Perfect Timing

Yesterday, I went out and planned the best way to kill a man.

Nothing new in that, of course. I can’t remember how many people have died by my hand over the years. They’ve been shot, stabbed, overdosed, strangled, torched, blown up with a variety of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), been run over by moving vehicles, pushed down staircases, ridden off the edge of cliffs, had their throats cut, and their skulls shattered with blunt instruments. Or, on more than one occasion, finished with a single empty-handed blow.

And, let me tell you, it’s been fun.

But yesterday I went and walked the actual killing ground, which is something I haven’t done in a while. So, what was different this time?

Everything.

Originally, I intended to take the target down at his office, where he has a habit of standing by the window when he’s on the phone. Getting his number is easy, and I know exactly what to say to keep him on the line. But the more I went over his place of work, the more problems became apparent. Access, for one. Not that I need to get close to him, not by any means, but a clear line of sight is vital or the whole thing falls apart.

And then there’s the fact that my target is military. A career soldier – hard-bitten, experienced. He’s seen active service in every nasty corner of the world for nearly forty years. Sneaking up on such a man is not easy. Especially when he has a pretty good idea that someone’s gunning for him.

There’s no opportunity to set up a booby-trip, no time to rig his car, even though I’m sure I could cook up something that would do the job, in less time than it takes me to do the ironing. Taking him at home isn’t a much better option than work, which is probably why he chose to live there. Too hemmed-in for a long kill, too overlooked to get in closer. Because getting in close dramatically increases the chances of being seen, being caught. And, trust me, I want to get away with this, so egress is almost more important than access.

It’s got to be seamless, it’s got to work.

So, I’ve no option but to take him on the move, doing something routine, something he thinks is ordinary, even dull. Which is why we went out in the rain yesterday and drove the most logical route I knew my target would take from one confirmed location to another, and I looked for my opportunities.

Trouble is, I’m not dealing with open rolling countryside here. It’s chopped up, twisty, bordered by high hedges and dry stone walls a foot thick. It offers only short bursts of rapid-motion exposure, with little forewarning of his exact time of approach. Habitation is sparse, but people here are wary of strangers, and prolonged stay will attract their attention. It has to be done fast, in and out.

My target’s entire journey is less than five miles. I drive it, increasingly anxious, finding nothing for the first three. Then, there it is. A blind, ninety-degree corner onto a narrow bridge. Heading in the same direction as my target, car drivers are forced to brake almost to nothing before turning in. We park up and pace it. The bridge is thirty-three metres long, almost flat, crossing a disused railway line. My target drives an old Land Rover with all the acceleration and aerodynamics of a Post Office. I estimate it will take him between four and five seconds to cross.

And ahead of him, as he drives onto the bridge, the ground rises maybe eighteen metres to the tree line, a fifth of a mile away from that initial turn-in point. Three hundred and twenty-two metres. Back when I was actually shooting in competition, I could reliably take out the centre of a target at a little under that distance, even with an indifferent, rough-zeroed rifle and open sights. For this I have somewhat more specialised equipment in mind.

There’s a farm close by, but the trees provide a degree of separation. Not ideal, but a manageable risk, and there will only be a single shot. By the time the farmer gets his boots on, I’ll be gone. The elevation gives me uninterrupted visibility – a head-on target, travelling at relatively low speed for a calculable time period, at a quantifiable range. Not perfect, but as near as makes no difference.

It still confounds me, having stood and looked down from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, that the killing shots were not taken as the presidential motorcade progressed, slow and stately, almost directly towards the building along Elm. But instead the gunman – plural or singular, I’m open on this – waited until that awkwardly sighted, tight turn into Dealey Plaza, partially obscured by trees, to open fire.

But I digress. So, now, armed with no more than my notes from yesterday’s excursion in the rain, I can sit down, cosy at my desk, and write the fictional scene that makes use of all this fascinating research. What? You didn’t think I was actually going to …?

Sometimes, imagination alone is more than enough to write the kind of books we do, but if I can blur the lines between fact and fiction, slide some invention between the cracks of reality, so much the better. I’m not suggesting becoming a method writer, who has to see, hear, touch, taste and smell every experience before they can be portrayed. I didn’t go crawling round brothels in Brooklyn in order to describe the inside of one in THIRD STRIKE, although, I did seek advice from multi-award-winning Long Islander, Reed Farrel Coleman as to most probable locations. He sent me the kind of amazingly detailed answers that only a fellow crime writer can provide.

But I did spend a day going over a cross-channel ferry before I wrote ROAD KILL, and – even if I didn’t fill in all the blanks – the method of disabling it I used in that book is absolutely real. Not only that, it’s better than anything I could have come up with. Because I wouldn’t have made it so worryingly easy.

Working blind, I doubt I would have invented that bridge, that corner, that hill. If nothing suitable had turned up during that five-mile drive, I would have pinpointed a ficticious location entirely out of my head for my unknown, equally ficticious, assassin to carry out that hit. Somewhere that would undoubtedly have done the job, but it wouldn’t have had that extra little tinge of realism to it. I know part of our job description is that we Make Stuff Up, but to be honest, I couldn’t have imagined a better spot for an ambush if I’d tried.

So, what do you all favour – pure invention or partial reality? Do you need to go and walk the ground, take photographs, notes, clippings. And if you can’t get there in person, what do you rely on to feed your imagination?

This week’s Word of the Week is deadline, which was used for years in the newspaper business, where writers had to have their copy filed by a certain time in order to make the following day’s paper, or the story was considered dead. It’s a word that strikes terror into the hearts of authors everywhere, which is rather appropriate to its original meaning – it was supposed to. During the American Civil War, the prisoner of war camp at Andersonville used a white painted line instead of external walls or wire. Marksmen placed around the perimeter had orders to shoot any prisoner who attempted to cross that white line, no questions asked. Hence, you were allowed to go right up to the deadline, but woe betide you if you went over it.

I know the feeling …

“So Is This a New Series?”

by J.D. Rhoades

"So, is
this a new series?"

It’s the question at least a dozen people have asked about BREAKING COVER, once
they find out it’s not a Jack Keller book (despite the fact that several online
sites have called it ‘Jack Keller, Book 4." It took WEEKS and e-mails from
several sources to get Amazon to correct it, and by then the error had
spread. Argh.)

Anyway, the answer is, "I don’t know." I didn’t plan it as anything
but a stand-alone, and the current WIP (working title: STORM SURGE) is a
totally different (and I mean really different) character.

Then again, I didn’t set out to write a series when I wrote THE DEVIL’S RIGHT
HAND. It wasn’t until nearly the end of the first draft of the manuscript that
I realized "hey, this character might have some legs."

Writing a series as opposed to a stand-alone presents certain challenges. For
one, there’s the question of stakes, of what’s at risk. If I know a book is a
standalone, sure the main characters stand a better chance than average of
being alive at the end, but there’s always the risk someone could pull one of
those Hamlet endings, or perish in a noble act of self-sacrifice like in A TALE
OF TWO CITIES.

In a series, however, particularly a long running one, you know the main
character is going to survive til the last page and beyond. So, to a certain extent, you know how the
story’s going to end. They may not live happily ever after, but they will live,
and that takes one way of building suspense out of the equation. It takes away
the sense that everything’s at risk, even survival. Some people seem to like the comfort of that, I guess, and that may be why series are so popular.

But then, you have to find
other things to dangle over the abyss. It could be a beloved character,
although at some point, if you put the same character at risk book after book,
it starts to get ludicrous. Superman can only rescue Lois Lane so many times before people
start going “why doesn’t the silly twit just move the hell out of Metropolis
and stay away from that Kent character?”

God forbid, however,
you should actually follow through on the threat and kill off a favorite
character. An friend of mine did that and got roasted over the coals on a
couple of the book blogs.

How I addressed that problem in the Keller books was by making it clear (I
hope) that what’s at risk is Jack’s already tenuous hold on sanity and
his recovery from PTSD. Even if Jack survives all the horrible stuff I
put him through, he may not be functional psychologically by the end. But
again, how long can that go on? How much pain can I put the poor bastard
through before the reader screams "enough!"

Another challenge in a series, and this is one I really struggle with. is the
question of backstory. Older mystery series tended to be self-contained within
each book, with no reference to what came before or after. I read an interview
with Rex Stout, creator of the wonderful Nero Wolfe books, in which he said
that he did this deliberately, so that you could pick up any one of the dozens
of books in the series and not wonder about whether it was number one or number
twelve. This of course had one major advantage: you could read the books in any
order. The disadvantage to that is that it takes away a lot of the realism and
to me, the believability of the story. In real life, people are affected, often
catastrophically, by their pasts. They change. They grow over time. This
is one of the reasons that I loved Dennis Lehane’s Kenzie/Gennaro series when I
first read them. They took damage that they carried with them from book to
book. But the challenge of that is to carry the thread of the long story from
book to book, while making the short story of each book self-contained so as
not to alienate the reader who may not have read the earlier books and who’ll
put the book down if they don’t know what’s going on or why the people are
acting this way.

And that’s
hard. You have to fight to keep from drifting into long expository passages, or
even worse, long spoken exposition by characters: "As you know, Bob. the
last time this happened, we…" Yecch. It almost makes me wish we
could get away with one of those short synopses like they used to do in the
movie serials: "In our last episode…."

I will say that one of the people who does this right is our own Zoe Sharp. I
just finished Zoe’s SECOND SHOT, and she does a masterful job of weaving the
threads of the past into the story of the present. And it’s necessary to do so
because Zoe’s character Charlie Fox has taken some pretty severe damage of her
own that she’s trying to get over. I learned a lot about how to do quick,
concise backstory from studying the way Zoe does it.

Still, people do seem to love series. Hell, I may bring Tony Wolf back. Or Jack
Keller for that matter. Maybe I’ll put them in the same book, thus creating
some really tough problems of backstory!

So, fellow
‘Rati, both writers and readers, who do you know who handles these
problems–creating risk and weaving in backstory–particularly well? How do you
writers meet those challenges? Do you prefer series to standalones, or is it the other way around? And why?

Hawaii Dreaming

By Louise Ure

Over the months we’ve had lots of conversations about mystery conferences and conventions. Do you prefer the writer-focused or the reader-focused? Are they worth the money? How many do you attend per year? What’s the best part: the camaraderie in the bar or the insight from the panels?

But one thing we’ve never talked about is organizing the con.

I’m the Co-Chair of Programming, along with Jude Greber (Gillian Roberts) for Left Coast Crime in Kona, Hawaii next March. Hoo boy.

There are five great things about this project:

1. I LOVE Left Coast Crime cons.

They’re primarily reader-centric and that means a terrific blend of folks to gather to talk about crime fiction. And they’re small enough that you – whether you’re a reader or a writer – don’t feel lost or left out.

Left Coast Crime in Monterey was the very first con I attended, and it was the foundation for many friendships I now hold dear.

2. It’s in Hawaii.

How cool is that? A vacation and business conference all in one. This is one con I might actually be able to get my husband to attend.

3. It’s organized by an incredible team of volunteers headed by Bill and Toby Gottfried and Janet Rudolph.

These folks are so well organized and so energized by the Hawaiian location that it’s infectious. You’ve seen the kind of party they can throw — LCC in Monterey was my first taste of it. – but just wait until you see what they’ve put together for Hawaii.

4. Our Guests of Honor are just too cool.

Rhys Bowen, Barry Eisler, Lee Goldberg: they’re the yin and yang and yowza! of crime fiction writing. And you’ll be seeing a lot of them. Some of it comedic. Some of it serious. Some of it downright silly.

5. Sharing Programming responsibilities with Jude Greber is just plain fun.

What a great excuse to spend more time with her. The only thing that separates our houses is the Golden Gate Bridge. We call it our clothesline, and we hang out on opposite sides of it and kibbutz like 21st century versions of the characters from the 1930’s radio show The Goldbergs. “Yoo hoo! Anybody home?”

Now for the bad part:

1. I want to put every author on every panel.
Sure, she writes horror and suspense novels, but she’s also been a screenwriter. Here’s an incredible forensic specialist from Hawaii but he’s also written in the true crime genre. She’s a debut author, but also lives in Hawaii so she’s one of the locals we’d like to feature. He’s an Earl Derr Biggers expert but he also writes an historical series with a female protagonist.

It’s great fun mixing and matching the panelists, finding combinations and topics that haven’t been covered before. But it’s also a logistical nightmare. This one won’t arrive until Sunday. This one likes afternoon presentations. This one we already have scheduled for another topic at the same time.

It’s a five-and-a-half-day game of Concentration for the crime fiction set.

2. How do you keep it fresh?

Early on in our discussions, Bill and Toby began calling this The Unconventional Convention, and part of that means keeping it fresh and new. But how do you do that? Haven’t all the other cons already done all the panel options?

You do it by not starting with regular panel thinking. There will be small breakout sessions under the banyan trees. A special writer’s track offered to folks who’d like to perfect their skills and learn from the experts. Interactive panels led by readers – imagine that, readers! – instead of writers. Book discussion groups. Contests, trivia, prizes, games.

You can even enjoy an original play, Ghost of Honor Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan story “A House Without A Key,” directed and produced by Hal Glatzer.

Okay, I guess that with the help and ideas of all the volunteers, keeping it fresh is not so tough.

3. How do you program against all the incredible outings being offered?

Some of the other cons – Bristol, Denver, Anchorage – have done great jobs of offering side trips and exploration of local attractions.

But this is Hawaii.

I mean, a trip to the summit of Kilauea Volcano for an after dark light show? Snorkeling at Kealakekua Bay and Puako Reef? Waipi’o Valley on horseback? A gourmet dinner and a night of astronomy atop Mauna Kea?

I might as well give in on this one and admit that some attendees are going to forsake a few of my ever-so-well-thought-out panels and events for some sightseeing. I would, too.

Overall, the job of Programming would be daunting except for a few factors I haven’t mentioned yet:

• It’s nothing compared to the attention to detail that Bill and Toby and the other committees are doing. They have the hard part and they make it look easy.

• The Programming Committee is made up of lots more folks than just Jude and me and they’re terrific. We’ll need to get the basic grid set before we call on many of them for help, but oh boy, will we ever be calling. This group knows how to put on a party.

• It’s a joy to sit back and say, “If I were designing the perfect convention, here’s what I’d do.”

That’s my question for you today, ‘Rati. If you were King of the World and designing your own ideal mystery convention, what would it look like? What panels and discussions would you like to see? Any other random thoughts on things that should be done?

And do come join us, ‘Rati. We’ll be at the Marriott Waikoloa Beach Resort on the Kona Coast, March 7 -12, 2009. There are still airline deals to be had, convention membership is only $225, and the room rates are really good for this beautiful resort.

We’re doing the program planning right now, folks. If you want to make a real splash at LCC next year, now’s the time to tell us you’ll be there!

It should be fun. Aloha!

My friend Cary

by Pari

I got the email last Thursday. My friend Cary is dying.

Six years ago when Cary was diagnosed with 4th stage ovarian cancer, all of her friends uttered a collective, "Oh, crap."

"I’m not dead yet," was her response. She proved it too. During her chemo, radiation and numerous surgeries, during the devastating news that the cancer had come back again and again, Cary continued to work as a photographer (go here to see her recent work for me). She even managed to achieve a life-long dream when UNM Press published her book and it went on to win a national award (It’s still garnering new praise).

But now she’s in hospice. I can’t pretend there’s going to be a different outcome, no more emails about her "beating the odds."

Today, I’m thinking about grace. Though I haven’t been in Cary’s innermost circle, I’ve known her for 20 years and have always appreciated her incredible professional eye and her marvelous humor. Since her cancer diagnosis, I’ve been floored by her ability to rise above becoming the disease and her insistence on eschewing any inclination for self-pity.

Cary has shared her journey through group emails. She’s written about the cancer’s merciless progress and we readers have witnessed her determination to live her life fully until . . . Damnit, there have been so many setbacks and she’s always managed to pull through. But three weeks ago, her email began with:

"My dear friends, family and colleagues,
The truth is that the news from me is not very good . . . "

The road block this time was too big, too much. In another recent email, she included this poem:

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

. . . my friend Cary was saying goodbye.

Today as I write this, I am heartbroken.

I’m also grateful. Through the bounty of words and her photographs, Cary has created a legacy that will outlast her too-short life.

We human beings are bound most fundamentally by the truth of death. We mystery writers think about it every day — in our fiction at least — and yet when it slaps us upside the head, we still reel from the blow.

Though I feel tremendous grief right now, a sore rawness in the final waiting, I want to honor Cary and all that she has accomplished . . .

When a fan sent me this link I immediately thought of Cary’s well-lived life. It’s for an indie film about the fan’s father; he’s determined to find and photograph all the Native American petroglyphs in New Mexico before they disappear due to natural or human causes.

Please take the two minutes to watch the preview. It’ll inspire you.

And then take a moment more to look inside yourself — at your own dreams, your own life, your own creative legacy — and give thanks.

_____________________________________
UPDATE: I just got the email this evening. Cary died today . . .

the ending is nearer than you think

by Toni McGee Causey

I’m going to admit to something.

I will often go read the end of a book waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay before the middle. Sometimes I will read it after I’ve only read a couple of chapters. Many times I have stood in the store, read the opening, flipped to the end and read it, then bought the book.

[Waiting for the flailing and the heart attacks to subside.]

Back with me?

I know, it’s kinda like hearing someone licks the toothpaste tube before they re-cap it, or eats dessert before breakfast.

I know. [You want to watch a bunch of writers’ heads spin around? Admit this at a conference. I have several friends who think I’m nuts.] [Okay, probably most of my friends think I’m nuts, but we aren’t going to talk about that today.]

It never really occurred to me, to be honest, that this might not be the natural way of things until friends’ gaped at me when I mentioned it. I mean, I was the kid who opened her Christmas presents ahead of time, played with them, then re-wrapped them for my parents to see under the tree. Every night. All the way up ’til Christmas morning. The first few years, they thought I had an uncanny ability to guess what was in each gift. Then, once they caught on, my dad tried several tricks to stop me. He once marked every present so that all of the marks lined up with each other a certain way, so that if I unwrapped them and wrapped them back again, the marks would not line up. I saw the marks–he’d actually done it. Then I realized a couple of nights later… after experimenting with a couple of boxes… that he wasn’t going to remember where he put those marks, so I unwrapped them, played with them, re-wrapped and put new marks, all lining up. The next year, they hid the presents at a neighbor’s house. In the neighbor’s attic.

So. Yeah. Reading the end first. Never even gonna feel guilty about that.

The first time I admitted this to someone, they were slightly horrified. [Slightly being defined as a wide-eyed double-take that may have been accompanied by an, "Are you NUTS?"] And they have continued to be horrified. Some of them even outed me to friends [coughAllisoncough] [where, I am gleeful to note, I am not the only one].

One of the big concerns–and something I’ve been teased about–is that all the careful planning I put into a book is totally ruined by people like me, who go read that end first, who don’t take the trip as the author has planned it and therefore, cannot be surprised. And my gut reaction is this: if someone can go read the end of my book and know everything they need to know to understand the story? I didn’t build in enough surprises anyway. They should read that end and think, "Wow, I’m missing something here, who is this guy / gal, why are they important here?" or "Wow, that’s bizarre, I wonder why they’re even there?" or "Holy crap, they just did what? Why?"

The truth is, the ending of a book sells the reader on the next book. But it also–if it’s done its job–makes the reader feel vindicated for having plunked down their money on this book. They should leave the story feeling immensely satisfied and surprised, feel as if the story couldn’t have turned out any other way, that it was organic, and yet, they did not see it happening like that.

The other truth is, you, as a writer, have no control over the crazy people like me, who will read the end first. I think the most difficult thing I had to accept as a writer was that sometimes, people weren’t going to read my book all in one sitting. [gasp] [real life, how dare it get in the way?] I write the book to be read as this mounting tension, the intense build of crosses and double crosses and humor which builds on other layers of humor, and if someone stops and starts a few times, that rhythm is broken. It’s like listening to a song a few lines at a time over several days: it just does not have the same impact like that as was originally intended.

So, what I take from this — and from crazy people like me — is that the ending has got to have that wow factor. If someone reads the first chapter and then reads the end, they’ve got to be confused and, at the same time, feel a sense of confidence in me… they’ve got to sense that I have confidence in where I’m taking them, and that it’s not predictable. And it’s got to be satisfying.

My analogy is the roller coaster ride. I know how the ride ends before I get on the thing. I want to see where those little cars roll in so that I know those people lived. I once was literally flying out of one the cars as a teenager on a roller coaster ride when our high school group went to Astroworld. Had the boy next to me not realized it and grabbed my ankles as they went past the safety bar… I was airborne… I’d have been out of the ride. I learned to hold on. [Didn’t stop me from riding.]

So, how about you? Read the end before the rest of the book? Wouldn’t dream of it? What other reading pet peeves do you have?

~*~

I have the absolute THRILL to announce that, starting next Sunday, Allison Brennan will be alternating Sundays with me. She’s not only a terrific friend, she’s one of the stellar bloggers around and I’m honored that she’s going to be here. Plus, she’s just a damned fine writer, so she’s always got great insights.

~*~

Gustav: as I write this, all hatches have been battened, supplies laid in, stores with empty shelves gape vacantly into the night, and people are evacuating. I’m keeping tabs on friends trying to fly out right now from N.O. International, including our own Alex and friend of Murderati Nancie–hopefully, by the time this posts in the morning, they will be safely on a plane. Thank you for all the kind emails–much appreciated.

The First Act

So, continuing the conversation from last week, what actually goes into a first act?

The first act of a movie (first 30 pages) or book (first 100 pages, approx.) is the SET UP. By the end of the first act you’re going to be introduced to all the major players of the story, the themes, the location, the visual image system, the conflicts, and the main conflict.

When you’re making up index cards, you can immediately make up several cards that will go in your first act column. You may or may not know what some of those scenes looks like already, but either way, you know they’re all going to be there.

– Opening image
– Meet the hero or heroine
– Hero/ine’s inner and outer need.
– Hero/ine’s arc
– Meet the antagonist (and/or introduce a mystery, which is what you do when you’re going to keep your antagonist hidden to reveal at the end)
– State the theme/what’s the story about?
– Allies
– Mentor
– Love interest
– Plant/Reveal (or: Set ups and Payoffs)
– Hope/Fear (and Stakes)
– Time Clock (possibly. May not have one and may be revealed later in the story)
– Central Question
– Sequence One climax
– Act One climax

Yeah, it’s a lot! That’s why first acts are often the most revised and rewritten sections of the story. It’s also why it’s often the section most in need of cutting and condensing. The answer is usually combining scenes. All these things have to be done, but they all have to be done within such a limited time frame (and page frame) that you simply HAVE to make each scene work on multiple levels.

Let’s break these things down.

OPENING IMAGE:

Of course in a film you have an opening image by default, whether you plan to or not. It’s the first thing you see in the film. But good filmmakers will use that opening image to establish all kinds of things about the film – mood, tone, location, and especially theme. Think of the opening image of WITNESS – the serene and isolated calm of wind over a wheat field. It’s the world of the Amish – the non-violent, unhurried world into which city violence will soon be introduced. It’s a great contrast with the next image to come – the chaos and noise of the city. This is a great opening image because it also suggests the climax (which takes place in the grain silo – the villain is killed by the spill of grain as the townspeople keep him surrounded.

The opening image of THE USUAL SUSPECTS is a man taking a piss… a sly reference to Verbal and the whole movie “taking a piss” – as the British say – on the audience.

The opening image of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is a dark, misty forest, through which Clarice is running as if in a dream.

MEETING THE HERO/INE

Of course you’re going to devise an interesting, clever and evocative introduction to your main character. But there are a whole lot of structural things that you need to get across about your hero/ine from the very beginning. You have to know your character’s INNER AND OUTER DESIRES (more here… ) and how they conflict. Closely entwined with the inner/outer desire lines is the ARC of the character (since you are devising the end of your story at the same time as you’re planning the beginning. The arc of the character is what the character learns during the course of the story, and how s/he changes because of it. It could be said that the arc of a character is almost always about the character realizing that s/he’s been obsessed with an outer goal or desire, when what she really needs to be whole, fulfilled, and lovable is (fill in the blank). On top of that a character will go from shy and repressed to a capable and respected leader, from selfish to altruistic, from pathological liar to a seeker of truth… and the bigger the change, the more impact the story will have, as long as you keep it believable.

So it’s essential to know where you want your character to end up, and then work backward to create a number of personal obstacles and external problems that are keeping that character from being everything s/he can be.

THE ANTAGONIST

The antagonist, opponent, villain deserves his/her own post, of course; I’ll have to get on it. For now I’ll just say, either you’ll be introducing the antagonist in the first act, or you’ll be introducing a mystery or problem or crisis that has actually been set in motion by the antagonist.

ALLIES

Also in the first act, you’ll set up most of the hero/ine’s allies – the sidekick, the roommate, the best friend, the love interest, the brother or sister.

MENTOR

Not all stories have mentors, and the mentor might not be introduced until some time in the second act.

LOVE INTEREST

This character generally plays a dual role: the love interest can also be the antagonist (in most love stories), an ally, or a mentor.

HOPE/FEAR (STAKES)

Just as good storytellers will be sure to make it perfectly clear what the main character’s inner and outer desires are, these storytellers will also be very clear about what we hope and fear for the main character. Generally what we hope for the character is the same as her or his INNER NEED. We hope George Bailey will defeat Mr. Potter. We fear Potter will drive George and his family into ruin (and George possibly to suicide). Our fear for the character should be the absolute worst case scenario: in a drama, mystery or thriller we’re talking madness, suicide, death, ruin. In a comedy or love story the stakes are more likely the loss of love.

Our awareness of the stakes may grow along with the main character’s growing awareness, but it most stories there are clues to the bigger picture right from the beginning

STATEMENT OF THEME:

A reader or audience will get restless if they don’t have a good idea of what the story is within the first five (I’d even say three) minutes of a movie, or the first twenty pages of a book. Sometimes it’s enough to have just a sense of the central conflict. But often good storytellers will make it perfectly clear what the theme of the story is, and very early on in the story. In the first act of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, George is impatient to leave pokey little Bedford Falls and go out in the world to “do big things”. George’s father tells him that in their own small way, he feels they ARE doing big things at the Building and Loan; they’re satisfying one of the most basic needs of human beings by helping them own their own homes. This is a lovely statement of the theme of the movie: that it’s the ordinary, seemingly mundane acts that we do every day that add up to a heroic life.

FIRST ACT CLIMAX/CENTRAL QUESTION:

We talked about sequence and act climaxes last week – that an act climax will have a reversal, revelation, and often a setpiece and/or change of location set piece that spins the story into the second act. What we didn’t talk about is the idea of the central question of the story.

I will be didactic here and say that by the end of the first act you MUST have given your reader or audience everything they need to know about what the story is going to be about: what kind of story it is, who the hero/ine and antagonist (or mystery) are, and what the main conflict is going to be. It’s useful to think of the story a posing a central question: Will Clarice get Lecter to give her the information she need to catch Buffalo Bill before he kills again? Will Sheriff Brody’s team be able to kill the shark before it kills again (and in time to save the tourist season?) Will the crew of the Nostromo be able to catch and kill that alien before it kills them?

(All right, those are some bloody examples, but hey, look at the title of this blog…)

It’s the question on which the entire action of the story hinges.

Here’s an interesting structural paradigm to consider. In a lot of stories, the central question is actually answered in the second act climax, and the answer is often: No.

What’s the second act climax of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS?
(Hint: it’s the one scene/setpiece that EVERYONE remembers, and Clarice has nothing to do with it.)

Right – Lecter escapes. Well, what does that have to do with our heroine?

It means that Lecter will NOT be helping her catch Buffalo Bill. In fact, in the movie, when she gets the phone call that Lecter has escaped, she says aloud, “Catherine’s dead.”

Because Clarice thinks that she needs Lecter to save Catherine. But Lecter, like the great mentor he is, has TAUGHT Clarice enough that she can catch Buffalo Bill and save Catherine herself (okay, with help from the teaching of her other mentor, Crawford).

Ingenious storytelling, there, which is why I keep returning to SILENCE OF THE LAMBS for my story structure examples.

Next post I’ll move on to the elements of the second act.

And now I’m headed to New Orleans… wish me luck (!).

Actively Disengaged

by JT Ellison

I really should have titled this "What I’ve Read on My Summer Vacation," but actively disengaged fits so well.

I’ve been at the beach this week, desperately trying to keep away from the Internet, from work, from the incessant deadlines that seem to plague me. And for the most part, I’ve done a good job. I have the beginnings of a wicked tan, have indulged in adult beverages in the middle of the day, have seen more flesh than is humanly possible, and have read four books. And of course I’m typing this blog, because I couldn’t get everything I needed to done before I left for vacation. I haven’t been able to stay away from the television, mostly because we were dealing with the remnants of Thunderstorm Kaye when we arrived, and are now fretfully watching Gustav, scared to death for our friends in New Orleans.

Since 14 came out this week, I’ve also been doing press — interviews and guest blogs, phone interviews, all the attendant public relations that goes hand in hand with a book’s release. I went to Barnes & Noble and Bookland to visit the book Tuesday, a heartening experience considering they asked me to sign all the stock. Every time I crossed out my printed name and slapped my signature on the book, I felt a little lighter. It’s utterly surreal to have published a book. To have two books on the shelves is a bit overwhelming.To be able to walk in a bookstore, a grocery store, a drugstore and see my name of the cover of a book is craziness.

I think I’m lucky that I use a pseudonym — like I’ve said before, I can separate J.T. Ellison from me, which lends this slightly warped perspective to my daily life. It’s hard trying to keep the two halves of my world separate. I don’t like JT bleeding into me, and I don’t like me bleeding into JT. It’s difficult to keep the two apart, especially when you’re working on vacation. Bah.

It can be especially hard for me to disengage the JT part of my brain when it comes to reading. Turning off the writer side off and letting my inner reader reign supreme can be tricky. But this week, the books I chose to take with me have let me to be a reader, to glory in the story, to read without analyzing writing style, without that little niggling voice that usually reads a line and say oh, I wouldn’t have said it quite that way.

I started with Zoë Sharp’s FIRST DROP — I’m telling you, Taylor and Charlie Fox would get along very, very well if they ever had a chance to meet in person. The story rolled along at a breakneck pace — I always love books where there’s a real chase on — and kept me up way to late the first day we were here. Add to that the setting, miles from my current environs, and I was totally hooked. I’m moving on to SECOND SHOT by the end of the week.

Next up was Kristy Kiernan’s MATTERS OF FAITH, a brilliantly nuanced story of love, loss and family relations. Kristy’s books are always lyrical and stunning, and I was so completely sucked into the story that the real world faded away. It’s one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.

I finished Alex Berenson’s THE FAITHFUL SPY last night. I’ve been saving this book for months, knowing it wouldn’t disappoint. I was right, it was stunning. Scary as hell, too, considering our political climate and the war on terror. I have his new book, THE GHOST WAR, and will hopefully get it done in the next week.

I’ve also nearly finished Dave White’s THE EVIL THAT MEN DO, a wonderful followup to his debut Jackson Donne novel WHEN ONE MAN DIES. Dave writes with an assurance well beyond his years, and I can’t wait to see where this series goes.

So in addition to the second efforts of both Zoë and Alex Berenson, I’ve got CHASING HARRY WINSTON by Lauren Weisberger. Had to do it. Don’t apologize for a second. Can’t wait to dive in. So there.

At the bottom of the stack is the creme de la creme, the book I’ve been waiting to read for months. Lee Child’s NOTHING TO LOSE. I can’t wait.

This is only a tiny crack, a baby fissure in the stacks and stacks of books I need to catch up on. I’m taking September off from writing, will be doing research for book 5, THE IMMORTALS, reading for pleasure, and touring. Catching up on playtime. At least for a few weeks.

So let’s just have fun today. What are you reading?

Since I’m in the land of margaritas, daiquiris, crashing waves and soft sand, let’s skip the wine this week and do something called Chases’ By The Beach – raspberry liqueur, vodka, Cointreau, cranberry juice and orange juice. Yum! And how about a glass of Prosecco to toast our 13th wedding anniversary this past Tuesday. Nothing like have a book drop on your anniversary : )

Call me Mr.…eh…eh…just give me a moment to think…

By Brett Battles

Here’s something they don’t usually tell you when you’re an unpublished novelist trying to get a deal. That title you gave your masterpiece? The word or phrase you felt was perfect, in fact was the rock you built your entire opus on? Well…there’s a very good chance the only one who will know the book by that title will be you.

I know, I know. Not everyone comes up with a title right at the beginning, but we all come up with titles. Even if we don’t always love them, we feel a certain amount of compassion for them. Hey, WE came up with them after all.

But the long, hard truth is that if your publisher doesn’t like the title you’ve lived with for months or even years, when your book comes out your title is going to be different. Now, not all houses work the same. Some will strongly suggest a title to you in a way that will make you feel compelled to say, “I love it”, or at least, “It’s okay. I can live with it.” Some, hopefully most, will ask you to come up with some titles while they do the same. Everyone working together for the greater good. Even then, the decision on what the final title will be will fall to someone other than you. That would be your publisher. Either a specific person high up on the chain, or a group. They will choose from the list, perhaps yours, perhaps theirs. Hopefully it’s a good one.

The good news is sometimes it’s even better than the one you had.

Though I only have two books out so far, I actually have a bit of experience in the title arena. As most of you know, my debut novel is entitled THE CLEANER. For those of you who read it, you also know that the title is perfect for the book. It’s the obvious choice.

So obvious that I never thought of it.

As I wrote that novel, I had no idea what to name it. I played with several ideas, finally settling on a one. I called it…and I kid you not…DEVIL MAY CARE. That’s right, I gave it the same title that eventually was used this year for the latest James Bond novel. Now I’d love to claim responsibility or some kind of connection, but it’s highly doubtful. The only people who knew my book by that name were the members of my writer’s group, and Jim Pascoe and Tom Fassbender, the publishers/editors at Ugly Town – the people who initially bought my book. (For those who don’t know my publishing story and how I ended up at Bantam Dell, I’ll probably tell it again someday, but it’s around the web somewhere.)

Jim and Tom didn’t like the title. And, honestly, I wasn’t sold on it either. So they asked me to come up with alternatives. I came up with a list…a sucky list, but a list nonetheless:

A DEEP DISRUPTION
DROP FROM SIGHT
THE EDGE OF DEATH
THE DISRUPTION POINT
THE POINT OF DISRUPTION
POINT OF DISRUPTION
THE POINT OF NO RETURN
A TIME OF MADNESS
THE EDGE OF MADNESS
IN THE FACE OF MADNESS
THE MADNESS POINT
THE SEED OF HATRED
A REASON TO FEAR

Boy, that list is bad. Maybe not for some books, but for mine, none of them make too much sense. Jim and Tom thought the same. So more lists were developed, and finally from the last list one title stood out:

HUNG OUT TO DIE

It retrospect, it’s a much better title for a mystery than a thriller, but at the time I was just happy that we had something.

Flash forward a few months to when Bantam Dell bought my contract from Ugly Town (I refer you to the previous note re: publication story.) “We love the story,” my acquiring editor said, “but that title. Think we need to come up with something else.”

So with a heavy sigh I went back to the drawing board. Came up with more suggestions. But, ultimately, it was that same editor who said to me one day, “Have you ever thought about the title THE CLEANER?”

I was silent for several moments. When I finally did speak, I think I said something like, “It’s perfect,” and then proceeded to flog myself for days for not thinking of it earlier.

With my second book, when my editor asked what the title was, I said THE DECEIVED. And for some reason that stuck. There were no lists this time. No back and forth. I even came up with a title for book 3. I thought I was on a roll. It was starting to come to me now. A half dozen other titles revealed themselves over the next months, titles for potential future novels in the series. This was going to be easy now.

Oh, ignorant fool.

The call came this week. “The title for book 3? Think we need to find something else.” Suddenly I knew all of those other titles would no longer work for the series either.

Square one. Crap.

Soooo…that’s where I am this week! Fun times. Time to put my thinking cap on and pull that drawing board out again.

If you have a title story to share, please do. Or if you’ve heard of one, share with the class. Hell, if you just want to rant about all the typos I probably have in this post, have at it. All comments encouraged.

Song for the day: Most Beautiful Girl In The Room by Flight of the Conchords

Beautiful Day

There are moments in life to remember.

I tend to
gather these moments like presents under a Christmas tree, opening
them, rejoicing in their glory, then mentally rewrapping them and
hiding them away in some recess of my brain to bring out and enjoy over
and over again.

I had one of these moments Monday night.

Monday was a
big day for us, to say the least. Let me extend a warm thank you to
everyone who has supported Killer Year – believe me, we couldn’t do any
of this without you.

So after a
long, happy day, I made a big pot of chili, cut up some jalapeno
cornbread and sat down with Hubby to watch Monday Night Football. I
wanted to bear witness — the Saints triumphant return to New Orleans.
(By the way, someone buy the Saints’ special teams a drink!)

The pre-show caught me off guard.

Music Rising,
the organization started by US’s The Edge to help bring music back to
New Orleans, sponsored the show. With a jubilant horn serenade, Green Day
took the stage. Now, here’s where we start with the memory moments.
Green Day is a personal talisman for me. Every time I hear their song Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life), something good happens. Corny, but true.

They took the stage and opened strong, with The Edge playing guitar. Then Bono joined them. And I started thinking about that phone call.

“Hey, Billie
Joe. U2 wants you to fly to London, record some tunes, then go live on
Monday Night Football in New Orleans for the pre-game show.”

Uh, yeah.
Think they thought about that for more than a millisecond? I mean,
let’s face it. The Baby Boomers have the Rolling Stones, and The
Beatles, and well, Cat Stevens. My generation has U2. We win, hands down.

As the
melded bands played an original composition combining “House of New
Orleans” and “Beautiful Day”, I teared up, enjoyed the show and the
message. When my goose bumps finally packed suitcases and went on
vacation, I marked my mental moment. Then I started thinking about
mentors.

Now, I’m assuming here, but roll with me.

I’d be
willing to bet that Green Day views U2 as an iconic band. Perhaps now
they even view them as mentors in their musical careers. To have the
greatest of the great want to work with you is a humbling experience.
I’m sure they jumped at the chance.

That’s how
we feel about our Killer Year mentors. We were overwhelmed at the
prospect – the best minds in our industry would mentor us? As Marcus
Sakey said, “I grew up on books these people wrote. I never dreamed they’d one day be helping with my own.”

He summed it
up perfectly. These are our heroes, these giants of the mystery and
thriller genres. And they’ve agreed to help us, show us the ropes,
share their considerable insight into the publishing game? Would
someone mind pinching me, please???

Thanking ITW
for this amazing opportunity isn’t enough. I’d like to take it one step
further. At the risk of sounding too much like a Girl Scout, a promise.

A promise to
pay attention. A promise to listen before we speak. A promise to take
the considerable time and attention being paid the Class of 2007 and
give back to the Class of 2008 and beyond, if they’d like it. A promise
that we’ll be the best mentees we can be, and always, always promise to
do our best.

And on a more personal note, I promise to stop waxing poetic in my blog posts.

Safe travels to all of you heading to Madison
today and tomorrow. I know you’re going to have a wonderful time, and
I’m bummed I won’t be there. And if you see your mentor, tell them
thank you.

Do you have a mentor story you’d like to share? We’d love to hear it!

Even When it Hurts

by Rob Gregory Browne

There is a gene in me that compels me to do what I do.

Or maybe it’s a disease. A sickness I’ve carried from the moment of birth. I often think I might be better off with a transorbital lobotomy, lumbering vacantly toward an empty room.

I don’t know why I’m this way. Could probably trace it to my mother. I grew up listening to her play Chopin and Beethoven in our living room on a funky console piano.

It sounded like a Steinway to me.

Or there’s my Uncle Ed, who loaned me his baritone uke when I was eight years old. He saw my eyes get big when he started playing, and for reasons I’ll never know, handed it to me, wearing that wise-acre grin of his, and said, "Keep it for awhile, kiddo."

Next thing I knew, I was blasting away on those nylon strings, writing songs. But then I guess I’d always been writing them. When I was very young I used to sing myself to sleep every night, rolling my head from side to side in rhythm to the tune I’d made up.

Yes, I was a strange kid.

But then we’re all strange, aren’t we? Those of us who attempt to create. We spend so much time in our own heads that the people around us, the people we love, start to feel neglected.

We live in messy rooms, drive dirty cars and can’t stop humming that new melody we’ve come up with — working it, revising it, sometimes forgetting it. We figure out character flaws and plot turns while we’re supposed to be concentrating on the road. We sketch doodles on place mats as we wait for our french fries. We snap photographs of our children, experimenting with angles, then upload them into an electronic box to play with the colors and the grain and the contrast.

I’ve had this disease — this desire to create — for as long as I can remember. And I can’t control it. Can barely manage to channel it into one specific task. When I’m writing, I want to be making music. When I’m playing guitar, I want to be editing video. When I’m editing video, I’m thinking about the book I should be working on.

But then it all comes together somehow in my brain — the melody, the images, the words — and after a long, difficult slog, a book is born. A song is written. A video completed.

But I often wonder what it is that compels me to do these things. What is it in my DNA that forces me to pick up a pen or play a piano or draw a picture? And when I was first starting out, what gave me the audacity to believe that I’d ever be any good at it?

Or does that really matter?

Gift or curse, this desire is something I’ve had to learn to live with. And the most painful thing about it is that most of my attempts to be creative actually fail. I’m never completely satisfied with my efforts.

But then maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s only the pursuit that counts.

And I always enjoy the pursuit. Always.

Even when it hurts.