Mysterious Matters: Mystery Publishing Demystified

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...  

Learning from Rejection: The Ongoing Monologue

This was a particularly good week for manuscripts.  I had about half a dozen to catch up on.  All of them were good to very good; I enjoyed reading all but one of them. But I did not offer a contract on any of them.

It occurred to me that, as an industry, we should be better about telling authors (and agents), whose hopes we have raised, WHY we turned down a book.  But who has the time?  Or the energy?  We've got to keep moving ahead... and it's always easier to say "It just wasn't right for me" or "I didn't fall in love with it."

So, herewith a blog post outlining why those six books didn't get contract offers from me.

All of the manuscripts were well written.  That goes without saying for any manuscript that gets to the "full read by an editor" stage.  So why didn't I take any of them on?

My favorite one (of the rejectees) was quite wonderfully written.  Oh, what command this writer had of his subgenre.  The turns of phrase were pointedly and sometimes hilariously world-weary.  Every page had an observation that made me think of the writer as a kindred soul.  The plot was serviceable enough, even interesting, with nice twists and turns. 

But...there was nothing NEW there. All of the characters were well-drawn, but I've seen all of them before. They were nicely fleshed out, but still the "types" that are a staple of that particular subgenre. Looking ahead to the publicity and the ARCs, I struggled with how I'd describe the book, what I'd promise readers.  "If you like X, Y, and Z writers, you'll like this one."  That seemed damning with faint praise.

In a couple of others, I felt that a strong premise - and equally strong opening chapters - fizzled out by mid-book.  This is an area fraught with dangers for writers, I think.  The premise ("high concept") is what gets an editor's or agent's attention...and thus sets up a high expectation, which then raises the bar HIGHER for the author than a book whose concept is not quite so smart or innovative. I know this about myself, so I try to compensate by cutting the author a bit more slack as I read through. I feel that readers deserve not only a good opening, but also a good middle and a good ending.  These manuscripts had great openings; OK middles; and not-so-great endings.

I quite enjoyed another manuscript, found it to be the perfect balance of light entertainment: fast, fun, but not stupid or hackneyed. A terrific central character combined with an above-average plot gave this one legs, I thought.  But then...I asked a couple of my female colleagues to read it.  They were underwhelmed. I then asked a male colleague to read it, and he liked it. So, based on my small sample, I had to come to the conclusion that this was a man's book, not a woman's book.  And since women buy most books, I had to think that we wouldn't be able to sell enough copies of it.  (There is credible research, somewhere, that says that women are much more likely to take chances on new writers; while male readers--who DO make up large numbers--tend to buy books by names they know, such as Baldacci, Connelly, Patterson, and the other big names).  

The last manuscript was one that I liked precisely because I had not expected to like it.  It is in a subgenre that isn't one of my favorites, and one that I'm not particularly interested in.  When I finished reading it, I thought: "Wow, that was much  better than I expected, and much better than the usual fare."  But, sadly, this line of thought makes me the wrong editor for this book.  I simply didn't think I'd be able to provide the best editorial guidance to the author; the house I work for isn't particularly strong in this subgenre; and our publicist isn't necessarily in love with this type of book either. Rejection letters often close with "we wish you the best in placing this with another house," but in this case it was clear that our house was NOT the right publisher for it, that the author would be better off elsewhere.  

Of these 6 books, I will not be surprised if at least three of them end up with contracts.  And I'll buy the final copies to support the authors, who deserve to be published.

One thing that occurred to me after my week of reading was that this part of the process is absolutely my favorite part of my job. One thing I love about reading works by unknown writers is the tabula rasa I bring to the table.  I open the manuscript with little to no expectation or experience with the writer--therefore the work must stand on its own merits. I have also come to the conclusion that one criterion has come to the forefront in terms of my requesting a full manuscript or taking the book on: ABSORPTION. If a first chapter completely absorbs me, the author's chances of a contract have just increased exponentially.  In a way, this absorption can be aggravating: I'm wanting to breeze through that first chapter, I'm looking for reasons/excuses to toss it into the rejection pile, but it just won't let me. I want to rush through it so I can cross it off my list of things to do, but it won't let me rush. I read the first page and want desperately to hand it off to my assistant because there are so many other things to do, but that little bell goes off in my head:  No, Agatho, YOU must read this.

A lot of the books I've raved about on Mysterious Matters in the last year or so are those that offered me instant absorption: Burial of the Dead, The Lock Artist, Mr. Peanut, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  None of these books is perfect, but at the end of the day they provide me with that all-absorbing reading experience that is the mark of a fabulous book.

Hmm, and what leads to this all-important ABSORPTION?  I'll have to think about it, and perhaps post at a later date.

Debunking Some Myths

Boucheron is coming up soon...a conference I love.  Each year I find that (writers, especially) come back buzzing with energy and enthusiasm, and also some strange ideas they have picked up along the way. So I thought it might be fun to debunk some myths.  The guiding principle behind all this debunking is the unarguable fact that we operate within such a subjective industry.  I believe it was John Maynard Keynes who talked about the "animal spirits" of people as the only key force that drives the stock market--and I think that publishing is just as subject to animal spirits as Wall Street.

MYTH #1 - Editors prefer manuscripts written in third person.

Debunk: It really depends on the editor. We all have our strange little quirks (it is the agent's job to figure these out, hence the lunches), and what's right for Editor A could be completely wrong for Editor B. I personally do not care for present-tense narratives, and I almost always have a difficult time getting interested in a "cold case" manuscript, because I feel that these often lack urgency, immediacy, relevance. But Lord knows there are plenty of decent present-tense books out there, as well as plenty of cold case books.  There are some editors out there who prefer third person (I know a couple of them), but if first person feels right to you, then go for it.  I doubt Sue Grafton or Janet Evanovich (or James Patterson) would disagree.

MYTH #2 - When I get my first contract, I'll be able to write for a living.

Debunk: Oh no, not any more. Advances have gone way, way down at many houses, especially for first-time novelists. The people who get the large advances are those who are already pretty well connected - usually writers for New York-centric publications like The New Yorker and The New York Times. These books have a built-in audience, and that Inner Circle of writers is able to finagle some pretty sweet deals.  Look at Elizabeth Gilbert with Eat Pray Love, Colin Beavan with No Impact Man, who both got large advances--enough to live on for a year. It's not the norm, though.  Even more challenging is the fact that many agents have stopped taking on new fiction because the advances aren't what they used to be.

MYTH #3 - Editors don't read manuscripts these days.

Debunk: I really don't understand how intelligent people can bandy this one about.  OK, granted, if Angelina Jolie sent me a manuscript, I'd be offering that contract before I turned the first page. (Of course, others would offer much more than I would, so I wouldn't get it.) But of course we read manuscripts. We have to be very, very persuasive when trying to convince an editorial board to buy the book - how do we do that if we don't have the first idea of what it's about?  

MYTH #4 - Editors don't edit the manuscripts they acquire.

Debunk: Another insane idea. A lot of people think that "editing" means adding missing punctuation and fixing spelling errors.  Well, of course there are people who do that, and they are called copy editors--they are the last pass through a manuscript before it goes out for typesetting. But every editor reads manuscripts and offers feedback--some at a macro level, some at a more micro level--intended to make the story work and the book have a better chance with reviewers and book buyers. This sort of feedback is much more valuable than simple copy editing.  (I don't mean that copy editors don't add value, because the best of them really polish a manuscript to a fine sheen.  But the acquiring editor is the one who has shaped the book and helped get it ready for the market).

MYTH # 5 - My book doesn't stand a chance if it's not in bookstores.

Debunk: This is a tricky one, and getting trickier. We all know what trouble Barnes & Noble and Borders are in. Local bookstores / indies have been having a hell of a time lately, and it's not getting any easier. The odds of a first-time novelist (especially those who aren't already famous) getting any shelf space at all are diminishing as the retail spaces get smaller.  Then, of course, we have the issue of returns, which have destroyed the profitability of many a book.  (Many contracts these days make allowances for massive returns.) I don't think the printed book is going away, but I do think that online retail is the wave of the future--as are the electronic readers like Kindle. Right now we're in a period where anyone can publish anything on those things (B&N has been marketing PubIt! like crazy), and the nature of technology makes me think that won't change much. But I expect we'll see more and more books being sold via electronic retail (nobody can beat Amazon's prices, a least for the time being) and probably fewer via bookstores.  SO, while it is of course good to be in bookstores, I don't think it's a necessity any longer. Mass-market publishing is going to probably be limited to a few really big names -- trade paperbacks are the wave of the future, at least until someone makes a name.  I love a good hardcover, and they'll always be there for the library market especially, but I do predict some big changes there, too.

 

 

 

So, What Do We Learn From Bad Books?

I must say, the readers of Mysterious Matters are quite a dishy group. My last post, on the topic of "Forgotten Greats," netted me about a dozen emails all asking the same question: Which two books, alluded to in the first paragraph of that post, were so awful?  AUTHORS AND TITLES, my readership demanded, along with all the gory details that made them such horrible pieces of dreck. 

Well, I can't be that specific. I have a very karmic approach to this industry, and I never bad-mouth anyone who hasn't been dead for at least five years.  But I think I can offer a few suggestions to aspiring writers regarding what those two books did so horribly.  Like the manuscript in that infamous episode of I Love Lucy, I can use them as an example of what NOT to do.

One of the books was what I call an "MWA Book"--you know, the type where MWA members line up to blurb it, so much so that the entire back cover and flap are filled with superlatives from friends.  I must say, after being burned by several such books in the last few years, I am starting to regarding them with a lot of suspicion--especially when the blurbs are from people I've never heard of, which seems to be happening more and more lately.    

The main problem with Book #1 is that the author simply cannot write. Those are harsh words, because there's a continuum of writing competence, with "less competent" on the far left and "more competent" on the far right. The issue here wasn't that the author couldn't put a book together. The plot, though dull and derivative, was serviceable enough.  No, this author induced a cringe on every page: stilted language, dull (and I do mean DULL) dialogue, terrible jokes that dropped like lead to the ground, sentences that simply did not make sense. What a train wreck!  I kept waiting for the joke to be revealed, but the joke was on me.

I should have been suspicious when I read the acknowledgments, which some of the more gushy writers are choosing to put upfront rather than in the back of the book, where they belong.  This has become another red flag to me - a sign that the book/author has gotten published through a powerful agent, or "community connections" in which the agent wears down the poor editor with enough promises of built-in publicity that the editor says, "OK, fine, I can't take it any longer."  The acknowledgments here were awkwardly written, and my first thought was that somehow a young teenager had managed to get his/her first hackneyed attempt at a book published.  And things went downhill from there.

I suppose much of this could have been forgiven if the author had managed to create even one moderately interesting character.  The heroine, God love her, is quite possibly the most boring woman I've ever encountered, in fiction or in life. Just being near her sapped my will to live. The book's characters seemed to be drawn to her, for reasons explicable only in a fictional universe, or for reasons required by inexperienced plotters. She's involved in a milquetoast relationship with the requisite feminized man who lives to serve her. The plot meanders and goes nowhere for hundreds of pages, only to be resolved by a coincidental observation in the last 20 pages.  

LESSONS TO BE LEARNED: Put your acknowledgements at the back of the book. Imbue your characters with some personality. Write compound-complex sentences with occasional participles or gerunds, just to mix it up and move beyond the simple sentences that my five-year-old grandchild can write. Have some conflict between the main characters; all that sickly sweet love doesn't make the pages fly by. Stop writing under the influence of Klonopin, or Valium, or Ativan so that your characters have some affect and you can see how incredibly ridiculous your story is.

Book #2 was, if possible, even worse.  Definitely better written--but by an author who absolutely adores the sound of his/her own voice. This author's philosophy: Never say in five sentences what you can in ten. Find a horse and beat it to death, and even when it's dead, keep beating it. 

The problem here--other than the plot, which doesn't kick in until half the book is over, and then fades away yet again so that the author need not be distracted from the self-love of his/her prose that is lavished on every page--is an absolutely hateful, self-absorbed protagonist. Hey, we all have our self-absorbed moments; and some very funny characters have been created this way.  The self-absorbed either (a) exist to be mocked, or (b) learn their lesson and eat some humble pie.  Not this protag, who is surrounded by loving friends and family but who does nothing but complain about them. I wish I could be more specific about some of the things she does to make her such a truly awful romantic partner/ parent/ friend, but that would be giving away too many details. 

The worst part about this is: The author has absolutely no idea that the protag is a beast. How out of touch is this author, thinking that a character like this would be appealing to anyone?  (While we're at it, we might also ask what the agent and editor, copiously thanked in the self-absorbed front-of-the-book acknowledgments, were thinking, too.) 

For the three nights I suffered through this book, my poor wife had to suffer through my harangues. Finally she picked up the book, read the first ten pages, and asked me why on earth I continued to torture myself. A good question - and the answer has to be: I've heard of this author, I've read reviews, I've heard good things...so surely there is some redeeming value in there, somewhere?  No, there is not.

I got a quite a kick when I went to Amazon after turning the last page to find a plethora of 1-star reviews with titles along the lines of "I'd give this zero stars if I could" and "the worst book I've read in decades, perhaps my entire life."  

LESSON TO BE LEARNED: Learn some lessons, or at least have the characters do so. Stop to think about what the characters are doing and how readers will perceive those actions. If you're going to have a series character, it's fine for that person to be flawed. But not so flawed, so annoying, and such a generally terrible person that readers are repelled.  (If you're doing satire, that's a different story, of course.) I've never seen a manuscript that couldn't have 10,000 words cut from it; this one could have had 30,000 cut, which would at least have dulled the pain.  So be on the lookout for extraneous words, scenes, dialogue that add nothing.  In short, please think about THE READER instead of yourself at all times.

One final thought - I know I have opined in the past about the need for moderation in reviews; I am the first to complain about those malicious Amazon Vine reviews, as well as the Amazonian 1-star reviews by mentally ill people working out emotional problems/grudges electronically. But the experience of reading these two books has made me understand, a little more, why people can be compelled to write really vicious reviews. In my case, I have so many books I want and need to read, books by talented writers who need readership.  The ten or so hours I spent on these books is time I'll never get back. And I truly can say nothing positive about them, which is rare for me; and that's why I feel so damn furious about this whole thing.  

Off soapbox! (But it felt good...)

Writing the Professional Sleuth: Keep It Smart and Cynical

[This will be the last of my opinionated posts on my previously unstated (and unexamined) expectations for manuscripts in each of the subgenres of crime fiction....]

At the opposite end of the spectrum from the amateur sleuth is, of course, the professional sleuth.  I put the professional sleuth in a different category than the police sleuth.  For example, many of the great English detectives (currently being written about) are all in the employment of the crown, officially, as policepeople, so I wouldn't classify them as professional sleuths--that is, those who are self-employed investigators. Lynley is a police (as Martin Amis would say); so are Dalgliesh and Wexford, and Dalziel and Pascoe, and Inspector Morse. 

In the States, where living in that borderline between legal and illegal seems to be more appealing to the reading public, we have more private P.I.s.  We have Easy Rawlins, and Kinsey Millhone, and (until recently) Spenser.  Really, there's no better job for someone who isn't afraid of a little danger, doesn't want a boss, is notoriously afraid of commitment to the opposite sex, and doesn't mind walking that provocative line between legal and illegal.  In fact, I think this last point is one of the reasons why we like P.I.'s so much in the States.  Policefolk have their hands tied in terms of exacting poetic justice, but P.I.'s can be so much more creative.

I'm not seeing as many professional P.I. manuscripts as I used to - interestingly, the ones I do see tend to be written by people who are, ahem, a bit older - but I still think there's a market out there. So, herewith my suggestions for writing a marketable P.I. book.

1. YOUR SLEUTH ISN'T AN AMATEUR, SO DON'T TREAT HIM/HER LIKE ONE.   Amateur sleuths really don't know what they're getting themselves into most of the time, and that's half the fun.  But professional sleuths do, and they should proceed accordingly.  The nice thing about a pro (from the writer's perspective, that is), is the fact that s/he can't cherrypick assignments if s/he wants to pay the rent and eat.  This allows you to get your sleuth involved in all sorts of fun and nasty situations.  However, even the most unseasoned sleuth is neither stupid nor suicidal.  Experienced P.I.'s know when to walk away from a case, and when not take one.  So your set-up has to make sense, which means that some deception on the case giver's part is often necessary. 

2. CONNECT, BABY, CONNECT.  The professional sleuth gets the job done by having a wide variety of contacts, both legal (read: in the police, forensics, and M.E. departments) and shady (think various street types, a la Mouse in the Mosely books).  What I find in many books is the fact that these connections are taken for granted, and yet they are often a one-way street.  By that I mean, the P.I. often goes to his contacts for information, but rarely gives anything in return.  In the early books of a series, I'd like to know how these contacts developed and what keeps them going.  Of course, I don't need major backstory on each, as that would slow the book down, but I do want to know something.  And I want those contacts, especially the seedy ones, calling in favors once in a while.

3. CARRY A PIECE.  It never makes sense to have a P.I. who doesn't carry some sort of weapon for self-defense.  I wouldn't necessarily make my P.I. an expert in everything from archery through intercontinental ballistic missiles, but I would make sure s/he has some facility with a gun, a knife, a rope, and perhaps even one of the martial arts.  That said, P.I.'s are not the descendants of Superman and Wonder Woman, and they can be outnumbered, outgunned, or outwitted.  Smart villains (and we all like a smart villain) know this and plan accordingly.

4. THIS AIN'T NO COZY.  The hardboiled is a good place for cynicism; so too is the professional P.I. book.  Experienced P.I.'s have seen it all and really aren't given to sunny interpretations of people or situations.  They are almost never naive, and that includes matters of the heart.  Oh, how often I see that Macho Tough Guy or Facho Tough Gal taken in by that sweet-taking babe or Lothario; and oh, how often I want to scream that cynics are no less cynical about the opposite sex than about life on the streets.  A good professional P.I. assumes the worst and is usually right; even when s/he's wrong, there's usually more to the story that only confirms the P.I.'s generic cynicism.  This isn't to say that the P.I. can't have friends and relationships (though many writers choose to make the P.I. a loner, which is the lazy writer's way out).  But it is to say that P.I.'s trust most people only about 20%, and trust the people they love the most only about 50%.  This comes not from an inborn dark view of the world but rather experience and observation.  And let us never forget that cynics are almost always frustrated idealists.

5. STAY ONE STEP AHEAD.  People hire private detectives because they want somebody smart, someone with a track record of getting the information or getting to the heart of the matter.  This means that creating an effective sleuth requires superb plotting skills in which the sleuth, while hiding some information from the reader, manages to anticipate what the bad guys are going to do.  PLEASE! Note that "hunches" are the completely bogus and inane crutch of unskilled crime writers.  If you must have a hunch, please explain where it comes from.  Has the P.I. encountered this situation before?  Does it remind her of the way her sister used to behave?  Did she once see it on an episode of CSI?  Has he pieced this pattern together based on experience in interrogating suspects?   

6. A RIVAL IS MOST ENJOYABLE.  I love when a P.I. (or any protagonist, for that matter) has a rival who occasionally bests him or her.  Maybe it's a friend with whom the P.I. has a friendly rivalry or history of one-upsmanship.  Maybe it's an enemy for whom the P.I. has a grudging respect.  The occasional intrusion of this rival into the proceedings can be great fun and force the P.I. into ever more subtle and brilliant machinations.  Of course, our P.I. can't always win, otherwise we as readers would grow weary of the rival.  So it's nice to have the rival occasionally win out over our P.I., to encourage our protags to be their best.  I recently heard the term "frienemy" used to describe the type of person with whom we are ostensibly friends, but who remain rivals or foils to us, and I love it.  Rare is the P.I. who couldn't benefit from a frienemy's taunts.

Writing the Thriller: Keep It Unexpected

I will admit that I have become disillusioned with thrillers in recent years.  In addition to so many of them being written so unimpressively, I'm starting to think of them as mostly interchangeable.  The last dozen or so thrillers I've read have all had the same characters, same villains, same plots, as follows: 

Brilliant protagonist (computer specialist, usually) +

Shady government types +

Conspiracy theories +

Several double-crosses +

Evil, stop-at-nothing-to-get-money corporations =

1 Boring Thriller 

I admit that I'm not quite as well-read in thrillers as I am in other types of crime fiction, but I still know what I like to see, and what gets me interested in a manuscript.  So, here goes.

1. GIVE ME AT LEAST TWO PLOTS.  The average thriller, for whatever reason, usually ends up about 100 printed pages longer than the typical mystery.  To make the most of those extra hundred pages, it really helps to have at least two main plots, intersecting in interesting ways, along with a subplot or two.  While I'm a huge advocate of tight crime fiction, I do think the thriller subgenre allows more to be crammed between the covers.  It's pretty tough to keep one plot going for 400+ pages, so I do need to see more, AND both plots have to be equally intriguing, and they have to come together around the middle of the book, so that I don't feel like I'm reading two separate books until the last chapter.  

2. GO BEYOND A CARTOON VILLAIN.  Of all the subgenres (though some may quibble that thrillers are a full genre unto themselves, rather than a subgenre of crime fiction--an assertion with which I would not argue too much), thrillers seem to have the largest number of cartoonish villains, people who are bereft of all human sentiment, all moral fiber, and any sense of remorse or self-inspection.  Lord, what I would give for a thriller in which the villain, or bad guy/gal, is more than Satan himself come to earth.  An old saying goes, "The best villains think they're the hero," and a little more attention paid to that shibboleth would give us many more rich reading experiences.  WHY is the villain behaving as he does?  What motivates him, other than sheer evil or greed?  Why can't we have more villains like Javert in Les Miserables?  Think of an antagonist as more of a foil, and less as a villain, and you're on the right path to doing something interesting.

3. THERE'S MORE TO LIFE THAN COMPUTERS.  Without magical computers than can solve cryptic ancient codes and process billions of possibilities per second, I fear that today's thrillers would be unable to move beyond Chapter 1.  Certainly technology is advanced, and advancing farther each day, but I feel that it's become a crutch for lazy writing.  The protags of today's thrillers don't seem to have much in the way of smarts; one wonders how they've become so heroic simply by feeding data into a mainframe and having the computer spit out the answer.  I'd love to see some really smart, interesting protags (and I do believe that this is one of the factors that kept The Da Vinci Code at the top of the best-seller list for so long.  Robert Langdon wasn't the world's most interesting man, but he certainly was a brilliant man at the top of his game.)    

4. LIFE IS NOT ONE BIG CONSPIRACY.  I know that conspiracies have an inherent level of interest, and certainly there's nothing like a good conspiracy.  But in life I tend to think of conspiracy theorists as a little nutty.  I find them so hard to swallow when I hear people spouting them at cocktail parties (and it's always a bit shocking to me how many supposedly intelligent people believe quite inane things) that I have a hard time suspending disbelief in fiction.  Really, I think that a good thriller has a lot in common with a good caper, with the difference between the two being what's at stake.  The stakes are a lot bigger in the thriller; but I'd encourage writers to think that the stakes can be really high without the entire world being in jeopardy.  

5. AND WHAT ABOUT THOSE SERIAL KILLERS?  A lot of times, I think, the serial killer book gets swept into the thriller category.  I understand why; in a lot of these books, alternating chapters follow the investigators, victims, and killer, so we see multiple viewpoints, with each chapter furthering the action and creating nice suspense (in the best cases).  It's really, really hard to do a good serial killer book these days, maybe because they've become such a staple of the genre that it's tough to do anything different.  One serial killer book I liked, not only for the plot but also for the writing, was Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn.  The early Pattersons were quite good in this regard, too.  I'd really like to see (if I must) a serial killer with a reasonable motive beyond insanity/psychopathy.  That makes them multiple murderers rather than serial killers, which promises me a more intriguing plot and characterization.

6. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.  See the recipe with which I started this post, and don't do it.  It would be really, really nice if there was a motive beyond money and/or world domination.  There are lots of well-meaning lunatics out there, like eco-terrorists, fanatical hobbyists who'd kill for a rare stamp, people who live life according to a theory rather than reality, and so on. There are protagonists who aren't G-men, computer specialists, or former military types.  Let's try to see some new protags and antags, some of the overused techniques of suspense applied to different situations.  If I see one more gorgeous, sexy, brainy femme fatale in these books I'm going to scream.  

7. START WITH A BANG.  These leisurely, "cerebral" thrillers that take 100 pages to kick into gear may fit someone's definition of a good read, but they sure don't fit mine.  A great first chapter with some action is important in any of the crime genres, but I'd argue that it's intensely important in the thriller.  The job of a thriller is, first and foremost, to thrill.  You can't do that without action, without giving the reader that roller-coaster feeling right from the beginning.

8. PARCEL OUT THE SURPRISES.  A good crime novel can hold its own with a shocker in the last chapter.  Thrillers, however, need more than one good shock (I'd recommend at least two or three) parceled out throughout the book.  It's really that sense of shock and surprise that is the most thrilling to readers; cliffhangers can and should appear throughout the book instead of in the last 20 pages.  All of this means that you have to be a good planner, a good plotter, a writer with a terrific sense of pacing.  Know what surprises you're going to throw at the reader before you write your first sentence, and keep them coming.  Double agents and double crosses will sometimes do the trick, but they're the easy way out.  Try something more subtle or more audacious, if you dare.

9. A THRILLER ISN'T A TEXTBOOK.  One really nice thing about thrillers (well, any good fiction) is their ability to introduce the reader to a world they don't know much (or anything) about.  I truly believe that even people who read for escapism like to learn while they read.  However, too many of the manuscripts I see have been written by experts who can't write about their field for the layperson.  For example, I've seen thrillers written by chemists that would require the average reader to have a Ph.D. in order to understand them.  Long passages of exposition about scientific phenomena derail the action; it's much better to give a greatly simplified, easy-to-understand primer than to go into excruciating detail about your field.