Tried and True Plots

By Mark W. Danielson
Good versus evil, the underdog rises, the lost kid comes home. All are popular themes that are sure to win audiences. For lack of a better description, I’ll call them core plots. In movies, core plots are moneymakers. In writing, they usually mean a series. Romance and western writers rarely stray from their core formulas. Doing so ensures longevity, but it can also get boring and predictable.

I recently watched Real Steel, the first CGI movie I’ve seen in a while, and walked away feeling so-so. Compared to The Help, The Debt, Moneyball, Dolphin’s Tale, and Midnight in Paris, Real Steel melted like butter. Still, it’s been a box office smash and its audience has given it high approval ratings because it’s a feel-good movie about a comeback kid. Unfortunately, we’ve seen this plot before. Pair Rocky and The Little Engine That Could and you’re on the right track. (Pun intended.)

Mystery writers cannot get away with wowing readers with on-screen trickery, though. Their readers demand fresh plots with fun twists. The writers for Castle set the bar on how to do this well. Readers should be turning pages thinking, “Wow, I didn’t see that one coming.” If they manage to figure out the plot one third of the way into the story, then the author has failed.

Every mystery author wants their readers to think they know the plot and then Bam! take them in another direction. How you do that depends upon your writing style, but it all has to make sense so it’s believable. Learning to do this well is the real mystery in writing.

It may not hit you that your story isn’t unique until someone else reads it for the first time. Call these readers The Grim Reaper’s helpers. (Others call them editors.) Because murder can come in so many forms, it is difficult not to duplicate. For example, one day my daughter called me up with a great murder plot – use an icicle to kill someone. That way there would be no prints or means of tracing the murder weapon back to you. I told her it was a great idea except it had been done before and went on to explain its limitations. But what the heck, we had a good laugh over what had come to her in a dream. (Just to be clear, my daughter has no aspiration of murdering anyone.) The point here is the cause of death isn’t as important as the story behind the death. Why did the killer commit the act? What steps did they take to conceal their act? What ultimately led to their getting caught? The answers to these questions must be unique in every mystery. So dig a little deeper and make sure you don’t fall into the tired and true category. It may take a little longer, but your audience will thank you for your effort.

Got a Cure for Blogger's Block?

By Chester Campbell

I've never been plagued by that strange malady known as writer's block. When I start on a story, I have no problem pursuing it to the end. Of course, when I get to the end, that isn't really the end. It's just time to go back to the beginning and start revising. But lately I've faced another dilemma: blogger's block. I sit down to create one of these scintillating journalistic exercises and...nothing. No idea what to write about. Should it be a piece on the craft of mystery writing, a short essay on some topic of current interest, some hopefully exciting tale from my checkered career?

Okay, say we try the writing assignment. I've been crafting mysteries full-time, more of less, for the last twenty years. I've read numerous books on writing, sat through panels at conferences and conventions covering just about any area of writing you could imagine. I've devoured my share of essays on everything from plots to characters to settings to...well, how about stuff to avoid (adverbs) and stuff to concentrate on (active verbs). Is there anything that hasn't been covered? Not likely. Do I have a unique approach to any of this?

I suppose my contribution might serve to remind someone of something they already knew but let slide in the pressure of the moment. That's one of the advantages I get from attending writers' conferences. It jogs my memory of things I should be putting into practice but have gotten away from over time.

Maybe it would be a good idea to take on some current hot-button issue. Politics is the big thing now, with the elections coming up in a few weeks. That's a sure way to stir people's ire. If you happen to be on the opposite side from them, you'd better be wearing a Kevlar vest. Have you read the comments following political pieces in places like the Huffington Post? If you enjoy crucifixion, give it a try.

You'd think everybody would be against taxes, but not this season. If you make more than $250,000, you're one of "them." I hardly take in a fraction of that, but it isn't because I wouldn't like to. My wife and I are always talking about how we wish we had enough money we could hand out $20 bills to every guy we see standing on the corner with a sign. Guess I'll have to save taxes for another time.

Hmm, looks like I'm down to my last choice, writing about an exciting adventure from my past. I've already covered a bunch of those, like the time my fourteen-year old buddy and I rode our bikes to the airport and went up in a snazzy open cockpit plane. I recently wrote in my own blog about rafting into the River of No Return Wilderness Area. I'm sure there are plenty of others I could  dig out of my rusty memory banks, but it's getting late and this blog needs to be up at 12:01 a.m.

So guess I'm back to my opening question: anybody got a cure for blogger's block?

Find me suffering also at Mystery Mania.

Common Writing Flaws

By Chester Campbell

I'm in the midst of reading manuscripts for a mystery writing competition. I thought it might be instructive to mention a few of the most common shortcomings I've found. Overall, the writing has been quite competent, but most entries could use the sure hand of a skilled editor. I took on the job with some trepidation. When reading for pleasure, I (like most readers, I suspect) tend to ignore minor miscues if the story is interesting. With this task, I have been forced to adopt a more critical stance.

The most common problem I've found is getting too carried away with the characters or the settling and failing to move the plot along. Let's face it, a mystery is about a crime and the difficulties it causes, usually including a murder. Character is important, but unless all these well-drawn people get involved in the crime or its solution before too many chapters pass, readers will lose interest. In so-called "literature," characters can go on doing mundane things ad nauseam, but in mysteries something critical has to happen.

In a minority of the manuscripts, the writer needed to loosen up when it came to dialogue. That's one place where reading the lines aloud helps. If it doesn't sound natural, it ain't. Some casual conversations sound more like lectures. Long, carefully constructed sentences instead of several fragments, the way real people talk.

One manuscript began: "It was a dark and stormy night." The second sentence said, "No really, it was a dark and stormy night." It was written as a humorous piece but rambled too much. The rules for the contest said you could send up to fifty pages. This one stopped at sixteen. If the manuscript ended there, it would make a great short story. But this was a novel-writing contest. Oh, well.

Another problem I encountered was overwriting. I got introduced to that subject early in my novel-writing career when I sent a manuscript of more than 600 typed pages to an agent. The agency was interested but said the story was overwritten and needed to be pared considerably. I didn't know what the term meant but quickly learned I was guilty of things like too much description. One of the contest entries is set in a popular European city and sounds too much like a travelogue.

Frequent shifts in point of view can be a show-stopper for a mystery writer. Constant head-hopping leads to confusion. You encounter an important point and wonder "how did he know that?" Then you realize you're wandering around in some other character's mind.

Fortunately, all of these problems are fixable. Unfortunately, most of the writers guilty of them don't realize what they're doing wrong. It's why the advice to let a competent editor critique your manuscript before you send it off is so important. We all make mistakes, and with a little extra effort we can correct them.

Mystery Mania

Castle

By Mark W. Danielson

Not since Murder She Wrote has there been a television mystery show worthy of mention. This is the second season for Castle, but I didn’t start watching until this year. The premise is a successful and debonair mystery writer Rick Castle is allowed to shadow attractive, intelligent female Homicide Detective Kate Beckett, much to her dismay. The chemistry between these characters is as brilliant as the script. Castle uses his writer’s intellect to think like criminal and detective to assist in the apprehension of the killer. Sure, sometimes things conveniently come together, but hey, it’s only an hour show, and each episode is unique. The good news is you don’t have to have watch every week to keep up.

Mind you, I’m not shunning my writing and flying careers to become a television critic, but this show is of interest to every mystery novelist. Its concepts are fresh, the characters are believable and likeable, and the twists are entertaining. In other words, Castle is a great example of how good mystery novels should read, and that’s why I recommend it to every mystery writer. Castle airs on Monday nights at 9 Central; 10 Pacific/East Coast time.

While watching, writers should pay attention to the show’s pacing, how its characters interact, and why it keeps your interest. The casting is superb, and the writers do an amazing job in creating believable, witty scripts. If its viewers don’t care about the characters, Castle would be off the air. Instead, it has been renewed for a third season.

Novels share the same elements as Castle. It matters not who writes a novel, if the story doesn’t grab me within the first couple of chapters, I’ll put it down, even if I’m trapped on an airliner with nothing better to do. (To clarify, I’m referring to when I’m flying as a passenger, not when I’m piloting the airplane.)

Castle includes enough humor to get a laugh, but is still serious enough to be a convincing murder investigation. In a recent episode, the victim dies from a vat of liquid nitrogen being poured on him. When someone checks for a pulse, his hand breaks off – and it’s so well done, it’s funny. Of course, they throw in a few jokes, too, but that is also appropriate. You see, “black humor” keeps law enforcement officers sane in otherwise dismal situations. Ambulance and fire crews share this humor for the same reasons. (For example, a firefighter remarks to a fellow firefighter about a dead victim being extra crispy – the way he likes them. Sure, it may seem sick, but it also relieves tension and eases the task of removing charred bodies.)

If you enjoy writing about murder, then give Castle a look. You might just learn a thing or two.

J. A. Jance

by Jean Henry Mead

Bestselling novelist J.A. Jance has two recently released novels, Fire and Ice from HarperCollins and Trial by Fire by Simon and Schuster. She's pictured with her dogs, Aggie and Daph, named for Agatha Christie and Daphne du Maurier.

Judy, when did you first know you wanted to become a mystery writer?

I knew I wanted to be a writer from the time I was in second grade. I didn't specifically want to be a "mystery writer" but because I always read mysteries it was a natural fit.

Tell us about Fire and Ice and Trial by Fire.

Fire and Ice is the second pairing of my two detectives, Joanna Brady in Arizona and J. P. Beaumont in Seattle. They are working seemingly separate cases but, by the end of the book, they find the two are definitely connected. Beau's parts of the story are told in his first person voice. Joanna's parts are told in the third person.

Trial by Fire, Ali number 5, has her working as a newly appointed Media Relations Officer for the Yavapai County Sheriff's Department. When eco-terrorists burn down a supposedly unoccupied house, Ali is part of the investigation that first must identify the victim before locating the killer.

How did your J.P. Beaumont, Joanna Brady and Ali Reynolds series come into being?

Until Proven Guilty, the first Beaumont book was published in 1985. When I wrote it, I thought I was writing a one-time book. I was new to Seattle, but the character was a Seattle native. I had to do a lot of research to make that work, and writing in from a male first person point of view was challenging. After writing nine Beaumonts in a row, I was growing tired of the character.

My editor suggested I come up with some other character so I could alternate. When I wrote the first Joanna Brady, Desert Heat, I knew I was writing a series but I used my experiences of being a single parent, of living in the Arizona desert, and of working in a non-traditional job to create her character. Ali Reynolds grew out of seeing a longtime Tucson female newscaster pushed out of her job due to age factors.

What in your background prepared you to write grisly crime and horror novels?

I have the dubious honor of having spent sixty days of my life in the early seventies being stalked by a serial killer, someone who is still in prison as I write this. During that time I wore a loaded weapon, and I was fully prepared to use it. I used some of what I learned from that investigation to create the background for Hour of the Hunter, Kiss of the Bees, and Day of the Dead.

Where do you do your best writing, in Seattle or Tucson, and why?

I write in both places. It remains to be seen which writing is best. And I don't have to BE in Arizona to WRITE about Arizona. It was in trying to turn the landscape around Bisbee into words when I finally realized why with the red shale hills and the limestone cliffs that Bisbee High School's color are red and gray.

Who are your favorite authors and which one most influenced your own writing?

I started out reading Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene. But I read John D. McDonald and Mickey Spillane. Those were the people who showed me it was possible to write a series of books for adults.

What’s your writing schedule like and do you aim for a certain amount of words each day?

Since I'm on a two book a year schedule, I write every day. I don't have a set number of words. I'm also a wife, mother and grandmother. I like having a life.

What are the basic ingredients for a bestselling novel? How long did it take you to reach the list?

I don't know the basic ingredients. I guess I'd say characters and plots. As for when did I make the list? Fifteen or twenty books ago probably, but making the lists is entirely arbitrary and based on decisions that are made far away from the author's effort. I don't think the books I wrote before making "the list" were of any lesser quality than the ones that have.

When did you begin donating a percentage of your bookstore earnings to charities, and which ones?

Very early on. I don't remember exactly. I've been involved with the YWCA, the Humane Society, the Relay for Life, ALS research.

Advice to fledgling writers.

When I bought my first computer--1983--the guy who installed my word processing program fixed it so every time I booted up the computer, these were the words that flashed across the screen: A writer is someone who has written TODAY! Those were words I clung to when I was a "pre-published" writer and that still resonate with me today. Today I AM a writer. I'm working on Chapter 5 of the next Ali book.

J. A.'s website is www.jajance.com. She also has a blog there as well as at www.Seattlepi.com in the City Brights section.

Murderous Motivations

By Beth Terrell

One of the most challenging facets of mystery writing is creating believable villains. One key to this is to give your villain a compelling--or at least, believable--motivation.

I've heard that there are only 4 motives for murder: love/sex, greed, revenge, and madness. There are variations on these themes--for example, obsession is a twisted form of love, greed may manifest as a lust for money or for power, and revenge may have its roots in the loss of love or in the loss of self-esteem (personal power) through humiliation--but whatever the surface motive, dig deep enough, and you'll find its roots in one of the basic four. Self-preservation could be added to the mix, but it might be said that this particular motive falls either under love (of self), greed (fear of loss of status or esteem), or madness (if the perceived threat is, in fact, all in the killer's head).

Ed McBain once wrote about a sleuth who was driven by the desire to discover an entirely new motive for murder, one that didn't trace back to one of the basic four. He never did.

P.D. James defined the four motives as: love, lust, lucre, and loathing. It's pretty easy to tie this more alliterative list to the one given above. Love might lead to a jealous rage (a husband finds his wife in bed with his best friend), a revenge killing (a woman stalks and executes her daughter's rapists), or obsession (stalker kills actress because, if he can't have her, no one can). Lust might be lust for sex or power. Lucre might lead to treachery or blackmail. Loathing might stem from the desire for revenge over real or imagined slights.

The FBI defines four basic categories of murder. Almost all (if not all) have their roots in the four basic motivations. The FBI Crimes Classification Manual describes the categories as follows:

1. Criminal Enterprise Murder
2. Personal Cause Murder
3. Sexual Homicide
4. Group Cause Homicide

The criminal enterprise murder includes all murders committed for personal gain (insurance scams, gang wars over turf, inheritance, etc.) and those committed during the commission of another violent crime.

The personal cause murder is the result of an emotional conflict. These homicides include those in which the murderer constructs an elaborate fantasy about his or her victim and will do anything to preserve it--including killing the object of his or her fascination. Other types of personal cause murders are domestic homicides, revenge killings, "authority homicides" (in which the victim is in a position of authority over the killer), extremist homicides (committed because of the killers ideology), and mercy/hero murders (such as a health care worker who acts out of a desire to put his or her victims out of their misery). (There is also what is known as the nonspecific homicide, in which the killer's motive is never discovered, but this does not generally make for very satisfying crime literature.)

Sexual homicides are those in which the sequence of events leading up to a murder have a sexual component. These homicides include children killed by pedophiles, women killed by their rapists, and the stereotypical serial killer for whom murder is accompanied by sexual gratification. Perhaps the worst of the sexual homicides are those committed by sexual sadists, who obtain gratification by means of their victims' suffering.

Group homicides are, as the name indicates, committed by multiple assailants. Motives vary, as in the personal homicides.

The Encyclopedia of Murder and Violent Crime (by Eric W. Hickey) lists a number of possible motivations for murder. Again, all were rooted, to some degree, in the Basic Four. This is an amazing book. It can be purchased for a hefty fee; the ones I looked at started at $154. Some of the motives Hickey lists are:

Abandonment/Rejection - the killer feels unloved and either lashes out in anger (many school shootings) or kills in an attempt to keep the loved one from leaving (Jeffrey Dahmer)
Altruism - mercy killings, saving victim from a worse fate or from a sinful life
Cover-up - destruction of evidence, silencing witnesses
Alcohol and drugs - a type of chemically induced, temporary madness
Protection of self or others - ex.: a woman kills her husband to protect the daughter he's abusing
Fatal Abuse - a habitual abuser loses control and goes too far
Frustration/Anger - perhaps a mother "snaps" and shakes her crying child to death, a man beats his father who has Alzheimer's, or a frustrated, back-alley boxer bites off the nose of an opponent
Greed - committed for personal gain
Escape - the killer feels an overwhelming need to get away (perhaps from an abusive relationship or a hostage situation, but also perhaps from a situation in which the killer is a caregiver and feels like he or she has no other way out)
Fame/celebrity - the killer believes he or she will become famous because of his or her killing spree
Hate/resentment - "Mother always liked you best."; "That jerk got me fired, took my job, and now he's sleeping with my wife. Enough's enough."
Jealousy/rivalry - a motivation as old as Caine and Abel
Sexual property - the killer sees the victim as belonging to him
Unwanted Children - a young mother gives birth at the prom, strangles her baby, and leaves it in the garbage can, then goes out to dance with her boyfriend; Susan Nicole Smith drowns her two small sons after her lover breaks up with her because he doesn't want children.

Sadly, there are probably many, many more. How about your villains? What makes them tick? What makes them cross that most irrevocable line?