Do You Believe It By Kait Carson

Fiction writers in general and mystery writers in particular ask their readers to suspend disbelief and enter into the story world of their characters. Why mystery writers in particular? Well, unless you’re writing true crime, chances are those body drops are unlikely to happen in the real world. Craig Johnson, who writes the Longmire series, has confessed that he sets every other book away from fictional Absaroka County because, ‘what are the odds that in the least populated county in the least populated state’, the sheriff is tripping over enough bodies to populate a long-running series?[1]

 

Cozy and traditional mystery writers face the same dilemma. At least Longmire is a sheriff. His job is to trip over bodies. But what about your average pastry chef, restauranteur, or librarian? There’s not much chance realistically they will cross paths with the deceased on a regular basis, much less successfully pursue the killer without the help of the police. What’s a writer to do? Make a pact with the reader, of course. If the reader will suspend disbelief long enough to buy into the premise, the writer will deliver a fun and suspenseful story within the parameters of an altered reality. Everyone benefits.

 

This is a double-edged sword when the writer is successfully writing a long-term series. Authors solve it differently. Readers expect body drops in mysteries and kindly overlook the death toll in small towns. Although it’s uncertain if they would consider moving to say, Cabot Cove, ME, where newcomers have a better than even chance of ending up dead. Amateur sleuths give readers an opportunity to exercise their own powers of observation, deduction, and induction. What should be unbelievable, in the hands of a skilled writer who deftly plants clues, becomes logical and believable as the reader and the sleuth partner throughout the book.

 

Character lifespan is the second, sharp side of a long-running successful series. People age. Protagonist’s age. Sue Grafton handled this by having her character, Kinsey Millhone age by weeks rather than years. Over the course of 25 books, Kinsey aged very little. This required the author to dial back technology, but it worked because it was true to the story. Tie something in your character’s life to a date certain event, and, if you are lucky enough to find success, you may have created a problem.

 

P.D. James aged Adam Dalgleish realistically. He advanced in his profession and in his external wealth trappings on pace with the span of years the books cover. Other novelists, whom I will not name here were not so prescient. One introduced a character with memories that began in WWII during the blitz. Based on the storyline, he would be 85 now. A bit long in the tooth for his job. Likewise, another character is identified by service in Viet Nam. Those of us old enough to have been around during that war recognize by the battle dates that the character would be 77 in story years. What are the odds this character is continuing to believably put himself in the path of speeding bullets?

What’s the solution? Frankly, I hope I have the problem someday. As I currently don’t, perhaps I can hazard two suggestions as a reader. First and always, write well enough that readers want to participate in the story and suspend disbelief. Second, hedge your bets. Be nebulous. Don’t tie characters to a specific, easily datable, timeline. That way they can grow in story time and not require any suspension of disbelief.

 

Readers, do you mentally age characters based on events in the books?

Writers, how do you handle character aging?

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[1] Conversation with Craig Johnson in Depth of Winter – statement paraphrased for brevity.

Selling the First and Planning the Second Book by E. B. Davis

I’ve written the first book in my series. It’s taken a long time—too long. My writing life took a hit when I relocated three years ago. But I’m back on track because my situation has changed and due to WWK writer Grace Topping urging me to get moving. Thanks, Grace, I needed that kick. But more, I also needed to hear that you remembered my book fondly from beta reading it four years ago. Knowing just one other person thinks my book has value soothes those insecure and emotional fears that lurk just below my carefully engineered façade of professionalism.

The Writers Who Kill blog has created a community for writers regardless of their position on the ladder to fulfilling their writing career goals. I learn from the experiences of my blogging peers. Case in point: Grace Topping. She found an agent, who sold a three-book deal to a publisher. Her first in the series will be released at the end of April. What’s she doing now? Writing the second book.

What have I learned? Plan the character arcs of your characters before it’s forced upon you by deadlines. Plan the series, at least a rough outline, of each book to take your characters through the experiences they need to grow. Plant the seeds of the second novel in the first or at least make nonspecific situations in the first so you have a clear slate upon which to build the second plot.

Why didn’t I think about this sooner? I’ve had plenty of time. But the fact is that when you haven’t yet sold the first book you wonder if your time was wasted. If you invest more time creating the entire series, are you building yourself another black hole of wasted time?

Grace’s experience has taught me the answer is no. Whether or not you sell the series, the process of planning the series, building your characters arcs, and developing plots for subsequent books is a crucial skill set that will serve you well even if you end up selling a different book and perhaps a different series.

What am I doing? I’m going back through the first manuscript, tweaking characters to set them up for their development and taking out specifics that may hamper the plot of the next book.

What I have to do next? Get my promotional pieces to sell the first book as much as I hate writing about my work. What will entice an agent or publisher? I find making comparisons of my work to others problematic. I don’t want to misrepresent my book, and I also feel boastful comparing my work to the success of others. Do I have to do this?

Similar to Lucy Burdette’s Key West Food Critic mysteries,

my cozy main characters meet at a Naples, FL resort,

a la Neil Simon’s California Suite, which is hosting the set and crew of a movie,

where the murder of a screenwriter takes place, much like the Red Carpet

Catering mystery series written by Shawn Reilly Simmons, and solve the

murder along with hotel detectives, as per Alan Russell’s Hotel Detective series.

Really? Elements of those other works may occur, but as a whole, it’s not like them at all.

Have you ever compared your book to others? If so, how do you feel about it?

Introducing Megan McCree

by James M. (Jim) Jackson

On February 7, 2017, I’ll be introducing a new member of the Seamus McCree extended family to the reading world. Her creation did not come easily, and I worried whether I was doing her justice. Let me explain.

Megan first entered my consciousness four years ago. I wrote the first 40,000 words of a novel set in the future. The YA main character had an older sister, a real tomboy. I thought the kids would be Seamus McCree’s distant descendants (just to keep it all in the fictional family). As I worked through the story, the sister role faded out and the first sparks of this female character were extinguished.

Then I decided to bring the story closer to the present and made Seamus McCree’s son, Paddy, a very old man—well over a hundred (medical improvements and an organic vegetarian diet worked). But Paddy at 140 was still too close to the present. That’s when I decided to utilize Paddy’s child, Seamus’s grandchild, the very old person. As I considered what internal forces would drive this character, I decided she should be female. Eventually, that project faltered and still awaits future attention. And so this as yet unnamed Seamus McCree granddaughter faded into the background.

When I started writing Empty Promises, the fifth in the series, hopefully coming out later this year, I recalled my vision of the ancient woman, and decided to bring Megan McCree to the stage. I wanted to show in this girl the seeds of the woman who in the very distant future would became a marvelous “ancient.” Because of the planned time gap between Doubtful Relations and Empty Promises, Megan will then be age three and a half.

I worried about what I knew about three-and-a-half-year-old girls. My daughter had been that age in the mid-1980s. Even my granddaughters are now preteens and teens. Could I carry off developing this short person in a way that was realistic?

When I sent a draft of Empty Promises to my developmental editor, I specifically asked for a critique of Megan, and then I held my breath. The editor had lots of suggestions, but none of them related to Megan as a character. Whew!

While continuing to work on Empty Promises, another opportunity for Seamus and family arose: a novella set in Georgia’s Lowcountry. What could be better than to bring Seamus, his darts-throwing mother, and Megan to Tybee Island, Georgia—the barrier island near Savannah—for vacation and havoc? But for this vacation to make sense in Seamus McCree’s overall arc, this story takes place several years after Empty Promises. Megan is a shade over six.

More worries for me. Could an old guy depict a six-year-old girl that mothers would accept? (Fathers accept any daughter, right dads?) Again, my development editor had no issues with Megan. I polished the novella and recently sent it to two terrific beta readers. Both know the Seamus McCree series and have an eye for errant homonyms, misspellings, misplaced modifiers, and the like. Again, I held my breath. These folks had never heard of Megan. Would they accept her?

Beta reader one gave me her corrections. She loved the story, and particularly loved Seamus’s mother. I broke down and asked if I had drawn Megan realistically. “Oh yes, she was fine,” she said. “But I really like Mom—probably because of my age.” Her grandchildren are older than mine, all out of high school. I didn’t take that as a vote of confidence on Megan.

Just this past week I received corrections from reader number two. She started her note with, “I just now finished the book and thoroughly enjoyed it! I fell madly in love with Megan.”

I think I’ve been holding my breath for four years—a long gestation period even for a fictional character. It’s nice to breathe naturally again.

You can meet Megan in the novella titled “Low Tide at Tybee” in Lowcountry Crime: Four Novellas to be released in print and Kindle editions on February 7, 2017.

Creating A Short Story

It starts with a flash. I hear a voice or see a character. This is usually indicative of a schizophrenic bout, but in my case, it means I’m creating a short story or the first scene in a novel.

The concept can be my own or if there is a call for a particular theme from an editor/publisher, given. A given concept can be anything from holidays or settings, a picture or feeling, an experience, but I’ve found that publishers stay away from specifics so that writers can apply the concept within their own genre and subgenres. With or without a concept, a flash in the form of a voice or character presents itself. I usually have an idea or two already floating around in my head. But without relating it to a conceptual framework, it has no shape.

Crime, my framework, leads to a question. When I first hear or see a character, I ask if the character a predator or is a victim. To determine this, I must visualize the character, which means listening to that voice and attaching physical characteristics to it, age, sex, physique, the look in their eyes. If I have a visual of the character, I have to make them speak, which, like the eyes, gives me a feel for their soul. Sometimes, the character is both predator and victim, a real situation in the world. The big fish eats the little fish and the little fish eats a smaller fish, etc. Yes, it’s a basic, base question starting on an animalistic level. The strong conquer the weak. It’s survival. When I feel a character, I assess the character’s intelligence and personality because in humans, physical weakness isn’t necessarily the determining factor.

If the character is a predator, I ask what type of crime the he or she would commit. If the character is a victim, I ask to what crime the character would succumb. To make this determination, I have to provide more character details, such as socioeconomic status, profession, demeanor, level of success, personality, disabilities. Is she a killer, or an embezzler? Once I determine the crime, then I relate the character and crime to the concept, and the plot follows given whatever theme I’ve created or been prescribed.     

In short, I start with characters and then develop the plot given the characters’ traits.

How do you start writing, and how do you create characters?

Sounding Retreat to Write Another Day

I wrote a synopsis for my third novel in the Skeet Bannion series and sent it to my agent the other day. I felt pretty good about it and ready to start working on it as I can during this crazy book-promotion time right before Every Last Secret (the first Skeet book) launches. I had my novel-writing group (there are three of us who have met monthly for years) take a look at it, and they liked it.

My agent, who is wonderful, sent back a reply, saying it had lots of interesting characters and good suspense and plot complications. Then, she asked me, “How is Skeet being tested anew?”

 

I stared at it and realized that, unlike the first two books where the story had risen from Skeet’s character and the things she needed to be forced up against to create growth in her character, with this book I got carried away with great situations and quirky characters and left that most important consideration out of the equation altogether.

I packed up my laptop and marched myself to my local coffee shop for a full day of total focus on revising this synopsis and fixing it. I could do this thing. I just had to tie it into Skeet’s character development. That was all I had to do.

By the end of the day, I was ready to cry. My great synopsis was not going to work. All those terrific characters and interesting situations didn’t fit Skeet’s character arc—at least not at this point in the series. Oh, I won’t throw them away. But this is probably going to have to be a later book—or maybe even someone else’s book. I crawled back home, defeated.

 

After much thought about it, I emailed my agent and said I needed to start from scratch to be sure this book would have the same level of quality the other two had. I wondered if she’d think I was a lousy writer because I couldn’t make the synopsis fit. I had visions of my name falling down to the bottom of her priority list.

She told me not to worry, that now my concern was to promote the first book, and she knew I’d come up with the right book with time. (I told you she was a wonderful agent.) The weight lifted off my shoulders, and I looked one last time at the synopsis. Lots of good stuff there, but for another book. I would go back to Skeet’s character and situation at the end of book two and look for natural outgrowths and integral elements that will test her and cause her to learn things she doesn’t want to face.

Sometimes it’s best to say, “This is not working. Let’s try something else.” And sometimes, if we’re very lucky, someone else will lead us there before we’ve gone too long down the wrong road. A Southern friend’s grandmother always used to tell her, “You’ve never gone too far down the wrong road to turn back.”

Have you found yourself mired in a story that ought to be working but isn’t? Have you ever wandered from the strengths of your original work to something lesser and realized it with horror? Have you ever gone down that wrong road?