First-Draft Terror

Suzanne Chazin was our Guest Blogger a couple weeks ago. When I asked her for one, she sent me two. The other, describing how she starts a new novel, is a howl. Who hasn't suffered this way?

Robert Knightly

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I’m about to start the first draft of a new novel. This instills in me all the self-confidence of two virgins in a MINI Cooper. I’m sweaty and awkward. I don’t have a clue where anything goes. And I’m already questioning whether this was the right vehicle for attempting this in the first place.

I don’t know why first drafts scare me so much. It’s not as if I don’t know by now that I’ll be rewriting it all in a few months anyway. You’d think, with three published novels and a finished fourth manuscript behind me, I’d be like Larry King at the altar: ring in one pocket, attorney on speed dial in the other. I know what’s coming—the revisions, the tossed scenes, the killed characters, the discoveries I won’t make until I’m practically finished with the draft. And yet I will do almost anything to delay the process. This past week alone, I have:

1. Transferred all of my children’s baby pictures to DVD
2. Volunteered to be on the interview committee for the new principal of my daughter’s middle school
3. Filled out my bank’s customer satisfaction survey (probably a first in the history of my bank)
4. Actually listened to the Jehovah’s Witnesses who came to my door.

I’m so desperate I called up GEICO to see if I could save money on my car insurance. (Don’t let the Cockney accent fool you; the lizard is a liar).

I’m really starting to panic.

I’m stalling by researching stuff I will never, ever need to know. The Internet is great for this. I can start off with a simple question about common Honduran surnames for my new mystery series about a Latino detective in suburban New York and end up two hours later reading the history of the Indian ruler Lempira who fought the Spanish and now has the Honduran currency named after him. (Pause to reflect: would the U.S. be in any better shape if our bills were called “Geronimos”?)

My first mystery series, set in the New York City Fire Department, provided loads of fun researching how to start fires and blow up things. There is nothing like watching a video of a room turning into a solid wall of flame in under three minutes to give one an Old Testament appreciation for how fast things can go wrong. Makes that unexplained clunk in my car and the untraceable leak beneath my kitchen sink feel like good Karma by comparison.

Here’s where a well-conceived outline would come in handy. I love outlines. I really do. Wish I could write one. Typically I start out with three pages of notes for the first chapter and by chapter five, I’m down to descriptions like, “someone dies here” and “they have good sex.” (Is there any other kind in fiction?) The truth is, I just don’t know what’s going to happen until it does. I write great outlines for my second drafts. But that’s like waiting for the medical examiner when what you really needed was the doctor. It’s so much more convenient to catch the problem before the patient stops having a pulse.

I know what I have to do. I have to write something awful—something I would only show to my mother when she was alive, and only then, after she’d had a couple of glasses of good red wine. And then I have to believe that it will get much, much better as I lay down more of the story. To build a smooth road, you always have to start with a pile of rocks.

Chinese Fortune-cookie stuff, I know. But it also happens to be true. I had an art teacher at Northwestern University named George Cohen who once instructed every student to paint the “best” painting he or she could create. In the second class, Cohen asked every student to paint the “worst” painting. Then Cohen papered the room with all of our artwork and asked students to vote on the best pieces. About 75 percent of the pieces voted as “best” were the ones we had painted as our “worsts.” (Makes me wonder about my other decisions in life.)

So I will try to be fearless and not worry about what’s “best” and what’s “worst.” I will try to have faith that over time, there will be a road through the wilderness.

Then again, I could always start another blog…

Suzanne Chazin

How Mystery Writers Can Use Pacing as a Tool

"Who's Got the Money?"

Morgan St. James has the answer… Did you know federal prison factories manufacture $800,000,000 of merchandise every year? Read this amusing crime caper by Morgan and her co-author Meredith Holland, and find out how some sharp women make the bad guys pay.

The authors toured prison factories and military warehouses, then wrote this amusing novel. The book is fiction, but a former FBI Agent and NYT bestselling author wrote that "It really could happen."

This book tells us about million dollar greed and ironic justice in an industry few of us know even exists.

Please welcome mystery writer, speaker and columnist, Morgan St. James.

Thelma Jacqueline Straw

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Pacing is a tool for aging characters or holding them at certain places in their lives, showing how events impact the plot or how timing affects a particular event. How fast or how slow should parts of the story unfold? What does it take to pull the readers through the events, hold their interest and keep them turning the pages? When have you revealed enough and when is it too little?

Think of pacing as the act of changing gears. If you’re driving a manual shift car or watching the gauges, the car tells you when it’s time to shift from second to third or gear down. The same holds true for fiction. The story is moving along and you become aware that something has to slow down or speed up to maintain the effect you envisioned.

SPEEDING IT UP

Cliffhangers

If you leave something unresolved or hint at something yet to come in the next chapter, that’s called a cliffhanger. It is one of those devices that naturally picks up the pace and compels the reader to turn the page. After all, they have to find out if something happened. One good way to accomplish this if the scene ends with dialogue is to have a character say something cryptic that foreshadows eminent danger, fulfillment or any other number of events. If you are using an omniscient or third person narrator, the same opportunity exists. Example: If Martin had even a slight suspicion of what awaited him, he might not have taken that fateful step into Joan’s house.

Tools for speeding it up

As a writer, your arsenal is filled with many tools proven to speed up the action. Action is best written in short and medium sentences that move the story along. Some of those sentences might be as short as one word like Run! or Stop! You get the idea. The short bursts heighten the anticipation and, if appropriate, the fear or elation.

When writing action, long descriptions or expository speeches just don’t work. All they do is distract the reader from the purpose of the scene. They rarely resonate as real. That doesn’t mean the scene should be bland—not at all. But stay on point. For example, the person must get from here to there to find the bomb and defuse it. They aren’t going to stop to look in a store window and admire the merchandise. They are going to do anything and everything possible to get there, and that establishes a heart-pounding scene. Obstacles are good because they increase the tension.

Keep it entertaining or heart-pounding

In my upcoming Silver Sisters Mystery Terror in a Teapot, the protagonists, twins Goldie and Godiva, are desperate to get to a house where their mother and uncle are in danger. Stuck in a traffic jam, Godiva tries to change lanes and hits a truck in the next lane. This delays the action (getting to the house), induces tension (they are trying to do whatever they can to get back on the road), and creates the fear that something will happen to the oldsters before the twins can reach them.

One tool is to draw from things that happened to you and make them fit your scene. We used this: Several years ago Phyllice clipped a car at a strategic point that caused our front bumper to fly off, sail over the truck next to us and land on a median strip. Seeing how upset we were, after Phyllice and the fellow we hit exchanged information, he retrieved the bumper of the rental car from the median strip and fitted it into our back seat so we could be on our way. It was hanging out the windows on both sides, but we were back on the road! When we turned the car in, eyebrows raised when we said they would find the front bumper in the back seat. In Terror in a Teapot, a version of this happens to the twins.

Keep it real

By all means don’t put long thoughts in your character’s head when they are working on sheer willpower. Think of what you would do in a life threatening situation. Would you have the presence of mind to think in beautifully constructed sentences and map out what you had to do point by point? Of course not, unless you are one of the few who actually think like that. More often, thoughts are static and disjointed when faced with these situations.

Using scene cuts

Scene cuts are sometimes called jump cuts. Without explanation, the story is moved to a new location or time, and the characters might even be different ones than in the previous scene. This has to be done carefully so the reader is not confused. The main purpose of a scene cut is to speed up the action. Back in the days of heavy movie censorship, the actor Andy Griffith put out a comedy album and in one track he summed up scene cuts neatly. He said something like: He kisses her with passion and just when he is ready to make his next move, time passes and the scene changes. In this case, the viewer was expected to fill in the details between the cuts with their own imagination.

SLOWING THINGS DOWN

While it is great to have a story that keeps zooming along, sometimes it makes good sense to slow it down—let the reader catch their breath and put everything into perspective. This technique will also serve to build tension. Slowing down the pace is one way to let it layer, leading up to the maximum payoff.

After the cliffhanger

Okay, assume the last chapter ended with your version of “The Perils of Pauline,” or the pretty woman tied to the railroad tracks as the train speeds toward her. What next? How do you slow something like that down unless Superman puts out his hand and stops the train? The answer is to prolong the outcome. If you stretch it out instead of giving the instant outcome, the end result is that it actually speeds up in a way. The reader rushes ahead to find out what happens, reading as fast as possible but not wanting to miss a word. So, how do you slow it down?

Some types of scenes that could benefit from a slowdown:

Romantic interludes

Everything has been happening at breakneck speed for your male and female protagonists. Maybe the detectives are attracted to each other, but who has time to find out? We see this all the time in TV shows. The tension is kept alive with the “will they, won’t they” question. All of a sudden it happens. Do we want to speed past this as well? If the plot calls for it, slow things down. Let the reader enjoy the scene where they kiss...and more.

Emotional decisions

Give your characters ups and downs. Vary the scenes so intense emotions don’t dominate every single page. Let them be confused, afraid or undecided about something. Are they reluctant to take the next step? Why? Does something stop them in their tracks? All of these things can slow the pace but leave the door open for picking it up again anytime you want to. If you give the reader some low moments, they will savor and enjoy the high ones even more.

Descriptions

Descriptions are good devices, but there is a narrow path to be walked here. Too much description and it becomes snooze time. Too little, and the reader might feel cheated. Like they were just beginning to get a sense of the overall picture, but it wasn’t completed. Evaluate how much description you need, and where. Ask others to read these scenes and listen to their reactions. You have lived the scenes over and over and have probably become jaded, but they will read it with fresh eyes.

Flashbacks

Flashbacks always slow the action, either in a major or minor way depending upon the content and how long the scene lasts. Again, just as with descriptions, be careful with flashbacks and moderate how you use them. Good flashback scenes will fill in the details and help deliver the backstory, but too many or too long, and you might lose the reader. They begin to flip pages to revisit some of the things they’ve read, because they might have lost the thread of the story. Flashbacks are like having a franchise to peek into the past, but franchises can only be exercised a certain number of times.

Let your protagonist make mistakes

You’ve heard the often-used expression: One step forward, two steps back. If circumstances undo some of what the protagonist has accomplished and another way has to be found, the story is going to slow down for the period of time they are getting back on track. It can be short or drawn out. In either case, mistakes work. The same goes for unexpected events. The protagonist approaches their destination holding a paper with the address. But the building has been torn down. Where do they go from there? Whether pursuing a lover, an opportunity or a killer, this is an opening where you can choose the pace.

Morgan St. James

www.morganstjames-author.com

Maybe There's a Lesson Here

I’m going to miss Smash. In spite of itself.

Writers need a break from the reality of their writing lives. As most any writer will tell you, when you commit to writing, you don’t get many diversions. Deadlines (self- and publisher-imposed), your family, the chores, and the other career (the one with the 401k and health insurance) don’t leave much room for other activities. You don't get to read for pleasure or see friends as much as you’d like. You go out less; you entertain less. Sometimes, it feels like you don’t do much except work and the laundry.

At times like that, I need a reboot. I need to shut down the creative part of my brain for an hour. When I start it up again, whatever froze my imagination and enthusiasm has usually disappeared. In addition, my eyes spend so much time going back and forth across my computer screen or printout that, if the reboot diversion also gives me a chance to roll my eyes for a while, so much the better.

And Smash was a worthy diversion on both counts. In the beginning I watched in sofa-lolling relaxation an undemanding melodrama with excellent singing, and then I watched – my eyes circling my sockets – plot twists so contorted that I just had to see what the next bizarre pretzel-turn would be. Which isn't necessarily all that easy with your eyes rolling around in your head.

Smash was (actually still is, for the rest of the month) about getting a musical to Broadway. Maybe I should have been warned when a series has enough, dare I say, hubris to give itself a title like Smash. And to think there was much left to be said about Marilyn Monroe.

But hey, I wasn't looking for art. And as a bonus, I got to hear some terrific Broadway voices, performers who know how to interpret a song, and don’t think that as-loud-as-I-can-belt and as-long-as-I-can-hold-this-note are the hallmarks of singing. And I got to see some pretty fair dancing for a TV series (at least in the first season).

I was charmed by Christian Borle. In awe of Megan Hilty. Eager to see what Jack Davenport would get up to next. And I was certain Anjelica Huston’s facial muscles would eventually move.

And I could pair the show with a wonderful blog by Broadway actress/dancer Sharon Wheatley called SMASH: Fact or Fiction, a valentine to Broadway, full of fascinating tidbits and insight about what it’s really like to create a show on the Great White Way. And, unlike so many entertainment bloggers, Sharondoesn't seem to have a snarky bone in her body. But eventually, the parade of implausible plot points and absurd motivations forced even Ms. Wheatley to give up on Smash. 

Sigh.

Maybe Smash never really had a chance. Ultimately, its premise was deeply flawed: that there could be a believable competition for the role of Marilyn between the characters of Karen and Ivy. It says something about network-TV desperation, the lure of cross-marketing and the demands of “media-ready” casting that American Idol runner-up Katherine McPhee (as Karen) was thrown mercilessly into the ring with Broadway vet Hilty (as Ivy). Yikes, what alternative universe have I wandered into that this fight could be fair?!

Even if one accepted the premise that a woman with no Broadway experience who looked and sounded nothing like Marilyn could be a contender, the show swung off the rails a few times in season one. Then the swinging turned to careening in season two. Karen quit the lead (the lead!) in the Broadway show Bombshell – a role in which she was called “brilliant” by other characters though the TV audience was never granted the privilege of seeing these on-stage moments – for a role in a black-box theater downtown because…  Oh, it doesn’t matter, it made no sense. The renowned Broadway director Derek (Davenport) leaves Bombshell, too, in a huff, then agrees to direct the downtown show, which isn't really finished and was created by a couple of guys who've never had a thing produced before. And Bombshell’s composer (Borle) is suddenly, with no experience, Bombshell’s director. Whaa??

And although I could have gone on rebooting my brain with Smash, NBC has pulled the plug.

What can I salvage? As with any failed relationship, one asks: Is there at least a lesson to be learned here? Can I find any bits of wisdom to pass on to, say, a reader of this blog who’s an aspiring writer? One working on a mystery novel and not, say, a network TV show?

No square pegs in round holes. In mystery novels, you don’t get cut much slack for these. Your characters aren't allowed to go off and do something that makes no sense because, you know, you need them to. Your protag can’t just decide to investigate a crime because, well, she found a body and you need her to be an amateur sleuth; and she can't do dumb things because you need her in peril. She can't go into the house when she finds the front door open; continue into the deserted parking garage even though she thinks she’s being followed; or agree to meet a mysterious informant in a place not flooded with light and witnesses. When your writing starts to feel like hammering, it’s time to stop, rail at the wall for an hour, then admit your needs aren't really important here. What does your character need? A better motive.

Obnoxious does not equal a character readers love to hate. Smash didn't learn its lesson in season one with the character of Ellis Boyd, the uber-obnoxious assistant. They doubled down in season two by making uber-obnoxious a main character, Jimmy Collins (played by Jerome Jordan exactly as the writers/producers/directors must have wanted him to play it, because he’s capable of nuance and charm). They chose to make Jimmy not only a ^%#*, but a callow ^%#*. And callow and ^%#* are pretty much impossible to make compelling. They made poor Karen his doormat, so maybe we were supposed to hate him while at the same time intuit that there was a good man underneath all that because, uh, Karen fell for him and he's cute. Doesn't that count? Not in mystery novels. Not unless you want the reader to throw your book across the room. Readers see people who are uninspiring, unintriguing and unbearable every day. They probably work for one. They don’t want to read about them when they get home.

And so Smash will be gone soon. What will I do for a reboot? Where can I find another show that will render me alternatively brain flat-lined and yelping at the TV?

I mean, other than Castle. (My devotion to Nathan Fillion is not unmotivated. Since Firefly, a woman is justified in following him practically anywhere.)

Other suggestions for reboot candidates are welcome.

Sheila York

Julia Pomeroy: Actress, Restaurateur, Author

Yesterday I listened to Julia describe how she lost her publisher as her second series mystery, COLD MOON HOME, was about to hit the streets. Her first, THE DARK END OF TOWN, from the defunct Carroll & Graf, got fine reviews and decent sales, but alas as we all know… Julia and I are fellow Mavens of Mayhem, the Upstate Hudson Valley branch of Sisters In Crime (SinC). After a suitable period of mourning, she came to appreciate the new-found freedom, she said, beginning her first thriller, NO SAFE GROUND, the protagonists a pair of middle-aged men residing in the Hudson Valley region of Columbia County. The male point-of-view is new for Julia, whose series heroine Abbe Silvernale waitressed while solving crimes in the fictional upstate Town of Bantam, not unlike where Julia and her family reside and once owned a restaurant. Julia Pomeroy is, from my innocent male perspective, a Woman of the World, having lived in Japan, Somalia and Italy, where her dad’s job as a Foreign Service Officer took them. On returning to the U.S., she became a Hollywood actress, among other things. NO SAFE GROUND is out this month from Five Star.

Robert Knightly

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MURDER MOST FOWL

I was on a panel this last Saturday, the topic: Food in Crime Fiction. Actually, it was called Murder Most Fowl and it was part of the Roger Smith Cookbook Conference in Manhattan. When I was asked, I thought, what do I know about food in mysteries? And do I care? My new standalone thriller, coming out this weekend, has some raw meat, a couple of cheeseburgers and some burnt spaghetti sauce in it.

My fellow panelists were to be Katherine Hall Page, who writes a wonderful series about a caterer; Marilyn Stasio, reviewer for the NYT, who has probably read more crime fiction than a Bouchercon banquet-load of fans; and your own Annamaria Alfieri, who is of Italian blood, and therefore gets a special papal dispensation to talk about food. My claim to food is that I once owned a small town restaurant, and my protagonist, in my first two books, is a waitress in a similar small town restaurant.

The day before the panel, the big storm Nemo blew into town, and on Saturday Katherine couldn't get out of Massachusetts. Annamaria, jet lagged from three weeks in Italy but still game, showed up. I came, nervous and feeling highly unqualified. Finally, Marilyn and the moderator arrived, and we began.

Luckily Bruce Kraig, our moderator, (who has written a tabletop book on hotdogs!) had asked us to prepare talks about our books and the food in them. Marilyn Stasio, thank God, went first. She had done her homework and read a bucket of food-related mysteries. She had wonderful points to make about food and its uses in crime fiction. Food used well and food used poorly. She talked about dozens of writers and she was lucid and interesting, and after a particularly stirring question or comment by one of the audience, she stopped and said, "I should write an article about this."

Then it was my turn. I explained my train of thought as I had prepared for the panel. I mentioned my two first books briefly, and how I'm more interested in the restaurant as a theatre-like setting, with front of the house and back of the house, than I am in the food. And that I rarely think about food or remember food in the novels I like. What does Harry Bosch eat? Nothing. At least, nothing memorable. Maybe a taco from a street vendor. But what does that say about an obsessive driven detective? When you think about it, quite a lot.

I told the audience how I delved into the internet, digging around to see what other people thought about food in mysteries. Someone described food, in the classic mysteries, as a sign of elitism in characters like Nero Wolfe, Maigret and Poirot. Not a bad point. There was definitely a class distinction in those books. Also, food as death! Think of all the poisonings in Agatha Christie. Roald Dahl's famous story, Lamb to the Slaughter, about a woman who beats her husband's head in with a frozen leg of lamb, then serves it, roasted, to the detectives.

Which made me think, if it can represent death, then isn't food in fiction something like sex in fiction? Both should work to enhance character, setting or conflict, and shouldn't feel artificially stuck on.

Finally, Annamaria gave a wonderful explanation of how food in historical mysteries works to place the reader in the writer's world, reminding him/her, through the description of particular food, of that time and place. And it also makes the protagonist truly human, with mouth, gullet and stomach, just like the rest of us mortals.

And then it was over. The time had flown by.

As I write this, I think once again about my new thriller, and what part, if any, food plays in it. And it just comes to me that, yes, when it's there, food in my story is about family. Safety. Even if it's just a simple spaghetti sauce.

So, even though I have never thought of myself as someone who writes about food, I learned that I was wrong. We all are, us crime fiction writers. Either through inclusion or omission, we are all food writers too. And that's what I got from going to a cookbook conference. Life's funny that way, isn't it?

Julia Pomeroy

So, How Did You Learn to Write Thrillers?

Our guest today is James (Jim) Hayman. When I read this post of his about learning to write thrillers on the Maine Crime Writers blog, I invited him to share it with our readers, not only because I make no secret of my own devotion to Maine–Prout's Neck, a tiny village on the coast near Portland, is one of my favorite places on the planet!–but because it's a thought-provoking and informative piece.

Jim Hayman began life in New York City, was educated at top schools in New England, and after a highly successful professional career in Manhattan moved to Portland, Maine, just before 9/11.

The Big Apple provided years of training that now serves him well as he pens spine-tingling crime novels. A star on Madison Avenue, as well as in TV production, his experiences in creative direction on famous accounts like Procter and Gamble, the U.S. Army, Lincoln/Mercury, as well as superb credits in The Sopranos, Law and Order and Murder One, provided this talented writer with material that brings out the fear and trembling in his increasing hordes of eager readers.

When I read his first book, The Cutting, I thought, "This guy HAS The Touch!" Then The Chill of Night made my little grey cells clamor for more! Now I anticipate Darkness First!

Thelma Straw

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Whenever I give a reading in a bookstore or a library, I usually mention that when I began writing the first McCabe thriller, The Cutting, I had no prior experience writing fiction. I’d never written so much as a single short story. Not even as an exercise in a college creative writing class.

When I say this, someone in the audience, often an aspiring mystery writer, inevitably asks, “So, how on earth did you manage, first time out, to write a thriller that someone wanted to publish?”

“Well,” I respond truthfully, “I started by reading a bunch of how-to books on the craft of writing mystery fiction.” These included James Frey’s How to Write a Damn Good Mystery, Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel by Hallie Ephron and Write Away by Elizabeth George. All were helpful in teaching me the basics. How to structure a plot, how to build tension, how to shift point of view and a number of other writerly techniques. “But,” I tell the audience, “I can’t honestly say they gave me the skills I needed to write and publish The Cutting.”

“Okay, so what did?” my questioner asks.

“Well,” I say, “I’ve been a writer all my working life and managed to make a living so I guess writing comes naturally to me. It’s about the one thing I think I’m genuinely good at.”

The questioner still looks dubious. “What kind of writing did you do?”

I then describe how, for the ten years prior to sitting down to write The Cutting, I churned out an almost endless stream of brochures, newsletter and business press articles, web content, speeches and white papers that were written mostly for companies in the healthcare and financial services industries. I also mention the two non-fiction books I wrote, one a history of Banknorth Group, the other a history of Maine Medical Center.

“Do you think writing that stuff gave you the skills you needed to write thrillers?”

“Well, some,” I reply honestly, “But not all.”

At this point, my questioner usually gets a determined look in his or her eye. “Okay,” they ask, “so what did?”

“Advertising.”

“Advertising?”

“Yes. Advertising. Specifically television advertising. More specifically television advertising for clients who, back in the eighties and nineties, wanted and could afford to pay to produce big-budget movie-like commercials shot on location by top-notch directors like Michael Bay, Joe Pitka, Tony and Ridley Scott, Eddie Bianchi and others. Before going freelance, I worked as a copywriter and creative director at one of the top agencies in New York writing and producing those kinds of commercial for clients like the U.S. Army, Lincoln/Mercury and Merrill-Lynch.”

At this point there’s usually a joke from the audience. “Advertising?” some wag will say, “I thought you said you’d never written fiction before.”

Having just lived through a political campaign where nearly everything the candidates claimed in their TV commercials was exaggerated to the point of being flat lies, I can’t do anything but smile, nod and agree.

“However,” I add, when the laughter finally dies down, “that’s not really my point. The truth is writing mini-movies like TV commercials is great training for writing not just thrillers, but any kind of fiction.”

I believe that to be true, for three distinct reasons.

First, writing TV commercials teaches you to write dialogue. A lot of aspiring writers find creating believable dialogue to put in the mouths of their characters is difficult. But because so much of writing for film requires writing dialogue, that eventually, if you have any kind of ear for how people speak (and I think I do), it starts to become easy. All three of my books are dialogue-heavy. Most of the story is told through conversation. One character telling another what I want the reader to know. I imagine the same can probably be said about most of the books written by most of the other writers who have come out of ad agency backgrounds–James Patterson, Stuart Woods, Marcus Sakey, Ted Bell, Chris Grabenstein and many others.

The second important thing writing for the camera teaches you is to think visually. You have to know where the camera is in your scene and mentally write down exactly what it’s seeing. For example, when I was writing commercials, I might write a camera direction like: “Open on a a long shot of a white sand beach on an overcast morning in September. We can see a calm ocean behind it. Camera moves in to reveal two people, a man and a woman, walking along the waterline. They’re both wearing white. Continue to move in on their faces to medium close-up. Finally they stop walking and look at each other. Continue move to tight close-up of their two faces.”

In my first book, The Cutting, this kind of camera direction was translated into the opening two paragraphs of an important chapter: “Had anyone been watching, the two figures would have appeared almost spectral. A man and a woman, both dressed in white, moving together across a translucent, nearly monochromatic emptiness, where sand blended into sea and sea into overcast sky without perceptible delineation.

For a time, they seemed lost in thought, each looking down, each noting the prints their steps left behind in the sand. After a while they stopped and the woman turned toward her companion. She took one of his hands in hers as if willing him to move closer. He didn’t. She let go. A wisp of blonde hair blew across her face. She brushed it away.” Seeing the scene in your mind as clearly as if you were watching it in person or on a screen, then writing what you see helps the writing succeed.

Finally, the third thing writing TV advertising teaches is to write tight. In a sixty second commercial you get a maximum of roughly one-hundred-and-twenty words to tell your whole story. Beginning, middle and end. In a thirty second commercial, you get sixty words. In either case, every word counts. Not a single one can be wasted. It’s an important discipline that serves one well when writing fiction. Or, frankly, when writing anything else.

Those are the primary skills advertising gave me that helped me write all three of my books, The Cutting, The Chill of Night and my upcoming thriller Darkness First. You don’t need to spend twenty years in an ad agency to get them. Just listen to how people talk, imagine what your scene looks like and don’t get wordy. Having said all that, I have to add it doesn’t hurt to have an active imagination and a natural affinity for the English language.

James Hayman

The Craziest Thing You've Ever Done

In one of those charming articles on true love in the Sunday Style section of the New York Times I read of a dating couple playing a question game where each got to ask the other a question. The boy asked, "What's the craziest thing you've ever done?" The girl confessed that she had gone to Assisi and worked with a wedding planner to concoct her dream wedding, without ever having met the right man. The relationship blossomed and the two were married the following year, in Assisi. (It was an article on true love, after all.)

The piece got me thinking. Could I answer such a question? No. I don't do crazy things. I do ill-advised things, but seldom impulsively. When disaster strikes I tend to freeze like a mouse under the gaze of a snake. I'm paralyzed until I understand what's happening. Sometimes this takes years.

Carina Nebula, the protagonist of Monkeystorm (the book I just finished), is, on the other hand, all impulse. She is so crazy that she had to break out of Trenton Psychiatric, and the craziest thing she ever did was whatever she just did two minutes before. It was interesting to write a character like that. I had to find her inside my stodgy self, where all of us find our characters, if we are writing honestly. But it took a long time. Carina could decide in a heartbeat to torch a building or cut herself on the hand, but I had to mull it over for days before I realized it was what she would do.

So what's the craziest thing you've ever done?

Kate Gallison

The Change of Life

I was intriqued by Leslie Budewitz’s double-life as Montana lawyer, cozy novelist and author of the tell-all insider’s book, Books, Crooks & Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law & Courtroom Procedure. It’s the real deal. Reviewed next month — Robert Knightly

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Like most writers, for years I stole bits of time from myself–and my day job–to write. Half a dozen published stories, four mystery novels in boxes in the closet, and a notebook filled with ideas–one line, two paragraphs, three pages.

So the thrill of selling a book was doubly strange, because my first book intermingled my two jobs. Books, Crooks & Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law & Courtroom Procedure (Quill Driver Books, 2011) is aimed at the writer–of novels, stories, screenplays, and more–who recognizes that a legal thread runs through the fictional world, and that getting key details wrong can unravel the entire plot. It’s also useful for nonfiction writers who want a primer on the criminal and civil legal systems.

Now that I’m making the transition from practicing law to writing full-time, I’ve been thinking about how my day job of nearly thirty years has influenced my writing. Most notably, my legal work gave me the subject matter for Books, Crooks & Counselors. It gave me first-hand experience with many of the issues of criminal and civil law I wrote about, the skills to research what I didn’t know, and the ability to identify what writers needed to know. It enabled me to give them real-life examples, and ideas for using legal issues to complicate and deepen their own work.

It's given me discipline and experience writing on deadline. You can’t tell a judge you’ve got writers’ block.

It's taught me to think about my readers and what they need to know–whether it’s to make a decision about a case or get caught up in a novel. As a civil trial lawyer, I might write to a client, an insurance adjuster and his or her supervisors, opposing counsel, a trial judge or an appellate judge—each with different interests and needs. That experience has taught me to think ahead to what my readers will do with the information I give them, and plan my own next steps. It's also taught me how to read more carefully.

While my legal career has been a boon to my nonfiction, it's also a great help for writing fiction—even in my cozy mysteries, where lawyers take a back seat to small-town shopkeepers, artists, and chefs. Lawyers can choose to solve problems—or make them worse. And since story depends on giving our characters goals, thwarting them, and repeating the process for 300 pages, it’s great to be able to analyze both sides. And while making things worse is an irresponsible choice in real life, what fun in fiction!

Writers, how has your day job benefitted your writing? And readers, does knowing what an author does–or did–by day influence your book choices?

Thanks to Bob for inviting me to join you today!

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Leslie Budewitz is a mystery writer and practicing lawyer. Her first book, Books, Crooks & Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law & Courtroom Procedure (Quill Driver Books, Oct 2011), won the 2011 Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction, and has been nominated for the 2012 Anthony and Macavity Awards. Read an excerpt and more articles for writers on her website (www.LawandFiction.com) and blog (www.LawandFiction.com/blog), or join her on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/LeslieBudewitzAuthor.

Her cozy series, tentatively titled The Food Lovers Village Mysteries, set in a small lakeside community in Northwest Montana and featuring the manager of a specialty local food market, will debut from Berkley Prime Crime in 2013.

Leslie lives in Northwest Montana with her husband, a doctor of natural medicine, and their Burmese cat Ruff, an avid birdwatcher.

How I Cured My Ailing Main Character

Donna Huston Murray, author of Cured, offers us another post today, reposted from her web site at www.donnahustonmurray.com.

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The ride from Philadelphia to Ithaca, NY, feels especially long in bad weather. I spent the time with a yellow tablet in my lap playing with names for a Pennsylvania farmer’s daughter who would become a cop. As the main character of my new suspense series, I might need to live with the name for years to come—if I should be so lucky. Before my husband and I arrived at the Thomas Farm B&B, the birth certificate read, “Lauren Beck.” Who she was remained to be seen.

For November games Hench usually spirits me up to the press box where he does radio for the University of Pennsylvania football. That day, rather than cramming into the booth with the guys, I was invited into Cornell’s adjacent VIP lounge. There I laid about as low as an antelope in a lion den until I heard a woman talking about a recipe for pumpkin-pecan pie. With Thanksgiving coming I couldn’t resist. As usual, the recipe did me no good whatsoever–unless you count meeting the prototype for my new alter-ego.

After being cured of an illness that had her in and out of an iron lung for several years, Carol Brentlinger gave sky-diving a go–about forty-three times. She fed sharks underwater, and, as a colonel in the Commemorative Air Force, flew retired WWI bombers for fun. Her bravery awed me. What a fabulous heroine she would be!

Sadly, my then agent disagreed, and sadly she was more right than wrong. Readers ride on a character’s emotional coattails. Since Lauren Version One feared nothing, the tension I was working so hard to inject into CURED went unnoticed. I didn’t have a suspense novel, I had a grocery list.

For longer than I care to admit, I struggled to change Lauren’s personality, nearly reverse it, morph her into more of a wimp like me. For my seven previous novels the main character was me, and that had worked. However, I cannot carry a gun or bring off a swear word convincingly. I’ve seen the faces.

An author’s goal, among other things, is to sound like yourself. Finding my voice the first time took several years; but when I did, it was like receiving a lifetime railway pass. I could climb on the Ginger Barnes Main Line Mystery train and write without concern for the physicality of getting from here to there. Or, put another way, it was like touch-typing. Try changing that. Not easy.

Lauren was now both insecure and strong. She sounded like Carol Brentlinger one minute and Ginger Barnes the next. I stopped, wrote another book, then returned. What was happening to Lauren was also happening to me. We were emerging from difficulties together, feeling vulnerable but able to gather enough confidence to bypass the New York publishers and declare our independence. And yet the verbal merge remained incomplete. My daughter, who happens to teach creative writing, recommended that Lauren and I sit down with a glass of wine.

“Who are you?” I asked over my share of merlot, and finally–finally–Lauren told me.

Donna Huston Murray