Playing fair: The mystery writer's high-wire act

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Today I'm posing a wonky writing question.

Mystery writers write genre fiction. Genre. Which means there are a ton of expectations we need to meet or address. And two of them have always seemed to me to be in conflict with one another.

#1: Play fair with the reader.

This translates to: whatever the narrator knows, the reader should also know. If the narrator sees something, the reader should "see" it, too.

In other words, it's not kosher for the narrator to say, "I couldn't believe what I saw!" or "There, in the corner, I saw something that made me realize what was going on." And then not, right then and there, when the narrator has the realization, reveal it to the reader.

The reasoning here is that readers want a fair crack at solving the mystery along with the sleuth. They don’t want to feel cheated because the sleuth hid key clues.

#2: Create suspense by posing unanswered questions and delaying the answer.

This can involve saying something like, "I couldn't believe what I saw!" and then waiting three more chapters before revealing what that seen thing was.

The reasoning here is that suspense will keep reading. Turning those pages. Looking for the answers to those unanswered questions.

So I feel that push/pull when I'm structuring my tale: how to create suspense by posing unanswered questions and delaying the answer, on the one hand, and playing fair with the reader on the other?

So todays queston: How have you reconciled those competing goals to create a page turner? Or do you you just ignore both "rules" and let the chips fall?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: What a tough question, Hallie! I think I'm cheating a little bit because I write in third person with multiple viewpoints, so sometimes the reader may know things that my detectives don't.

But I absolutely play fair–my detectives never make a big discovery that the reader doesn't learn, too. I think scene and chapter breaks as the characters are ABOUT to learn something go a long way towards creating tension, but no cheating by keeping that information a secret allowed.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: When I teach my seminar on suspense, one of the works I reference is, believe it or not, Cinderella.

Everyone knows the story, and it points out the underlying basics of suspense: the reader needs to CARE about the character and the character’s goal needs to be desperately important to them. (I could go into a whole ‘nother seminar on why caring is different from liking, but I’ll save it for another day.)

I don’t think the suspense is in “I can’t believe what I saw,” because the answer to “what did the sleuth see?” should immediately lead to another question, or another obstacle blocking the sleuth from racing their goal.

An amazing example of this is K.J. Erickson’s THE LAST WITNESS, where the detective knows the victim’s husband murdered her. But he doesn’t know how and he can’t find the body. It’s a great example of the suspense coming from the character’s goal, not the solution to the murder.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I think suspense is the way authors can use time. We have control over whether time passes quickly or slowly, and can play with that to tease out suspense.

In my classes, I teach suspense with—-Baseball! It’s the bottom of the ninth, tie game, two outs, bases loaded, and the guy comes to the bat.

The ballpark is full. But! Half the people are rooting passionately for the batter to score–and the other half is rooting just as passionately for him to fail. Two groups rooting passionately for the OPPOSITE outcome! ANd it’s good guys and bad guys, depending on where you sit. It’s the highest moment of the highest stakes in baseball. We all hold our breath. WHAT will happen? In seconds we will be cheering or devastated. And the batter will be running! Or slinking back to the dugout.

But it’s the moment BETWEEN that’s the jewel of suspense. The moment before the pitch and the swing. In real life, it’s an instant. But in a book, in that intense moment of the book’s real life, the author can pause. Put the action on hold. And, depending on POV, tease that moment out while the reader is holding a hope in their minds. And then boom, come back to it.

And yes ,as a result, it’s all about motivation. What does someone want, and how far will they go to get it? Will they get it? What will happen if they fail? That’s suspense.

JENN McKINLAY: I’m a let the chips fall sort of writer. I always leave a trail back to the killer but I throw in a lot of misdirection.

I write in first or third but only one point of view so the reader is the sleuth and learns everything the sleuth does. There are no “I can’t believe what I just saw” moments as I feel that’s unfair!

RHYS BOWEN: it’s all a question of who do we trust, isn’t it? Who is good and who is bad.

I do like to play fair with the reader. Writing mysteries mainly in the first person we learn clues at the same time as the sleuth. But this is also useful for suspense if the reader puts two and two together quicker than the sleuth. She goes into a house of a person we don’t think we can trust.

HALLIE: So, as a reader, does it drive you nuts when the writer plays fast and loose with the "play fair" rule. Do contrived "cliffhangers" drive you bananas? Or do you just let yourself go with the flow if everything else is working?

Steven James, the consummate story blender

HALLIE EPHRON: I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed on  The Story Blender, a fantastic podcast hosted by Steven James and featuring interviews with storytellers of all stripes. 

Steven is a masterful storyteller in his own right. He is a national bestselling and award-winning author of fourteen pulse-pounding thrillers featuring FBI Special Agent Patrick Bowers. Publishers Weekly calls him a “master storyteller at the peak of his game.” 

He is also insightful about the art of storytelling, and wrote Story Trumps Structure.

Welcome Steven! When and how did you come up with the idea for The Story Blender, and who have been some of your top "gets" in terms of storytellers?

STEVEN JAMES: I think that every great story is a combination of factors: audience engagement, emotional resonance, escalation, desire, causality, and more. The blend of those ingredients differs for different art forms (oral storytelling, film and fiction, for instance) but everyone loves a great, well-told story.

So, The Story Blender has been my opportunity to pick the brains of some of the best storytellers out there and uncover the secrets to what makes their stories so powerful. 

I’ve been really honored by all the guests who’ve joined me. I particularly enjoyed speaking with screenwriter Mark Bomback (from the recent Planet of the Apes movies), sand artist and storyteller Joe Castillo, comedian Bob Stromberg, and international best-selling authors Jeffery Deaver, Sue Grafton, and Sandra Brown.  

And, of course, you, Hallie!

HALLIE: You write pulse-pounding thrillers. And you teach and write about storytelling. What is the one piece of advice you'd give to aspiring thriller writers?

STEVEN: Suspense is created not by what you conceal from readers but by what you reveal to them. Sometimes authors will tell me, “I didn’t want to give too much away and I wanted to create suspense so I didn’t tell the readers about—whatever it might be.”

That’s how you create mystery (and appeal to curiosity) but not how you create suspense (which increases apprehension). When readers are aware of impending peril that a character is not aware of (and they have concern for that character), they’ll feel anxiety. So, let readers see the bomb under the table, the killer lurking in the basement, the terrorist putting on his suicide vest, but keep that information from the characters who might suffer. In this way, you create suspense by revelation of danger to readers, but concealment to characters. 

HALLIE: The title of one of your books on writing is STORY TRUMPS STRUCTURE. What do you mean by that?

STEVEN: Regarding story structure, some stories have one act (for instance, one-act plays), some have two (most sitcoms), some have three, others four or five (like Shakespeare’s plays), and so on. For every storytelling “rule” there are notable exceptions. 

All stories involve some sort of pursuit, but how many chapters or acts or pages that takes depends more on the obstacles that the characters encounter and their subsequent choices than it does on a fill-in-the-blanks plot template.

So, rather than teach a plot formula I’m trying to help authors and screenwriters understand the principles of storytelling. 

Also, I write organically, without an outline, and there hasn’t really been a practical book for those who use this approach on how to do it. I believe that the more you understand what lies at the heart of a great story, the less you’ll need to outline and the less you’ll need to write “by the seat of your pants.”



HALLIE: You've written nine books featuring FBI agent Patrick Bowers. The early titles were OPENING MOVES. Then THE PAWN. Then THE ROOK. Can you talk about chess (a sedate game, played mostly while seated) and how that sparked stories packed with riveting suspense and action?

STEVEN: Ha! I’ve never been asked that question before. 

When I was beginning the series I was drawn to the idea of strategy and trying to get one step ahead of your opponent—in chess, as well as in an investigation. Cat and mouse intrigue. Move/countermove. That’s what drew me to the idea.

Also, for marketing purposes, I thought it would be intriguing to write a book for each piece on the board so that readers could try to collect them all. So, it’s been fun to hear from fans of the series as they anticipated what book would come next. 

HALLIE: When you started writing about Bowers, did you have any idea how many books about him that'd be writing?

STEVEN: I had the dream of perhaps completing the chess board, but no real anticipation that I would. As time progressed and readers responded to the series, it grew book by book, chess piece by chess piece. 

I’m now working on a spinoff series of sequels that includes my latest EVERY DEADLY KISS. 

I realized recently that I’ve written nearly 1.4 million words about Patrick Bowers and he’s still an intriguing character to me. 

HALLIE: You teach a writing retreat with Bob Dugoni, one of my favorite authors and a brilliant teacher. How did that start, and where can people find out more about it? 

STEVEN: Many years ago when I first started writing I became a contributing editor to an inspirational magazine. One weekend the publishing company flew eight of us out for a weekend retreat at a bed and breakfast.

In those three days in that small community with an informed and talented editor, I learned more about writing than I ever had before.

After becoming a novelist myself, I decided to try to recapture that atmosphere by hosting a four-day writing intensive for other novelists. I lead the first by myself and it was a crazy amount of work. So I asked Bob--who's one of the best writing instructors I've ever met--if he would team up with me.

Thankfully he did. We've now taught eight of the intensives together and the response has been phenomenal.

The intensives are limited to twelve participants. Bob and I critique up to fifty pages of each person’s work in progress. We rent a bed and breakfast for everyone and spend four days going through the manuscripts and lecturing—nearly 20 hours of teaching. The success stories of authors who’ve been published and signed with agents has been inspiring.

Information on the seminar and how to get on the invitation list can be found at novelwritingintensive.com

HALLIE: So what think? Is reading a great suspense novel like watching a brilliant chess match? What blend keeps you turning the pages? 

TWENTY REASONS WHY @LucyBurdette #amwriting #Redsonwriting



LUCY BURDETTE: With each of the mysteries I’ve written and had published (15 so far*), I've been required to turn in three chapters and a plot synopsis to my editor toward the beginning of the contract.  (Except for the first book ever, which I had to write to completion.) And it has never failed that my writing comes to a screeching halt somewhere in the middle because I don’t know what’s happening next.

“What does your synopsis say?” my husband always asks.

“Nothing, it says nothing! I’ve got nothing!” I moan in reply.

Then I try all my tricks—whine on Facebook, brainstorm with writers group, attempt to start at the end and work back to the point where I’m stuck. Eventually the ideas do come and the book gets written and this mid-book agony fades.

Since I have all those books under my belt, my agent and I have been hoping that I could provide the same kind of material for a new book, even though it’s in a slightly different genre. The idea would be that she’d try to sell this proposal while I write like mad.

 So I sent her 94 polished pages and a 10-page synopsis that I thought was in pretty good shape. Excellent, in fact. The best so far! Compelling! Full of plot twists and deep character change!

As we had planned, she is sending the proposal around, and I continue to write, referring to the synopsis as needed. I’m broken-hearted to report that the same thing is happening with number 16 as happened with number two: I'm 100 pages in and I’ve run out of plot. The synopsis, it turns out, was a summary of the first 100 pages and the ending. I’ve got precious little to fill the empty space in between those two points…

I'm trying not to panic, trying to follow the characters wherever they take me. After all, Hank and Rhys and Hallie never know quite where they're going with a book in progress and they've done pretty well, right? I even signed up for an online class sponsored by our New England chapter of Sisters in Crime, mostly because Susan Meier, the teacher (who is terrific by the way), promised a technique for generating plot ideas when all the natural ideas have run dry. One of her many good suggestions was pinpointing a plot question, and then giving yourself a very short (1-2 minutes) time to generate a list of possible answers. The thought is that the first few will lack freshness, but as you force your brain to work, some wild ideas are bound to surface. And some of them might even work! Here, let’s try…

Suppose I want to write a suspense book about a psychologist who has had her license to practice suspended. (Then I might imagine moving her to Key West where she might volunteer in some way in the local jail and get in some major trouble.) Of course, I will want the reason for her suspension to echo in the plot later. So in this example, one question is why did the ethics board suspend her license? Here are the first few possibilities I came up with—you can see they aren’t very imaginative—yet…

1. She slept with her patient
2. She bought drugs from her patient
3. She sold drugs to her patient
4. Her patient killed himself and his family has filed a negligence complaint
5. He pretended to kill himself and persuaded…as above
6. She stalked her patient
7. She created false records of patients and billed for them
8. Her patient is able to persuade the review board that she did sleep with him (though she didn’t)

So you get the idea…I haven’t found what I’m looking for yet because while I want her to be troubled in some way, I also want her to be appealing. I know the answer is out there. Somewhere. Anyone want to try?

*I couldn't resist lining them all up for a photo opp:)--aren't they pretty? Though in the night I heard them squabbling over who got the best cover artist....

What Would Mary Write: 2016 Mary Higgins Clark Award nominees

 HALLIE EPHRON: I’ve been surprised to discover that authors, myself included, often don't know what kind of book they're writing. It came as a surprise to me that mine were in the spirit of novels by Mary Higgins Clark, “Queen of Suspense.” But after my first totally unexpected nomination for the Mary Higgins Clark Award, I’ve embraced MHC and consciously evaluate every 4-letter word that tries to sneak into my book, asking myself What Would Mary Write?

NIGHT NIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT is my fourth suspense novel nominated for the award (which btw Hank's THE OTHER WOMAN won), and I am in awe of the nominating committee because I have read the other four nominated books and it's stiff competition.

Here are the criteria for the award, supposedly spelled out by Mary herself:

• The protagonist is a nice young woman whose life is suddenly invaded.
• She’s self-made and independent, with primarily good family relationships.
• She has an interesting job.
• She is not looking for trouble–she is doing exactly what she should be doing and something cuts across her bow.
• She solves her problem by her own courage and intelligence.
• The story has no on-scene violence.
• The story has no strong four-letter words or explicit sex scenes.

Today I’ve invited my fellow nominees, a spectacular group of like-minded writers of creepy (but not icky, per MHC) suspense novels to share with you their own feelings about the nomination.

CATRIONA McPHERSON: You could have fanned me flat with a flapjack when I saw THE CHILD GARDEN short-listed for the Mary Higgins Clark award. As well as the unbelievable honour of it, the book has quite a few f-bombs and – I thought – fell way short of the “primarily good family relationships” that Mary’s books celebrate (and are hard to write well).

I think I worked it out, though. While Stig swears like a squaddie, Gloria, the heroine, hates it and nags him. So the reader gets to nod along with her. Also, while Glo’s relationships with her mum and sister are atrocious, she adores her son and is a wonderful mother to him. So her primary family relationship is great one. That’s my theory anyway. When the judges reveal their identities at the Edgars I’m going to ask. Until then, I’m just beaming.

SUSANNA CALKINS:  When I first began to write my Lucy Campion mysteries—historical mysteries set in 17^th century England—I had to make a decision about how dark or violent I was willing to go. After all, my stories are set in a period where people’s lives were—according to philosopher Thomas Hobbes—“nasty, brutish and short.” But I deliberately put my protagonist Lucy Campion, a chambermaid turned printer’s-apprentice, in households where she was protected and even educated, as women of her station often were not.

While I frequently allude to the violence around her—death, misfortune and of course murder—I’m more interested in the impact of violence on the community, not the violence itself. So, while I did not consciously seek to follow the criteria for the Mary Higgins Clark award, I’m honored that THE MASQUE OF A MURDERER is included among this year’s nominees. 

FRANCES BRODY: Now that you mention it, Hallie, I see connections. Mary Higgins Clark develops the classic theme of a woman in distress: a likable young woman whose life is turned upside down. In A WOMAN UNKNOWN, Deirdre Fitzpatrick needs to earn money to care for her sick mother. Philippa Runcie wants to escape her faithless marriage. Kate Shackleton, widowed detective, seeks truth and rights wrongs. MHC takes inspiration from real life events. The title for A Woman Unknown jumped at me from a social commentary on the period between the two world wars, a time when women’s lives changed dramatically.

LORI RADER-DAY: Just before my first novel THE BLACK HOUR was published, I went through the full manuscript and checked every f-bomb like a loose tooth. Could it be pulled? I imagined my parents reading it; my dad had already announced my forthcoming book to his church group. I was prepared to leave the words in—I enjoy a fine word bomb in real life as much as anyone—but I found that none of them were essential.

They came out. And then when that book was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award, I felt vindicated. LITTLE PRETTY THINGS got the same treatment. I’m not anti-That Word, even now, but like every other word in a manuscript, it has to pull its own weight. Mary Higgins Clark is the better angel of my editing process, helping me watch my saucy mouth.

HALLIE: My favorite criterion: She solves her problem by her own courage and intelligence. I'm 100% onboard. Not so much on good family relationships. My protagonist's are often complicated by things like alcoholism. Explicit sex and graphic violence are easy for me to leave out, and four-letter words have always felt like lazy witing. Unless (BIG exception) it’s in dialogue. Then if there’s a character who cusses, and that’s just who she is, I need to put her on the page and let her cuss. Sorry. Mary.

Reds and readers, where do you draw the line with sex and violence and 4-letter words? Extra points to anyone who knows what squaddie means.