Mysterious Matters: Mystery Publishing Demystified

Action - Camera - Lights!

I haven't been blogging as much as I'd like to lately because it's been a good season for manuscripts. (I wonder if this has anything to do with NaNoWriMo.) As always, there are many submissions, few contracts. The submissions tell me that, despite all the dire prognostications, as well as the pomposities of the self/vanity-published, there are still a good many aspiring writers who understand that a publisher can do many things that the average person can't - and that the publisher will actually pay to have all of this done because it believes in their work! Imagine that - a world in which writers don't have to pay for editors, pay for typesetting, pay for ISBN numbers, pay for cover design, pay for publicists, etc. Oh, right: That's the world I've been working in for decades now. 

But I digress. I'm seeing a common problem in recent submissions. It's not that this problem is NEW (in fact, it's always been a problem, for at least as long as I can remember), but since I've just set side about the 20th manuscript that has this problem, I thought I'd talk a little about it here.

In a nutshell: Writers, please make sure something HAPPENS in your first chapter. Not just anything, please, but SOMETHING INTERESTING, WEIRD, PUZZLING, ODD, or MYSTERIOUS. This spark of action is what readers need to get involved in your story. There's that old literary concept of in medias res - of starting a narrative in the middle of something, then going back and filling in details about the past as you move the story forward. It's as relevant to genre fiction as it is to Beowulf, and I can't stress that enough. A protagonist is not a baby just out of the womb: We should not hear the protagonist's life story, in sequence, starting X number of years ago, in the first chapter. We need STORY in the first chapter, with hints about what is to come and strange things about the characters that need explanation. 

This is why I suggest the Action- Camera - Lights! approach to writing your first chapter.

ACTION - Have something happen. Your doorbell rings, you answer the door, and a stranger drops dead in front of you. You run to pick up the phone and as you're doing so, you hear someone smashing the back window of your house. You're running through Central Park at night, chased by God knows who, protecting that little package (with CONTENTS UNKNOWN TO THE READER) as if your life depends on it, because it probably does.

CAMERA - Make that first chapter visual. Picture it as the opening sequence of a film, or the trailer that makes you want to plunk down ten bucks to see the movie before it's released on DVD two weeks from now. I'm not saying to describe every last thing or person in detail, but make that opening chapter visceral. Something important has to be at stake, and you can "swing the camera" to other viewpoints (if you're doing a third-person narrative) to increase the mystery of what's going on.

Then, finally...

LIGHTS! - In your second chapter, or later, begin to illuminate what has happened in the first chapter. How did your protagonist get to where he or she is? Please note: I'm NOT saying that Chapter 2 is the place to then begin a longwinded backstory about your character's entire life history. I'm saying that in Chapter 2, you can let just a little bit of light onto your scene, dropping a couple of delicious tidbits or hints for your readier. The police have identified that man who dropped dead on your doorstep - It was your wife's lover, whose awareness you'd been blissfully unaware of. You find safety in a little-known hidewaway in Central Park and notice the feet of your attacker running past - he's wearing orange running shoes of the type favored by your boss. When you go to investigate the broken window at the back of your house, you find that your favorite pen has been stolen. But it was a Bic pen that you bought at Walmart for 29 cents. What gives?

You see my point... I don't want to read an autobiography or a biography. I want to read CRIME FICTION. So do the tens of thousands of other devoted mystery fans who are willing to try a new writer who does things right.

Top 5 List: The Mystery Novelist's Challenges

Most of the time, I blog about the editing and publishing of mysteries/crime fiction, rather than the writing thereof. But over the last few months I've been having conversations with writers from my list, and the talk has sometimes steered toward writing process, revision, audience considerations, and so forth. So, based on those discussions, I thought I might list what I see as writers' (or at least MY writers') top challenges as they write.

1. How do I balance plot and character?  I find that many writers worry about finding this balance. Given length constraints, how do they tell a story while also giving characters room to grow and evolve? And I do think the balance is a tricky one to pull off. I often get manuscripts that are too character-centric, with only the sketchiest of plots; and I also get fast-paced books with paper-thin characters. If you're writing a series, having a strong protagonist (as well as a strong supporting cast) is essential. At the same time, you want to draw readers into your story. How do you accomplish all of this in 70-80,000 words?  It's not easy.

2. How do I make the language do what I want it to do?  All of my authors write in English. It's a nuanced and versatile language, but I hear a lot of writers say they feel they must wrestle it to the ground to make it do what they want it to do. It's not just a matter of word choice; language is essential in planting clues/hints/doubts. A lot of writers have been telling me they struggle as much with what they do not say as they do with what they do say. I think that's an important point: In mystery fiction, what you don't say is as important as what you do.

3. How do I find enjoyment as a writer while meeting my readers' expectations?  We can all give examples of writers who are on auto-pilot, who've written the same book a dozen times. There's a place for that; formula can be comforting and enjoyable for readers. But a lot of my authors try to expand their horizons, and they find themselves asking the question: How do I write a book that people will want to read, but one that will be a challenge for me to write? As a writer, how do I hone my craft while not straying too far from the commercial realm of a book that the mass market will want to buy and read?

4. How do I develop a readership among all the competition?  Interestingly, some authors worry about this question more than others. I have some authors who are masters of promotion, never missing a publicity opportunity. And I have others who just don't have it in them. That's not how they think or who they are. They're happy to do anything our publicist asks them to do (usually), but they're more introverted, less "out there." From where I sit, I'm not sure how much incessant self-promotion really impacts the bottom line. We have books with introverted authors that take off with a life of their own, and books by extroverted authors that sit in the warehouse. I wish I had the magic formula; my retirement fund would be a lot bigger.

5. How do I motivate myself to write, to stay in the game?  A majority of writers (I'd go so far as to say a large majority) can't pay the bills by writing fiction. So there's the constant question of how much time they can spend on their writing, when they often have a full-time job, and/or a family, and/or other demands on their time. This isn't an endeavor for the weak or faint of heart; it takes time, tenacity, a thick skin, and a lot of patience - often without significant financial reward. When my authors miss deadlines because they have to work overtime at their day job (the one that pays the rent or mortgage), how mad can I really get? I can't pay them large advances, can't really give them the financial incentive to take six months to do nothing but write, revise, polish, and submit. 

Next week: The Mystery Editor's Top 5 Challenges.

Beautiful, Lovely, Gorgeous, Et Al.

I recently finished a freshman effort - a historical mystery. Didn't love it. 

First let me say that I think historical fiction is probably the toughest subgrene to carry off well. (Well, maybe not THE toughest. Humor's difficult, too. And there can be a fine line between hard-boiled and perverted.)  When not done well, historical fiction can be turgid (and this one was). There's also the heavy challenge of making conversation sound somehow "real" for the period while not making it tough for the reader to follow. (Crichton's TIMELINE solved that with technology; when all those folks got transported back in time to the medieval days, they were equipped with in-ear technology that converted Middle English to Modern English. Convenient!) Some (many?) of the historicals (especially in manuscript) read like textbooks on the period because the author has felt the need to include every interesting detail unearthed in the research.

But the challenges of writing historical fiction aren't the reason for today's post. I don't usually get too much into the weeds of the craft of writing - you know, whether it's OK to say "There is" and "There are" or whether "data" is singular or plural. However, this particular book had a problem that I realized I see not infrequently in manuscripts: The repetition of the same word in a sentence or paragraph.

Here's my advice: Don't do that.

In the course of one not-very-long paragraph, the author in question used the word "beautiful" three times. One might argue that the copy editor should be fired, but a manuscript with that kind of repetition shouldn't have been turned in to begin with. As writers, you're expected to have more facility with the language, to have a good grasp of synonyms. For beautiful, this author could have substituted lovely, gorgeous, stunning, dazzling, breathtaking ... the list goes on and on.

There is something lazy about a writer who can't be bothered to find different ways to express the finer gradations of a concept. I think this deficit registers with readers (and it certainly registers with this editor). Interestingly, I think this problem is symptomatic of this particular writer's issues - s/he described everything in a sort of freshman-essay style. I have no doubt she got the period details correct, but much of the description (and there was A LOT of it) felt lifted from an art history textbook. This was the primary reason the book didn't work for me; it didn't help that the mystery wasn't particularly good, either.

So, for the aspiring authors out there, do check for word variety before you submit to anyone.

[Maybe I'll do another post on some picayune grammar points I have noticed of late. Point #2 would be: Don't use semicolons. No one knows what they mean.]

 

Top 10 List for the Unpublished

I know that readers of Mysterious Matters like my occasional "Top 10" lists (I'm reminded of the old Book of List series by Irving Wallace et al., quite big in the 80s, if memory serves. They were fun). Today I feel inspired to offer Agatho's Top 10 Tips for the Unpublished (a/k/a Top 10 Tips for Aspiring Mystery Writers).

10. Take yourself seriously, but not too seriously.  It's one thing to be devoted to honing your craft and getting published, quite another to set yourself up as the World's Greatest Mystery Novelist. 

9. Have something in your life besides your writing. It's really tough to make a living at this game. Enjoy it as a hobby, but do other things besides write and network. If all you do is eat, drink, and breathe your manuscript, you'll drive yourself (and everyone around you) crazy.

8. Go easy on the BSP.  BSP standards for blatant self-promotion, the type of promotion that one often sees at work on the Internet. There's a fine line between getting your work out there and making a pest of yourself. I've seen many a writer cross this line. In the early days of the Internet, it worked. Now I think it just turns a lot of people off.

7. Keep learning. Learn from your agent, your editor, other writers, best selling authors...anyone who has something to teach you. Be wary of anyone who professes to know it all. None of us do. And be especially wary of anyone who wants to charge you.

6. Understand basic economics.  You'll be a lot happier as a writer, with much more realistic expectations, if you understand how a business works and how business owners have to protect their bottom line. It's also important for you to understand the product you are selling - a book that has literally tens of thousands of competitors. (For those who know a little economics, established writers are working in a "monopolistically competitive" market, while new writers are working in a "perfectly competitive" market.)

5. Be patient. This whole process takes a long time, much longer than it should. That's just the way it is, and I don't see it changing any time soon. if you have other things in your life (see #9 above), you should be able to focus on other things while you wait.

4. Talk to librarians. Your local librarians have an excellent sense of the local market, of who's reading what and why. Ask them about your book, about its potential. If they're less than enthusiastic, take a giant deep breath, go home, and analyze what you're doing wrong.

3. Understand what happens when you go the self-publishing route. Many frustrated writers are turning to self-publishing (often in electronic formats), a few of them (but still a tiny percentage) to great success. Know that your work will not be reviewed by the most respected review magazines and will have no bookstore presence. The industry as a whole just looks askance at self-publishing as an outlet for the Deluded. (Whether this is a fair judgment, or pure snobbery, is a topic I've vowed never to get into.) Never, ever query an agent or editor by talking about your self-publishing activities. 

2. Treat your editor and agent as the professionals they are. Everyone who works in this industry has one common goal: to publish wildly successful books. Throwing accusations at your editor, publicist, or anyone that your book isn't being "supported" properly won't endear you to anyone and may cause your book to get even less support, because (as human beings) we respond in kind to those who treat us well.

And, finally...

1. Don't do it for the money. Do it because you love it. Whether you're published by one of the big publishing houses or a smaller independent press, the likelihood of you becoming wealthy from your writing is quite small indeed. And I think we see what has happened to a number of writers who do it for the money, who keep series going when the characters, plots, and general authorial involvement in the process have long since passed their expiration dates. If you do it for pleasure - and accept the pains that come with it - you'll meet some great some people along the way and have some fun. You'll meet plenty of jerks, too; but hey, the same thing would happen if you went to a grocery store.

Character Development: Does Perception Equal Reality?

I think I might have commented in the past that no two editors do their job exactly the same way. Our primary job, of course, is to bring money in for the house that hires us - and there are many ways to go about that.  Yes, we are businesses that must cover costs and turn a profit, lest we go under, so I never apologize to for making business decisions that keep us in the black.  

Another part of the job that we can't get away from - and that most of us would never want to get away from - is author development. A good review for our authors is a good review for us; great sales for an author are great sales for us.  Their success is ours.  We thus find ourselves often in the role of coach. We aren't writing the books, just the way the coaches aren't playing the game, but we do think our advice can make the difference between success and failure.

The advice I've been offering a lot of writers lately, I've realized, has to do with protagonist development in the early pages of the manuscript. Because I am a very reader-centric editor, I try to calibrate my reading to a high level of sensitivity regarding the reader's perception of the protagonist and some of the supporting cast, especially in those first 30-40 pages.  

In a post from a few weeks back, I asked of aspiring writers "What are you trying to accomplish?" and this questions applies not only to themes and plot but also to character. I think many commercially-oriented writers would say that they are trying to make their hero/ine likable - that they want the reader to become very fond of the protagonist.  And while I do have an issue or two with trying too hard to make characters likable (sometimes doing so makes them treacly or nauseating), having a likable protagonist is definitely a good idea in a genre that lives on series characters.

For all these reasons, I encourage writers to look closely at what their protags say, think, and do in their first couple of chapters. Even a protagonist with some sort of grudge needs to be perceived as being somehow "above" the other characters for us to root for him.  But spite, malice, sarcasm ... these are often the traits I see exhibited in the early chapters of manuscripts, and they set me against the protag.  So even if their cause is just, I perceive them as unlikable or childish - and I don't necessarily want to read further.

An example from my own life: Decades ago, one of my older brothers had a sort of rivalry going with another guy in our primary school. The rival decided to expand his vendetta to other members of the family, and I distinctly remember the following sequence of events: I was in the schoolyard at lunchtime, playing with friends, when this guy hurled a baseball with intense malice at my private parts. It was 50 years ago, but I can still remember doubling over in pain, along with the embarrassment and rage I felt.  (For those who are interested in how the story ends - my brother beat the guy within an inch of his life, got arrested, but was let off by someone who agreed that the guy deserved everything he got.)  I tell this story because I still think about it occasionally all these years later - but if I was a protagonist in a crime novel, looking to get revenge on this guy for something that happened half a century earlier - I think most readers would think, "OK, that was pretty bad.  But it happened 50 years ago. Shouldn't you get a life?  In the last half century, shouldn't you have done a few other things to occupy your time?"

The idea of perception being reality is one of the reasons I am so sensitive to the use of humor in manuscripts. A character who is trying too hard to be funny comes across as desperate - and I cringe. A character who shoots one snappy comeback after another reminds me of those people in "real life" who are impossible to talk to, who see you not as a conversational partner but rather as someone to impress with their wit and/or repartee.  A protagonist who acts in a spiteful or malicious way early in the manuscript is someone I have a hard time wanting to spend the next 300 pages with.  

I'm not trying to imply that protags should be milquetoast, or all sweetness and light. But I do think that those early chapters are the basis on which many an agent and editor make decisions, so it's worth taking a look at the early pages of your work in progress and ask yourself how your character is coming across.  For mainstream genre mysteries (even for hardboiled) I would save the deeper, darker things for a bit later (of course, there can be hints early on).  

And I'm not suggesting that this balance is easy for a writer to pull off.  I don't know that there's a set of rules anywhere outlining "What a good protagonist does or doesn't do."  We all know how to establish villainy - have your bad guy hurt an animal or a child, and that's the end of it - you'll never get the reader back. This is one of the things that made Stephen King's The Shining so interesting: We know that Jack Torrance "accidentally" (?) hurt his young son as a result of alcohol and anger issues; it's precisely these sort of issues that the Overlook Hotel uses and magnifies, which makes the book nice and creepy. However, that is horror - not mainstream mystery fiction - and I doubt anyone would argue that Jack Torrance should have been a series character.

Any writers out there care to comment on their DO's and DON'Ts for establishing a reader's connection with your protagonist?  This post is getting a little long (feeling rather pensive this evening), so maybe I'll try to come up with a Top 10 list for my next posting.

What Are You Trying to Accomplish?

A question I often asking aspiring novelists, directly or indirectly,is "What are you trying to accomplish?" The response is often, "I want to get published."

Wrong answer!

I know we are dealing with genre fiction here, but many people probably remember their college writing classes and those boring dictates of the five-paragraph essay. Young writers are encouraged to consider their audience and their purpose. Without these considerations, the conventional wisdom goes, the piece of writing will lack focus and interest.

True or untrue?  Very, very true, I would say.

Audience is a topic for another post (at a later date, if I remember to write it) but for today I wanted to opine about the importance of knowing what your manuscript's purpose is. What, exactly, are you trying to do?  The answer can be simple or more complicated, but I believe that the books that get bought are usually the books whose authors can answer this question succinctly and provocatively.  Here's a range of responses, some real, some made up, all good:

• I want to take people away to another world, where they can escape the stresses of their lives with characters they care about.
• I want to explore women's roles in law enforcement and some of the contradictions of feminism.
• I want people to race through my book in one sitting.
• I want to explore the difference between the way children perceive one another versus the way adults perceive those same children.

Do you see what I'm getting at here?  At the heart of crime fiction we have, of course, a crime to be solved (in most cases), a set of characters, a setting, a protagonist. These make up the skeleton on which all writers build their novels. But for a novel to work (for me, at least) I have to have a sense of its deeper or underlying purpose--what the author was hoping to accomplish in the work. This need not be a "serious" purpose a la Vachss or Connelly, but I want to know (and I usually see very quickly) what authorial intent lurks behind these 70,000 words.

If you're writing a book or preparing to submit to agents, you might ask yourself this question, then answer it in your query letter.  A good sentence or two on this could open a lot of doors.

GOOD: My plot's over the top, even a little outlandish, but if the National Enquirer has taught us anything, it's that sensationalism sells.  My book is sensationalistic and gossipy, and while it's meant as a fast, juicy read, I like to think it will also make people think a bit about the excesses of celebrity culture and how we buy into it.

BAD: My 70,000 word mystery takes place in Wyoming on a sheep ranch.  Why is someone killing Farmer Brown's sheep?  Is there a crazed serial sheep killer out there?  

GOOD: My protagonist, Mary Smith, is a Brownie Den Mother who turns Sleuth when someone steals her troop's shipment of Thin Mints.  My audience will be primarily cozy lovers, but I'll also give some insight into the unseen, often-insane world of the contest to sell Girl Scout Cookies, and the lengths people will go to, to make sure their daughter wins that cheap plastic $5 prize.

BAD: John Franklin is a cop with an alcohol problem.  He's considering suicide when a phone call from a former girlfriend gets him enmeshed in a bad situation.  I have completed the manuscript and have it available to send at your request.

People, Characters, Protagonists, Villains, Sidekicks, Ad Infinitum

For a couple of weeks, I opined about half of the mystery equation: plot. Today I thought I'd think out loud about the other half of the equation: character.

I'm tempted to ask (and answer) the rhetorical question: What makes for a good character?  But I don't like that word, "good."  There's a sort of moral judgment that goes along with it: Characters don't have to be good, morally, to be effective as characters.  So I suppose the question should be: How do you populate your pages with characters that grab hold of readers? I think characters like Dexter and Hannibal Lecter have shown us that not every protag need be syrupy sweet (or even sane, for that matter).  Let me suggest, then, that the best characters are:

1. MYSTERIOUS. In a lot of manuscripts I see, the protagonist's life is an open book from page one.  Let's say our main character, Prunella Smythe-Hummingford, enters the ballroom on page one. For some reason, many writers are compelled to move instantly into PS-H's childhood, relationship with her parents, neuroses, and the specific highways and byways she took to get to this particular ballroom. But I don't want (or need) to know all about Prunella in that first chapter.  I want parts of her to be unexplained.  Why does she keep touching that emerald necklace nervously?  I'd prefer to find out in Chapter 10 rather than on page 2.  Why is she avoiding Eustacia Burford-Leavenworth?  Again, I'd rather develop an idea about it on page 3, only to be proven wrong in Chapter 8.  In fiction as in life, everyone's hiding something, whether it's a secret or an "unacceptable emotion," or something even deeper yet.  I like to see the novel as a gradual unfolding of the main character, as well as some of the supporting cast, rather than the "Here's my protagonist's life story in Chapter 1, now let's get on with the murder" approach.  The best crime fiction, I think, has a few characters who are at least as mysterious, or as unexplained, as the events.

2. DRIVEN.  Characters, just like people in real life, have to be driven by something. It could be something as simple as money or as complicated as a traumatic childhood.  This is just as true for supporting characters as it is for main characters. When they get out of bed in the morning, they are thinking about SOMETHING - and I would like to gradually come to understand what that something is.  

3. INTELLIGENT. I've mentioned this before; I think the reading public has zero tolerance for dumb main or supporting characters, unless they're there for comic relief.  Even if the character doesn't have a formal education, s/he should have some sort of street savvy, or be good at something.  Easy Rawlins' aide-de-camp, Mouse, isn't moral, but he's very effective at what he does on the shady side of the law. Criminals have to be intelligent, too; or it would be much too easy to apprehend them.  (If any of you out there are fans of Dell Shannon, you'll remember how many of her perps were just dumb, and this led the cops straight to them.  Of course, those books were police procedurals juggling sometimes half a dozen plots.  The modern crime novel doesn't usually juggle quite so many strands.) Intelligent characters also have the benefit of giving the reader a challenge to keep up with them, and I do think most crime aficionados enjoy this challenge.

4. NOT FULLY PREDICTABLE.  People (not me, of course) say that marriages become boring because they often become so predictable.  Characters can remain true to their core values or core personality but still do unpredictable things that take the plot into intriguing new directions. Even Mma Ramotswe, she of the predictable earthy good wisdom, sometimes does the unexpected (which, I believe, is part of the delight of reading about her). But I beg you, please do not have a person do something completely out of character to further the plot.  I've seen this happen a little too often lately; and what could have been quite a good book ends on a sour note. 

5. GRADATED.  By "gradated" (is that even a word?), I mean the character shows gradations, some shades of gray in key areas.  Maybe a devoted husband and father has an extramarital affair.  Not a good thing, of course, but such a lapse makes him human.  Maybe a devoted mother is so frustrated with her daughter that she passive-aggressively "forgets" to pick the kid up at school and makes her walk home in the rain.  Readers love these imperfections in character because they help us feel less guilty about our own shortcomings.  (Sounds corny, but I believe it's true.)  

6. INTRIGUING.  It's tough to describe this in any more detail.  An intriguing character is one who makes me think, "I'd like to know what's going on in HER head." One meets these types of people at parties sometimes, I find.  I'm not much of a partygoer, but I have to attend them in my professional capacity, and every so often I will zero in on someone and think, "There's more there than meets the eye."  It's easy to write about the loudmouth drunk who uses alcohol to hide his insecurities. That type of character isn't interesting to me because it's so obvious what he's all about.  But that person at the party who's clearly mismatched with her date, or the obviously beautiful woman with an unexplained air of hostility -- hmmm, now there's someone interesting.

7.LIKABLE.  I hate to close the list with this word, because I see so many manuscripts in which the author is working like a demon to make his protag "likable." Now let me go on record as saying that a likable protagonist is an EXCELLENT thing. People buy series books because they LIKE the protagonists and want to follow along on their adventures. But likable doesn't have to mean perfect.  Nobody is smart, sexy, perfectly built, kind, well-read, funny, and completely secure.  So your protagonist shouldn't be, either.  Kinsey M. has had a good run of being quite likable while also dealing with her issues with men, etc.  

PLOT: The Center Must Hold

So today I want to talk about PLOT.  I was trying to think of a series of clever acronyms that would encapsulate plot:

• People Living Out Tensions
• Please Let Others Think
• Puzzles, Logic, Omens, Tricks

I don't love any of 'em, but I probably like the third one the best (and I'm sure there are more).

I'm fond of opining that genre fiction is the intersection of plot and character. Speaking for myself, I just adore a good plot ( = story).  The reviews that get make me most likely to buy a book are those saying that So-and-So is a "first-class storyteller."  And I read first for plot, second for character. This isn't to say that character isn't hugely important.  It's just that I believe that a mystery novel without a compelling and somewhat original plot is rarely fully satisfying.

And most of the manuscripts I see aren't very innovative when it comes to plot. Somewhere on the Internet, there's a piece about the six (or seven, or some other number) of plots on which all fiction is based.  I suppose we could spend some time deconstructing that, but I thought it might be more fun to talk about the common plots we see in crime fiction and see if we can come up with some guidelines for working with them in new ways that editors (and readers, of course) will notice and appreciate.

1. THE SERIAL KILLER PLOT.  A lot of mystery lovers roll their eyes at such plots, considering them stupid or lazy.  And many of them are.  What we CANNOT ignore, though, is the public's taste for them.  Let us not forget that the single most successful book of the millennium, thus far, is a serial-killer book: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  And we've seen plenty of other serial killers on the best-seller lists; think Thomas Harris and Chelsea Cain. These books will keep being published because they sell, so how can we make them at least moderately interesting?

It really has to be all about the spin.  I firmly believe Stieg Larsson's success is based at least partially on the fact that he showed a serial killer in another country that most Americans don't know anything about.  Hannibal Lecter, hateful as he is (and I would go so far as to state that I loathe that character more than any other in fiction), was brilliant and provocative in his way of playing with Clarice. Chelsea Cain's serial killer has the distinction of being a woman (and thus a statistical anomaly among serial killers). Dexter is a serial killer who kills killers - wow, what a fabulous concept and twist (I say that without irony).

So, for God's sake, if you want your book published, please stop using the same old serial-killer tricks. I cannot tell you how weary I am of serial killers who leave some sort of bizarre calling-card with all their bodies (a tarot card, a piece of Limoges china, a postcard of some Rembrandt painting, or something equally ridiculous).  It's tired, boring, derivative. Serial killers toying with detectives and police may be realistic but it's becoming so dull and predictable. This may sound odd, but I'd like to see a serial killer who isn't 100% psychopathic or over-the-top.  How about a serial killer who kills for a cause; for the benefit of the people he or she likes/loves; and so forth?  I want, need, desire some sort of motivation beyond the same old, same old psychosexual issues.

2. THE COLD CASE.  Hmm, I'll admit that these types of books have a hard time getting onto my desk. The issue is that they so often lack immediacy and seem warmed-over. And, in many cases, the investigation seems more informed by idle curiosity (and having too much time on one's hands) than on anything that really pulls me in.  

If you're going to do a cold case, it's essential to make it relevant to what's going on today, and/or to the investigator's life.  Old murders now seem old hat to me; how about trying some sort of other crime from the past, like a stolen inheritance or kidnaping?  These types of plots are really difficult if you're trying to introduce a series character; at some point you're going to need crimes happening now to give your protagonist something to do.  

3. THE COZY VILLAGE MURDER.  So, death hits a quaint little town and lots of delightful people, one with a really dark secret, find themselves as suspects.  When Agatha did it, it was new and exciting. Now I'm finding it a bit milquetoast.  So many cozies these days are more about creating a quirky (and, to my mind, absolutely unbelievable) set of characters and circumstances that the plot recedes into nothingness.  

I know that readers love these books more for the characters and setting than for the story, but I think a cozy with a superb storyline could make an impact.  Sort of a Minette Walters-type plot but in a village setting with characters who feel more real and less like caricatures.  Stories that don't center solely around things like unwanted development, the mysterious out-of-towner, the hateful city people who show up and wreck the peace and quiet.  

Next week I'll write more on this topic, as there are still plenty of plots to be deconstructed....

 

The Best Description Is Observation

The news about Walter Berglund wasn't picked up locally--he and Patty had moved away to Washington two years earlier and meant nothing to St. Paul now--but the urban gentry of Ramsey Hill were not so loyal to their city as not to read the New York Times. According to a long and very unflattering story in the Times, Walter had made a mess of his professional life out there in the nation's capital. His old neighbors had some difficulty reconciling the quotes about him in the Times ("arrogant," "high-handed," "ethically compromised") with the generous, smiling, red-faced 3M employee they remembered pedaling his commuter bicycle up Summit Avenue in February now; it seemed strange that Walter, who was greener than Greenpeace and whose own roots were rural, should be in trouble now for conniving with the coal industry and mistreating country people. Then again, there had always been something not quite right about the Berglunds.

--Jonathan Franzen, Freedom, page 1

 

Remember the old saying that goes something like, "I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it"?  I think most of us know a good book when we see it, but we're hard pressed to define what, exactly, a good book is or does. Such a task is probably impossible, but, taking a page from E.M. Forster (how arrogant of me, I know), I thought I'd take a stab in the first few months of 2011 at trying to explain various elements of the mystery novel/crime fiction and what makes them work.  A daunting task, and I may fail, but let's give it a try.  Today's topic will be: DESCRIPTION.

Clearly, description has a strong place in crime fiction.  We need description to have a sense of the characters' physical being, and it's essential to establishing a sense of place.  When done properly, a good description illuminates, enriches, deepens. And yet in so many manuscripts I see description that I can describe only as tiresome or useless.  So what, for me at least, separates good description from bad description?

First and foremost, bad description centers solely on the physical.  It's one thing to know the color of a character's eyes and hair; it's another thing to describe her every aspect in detail.  Most readers, I think, might consider themselves Impressionists: They like just a few key details that help them form a foundation on which to build the character (or scene) in their minds. Anything more than that deprives them of their (sometimes unspoken, often unconscious) need to construct the book according to their needs and desires at the time of reading.  My first suggested rule of thumb, then, is: Keep it short and make an impact.

Second, I would argue that the best description is not so much description as it is observation.  Anyone can look at a landscape and describe the locations of the trees, the way the sunlight plays through the dust motes, and the variations in the land.  But good description posits and draws conclusions; it reveals something about the item or person being described that the readers would not have guessed from the purely physical description.  Note the use of adjectives in the excerpt from the Franzen book above; in this first paragraph of the book, our attention is immediately drawn to several complexities. First, can the media be trusted in describing Mr. Berglund as arrogant, high-handed, ethically compromised?  Exactly who is using these terms?  Do the purveyors of these adjectives have their facts completely wrong, given Mr. Berglund's former reputation for being generous, smiling, and red-faced? Or was Mr. Berglund able to completely fool the people of St. Paul, while the people of Washington (and New York City) were not so easily duped?  

You see my point.  In this paragraph, we have an oblique "description" of a main character that raises many more questions then it answers. While Freedom can't be considered crime fiction, I would argue that it is precisely this type of description that is most relevant to the mystery. Since half of mystery fiction is character (the second half is plot), doesn't it make sense to have at least some of the characters as mysterious - as difficult to decipher - as the various plot threads?  My second suggested rule of thumb, then, is: Don't just describe. Observe, critique, deconstruct, but leave some questions unanswered.  

Third, I think it's safe to say that if a college student taking a creative writing course could have written your description, it probably isn't very good.  Because it really isn't about piling on the adjectives or the sensuous terminology (though, for a book that does that insanely well, try Patrick Susskind's Perfume). If description becomes an exercise in digging into the deepest reaches of your vocabulary, or requires you to consult a thesaurus, you're on the wrong track.  My third suggested rule of thumb, then, is: It isn't what you show, it's what you reveal.

Finally, I would argue that some of the best methods of description make sparing use of what many of us would consider "descriptive words."  When describing a character who's selfish and cheap, is it better to use the word "skinflint" or to show the character blithely ignoring the crying of a distraught baby? If we want to set a scene under a gray, sunless sky, do we use the words "gray" and "sunless," or do we talk about the landscape being one that the Bronte sisters would have felt connected to?  And so on. My fourth and final suggested rule of thumb, then, is: Describe through action, thought, and deed as much as through words.

 

 

It's Really Hard to....

I was wracking my brain thinking about a "seasonal" topic for Mysterious Matters, but - alas, I must blog about what I'm thinking about, rather than what the season dictates.  And this week I've been thinking about what it's really hard to do as a writer (other than get published and sell more than a few thousand books). Thus, I present:

It's really hard to...

1. Write a funny book.  Lord knows, many people try.  If it weren't for my karmic approach to blogging, I'd love to list all those supposedly "funny" series that have failed to elicit even a smile, much less a guffaw, from me. I suppose I belong to the Oscar Wilde school of humor, which dictates that anyone trying to be funny by definition is not.  I think I'm pretty good at suspending disbelief (one must, if one wants to read and enjoy this genre), but madcap schemes went out with I Love Lucy, and characters created to be wacky always come across as completely fake to me. The only funny books, I think, are those that are understated, where the humor comes from the author's wit and ability to turn a phrase, as well as his or her ability to observe and comment on a situation with dry detachment.  I know editors say we're looking for funny--and we are--but each time I get a query or manuscript that the author describes as "hilarious," I cringe.

2. Create a world.  Years ago (1980, to be exact), Joyce Carol Oates' greatest work, Bellefleur, was published, and that superb novel contained an author's note that reads as follows:

This is a work of the imagination, and must obey, with both humanity and audacity, imagination's laws. That time twists and coils and is, now, obliterated, and then again powerfully present; that "dialogue" is in some cases buried in the narrative and in others presented in a conventional manner; that the implausible is granted an authority and honored with a complexity usually reserved for realistic fiction: the author has intended. Bellefleur is a region, a state of the soul, and it does exist; and there, sacrosanct, its laws are utterly logical.

Though 'twas 30 years ago now, I remember my reaction upon reading this note: "What pretentious bullshit this is."  Now, 30 years later, I see how completely wrong I was, and how absolutely correct JCO was. For the best fiction- whether genre fiction or more literary fiction - does succeed in creating an utterly absorbing world that follows its own rules and logic.  Unfortunately, I can't quite describe what it takes to make this happen; perhaps it springs from a sense that the author had spelled out in his/her own head exactly what is allowable in the created universe and what isn't. Certainly this requires more than a little self-confidence.  In fiction, as in life, self-confidence sells something better than tentative baby steps, which is why I always admire books that choose to make their own rules.  

One writer who creates a believable world, even amidst a lot of supernatural happenings, is F. Paul Wilson, author of the Repairman Jack series.  While Jack goes about solving various crimes, there's a war for the world going on in the background. It's all treated so matter-of-factly, with just the right amount of explanation (and zero apology), that I have no trouble believing any of it.

3. Write as the opposite sex. Wow, this is hard.  Really, really hard.  In fact, I can't think of any bigger challenge that a writer can set for her/himself. Again, it's hard to put together a "to do" list for writing as the other gender, which would most likely lead to a list of stereotypes so blatant that Mysterious Matters would be blasted from the blogosphere.  But does anyone remember the cause celebre over Smilla's Sense of Snow, in which Peter Hoeg dared to write as a woman, and found himself excoriated all over the place? As a man, I can't know how a woman feels when reading a book by a man written in first person as a woman, but I do know how I feel in the opposite situation; and I've just finished two books by women who write in first person as a man.  The first, Emily Arsenault's The Broken Teaglass, is a worthy book in many ways, though definitely caught in a strange timewarp that requires much suspension of disbelief.  Her male narrator, while sympathetic, just isn't male, and I know why--he just isn't angry enough, and the way he reacts to various stimuli isn't male: it's a female's take on the way a man should act, or on how she would act if she were a man.

In contrast, in The Little Stranger, a haunted house tale set in post-War England, Sarah Waters writes a first-person narrative as the male Dr. Faraday, who falls in love with a local woman as he goes about his rounds.  I found many of Waters' little touches absolutely convincing and never questioned the character's maleness.  There's a touching scene where the doctor gets a haircut and realizes that his shorter hair calls attention to his hair loss at the temples--a very male reaction.

4. Be a good critic.  Whenever I finish a book (never before), I go in search of reviews of that book, whether professional or amateur. Surprisingly, many of the key review engines, such as Library Journal and Booklist, get the broad strokes right 98 times out of 100.  But the limitations of the format prevent any sort of longer or serious discussion about the book much of the time; and, sadly, some of the periodicals/newspapers that still review books tend to look down their noses at genre fiction, which means I have to go hunting around on the Web, Amazon, listservs, and so forth.  While those hunts often reveal many gems, they also reveal a lot of half-hearted, not-very-thoughtful, or just plan incorrect criticism.  I usually find the best criticism in the 3-star reviews on Amazon, huddled there in between the rave reviews by people who just LOVE anything that so-and-so has written (or the author's friends/family) and the 1-star reviews of people with an axe to grind. I wish there were a place for serious, thoughtful criticism of our genre.  The DorothyL listserv used to serve that purpose a bit more, but it seems to have become primarily a promotional device where anything negative is perceived as "hurtful."  This is one of the reasons I welcome comments on Mysterious Matters--I would like it to be a forum for the serious discussion of the books we love.  But just because we love 'em doesn't mean we can't talk about what they do well and what they could do better!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 How well do these women succeed in writing as men? Read them to find out...