Just Keep Writing!

by Kathleen Ernst

Last November I wrote a post I titled Gratitude about why I feel grateful to be a working writer, despite the inherent challenges.   Most comments were positive, but I did receive one message from an aspiring writer whose basic message was, “Easy for you to say, oh published one.”

I did try to stress that making my way along the writer’s path has not always easy.  Perhaps a few more examples will help:

*In the 11^th grade, I once received a zero on a writing assignment—“because the work was not good enough to earn an F.”

* I wrote at least a dozen novels before one was picked up for publication.  Probably more; I stopped counting at some point.

* The first time I entered a novel in a statewide contest, the judge for my category chose to not acknowledge any entry that year.

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

I’m celebrating the publication of my 25^th book, a children’s mystery called Traitor in the Shipyard, and I’m under contract for two more books. Does that mean I’ve passed some magic mark where everything I write gets published?  Not hardly. I have a handful of manuscripts that I love, that I worked on for years, but have never landed on the right desk at the right time.

My beloved agent of ten years recently returned to the editorial side of the business.  When we talked about our momentous decade together, she summarized what she saw as perhaps my greatest strength: “You just keep writing.”

To that I’d add always trying to improve my work and striving to understand the business end of writing.  Nonetheless, if there is a single strategy that got me where I am, it’s simply that. Despite frustrations, disappointments, and setbacks, I just kept—and keep—writing.

I wish  you aspiring writers all success!

Talkin’ & Walkin’

Cricket McRae

On Inkspot we’ve talked a bit about where we write, about our different offices, writing areas and techniques for buckling down and avoiding distraction. Despite my luck at having a rather large and cushy office, I tend to wander away from home to write whenever possible. I mix it up – one of the three public libraries, the University library, various coffee shops around town, and in warm weather I spend hours in parks and picnic areas around – and outside of – town.

On one hand, I’m avoiding yard work, housework, errands, phone calls, people dropping by because they don’t think I have a job, workmen, Internet surfing, social media, cleaning closets, looking to see if anything interesting has materialized in the refrigerator, etc. You know: life.

On the other hand, I’m seeking quiet, inspiration, chunks of uninterrupted time, beauty, solitude – or being around people but not having to talk to them – sunshine, a work mindset (particular to college libraries) and regular doses of caffeine.

However, there are two times when I’m forced to hunker down in my own home in order to get the job done. The first is when I’m plotting and developing new characters for an upcoming WIP. The second is the final rewrite/edit at the end of the process.

Why?

‘Cuz I talk to myself. Seriously talk to myself. I mutter at characters. I ask them questions. I ask myself questions. I answer myself. Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard the joke. And yes, I might very well go slightly insane at these times.

But wait. There’s more.

I walk while I talk. I pace and stride and shuffle back and forth in my office, and sometimes all over the house. And into the backyard. Still muttering. This is not the kind of thing which one should do in public, not even in a park. Even the cadre of homeless guys at the downtown public library would look at me funny.

But for me, it works. Starting with writing college papers in the middle of the night and continuing right through preparing presentations in the corporate world, walking-and-talking has been part of my creative process how I get things done.

So be it.

How ‘bout you? Do you have any particular writing quirks? How about reading quirks (e.g. I used read paperbacks on my three-mile morning walks)?

Splat!

Cricket McRae

You would think on a blog written by mystery authors, I’d be talking blood spatter with a title like that.

Nope. Sorry.

Lately I’ve been refining my workshop on getting to know your characters better. It consists of nine ways to dig deeper when developing protagonists, antagonists and the secondary folks who populate fiction. The last time I taught this workshop I was reminded of a screenwriting intensive I took from Stewart Stern in 2006.

Stern is the soul-sounding writer of, among other things, Rebel Without a Cause, Rachel Rachel and the teleplay for Sybil. He wrote old-school style – no Vogler or McKee outlining how stories ought to work (though I bet he was familiar with Aristotle’s Poetics). In the intensive, he shared with us the impetus behind his genius.

He called it going through splat.

In fact, there is a documentary about his life, writing, and war (he fought in the Battle of the Bulge), called Going Through Splat: The Life and Work of Stewart Stern.

And here is an interview with him.

Splat was his way of talking about the difficult, psyche-scraping process of discovering something about ourselves that we have always avoided facing. In doing so, we are able to give that same gift to our characters. Protagonists in particular need to do that which they have always avoided in order to grow. 

Splat comes from wounds in the back story of a character. They do not have to be huge dramatic wounds – abuse, death of a parent, or great tragedy. But Stern maintained that there needs to be a point of connection between our protagonists’ back stories and our own. That connection may not be obvious to others, but we know it’s there.

Splat is facing the thing that stands in our way in our lives. Facing that thing creates hope. We may deprive ourselves, or hurt ourselves to avoid dealing with it, but in the end it is necessary. Stern maintained, “Courage is the price that life charges for peace.”

Splat is “being skinless in order to communicate,” to really tell the story. Your art lies in your own experience. Your fantasy about facing something you want to avoid is nourishing to others.

Do the thing you don’t want to do, to understand what that’s like, so you can pass that knowledge on. The mission of an artist “is to give to their audience one single moment in which they can glimpse their own capacity for greatness.”

So does all that sound like a bunch of hooey to you? While it resonates deeply with me, I think it does depend on what kind of story you’re telling. Applying the idea of splat to the lighter fare some of us write could defeat the purpose of providing, say, humorous escape. On the other hand, having that dimension of character even in a cozy provides a welcome depth – as long as it’s applied with a feather touch.

As a writer, do you dig deep, uncomfortably deep, to grant your characters life? As a reader, do you enjoy it when a writer does this?

Ethos, Logos, Pathos

Cricket McRae

A while back a young friend of mine told me about a persuasive essay she had to write as a school assignment. Waving her hand dismissively, she said, “You know, all that ethos, logos, pathos stuff.”

Well, yes. I did know about that “stuff,” though certainly not from high school English class. I’d come across it during my years as a geeky philosophy major in college. Ever since that conversation, the notion of how Aristotelian rhetorical technique applies to fiction writing has been floating around in the back of my mind.

Because apparently I’m still a geek.

Still, fiction writers do have to be persuasive. They have to convince readers the story they’re telling is not only possible and realistic, but important enough to care about. That’s at the very least. Sometimes a tale can go much further – to inspire, educate, or comment on social or political issues, for example.

Ethos appeals to the ethical character of the reader and/or relies on the character of the author. Especially in mysteries, the goal is to catch the bad guy and bring him to justice. An occasional variation on that is to allow the killer to escape because his actions were ethically, if not lawfully, sound. Protagonists must have a value system to which we relate, even if it doesn’t precisely echo our own. Heck, even antagonists have to have a value system that makes sense, though it’s often in moral opposition to ours. Ethics are always part of the drive behind a murder investigation.

Logos appeals to rationality. A logical argument uses reason, syllogisms, statistics and the like. But a piece of fiction has to make just as much sense as rhetorical argument in terms of logic. To be believable, characters have to act in a consistent manner. They must respond to situations as we expect them to based on their previous behavior. Or, if they don’t, the reason they don’t has to make logical sense. Works of fiction that involve world-building – fantasy, science fiction, paranormal, etc. – have to be logical down to the last invented detail in order to be believable. And too much coincidence is illogical, so realistic cause and effect should drive the plot.

Pathos appeals to the emotions. Writers have to be careful about overuse of pathos, not only because it’s considered cheap and underhanded (advertisers use A LOT of pathos to get you to buy stuff) but because it’s a delicate balance. It’s easy to be ham-fisted, especially if the author makes the mistake of telling the reader how they should feel. But in the hands of a skilled storyteller, pathos is probably the most important way to engage readers, keep them thinking about the book (or short story, or poem) long after they’ve finished it, and get them talking about it to others.

An author can’t make a reader feel, though. All we can do is create characters whom readers care about, put them in situations where the reader wants them to prevail, and then present realistic and relatable challenges and difficulties. People care most when they identify with someone. Sympathy is one kind of pathos. A deeper level of pathos involves engaging the reader’s imagination to the point where they are actually feeling what the characters feel. That’s what we want. Never mind that the characters are fictional.

It’s a glorious, circular, tricky business, indeed. As an author do you think about how you persuade readers via your writing, or does it just happen in the course of telling your tale? As a reader are you aware of being persuaded by a story? Do you seek out fiction that makes you feel a certain way?

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Panel

By Darrell James

On my way to an author panel last Sunday, I encountered a woman in the parking lot of the local Denny’s. She was loading music instruments into the back of an equipment van. On a guitar case was a sticker that read: New Christie Minstrels.

Now, for those of you who weren’t around in 1964, or who were too stoned to remember, they were a folk group of considerable fame. (Something along the lines of Peter, Paul, and Mary.) This day they were on their way to a performance in San Dimas.

I introduced myself as a fan, and told her where I was heading. The rest of the band was quickly summoned-round to meet the mystery writer Darrell James (no mention of the word famous in my regard).

They were gray-haired, and bleary-eyed at the early hour, but still out there touring and spreading their music to the masses. Four of them were of the original founding members of the group. I shook hands with each in turn and a lively discussion of their early work and my long-time fan-ship ensued.

See, I had only a couple of months earlier related to my wife Diana that there was an old song (by this group) that I would love to find, if it still existed. The song is titled El Camino Real, from the album Land of Giants. To my dismay, Cantebury’s in Pasadena had the album on CD, and I purchased it. I happened to be carrying it with me in my car at the time, and the entire band signed the cover.

It was a chance encounter, of little consequence to anyone other than me. (And perhaps the band, as they’d met someone who actually remembered them from the good 'ol days.) We exchanged business cards. I promised to try to catch one of their performances some day, they promised to read my first book when it comes out.

Maybe either will happen; maybe neither will. It doesn’t matter so much. I left feeling nostalgic and warm. And for the remainder of the day, the song in question played inside my head.

It tells the story of the early days of Southern California, of horse and rider, and of the fight for independence from Spain. The lyrics are powerful and provocative, the characters courageous and sad. I’ve never been able to repeat the complete lyrics without choking up.

My wife comes from the disco era, and if the music makes you want to dance, she’s down. Another friend tells me he has to be able to sing to it. For me, a folk-rocker from the Dylan generation, it’s all about story and about poetry and about words. Much of my writing is inspired by song lyrics.

What about you? Are you a dancer or poet, songbird or storyteller? What place does music play in your life?

Fill in the Blank

Cricket McRae

The other night I indulged in something I rarely do: checking out the special features on a DVD. I’d just watched The Bourne Ultimatum, and though I generally find the behind-the-scenes information strips a lot of the magic out of a movie, I was curious about which scenes had been edited out. It quickly became clear that all the bits they’d removed, though well enough written and acted, over-explained what was going on. They told more than they needed to. Including them would have slowed the pace, but wouldn’t have added much in the way of real information.

Show, Don’t Tell. The old maxim holds even truer for novelists than for screen writers. Readers fill in blanks and make interpretations and judgments, but they also have to add sensory data, including the visual and auditory information inherent in the cinematic experience. The danger of an author telling and not showing is far greater for the simple reason that we’re painting our stories with little black squiggles … and nothing else.

We ask readers to take those squiggles and translate them into whole worlds, people, events, meaning, for heaven’s sake. I mean, that’s crazy, when you think about it. Is it any wonder that sometimes we overdo it, attempting to make it easier for those marks on paper to convey the effect we desire? To communicate our vision complete with subtlety and layers of surprise and emotion?

But a writer’s job isn’t to tell the whole story. For one thing, we can’t, and the more we try, the more we kill something vital between writer and reader. The writer’s job is to show (and sometimes tell) enough of the story for the reader to fill in the rest by himself. Our readers’ imaginations are fabulous and amazing, but perhaps more importantly, inevitable – and that makes their imaginations an essential part of our story process.

When I was in high school I was taken with a passage from Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent:

“A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudices, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home with it. Only then can he accept wonder.”

That quote has stayed with me ever since. Story as a synthesis of writer and reader. It’s mysterious, maybe a little unpredictable, and sometime disconcerting.

And so very, very magical.

Turned Off by Turn Offs

A while back, the topic came up on DorothyL about turn-offs in mystery novels. Show stoppers, those things that when you read them make you put the book down and never pick it up again. Those things that makes you dash off breathless letters of condemnation. Those things, even, that make you want to buy Author Voodoo dolls and use them for a game of Author-in-a-Blender.

Some oft-cited examples, in no particular order:
• Swearing
• Smoking
• Tattoos
• Women protagonists who blindly walk into peril
• People who won't talk to the police
• Sub-plots involving adultery
• Did I mention swearing?
• And smoking?

All this surprised me. First of all, it was a little alarming because my follow-up to Lost Dog features a fair degree of swearing and smoking (and extensive craving of a smoke) as well as people who won't talk to the police and a sub-plot involving adultery. I even have a minor character with lots of tattoos. I don't have a woman protagonist who walks blindly into peril in this one, which is my one saving grace I suppose. Oh, and I don't kill a dog, an act so heinous it doesn't even need to be listed.

My own personal pet peeve, as described in a previous post, is unrealistically great first time sex, with ubiquitous, unstoppable computer hackers running a close second. Other than that, I am pretty tolerant. We're talking about a novel here, after all. It's not like I have to hang out with these people.

Take smoking. My guy, Skin Kadash, smokes like a chimney in Lost Dog, but has mostly quit in my second novel, Chasing Smoke. All throughout Chasing Smoke, however, he's craving a smoke. I mean, he just quit, and it's hard. Sometimes he almost breaks down and lights up, but even when he's not smoking himself he's watching others smoke, and thinking about it. A lot.

Now, I'm not a smoker. I'm not even a former smoker. I'm gracious about it with my friends who do smoke, but I admit I don't care for the smell of tobacco smoke and I don't care for smoker's breath and smoker's hair. But, hey, let's face it, it's not my decision and if my friends want to smoke, it's their choice. If we're out having a beer and a friend lights up, no worries. I like my friends a LOT more than I dislike smoking. And no doubt I have plenty of habits that others don't care for.

In writing about smoking, I went to great lengths to create a character who was sympathetic, and whose need for a smoke actually accentuated his intrigue as a person. Aside from the challenge it posed to me as a writer, it also just fit in with who he is. How successful I am with Skin I'll leave for my readers to decide, but I would hope that no one would dismiss him, or the book, out of hand simply because he's a smoker.

Consider that other great taboo. Killing a dog or cat. As crime fiction writers, we can kill off untold numbers of people, but lay a finger on the fur of a single fictional pet and we're Hitler. Kids are pretty much sacrosanct too, though we're actually allowed to put children in danger at times.

True, some folks have gotten away with the killing of the innocents. Glenn Close still had a career after boiling the bunny. Steven Spielberg still gets to make movies despite T-Rex eating a dog in Jurassic Park II. And there are a number of successful books and films in which children come to a dark end. But for the most part, those are events we dramatize fictionally at our peril. "After he killed the pomeranian, I resolved to never buy another book by him, and to picket bookstores that sell his books, and to mail little ziplock bags of dog doody to his mother, and,... and,... and,..."

That's disappointing to me, and not because I want to kill a dog. I love dogs. And I love kids. And I love people, though certainly not all of them. But as a writer, I want to feel free to tell stories as they unfold, not feel constrained by lists of no-no's. And, as a reader, (and let's face it, I read a LOT more books than I'll ever write), I want authors to feel that they can tell the stories they need to tell without stressing about the Verboten!

I'm not advocating gratuitous butchery here. But let's be honest. We're killers, as writers, and voyeurs of killing, as readers of crime fiction. Even the coziest among us produce a body count that would be shocking if it weren't on the page. The distinction between a bloodless death in the drawing room and serial slaughter in an abattoir isn't all that great, even if sometimes we pretend it is. And certainly I know there are any number of topics that probably cross the line for the vast majority of us. I'm not saying there aren't valid lines. I'm also not suggesting that we have to read or write about topics that don't interest us. There are a million books out there, and none of them are for everyone. I just wonder if, considering the mayhem we do tolerate, some lines aren't a little arbitrary and unmindful of what's really going on here.

I don't smoke, and I don't have a tattoo, and I won't commit adultery. But I write about all these things, and many others that probably make it onto scold's list somewhere. I guess, in the end, if we're okay with Colonel Mustard doing it in the library with a candlestick, might it also be okay if he has a smoke afterwards, and maybe cops a feel from Mrs. White at the biker bar up the road while getting his tats touched up? We're being entertained by imaginary murder. Is a cigarette or illicit affair so awful in comparison?

The Way In

By Nina Wright

For three years I was glued to my chair writing one book after another on deadline. Six books, six sales. Very satisfying.

In recent months, however, my goals and my pace have changed. I’ve researched, contemplated, and started a half-dozen fiction projects unrelated to anything I’ve done before. Since I write for younger readers as well as adults, I’m continuously monitoring trends in several markets at the same time that I audition new ideas. Although the “market mindset” is necessary, I find it also potentially distracting and, worse, discouraging. Thus I’ve concluded that it’s time to stop obsessing over what sells and simply write from my heart.

Finding "the way in" is different every time. I vividly recall walking through a cemetery in Tecumseh, Michigan five years ago when I imagined a girl who saved a key from every apartment she lived in with her troubled, itinerant mother. At the time I was facing a move that seemed both inevitable and ill-advised. Notes for Homefree traveled with me and found their way into a draft that endured many revisions and submissions before it was published in 2006. The notion of the saved key survived but ended up a sidebar rather than the center of the story.

When I wrote Whiskey on the Rocks, the book that launched the Whiskey Mattimoe series, I was sharing my rural home with Lucille, a dog rescued in late pregnancy by my then-husband and me. Not remotely an Afghan hound, Lucille was a mutt with fast legs, a scary snarl and bafflingly high self-esteem. Like Abra, she had no apparent maternal instincts and a libido that wouldn't quit. She also had a propensity for chasing anything that promised misadventure. Given the slightest opening, Lucille would take off running full-tilt toward the nearest tavern, which lay on the other side of a vast soybean field. She'd ignore our calls for at least 24 hours before—I swear—she came home stinking of whiskey and cigarettes. I could never figure out what the bitch was up to. So my creativity kicked in. An old friend from college had an energetic Afghan hound; mentally I morphed the two dogs into one and added a healthy dash of imagination. The result was Abra.

What inspires me these days? Mostly, things that go wrong. Or could go wrong, or at least madly off course. Example: While I was grooming my father's cat, the feline kicked a wadded up paper toward me. It contained a confusing partial message written in a cramped hand; my father claimed he'd never seen the note before. Who wrote it, and why did the cat have it? That incident went straight into my notebook of potential story ideas. Since I’m inclined to use the most recent notions, I periodically review older entries to see whether any of those ignite sparks. When they do, it’s the lonely writer’s equivalent of Christmas.

Other ways in: Because I favor visual stimulation, once I get an idea working, I look for photos to feed it. Dozens of pictures of St. Augustine, Florida (for my teen books) and Afghan hounds (for the Whiskey books) fill my walls and computer files. My screensaver is always a slideshow related to my current projects.

Music provides another access point. Whiskey and Water, the fourth Whiskey Mattimoe mystery, was fueled by a Barenaked Ladies soundtrack. Imagining Whiskey’s first marriage set to those tunes made the writing not only easier but a helluva lot of fun. My close friends benefited, too; they got copies of BNL’s Greatest Hits.

Now and then I track my dreams, and whenever I do, something intriguing shows up. A Southern woman named Picket Pie came to me in my sleep. She explained that her name was short for Elizabeth Bye and promised she’d be back. Months later she appeared on the page as a leading character in my play Cherchez Dave Robicheaux.

All writers know that the way in is both simpler and more complicated than I make it sound here. I eavesdrop shamelessly; free-associate wildly; take lots of photos; go for long walks, swims, and bike rides; brainstorm exhaustive lists and alternate scenarios; and draft interviews, monologues, dialogues, and character bios. Sometimes I bounce ideas off friends.

What’s your way in? The key, I think, is to get out there and in there and turn off your mental critic. Put another way: “Travel boldly, listen closely, and carry a bright light.”

Playing Cleudo

By G.M. Malliet

This will be a shortish blog because I seem to have lost a character and I have to go look for him.

My work in progress has about a dozen key characters, and I feel like a mother cat with kittens. They keep wandering off. (Wasn't Winston supposed to be in the castle libary, dang it? But there he is in the sitting room talking with Tom. And where did I put Ninette?) Since they are all suspects, I have to keep track of where they are at any given moment. And where they tell the police they were.

Last night I realized I would have to come up with a schematic or floorplan of some kind, showing where each character is during the key hours leading up to the murder. I am beginning to wish I had taking a drafting course.

What I really think I need, though, is a dollhouse...then I could move the little figures about and take a photo of each new configuration in, say, half-hour increments.

How do you guys keep your timelines straight? Would some online site like Second Life help with this, do you think? Or software like Storyboard? I don't know much about how all that works. I just know I need to be able to visualize where all my "kittens" are.

Drug-Enhanced Writing and the Day of Atonement

Keith here.

A college friend of mine wrote two critically acclaimed mysteries. Then he had a kid and so stopped smoking. It turns out that the smoking was an integral part of his creative process. He's published no novels since.

I myself write at a local café. My brain's gears are lubricated by pot after pot of green tea. In fact, when I try to write without sipping, my brain is like a car engine without oil. I crunch to a halt, just as my college friend did when he forswore smoking.

So, I confess. I am a tea addict. As sure as some people need nicotine, cocaine, or alcohol to function or to make it through the day, I need caffeine. Every word I write is drug-enhanced. William Burroughs (using the pen name William Lee) wrote Junky addled by morphine, and I finished my manuscript of Two Graves floating on green tea.

What does this matter? Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, starts this evening. So? Well, you see, from sundown tonight till three stars appear in the sky Saturday night, I'm supposed to refrain from eating and drinking. (Sex, too, by the way.) That way I can devote all my attention to a review of my transgressions over the past year and how I intend to improve myself over the next one. (Let me tell you, twenty-five hours is not enough for that double task. And by the way, I ask your pardon, dear reader, if I offended you in the past year.)

Some time Saturday morning, I'll feel that a belt is being tightened around my forehead. Kinda the tea DT's. Well, I've decided to cheat. Today I bought a bottle of Excedrin which is a combination of aspirin, acetaminophen, and caffeine. When the headache starts, I'm going to pop a few. That way I can focus on my wanderings from the path of righteousness and the route back to it, rather than the little gremlins jackhammering inside my head.

First caffeine and now Excedrin. Seems almost like the Valley of the Dolls, doesn't it?

Here's what I would like to know. What habits, drug-related or not, help you get your writing done?

Finding Nemo's Needs

By Joe Moore
I was over posting on Absolute Write the other day and a beginning writer ask the question, how do you find out what motivates your characters? I suggested it could be done with something as simple as an interview. I said to interview your character as if you were a newspaper reporter asking probing questions about their life, quest, current situation, and other topics that could yield the answers. Come up with all the questions first. Then conduct the interview. It sounds simplistic, but it works.

As authors, we know how vital it is that all our characters have a goal. They must want something, and that something is what drives them. But it's more than just a want. They must also have a need. If we don't know what our characters wants and needs are, neither will our readers. With nothing to root for, the reader will lose interest. And in the end, they won't care about the outcome.

So what is the difference between want and need? Think of Marlin, Nemo's father in FINDING NEMO. Marlin's only son, Nemo, is captured by a scuba diver and placed inside a fish tank in a dentist's office. Marlin sets out to find Nemo. But he has a big problem, one that's quite unusual for a fish: he has a terrible fear of the open ocean. So with just that much information, we now know his want and need. He wants to find his son, but to do so he needs to overcome his fear of the ocean. The reader (or viewer in this case) will root for Marlin to make it through all the perils he faces in order to find Nemo and rescue him.

Every character must have a want and need. The most critical are the ones for our protagonists and antagonists. But I think that even the smallest, one-time, walk-ons must be motivated. If we determine the goals of every characters, we will have an easier time writing them, and the reader will have a more distinct picture of the character in their minds.

In planning our stories, it's important that we determine our main character's wants and needs first. In doing so, we'll always have a goal to focus on as we write our stories. So what are your main character's wants and needs? Can you express them in one sentence like we did with Marlin? Let's go find your Nemo's needs!

The Great Idea of the Month Club

by Joe Moore

“Where do you guys get your ideas?” That’s the second most frequently asked question that Lynn Sholes and I are asked at book signings, conferences and in email from our readers. Our answer is that we subscribe to the Great Idea of the Month Club. In reality, ideas come at writers like angry bees swarming. It’s hard to run from them, there are so many. We’re bombarded with ideas on the news, in the paper, listening to the radio, and even from other writers’ books. I’m not suggesting plagiarism with that last item—just that one great idea usually spawns another.

Lots of times, the person who asks us the question usually follows up with something like, “I could never come up with ideas like that.” Personally, I don’t believe that. I think everyone is capable of coming up with a stone-cold, smash hit that could be turned into a bestseller. It’s the “turning into” that’s the tricky part. But ideas are as plentiful as HeadOn commercials—you just have to know when you’ve got one that’s good enough to turn into a 100,000-word manuscript.

So where do we get ideas for our Cotten Stone thrillers? Mostly from hotspotsz.com, the real-life, Great Idea Of the Month Club website. Because our books deal with the unusual, strange, out-of-the-ordinary, supernatural, and paranormal, what better place to go for ideas than the number one site for stories on Paranormal Phenomena. It’s like the National Inquirer for writers.

We’ve included subjects in our books that cover Friday the 13^th, Armageddon, The Great Flood and Noah’s Ark, quantum physics, quantum computers, human cloning, The Holy Grail, the Emerald Tablet, The Spear of Destiny, Atlantis, lost cities of the Inca, the Ark of the Covenant, Cleopatra’s Needle, the Apocalypse, the Anasazi, Lenin’s Tomb, the Secret Archives at the Vatican, the cathedrals in the Kremlin, Satanism, Fallen Angels, the Nephilim, Crusader’s tombs, The Garden of Eden, The Tree of Life, Medieval puzzle cubes, and witchcraft. This place is a virtual smorgasbord of strange stuff. There are other sites, but Hot Spots is one of our favorites.

So when we give our answer to the second most frequently asked question, and it sounds flippant, there’s actually a lot of truth to it. What’s the most frequent question? How can two people write fiction together? That’s a subject for a future post.

Where do you get your ideas?

Start At The End

By Joe Moore

Kurt Vonnegut once revealed his 8 rules of writing fiction. They’re worth reviewing and taking to heart. But his rule number 5 is the one that made the biggest impression on me. Rule number 5 is: Start as close to the end as possible. This is relevant for both the entire book or a single chapter. We often hear that the most common mistake of a new writer is starting the story in the wrong place.

Well, it happens to published writers, too. Lynn Sholes and I are writing our fourth book together and we still make that mistake once in a while. We’ve written whole chapters that either occurred in the wrong place, or worse, weren’t even needed. Usually they turn out to be backstory information for us, not the reader. We go to the trouble of writing it only to find it’s to confirm what we know, not what the reader needs to know.

So if we apply Vonnegut’s rule number 5, how do we know if we’ve started close enough to the end? Easy: we must know the ending first. To me, this is critical. How can we get there if we don't know where we're going? And once we know how our story will end, we can then apply my top of the mountain technique. In my former career in the television industry, its called backtiming—starting at the place where something ends and working your way to the place where you want it to begin.

But before I explain top of the mountain, let’s look at the bottom of the mountain approach. You stand at the foot of an imposing mountain (the task of writing your next 100K-word novel), look up at the huge mass of what you are going to be faced with over the next 12 months or so, and wonder what it will take to get to the top (or end). You start climbing, get tired, fall back, take a side trip, climb some more, hope inspiration strikes, get distracted, curse, fight fatigue, take the wrong route, fall again—and if you’re lucky, finally make it to the top. This method will work, but it’s a tough, painful way to go.

Now, let’s discuss the top of the mountain technique. Imagine that you’re standing on the mountain peak looking out over a grand, breathtaking view feeling invigorated, strong, and fulfilled. Imagine that the journey is over, your book is done. Look down the side of the mountain at the massive task you have just accomplished and ask yourself what series of events took place to get you to the top? Start with the last event, then the second to the last, then . . . you get the idea. This takes it a step further than Vonnegut’s rule number 5 by starting at the end and working your way to the beginning. Guess what happens? By the time you are actually at the beginning, you will have started as close to the end as possible. Rule #5 rules!

See you at top of the mountain!

The Big Bad Wolf

by Bill Cameron

I don't believe in evil. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say I don't believe in capital-E Evil. Eeee-ville. I don't subscribe to the notion that evil is some kind of malevolent force in the universe. On the flipside, I don't believe in Good either. I don't see the world in Manichean terms, as a struggle between the forces of Good and Evil. This doesn’t mean I don’t have a sense of right and wrong. It doesn’t mean I don’t judge actions. I like to believe I have strong ethical and moral sensibilities. But my own worldview doesn’t feature Good and Evil. And when it comes to human activity, I’m even a little hesitant to use lowercase good and evil to describe it.

The way I see the actions of people in the world is through the lenses of circumstance and response. We experience events in life and respond in our many and varied ways. Circumstances can shape our responses, though I don’t want to imply that I see us as deterministic beings incapable of making choices. But I do think some choices are harder than others, and that difficulty may be influenced by any number of factors, from social conditions, personal interest, and even our brain chemistries.

This is on my mind right now because I'm in the throes of character creation. Novel number three is in the development phase, and for me, that mostly means character development. Plot doesn’t happen until after I know who it’s happening to.

How I personally see the world obviously shapes the way I develop characters. I don’t see myself as creating villains and heros. Good guys and bad guys. I don’t even like to use those terms. Forced to differentiate, I may describe one or another as the protagonist or the antagonist, but even those terms include an implied judgment with which I’m not all that comfortable.

When I write, I see myself as channeling people. My hope is that I am creating them with honesty and integrity. I want them to be comprehensible and plausible. In Lost Dog, Peter is not the good guy and Jake is not the bad guy. Each is an expression of choices made in the context of his own circumstances. Each is a person, a human being, with his own social history, personal history -- his own brain chemistry. One does awful things, makes truly awful choices. The other, ultimately, makes choices that in a big picture Good v. Evil sense might fall -- loosely at least -- on the side of Good. But in many ways they’re not so different from each other. They differentiate through their choices. That’s what interests me about character. For me, that’s what character is.

Choices made in the context of life circumstances.

How about you? What do you look for in character, either when creating characters as a writer, or experiencing them as a reader?

Falling in love again...

by Bill Cameron

Okay, I admit it. I've met someone new.

Sigh. *batseyes*

Do you want to hear about him? I don't even know what to say, he's soooo dreamy. Which means, I admit, that I dream about him constantly. Daydream. You know. Oh my. But he's so amazing.

His name is Eager Gillespie.

Yes, I know, that couldn't be his real name? Could it? Maybe it is. When a while can be named Moon Unit or Metallica, Eager doesn't sound so weird. Of course, maybe it's just a nickname. We've just met, and I haven't had a chance to ask about his family or his background much.

There's just one thing. He's dead.

I know, I know, how do you fall in love with a dead guy? What kind of sicko am I, anyway? But it's complicated, and honestly, if all goes well, maybe there's something I can do to bring him to life again. Maybe there's some secret that I haven't yet discovered about who he is, something that will move him from the dead to the quick.

I sure hope so. Because I loooove him!

Here's what I know. He's a young cop, still a probie barely out of the academy. His death is tragic and unexpected (as are so many of them), but he dies in the line of duty. A hero's death. Which is actually good for him, because it turns out if he hadn't been killed, he'd be dead soon anyway, and much more unpleasantly. His hero's death is almost a gift.

The sad thing about Eager is that he's in to some stuff he shouldn't be. I don't know much about it yet, and it's not going to be easy to dig it all out. He wants to be a good guy, but who saddled him with that name maybe got him off on the wrong foot. I've been dreaming about him, and in every dream I learn something new. I learn who his friends are, and which friends maybe shouldn't be. He talks fast and is eager to please, which is probably where his name comes from. That's a great strength of his, but it's also a great weakness. It's what gets him into trouble.

He's my newest character, and I'm going to love bringing him to life and then killing him off again.

Sigh. *batseyes*

Where I Get My Ideas

by Nina Wright

Since the premier of my very first play, I continue to be thrilled whenever readers or audience members care enough to ask where I find my ideas. It's a question I always answer honestly; however, the reply that I long to make is a variation on one I heard a bestselling writer give on late-night TV. When asked where he got his ideas, the celebrity novelist replied, "Dubuque." After the laugh, he went on to say that he’d never been to Dubuque, but he figured it was as good a place as any to shop for inspiration.

I’d like to say my ideas come from . . . Cincinnati.

And not just because it sounds funny. Newly divorced in my 20s, I had moved to Cinci to take what would be my first corporate job when I realized that I was never going to be happy wearing a suit every day. That shouldn’t have been a stunning revelation since I had already worked five years in professional theatre; however, the big Three-Oh wasn't far away. Time to get serious about earning a steady income. Alas, selling bulk orders of Crisco shortening for Procter and Gamble was not my career destiny, despite the tempting health and retirement benefits.

So it was in Cincinnati, during an existential crisis, that I faced my personal truth: no matter what the cost, I wanted to walk through life as a Writer.

I look back on my brief time in the Queen City as the start of a long and winding road paved with corporate failure and creative fodder. I wish I could say (on a late-night TV talk show promoting my first bestseller) that I found a blockbuster idea in a bowl of Skyline chili, but of course that didn't happen. No, the answers I stumbled on in Cincinnati led me to grad school, restaurant work, more grad school, more theatre work, assorted teaching jobs, lots of freelance writing gigs, a sideline biz renovating homes, lots of elder care, and a costly school-of-hard-knocks general education before I ever got my first novel published.

So . . . where do I get my ideas?

Honest answer: Finding ideas is the easy part—the easiest part—of the whole creative process. Inspiration is literally everywhere, especially if you listen more than you talk. People are always telling their stories, asking their questions, whining their complaints. All you have to do is pay attention. You don’t even have to wait around long enough to hear the ending. In fact, I recommend that you don’t. Walk away while they’re still talking and go write the rest of the story. It’s yours now. Let the magic begin.

The Dreaded Epiphanot Alligator

epiphanot
An idea that at first seems like an amazing insight (at least to the conceiver) but later turns out to be pointless, mundane, stupid, or incorrect, and often is the root cause of bad decisions. Mostly occurs under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

That's the word of the day over at the Urban Dictionary. It got me to thinking…
As writers, we're constantly asked the question, "where do you get your ideas?"
I don't think that's the real question with writers. I think most of us are bombarded with story ideas. Every eavesdropped snippet of conversation, every weird news event, every person we pass on the street holds an idea for us. That's just the way we're wired.

The real question isn't where we get ideas, it's how to know which ideas to act upon. How do we know that idea isn't leading us into Bad Idea Swampland where we find out it's an epiphanot ? How do we know the Epiphanot Alligator isn't waiting in the dark to snarl, "This is schlock!" and gobble up weeks, maybe months of work?
(Okay, sometimes he's an agent or an editor or a critique partner, he just looks like an alligator at the time.)

I can only speak for myself on this, and the truth is, I don't know. But I trust my gut when a really intriguing idea beckons me to step out into the dark. If it won't go away and seems friendly, I grab my flashlight and venture a few feet out at a time. Maybe I plot, maybe I collage, maybe I journal, maybe I brainstorm, maybe I draft like crazy.

Sometimes I whine. Loudly.

But I do whatever it takes to get me to move out in the dark a little further.

I may have to back up and take another path now and then, but I keep going and trust that just beyond the flashlight's beam, is Story. Being a writer means we have to be optimistic, sometimes even irrationally so, that we will reach that Story End, and a lot of that is simply about moving out into the dark swamp. So what if we encounter the Epiphanot Alligator?

We'll probably just write him into the story.

Susan Goodwill writes the Kate London Mysteries, BrigaDOOM, a quirky romp through murder, mayhem, and romance gone awry was released March, 2007 from Midnight Ink Books.

Is that a gun in your pocket . . .

by Joe Moore

. . . or are you just happy to see me? Mae West got our attention with one of the most famous opening lines in history. So how important is a first line? In life, some people call them icebreakers, and they can mean the difference between getting a date with that just-right person or nailing that dream job. It can set the tone for a relationship with your new end-laws or neighbors. The more important an event, the more importance we place on it.

In a novel, the first line can be a killer or a clunker. It can lay there like an overcooked piece of fish or fire up the imagination and demand that the second line be read and the third . . . It can produce a ho-hum yawn or cause a gasp. And it is probably the most overworked, over written string of words in a writer’s life.

Some first lines drift away like smoke on an autumn breeze. Others laser themselves in our gray matter to be remembered and recalled until the grave. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of time . . .” from Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities comes to mind. The problem with that one is, back in school I was told it was a great first line. Admittedly it is, but what I’m talking about here are the ones that we discover on our own. The treasures in the attic or the gems buried in the bottom of the old dresser bought at a flea market.

When I was in high school, I picked up a novel and read the first line, and knew in an instant that I would never forget it. That I would be able to recite it anytime, anywhere for the rest of my life. And because of that line, I devoured the rest of the book and every other novel the author wrote. That first line was a black hole that sucked me in. It was an 11-word mixture of mystery, suspense, intrigue, darkness, and magic. As a writer, I aspire to someday writing a first line as good. For now that’s only a distant dream, but one I never stop working toward. Here’s that first line:

“The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm.” Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.

What’s your favorite first line?

The Procrastinator

by G.M. Malliet

I happened to catch Laura Lippman on the CBS Early Show on March 15, talking with Harry Smith about the writing life. She mentioned that she writes almost every morning in a coffee shop near where she lives. She doesn't do this for the ambience, nor even for the coffee. She does this to get away from her laundry.

"The thing about being a stay-at-home writer is that laundry becomes immensely attractive and seductive," she said.

I knew exactly what she meant. I think every writer in the world, famous or no, fiction or non, gets this.

I once heard a writer say her house was never so clean as when she had a looming deadline.

Faced with a blank page that you're supposed to be filling with type, almost any other activity starts to look really good. Closet cleaning, bathroom-tile scrubbing, venetian-blind dusting, even bill paying. Of particular fascination to me--rising to nearly the same level as the siren call of the laundry--is the dusty picture frame. You may have noticed that picture frames tend to collect dust along the top, a fact that--until I hit a rough patch in, say, Chapter 13--triggered no particular alarms. But suddenly, nothing would do but that I find a dust rag and furniture polish and get to work on every frame in the room. Chapter 13 be damned, and it probably will be.

There has, simultaneously (while the dusty frame emergency was growing to crisis proportions), been a dead moth "living" in my overhead light globe ( if there is a better expression for "light globe"I would be grateful to the person who supplies it) for at least a month, probably more. Probably years.

In my moments of communion with the Muse, as I cast my eyes heavenward, I notice the corpse of him/her. This poor moth. I am never, interestingly enough, as a crime writer, moved to do anything about this. Investigate it, or something. I just sit there staring blankly upwards. To do something about it would require getting out a ladder and stuff and I really don't have time: I'm busy staring into space.

I don't know what this says about me as a writer or as a person, for that matter. I should bury the poor moth, who, after all, has harmed no one, but somehow I never get around to it.

I guess it says that I don't procrastinate just any old way. I am highly selective about my choice of procrastination activities. Unlike Joe Moore, who is clearly a highly disorganized procrastination dilettante.

Blogging might turn out to be another, powerful form of procrastination for me, but I can tell already it's going to be wa-a-a-y more fun than dusting.

In The Mood

by Bill Cameron

On my iPod I have a playlist called "Mood Music." When I go out to write -- and, alas, I can't seem to write at home -- I listen to a few songs on my way down to the Starbucks where I do my writing. At that point, I just listen to whatever comes up at random. I'm just looking to get into the mood.

Some days it's easy. Some days I leap out of the blocks in the mood, so my iPod with its magic playlist serves as a talisman rather than a tool. I've got it if I need it, and more often than not that's enough. When I write, I tune out what's going on around me anyway. The background noise of the coffee shop is just texture, and whatever's playing through the store sound system (i.e., whatever CD Starbucks is currently pushing) adds to the texture. I like sound, I like motion. They contribute to getting me in the mood.

And some days, that's not enough. Some days I have to put the talisman to work. I put on the headphones and click the play button. Listen to what comes up. Because I selected the songs pretty carefully, almost always whatever the random number generator inside the iPod settles on is the song I need to hear. And if not that one, the one after, or the one after that.

"Mood Music" is only 120 songs long. They cover a wide variety of styles, though in theme they are more narrow. Rock and roll, alternative, folk, classical, oldies, newbies -- name your style and it will probably be there. I admit that a few genres are poorly represented. I like the idea of jazz better than the sound of it, and with only a few exceptions I can't abide country. Still, I got Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck in there, and a Faith Hill. There's pop music and and its philosophical opposite (Philip Glass), hits and B-sides. The famous and the obscure. Paul Simon, Outkast, Unicorn, or The Rolling Stones. Whatever gets me in the mood.

One of the things that grew out of "Mood Music" was the soundtrack for Lost Dog. These are songs that I think capture some of the mood of the novel. Not all of it, and what gets me in the mood might be a turn-off to others. But at various times these were songs I listened to get myself in the mood, among many others.

"Pressure's On" James
"Hairshirt" R.E.M.
"Straight to Video" Mindless Self Indulgence
"The Crystal Lake" Grandaddy
"My Weakness" Moby
"Unchained Melody" Righteous Brothers
"The Kiss" The Cure
"Sweetness Follows" R.E.M.
"Out To Get You" James
"Everloving" Moby
"Say Say Something" James
"My Sundown" Jimmy Eat World

So tell me. When you feel yourself start to dry up, what do you listen to to refresh yourself? What do you read, or watch, or do? What gets you in the mood?