Where the Rubber Meets the Road

By: Maegan Beaumont

We all have them: brilliant story ideas.

Sometimes, they come to us fully formed. You see every facet clearly—who your protagonist is, the trouble he or she faces. What they will do to dig themselves out of it… the trouble they meet along the way. Sometimes, it’s just a flash. Something you see or hear triggers a thought. That thought leads to another… and another… until the idea takes shape and you're left with no choice but to write it out. 

And other times that something you see or hear burrows into your brain. It niggles and nags. It refused to be pushed aside—demands to be written.

So, if these ideas take all the time and trouble to bring themselves to our attention, to demand that we listen, why is it that sometimes they have the audacity to be unable to support the story we so desperately want to write? Why is it that they fall apart half way through the novel? 

I hate to say it, but… it’s not the idea you should be blaming. It’s you. You’re probably the reason things aren't working out the way you’d planned them to. The idea didn’t fall apart. You probably broke it.

Writers generally fall into two categories when it comes to starting a novel:

You have the Nervous Nelly. The writer who circles the pool a few dozen times. Dips their toe in to check the temperature of the water. Makes sure their hair is tucked securely into their swim cap… you know, they think about it for weeks and months before they even write a word. They over think every aspect of the idea until they convince themselves that it’s not a good one.

Then you have the Kamikaze. The writer that sees the pool from a distance, climbs up onto the roof and takes a flying leap, legs tucked into a cannonball, eyes screwed shut… without checking to see if there’s even water in the pool. They have this idea and that it’s—they’re at their computer, frantically typing away without knowing where they’re going or how they’re going to get there.

To the Nervous Nelly, I say:

 Loosen up for God’s sake. It a novel, not the Magna Carta. Yes, writing is hard work. It’s grueling and often lonely business… but if you’re truly a writer, then at the heart of it all, is love. It’s what you love to do. The one thing in your life that you can’t imagine not doing… so do it. Stop beating the poor thing to death and get on with it. Write a synopsis. Write a character sketch for your protagonist. Research your setting… it doesn’t matter what you do, really, as long as you do it. 

To the Kamikaze, I say:

Novel writing is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes stamina. It takes focus. Neither of which you have when your banging away on your keyboard like a cracked-out monkey. Take a deep breath… now take another one. Let the story take form, it’s really not something you can force. And that’s what you’re doing. You’re forcing it. Stop doing that. It’s like handing your keys to a seven year-old and telling them to move your car and then getting mad when they put your Toyota through the neighbor’s living room. I suggest you do the same thing as Nervous Nelly up there—write your synopsis. Flesh out your characters. Research your setting… because that’s what it all comes down to. That’s the secret… 

There is no such thing as a poor story idea—just poor execution.

Ideas, after all, are just that—ideas. A fully-formed novel is something else entirely. You’re the architect that plans it out and the the carpenter that builds it—it’s your responsibility to make sure it has all its parts and that those parts are in working order. Plot. Characters. Setting. These are the components that make a novel work. One can be, and is usually stronger than the other (Plot driven vs. Character driven novels… another topic for another time) but if all three are weak—forget about it.

If the plot leaks like a spaghetti strainer, your reader will grow very angry, very quickly. Readers are an intelligent lot. If your plot isn’t tightly laced, they’ll know it and they’ll hate you for it. Not because you wrote a bad book, but because they’ll feel like you tried to get one over on them—and no one like to be made a fool of.

If your characters are flimsy, your reader will feel cheated. Most people read, because they’re looking for a new experience and they want to live that experience through someone they feel emotionally connected to. Someone as flawed as they are. Someone they wish they could be. Someone that has the guts to do the things they don’t. Say the things they never could. If your characters are one dimensional creatures, no one will find them interesting, and if no one finds them interesting, then no one will care what happens to them. 

Setting lends a bit of realism to the whole thing, which allows your reader to connect even deeper to your story. Remember, it’s all about experience. That’s what the reader needs—it’s what they’re looking for. A woman who’s never left her small town can read a book set a Paris, and if the writer is good, and pays attention to detail, can feel as if she’s walked along the Seine or seen the Eiffel tower. She feels worldly. Connected. The experience she has is rich and fully formed. Without setting, it’s flat and dull. The reader is left feeling like something is missing.

All of these components must work in concert with each other: 

Story idea. Plot. Character. Setting.

They build upon each other. Lend support. One leans against the other. If a story isn’t working, they’re a reason. One or more of these pieces is either lacking in structure or missing all together. Before you give up and move on to the next story idea, give this one the time and attention it deserves. Find it’s weak spots and shore them up… maybe you’ll have to tear it down and start from scratch, but don’t give up on it. There’s a very good chance it’s worth your time and attention. After all, there’s a reason the idea grabbed you in the first place. 

Maegan Beaumont is the author of CARVED IN DARKNESS and SACRIFICIAL MUSE, books one and two in the Sabrina Vaughn thriller series.

 

Act-iiiiing!

by Jennifer Harlow

One of the most common questions as an author I'm asked, like every darn time, is what advice I would give to aspiring writers. There's the old standbys, "Read A LOT", "Write, write, write," and "Don't wear white shoes after Labor Day." They work! Especially that last one. But one thing that I don't often hear from other authors that really helped me, was take an acting class. Or six years of them like I did.

What? you may be asking. You, the gal who learned to sneeze silently so people wouldn't look at her for a split second, who goes out of her way to blend in so people leave her alone was an actor? Yep-a-roonie. From seventh grade through senior year I was always in drama club or class. I acted in two school plays, a friend's music video, a local PSA, and was even the VP of the club. I was no Meryl Streep (though I can do a Southern, Long Island, Valley Girl, Minnesota “Fargo”, and English accent on cue, not that I'm bragging) (Okay, I so am), but people told me I was pretty darn good. It was just fun. I got to put on a persona and pretend I was someone other than me for awhile. When high school ended, and I moved from SoCal to NoVa, my acting career ended as well. In an official capacity anyway.

What I especially loved about acting was getting lost in being another person. Thinking new thoughts, safely experiencing danger or love without the consequences. The skills I learned on stage translated to when I was writing. When I sit down with pen and paper I have to transform into the person whose story I'm telling, feel what they're feeling at the time so I can put into words that sensation. I have to be that person as if their soul were taking over my body, using my own emotions and memories just like I did onstage. Method acting without the performing, at least sometimes. Once or twice I have been looked at sideways in the library as I was mimicking facial expressions my characters would have. In those instances I'm so lost in my own world this one and Jennifer Harlow have vanished.

Besides the Method, Improv also helped hone my writing skills. I was never the best at it, I always felt like an idiot up there with no props or sets pretending to make a cake or whatever silly exercise my teachers had us do. But in the end me acting a fool helped me write, especially dialogue. When you're across from another actor with my script and minimal props and have to think on your feet while being someone else. You have to speak as them with no rehearsal and what you say has to be both entertaining and topical. While I'm writing I'm like a one woman improv troupe playing out all the other characters. Those sessions in class helped strengthen my wit sword so by senior year I had a witty comeback the moment the other person stopped talking. My sharp tongue is my greatest weapon, and from the letters I've received my greatest writing asset.

So to all you aspiring writers out there, I recommend you take an acting class or two. Not only are they a barrel of monkeys but they'll help you with dialogue and characterization. Acting!

P.S.-I just signed another deal with Midnight Ink! I've been wanting to tell y'all for months, but had to wait for contract negotiations to finish. The books will be stand alone spin-offs of the FREAKS, who will make a cameo in each, and the characters in those will make cameos in each others and the FREAKS books. They're sort of friends of the FREAKS, supplemental to the original series. The first, What's A Witch to Do? will be out 3/13.

Column A

After Beth Groundwater's wonderful post yesterday, I give you a short, simple, writerly tip of the day:

What goes in Column A comes out in Column B.

Several years ago I was cramming to meet a deadline. I had been holed up in my attic writing lair for about three weeks solid when a social obligation arrived out of which I could not wiggle:a long planned dinner with friends. Oddly, they called my significant other the night before and told us to wear sweats. They said they had a surprise.

Oka-a-a-ay. I know these folks, I'm not worried. Maybe a little. But we wore sweats. When we arrived, they served wine, light appetizers and bottled water, and in the other room they had booked a masterful masseuse (pardon my alliteration), and we each took turns for a forty-five minute session. The outcome was that I turned to jelly, went home invigorated, and wrote like the wind for the next two weeks. I finished my deadline on time, and I believe my writing (Column B) improved greatly from stepping away for that massage evening with my friends (Column A).

From The Writer's Life, Insights from The Right to Write by Julia Cameron: One of the mysteries of the writing life is the fact that an investment of interest in column A—say listening to a great piece of music—will pay off obliquely when we set pen to paper on an entirely different topic. Writing is what we make from the broth of our experience. If we lead a rich and varied life, we will have a rich and varied stock of ingredients from which to draw on. If we lead a life that is too narrow, too focused, too oriented toward our goals, we will find our writing lacks flavor, is thin on the nutrients that make it both savory and sustaining. Although we tend to think of it as a linear, writing is a profoundly visual art. Even if we are writing about internal experience, we use images to do it. For this reason, we must consciously and constantly restock our store of images. We do this by focusing on what is around us.

If you are blocked or frustrated today take a minute or twenty for yourself to take a walk, look around. Shut your eyes and listen to music from the viewpoint of one of your characters. Leaf through a magazine and clip items that remind you of your story and your characters. Go to the dollar store and buy one item representative of your protagonist, another representative of your antagonist. Put them on your desk or carry them in your pocket as talismans. Or, get a massage!

Happy writing.

Susan Goodwill

author of The Kate London Mystery Series

Brigadoom:2007

Little Shop of Murders: 2008

How did you start?

Sometimes I have to pinch myself that I'm in the company of authors--that I am an author. Me.

All my life, I've dreamed of "being an author." I grew up talking about writing, loving books. That picture is my mom with her nonfiction book, The Giant Hobby Handbook, published the year before I was born.

Over the years, I've read every book on the subject of writing, subscribed to "Writer's Digest", talked about it, and wrote bits and pieces of stories and oddball poems that I kept in my sock drawer.

As far back as I can remember, I scoured the mystery shelves at my library for the gold sticker that provided this intriguing information: "Agatha Award Nominee."

And now, I call Agatha Nominees like Joanna Campbell Slan and G.M. Malliet my colleagues--my friends. Congratulations to you both.

It's pretty wonderful to hang out here. To be a writer--an author.

Here's how it happened for me:

After all those bits and pieces of writing, I finally started writing every day. I took an inciting incident and a rough mental outline for a mystery and wrote a few chapters, very rough. I'd just turned forty. I guess it was my own weird form of biological clock, but it was that now or never feeling that finally got me moving.

It took a few months after that, maybe a year, but I finally screwed up my courage and joined a local writers' critique group. I pretty much had to. The universe sent me messages until I did. (I stumbled across the same flyer for the same group no less than five times on bulletin boards up to thirty miles apart, then it turned out the group leader was a friend of a friend.)

The workshop gave me a little more nerve, and I moved on to another, more serious, group.

Six months or so later, I took a deep breath and signed up for a ten day intensive novel writers' retreat. I was terrified. I felt like an impostor, but I went. My first trip to that retreat changed my life. I "became" a writer. A year later, on my second trip to the same retreat, I met my agent and signed with her. By now, I had most of my first book written.
My third trip, my first book was completed, and I began work on the sequel while my agent shopped my first book in New York. After a few rejections and a serious rewrite, we sold both books to Midnight Ink.
I've been at it ever since.
The point is this: I was terrified and I felt like a fraud and an impostor, but I went to my first workshop anyway. It was quite literally, the best thing I have ever done for myself. If I hadn't gotten an agent or sold my books, getting serious about writing and getting involved in the writing community would still be the best thing I'd ever done for myself. I have made lifelong friends and begun the career path I never dreamed possible.
How did it happen for you? Or will you make it happen for you?

Plot, Place, Character?

In searching for a subject for this morning's blog post, I was glancing through Speaking of Murder—Interviews with Masters of Mystery and Suspense published by Berkley Prime Crime, way back in 1998. I stumbled upon an interview with Elizabeth George where she speaks about her deep "psychic" connection to England. She goes on to say how she starts with the merest kernel of a plot then spends about a week at the location of choice (a spot in the U.K.) to allow the seed to germinate. She often goes back later, as the story develops, to soak up more of the region.

She particularly likes writing about a foreign country because she notices every detail. She goes on to say that when writing about U.S. locations, she doesn’t pick up the same info on her radar. The nuances of every day life, like the type of raincoat a person wears, the food one orders, the newspapers one reads, all are so familiar, the tiny things get lost in the shuffle.

So this started me thinking, how much do you think a sense of place has to do with your story?

I know that most of the authors that post regularly on this blog write series mysteries, so the question of place is often answered in advance. Not always, though. And sometimes, just like similar plots or the same core characters go stale without a new twist, a writer needs to shake things up a bit with their sense of place.

I believe this is why, as a series goes on, we often see characters from a small town take a trip. You see it all the time on TV.

Lucy and Ricky and Ethel and Fred loaded up the car and went to Hollywood. Later in the series, they even bought a country inn. And then, look at "Murder She Wrote." Cabot Cove having beaten out Detroit and Washington, D.C. as the town with the most killings per capita, Jessica Fletcher split for greener (or more bloody) pastures just about every week. But, I think it's safe to say, by that point in the series, the sense of place established by the series traveled with her. Maine in that big black purse, ah-yup.

And take a look at the CSI TV shows, talk about a sense of place! NY, Las Vegas, and Nevada, ne'er the twain shall meet. (Except that one time when Horatio flew to N.Y. He seemed so lost without his shades, but don't get me started!)

When Midnight Ink first considered my book, BrigaDOOM, they asked if I would move the Kate London Mystery Series from the western Michigan coast to Cleveland. Cleveland??

After I finished gasping and got up off the floor, I took a deep breath and explained how inextricably linked a small, blighted town on Lake Michigan's shore was to the characters' sense of self, the stories, and the series in general. The frustrations of an 'almost tourist town' that is unique to that part of Michigan, the feeling of a peninsula, the shortest of summer seasons, the dunes, so many things would change or be lost. I grew up not far from Cleveland, and a person not from Michigan might argue that they are close enough, take it from me, they're not.

Midnight Ink, thankfully, agreed.

So, how strong is the sense of place in what you write? In what you read? What would happen if you moved your protagonist to another town?

Try the Wine by Susan Goodwill

Ray Bradbury has always been the author that inspires me most. Not only that, but he truly writes books that have changed the way the world thinks, like Fahrenheit 451 or the Martian Chronicles. His first book, Dark Carnival was released in 1947. His most recent, Now and Forever, was released last year-a sixty year span. Sixty years!
In Zen In the Art of Writing, he captures the true joy he feels at being born a story teller. He relates a story where, as a child of about twelve, he entered a carnival tent. A mysterious magician tapped him on the shoulder with a sword of electric blue flame. "Live forever!" he roared. Ray tells us that at this very moment he new what he would do with his life. He would be a writer and live forever! He's never looked back.
If you haven't read him, you should. If you have, pick him up again. To feel the inspiration of a writer who has such excitement and love for the art of the story is a wonderful thing. May I suggest the vintage Dandelion Wine? It's a fabulous summer blend. Once you decant it, you'll find it as sweet and tangy to the palate as a life of words well lived.

On the occasion of his 80th birthday in August 2000, Bradbury said, "The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me. The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was twelve. In any event, here I am, eighty years old, feeling no different, full of a great sense of joy, and glad for the long life that has been allowed me. I have good plans for the next ten or twenty years, and I hope you'll come along."

You can visit Ray at http://www.raybradbury.com/ .

The Arkansas 11

Tom Schreck
author of TKO

As you all know I got a thing for basset hounds.

A week or so ago one of those bastards that operates a puppy mill in Arkansas called a local basset rescue group, told them he was getting out of the business and they better get over to get the 11 hounds within a week or "he'd take care of them."

Translation: he'd kill them.








The Ozark Mountain Basset Rescue was filled up because, being in Arkansas where puppy mills flourish, they are always filled up with abused and neglected hounds.

This is where the story gets good.

The Ozark Basset Folks called the New York Basset Rescue known as All Bassets Cherished. ABC is made up of committed people who don't mess around--especially when someone's mean to a basset hound. They don't hesitate, they don't ask what it's going to cost, they just act.

In 48 hours they had foster homes for the 11 hounds and a couple ABC members were in a truck headed to Arkansas.

They got the hounds and took them to the vet where they were treated for all sorts of neglect--one little guy had to have an eye removed-- and the bassets were all spayed an neutered.

So far the bills are over $3,000 and they aren't done yet.

The hounds are all safely in New York foster homes where undoubtedly they are sitting on the furniture. They've probably all have stolen something off the kitchen counter.

And I bet not a single one has been scolded yet.

ABC is selling autographed copies of my books and I'm giving the cash (even what the books cost me and the shipping) to the Arkansas 11.

Go to nybasset.org and hit "Donate Now" and send them money. If you feel like it buy my silly books.

What are basset hounds like?

Bassets don't do anything you tell them.
They smell kind of houndy.
They bark too much.
They'll eat your furniture.

and they'll love you unconditionally.

If you pay attention they'll teach you to not focus on material things and to get over your own self absorption.

That's what they are good for. That and they make you laugh like hell.

And as for that puppymill guy back in Arkansas, well, I guess I'm glad he's out of the business.

I'll tell you what though--he doesn't deserve to be called a son-of-a-bitch.

The Creative Spark and How to Re-Ignite it

by Julia Buckley
I haven't written for a while. The other day I tried venturing into the shallows by attempting a short story. My husband read it and said it didn't seem "like something I'd put my heart and soul into." My soul? I don't know that I put my soul into my writing.

But I do know that the creative muse is hard to pin down.

My oldest son (newly thirteen) asks me to type his assignments for him, so I am given access to writing that he would normally not bother to show me. Recently I looked at his freewriting--journals that they must do in class but which the teacher doesn't always read. Her philosophy is that they should be writing all the time, whether she has time to go over it or not. I think that's a good idea.

In any case, I read Ian's journals and was amazed by their energy. They were fun, creative, interesting--everything I want my own writing to be. Perhaps, though, I want it too much. The advantage of Ian's writing is that it's done without pressure. Come up with a journal, jot it down. No fear of whether or not it's quality stuff, no fear of rejection. He's not writing for publication, he's writing for himself.

He did, however, give me permission to publish one of his journals here--one that struck me as a humorous modern day fable. Here it is:

The Snowman Who Could Turn Invisible

Once upon a time there was this snowman that lived in Queens. He was made by some kid who abandoned him in a park. One day he was pelted by freezing rain, and gained a thick coating of ice. That night two losers who had nothing better to do put the snowman on a sled and pushed him down a hill. He stayed in one piece the whole time because of the coating of ice around him. Eventually, he crashed into an electric fence. Then he passed out.

It took him until he woke up to realize that he was ever alive. And then he realized that, for some reason, he could turn invisible, probably from the power jolt from the electric fence.

First he thought he should use his powers only for good. Then he decided to use them just to annoy. So for the next few weeks, he’d turn invisible and push someone into the snow, or tie someone’s shoelaces together.

One day, he made a mistake and didn’t turn invisible when he pushed one kid over. Then everyone knew that a snowman was causing the problem, so they thought of a solution: they used a guy as bait, making him wait in the snowy park. Now they could see the snowman’s footprints as he walked through the snow.

Then someone ran out with a blowtorch and melted him into a puddle.

The End

What do you think? Does he have the creative spark, or is it my imagination? :)

(Photo courtesy of me--that's a candle making cool lines on my wall.)