Short blogs from two mystery writers caught my eye this week. Marcia Preston, past president of the Oklahoma Writers Federation, wrote about her son who’s off on his third tour of Afghanistan. Mary O’Gara, current president of Sisters in Crime-Internet Chapter, remembered family members who came home safely from two World Wars, offering a meditation that could easily be used as a cure for writer’s block. Together, these thoughtful blogs seem just right for the Fourth of July observance.
MARCIA PRESTON
I met Marcia Preston in Fresno, California, where she was on the 2001 faculty of the now-defunct William Saroyan Conference. I still have my cassette tape of her workshop on writing a short story. She laid it out so logically and made it sound so easy that I still think “one of these days” I’m going to write a short story.
At the time Marcia was editor-publisher of ByLine magazine and had just written her first mystery, PERHAPS SHE’LL DIE, which was nominated for the 2002 Mary Higgins Clark Award, and for Macavity and Barry awards in the Best First Mystery division.
She has since sold the magazine and (writing as M.K. Preston) published an Oklahoma mystery series featuring Chantalene Morrell, daughter of a Gypsy mother and a redneck father. SONG OF THE BONES won the 2004 Mary Higgins Clark Award for suspense fiction, and also the 2004 Oklahoma Book Award in fiction.
Her most recent novels are general fiction. The latest is THE WIND COMES SWEEPING, set on a wind farm and cattle ranch in Oklahoma.
Marcia earned degrees from University of Central Oklahoma, taught in public high schools for more than a decade, and worked for a time as PR and publications director for the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. There’s more about her and her books on her web site at www.MarciaPreston.com.
Here’s Marcia’s blog.
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THIRD TOUR by Marcia Preston
Do you know how hard it is to watch your child deploy to war in the Mid-East – for the third time in six years?
Some of you do know. Many sons and daughters have served even more tours. By the third deployment, you start to wonder how many times the little buzz-haired boy you raised can walk into harm’s way and return safe and whole. I won’t say unscathed, because nobody returns without cost.
Everyone says it’s much safer in Iraq now, but every day we read of deaths from IEDs and suicide bombings. Our son wears body armor under a standard uniform that’s not cool to start with, in summer temperatures that reach 110 to 120 degrees. And I better not find out he ever goes out without that body armor, even though this is a kid who loved to goose hunt in freezing weather and used to suffer in Oklahoma heat.
I can’t know what it’s really like for our military people, how they face their fears or mark the days missing their families, how they cope. I admire them more than I can speak. But I do know what it’s like for the ones left behind.
Think of the thousands of spouses and children, the mothers and fathers, who deal with this every day. They go about their daily lives doing their best to function normally, but a big chunk of their minds and hearts is overseas, sweating out the days with someone they love more than life itself.
They also serve who only stand and wait.
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MARY O’GARA
Albuquerque writer Mary O'Gara is the new president of the Sisters in Crime Internet chapter, an online chapter of Sisters in Crime, the international organization for readers and writers of mysteries and crime fiction. She’s also one of the busiest and most generous people I know.
Mary is a creativity and spiritual life coach with an eclectic approach to coaching. She has a lifelong passionate interest in creativity and especially enjoys coaching writers, artists, small business owners, and women over 50 who are creating new ways of living in the second half of life.
She’s also an internationally known psychic and astrologer who has been a professional astrologer since 1976, and it was an astrologer that I met her in 2003. I had an appointment with Mary while I was in Albuquerque visiting a friend and attending a workshop sponsored by South West Writers.
Mary’s bio is longer than my arm, but briefly:
She’s a journalism graduate from the University of Nebraska with both the Ph.D. and the D.D. from the Academy of Universal Truth, Seattle. She writers the Starfire astrology column for Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine and the Riding by the Stars column for Motorcycle Rider News. She has been offering online workshops on psychic topics for writers for more than a decade.
Mary is the author of short fiction published in Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine and in two anthologies, Just in Time from eWings Press and The Trouble with Romance from Trebleheart.
The Trouble with Romance was a New Mexico Book Awards finalist. Read more from Mary at her web site: www.maryogara.com.
Mary’s blog was written for Memorial Day but it’s appropriate for any patriotic holiday, and for any writer’s day.
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MEMORIAL DAY AND THE WRITER
By Mary O’Gara
Today is a fine day for a writing dialogue with someone you loved–or might have loved if he or she had returned from a war, any war–or perhaps for writing a heartfelt prayer for the ones who did come back.
In Red Oak, Iowa, my home town, they still fly the funeral flags of our hometown veterans on Memorial Day. Among them are two men I loved who came back: My father and my grandmother’s brother, who was my surrogate grandfather: Charles Arthur Reese and Philo Douglas Clark.
The stories they told me as a child were wildly exaggerated and made war sound like a great adventure. Today I might dialogue with Uncle Philo about his real memories of World War One. Dialogues aren’t limited to living people.
You could also dialogue with the condition of living in a world at war, and you might be surprised at what you discover for your own life and your writing.
Or this may be a chance to say good-bye in dialogue–or hello to someone you never got to meet.
Dialoguing is simple: Sit quietly and breathe slowly and deeply. Write a name on the journal page and make a short list of up to a dozen milestones in that person’s life, remembering that you are only one of those milestones. Then close your eyes and imagine that person or something representing the situation in front of you.
Close your eyes.
Write: Hello or some other greeting.
Listen and record what you hear or understand.
Write your next sentence. Continue until the conversation drops.
Ask if there’s anything else.
Sit in silence a little longer, waiting.
And when it’s really done, jot down a summary sentence for yourself or maybe a reminder about what you want to take into the rest of your life from this moment.
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By Pat Browning
Last Wednesday I was guest speaker at a creative writing class sponsored by the city recreation department. We gathered at the senior center to talk about short stories.
Fortunately I had a tape of Marcia Preston's workshop at the 2001Win-Win Conference in Fresno, Calif. Title: "One Way To Plot A Saleable Short Story." Macia is an Oklahoma novelist, and former publisher of ByLine Magazine.
In her tape, Marcia explains commercial fiction and discusses a 5-step structure for a commercial short story. It’s a structure she learned from a book by an OU professor named Foster Harris.
Curiosity being part of a writer's DNA, I looked up Foster Harris on amazon.com. His name was William Foster-Harris, and his book is THE BASIC PATTERNS OF PLOT. It’s out of print, but there's a used paperback available for $181.71 (plus $3.99 S&H) from a bookseller in Baltimore, and 3 used hardcover copies from $32.95 to $89.95.
Further intrigued, I did a quick Internet search for Foster-Harris. I’m amazed at the life he led and the writing he did. At www.philsp.com I found this:
**1903-1978. Educator, author, oilman, editor of an oil-related newspaper. Born in the Chickasaw Nation Indian Territory. Died in Norman, Oklahoma.**
Foster Harris wrote constantly during the 1920, 30s and 40s. His bibliography is longer than my arm and includes several novelettes. Obviously, he knew what he was talking about. He spoke from successful experience.
At Wednesday’s program we discussed the 5 steps:
Quoting Marcia: “These are really 5 steps for pre-writing, building a skeleton that we can hang a story on. These are the bones. How you put the flesh on them is up to you. That’s where the writing comes in.”
The 5 steps and Marcia’s examples.
1. Pick a character – an engaging, sympathetic lead character with whom the reader can identify and from whose point of view the story is told.
Ex: Jason, teenage boy, looking forward to his senior year in high school.
2. Give the character a major goal or big dream.
Ex. Jason wants to start on his basketball team. He knows he’s too short for college or pro basketball, but wants to finish his high school career as a starter.
3.There must be a conflict. Something stands in the character’s way.
Ex. First day of practice, Jason sees a new kid, Brian, who was a starter at another school and has transferred to Jason’s school. He’s taller than Jason, too.
4. “The plot thickens.” Find a way to raise the tension, and force character to take action, that will cause him either to fail or to succeed.
Ex. Jason thinks of a way to show up the new kid. He challenges Brian to a one-on-one after school, knowing the coaches will be hanging around. Brian wins the one-on-one, dunking the ball into the basket right over Jason’s head. The tension is like a roller coaster, climbing up, up, up.
5. Climax. Brian now thinks of Jason as a friend, and confides that if he doesn’t pass his history exam he’ll be ineligible for the team. He asks Jason to help him prep for the exam.
Ex. Jason’s dilemma: If he helps Brian pass the test, Brian will get the starting position. If he doesn’t help Brian, he’ll feel like a jerk. This is not only a plot choice, but a life choice. Jason agrees to help, but sees his goal/his dream going down the drain.
The roller coaster goes all the way down. The release of tension is why we read fiction or ride roller coasters.
Conclusion: Americans like a happy or hopeful ending. Here’s one.
Jason is riding the bench the night of the game, while Brian is the star of the show. Jason’s only consolation is that he did the right thing. But wait --
Maybe an assistant coach, or the history teacher, tells Jason that he heard what Jason did, and when scholarship time comes up again, Jason’s name will be high on the list.
OR a cheerleader comes up to him and says she heard he was a good guy and she’ll meet him later. Both are endings with a note of hope and/or satisfaction.
Then my group brainstormed a short story following the 5 steps and they were very inventive. Someone suggested an English girl who wants to stay in the U.S. She’s on a work visa studying for citizenship. No, she’s an exchange student. No, she’s a diplomat’s daughter. By the time they got into who she was and possible complications blocking her goal, they were tossing out ideas left and right, but our time was up.
Next time, given our economic downturn, I think I'll also use O.Henry's "The Gift of the Magi." It's a literary piece but still follows the commercial plot structure, or variations.
A summary of that story from Wikipedia:
“James Dillingham Young and his wife Della are a young couple who are very much in love with each other, but can barely afford their one-room apartment due to their very bad economic situation. For Christmas, Della decides to buy Jim a chain which costs twenty dollars for his prized pocket watch given to him by his father. To raise the funds, she has her long hair cut off and sold to make a wig. Meanwhile, Jim decides to sell his watch to buy Della a beautiful set of combs made out of tortoise shell for her lovely, knee-length brown hair. Although each is disappointed to find the gift they chose rendered useless, each is pleased with the gift they received, because it represents their love for one another.
"The Gift of the Magi" has stood the test of time. It has been used or adapted for everything from Hallmark Hall of Fame to Saturday Night Live. Quality writing never goes out of style.
