Category: mystery

A Little Exercise in Writing

~ dzchurch ~ 4 Comments

I had the opportunity to join the Sisters in Crime crowd for a course in short story writing given by Art Taylor. It reminded me that I have a long-haul brain and a swift to explain psyche. It isn’t a terrific combination. I’m fighting both all of the time.

The writing of extremely short (700 words) stories was covered . . . a bit. I found the idea intriguing and liked the promised discipline of it. Really, how do you tell a good tale in seven-hundred words? I’m barely started by then. Heck, I can write seven-hundred words about the Canadian Shield lining Highway 14 in Ontario in seven minutes flat, fingers flying. But should I? Too often, I just want to tell everyone everything about everybody. I spill the beans right out of the can the minute the lid is off. It is a nasty habit.

It means that I spend days after the first draft is completed moving all of the spilled beans around to where they belong in the story. And sometimes, they don’t belong at all. And sometimes, they get left in when they shouldn’t, leaving a soggy bit of mess.

So, I suggested to my Bodie Blue Books partner that we each write a seven-hundred word short story for our upcoming newsletter. For me, it became the perfect exercise in combating my twin demons. Seven-hundred words are not many (heck, I’ve already used nearly a third of them). Like any book or short story, your seven-hundred-word tale needs a beginning, middle, and end, acts one through four, and a climax or conundrum. The enforced discipline of writing a super short story should be obvious by now.

For success, you need to question each word, its placement, purpose, and usefulness to the story right up to the hopefully satisfactory denouement. Each word should serve the purpose of the narrative. One word, one message, one point, one emotion, you can’t waste any of your allotted words, nor should you ever, no matter the length of your manuscript.

Let’s say your characters are awaiting an incoming storm of megalithic proportions. Do you describe the sky or their apprehension? Can you do both? Is it necessary to do both? Which has the most effect on the narrative? The mood?

My tale is a ghost story derived from an actual event in my life. I began writing it as it had occurred at our century-farmhouse packed as it was to the gills with the Uninvited. I felt the need to provide the provenance for the ghost. Then I realized his provenance was the mystery.  I had to walk back from my habit of spilling every character’s motivation and back-story, sometimes all at once like spewed pea soup. I worked, and honed, and edited, and . . . recalibrated a lot.

Frankly, the discipline of the limited word count drove me to rethink my writing and re-motivated me. Not a bad way to spend four frustrating days. And the exercise inspired this blog. All good, eh? (505 words)

So, suppose you decide to write an extra-short story? I suggest you limit yourself to precisely seven-hundred words to tell a tale you wouldn’t be ashamed to see in print. It will be time well spent. I leave you with that thought and 145 perfectly-good words to use anywhere needed.

Visit me at: dzchurch.com, facebook.com/mysteryhistorysuspense, or Amazon to check out my books

Confessions of a Confused, Disorganized Writer

~ Pamela Beason ~ 7 Comments

Does the drifter know anything?
     That’s what it says at the top of a page of writing notes (okay, scribbles) that I found a while ago in my desk drawer.
     I’d give anything to find out if the drifter knows anything. As a matter of fact, I’d give anything to know who the drifter is.
     The most troubling aspect of this question is that the note is definitely in my handwriting. Perhaps the query refers to my grandpa-may-have-been-a-serial-killer screenplay, since there are other cryptic notes on the same page such as Maybe Jessalyn was her mother, not her aunt, and I do have a deceased character named Jessalyn in that story. There’s also kind of a down-and-out handyman, but he’s always been part of the community; he’s not really a drifter.
     Then again, since there’s another scribble on the same page about designer sunglasses that I recognize as a reference to Undercurrents, my marine-biologist-dies-in-the-Galapagos mystery, maybe the question pertains to that novel. But while there’s a drifting corpse in the ocean, there’s not really a character that I would really call a drifter in that one, either.
     I search my memory banks. How about Call of the Jaguar, my find-the-other-lover-in-war torn-Guatemala novella? Endangered, my missing-kid-in-national-park mystery? Shaken, my earthquake/arson/is-our-heroine-committing-insurance-fraud romance? Nope. No drifters.
     Perhaps I was going to add a drifter somewhere? Or perhaps it belongs in a future story? I have another note about a mystery solved due to an error overlooked in digitally altered photographs, and that doesn’t match up with any story I’m currently working on.
     I haven’t always been this way. Who’s to blame for my current mental and physical confusion? I blame editors and agents.
     When I first decided to turn my writing talents from “how-to” manuals and books to fiction, I sat down and wrote Endangered, my first mystery novel, in about six months. Total focus. I sent out query letters.
Not taking new clients at this time.
Not distinctive enough to stand out in a crowded market.
     Not for us.
     Not right for us, but this is subjective; others may feel differently. Good luck.
     The few agents who asked for samples hinted that the story seemed awfully close to Nevada Barr’s writing. I’d never heard of her at the time, but when I read some of her books, dang if they weren’t right, my protagonist (park ranger), setting (national monument), and story (was the missing child eaten by a cougar?) could have been written by her. The tone was even similar. I suspect Nevada is my long-lost twin.
     So, I changed the protagonist and the story slant substantially, and sent it out again.
My client list is full.
     Not distinctive enough to stand out in a crowded market.
     Well written, but I advise you to lose the technical stuff and focus on the outdoor adventure.
     Excellent writing, but add more technical stuff and lose some of the outdoor adventure and nature aspects.
     Not for us.
     Oh, I did get a contract in the mail from an agent who wanted money up front, which seemed a little suspicious. I called to get more information. When I asked about this person’s experience and publishing contacts, I discovered she was no more of a literary agent than I am.
     My novel did finally intrigue one agent from a reputable house sufficiently that she jotted down several very good suggestions for changes (bless her!) and agreed to see the novel after I made changes, along with samples of all my other work. Thank God, I thought, and applied myself to making the changes. Five months later (hey, I was working full-time in a software firm), I eagerly mailed my much smoother novel to her. I promptly received in reply a note from the head of the agency:
This agent has quit agenting. We shredded your manuscript.
     If my four cats hadn’t kept reminding me of an imminent tuna crisis, I might never have scraped myself off the floor.
     I wrote a children’s book about a Kikuyu girl who wanted to save the hippos around her village in Kenya. It was a prizewinner in a local contest. A publisher was interested until she found out that I wasn’t African-American.
     I went to screenwriting school in an attempt to revive my sagging creative spirit. I wrote my first romantic adventure screenplay, sent it around.
Not taking new clients at this time.
     Client list’s full.
Not for us.
     I heard a romance editor talking up an outdoor adventure novel as ‘exactly what we’re looking for.’ After reading that book, I was a) confused, because in no way was it a romance (the protagonist’s lover is dead from the get-go) and b) enthused, because the book had a tone and theme similar to Endangered. I fired off a query to that editor, referencing the conference and the book she’d mentioned. No response.
     Meanwhile, having read that it’s much easier to publish mysteries if you’ve got a series, I worked on sequels to Endangered. (That series has five books now.)
     I finished a romance. I started to send out queries on it, while still trying to find a place for Endangered and its sequels Bear Bait and Undercurrents.
Not taking new clients.
     Got any non-fiction proposals?
     Not right for us, pardon the form letter.
     Agent deceased.
     I did finally get a contract for three mysteries with Berkley Prime Crime. After the first one was published, my editor/champion moved to a nonfiction position, and no editor left in the original group was even mildly interested in marketing my mysteries. So, after two years of stagnation, I got the rights back and published them myself.
     Now I’ve got eight mystery novels, three romantic suspense novels, two drafts for children’s books, dozens of outlines, crowds of characters, hundreds of clever clues, and a score of half-baked plots romping through my head. “You must like banging your head against the wall,” my mother once remarked. (I’ve always had such a supportive family.)
     I’m a fast writer, and a good one, according to my fans. If I had only had honest feedback on what editors and agents wanted, or encouragement to run down any particular path, I would have galloped to the kill like a cheetah after a bushbuck. Instead, I still seem destined to become like the giant sunstars I see on my scuba expeditions; a creature with so many appendages that it’s a miracle it can move at all.
Does the drifter know anything?
     I really hope so. And I hope he shows up soon to share it with me.

Mud Season by Karen Shughart

~ kshughart47 ~ 9 Comments

If you’ve ever read any of my Cozies, you may have noticed that the month of March doesn’t figure prominently in the narrative. Don’t get me wrong. We live on the south shore of Lake Ontario in New York state, and it’s spectacularly beautiful here almost year ‘round. That is to say: it’s spectacularly beautiful eleven months during the year. Not so much March.

March is the month of transition. One day the temperature plummets into the teens, the next day it rises into the 60s. We can have winds of 50 miles an hour. Then, waves up to 15 feet crash turbulently against the beach, roaring so loudly that they obliviate other village sounds. When the winds die down, there’s an eerie silence, and the lake looks like glass. .

We have snow squalls and rain, sometimes in the same hour. Snow that’s accumulated throughout the winter now starts to melt; quickly, in torrents and rivulets that make our backyard a swamp. I wear my old Wellies to stomp around to view the changing landscape. We don’t have many sidewalks here, and a stroll through the village can be challenging, to say the least. Many of us refer to the month as Mud Season.

Mid-March along the lake by Karen Shughart

Gray days seem to dominate, but it’s not all doom and gloom. You can smell the ripening as the tree buds start to swell and begin turning red or pale green. Snowdrops bloom, and our daffodils stretch up through the melting snow. The sun rises earlier, casting rose gold streaks over the bay; on rare days it is piercingly bright, with a clear azure sky. Those are the days when our middle-aged dog, Nova, sleeps in sunbeams that move from room to room.

We hear lots of birdsong. Robins live here year ‘round, but mostly in winter they hunker down out of site. Now, they make their presence known. A couple weeks ago, I peered out our living room window and spied two sparrows, a male and a female, chattering away on the winter wreath of twigs, pinecones and berries that hangs on our front door. I believe they were having a conversation about whether to build their nest there. It’s a perfect place, protected from the elements and predators.

They returned to that same spot for several days in a row. Don’t get me wrong, I love the birds. I just don’t want them nesting against our front door. Regretfully, I removed the wreath, to replace it later in the spring with one that’s more seasonal. I expect they were surprised when they returned to find their building site was no longer available.

I’ve purposely not written much about March in my Cozies, but now, after writing about this month of so many moods and faces, I begin to wonder why I’ve been avoiding it. Winter is ending, spring is on its way, and change happens rapidly. Hmm, could this be a metaphor, perhaps, for my next Cozy?

To Gore or Not To Gore… And How Much?

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 11 Comments

by Janis Patterson

When one writes mysteries, one has to come face to the face with the problem of violence – when, to whom and how much. Almost every mystery – those for grown-ups, that is – includes an assault and/or a death. It is very rare to see a mystery without one or the other and usually both. Dead bodies are pretty much the raison d’etre of a mystery!

The question is, how did the body get dead, where is it found, what condition is it in, and how much – if any – of the actual crime do we show?

What they’re now calling cozy mysteries – the kind with a ditzy amateur sleuth with a terrible love life, a cute job, probably a shoe obsession and perhaps intelligent animals which may or may not solve the actual mystery themselves – usually back away from violence and its aftermath as much as possible. (And yes, I know there are exceptions, but it is the exception that proves the rule!) The dead body that propels the story is so sanitized and occasionally de-humanized that in some stories it resembles little more than a stage prop. Which is distressing but not surprising, as more and more publishers are demanding that the body appear in the first few pages if not on the first page itself. This makes it hard for the reader to regard said dead body as little more than a plot device instead of something that was once a living, breathing complete human being. (In case you didn’t know, this ‘where does the body appear’ thing is one of my hot buttons!)

What we used to call cozies are now in the labeling limbo of ‘traditional mysteries’ which to me means more realistic characters, more realistic actions by those characters, but with only minimal violence. There is blood, but only a tangential mention. My favorite description (taken from one of my own books, of course) talks about the body hastily covered with a now-stained bedspread (at the time of my sleuth’s arrival) with just a lip of wet red peeking out from under the edge. Enough description to evoke a feeling of horror at such a heinous and violent act, but most definitely not enough to revolt or sicken the reader. It’s sometimes a difficult balancing act.

In a hard-boiled or noir mystery, the violence is not only part of but sometimes seems to be the reason for the story. Descriptions of violence, whether or not they result in death, are often and lovingly detailed. Remember how often Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer either was beaten up (each blow described) or beat up the bad guy (each blow described.) He wasn’t the only one, either. There are scores of such novels celebrating violence written every day.

My personal bête noir example of gratuitous violence is Robert Ludlum. Yes, his novels are generally classified with thrillers, but in each one there is a mystery, and I’m trying to make a point here. I have publicly called his books ‘the pornography of death.’ Think about it – in sexual pornography nothing is hidden; every moan, every stroke, every touch, every single action is described, usually in loving and minute detail. Ludlum’s (and others’) do the same thing with violence. Every split of skin from a blow. The explosion of skin and the fountain of blood caused by the entry of a bullet… or a spear, or some other penetrating object. The crisping and blackening of skin as it begins to burn. Personally, I find it sickening, but considering how these books sell I’m obviously in the minority!

My feelings toward violence in my books are sort of like mine about sex in my books. They both happen, and we as readers know they happen, as we see the results, but they do not happen ‘on screen’ and there are no overly graphic descriptions.

Once a couple of decades ago I was doing make-up on the set of a horror film. A grizzled old hand and I were watching as an actor was being glued (yes, glued!) into his costume. The gaffer snorted derisively, saying that clump of foam and make-up wasn’t really scary.

Well, it was pretty scary-looking to me! When I told him, he said the purpose of a horror film was to scare people, and not all people were scared by all things. To really scare people, he said, you give a suggestion – a shadow, a hand or a tentacle, and let people create in their own head the thing that scared them the most. “Don’t show the monster,” he said. “Let people create their own monster.”

It’s the same thing with violence. A suggestion – ‘a lip of wet red peeking out’ – can evoke more feelings, more visceral reaction, than an entire thesaurus of detailed description. And that’s why I don’t write overt gore.

The New Nancy Drew… Really? by Heather Haven

~ Heather Haven ~ 14 Comments

Like a lot of mystery writers, I tend to read and view tons of other mysteries, just to see what’s happening and to learn a thing or two. Call it the tools of the trade. Recently, I stumbled across yet another new television series based on the world famous Nancy Drew Series by Carolyn Keene. And there the resemblance ends. I don’t mean to be rude…well, yes, I do… but this is soooooo not Nancy Drew. At least, not the Nancy Drew I grew up with.

As everyone knows, the Nancy Drew of the past is a spirited young woman who lives with her widowed father, Carson Drew, a lawyer, and their trusted housekeeper, Hannah Gruen. These three, despite the generation gap, have a warm and loving relationship. Nancy’s two best friends, George and Bess, as well as her quasi-boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, solve crimes warm and fuzzy. Nancy is a young lady who is strong and self-reliant, with a feel-good crew to back her up. That’s the gal detective I know.

Enter Nancy Drew 2020-21, where these kids look around 26 and act a bad 40. The opening scene of the new television series has her sitting astride her convicted felon boyfriend, Nick, whose real name is Ned Nickerson. They are having sex. Excuse me? After the shock of that, we move onto George. She is supposedly Nancy’s best friend. This George is a belligerent young woman who has just ended the affair she started at 17 years old with a 30-something married man. By the way, she does not like Nancy. They never got along.

Then Bess Marvin shows up. She ‘s in love with a woman posing as a chauffeur who is actually a policewoman. Bess is also a rich family’s poor cousin, literally, but is dying to be a part of this obviously questionable clan. Marvin skeletons are in every closet but they take Bess into the family on the proviso she rat on her new girlfriend. She does.

And these are the lighthearted parts.

Let’s get heavier. Carson Drew, Nancy’s father-knows-best dad, is a dysfunctional man involved in the town’s evil doings and has been for decades. If there’s a murder or dead body, odds are Carson Drew had something to do with it. Just when you hope you might be able to root for him it turns out he’s not Nancy’s real father, but has lied to her about her parentage every step of the way. Add in the paranormal, seances, and some supernatural thing called the Aglaeca, and this storyline gets darker with every episode.

As a writer, I can see how the scriptwriters sought out any idea the protagonist, Nancy Drew, would find challenging. Then they threw it into the story and doubled-down on it. She is betrayed by her father, her lovers, and her friends continually. Even her roadster does her dirty. But to be fair, Nancy may be tortured every step of the way but so is everyone else. They only pause long enough to find a new lover, change partners, or have a séance. Then its off on the next soul-ripping escapade. There is no joy in River Heights, which by the way, has been relocated to Horseshoe Bay… because.

But here’s the kicker. Even though this new series is NOTHING like any Nancy Drew book I’ve ever read, the producers put into the credits the phrase “Based on the Nancy Drew Series by Carolyn Keene.” That started me thinking. What would I do if the producers take the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries, currently under option, and make them into a television series nothing like the books? They have already told me if the projects goes, the movies will be a little different. But what is a “little?” And will I care? Can I do anything about it if I did care? The answer to that question is a resounding no. I signed certain rights away to see my stories come alive in another media. And I would probably do it again.

But this may be why Sue Grafton said she would never sell the television or movie rights to her books, I’m thinking. It comes down to the written word versus other media forms. The iconic Nancy Drew series is decades old and has been loved for generations. But that makes it vulnerable. Or is it so endeared by all of us, we don’t give a hoot what anyone tries to do to it? We know the truth. And the truth will set us free.

There’s another truth. Once you put your work out there, out there it is. An offshoot of Jane Austen’s Emma turned into the movie Clueless came off charming. But it might not have. The movie based on Janet Evanovich’s book, One for the Money, was a real dud. And nothing like the book. But the end result is rarely up to the author, alive or dead. You are completely at the mercy of a whole other entity. Maybe the Aglaeca. It’s no wonder so many of us writers have a reputation for drinking. I get it now. Pass the vodka.