Covers, Titles and Spoilers

RHYS BOWEN: This week my lovely editor at Berkley contacted me to see what I wanted on the cover of next year’s Royal Spyness novel. I realize how lucky I am to have a publisher that takes my wishes into consideration so that we have a shared vision of the cover of my books. My new Royal Spyness book comes out in four weeks and as always I am delighted with the cover: the Irish castle, the horse racing... all perfect. And the enigmatic man with his back to us. But I thought you'd like to see how the cover evolved. First draft:

We felt that the raincoat needed to pop a little more and the man in boots looked as if he had unnaturally skinny legs. Hence the second draft:

I am all too aware that it is the cover and title that sell the book to new readers. A dreary, boring or wrong cover can doom the best novel. I’ve had friends suffer from a major spoiler on the cover (such as the murderer holding a gun???) A friend’s legal thriller came out with a spaniel on the cover once, because the art director liked spaniels. Doomed as far as male readers were concerned.

I also find that I have to fight from time to time to stop the cover copy from giving away clever plot points. I’d rather it didn’t say “she goes to work for an unpleasant and arrogant millionaire. When he is found murdered…..”  I don’t want my reader to know in advance who is going to die. I want the reader to observe the main characters interacting and to think “something bad is going to happen here” but then be shocked and surprised when it does.  So I’m often hesitant to read cover flaps.

And as for titles: it’s often the title that comes to me first. I find I can’t write with confidence and enthusiasm unless I have a title, even if I know it’s only a working one. Sometimes I have discussions with my publisher about the title. We throw suggestions around and always come up with something that satisfies all of us. But I am always conscious how important the title is. I have to confess that I have been lured by an intriguing title into buying a book. The Thirteenth Tale. Loved it.  Anything with the word Garden intrigues me. And water. The Shape of Water. 

At the moment the fad seems to be to use the word GIRL in the title. Or the word GONE. Or COLD. Or TRAIN. So my next Georgie book will be called COLD GIRL GONE ON THE TRAIN.  Or... GIRL GONE ON THE COLD TRAIN , or TRAIN GONE, GIRL COLD. Future bestseller, do you think?

Above all, the cover should tell you what kind of book you are getting. I once put together a selection of covers that really missed the mark. Here are some of them!

So do share your experiences: writers, have you ever been stuck with a title you didn’t like? Have your editors come up with a title you thought was brilliant? And readers, how often do you pick up a book because the title intrigued you?

And what about covers? Ever bought a book because you couldn’t resist the cover?

AND do you want to know what’s going to happen, who is going to die when you read the cover flap?

Don't Believe A Word I Say

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Remember that game show To Tell The Truth? It was on too late for me to watch when I was a little kid but I could hear the TV in the living room as I listened from bed. I didn’t really need to see., right? Just listen. The key, remember, was to guess which of three contestants was “the real” chicken-plucker or Nobel prize winner. In fact, it had some amazing contestants: Hunter Thompson, and Garry Trudeau, and Orville Redenbacher and Gene Roddenberry. Wrong-Way Corrigan and Caroll Spinney.

ANYWAY. That show was all about lying. About being unreliable. And we loved it!  Now, we put liars in our books. Or, are they really lying? Maybe they are just telling us the truth as they perceive it.

  

Our Obsession with Unreliable Narrators

By Eileen Cook

Unreliable narrators are more popular than ever, appearing in novels from Gone Girl, to Pretty Baby, to The Girl on the Train. We enjoy having someone lie to us- at least on the page. In some cases we doubt them from page one, and in others there’s a twist in the narrative that stops us in our tracks and forces us to rethink everything that came before. It’s that uncertainty that keeps us turning pages.

Reading is the ultimate voyeur activity. You have the opportunity to crawl inside someone’s head. Reading allows you to try out, even for just a few hundred pages, what it is like to be someone else.  You can imagine what it must be like to be a spy, to survive the French Revolution, or having to hide a body after an unexpected murder. But what if you can’t trust the person whose head you are in? There’s something fascinating about being inside someone’s point of view, yet still uncertain if you can put your trust in him or her.

All first person narrators have an element of unreliability. I’ve worked as a counselor and one of the first things you learn about human behavior is is that reality is always filtered through the lens of the person telling the story. There is what objectively happens, but as anyone who has read comments on Facebook knows- almost more important than what is said, is how it’s interpreted.

Narrators are often unreliable because they can’t (or won’t) admit their real motivations to others, or in some cases, even to themselves. They want to control the story so they can manipulate how they’re seen.  Part of the appeal of an unreliable narrator is seeing how they twist events to fit their view of reality. As readers we recognize at some level how we’ve done that in our own lives and we want to see how the character will make sense of their actions and justifications.

Stories with unreliable narrators provide us the opportunity to “Nancy Drew” the situation, looking for clues to the real story. We pride ourselves on being able to see through the character. We filter details and weigh their importance- ultimately deciding what’s true or false.  In the same way that a reader of mystery novels enjoys putting together the clues, racing to solve the crime along with (or even slightly before) the detective, readers of unreliable narrators like trying to resolve the mystery of why people do what they do.

Even if we remove the potentially sinister aspects of an unreliable narrator- the fact remains they’re fun. They’re the wild girl you knew in high school who might do anything at any moment. They’re the politician who says something and then denies ever having uttered that comment a second later with their eyes wide and innocent, leaving you questioning your own sanity. They leave you off balance, and while you may not trust them- they’re never dull.

Writers love creating these characters.  It’s an opportunity to create an individual who can’t be taken at their word, who requires exploration.  And if that exploration keeps readers turning pages long into the night, promising themselves just one more chapter- then I can live with that.  

HAK: Yup.I just read I LET YOU GO. Whoa. And it totally got me. (Have you all read that?)

What do you all think about this “unreliable” thing? Is it new? Or is it as it has always has been--and must be?

 Eileen Cook is a multi-published author with her novels appearing in eight different languages. Her books have been optioned for film and TV.  She spent most of her teen years wishing she were someone else or somewhere else, which is great training for a writer. Her newest book, WITH MALICE, will be out in June 2016. You can read more about Eileen, her books, and the things that strike her as funny at www.eileencook.com. Eileen lives in Vancouver with her husband and two very naughty dogs and no longer wishes to be anyone or anywhere else.

WITH MALICE

In the tradition of Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train and E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars, this gripping, addictive thriller will blow you away.

Eighteen-year-old Jill Charron wakes up in a hospital room, leg in a cast, stitches in her face and a big blank canvas where the last 6 weeks should be. She comes to discover she was involved in a fatal accident while on a school trip in Italy three days previous but was jetted home by her affluent father in order to receive quality care. Care that includes a lawyer. And a press team. Because maybe the accident...wasn’t an accident. Wondering not just what happened but what she did, Jill tries to piece together the events of the past six weeks before she loses her thin hold on her once-perfect life.

Two friends, an exotic foreign location, the potential for revenge and jealousy, and an accident that looks like it might have been murder. It didn’t matter what the truth was - what mattered was that it was fun to talk about.

A gripping and addictive read that grabs the reader and yanks them into a world where nothing is what it seems and where everyone is a suspect. You won’t believe how it ends.

Can Dickens Get you a Date?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: A front page story in last week's New

York Times quotes a just published study in the journal Science. The research, conducted by social psychologists at the New School for Social Research in New York City, found that subjects who read "literary fiction," as opposed to "popular fiction" or nonfiction, performed better on tests measuring empathy, social perception, and emotional intelligence, skills that one would expect to give the subject an advantage in social relationships.

Among the "literary" material were excerpts from novels by Don DeLillo and Wendell Berry; "popular" works included Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, a Rosamund Pilcher novel and a Robert Heinlein story.

The authors of the study theorize that "literary" novels concentrate on the characters' self-examination rather than plot, and that in popular plot-driven fiction characters are interchangeable and stereotyped.

Well, hmm. Interesting. But the more I thought about this, the more uncomfortable I began to feel. This seems enormously subjective--where exactly do you draw the line between "popular" fiction and "literary" fiction? They apparently chose prize-winning novels for the "literary" material. The "popular" or "potboiler" fiction choices seem entirely random.

Charles Dickens's novels, for instance, now considered literary, were the "potboilers" of his day.  Would Shakespeare have been consigned to the popular heap?  Shakespeare and Dickens were certainly purveyors of plot.

While I'm not surprised that reading well-written fiction increased the test subjects' emotional intelligence and empathy, I am surprised that, according to the study, the readers of "popular" fiction did no better than subjects who had read nothing at all.

Hmm. Surely there is a gradient here?

What do you think, dear REDS and readers?  Where exactly would you draw the line between literary and popular fiction? And do you think that readers of popular fiction have no more empathy than those who read nothing at all?

Must We Like the Characters?

LUCY BURDETTE:  I have this question very much on my mind since I just finished GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn. I may be the last person in the world to read this book, and here's the reason: I avoided it because I'd heard the rumor that while the story was compelling, the characters were unappealing.
But one day last week, my neighbor offered me a copy and I couldn't resist a peek to see what all the bestseller fuss was about. And wow, it gripped me and would not let go--all 413 pages. But if I ever got within 50 yards of those characters come to life, I'd run like my life depended on it.

Lisa Scottoline has written that writers should choose a likable character, so that readers can identify with and care about him or her. This makes it more likely that they will be happy to spend 300 or so pages reading along.

So what do you think Jungle Red writers and readers? Is likability important in the characters you write or read?

HALLIE EPHRON: I found Gone Girl so compelling but very unsettling at the end. It's what makes it a terrific book club book -- so much to talk about. I don't think a series could have Nick or Amy Dunne as its protagonist. Having said that, I'd love to read a sequel set 20 years later with their child as the protagonist. And what fresh hell, I wonder, has gone on in the meantime?

RHYS BOWEN: I couldn't live with a character I didn't like for six months. I find I'm so involved with my protagonist that if Molly Murphy is having a fight with her husband, I'm snipping at mine for no reason. So God knows I'd be with an unlikeable heroine inside my head. I read the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo etc and didn't like any of those characters but was compelled to go on reading. Usually I put down a book when I can't find a character I'd like to follow.

LUCY: LOL Rhys--the things we put our husbands through!


HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: You all are going to sneer--and I know it's not fashionable to say so--but I think it's all about the plot. The story. If there's a character I don't like, but in a story that's fabulous, fine with me. Do we "like" Scarlett O'Hara? Do we "like" Carrie? Or Undine in Custom of the Country? (Or Nelson DeMIlle's John Corey?)

And Amy's voice in Gone Girl permeated my brain so much I got snarky for awhile--that's writing for you!

ROSEMARY HARRIS: Funny, I just reread that Lisa Scottoline quote too and I don't agree. I think they can either be likeable or compelling. It's boring when everyone is likeable.

Perhaps she was talking about a series protagonist ala Kinsey Milhone - someone you could conceivably be living with for decades! Although most series don't last that long these days.

Re Gone Girl - I didn't mind that they were unlikeable. Ever read The Maltese Falcon? They were all pretty unlikeable. The characters in House of Cards are all pretty reprehensible - but I'm aching for the next season.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I have a hard time staying with a book if I don't like anyone in it. I certainly can't imagine writing a series with an unlikeable protagonist. I don't think I'd be very nice to live with in the process... That said, I find I LOVE writing bad characters in my books--the ones who say and do things that I would never say or do. It's very liberating.
And Lucy, you weren't the last person in the world not to have read Gone, Girl, because I haven't read it either.
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: As a writer, I'll agree with everyone who's said it would be hard, if not impossible, to write a series protagonist who was unlikeable. However, I positively enjoy writing minor characters who are horrid. I think it's an outlet for saying or doing all the things I'll never say or do!

I agree, however, that the most important trait for a character is to be compelling. If your lead is a character that the reader absolutely can't take his or her eyes off of... well, that's a memorable character. See, e.g., Hannibal the Cannibal, Richard III, or, as Ro says, Francis Underwood in HOUSE OF CARDS. All of them prove it's entirely possible to root for the bad guy.

LUCY: Red readers, let us know what you think. And, this is very big book week. We are celebrating Red Rhys's book launch for Heirs and Graces tomorrow. Then our pal Leslie Budewitz on Wednesday. We are giving away books and arcs all week to lucky and loyal commenters. 

Let's start right now--giving away an ARC of the desperately awaited Julia Spencer-Fleming book, THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS....