Author Archives: Murderati

A Song Only You Can Hear

"You’d better take a can of mace," my friend said, and he was only partly joking.

You see, he knows several romance writers and he warned me that, being one of the few men to attend the annual RWA conference was akin to volunteering to be the bait at a greyhound race.

But when I looked in the mirror, I thought, don’t worry, Rob, you’ll be safe. They only chase small animals and you’re anything but small. Especially since you packed on those extra 20 lbs.

So, as you read this, I’m driving up the coast to windy San Francisco, facing uncertainty and possible doom. I will, however, not be in the company of a pack of dogs, but a lot of writers and readers and genuinely wonderful people who happen to be mostly female — some of whom are my friends.

Which is fine with me. All my life I’ve felt more comfortable in the company of women. To be perfectly honest — and I don’t want to insult any of the men in the crowd — I find the conversation among females to be far more interesting and stimulating.

And it doesn’t hurt that they’re a lot easier to look at.

When I tell friends here at home that I’m going to the conference, I usually get a blank stare.

"But why?" they say. "You don’t even write romances."

Oh, but I do. In my first book, KISS HER GOODBYE, there is a definite romance in the making — my hero and his assistant, who have been eying each other for quite awhile. In WHISPER IN THE DARK there are two romances: a man struggling with his love for his dead wife as he starts a new relationship, while another — a cop — rekindles his feelings for his ex-partner.

These relationships don’t dominate the books, but I can’t imagine the stories without them. Every book I write has at least a touch of romance. Partly because I’m a romantic at the core, and partly because I strongly feel that the best stories are about emotion — big emotions — and romantic love certainly qualifies in that regard.

Romance writers and, especially, readers often get a bad rap. The stuff they write and read, some say, is pure pablum. Silly little love stories that feed on the fantasies of middle-aged housewives.

And to this I say, bullshit.

What surprises me most is that some of the people I’ve heard express this sentiment are mystery and thriller writers. And if anyone should understand literary snobbery and all of its pettiness, it’s mystery and thriller writers.

The truth is, the quality of any book comes down to one thing: how it connects with an individual reader.

Our tastes vary from person to person — and sometimes, in fact, from day to day, within ourselves. So, to my mind, it’s the individual who must decide the worth of a particular book or genre he or she has chosen to read. One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure.

I myself have read several romances over the years and while I can’t claim that I loved them all, I certainly fell for quite a few and found them no different than any other book I’ve enjoyed. When an author’s voice speaks to me in that certain way, I’ll follow her wherever she wants to take me.

There’s an anonymous quote I came across recently that I think sums it all up: "You don’t love someone for their looks or their clothes or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear."

Perhaps this is something we should remember when we feel the urge to insult someone’s reading preferences — and I don’t pretend to be a saint in that regard.

The phrase, "to each his own," works quite well here.

Beyond all that, of course, there’s also a practical reason for going to RWA:

Connecting with readers. Most readers in this country are women, and the majority of those women read romances. I would be crazy not to attend a conference that caters to the largest audience this industry has. And while it’s true that it’s generally a writer’s conference, let’s not forget that writers are readers, too.

So I’m now heading up to San Francisco, certain I’ll have a blast, but still hearing echoes of my friend’s warning in the deepest recesses of my brain.

Thankfully, however, I won’t need that can of mace to fend off the hordes of adoring females. I’ve got something even stronger:

Barry Eisler will be there, too.

When your book turns into a brussels sprout

Ever since I turned in my latest manuscript, I’ve been spending a lot of time weeding my vegetable garden. As I work in the hot sun, a tune keeps playing in my heat-addled brain, a tune I can’t seem to shake. It’s the song "Plant a Radish" from the off-Broadway musical "The Fantasticks," and it’s sung by two fathers who bemoan the fact that parents never know exactly how their children will turn out. So they extol the virtues of growing vegetables instead, because when you plant a radish, you know that you’ll get a radish:

Plant a carrot, get a carrot,

Not a Brussels sprout.

That’s why I love vegetables,

You know what they’re about!

Life is merry, if it’s very

Vegetarian!

A man who plants a garden

Is a very happy man!

(Lyrics by Tome Jones, composer Harvey Schmidt)

This song has special meaning for me, not only because I’m a gardener and a parent, but also because I’m a novelist, and every single story I’ve ever started has morphed, in some way, into that proverbial Brussels sprout, the vegetable I never thought I’d planted.

It’s a result of poor planning — or in my case, no planning whatsoever. That’s because I don’t plot out my books ahead of time. And that leads to surprises.

Occasionallly, I teach at writing workshops, and one of the first lessons I tell my students is this: not everyone’s a planner. Not every writer can map out every plot twist of his novel in advance. If you are a planner, then good for you. I envy you.

If you can’t do it that way, if you’re the sort who just dives into the story and sees where it takes you, that’s okay too. It can be a chaotic, frustrating way to write a book. You’ll waste precious time backtracking to fix things. You’ll probably have writer’s block somewhere in the middle, because you don’t know where the story goes next. You’ll suffer through multiple drafts, and you’ll feel like ditching the accursed plot many times. This probably makes writing a book sound like an ordeal, and it can be. But it’s also an adventure that will take you to unexpected and startling destinations.

The book I just finished writing, THE KEEPSAKE (in the UK, its title will be KEEPING THE DEAD) got its start several years ago, after I’d listened to a series of lectures by Egyptologist Bob Brier, about the ancient Egyptian technique of mummification. Brier had actually made a modern mummy (yes, a volunteer donated his remains for that purpose) and the result was startlingly similar to the mummies of ancient Egypt. How incredibly cool, I thought.

And then the novelist’s mind kicked in, and I wondered how I could turn this information into a thriller.

The idea sat and percolated for a few years. I just didn’t know what the plot would be. I wanted to incorporate my love of archaeology and the dusty creepiness of old museums. Since it would be part of my Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles series, it had to take place in Boston. And since I’m a doctor, I wanted medicine and science to be a vital part of the story, too.

All I knew about the plot was this: it would kick off in the diagnostic imaging department of a Boston hospital, where an "ancient" mummy is undergoing a CT scan. A shocking surprise is revealed — the mummy has a bullet in her leg. She is, in fact, a modern murder victim who’s been preserved using ancient techniques, by a killer with obscure archaeological knowledge.

Enter Jane Rizzoli.

And that’s all I knew about the plot. My proposal synopsis contained a bunch of nonspecific plot details to convince my editor I knew where I was going with the book. But the truth is, I didn’t know. I never do. I just started writing and waited to see where the story would take me.

It took me down a number of blind alleys. I wrote about a hundred pages that later got discarded. I wasted endless weeks chasing plot threads that petered out. I introduced half a dozen characters who were later excised and will never be used. The killer kept changing identities. The motives repeatedly changed as well. Characters clamored for me to "go this way," or "no, you numbskull author, go that way!" Surprises piled up, twists that I never could have planned out ahead of time because they popped up on the spur of the moment, right as I reached that point in the story.

In the midst of the chaos, something began to take shape, something I couldn’t see until I finished the first draft. Something that surprised me.

If I had charted out the plot ahead of time, would it have resulted in the same book? No. Would it have been a better — or a worse — book? I don’t know.

I do know that it’s the only way I’ve been able to write a book. Using this crazy, anxiety-ridden technique, I’ve produced twenty-one novels (counting my romantic thriller novels) and now I’m too old a dog to learn any new tricks. I’ve just learned to live with the unpredictability of every new book.

Thank heavens I have a garden. At least there’s something in my life that is utterly, unalterably predictable.

Weeds.

The Tyranny of the Should*

by Pari

I’m a goal oriented kind of gal. Give me a mountain to climb, a river to ford, a meatloaf to make and I’m a happy camper. But unlike most of the ‘Rati, I don’t have externally set deadlines for my novels. Not yet.

Anything I do, good or bad, is self-imposed.

You’d think that this situation would be a lovely thing — to have the freedom to determine my own timeline — but I’m finding it an odd challenge. You see, my super-ego is in overdrive. No matter what else I do in the day — take care of my children, exercise so I’ll live long enough to see my kids grow up, cook, clean, spend time with my husband, garden — there’s always this voice telling me that I’m not doing enough to further my career.

Even when I sit at the computer and edit or write, that same damn voice screams for attention and most of its messages are negative. I wouldn’t mind if it helped inspire me or urged me to stretch creatively.

But no.

It destroys joy. It smashes fun into shards of guilt, cuts my feet until they’re bloody and makes a huge mess where there could be giddy adventure.

So what to do?

I suspect I’m not alone; I’m not the only writer with this conundrum. As a matter of fact, it might be one of the prerequisites of the job — with or without deadlines.

Lest you misread my words, I’m NOT talking about self-discipline here. I’ve got that out the wazoo. This is something far more insidious and potentially paralyzing.

And it takes more than just the pleasure away; it diminishes productivity.

I’ve tried daily writing goals and I’ve met them. The stupid voice still pounds in my ears. I’ve tried ignoring it or reasoning with it or visualizing myself free of it. I’ve tried shoving it out of my mind with positive affirmations: "I’m making progress." or "I did more than I thought I would today." Or "I am doing as much as I can."

But it’s like some kind of mutating computer virus that keeps adapting to whatever I throw in its path.

If I have to live with the damn thing, I will. I’ve done pretty well so far and have managed write a fair number of manuscripts, books, stories etc. But if there’s a way to put it in its place, to push a mute button, I’d sure like to know how.

So that’s my question for today: Do any of you, Dear Readers, experience this in your own writing or other professions? If so, tell me how you quell the tyranny of the should.

___________________________

* From Neurosis and Human Growth by Karen Horney. This is a seminal and fascinating book on neurosis. I studied it while in grad school.

figuring out what they’re not telling you

by Toni McGee Causey

If you’ve been querying or sending your work out and you’re getting
positive responses but you’re not quite crossing that elusive sale
line, it can be incredibly frustrating and debilitating. Sometimes,
it’s an issue of luck or timing, and there really isn’t a helluvalot
you can do about that.

A friend of mine and I recently discussed this, and she pointed out that there were four elements to this business: work, luck, timing (marketplace), and talent.

You cannot control the last three, not as a writer. The amount of talent you have is what you have, but you can improve your craft through practice, you can hone that talent to a fine edge. You cannot control luck, and timing–how things will fall together in the marketplace–is anybody’s guess, but it certainly not something a writer can control.

What you can control, however, is the work. How much effort you make, how hard you reach to improve, how much risk you’re willing to take, how objective you’re willing to be about what you have, and haven’t, managed to get onto that page. That? Is all you can really control.

There are times as writers
that we’ll get encouragement and nice comments without really knowing
what is making them–those people who buy–say "no, not for me." In the course of a discussion
on Backspace (a while back), someone asked,
"How do you know what to fix when they don’t tell you?" I had gone
through a self-evaluation process before the first book sold. My analysis of my own writing below is certainly not a "fix-all" sort of thing; however, it may be a way of looking
at your own work and stepping outside what you’ve been seeing up to
that point to analyze it. On the off-chance that it might be of help,
I’m re-posting my answer here:

A much larger part [of the analysis process] was sitting down and dissecting my own way of telling stories, pros and cons. Instead of
listening to what readers were saying, I started to look at what they
were not
saying. The gist of what I was hearing was that they always loved my
characters, loved the humor, loved the setting. Well, that kinda sounds like I had it covered, but something about the
way I told the stories wasn’t working since they weren’t selling, and
no one could tell me why.

Believe me, I asked. Especially of those producers with whom I had a personal relationship.

Instead of assuming that selling was all just subjective or luck, and in
order to figure it out why that wasn’t happening, I started giving my writing to people and asked
them to list the positive feedback they’d give me, and then I’d look at
those things and say, "What’s missing? What am I not seeing on this
list?" This is an odd sort of way of going about this, I know, but the
critiques I was getting weren’t pointing out the "gestalt" — the
overall problem.

(I started doing this sort of analysis with my screenwriting, and when
it worked, I transferred what I’d learned to my fiction. The relative
shortness of a script as compared to a manuscript may have given me an
advantage because it was easier to see it as a "whole" when trying to
break it down. )

With that in mind…

So… what was not being said?

The one thing that popped in my head that I noticed wasn’t said (or if it was, it was only occasional), was,

"I couldn’t put it down."

That whole "couldn’t stop reading" aspect is critical, especially if
you want to maintain an exec’s attention (in the screenwriting world)
or an agent’s attention (either world).

Now here’s the kicker — people would say how much they loved the
read, how immersed they were in the characters, so you’d think these
were the same things, but they’re not. And it took me a little while to
realize that.

Second thing that happened is pretty notorious in the screenwriting
world– you get killed by encouragement. But when you try to get to the
heart of why they’re not buying, they’ll use vague terms. They’re not
doing this to be mean, but because they aren’t writers and they have no
clue how to explain to you that there’s something not working. So
they’ve come up with a sort of shorthand which sounds like they’re
telling you something, when in fact, they’re basically saying, "I don’t
know jack, I just know I can’t buy it and I can’t put my finger on why." In the book world, this translates into "I can’t get the marketing team behind it."

I’ll break down one example for you, and how I analyzed it.

One of the things I had heard was that they loved the scripts
(the romantic comedies), but they were "soft." What the hell is soft?
It’s a romantic comedy. If it was ‘hard,’ it would be porn. How is ‘soft’ a definition for writing?

I’d ask my then-screenwriting-agent, who would be just as confused.
We would try to get more specifics out of them but the execs didn’t
think "soft" was a bad thing per se…and since they were in the middle
of telling me all of the good stuff, it was easy to set that aside as a
vague excuse.

Until one day, I finally realized what they weren’t saying.

They weren’t saying "I couldn’t put it down."

I’d get stuff like, "I love reading your scripts, I will always give
your agent a read overnight for your stuff," and "Your characters and
your worlds are so original, and I laughed all through it, so it’s
funny!" Which is great! But no one was saying, "Ohmygod, I had to pee
and I refused to get up to go to the bathroom because I had to see what
happened next and now I have to buy a new leather chair, damn you."

That is critical. You have to write in such a way as to get to feel
a freakishly urgent sense of needing to finish the read, which is what
translates into them being compelled to convince their bosses to spend the money.

A lot of other writers and people in the business were trying to
guess what "soft" meant at the time (since this was a fairly common
excuse floating around), and one opinion was that it was
the opposite of edgy. Well, not everything can be edgy,
so that wasn’t really working as a definition. Then one day I put the
two things together and I realized what ‘soft’ meant: it meant that
there wasn’t enough forward motion in the story to actively compel the
reader to keep reading, regardless of all else.

‘Soft’ is the opposite of ‘crisp’ and ‘urgent.’

How did that apply to me?

This is where it got tricky. I went through my stories and on the
surface, it seemed like I was already doing what needed to be done.

interesting characters………..check
clear goals………………………. check
obstacles………………………… check

So, hmmm. That looks like everything I need. What the hell is up
with that? Then I looked more closely at story structure, which is when
I realized: a lot of what is motivating the characters isn’t revealed
until sometime later in the story. And some of these were pretty
important reasons for being motivated, but they were buried deeper. And by trying hard to be mysterious, I just ended up with vague motivations.

But… but… (I can hear the outcries), in mysteries and thrillers, the real reasons aren’t usually revealed up front.

True.

But the reader still needs to have a reason, a motivation, for the action. They need to understand what that motivation is–whether or not you end up disproving it later.

The problem with writing so "indirectly" is that for the first part
of the story, the reader has to take it on faith that you’re going to
eventually supply them with the motivation and what’s at stake for the
main character. I managed to dance fast enough to keep them interested,
but I am certain that when they put my stuff down and had to go explain
to their boss, they weren’t able to sum up the character very easily,
or what the character wanted / needed or why. I definitely had reasons
all along the story trajectory as to why the character was doing what
they were doing, and the reader could deduce some of the motivations,
but at the same time, I blocked the reader from getting too much
information because I wanted to reveal more about them later. My
assumption had been that this sort of structure made the story deeper,
more thought provoking, creating a greater impact. That delay can work,
but it also renders a lot of your story as appearing to be re-active
instead of active: it doesn’t look so much like the character is
forging forward as they are simply reacting to what’s happening, and
that can make the story feel passive and less immediate.

I will give you a movie example that I think many of you have seen: The Usual Suspects. In it, [SPOILER ALERT, OLD MOVIE] Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey) has been brought into the police station for questioning about his part in the gang who’ve ended up dead. Through flashback, Verbal tells the story, and we believe that his motivation is to get his ass out of a sling. He is just this sort of slow, innocent guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. His motivation to stay out of jail is palpable and his fear of Keyser Soze, the real bad guy behind the slayings, drives the story.

Except, of course, at the end, there is the long reveal that he is Keyser Soze.

If the writer, MacQuarrie, had not given Verbal Kint a hard-driving reason for telling his story, the reveal wouldn’t have been as powerful.

Nor would it have been as compelling.

The story drives forward fast on the motivation of Verbal Kint to stay out of trouble with the police and with Soze. It is *really* being driven forward by the fact that Soze is completely manipulating the police detectives doing the questioning, and they just don’t realize it yet. He’s toying with them, showing off, and they’ll understand that later.

Complex characters can make for excellent writing, but you have to
do one very simple thing to pull them off: give the reader at least a
surface motivation as to why they’re doing what they’re doing. Why they
must have whatever it is they’re going after in the story. Even
if you want to deepen that later or turn it in on itself and twist it
to surprise your reader by making the character more complex, you still
need to keep the reader invested in the story, and they have a hard
time staying invested if they don’t know what’s at stake or why it’s
critical to the character.

So the new list:

interesting characters…….check
clear goals…………………… check
motivation……………………..check
obstacles…………………….. check

Then I looked at the "obstacles" and analyzed my writing, and I
realized that not only did I have to make those obstacles incrementally
tougher, they had to matter so much and the character had to keep failing.

Terry Rossio, over on his Wordplayer (highly, highly recommended reading) used Indiana Jones as an example…

Indy [PRE INDY 4, OBVIOUSLY] is this great archaeologist / hero, able to go into difficult
areas and retrieve these priceless artifacts, and when he’s going after
the ARK, he keeps failing. When it looks like he’s about to succeed,
there’s another twist and he’s not only failed, he’s in a bit of a
worse situation than he was when he started. And now he’s got to
brainstorm his way out of that.

Someone once said to me: character is shown by the choices we make when things aren’t going well.

A person may talk the talk of a pacifist, for example, but when
confronted with a situation, realize that they would resort to violence
to save someone they loved… so their character is not a pacifist
after all (something they may have difficulty dealing with in the
story.)

When you make sure that your stakes are escalating and that your
character has to keep dealing with these problems, and the problems are
getting worse, then you’ve got the chance to show what this person is
really like — good and bad — which, along with the stakes, renders
the story a ‘page turner.’

So I looked at my scripts and realized I wasn’t applying that sort
of tension. (This can, honestly, apply to literary fiction as well. The
stakes are more intimate, more personal, but they have to keep
increasing and keep mattering to the character.)

Once I realized these things, I looked around for the kind of story
that resonated with me, the kind of character I just could not put
down. I looked for a way to tell this story without sacrificing voice
or style, a way to immerse the reader immediately and have them hanging
on, turning the page to see what happens next. When I started getting
that "I couldn’t put it down" reaction consistently, I knew I had
stepped onto a higher level playing field. (There are always higher
levels, no matter where we are, where we’ve started.)

These things which applied to me may not apply to you. You have to
really look at what is being said, make a list of the positives and the
negatives, and then start looking at what’s missing. Most people are
not Simon Cowell (American Idol) and aren’t going to tell you the
brutal truth, even if they’re thinking it. They’re going to sugarcoat.
But I think by looking at what is consistently not said, you may be
able to dig up some useful truth.

If you’re getting the "I couldn’t put it down" sort of responses
from just about everyone reading but it hasn’t crossed that elusive
"sold" line, remember that a big part of what we do is sales, and not
every buyer is looking for exactly what we have. That’s the frustrating
part about the business, but it doesn’t mean you’re not on track with
your writing (if you’re getting the great responses)… it’s just a
matter of right person and right time.

Persistence is everything.

I’d love to add to my examples of movies or books with double layered motives. Especially any good sting type of movies (like, well, THE STING) where the motives hit the switchback trail a couple of times and still keep you utterly compelled. So what have you seen (old or new) where the motives were utterly compellingly written?

Reporting Earning$

What would happen if the book world openly reported the money a book grossed on it’s opening weekend?

Visual Storytelling

by Alex

Because I have been in that bliss period between handing in a new book and getting editorial notes, I’ve actually been able to read, and have been picking up about ten books a day. I can do that because when I’m reading for pleasure, I discard most books within ten pages, if that. Sometimes I give it 50 pages. Sometimes I make it halfway through and lose all interest. So that’s pretty much been the process over the last two weeks. Have only made it through two whole books so far.

Yesterday I picked up a book that had me riveted from the very beginning – and it made me realize something actually pretty obvious about myself.

I am a visual whore.

Yes, and proud of it. Oh, sure, I could pretend to be all highbrow and quote Aristotle on “Spectacle” in The Poetics, but really, why sugarcoat it? Give me eye candy. Dazzle me with images. But make them mean something. Your story better give me your themes visually or you risk losing me, and fast. I want symbols, symbols, damn it!

And no, I haven’t segued into talking about movies, now. I’m talking about books.

I have to say, one thing all that screenwriting has been really good for is helping me develop a strong visual writing style. I love it when readers tell me – “I can see every scene you write.” But actually, visual storytelling is a lot more than just putting a movie into your readers’ heads as they’re reading your book. Visual storytelling actually presents themes that elevate a story and make it resonate in a reader’s consciousness – and subconscious – long after they close the book.

My obsession with visual storytelling started way before I started writing scripts. Production design is a crucial element of theater, too, and we had a brilliant head of design in the theater department at Berkeley, so I got spoiled early on with mindbending, thematic sets that gave a whole other dimensionality to the plays I saw in my formative years. A good production designer will make every single thing you look at on stage – color scheme, props, sets, costuming, shapes, textures – contribute to your deeper understanding of the play’s story, characters and themes.

That was a lesson that served me well when I started screenwriting. And then working as a screenwriter opened up whole new worlds of visual storytelling.

So what can we as authors learn from screenwriting about writing visually?

A lot.

Let’s start with establishing shots and master shots, setpiece scenes, and visual image systems.

ESTABLISHING SHOTS AND MASTER SHOTS

One thing I’ve noticed about beginning writers’ writing is that they almost always fail to set up a chapter visually. Actually a lot of published authors have this problem, too. I find this extremely annoying and frustrating. After all, human beings process the world visually before any other sense, so why wouldn’t we as authors want to instantly establish where we are and what we’re looking at and how that makes us feel right up front, in every chapter? If you don’t, your reader is going to be uncomfortable and disoriented until you finally give her some idea of where she is.

That’s why it’s useful to think in terms of establishing shots and master shots.

An establishing shot, in film – you guessed it – establishes the location. A shot of the Eiffel Tower lets us know we’re in Paris, a shot of the Sphinx tells us we’re in Egypt. An exterior shot of an office tower followed by people working inside an office lets us know we’re inside that building.

A master shot is an angle on a scene that shows all of the players of the scene in the specific location – like looking at a stage and seeing the entire set and all the actors on it. You get all the information about the scene in one shot.

But an establishing shot is more than just information about WHERE the action takes place. It can, and should, convey emotion, suspense, theme – any number of things about the action about to transpire or the character walking into the scene.

Every time I start a chapter or a scene, I think first about the establishing shot and the master shot. I look at the upcoming action from a long enough angle to see everything there is to see about the scene. Where am I and what am I looking at? I might not describe it outright for a paragraph or two but if I don’t, there’s a damn good reason that I didn’t start with it, and I don’t keep the reader waiting long to give them the visual. And when I do give the visual, I think about what it says thematically and emotionally about the scene. Is it a confined space because my heroine feels trapped? Then I make sure to convey that claustrophobic sense. Are the colors of everything muted and leached because of my hero’s depression? Is every tree on the street bursting with bloom and fragrance because my lovers have finally reunited? (Yeah, I’m being on the nose, but my feeling is – be over the top at first to make sure the emotion is there… you can always tone it down later.)

SETPIECE SCENES

This is a fabulous lesson to take from filmmaking.

There are multiple definitions of a setpiece – it can be a huge action scene like – well, anything in THE DARK KNIGHT – that takes weeks to shoot and costs millions, requiring multiple sets, special effects and car crashes… or a meticulously planned suspense scene with multiple cuts that takes place all in a – well, a shower, for instance, in PSYCHO.

If you start watching movies specifically to pick out the setpiece scenes, you’ll notice an interesting thing. They’re almost always used as act or sequence climaxes. They are tentpoles holding the structure of the movie up… or jewels in the necklace of the plotline. The scenes featured in the trailers to entice people to see the movie. The scenes everyone talks about after the credits roll.

That elaborate, booby-trapped cave in the first scene of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. The helicopter chasing Cary Grant through the cornfield in NORTH BY NORTHWEST. The goofy galactic bar in STAR WARS. Munchkinland, the Scarecrow’s cornfield, the dark forest, the poppy field, the Emerald City, the witch’s castle in THE WIZARD OF OZ. The dungeon – I mean prison – in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. In fact you can look at RAIDERS and SILENCE and see that every single sequence contains a wonderful setpiece (The Nepalese bar, the suspension bridge, the temple in RAIDERS…)

Those are actually two great movies to use to compare setpieces because one is so big and action-oriented (RAIDERS) and one is so small, confined and psychological (SILENCE), yet both are stunning examples of visual storytelling.

A really great setpiece scene is a lot more than just dazzling. It’s thematic, too, such as the prison (dungeon for the criminally insane) in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. That is much more than your garden variety prison. It’s a labyrinth of twisty staircases and creepy corridors. And it’s hell – Clarice goes through – count ‘em – seven gates, down, down, down under the ground to get to Lecter. Because after all, she’s going to be dealing with the devil, isn’t she? And the labyrinth is a classic symbol of an inner psychological journey – just exactly what Clarice is about to go through. And Lecter is a monster, like the Minotaur, so putting him smack in the center of a labyrinth makes us unconsciously equate him with a mythical beast, something both more and less than human. The visuals of that setpiece express all of those themes perfectly (and others, too) so the scene is working on all kinds of visceral, emotional, subconscious levels.

Now, yes, that’s brilliant filmmaking by director Jonathan Demme, and screenwriter Ted Tally and production designer Kristi Zea and DP Tak Fujimoto… but it was all there on Harris’s page, first, all that and more – the filmmakers had the good sense to translate it to the screen. In fact, both SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and RED DRAGON are so crammed full of thematic visual imagery you can catch something new every time you reread those books.

But this post is already long, so I think I’ll save my discussion on visual image systems for another even longer post, so we can focus on setpieces today.

What are some of your favorite setpieces or symbolic images, literary or filmic, recent or classic?

Oh, and the book I picked up yesterday that inspired this post?

Barbara Vine’s THE MINOTAUR… wonderfully creepy and psychologically perverse – you have a schizophrenic (maybe) brother, four strange sisters, an even stranger mother, and a young au pair on an isolated English estate – and in the middle of this house is a mysterious library built as a labyrinth.

You better believe I’m hooked.

How To Kill Someone With Small Change

by Zoë Sharp

I suppose, first of all, I need to start with an apology. I’ve been singularly absent from the comments section to posts on this blog since … well, since my last post, to be honest.

Summer is the silly season as far as the day-job goes. Not that it seems to rain less, exactly, in the British summer for location photoshoots, but the rain’s certainly warmer. And the last month or so, what with the run-up to the CWA Dagger Awards and trying to plunge into the new Charlie Fox book, well. Let’s just say things have been a little hectic. Spending six days out of seven on the road does not make for a good ‘Rati member, I freely admit. So, apologies again, and I’ll try harder. In fact, when JT originally asked me for a title for my blog, I so very nearly used Must Try Harder instead of Changing Feet. Sometimes it would have been very appropriate. Whenever I do get the chance to catch up, I find you’ve all been having superb posts that I really would have liked to take part in.

Anyway, my last bout of rushing around the country took in the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate . Not quite the glamorous location of NYC for the recent ThrillerFest, but Harrogate still has a fine traditional connection with crime writing. When Agatha Christie did her famous eleven-day disappearing act in 1926, it was in the Harrogate Hydro Hotel she was eventually found.

The crime writing part of the Festival has been going since 2003, rapidly establishing itself as one of the biggest and best. I don’t say that lightly, or to belittle any other events. Everything that promotes crime and thriller fiction is welcome, I feel, but Harrogate is pretty unique for several reasons. The line-up is the first thing. Robert Crais, Jeffery Deaver, Andy McNab, Peter Robinson, Laura Wilson, Simon Kernick and, of course, our own Tess Gerritsen, to name but a few. You have to be invited to take part, are paid a small fee for the privilege, and only one panel track runs throughout the four-day event. Hence the fact that there can often be more than 400 people in the audience for each panel. Which would be quite a scary prospect were it not like being on a theatre stage, where the lighting means you can’t see past the first few rows.

My own bit was part of Creative Thursday, which is aimed at budding crime writers rather than those already established. I seem to be acquiring quite a reputation of sorts, because I was asked to deliver a workshop on How To Kill Someone With Small Change. For this I went trawling through my lists of ordinary objects that could be used to great damage and effect, and came up with things like hairspray, a flashlight and a table fork, which we bent into a knuckle-duster of sorts. So many people subsequently asked to see this that I ended up carrying it around in my handbag for most of the weekend, hoping I wouldn’t undergo a stop and search by the police while walking back to my hotel in the early hours. Indeed, Meg Gardiner saw a police chase and arrest from her hotel bedroom window.

Mind you, one particular writer got picked up by the police himself trying to return to his hotel in a somewhat ‘tired and emotional’ state. He thought they were being friendly and helpful when he blundered into the wrong building, but apparently they thought he was a burglar.

As is always the way, when you get a bunch of writers together the drink flows. Last year, the hotel turned over one of the bars to a wedding party, but I’m told their entire evening’s spend did not equal an hour of author drinking, so both bars were firmly available to the crime writers this year.

Sadly, there was no repeat of the chimpanzee impersonations by literary agent, Phil Patterson, regardless of encouragement by the rest of us. People kept greeting him as Agent Phil, which made him sound like some shady fed. I expected him to flash a government ID at any moment – "Agent Phil: Hominoid Division."

The hotel management could have run a book on how late the authors stayed in the bar. This Kevin Wignall would undoubtedly have won. On Saturday night he didn’t leave until 5:50 AM, only resurfacing just before lunchtime on Sunday, wearing dark glasses and a slightly delicate smile.

Of course, there was some serious business done, too, and the additional number of European publishers present was noticeable this time around, all a sign of how the festival is growing in stature.

Many happy returns to Lizzie Hayes of Mystery Women, whom we helped celebrate her birthday, along with her friend Sue, and Adrian and Ann Magson, in the Drum and Monkey. And no, Agent Phil wasn’t there …

I think one of the highlights must have been Stuart MacBride channelling the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe in the Balloon Game on Friday night, where a bunch of modern crime writers defended their predecessors in a hypothetical sinking hot-air balloon. The audience got to choose who stayed and who was thrown over the side in defence of the others. Despite a downright creepy performance by Stuart as Poe – complete with a raven glove puppet made from a sock – clean, we hope – in the end it came down to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle versus Dame Agatha Christie, as represented by Mark Billingham and Val McDermid with, somewhat bizarrely, a bag perched on her head.

The usual mass quiz on Saturday night was fun, although treated with deadly seriousness by some of those taking part. This year I was stunned to discover that one of the questions was about my books – trying to put the early ones in the right order. I knew writing FIRST DROP as book four would come in confusingly useful one day! Congratulations to my fellow team members, Martin Edwards, Meg Gardiner, Rhian Davies from It’s A Mystery and Karen Meek and Maxine Clarke from Eurocrime, all of whom knew far more than I did.

I was even asked to join a discussion on the BBC Radio 4 arts programme, Front Row, along with Chelsea Cain, Simon Kernick, and Mr MacBride. The programme, all about the highlights of Harrogate, was broadcast in the UK on Wednesday evening, but you can Listen Again Again on the ‘Tinterweb for the next week, if you feel so inclined. I also recorded an interview with the delightful Sarah Walters of the Yorkshire Post for their OutLoud online series.

One of the most interesting surprises was the new book-related board came – Bookchase – designed by Tony Davis. I’d love to tell you how it all works, but I haven’t got hold of a copy yet. Still, it was launched at the Hay Festival last year and it looks fascinating. Tony promises that a crime and thriller edition might well be on its way!

I’m sure there’s lots I’ve forgotten, but it will come back to me. Meanwhile, I offered a small prize to the best suggestion from my workshop class of use of an improvised weapon, or (very) short scene containing one. The deadline for that has already passed, but if anyone wants to suggest something, I happen to have another prize. A copy of the ingenious TELL AN OUTRAGEOUS LIE – 188 Legal Stimulants Designed to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing – by Mandy Wheeler and James de Ville.

Oh, and if anyone’s interested, I will be delivering an evening lecture at Lancaster University as part of their summer programme of events – 8:30 PM on Tuesday, August 5th.

This week’s Word of the Week has to be hominoid, an animal of the family Hominoidea, comprising man and the modern apes and their extinct ancestors.

You’ve Arrived On A Rather Special Night…It’s One of the Master’s Affairs.

by J.D. Rhoades

Yesterday was the day.

Drop day. Launch Day. Publication Day.

The day that my fourth book, BREAKING COVER, hit the beaches to try to claw its way to success with nothing but a spunky attitude and a dream of someday making its way into the Big Time.

When my first book, THE DEVIL’S RIGHT HAND, came out, people asked me, "so, are you going to have a big party in New York to kick it off?"

It seemed like a great idea. After all, I’d seen the episode of Sex and the City where Sarah Jessica Parker kicks off the launch of her book at a great big New York party attended by incredibly witty and improbably hot literati.

With big drinks. And shrimp. I love shrimp.

God help me, I was naive enough to ask my editor if we were going to do something like that. Being a kind soul, and not wishing to crush all my illusions (or perhaps knowing that the business would be pleased to do so without his intervention) he did not laugh derisively in my face. No, he gently informed me, the publishers were going to concentrate their resources where they might actually do more good than just getting me drunk and boosting my ego.

I saw his point. After all, I can do both of those things just fine on my own.

So I confess, I’ve never had a big fancy party to kick off one of my books.

But doggone it, I still think it would be pretty cool.

So let’s have a virtual one!

All you guys are invited, of course…and you can help me plan it. You can each bring a guest, and since it’s a virtual party, it can be anyone in any world, real or fictional.

We’ll need to stock the bar, so tell me what you’re drinking.

And the kitchen’s open, with a crack team of chefs, so let me know what you want to eat.

Finally, I’ve got one kick ass band booked and they take requests…so what song is it you wanna hear?

Come on in, folks…you are invited!

Trade Winds

By Louise Ure

I wrote a blog post a couple of weeks ago about the length of books, and whether it mattered that a book was especially long or short. I have another size question today folks, and it’s about paperbacks.

Specifically, trade paper editions versus mass market paperbacks.

My editor recently told me that The Fault Tree would be issued as a trade paperback next spring. Imagine my glee! (Please God, let them keep the same cover.)

As both a reader and a writer, I adore trade paperback editions. There’s just something so posh … so sexy … about them. Something that says “Doesn’t this feel good to hold?” and “I’m something special.” And the fact that they only cost $14 or $15 doesn’t go down hard either.

I have a number of them on my shelves. “Ahab’s Wife.” “Empire Falls.” Christina Schwarz’s “Drowning Ruth.” Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” and Wallace Stegner’s “The Big Rock Candy Mountain.”

They’re about as tall as a big, spread hand, but they have the grace of a fine evening bag. The paper stock has depth and character; the typeface is elegant and cool. They whisper: “This is for the shelves; don’t trade me in at the used bookstore.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love being published in hardcover, too, but there’s just something about coming out in trade paper afterwards that makes me feel like I’ve been made love to two times in one night.

But J.B. Dickey of the Seattle Mystery Bookstore has a different take on it:

“Trade paperbacks are expensive paperbacks. The great thing about the mass market paperback is the reason it was created – to reach a mass audience. There is still a need and a demand from that mass audience and, as the middle class and lower class are squeezed further and further and have less disposable income, a book that costs $14.95 takes the place of two mass market books that cost $6.99 or $7.99. Authors, I think have been hoodwinked – to a large extent – by the false allure of the trade paperback.”

Moi? Hoodwinked? Well, it’s happened before, once by a skydiver named Steve …

“It’s far harder,” he goes on, “to introduce a reader to a new author at $14.95 than it is at $6.99 or $7.99, which hurts newer authors. A lot of folks don’t want to take a chance.”

Damn. And here I was just feeling good about the fact that I wasn’t asking them for $24.95.

“And, from a bookseller point of view,” he continued to dampen my spirits, “trade paperbacks means less cash flow because trade paperbacks cost us more money and therefore more money is tied up in stock on the shelves.”

Well, he’s right. Trade paper is more expensive than a mass market book. But doesn’t it just scream “I’m for discriminating buyers” and beg for face-out placement on the shelf?

I guess the answer is both yes and no. We’ve all become more discriminating buyers in this new economy, now weighing how many soft cover books we can buy instead of how many hard covers. And that decision reaches into the trade versus mass market distinction, too.

Lesa Holstine, uber-librarian from Glendale, Arizona adds this:

"For shelving, I definitely prefer the trade. Mass market doesn’t fit on existing [library] shelves well.

For reading, it’s a toss-up. All I really care about, and all my patrons care about, is the size and quality of the print. Some of the trade paperbacks actually have print that is too light. I hate that, and my patrons complain. We want a nice size, legible print. [And the trade paperbacks are] not necessarily a better investment. The mass market paperbacks do hold up just as well.

I will say, with budget cuts … if we buy anything, it will probably be the most reviewed, most popular materials. Unfortunately, that means fewer mass market paperbacks in our collection. I, personally, think you’re better off with [your book] coming out in trade. We’re more likely to replace a copy with a trade paperback than mass market."

So, from my wee sampling effort, I’m hearing that:

• Readers like trade paperbacks, but it may be a price point issue if they’re divvying up a smaller book-buying budget and now have to choose between mass market and trade offerings.

• Authors like trade books because they make them feel special and loved … unless, of course, they mean fewer sales.

• Booksellers aren’t crazy about them.

• Libraries don’t mind them a bit, but it wouldn’t be the first thing they turn to in a budget crunch.

What say you all, as readers, writers, sellers, librarians?

Don’t mind me, I’m just going to keep rolling around in that great, good feeling that a trade paper release gives me. Even if it’s all in my head.

Kicking Butt

by Pari

I wasn’t a kid who grew up wrestling with brothers, tackling dads in impromptu football games, or even shoving a bully out of my way. The worst I had to contend with was an older sister who’d pin me down on the floor and tickle me until I peed in my pants.

I didn’t like fight scenes in books either. Part of this aversion was a lack of understanding; I couldn’t visualize the reality from the words on the page. But an even larger reason was my idealism. I just didn’t want to think that people really would hurt each other in those ways. I didn’t like the idea of glamorizing violence through literature.

Pollyanna and I had a lot in common then.

But writing about murder has a way of changing one’s perspective.
Wanting "to get it right" does too.

I tried the armchair pugilism route and realized quickly that it couldn’t work.

My first real fight scene was in The Clovis Incident. It was an amateurish attempt, but works — I think — because my protag, Sasha, doesn’t have a clue about physical fighting. Neither does her assailant.

Neither did I. But I did realize that I had to get up and actually try to sense what the fight would feel like. I didn’t punch myself in the stomach, but I did tap it hard enough to leave a little bruise . . .

Today, I no longer can pretend not to know. Since I’ve become a more serious martial artist, I been slammed in the solar plexus by a fist twice my size of my own. I understand what a well-placed kick to the front of the knee can to do someone who weighs a good 100 pounds more than the attacker. A palm strike to the chin or nose, an elbow strike to the jaw, both can take a person out. I also know how to fall well and poorly, how to think in terms of offense and defense.

As I’ve learned more, I’ve also become a much more attentive — and critical — reader of other writers’ fight scenes. There are those that contain reams of information; the author obviously knows a tremendous amount about the logistics and effects of the techniques. But after a page or two, I tend to get bored for some reason. Maybe it’s because when you’re in a fight, time passes so quickly and the description doesn’t convey that urgency. Other scenes don’t have enough information to help my imagination flow; these frequently assume the reader has the same specialized knowledge the author does — that everyone knows what a tornado kick to the head means. I usually skip ’em too.

And then there are the writers who seem to get it right every single time. Dick Francis comes to mind. I bleed and ache with his protagonists. I can feel the dull thud of a fist connecting with the hard muscle under flesh. I can hear the crack of a broken rib.

Do you have any favorite fight-scene writers? Can you share a sentence/paragraph of what you consider to be an excellent example?

P.S.
I passed my pre-test for my black belt in Tae Kwon Do last Friday night and have been invited for the formal test on August 2. Hold a good thought for me. I’ll post the results on August 4.