Building the Story

April 26, 2025 ~ susanoleksiw ~ 6 Comments

I’ve just finished writing a story that took me almost twenty-five years to compose, and not because I’m a slow writer either. Doris Lessing once said that “writing is probably like a scientist thinking about some scientific problem, or an engineer about an engineering problem.” Based on my experience with this story, I have to agree.

All those years ago I heard a woman make a comment about a divorced man’s new life. She was a friend of his ex-wife, who remained not so much bitter as still stunned years later. As I learned more about his conduct, I could understand her reaction to the divorce. The scene the friend described to me remained vivid in my memory, and I couldn’t put it to rest, forget about it and bury in in the ash heap of ideas that never went anywhere. So I thought about it.

Just sitting down and composing a story of the tacky, mean-spirited, selfish ex-husband wouldn’t make an edifying story—we all know too many people like that. So what was the story? And who would tell it? That last question was the key—someone on the outside, not in the family and not in the circle of friends. I landed on a low-level staff person in his office, and at that point the story opened up. It rolled out in front of me like the proverbial red carpet, the stairs up into the blue sky, the plane on the runway. I didn’t know where I was going but I knew I was moving.

Because I was focusing on one character in particular as she dealt with a man of very specific weaknesses I knew all I had to do was follow her through her work and off days. The story from my friend, only a scene she had viewed, developed into this young woman’s story, and went where neither one of us expected.

This sounds easy—just listen to someone else’s throwaway comment and you have a story. But it wasn’t that easy. I had the scene in my head for all those years, and I could not feel anything growing whenever I thought about it. What finally worked was looking at it as a problem to be solved. Here is the scene. This is the kernel of the story—this can’t be changed. It leads to the end. How do I get there? What do I need? I need a main character to follow, a setting where this man can reveal his weaknesses, a cast of characters that will reveal themselves at the crisis, and an ending that is honest no matter how awful or unsatisfying. (Just looking back at it now the whole thing seems daunting. As long as I didn’t think about all this at once I could make progress.)

I do some of this with other short stories and crime novels, but in those I have more control over where I go with the plot. In this story I was committed to ending with that scene given to me by my friend—it said far more than any one of us wants to hear, see, or experience.

When the story was finished, I was mildly depressed. I felt drained. That’s very unusual for me. My imagination might feel tapped out some days after meeting a deadline, but my emotional reserves have almost always felt bottomless (an illusion, but I like it), and I cheerfully look around for the next project.

Not every story proceeds in this manner. Some are so much fun to write that I’m sad when they come to an end. Some are easily and obviously constructed and I delight in their form and flow, and almost want to pat them on the head, like a well-behaved dog, at the end. But this one left me feeling satisfied, like I had just accomplished something I’d finally set out to do. I also think it’s one of my best.

You can read it for yourself and be the judge. It’ll be in Snakeberry, the 2025 anthology from Crime Spell Books, out in November.

How many are enough?

March 22, 2025 ~ susanoleksiw ~ 3 Comments

Over the years I’ve become aware of my weaknesses and bad habits as a writer. I overuse certain words (we all have our favorites), prefer certain kinds of clues (character flaws versus ink stains), and reveal the villain in the same way (a great uncloaking as opposed to the reader’s gradual realization). These are the result of lazy writing and can be fixed when I kick myself in the back side, slap my forehead, and exclaim, What was I thinking? Or, as my old boss used to say, What? Was I thinking? Surely not.

But the flaw I’ve been thinking about a lot more recently is a quirk that I’ve mostly mastered. When I’m going along with the story the various steps in the plot falling in place on the path, invariably something comes up. I need a character to swerve his car in front of the detective’s car just to slow her down for a few minutes. Or I need someone to claim to be a witness and come up with erroneous, misleading information. Or I need a hitherto unknown relative to show up and complicate the simple death as undeniably a murder for gain. For any one of these situations, I obviously need a new character.

And then I need to introduce a seemingly irrelevant piece of information no one knew about. I need another character for this. And then my main character digs up even more information and needs to double check this, so, of course, another character pops up. And someone attacks her, so, yes, another villain. No matter where I am in the story, I seem to need another character to deliver a message, a detail, an obstacle, a hindrance—something more. I call up my infinite reserve of minor characters, who seem to trot along with me in every novel looking for an opportunity to take all the attention even if it’s only one scene in the entire book. You can see the problem.

After my second novel I knew I had to face this habit of leaning on additional minor characters to get me through the first draft. Once I decided to tackle the problem, I used the appearance of an otherwise unnecessary minor character as an opportunity to better present and position the other, more important and usually recurring characters. These instances of digressions facilitated by new characters told me where I needed to deepen the figures I’d begun with, stretch what I knew about them and complicate their established reputations. Sometimes I needed to collapse several instances and the minor characters created for them into one or two side figures. This is where I could apply the rule: if a character has no other purpose than to deliver a minor detail, give the job to someone else. And whatever you do, don’t give the minor a name.

I hesitate to state a rule that a traditional mystery or a cozy should have no more than x number of characters, but I know when a novel has too many peripheral figures. Every great story can be told with a limited number of characters because the story is how they interact and reveal themselves, and too many characters will detract from that. I recently read Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, which impressed me with the small number of main characters and the equally small number of secondary characters, but each one played a significant role that could not have been reduced or eliminated. It was a brilliant lesson in concision, among other things. Another example is Clea Simon’s The Butterfly Trap, which focuses on two main characters buffeted by their ambitions, which are supported and encouraged by the friends in their lives.

It can be hard to eliminate a minor character brought into the story for one purpose. They arrive fresh on the scene, give the writer the opportunity to do something new and discover a new personality, but in the larger scheme of the novel, they may well be irrelevant. Anyone in the story so far can do the same job. As hard as it is, I have to let the superfluous figure retire and stay focused on the main characters and their story. How many are too many? If I find myself asking that question of the book I’m working on, thinking I may be veering into an overpopulated world, then the answer is, the number I have now is too many. Combine, eliminate, reduce. And give the richest minor characters a larger place in another book.

Silk Road Inspiration

February 22, 2025 ~ susanoleksiw ~ 6 Comments

Recently a friend told me about a trip her mother wanted to take with her to India, and asked me about some of the sights and events planned for them. I found a description of the trip online and skimmed through it thinking how I would answer her questions when just below was another trip that threw all my travel plans and budget for the year into the trash can.

When I was perhaps eleven or twelve years old I came across a book about a trip to Central Asia. After You, Marco Polo by Jean Bowie Shor describes a journey she and her husband made following in the footsteps of the explorer on his travels from Venice to China in the late 13^th century. The book was published in 1955, only a few years after their trip in the late 1940s. The author is the definition of the word intrepid, and I don’t believe anyone alive today would even consider taking the same trip so dependent are we on cell phones, public transportation, emergency services, detailed maps, and reliable guides, not to mention translation programs on our cell phones and a general sense of peace and safety (now perhaps ebbing). I reread this book recently and it is still one of the most incredible survival stories of any traveler on the Silk Road in Central Asia I have encountered.

This book sparked my love of Asia, as a result of which I ended up living in India for a year doing research, and then returning for a second year for more of the same. I’ve been back several times to visit friends, and even though I’m no longer any kind of scholar, I’ve maintained my interest in India in the Anita Ray series and several photography projects. The author, Jean Bowie Shor, inspired numerous characters with her impetuous forays into forbidden areas and unbelievable luck in surviving and even thriving, as well as her fortitude in traversing a 20,000 foot mountain pass with her fever-stricken, delirious husband and two guides who were hoping to fleece their dead bodies of more money than the entire community would see in a hundred life times.

I don’t plan to write during the trip, but that’s a plan that can quickly evaporate. I do plan to take a lot of photographs, and as I often do when working on an Anita Ray story, I’ll line up the most interesting along my desk to glance at while I work after I get home. Some people like music in the background, some like a particular bit of clutter, I like photographs.

Now, after many years, I’m finally taking my dream trip—to the Silk Road. I’ve signed on for a tour with about a dozen others to visit three of the Stans—Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan—along the Silk Road. After a lapse of many decades, I will be part of the kind of ensembles of tourists that I find so stimulatingly murderous in my Anita Ray series set in South India. I’m doing a lot of background reading so I’ll be ready for my characters when they show up. The trip is scheduled for the fall, so I have a lot of time to enjoy one of the best parts of travel—anticipation.

I’m not sure what this post is about, but I’m booked for a trip I’ve dreamt about for years and taking it now seems fitting.

Lists and More, Always More

January 25, 2025 ~ susanoleksiw ~ 4 Comments

I belong to a chat list of people in my general geographical area, one or two counties north of Boston mostly along the water. Here we post requests for a carpenter or, right now, a snow shoveler. Members report on the remodeled bath and how well the job was done, or not done.

One man organized a picnic for anyone who wanted to come, and within days he had offers of side dishes, the loan of a grill, a small tent in case it rained while he was flipping burgers, a few tables and chairs, and a volunteer to track who was doing or bringing what. There are long discussions on what’s happening that has brought a helicopter and two police cars, and whether or not the city can or should do something about the homeless woman who has set up shop on a certain corner.

This is a community within a community, an ongoing exchange of good will, information, moral support, and occasionally humor. Lots of people are looking for small jobs, the kind that don’t attract construction companies. These are people willing to do just about any little chore—watch your elderly mother one afternoon a week, or your two pre-school children three days a week, or water your plants while you’re on vacation, or fix the front steps, or cut down a small tree that’s dying. There’s always someone who’ll help install a smoke detector, explain the restrictions on B&Bs in a specific town, or suggest a junk removal guy who is reasonable, quick, and neat. Small jobs but necessary ones.

I’ve had several jobs taken care of through this site, and occasionally I recognize another user, or another user recognizes me. The site is more efficient than asking at the local hardware store, another place I’ve come to know and love since my husband died. It’s also more informative. In almost any instance a person seeking a worker for anything will get two or three suggestions, with affirmations (or not) by other readers.

The site is remarkably accurate as to skill, reliability, and pricing, perhaps because a failure in any one of these areas will lead to a disappointing post, at best, and complaints from others and a decline in business.

For a long time I thought of this as a useful site, but now I read the offers and requests, including occasionally my own, and I feel like I’m reading a novel or a short story as people report on life changes requiring a new home for a pet or a change in a second bedroom. This change in perspective is perhaps the result of how I see the world, or at least my corner of it.

When I hear someone talking about an incident, or see a group of people engaged in something, within seconds my brain has constructed a narrative, just like what I did in the first paragraphs above. You read very few facts; instead you got a feel for how a group of people relate to each other, with holes where paranoia, suspicion, ill will could fold away from view.

When you’re a writer, wherever you look you find a story.

Endings

December 28, 2024 ~ susanoleksiw ~ 3 Comments

Beginnings and endings are the hardest part of writing for me. (That’s today. On other days it’s the muddled middle.) Some writers have arresting, captivating openings that grab the reader and carry her along into a ninety-thousand-word novel. I’m not one of those, but I can eventually get a few words on the page to get the story moving. For me the greater challenge is endings.

Some years ago I listened to Andre Dubus III talk about his new book, House of Sand and Fog, which led him to talk about how he’d grown as a writer. He didn’t like his first book, Bluesman, because he considered it sentimental. His disdain for this failure in craft was obvious, and when I met him at a writers’ event years later, the subject came up again. As I listened to him touch on the challenges in his work, I understood that for him an ending that is sentimental is also in some ways dishonest, an inability to reach deeper for something that was true. I had just purchased TheGarden of Last Days, and read it with that in mind. There is nothing sentimental in that book, least of all in the ending.

Several critics have explored the link between the traditional and cozy mystery and comedy; noir crime fiction has been linked to tragedy. At the end of the cozy mystery, the world is set right again; the villain has been identified and brought to justice of some sort; the lesser crimes of other characters are brought to light and justice is visited on them in various ways, perhaps public censure or shame or remorse; and the minor romance barely acknowledged sometimes comes to light and there is a new beginning for a young couple. All is right with the world. From Restoration Comedy to Agatha Christie and writers today, it is hard for a reader of cozies or traditional mysteries to be satisfied with less. An unrequited love or an unchallenged con artist will annoy some readers as much as a dangling participle will menace the peace of mind of a copy editor. And I understand this. There is something deeply satisfying about the comedic ending, a moment that reassures us that the world aslant can be righted, that our inchoate ideals can be realized.

So how does a writer of traditional crime fiction compose an ending that is both true to the story being told and unsentimental? Sometimes I think this question is just one more obstacle to writing a satisfactory ending, and all I’m doing is complicating matters, making life harder for myself. I’m not unsatisfied with the ending of Family Album, the third in the Mellingham series, but I acknowledge that it is a tad sentimental (maybe more than a tad). But readers loved it because it fulfilled one of the hints at the beginning of the story, and a promise fulfilled, particularly about a possible romance, always brings a frisson of delight. But it was sentimental. At least it wasn’t mawkish.

I don’t remember most of the endings in my books and stories but some stand out, for me at least. The ending of When Krishna Calls in the Anita Ray series required research, rethinking, and stepping back. A woman sentenced to prison looks out on her new world, listening to another prisoner, and is satisfied with the choices she has made. She won’t forget why she is where she is, and she won’t regret it. The ending of Friends and Enemies in the Mellingham series required several versions before I finally landed on the one that worked and fit with the rest of the story. An editor who read the ms and considered acquiring it mentioned how much she liked it (but not enough to take the book). Another ending that satisfied me is that in “Coda for a Love Affair,” in Devil’s Snare: Best New England Crime Stories 2024. The ending is simple, clear as cut glass and sharp.

Endings are hard because the easy ones come fast, are easy to write, and sit well on the page. And that’s the problem. They tempt us to take them, give a sigh of relief, and pat ourselves on the back for coming up with (rather than running carelessly into what looks like) the perfect line or paragraph to close out three hundred pages. Depending on how tired we are of the story and working on it, that ending will appear reasonable, acceptable, or a gift from the writing gods. So this is where I step back and wonder what Andre might think. I don’t have to get far into that mental exercise to admit that the first or even the thirtieth ending is not what I want.

If nothing else, writing keeps us humble. In our heads we hear perfect dialogue, snatches of prose so brilliant we’ll never need the sun again, but on the page, our pen does not cooperate (or the computer keyboard), and we end up with the mundane, the ordinary, the usual. I keep working on endings but I know I fall short most of the time. As do we all. It’s encouraging to know that greater writers have the same struggles, the same challenges, the same doubts. With one eye on writers whom I admire, I keep at my own work, striving to meet my standards even if that means sometimes disappointing some readers. If I want better endings, I just have to keep at it until I get there.