It's Street Sweeper Day!

Yesterday was street sweeper day at my sister’s house. That basically means the city will make some revenue off this block from the poor schmucks who forgot to cram their cars into the driveway, three and four deep. The street sweeper comes by about 7:30 in the morning followed closely by the woman in the little white car with an overactive pen waiting to write a ticket. This street is very near a state university so there are several houses with hard working, low-income, college students living in the neighborhood. Most can’t afford the parking tickets.

This is my sister’s pet peeve.  But before I go on, you have to know that she is like the street monitor making sure everyone keeps their yards looking nice, no sofas left on the street, no loud parties, or barking dogs, etc., She has lived in this neighborhood for forty years and loves it. She raised her kids here and knows most if not every neighbor by name, their children, and cats and dogs. The neighbors love her.

But every second and fourth Wednesday the street sweeper comes. He drives way too fast, blows the leaves and trash, (that the neighbors have just swept into the street) back up on the sidewalks. Then, instead of cleaning his brushes, or emptying his load, or whatever street sweepers do to get rid of the extra debris, he keeps rolling along the street until it all falls off right back onto the street he just swept. Somehow, and I’m not sure it’s by accident, he manages to dump most of it right in front of my sister’s house.

My sister has taken it upon herself to make sure no more money goes into the city coffer from parking tickets on her street. So, every second and fourth Wednesday she gets up early, and at 7:25 drives around the block and knocks on doors where the cars are parked in the street. Most of the time it’s the houses with the students, but not always. Sometimes it’s the guy who had to work late who just forgot, or the family that had out-of-state company and didn’t realize what day it was.

What does this have to do with crime or fiction, you ask? Well, my sister thinks it’s a crime, but that wasn’t the point of my story. This is the kind of every day thing that builds characters in our books. I’m sure you know a lot more about my sister from this description than you would if I just tried to describe her. I bet you formed your own idea of what she looks like, the way she behaves, her personality. Well, if you imagined a wiry, petite, woman who never slows down, never gives up, who loves children and old people, and does it all with a smile, you nailed it.

Every day, wherever I am, or whatever I’m doing, I watch for the little things that go on around me. They help build great characters.

By the way, my sister is out of town this week and I’m house sitting for her. I left the house about 7:30 this morning and noticed the street sweeper hadn’t been there yet. I spotted a car on the street and I couldn’t help myself. I stopped, knocked on the door, and when the man came to the door in his housecoat I told him it was “street sweeper day.” I wasn’t too sure how he would react. I waited for a second. He turned, stuck his head in the door, and yelled, “Gabby, move your car!” Then he said, “Thanks, she didn’t need another one. I can’t afford it.”—It felt good.

Writers: Where do you get your ideas for this kind of character building?

Readers: Do you enjoy reading about the crazy little things a favorite character may do in their everyday life?

Urges

by Peg Brantley


When I asked a reader what she would like to see discussed at CFC, here's what she suggested:

… [A writer] having a character spring to life in her mind and having to write his story. As someone to whom this has NEVER happened, and to whom it is very unlikely to happen in the future, I was interested in what makes the urge to tell stories take root in a person’s mind.

Lordy, gordy. This tiny little bit set my mind on a roll. This is from The Missings—(I needed a minor character to give direction to a secondary character. See how small the role was supposed to be?):

“My sister has been murdered and I am looking for her killer. You and I have both heard about ‘the missings’ in our community, and I’m told you know something about them. There’s a good chance whoever is responsible for their disappearance is also responsible for my sister’s death. Will you talk to us?”

The entire time Elizabeth spoke, the man’s eyes remained fixed on Daniel. Those eyes, surprisingly light in a dark Chicano face, were hot with reined-in anger. His body signaled casual, easy: the kind of end-of-the-day posture all workingmen get, whether they’ve spent hours in the sweat of manual labor or sitting behind a desk. Forget that the clock said noon, his demeanor said relaxed. But his eyes told a different story. Intense. Unrelenting.

Elizabeth paused for a moment, waiting for an answer. The man’s attention never left Daniel.

“Do you always,” he enunciated in slow, precise Spanish, “let women do your talking?” The man did not so much as twitch. His voice remained low. Calm. “Did you leave your balls behind with your Mexican heritage?”

Daniel took a step closer. Pulled Elizabeth out of the way. Leaned in.

“My balls,” he replied in Spanish, “are where they’ve always been. Do you want to see who has the bigger pair?”

The man smiled. Then he laughed. Harder. So loud the rest of the bar once again grew silent. “I won’t work with someone who clearly denies who he is. You won’t get anything from me regardless of the beauty of the women you send ahead.” He cocked his head. “However, I’ve heard good things about someone in your department. Tell Detective Waters I will come to see him this afternoon. Tell him it’s time for me to find someone I can trust and that it isn’t you.”

***

This was my first introduction to Mex (whose real name is Carlos Alberto Basilio Teodoro Duque de Estrada Anderson). I met him just as readers met him. Fully formed. I knew immediately that he'd suffered tremendous loss. Strong. I knew he had a code he would not violate. I also knew how much that code had cost him. He showed up in the shadows of a bar in The Missings and threatened to derail the whole book. I was thinking Jack Reacher. I was thinking Lucas Davenport. He was thinking Mex Anderson.

I was soooo close to finishing the first draft of this book. I just needed a guy in a bar to help point my detectives in the right direction. Instead, Rambo showed up.

And he wouldn't shut up.

I became desperate. At the same time I was falling in love with this wounded-loner-strong-macho character, I was trying my damnedest to finish this story. My solution? Promise him one of his own if he'd just tone it down a notch.

Here's the deal: our "urges" take us onto the paths we're meant to follow. It's our choice. Writers, mathematicians, teachers, fire fighters, politicians, truck drivers or whatever… we get the urge and then we decide. Once we determine what path we're going to walk, we're at the mercy of the whims of that path. In my case, for this point in time, it was Mex Anderson.

It's all about revenge

by Jenny Hilborne

What is your motive? For me, it's all about revenge.

Every day, I plot murder. I fantasize about the evil things I, I mean my characters, would do to their victims if given the chance. I plot how they’ll get away with it, at least for a while. During this process, I noticed a trend, which caused me to examine my own personality.

In real life, I’m not the type to hold a grudge. At least, I don’t think so. However, in my fictional world, almost all my motives seem to revolve around revenge. I gravitate towards it. Quite frankly, I find it the purest and most satisfying kind of motive, both to write and to read. Characters driven by revenge are obsessed and determined, with a single-minded goal. They must settle the score at all costs, and their conduct shocks me the most.

Other motives seem weaker in comparison and more difficult to understand, especially in mysteries and thrillers. A villain bent on revenge is exciting to follow; his target, or someone close to that target has already hurt him, and we want to know how he’ll retaliate. Is the punishment deserved? Unless the villain is entirely bad, with no redeeming qualities, I’d say quite often it is. I love a villain who provokes empathy in me as a reader. This compassion adds to the drama and conflict going on inside me as I read. It raises questions in my mind about fairness, and righteousness, the validity of his actions, and how he should be handled when he’s caught.   

Other popular motives for pre-meditated murder include jealousy, robbery, and crimes of passion. More unusual motives might include boredom, or for fun (thrill kills). With these types of plotlines, I find I have less empathy for the villain and more for the victim, which seems more conventional, and; therefore, the stories don’t move me as much. The unconventional is more interesting and more troubling because deviant behaviour defies societal norms. It makes us question our own character. Is it normal to side with the villain? What would we do under the same circumstances?

Which motive do you find the strongest and the most satisfying, and what does our choice reveal about our own personality?

Can Too Much Forensic Science Smother Your Fiction?

By guest blogger D.P. Lyle, author, doctor, and forensics expert (The Writer's Forensics Blog)

If you write crime fiction in any genre—hard boiled, cozy, thriller, romantic, literary—you must have some knowledge of forensic science. Even if your story doesn’t include DNA or fingerprints or toxicology or autopsies or any of the other forensic techniques, you have to know what’s out there. Failure to do so can sink your story.

You might not directly use any of these techniques in your yarn but you must acknowledge that they exist or risk losing the reader. You see, readers are smart. Especially readers of crime fiction. They know how crimes should be investigated and recoil when simple, common sense things are avoided. For example, if your killer breaks and enters and commits a murder, your investigator must consider such things as fingerprints, shoe prints, hair and fiber, tire tracks, DNA, and many other types of evidence. Okay, so maybe your little old blue-haired sleuth doesn’t use these procedures herself but she must be aware of them if she is to be clever enough to solve the confusing crime you have created for her. And the police that are also investigating the crime definitely should. Avoiding at the very least a passing mention of these techniques will cause your reader to lose confidence in you as a storyteller.

Delving into these techniques in any detail isn’t necessary but letting the results of these tests impact your characters is essential. It’s not the science that pushes the story forward but rather the effect the science has on your characters that’s the driving force.

What about the other end of the spectrum? Can too much science kill the story? If you stop for lengthy scientific explanations will the forward momentum of your story die?

Absolutely.

Remember, the story is not about the science, it’s about the characters. The science is not important per se, it’s the effect of the science on the characters that drives the story. The methods of DNA analysis are boring. The details of toxicological testing will flat out put you to sleep. But if the DNA points a finger at your innocent protagonist or the toxicology results suggest that the old man died of poisoning and not a heart attack, tension and conflict follow. And that’s what drives a story.

In my latest Dub Walker novel, Hot Lights, Cold Steel, there are many forensic science techniques in play. Autopsy findings, traumatic wound analysis, ballistics, toxicology, and time of death determination to name a few. But none of these are the story. These techniques might solve one problem but inevitable generate more questions. When one thing is figured out four more possibilities emerge. And each of these apply pressure to Dub as he tries to uncover the person, or persons, responsible for a series of bizarre murders perpetrated by someone with incredible surgical skills and state of the art toys.

Even my other new book, Royal Pains, First Do No Harm, which is a comedy/drama tied to the popular TV series and not necessarily crime fiction, contains forensic science. The testing itself is never discussed but the results, at first confusing, ultimately allow Dr. Hank Lawson to zero in on the bad guys.

Character and conflict. That’s what’s important in storytelling. Science merely adds to the conflict and ramps up the pressure. Never lose sight of the fact that it’s a character under pressure that makes readers turn pages and your stories will carry those readers into the world you’ve created.

How much forensic science detail do you like in your crime fiction?