Facing - and using - your fears

By Gayle Carline
Mystery Author and B-eye-onic Woman

Whether you're writing mysteries or thrillers, you're always on the lookout for situations in your real life that you could turn into a dangerous place for your protagonist. You find yourself picturing a car chase as you drive to the store. You visit the bathroom at a restaurant and wonder if a character could be kidnapped from there.

Truly, it's a wonder that paranoia doesn't keep writers from going anywhere.

This week, I got an extra surge of plot ideas - I had cataract surgery. This was my second go-round, as I'd had my right eye done about a year ago. I won't describe it as a pleasant experience, but it had been mostly benign. I expected to take a day or two to recover, but my recovery went so quickly, I was able to drive the next day. So I expected this time to be similar.

Ah, but that's what they'd like you to think.

The difference began with having two nurses fussing over me, asking me the same questions over and over. "Any heart problems? Diabetes? Hearing aids?" (No, how about you?) "Are you wearing any jewelry?" Yadda-yadda-yadda.

At one point, I thought about telling one of them that the other just asked me those questions, but I thought, well, maybe they'll throw a new one at me. They didn't.

Then there were the eye drops. I remember the drops before just being wet and cold. These stung. All. Of. Them. What especially alarmed me was when they'd put in the drops that were numbing - the drops that followed still stung. What if the numbing drops weren't working?

This is always my fear in any procedure: what if the numbing/ tranquilizing/ anesthesia doesn't work?

One of the nurses then approached me with two cups. "You've had the LensX procedure before, haven't you?"

"No."

"Well, then you get to take a pill." She was a little gleeful when she said this. As I swallowed it, she explained. "For the laser part of the surgery, the doctor needs you to be relaxed but not too relaxed. So we just like to give you a Xanax."

WHAT?!?!?!?!?

No-No-No, I like to be sleepy-dreamy-so-relaxed-you-could-saw-me-in-half. Not "relaxed but not too relaxed." I began to picture something I saw in a movie. (I don't advise watching more than a minute of it.)




They wheeled me into a room that looked like a broom closet with a machine in it. Dr. Brar, my surgeon, was there, and positioned the machine over my eye. I mentioned that I didn't think the drugs did much good and I was nervous as a cat.

He said not to worry (HA! easy words for him), then began to gently tell me that he was going to use this clamp to keep my eye open and all I'd feel was a little pressure and all I'd have to do was keep absolutely still. I still wanted to jump out of my own skin and run down the hall, screaming, but he just kept talking, very calm, and I sucked it up and stayed quiet.

It was over in a couple of minutes. The nurse said they were going to give me something to make me drowsier for the lens replacement and I remember saying, "Oh, good."

That's the last thing I remember until I was in the recovery room.

As you can see, for a writer, this was chock full o' ideas for me. How someone can be tortured, or threatened with torture. How the character on the receiving end might feel about it all. Character studies of the nurses and doctors.

For a person who is afraid of needles and pain, it's a great way to get me through a surgical procedure.

What pumps up your courage and gets you through your fear?

BTW, the Xanax did finally kick in - I slept all day.

Call me chicken.

By Gayle Carline

One thing all fiction writers must do is build tension in their stories. No matter the genre, the main character must have a goal and be thwarted at every turn from achieving that goal. The cop wants to catch the serial killer, but is given false leads. The sleuth opens a cabinet that holds an important clue, but is conked over the head with a teapot. The handsome cowboy is set to ask out the cute barmaid, but is told by her psycho-stalker roommate that she’s a lesbian.

 

It’s always something.

 

One of the things I have to do is put my P.I. in dangerous situations. I don’t like danger myself. I don’t walk down dark alleys, don’t snoop around where I’m not wanted, and have never been in a physical fight, unless you count the time my mare bit me and I smacked her with the hose. I don’t even open other people’s medicine cabinets when I’m visiting, unless I’m looking for dental floss to dig out that piece of overcooked brisket wedged in my molar.

 

Honest, that’s all I’m looking for.

 

If I made a horror movie, it would last exactly five minutes. When I heard the weird noise outside, I would not go out looking for the source, carrying a candle and wearing a negligee. For one thing I don’t own a negligee. What I would do is call 911, turn on all the lights, gather every weapon and sharp object in the house and barricade myself in the back bedroom. And… credits roll (police sirens in the background).

 

So putting Peri in the line of fire is not easy for me. I like Peri. I don’t want her to be injured or killed. But I’ve read armchair detective stories and I’m just not as interested in the action if the main character is not in the thick of things. Secondary characters in danger don’t get me as involved as when it’s happening to the protagonist. So Peri must go where I don’t want to tread.

 

Apart from my own fear, I confess, when I begin to write a scene where Peri is going down the dark alley or snooping around, I am actually afraid that the scene is going to get out of my control and Peri will be boxed into a corner with no escape. I have written plenty of scenes where I want them to go in one direction and my characters revolt and march off the opposite way. What if the danger doesn’t go the way I plan? What if the villain is a step ahead of her and she walks into an ambush?

 

I know what you’re thinking: just rewrite the scene. (Okay, you’re probably thinking I’m loony as a Toon, too, but let’s leave that for another post.)

 

I’d like to think I can rewrite the scene, but I can’t. I mean, I can, but the original version will haunt me. All the time that I spend revising that chapter so that she gets a phone call just before she opens the door, which delays her enough to figure out that she’s being set up, I’m still thinking: nice dream but I know she really walked straight into that gunfire.

 

So when I begin an action scene, I decide on the outcome first. Is Peri left unconscious? If she gets shot, where? Once I know how she will survive, then I imagine rewinding the scene and playing it backward, so to speak. This way, I can direct the action from the start so it ends my way.

 

After all, I can’t depend on my characters to do it for me.

 

So, writers, how do you thrust your characters into the line of fire? And readers, how much do you trust an author to take you to that edge without driving you over it?