Flotsam and Jetsam

 

By Louise Ure

If flotsam is the wreckage of a ship washed up by the sea, and jetsam the purposeful tossing of objects overboard to lighten a vessel … this has been a week of both for me. I can best describe it as a week of useless and discarded objects.

Returning from moving my father-in-law to assisted living in Seattle, I faced my own house with new eyes. Ye gods. I’d become a hoarder, too.

I don’t know why, but I always start a cleansing process like this with the tiniest job imaginable. I roll pennies. I organize a button box. I put all the stamps in one place. Maybe taking that small first step gives me the courage to try something bigger, like a drawer. Soon I was going through closets, drawers and cupboards and evicting anything broken or the wrong size or I simply didn’t like. Funny how much of the stuff I own falls into one of those categories.

The storeroom in the garage held a four-drawer filing cabinet with tax records and canceled checks dating back to 1979. Ten big plastic bins crammed with God-knows-what. Vacuum-sealed bags of clothes with no owner. The third bench seat to a car I no longer own. Rolled rugs so old and dirty that no charity would take them. Empty boxes from TVs we gave away ten years ago.

I spent five days down there, going through every piece of paper, sorting through bags of cloths to give away, making a bonfire-sized pile for the junkyard. After recycling and trashing as much as I could, I still had 210 pounds of paper to take to a professional shredder.

Then there were new targets: things that decided to break right in front of my eyes as if to tell me that they, too, were ready to join The Long March. The coils in the couch that sprang loose to stab me in the butt. The computer that finally said it had only 4 MB of space left and would no longer even sync to my mobile phone.

Out with the old and in with the new.

I hired a tech guy to set up the new computer and make sure I didn’t lose any data. He was a gem, setting up wi-fi networks and discarding a modem so old (still plugged in!) that it was on dial up. He went through everything electronic in the house — routers and firewire, cables and AC adapters, old cell phones dating back to the 80’s, a Super 8 player! — and took them all to either recycle or sell for me on eBay.

And yet, and yet … I look around and nothing looks leaner or cleaner or uncluttered. How is that possible?

I had lunch with an old friend in the midst of all this clearing away madness and she told me about her own, preferred Spartan style of living. The kitchen counter must be bare, nothing must reside on the front or on top of the refrigerator. Her “junk drawer” has only eight items in it. They are in a drawer organizer.

My cupboards are still full, not a scant inch left for a new vase or sweater or book. There is no table that needs another “interesting objet d’art” on top. The storage room in the garage looks just as crammed full now as it did before the purge. And yes, there are baskets stacked on top of my refrigerator.

What about you guys? Are you neatniks? Is there an empty drawer someplace in your house? Are you happily cluttered? Or are you — like me — in danger of being approached for that Buried Alive hoarder show on TV?

 

What’s in a Name (and a Jacket)?

by Alafair Burke

I have a confession: I long for a world where the content of a book speaks for itself — where the reading experience is entirely subjective and organic, where a reader actually has to read Book C by Author Number 62925 before deciding what “kind” of book it is. 

I know: I’m in la-la land.  Readers want to know who wrote the book.  But would I have a different audience if I published under, say, Ally Simpson instead of Alafair Burke?  And readers want to know a genre.  But am I mystery or thriller?  Women’s suspense (whatever the frack that means) or procedural?  And readers want to know some basic information about the plot.  But should the jacket description of 212 emphasize the stalking of a college student, the murder of a celebrity bodyguard, or the death of a real estate agent who was leading a double life? These choices we (or our publishers) make about what to put on the book jacket send signals to readers about the contents of the book before they’ve even broken the spine.

Arguably that signal begins with a book’s title.

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I struggle with character names, but when it comes to titles, the struggle reaches epic, paralyzing proportions. Why?  Because I withdraw from every decision that purports to typecast the book I have written.

I’m in title hell right now with my next book, my first stand-alone.  I ran a couple of contenders past my kitchen cabinet advisors (i.e., Facebook friends).   The comments cemented my gut instincts: one sounded thrillerish, one sounded chick-ish, and both sounded vaguely familiar.  “[Suggested title] sounds like a cheesy book I wouldn’t read under threat of bodily harm,” said one.  Another reader said one title sounded like a Harlan Coben novel, the other like Nora Roberts.  Same book, two pretty different impressions.

See?  This is why I hate the pressure of a title.  Pick a couple wrong words, and you just might lose the readers who would have loved that book.

But here’s what I’m learning about titles: They don’t exist in isolation.  They are backed by an image on the jacket, and, as the cliche goes, a picture says a thousand words.

Consider some recent examples:

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell.  I’m not sure what the title on its own would say to me, but the quirkiness of the jacket “matches” the tone of the book.

Then there’s One Day by David Nicholls.  Kind of bland.  Kind of makes me want to sing “One day, one where, we’ll find a new way of living,” but I do have an annoying tendency to break out in song, regardless of lyrics.  But check out the jacket:

Gets your attention, right?  Flip it over and learn that the novel depicts two people on one single day across twenty years?  Suddenly it’s a perfect title.

Or how about “Caught” by Harlan Coben?  Pretty good title.  I always like those one-word things.  But take that single word, and drop it against this background:

Then read this first sentence: “I knew opening that red door would destroy my life.”  Awesome!

I recently finished a little book called The Glass Rainbow by some guy called James Lee Burke.  I confess to talking some serious smack about that title when I first heard it.  The Glass Rainbow?  The only book I could imagine was a memoir of Kurt Hummel’s early years:

But add the jacket art, and The Glass Rainbow suddenly looks like a JLB novel.  Read the book, and the title truly works.  (Blatantly nepotistic plug here: The book’s fabulous and just came out last week!)

So folks, I’d love to hear your thoughts about some of your favorite book jackets and titles.  Send links to images if it’s not too much work.  And, oh, if you happen to have a good standalone title for someone who writes sort of like me, let me know!    

(I’ll be on a plane today on my way home from a wedding in Santa Fe, so I may be slow to post replies, but I can’t wait to read your comments!)

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Sex in a Series

So Alex did it to me again. She sent out a vibe three thousand miles away, found out exactly what I was thinking, pulled it from my brain, and wrote a fabulous blog about love and sex in mysteries.

 

I’d been thinking about this subject a lot lately as I write the second book of my Lucy Kincaid series. Why? Because with an ongoing relationship, the love scene takes on a different meaning, and to keep them from being staid, “insert part A into slot B”, each scene needs to bring the characters closer or push them apart, while also complicating the relationship or raising the stakes. That’s a lot harder to do, I’m discovering, in book two of a series (and probably book three, book four, book five . . .  if I’m so lucky.)

 

So because Alex invaded my thoughts and plucked my idea, I went with the next logical discussion point: character growth in the series.

 

I wrote twelve romantic thrillers which were more or less stand alones. Not purely stand alones, but each one had a separate hero/heroine and a separate crime, which was resolved by the end of the book. The only continuity was the occasional recurrence of secondary characters, some of whom had been or would be stars in their own book. The only trilogy that was more than loosely connected was the Prison Break trilogy where in book one (KILLING FEAR) an earthquake under San Quentin frees a group of death row inmates and each book handles a different escapee, until book three where the last escapee is trying to prove his innocence and enlists his estranged daughter’s help.

 

Because the story, protagonists, and villains are different, I don’t really think of these as a series—more like they’re crimes happening in the same fictional world.

 

The Lucy Kincaid series is truly a series, with the same core group of characters facing different crimes. Lucy was previously a secondary character in my “No Evil” trilogy who was kidnapped in FEAR NO EVIL. Because of her past—not only what happened to her but how she responded both then and now, six years later—I find her one of the most compelling characters I’ve gotten to know. Everything she’s done for the last six years is to land her a job with the FBI, but she’s not there yet. Her love interest is Sean Rogan, a private investigator and security expert who has had run-ins with the FBI, and not all of them friendly. We don’t know his entire past, but there are enough hints in the first book to suggest that he hasn’t always been a law-abiding citizen. Well, he’s not exactly a law-abiding citizen now, either—just better.

 

There are other recurring characters, some more important than others (like FBI Agent Noah Armstrong who Sean calls “Mr. Law & Order”—and not very nicely, I might add!—especially after Lucy develops a camaraderie with the agent. Patrick Kincaid, Lucy’s older brother who was seriously injured rescuing her in FEAR, is Sean’s partner, and there may be other characters from previous stories who will pop in, depending on the story.

 

I’m not worried about story ideas–I have a lot of ideas for Lucy. I can “see” the characters and what type of crimes would draw them in and challenge them, while tapping into something in their past. What I’ve truly been wrestling with is multi-book character growth. There are two primary concerns here: first, that my characters continue to grow and change, organic to the story, in each book. And second, that new readers coming in mid-series will get both a complete story, and not be lost in understanding the character and their decisions.

 

Writing a stand-alone—where two characters (for me, a hero and heroine)—I know what to expect, at least as far as the character arc. The reader needs to be satisfied that the characters have grown to the point where they have solved their internal problems and can have a life and stay together (the romance part of “romantic suspense.) In my book THE HUNT, for example, the hero FBI Agent Quinn Peterson prevented the heroine Miranda Moore from graduating at the FBI Academy—he had her kicked out because of a psych exam. Considering that they were lovers at the time obviously caused much consternation—Quinn felt that Miranda was on a personal vendetta against a serial killer who killed her best friend, so much so that she’d make a dangerous agent. Miranda felt betrayed that Quinn had her tossed from the academy, and that what he believed about her mental stability. Fast forward twelve years and they are working on a case together—Miranda in search and rescue looking for a missing college girl who fits the pattern of the serial killer, and Quinn as the FBI Agent most familiar with the case. They obviously have to find the girl before she’s killed,  and identify and catch the killer, but layered over that is Quinn’s perception that Miranda is too close and reckless, Miranda’s personal fears about the killer, yet ultimately Miranda’s knowledge of the Gallatin Valley is essential to finding the killer. They have to work together—they have no choice if they’re to save the girl.

 

By the end of the story, Miranda faces her fears and proves to Quinn that he was wrong about her stability and she ; Miranda accepts that twelve years ago she was too close to the case; time and experience gave her the ability. By the end, she forgives Quinn because she now understands herself and her flaws—but more importantly, what her motivation was then and is now. The End.

 

In a series, I need to take Lucy and Sean to the next logical level in the relationship without having a complete conclusion. There should always be reader satisfaction, but a hint of doubt and conflict for the future. Each book needs to grow on that. JD Robb’s Eve Dallas and Roarke are models for this—you know they love each other and will stay together . . . but they both have a past and conflicts. For example, when Roarke’s previous lover comes to New York, Eve’s insecurities about their relationship come forward and Roarke, true to personality, is angry that Eve doesn’t trust him and his feelings.

 

But more than their personal relationship, each character has to grow and change in the story, without rehashing the same problems over and over. Therein lies the difficulty. Keeping the characters growing, changing, but having conflict in each story. Keeping the love scenes from being more than just physical acts of sex, but emotional turning points for one or both of the characters.

 

What I’ve decided to do, at least for book two, is take Lucy’s primary insecurity—that she isn’t “normal” because of her past, and run with it by highlighting how “normal” Sean is and see where it takes the two of them. Lucy is serious and focused; Sean is a daredevil and charming. Put in a female character like Sean and Lucy’s insecurities will shine. The female cop who is helping them find a missing teenager is everything that Lucy wants to be and thinks she isn’t–attractive on multiple levels, from personality to looks, having “normal” interests outside of work. The cop’s life and past doesn’t consume her: she’s doing a job and has a personal life. Lucy has a hard time separating these, and seeing how Sean is so natural with the stranger highlights Lucy’s fears and insecurities about not only herself, but their relationship. This should be the core conflict in all the scenes between Sean and Lucy, hanging over them, but be at least partly resolved by the end of the story.

 

Character development should be organic to the story, the the love scenes should continue that whether they are graphic or tame. I’m hoping that each book I can find one more area to work on. I’m finding I love writing a series, but at the same time? It’s just as hard as a stand alone. But in this business, nothing is easy.

 

Just curious . . . do you prefer stand alones or series? Why or why not? Does it matter? 

No sex, please, we’re mystery writers

by Alexandra Sokoloff

When my first book came out I didn’t read my reviews all that often, except the biggest ones.    Maybe that was mostly because I was so deep in the middle of the second and it was such an intense experience that I blocked out most of what else was going on around me.   I know some authors don’t read reviews at all.    I don’t avoid them, but I don’t try to hunt them down.   But you do get a lot of them by osmosis, and it is useful to have an overview, because by the fourth book I am getting a sense of some patterns of response, here.  

And one of them I find really amusing, always from men, of course, is the “unnecessary romance” gripe.    Usually phrased as “unnecessary sex”.  

Now, the first thing that comes to mind is, “Unnecessary to whom, exactly?’   Because I know these characters I’m writing pretty well, and I can assure you that they don’t feel sex is unnecessary.  As a matter of fact, if you asked them, they’d probably say it was about !%@#&* time by the time it finally happens.    I myself would be pretty unhappy if I had to go the whole length of a book without sex.

But it’s really interesting how some genre puritans – I mean purists – just do not think sex belongs in a crime thriller, or a horror novel, or a mystery. 

Maybe I’m just coming from a different frame of reference.   I’m sure Steve, Rob and Toni can back me up on this – the love subplot is just de facto in Hollywood, except in the most extreme cases, and so you learn to weave it in as an essential part of your plot.  

But I still can’t understand why people would be so put off by sex in a thriller.   If you’re not getting off on the sex, doesn’t that mean, basically, you’re getting off on the violence?   Worrisome.

Anyway, long rant to get to what I really wanted to talk about.   I am not going to be taking sex out of my books (in fact, having done a paranormal, now, coming out in November, people who read me better be bracing themselves for more than usual).     But I do feel very strongly that the love plot has to be essential to the action, and thematic, not just a throwaway.

It’s sort of a monumental task to take on the structure of romance, so I’m been starting to break it down into elements one at a time, to see what I can learn about what makes a great love story.   I talked about how crucial theme is in a love story before, and today I’m focusing on a particular dynamic between characters that I’ve noticed lately.

There’s a saying I’m sure you’ve heard that in a relationship there is always a Lover and a Loved One. Whether that’s actually true in life, I’m not sure I want to know; one would hope these things would be somewhat equal. But I know this Lover/Loved One dymanic tends to be the case in romantic comedy (the romance readers/writers will have to tell me if it’s the case in romance fiction, I’d love to know your thoughts.). Either way, it’s a useful model for writing romance, and I think for a love subplot, too.

In most stories, for most of the story, there’s an imbalance between the hero and heroine, or hero/hero, or heroine/heroine… the two lovers, whatever gender and orientation they may be. (I’m not going to get into the subgenre of ménages today, sorry.)

At first what this looks like is that there’s a Pursuer and a Pursued – but the pursuer might not be the one who loves most deeply. The pursuit might be ego-based, or to win a bet, or obviously, just sexual conquest – any number of things.
Now, the two characters might equally hate each other at first: as in WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS, YOU’VE GOT MAIL.

But pretty quickly in most romantic comedies, one of the characters becomes more interested in the other, and becomes the pursuer.

Note that the protagonist can be either the pursuer or the pursued. In NOTTING HILL, Hugh Grant is the pursuer (in that diffident English way, of course…). In IT’S COMPLICATED, Meryl Streep is the pursued.

In WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, Harry is the pursuer. In YOU’VE GOT MAIL, Tom Hanks is the pursuer. In PHILADEPHIA STORY, Katharine Hepburn is the pursued. (arguably in these three films there is no true protagonist; the hero/heroine characters are about as equal as characters ever get in a story)

Hmm, do we see a pattern here? Male pursues, female is pursued. Maybe biology really IS destiny. No, wait – in BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY, Bridget is the pursuer. In BRINGING UP BABY, Katharine Hepburn is the pursuer (but not the protagonist). And I’m sure you can think of a lot of other examples.)

But the pursuer is not the same as the Lover, necessarily. In NOTTING HILL, Hugh is both the pursuer and the lover (he is definitely the one who feels most deeply in the tentative dance going on between him and Julia Roberts). In IT’S COMPLICATED, Alec Baldwin is very much the pursuer, Meryl Streep is the pursued, and Steve Martin is the lover (also a pursuer, but overwhelmed by Alec Baldwin’s intense pursuit. But in this trio, Steve Martin is most clear about who and what he wants.).

In WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, Harry is the pursuer, but not the lover. At a certain point, it’s Sally who realizes that she wants more than friendship. She becomes the lover.

In PHILADELPHIA STORY, Cary Grant is the pursuer and also the lover, but interestingly, he’s coming from much more of a position of strength than the lover usually comes from; from the beginning, he has no intention of compromising.

Pursued and pursuer, lover and loved one, different combinations of and variations on those dynamics. 

And once I noticed that dynamic, I also noticed that there’s a very typical scene, usually in the very last part of Act II:2, but sometimes in Act III, that I’ll call “The Lover Makes a Stand” (Takes a stand? Makes a stand? Looking it up. Okay, it’s “makes a stand.”).
 
And in this scene the Lover, or whoever has become the Lover by this point, the one who loves most deeply, basically says to the Loved One – “I’m not going to take your bullshit any more. Make up your mind. Either commit to me or don’t, but if you don’t, I’m out of here.”

Steve Martin tells Meryl Streep that she’s not done with Alec yet, and he doesn’t want to see her while she’s still emotionally involved with him. Hugh Grant tells Julia Roberts in the bookstore that between her “vicious temper” and his far more inexperienced heart, he doesn’t think he would recover from being discarded again, and turns down her offer to date. Sally refuses Harry’s offer to go to the New Year’s party as his “friends with benefits” date because “I’m not your consolation prize, Harry.”

Cary Grant – well, in PHILADELPHIA STORY Cary makes his stand at the very beginning, in action, not words. The whole movie is about him creating a situation that will force Katharine Hepburn to look at herself clearly and choose what and whom she really wants. Cary never begs. He manipulates, then stands back and watches until she falls, and in falling becomes the whole woman he always knew she could be, but he will not accept less than.

(And that, btw, is the sort of thing that makes a person Cary Grant…)

In all of the above scenes, the Lover’s Stand forces the Loved One to step up and commit just as deeply as the Lover is committed. But it seems that very, very, very often, it’s one character, the Lover, who has to force the issue.

It’s such a common scene, I’m going to have to stick it in my Story Elements Checklist, right around Sequence 6 or Sequence 7.

Now, sometimes there’s a different scene at this juncture, which I will call The Declaration. A very good example is in BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY, when Bridget races to the party to tell Colin Firth she loves him, only to find that his parents have thrown the party to announce his engagement and departure for America. Then she makes her Declaration – a mangled sort of toast that Colin understands is her desperate confession of love. It’s not the same as a Make a Stand scene because it’s not saying, “I’ve had it, I’m walking.” But it does put the cards on the table so the Loved One will have to make a decision, one way or another.

The more I look specifically at the way love plots work, the more these elements seem to be the natural – or unnatural, if you want – rhythm of courtship.    For better or worse, but that’s the way the game plays out.    And that’s an interesting thing to know, whether your book or script is all romance, or whether you’re working on a love plot for your mystery or thriller.

What do you think, all you romance writers out there who are far more qualified to write this post than I am? Am I on to something, here?

Any examples of Pursuer/Pursued, Lover/Loved One? Or examples of The Lover Makes A Stand scenes or Declaration scenes for us?   Or other essential elements of romance/love plots that you’ve found?

Or am I wrong, and sex really doesn’t belong in a mystery/thriller?

– Alex

———————-

I’m teaching a 2-week online Screenwriting Tricks For Authors workshop this month – details here.

WISE UP

By Stephen Jay Schwartz

I was going to call this blog “Moonwalking in New York,” and it was going to start off something like this:

“Are you guys all dancers?”

“Excuse me?” I said, to the girl in the elevator at the Hyatt Regency, New York.

“It’s about Michael Jackson, right?”

We had almost reached the lobby by the time I figured it out.  She was looking at my badge.  Thrillerfest.  I imagined a thousand thriller authors taking over Grand Central Station, doing the moonwalk to cuts from the Michael Jackson album “Thriller.”

“No, oh-no,” I said, but the doors had opened and she had already gone.

True story.  But then I thought, ugh, really?  I’m going to blog about Thrillerfest?  My God, I’ll never do it justice.  It was like a whole universe unto itself, a crazy, wonderful mystery-thriller love-fest that just simply cannot be represented accurately in a blog.  It’s like Rashomon, where everyone’s perception of the event is different.  It’s really a thousand Thrillerfests seen through a thousand different eyes.

I mean, if you really want to read a good blog about Thrillerfest, check out Jason Pinter’s article in The Huffington Post.  I took one look at that and said, “Well, shit, I can’t top that.”

Of course, if I did talk about Thrillerfest I’d talk about all the things that made it special for me, the things that stand out in my mind as simply exceptional experiences.  Things like meeting Heather Graham, then drinking “car bombs” with her and F. Paul Wilson and Eric Raab, my editor, at the Irish pub two blocks from the hotel, I could talk about the tsunami high school reunion feeling of that first night when all the authors bumped one into the other and in one moment I was arm-in-arm with Sophie Littlefield and the next Ken Follett and then Jamie Freveletti and Allison Brennan and Alan Jacobson and then I escaped for a breather and it was just me and Gar Anthony Haywood chilling out in the hallway, two cats in love with a world of words.  I could talk about the excitement of being handed a copy of the trade paperback version of BOULEVARD weeks before it hits the stores, or my rush to the Mysterious Bookstore for yet another Thrillerfest cocktail party and how excited I was to be able to thank Michael Connelly in person for the blurb he gave BEAT, or the fun I had at our Murderati lunch where I finally got to meet Tess and hang with Allison and Alafair and JT and her husband Randy and Neil Nyren and his wife.  Or how I kept going back to that pub for more “car bombs” (Guiness plus Jameson plus Bailey’s Irish Crème) with Heather and Paul and now Keith Raffel and Marcus Sakey and Jason Pinter and more, and how I roomed with Josh Corin and he was great and sweet and wonderful and he talked like a madman in his sleep, and how I loved the Debut Author’s Breakfast where I pitched Boulevard in sixty seconds or less and saw my books sell out of the bookstore during my signing, how I ditched the big banquet to eat pizza with my editor and debut author John Rector and we rode the Stanton Island Ferry while others gave speeches and received awards, and when we returned all was good and everybody and everything simply glowed with enthusiasm and glee.

But that’s not the blog I chose to write.

So I started a different blog, and called it “Newbie No-Mo.”

The concept being that, despite the fact that I’m still in my debut year, I feel more like a veteran than a newbie.  Newbie, No More.

Despite its catchy title, the blog was a college thesis documenting my rise from naïve newcomer to worldly author.  I wrote about the fact that I’ve been a Murderater (Murdermarauder?) for more than a year now, my first blog having been posted on May 22, 2009.  (So where was my one-year chip?  Shouldn’t someone have given me a one-year chip on my “birthday?”  Who’s running this meeting, anyway?)

The blog detailed the three different conferences I’ve seen:  Bouchercon, Left Coast Crime, and Thrillerfest.  There were graphs and pie charts showing the progression of my maturity in the business, beginning with those first sloppy attempts to pitch my book (in twenty words or less), and ending with the pinnacle of my success as represented in my ability to hand-sale Boulevard to the guy in the seat next to me on the airplane home, and how the momentum escalated further, climaxing with a slam-dunk pitch that sold my book to the Supershuttle driver who delivered me to my doorstep.

But there just wasn’t enough PASSION in these topics, so I bailed, I shut down, I closed out Microsoft Word and opened iTunes and I listened to a song by Aimee Mann called “Wise Up.”

Passion.  Why is it always music that takes me there?  Words are too wordy, they sometimes get in the way.  Music cuts right to the soul.

Aimee Mann… I love her voice and her phrasing and her range and control.  Her music brings me back to the core of what I’m feeling these days, and that feeling is passion.  That’s what got me here.

And where is here?  Here is two weeks away from the release of Boulevard in trade paperback:

See, that’s the cover I was passionate about from the start, and then Barnes & Noble had us change our cover to the one with the gun on it.  Which I love, too.  But this one really spoke to me.  My editor knew it, so he fought to get it for the paperback.

And then, two months after that, this little ditty hits the stores:

(Do me a favor and CLICK HERE – I couldn’t get the image to load up.)

Can you see why I’m such a nutcase over here?  I’m living my dream! 

So, I guess what I’m saying, at 2:30 am when my blog goes up in two hours, is that it’s all about passion.  When I start bitching about the bills and the dues I’m-a payin’, I better just chill out and…wise up.

 

SPACE OUT

By Brett Battles

Pari’s post on Monday and a question I was asked by a friend last week got me thinking about writing rules. Not the ones that Pari talked about, but the more mundane rules, the technical rules.

The question I was asked (and Steve was on the email, too, as it was from an old college friend of ours) was to settle a bet our friend had with her daughter. Her daughter had come home from school after getting a report back with a note from her teacher that said it was unnecessary for her to put two spaces after periods. My friend found this odd. She clearly remembered learning back when she was in school that you always put two spaces after the period. So she wanted to know who was right, and hence the question to Steve and I.

I remember that rule, too. Probably the most important – and impactful – class I took during my junior high experience (though I didn’t know it at the time) was a summer school typing class.  I went from a hunt and peck typist to a touch typist, and have never looked back. As someone who writes everyday, that’s been HUGE in my life. It has allowed me to write tons faster than I would have the old way. Along with learning to type without looking, I also learned the two spaces after a period rule.

For well after I got out of college I would dutifully double tap the space bar before I’d start a new sentence. That is until one day a co-worker said to me, “You don’t have to do that anymore.” At first I didn’t believe her, but she then explained to me why, and from that point forward, only a single tap for me.

You see, in today’s modern computerized world, you don’t have to double space after a period. Why? Well, in the typewriter/typesetting days (think everything pre-late 80s) type was pretty exclusively what is called mono-type. That is each letter takes up the same amount of space as the others. In other words a W would occupy a similar sized area as an I. In the monotype world, putting two spaces after a period helps readers know when a new sentence starts. There are still a few monotypes used on computers. The most common being Courier.

In the computer world, most typefaces are what’s called proportional type or fonts. In these the W and I do NOT take up the same space. They take the proportional space they need. Times and Helvetica and any number of others are examples of these.

With proportional type you do not, and should not, double space after the period. In addition, even in this computer age, it’s basically unnecessary to double space even when using Courier. Of course, if you’re still using a typewriter, tap-tap.

Most of you probably already knew this, but perhaps didn’t know the reason. Or perhaps you did. Either way, it was on my mind and I though would be a good idea to throw out there.

A few other manuscript guidelines…I won’t say rules because I’m sure there are variations…that may or may not be helpful:

• Make your margins one inch all the way around

• Double space your manuscript. (There are exceptions I allow myself, such as when I’m mimicking a newspaper article or emails or the like.)

• Start each chapter at least a quarter of the way down on the page. Nothing in stone on this one.

• Number your pages either in the footer or header. I use the upper right of the header, but I know others who use the middle of the footer…no hard/fast rule here.

• Don’t put THE END at the end. You’re reader will know.

• There are exceptions to everything

 

So what do you think? Got any guidelines you’d like to share?

 

A little PR: I was interviewed on BlogTalkRadio earlier this week. It was a lot of fun, and if you’re interested in listening to it, click here. Let me know what you think!

A Little R & R

by Rob Gregory Browne

You’ll have to forgive me for failing to show up at my appointed time last week.  Thank you to Dusty for so graciously stepping in to cover for me.  That’s one of the many great things about Murderati.  You know you can count on your fellow bloggers to cover your ass.

Right now I’m lying in a little bedroom in Aina Haina, a suburb of Honolulu.  We just arrived today and I’ve eaten an amazing sushi meal and I’m feeling a little zoned out, partly from the food, partly from the time change (it’s much later for me than the clock says) and partly because I’m coming down from one of the most intense experiences I’ve ever had as a writer.

They always say that your second published book is the hardest book to write.  The reason, of course, is that when you writing your second book, life has suddenly changed for you and you have this little thing called a deadline to deal with.  That puts a whole new twist on the situation.  You’re no longer an apiring writer (although I’m not sure I like that term.  If you’re writing regularly, you’re a writer, published or not), they’ve just paid you a hunk of money and it’s time to get professional.  Meaning, get the book in on time.

Well, I’m here to tell you that your second book is nothing.  It’s your seventh book that nearly kills you. 

(No, those of you keeping track haven’t miscounted.  I also write under a top secret pen name.)

After writing a draft of this current book very quickly, I was not satisfied with it.  I turned it in, got some much needed guidance from my editor, and just spent the last several months restructuring the book and adding some 30,000 words.  What I turned in on Monday is what I think is a much, much better book.  Hopefully my editor will agree.

I have to tell you that the task of fixing this book is probably the hardest I’ve ever worked.  I not only restructured, but the underlying mystery was changed, an entire subplot was scrapped and replaced with a new one, a new character added and a character who made a cameo in the original is now a major force in the story.

In other words, a LOT was done.  Not only were those 30,000 words added, but probably 50,000 were completely revamped on top of that.  In fact, there wasn’t a scene in the book that wasn’t changed.

Who ever said writing was easy?

So, now, here I sit, kicking back and taking it easy–or at least trying to.  Despite taking off to Hawaii for some much needed R & R, I’m having a little trouble winding down.  Although I have a feeling by tomorrow I’ll be doing just fine….

Anyway, no, not a lot to talk about — I’m all “talked” out right now.  But I am interested to know:

1.  What do you do to wind down after an intense period of work?

2.  Where is your favorite place to go to get away?

Until next time….

 

“Why the hell won’t they review my book?!!!”

(note: I’m traveling right now, promoting ICE COLD and “Rizzoli & Isles,” so apologies for the short blog post.  I won’t be able to respond to comments, but trust me, I will be checking them when I get home in two weeks.)

All you writers reading this have no doubt stared in frustration at the book reviews page of major newspapers and wondered why your title isn’t included in the latest roundup of novels.  John Q. Stuckup’s latest literary novel about  the usual (yawn) white-male-midlife-and-bad-marriage-crisis will eat up a zillion column inches.  So will the review of Jane Babyface’s debut memoir about her angst-filled days as a barista/ hooker.  But your novel? The wham-bam thriller that will probably find twice the audience as Mr. Stuckup’s or Ms. Babyface’s?  It’s nowhere to be found in any newspaper review pages.  Yes, it may have been dutifully reviewed in Publishers Weekly and Booklist and that perennial good friend to authors, Romantic Times.  But good luck finding it mentioned in the New York Times or the Washington Post.  Or, for that matter, in any major big-city newspaper.

It’s no doubt a sore point for many genre authors.  After all, we’re the engine that drives publishing, the creators of the product that the public actually wants to read.  But where are the reviews of thrillers, romances and science fiction in newspaper review pages?  Are we being discriminated against? 

Perhaps. 

Or maybe the reason is this:

 

You are looking at the July fiction reviews bookshelf of the Philadelphia Inquirer.  These are the galleys that the Inquirer is considering for reviews during the month of July.  Mnd you, this is only the fiction section; the nonfiction section has a cabinet with just as many galleys waiting for review.  This is only for the month of July, and these are the survivors after a severe winnowing down of all the galleys the newspaper received for this month.  

I had the chance to visit the Inquirer building during my recent trip to Philly, and journalist Michael Klein was kind enough to give me a tour of the newsroom.  (Get a load of the messy desks — they look like mine!)

 

 

Klein pointed out bins and bins of discarded galleys which had already been rejected.  He also told me that, every week, the Inquirer receives about two hundred galleys for review. That’s eight hundred a month.  

If yours is one of them, good luck getting noticed, much less reviewed.  The chances are, it got chucked into one of those recycle bins.  

With that many galleys flooding the newspaper, reviewers have to make tough choices.  Big debut novels, of course, get special notice.  So do books by high-profile or celebrity authors such as Glen Beck or Sarah Palin.  But for those of us who reliably hone our craft year after year?  We have to fight for every column inch of attention.

My visit to the Inquirer was a sobering look at how tough newspapers have it these days, trying to keep up with all they have to cover.  Every author wants attention, but one look at the piles of discarded galleys reminded me of just how hard it is to be noticed when you’re fighting for attention along with two hundred other books.  Every single week.

 


Rules

 by Pari

“Can I pick your brain for a moment?” said my friend.

“Sure.” Here it comes.

“I’m taking this dialog-writing class . . .” He looked down at his feet, cleared his throat, scratched his nose. “And the instructor said that if we don’t have a lot of dialog on every page, no one will want to read our work.”

Oh, for Heaven’s sake. Tell your instructor to go to —

“What do you think, Pari? Is that right?” he said. “Do we really need to have so much dialog? Because when I open the books I like, they all have a lot of description.”

Oh, man. His fundamental question gave me hives. I’ve met so many new writers who try to adhere to all the how-tos and must-dos, they end up with can’t-reads.

So what’s the deal with rules? Which ones are useful? Which ones have lost their meaning? And how is a writer to know the difference?

In order to talk about this, I divided rules into three categories. They include a few examples. Use them as a launchpad for thinking about this topic and for our discussion.

Grammar
No repetition.
Never start a sentence with “And” or “But” or “Because.”
And watch those commas; don’t ever ever ever split an infinitive!
Or what was I thinking of? Ah, yes. No prepositions at the end of a sentence.
Or sentence fragments.

Every writer I know has had an encounter with Ms. Corrector Lady (always a woman, in my experience) whose raison d’etre is to send us emails every time we err grammatically. While it may be a civic duty to give her life meaning, I can’t help wonder if she’s living in the past?

Genre Specific
In writing traditional mysteries, I’ve met:
You have to introduce the killer somewhere in the first two chapters.
You have to introduce the killer within the first 50 pages.
You can’t have a series that switches location from book to book. (Pshaw. I did that with Sasha and no one seemed to complain.)
You have to start with a dead body.
No multiple POVs; those are for thrillers.
Not more than 80,000 words.

You get the idea.

What are the rules for thrillers, romantic suspense, science ficiton, fantasy, YA, romance etc.?

General
No prologs.
Use a lot of dialog.
Don’t use a lot of dialog.
Don’t pitch a series.
Pitch a series.
Edit and polish and edit and polish again.
Don’t overedit your work because it’ll lose its heart.

“Know the rules so you can break them.” Oh, come on.
“Cut the stuff that bores people.” Yeah. Sure. Right. Clever sentiment. Totally useless to a beginning writer.

Observations
#1  Grammar is changing. It’s always changing. Yes, a person needs to know how to form sentences and paragraphs. However, there’s a lot more freedom in this area than there used to be. Is this a good thing? A bad one? Hell, I don’t know. What do you think?

#2  “Genre” is becoming a useless concept. While purists might be upset with all the blending between various literary traditions, I’m dancing a jig. Someday, I hope the only hard genre distinction is between Fiction and Nonfiction.

#3   Many general rules stem from pet peeves. Like the one I mentioned at the beginning of this post, they’re literary soundbites that have become codified because people want a magic bullet.

What do you think?

Which rules still rock?
Which ones have outlived their usefulness?
Are there new ones that you like, find helpful?

I’m looking forward to this discussion.



 

in which I make up a point just to get to post this twitter feed

(a Twitter / Facebook / social media how-to)

by Toni McGee Causey

Okay, look, there are lots of discussions going on (one at Thrillerfest this weekend, moderated by our own Allison Brennan), wherein Social Networking is dissected and analyzed and pondered and ground to a pulp. Since I sadly was not at Thrillerfest (whimper) and missed their terrific panel, I have no clue what was discussed there… but I’m willing to bet that there was at least some reference to using social networking sites for “branding” and “getting your name out there” for the public and “keeping a presence” on the interwebs and promoting your book.

But, mostly, social networking is really just supposed to be social. You know. Fun. 

[I will tell you one thing–I have had people follow me in order to be able to DM me about their latest release. It’s not a personal DM (direct message)… it’s a canned message. Spam. I hate it. I will not buy a book if I’m spammed like that. If you have a review that you’re proud of, that’s great. Or a blurb? Terrific. If someone is excited about someone else’s book and mentions it–wonderful–in fact, I’ll tend to pay more attention if someone is mentioning you than if you’re doing it yourself. I will follow links to reviews and I have bought books like this. But a direct spam in my private in-box? No. No no no no no. And really? No. Don’t do it. You don’t want to look smarmy and socially inept. You wouldn’t show up at my door in a shiny leisure suit when I was having a casual party for friends and barge in and announce that your book was out today and you had this great offer and by the way, what was my name again? Well, maybe some people would, and those people get deleted and ignored.][I don’t care *how* famous you are.]

So, back to social networking. I think it’s okay to mention what you’re working on, talking about the process of what you’re going through. It’s okay to mention when your book is coming out, because that’s an event in your life. But if all of your posts to Facebook and Twitter (etc.) are promotional, people are going to tune you out. You will become the equivalent of the DVR’d commercial: zip, on to the next interesting thing, instead of hanging around and getting to know you.

Instead, social media should be used for fun. Networking and promotional stuff is just a side benefit, a little lagniappe, if you will. Take, for example, this exchange Friday night, wherein we pick up this story with Colleen crouched on her sofa, wielding a spatula:

 

colleenlindsay 

I’m not afraid to eat fried worms but I am afraid of this monster flying roach thingie that’s aiming for my head. #whyineedashotgun

 

ToniMcGeeCausey 

@colleenlindsay A fast remedy for the flying roach and you’ll think I’m crazy, but it works–hair spray. If you don’t have bug spray.

 

colleenlindsay

@ToniMcGeeCausey Er, um, I have a buzz cut. Thus, I do not own hair spray.


ToniMcGeeCausey

@colleenlindsay oven cleaner? windex? really anything spray-able. Also, I now know what to tell your clients to get you for Christmas. 😉

 

Jinxie_G 

@colleenlindsay Got any Raid? And a lighter? Instant flame thrower!


colleenlindsay

@Jinxie_G The way my luck has been going the past three weeks, I’m just as likely to set the whole house ablaze. Good suggestion, though!

 

Jinxie_G

@colleenlindsay Yeah, I thought of that after the fact. LOL Seriously thought, what Toni suggests should work with the sticky wings.

 

colleenlindsay 

Damn it, SIGOURNEY WEAVER would know how to kill this giant roach!

 

ToniMcGeeCausey 

@colleenlindsay uh, Sigourney didn’t fare so well by the third movie. She was having alien baby, killed self. Do not go down that path.

 

colleenlindsay 

I swear to God Stinkyboy just offered that roach a martini.

[note to reader: Stinkyboy is Colleen’s cat.]

 

colleenlindsay

This roach needs to die. #whatwouldBrianBoitanodo? #hedmakeaplanandseeitthrough #withaflamethrowerprobably

 

literaticat

@colleenlindsay Honestly, Colleen, put on your big girl panties & deal with it. I know actual babies who’re tougher than you. #sissylindsay


colleenlindsay

@literaticat I am not denying my inherent sissy nature. I AM NOT ASHAMED TO BE A WUSS.

 

JM_Kelley

@colleenlindsay Scrubbing Bubbles Foam will kill any multi-legged beastie & make your surfaces gleam while it’s choking the life out of ’em.



@JM_Kelley I HAVE SCRUBBING BUBBLES! I will BUBBLE it to death!

 

colleenlindsay 

ACK! Just dive-bombed my head again.

 

colleenlindsay

Sneak attack! Have disabled Mothra with Scrubbling Bubbles. It fell behind stove. Not waiting around to see if it crawls back out, dammit!


Meanwhile, in a related conversation, after HC mentioned she had firebombed a spider once…

HC_Palmquist

@ToniMcGeeCausey He pissed me off, trapping me in the house like that. I finally got so mad, I made SURE my revenge was not served cold.


ToniMcGeeCausey 

@HC_Palmquist LOL… damn, girl, you’re hard core. I’ve Raided ’em and WD 40’d em and Lysol’d em, but I have never firebombed one.

 

ToniMcGeeCausey 

@HC_Palmquist of course, given that it’s *me*… me+firebomb would be a very sad thing. I once tried to shoot a rat with a gun, tho.

ToniMcGeeCausey 

@HC_Palmquist missed it.


 

@HC_Palmquist managed to kill a really nice piece of molding and a desk leg.

 

Then a few minutes later… after we hadn’t heard from Colleen in a while…

Stinkyboy

Waiting for Fat Biped to fall asleep. We will then offer her up as a prearranged sacrifice to the Great Flying Roach God. Shhhh! Don’t tell!

 

There were signs the next night that Colleen lived. Stinkyboy will lounge to doublecross another day.

We had fun, goofing off, all of us. I don’t know Colleen, other than she’s a literary agent at FinePrint Literary Management. I did not start following her because she’s an agent — I am extremely happy with my agent, Stephanie Kip Rostan of Levine/Greenberg. (Exceptionally happy.) I started following Colleen because someone retweeted a funny comment she’d written.

Here’s the thing… Colleen accomplished something pretty smart with her playfulness — she demonstrated that she’s got a great sense of humor, she’s self-deprecating, she’s easy to interact with, and she’s human–not at all stuffy and scary, the way so many agents are perceived. She does a Q&A every so often (I haven’t kept track of when–perhaps she’ll mention it in the comments), and if I were ever asked by anyone if I knew anything about her, I’d say that I thought she was a lot of fun, and clever and approachable and yet, I’ve also seen her answer questions very professionally. Now really, she wouldn’t have accomplished that if she were telling me she was fun and clever and yet, professional. She simply showed it.

Show, don’t tell.

Treat your social media as fun; be a friend, interact as friends. Ask people about their day, see how they’re doing. Respond to what’s going on in their lives. Don’t try so hard to be anything important and for heaven’s sake, don’t just interact to promote yourself. Do pass along links of interest and contests you’re sponsoring–those are often appreciated, but don’t get so aggressive that you pass along every freaking contest you’ve ever seen on the internet. Most of all, relax. Twitter and Facebook are the equivalent of gathering for a break at the water cooler. If you were standing there, you wouldn’t want to hear someone evangelize or detail their latest colonoscopy or try to sell you some Amway. You’d just want to hang out, have some fun, maybe talk about something interesting in the news and then go back to work. You’ll remember the people who made you laugh and you’ll avoid the ones who were hounding you for something. Social media works pretty much the same way.

Plus, you learn that Raid + lighter = flamethrower, and you just never know when that might come in handy.

 

So tell me, ‘Rati, what odd / fun / interesting thing have you learned lately from a social media site?