Don’t be arrogant

by Tess Gerritsen

Last year, I received an email from an unpublished novelist who had been sending out query letters, plus the first fifty pages of his manuscript, to literary agents. None of the agents had asked to see the entire novel. "What's the problem here?" he asked. "I have Hollywood writing credits. I have a background in story analysis. But all I get back from these agents are form-letter rejections." He wondered, was the New York publishing world such a closed shop that you have to know someone just to get your foot in the door?

His background did indeed sound impressive. He'd worked as an executive in the film industry and had been associated with some major names. Just based on his work experience, I would think that a literary agent would have been very interested in this man's novel. So why was he getting only rejections? I told him I couldn't read his manuscript, but I offered to look at his query letter.

And that's where I found the answer.

The letter starts off well enough, describing the writer's extensive experience in Hollywood. He certainly seemed like a man who'd be able to recognize a great story when he sees it. Were I a literary agent, I would definitely have sat up and paid attention.

But then he commits a fatal mistake: He says, essentially: "This novel is superbly written and bound to be a success."

The letter doesn't offer even the barest description of the plot. Instead, it commands: "Read these first three chapters, then call me for the rest. What you'll find is a great plot and amazing twists. Read it, and then let's get down to business."

Finally, he closes by saying that he's sending this material out simultaneously to some big-shot agents. The unspoken message is clear: you'd better get your ass in gear if you don't want to miss out on the book deal of a lifetime!

I stared at that letter for quite some time, debating whether or not I should tell this writer the painful truth. I could have taken the easy and cowardly way out and written back: "Gee, it beats me why it's not selling! Good luck and see ya!" But I must have had a few glasses of wine that night, because I ended up telling him exactly what I thought: If I were an agent, I wouldn't take you on in a million years.

I explained that his letter was a turn-off in so many ways. First, he announces to the agent that he is a brilliant writer. (Oh yeah? Says who?) Second, he doesn't provide a synopsis (because synopses are for the common folk?). He expects the agent to read his chapters and immediately recognize his genius. Third, he tells the agent how she's supposed to react to his work. He tells her how to do her job. I can almost hear what the agent is muttering as she sits at her desk reading this letter.

And she's not saying nice things.

Maybe this outrageous display of overconfidence is something you learn if you work too long in Hollywood. Maybe it's part of doing business in a town where everyone is striving to be skinnier, richer, and on the covers of more magazines than anyone else, where everyone has a personal publicist whose only job is to tell the world how bodacious you are.

I don't think this sort of noisy chest-beating goes over well in the more sedate publishing world. Yet unpublished authors, whether or not they come from Hollywood, often seem to commit the same sins as this man did. In query letters, they'll describe their manuscript as "well-written," or "sure to be a hit" or "as thrilling as The Da Vinci Code — only more literary!" Way too many of them will tell you that "my mom loves it! And she knows a good book!"

Literary agents don't give a damn what your mother thinks about your book. They don't want to be told that your book is wonderful and that you're the next John Grisham. They want to know what your story is about, who your characters are, and why readers should care about them. They want to know that you're cooperative and willing to work hard. They want to know that you're not a jerk.

And sending them an arrogant query letter doesn't help your cause.

Published novelists who've been in the business a while know that the writing profession is far more likely to breed humility than arrogance. We're forced to live with uncertainty. No matter how well your last book sold, your next one could be a flop. You could be a bestselling author today, and a few years later be unable to land a book contract. It took me ten years and ten books before I hit the bestseller list. During those first ten years, I wondered if I'd ever make a living at the craft. Even now, I never stop worrying that I've lost my touch, that people will stop buying my books, that I'll never write another good one. I never forget that my success is built just as much on sheer good luck as it is on my talent. It's hard to be arrogant when I know how easily it all could have turned out differently.

After I wrote back to that aspiring novelist, telling him how much I disliked his query letter, he took it very well. He said that I was right, that he could see how his query letter would turn off agents. I told him to take out all the chest-pounding, include a synopsis, and stop talking about what a great book it is. He said he would re-write the letter and send it out again.

Only a few weeks later, he happily told me that an agent had just taken him on, and publishers were already expressing interest. Clearly the man has talent; it was his attitude that got in the way of making the sale. But he was able to step back and re-evaluate his approach and see where he'd gone wrong. And he was willing to fix it.

I look forward to reading his book when it's published. I hope it's a hit.

Silence, please!

by Pari

It sounds easy enough: Commit to one internet-free work day each week.

That resolution is related to another one this year: start each day with writing rather than email or other distractions.

But wouldn't you know? On Wednesday, after taking my older daughter to school, I started my computer and went straight to the Inbox. It took a few minutes before I realized what I was doing.

On Thursday I was smarter. I didn't turn on the computer at all.

You see, the internet is a comfortable habit, a ritual. It's also an incredible time and creativity black hole. When I spend the first hour of my day reading and answering emails, visiting blogs, checking out news sites – my mind is already crammed with other people's concerns and ideas. It's even worse than that; the habit leads me to internalize much of what I read and begin thinking stupid thoughts such as:
* Why bother writing at all when the publishing industry is going to hell?
* What do Sasha's adventures matter when compared to our failing economy?
* Who'd care about Darnda in the face of global warming?

We all know how productive those kinds of questions are.

When I read JT's recent posts on the writing life I realized I'd been thinking along the same lines. What were my work habits? Were they helping or hindering me?

The most important question of all was: Why do I feel so overwhelmed and undercreative?

Problem #1: CLUTTER
Physically — my office and house are full of unnecessary crap. Compound my packrat ways with three other people and you've got a real mess. There's no visual peace.
The good news is that I can throw stuff away, get rid of the papers I've kept since grade school. Shedding the junk, the tangible things, of my past life is incredibly liberating.

Mentally — Oh, boy. Talk about running in circles. Whether it's on the internet or worrying about the kids, my husband, my career, money, making dinner . . .

I never feel like I'm doing enough.

Here's the kicker: Mental quiet nurtures my creativity like nothing else. It's essential. But I've put myself in a position where it's so rare it almost feels like cheating. I've forgotten how to BE quiet without feeling guilty.

A remedy for this is a little more difficult to build into my life than you might think.

Problem #2: Marketing
I honestly believe that just about everything an author does that touches others can fall under the rubric of public relations/marketing. Because of this, I've allowed myself to feel like I HAVE to do everything. Every email MUST be answered personally and sincerely. New marketing outlets MUST be found, researched and pursued. Every blog MUST be visited. You get the idea.

I feel like I'm never doing enough.

Here's the pisser: You've got to have new product to market. Otherwise it's a case of diminishing returns when you're only flogging your past works. If I'm constantly worried about marketing, I'm not writing my fiction and expanding my "product base." I know that sounds utterly unromantic, but it's a business reality for my career trajectory.

Back to last Thursday . . .
One of the things I noticed when I sat in my office chair that day was that the computer pulled at me even though it was off. There was this weird palpable vibe, a nervous tingling in my stomach. A hum. I felt tethered from the machine right to my heart.

Screw that!

I left the room and edited hardcopy at the dining room table. I wrote with pen on paper.

And . . .
I had breakthroughs in plot points that had been bugging me for months.

In the afternoon, I went back into the office and began throwing out some of the junk I'd kept for future maybes. Jettisoning an old term paper would make me think of something in another part of the house and I'd get up and throw that out too. In the middle of that flurry of activity with all those connections coming to the fore and all those synapses firing, my mind was wonderfully at ease.

I could feel the shift and it energized me.

My internet-free work day demonstrated that peacefulness is more complicated and less easily defined than I thought. Much of the noise comes from within. Guilt is born from a misguided idea that accessiblity or the old butt-in-chair AT THE COMPUTER technique is synonomous with productivity.

It's not for me.

I realize I've painted myself into a psychological corner. I've surrounded myself with technological temptation and noise and have convinced myself that it's my real work. It's easier in a fragmented life like mine — with kids and other obligations — to justify grabbing a few minutes to shoot off an email than it is to sit there staring at a blue sky.

But which activity is ultimately more important?

Which one fosters the mental environment for creativity?

I know that my happiness and productivity are linked to finding more time for blue-sky gazing. So far, a potential antidote is to turn off the computer at least one work day a week. Since I can't go on long retreats, it's the respite I can provide myself that will keep me in touch — and will affirm and strengthen — my attempts to find the quiet to be creative on a daily basis.

I might end up w/o the computer more frequently than that; it feels so good. Or maybe I'll find something else that's even better.

The internet/technology aren't intrinsically bad. Not at all. But I've found they're culprits in the way I approach my craft.

What about you?
How do you find the consistent and real silence to hear your own thoughts, to let your creativity speak?

The Villain’s Journey

The problem with blogging after Alex is that I feel inferior. She knows so much
more than I do about story and story structure that I feel wholly inadequate.

But I wanted to talk about villains, because villains are near and dear to my
heart. So even though I’m practically dying to hear more about what Alex says
about villains, I’m going to put out my own theories about what works—and what
doesn’t—with I read villains.

I never realized that villains were so important in my writing until I received
my revision letter for my debut novel. My editor said that the scenes where I
went into my villain’s POV were so strong that she wanted more of them.

I was taken aback a bit because I had not consciously thought about the structure
of the story and the villain’s POV specifically. Since I write
organically—without an outline or plan—I tend to write whatever scene is
logically happening at that time in the story. So I went back and added a
couple scenes in logical places where my editor felt that either adding or expanding
on the villain’s POV would make the book stonger.

Then the marketing material came out about my debut trilogy. My publisher likened my
style to “Julie Garwood meets Thomas Harris.”

I have a confession to make. At that point (2005), I had never read Julie
Garwood OR Thomas Harris.

I thought then that Julie Garwood only wrote historicals. And while I had seen the movie
SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, I’d never read the book.

What did I do next? Well, the obvious. I bought all the Julie Garwood romantic
suspense novels and all Thomas Harris novels (though I haven’t read HANNIBAL
yet.)

I still don’t quite get the connection, but at least I have a glimmer
of understanding. The Julie Garwood connection was more to establish my romance
roots, while the Thomas Harris connection was to show how I was different than
a traditional romantic suspense. Because few romantic suspense novelists go
deep into the psyche of the killer. (My friend Karen Rose is one—if you haven’t
read her, you should.) But honestly, Garwood and Harris are so phenomenal as
storytellers that I knew the comparison was more a marketing gimmick than
truth.

I have another confession. I’m not a huge fan of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Yes, it’s a
brilliant movie and a great book. The primary villain, Hannibal, is alluring on
many different levels (largely due to Anthony Hopkins performance which in many
ways influenced my reading of the book, so I don’t have a good assessment of
the novel because it’s so intertwined with the movie.) But I’m not a fan because
of the heroine: I did not like Clarice Starling. I wanted her to succeed, and I
admired her overcoming her fears at the end of the book and going into the
lion’s den to rescue the girl in the pit from Buffalo Bill, the serial killer.
But as a heroine, I thought she made several TSTL mistakes.

First, she revealed far too much about herself to Hannibal. Second, when Hannibal
escaped, she didn’t fear for herself. What she says to her friend at Quantico
that he “won’t go after me” is just stupid. Okay, maybe she thinks he wouldn’t,
but good Lord! He just skinned a man and put the dead man’s face over his and
lay there waiting for someone to “save” him. He’s ruthless and vicious and a
genius. Alluring and repulsive at the same time. So yeah, she might have
intuitively known he wouldn’t go after her, but dammit, she should be scared
anyway—if not for herself, then for everyone else in the world.

Hannibal is the best of villains. Clarice Starling wasn’t worthy of him.

And that is the crux of the villain/hero conflict. To make a villain worthy of your villain. And, unfortunately, Clarice Starling wasn’t worthy of Hannibal—even though she got the bad guy in the end. Why? Because of her, Hannibal–an evil, brilliant,
maniacal, meticulous predator–escaped.

So I didn’t hate SILENCE OF THE LAMBS because honestly, it is the standard bearer
for all serial killer novels that followed. (And though it ticked me off, it's still a great movie in so many ways and I'm happy to watch it over and over again.) It is a classic. But RED DRAGON, the story that came before SILENCE, was, in my opinion, superior in every way to its sequel.

Perhaps I liked this book more because I read it before I saw the two film versions of
the book. Hands down, RED DRAGON was superior to MANHUNTER. IMO, though
MANHUNTER was fairly true to the book until the climax where they totally
deviated and cut off the movie before the end and I felt CHEATED, the movie was
also plodding; Will Graham’s conflict and introspection that worked fabulously
in the written story was slow and tedious as a verbal monologue; and the
villain was two-dimensional and hollow, the opposite of the depth of character
revealed in the book. RED DRAGON, though more violent on screen than its
predecessor, showed Will Graham’s conflict on screen rather than had him
verbally expound on it; the villain (played by Ralph Fiennes) showed the depth
of character as portrayed in the novel; and the ending was true to the book.

RED DRAGON is Will Graham’s story, the FBI Agent who caught Hannibal Lecter in the
first place. He almost died in the process. (And presumably, almost eaten.) But it's not about Will capturing Hannibal; it's about how will handles the aftermath of what happened, and how he can once again go after another sadistic killer. Will is tortured in so many ways, but he is truly one of the good guys. He has
many battles, including drinking, but he has so much empathy with the victims
that you, the reader, have empathy with the victims. You feel Will’s pain. If I
learned anything about storytelling from this book, it’s that how your
characters feel about their job, their duty, their honor, and the very real
conflicts that arise from such is just as important as the current case they’re working. We don’t live in a vacuum; we are the sum of our past, of our emotion and experiences. True heroes are not fearless; they are not without conflict or pain; they make
mistakes and they worry about their decisions. True heroes are you and me who
overcome or fears and limitations to do the right thing.

And a villain, to be a strong character, must be worthy of the hero. Francis
Dolarhyde is a superior villain. He is worthy of Will Graham in the same way
that Hannibal Lecter is worthy of Will Graham. In fact, Hannibal Lecter in many
ways created the person Will is today (i.e. in RED DRAGON.)

Reading RED DRAGON taught me that the villain’s backstory is as important—if not more
important—than what the villain is doing in the present.

In Christopher Vogler's THE WRITERS JOURNEY, he said that the villain is the hero
of his own journey. As soon as I read that, so many things clicked for me. Any
story must be fully fleshed out to avoid stereotypes or caricature. As we go
into our hero's head, so must we go into our villain's head. We must understand
his GMC (goals, motivation and conflict) perhaps even more so than the hero and
heroine.

A killer who kills for the sake of killing isn’t interesting on any level; there
should be a reason that the reader can buy into. The reason doesn’t have to be
justifiable for the reader in the sense that the reader, in the same
circumstances, would kill; but the reason must be justifiable for the
villain—that based on the personality and backstory of the killer, under the
circumstances yes, we understand why he/she is committing just evil and violent
acts.

A three-dimensional villain, even if he doesn't see much page time, will always
make a story stronger. The stronger the villain, the stronger the conflict and
more important, the better your hero and heroine. Who cares if your hero
defeats some weak criminal? Your story villain should be equal to or stronger
than your hero. So that when the hero wins, we feel as if we’ve just been to
the pit of Hell and back.

Now you might think I’m contradicting myself (and I’m not surprised!) because I
earlier said that Clarice Starling wasn’t worthy of Hannibal. Hannibal was
certainly the stronger character, as it should be suspense. My problems had to
do with her thought processes. That she wasn’t scared when he escaped. That she
didn’t feel guilty of culpable in his escape. Giving him a reward for giving
her information is fine: that doesn’t bother me. Her idiocy in not being scared
of him bothered me.

One thing Thomas Harris does particularly well in RED DRAGON is to get into the
characters heads—both the villain and the hero. We see the battle within both
of them as they move toward the finale. Will Graham is battling not only the
unknown killer (Dolarhyde) but the psychologically destructive Hannibal Lecter.
Hannibal will say or do anything to destroy Will—on the surface he claims to
admire him because Will figured it out—that Hannibal was guilty—and put him in
prison (a mental hospital.) But underneath he is furious that Will—someone he
considered inferior in every way—stopped him and took away his freedom. Which
is why he does what he does in the book. (I don’t want to give it away—I think
anyone who writes serial killer novels should read this book.) Hannibal both
helps Will reach his goal, and he sets up Will so that Hannibal might attain his goal: destroying the man who denied him freedom.

But RED DRAGON is not Hannibal’s story, and in fact Hannibal plays a small but
important catalyst role. It’s truly Will and Francis Dolayhyde’s story.
Dolarhyde is a tragic villain. While I have always understood the sympathetic
villain, this was the first time I understood how the past truly shapes the villain, and in many
ways, the villain is still living in the past. By killing “happy families”
taking special care with the mother—Dolarhyde is returning to his childhood and
the rejections he faced early on by his mother. Dolarhyde would have been just
another monster with a so-sad childhood if he hadn’t been made human by his
affection for a blind colleague. In that relationship, we see how he wants so
badly to be loved for who he is, not only identified by his physical handicap.
That gives him depth of character that few villains achieve in fiction.

And it’s something I constantly strive for.

A villain has specific goals. Murder is not the goal. Murder is the means to an
end. Very few villains kill simply to kill. It's the feeling the murder gives
them, or how they felt before, during, or after the crime that is A goal, but
it may not be the ONLY goal. That Dolarhyde breaks the mirrors in his victim’s
homes; that he kills the children quickly and without pain (or little pain) but
makes the mother’s suffer, is all significant. But what is his goal? Revenge
for how his mother treated him? No. His goal was more a manifestation, from a
physical monster into a beautiful creature; the more “beautiful” he became in
his mind (i.e. turning into the Red Dragon) the more of a monster he became in
real life. But his goal was ultimately to be reborn. (Though again, that’s just
my opinion, and there are other valid commentaries on this story.) And there's also the cruel dead grandmother, and a bit of PSYCHO in the story, but in an even more twisted (and fantastic) way. So we are left with the question that if Dolarhyde's beautiful mother didn't leave him because of his physical deformity (which is actually quite minor) with his cruel grandmother, and if his cruel grandmother didn't abuse him physically and emotionally, would he have turned into a psychopath and killed complete families? Or was that his destiny? The ultimate question I could argue on both sides: is a killer born or made? Nature or nurture?

In KILLING FEAR, my villain's goal is not to kill, but to feel. He has never had a
real human emotion–he can't. He was born without empathy or feelings. He
learns early on that he receives a physical adrenalin rush when he causes pain
to others–either emotional pain or physical pain. Over time this escalates. He
attempts to satisfy his need for adrenalin by becoming involved in extreme
sports–and for a time that works. But over time, even those challenges are
lacking. That he kills is incidental. Yes, he enjoys it but not for the killing
part. He needs to kill to receive that physical rush—the adrenalin which is a
FEELING–by watching the terrified faces of his victims. He lives vicariously
through the emotions of others. (An example of NATURE creating a killer.)

In SUDDEN DEATH, I ended up challenging myself and trying something beyond what I believed I was capable of. I have two villains. (I’m not giving anything away because by the end of the first chapter you know that there are two villains), but one of the
villains is insane. In my first draft, I didn’t get into his head because, to
be honest, I was scared to. I’d never gone into the head of a villain who
really was not truly there. I had no idea how to do it. But my editor felt that
if I wrote the scenes from his POV rather than his killing partner’s POV they
would be more powerful. So I read up on certain disorders and how someone
“snaps” and why, and how they function on a day-to-day basis. I realized as I
got into his head that he would have killed himself before he killed anyone
else. I had to deal with that knowledge—so his partner ultimately stops him
from killing himself, and that changed everything. I could feel his pain and
conflict, why he killed and what he thought he’d get out of it, and what he
really got out of it. It was a difficult exercise for me because I’d never done
it before with that deranged a character. Most of my killers were logical (in
their mind) and because of that, I could understand them. Ethan is not logical.
His partner, however, is. (An example of NURTURE–or rather, unusual circumstances in Ethan's adulthood–that turned him into a killer.)

Of course, you'll want to know exactly why your villain is committing this particular crime.
What happened in the past? Had his mother cheated on his father? His father on
his mother? Or maybe his ex-wife cheated on him. Was he sexually abused as a child? Physically? Emotionally? Many kids are tragically abused and never grow up to be serial killers or predators; what makes your villain snap? Why him and not others? Most serial killers (but not all) were subjected to abuse by one or both parents (or step-parents.) Most (but not all) serial killers display some sadistic tendencies as children or young teens (setting fires, killing small animals, etc.) Another obvious conflict with
villains is that most of them don't want to be caught. Most villains want to
remain free to continue their dastardly deeds. That is an internal
conflict–their need for killing is greater than their need for freedom, but
their need for freedom will make them cautious and provide valuable tools for
the author to make them smart. Dumb criminals are caught. Dumb criminals do not
make interesting, or worthy, villains.

The Hero's Journey is a valuable tool for your writer’s tool chest. If you remember that the villain is the hero of his OWN journey, your bad guy will
be richer–and scarier–for it. But it's not just the "bad guy"–it's
any antagonist in your story. WHY characters do things, even minor characters,
is important to know, so if you can identify where they are on their personal
journey, it'll help enrich your story. This isn't to say every character needs
a backstory on the page, but every character needs a backstory in your mind.

Remember, Joseph Campbell said that the Hero has a Thousand Faces; don't forget that the
villain has a thousand faces, too.

Take chances and put yourself in ALL your character's shoes. You'll be surprised at
how much richer your story will be.

Some articles about the hero's journey:

An
Extract from the Writers Journey

On Wikipedia:
Steps of the Journey

Creating
Villains People Love to Hate By Lee Masterson

Villains from
the Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy — Some great stuff even if
you're not writing fantasy.

And THE WRITERS JOURNEY by Vogler is still, IMO, the single best condensed explanation
for The Hero’s Journey and universal storytelling in general. Campbell is the master, but his books are also dense and detailed and I've never been able to get through all of them. Vogler boils it all down to the key elements. And frankly, I'm lazy. I like Vogler's conversational tone. I don't have to think too hard :)

So, other than Hannibal Lecter, who’s your favorite novel or movie villain and why?

And guess what? I got extra ARCs for SUDDEN DEATH. This is huge for me, because I usually get five or six; I have over 25. I'd love to send one to a Murderati friend, so please comment and I'll randomly pick a winner.

Creating Suspense, Part 2

by Alexandra Sokoloff

I FINALLY got my galley corrections in for THE UNSEEN. I know I grumped here about having to do that over the holidays – it seemed especially hard. But there was a silver lining under all the tediousness: I was surprised, even pleased, at how well the suspense was working in that book. And that reminded me that I never did post a follow-up post on specific suspense techniques, so that's what I'm going to do.

Here's the first, to refresh everyone's memory: Creating Suspense

So this is my number one overall recommendation:

DO A DEDICATED SUSPENSE PASS.

After I've written that first agonizing bash-through draft of a book or script, and probably a second or third draft just to make it readable, I will at some point do a dedicated pass just to amp up the suspense, and I highly recommend trying it, because it's amazing how many great ideas you will come up with for suspense scenes of you are going through your story JUST focused on how to inject and layer in suspense.

Unlike the techniques I discussed in that first post on suspense, which are more structural in nature, you don't have to get all of the following ones into your first draft – in fact it's probably more effective to use techniques like this after the structure of your story is solid. A lot of these tricks are REWRITING techniques to keep in mind for your suspense pass.

KEEP THE READER OR AUDIENCE OFF-BALANCE.

This is a huge overall suspense technique and there are many ways to achieve it.

Ask a question that you leave hanging. “But why does that mild mannered librarian have duct tape in the back of his car?” “But why won’t his stepmother let him go in that back room?” It will remain in the audience’s or reader’s mind and chafe. That sense of discomfort is a crucial element of suspense.

Another variation of this is: let a character, or many of them, lie.And then don’t have any other character call them on it. Let the reader notice the lie, let it bother them, and leave it hanging.

Use PLANTS – like showing that gun early on. Audiences and readers subliminally know that you wouldn’t be showing that gun if it wasn’t going to be used, so you set them up to expect violence.

Any twist or surprise will off-balance the reader/audience and keep them off balance. Set them up to expect one thing and give them something from left field.

LOWER THE READER’S/AUDIENCE’S DEFENSES

A classic suspense trick is to use water or sex or a combination of the two to get the audience or reader to unconsciously relax so you can really dial them up with the attack that’s coming. We’ve all seen this a million times, so much so that it’s often now played for comedy when a character gets into the shower or bathtub in a horror movie. But again, if you do it with a little imagination, it does work for a reason. A great example is in the first ALIEN, where Harry Dean Stanton is off on his own, searching for the alien in the bowels of the ship, and stops under a broken water pipe to wash off his face. He takes his time (and so do the filmmakers) enjoying the water… we feel the heat of the steamy tunnel, and the cool of the water ourselves. It’s as hard to resist as a neck massage, and our defenses go down. Same with a sex scene. This is a big example of why sensory detail, and sensual detail, is so hugely important in creating suspense.

USE THE PAVLOV EFFECT

Within the course of your own book or film, you can literally train your reader or audience to be scared on command.

JAWS does a great thing in the first act that establishes the white-knuckling suspense that film is famous for. Spielberg kills off two people in rapid-fire succession – the girl in the opening scene, the little boy on the beach. Spielberg is quickly and efficiently training us, Pavlov-style, to expect bloody mayhem any time anyone goes near the water, and he does it so well that after those two deaths, the whole film can slow down considerably and become more about character and theme. No one dies again for more than a half hour, but we’re still on pins and needles the entire time in anticipation of the next attack.

The other classic Pavlovian technique in that film is John Williams’ now iconic score – Da dump Da dump Da dump…. Every time we hear it our own blood pressure skyrockets, because we know it signals the approach of the shark.

Note that Spielberg and Williams don’t cheat with that technique, either. When the two boys manage to scare the bejesus out of the entire swimming community with their plastic fin, there is NO shark music underneath the scene; it’s a subtle invitation to the audience to figure out the shark is a fake.

I saw another good example of that Pavlovian association recently and it is driving me crazy that I can’t remember what film it’s from. It was a low-budget J-horror, and it’s probably better for you that I don’t Google it and give you the name, because you definitely don’t want to waste your time, but it does use this technique effectively. It shows a female character with long dark hair from behind, and when she turns, her face is hideously disfigured, and we jump. Yeah, yeah, what a cliché, right? Not to mention a total ripoff of RINGU! But it works – so that every time we see a shot of this woman from behind, we freeze up in anxiety, thinking we’re going to get another view of her face.

If you set up a negative association: linking a certain shot, or location, or person, or situation, with a bad scare, then you can keep your reader/audience unbalanced by the mere suggestion of that situation or person – or shark.

USE FALSE SCARES

One of the rules of comedy is: Always go for the joke. Well, likewise, one of the rules of suspense is: Always go for the scare.

How many times have we seen a bunch of birds fly up in a hero’s face, or a cat drop off a refrigerator (in TERMINATOR it was an iguana), freaking the heroine and audience out with a false scare? Well, while you do run the risk of cliché or outright stupidity, false scares are a staple of suspense for a reason, and if your story has gone too long without suspense, I suggest you try putting in a false scare – mainly for this reason: Very often brainstorming on a false scare will give you an idea for a real, organic, scare.

LAYER JEOPARDY INTO A SCENE

This is something I usually do in my dedicated suspense pass when I see a scene that’s just flat or too expositional. Say I have a character who needs to get some information out of a library, or from someone at an office, or in a hospital. I can have the character simply ask the appropriate personnel for help, but there’s not much suspense in that. How much better is it to have the character have to break in somewhere, or sneak in, to get that file or that book? Suddenly you have stakes, suspense, jeopardy – in a scene that could have been just flat exposition.

It’s a very simple trick, but hugely effective, and you’ll find that once you start brainstorming about why that particular file is lo
cked up and what the danger is to the heroine if she’s caught while sneaking in to get it, the scene will come alive and possibly give a whole new layer of meaning to the story.

Again, go for the scare.

LET THE READER/AUDIENCE IN ON SOMETHING THE MAIN CHARACTER DOESN’T KNOW.

You’ve seen and probably used this yourself this a million times – a film cuts away to the killer coming back to the house when the hero is searching it. But always be looking for interesting variations on this technique. One of the most awful and heartbreaking examples I know is in PET SEMATERY, in the beautiful scene when the father and son are out flying a kite for the first time. At the end of the scene, in a simple sentence that you might miss if you’re a skimmer like I am – I’m paraphrasing because I couldn’t find the book this morning – “He had no idea that at that moment Gage had only two weeks to live.”

Devastating.

(Of course, I could do a whole post, and just might have to, on the structure of fate in that book. Every single thing about it leads inevitably to that horrific conclusion.)

USE INNER MONOLOGUE –

The easiest way to make a reader feel unease is to let her or him in on the character’s unease. Let her imagine a shadowy stalker behind her (whether it’s there or not). Take your time to put your character through the physical sensations of fear, and let the reader experience the physical sensations of fear with her.

USE PREMONITIONS.

A variation on inner monologue, but very effective, when a character has a premonition of danger to come.

Again, PET SEMATERY has a great example of a premonition, when early in the book the father is carrying his son up the stairs and has a moment of sheer, unfocused, primal terror. (It’s also important in a book or film like that to warn the audience or reader that this is not going to end happily, otherwise they will feel ripped off when things go to such dark places in the end. PAN’S LABYRINTH did this well in the beginning, too… you’re prepared for the girl to die, even though you forget the beginning.)

Let’s face it, most of us do have moments like this once in a while, and premonitions are realistic in the context of a thriller because danger heightens ALL our senses and makes us more perceptive to clues around us. I very, very strongly recommend that every suspense and thriller writer read Gavin deBecker’s THE GIFT OF FEAR. It’s a non-fiction book by security consultant to the stars deBecker which provides fascinating accounts of ordinary people’s lifesaving perceptions. Unmissable, and not just for writers – it's essential self-defense stuff for all.

END EACH CHAPTER WITH A CLIFFHANGER

This may be as simple as asking a question that is set up but not answered, but you should strive to make every one of your chapters or scenes end with some sort of cliffhanger that makes that reader have to turn the page.

If you find your chapters are NOT ending with cliffhangers, then you may be breaking the chapter or scene at the wrong moment. Go back through it and see if there’s some other logical break that will create the suspense you’re looking for: break when the doorbell rings, but without revealing who’s behind the door, so that the reader will turn the page to find out who’s at the door. It really can be that simple.

Another way to amp up the urgency and make the reader want to turn the page is to have the character voice a question, either silently or aloud, that s/he really wants the answer to. If the character wants it, the reader or audience will likely want it, too.

STATE WHAT THE CHARACTER IS LOOKING FOR

– the Lost Ark of the Covenant, the Maltese Falcon, the file, the book – and state it often. If there’s not a specific object, have the character repeatedly ask the question that s/he wants the answer to. It may not be suspense, exactly, but it builds emotion by creating impatience and urgency and a desire in the audience to get the answer, and when the character finally finds the – whatever – the reader or audience will be just as excited as the character.

Suspense is emotional manipulation, so manipulating ANY emotion will increase the suspense of your story.

In fact, besides doing a suspense pass, I also find it hugely useful in the later stages of revision to do an EMOTIONAL PASS, in which I read a script or a manuscript putting myself into the frame of mind of the reader, and just thinking of what I want the reader/audience to be experiencing in every scene.

These are just a few specific techniques, and once you start looking for them, you’ll notice all kinds of great tricks. Why not start a section in your personal story structure workbook just for notes on suspense tricks?

And fair’s fair – share!

– Alex

——————————————————————————————————————

Previous articles on Story Structure:

What's Your Premise?

Story Structure 101 – The Index Card Method

Screenwriting – The Craft

Elements of Act One

Elements of Act Two

Elements of Act Two, Part 2

Creating Suspense

Visual Storytelling Part 1

Visual Storytelling Part 2

Elements of Act Three, Part 1

What Makes a Great Climax?

Fairy Tale Structure and the List

————————————————————————————————————–

Story Structure Workshop:

I’m going to be teaching an online workshop of these techniques we’ve been talking about, for the Heart of Carolina Romance Writers, during the month of February. If you're interested, you can learn more about it here.

Welcome Guest Blogger Laura Benedict!!

I'm so excited to have one of my favorite people on the planet here at Murderati today. Laura Benedict is a classy chick in every sense of the word and a superb writer, a cross-genre darling who dabbles in thrillers, horror and the supernatural all at once. She should definitely be on your To Be Read list if she isn't already. Her latest is CALLING MR. LONELY HEARTS, and it's just plain fantastic.

Laura and I are on the "Blonde and Blonder Tour" this week. We'll be in Houston at Murder by the Book at 7 tonight, so if you're in the area, stop in. We'd love to see you.

And without further ado, presenting one of the more fascinating blogs we've had at Murderati, I give you… Laura Benedict.

HORROR AND THE “R” WORD

by Laura Benedict

A reviewer got me thinking. Usually, reviewers either delight me, make
me cry, or just piss me off—rarely do I get past those emotional stages
with reviews of my work. And I speak as someone who has reviewed books
for over a decade. (For many years I fancied that I was writing for the
writer’s improvement. Now I work for the reader.)

Here’s the quote that intrigued me: “One thing interesting about the horror genre is that it is not afraid to work with Christian elements.”

Yes,
it is interesting. The word “afraid” struck me as well. But what is it
about religion that makes it so well-suited to the genre?

Why
read a horrifying story? I read classic horror–Matheson, Jackson,
Stoker, Poe, Lovecraft—to indulge my senses, to experience a deep and
satisfying tension. Good horror possesses me in a state of almost
constant nervous stimulation. When I was in college I called a friend
of mine to come over one night because I was too frightened to be
alone. He found me sitting in the dark watching Friday night monster
films on television, an open copy of The Shining on the couch beside
me. Terrible acts, mortal danger, forces beyond human control,
irrationality: they speak directly to that old, old part of my brain,
the

amygdala,
where the fight or flight mechanism first appeared in our
millennia-distant ancestors. The nice folks at the National
Institute of Health posit that our susceptibility to danger signals may
be related to how long or short our copies of various gene variants may
be. I expect I must have a couple copies of the short variant
because I am highly, highly susceptible. I watch the most frightening
scenes of horror films from behind my hands. I anticipate that any
household object might cause my death, and almost any stranger could be
the agent.

Not long after I found Poe, I read a
then-contemporary novel by Jeffrey Konvitz. The Sentinel featured a
grim, blind priest who did little but sit in a chair in a Manhattan
apartment building that just happened to contain the entrance to hell.
Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen and The Exorcist quickly
followed. The books and the films were steeped not just in religious
symbolism, but in the acts of religion, and characters who were
motivated by intense faith of one kind or another. The settings were
powerfully gothic.

I
read these novels (and saw the films) when I was in my early teens, a
time when I was struggling with my own religious experiences. I was
Roman Catholic and the churches of my early memories were urban-gothic
and always beautiful and mysterious. But my family had moved to the
suburbs, to churches that were either bright and antiseptic or dull and
seemingly hungry for cash to build gyms. And I couldn’t abide Guitar
Mass. Church had lost its romance, its aesthetic appeal. I’m old enough
now to admit that, yes, aesthetics matter to me.

But this isn’t a description of my personal spiritual journey.

At
the heart of every religion is at least one mystery. In the
Judeo-Christian tradition, there is no darker mystery than sin. Sin is,
of course, an offense against God. But—and this is kind of a big leap
here—if one accepts the theory (common to many religions) that God
dwells in each one of us, then our crimes against one another are
always an offense to God, and thus are anathema. One of my off-scene
characters in Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts espouses my personal religious
philosophy (which, after years of religious study, I may actually have
gotten from a bumper sticker). It all comes down to “Jesus says, ‘Don’t
be an asshole.’”

One
of my very favorite horror novels combines the power of sin with my
beloved aesthetics. In Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian
Gray wishes that he would forever remain beautiful and unsoiled by
life. His wish is granted. (In the film, it was by way of an Egyptian
statue of a cat, maybe? But I don’t remember such a thing in the novel.
Does anyone?) Thereafter Dorian is able to engage in any heinous
activity he chooses, harming whoever he will, without any change in his
physical self. He doesn’t even age. It is the portrait that becomes
ugly and deformed by his deeds. The portrait is his very soul, and
when, in despair, he slashes it with a knife, he dies.

Guy,
Rosemary’s husband in Rosemary’s Baby makes a Faustian bargain to
fulfill his dreams: he sacrifices his wife’s body and sanity for
commercial success. It works out better for Guy. Not so well for his
wife.

What of Flannery O’Connor? Her characters are often
steeped in sin, their actions horrific and difficult to watch. With
O’Connor, though, there is nearly always redemption. In so many true
horror stories, there is punishment without redemption. (Wise Blood is
my favorite. Do you have one?)

So, what is it about the combination of horror and religion that makes it so powerful?

Let’s
go back to the brain….Still, I’m no kind of scientist. But I always
assumed that religion was sympathetic with the emotional part of the
brain, the limbic system, where the amygdala lives—the same part that
is responsible for my deepest fear reactions. I was interested to learn
that it’s not necessarily so. I’ll link to an Economist article about
it here.
It seems that religion/faith-related activities in the brain occur all
over the brain, engaging complex thought processes—including deduction
and reason—and not just the regions linked to emotion.

When I
read this, it made a great deal of sense to me when I thought about the
interplay between the terrible and the sublime in works of dark
fiction. Horror. The crimes are all the worse to the characters
involved because there is always more at stake than a life or lives,
love, money, or even the earth’s survival. The unseen and unknowable
come into the picture. The issues for the characters are complicated by
not only centuries of tradition, but also often by years of speculation
and doubt, or reflections on what might or might not be in the
universe. It is emotion–plus. And as an added bonus, there are always
two endings: faith or disbelief.

Laura Benedict is the author of CALLING MR.
LONELY HEARTS and ISABELLA MOON, both from Ballantine Books. Her short
fiction has also appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and several
anthologies, including the SURREAL SOUTH series, which she edits with
her husband Pinckney Benedict. For the last decade, she has reviewed
books for The Grand Rapids Press in Michigan. She lives with her
husband, two children, two dogs, and the occasional intrepid bobcat in
rural southern Illinois.

Having A Stab At It

by Zoë Sharp

We spent yesterday officially snowed-in out here in the wilds of Cumbria, with no mail delivery, no rubbish collection, and temperatures which have been dropping into minus double figures every night. For a country totally flummoxed by its weather, that’s perishin’ cold. And what with the world economy on its arse and the publishing industry sprouting doom and gloom in every direction, there’s not much to smile about at the moment.

If you’re currently sitting at home contemplating your unfinished first novel, you might be forgiven for wondering, "What’s the point?"

But don’t give up, there is a bit of light at the end of the tunnel in the form of the Debut Dagger competition from the UK Crime Writers' Association.

I’d never heard of the Debut Dagger when I was writing my first crime novel, or I would have been in there like a shot. Or a stabbing, or a strangulation, or a disembowelment – or whatever other method of murder I could devise at the time. It might even have saved me a good deal of heartache.

The name Debut Dagger is a bit of a misnomer, because that does make it sound as though it’s a prize for first novels, and that’s not quite the case. It’s for the beginning of a first novel. It doesn’t even have to actually be your first novel. You could have written dozens, providing none of them have been commercially published. Short stories and non-fiction doesn’t count. Even some on-line and self-publishing doesn’t count, although it would need to be OK’d by the organisers before you sent your entry.

The Debut Dagger is for the opening chapter(s) of a crime novel, up to a strict maximum of 3000 words, plus a short – 500-1000 words – synopsis of the rest of your proposed book. The organisers give some excellent tips, and helpfully describe the synopsis as a distilled idea of what the book is about, written in present tense, up to and including the denouement. Cliff-hangers and teaser endings are not allowed in the synopsis – you've got to tell it like it is! The organisers put it so much better than I could:

"The challenge of writing a good synopsis is out of all proportion to its length. Writing a synopsis requires you to simultaneously know everything that’s going to happen in your story, and be able to strip 99% of it away to leave only the most important details – and to then sum that up in a fluid and engaging way. If you haven’t written the book yet (as many Debut Dagger entrants haven’t), that can be tough, but if you don’t have a clear idea of your story then the difficult business of writing a synopsis becomes almost impossible. Clarity of expression always follows clarity of thought.

"You’ll probably find you need to take shortcuts and make simplifications that underplay the complexities of your novel. Don’t worry. The judges don’t know (and don’t care) how much you’ve oversimplified or even misled them with the synopsis, they just want it to sound like something they want to read. Equally, don’t worry that the story may change when you actually come to write it. All books change during their writing, characters begin to grow and take on lives of their own, to veer away from the planned path, unexpected events impose themselves. None of that matters if the completed book works. Look on the synopsis as a road map, but one which allows a few unexpected but interesting diversions along the way. And above all, remember this. With the synopsis, you’re not giving us a schematic plan of the novel; you’re not bound to give us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. You’re doing what writers have always done: you’re telling a story. Just shorter."

The competition has been running since last November, and closes on February 7th 2009, so there is still time to polish and submit your opening 3000 words, and wrestle with your synopsis. You can enter as many times as you like, with as many different starts of novels as you have sitting in boxes under the bed, providing you pay the £25 entry fee with each one. (I think that’s about $37 at current exchange rates.)

All the entries are read by professional readers, with the best passed on to the judges, who put together a shortlist of about ten, and select the winner. This lucky soul collects £500 (about $730-ish), sponsored by Orion, and a couple of tickets to the Dagger Awards, which last year were held on Park Lane in London. The best thing about it, however, is that the judging panel is made up of top UK agents and editors. What better way to put your would-be novel in front of such people?

Of course, there is no guarantee that the winning entry will be published, but the Debut’s record to date is pretty impressive:

"Inaugural winner Joolz Denby was short-listed in 2005 for the Orange Prize for Fiction, while 2001 winner Edward Wright was awarded the 2005 Shamus award for best PI novel by the Private Eye Writers of America. Allan Guthrie won the 2007 Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year for TWO WAY SPLIT, developed from his entry shortlisted in 2001. Barbara Cleverly, shortlisted in 1999, won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger award in 2004. Louise Penny, highly commended by the judges of the 2004 Debut Dagger, was awarded the 2006 CWA New Blood Dagger".

"Oh, but what chance does my novel stand against all those others?" you cry. Well, a pretty good one, actually, just purely from a numbers point of view. The Debut Dagger, for some unknown reason, receives entries in the low-mid hundreds, rather than thousands.

So, what’s stopping you? Is it fear of failing? Because, trust me, if you’re going to write and hope to be published, you’re going to get a LOT of knock-backs. Get used to the idea. And, who knows? You might just be one of the lucky ones.

My question this week is, did you enter competitions like this before getting published, and if not, why not? Is that how you got published in the first place? If you don’t go for this kind of thing, why not? What’s your opinion of them? Are you a supporter, or what puts you off? If you’re not yet published, would you consider it?

This week’s Word of the Week seems almost superfluous after Pari's wonderful post on Monday, but I’ll go for monophthong, a complicated word meaning a simple vowel sound.

And my apologies both for the slightly later-than-usual posting, and for the lack of illustrations. There's only so many times Typepad/Internet Explorer can fall over and lose everything before you either throw the entire computer out of the nearest window, or give up trying to be clever …

In Which I Save Publishing

by J.D. Rhoades

With the news of widespread layoffs in the publishing industry, declining orders from the big chains, and of course the perennial “death of reading” predictions, we’ve all been watching anxiously, wondering which was the industry is going to go. Are the days of big, quit-your-day-job advances over? Isn’t most marketing, with the book trailers that no one watches and the ads in newspapers (which are also dying) a massive waste of cash and effort? How do we get paid for e-books, especially the ones that can just be copied and spread like wildfire across the ‘net?

How the heck is anyone going to make any damn money in this business, anyway?

Well, according to this article in Galleycat, editor Tom Englehardt thinks he knows. And, as the supercomputer Deep Thought told its eager questioners in THE HITCHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, you’re not going to like it.

Ready?

You’re really not going to like it.

Sure?

Okay, here goes….

Advertising.

Englehardt writes: “The ad, after all, has colonized everything in our world from gas
pumps to urinals, bars to doctor’s offices, taxis to your sneakers and
cell phone, not to speak of every imaginable printed form, including
the cereal box and the back of your supermarket receipt, and yet,
strangely enough, it never successfully colonized the book.”

I told you you weren’t going to like it.

According to the Galleycat piece, a “book-serialization website” called DailyLit “feature[s] the sponsor’s logo as well as a hyperlink to its website in the right-hand corner” of its offerings.

Now, this raises a lot of questions. Will advertisers really pay for something like this? Will readers object to the distractions of logos and hyperlinks in their reading material?

Well, maybe. But then again, maybe not. After all, we quickly got used to our TV screens being visited by those little dancing figures in the bottom of the screen pimping next week’s new blockbuster show.

But why stop with ad-matter outside of the text? Why not accelerate the process and go straight to that brainstorm cooked up by the bright boys and girls of Madison Avenue to make sure that no facet of our lives remains untouched by hucksterism?

I’m talking, of course, about product placement.

Product placement, if you’re not familiar, is the practice of making sure that your company’s logo appears “subtly” in apparently unrelated TV, movies, etc. It’s the art of making people watch a commercial without realizing it’s a commercial. Observe:

Imagine the possibilities of using this in literature:

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking Sierra Nevada beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in an Applebee’s just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.

Okay, maybe that one needs a little tweaking. How about:

I was wearing my powder-blue suit from Jos. A. Bank, with dark blue Brooks Brothers shirt, Principessa tie and display handkerchief, black Florsheim brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them (on sale at Target). I was neat, clean, shaved, and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

Hmmmm…a little wordy. Let’s try again:

It was a a bright cold day in April, and the Seiko clocks were striking thirteen. Seiko…over a century of excellence!

I’ll admit, the concept needs a little work. So help me out. Take one of your favorite passages, from one of your books or a favorite by someone else, and practice your product placement skills.

If we can’t stop it, we must learn to embrace it.

The Spoken Word

By Louise Ure

"Just because you ran over him doesn't make you guilty."

– Man to man, overheard at Starbucks in Belmont by Harry Smith

There's something special about the spoken word that sets my heart a-thumping. That's true for dialogue in crime fiction, but also for the casual eavesdropping I do in coffee shops, at cocktail parties and in line at the bank.

Take the example above. It's part of a daily offering in our San Francisco paper, where hapless bystanders phone in the most bizarre conversation they've overheard that day.

Is that a story starter or what?

Maybe they're talking about running over a dog. Maybe a little kid darted out from between two cars. Or maybe the second man used his car as a battering ram in self-defense when some guy was attacking him.

Whatever the case, if I opened a book to find those words on the first page, I wouldn't be able to put it down.

It's a hook, certainly, as well as a glimpse into a character and a life. And it's all fodder for our work. Maybe that line will define a character I create (someone with the morals of a weasel, methinks).

Maybe it will become the basis for a plotline (a father telling his adopted teenage daughter that it was okay to leave the scene of the accident because he knew he couldn't afford to have the cops get her name, photo and fingerprints. Hmmm.).

Here are a few more "Public Eavesdropping" mentions from the paper that made their way into the Ideas Folder on my desk:

"Check it out, dude. those are isotopes."

-Young men overheard at the BART station by Robin Sutherland

"I am really attracted to people with hyphenated names. It shows extra effort."

-Uncredited Public Eavesdropping, SF Chronicle

"My parents' biggest disappointment in me is that I'm not a lesbian."

– Woman in clothing shop in San Francisco, overheard by Mike Pincus

"A marshmallow saved my dad's life."

– Man to woman, overheard at Longs in Oakland by Elyanna Snyder

We all do it. Pretend to be consulting your iPhone, but your ears are trained on the conversation of the two people in front of you in line at the grocery store. Stop to dig around in your purse, but you're just killing time so you can listen in on the fight in the car parked next to you in the lot.

A friend of mine proudly wears a sweatshirt that reads "Be nice or I'll put you in my next novel." I'd never announce my intentions that way. It's too much fun to sit back unobtrusively and jot down the random craziness I hear in the next booth at the coffee shop.

Here are a few more from my own eavesdropping efforts:

"Unidentified transient odors are not enough cause for a warrant."

– Man in a suit to a cop, overheard at coffee shop in San Francisco

"She treats him like a flying carpet. Walks all over him and still expects him to take her places."

– Young woman to young woman, San Francisco Galeria

"If he touched my leg one more time I thought I'd have an organism."

– Preteen girl to preteen girl in Nordstrom's, Seattle

"I used to be your mother once."

-Middle-aged woman to teenage daughter wearing headphones in MacDonalds on I-5

"How would you know it was a real hot flash and not just July?"

– Woman to woman at Fry's grocery story in Tucson, Arizona in July

"Why don't you buy a slipcover for it?"
"Because then it would look like a couch wearing a condom."

– Well-dressed woman and man in line at Wells Fargo

"I think she was a Weather Girl in another life."

– Said with a sneer by a middle-aged woman in line for a movie

"I thought Greenwich Mean Time was the hour I was allowed to be obnoxious."

– Teenage girl to father in food court

And my current favorite:

"No, no. If you're famous before the trial, you get acquitted.
If you're famous because of the trial, you get convicted."

-Lawyer to gangbanger at a lunch counter next to the Hall of Justice, San Francisco

We couldn't make this shit up. And isn't that grand?

Sorry for the short post today, 'Rati, but I'm knee deep (along with Co-Chair Judy Greber) in the final programming for Left Coast Crime in Hawaii. Who to moderate this panel? Can we shift the time so that folks can get to see the lava flow? Is she arriving Saturday or Sunday? If you haven't signed up yet, please do so soon, or you'll miss out on the very best panel placement opportunities. This is going to be a blast.

And in the meantime, what's your very best "overheard" conversation?

My Preciousssss….

I hear the noise, that deep, rumbling purr. The cat sits up, stares out the window, tail twitching in anticipation. Closer it comes, closer. My heart beats a little harder. What will it be? What is about to alter the course of my day? Will it be flat, or bulky? Will it contain untold treasures, bad news?

There! I see that flash of brown, whipping into the cul-de-sac. Screech, slide, slam!

My precioussss….

I race to the door. I realize I need to get a life, then shake it off. Excitement floods my system. What has he got for me today???

UPS is here.

Oh come on. Admit it. You get just as excited as I do when you receive a package.

Our Shrinking Language

by Pari

Am I Cassandra? I wonder. I find myself worrying in broad strokes about our culture. The questions I ask are big. Even the ones that appear trite feel huge to me. None have easy answers.

For example: What impact do thesauri in word processing programs have on contemporary language?

Yeah, I know. Weird. But I really do think about these things.

Consider this:

In the MS Word thesaurus, the word mystery yields these choices: (n.) secrecy, anonymity, obscurity, ambiguity, inscrutability, vagueness. (adj.) unknown, anonymous, unidentified. (n.) whodunit, detective novel, thriller, crime novel.

Without getting into the question of whether "mystery" is ever really an adjective, I will say that the above alternatives are perfectly serviceable. There's nothing wrong with any of them.

However, when I look up mystery in my old Roget's International Thesaurus (circa 1977), something very different happens.

I'm forced to think.

I can imagine Dr. Peter Mark Roget sitting across from me. He's wearing those square glasses that Benjamin Franklin wore; they're halfway down his nose. He puts down his quill and shakes his head. "Mystery? What do you mean, Mrs. Taichert? Are you considering enigma or fiction? Are you referring to occultism or perplexity? Inexplicability or wonderfulness? Please clarify that I might offer assistance."

Merely by looking at the options in the book's index, my way of thinking about the word has expanded. I go to the enigma entry and find: enigma, mystery, puzzle, puzzlement, Chinese puzzle, crossword puzzle, jigsaw puzzle. Hmmm. Some of those might work. But there's more: problem, puzzling or baffling problem. I like the word baffling. Haven't thought of it in years. On I continue to question, question mark, vexed or perplexed question . . . Oh, I like this: mind-boggler, floorer or stumper, nut to crack, hard or tough nut to crack; tough proposition. How cool are those?!

Right below the enigma entry is one for riddle, conundrum, charade, rebus, logogriph . . .

What the hell is a logogriph?

So then I look up to the larger idea category and see that it's Unintelligibility and I start to think about that in relation to mysteries and the mysterious.

Wow.

All that thinking: the consideration and discarding of irrelevant words; the grouping of ideas and expansion of their meanings; the stumbling into different concepts I'd never thought about in relation to the word "mystery;" the meeting of old friends — words I'd forgotten I liked; the curiosity kindled by words I'd never encountered before . . .

This was no mere collection of synonyms; it was an intellectual exercise. After those few minutes of searching, I felt enriched. I grew and made connections that stimulated my mind and sparked creativity.

I wonder how many people take the time to do this anymore? I know that most kids who compose on their computers don't bother with what I think of as a real thesaurus. The quick approximation is good enough for them. I can tell this is happening in popular literature as well. Words that are a little different stick out; they're becoming obsolete.

Is it because they're anachronistic? Or is it simply because they don't pop up in our computer programs?

I don't know. These questions nag at me.

Are we bankrupting our vocabulary, our language, because of convenience? What price will we pay for this laziness?

What do you think?
Do you have a favorite word that seems obsolete now?
Is there a word you'd like to bring back into usage?
Am I looking for problems where there are none?