Author Archives: Murderati

Can a bad review end your career?

by Tess Gerritsen

Yes.

I realize that’s a pretty blunt answer, and many of you will disagree with me on this. Nobody reads reviews anyway, you’ll argue. Bad reviews come with the territory, and authors survive them all the time. Or you’ll observe (accurately) that I’m famously hypersensitive to lousy reviews and I endow them with more power than they really have.

So let me explain why I think one bad review can, indeed, end your career as a published author.

There’s one time in particular when an author is particularly vulnerable to the effects of a devastating review, and that’s when you are a debut author. An editor who takes on a first-time novelist is taking a risk on someone who’s untried in the marketplace. The editor hopes, of course, that the debut novel will be wildly successful, or at a minimum, earn back its advance And to increase the chances of its success, this editor will talk up the book to the sales force. As the pub date approaches, she hopes that in-house enthusiasm for the book builds, because that enthusiasm gets transferred to booksellers, who will be convinced to increase their orders. Hefty orders mean more exposure, better displays, and of course better sales. Imagine you are that debut author, and your novel “FIRST TIME OUT” has been bought with a generous advance. Imagine that the publishing house is telling you this is going to be an important book. Imagine that they have decided to give it a big push, with major ads and an author tour.

Then imagine that your first review appears in Publishers Weekly, and they pronounce it a disaster. They call your publisher a house of idiots for buying it.

Now your editor looks like a dope. The enthusiasm at your publishing house suddenly deflates like a popped balloon. Everyone there feels a bit embarrassed, not just for you, but for themselves. The big bookstore orders don’t come in. Costco and Walmart take a pass on it. Even before your book goes on sale, it already feels like a big failure and an expensive mistake.

Those promised ads never materialize. And even though they do send you on book tour, every time you meet a bookseller, you just know they’re looking at you and thinking, “oh, so you’re the author whom PW called illiterate.” And you feel like such a loser.

That scenario is just what I faced when my first hardcover, HARVEST, was published. About a week before the book was released, a review appeared in PW. If you want to see how bad it was, check it out over on Amazon or BN.com. According to PW, HARVEST was so awful, it would be appreciated only by “readers who move their lips”. I vividly recall the depressing phone conversation I had with my agent after that review came out. And one thing she said stuck in my mind: “we’re lucky this review came in so late. The bookstores have already placed their orders.”

But what if the review had come in two months earlier? What if Costco and Target and all the myriad other book merchants had taken a pass on HARVEST? I’m almost certain that HARVEST never would have hit the New York Times bestseller list (which it did, at #13.) And even though many good reviews followed, the damage would already have been done. The book would have died, and orders for the next book (LIFE SUPPORT) would have been even worse. And that could have been the end of my career as a thriller novelist.

Debut authors in particular are exquisitely vulnerable to bad reviews. But what about the seasoned veteran, the writer who’s already established himself as a bestseller? Bad reviews don’t affect our careers, right?

Wrong. They can. But for entirely different reasons.

I recall hearing about the time Stephen King got a PW review that was so brutal, so nasty, that it almost made him stop writing entirely. Lucky for his readers, he got over the hurt and resumed writing, but I understand why he might contemplate calling it quits on his own career.

Because I had the same experience just last year.

After writing six books in the Jane Rizzoli series, I wanted to devote myself to a project that I truly, deeply, cared about. THE BONE GARDEN was an historical novel about childbed fever, the dawn of microbial theory, and the contributions of a real-life medical hero named Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. I had dreamed of writing this book for years. I spent months researching medical history, grave robbers, and the state of medical education in the 1830’s. I read reams of old Boston newspapers, immersed myself in the contemporary fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and pored over old surgical textbooks. I thought the book was one of my best ever, and I waited for the first reviews to come in, hoping that the critics would agree.

The review that came in from Booklist was one of the worst in my entire 21-year career. The reviewer ridiculed the book and called my writing incompetent. And in the weirdest criticism of all, he said he saw no reason for Oliver Wendell Holmes to even be in the book, because he had no role there. He missed entirely the theme of childbed fever and medical history — the very reason I wrote the book.

Although many good reviews followed, the damage was done. I had to finish writing the next book in order to satisfy my contract, but looking back now, I don’t know how I managed to do it. I wrote in a cloud of depression. I couldn’t focus. I didn’t see the point of continuing in a job that just invited brutal and very public humiliation. I thought about how much easier my life would be if I just quit.

That’s right, quit.

Practically speaking, I could have managed it. I’m thrifty by nature, I abhor shopping, and I’ve saved up enough money over the years to retire right now. I imagined liberating myself from the yearly cycle of sales anxiety and nasty reviews. I imagined writing only for myself — stories that I’d put in a drawer, never to be seen until after I’m dead and buried. I imagined the relief of never having to hear another critic sneer that my books stink.

It took me over a year to finally get back my equilibrium. The good reviews for THE KEEPSAKE has helped. So has the passage of time. But I was close, so very close, to just closing up shop and saying “I’m done. I’m retiring.”

All because of a bad review.

I know that it’s a wimpy excuse — “I’m quitting because my feelings were hurt by a mean reviewer.” But the process of writing relies so much on our state of mind. On how confident we feel, how excited we are about a story, and how sure we are that people will like the result. When you’re depressed, you can’t write. When you feel like a failure, you can’t write. And when you are already preemptively cringing from the next public humiliation, the writing suffers.

Sometimes it never recovers.

Poetry in motion

by Pari

I’m a sucker for a good metaphor.

When prose rises to lyricism, my heart dances.

My love affair with the odd juxtaposition began when I was seven and wrote my first four-stanza piece. Here’s the "chorus":

Oh sea, oh sea
the great red sea,
my love, my dove,
the great red sea . . .

Pretty funny for a kid who lived in New Mexico. I have no idea what it meant, but it sure sounded good.

In middle and high school, I remember long hours sitting with a friend in the library and reading e e cummings to each other. In college, I graduated to Wallace Stevens, Theodore Roethke, Marianne Moore, Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams.

Here’s something most people don’t know about me: I’ve always wanted to go to the National Poetry Slam. I’d love to compete — if only I wrote true poetry and could be cool enough to pull it off in performance. (Where did I put that beret?)

Last weekend, I had a marvelous time at the Wrangling with Writing conference in Tucson, AZ. I hope to write about it in a future post. But for right now, I wanted to introduce Murderati readers to Taylor Mali. He was the keynote speaker at the con and it was one of the high points of a great, great experience. I’m including two of his poems here.

The first is called The The Impotence of Proofreading. It’s a brilliant take-off on a subject close to every writer’s heart. Warning: there’s a fair amount of "adult language" herein — so don’t listen to it at high volume at work. (BTW: The man sitting on stage with him is Billy Collins, a former poet laureate of the U.S.)

This next one is What Teachers Make (which should be an anthem for all teachers everywhere . . . including those of us who like to teach aspects of writing or the writer’s life)

Well, if that doesn’t inspire you, I don’t know what will.

For today’s discussion, tell us about the poets you love — include readings or excerpts if you can find them.
Tell us about mystery writers whose works bring the kind of satifaction we can find in good poetry.

I can’t wait to see your responses . . .

************************************************************************************
I’ll be at Bouchercon briefly this year — from Friday afternoon until the middle of the luncheon on Sunday when I have to scoot off to the airport. My panel is Sunday at 10 am:

"A TOWN CALLED MALICE (The Jam)
with Ann Cleeves (m), Martin Edwards, Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett, Carolyn Wall . . . and yours truly.

I hope to see some of you there.

Fear of Speeches

By Allison Brennan

I love public speaking. I’ve done it many times, not only as an author, but during my previous life in public policy.

But I’m scared to death of having to write a speech. The only thing I can attribute this fear to is my dislike of plotting.

I don’t plot. I don’t plot my books, I don’t plot out my life. I have a vague sense of my career goals just like I have a vague sense of what’s going to happen in my stories. Why plan it all out? As Stephen King says in his book ON WRITING, “Why be such a control freak?”

While I can appreciate and learn from Alex Sokoloff’s fabulous and informative presentations on story structure-and I really love reading craft-related writing books-when if comes to my own writing, I can’t shape it into a structure beforehand. The story comes out one word at a time, and I learn about my characters and what’s happening in the plot pretty much as I write.

Most writers are rather middle-of-the-road when it comes to plotting. They have a rough outline, maybe a few key plot points, perhaps a couple paragraphs about the main characters. They might not have a clear roadmap, but they know the general direction they’re headed and have all the major intersections and turns identified.

Extreme plotters need to start with a detailed outline. They can’t even get behind the wheel unless they know where they’re going, how they are going to get there, and every gas station, restaurant, and hotel on the way. They often have spreadsheets, a detailed scene-by-scene written outline, and sometimes even character charts. They’ll know not only where they are going, but where they’ve been. They can’t even type CHAPTER ONE until that map is complete, and they keep their GPS open and functioning all the time.

I jump into the car, turn the ignition and start driving. Sometimes I go too slow and push myself to speed up; other times I’m in a race for the finish line and have to force myself to slow down. Sometimes I go down the wrong road and have to make a 180; sometimes I go down the wrong side street and find myself in a dark alley with no way out – but then there’s a Dumpster and I jump on it. Pull myself up on a ledge, throw myself onto the fire escape, climb up, leap into an open window and I have no idea where I’m headed, but the journey is more fun than terrifying. (Though there’s a lot of fear as well.)

When I present a writing workshop, I never go in over-prepared. In fact, I rarely go in with more than a couple of bullet points. Every time I give a workshop, it’s completely different-even if it’s the same material I’ve discussed before. That keeps it fun and interesting for me.

Workshops are interactive. They’re personal. I can read expressions in the audience, their body language, figure out whether I’m failing dismally or they’re interested. I ask questions of the audience, try to gauge what they want, play off their questions to me. I’m spontaneous and go off on wild tangents with stories that somewhat relate to the subject. But in the end, they seem to go pretty well-so for me, it works. And they came to my workshop because they wanted to be there. It’s not like I chained them to their chair, right?

But a year ago, I committed to something I’ve never done before. I’m giving the closing speech at the Emerald City Writers Conference in Seattle on Sunday. Speech. Speech implies a plan, words written done on paper that I will read or memorize and quote. Right? This isn’t a toast at a wedding where everyone taps on their champagne glasses and shouts, “Speech! Speech!” and expect you to be spontaneous. This is more like being the pastor and reading correctly from the book otherwise the couple might not actually be married during the reception . . .

I wasn’t worried about this until recently. In fact, I had no intention of writing an actual speech. I figured sure, I needed more than five bullet points–maybe ten–and a couple writing quotes that I can extrapolate on and relate to the writing life. I said as much to my friend Margie Lawson, a fantastic speaker and terrific teacher.

She looked at me and said, “You need a theme.”

I stared blankly. “Theme? What’s a theme? I don’t have themes.”

She laughed. She thought I was joking. “Sure you do. All your books have themes. A speech is no different.”

My books have themes? Really? “They do?”

“Of course they do.” Her smile faltered. I knew that she’d read at least some of my books because she’s used them in her writing classes. So if she thought I had a theme, wow. She probably knew what a theme was. She probably knew what my theme was.

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines theme as: 1 a: a subject or topic of discourse or of artistic representation

Well. Duh. Who needs a word for it? Of course I have a theme. Once I get to the end of the book, I know what it is. Sort of. If put on the spot. With a knife to my throat. Sure. I got it.

To me, theme is like branding. I have no idea what my “brand” is. I’ve taken FOUR online or workshop classes about branding and still have no idea how to define my brand. When told one instructor that my brand was dark romantic thrillers, she informed me that was my genre, not my brand.

Getting back to Margie . . . so I need a theme. She gave me one (thank you!) She said because I was the closing speaker, I should be motivational, to rally the troops so-to-speak, to send them forth into the world to write!

Great! I had a theme, I was done. I could motivate. I motivate my kids to clean their rooms.

“Clean your room and we’ll go out for ice cream.”

“Naw.”

“Clean your room or no video games (or cell phone or television or computer, depending on the kid) for a week.”

The room gets clean. I know how to motivate!

But that wasn’t enough for Margie.

“You have to write a speech.”

“That sounds like plotting.”

“It’s not plotting. It’s writing a speech.”

“I don’t plot.”

“It’s a speech.”

A close version of this conversation took place in June. I’ve been stressed ever since.

Except for a short time during the RWA conference. I gave a speech to the Kiss of Death chapter (those of us writing romantic suspense.) It was a speech. I had five bullet points, no written or practiced speech. It went well, I’ve been told. (Unless they were being kind because I know 1001 ways to kill people. But I’ve never done it personally.)

Then I heard the incomparable Victoria Alexander speak at the luncheon and I knew I could never do that. She was funny, poignant, poised, perfect.

On the Levy bus tour I shared my fear with my good friend Roxanne St. Claire (at least, she was my good friend until she said . . . )

“You have to write a speech.”

“Define write.”

“What’s your theme?”

Aw! That I knew. Margie had given it to me in Colorado. “To motivate.”

She looked at me strangely. That was a theme, I assured her. Something positive and uplifting.

“Okay,” she said. “Write your motivational speech. Edit it. Read it out loud over and over and over until you know it so well you don’t even need to look at it. You’ll be great. Just practice, time it, and then print it out in large font in case you need to look down for a moment to figure out where you are. But you’ll know it so well you won’t even need to look down, as long as you practice.”

“I don’t have the time.” I wasn’t joking.

“I promise you’ll do great if you follow this formula. You’ll do as good as Victoria Alexander. Trust me. She wrote that speech and practiced it.”

And I knew that was true, because I talked to friends of hers who told me they listened to her read the speech over the phone the night before she gave it.

I began to stress again. Not a little tickle of doubt, but brain-numbing panic.

I started my June 09 book last week. It’s been slow going-I wrote and deleted the first chapter four times, but I think I have it down. At least, the opening paragraphs are strong and I’m finally starting in the right place. But I know that part of the reason I’ve been struggling is because I’m scared about the speech I haven’t written.

I need to write it.

I don’t want to write it.

I want to wing it.

Two people I like and trust told me I can’t wing it.

Ironically, I’m not scared of speaking. I stood up at Thrillerfest in July and winged my way through the Awards Ceremony with only the names of my judges that I had torn off a printed email. But I’m scared of writing a speech.

So I’ve decided to do something in between winging and rehearsing. It’s the only way I can keep my sanity, and finish my book by deadline. I spent yesterday pouring over my favorite craft books and pulling out quotes that are motivational and uplifting. I printed out all my motivational lectures from online workshops I’ve given over the last couple of years. I put everything into a folder, stuck it in my laptop case, and am forgetting about it. When I’m on the plane Friday afternoon, I’ll take everything out and (shiver) write talking points. I think I even have a theme, something a bit more focused than “to motivate.” I’m going to talk about fear. I think. At least, that’s the direction the quotes I’m pulling are sending me.

Might have something to do with the fact that I’m scared myself, but I’m still going to Seattle and speaking in front of 250 people.

Because that’s what professionals do. We acknowledge the fear, toss back a shot of tequila (or smoke or pray or all of the above), and perform.

How do you handle your fears?

Story Structure – Act Two, Part Two

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Okay, back to story structure this week. Come on, you know you want to.

As we were talking about in our discussion of the Elements of Act Two, the first half of the second act – that’s 30 pages in a script, or about 100 pages (p. 100 to p. 200) in a 400 page book, is leading up to the MIDPOINT. The Midpoint is one of the most important scenes or sequences in any book or film – a major shift in the dynamics of the story. Something huge will be revealed; something goes disastrously wrong; someone close to the hero/ine dies, intensifying her or his commitment (What I call the “Now it’s personal” scene… imagine Clint Eastwood or Bruce Willis growling the line). Often the whole emotional dynamic between characters changes with what Hollywood calls, “Sex at Sixty” (that’s 60 pages, not sixty years.)

It’s also sometimes called the “Point of No Return”, in which the hero/ine commits irrevocably to the action (this may have been the German dramaturg Freytag’s assertion – I’ll have to research it further).

Often a TICKING CLOCK is introduced at the Midpoint, as we discussed in Building Suspense. A clock is a great way to speed up the action and increase the urgency of your story.

The midpoint can also be a huge defeat, which requires a recalculation and a new plan of attack.

And the Midpoint will often be one of the most memorable visual SETPIECES of the story, just to further drive its importance home. It’s a game-changer, and it locks the hero/ine even more inevitably into the story.

The Midpoint is not necessarily just one scene – it can be a progression of scenes and revelations that include a climactic scene, a complete change of location, a major revelation, a major reversal – all or any combination of the above. For example, in JAWS, the Midpoint climax occurs in a highly suspenseful sequence in which the city officials have refused to shut the beaches, so Sheriff Brody is out there on the beach keeping watch (as if that’s going to prevent a shark attack!), the Coast Guard is patrolling the ocean – and, almost as if it’s aware of the whole plan, the shark swims into an unguarded harbor, where it attacks a man and for a horrifying moment we think that it has also killed Brody’s son (really it’s only frightened him into near paralysis). It’s a huge climax and adrenaline rush, but it’s not over yet. Because now the Mayor writes the check to hire Quint to hunt down the shark, and since Brody’s family has been threatened (“Now it’s PERSONAL”), he decides to go out with Quint and Hooper on the boat – and there’s also a huge change in location as we see that little boat headed out to the open sea.

Another interesting and tonally very different Midpoint happens in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. I’m sure some people would dispute me on this one (and people argue about the exact Midpoint of movies all the time), but I would say the midpoint is the scene that occurs exactly 60 minutes into the film, in which, having determined that the Nazis are digging in the wrong place in the archeological site, Indy goes down into that chamber with the pendant and a staff of the proper height, and uses the crystal in the pendant to pinpoint the exact location of the Ark.

This scene is quiet, and involves only one person, but it’s mystically powerful – note the use of light and the religious quality of the music… and Indy is decked out in robes almost like, well, Moses – staff and all. Indy stands like God over the miniature of the temple city, and the beam of light comes through the crystal like light from heaven. It’s all a foreshadowing of the final climax, in which God intervenes much in the same way. Very effective, with lots of subliminal manipulation going on. And of course, at the end of the scene, Indy has the information he needs to retrieve the Ark. I would also point out that the midpoint is often some kind of mirror image of the final climax – it’s an interesting device to use, and you may find yourself using it without even being aware of it.

Another very different kind of midpoint occurs in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS: the “Quid Pro Quo” scene between Clarice and Lecter, in which she bargains personal information to get Lecter’s insights into the case. Clarice is on a time clock, here, because Catherine Martin has been kidnapped and Clarice knows they have only three days before Buffalo Bill kills her. Clarice goes in at first to offer Lecter what she knows he desires most (because he has STATED his desire, clearly and early on) – a transfer to a Federal prison, away from Dr. Chilton and with a view. Clarice has a file with that offer from Senator Martin – she says – but in reality the offer is a total fake. We don’t know this at the time, but it has been cleverly PLANTED that it’s impossible to fool Lecter (Crawford sends Clarice in to the first interview without telling her what the real purpose is so that Lecter won’t be able to read her). But Clarice has learned and grown enough to fool Lecter – and there’s a great payoff when Lecter later acknowledges that fact.

The deal is not enough for Lecter, though – he demands that Clarice do exactly what her boss, Crawford, has warned her never to do: he wants her to swap personal information for clues – a classic deal with the devil game.

After Clarice confesses painful secrets, Lecter gives her the clue she’s been digging for – to search for Buffalo Bill through the sex reassignment clinics. And as is so often the case, there is a second climax within the midpoint – the film cuts to the killer in his basement, standing over the pit making a terrified Catherine put lotion on her skin – it’s a horrifying curtain and drives home the stakes.

It really pays to start taking note of the Midpoints of films and books. If you find that your story is sagging in the middle, the first thing you should look at is your Midpoint scene.

I know this and I still sometimes forget it. When I turned in my latest book, THE UNSEEN, I knew that I was missing something in the middle, even though there was a very clear change in location and focus at the Midpoint: it’s the point at which my characters actually move into the supposedly haunted house and begin their experiment.

But there was still something missing in the scene right before, the close of the first half, and my editor had the same feeling, without really knowing what was needed, although it had something to do with the motivation of the heroine – the reason she would put herself in that kind of danger. So I looked at the scene before the characters moved in to the house, and lo and behold – what I was missing was “Sex at Sixty”. It’s my heroine’s desire for one of the other characters that makes her commit to the investigation, and I wasn’t making that desire line clear enough. So now although they don’t actually have sex yet, there’s definitely sex in the air, and it’s very clear that that desire is driving her.

The Midpoint launches ESCALATING ACTION/OBSESSIVE DRIVE

In the second half of the second act the actions your hero/ine takes toward his or her goal will become larger and increasingly obsessive. Small actions have not cut it, so it’s time for desperate measures.

These escalating actions will often lead to HARD CHOICES and CROSSING THE LINE: the hero/ine very often starts doing things that are against character, self-destructive or downright immoral. When Catherine is kidnapped, Clarice is warned by her roommate that if she doesn’t study for and take her FBI exams, she’ll be kicked out of the program. Of course Clarice puts Catherine’s well-being above her own, but it’s a great way to back her into a corner and force hard choices. Often the hero/ine will lose support from key allies when s/he begins to cross the line.

Naturally the antagonist’s actions are escalating as well.

This third quarter also almost always contains a scene or sequence which since the ancient Greeks has been called THE LONG DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL. In THE WIZARD OF OZ it’s when Dorothy is locked in the witch’s tower with that huge red hourglass and all looks lost. The hero/ine metaphorically dies in this scene – yet like the phoenix, rising from the ashes, the hero/ine also formulates one last desperate plan, or figures out the missing piece of the puzzle, and comes out of the long dark night even more determined to win.

This scene is usually very near the climax of the second act, because it’s such a boost of energy to go from losing everything to gaining that key piece of knowledge that will power the hero/ine through the final confrontation to the end.

Now, remember, in standard film structure, the second half of Act Two is two sequences long – two fifteen minute sequences, each with a beginning, middle and climax. A book will perhaps have three or four or five sequences in this 100 page section. But if you concentrate on escalating obsessive actions by the hero/ine and antagonist, and then an abject failure, out of which a new revelation and plan occurs, you pretty much have the whole section mapped out to the ACT TWO CLIMAX

As I’ve discussed before, the Act Two Climax (page 90 of a script, page 300 or so of a novel) often answers the Central Question set up at the end of Act One, and often the answer is “No”. No, Lecter is not going to help Clarice catch Buffalo Bill and save Catherine – Clarice is going to have to do it herself. No, Quint will not kill the shark; the shark kills him instead and Sheriff Brody is going to have to face the shark alone.

The second act climax will often be a final revelation before the end game: the knowledge of who the opponent really is (as in THE FUGITIVE, when Dr. Richard Kimble realizes that his friend Chuck has set him up and that leads to the final confrontation and fight/chase. THE FUGITIVE has a nice, satisfying structure because at the same time that Kimble is realizing who his real enemy is, US Marshal Gerard (the Tommy Lee Jones character), who has been chasing Kimble for the entire film, also becomes convinced of Kimble’s true nature – that he’s innocent.

It’s a very common storytelling device that the hero/ine’s main ally is revealed to be an enemy, or THE main enemy, and it also often happens that the hero/ine’s enemy is revealed to be more of a friend than we ever suspected (a classic example of this is Captain Renault in CASABLANCA, who not only covers for Rick’s murder of the Nazi Strasser, but junks his post to go fight the Nazis with Rick).

The second act climax is another place that you might start a ticking clock – such as in ALIEN, when Ripley sets the ship to blow up in ten minutes and has to evade the alien and get to the shuttle by then – as if being chased by an acid-bleeding monster weren’t stressful enough!

And the third act is basically the FINAL BATTLE and RESOLUTION. It can often be one continuous sequence – the chase and confrontation, or confrontation and chase. There may be a final preparation for battle, or it might be done on the fly.

But we’ll talk about the third act and climax in a separate post.

What I’m really interested in today is hearing examples of great midpoints.

For previous articles on story structure:

What’s your Premise?

Story Structure 101 – The Index Card Method

Elements of Act One

Elements of Act Two

Creating Suspense

A Virtual Montparnasse (Part Three)

by JT Ellison (with Neil Nyren)

(I’m thrilled and honored to have our dear friend and legendary editor Neil Nyren back on Murderati to talk about how our newfound connectivity alters the editorial process. For those of you just tuning in, "A Virtual Montparnasse" is an occasion series examining how the Internet has affected the art and literary communities. Part One is here, and Part Two here.Without further ado, I give you Neil Nyren!)

_____________________________________

J.T.’s asked me
to comment on how the “Virtual Montparnasse” has affected the editorial
process, and I’m happy to contribute. It’s affected publishing in a lot more
ways than that, of course, but I’ll leave marketing and such for others – it’s
the editor/writer relationship we’re talking about here.

But first, a
confession:

Until the summer
of 1998, I’d barely even touched a computer. We had very few PCs in our
offices, and most of my communication was done by phone and by typewriter. I
shall pause while those of you who are under 25 try to wrap your heads around
that notion. Just a few weeks ago, my assistant was going through some older
files and announced to me, “Carbon copies! They were filled with carbon
copies!” as if announcing some mythological beast she’d thought existed only in
storybooks.

Yes, I told her,
but thanks to young Franklin’s
recent experiments with kite-flying, we did have electricity, however.

Anyway, about
that time, Putnam Berkley combined forces with Viking Penguin, and we all moved
in together. When I arrived at my new office early that Monday morning, there,
gleaming on my desk, was a new computer, and I said, “Well, guess I’ll have to
learn how to use the darn thing, then.”

The first real
test came pretty quickly. One of my authors was based in Brussels,
but his work took him everywhere – he was just as likely to be in Moscow or London on any given day. He was writing a book on the new Germany, and his deadlines were tight,
and so we started swapping chapters online. He’d email me a draft, I’d read it
and give him notes, and then no matter where he was or what time zone he was
in, he did the revisions according to whatever fit his daily schedule, and sent
them back. We did the whole book that way, and I very much doubt we could have brought
it off in time if we had done it any other way.

It was a
revelation. Even now, ten years later, it’s still a revelation, although by now
I’m sure it seems commonplace to all of you reading this on Murderati. I have
authors all around the country and in various spots around the globe, and they
are all instantly accessible. It’s not just editing. If I want someone to see a
jacket design, I no longer have to prepare a comp and overnight it to his house
– I just send him a jpeg. Jacket copy, catalogue copy, queries – off they go,
and back come answers. Photographs – I can eyeball them online, confer with the
author about what works best, and then download them for production. Some
queries I never even have to send to the author, because if I’m unsure of a
fact or a name as I go through the manuscript, a quick trip to Google or
Wikipedia is likely to give me the answer.

And it’s not just
the work relationship that’s improved, it’s the social one as well. We dash off
notes to each other all the time. With one author, I gossip about books and
music. With another, it’s politics. With a third, it’s our mutual obsession
with the Red Sox. J.T. wanted to know if spending so much time interacting
online rather than face to face helped or hurt the editor/author relationship,
and I can say for a fact that we communicate way more now than we ever did
before. After all, with most authors there’s not a lot of face to face anyway. Texas? California? Florida? Outside of occasional trips,
they’re there and we’re here.

I could go on
about other ways our lives have changed, too. Submissions? The vast majority of
them are emailed now, cutting time and expense all around. Some publishers are
experimenting with E-readers for their editors, so that instead of printing out
those attachments, they can simply download them and skip the mass of paper.
The same is being done for sales reps – every one of Putnam’s reps has an
E-reader now, which means that they don’t have to receive the mountains of
manuscripts which tottered in piles around their houses. Now, there’s a site
where everything’s posted and they can download whatever they want and read it
no matter where they might be. Writers’ conferences? The question I always hear
the most at conferences is about how to find the right agent, and I always say,
“Homework.” Now that homework is easier to do than ever. Besides such sites as
Publishers Marketplace, AgentQuery, and the like, every agent in creation has
his or her own website where you can find out about their preferences, authors,
deals, ways of doing business. Really, people, there’s no excuse for
cluelessness anymore.

I’m going to stop
there (though I haven’t even gotten to the subject of Electronic Workflow yet).
Suffice it to say that my life, the life of my assistant (“Carbon copies!”),
and, I suspect, the life of each one of my authors has gotten a lot easier
since that summer of 1998 — at least in that regard. You still have to write
the damn books, though. Sorry. Can’t do anything about that.

Neil S.
Nyren is senior vice president, publisher and editor in chief of G.P. Putnam’s
Sons. He came to Putnam in
1984 from Atheneum, where he was Executive Editor. Before that he held
editorial positions at Random House and Arbor House. Some of his authors
include Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, Jack Higgins,
W.E.B. Griffin, John Sandford, Dave Barry, Daniel Silva, Ken Follett, Alex
Berenson, Randy Wayne White, Carol O’Connell, James O. Born, Patricia Cornwell
and Frederick Forsyth; nonfiction by Bob Schieffer, Maureen Dowd, John McEnroe,
Linda Ellerbee, Jeff Greenfield, Charles Kuralt, Secretary of State James Baker
III, Thomas P.M. Barnett, Sara Nelson, and Generals Fred Franks, Chuck Horner,
Carl Stiner, Tony Zinni and Wendy Merrill.

Neil has also been interview on Murderati twice. Click here for his latest interview, and here for the first.

Balimore Beckons

by Zoë Sharp

Next week it’s the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in Baltimore, with the catchy title of Charmed To Death. Co-chaired by crime aficionado Judy Bobalik, and Jon and Ruth Jordan, the force behind Crimespree magazine, it looks like being one of the biggest and best yet.

It will certainly be one of the busiest. As I look at all the scrawled notes in my pocket diary – cell phone numbers of all the people I’ve promised to meet up with, appointments and get-togethers – I realise that there’s very little blank space left for actually going to panels. Even my own!

This year, I’m lucky enough to have been invited to participate in two-and-a-half. The first is 4:40pm on Thursday afternoon, entitled ‘Janie’s Got a Gun’ (Aerosmith) – do you need to kick ass to be kick ass? – with own JT Ellison in the moderating chair, plus Tasha Alexander, Robert Fate, Cornelia Read, and Greg Rucka. This should be a very interesting topic because of the amount of perception involved in whether people pick up a writer’s book or not. Does it help if the reader believes the author actually capable of the things they’ve written about? Does it matter?

The second is 8:30am Friday morning. This one’s called ‘Six Days on The Road’ (Dave Dudley) with me taking the hot seat this time, and Glynn Marsh Alam, Barry Eisler, NM Kelby, Jonathan Sandlofer, and Marcia Talley all bravely agreeing to rise at that hour of the morning. After some discussion we seem to have split this topic into two distinct subjects – using location in the writers’ work, and tales of touring. I’m sure everybody has horror stories of the Tour from Hell and I can’t wait to hear them.

I also asked all my panellists for a quirky fact about themselves just to add to the mix, and they’ve come up with some belters. I shall definitely be asking Jonathan about his experiences with egg yolks and gladioli in Spanish Harlem, and Barry about the book he owns on CONTINGENCY CANNIBALISM. So, if you want to know more, you’ll just have to be there …

But, moderating a panel at B’con is a big responsibility, and one I take seriously. I know people are happy just to wing it, but I know others are very uncomfortable to play it completely off the cuff, and I’ve tried to make sure I’ve done as much prep as I’m able to, reading as many of the panellists’ books as I can, and spending some time on their websites. What’s your preference? As either a panellist or audience member?

And last – but not least – we come to the half a panel I mentioned, which is one of the half-hour slots – at 10am on Saturday morning. This is where Meg Chittenden and I will be reviving our semi-lighthearted talk and demonstration on the gentle art of self-defence. We haven’t given this one for a few years, but the last time we did, we called it ‘You Can’t Run in High Heels’. In deference to Baltimore B’con’s song-title-themed panels, we’ve changed this slightly to ‘In These Shoes? I Doubt You’d Survive!’ (Kirsty MacColl).

As Meg lives in the Northwest rain forest, and I live in the UK, we can’t exactly get together to rehearse much for this. On previous occasions, we’ve found a quiet spot somewhere at the convention and gone through some of the moves we’ll be demonstrating then. And you know the weirdest thing? As any of you who know Meg will testify, a wicked wit and serious mystery-writing skills are hidden behind a butter-wouldn’t-melt white-haired exterior. So, there’s this genteel-looking lady, apparently being strangled by some English ruffian, and does anybody gallantly offer to come to her aid? Do they even ask what it is we’re doing, exactly? Er, no, they don’t.

And if that’s as good a reason as any for learning to take care of yourself, I don’t know what is …

As is always the case when we cross the pond, our first instinct is to try and find a gun range to brush up on our skills. In fact, at ThrillerFest in July 2006, my other half, Andy arranged a big outing to the Scottsdale Gun Club as part of a belated birthday present. After all, what else do you buy a girl except three belts of ammunition to put through a Squad Assault Weapon?

And, if we find a range nearby in Baltimore that’s amenable – like we did with the excellent Deerfield Archery and Pistol Center in Deerfield, WI when we were at B’con Madison in 2006, I’ll be delighted to put another ‘Have Breakfast and Go To The Gun Range’ lot into the charity auction. Last time, the winning bidder was Judy Watford, who was determined to take the opportunity to go shoot holes in a target, as she’d never been allowed to do so in her home state of Texas. Now, I’d always thought things like that were fairly compulsory in Texas, but Judy has been blind from birth and could not find a range who would allow her to have a go. The guys at DP&AC were far more laid-back about the whole thing and we had a great time.

But nevertheless, going to a convention is a big outlay in time as well as money. We’ll be away the best part of ten days, including calling in to NYC on the way back to do my one post-Bouchercon event – at Partners & Crime in Greenwich Village, 7pm on October 14th, with Sean Chercover, who’s launching the already acclaimed TRIGGER CITY on the same day my THIRD STRIKE comes out. It was great of Sean to invite me to join his party, as it were, and I’m thrilled and honoured to be able to do so.

So, my question is, why do you go? Is it to meet fellow authors, to get out of that secluded little world we tend to sit in and write? Is it to revitalise your enthusiasm for the craft? Is it to make contacts and meet new readers? Do you have that vital ‘elevator pitch’ prepared for your latest WIP?

What do you hope to get out of attending a convention – and do you succeed?

This week’s Phrase of the Week is knuckle under, which means to submit. It comes from the drinking taverns of 17th century London, where arguments raged. A person admitting defeat would knock on the underside of the table with his knuckle. There’s also some suggestion that it comes from bare-knuckle boxing, where the fighters would keep their fists up in front of them if they still wanted to fight, and down, with their knuckles behind their hands, if they’d had enough. Also corrupted into buckle under.

This should not be confused with knuckle down, which means to concentrate or apply yourself to a task, and comes from the game of marbles. The rules state that a player’s knuckle must be placed in the exact spot where the player’s previous marble came to rest. Those not paying attention, and allowing their hand to come off the ground are told to put their ‘knuckle down’.

Driven by Desire

by J.D. Rhoades

I know, sounds like a romance novel title, doesn’t it? But it seems to have gotten your attention…

Writers and critics talk sometimes about "plot-driven" versus
"character-driven" fiction. I’ve always thought it was a false dichotomy, however. In my opinion, character drives plot. Or to be more
specific, characters have desires,
and it’s desire that drives plot.

I was thinking about
this a few days ago during an e-mail exchange with a young aspiring writer. He
had all these characters, he said, but he didn’t know what to do with
them. This is what I told him:

Figure out what each of your characters wants,
both
in the short term and in the long term. In real life, people want more
than one thing, and the same should be true in your fiction. For
example, the
main character may want to rule the world, he may also want to get the
girl. For each character, then, write out: what are their deepest
desires? What will
they do to achieve them? Will they have to sacrifice one desire to
achieve
another?

There’s a lot of potential for drama in that last
question, by the way, as some of the most wrenching conflicts can
occur where a character has to give up one cherished desire for
another. Classic example: in THE MALTESE FALCON, Sam Spade desperately wants Brigid
O’Shaughnessy, or whatever the hell her real name is, but he also
wants to find out and bring to justice whoever killed his partner. When
those two desires collide–when Spade finds out that his love is the
one who did the deed–the result is one of the most brutal speeches in all of hard-boiled literature:

"When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it.
It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was your
partner and you’re supposed to do something about it. And it happens
we’re in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization
gets killed, it’s-it’s bad business to let the killer get away with it,
bad all around, bad for every detective everywhere…I hope they don’t hang you, precious, by that sweet neck. Yes, angel,
I’m gonna send you over. The chances are you’ll get off with life. That
means if you’re a good girl, you’ll be out in 20 years. I’ll be waiting
for you. If they hang you, I’ll always remember you."

Another example: in THE GODFATHER, Michael wants to live his life free of the Mob and its associated violence. But he also loves and wants to protect his family. When his father’s life is threatened, he has to act on the second desire, and finds himself losing the first.

As stated above, characters often have a short and a long term desire. In my Jack Keller books, Jack, of course, wants to track down and bring in his target. But his long term desire, even though he has trouble admitting it, is to learn to connect with people and to love again. Another example: Michael Connelley’s Harry Bosch wants to solve the mystery in every book. But what drives him, book to book, is the desire to in his words, "speak for the dead."

Which brings us to another way that character can create drama: some characters have desires that they don’t realize or don’t admit. Harry Bosch’s real long term goal is to avenge the death of his mother, to make her almost unnoticed death matter. So the other thing that drives him is his motto: "everyone counts or no one counts."

Now that you’ve got a handle on what your characters want, figure out which characters’ desires conflict with those of other
characters. For the most obvious example, in a traditional mystery, the bad guy wants to get away,
the good guy wants to stop him (and probably get the girl). In a heist novel, the protagonists want the loot, but they come into conflict with each because one or more of them wants a bigger share (or the girl). Zombies want
to eat people, the hero wants to avoid being eaten (and probably get the girl).

Mix those together. See what happens. When you get stuck for what happens next, as an alternative to having a man with a gun come through the door, remember what each character’s
goal is and think about what they’d do next to accomplish it (which may or may not involve coming through the door with a gun).

Keep in mind as well that, in the words of the famous quote, "no one is a villain in his own eyes." The antagonist, if he’s not a maniacally cackling, hand rubbing cartoon villain, has reasons for his actions which seem perfectly logical and consistent to him, even if they may not seem that way to the reader. Or, as I put it, the villain thinks he’s the hero.

Even minor characters’ desires can move the plot. In JURASSIC PARK, Dennis the computer guy wants the money he thInks Hammond owes him. So he comes up with a scheme to swipe some dinosaur embryos, which involves the crucial plot point of turning off the safety systems, he thinks for a short time. But, unfortunately for poor Dennis, dinos have the desire to eat.

In BREAKING COVER, Tony Wolf wants to hide, to disappear. But he’s
also unable to stand by while a child is hurt, so his gives up his anonymity for a crucial moment. Johnny Trent wants to
find Wolf and do terrible things to him because of the damage Wolf did to him. Tim Buckthorn wants to keep
his town safe, and that means finding out who this enigmatic stranger
who’s moved into the area really is. Gabriella Torrijos wants the
story behind this guy who suddenly erupted onto the landscape, then
disappeared again. All of these people want something that’s totally
reasonable and understandable for them, but they can’t all get what
they want. And so, you have a story.

So, today’s discussion question: Apply this analysis to one of your favorite books (which, writer ‘Rati, may include your most recent one or even your WIP). What does your protagonist desire? What does your antagonist desire? How does that drive the plot? How do the desires of supporting or even minor characters move things along?

Get A Clew

By Louise Ure

For the criminally-minded among you, my friend Jude Greber (Gillian Roberts) wrote me recently that she’d just read “The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher," a nonfiction account of a homicide in England in the 1860’s, which was full of interesting tidbits on the birth of the detective, and of the detective novel.

* The word ‘clue‘ derives from ‘clew’, meaning a ball of thread or yarn. It had come to mean ‘that which points the way’ because of the Greek myth in which Theseus uses a ball of yarn, given to him by Ariadne, to find his way out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth.

* The word "detect" comes from the Latin ‘de-tegere’ or "unroof" and the original figure of the detective was the lame devil Asmodeus, ‘the prince of demons’, who took the roofs off houses to spy on the lives inside.

* Because of the Brits aversion to being observed or spied on by the police force, a Bobby (named for Robert Peel and also called “Peels” at first) had to be in uniform all the time – even when off duty – so that the populace would know who he was and he couldn’t abuse his role.

These examples, of course, sent us on a flurry of research into other mystery-oriented words.

* The immediate ancestor of the word “sleuth” is the compound sleuthhound, "a dog, such as a bloodhound, used for tracking or pursuing." The shortened form sleuth, was being used to mean "detective" as early as 1872.

* There are two schools of thought for the derivation of the word “Shamus.”

One group believes that Shamus, as an American slang term, first meant "policeman", not "private detective" and that it arose as an Anglicized spelling of the Irish name Séamas because so many of the policemen in America’s cities were Irish or of Irish descent.

Others suggest the Hebrew shammes — "a beadle or sexton in a Jewish synagogue" — as a possible origin. But why would a Yiddish word for a synagogue beadle become American slang for a detective?

The answer may lie in the Yiddish saying: “I know the shammes and the shammes knows the whole town.”

The shammes in an Eastern European synagogue indeed had to know everyone in town. To begin with, he had to know where everyone lived, since it was his job to knock on each Jew’s door and rouse him for the service. And it was his job to know each Jew’s name and father’s name so that he might be called up correctly to the Torah; to know who was getting married, had given birth, was ill, or had recovered from an illness or escaped danger, so that the appropriate blessing might be made for him or her; and even to know what each family’s economic situation was so that he might advise the synagogue’s officials, how big an annual contribution to expect.

The shammes was in a sense the “private eye” of the shtetl: If you wanted to know something about somebody, he was the logical person to ask.

* How about Private Eye? Did it come from the Pinkerton Agency’s big eye logo or was it a shortened version of “private investigator”? Given that the Pinkerton operatives were never called “investigators” (they were always “detectives” or “Pinkerton detectives”) it was probably a combination of the two: the “I” taken from “investigator,” and the spelling “eye” taken from the Pinkerton logo.

* Alibi, of course, is the Latin word for "elsewhere." The "al" prefix means "other," and "ibi" means "there." Therefore "alibi" does NOT mean an excuse (the way it’s often misused) but means evidence or proof that someone was somewhere else at the time of a crime.

* Autopsy has also gone through a shift of meaning in its current usage. It comes from the Greek “auto” meaning self and “opsy” meaning eye, reading together as “to see oneself.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the autopsy first meant “seeing with one’s own eyes, eye-witnessing; personal observation or inspection,” and the first uses of the word autopsy were with regards to self-reflection and observation. Anybody know when we first began to use it in its current anatomical and forensic guise?

Word derivation has always been of interest to me, and the argot of our chosen field provides lots of words to explore. Are there any others you guys always wanted to know about? Or any words you just love saying for the way they sound?

Whadda’ya know?

by Pari

Way back when I was writing my very first manuscript — one that never sold — I wanted to know about money laundering and got an appointment to speak with a special agent from the FBI. The interview was a bust. I kept asking questions and he kept avoiding the details that would make my work believable. Both of us became increasingly frustrated until, finally, he said, "You’re a novelist, right? This is fiction. Why don’t you just make it up?"

(If you read CLOVIS, you’ll see the FBI agent isn’t very likeable. We writers get our revenge . . . but that’s another post.)

I’ve never written a manuscript without doing research. Some of it is the obvious stuff. For my New Mexico series, I always go to the town I’m writing about and spend time driving around, staying in the hotels, eating at local restaurants, visiting touristy places. When I write anything with a gun, I ask experts. When there’s actual police procedure, I ask experts. In my new series, I’m reading every book I can find on animal behavior and communication, animal mind and consciousness (or lack thereof).

But in each of my three published books, there’s been a mistake that I didn’t know was a mistake until a reader told me. For example, in SOCORRO, I have Sasha drink from a raku pottery cup. Now I grew up with a mother who collected art. We had several pieces of raku around the house; that’s how I came up with that detail in the first place. Wouldn’t you know? A woman who was an expert in pottery wrote to tell me that raku is decorative — never utilitarian.

Great. Wonderful. Screwed up again.

Or there was the time I got the wrong kind of freezer in someone’s house. The wrong brand.

Frankly, most of us don’t know how much we don’t know.

But how much should an author second-guess herself? How much should she stop the process when she DOES think she knows? These little mistakes can throw a reader right out, but for others, they’re nothing — just blips.

There’s probably a fact, something that can be checked, at least on every single page of every manuscript I write. I try to be as accurate as possible without becoming pedantic or boring. But I make assumptions all the time AND I’m NOT EVEN AWARE that they’re assumptions (that’s what happened with the raku and the freezer).

If I stop to check absolutely everything, I’d never finish a manuscript. My hope is that with all the eyes reading my work — my critique group, my agent, an editor, a copyeditor — that we’ll catch the egregious problems and quite a few small ones along the way.

But . . .

Authors:
How much do you fact check/research?
How do you know what you know AND don’t know?

Readers:
What’s your take on this?
Are you the kind of reader who screams and slams a book to the floor if a restaurant you know is on the wrong side of the street?

Everyone:
I’ll be on the road today but will try to check in. If I don’t make it, I’ll respond to every single comment tomorrow. This is a subject that really interests me and I hope the conversation is a good one!

Thanks.

cultural iconography

by Toni McGee Causey

I heard a discussion not long ago where a writer talked about how he had gone out into his city and literally walked the number of paces it would take to go from point A to point B. He timed it so he’d have an accurate depiction of the action sequence he was writing. In the middle of writing his book, a big catastrophic event occurred which changed that area of his city, rendering his description inaccurate, and he fretted about the fact that locals might hold his feet to the fire for not being exact.

Another time, a fellow author discussed how she was the curse of local restaurants; the restaurant she mentioned in her first book went out of business within the first couple of months of publication. The restaurant she mentioned in her second book went belly up before the print run was complete. To prevent this from happening again for her third book, she chose a restaurant that was a local favorite and had been in business for over thirty years… and before she could turn in that book, its doors had closed (and was a surprise to the community). She really wanted her books to detail real places, smells, sounds, so that people could "walk the paths" of her books.

I think they failed to see that no matter what their genre, what they were actually writing were historicals.

Every book is a cultural reference point, and it can evoke the truth of the place and the time while still being flexible with exacting detail.

Even urban contemporary is still a historical, because you’re writing from the perspective of where you, the writer, are, in your culture, in the framework of what you know, now. You might be writing fantasy, or SF, and you may be creating worlds you feel we’ve never seen before, but you still have to relate them to what we know now, in some way, so that we, the audience, can see what you see. You also (in SF) have to take into account the newest inventions and extrapolate out, so that each generation has an advantage over the past, because we’ve seen more technology. [Those Star Trek transporters don’t look all that extreme once you see a fax. And communicators fail to impress once you’ve had a hands free cell phone.] If you’re writing a crime contemporary, you’re still writing a historical because you’re depicting that moment in time, in that culture, with the tools available to those people for detection and communication and transport.

All we have to do is look at "contemporary" spy thrillers from the late eighties, early nineties and see the woeful lack of cell phones, Bluetooth, internet, signal jammers, DNA recovery methods, etc., to see this in action.

Or, hell, just look at the clothes.

There’s no way to avoid that issue. (Nor should we.) Worlds are built, whether it’s contemporary or SF or an actual historical, and they need to be to transport the reader out from the room they’re in–the one where the dog has thrown up on the carpet or the kids have just bopped each other on the head or the boss was on a tear or someone in the family has a terminal illness. Readers need details to hang onto, to build images in their minds and forget where they are.

Here are a few important things on my checklist of what works / doesn’t work for me as a reader. (As a writer? I’m sure I make mistakes and there’s always room for improvement.)

1) Beware of writing the MapQuest version of a story. Yes, setting details matter and verisimilitude is a cool thing, but I unless I need to know that it’s eight steps from that elevator to that archway for some damned good reason, (like step #9 is gonna trigger a bomb), then ease back. Once or twice? Not a big deal, I’ll roll with the writer. An entire scene’s worth? Very likely to be boring… unless the writer…

2) Make the details relevant to what’s going on, right now, for the character. Two sentences (or, and this is not uncommon, an entire paragraph) about, say, a painting on a wall or the decor of a room is going to jerk the story to a halt. Unless the character cares about that painting deeply, unless [for example] it was stolen from him or she used it as a murder weapon or it’s the center of contention in a family dispute and just seeing it reminds the character of something pertinent to the story, keep it brief. Not only brief, but if a writer is in a character’s POV, give the details as the character(s) would interpret them.

3) Watch out for the name brand cheat. Not everyone in the world will necessarily know the denotation nor the connotation of every name brand under the sun. Ten years from now, is that name brand still going to be immediately recognizable without any descriptors? Using a name brand as a signifier of something about a character is normal, but without any other descriptor, for a lot of people, it’s just a void string of words and the writer has lost an opportunity to create an image and an impact. Does the name brand of the cigarette matter, for example? or the fact that they’re unfiltered? or his anger at people asking? telling him where he can and cannot smoke?

4) Evoke the culture of those characters. If you accept the premise that anything, once committed to paper, is somewhat historical, then realize that a few months to a few years from now, that place and time and culture will have changed. People are going to be traveling back in time to the era a writer is depicting, even if it’s right now. Taking contemporary fiction as my main example here: show me the world they’re in. I know writers who avoid naming any popular restaurants or detailing any technology in the hopes of extending the life of their fiction, an effort to prevent their world from feeling dated, but the lack of cultural details can end up being generic. Generic is not memorable. What do the characters see? Taste? Smell? How is that different from their own childhoods? Early adolescence? Not that a writer needs to have a running commentary on every iconic detail he or she lists, but the character is bound to have some attitude about the items, or else why bother listing them? McDonald’s? Fries to die for or a culinary abomination?

5) Order of appearance. Smell can strike us long before we see the item. Sounds, as well. Keep in mind the texture of the details, and keep in mind that sighted readers (vs. readers of Braille, for whom I cannot speak) operate within a sighted world. If a writer fails to give the description of a character until page 312, the reader will have long long long ago filled in a detail and will be jarred when they get to the writer’s because it will be too different than the way they "saw" that character. Or thing. Our minds’ eye will go where you direct, in the order that you direct, and it then fills in. If I say to you: worn black and white checkered tile floor, scraped raw where the heavy wood door has swung open for years, small tables crammed into every nook, clean white cloths draping onto the cracked leather seats of old ladderback chairs, the candlelight absorbed into dark paneling, where are we? What did you just see on those tables? I’m betting you filled in some details like salt and pepper, probably the short squatty glass globes, silverware (plain, no frills), a taller canister of Parmesan cheese, a little white ceramic tray of sweeteners, possibly even candles on the actual tables, possibly menus.

6) It all means nothing without the character(s). Whether the writer is using first person POV, third, intimate or even second, how the writer sees the world should not be identical to how everyone in the story sees the world. The world has to be filtered through what the character perceives as important. (Probably the only exception is omnipotent where there’s authorial narration, but even then, there should be details built on the characters’ perception.)

7) Context within the framework of the bigger world around them. Writers shouldn’t assume everyone’s going to get the context automatically. I don’t mind (as a reader) occasionally seeing a song title listed, for example, but nine times out of ten, I have no clue what that song is or why it has some meaning in the moment. If a writer uses a lot of such things, then I’m lost. Odds are I–and many people like me–aren’t going to have all of those songs and contexts memorized, and if a writer is relying on that context to add a layer, they’ve just struck out. Doesn’t mean the writer shouldn’t include a song title or mention of a genre, but I chalk this up to the equivalent of preaching to the choir or hanging with the cool kids. Sure, preaching to the choir means the choir is most likely to "get" everything and the writer can show off their detailed knowledge and make inside jokes about what Maddy did last Thursday after the pot luck dinner, but the problem with the choir is that the choir is much much smaller than the audience. So sure, the choir might like to hear that riff, but everyone sitting out in that audience is going to wonder why they weren’t invited to Pot Luck Thursday and why they aren’t important enough to the writer to have the inside information and people don’t really pick up books to feel stupid. (Most of the time.)

Mostly, though, the point of what a writer mentions should be in service of the truth of the place. The truth as it was that minute for those characters.

Okay, there are more, but right now, the granddaughter is waking up and not terribly happy that she’s not the center of my universe and LSU’s about to kick off, so I am outta here. Meanwhile, how about any cultural references no nos for you as a reader? Or tell me who’s done the cultural stuff right, so that you really see their unique world, no matter the time frame?