Author Archives: Murderati

Fairy tale structure and The List

This week I got a truly excellent request: for a list of books that would illustrate some of these things I’ve been talking about. I’ll have to start compiling it.

But this is why I really stress, and I should continue to stress, the importance of creating your OWN master list in your own genre, in that story notebook I talked about.

Anyone who’s developing a new story, or is even remotely thinking about it, who hasn’t done this yet should do it RIGHT NOW: make a list of ten books and movies in the genre that you’re writing in: books and films that you love, that you think are structured similarly to the story that you’re telling, or even that are not in your genre but are your favorite books and movies of all time.

Because what works structurally for me is not necessarily going to do it for YOU.

For me, I am constantly looking at SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (book and movie), A WRINKLE IN TIME (book), THE WIZARD OF OZ (film), THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE (book and ORIGINAL film), anything by Ira Levin, especially ROSEMARY’S BABY (book and film), THE EXORCIST (book and film), JAWS (film, but I need to go back and compare the book), PET SEMATERY (book, obviously), THE SHINING (book and film), IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE.

That’s off the top of my head, just to illustrate the point I’m about to make – and not necessarily specific to the book I’m writing right now.

All of those examples are what I would call perfectly structured stories. But that list is not necessarily going to be much help for someone who’s writing, you know, romantic comedy. (Although the rom coms of George Cukor, Preston Sturges, and Jane Austen, and Shakespeare, are some of my favorite stories on the planet, and my master list for a different story might well have some of those stories on it).

You need to create YOUR list, and break those stories down to see why those stories have such an impact on you – because that’s the kind of impact that you want to have on your readers. My list isn’t going to do that for you. Our tastes and writing and themes and turn-ons are too different – even if they’re very similar.

I will start using more examples of each thing I’m talking about. I’ll go back at some point and revise these posts with more content, too. But in the meantime, I will keep begging for everyone’s examples so we can have a more eclectic and genre-inclusive discussion and so I can learn something, too.

I just taught a story structure workshop last week and it was as always fantastic to hear people’s lists, one after another, because it gives you such an insight into the particular uniqueness of the stories each of those writers is working toward telling. Make your list. Think of the story you are writing right now and list ten books and films that are like it – without thinking about it too much. There will always be some complete surprises on there, and those stories are sometimes the most useful for you to analyze structurally. What you are really listing are your secret thematic preferences. You can learn volumes from these lists if you are willing to go deep.

Always trust something that pops into your head as belonging on your list. The list tells you who you are as a writer.

One thing I’ve learned about myself as a writer is that my favorite stories of all are fairy tales and myths – which are often interchangeable, although Christopher Vogler and John Truby make good arguments that stories with mythic structure and stories with fairy tale structure have their own rules and formulas.

When I respond deeply to a movie or book, no matter how realistic and modern it seems on the surface, chances are it’s going to have a fairy tale structure.

SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, RED DRAGON, THE EXORCIST, THE GODFATHER, A WRINKLE IN TIME, STAR WARS, THE TREATMENT (Mo Hayder) – every single one of them is a fairy tale. And fairy tales have their own structural rules that just work for me.

This week I finally saw PAN’S LABYRINTH (I know, I’m WAY late on that one, and Del Toro is one of my favorite directors. It’s wonderful, heartbreaking.)

That movie has a blatant fairy tale structure, and as in so many fairy tales, the heroine is told by her mentor and ally the faun that she must perform three tasks to save the underworld kingdom and reclaim her place as the princess of that world (and thus escape her horrifying reality in 1944 Spain.)

The three-task structure is SO useful and successful because it tells the audience exactly what they’re in for. Audiences (and readers – but especially audiences) need to know that things will come to an end eventually, otherwise they get restless and worried that they will never get out of that theater. I’m not kidding. And a reader, particularly a promiscuous reader like me, will bail on a book if it doesn’t seem to be escalating and progressing at a good clip. But with a three-task structure, the audience is, at least subconsciously, mentally ticking off each task as it is completed, and that gives a satisfying sense of progress toward a resolution. Plus once you’ve set a three-task structure, you can then play with expectation, as Del Toro did in PAN’S LABYRINTH, and have the heroine FAIL at one of the tasks, say, the second task, and provide a great moment of defeat, a huge reversal and surprise, that in this case was completely emotionally wrenching because of the heroine’s very dire real-life situation.

Another classic fairy tale structure is the three-brother or three-sister structure. You know, as in The White Cat, or The Boy Who Had to Learn Fear, or Cinderella. In this structure there is one task that is the goal, and we watch all three siblings attempt it, but it’s always the youngest and ostensibly weakest sibling that gets it right.

Another Rule Of Three fairy tale structure deals with the three magical allies. THE WIZARD OF OZ has this – Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion; the animated classic SLEEPING BEAUTY – fairy godmothers Flora, Fauna and Merriwether; A WRINKLE IN TIME – the “witches”: Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, Mrs Which; and STAR WARS – R2D2, C3P0, Han Solo (Okay, there’s four, Chewbacca, but he’s so joined at the hip to Han that they’re really one entity.). Magical allies give gifts, and they provide substructure for stories by each having their moment or moments of aiding the hero/ine.

I must point out that you DO NOT have to be writing a fantasy to use any of these structural techniques. They all can work just as well in the most grittily realistic story. Just look at THE GODFATHER, the most classic modern example I know of the three-brother structure. There’s the old king, the Godfather; the two older brothers, Sonny, with his lethal temper, and Fredo, with his weak womanizing; and the youngest brother, Michael, who is the outsider in the family: college-educated, Americanized, kept apart from the family business, and thought of as the weakest. And throughout the story we see this unlikely younger brother ascend to his father’s throne (even though it’s about the last thing we want.)

You can see the three-brother structure working loosely in MYSTIC RIVER, with the three friends who are all cursed by a horrific childhood event that inextricably binds their fates together. Lehane even uses a fairy tale analogy in the tale: “The Boy Who Was Captured By Wolves,” and the fairy-tale resonances in that book and film contribute to its haunting power.

THE DEERHUNTER is another three-brother structure, that opens with another huge fairy tale story element: a curse. The whole first sequence is a wedding, complete with unwanted guest (the Green Beret who won’t talk to the three friends about Vietnam), and at the height of the merrymaking the bride and groom drink from the same cup and spill wine on the bride’s gown, thus bringing on the curse for all three friends.

The point is, if you really look closely at stories on your list, you might just find a similar meta-structure at work that will help you shape your own story. Try it!

And please do give us all some examples today – your own master list, or books and films with fairy tale elements or structure.

Previous articles on story structure:

What’s Your Premise?

Story Structure 101 – The Index Card Method

Screenwriting – The Craft

Elements of Act One

Elements of Act Two

Elements of Act Two, Part 2

Creating Suspense

Visual Storytelling Part 1

Visual Storytelling Part 2

I’m Only Happy When It Rains

I think we’ve probably covered just about every iteration of HOW we write. But if you’re like me, the weather plays into my productivity. Sunny, beautiful days. Eh. Rainy, stormy, gray days? Word count out the roof.

Why is this? Am I just a closet depressive? I wonder what my word counts would be if I moved to England, or Seattle?

There’s nothing I love more than a rainy day. There’s something so romantic about rain, such a "Heathcliff on the moors" quality to a gray sky. (Oh, great. Now I need to break out Wuthering Heights, again.)

The Genre Wars

by J.T. Ellison

I’ve done several book events in the past week wrapping up the tour for 14. Two book clubs, which is always fun, a panel for the Women’s National Book Association (WNBA) Nashville chapter, and a talk to my local Sisters in Crime chapter. Before my SinC talk, I attended a meeting of my local Southeastern Mystery Writer’s of America (SEMWA) chapter. Next weekend, my local chapter of RWA, the Music City Romance Writers, meets. Both in the book clubs and the organization meetings, I heard the same questions.

"Why do you belong to so many groups?" and "What do you want out of an organization?"

Let me preface my answer by throwing this into the mix – I am also an active member of MWA, serving on a committee for ITW, am lost in the annals of RWA and belong to one or five of their subgroups. I’ve also joined Novelist Inc, Author’s Guild and used to belong to the International Crime Fiction Writers.

So why do I belong to so many groups? Good question. I’ve been letting a few lapse here and there because I don’t feel like I’m getting anything from them. But it’s also the thing to do. When you get published in crime fiction, you immediately join ITW and MWA and RWA and every organization that will have you. It lends you a bit of legitimacy and puts you in immediate contact with real live authors. Okay, fair enough. But the second question, coming from within the groups themselves, is harder to answer.

What do I want from an organization??? I’ll take a stab at this. What I really want?

I want them all to meld together and get rid of the genre designations.

John Connolly had a painful and fascinating post last week reporting on his reception at a literary festival in Canada. He was bombarded with the kind of – well, forgive me – ignorance and stupidity that seems to be prevalent in the genre wars. You must read his post to get the full effect of the several "literary" authors whose arrogant attitudes were particularly astounding, but one of the conversations struck a chord with me. Here’s an excerpt:

"[He] posits that mystery fiction is inferior to literary fiction because
literary writers “hone” their work. They fret about it, reworking it
time and time again, whereas genre writers simply churn out novels.
With each book, literary writers are forced to reinvent the wheel,
discarding all that went before in favor of an entirely new construct.
They are original, while genre writers are essentially imitative."

John points out that he does several versions of a novel. I also do several versions. By the time my editor reads one of my books, we’re on manuscript.V6, or version 6. That’s six revisions that I’ve done, six drafts of the novel. Then it goes through her revision, I adjust according to her notes, we do another read through, then copy edits, then page proofs. What’s that, 9, 10 drafts before the book goes into production? Yeah. I’m not doing any honing at all. I’m just churning out two books a year and don’t give a crap about the actual literary merit. Just because I actually write everyday, does that make me less of a writer than someone who stares at their screen and can’t come up with the right word for three years? I don’t think so.

Then there was this wonderful essay (and a fascinating backblog discussion) by Kyle Minor over at Sarah Weinman’s blog. I wasn’t familiar with him until this, but I’m certainly adding him to my list. His essay started me thinking, yet again, about how crime is really the basis for many literary novels, and there are purely literary writers who write about crime. Michael Chabon, Dennis Lehane, Alice Sebold, Curtis Sittenfeld, Paul Auster, Donna Tartt. Are they being accused of being "genre?" No. So why are "we" relying so heavily on the term?

If we’re being honest with ourselves, the genre writers are partially at fault for this impression. You know why? Because we INSIST on segmenting ourselves. We are romance writers, thriller writers, suspense writers, romantic suspense writers, traditional mystery writers, mystery writers, cozy writers, comedic writers, police procedural writers, private investigator writers, psychological thriller writers, craft mystery writers, horror writers, science fiction writers, fantasy writers, vampire and werewolf and shapeshifter writers, GLBT writers, black and white and pink and blue and space alien writers. There are hundreds of sub-genre designations, and when we’re starting out, we spend so much time trying to identify "what" we are, to fit ourselves within that little box, to submit to agents who represent our "kind" of work and to interact only with other writers of that ilk that we lose site of the fact that we all have the same job. Why?

Look at the list of organizations, of subgroups and online groups, and you’ll see a ton of overlap. Heck, every conference I go to, regardless of the sponsor, is populated with my friends. We all write in different genres, and we’re all attending each other’s cons. And how many times a day do you see a message on a listserve that apologizes for cross-posting?

Take it one step further. All the people in my SEMWA group are members of Sisters in Crime. What would happen if we married the two together into one meeting? Is there any reason why we can’t invite the Music City Romance Writers to our meeting, or go as a group to theirs? Do we really need all these minor segments? Aren’t we all, first and foremost, writers? Does it really matter what we write?

It does to some of the literary writers. They seem to float about, bitching about our market share and treating our writing as nonsense. They look down their noses at our petty squabbles, our insistence on labeling ourselves. So long as we continue to do so, we’ll continue our Rodney Dangerfield existence in the literary world – getting no respect.

There are two organizations I’m part of where genre doesn’t matter – Author’s Guild and Novelists Inc. But the problem of genre designation is systemic. There’s no good answer outside of self-awareness that it doesn’t matter. I know I’m going to catch hell over this, but really – IT DOESN’T MATTER! If we would spend half the time working TOGETHER instead of labeling ourselves and segregating into our sub-genres, I honestly think we could start making a dent in the literary snobbishness.

For example, do we need a separate Sisters in Crime and MWA? It seems to me that there is a huge amount of overlap between the two groups. I know the whole concept behind Sisters in Crime is to make sure women writers get equal standing in the literary world. Guess what? We do and we don’t. There are some major female mystery writers, and there are some major male mystery writers. I don’t think anyone would argue with the point that we need to be paid equally, period.

The reading public seems to understand that. The bestseller list is populated with both sexes. The review space is still male-centric, but on the Forbes list of the top grossing authors this year, three were women – Danielle Steele, Janet Evanovich and J.K. Rowling, and Rowling was #1. I’d like to see that list be split 50/50, but there’s a definite presence, and a woman is the top-grossing author. So maybe, just maybe, SinC has served its purpose. Women aren’t exactly equal in the field, but we’re a hell of a lot better off than we were, and SinC is definitely a reason why. But if we were to meld SinC with MWA, and have the legitimacy of both organizations in one umbrella group, wouldn’t that be even better? Do we need to continue separating ourselves out by female and male? Is the opinion still there than women can’t write anything but romance and men can’t do anything but blood and guts? I don’t think so.

I adopted initials because I wanted to grab male readers in addition to
female. It seems to have worked – I have plenty of fan mail from men. At the same time, some of my
biggest fans are men who know I’m a woman. Granted, my picture is on
the book, so it’s not a mystery for long. But is it really true
that men don’t read women? I don’t think so. I think it’s more of a
function of men just not reading as much as women, hence a smaller pool
for them to choose from.

But what about the awards? Each sub-genre has its own awards, though MWA’s Edgar Award has the loosest definition – any book meeting the appropriate publishing criteria that has an element of crime is eligible for submission. And since I met Michael Chabon at the Edgars last year, they seem to have lived up to their word.

It is difficult to imagine a cozy being nominated for the Thriller awards, and a thriller being up for an Agatha. So maybe we do need to breakdowns, if only to allow more writers to be recognized for excellence in their respective field.

Don’t even get me started on the format issues. Hardcover gets WAY more respect than paperback originals. It is what it is.

So on Tuesday night, while I was tucking into my three-cheese quiche, I was on this rant. Do away with the genre designators and let us all coexist in one big happy stew of fiction. One of the writers at the table said, "But how would the bookstores know where to place our books?"

Okay, that’s a legitimate question. But when you look at how bookstores work, you have to wonder. In Barnes and Noble, I’m shelved in Literature and Fiction (which I particularly like.) Borders shelves me in Mystery. Books a Million puts me in Romance half the time, Suspense and Mystery the other half, and many of the independent stores have me lumped in with all the "genre" genres alphabetically. My library is all alphabetical too. Those crazy Dewey Decimal kids…Does it really matter what the genres are and where they’re shelved, or is this idea simply the biggest OCD nightmare ever conceived?

B&N came out with a dismal Christmas forecast. Borders can’t pay their bills. Rumblings about the collapse of the book industry seem to come every couple of months. Shouldn’t we be looking at ways to work in concert with all the organizations to promote BOOKS so we don’t lose everything?

So what say you? Am I just being naive? Is genre, and subgenre, and a plethora of organizations vitally important to our daily lives? Is there a way to have a bit tent and get everyone under it, or do we like to segregate? Is it too hard to believe that in 2008, we could be treated as equals to the literary writers – just men and women who write damn good books; writers first and foremost? Would the bookstores collapse if they didn’t have the genre designations? Could we create a group that didn’t define itself through genre alone, but as a whole, like the Screenwriters Guild? Should I just shut up and get back to work?????

And readers, do the designations make any difference to you? I understand that not every readers wants to do serial killers, and not every reader can do knitting. Is that the sole goal of the sub-genres, to keep out unwanted stories?

Wine of the Week: Apparently I need a large glass of this – 2003 Saint-Emilion Jean Pierre Moueix

‘Tune in Next Week …’

by Zoë Sharp

More years ago than I care to recall, I used to watch a regular TV drama call The Champions about three agents for a shadowy international law enforcement agency called Nemesis! In fairness, the exclamation mark may not have been part of the official title, but every time anyone said the name, it definitely seemed to have one attached. Nemesis! were based in Geneva. You knew this because of a badly back-projected shot of the cast against the giant Geneva fountain, the Jet d’Eau, in the opening credits.

The basic premise was that in the first episode, three agents of Nemesis (just take the ! as read, will you?) Richard Barrett, Sharron Macready and Craig Stirling, played by William Gaunt, Alexandra Bastedo, and Stuart Damon, are in a plane crash in the Tibetan mountains. They are rescued by an ancient sect of monks who not only nurse them back to health but, for reasons of their own, also bestow upon the trio various superhuman talents. ESP, precognition, superior strength, speed, etc.

So, every week this fearless trio undertook a different vitally important assignment in a different corner of the globe. The assignment always saw them utilising their unique powers, whilst hiding their abilities from their enemies and their incredibly dim-witted boss, Tremayne. "So, Craig, exactly how many minutes did you manage to hold your breath under water …?"

(Stick with me on this – I think I know where I’m going with it, honest…)

Recently, somebody lent us the complete series on DVD and it was much funnier than I ever remember. Sadly, it was not intended to be a comedy, but Tremayne’s wig appeared to be constructed from ginger Astroturf and could not have looked any more artificial if it had come equipped with a chin strap – maybe that was the purpose of the also-obviously-fake beard he wore. And despite the numerous exotic locations called for in the storylines, they only seemed to actually have three sets – submarine, country house and underground lair. These did duty for just about anywhere, from small South American dictatorships, to the Australian Outback, to the Arctic, inter-cut with what was patently stock footage.

In my defence for taking weekly enjoyment in what might sound like the shonkiest bit of TV fluff going, I should point out that when the original series came out, I was about four. Not exactly of an age and level of sophistication where slightly dubious production values – not to mention a good deal of overacting – were what caught my eye.

I loved it.

I can still remember sitting utterly glued to the TV set in my grandmother’s living room, twisting myself into absolute knots of desperation as I watched the characters attempt to extricate themselves from whatever apparently hopeless predicament they’d got themselves into, in time for the closing credits. And my grandmother would always reassure me with the same words.

"But nothing terrible can possibly happen to them," she’d say, adding with the perfect logic of grandmothers everywhere, "It can’t – they’re on again next week."

And, of course, although it never seemed to reassure me much at the time, she was quite right. They always beat the bad guys and lived to fight another day.

Just like a series character.

(See, I told you I knew where this was going.)

When you pick up an ongoing series, you do so in the knowledge that the characters you’re going to read about – those you’ve come to care about – will survive past the final page. Conan Doyle did his best to kill off Sherlock Holmes, but was forced by the resultant public outcry to come up with a way of him surviving his encounter with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls, and go on to further adventures. Of course, Lee Child has famously promised that he’s going to kill off Jack Reacher in the final instalment of his series, but until we reach that book – and we hope it’s not for years yet – we know he’s still going to be around to walk off into the sunset.

In a standalone, on the other hand, you can reach the final page to find it’s not so much a case of Last Man Standing, as no man left standing at all. And anybody who’s read any of Duane Swierczynski‘s wonderful visceral novels will testify to that one.

Our next-door neighbour, who’s a big reader of mystery/thriller/adventure novels, comes round occasionally to have a browse through our book collection and borrow a few books, and he won’t read series. He claims this is because he likes a totally self-contained story with no loose ends, rather than because he prefers the uncertainty of not knowing if the main protagonist and the ongoing surrounding cast will make it to the end of the story.

But do they always?

We’ve talked before here about how much can you progress and grow and change your series protagonist from one book to the next, but I want to pose a question one step further. Can you have sudden cataclysmic change in an ongoing series and get away with it?

This week’s Word of the Week is borborygmus, which is the rumbling sounds made by the stomach, caused by the movement of food, gases and digestive juices as they migrate from the stomach into the upper part of the small intestine. The average body makes two gallons of digestive juices a day.

Just to apologise in advance, by the way – I’m out on a shoot all day Thurs, but will answer all comments when I get back in the evening!

Veteran’s Day

by J.D. Rhoades

Yes, I know, it was yesterday. But it got me to thinking about how many characters in crime fiction are ex-military…and why.

Harry Bosch is an ex-Vietnam "tunnel rat." Elvis Cole’s an ex-Army Ranger, while Joe Pike’s a former Marine. Jack Reacher’s an ex-MP who got caught in the explosion of the Marine barracks in Beirut. Our Zoe’s Charlie Fox is ex-SAS. Both of James Crumley’s PIs, Milo Milodragovitch and C.W. Sughrue, are ex-military intelligence. Travis McGee’s a veteran of a war that’s never really specified, but we assume it’s Korea. Chris Grabenstein’s John Ceepak is a veteran of the Second Gulf War; my own Jack Keller’s a veteran of the First, while his lover Marie’s another ex-MP. Walter Mosely’s Easy Rawlins is a WWII vet, as is Stephen Hunter’s Earl Swagger and Spillane’s Mike Hammer. Even Lindsey Davis’ Falco is an ex-legionary, while Brother Cadfael served in the First Crusade. I could go on, but you get the point.

So why are so many crime fiction protagonists ex-military? Well, for one thing, it already gives them a certain amount of built-in bad-ass cred. It’s a little more plausible that someone who’s been in the military, particularly in combat, would have less trouble handling guns and would be less likely to fall apart in a fit of the shakes in the event that they have to drop the hammer on some bad guy.

Then there’s the increased possibility that an ex-soldier or Marine will have some sort of tragic backstory. Jack Keller’s still shaking off the PTSD caused by a "friendly fire" incident in the First Gulf War. Rennie Airth’s John Madden is still trying to get over the horrors of trench warfare in the First World War.

On the up-side, the virtues the military instills (or at least tries to) in its members can come in handy for a crime fiction protagonist: Duty. Honor. Sacrifice. Self-reliance. Courage.

The same types of things, it should be noted, apply to another oft-seen breed of protagonist: the cop or the ex-cop.

But this raises the question: is it sometimes too easy to clothe a character in an ex-military uniform to make him either admirable or tortured or both? Do we risk getting cliched?

(I’ll note that Our Zoe manages to dodge the trap of cliche quite nimbly by giving Charlie Fox’s story a particularly dark twist: she hasn’t been in combat, but what happened to her at the hands of some supposed comrades leaves scars just as deep and lasting.)

What do you think about characters who are ex-military? Done to death? Can’t get enough? How else, other than making a character an ex-soldier or a cop, do you give him or her that bad-ass credibility and sad past? And while we’re at it…who’s your favorite ex-soldier?

The floor is open. And to all our veterans…thanks.

The Dreaded Query Letter

By Louise Ure

Since I became a published writer, there are two questions asked of me more often than any others.

• Readers, friends and family always ask, “Where do you get your ideas?”

• Beginning writers, however, ask, “How did you get an agent?”

In some ways, I think the agent search is more difficult than actually writing the book. Remember, eighty percent of Americans say they’re going to write a book one day. If even ten percent of them finally sit down to try it and only one percent actually finish it, that still means that 300,000 people are trying to get their first book published. And there are lots more who are trying to stay published. That’s an awful lot of people vying for an agent’s attention.

There are other options than going the traditional get-an-agent-get-a-publisher route. Some small publishers do not require an agent. Some writers choose to use a print-on-demand process and self-publish.

I decided to go the traditional route because I wanted to be published, not just in print, and because I wanted the marketing, editorial and distribution arms of a major publisher behind me.

To do that, you need an agent. And to get an agent you need a query letter.

The query letter is a deceptively simple document, and harder to write than you ever expected. There are several variations on specific formatting. Here’s mine.

A query letter should have four parts to it:

• The facts

You should include the title of your work, the genre, the approximate word count and the fact that it is completed. (In mystery fiction the book must be completed before you submit your query, you know that, right?)

This paragraph should also include the reason you’re writing to this particular agent. Did you see a blog post they wrote that intrigued you? Have you read every book by one of their clients and thought the agent might also be interested in a similar tone or theme in your work? Did you meet them at a conference? (I will admit that sometimes it’s hard to come up with a believable reason for selecting each agent. I was once tempted to write, “Your middle initial is C and my middle initial is C!”)

• The hook

The hook is a one-sentence tagline for your book. It’s meant to hook the reader’s (agent’s) interest and keep them reading. It can either go at the beginning of your query letter, or as part of the mini-synopsis.

The hook for The Da Vinci Code might have looked something like this:

“A murder in the silent after-hour halls of the Louvre museum reveals a sinister plot to uncover a secret that has been protected by a clandestine society since the days of Christ.” (From www.agentquery.com)

The hook for my most recent book, The Fault Tree, might be:

“When blind auto mechanic Cadence Moran becomes the only witness to a brutal murder, she sets herself up as the killer’s next target, and she won’t even be able to see the danger approach.”

• The mini-synopsis

This is an entire summary of your book, in no more than two paragraphs — maybe 150 words – told in the most compelling way possible. You need to lay out the story, and introduce the major characters, the situation, the setting and the era, the motives of the characters and what obstacles they face. And you need to do it in a way that reflects your voice and writing style.

Example:

“Steve Hartz, a postal worker in Miami, has a peculiar talent. He’s very good at sketching, but he isn’t an artist. In fact, all of the sketches are done in his sleep. More disturbing, all of the sketches are coming true. First, there was the portrait of Maria Seever – two days before he met her. And then, more sinister, came the sketches of the crimes, all two days before they occurred. The places in the sketches are all familiar haunts of his, and Hartz begins to wonder if he’s involved in the crimes somehow. Fearful of turning to the police, Hartz determines to solve the mystery himself – with the help of Maria, the psychic from his first sketch, who knows far more than she’s telling.” (From Writers Digest.)

Easy? No, but possible. Keep rewriting the hook and mini-synopsis. Ask your family and friends to read it. Cut out all the flowery language and get down to the guts of what makes this story special.

• Writer’s bio

If you’ve got writing credentials, this is the place to brag. If you don’t, that’s okay, too.

Keep in mind, this is not a resume. Include only that information that gives the agent a reason to believe that you know what you’re writing about and you’re the only person who could have written this book. If you were in the military and your book is a spy thriller, that’s relevant. If you grew up in Boise and that’s where your book is set, that’s relevant. But if you published two computer-training manuals and this book is a private eye novel, that experience should not be included.

One final example. Here’s the actual query letter I sent out for my first novel. You’ll see that it doesn’t strictly follow all the rules I’ve laid out above, but it worked for me. And yep, that’s how I got an agent.

____________________________________________________________________

Dear (Specific Agent Name),

I have completed my first novel, FORCING AMARYLLIS (approximately 80,000 words), and am now seeking a literary agent. Your representation of (Specific Author Name) and (Specific Author Name) who also set their works in the desert Southwest made me think that you might be receptive to my work.

For this story, I’ve chosen to write about the world of trial consultants and jury selection specialists, a group not widely known outside of legal corridors and the O.J. Simpson trial. My research suggests there is no series and no protagonist in current crime fiction that focuses on this area. It is a garden ripe with stories to be told.

In FORCING AMARYLLIS, Calla Gentry is a Trial Consultant in Tucson, Arizona. She has been asked to help defend Raymond Cates against a murder charge, but soon realizes that he could be the man who violently raped her sister, Amaryllis (Amy), seven years ago and left her for dead. Calla reluctantly accepts the help of private investigator Anthony Strike, who is also part of the Cates defense team, to discover the truth about her sister’s attack. Through it all, Calla is torn between professionally executing her job – juror selection, strategy planning, witness preparation, mock trials – for the accused man who has put his faith in her, and a growing awareness that he might be her sister’s attacker and must be stopped. When the legal system fails her, she confronts the real villain and he lashes out against her in a battle that ends in a remote desert canyon in the moonlight.

Like my protagonist, I spent years in advertising, marketing and market research. In my case, my experience covers more than two decades and includes work on three continents. I found it fascinating to translate those same communication and research skills to the courtroom through this story. And while I now live in San Francisco, I am a third generation Tucsonan, and have tried to bring the legends, the mystery and the magic of the desert Southwest I love to life in this work.

FORCING AMARYLLIS is finished and available upon request. I’ve enclosed a synopsis, a sample chapter and a self-addressed stamped envelope, as you suggested on your published contact information. Please let me know if you’d like to see the rest. Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

Name
Address
Phone
Fax
Email

______________________________________________________________________

Do’s and Don’ts Checklist:

• Do make your query letter short, professional and businesslike. That means one page or at most one and a half pages with a 12 point font. No typos. No grammatical errors. No colored paper or glitter.

• Do address your letter to a specific agent, not just “Dear Agent”

• Do include all the information on how to reach you, including phone and email

• Do include a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope) with all snail mail submissions

• Do write your hook and mini-synopsis in the present tense. It gives it more immediacy.

• Do thank the agent for their time and consideration of your project.

• Don’t sing the praises of your book like a huckster. (“My friends all say it’s hilarious!”)

• Don’t compare it to a famous bestselling novel. Let the agent come to that decision on his own.

• Don’t send anything other than what the agent’s website suggests. If they say “query letter only,” send that. If they say “query letter and first chapter” send that.

• Don’t include any attachments with email submissions. Include the file in the body of the email, but only if the agent’s guidelines tell you to send something more than the query.

In my next blog post (Tuesday, November 25), I’ll cover the other half of the query question: Who do you send it to?

In the meantime, do any of you have any query letter tips or horror stories? Do tell.

Murderati Rules You Betcha

What a joy when this kind of post lands in the inbox! Our beloved Ken Bruen sent this to Louise Ure and she offered to have it run today. What a gift.

Have a blessed week,
Pari

End of year approaching

Wondrous wind of change in America.

That elusive near dead concept, HOPE, has re-surfaced.

One of the highlights of 2008 was being part of Murderati.

It is quite unique to have such a disparate crew of writers in nigh perfect synch on one site and the outstanding aspect is the huge affection they have for each other.

You only had to see the crew in Baltimore to see how like family they are.

And between them, they cover just about every aspect of mystery.

The lack of rancour, vindictiveness, envy is magical.

I will always be delighted that I was a part of such an unique and warm team.

How rare it is to make deep friends with people you’ve mostly never met!

And a sad and wrenching year with the terrific people we’ve loved and lost.

Still love and deeply grieve.

They are carved in our hearts, imprinted on our psyche and live in our collective affection.

To have known nigh most of them, being close friends and sparring buddies, is the grace I was given gratis.

I cherish that.

The year saw awards go to so many deserving emerging writers.

Of course, during any year, feuds develop, arguments flare, words are spoken in rushed anger but as Baltimore demonstrated, they are but part of the whole tapestry that is the mystery community.

I truly believe there is no other family quite like it.

I had a brew with a writer who has often professed to hate me guts, we had a beer, talked of books, deals, agents and if there was any lingering enmity, it dissipated on the B’con air.

As it should.

Already, I have received galleys of new books that have fired me imagination.

From tried and trusted names to new and stunning debuts.

The economy sucks

The dire warnings of gloom proceed apace

Nothing really new there.

But you log on to Murderati, Bill Crider, Dusty Rhoades, and guess what, business as usual.

That’s the real hope.

My heart aches for those we’ve lost, I deeply regret losing touch with many I care about, but that is, if not exactly, the business of living, it certainly is the way life continually sideswipes you.

As sure as hurleys are made of ash, as sure as new controversies will arise, I know one thing for sure. Mystery is the beautiful game and in all its manifestations, I’m grace-d to be a player.

Con corazon

food… glorious, sumptuous food

by Toni McGee Causey

"It’s gumbo weather."

If you hear that in south Louisiana, you know two things: it’s probably late into the football season and we’ve just recently had a "cold snap," which means we’ve finally had nights that dip into the 40s. It also means that a whole lot of natives just broke out the skillets (the better to make the roux), and green onions, shrimp and a ton of spices.

There are a wide variety of gumbos–most use a chicken stock as part of the base and add on from there. Shrimp and okra, sausage and chicken, the general throw-everything-in-the-pot seafood. Its stock is typically thinner than a stew and thicker than a soup, served over rice, and served with a condiment called filet (ground sassafras). (One tiny 1/4 teaspoonful per bowl is usually enough.)

Now, if your gumbo gravy is red, then you’ve got some other influences going on in there which are not south Louisiana; if there are hard boiled eggs in there, absorbing the gravy, then you’re probably eating gumbo in the Lafayette / Lake Charles area. [North Louisiana gumbo tends to be thinner and lighter as well.] [My husband completely freaked out the first time he fished an egg out of the gumbo pot. I think he thought he’d married into a bunch of crazy people. He was born in Alabama. We make allowances.]

When we’re developing characters and place in our stories, there’s one often-forgotten sensory experience left unexplored: tastes. But it’s one powerful connector to place, to the unique aspects of that place, which can orient a character there faster and more firmly than any mountain of prosaic description of landscape could ever manage.

For example, I know if someone mentioned crawfish etouffee,
[pronounced eh-too-fey] and its particular blend of spice, that they are familiar with south Louisiana.

I’m not sure if they’re familiar with the fact that one of our main crops is rice (which is one of the reasons why it’s so prevalent in many of our dishes), but if they can describe the particular creamy-roux-based taste, with a touch of tomato mixed with onions and butter, generally heavy cream (this is not cooking for the diet conscious), then I feel like they’ve captured a sense of the place. If, however, someone mentions boudin [boo-dan–that ‘n’ is barely pronounced, then I know they’re a bit more familiar with south Louisiana heritage. (Boudin is one of those foods, like sausage, where you really just do not want to go looking all that carefully at the ingredients, if you’re queasy about that sort of thing. It’s a finely chopped meat/uh, other stuff/rice/spice combination which is then stored in sausage casings. Think "spicy spicy spicy "dirty rice" and you’ll have some idea. A lot of field hands and hunters / trappers would take a string of boudin links with them out in the field–cutting off a link and squeezing out the rice combination to eat as they worked or hunted. Made for easy transportation of food. I’ve seen people who beg for hot Thai food tear up over boudin, if it’s made well.)

We have other regional foods that are, perhaps, better known nationally: the spicy rice/meat combination we call jambalaya.

The common "po boy" which I understand has variations elsewhere as the "hoagie" or the "sub":

A local favorite, blackened redfish, which pretty much disappeared when the fish were over harvested and the state stepped in to mandate maximums:

(I’m not 100% sure that’s redfish in the photo, but it was the best representation of what truly "blackened" means… those spices have been seared onto the fish, the fish is not at all burned.)

I know we commonly have beignets [bin-yays] here:

Whereas, elsewhere in the country, they might call them sopapillas:

Long before there was a Starbucks in south Louisiana, their coffee cropped up in places in fiction I’d read. (I honestly had no clue at first what a Starbucks was. The preferred coffee here is Community, usually Dark Roast, which will stand up and bitch slap you, it is so strong.) I’ve gotten a tremendous sense about who that character is from whether they cook mac and cheese from a box or a five course (possibly poisoned, if it’s a murder mystery) Italian meal. Or a fine, flaky dessert called baklava:

I don’t necessarily want a description of every meal–or even many meals, especially in thrillers or mysteries where too much description could slow the killer pace, but people eat and drink and noting regional favorites gives added… uh, flavor (sorry), to the work. Does the character know their way around a kitchen? or have they stockpiled take out menus (and if so, is their favorite Chinese? Thai? Italian? Russian? Do Russians have take out menus?) (I am now suddenly realizing that Bobbie Faye’s boss, who owns the Ce Ce’s Cajun Outfitter and Feng Shui Emporium will now also have to open a Russian-styled "home cooking" place because, well, she’s Ce Ce. And a little crazy.)

So what’s normally cooking in your area? Tell me about your regional favorites, especially the local variations on them. And is anyone else a Top Chef fanatic? Bueller? Bueller? hello?

(ps… happy birthday to my oldest son, Luke!)

What makes a great climax?

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Come on, admit it, one of the great things about being writers is that we get paid for them.

Brett talked about beginnings this week – so I thought I’d bookend it.

I was watching “The Making of Jaws” the other night. I swear, DVD bonus features are the best thing that EVER happened for writers and film students. No one needs film school anymore – just watch the commentaries on DVDs. (That’s something you’re not going to be able to experience the same way when everything goes to streaming video – could be a big problem, there…)

Peter Benchley, the author and co-screenwriter, was talking about the ending of the film. He said that from the beginning of production Spielberg had been ragging on him about the ending – he said it was too much of a downer. For one thing, the visual wasn’t right – if you’ll recall the book, once Sheriff Brody has killed the shark (NOT by blowing it up), the creature spirals slowly down to the bottom of the sea.

Spielberg found that emotionally unsatisfying. He wanted something bigger, something exciting, something that would have audiences on their feet and cheering. He proposed the oxygen tank – that Brody would first shove a tank of compressed air into the shark’s mouth, and then fire at it until he hit the tank and the shark went up in a gigantic explosion. Benchley argued that it was completely absurd – no one would ever believe that could happen. Spielberg countered that he had taken the audience on the journey all this time – we were with the characters every step of the way. The audience would trust him if he did it right.

And it is a wildly implausible scene, but you go with it. That shark has just eaten Quint, whom we have implausibly come to love (through the male bonding and then that incredible revelation of his experience being one of the crew of the wrecked submarine that were eaten one by one by sharks). And when Brody, clinging to the mast of the almost entirely submerged boat – aims one last time and hits that shark, and it explodes in water, flesh and blood – it is an AMAZING catharsis.

Topped only by the sudden surfacing of the beloved Richard Dreyfuss character, who has, after all, survived. (in the book he died – but was far less of a good guy.) The effect is pure elation.

Spielberg paid that movie off with an emotional exhilaration rarely experienced in a story. Those characters EARNED that ending, and the audience did, too, for surviving the whole brutal experience with them. Brilliant filmmaker that he is, Spielberg understood that. The emotion had to be there, or he would have failed his audience.

This is a good lesson, I think: above all, in an ending, the reader/audience has to CARE. A good ending has an emotional payoff, and it has to be proportionate to what the character AND the reader/audience has experienced.

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is another terrific example of emotional exhilaration in the end. Once George Bailey has seen what would have happened to his little town if he had never been born, and he decides he wants to live and realizes he IS alive again, the pleasures just keep coming and coming and coming. It is as much a relief for us as for George, to see him running through town, seeing all his old friends and familiar places restored. And then to see the whole town gathering at his house to help him, one character after another appearing to lend money, Violet deciding to stay in town, his old friend wiring him a promise of as much money as he needs – the whole thing makes the audience glad to be alive, too. They feel, as George does, that the little things you do every day DO count.

So underneath everything you’re struggling to pull together in an ending, remember to step back and identify what you want your reader or audience to FEEL.

Another important component in an ending is a sense of inevitability – that it was always going to come down to this. Sheriff Brody does everything he can possibly do to avoid being on the water with that shark. He’s afraid of the water, he’s a city-bred cop, he’s an outsider in the town – he’s the least likely person to be able to deal with this gigantic creature of the sea. He enlists not one but two vastly different “experts from afar”, the oceanographer Hooper and the crusty sea captain Quint, to handle it for him. But deep down we know from the start, almost BECAUSE of his fear and his unsuitability for the task, that in the final battle it will be Sheriff Brody, alone, mano a mano with that shark. And he kills it with his own particular skill set – he’s a cop, and one thing he knows is guns. It’s unlikely as hell, but we buy it, because in crisis we all resort to what we know.

And it’s always a huge emotional payoff when a reluctant hero steps up to the plate.

It may seem completely obvious to say so, but no matter how many allies accompany the hero/ine into the final battle, the ultimate confrontation is almost always between the hero/ine and the main antagonist, alone. By all means let the allies have their own personal battles and resolutions within battle – that can really build the suspense and excitement of a climactic sequence. But don’t take that final victory out of the hands of your hero/ine or the story will fall flat.

Also, there is very often a moment when the hero/ine will realize that s/he and the antagonist are mirror images of each other. And/or the antagonist may provide a revelation at the moment of confrontation that nearly destroys the hero/ine… yet ultimately makes him or her stronger. (Think “I am your father” in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK)

The battle is also a chance to pay off all your setups and plants. Very often you will have set up a weakness for your hero/ine. That weakness that has caused him or her to fail repeatedly in previous tests, and in the battle he hero/ine’s great weakness will be tested.

PLACE is a hugely important element of an ending. Great stories usually, if not almost always, end in a location that has thematic and symbolic meaning. Here, once again, creating a visual and thematic image system for your story will serve you well, as will thinking in terms of SETPIECES (as we’ve talked about before) Obviously the climax should be the biggest setpiece sequence of all. In SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, Clarice must go down into the labyrinth to battle the monster and save the captured princess. In JAWS, the Sheriff must confront the shark on his own and at sea (and on a sinking boat!). In THE WIZARD OF OZ, Dorothy confronts the witch in her own castle. In RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, Indy must infiltrate the Nazi bunker. In PSYCHO, the hero confronts Tony Perkins in his basement – with the corpse of “Mother” looking on. (Basements are a very popular setting for thriller climaxes… that labyrinth effect, and the fact that “basement issues” are our worst fears and weaknesses).

And yes, there’s a pattern, here – the hero/ine very often has to battle the villain/opponent on his/her own turf.

A great, emotionally effective technique within battle is to have the hero/ine lose the battle to win the war. AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN did this beautifully in the final obstacle course scene, where the arrogant trainee Zack Mayo, who has always been out only for himself, sacrifices his own chance to graduate first in his class to help a classmate over the wall and complete the course, thus overcoming his own flaw of selfishness and demonstrating himself to be true officer material.

Another technique to build a bigger, more satisfying climax is is to have the allies get THEIR desires, too – as in THE WIZARD OF OZ.

And a particularly effective emotional technique is to have the antagonist ma have a character change in the end of the story. KRAMER VS. KRAMER did this exceptionally well, with the mother seeing that her husband has become a great father and deciding to allow him custody of their son, even though the courts have granted custody to her. It’s a far greater win than if the father had simply beaten her. Everyone has changed for the better.

Because CHANGE may just be the most effective and emotionally satisfying ending of all. Nothing beats having both Rick and Captain Renault rise above their cynical and selfish instincts and go off together to fight for a greater good. So bringing it back to the beginning – one of the most important things you can design in setting up your protagonist is where s/he starts in the beginning, and how much s/he has changed in the end.

I bet you all can guess the question for today! What are your favorite endings of screen and page, and what makes them great?

Previous articles on Story Structure:

What’s Your Premise?

Story Structure 101 – The Index Card Method

Screenwriting – The Craft

Elements of Act One

Elements of Act Two

Creating Suspense:

Elements of Act Two, Part Two:

Sweet Dreams… NOT!

by JT Ellison

I had a familiar dream this week – one that’s really a recurring nightmare. I’m at the beach, in Florida, and the waves are just overwhelmingly big – fifteen footers. I’m out on my board, struggling to keep it from getting away and allowing my leash drag me under. When they break, I dive in early, and it feels like I’m underwater for a very long time before I break the surface. They come in so quickly that I’m swept under over and over, and it’s kind of fun, until I see the big one in the distance. I’m suddenly out of the water, on the boardwalk, watching this massive wall of water coming toward me. I never know for sure if I’m far enough away, but ultimately the water comes within a few feet of me, then spills away.

I’ve had this dream so often that I can manipulate it while I’m in it, adjusting the length of time I think the big waves are fun, moving to various points up and down a two-mile stretch of beach. Sometimes I don’t feel like I’m going to make the boardwalk in time, other nights the waves are smaller, more manageable.

I had the dream Monday night, and on Tuesday, I saw this story. Now, talk about freaky coincidences. I’m dreaming about tidal waves while one is hitting Maine. And it’s totally unexplained? That’s the big problem in my dream, there’s absolutely no reason for these waves to be so damn big! And it’s happened before – many times, really. So my dream is based in reality, which makes me a little nervous. Because my dreams? They have a tendency to come true.

My mom used to dream about tidal waves in her childhood beach destination, and one eventually came in to Sea Isle City, New Jersey in the form of a hurricane that wiped out a lot of the area. Kind of creepy that I’ve inherited her nightmare, huh?

About two months ago, right before I was due to turn in EDGE OF BLACK, I had an airplane crash dream. I’ve never, ever dreamt about plane crashes before. I started flying when I was an infant, had a frequent flier card when I was a teenager, and eventually ended up working for a sub-contractor to the FAA. I LOVE airplanes. I LOVE flying. So I was especially freaked out by the dream. We were over a city and banking right, then just started going down amid the skyscrapers. Happily, at the last minute we pulled up and skimmed the ground, and I woke up. I had a second one two weeks ago. This time it was a Lear jet, we were flying over a ski resort and went down at the top, skidding our way down the treacherous slopes in a ridiculous parody of Lear jet giant slalom.

It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to recognize these are anxiety dreams. I started having them when I was a little girl. For my fifth birthday, my parents took me to Blinky’s Fun Club, a television show in Denver starring Blinky the Clown. Being utterly scared by the knowledge that I was on television, I did what any intelligent child who has self-preservation in mind would do – I picked my nose. Blinky "Bastard Son of Satan’s Spawn" the Clown popped up (clowns have a tendency to do that, pop out of nowhere) and YELLED at me. Cue crying, screaming, begging, and a lifelong fear of clowns.

The jerk also cemented my original anxiety dream – I’m sitting in a darkened television studio and hear a slithering, scaly crawling. I turn and come face to face with a giant stuffed purple snake with massive green polka dots, who looks at me with it’s slitted eyes then undulates away through the studio. I still have that dream. And it freaks me out every time.

I’ve never had the typical naked at school type of dream. Mine have to have some random element of creativity to them, at least. I dream in color, and they’re so damn real. I’ve been known to wake up furious at Randy and snarl at him for a day because he’s cheated on me or left me.

But the worst are the serial killer dreams. And I have those a lot. Whether it’s knives and chasing, or just locking eyes with someone who I realize means me harm, I wake up breathless and panicked. I get up, lock the bedroom door and try to think about other things so I can go back to sleep. Because I can wake up from a dream, get up in the middle of the night, walk around, shake it off, go back to sleep and pick up where I left off. It’s not a nice talent.

It’s funny, the purple snake dream can be just as menacing as being chased by a serial killer.

There’s not much I can do to alter the way my subconscious works through my issues. I’m a dreamer, in every sense of the word. Hell, I dreamed the entire plot of ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS, start to finish. Man, I wish I could do that more often. I’m not an edgy kind of person during the daylight hours. It’s when darkness falls that I get jumpy. I just don’t know what the night will bring.

So what about you? Do you have anxiety dreams? Are they straightforward, or kooky? And do you have recurring dreams? What’s your trademark nightmare?

Wine of the Week: 2006 Michaud "3" Chalone Red Blend

UPDATE: Wanna see what my waves look like? Click here and read this.