Tag: writing process

You Just Feel It

~ patyjag ~ 3 Comments

I finished book 12 in my Gabriel Hawke series two weeks ago. This is the first book that when I finished, I didn’t have any doubts that I had forgotten something or that it dragged in places or that it wouldn’t sit with some of my readers. I finished this book with a smile on my face feeling as if it was a good book. Not all books feel that way when I finish.

Many writers understand this. There are very few books that when I have it ready to go to my CP and beta readers that I feel I captured everything I wanted and gave all the right clues and nailed the characters. Even the killer. I figure the places that I’m worried about they will see, and I can fix them.

As usual this was what I call my first draft. Over the decades of writing and having published 58 books, not counting the 7 that never made the cut to being published, this was the first time I finished without any doubts about the story. Having been writing this long, I have a system where I what I write the day before is where I start the following day. I begin where I started writing and read through, making changes to scenes, sentences, and words. So by the time I do type the last word in a book, it is the draft I send to my CP and Betas. After they read and send me their thoughts and suggestions, I do what I call the second draft. This one goes to my line editor. Who will also catch any wrong names, duplication of information, and my legal mistakes. From her, I go through it one more time, the 3rd draft, and send that to a proofreader. After I change what she finds, that is the final draft, and it is published.

Now I could be all wet and full of myself on this one, but so far, the beta readers have liked it and found little to comment on. Well, except for my retired police officer. And what he commented on wasn’t anything to do with police procedure. He didn’t like that Hawke kills a rattlesnake. He thought Hawke should have backed out of the cougar’s cave he was crawling into and waited for the snake to leave. I’ve thought about this since his text to me about enjoying the book other than that scene. I’ve bounced around different ways I could change the scene, but they don’t harken to the urgency that Hawke feels about finding more evidence.

My other beta reader liked the whole book. Didn’t see any problems with any of the story. She did catch some typos.

I’m waiting for my CP to get it back to me and see if she mentions the snake scene. I felt Hawke was doing what he needed to do to keep him and Dog safe while they finished their search of the cave. A small area that they couldn’t have avoided being bitten by the snake if they moved around inside upsetting it.

The scene will stay as is. And the book that when I finished felt right and made me smile, is available for pre-order.

This double cold case and current homicide have Oregon State Police Fish and Wildlife Trooper Gabriel Hawke calling in favors… and exploring a childhood he shoved into the deep recesses of his mind. 

While patrolling on the Snake River in Hells Canyon, Gabriel Hawke’s dog digs up a human bone. Hawke is confronted by an aunt he doesn’t remember, and he finds a canister of film when the rest of the remains are excavated. The film shows someone being killed and a rifle pointed at the photographer.

Going through missing person files, Hawke discovers the victims of the
decades-old double homicide. A person connected to the original crime is
murdered, giving Hawke more leads and multiple suspects.

Attending a local Powwow with his family, Hawke discovers more about his childhood and realizes his suspects have been misleading him.

Pre-order: https://books2read.com/u/bQGkXw

Adapting Agatha and Other Greats by Heather Haven

~ Heather Haven ~ 8 Comments

Several days after returning from the Left Coast Crime Conference, I came down with one of those upper respiratory bugs that are sent to try us. After making sure it wasn’t Covid or RSV, I accepted and dealt with it. Medicated up the wazoo, bored out of my mind, and feeling sorry for myself, I turned to what I always have in times of trouble – murder and mayhem.

One to never let me down in that department is Agatha Christie. I think I’ve read everything she’s written and loved them all. I even liked The Big Four, considered one of her worst. Frankly, I’m convinced that even her worst novel is better than a lot of other writers’ best, but maybe I am prejudiced.  Whatever, it was Agatha Christie Chicken Soup time.

Assessing the situation, I realized the Kindle was being charged and any reading materials in the bedroom were aaaall the way across the room on bookshelves. Doped up and lazy, I reached for the remote. I managed to stream in a collection of several versions of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple done throughout the years. I glommed onto Joan Hickson, who I feel is the quintessential Miss Marple, sharp but seemingly befuddled, all-knowing but not pushy about it. And here she was, in one of my favorite Christie stories, Nemesis. I blew my nose, settled in, and went back to jolly old England during the fifties aboard a week-long motorcoach of historic homes and gardens.

Before long, everyone aboard the bus winds up to be a suspect, of course, having either won the tour or offered hard cash to join. Most damning of all, each was a player in a past … secret. But nothing throws Miss Marple for long. She’s there, complete with godson companion, in accordance to the wishes of a recently deceased friend and millionaire, to right some horrible wrong from the past, no matter what the consequences. Thus, the name Nemesis. Guided by a biblical saying “Let Judgement run down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream,” the story moves forward and pretty much follows the original, Christie plotline which is chilling, fiendish, unique, and satisfying.

I got greedy. Right next to this episode was yet another Jane Marple thespian, Geraldine McEwen, appearing in the very same mystery. I thought, well, why not? The comparison of both might be fun, and Lord knows I’m not very busy. So, hubby brought me a cup of herbal tea, a scone, and I settled in again. Okay, not a scone. It was actually a chocolate croissant but munching on a chocolate croissant doesn’t sound quite right for the occasion.

Ms. McEwen presents an intelligent, twinkling Marple, as if she knows whatever she is saying is clever and important and you’ll catch on in your own good time. I found her Marple charming. I liked her. The storyline, not so much. In fact, I was completely at a loss as to what was going on. It still took place on a bus tour of historic homes and gardens, a few years after WWII, and there were a host of odd characters showing up with familiar character names, but they were nothing like the original ones. In short, there was no similarity on any level to the book or even the 1989 Joan Hickson version.

This version involved missing airmen, whackadoodle nuns, scarecrows, and a bust of Shakespeare used for nobody’s good at all. Even the villain was different and once revealed, was an unsatisfying one, at best. I couldn’t blame the budget. It looked to me as if the same amount of money and attention to detail went into making the 2007 version as it had the one done twenty-years earlier. But this 2007 Nemesis made no sense. I became cynical. Some hotshot somebody or other, under the guise of transporting the work from one medium to another, thought they could do a better job of Agatha Christie’s story than Agatha Christie. As Puck says, “What fools these mortals be.”

Not-so-cleverly segueing over to Shakespeare, here is someone else whose stories are often played with as fast and as loosely as Agatha’s. They have cut, added, rewritten, edited, obliterated, updated, melted down, puffed up, refined, and poured over brine everything he has written. It is rare to see his work performed in any of its original form, especially the same historical period. Too old hat. Others need to put their stamp on it. So if you’re off to see the latest version of Macbeth, it might have a Polish circus or a Macon, Georgia, WWII prisoner of war camp as a backdrop.

Back to Agatha. I remember one horrible adaptation of And Then There Were None in 1989. They called the movie Ten Little Indians. This particular novel has had many titles throughout the years. Namely, different forms of Ten Little Somethings Or Other. Not much worked until they came up with And Then There Were None, which might seem to give the plot away but apparently doesn’t. And it’s PC.

Regarding the plot, the scriptwriters changed the location from an island along the Devon Coast and plopped it amid an African safari at the bottom of a ravine, their idea of remoteness. Here, the roar of a surrounding pride of lions can often be heard but are never seen. I suspect the big cats were too embarrassed to be caught on-camera. Even Donald Pleasance and Brenda Vaccaro could not save one single moment of this dreadful interpretation. And yet I watched every frame, hoping against hope it might save itself. After all, it was Agatha’s work. Maybe somebody in charge got a clue and reverted back to what worked in the first place. Maybe somebody saw the rushes. Maybe the Serengeti rose en masse and took back its own.

Nope.

One reason for the wild takeover of someone else’s work could stem from filmland’s past history. From 1930 until 1968 every single movie, including adaptions, had to follow the guidelines of the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, also called the Hays Code. The Code was a strict master and you’d better believe it. It didn’t mess around, it didn’t compromise. If the code found one scene didn’t meet those standards, the entire movie could be scrapped. Goodbye production, cast, and crew. Hello breadline. Below is a link to what a studio had to deal with: https://cinecouple.hypotheses.org/files/2017/07/Code_Hays.pdf. That’s still no excuse for some of the stunts adapters pulled throughout the years, even though sometimes rewriting had to be done. Unfortunately, it did give those with power, money, and ego a chance to play around with a genius story until it resembled the original work in title only.

Here’s an interesting fact, though, in the it-pays-to-be-good category. No matter what a screenwriter, actor, producer, or director does – and they can make all the idiotic versions they want – the reality is nothing can diminish the author’s original WRITTEN words. Anyone who wants to know the talent and timelessness of the Bard or the Queen of Mystery and others like them, have but to sit down and read their books. The power of the word. It never goes away.

Picking Up Steam by Karen Shughart

~ kshughart47 ~ 3 Comments

I recently received an email from someone who has read all the cozies I’ve written. She said that while she enjoyed each of the books in my Edmund DeCleryk series, she thought the most recent one, Murder at Freedom Hill, was the best; with each book my writing skills have evolved, with layers added to each story. I appreciated her candor, and she probably was correct. My writing has in many ways been like a train, metaphorically picking up steam, and adding railroad cars as necessary to accommodate a growing number of passengers seeking to get to their destination.

With the first book in the Edmund DeCleryk cozy mystery series, Murder in the Museum, I wrote a prologue that introduced a historical backstory that provided clues to why the present-day murder occurred. As the mystery unfolded, the backstory, spanning the late 1700s to the mid-1800s, continued with artifacts found in the basement of the museum and discovery of a memoir written by a man who, in his youth, had made terrible mistakes but who redeemed himself in adulthood. It was a short story within the book.

I continued with the historical backstory concept in my second book, Murder in the Cemetery, after deciding it would always be part of my cozies. But this time after the prologue, I conveyed it with the discovery of an artifact at the cemetery where the victim was killed, and a series of letters a lonely wife wrote to her sister while on a quest to find her husband, who had been transported to England as a prisoner of war during the War of 1812. Instead of one prologue I wrote two, the first introducing the backstory, and the second giving the reader the seasonal setting for the present day murder.

In the third book, Murder at Freedom Hill, I continued with the two prologues and the backstory-a narration for an exhibit at the historical society about the victim’s ancestors, both Black and White-who were involved in the Underground Railroad and Abolitionist Movement. Then I added a subplot that was separate from, but intricately woven into, the main story.

Now I’m working on book four, Murder at Chimney Bluffs. In this one, I continue with techniques I used before: the two prologues, the historical backstory -now rumrunning and the Prohibition era -but the backstory will also be the subplot. And I’ve added a second mystery, a cold case from decades ago that may lead the investigators to the killer.

I’m happy with the progression of these books, it keeps me interested and stretches my brain, but I confess that the writing is taking me a bit longer with each one. Now I’m compiling more notes and have added a timeline and a list of characters, many of whom are recurring; some new. As I continue to write the series I, too, am picking up steam, which will, hopefully, make each book better than the one before.

Karen Shughart is the author of the award-winning Edmund DeCleryk cozy mystery series, published by Cozy Cat Press. She has also co-written two additional mysteries with Cozy Cat authors, and two non-fiction books. A member of CWA, North America Chapter, and F.L.A.R.E., she lives with her husband, Lyle, on the south shore of Lake Ontario in New York state.

Noise Levels and Other Considerations

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 7 Comments

by Janis Patterson

This is a noisy world. There are sirens and neighbors and families and appliances… and not even noise-cancelling headphones can guarantee total silence. At least, not at my home with a house reconstruction going on to the west and the neighbor to the east – though a wonderful man in many ways – owning every gasoline-powered piece of lawn equipment ever made. His lawn is beautiful, though.

Now all writers are different. Some like lots of noise, claiming it is a stimulant, while others like pure silence as they say it frees their creativity. Depending on the time and our mood of the moment I daresay most of us fall somewhere in between.

Some writers swear by writing in different places – cafes, car parks, just about any place you can think of. Now when we have to be someplace besides our office, a writer can work almost anywhere, especially a writer under deadline. Have to take your child to ballet practice? Need to get the car worked on? Have a lunch hour at work? You can take a laptop or one of those keyboards that feeds  into your phone (I keep meaning to get one of these, just as soon as I get a phone which can handle it), or even a humble pen and paper, then make use of the time to up your word count.

Other writers believe in total silence – or as total as one can achieve short of moving to an uninhabited mountaintop in some third world country. Noise-cancelling headphones help, as sometimes does a white noise machine, but nothing can truly drown out the noise of the modern world.

As I usually do, I stand firmly in both camps. There are times I write happily in front of the blaring television while listening to The Husband tell me about his day, and other times I have on my headphones, my office drapes drawn and a sign on the door threatening a dire fate to anyone who disturbs me.

So what is the best way to write? I can only speak for myself, but as always my practice varies. If I had to choose just one atmosphere, it would be classical music (either full orchestra or piano only – no screechy strings, please) playing softly in the background, preferably of an emotion and tempo appropriate to whatever I was working on at the moment. After that, as pure a silence as could be achieved. Of course, I would – and have – made do with whatever had to be undergone at the moment.

By contrast, I have a friend – an excellent writer – who is addicted to writing in cafés. Now I admit there are advantages to writing in a café, foremost of all being to command endless cappuccinos by the mere raising of a hand! On the other hand, there is a constant swirl of people and babble of conversation, to say nothing of being the object of curiosity by the customers (“They’re real writers? And they’re working on books?”) for all as if we were some sort of exhibit in a raree show. I am no shrinking violet when it comes to being in the public eye – far from it – but not while I’m trying to concentrate on work.

However – being a fair individual and willing to experiment, I have joined my friend on occasion, and yes, despite being interrupted by spectators telling me about how they have always wanted to write a book, or have a sure-fire idea for a best seller, both broadly implying that I should stop and either teach or co-write with them (grrr) I managed to get a fair amount of writing done. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really writing – just lots of typing that, on a cool-headed reading the next day, was barely one baby step away from garbage. I didn’t try to save any of it, but I did go put on some Chopin, close the drapes and the door and try to salvage the underlying idea.

By contrast, my friend actually wrote a short story that same afternoon, one when it was polished, she sold.

How boring life would be if we all worked exactly alike!

Motivation

~ susanoleksiw ~ 9 Comments

I’ve been working on the sixth Anita Ray mystery since July, and now have 44,000 words. That by itself should tell you that I haven’t been well focused on this one, but I’ve had two epiphanies this month. First, I know what the big crisis will be, and it’s coming up in the next 10,000 words. Second, and much more important, I don’t have to know a character’s motive until I get near the end.

This, the second discovery, surprised me. I’ve struggled with finding motivations for my characters’ behaviors beyond their conduct simply being the result of who they are, their past experiences and hopes for the future. That’s always been true of any character, but when it comes to murder or some other form of violence, I need to see something more in this person I’ve created, something that the reader hasn’t already divined by reading about him or her. 

We stitch together our fictional creations from snippets of real life. Riding on the subway or bus or train brings us into contact briefly with the oddities of our world, the woman who wears orange sandals under a plaid lumber jacket on a sunny day, her jacket covering up fabric of such color we’re dying to get a look at it but she’s buckled up tight. Perhaps the only thing about her buckled up. We overhear snatches of conversation. I still wonder about the meaning behind the casual words of two men in a cafe. She’s always been like this; it was no secret. But he married her anyway? He did. And it isn’t medical? Nope. I really want to know what “it” is. And then there was the package that arrived at a neighbor’s, which she sniffed and shook, and apparently rejected because she left it on the front step. I don’t know what happened to it after that, only that it disappeared.

I’m curious about these people’s lives but if I put them in a story as a killer, I need to know what would make them kill. Being odd or different or cryptic isn’t enough, as every writer knows. We look to the great ones in our genre—Agatha Christie in the traditional mystery, Ray Bradbury in science fiction, or James M. Cain for noir—and think about how they developed their characters’ moves and failures. The motives for crime can be limitless, but perhaps the shortest list comes from Christie: greed, lust, envy. Those cover just about every failing in life.

I’ve been thinking about these for weeks now because even though I have a murder, another crime coming up, a diverse cast of miscreants, and a great deal of stupidity, I still don’t have a motive for the inciting incident. At least, I didn’t. That was part of the second epiphany this month. The characters can have all sorts of immediate short-term motives, but the one that’s driving everything has to be larger, tied deeply and inexorably to the character’s identity. I found it this month, and it has delighted me. It was almost obvious, but not quite. 

The surprising thing to me is that I’ve written half the book without knowing why this is all happening and happening in the way it is. We watch people in life, just as in books, wondering what they’re up to. We’re waiting to cross the street when he see a man on the opposite sidewalk stop and stare in a store window; he peers, he moves closer, he looks around to see who else is nearby, and he stares even harder in the window. When he walks on, looking back once or twice, we cross the street and try to guess what he was looking at. It’s an old-fashioned tailor’s shop with the expected clutter in the undusted window—scraps of fabric, a bolt of cloth, a tape measure, a small cardboard box of pins and other notions. In the unlit interior beyond, we see nothing to catch our interest. So what was he looking at? He wasn’t wearing a fine suit, just a short jacket and slacks; and he wasn’t old enough to have known about regular tailors in this little city. But there is something in that window . . .

I stopped worrying about my characters’ motivations in this particular novel while I wrote, figuring each one would either come to me or it wouldn’t. And I have faith in my unconscious to supply the needful. But I’m also flexible, and if a better one pops into my head, I’ll go with that. This is all part of the path I decided to try with this book. I would write it without guideposts, outlines, clear (or vague) ideas of where I was going. If a character or incident popped into my head, I’d add it. I’d just keep going. It’s very liberating but also a little scary. I’m not sure what I have, if anything, but I do have a sense of things coming together. I’ll let you know in another 20,000 words or so where I am.