Guest Post: I’m Stuck—Now What?

Filling in for me today is Stacy Woodson, a writer I first met at Malice Domestic in 2018. I was participating in Malice Go Round, a form of speed dating where pairs of authors move from table to table every few minutes pushing their latest project to several interested readers. I was on break when Stacy arrived. There were no seats available at the official tables, so—in violation of the rules!—she sat with me at the break table and I learned she had just sold her first story to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Stacy and I have since crossed paths at several in-person and virtual events, and she has contributed to several of my projects, including the recently published Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 3 and the forthcoming More Groovy Gumshoes.

Learn how she overcomes those inevitable moments when she gets stuck.

— Michael Bracken

I’m Stuck—Now What?

by Stacy Woodson

The ideal solution.

When it’s time to write, I light a scented candle, put on classical music, sit at my computer and the words flow through my fingertips. I’m a vessel for story. It’s euphoric.

And…

That’s a load of crap.

At least for me. (I do envy people who can access story this way.) My process is messy, don’t-look-behind-the-curtain-Wizard-of-Oz kind of messy. I need an interesting character, thrown into an interesting situation. I need to know the ending and the twist. Without the twist I’m dead in the water. And when I’m writing I’m constantly saying to myself: give the reader a reason to care.

A HOT MESS—that’s my writing process.

As you can imagine, I’m often stuck. Not blocked. (Yes, I’m one of those people who doesn’t believe in writer’s block.) But I do believe in getting stuck. And recently (six months ago, recently) I started being mindful of things I do to get unstuck—thanks to Becca Syme and her Intuition Series.

So, I created my own personal “stuck list,” a list of things that have helped me get unstuck. It’s a list I continue to update. (And yes, there are some things on there that we’ve all heard before like: take a shower or a long walk.) But it has other things that I think are unique that work for me, and I hope some of them work for you, too. So here it is. My stuck list in all its messy glory:

Can’t figure out how to start.

First the initial frustration hits: OMG I can’t start. Why can’t I start? What is wrong with me? The candle is lit, the music is playing. (Just kidding. I promise, I’m not on that hamster wheel again.) But seriously, I was having one of those moments a few months ago. Frustrated, I turned to my shelf and opened a book by an author I admire and read the opening paragraph. Then, I opened another. Five books later, I turned to some of the short stories I had written. I read those openings, too. And then I felt it. (I’m an intuitive writer. I outline [sort-of] and chase a feeling [always]—tone, vibe, a way to hear the voices of my characters. I told you, I’m a hot mess.) After reading those openings I was able to start.

Can’t move forward.

People say write ahead—pick a scene that comes later and write it. This doesn’t always work for me. Often, I am a linear writer. I need the momentum of the story to carry me to the next scene. But I always know the ending before I start and sometimes writing the scene with that twist gets me there. “The Retirement Plan” worked that way. I wrote the ending when I was blocked (I mean stuck) and then I was able to write the missing pieces.

The household chaos.

Things still need to marinate.

I say all the bad words. Then, I take a walk or a shower or go to the box. (In the CrossFit world that’s a fancy way of saying gym.) Sometimes my subconscious just needs time to work on the story. There are times I do more research and look at pictures. When I wrote “The Rose” I looked at dozens of pictures of Honky-tonks and watched a documentary about the Broken Spoke. It helped me hear the voice, feel the vibe, and access the story.

Plot isn’t ringing true.

More cussing. Especially if I’m halfway through the story. (I served in the Army. Cussing is a reflex for me. It’s like breathing.) When I’m done verbally purging, I start asking questions. Are the stakes personal enough? What happens if the protagonist fails? And do I care? If I can’t move forward still, I go to my resource folder. (Thank God for great craft articles and classes and blogs.) I read and use this information to brainstorm how to fix it. Click here for one of my favorite posts at The Write Practice on stakes.

Can’t figure out the twist.

This happens during my “sort-of-outlining” process. I have that interesting character in that interesting situation and then I have NOTHING. No twist. And all the frustration. Then comes… all the Facebook. Because that’s what I do when I get stuck. Instead of going to my list, I click over to Facebook. Don’t click over to Facebook. It suuuuuucks you innnnnnn. My phone rings or the dog barks (thank God, again), and I realize that I’ve disappeared into the void for an hour. Then, I regroup and go back to my trusty resource folder and look at lists I’ve made about twists—generic and specific examples. When I read a story, especially short fiction that has an interesting twist, I write them in a journal so I can go back and study how the twist was executed. I look at articles that I’ve collected, too. Click here for one of my favorites from Screencraft.

Can’t hear the character’s voice.

I started creating a list of characters that resonate with me from television and film, and I watch snippets of their performances so I can hear their voice and feel their vibe. (I DON’T use their words. This has nothing to do with their dialog or their story.) I’m simply trying to access who they are during their performance. If I’m looking for a troubled vet, I often watch Huck from Scandal. I need a crusty mentor character, I watch Lloyd from Yellowstone. A chatty gossip, anyone from the movie Steel Magnolias. No impulse control, Daisy from Bones. Someone bigger than life, Effie from The Hunger Games. (Yes, my viewing choices are diverse.) There’s a tenor and cadence in how these actors deliver their lines that I can harness when I’m writing dialog.

The uncredited assistant.

Don’t care about the character.

I’ve created an interesting character in an interesting situation, and I have the twist. I start writing—and I don’t care. Ugh. I’ve done all the things. The story gods should reward me, right? Wrong. After the cloud of profanity passes, I look at the emotional stakes in the story. Are they strong enough? (This goes back to my personal give-the-reader-a-reason-to-care-mantra.) Does the story feature important relationship characters? Does it feature pertinent interpersonal conflict? Are the emotional stakes tied to plot stakes? Questions I’ve hijacked from Kim Weiland and her amazing blog Helping Writers Become Authors. Click here to read her article on emotional stakes. (I’m a total Marvel nerd and LOVE this one.)

My in-case-of-an-emergency-break-glass person.

If I’m still struggling, first, I complain about the story to my husband. We brainstorm in the kitchen. Sometimes it works. (He helped with the twist in “Armadillo by Morning” which will appear in a future issue of Black Cat Mystery Magazine.) Often, unfortunately, I’m still stuck. But it’s not a waste of time. Even without an answer or way ahead, verbalizing the story (external processing) helps because I’ve considered and discarded other ideas, and this keeps the creative juices flowing. I try chatting with friends in my writers group (shout out to The Royals), bus stop moms and dads, my CrossFit friends on the sunrise squad. (Sometimes Barb Goffman gets a call, too.) And when all else fails, I turn to a story coach. It’s true. I have a story coach. She’s like my own personal story therapist. When I’m really blocked (I mean stuck), I call Dawn Alexander. Which results in a session where I tell her everything. And she looks at me over Zoom, smiles, and says—have you thought about this? Then, I love her and hate her all at the same time because she’s usually right.

Can’t focus.

The kids are too loud, the dog won’t stop barking—but I can’t leave the house. The frustration! So, I put on Brown Noise. Not White. Brown. I read an article about Brown Noise (how the sound blocks out other sounds so you’re less distracted) and tried it. I’m hooked. In fact, I have it playing right now. More on the science behind Brown Noise here.

Click here if you want to take Brown Noise for a test drive.

Phew. So that’s my stuck list, for now, anyway. I’m sure I will continue to get stuck, and my list of hacks will continue to grow. What works for me, may not work for you. Still, I hope there’s something here that’s helpful. Do any of you have a stuck list? What works for you?

---

Stacy Woodson (www.stacywoodson.com) is a US Army veteran, and memories of her time in the military are often a source of inspiration for her stories. She made her crime fiction debut in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s Department of First Stories and won the 2018 Readers Award. Since her debut, she has placed stories in several anthologies and publications—two winning the Derringer Award.

My DNA—Oh, the Places It's Been!

DNA evidence is one of the hallmarks of contemporary crime investigation, separating it from the cruder forensic methods, interviewing of witnesses and suspects and Sherlockian reliance on deductive reasoning, of the past. But access to DNA solves many mysteries besides those of murder. We now have easy access to the information coded in our own DNA, and I, for one, am finding what I'm learning, even at the most superficial level, fascinating.

Liz as Greek goddess: a fun feature of MyHeritage.com

This isn't about genetic markers for disease or health issues, though for a lot of people, it has been crucial information that would not have been available to them before. It's about my roots and familial relationships. We live in a nation composed largely of immigrants: the voluntary, the involuntary, and the desperate. My own parents were born, respectively, in what was then called the Ukraine and ruled by the Czar of Russia and in Hungary. With their own parents and nearest siblings, they came through Ellis Island as young children in 1905 and 1906. My father's extended family on both sides emigrated too; he grew up in Brooklyn alongside dozens of cousins. My mother knew the aunts and uncles and their twenty children on her father's side, but her mother's equally large family remained in Hungary and was eventually lost to the Holocaust.

Because of the Holocaust, there were significant gaps in the record. Synagogues, cemeteries, whole villages in Europe were lost. Registers of births, marriages, and deaths as well as countless family documents and photographs were destroyed. Memories and family stories were killed en masse along with the people who carried them. Without these, Jewish genealogists ran into blind alleys, with no way to tell whether people with the same name shared a common ancestor. DNA changed that, along with the potential for people to reach out to possible kin on the Internet.

Liz as Persian princess

I've had my DNA tested by both MyHeritage.com, which I got as a gift a couple of Xmases ago, and Ancestry.com, which I did later on. I pay a monthly fee to MyHeritage, and as a result, I get more ongoing information, notably a weekly list of DNA matches, ie people who share segments of DNA with me and some of the people I share DNA with who also share DNA with those people. Most of the folks whose names they offer me share only 1% or 0.9% of my DNA. The cousins I've made contact with, with whom I actually share known family members, are a 4.1% match on the Hungarian side and 2.8% (mother) and 2.3% (son) match on the Ukrainian side.

Janos, a Hungarian about my age who has lived in Denmark since 1957, is the grandson of my my mother's mother's sister Paula. Gran, whom I adored, always said that Paula was her favorite sister. I learned from Janos that she almost survived the War; she died of starvation in the Budapest ghetto in 1945. Gary told me his mom, Leni, was the granddaughter of my father's mother's sister Basya or Bessie, who was thus his own great-grandmother. Gary lives in New Jersey.

Liz as Edwardian lady

Now, here's the mystery. As I scroll through the lists of DNA matches and their matches to my matches every week, I find dozens of people who share not only bits of my DNA, but also bits of DNA I got from my mother, born in Pápa, Hungary, and bits of DNA I got from my father, born in Ekaterinaslav (now Dnipro), Ukraine. My mother always said she didn't even know Russian Jews were human until she grew up and met my father in law school in 1921. There's always a pecking order. I guess the German Jews who emigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century considered themselves above the Hungarian Jews, and the Sephardim (the Iberian Jews who got kicked out of Spain and Portugal in 1492 and 1493) a cut above the Ashkenazim (the Eastern European Jews) in general. One study says that the Ashkenazim, who seem to have arisen as a genetic and linguistic entity in Europe in the eleventh or twelfth century, originally consisted of only 350 people. So maybe I shouldn't be surprised that my Hungarian side and my Ukrainian side are connected. But I still marvel.

Liz as Art Nouveau poster girl

Bigots and would-be world dominators have been trying to wipe the Jews out for five thousand years, and they haven't succeeded yet. We may not all define our Jewishness the same. We may not all practice traditional Judaism. We may reshape it to accommodate contemporary concepts of spirituality and family. But we are everywhere. Segments of DNA that matches mine are walking around in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Israel, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, the United States, United Kingdom, and Uruguay, keeping my genetic heritage alive all over the world.

Wednesday died on Saturday

example of fan art, artist unknown
© WallPapersDen.com

Lisa Loring, who played the original Wednesday Addams, died last weekend, the 28^th of January. Since her 1964 series, Wednesday has been played by a number of actresses.

The Addams Family grew out of a series of 1938 cartoon panels and evolved ever since. Most recently, in the titular Wednesday, Jenna Ortega stars in the rôle in which she enters a private school where she plays detective to solve a murder. She’s good as the character and interacts well with her charming, scene-stealing werewolf roommate, Enid. Anything involving Tim Burton and Danny Elfman is bound to be interesting.

Fortunately, Wednesday’s parents barely appear on the screen, Part of the fun of the original series was the deep and abiding (and over-the-top) romance between Morticia and Gomez. Hardly so in the latest incarnation. The performances of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán fall colder and flatter than a collapsed gravestone. Reading between the pixels, the couple appeared ready to barf as they monotoned dry-rotted romance lines.

Yes, Jenna Ortega took two months of cello lessons to learn how to handle it. No, she does not play the popular excerpt in the film.

The series appears to nod at a few influences– Harry Potter, The Munsters, and The Exorcist, this last hinted at in a few strains of tubular bells. It’s on Netflix.

example of fan art, artist unknown
© WallPapersDen.com

That Other Wednesday

Thus far, I’ve spoken of official elements owned by MGM, Paramount, and the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation, but clearly this recent release has been influenced by a lovely YouTube renegade, Adult Wednesday Addams starring Melissa Hunter. She crowd-funded it, seeking $5000 through IndieGoGo… and received $15,000, hardly a fetid pimple pop on the studio’s Uncle Fester.

And her skits are funny. Word spread about the little episodes. Adult Wednesday rights small wrongs. No injustice is too minute not to be taken seriously. Until one day…

A letter arrived from the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation: cease and desist. Thus landed a slap on the creative face.

On the one hand, Addams intellectual properties are owned by the foundation and studios. Further, they have the financial means to wear out almost any litigant: Those with the deepest pockets wins, and clearly Hunter doesn’t have deep pockets.

By some lights, Melissa and her little group appear on the side of the (dark) angels– the work is parody, clearly transformative, and appears in a smaller format. But fair use law remains exceedingly vague and only a judge could decide. She couldn’t afford to challenge the big guys on an iffy outcome.

But what an opportunity for the studios! Why not hire Melissa Hunter and her crew? Hit the ground running with an existing popular series with millions of views? Nah, that would be too sensible.

The big corporations issued take-down notices forbidding YouTube to publish Adult Wednesday Addams on her channel. Since then, episodes appear, disappear and reappear as stubborn fans post and repost.

Try these episodes while they’re still available. Tell me if you enjoyed the show.

S1E1 • The Apartment Hunt

S2E1 • Babysitting

S1E2 • Job Interview

S2E2 • Driver's Ed

S1E3 • Internet Date

S2E3 • Wednesday v Catcallers

S1E4 • Dog Walker

S2E4 • The Haircut

S1E5 • One Night Stand

S2E5 • The Reality Star

S1E6 • Planned Parenthood

S2E6 • The Flea Market

____ • A Special Message

S2E7 • True Love Series Finale

Midstory Surprises

  

I've always enjoyed plot twists. I love it when a novel or movie or short story suddenly changes direction--and it doesn't have to be a surprise ending like The Sixth Sense or The Usual Suspects or Planet of the Apes. Effective twists and reveals can happen anywhere in the story, and in my opinion, the bigger the change, the better.

I've written a lot of these story twists myself, and encountered a lot of them when I'm watching a movie, or reading. So, since I was recently thinking about this kind of thing and also wondering about a topic for today's SleuthSayers post . . . 

Here are a few movies that had what I think are memorable and mid-steam plot twists. I liked them all.

Psycho -- The first of the two big surprises in this movie happens before the midpoint, but it's still a good twenty minutes or so into the story. All of you know what it is--Janet Leigh said in an interview that she only took baths afterward, never showers--and it turns what starts out as a theft-and-getaway story into an edge-of-your-seat horror/suspense film.

Marathon Man -- Midway through the movie, we discover that the two characters we've been watching separately, in their own story-worlds, are closely connected--in fact they're brothers. The novel, by the great William Goldman, used the same surprise, and perfectly. This is one of my favorite midstory reversals.

Titanic -- Starts out as a romance and becomes, when the iceberg shows up, a disaster movie. (Not that we didn't expect it.) This reminded me a bit of what happened in the lesser-known Miracle Mile.

The Village -- This one begins as an otherworldly love story/horror story in which residents of a small settlement live in fear of terrible unseen creatures in the surrounding forest--and then becomes a real-world suspense tale. It's probably worth mentioning that none of my writer friends liked this movie. (What do they know? I loved it.) 

 From Dusk till Dawn -- When a group on the run from the law after a bank robbery stops at a bar in the middle of nowhere, the story turns into a vampire/horror flick. Tarantino at his zaniest.

Gone Girl -- Here, the audience discovers in midstream that the girl who's gone is instead alive and well, and--of course--everything changes as a result. Similar, in that respect, to Laura and The Third Man.

Vertigo -- An investigation suddenly becomes a strange romance. This one also reminded me a bit of Laura. 

A History of Violence -- At about its halfway point, a small-town hero is revealed to be ruthless former assassin, and because of this, a local crime story becomes a movie about mafia hitmen. Another little-known movie that 's one of my all-time favorites--probably because I've always liked watching Ed Harris and William Hurt.

Sunshine -- This one changes in the middle from a science-fiction film to a horror/slasher movie.

Predator -- Same kind of thing. Starts out as a jungle rescue operation and turns into a science-fiction/horror tale.

The Sound of Music -- A romance movie becomes (admittedly late in the story) a suspenseful drama about escape from the Nazis. Not a great example, but I wanted to at least mention it.

Bone Tomahawk -- Changes suddenly from a Western to a horror movie. (I read someplace that this one starts out as True Grit and becomes Cannibal Holocaust.)

L.A. Confidential -- This is one of five films I can remember (Psycho, Deep Blue Sea, Executive Decision, and Pulp Fiction are the other four) where one of the most famous and top-billed of its actors is unexpectedly killed off fairly early in the movie. Each of these reversals is an absolute and intentional shock, and leaves the stunned audience wondering What else might happen?

Not that it matters, but here are a few more midstory events that changed everything:

- The chest-buster scene in Alien

- The restaurant murders of McCluskey and Solozzo in The Godfather

- Maggie breaking her neck in the boxing ring in Million Dollar Baby

- The T-Rex escape in Jurassic Park

- The near-miss shark attack on Chief Brody's son in Jaws (turned a land-based investigation into a seagoing survival movie).

NOTE: Also interesting about the above five examples is that four of these films were the original installments of what would become hugely successful multi-movie franchises.

Can you suggest other midstream reversals that I've missed or forgotten? Do you think this kind of plot shift--and jolt to the reader/viewer--adds value to the story? Can you think of any surprises like this that didn't work? How about your own writing--if you use plot twists, do they ever happen in the middle of your story or novel? 

That's my rant for today. Take care, and keep writing!

Plotting Your Story with Aeon Timeline

I’ve spent the last year working on a nonfiction ghostwriting project for a client who got a deal to deliver a memoir about, shall we say, his military career. (Our contract precludes me from spilling many of the details, but I’ll try to work around it.)

Recently, I asked the client a question that puzzled even him.

“Did you return home at any point during your first deployment?”

“No, why?”

“Because your first daughter had to have been conceived during that year. If you were overseas…”

I stopped shy of asking him who the father really was…

A few days later I got a flurry of humorous texts from his wife. They both had a good laugh over my question. Yes, she recalled, he did come home once during that period of time. (She had photos of a romantic dinner and getaway weekend to prove it. Not that I needed it!) By the time Dad returned home again, a beautiful three-month-old baby was waiting to greet her father for the first time.

“That’s so funny,” the wife told me. “It was so long ago, we forgot that little detail. How did you figure it out?”

Normally, I can use these moments to brag that I’m the greatest reporter ever. But in this case, the tipoff sprung not from my brain but from a piece of software that I’ve been using to plot the book.

The software is Aeon Timeline. Product developers use it to plot the trajectory of their real-life projects. Scholars and historians use it to map out their areas of study, both Before Common Era (BCE) and Common Era (CE). Lawyers use it to plot litigation strategies and timelines. Writers of all stripes use it to map out fiction and nonfiction. Screenwriters presumably can do the same.

This is not the world’s most expensive software. You’ve got it forever for $65. If you want annual updates, that will run you a little extra. All completely tax deductible for a professional writer.

What do I like about the program? I can list every single character in the book I’m planning, inserting their birth and death dates. From that moment forward, whenever Character A meets Character B in the timeline, the software automatically calculates each person’s age down to the years, months, and days. For the project I’m working on now, I can insert real-life historic events—the election of presidents, dates of wars, what-have-you—and everything will populate on my screen, showing me how people, places, events all intersect.

As you can imagine, this can be pretty useful for mystery writers working with tricky timelines. On its website, Aeon actually uses Murder on the Orient Express as one of their case studies. (I have reproduced some of the Orient Express screenshots here, but you will find them infinitely more readable on this page of Aeon’s website.) 

That novel is a good example because everything hinges on the events occurring over one night aboard that infamous train. Poirot nimbly tucks away all the details in his little gray cells, but I’m pretty sure Dama Agatha plotted her story using a handwritten version of what Aeon shows us in these screenshots.

If you need to keep track of murder weapons, locations, character traits, etc., you can easily create a new entry and start tracking that plot point or detail. 

I guess you could say the software is remarkably flexible. I like that about Aeon Timeline. I also sorta kinda hate it. This is one of those software programs that rewards a long learning curve. Luckily, there is a knowledge base, forum, and developer support on the software’s website, not to mention countless YouTube videos to help you piece together how to use it.

Early on in this project, I found myself spending a tedious week trying to input all our nonfiction milestones into the software. I pulled the details from a mountain of documents the client shared with me. Four or five days into this, I had to ask myself if this was all worth it. Was I wasting my time? Couldn’t I just hand-write the details on sheets of paper, the way I’d always done?

I could have, but then I would have had to keep a mountain of paper at the ready. Instead, once I input everything into the program, I tucked the reams of paper into a banker box, forgot about them, and focused on the unfolding story instead. Every time I did another interview with the client, I spent a few post-call minutes plugging new dates and times into the program.

Aeon has been a lifesaver, and I’m eager to try it again for an upcoming fiction project. I think you’d get the best mileage out of Aeon using it to plot longer projects such as novels, novellas, or anthology book series. One feature I’m eager to try is Aeon’s narrative timeline, which allows you to drag and drop plot points from one timeline into a secondary timeline that mimics how you will actually structure the book.

Example: A scene actually occurs at the end of the timeline, but you can drag it into the prologue position. That could be a valuable feature if you were planning a project with an abundance of flashbacks.

All that said, Aeon might be helpful if you’re writing a short story of unusual complexity. Since my short stories tend to be, ahem, fairly clueless, I don’t think it would be smart to plot them digitally. Most of the time, a sheet of scrap paper with a five or so plot points is enough to keep track of where I’m going. And besides, I enjoy writing short stories precisely because dense outlines aren’t necessary.

It may not look like it, but I really do try to limit the amount of software I use in my daily work. If something doesn’t blow me away with its usefulness, I chalk the whole thing up to an experiment that didn’t pan out, and delete the program from my computer. Because, in the end, who really has the time?

I’ll discuss another software program for writers when I see you in three weeks!

Joe

josephdagnese.com

Thoughts on Writing & Memory

Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.

                  – Marcus Tullius Cicero, On the Orator

My brother-in-law has a saying. "With family, it is best to have a short memory."

I was thinking about this quote during a recent conversation I had with my wife. She showed a photo of something and I asked her what it was. She said to me, "I showed you this thing just the other day.

I responded with an intelligent, "You did?"

And she said, "Yes, and you said at the time, 'Looks exactly like I pictured it.'”

I have no memory of this conversation. Or had no memory of it, until my wife reminded me of what I said.  And I think this is an interesting illustration of how tricky human memory can be.

And what’s even trickier is trying to write human memory in all of its forms: straight remembering; having some thing tickle at the back of your skull, but you can’t quite put your finger on it; not remembering at all, etc.

Luckily we're not talking about THIS kind of "Memory."

One of the things that I have always prided myself on throughout my life, is my memory. Now deep in the midst of my late 50s, I find certain names dates, etc., elude me and I have to reach for them. 

I have also noticed, as illustrated in the instance related above, that my mind is pretty efficient about discarding memory that is trivial or completely unimportant to my long-term goals, to my long-term interests, or to anything other than being in the moment. 

And yet other such memories, the feeling of hiking the Virgin River in Zion National Park, for example, that could be a cursory memory that some people wouldn’t remember. And yet I do, and I don’t just remember the hiking. I also remember the sun filtering off the canyon walls, the smell of the river, as I waded through it, the sound of people murmuring to each other as they hiked up the river, and so on and so forth.

Like I said, memory is a tricky thing. 

And it's even more dicey to effectively to write about it. 

Some examples that spring to mind (Warning: there are a few SPOILERS looming ahead)

In his novel Inferno Dan Brown has his protagonist Robert Langdon awaken in an Italian hospital with no memory of the past several days, and he spends the lion's share of of the rest of the book trying to put together some fragmented images and some sentence fragments, especially the repeated phrase “very sorry,” repeated over and over again. Turns out he was thinking of the Italian artist and art historian Giorgio Vasari.

For my money, Brown draws this out quite a bit longer than necessary, and this eventual "revelation" is expected to carry far too much of the load as a plot transition point. This is no criticism of Dan Brown. Far from it. I'll be the first to say that his experiment with the vagaries of a fragmented memory and their collective effect on the narrative, especially when the point-of-view character is the one struggling with their memory, is one worth taking. And it's definitely a larger risk than I have taken in my own fiction writing.

This trope has been around for a while. Memory loss has frequently been used as a crutch tossed into any number of formulaic novels/films/TV shows over the years, with mixed results. Thinking especially of some good examples (The Prisoner, starring the inimitable Patrick McGoohan, comes to mind) and some hokey ones (Pretty much anything produced by 60s/70s Hollywood TV heavyweight Quinn Martin, with the exception of The Fugitive and The Streets of San Francisco).

And there are , of course, many other relatively recent novels/films that have played around with sketchy memory: not least the Guy Pearce vehicle Memento, which turns on the point of view character having brain damage that has affected his ability to process short-term memory into long-term memory, and Dennis Lehane's terrific novel (and the Martin Scorsese-helmed film of the same name adapted from it) Shutter Island–a master class in the use of an unreliable narrator.

Other successful novels (and films adapted from them) in the unreliable narrator vein include such bestsellers as The Girl on the Train and The Woman in the Window, neither of which I have read, and both of which I am given to understand make use of questionable memory on the part of the main character (at least in part alcohol-induced). 

There have been so many films of this variety, that the whole subgenre even has its own excellent parody: the 2022 Netflix miniseries The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window. It's worth your time. Kristen Bell alone as the main character is worth the price of admission.

For me, though, no one has ever done the "shattered memory holding back the main character, who must race against time to put the pieces together" thing quite so well as thriller master Robert Ludlum.

I'm talking, of course, about Ludlum's masterwork, The Bourne Identity. And yes, I am well aware that Ludlum's novel has long since been adapted into a rightly well-regarded series of thriller films starring Matt Damon and Brian Cox. If you haven't seen these films, I urge you to do so. They are incredibly well-done.

And yet, if you haven't read the source material, Ludlum's original novel...even if you have seen the movies based on it, I strongly urge you to give the book a chance. There are so many differences between book and movies, and I don't want to spoil them, so I'll just close with a phrase that Ludlum used (to vastly greater effect) as his own earlier version of Brown's "very sorry":

"Cain is for Carlos, and Delta is for Cain."

How about you? Favorite works of fiction that play around with memory? Challenges you have faced trying to play around with memory in your own work? Let us hear from you in the comments section!

See you in two weeks!

Today in Mystery History: February 1

 

Today is our 12th exciting journey into the past of our amazing field.  Hang onto your blunt instrument.

February 1, 1878.  H.C. Bailey was born in London.  His most prominent creation was  a surgeon and amateur detective, Reggie Fortune.  He also wrote about an attorney, the unfortunately named Joshua Clunk.

February 1, 1920. British novelist Colin Watson was born.  He wrote about Inspector Purbright and Lucilla Teatime (another interesting name).  He also produced a history of crime novels between the wars called Snobbery with Violence.

 February 1, 1924.  "Night Shots" appeared in Black Mask Magazine.  It was Dashiell Hammett's seventh story about the Continental Op.  

February 1, 1925. Top Notch Magazine featured "The Case of the Misplaced Thumb" (and now the titles are getting weird).  It was Erle Stanley Gardner's first novelette about Speed Dash (another name for the books), a human-fly turned crime fighter.  I don't mean that he was a character from the movie The Fly.  He was an acrobat, able to climb walls unaided.

February 1, 1929. Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest was released.  It was his second novel about the Continental Op.

February 1, 1976. Robert Martin died. In the forties he wrote for Black Mask, Dime Detective, and other pulps.  In the fifties he started writing novels, many about Cleveland private eye Jim Bennett.  Bill Pronzini, who corresponded with him in his later years, called Martin "a genuinely nice man." 

February 1, 1989.  P.D. James' novel Devices and Desires was published.  It was the eighth appearance by Adam Dalgleish.

February 1, 1993. Publication date for Marissa Piesman's Heading Uptown.  Piesman and her protagonist were both Jewish New York attorneys.  The books were funny.  She used to write them on the subway on the way to work but, alas, she changed jobs , shortened her commute, and stopped writing them.

February 1, 2000. Peter Levi passed away.  This English author was an interesting fella.  He was a Jesuit priest until his forties.  He became Oxford Professor of Poetry and discovered (in California!) a poem he claimed was written by William Shakespeare.  Most scholars disagreed.  He  wrote several mysteries starting with the wonderfully titled The Head in the Soup in 1979. 

 

 

The Importance of Emotional Motivation in Fiction

I'm on vacation, so I'm rerunning a post from last winter (with minor changes). It's about the use of emotional motivation in crafting characters, using my short story "Beauty and the Beyotch" as a teaching tool. This column is timely because this story was named a finalist for the Agatha Award last week, sharing category honors with authors Cynthia Kuhn (for her story "There Comes a Time"), Lisa Q. Mathews (for her story "Fly Me to the Morgue"), Richie Narvaez (for his story "The Minnesota Twins Meet Bigfoot"), and my fellow SleuthSayer Art Taylor (for his story "The Invisible Band"). I'm looking forward to seeing them all at the Malice Domestic convention in April. But first ... emotional motivation.

 

Writers know their characters should be real, distinct, and engaging, but that's easy to say. How do you go about doing it? Focusing on voice—what and how a character speaks and thinks—is an important part of the process of making your characters come alive off the page. Another is understanding what drives the characters. This latter element played a key role when I wrote my newest story, "Beauty and the Beyotch," which was published last February in issue 29 of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. Here's the teaser:

"Beauty and the Beyotch" is a story about three high school girls told from two perspectives about one thing: their struggle to make their deepest desires come true. What happens when those dreams collide?

These girls' motivations drive all the action in the story and make them who they are. So, who are they deep down?

 

Elaine is an insecure spoiled girl who yearns for acclaim and fame. She is afraid that Joni (her best friend, Meryl's, new pal) will get the starring role in their school's upcoming musical, Beauty and the Beast—a part Elaine not only craves but believes is her due. Elaine is desperate to avoid such humiliation, which she fears would undermine her long-term goals.

Joni is shy, an introvert. The idea of auditioning for the show scares her. But she also badly wants to please her mother, who starred in her own high school productions and who keeps encouraging Joni to spread her wings and make some friends. So, despite her anxiety, Joni decides to try out for the spring musical.

Meryl is caught in the middle of her friends. More than anything, she wants to be a mensch—a good, kind person. It's what prompts her to befriend Joni, even after she learns Elaine doesn't like her, because she can see Joni needs a friend. Because of incidents from Meryl's past, being good and honest means more to her than anything else. But when Elaine's and Joni's goals collide, Meryl is forced to make heart-wrenching choices that strike at the essence of who she wants to be.

So, we have three distinct characters, each driven by something different. But are their goals substantial enough to justify their actions? To make them believable and to make readers care about what happens in the story?

 

The answer for Elaine is an easy yes. Her dream of becoming an actress is something people can understand, if not relate to. The longing for celebrity is well known in our culture, and Elaine believes getting the starring role in the school musical is a key part in her path to fame. In contrast, Joni's and Elaine's deepest desires are quieter. Joni wants to please her mother. Meryl wants to be a good person. I wonder if readers might be skeptical about these goals. Are they important enough to warrant being described as the girls' deepest desires? Are they strong enough to drive Joni's and Meryl's stories?

Thinking about crime fiction brings these questions and their answer into stark relief. When crimes are committed, we know that there can be a superficial reason driving the perpetrator as well as a more meaningful reason. For example, Bob Smith robs a bank because he needs to pay for his mom's nursing home. His reason is practical, but deep down, it's also very personal. He cannot allow himself to be the son who lets his mom down again, and he will risk anything to be a better person for her, even if it means being a bad person in the eyes of the law. What's driving Bob is personal, all about how he sees himself and wants to be seen in his mother's eyes. Yet I'm sure readers would think these needs are meaningful enough to believably drive his actions and could lead readers to become invested in what happens to Bob, even if they think his actions are wrong. 

 

With that in mind, let's return to Joni and Meryl. Just like Bob is driven by a personal reason, so are Joni and Meryl (and Elaine, for that matter). Each girl's past has turned her into the person she is as the story begins, be it a fame-seeker, a mother-pleaser, or a mensch. They're all desperate to get what they need emotionally, and those needs, those passions, those deepest desires, are believable, even if they aren't what many would think of as big dreams. They've set these three girls on a collision course, and the result is a story that I hope readers will find compelling.

So, when you are crafting your stories, think about what drives your characters deep down. It doesn't matter if their needs involve careers or more personal desires. It only matters that you make the characters feel real. Basing their actions on their emotional motivations will hopefully enable you to bring the characters to life in complex, compelling, and engaging ways.

 

Want to read "Beauty and the Beyotch"? You can read it on my website by clicking here. Or, if you'd prefer to buy the issue, it's available in ebook form and trade paperback from the usual online sources. 

Word salad? Dig in.

 
I fell in love with words at an early age.  I don’t just mean a love of literature, but of the individual words themselves.  One strong influence was all the adventure books from the late Victorian and early 20^th century passed down from my father and grandfather that I devoured like giant bowls of buttered popcorn. 

They were written in the style of the 19^th century, which leaned toward the purple and prolix.  Ornate language peppered with words you’d never see in contemporary literature, much less hear in everyday conversation.  I’d look up their meaning in my brother’s exhausted Merriam-Webster’s, and catalog the definition in my tender memory.

I also used quite a number of these forgotten words and usages in my earliest writing, much to its detriment.  Few high school English teachers had ever heard of Stygian darkness or a flexile snake.  Or would approve of a stern expression being described at a stately countenance, or a homeless guy on a street corner as a mendicant.  But I did.

By the way, Victorian writers often interchanged “he exclaimed” with “he ejaculated.”  Even as a junior writer I knew this was an anachronistic usage best avoided. 

It wasn’t until I started reading Hemingway, that god of succinct and efficient prose, that it dawned on me:  big words – worse, obsolete words – make you sound ridiculous and pretentious.  This was somewhat countered by James Joyce, who used every word in the language, and conjured a few neologisms of his own, but did so with such poetical brilliance that few griped about it.  Not being Joyce, I’d simply choose to pop in a bit of obscure vocabulary every once in a while, and wait for the editors to circle it and write, “Huh?”

I’m not the first logophile, by any means.  William Buckley famously confounded even hyper-educated PBS viewers with the sweep of his lexicographical panache, often insulting his guests on Firing Line without a breath of reproach, since they’d have no idea what he just called them.  Shakespeare is not only the Greatest English Writer of All Time, his vocabulary is still thought to be the largest ever recorded.  And this without Google, or dictionaries for that matter.  But I’d also commend modern writers such as Anthony Burgess, Tom Wolfe, Joyce Carol Oates and Christopher Hitchens as no slouches in this department.

English has been described as a whoreish language, in that it will copulate and reproduce with every other language on earth without shame or regret.  That’s how we ended up with so many words, so many derivations, such richness of expression.  The French, of all people, find this tendency unseemly, and try to block outside influence, which is one reason why English is now the closest thing we have to a common world tongue. The new Lingua Franca. 

With such an enormous and diverse palette to choose from, it takes discipline to select words that get the immediate job done, though I can’t resist the occasion when a big, fat, juicy splotch of verbal obscurity seems like just the right thing.  It may not always serve the purpose of my writing, but it’s fun. 

Even ineluctable. 

 

Simple Mathematics

 

Mathematics is derived from two Greek words:

    'Manthanein' meaning 'learning' and 'techne' meaning 'an art' or 'technique.'

Mathematics simply means to learn or study or gain knowledge. The theories and concepts given in mathematics help us understand and solve various types of problems in academic as well as in real life situations. Mathematics is a subject of logic.

So, now let's see how we can use mathematics to reduce real life undercover situations to simple equations.

Our first equation would look like this:  IM + T = PD

IM stands for Informant Motivation which has several subsets

    Revenge: the informant wants revenge on a criminal because of a real or imagined hurt

    Money:  The informant wants or needs money and therefore is willing to work for law                         enforcement on a limited basis

    Leniency:  the informant has a case against him and is cooperating to get less or no time                        on his sentence 

    Rival:  the informant wants to cripple or get rid of a rival criminal/criminal organization

    Public Minded:  the informant doesn't want this particular criminal/criminal organization                       in his neighborhood

    Profession:  yes, there are informants who travel from city to city and work this as their                         profession

T stands for Trust. If the informant is in good standing with the criminal/criminal organization, then more than likely when the informant introduces the undercover agent to the criminal/criminal organization, they will accept the undercover agent.

    NOTE: T does not mean that the undercover agent or agency should blindly trust the informant. Think about it. The informant is scamming the people he is introducing the undercover agent to, so sooner or later he may start scamming the agent and enticing him into a bad situation or even breaking the law in some fashion. After all, a criminal has no better currency for getting out of a jam than to offer up a corrupt cop.

The Russians have an old proverb, "trust, but verify."

As we Americans have recently applied this saying to China, "distrust and verify."

PD represents our Potential Defendant. Now, put it all together. A motivated informant (IM) who is trusted (T) means that an undercover agent should be able to acquire whatever evidence or contraband goods are needed to end up with the arrest of a potential defendant (PD).

Our second equation would look like this:  O + G =BB

    O represents opportunity

    G is the target's greed

    BB means buy bust

Here's an example of Opportunity. A hashish dealer travels to the Middle East, scores several blocks of blond Lebanese hashish, conceals the hashish in the walls of three smuggler's trunks, ships one trunk to a friend's house in Miami and the other two trunks to his unsuspecting mother in Sioux City, Iowa. Unfortunately for him, Customs has drilled a hole in one wall of each trunk and retrieved core samples of hashish.

The one trunk is delivered to the friend's house in Florida, the recipients open the trunk with glee, but soon spy the the drilled hole and flee out the back door. They are as they say, "in the wind."

The other two trunks are delivered to mom's house in Sioux City. Dear old Mom is soon reading a search warrant and wondering what the heck is going on. Law enforcement remove the trunks and recover two letters from prospective buyers of the hashish. These two letters, containing the prospective buyer's telephone numbers, provide the opportunity.

Now comes the Greed. I use the first telephone number to call the wannabe buyer in Omaha. I explain that the big dealer is currently taking care of business in Florida and therefore he has asked me to make some calls to deliver the hash from the other two trunks. How much would he like to purchase? We arrange for me to call him in the near future to set up a time and place for the transfer of hashish and money. Now remember, this is the first time this guy has met me and that's over the phone. Greed has blinded him from taking precautions. He gets a warning call before I call him back and he subsequently joins the In The Wind Program. Lucky him.

I call the second number, located in Des Moines, not part of our Resident Office territory. This future arrestee arranges to meet me in in a tavern. He describes himself, sets the time and place and says he will be sitting at the bar. All is agreed, but since our agency has temporarily run out of travel funds, I contact an agent in our Des Moines office and provide him with the details. He and his partner only have one block of black hashish available to them from old evidence, so they wrap up some slender telephone books to make it look like they have more. The agent meets the future arrestee in the bar. They talk. Future arrestee mentions that the agent's voice sounds different than on the phone. That should have been his first clue, but greed intervened.

They go out to the parking lot. Agent takes the block of real hashish to the future arrestee's vehicle. Future arrestee's partner goes to the government car where 2nd agent waits with the rest of the hashish blocks (wrapped up phone books). After future arrestee sees the real hashish sample block then the exchange will take place. Future arrestee mentions the hashish is black instead of blond. That should have been his second clue. Agent makes up story. Once again, greed overrules good sense. The idiot produces the money, and since we can't let the hashish walk, the agents bust them, seize their money and vehicle and return the hashish to old evidence. Thus, Opportunity (on our part) plus Greed (on their part) equals a Buy Bust.

These simple equations can also be applied to plots for crime, mystery or spy stories, merely change the circumstances.

Enjoy.

We, The Jury

It's Derringer time, and that's prompted me to think about the whole literary jury process.  I've been on several, and this guest post below, by my good friend and author Jayne Barnard, really speaks to me.  How about you?  Have you ever been on a literary jury?  Please tell us your experience in the comments below.

We, the Jury...

by J.E. Barnard

When a crime writer hears the 'J' word, they can be forgiven for thinking Twelve Angry Men, A Jury of Her Peers, or any book, movie, or news article about a trial.  Maybe our minds veer to Grisham novels about juries or the Richard Jury mysteries by Martha Grimes.  Rarely do we consider the other kind of jury:  the one that decides on a writers' award.  Whether it's the National Book award, the Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award, the CBC or Writers Trust, or--particular favourites of crime writers--the Edgars, Agathas, Daggers. Derringers, Theakston's Old Peculiar, and Canada's own Crime-writing Awards of Excellence (formerly the Arthur Ellis Awards,) there's a jury behind it.

After two decades of serving on writers' juries in the Canada and the USA, for fiction and non-fiction, children and adults, short fiction and long, even for plays and scripts, I've got some thoughts to share about what makes a good juror and why writers would, indeed should, try jury work at least once in their literary career.

Who sits on a writers' award jury?

The fact is, juries are made up mainly of readers and writers like you.  Award-winning authors, multi-series authors, one-book authors, true crime authors, short story authors, journalists, bloggers, reviewers.  Other seats are filled by those working in the publishing industry, or in libraries, or those with subject area experience like lawyers, prosecutors, criminologists, pathologists, cops.  But mainly writers and readers.

What makes a good crime writing juror?

1.  Someone who loves crime writing.  Writing it, reading it, listening to it, watching it.

That juror represents all readers of that crime category.  Ideally, they're aware of what's hot in crime writing and tropes that are past their prime.  The good juror accepts that, as much as they personally may love the Golden Age detective authors like Agatha Christie and Dashell Hammett, the genre has moved on, and the awards moved on with it.  The good juror knows that even though they personally love cozy cat mysteries with recipes or serial killer POV scenes in alternating gory chapters, the genre is far wider than both and they must evaluate all entries in their category not on what they personally prefer but on how well the author has executed a work according to its place on the crime writing spectrum.

2.  Collaboration.  This essential qualification is too often left unstated.  It's rare that a single book or story rises to the top of every jury member's list.  Any category may include several eminently worthy candidates for the top slot.  Jurors need to communicate their shortlist selections clearly to fellow jurors and be able to defend those choices with calm, clear language, while respecting other jurors' alternative perspectives.  Only together can jurors develop a short list that reflects the breadth of excellence in that category of writing.

Other qualifications:  your writing credentials and your relevant life experience.  A working children's librarian or elementary school teacher is better placed to evaluate a Children's and Young Adult category than, say, a retired criminology professor who taught adults and has no regular contact with child and adolescent readers.  It's not that the latter couldn't evaluate the writing and the structure, but that they're unfamiliar with what readers in that category are currently consuming and what those readers value in a book or story.

What other qualities does a good juror bring?

Ideally, they're familiar with:

• the award's writing language (in Canada, so far, that means English or French) including a solid grasp of grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
• structural issues of storytelling:  plotting, pacing, tension.
• elements of a strong opening and a powerful ending.

Good jurors understand enough about characters and their arcs to tell whether they're introduced or developed poorly or well, and can explain those thoughts to their fellow jurors during the consultation process (and to the author if their jury is one that offers comments/feedback.)

Non-fiction jurors ideally have a grasp of language and storytelling as well as some subject-area expertise.  

One reason why juries traditionally have three or more members is to balance overall strengths.  A strong writer with two subject experts, or two writers with a lone subject expert, can turn in the strongest possible shortlist if they respect the knowledge and skills each member brings to the reading and discussion process.

Why serve on a jury?

1.  To give back to the community of writers that breaks trail, nurtures your skills, and has built the publishing industry and awards processes you already are or hope soon to be competing in.

2.  As a master class in what makes some stories, articles or books work better (and win awards) than others.

Trust me on the second one: jury work can revolutionize your writing practice.  There are few more concentrated ways to figure out what makes a good first page than by reading twenty or more of them in quick succession to see which ones hold your attention and figure out what makes them stand out.  Read twenty opening chapters and you'll have a clearer idea what kind of character introductions, settings, or situations work best - or utterly fail - to pull you into stories you might not otherwise read.  Look at twenty endings and some will have a resonance you can feel to your bones while others will be just okay.  Take those new or more in-depth understandings and apply them to your own writing, and your odds of seeing your work on an awards shortlist can increase exponentially.

I hope the next time a crime writing award puts out a public or selective call for award jurors, you'll take a moment to consider whether you have some skills, dedication, and desire to learn and to serve.  And then apply.

 

Alberta author J.E. (Jayne) Barnard has two award-winning series – The Maddie Hatter Adventures and The Falls Mysteries – and numerous short stories involving history, mystery, crime, and punishment. Between writing gigs, she volunteers for Sisters in Crime and Crime Writers of Canada, and regularly serves on fiction juries in Canada and the USA. She lives in a vine-covered cottage between two rivers, keeping cats and secrets. Her most recent winter mystery is Where the Ice Falls (Dundurn Press 2019).  Find her on your favourite platform via Linktree https://linktr.ee/je_barnard