Why?

By Andrew E. Kaufman, author of psychological thrillers

Photo courtesy: Nikopoley

It's a loaded question, yes?

As a small Andrew, I was what one might call a Why Kid—you know the type, right? Every answer to every question was followed with a Why?  This would go on heedlessly (and perhaps annoyingly) for quite some time, until the person being questioned—usually an adult, often a teacher, and sometimes another kid—would get frustrated and yell, Shut the hell up!

Then I would be annoyed.

If we were tracking trends (also something I do rather obsessively), we might surmise this is why I ended up making a career out of answering the eternal question: Why?

And really, isn’t that what being a writer is all about?

When people ask how I come up with my ideas, how I create my characters, or how I plot my stories. Guess what I say?

Why?

Why, of course I do. In this case, however, it’s not actually a question (a relief, I’m sure), but more, it’s a truth, because every story I write begins this way.

In my first book, While the Savage Sleeps, it was: Why are two people, who have absolutely nothing in common and live in two different cities having seemingly similar creepy experiences that seemingly have nothing to do with each other?  Well, there were perhaps quite a few bodies dropping like flies everywhere and in rather hideous manners, but that was mainly the mood music.

In the Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted, it was: Why did Patrick find evidence of a murder among his hideously abusive, and incidentally, dead, mother’s belongings?

And in Darkness & Shadows, I asked: Why did the love of Patrick’s life die twice? Well, maybe that one’s more of a how, but you get the idea.

 

The point to all this? There are a few (What, did you expect the Why Child to only have one?)  

First, I think authors write books for the same reason that people like to read them. We’re insatiably curious (read: insatiably nosey). It’s not just enough to know that an eighty-six year-old grandmother was planting bodies in her tulip garden. We want to know why the hell she was doing it.

Second, whether we realize it or not, we’re all students of the human mind. We like to know how people’s brains work, or, for those of us who write our slightly off-color stories (read: bent), what makes them not work so much.

And last, never tell a writer to shut the hell up.  Don’t do it.

We get very annoyed.

Then we kill you off in our books.

It's worth spending the time

By Jenny Hilborne
Author of psychological mysteries and thrillers

Title is a big deal, maybe more important than the cover. Just like newspaper headlines, it has to have the power to grab attention. Choosing a good book title is difficult and it takes a lot of time.

As I remain undecided about the title for my upcoming suspense, I wonder how many other authors struggle with choosing their titles. How much attention do readers give to a title? Often when I've read a good book, I'll remember bits about the plot, perhaps not the characters, but I'll always remember the title.

A purchase could be based on a title alone, especially if it's a cool or intriguing one. I'm trying to remember if I've ever bought a book based on the title alone, but I'm sure I've certainly picked one up. I see it happen at book festivals, when a potential reader sees a book on a table that catches their eye and comments on the title. An interesting title gets the book in their hands. A great title offers the promise of a terrific story.

Some authors find it difficult to work on an untitled project - myself included, and we spend far too long analyzing labels instead of writing. When I think of titles for my work, I try to come up with key words in the story. If any jump out at me, they go on the possible list. In two or three words (I prefer short titles), I have to convey what the general story is about. It's not easy.

Putting on music, having a glass of wine, dimming the lights....none of this works for me when choosing a title for my books. Not even staring at the ocean. For my work in progress, I've put it out for a vote - and still can't decide. Maybe I'm overthinking it and if I forget about it for a while, the right title will come to me. That's the plan for now. While I was hunting around the web for ideas on creating a compelling title, I stumbled across a blog post by Michael Hyatt using the acronym PINC, which stands for Promise, Intrigue, Need, Content. Hyatt's post includes some good info. For anyone interested in reading it, I've included the link:

http://michaelhyatt.com/four-strategies-for-creating-titles-that-jump-off-the-page.html

In his blog post, Hyatt states great titles do one or more of PINC: make a promise, create intrigue, identify a need, or state the content. This helps. I've noticed when I buy books, I'm drawn to the intrigue part of PINC, to the titles that raise questions in my mind; what's this book about? I think he's right that a title goes a long way towards making or breaking a book's success and it is worth spending the time to come up with the right one.

Readers: do you ever buy books based on title alone?
Authors: Do you change your title as your story develops? How do you know when you've found the right one?

Have you lost the plot?

By Jenny Hilborne, author of mysteries and thrillers.

I have a chaotic mind and a tough time focusing on one thing at a time. I'm an erratic thinker with a short attention span. I often wonder how I got from one point in the thinking process to another. I'm a disorganized author.

When I sit down to write, my thoughts are scattered and my energy races off in several different directions, the result of which is a complex story with more than one plot line. These are the types of novels I mostly enjoy reading.

The challenge with a complicated story and multiple plot lines is the tendency to introduce the reader to a large cast; Stieg Larsson's series comes to mind. In Hide and Seek, I chopped out 14 characters during the editing process; enough to star in a novel of their own. I was still left with 41. I don't know what the optimum number of characters is. Each one in Hide and Seek had a purpose, and each earned their place in the story, but I would have preferred to write with a smaller cast.

A larger cast is more difficult to memorize, at least until the framework of the story is understood. This was part of the reason Dragon Tattoo took me several attempts before I stuck with it. If an author makes a reader do too much work, the reader might give up and move on to another book.

Another challenge with parallel plot lines is getting the threads to merge. In Madness and Murder, my two plot lines merged well and clues were dropped early on to show the reader how they would blend. I left the reader with questions, and the promise they would be answered. It's not always easy to get sub-plots to merge, as I've discovered with my new novel, Stone Cold, a current work in progress.

Stone Cold has a much smaller cast, but the sub-plot has grown legs of its own and taken over the main plot. I'm left wondering whether to cut the main plot and use it in another novel, or continue to try to blend them. Both plots have emerged as strong stories. As an author, I'm wondering what my readers might prefer. I love the complexity - do they? As the storyteller, I must choose how to tell the story, but a wrong choice could fail to draw the audience into the world I've created. I've agonized over it for weeks.

Reading authors such as Stieg Larsson can be work (and well worth it, once I got past the challenges he presented). I imagine writing his books and keeping track of the immense cast was not easy, but each character moved the story and he knew how to tell it. Authors have voices and stories in their heads, but who knew getting them on paper could be so difficult?

Authors: what traits of your personality make writing a challenge for you?

Readers: How complex do you like your mysteries and thrillers? Does a story with more than one main character and more than one plot line make it too difficult to follow the action?

Questions for Your Beta Readers

by Jodie Renner

Since I'm a freelance fiction editor and craft writer, most of my posts here will be advice, tips and resources for aspiring novelists, with an emphasis on thrillers, romantic suspense and mysteries.

So you've written your first draft? Congratulations! What's next? A future post of mine will go over the revision process, but for now, let's skip ahead to after you've revised your first draft once or twice. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by sending it off to an agent too soon, or self-publishing it yet. That's the biggest mistake of unsuccessful novelists - being in too much of a hurry to get their book out when it still needs significant revisions and final polishing. To start, get some input from volunteer readers familiar with your genre, then do some revisions based on the feedback, and finally, get a thorough copyedit, preferably by a professional freelance editor.

First, get some trusted colleagues or acquaintances to read your story through (or even the first few chapters) and tell you what they think of it so far. But don't ask your parent, child, sibling, bff or significant other to do this “beta” reading, as they probably won't want to tell you what they really think, for fear of jeopardizing your relationship. So how do you find your beta readers? Perhaps through a critique group, writing class, workshop, book club, or online networking such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.

Be sure to choose your pre-readers from people who already read and enjoy your genre. In the case of a YA novel or children’s book, look around for be age-appropriate relatives, neighborhood kids, or the children of your friends – or perhaps you know a teacher or librarian who would be willing to read some or all of it aloud and collect feedback.

To avoid generic (and generally useless) responses like “I liked it,” “It was good,” or “It was okay,” it’s best to guide your readers with specific questions. I recently polled some author clients and friends about this, and here are their lists of useful questions for your “beta” readers or critique group.

YA and children’s fiction author Michael Broadway (Cornell Deville) contributed these questions:

• Did the story hold your interest from the very beginning?
• Was there a point at which you became less than excited about finding out what was going to happen next?
• Could you relate to the main character? Did you feel her/his pain or excitement?
• Did the setting pull you in, and did the descriptions seem vivid and real to you?
  

Friend, co-blogger and suspense-mystery writer extraordinaire, LJ Sellers, suggested these questions:

• Was the opening compelling? At what point did you first stop reading?
• Did you relate to the character? Did you come to feel you knew the character?
• Was there anything that confused or frustrated you?
• Was the ending satisfying? Believable?

Here are some questions and thoughts contributed by my client, author Robert Beatty:

“When I ask someone for what I call “Story Reading,” I want the reader to give me his or her detailed impression and thoughts as he/she is reading the story. I want to know what he/she is thinking and feeling as he/she reads the story. I ask questions like this:

• What scenes/paragraphs/lines did you really like?
• What parts did you dislike or not like as much?
• Where did you get bored?
• What parts resonated with you and/or moved you emotionally?
• What parts should be compressed?
• What parts should be elaborated on?
• What parts are confusing?
• What characters do you connect to and like?
• What characters need more development or focus?

Ideally, I want the reader to make many notes in the text as they are reading so that I can tell what they are thinking and feeling at each point. I literally want to be reading their mind. This allows me to know whether I’m connecting, communicating, and having the impact I intended. Some people are very good at giving me their thoughts and feelings as they go along. Besides asking “lay people” to read my stories critically, I also use freelance editors for the above kind of feedback, in addition to copyediting and/or proofreading.”

-          Robert Beatty, author of Sapo, Lioness, and Richard’s Laws of Motion.  www.robert-beatty.com

To the above questions I would add:

• Did you get oriented fairly quickly at the beginning as to whose story it is, and where and when it’s taking place?
• Were the characters believable? Are there any characters you think could be made more interesting or more likeable?
• Did you notice any discrepancies or inconsistencies in time sequences, places, character details, etc.?
• Did you get confused about who’s who in the characters? Were there too many characters to keep track of? Too few? Are any of the names or characters too similar?
• Did the dialogue sound natural to you? If not, whose dialogue did you think sounded artificial?
• Did you feel there was too much description or exposition? Not enough? Maybe too much dialogue in parts?
• Did you notice any obvious, repeating grammatical, spelling, punctuation or capitalization errors?

What about you writers out there? Do you use beta readers? If so, how do you guide their reading? Do you have any questions or suggestions to add that have helped you focus their reading, so you can get a good handle on the strengths and weaknesses of your novel? We'd love to hear from you!

Jodie Renner, a freelance fiction editor specializing in thrillers and other fast-paced fiction, has published two books to date in her series, An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: WRITING A KILLER THRILLER and STYLE THAT SIZZLES & PACING FOR POWER. Both titles are available in e-book and paperback. For more info, please visit Jodie’s author website or editor website, or find her on Facebook or Twitter.
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