Spoiler Alert: There is No Such Thing

By Andrew E. Kaufman

I’ve been spending about 98% of my time going crazy lately. No, really, I have. If you don’t believe it, ask those who know me.

I’m getting ready to release my new novel, a psychological thriller, The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted. But that’s not the problem—it’s what happens during the process that puts me on the Crazy Highway. Lots of second-guessing. Lots of worrying.

My latest neurosis came after sending copies out to beta readers. It appeared there was a bit of a plot issue—as in, nearly everyone had it figured out about halfway through.

I panicked.

My editor told me to chill, that it was okay for the readers to figure it out, as long as they don’t feel as though my protagonist is a complete moron for not doing the same.

A trusted writer friend also told me to chill, that it was okay because "Doesn’t everyone like to feel smart?"

Even the beta readers who figured it out said it wasn’t an issue because they thoroughly enjoyed the story from start to finish and that even though they knew the what, they still read on to find out the why.

Did I listen? Hell no. I panicked some more, started doing my usual mental machinations, then went through the manuscript trying to figure out where I went wrong. After that I restructured the novel adding new elements and chapters in order to camouflage my apparently transparent plot.

Problem solved. All was right with the world.

Until, that is, I read this article about a study done right here at the University of California, San Diego. Volunteers were asked to read different versions of twelve stories written by John Updike, Roald Dahl, Anton Chekhov, and Agatha Christie. One had the spoiler worked into the opening paragraph, the second had it written somewhere in the body of the work as part of the story, and the last gave no hint of the ending, whatsoever. The results? When asked to rate their enjoyment, the readers almost always chose the one with the spoiler right up front.

In a written statement, one of the study’s organizers said:

"Plots are just excuses for great writing. What the plot is, is (almost) irrelevant. The pleasure is in the writing." Another said that knowing the outcome helps the reader follow the story better, and as a result, enjoy it more.

I'm not sure about the first statement, but can see how the second might apply. And I'm thinking our editor at large, Jodie Renner might have some opinions about this as well.

So I'm wondering: did I waste my time rewriting my novel? Does knowing the plot decrease your enjoyment? Take the survey below and let me know, then feel free to add your comments. You can view the survey results here.

About That Creepy Guy I Met In The Woods...

by Tom Adair
My wife used to think I was paranoid. When your day job is all about murder, rape, and theft you tend to look at the world a little differently so I suppose I can come off as a little "guarded." Like a lot of folks in law enforcement I can easily imagine bad things happening.

Most people I give the benefit of the doubt but every once in a while I run into a person or situation that makes my necks hairs stand at attention. When that happens, my senses come alive and I start running "what if" scenarios in my head. Like some fictional Jason Bourne I start looking for "exits" and subconsciously check my weapons. It's a survival instinct and second nature at this point in my life. My wife can tell instantly when I go into this mode and sometimes she even races me there.

Such was the case this summer on a camping trip in Colorado. It was a cloudy/rainy day in the back country mountains west of the mining town of Leadville. We were driving along a lonely road and spotted a cute little creek winding it's way up the mountain. Always the adventurer, I pulled the truck to the one available spot to park at without rolling off the mountain. We grabbed the dog, camera, and headed up a small trail.

About 45 minutes into our adventure the hairs on my neck stood up. I noticed it even before the dog. A big man in his fifties, maybe 6'4 and 230 pounds, was coming up the small trail toward us. He was maybe 20 yards away. His blue overalls and boots didn't look like something you'd wear hiking. That...and the white hard hat perched on his head with the name "Rob" written in ink on a piece of tape affixed to the front. I had heard chainsaws on the opposite ridge a few miles away but this guy didn't have any tools.

The first thing any good cop looks at is a man's hands. Hands kill. I looked at his and saw something small and brown. The steep hill on one side and the creek on the other didn't leave a lot of room for maneuvering on the trail so I figured a good offense was better than a good defense. I put myself between him and my family and called out "How's it going?" My tone said go away. Actually, my tone added a few other choice words I can't repeat here.

That's when he held up the mushroom. "I've found these all along the trail. Do you know much about mushrooms?" he asked. "No" He held it out for me to get a better look but I kept my eyes locked on his. I never let him get within arm's length of me. Maybe he was just creepy and innocent but all I could think of was him grabbing my arm if I extended it; so I didn't. He never gave me cause to pull my gun but he creeped me out all the same.

After some one-sided small talk he moved on up the trail. Once out of sight, we turned and made our way back to the truck. There was no way I was following him into a possible ambush. When we got back to the road I noticed a funny thing. There were no other vehicles. So either this guy walked a really, really long way, he lives in the woods, or he had his car hidden somewhere not easy to find. I never cared to find out which it was.

The point of this story is that people like me, who saw the worst in people day in and day out, see the world differently. When you're developing your law enforcement characters remember that they have a unique world view. They may pick up on details others may miss. Often times their suspicions are unfounded, or they may come off as paranoid, but they are just trying to make sense of the puzzle pieces they find.

Heightening the Suspense, Part II

by Jodie Renner, editor & author 

Techniques for Building Suspense

As I mentioned in Part I of this article, all genres of fiction need some suspense, to keep the reader interested and turning the pages. And of course, you’ll need to amp up the suspense a lot more if you’re writing a fast-paced, nail-biting page-turner.

After revealing your intriguing story question and showing your inciting incident, you can continue to build suspense throughout your story by using a number of techniques, such as:

-      building the sense of danger slowly

-      sprinkling in some foreshadowing (teasing) as you go along

-      withholding information (revealing critical info bit by bit)

-      using a tense mood and fast pacing

-      adding ominous details to your setting (environment, weather, etc.)

-      using compelling, vivid sensory imagery to bring your story world alive

-      adding time pressures (a ticking clock) for your protagonist

-      piling on new obstacles and complications that get in his/her way

-      narrating the story through several different viewpoints

-      giving the protagonist some inner conflict and tough decisions

-      introducing a few surprise plot twists

-      writing in some cliff-hanger scene and chapter endings

-      creating a riveting, “close call” ending

Some “big-picture” techniques for writing suspense

-      First, make your readers care about your protagonist, by creating a likeable, appealing, strong, smart and resourceful but vulnerable character. If readers haven’t bonded with your main character, they won’t become emotionally invested in what happens to him or her.

-      Start gradually, and let it build. When writing suspense, start slowly and subtly — give yourself somewhere to build. As Hallie Ephron says, “If you pull out all the stops at the beginning, you’ll have nowhere to go; worse still, your reader will turn numb to the nuance you are trying to create.”

-      Create a mood of unease, by showing the main character feeling tense or uneasy, or by showing some of the bad guy’s thoughts and intentions. Maybe, instead of anxious, your heroine is oblivious, but because we’ve just been in the viewpoint of the villain, we know the danger that’s about to threaten her.

-      Use the setting to create suspense. To describe the surroundings of the character in jeopardy, use vivid details and sensory imagery that reflect or add to his angst or fears, and bring to life the dangerous situations he’s confronting. (More specifics on this in Part III.) 

-      Foreshadow trouble to come. To pique the reader’s interest and keep her reading, drop hints here and there about dangers lurking ahead.

-      Pile on the problems and continue to raise the stakes. A complacent hero is a boring hero. Keep challenging him, to amp up the plot and build a character arc in which circumstances force him to be stronger, cleverer, and more resourceful, in order to survive and vanquish evil.

-      Use delay and subterfuge: Either we know something the hero doesn’t, or the narrator-protagonist has crucial info he’s revealing little by little, doling out to others gradually — the clever author’s way of keeping us on our toes, anxious and questioning, eager to keep reading to find out more.

-      Use multiple viewpoints, especially that of the villain. This way the reader finds out critical information the protagonist doesn’t know, things we want to warn her about! And getting into the head of the bad guy(s) always enriches the story. 

-      Write in cliff-hangers.  Jessica Page Morrell advises us, “To amp up suspense, orchestrate your scene and chapter endings so they don’t wind down, but instead keep the reader hanging. …endings are the perfect places to create cliff-hangers, revelations, and surprises.” But do vary your chapter endings. 

-      Create a few plot twists. Readers are surprised and delighted when the events take a turn they never expected. 

-      Add in difficult decisions and inner conflict. These will not only make your plot more suspenseful, they will also make your protagonist more complex, vulnerable, and interesting.

Part III of this series covers some specific techniques for ratcheting up the suspense in your thriller or other crime fiction.

Resources:
Hallie Ephron, The Everything Guide to Writing Your First Novel Jack M. Bickham, The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes
Jessica Page Morrell, Thanks, But This Isn’t For Us

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.

Finding Humor in a Dark Future

By L.J. Sellers, author of the bestselling Detective Jackson mysteries. This essay was originally posted at Alex J. Cavanaugh's blog, but it's worth a repeat.

In my new novel, the future is bleak, my characters are flawed, and their quests are intensely personal. Writing this novel could have been depressing, but I set much of the story in an endurance contest called the Gauntlet, which provided some unusual and amusing research moments.

In one competition scene, the protagonist is required to crawl through tunnels. I wanted her experience to seem real, so I left my keyboard and got down on my hands and knees. I crawled around the family room for a few minutes, trying to decide how big the tunnel needed to be and what part of my body would start to hurt first.

Of course, my husband walked in as I was crawling and said, “When does the barking start?”

It was the first laugh “til your belly hurts” moment I’d had in a long time.

In another phase of the contest, Lara enters a locked-room scenario, in which she must use the items on hand to find a MacGyver-type solution to get out. I admit, I sought help from my husband, who designs and builds things for a living. We came up with a plausible three-step solution, then decided to test the parts of it that we could. Not wanting to give away this scene in the story, let’s just say we headed down to the garage with a box of matches and some potentially combustible material. (It’s Oregon, and it was raining, so we had to stay inside.)

As we struck the matches and cheered for a flame, we remembered catching our three boys doing something similar when they were young. We imagined our kids walking in on us while we attempted to start a fire in the garage, and saying “What the hell?” We laughed until the tears rolled.

It’s good to experience little moments like that when you write gritty thrillers. Otherwise, it’s too easy to get sucked into a dark mode and forget that people and characters can find joy and humor even under stressful circumstances. I also managed to sneak a light moment into the story near the end. And even though The Arranger is set in a bleak world thirteen years from now, the overall theme is an affirmation of the human desire to improve oneself and make a difference in the world around us.

Do you need humor in every novel? What weird/funny things have you done for research?

Drive to Better Fiction

By CJ West, thriller author

First, I want to thank the members of the collective for asking me to visit every other Thursday. I hope we’ll get to know each other through blog comments.

I love action and suspense movies. You might be thinking I’m about the car chases, fights and the occasional nude scene. I like to tell myself that by dissecting the story and my reaction to it, I can enhance my work. You’re thinking I’m lazy. You’re also thinking there’s a big difference between books and movies, but where else can you digest a novel-length story in two hours.

So, recently I watched Drive, which held several good lessons for me and I thought I’d share them here today.

The first sign of trouble came when my date and I took our seats. Six hearty souls sat around us when the opening credits rolled. The rest of the theater was empty. At that point I wished we had talked to friends before picking this movie, or at least read a review online.

My takeaway: Find out who is reading your work and why they enjoy it by conducting surveys and reading reviews of your books.

The movie opened with a car chase and twice the hero hid his getaway car and let the police drive by. He was an excellent driver and he was cagey enough to use a police scanner. The tactics rang true to me even though this was different from most car chases I’ve watched. I remember feeling as if I was learning something about hiding from the police AND feeling as if this movie could actually be good and that the theater might be empty because no one has heard of it yet.

Unfortunately that wasn’t the case.

My takeaway: Include interesting information that also moves the plot and reveals something about your characters.

Soon after the hero gets away from the cops, he has a really awkward series of scenes with the woman next door. They are supposed to be kindling a romance, but there is absolutely no chemistry. They go on several dates, but the only way we know they are growing fond of each other is because the woman puts her hand on his in the car. No kissing. No witty lines. No romance. The movie fell apart for me right here and I couldn’t take it seriously any longer.

My takeaway: Write authentic dialogue and relationships or readers will disconnect from your story.

The next thing we see is the hero’s boss financing a race car. The kid drives a few laps for a mafia-connected money man, and earns his backing even though he treats the investor with disrespect. When the movie was over, my date said she expected to see a car race. I felt let down by the lack of a race as well, but I was so disappointed with the rest of the movie I’d forgotten about the car racing by the end.

My takeaway: Meet the expectations you raise with your readers unless you are trying to surprise them.

As the movie approached its climax, the entire story unraveled for me. The mild-mannered hero went on a killing spree. The mafia had a hard time finding the man they just hired to drive their race car. In a city of half a million people, this movie introduced six characters and they happen to be the hero, the villains, and the damsel in distress. And they all know each other.

Had I cared about these people I may have enjoyed the ending, but as it was, I was just waiting for the lights to come up so we could leave. On the plus side, we didn’t need to jostle for space in the aisle.

My takeaway: Create realistic characters with meaningful motivations and allow them to act at maximum capacity.

I hope this post gives you something to think about the next time you watch a good movie, or maybe a justification for that $6.00 ticket.

I'd Love to Visit Your Book Club

By Judith Yates Borger, who's offering free ebook to any book club that sets up a Skype or FaceTime visit.

A writer friend refuses to visit book clubs because, she says, they tend to drink too much wine and grill her about why her character has premarital sex. Well, actually, it only happened once but it put her off book clubs forever.

I, on the other hand, love to visit with book clubs. In my little intro I tell them that I have very thick skin after working on newspapers where a good day was when only two people called me up swearing. I invite their criticism as well as their praise. They have never failed to heap on both, and I have learned from each comment. In fact, I made some changes in my second book, Whose Hand? because of comments about my first book, Where's Billie?

I've also learned there are a few key questions book club members ask every time:

Q: What is your writing routine?
A: I'm highly productive between 10 and 10:15 in the morning. The rest is slogging through mud.

Q: Was your car really blown up as portrayed in Where's Billie?
A: Yes, I wouldn't let that research go to waste.

Q: Are any members of your family characters in the book?
A: Note to my children: NO.

Q: Are any of your characters real people?
A: Lots of characters are an amalgamation of people I know or have met.

Q: How long did it take you to write the book(s)?
A: Start to publishing for Where's Billie? took three agents and seven years. For Whose Hand? it was about two years. I'm getting speedier.

Q: Do you get paid more with ebooks or paper books?
A: This is a classic Minnesotan question. What they really want to know is am I getting rich but they're too nice to ask directly. The answer is I get 70 percent royalty on ebooks, because I self publish them. I get five percent on paper books — about 80 cents for a $16.95 traditionally published book.  A reasonable follow up question here would be: Why in God's name do you work with a traditional publisher? But no one ever asks it.

Q: What is the husband in Where's Billie? doing? Fooling around? Out on assignment? Going through chemo? Then they often debate that point for up to 45 minutes.
A: Buy Whose Hand? and find out.

Three days ago I was asked: What will you be in five years?
A: Eligible for Medicare.

All of this is great, but my problem is I can't drive/fly/bus/take Amtrak many miles to visit book clubs. However, I'd really like to chat with readers from outside the Twin Cities. So ....

I'm offering  free ebooks of either Where's Billie? or Whose Hand?—your choice—to any book club willing to set up a time for me to visit  via Skype or FaceTime. Let's face it folks, the technology is there to reach out and touch someone face-to-face. Let's use it.

Email me at Judy@JudithYatesBorger.com to set up a date/time. I promise I'll be there. Go to my website, www.JudithYatesBorger.com, for descriptions of both books.

Edits Ahoy! Are You Onboard?

By Kimberly Hitchens (Hitch), founder of Booknook.biz

For those of you who've missed the latest, Amazon initially yanked and wirelessly replaced, and then removed entirely from sale, a book (Neal Stephenson's Reamde) after a reader posted a scathing, virulent review of the errors she found in the book. Her review, calling for a 75% price refund, said in part: 

“This level of carelessness is inexcusable on economic grounds. I’d expect to find format errors and mangled content in a pirated ebook, not in a $17 Kindle edition. When I purchase an ebook at a price point so close to the print version, the publisher rakes in far more profit than from a print title. To then turn around and offer shoddy, incomplete text in that pricey Kindle title shows an arrogant disregard for economics, the reader, and the distribution channel.”

Click here to read the entire review, which is worth reading, in my opinion. The Awl reports that Amazon had, as of Thursday morning, gone so far as to remove the title, which was #36 in books overall, #6 in SciFi on Kindle and #4 in print/audio. Clearly, a significant financial decision by HarperCollins.

Now, normally, I'd just report this as an odd bit of news, and not dwell on it; but two other things have happened this month that are related to this. Which makes me think that this shan't be an isolated incident, and we in the biz need to pay closer attention to what we write, publish and produce. The two events are:

• First, one of our top authors received a letter from Amazon, informing him/her that "During a quality assurance review of your title, we have found the following issue(s): Typo/formatting issues exist that may have been caused by an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) problem. An example is mentioned below:
  "Don't forger that" should be ""Don't forget that"
  Whereupon Amazon then advised him or her to: "Please look for the same kind of errors throughout and make the necessary corrections to the title before republishing it." (Italic emphasis added). The interesting part is that this book wasn’t scanned, nor OCR’d; and it was professionally edited more than once. Amazon only provided the one instance of an “error.”
• Another client, having crafted some rather unique content, had deliberately written scenes that were incoherent, to represent a protagonist in a comatose state. Amazon flatly yanked the title after customer complaints about the unreadability of the text.

What this tells me is that Amazon, having purged innumerable over-represented PD (Public Domain) titles, and every PLR (so-called, "Private Label Rights") book they could find, have decided that they are going to tackle the issue that everyone's been talking about: 

Curation

Which means one thing: Real Editing. Not Word's built-in spellchecker; not your Mom; real editors with real experience. Here at Booknook, we like the Twin Lizzies; Elisabeth Hallett and Elizabeth Lyon. Elisabeth Hallett, (Email here) specializes in line editing, as well as proofing and copyediting; Elizabeth Lyon (website here) is a freelance editor with more than 60 books under her belt, and can assist you with revisions and developmental editing, in addition to line editing services.

I know that this has been a long (and NOT funny!) first column for me (originally appearing on September 30^th, 2011, in our Booknook.biz newsletter), but the import of these events should not be overlooked. Lastly: learn to use Track Changes (if you use Word), or its equivalent in WordPerfect or Open Office. I am really surprised at how many authors don't know how to use it, or mistake tracked changes for Word's built-in spellchecker, but it's a simple tool, and one that can help you work competently with an Editor. A good editor can work faster in track changes than without it; if you know how to use it, it will save you money, not only in editing hours and in the number of revisions you'll end up paying for, post-production, in ebooks that you create, but also in keeping your book from being nuked by Amazon and badly reviewed, which will cost you sales.

The Pirates of ... Where?

Pirate King by Laurie R. King.*

 

Those who believe that a series gets weaker the longer it goes on have not read Laurie King's Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes books. This is the eleventh title in the series, and while it may not be the best of the bunch, it certainly ranks in the top three or four.

Russell/Holmes aficionados will know that Mary does not feel kindly towards her brother-in-law Mycroft. (Something about him being manipulative...?) So, when her husband tells her that his brother will be coming to stay for a few weeks while some work his done on his own house, Mary feels the need to be elsewhere. But her flat in Oxford has been flooded due to a broken pipe, so it appears she has no recourse.

Inspector Lestrade to the rescue! He asks Mary to be his "mole" in a silent film company owned by megalomaniac Randolph St. John Warminster-Fflyte ("Fflyte films -- Fflytes of fancy") who has decided to make a film about a film company making a film of a production of The Pirates of Penzance. And Mr. Fflyte has a need for authenticity, so they will be filming on location. No, not in Penzance. In Lisbon. You'll need to read the book to find out why.

From the time that Mary appears to the offices of Fflyte Films and introduces herself to general manager Geoffrey Hale, whose assistant she is replacing, the narrative begins to resemble an episode of I Love Lucy, with the distinction that if Mary takes one action things could be fine, the opposite could mean death or worse.

Yes, the tale is more humorous than other stories in the series, but that doesn't make it trivial. Trying to keep track of the whole cast and crew of the production is no easy task, but of course Mary manages magnificently. And in the process, she just happens to solve a mystery or two (with some help from her husband).

This book is truly a delight. It will certainly be enjoyed by Mary Russell fans, and might even draw some more into the company.

*Many thanks to Random House and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.