Timing is Everything

As a writer, I steal time. In other words, when I’m working on a new article, or a new story or plotline, I use whatever resources I have available whenever I can. I also have family obligations and a day job that has nothing to do with the other side of my life as a crime fiction writer. The fun comes when these two lives pass a hair too close in unexpected situations.

For example, a friend of mine suggested an article on how to hide a dead body. Well, at lunch I was using the computer at work for a little research, when my boss came by and looked over my shoulder. The computer is out in the open, with no real privacy, so the user has to be aware that anyone can see what is on the screen. I had the Google search window open, and had just finished typing, “How to Hide a Dead Body.” He said nothing at first, just standing there reading over my shoulder as I reviewed the admittedly odd search results. After a few minutes, he spoke.

“Research?” he asked, knowing I write mysteries.

“Sort of.” I decided to have a little fun.

He looked puzzled. “Oh, anything you want to tell me about?”

“Well, my daughter Katie is growing up, and is starting to discover boys. I just want to be ready, ya know.”

His eyes went wide. I smiled at him. And didn’t see him for the rest of the day.

7 Tips For The Organized Writer

Have you always wanted to write a book? Do you see the whole tale in your head but find yourself unable to get it out on to the page? Do you begin writing with enthusiasm only to burnout before you've begun? Here are a few ideas that may help you harness a bit of that enthusiasm, and focus your creativity.

1. Outline Your Ideas
Most people need to form their ideas in some kind of outline. An outline is the easiest and best way of organizing the brainstorm of ideas into something workable and understandable. An outline also provides the writer with a framework they can refer to as the story develops, helping them to stay “on track.” It doesn't have to include every detail of your novel, just the framework. And you can always add and modify as you go along.

2. Consider Point-of-View
For each scene, decide what point of view you are going to use. I write primarily in first person, but will write chapters in third person as I need to develop the action outside of the immediate view of the hero. One thing my editor would catch me doing was called “head jumping,” or changing POV in mid-chapter. Stick with a single POV for each individual scene/chapter, and your story will flow much better.

3. Dialogue
Read and re-read the conversations aloud. It is the best way to “hear” the characters, and makes the written word more real to you. Be cautious of accents, however. There are authors that can introduce accents into a story, but I’m not one of them. I have used a description of the accent, but have never tried to actually “write with an accent. It’s tough, I’m lazy, and I avoid it if possible. However, if one of your characters speaks a foreign language, be sure to get an accurate translation before using the language, and triple check the word spelling. I used Cuban Spanish in one of my novels, and had a Cuban friend check it, and correct it, for me.

4. Concept
Imagine you are writing the back cover blurb for your novel. You have 25-50 words to excite the reader enough to want to crack the binding. If you can do that, you have a strong story concept that will satisfy both you the writer and the readers as well. If you can’t, well, try going back to tip #1.

5. Building the Drama
A good story needs conflict. But every good story builds the drama gradually over the course of the book. You should try to let the drama flow as the conflict between the hero and the villain mounts towards the conclusion.

6. Show- Don't Tell
Re-action speaks louder than words. Use action instead of description to set the emotional tone of a scene, and try to avoid the “–ly’s” as much as possible. Too many adverbs spoil the narrative.

7. Obvious Mistakes
This is actually one of the most important. No matter how great your word processing program or how many times you proofread yourself, you can always overlook misspellings, grammatical errors and incorrect punctuation. You should have someone very qualified in English or a professional editor proofread your work. In his book, “On Writing”, Stephen King recommends putting the manuscript away for a time, then re-reading it with fresh eyes. Not a bad idea, really, and one I have used myself.

Good luck, and I hope to see YOUR name on the best seller list.

What Makes a Good Bad Guy?

Getting your readers to hate the bad guy is much easier than getting them to sympathize with them. True, you may want to give your villain some redeeming qualities, but if your character does something truly loathsome, your readers will never forget.

Some of the most memorable villains will often cause their victims to suffer in either their body or mind. Think about some of the most notorious bad guys, and you’ll see what I mean. Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest used degradation and humiliation to make her patients less than human. Jamie Gomb in Silence of the Lambs kidnapped and held his victims hostage before removing pieces of their skin. You get the picture. They were bullies and sadists, and they use their power to torment their victims.

On the other hand, murder is nowhere near as powerful a tool in defining the villain and making the readers hate him. Bullying can never be justified enough to make the sadistic character sympathetic, murder can often be explained away in a manner that the assassin can be a hero. A good rule of thumb is that murder and other violent crimes will only make a character villainous if the acts are performed for purely selfish reasons. Motives make the all the difference in determining the villain’s proper place on the moral spectrum. A con man can be a hero, as opposed to a cold blooded killer.

We are truly terrified by those who have an altered view of reality than we do. The villain who shows himself insane cannot be reasoned with, cannot be bargained with. While mental health experts may not like it, the criminal who is dangerously insane leaves the hero one alternative: to stop him. But remember one thing about your character, whether or not he is insane: Everybody is the hero of their own story. So even the villain believes there is something heroic in their actions from their point of view. I know. Crazy, right?

I would also recommend that your bad guy be a mirror for your hero. Think Holmes and Moriarty, Starling and Lecter, even Luke Skywalker and Dart Vader. Each villain reflects aspects of the good guy, defining both as they progress towards the final confrontation. The hero is defined as much by the evil of their foe as they are by their own nobility. A good bad guy enhances the hero’s story and gives us something cheer for.

I hope these ideas will help you as you begin your writing, and give you some guidance as to what makes a good bad guy.

Featuring Author Christine Duncan

It is my pleasure to host Christine Duncan, creator of the Kay Berreano mystery series. She has some very interesting and unique insights to share regarding writing that works.

Christine Duncan is an Arvada Colorado mystery writer. She got her start in writing for the Christian market, writing for Sunday School magazines. Her credits include Accent Books and Regular Baptist Press.
Her Colorado based, Kaye Berreano mystery series debuted in 2002 with the book, Safe Beginnings, which dealt with arson in a battered women's shelter. Safe House, the second book in the series is due out this spring.
Although the Kaye Berreano mystery series is set in a battered women's shelter, Ms. Duncan's husband wants the world to know it's not because of anything he did!
Come visit Christine at Http://www.ChristineDuncan.com
Or at her blog http://www.globalwrite.wordpress.com/

Writing Works When Writers Do

Writers spend a great deal of time trying to figure out when or if our writing works. We agonize over word placement and sentence structure, go to critique groups and get feedback, we have editors look at it. Even when we blog, we tend to look for feedback in the way of comments and statistics. When you think about it, it is a really interesting reaction to something that is really a solitary occupation. How did the traditional idea of writing alone and in some garret somewhere ever get started when so many of us really want to see our audiences' reactions?
Feedback is, of course, a marvelous way to figure out if whatever you wrote gets the point across. I'm not talking about the kind of feedback you got from your mother on every project you undertook since well, birth: "That's wonderful, honey." But if two or more writers from your critique group tell you to lose the prologue, you should give serious consideration to losing the prologue. And there is no substitute for professional advice.
But I believe that most of us really know when something isn't working. I don't think it's really all that difficult to get that perspective. Mary Higgins Clark was quoted a long time back as saying that she knew when she had written something really scary because she became nervous alone in her writing space. Other authors have said things like if it made them cry, they figured it made the reader cry. I think it's probably true and I'll go one step farther. If something makes you pause when you read it over, even if only for a moment, you need to make some change there.
Reading your manuscript aloud is often repeated advice for writers. I know that can really help in dialogue. But it isn't exactly what I mean here. The test for what works for me is similar to the woodworker who puts a nylon stocking on his hand and runs it over the wood he's been sanding before he applies the finishing stain. You have to take time. Set the piece aside for a day (or whatever works for you.) then read it slowly. The jagged parts tend to stick out. You might not always know just why they stick out but underline them either with a marker if you are looking at a printed copy or with that little highlighter on the formatting toolbar in Word if you're on the computer. Then keep reading.
When you're done, go back and play with the sections you've marked. Take the time to rearrange the words or even the scene. Try to remember just exactly what you were trying to say when you wrote it and see if that is happening. Write it a few different ways if you want. Then put the manuscript away again. Don't expect to fix everything this time. Next time you read the manuscript, mark the spots that give you pause again. Keep doing it until you have fixed all the rough spots you can see. Then take the thing to critique or your editor. I'm betting it will work better.

Some Things You Never Outgrow

It was a bad week. We all have them, kids and adults alike. Everything I touched broke, everything I tried to do became undone, and it seemed the harder I tried the further behind I wound up. Even the end of the workday brought no relief. The traffic was brutal, the never ending construction on Route 5 slowed everything to a crawl for no apparent reason, and to be honest, I was still stressed over my wife’s recent surgery for a spinal tumor. My parents had been helping out a lot with the house and taking care of Trish while I was working, so they were there at the house when I arrived.

Dinner was quiet, tense, and it was all because of the black cloud following me that day. It settled right in with me, bringing the misery and gloom of my bad day to those who had no idea it was coming. I grunted responses to mundane questions. I snapped at my kids, who after all were just being kids. I was such miserable company that if I didn’t have to be around me, I would have left the table. If they were honest with me, I think my whole family shared that particular sentiment. So it was with a gentle nudge my wife reminded me that my father had worked on and apparently fixed my chainsaw, and brought his as well. I had been meaning to do some clean up in the woods behind the house, cutting up some fallen tress from the winter’s storms. I couldn’t think of a better way to work out my hostility than to make short work of the fallen trees.

My father didn’t say anything, but the two of us rose from the table, me still in my work clothes, khakis and a polo shirt. My wife asked if I was going to change first. I shook my head, and went straight to the garage. We grabbed the saws and headed for the grove of downed trees in the back of our property, debris from the hard winter I had been meaning to get cleaned up. The saws roared to life, ripping through the wood with ease. In short, we made big logs small and downed trees into firewood for the backyard summer fire pit. Then, half covered in sweat and wood chips, and smelling of gas and oil fumes, we talked.

It seems there are some things you never outgrow. I don’t think I really needed to cut logs that night, but I needed my Dad. Throughout my adult life, my parents were never more than a phone call away. My wife and I moved from New York to Pennsylvania to Ohio, and always managed to keep in contact with my folks. But that night, at that time, I needed my Dad. He has a quiet strength, born of a confident been-there-done-that approach to almost everything. Maybe it comes from being the oldest boy in a large Irish Catholic family. Maybe it comes from his years in the Marine Corps. It could be from his years of hard work and sacrifice for his family, being the unsung hero to his four sons. Over the years, I have tried to learn from his example, and be the best example I can be for my own son and daughter. Time will tell, I suppose, but Katie tells me so far, so good.

Don't Just Sit There, Look It Up!

I was sitting there tonight with my son and daughter, when Katie asked me how to spell a word. She had written it on her homework page 3 different ways, and she said none of them looked right. So, being the brilliant homework technician I am, I told her to look it up. We did it together, and found the answer she needed.

When writing fiction, we are faced with two choices. We can make it up, or we can look it up. Unless you’re recreating the world of the Hobbits, let me recommend the latter.

Research gives your story, regardless of the genre, a feeling of reality that the readers will immediately recognize. When you’ve done your homework (research) correctly, your readers will sense the authenticity of your work. You should try not to think of it as labor intensive, back-breaking fact mining, but rather as the opportunity to learn more about the subject you’re writing about. This gives you the opportunity to educate as well as entertain, and if you are anything like me when you write, often times you get ideas for the story that you never imagined before.

So don’t be afraid of doing your homework. In this age of technology and instant access to information, if you need and answer, look it up!

New Review for Key Lime Squeeze

"Questions upon questions surface as Ron Adams' witty dialogue draws the reader in... yearning... for those questions to get answered. With action, excitement, and an incredibly likable character, P.I. Joe Banks, the reader can relate yet remain curious to Banks' undercover woes and his opposition to the Cantalino mob family. Adams has created a character worthy of more books and more thrills. Key Lime Squeeze is a rare treat."
- Reagan Rothe, author of blacke and Dreams and Baseball

Kind words indeed.