the start. We feel their fear, doubt, and confusion. We may not completely understand the danger, but we believe—we know—that it’s real.

In supernatural suspense, the challenge is more difficult. We need to get the reader to buy into the notion that psychics can see and communicate with dead people, or their lingering spirits. That ghosts may exist. That haunted houses can truly be haunted. Until we can get the reader (who may not believe in ghosts or psychics) to buy into our premise, we can't possibly offer them the kind of thrill ride they seek.

How can an author accomplish this? Research is one way. I’m a stickler for historical accuracy, even if I’m describing a crumbling insane asylum. Bad stuff happened there, in that “mental hospital,” all those years ago. Torture, neglect, and psychological manipulation really were acceptable medical treatments for the insane, once upon a time. Remember One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?

When my ghost—a pathetic little girl—goes looking for her father in Spirits of the Heart, my readers get on board, emotionally. Daddy was once a patient in that terrible place (an asylum that actually existed in my hometown). Heaven only knows what horrors he faced while still alive. And why can’t she find him? Be reunited with him in the afterlife?

Once you grab a reader’s heart, you’ve got ‘em.

Another way to get a reader to suspend skepticism of the supernatural is to present them with a known legend. In Hearts Unloched, that’s exactly what I did. There really is a tiny town in upstate New York known as Loch Sheldrake. In its center, the “loch” is a small but extremely deep lake. Urban legend claims that back in the early twentieth century, the loch was a favorite dumping ground for the Mafia. Gangsters would make the two-hour drive from New York City to drop their victims into what was considered “a bottomless lake.”

Chained to an old jukebox or wearing cement overshoes.

The legend, although I first heard it from my husband who grew up in the area, has its basis in truth. The local museum in nearby Hurleyville has an entire file cabinet drawer filled with newspaper clippings...

If there is a documented urban legend about dead bodies disappearing into a tiny lake in the middle of nowhere, doesn’t the possibility exist that maybe some of those sunken souls are unsettled? Still trapped in their watery grave? Maybe a little ticked off and wanting vengeance?

By setting stories in the real world, with accurate detail and historical context, an author of supernatural suspense can plant his or her readers’ feet firmly on the ground—before presenting the stuff that might make them go “yeah, right. Uh huh.”

Here they are: actual historical facts and legends. In this way we lure them just a little closer to the edge of believing in something they might not ordinarily be willing to accept. But it takes one more element to get a reader to suspend disbelief.

Real people. Characters who are normal, everyday folks with problems, just like you and me. Characters we can identify with, who are struggling, lonely, flawed, who have physical or emotional scars.

Characters so real, they dive off the page and straight into the reader’s heart.

Supernatural suspense. Not thrillers: in these books the pace is slower, there is less action, and the tension builds slowly. They are not typical mysteries, since the dead bodies show up on their feet, with opinions and agendas of their own. They’ve been dead for dozens, if not hundreds of years. These spirits then become cast members—integral parts of the story.

Would it be easier to accommodate reader expectations of real-world mystery or thriller novels? Perhaps. But I’ve always loved a challenge. I believe in the supernatural. I believe in an afterlife. I want my readers to believe as well.

---

Claire Gem is an award winning-author of supernatural suspense, contemporary romance, and women’s fiction. She also writes Author Resource guide books and presents seminars on writing craft and marketing. Her supernatural suspense, Hearts Unloched, won the 2016 New York Book Festival, and was a finalist in the 2017 RONE Awards.

Claire loves exploring the paranormal and holds a certificate in Parapsychology from Duke University’s Rhine Research Center. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Lesley University.

A New York native, Claire now lives in Massachusetts with her husband of 40 years. When she’s not writing, she works for Tufts University in the field of scientific research. She is available for seminars and media interviews and loves to travel for book promotional events. Find Claire on her website http://www.clairegem.com/.

Controlling the Flow of Information by Simon Brett

As a writer, you have one enormous advantage over your readers or audience. You know the whole story, and they don’t.

Except in very rare circumstances, you don’t start off knowing the whole story. You begin with an idea, which hopefully leads on to other ideas, which in turn act as springboards for further ideas. Characters begin to develop, as do conflicts between those characters. Settings become more solid and pertinent in your mind. A plot emerges. Gradually your story takes shape.

There’s no right or wrong way of building a story. Some writers don’t start the actual writing until they have the whole scenario worked out in their minds. Others begin with a sentence that intrigues and see where it leads them. Some regard the first draft as the exciting part of the process—telling themselves the story—and resent any changes that have to be made afterwards. Others find the first draft a terrible bore, creating a great block of material from which, rather like a sculptor with a mass of stone, they will carve out and perfect their work of art. For them the fun of writing lies in cutting away the dross, refining and reshaping.

But, by whatever process writers arrives at it, there comes a point when the whole story is known to them. And what they then have to decide is how much of that story they want their readers or audience to know at any given point in the narrative.

This is true in all writing, but particularly so in the two areas in which I specialise, crime fiction and comedy. The effect of both is weakened by giving out too little or too much information. For example, I remember my sister once saying to me, ‘I’ve just heard this very good joke about the Lunchpack of Notre Dame.’ I asked her to tell me more and she gave me the set-up question: ‘What’s put in a plastic box and swings from a bell-rope?’ I said I didn’t know and she told me the punch-line: ‘The Lunchpack of Notre Dame!’ She was disappointed at my lack of reaction to the joke, but then she had given me rather too much information too soon.

And that’s how storytelling works. The writer feeds out the narrative gradually, withholding clues and details until the optimum moment of revelation. A lot of a writer’s planning will involve thoughts like: ‘If that’s going to happen there, then it must have been set up earlier.’

For this reason, one of the most difficult parts of any book, play, or screenplay is the exposition. A lot of information has to be conveyed in as short a time as possible. In the visual media it’s easier. The look of a person, the environment in which they live, their clothes, their possessions can all increase their viewers’ knowledge of their character. And all that information comes across the moment the character walks on stage or appears on the screen.

In a book you don’t have that shortcut. Everything needs to be described, but it’s down to the writer to decide how much needs to be described. And here the general rule is: go for the minimum. If a character’s height is going to be important to your story, tell your readers how tall he is. If it isn’t, don’t bother. Two-page descriptions of every new character in the manner of Charles Dickens are completely unnecessary. The same goes for where they went to school, what their parents did for a living, how many siblings they had, whether their childhood was happy, and an infinite number of other details. Let your readers do some work for themselves; let them create their own pictures in their minds. Only supply the kind of information if it’s going to be relevant in the story you’re telling.

Some writers, I am aware, say they cannot begin a novel without knowing all the characters in detail, without having built up lengthy dossiers of all their personal data. In my view that’s just another displacement activity—and no one is more skilled in displacement activity than writers. Anything that puts off that dreadful moment of actually having to write is fulsomely welcomed.

The importance of exposition generally means that the opening of any piece of writing is the bit that gets most rewritten. As new ideas emerge in the course of creating the story, new information has to be injected into the set-up chapters or scenes. And it’s a task with which most writers have difficulties. If you ever feel uncertain about your own skills as a writer of exposition, I recommend that you take down from your bookshelves the Complete Works of William Shakespeare and turn to The Tempest. In Act One Scene Two of that classic play you will find one of the worst pieces of exposition you will ever encounter. The first 284 lines set up the backstory to the action in what is effectively a monologue by Prospero, with brief interjections from his daughter Miranda, on the lines of ‘What happened next, Dad?’ It is inept and tedious. So even the greats had their problems with exposition.

But there’s no way around it. Your readers or audience have to be given that information somehow. And it is in that ‘how’ that the writer’s skills are really tested. Particularly in a crime novel, the plot is often dependent on a detail which the readers cannot claim they haven’t been told of, but which is slipped into the narrative in a way that doesn’t draw attention to it. Something apparently trivial can frequently turn out to be of pivotal importance.

The skill required to shuffle in this kind of information can be compared to that of the conjuror. As he uses his patter to distract the audience from what he’s doing with his hands, so a crime novelist has to find his own means of distraction to disguise the importance of certain details. All you have to do is to obey the basic rules of story-telling. Make your scene so dramatic – or so funny – or so intriguing – that your readers have an emotional response to your writing and almost unconsciously assimilate the facts that you have so subtly shoehorned into the narrative.

Never forget that a book is an interactive medium. The relationship between writer and reader may develop and change, but it never disappears. And a skilful writer will be constantly aware of the effect that his or her words are having on the reader at any given point in the action. That’s what story-telling is about.

EXERCISE

A good way of honing your skills at controlling the flow of information is to write a page of dialogue which contains the fact that you are trying to hide. Say, for instance, the fact is: ‘The pastor had once been a professional footballer.’ Think of the various ways in which, without actually stating it in so many words, you can get that information across. The aim of the exercise is to make the little scene of dialogue you write so compelling that your readers become more concerned about the drama of the situation than about listening out for the facts which it contains. And the only restriction placed on what you write is that you are not allowed to hide your important fact in a catalogue of many.

A development of this exercise works even better with a group of writers. The tutor or moderator of the group writes on scraps of paper a number of pieces of simple information and gets each participant to pick one out of a hat or bag. The group then writes their dialogue and when everyone has finished, the pieces of work are read out in turn and the other participants have to try and guess what the hidden snippet of information was. The exercise combines the fun element of a party game with a useful lesson in writers’ diversionary tactics.

---

Simon Brett has published over a hundred books, many of them crime novels, including the Charles Paris, Mrs. Pargeter, Fetheringand Blotto & Twinks series. His stand-alone thriller, A Shock to the System, was made into a feature film, starring Michael Caine. Simon’s writing for radio and television includes After Henry, No Commitments and Smelling of Roses. Bill Nighy plays Charles Paris in the Radio 4 adaptations of his books. In 2014 Simon was presented with the Crime Writers’ Association’s top award, the Diamond Dagger, and he was made an O.B.E. in the 2016 New Year’s Honours ‘for services to literature’.