Motivation, Hitchcock and Why Cheaters Never Win

I was watching The Girl the other night and something Hitchcock said to Tippi Hedren has stuck with me. I can’t stop thinking about, even days later, and how it plays to the vanity of Hitchcock (specifically) and writers (in general).

In the scene where Tippi (played by Sienna Miller) and Hitchcock (played by Toby Jones) discuss her character’s motivation for going into the attic alone, knowing there would be birds there, (they were filming The Birds at the time). Tippi asked, “Why would Melanie go into that attic all alone?”

Hitchcock replied, “Because I want her to.”

Because I want her to.

While a cinematic genius like Hitchcock might be able to get away with that, for a lowly novelist like me, writing takes a bit more work. Just because I want my characters to do something, doesn’t mean I should make them do it. There has to be a reason my characters do and say the things they do and it's my job to give them that reason.

It's called motivation.

Motivation is what a writer weaves throughout a plot to bind it tight. Motivation is what makes even the implausible seem possible. Even the most unlikely seem inevitable. But what is it? A traumatic past? Money? Love? Revenge?

I can’t simply decide I want my protagonist to rob a bank or rescue a bunch of kids from a burning orphanage. There has to be a trigger that sets them on the course. Are they days away from losing their home to foreclosure? Is their child in need of a lifesaving operation and the insurance company refuses to pay. Did they lose a loved one to a fire? Did they grow up in an orphanage themselves?

These are seeds from which future action grow and if you want your novel to feel real, they must be planted. From these seeds should sprout a chain of events, fed on emotion and tended by circumstance, that will inevitably lead your protagonist to a place where the life-altering decisions they make are the only ones that make sense.

Look at it this way...

If a novel is a vehicle, then motivation is the fuel in the tank. It makes us move and takes us places. Maybe even places we never had any intention of going. Places we don't want to be... places we have a hard time visiting. If there's no gas in the tank, that vehicle isn't moving. But if you put the wrong kind of fuel in the tank then your vehicle breaks down completely. It becomes an undriveable hunk of crap that noboby wants to drive. Or read.

When Hitchcock sent his character into that attic full of live, pissed off birds, he wasn’t sending the character—he was  sending Hedren. He allowed his personal motivation to color the actions of his character… and in doing so, changed the movie completely.  

It was no longer about the story itself at all. It was about Hitchcock’s desire to punish Hedren for finding him repulsive. In punishing Hedren, Hitchcock gave us a peek behind the curtain. Even though we may not have known it at the time, we saw a writer at work and that is something your reader should never see.

The stories we write should be seamless.  Our characters should be fully formed, with their own set of experiences that give their choices weight and purpose and the conclusion those choices lead them to should seem inevitable.  

Anything less would be a cheat—to myself as a writer and to people I write for.

Maegan Beaumont is a native Phoenician,currently stuck in suburbia with her high school sweetheart and husband, Joe, along with their four children. She writes take-you-to-the-edge-of-your-seat thrillers, loves action movies and spending time with her family. When she isn’t busy fulfilling her duties as Domestic Goddess, she is locked in her office with her computer, her coffee pot and her Rhodesian Ridgeback and one true love, Jade.

KILLER FIRST LINES

by Lois Winston

I'm a firm believer in books needing killer first lines. No, I don't mean the killer should appear in the first line of a mystery, nor that the murder should occur at the very beginning of the book. I'm talking about first lines that grab hold of a reader and don't let go, the kind of first lines that pique a reader's curiosity and make him or her want to keep reading.

I learned the importance of killer first lines years ago when I attended a workshop given by a literary agent. He spoke about the importance of the first few pages of a book, how it's your one and only chance to impress editors and agents. Because if they're not impressed after a page or two, they're not going to keep reading.

From that day on, I decided that not only would my opening pages be free of back-story, unimportant details, filler, and boring descriptions, I'd make sure that I hooked the reader with my opening sentence. And I developed a philosophy about first chapters:

The first sentence of a novel should make the reader want to read the second sentence. And that second sentence should make the reader want to read the third. And so on, until you have a paragraph that becomes a hook that grabs the reader and won’t let go.  That first paragraph should do for the first page what the first sentence did for the first paragraph, and the first page should do for the subsequent pages in the chapter what the first paragraph did for the first page.

Of course, not all readers are going to be hooked by what I write. Taste is subjective, after all. However, once I went back and revised my first chapters, based on this agent's talk, I began receiving more requests for full manuscripts from editors and agents and less rejections. Eventually, those requests led to offers of publication.

I recently proofed the galleys for Revenge of the Crafty Corpse, the third book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries. The first line is:

"If that damn woman doesn't shut up, I'm going to strangle her!"

Have I hooked you?  

Award-winning author Lois Winston writes the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series featuring magazine crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack. Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, a January 2011 release, is the first book in the series and received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Kirkus Reviews dubbed it, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum” Death By Killer Mop Doll was released this past January. Revenge of the Crafty Corpse will be a January 2013 release.

Lois has also recently embarked on an indie publishing career, releasing some of her earlier romance, romantic suspense, and chick lit books under the pen name Emma Carlyle. Now through the end of October, Lois is donating $500 to breast cancer research for every 1,000 Emma Carlyle books sold. Visit Lois at http://www.loiswinston.com , visit Emma at http://www.emmacarlyle.com , and visit Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers character blog, www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com.

Third Time's the Charm

I've reached a critical scene in my work-in-progress (WiP), Cataract Canyon, which will be the third adventure for river ranger Mandy Tanner in my Rocky Mountain Outdoor Adventures mystery series that I'm writing for Midnight Ink. In this critical scene, Mandy and her partner Rob Juarez are sharing what they've found out about what's really going on and are making some conclusions. Those conclusions will drive their decision about what to do next--and that "what to do next" is the big confrontational climax.

The problem is that neither one of them knows everything yet, and even when they share the information they each have, they don't have the complete picture. So, they're confused and so is the reader. Sometimes that can be a good thing, but sometimes not if the confusion is too much. The first time I wrote this scene, the result was "unripe" like these not-red-yet persimmons. I left out issues and people they should have discussed, so for the reader, threads in the plot were left hanging loose. Even if Mandy and Rob didn't know everything yet about these issues and people, they should have brought them up in the discussion.


On to attempt two with that scene. In that rewrite, Mandy and Rob hashed out everything and everybody and every clue that they had come across so far. They figured out most of what was going on, and in the process, too much was revealed to them--and the reader. Very few surprises were left to be revealed in the climax. In other words, the rewrite stank. It was overripe, just like these bananas.


After sleeping on it with a nagging feeling that the scene was just not right yet, I ripped out the whole thing and started from scratch. Mandy and Rob reveal some important information to each other--and the reader--but not too much. They figure out enough of what's really going on to make some smart decisions, but not to eliminate all the risks. So, there's room for surprise and danger to appear in the climax. Now, the scene is "just right," like these apricots. Perfectly ripe, but not mushy, and with enough meatiness to sustain my characters--and my readers--as they rush forward into the climax.


Thus, the third time was the charm. The third time I wrote this scene, I felt that it finally worked. What would have happened if I didn't take the time to keep on reworking it until it was right? The dullness of an unripe plot or the rottenness of a too-ripe one would have propagated into the climax, leaving readers unsatisfied and with a bad taste in their mouths. Yes, doing this rework put me behind in my writing schedule, but it had to be done.

On to the climax ...

If you're a writer, have you had to rewrite a scene multiple times before you felt its flavor was perfect? If you're a reader, have you read a scene that you felt should have been rewritten until it tasted better? Please share!

Everything's A Story

By Deborah Sharp

A newspaper editor from way back in my previous life always said only a lazy reporter can't find a good story.

"Stories are everywhere,'' he'd say, taking a drag from the cigarette burning on the edge of his desk. Yes, I'm so old editors still smoked in their offices when I was a wide-eyed cub reporter. Drank, too, but that's a tale for another day.

Anyway, his advice set me on a path of always looking for the offbeat, the unusual, the toss-away observation that might turn into a story. Even though I write fiction now, I'm still doing it. These days, my eyes are peeled for the kind of details that could add something to a plot or to the characters who people my Mace Bauer Mysteries.

Occasionally, I do it just for fun. Just to see if I still have the chops for observation.

The scene: The sidewalk along State Road A-1-A, the beachfront highway in my hometown of Fort Lauderdale. My eyes -- and my notebook -- are open when I spot a couple of lowlife-looking guys, hanging out and drinking beer across from the Elbo Room. Their bicycles lean against the Wave Wall, under swaying palm fronds and a Turtle Nesting sign that details the yearly schedule for lights-out along the beach.

These guys are clearly members of the sun-baked, hard-living crowd my husband and I identify as BWI, or Biking While Intoxicated. They've already been found guilty of DUI, lost their drivers' licenses, and now get around on salt-rusted bicycles with holders on the handlebars to tote their beers. Flouting the law against open containers, Dude No. 1 has tucked a dirty washcloth around his beer can, like that'll fool the cops who patrol the beach.

Dude 1 sports a 'do-rag and a bright orange T-shirt touting a soft-drink, It's Crush Time. The cool thing about being a fiction writer, though, is I get to improve the scene with a better T-shirt I spotted in a tacky souvenir shop about a block away: I Support Single Moms, it said, above a stripper on a pole, One Dollar at a Time.

So, now Dude 1's wearing that T-shirt instead, chugging from his washcloth-wrapped Budweiser.
Dude No. 2 asks him, ''You've had a few, right?''
No. 1 nods.
Dude 2 holds up a 32-oz. plastic thermos. "This is my first one.''
In the spirit of show and tell, Dude 1 puts down his Budweiser so he can pull something from his pocket. Click. Snap.
''That's a switchblade!'' Dude 2's bleary eyes widen. "That's illegal, man.''
''I didn't know you were such a law-abiding citizen,'' says No. 1.

So, that's where the scene ends, as they mount their bikes and make their way south. But I couldn't help but wonder What If? (The two favorite words of a fiction writer, right up there with The End.) What if Dude 1 killed somebody with that switchblade? Or, what if he simply found it somewhere after someone else used it in a fatal stabbing? What if Dude No. 2 has to step up to help? Sober up, slay the demons he's keeping at bay with that thermos of beer, and use the skills he learned as a trained military investigator to clear No. 1 from a bum murder rap?

Maybe, or maybe not. But at the very least, that T-shirt with the stripper pole will turn up in the pages of my next Mace Bauer Mystery. So what have you observed lately that made you ask What If? Has there been something that made you wonder WTF?

Lying Liars

Cricket McRae

I love Pinocchio. It’s a great coming-of-age tale, inspirational and hopeful, plus it has a cricket as a major character (ha!). But I also love it because I’m a lying liar. No comments on the size of my nose, please.

All fiction writers are liars. We make up people, situations, places, events, timelines, and may introduce magic, vampires and werewolves as well as other fantasy elements. We can seriously mess with science or even rewrite history. Our kind of lying is tricky, though, because the folks we lie to know we’re doing it. They actually seek out the stories we create.

Notice I didn’t say they seek out our untruths. That’s because fiction, though not true by definition, must be True in a larger sense. It doesn’t have to be believed; it has to be believable. Another tricky bit to manage.

I have a writing friend who was a reporter for many years. The research for his historical baseball mystery is meticulous. Every game he uses in the book was actually played with the players he names. In fact, the actual plays were made. The streets, the food, the police uniforms – really everything about the atmosphere is exact and accurate. Even the jargon is spot on. All that lends a great deal to the believability of his story.

Another writing friend makes up everything he can, even though he may use real people and places as part of his stories. But because he never fudges with things like cause and effect, coincidence or acts of God, his stories make sense and are, again, believable and therefore entertaining.

I sit on the fence. The small town that my Home Crafting Mysteries are set in is based on a real town, but I “fictionalize” it because it gives me more freedom. I want the leeway to make some things up as I go along, yet I don’t have to create all the details. The fourth in the series, Something Borrowed, Something Bleu is set in a different town, also based on a real town and fictionalized. In the acknowledgements I note that if anyone recognizes the town they should know that the sheriff’s department operates differently because I made the town much smaller than it actually is.

My characters feel real to me, especially the series characters, and there are simply things they won’t or can’t do. For example, my main character, Sophie Mae Reynolds, is a terrible liar. Everyone says so, and she believes it. And sometimes she is awkward when trying to lie. But actually she’s the best kind of liar because she incorporates as much truth into her lies as possible so she doesn’t really think of it as lying. That makes it much more effective.

Kind of like fiction.

Her mother is a pretty good liar, though, or at least Sophie Mae thinks so. So in this latest book, which involves a trip back to her hometown in Colorado to investigate her brother’s suicide note which surfaced after eighteen years, Sophie Mae thinks a lot about lying. How to do it well. How not to get caught. It’s like a goal for her.

And she does get better at it. I wonder how that will backfire later? Because I can already tell it will.

I’ve been tagged a couple of times with the four-truths-and-one-lie challenge, and I’ve yet to step up. I can’t decide whether that’s because I don’t want to tell the lie or because I don’t want to reveal four truths. Maybe if I make the lie thoroughly boring it won’t stand out from the truths.

How do you feel about lying? Are you good at it? Do you feel guilty? And what about characters in books lying: Is it good or bad or simply a matter of what the story demands – like in Pinocchio?