I, A, B, II, A, (1) (2) (a),(b) B

If you've heard this before, and some of you have, now's the time to go for another cup of coffee. Please come back with it because before this ends I'm going to tell you how and why I used an outline for the first time when writing a book.

Last year, my grandson's language arts teacher told the class, "All writers plan their works with graphic organizers or outlines."

Aeden's hand shot up and he responded, "Not all of them."

"Yes, real writers do."

"But my G-Mama doesn't."

To shorten this story, the class wound up Googling me to satisfy the teacher that Aeden's grandmother really does write professionally.

Grandson is now
a teenager.

Aeden insisted that I don't use organizers and outlines, but the teacher still made the students all use the graphic organizer sheet she'd printed.

My classroom days are over, and I agree some of the forms used in classes no doubt help develop better student writers. Some of them address plot; some, characterization; some, setting; some, literary devices; some, other topics ad nauseam.

Frequently the forms are cute and most kids like cute much better than the old outline form with its capital letters, lower case letters, Roman and Arabic numerals that was used when I was in elementary school.

In my personal opinion, a lot of what's being used is too restrictive, even for students. Aeden's accelerated LA instructor this year sometimes uses forms requiring the writers to use a metaphor in the first paragraph, onomatopoeia in the second, direct quotations in the third, and on and on and on.

So where am I headed with all this? I haven't used an outline or, heaven forbid, a mimeographed graphic organizer sheet since I was a kid... until this year!

I started the first Callie book with a nursery rhyme, stuck a casket in it, and produced a title. (A Tisket, a Tasket, A FANCY STOLEN CASKET) I then thought of an ending. I wanted to have the protagonist wind up locked in a casket, and I actually wrote the climatic chapter first. After that, it was easy to start from the beginning and write until I reached the ending.

That pattern worked for the next four books, but the sixth required me to actually have a plan, an outline of sorts.

This time, the idea wasn't a nursery rhyme, but a song--"The Twelve Days of Christmas." The full title naturally was On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me A CASKET UNDER THE CHRISTMAS TREE. I wanted to relate it to the song, so I Googled and printed out the traditional words. That led to wanting to sing it, so my sons and grandson began making up lines that fit the melody but were related to mystery or crime or the South. I decided to use them as chapter headings. We came up with twelve presents to use. Here they are:

Everyone knows the pattern. It begins with the first verse:

On the first day of Christmas,

My true love gave to me,

A corpse under the Christmas tree.

The second verse is:

On the second day of Christmas,

My true love gave to me,

Two broken hearts,

And a corpse under the Christmas tree
Each additional verse adds a new present and then repeats all the previous gifts. At the end, it goes like this:

On the twelfth day of Christmas,

My true love gave to me
Twelve eggs a’nogging
Eleven axes grinding,

Ten turkeys trotting,

Nine guns a’smoking,

Eight collards cooking,

Seven doggies howling,

Six tongues a’wagging,

Five stolen rings,

Four falling flakes,

Three red wreaths,

Two broken hearts,

And a corpse under the Christmas tree

I had an outline--not with all those letters and numbers, but a plan. I decided each chapter should be twenty to twenty-five pages to make twelve chapters add up to novel length. Later I added recipes for my friends who laugh at recipes and knitting patterns in cozies and also because my agent likes for the Callie books to run between 80,000 and 85,000 words.

Next task: Develop an overall plot using chapters appropriate to their titles. I confess it took some thought, but I managed it and made one-line notes for each chapter. Then I wrote A Corpse Under the Christmas Tree. I can now say I've written a book essentially from an outline.

Currently I'm not working on a Callie, and I've reverted back to my favorite kind of writing. I call it "falling into the page." Stephen King describes it this way:

Until we meet again, take care of ...you!

The Great American Novel - Yeah, Right

by Eve Fisher

First of all, thank you, Fran, for a great idea for a column!  Fran wrote on Monday a blog called "What's Lit Got To Do With It" -  http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/12/whats-lit-got-to-do-with-it.html - in which she unveiled her new Callie Parrish novel, which is great, and I can hardly wait to read it.  But something she said - "it's not the Great American Novel..." - triggered a whole range of responses in me, beginning with,

WHY do we always say that?  (Except of course, for those who think they have written the GAN, and all I can say is, God bless you and just keep moving on.  Nothing to see here.  Nothing to do with you.)  Really, I have heard this rap - "well, thanks, but it's not the Great American Novel" - from all sorts of mystery writers, fantasy writers, romance writers, sci-fi writers...  And here's my response:

(1) Most "literary" novels, most "great" novels, are depressing.  I know this because I have read a lot of them.  They are mostly about how crappy life is, how disillusioning, how people make bad choices, and very few of them have happy endings.
SIDE NOTE #1:  I believe the only humorous novel that the critics agree is a Great American Novel is Huckleberry Finn - surely there are more than that.  And the last comedy to win Best Picture was "Annie Hall" in the 1970s...  Tells you something right there, doesn't it?  And a lot of people today are embarrassed about "Our Town" winning a Pulitzer Prize "because it's so sappy" - no, it isn't.
SIDE NOTE #2:  Interestingly, the Russians - who always get a bad rap for depression - are much more hopeful than the British and the Americans, but I think that's mostly because Dostoevsky and Tolstoy both had strong spiritual beliefs, and so believed that there was a way out of hell.  (And if you want ribald humor with that, try Gabriel Garcia-Marquez or Gunter Grass.)  But there's a whole lot of authors who simply provide hell, and no way out, and I'm not just talking about Kafka.  Back in Victorian times, after reading Jude the Obscure, Edmund Gosse wondered, "What has Providence done to Mr. [Thomas] Hardy that he should rise up in the arable land of Wessex and shake his fist at his Creator?"  I tend to ask the same about Cormac McCarthy.  Enough is enough.
SIDE NOTE #3:  I don't have to have a happy ending - I still re-read Edith Wharton and "Madame Bovary," and I loved "Mystic River" - but if your characters are universally unpleasant, violent, inarticulate, and hostile, moving across a bleak landscape in which there is no hope and it's all a mug's game, and everyone ends up miserable, raped, tortured, and/or dead...  I may give it a pass.  Forever.

The one and only
James Thurber

(2) What are the novels you read and re-read?  The ones where the spine's broken, and the pages are falling out, and you finally have to buy a new copy because you've read them to death?  My bet is a lot of them are funny.  A lot of them are fun.  A lot of them make you feel good.
SIDE NOTE:  Please feel free to provide your own definition of fun and what makes you feel good:  for some it's Stephen King (personally I read too much Poe and Lovecraft as a child, and I don't like being scared that much anymore).  Other's it's P. G. Wodehouse.  I go all over the place, myself, from the complete works of Patrick O'Brian (who has a wicked sense of humor) to James Thurber to Gunter Grass (everyone talks about "The Tin Drum", and all I can say is, read "The Flounder") to Angela Thirkell.

(3) There are not enough humorous works in the world.  Seriously.  We need more laughter, folks.  We need more jocularity, as Father Mulcahy would say.  And those who write funny, humorous, amusing, entertaining, witty, acerbic, knee-slapping, whimsical, ribald, facetious, farcical, waggish, playful, droll, campy, merry, and/or playful stories, sketches, plays, novels, essays, poems, etc. should never, ever, ever be ashamed of it, or put themselves down for it, or say, "Well, it's not the Great American Novel..."  I repeat, THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH HUMOROUS BOOKS OUT THERE.  Write some more.  People will thank you, read you, love you.  Repeatedly.  I know I will.

(4) People have been giving the lighter stuff a bad rap for millenia.  Petrarch told Boccaccio that his "Decameron Tales" (the world's largest collection of dirty jokes, told against the background of the bubonic plague, and if the world ever needed a laugh, it was then) were unworthy of a humanist and a scholar.  The result:  Boccaccio quit writing.  Religious pressure made Chaucer add a retraction to his "Canterbury Tales", taking it all back.  Samuel Johnson said that "Tristram Shandy will not last."  All I can say is, "Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah."

To these and every writer who has tickled, amused, and made me burst out laughing, thank you!
Keep it up!

What's Lit Got To Do With It?

Did you say,
"WHAT'S LIT GOT TO DO WITH IT?"


                                Not a damn thing!

 My sixth Callie Parrish mystery is out, and it's not the Great American Novel, not anywhere near literary.  It's another cozyesque, which is what I call the Callie books.

Here's a peek at what happens:

                 Callie and Jane love receiving presents, but 
                 the package under their Christmas tree isn't
                 from Santa.  It's the jolly old elf himself
                 though he's not jolly anymore.

                This investigation takes Callie away from her
                mortuary cosmetician duties to unusual places
                like Safe Sister and the first annual St. Mary
               Turkey Trot.  Sheriff Harmon even temporarily
               deputizes her before Santa's killer attacks both
               Callie and Jane.

A Corpse Under the Christmas Tree isn't great literature, but it was a great pleasure to write, and, according to the emails she receives, Callie's fans get lots of fun and mystery from her. (Yes, readers correspond with Callie, including holiday and birthday wishes.)

For a decent definition of the cozy genre, go to Wikipedia. I probably should have done that myself before thinking that's what I was creating.  Writing the first Callie mystery, I believed it was a cozy, but publishers marketed it and the following ones as Mainstream Mystery, and I created my own genre title--the cozyesque.  

Some cozies include recipes, stitchery patterns, and other useful instructions.  Perhaps additions like that would move me more into the cozy genre. I considered adding knitting or crochet patterns. After all, I learned to crochet and knit when I divorced.

I thought I'd need something to keep me busy every other weekend when the boys were at their dad's.  As though two kids, a house, full-time job, and sideline of writing songs and magazine features left a lot of time!

I learned to knit and crochet.  When the afghan for my king size bed was about twelve inches square, I decided I'd rather go dancing.

I'd still rather dance though I don't look quite like this doing it anymore. 

No knitting or crochet patterns for a Callie book.  I did, however, desire more "cozyesqueness" in the new book.

I  added recipes. 

No, they aren't scattered through the narrative. When other writers do that, it disrupts my reading.  Callie's brother Frankie has added some of Pa's Southern Recipes and Rizzie's Gullah Recipes at the end of the book.

I hope Callie's readers have as much pleasure reading the new Callie as I did writing it.  I  hope they try the recipes, some of which were previously on the website.

To read an article that made me very happy about the new book, go to http://www.free-times.com/pdf/112713/#p=36 .

This is the first novel I've written with an outline.  Next time, I'll share with you why and how.   
        
Until we meet again, take care of … you!

Pigs, Horses & Bulls

Back on October 8, 2013, Dale Andrews shared some British phrases, what they mean to the English, and the very different way that listeners sometimes interpret them.  More recently, Dixon Hill wrote about speaking in languages other than American English.
Dale and Dixon set me to thinking about differences in meaning and understanding of expressions right here in the USA.

SleuthSayer readers and writers are spread far and wide.  I was born fewer than thirty miles from where I live now in South Carolina, and today I want to have a few words with you about the language of Southernese.

Anyone who's ever attended a little country church in the South knows that regional preachers often introduce their sermons with an anecdote or joke.  Don't get worried.  I don't preach, but I do want to share a quick story about Southernese with you.

                That's Nice

Two elderly southern ladies are sitting on the front porch rocking.  The first one looks at the second one and says, "See this beautiful silk dress I'm wearing.  My husband bought it for me to show how much he loves me."

Second lady says, "That's nice," and keeps rocking.

First lady holds up her hand in front of the other lady's face and says, "See this gorgeous diamond ring. My husband bought it for me to show how much he loves me."

Second lady says, "That's nice," and keeps rocking.

First lady points to her shoes.  "See these expensive shoes I'm wearing.  My husband bought them for me to show how much he loves me."

Second lady says, "That's nice," and keeps rocking.

First lady says, "And what did your husband do for you to show how much he loves you?"

Second lady says, "He sent me to a fancy finishing school in Virginia so they could teach me to be a southern lady."

First lady says, "And what did you learn?"

The reply:  "They taught me to say, 'That's nice,' instead of 
'bulls_ _t.'"

Bless Your Heart

Right in line with "That's nice" is "Bless your heart," which some people think is a sweet statement that southerners say all the time. They don't understand that it actually has nothing to do with religion or blessings or being sweet.  It's a passive-aggressive way of calling the other person an idiot and frequently follows a negative comment.

Living in High Cotton

Cotton was a key crop in the South for many years.  The most successful harvest came from tall bushes loaded with fluffy white balls because the taller the bush, the greater the returns and the easier it is to pick.  "Living in high cotton" indicates a person is doing well--successful and wealthy. 

Rode Hard and Put Up Wet

"That gal looks like she's been rode hard and put up wet."
Don't think this is a sexual innuendo; it's not.  It means a person looks like they may have had too much to drink or stayed up too long the night before.  It's based on horse grooming. If a horse runs fast, it works up a sweat, especially under the saddle. After running, a horse should be walked around to dry off before going back to the stable.  If this isn't done, the horse will look sick, tired, and worn out, which is rode hard and put up wet.

Madder Than a Wet Hen

Someone who looks madder than a wet hen is being compared to a female chicken who gets irritated at the farmer when eggs are gathered because she wants to sit on them and hatch biddies.  This is called "broodiness," and the cure is to dunk the hen in cold water.  Does a hormonal hen who has had a cold water bath sound like anyone you know?

Happy as a Dead Pig in the Sunshine

I confess that this one isn't as popular as the other examples, but it brings up thoughts of Patricia Cornwell's The Body Farm. I need to connect this column to mystery and/or writing, so I'll share it. Pigs that die outside in the sty, become dried out by the sun. The skin pulls back around the lips giving the dead pig a grin. Hence, a dead pig in the sunshine looks happy.

One More

"That's about as useful as boobs on a bull."

If I have to explain that one, there's no hope for you to learn to speak Southernese.

Until we meet again, take care of . . .you!

Word Power

One of my favorite photos of Leonard Elmore shows him standing in a room decorated for Christmas.  He's wearing jeans and this 

T-shirt.  It's now on the Internet advertised as "the Leonard Elmore tee."

Though I hardly ever wear T-shirts, I do collect them.  Since I'm in no mood to write today, I'm sharing some of my favorites with you. The next one has emblazoned across it my answer (usually unspoken) to people who approach me with great ideas for novels and want to tell me all about them, but never put anything on paper or a computer.

My favorite before I saw the Leonard Elmore version:

I call this one the "get lucky" tee that belongs to a young

sci fi writer friend of mine.

This is more my style--threat instead of promise.

Another favorite.

Another threat.

A truism if ever there were one.

I'm beginning to worry about myself.  This

is another threat.

My second favorite shirt.

I apologize that I can't supply a pic of my most beloved T-shirt of all time.  I wore it out years ago, but Callie wears one in her first mystery.  The tee said:

VIRGIN

(This is a very old shirt.)

Until we meet again, take care of . . . you!

A Typewriter?

by Fran Rizer


Note:  This is not the column about words that I wanted to use today, but illness has prevented me from completing it.

My divorce was final when my younger son was five years old.  I admit that freedom from marriage allowed me to do some things I hadn't done while living with a husband.  No, not what you're thinking. I used to say the major changes were that (1) I could spread my clothes out in all the closet space in the master bedroom.  (2) I no longer felt compelled to jump up to clean the kitchen after dinner--sometimes I even left the dishes in the sink until the next morning. (3) I never planned to fry another chicken.  From then on, fried chicken at my house arrived in a KFC bucket and was transferred to a serving tray.

A year or so after the divorce, my sons spent a weekend with their grandmother. When they came home, the younger one told me, "Mom, did you know that people can make fried chicken in their own kitchens?"

I'm sure there are children who would be equally impressed to learn that people used to write without computers.  I'm not talking about way back when everything was written by hand (possibly even in cursive, which is no longer considered a necessary skill for students to learn.)  I'm referring to typewriters.  Some of us remember when most authors didn't have word processors or computers.  Editing and rewriting on typewriters was a pain in the Royal you-know-what.

All of that leads to my story for today, and, yes, it's nonfiction, a true story about a real man.

I picked this as the first drawing because I love trains.  In
fact, I've written several bluegrass train songs.

Once upon a time, actually on September 21, 1921, a baby boy was born.  His parents named him Paul Smith.

The odds were against Paul.  He had severe cerebral palsy, a disability that impeded both speech and mobility.

His challenges meant that Paul spent most of his life in a Nursing Home in Roseburg, Oregon.  He taught himself to become a master chess player even though he had very little formal education.  

Paul also taught himself to type; however, his palsy made it necessary to use his left hand to steady his right hand. This made it impossible for him to strike two keys at the same time. 

I've chosen this drawing because my very first recorded
original song was "Waiting at the Station."

Because he needed both hands to press one typewriter key, Paul almost always locked the shift key and typed using only the symbols at the top of the number keys.
These characters --
@ # $ % ^ & * () _
were the only symbols he could type. 

Note the signature in the lower right corner - Typed by Paul Smith. 

The drawings in this blog were all "Typed by Paul Smith," and

created from those symbols above the numerals on typewriters.  He created hundreds of pictures.  He gave many away but kept copies of some of them.
On the left is Paul's version of the
Mona Lisa.  Below is a close-up from that picture showing how his artwork was made.  

He died June 25, 2007, and his life and work are noteworthy as well as inspiring.

Paul Smith inspires me.  If a man who couldn't speak and had to steady his spastic hands to strike one key at a time could create such works from a typewriter, surely we can accomplish our writing goals with all the bells and whistles we have on today's computers.

A question for SS readers and writers--who inspires you?

Until we meet again, take care of you!

First of All

        

First lines are always interesting, and several SSers have written about them.  Last year, I shared the 2012 winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest in this blog, and here I am again, this time with some of the winners for 2013.

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was started in 1982 by Professor Scott E. Rice of the English Department at San Jose State University.  The contest is named for English novelist and playwright Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who penned the immortal first line of the 1830 novel Paul Clifford
which was probably the inspiration for Elmore Leonard's rule not to begin a novel with the weather.

In case you haven't had your first cup of coffee yet and don't remember it, that opening line reads:

     It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents,
     except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by
     a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it
     is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the
    housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the
    lamps that struggled against the darkness.
                                              Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

The first year of the contest, it received three entries.  One year later, after much publicity, there were more than 10,000 entries. Now there are numerous categories, the admissions are astronomical, and in addition to winners there are Dishonorable
Mentions.

Here are a few of the 2013 winners:

Grand Prize Winner 

Okay, this picture isn't exactly what
the sentence describes, but Lady
GaGa's meat dress was my first thought.

    She strutted into my office wearing a dress that clung to her like Saran Wrap to a sloppily butchered pork knuckle, bone and sinew jutting and lurching asymmetrically beneath its folds, the tightness exaggerating the granularity of the suet and causing what little palatable meat there was to sweat, its transparency the thief of imagination.
                 
                   Chris Wieloch, Brookfield, WI



Crime Category Winner

   It was such a beautiful night; the bright moonlight
   illuminated the sky, the thick clouds floated leisurely by 
   just above the silhouette of tall, majestic trees, and I was 
   viewing it all from the front row seat of the bullet hole
   in my car trunk.
                                          Tonya Lavel, Barbados, West Indies

Crime Runner Up

I do believe this is the first time SS
has had a plumbing fixture
illustration.

   Seeing Mrs. Kohler sink, Detective Moen flushed as he plugged the burglary as the unmistakable work of Cap Fawcet, the Mad Plumber, for not only had her pool of
assets been drained, but her clogs were now missing, and the toilet had been removed, leaving them with absolutely
nothing to go on.
               Eric J. Hildeman, Greenfield, WI

Crime Dishonorable Mention

   Observing how the corpse's blood streaked the melting 
   vanilla ice cream, Frank wanted to snap his pen in 
   half and add drops of blue ink to the mix, completing
   the color trio of the American flag--or the French flag,
   given that the body had just fallen from the top of the
   Las Vegas Eiffel Tower onto a creme glacee cart.
                                    Alanna Smith, Wappingers Falls, NY

Vile Puns Runner-Up

   Niles deeply regretted bringing his own equipment to
   the company's annual croquet tournament because those
   were his fingerprints found on the "blunt instrument"
   that had caused the fatal depression in his boss's skull
   and now here he stood in court accused of murder, yes,
   murder in the first degree with mallets aforethought.
                                                   Linda Boatright, Omaha, NE
                                        
For more of these, a lot more including Detective Fiction, Romance Novels, Western Novels, and Purple Prose, go to 
www.bulwer-lytton.com/ 

The opening line of my most recent Callie adventure, Mother Hubbard Has A CORPSE IN THE CUPBOARD, is: 

James Brown burst from my bra just as I took a sip of Coors from my red Solo cup– the kind Toby Keith likes to sing about.  

I'll save the first sentence for my October, 2013, release, CORPSE UNDER THE CHRISTMAS TREE until it's out.

What about you?  Care to share some first lines? Your own or your favorites for Honorable Mention or Dishonorable Mention?

WARNING:  The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest intrigues me. I'll share the 2014 winners with you next year.  Meanwhile, I may try writing some intentionally horrendous first lines.  Let's just hope I have enough sense to recognize them, enter them in the contest, and don't use one for the horror novel I'm finishing now.

Until we meet again, take care of… you!

Of Love and Sardines and Chocolate

by Fran Rizer

Leigh Lundin reminded us that SleuthSayers will be two years old on September 17, 2013, and asked each of us to write about the anniversary of its birth.   </

What should I write about?

How about the unusual birthday customs of other lands?  I know a lot about that because I taught ESL classes and frequently bought birthday cakes for students who'd never had one before.  To be honest, writing about that idea fell flat because it was too much like writing a lesson plan.


SleuthSayers is "A criminally compelling website by professional crime writers and crime fighters," but there's more to this spot than that. We've had posts about authors, explosives, undercover police procedures (some funny, some scary), writers' seminars, swimming in the ocean, book reviews, computers, publications and awards, movies, lists, and more. I even wrote about bras near Christmas last year.  As Robert Earl Keen, Jr., wrote "The road goes on forever."

Sometimes the blogs are about specific problems encountered by writers.  One of my difficulties relates to similes and metaphors.

The problem is two-fold.  I over-react to writers who don't know the difference between a simile and a metaphor because that's taught in fourth grade, and I don't use as many metaphors as others because, quite simply, mine seem weak and I generally delete them before reaching my final revision.  

A gentle reminder, dear reader:  Both similes and metaphors are comparisons with the primary difference being that a simile uses the words like or as.  Examples:  "The clouds are like cotton candy in the sky" is a simile.  "The clouds are cotton candy in the sky" is a metaphor.


When I taught fourth and fifth grades, I always taught similes around Valentine's Day and introduced the topic with Robert Burns's "My love is like a red, red rose."  The students loved hearing about Burns's life. (What other teacher discussed pubs with them?)  Then they wrote poems beginning with "My love is like..."  Their homework was to find an example of a simile.

By far the most common example given on homework papers was the quote that Forrest Gump attributed to his mother:

Life is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you're going to get.


Allan Rufus gave us this:

Life is like a sandwich                   
Birth is one slice 
and death is the other.
What you put in between
the slices is up to you.

My delight with the student who brought in the next one can be attributed to what many of my friends call my "quirky" sense of humor.


                               Alan Bennett wrote:

Life is rather like a tin of sardines--we're all of us looking for the key.

My absolute favorite though is from the late Leo Buscaglia in one of my favorite nonfiction books, Living, Loving, and Learning:

Leo Buscaglia

I love to think that the day you're born, you're given the world as your birthday present.  It frightens me to think that so few people even bother to open up the ribbon!  Rip it open!  Tear off the top! It's just full of love and magic and joy and wonder and pain and tears.  All of the things that are your gift for being human.

In its two years' of life, SleuthSayers has become, in its own way, like both a box of chocolates and a beautifully wrapped gift. You never know what you'll find when you open it, but you can depend on finding something good. 

I'm proud to have been part of it!  

Until we meet again...take care of you!

Wherefore Art

Introduction

by Fran Rizer

Curiosity is a characteristic shared by most writers. Toe Hallock’s name intrigued me from the first time I saw it in SleuthSayers Comments. Being my usual shy, retiring self, I didn’t hesitate to investigate.

Toe Hallock

I learned that Toe and I have a lot in common. We both graduated from USC, though his USC is the University of Southern California while mine is the University of South Carolina. We are both proud grandparents, though he has a granddaughter while I have a grandson. We’re both teachers who got serious about writing after retirement, but our greatest similarity is an intense love for the written word since childhood.

And, yes, I found out how he came to be called Toe. In X-Ray School Anatomy studies at Fort Sam Houston, his class learned the names of human bones. The word Hallux was brought to their attention. It meant “Big Toe.” From then on, Hallock was called “Big Toe” until it was later shortened to “Toe.” After his military service, Hallock used his legal name professionally, but when he began writing and discovered hundreds of Brad Hallocks out there, he became Toe Hallock again. So far as I know, he’s the only one.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my guest blogger for today— Mr. Toe Hallock!

---

Wherefore Art

by Toe Hallock

To begin: Thank you, Fran Rizer, for sharing your space. Most certainly, your audience will return when you, the real deal, come back. And fans of Fran, believe me when I say I’ll make every effort not to discourage your faith in SleuthSayers. All the people who contribute to this blog are topnotch, the best at what they do, and an inspiration to the rest of us aspiring writers.

Giuseppe Verdi

A fascination with words is what led to my wanting to be a writer. Which began when I first learned to read. Those Dick and Jane page burners opened a whole new world for me. How in the world do they do that, I wondered? You know, create something seemingly out of nothing. What a great challenge. Putting all the elements, words, together in such a way so as to fabricate a Universe of your own creation. Like in the Big Bang theory. I wanted to do that.

It all revolves around words. Savoring their sounds, their subtle meanings. Finding ways to give those words a whole new life. Crafting inspired phrases that produce a burst of revelation in the mind’s eye of the reader. Transforming their thoughts, and exceeding their imaginations.

William Shakespeare

Music and lyrics, words and phrases. These are combinations so powerful, that in the hands of the truly creative artist, they can transform one’s experience from the mundane into the sublime. Think Verdi. Think Shakespeare. And many of our contemporary composers and authors. There is a wealth of wonderful examples from the past and the present. As far as the future goes? I doubt we would even recognize it. It will embrace a whole new Galaxy of technological wonders. But, the storytellers… the storytellers will always be revered as those who explain and clarify the trials and tribulations of humankind. It is they who will expose the negative aspects confronting an overcrowded planet. It is they who will reveal thoughtful solutions, offer hope, and provide some sort of escape from life’s daily pressures. Being a writer is a proud heritage connecting past, present, and future. Can’t beat that.

---

Enough of the philosophy explaining why I’ll never give up. Did I just end with a preposition? Obviously, I still have much to learn. Please stay with me. After a succession of knuckle balls and sliders, it’s time for a change-up. I am going to share just a couple of words and phrases (out of hundreds) that, for whatever reason, intrigue my quirky nature.

Just a couple, I promise. Starting with a comment I made earlier about Dick and Jane stories being ‘page burners.’ Looking back, what an odd thing for me to say. But the thought pushed its way to the front lobe of my consciousness and refused to leave. Turns out there is a term for that. Malaphor. It’s a blend of two metaphors. In my case, ‘page’ turner and barn ‘burner.’ Both of which imply excitement. In fact, the term 'malaphor' itself is a combination of two words: malapropism and metaphor. Online research revealed that the term was coined by Lawrence Harrison in a 1976 Washington Post Op-Ed piece.

The ‘view from thirty-thousand feet.’ This phrase is irksome. The intrigue comes from how often it is used by self-important know-it-alls who have deceived themselves into thinkin they are more informed than their groundling staffs. It’s particularly popular among those who inhabit the executive sphere of the business world. They fly a lot and want everyone to admire their obvious sophistication from accumulating so many travel miles. Frankly, I think it is they who miss the big picture, not those doing the real work and looking after the day-to-day details. Besides, when they talk perspective they really mean bottom line. How it affects their bonuses, stock options, and other perks. Growing profits in an effort to please investors may, of course, result in the downsizing of job positions and personnel. But, despite this great sacrifice, these BTOs will maintain stiff upper lips when they proclaim “the vagaries of life are favorable to some, not so favorable to others.” Don’t you just love these guys?

In closure – I believe I can sense the collective sighs of relief (my own included) – I offer this:

I’ve passed along this strand of beach before
the dawn of life upon its callow shore…

When I was six, a child, I think I remember
my Grandpa held me up to a window that
faced the tiding sea, and told me if I looked
hard enough, I could see the waves.

It was magic then, to a boy so young, to see
an ocean where it shouldn’t be in a pane of
glass against all previous knowing:
This before I learned reflection is an art.

Yours truly, Toe

Voice?

Two weeks ago, I said that today I'd talk about voice in writing.  At that time, I had a general idea what I wanted to say, but I hadn't researched it.Since then, I've checked out several references, and found that it would be easy to spend hours and hours talking about this topic.

First, I want to narrow the subject for today. Dale Andrews gave us an excellent article on the narrative voice referring to first person or third person, and Terence Faherty followed up with more great info on that subject.  

That's not my topic.

We've all probably heard more than a life time's worth of discussion of passive voice and active voice.  

That's not my topic.

Donald Graves
1930-2010

The topic today is a characteristic of writing that many teachers as well as writers have difficulty in defining.  The term was coined by Donald Graves, Professor Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire, and author of numerous books on writing including A Fresh Look at Writing in 1994.Though some people use the term synonymously with style or tone, that's not what Graves meant, though "personal style" is close.


Another authority tells us that voice is the personality of writing while tone is the mood.  Voice may affect word choice, sentence and story structure, even punctuation.

Since Graves introduced the term, writing instructors have prompted their students to, "Find your voice," just as so many of them insist, "Write about what you know."  I differ with both of those. So far as writing about what you know, why not research and find out what you need to know to write about what you choose? 

I believe a writer can have more
than one best voice depending
upon the subject.

My response to "Find your voice" is that it's incomplete. I think it should be "Find your voice for the piece you're writing." 

We recognize the voices of writers we know just as we recognize the sound of voices of people we know. We would all know the difference in two descriptions of the same thing written by two authors such as Faulkner and Hemingway, and we would be able recognize the difference in how Agatha Christie and Mickey Spillane wrote the same scene.

Ernest Hemingway

Voice refers to the aspects that give the writing a personal flavor, and that personal flavor changes within a writer's works.  Not only does the voice change depending upon the intended audience, it varies with the author's purpose to inform, entertain, or motivate readers to take action. 

Writing to inform readers of the time and location of funeral services in an obituary does not require the same voice as the review of a book on etiquette, nor of a eulogy.

Mark Twain wrote frequently to entertain.  His writing voice is well developed, but note the difference in the voice of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.       

Mark Twain

Opening paragraph of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:

You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.  There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.  That is nothing.   I ain't never seen anybody but lied, one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly--Tom's Aunt Polly, she is--and Mary, and the Widow Douglas, is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

Huck Finn uses atrocious grammar, breaks rules, and interrupts himself.  All of these plus the choice of words enable us to hear and see the boy before the first paragraph is completed.

Opening of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer:

"TOM!"

No answer.

"TOM!"

No answer.

"What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!"

No answer.

The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked THROUGH them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service -- she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:

"Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll --"

She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.

The immediate difference noted is that Tom's adventures are told in third person, while Huck tells his own story in first person.  The voice of both is Mark Twain, but he changes not just the person, but the vocabulary, correctness of grammar and punctuation, and structure of the pieces. 

 

A writer may change
and further develop voice,
but please don't ever
lose it!

My personal definition of voice has become:  The individual writing style of an author is a combination of idiotypical usage of syntax, diction, punctuation, character development and dialogue within a given body of text.  The totality of that style is voice.  

One of the best explanations I've read of voice is that it's what Simon Cowell is talking about when he tells American Idol contestants to make the song their own and not just a note-for-note karaoke version.

What do you think about voice?  How do you define it?  Is your voice different for varying projects?

Until we meet again, take care of … you!