Whose Idea Was THIS?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: That’s why they call it a cursor, right? Because that little thing on your computer screen flashes at you, saying “Well, what are you gonna do now?’ And there are moments in all of our lives—if you’re a writer or a reader or a teacher or a lawyer or a mom or all of the above--when we think: whose idea was THIS?

 

One of my first pals in mystery world was Daryl Wood Gerber, who is smart, vivacious and inspirational. She’s non-stop. She writes under two names (the other is Avery Aames) and has so many wonderful ideas that they just—bubble over at every moment.

So what are her tricks for staying positive? And creative? Today on Jungle Red—take a moment for reflection.

Being a “Creative” Can be a Challenge

                                                                            by Avery Aames

Being a creative person isn’t easy. Author, actor, musician, artist, fill in the blank. You have new ideas streaming through your head all the time. Along the way, you choose your profession, and then (unless you’re one of the lucky few who are discovered at the age of five to fifteen, i.e. Justin Bieber, Judy Garland, Lassie) you face rejection. You put yourself out there, with your ideas, your talent, your heart on your sleeve, and you pray someone will say you’re good enough.

And even when you do find success, because you’ve faced rejection ninety percent of the time, you find it hard to pat yourself on the back and say you’re good enough this time. You face a new project, and you wonder if you’ve fooled someone the other ten percent of the time.  You tell yourself that your success was just a fluke, a one-time deal. This time, they’ll see. They’ll know.

This self-doubt is a twist on the moral of the Emperor’s New Clothes. You know the childhood story, a Hans Christian Andersen classic. The vain emperor orders tailors to fit him with a new outfit. They convince him they’ve woven the most beautiful clothing, except they’ve woven nothing. They convince him that those who don’t “see” the clothing are idiots. Except now, as a creative person, you wonder if you are not only the weavers but the emperor, as well. You fear that you’re vain if you think your work is fabulous, and you fear that you’re one of the tailors who have woven something that is sheer fabrication, worthless, and not fit to be seen.

How do you overcome this? You don’t. But you can press on.

Or how about this:

1. Set two first draft writing goals: a short-term goal (words per day or hours per day) and a long-term goal (how many days, months, years to completion) and stick to those goals.  Be reasonable. Make achievable goals. Don't convince yourself that you can a write 5,000 words a day or write a 500 page book in 8 weeks. You will probably fail.

2. Visualize the end result. I close my eyes and envision a movie of how people will react positively when they receive and read my work.  I replay this movie often in my head.

3. Give yourself a reward when you reach your long-term goal: chocolate, the time to read a good book, a nice dinner out, a good firm pat on the back for a job well done. Okay, you can give yourself rewards for mini-goals, too. Sometimes you need those.

As an author, I sit down at my computer each day and try to fashion something new, unique, fun, challenging, or enlightening. Not everything I write is good. In fact, most days I think it stinks. I’ve been told by my husband that I always feel this way until the entire manuscript (short story, screenplay, blog) is complete and I’ve sent it off. And then I start all over again, at the beginning, questioning my talent and my worth.

All I can say to you is believe in yourself. Because you are your own worst enemy, you must be your own best cheerleader. Believe in yourself. Find sayings each day that will spur you on. Turn to a friend or a loved one for positive feedback. Call on a higher power if that will help. [It helps me.]

HANK: Sigh. I have a motto on my bulletin board: “What would you attempt to do if you could not fail?" On the other hand, I've also posted this photo which I tore out of Vogue.

So I use what I need.

What’s your secret to staying positive? A copy of Clobbered by Camembert, Avery’s newest, to one lucky commenter!

 

Don’t forget my offer of a Kindle, nook, or $100 gift certificate to the bookstore of your choice! Click here for details!

 http://hankphillippiryan.com/newsletter-7-12.html

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Avery Aames is the pseudonym for Daryl Wood Gerber. As Avery, she writes the nationally bestselling A Cheese Shop Mystery Series. The first in the series, The Long Quiche Goodbye, won the Agatha Award for best first novel. The series is set in the quaint, fictional town of Providence, Ohio, and features Charlotte Bessette, a feisty cheese shop owner with a colorful extended family. Daryl writes short stories, the latest, "Palace on the Lake" has been nominated for numerous awards, and she has a new mystery series debuting in July 2013, The Cookbook Nook mysteries.  This new cozy mystery series features Jenna Hart, an avid reader, admitted foodie, and owner of a cookbook store in picturesque coastal California.

Five ways to KILL Suspense

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I met Meg Gardiner in a cab. Well, outside a cab. We were at--something in New York, I forget, going somewhere, I forget, and she was about to take the subway. Come with me! I said. I have on heels!  I'm getting a cab.

So we talked the whole way to wherever it was--she was hilarious and personable and wonderful.  I confess that in these situations, meeting a best-selling Edgar-winning author, I always think--here's a successful writer, I bet she could teach me a lot. But that's not the kind of thing you can ask.

So, isn't this clever? I invited her to JRW, so we can all learn.   And I'll give a copy of Meg's new RANSOM RIVER to a lucky commenter! And an ARC of THE OTHER WOMAN to another.

And now..I don't want to keep you in suspense, but here's--well, no. I DO want to keep you in suspense. And here's how. Um, how NOT to.

Five Ways to Kill Suspense

by Meg Gardiner

Suspense is vital to storytelling. It keeps readers turning pages, desperate to learn what happens next. As a building block of drama, it’s as old as literature itself—Aristotle said suspense consists of having some real danger looming and a ray of hope.

The word comes from the Latin suspendere—to hang up—and writers are the hangmen. We keep readers dangling. But if we do it wrong, we kill the story.

Here are five surefire ways to do that.

1. Sacrifice tension for surprise. Unexpected twists can delight or terrify readers. But if you don’t build up the tension beforehand, readers will be bored senseless long before you get to Boo.

Hitchcock put it this way: an audience experiences suspense when they expect something bad to happen and know more than the characters do—but can’t intervene to stop it. Say characters are talking in a restaurant. If all the scene shows is their chitchat, it’s tedious. But if the audience knows that a ticking bomb is planted beneath the table, it’s suspenseful.

The writer’s job is to create tension and then let it build for as long as possible. Be cruel. The page is the one place where cruelty’s a good thing.

2. Commit howlers. I don’t mean minor errors about arcane facts. I mean clanging mistakes about common knowledge. Writers should know that the capital of Brazil is not Rio de Janeiro. That the president’s airplane does not have AIR FORCE ONE painted on its flanks. That Interpol doesn’t strafe fugitives from fighter jets (to name three errors I’ve seen in books or movies). Ludicrous mistakes kill suspense by pulling readers from the story, thinking, Oh, come on. Do your research. And after you’ve done it, have knowledgeable people check it.

3. Write idiot plots. Plots that depend on characters acting like idiots kill suspense faster than cyanide. You’ve read this story: an unarmed woman fails to call SWAT and instead wades into the swamp alone, at midnight, in heels, to rescue her best friend from the maniac with the chainsaw. Go on, honey. Readers will be cheering—for the maniac.

4. Mistake mystery for suspense. Mystery propels our genre. But withholding facts from readers doesn’t always increase suspense. Sometimes it just annoys. Say the hero keeps everything he’s learned to himself until the final pages, when he reveals all. This is meant to make him sound brilliant and the revelation seem huge. But if the audience hasn’t struggled along with him as he digs for the truth, they haven’t experienced the story. They’ll feel shortchanged. (This is another reason to show, don’t tell.)

Or say you hide the identities of characters in a scene. “Two men sat at the dingy bar, scowling.” Maybe the scowlers are assassins, circling for a kill. But if they’re your hero and his brother—and it’s the tenth time you’ve used this ploy—it’s not suspenseful. It's a cheap trick.

5. Put the main character in a tight situation where the only question is whether she’ll survive. Here’s the problem: Readers figure that in mysteries and thrillers, the protagonist is going to live. If your novel’s in first person, they know it. So don’t have the bad guys abandon the heroine in the desert, then spend 50 pages depicting her trek back to civilization. There’s no question she’ll make it, so her tough slog to town contains no suspense.

But what if you truly want to abandon your protagonist in the desert? Then create real, looming danger… to other characters. And put a clock on it. The heroine must get to a phone by sundown—or the puppy farm will be blown up. Otherwise, cut everything after the bad guys dump her in Death Valley. Skip to her stumbling into the 7-11, dehydrated, covered in cactus needles, and hauling the corpse of the rabid skunk that attacked her.

Now, a confession: I’ve committed all these sins.

Sometimes I’ve caught these mistakes when revising. Sometimes an editor has noted, “Tiresome…” And sometimes I’ve decided a cheap trick is exactly what I need.

In my novel Ransom River, a juror finds herself fighting for her life when gunmen storm the courtroom. Then Rory Mackenzie discovers the attack is connected to an old case that was never solved. It's connected to her, and dark skeletons in her family's history. And bringing the truth to light might destroy her and those she loves.

My first draft opened with a long, procedural courtroom scene in Rory’s point of view. Then, boom—gunmen burst in. (Hello, surprise without tension.) I rewrote it to add scenes in a gunman’s POV. Now, while Rory hears testimony about two cops gunning down a teenager, the attackers circle the courthouse, arm themselves, and stalk toward the building. Readers know something bad’s coming, but they can’t tell Rory: Get out of there.

Then, to create a sense of real danger that would loom over the whole book, I revised again—so the story doesn’t open in the courtroom. It opens when Rory is nine years old. Late one night, she and her best friend see something they shouldn’t—something that scares them. They don’t understand it. They only know something's wrong. Something bad. But what—and how does it come back to haunt her twenty years later?

I’d tell you, but I’ve gotta keep you in suspense.

HANK: Thanks Meg! I'm off to look at my WIP one more time... How about you, Reds? Do you go back and add the suspense? Or write it a you go? I find when I'm in the suspenseful parts, somehow, I'm typing as fast as I can.

The most suspenseful thing I've ever read? Hmm. Dracula? The Stand? The most suspenseful movie I've ever seen? Hmm. The Vanishing? Rear Window? How about you, reds?

Remember--you can win!

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 www.meggardiner.com 

Meg Gardiner writes the Evan Delaney and the Jo Beckett novels, best-selling series that have been translated into twenty languages. China Lake won the 2009 Edgar for Best Paperback Original. The Nightmare Thief won the 2012 Audie Award for Thriller/Suspense audiobook of the year. Meg practiced law in Los Angeles and taught at the University of California Santa Barbara. She lives near London. Her latest novel is the stand alone, Ransom River.

Her blog: Lying for a Living.

Twitter: @MegGardiner1

The Secret Notebooks

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:   Rats. I didn't take a photo. But you should have seen John Curran hold the Malice Domestic audience captive with his stories about our goddess and mentor Agatha Christie. He got exclusive access to ALL her notes and notebooks and letters--stayed at her house, Greenway House, and was the very first person to see it all. Can you imagine? What a cache of treasures! And his stories are mesmerizing!

   So of course we had to invite the world's expert on Agatha to come chat at Jungle Red. (And we're giving away a copy of his first book--and a new one! Just answer one little question--see below!)

 

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Okay, John. How did this all happen??

JOHN CURRAN:  I have been reading Christie all my life and although I moved on to read lots of other writers I kept returning to Christie as she was/is the greatest exponent ever of the classical detective novel. For some years I edited an Agatha Christie Newsletter and later wrote an online version of it where I reviewed Christie plays and films and new editions of her books.

In 2004 I visited Calgary in Canada to see Chimneys, a play written by Christie in 1930 and never previously performed. There I met her grandson, Mathew, and he invited me to visit Greenway House, his grandmother’s home since 1938. When I read the Notebooks, which were stored there, I asked his permission to write a book about them and he immediately agreed.

HANK: Yikes. That is—amazing.

JOHN:  Yes!  So now, two books later, I hope I have contributed something to Christie scholarship with a glimpse into how she some of the best detective of all time. Mathew and I are also working to establish an Archive of Agatha Christie’s papers for future generations of scholars.

HANK: I keep envisioning you, discovering those treasures. Tell us more!

JOHN:The biggest surprise was how disorganised they were. I had assumed the plotting would be very ordered (as her books are) but the notes that go to make up any of her titles can be scattered over half-a-dozen Notebooks. And there are very few dates included. And the handwriting was very difficult to decipher.

The other big surprise, considering the number of books she wrote, was the number of plot ideas that she scribbled down but never used. I have included many of these in my two books.

Finding the short stories was an added bonus.  It was an unbelievably exciting event for an aficionado to sit in the author’s own home and read a typescript that no-one had even seen for over 60 years. It was the first ‘new’ Agatha Christie since I read Sleeping Murder in 1976. And finding the notes for them in the Notebooks made it even better. I feel very privileged to have been able to bring them to her legions of fans.

HANK: So this must have been a huge job! Were there any obstacles? Other than the obvious?

JOHN: Without doubt the biggest problem was the handwriting especially for the years between 1930 and the mid-50s.

HANK: Uh, oh. Lucky no one is gonna care about MY notebooks… Really?

JOHN: Yes, it took me about 8 months to decipher those notes and then to transcribe them into legible documents, one file for each Notebook. Of course, it must be remembered that no-one other than Agatha Christie was ever meant to read the Notebooks! When it came to deciding which notes would be included and which left out there were difficult choices to be made. I hope I made the right ones...

HANK: But wait, there’s more?   You’re writing a doctoral thesis on Christie?

JOHN: It will deal with the Golden Age of detective fiction between the Wars when Christie and her contemporaries were at the height of their considerable powers.  Apart from the literature itself it will also look at the social conditions that fostered its growth.

HANK: Let’s go back to the beginning. What was the first Christie book you read? Do you remember?

JOHN: I read my first Christie, Peril at End House, while I was at school and I still consider it one of her best – a very clever, totally fair detective story with a very simple plot device. After that I was hooked! And have remained so ever since. 

HANK: So, what do you think is the secret of Agatha Christie? Why does she continue to attract readers?

JOHN: I think it is a combination of a few factors and this combination has never been matched:

·                    Her writing is straightforward and readable and her books are seldom more than 200 pages.

·                    She tells a story that seems complicated but is quite simple when we get the explanation.

·                    People love a puzzle and she gives us all the clues we need to solve the puzzle but we (nearly!) always fail to spot the vital piece of information that makes everything clear.

·                    She can be enjoyed by grandparents and grandchildren – and there are very few writers of whom you can say that.

·                    And, of course, she now has enormous nostalgia value. Which is why updating her stories is a disastrously bad idea.

HANK: I almost burst into tears, winning the Agatha. (Didn't you? The...synchronicity?) (Look how surprised Jonathan is!) What do you see as her legacy to detective fiction?

JOHN:  Her influence is enormous; almost every crime writer today owes her some debt of gratitude. Although the type of story she wrote – the classical detective story –  has almost disappeared today, she also experimented throughout her career – the historical crime story (Death Comes as the End 1945), the serial killer (The ABC Murders 1935), murder in retrospect (Five Little Pigs 1943), murder abroad (Death on the Nile 1937), the psychological crime novel (Endless Night 1967). She wrote detective fiction better, for longer and more often than any other writer; and she made it seem so easy. Although many writers criticize her nowadays, nobody would object to having her fame – or her sales!

HANK:  Maybe unfair, but which Christie novel (or novels) is your favorite and why?

JOHN: My overall favourite is Five Little Pigs (Murder in Retrospect) – a brilliantly clever formal detective story as well as a novel with huge emotional impact. And the story-telling technique – five separate accounts of one day – is masterly. But very close to it are And Then There Were None, her most thrilling novel; Murder on the Orient Express with its wonderfully original solution; and Endless Night, a dark and brooding novel unlike anything else she wrote with a stunning surprise ending. 

HANK: Can’t resist. Who is your favorite Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple?

JOHN: Oh, certainly, it’s…

HANK:  Oh wait--we’re out of time! Come back Saturday for John’s answer--and the Reds will include our recommended summer reads!  And today a lucky commenter will win a copy of  Secret Notebooks!

John will try to come chat--he's in a different time zone! But meanwhile--what's your favorite Agatha? Or your best Agatha experience? Do you remember your first? 

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John Curran’s Edgar-nominated Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks (2010) won the 2011 Agatha, Anthony and Macavity Awards and his Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making (2011) was nominated for the 2012 Edgar and the Agatha awards. Both books examined the 73 notebooks used throughout her life by Agatha Christie in the creation of her immortal stories. A life-long crime-fiction enthusiast, he is currently writing a PhD thesis on Christie and The Golden Age of Detection at Trinity College, Dublin where he lives.