by Darcy Pattison

I am trying to write a short story mystery. Mysteries have always been mysterious to me until I read one day that mysteries are really two time lines: there’s the time line of what really happened and the time line of the detective finding out what really happened.

So, here’s my current process and it seems to be working–somewhat:

1. Decide on the crime: murder, kidnapping, and theft are the mainstays of this category. Notice, that a missing person could be the result of murder or kidnapping, so it’s not a good category to choose.

2. Decide on the victim. I try to do a nice character work up on the victim, just as I would on any character.

3. Decide on the villain AND the suspects. I tried doing these separately and realized that the suspects need reasons to commit the crime, too, and they need to be as strong as the villain’s reasons. By doing these at the same time, it helped make the suspects more credible.

4. Time line of the crime. While I decide on events, I also make a list of possible clues from each event.

5. Decide on the detective and his connection to the crime.

So, I may need to switch the order of 4 and 5, if the detective is around when the crime is committed. I like doing the detective after the time line, though, because I always need the detective to have character qualities that would allow him/her to understand the clues.

For example, if it was a magic trick that was used to divert the attention in the crime, then my detective needs to know something about magic, or be able to find out something about magic.

6. Time line for the detective discovering the clues and understanding their meaning. Where will each suspect fit in? Does the reader have enough clues to figure out the mystery.

7. Decide on an exciting beginning. Where on the time line do I want to start? Before the crime? After the crime? How to characterize the detective in these opening scenes? I know–it’s detailed and way too logical for lots of folks. But it’s letting me write my first mysteries!

by Darcy Pattison

Openings are incredibly important. This was brought back to me recently as I was judging a contest. Those manuscripts that kept my interest for three pages were rare. Usually, they lost me by the middle of page two!

Am I harsh? I don’t think so.

Noah Lukeman has it right in his book, The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile. This is a book I ask those attending my Novel Revision retreats to read before they attend. Lukeman’s premise is that an editor will decide if they want your book or not based on the first five pages of your manuscript. After judging this contest, I agree.

Here are five things that made me stop reading

1. Nothing happened. The whole first chapter could be cut, because no major action occurred. Ask yourself: what happened in this chapter? Is there any conflict here?

2. The voice was flat. Monotone and uninteresting. Read it aloud: Does the text demand that you use an interesting variation of pitches, tones, stops, starts, etc?

3. Inconsistencies. If I found myself thinking, “No, that couldn’t happen. Not that way,” then the story was in trouble. Consider: does the story logic work?

4. Backstory. Please don’t put backstory in the first chapter. Give us an active scene with the character in motion and wanting something. It doesn’t have to be the major goal of the book, but the character needs to want something and it should be something that leads into the main conflict. Ask yourself: Do I really need to explain the backstory here, or can I wait until page 100? Yes! Page 100! Move that stuff out of the first act entirely!

5. The point-of-view jumps out at me. Too many of the mss had first-person point-of-views that just jumped out at me and made me cringe. In other words, the voice wasn’t distinctive enough for first person. This is a personal opinion–FWIW–but I think too many people are trying to write a first-person narrative. The default should be third-person unless there is a compelling reason for first. It’s not just a bias against first-person, but rather, that the story would be better served from third in many cases.

There were some first-person stories where I didn’t even realize it because the story caught me. When it works, it work well. When it fails, the story might could be salvaged by a switch to third. Consider: Is there a compelling reason for the first-person point-of-view? Could this ONLY be told from first? Try–OK, just try–writing the first chapter from third and give it to an independent, unbiased reader (like you can find that!) and ask which version they like better (don’t tell them what the difference is). I bet that third will win in the majority of cases.

by Darcy Pattison

I just received copies of 19 Girls and Me (Philomel) in Arabic from an Egyptian publisher. I’m now published in eight languages. Or, I will be when the German version of this book arrives sometime later this year. And here’s the cover in Chinese from a Taiwanese company! 

by Darcy Pattison

Why am I posting this image of an award which The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman won in 2003? I got home today and found a box from my publisher. Inside was this nicely framed certificate from the Bank Street College folks naming my book as “An Irma S. & James H. Black Honor Book for 2003″. There was a note: “This was found in an empty office–strange!–but we thought you may like to have it.” Better late than never, I suppose.

by Darcy Pattison

Star Wars as a Model for Hero’s Journey

Have you ever used the Hero’s Journey to plot? Last night on the History Channel, I watched, “Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed.” Essentially, it went through all the elements of a hero’s journey and talked about how the six Star Wars movies epitomized the hero’s journey in multi-layered and complex ways.

For many years, I’ve been a fan of Christopher Vogler’s book, The Writer’s Journey, Second Edition: Mythic Structure for Writers. He takes the hero’s journey and makes it easy for the writer to understand and use.

The stages of a Hero’s Journey are the Ordinary World, Call to Action, Refusal of Call, Meeting with Mentor, Crossing the Threshold, Tests & Allies & Enemies, Approach to Inmost Cave, Supreme Ordeal, Seizing the Sword (reward), The Road Back, Resurrection, Return with the Elixir.

Vogler suggest typical events for each stage. For example, after the character has crossed into the new world of the quest (Luke agrees to go with Obi-Wan) there is often a “watering hole” scene, where the character meets the locals, learns new ways of acting and scopes out the landscape. So, Luke and Obi-Wan go to a cantina to find passage on a space ship. In “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”, Jessica Rabbit sings in the nightclub.

In particular, I like that the emotional/inner climax is clearly mapped in the hero’s journey. Like many plot schemes and paradigms, the middle of the novel is the hardest to manage in the hero’s journey and you can easily wind up with a sagging middle. But it’s stronger than many other paradigms. Usually, from the midpoint to the end, I manage to plot well with this paradigm. It’s just the beginning of Act 2 to the the midpoint that still is nebulous–rightly so, of course, because each story has its own needs and you can only discuss it in general.

The Hero’s Journey works well for fantasy stories, of course, but it also works for contemporary stories, if you just extrapolate a bit. Some worry that this is a canned program for a plot. It’s not. It’s a paradigm that draws upon mythic structure and shows how a typical myth might handle a subject. But Vogler has lots of examples of how the structure might vary for a story.

For example, in the movie, “Death Becomes Her,” it’s really a story about temptation, or a “call to action”. Each character is tempted to accept a potion which allows them to live forever. Only the character who “refuses the call” escapes the living death of a body that is falling apart and gets the true elixir of a “natural death.” In other words, it’s a flexible paradigm.

If you are totally unfamiliar with the Hero’s Journey, but you’re a Star Wars fan, you could start by watching the video “Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed. If you know the paradigm, but want to use it in your writing, look at Vogler’s book: The Writer’s Journey, Second Edition: Mythic Structure for Writers.

Recap: We’ve spent three weeks talking about how words affect voice.

Voice Friday: Word Choices
Voice Friday: Word Connotations
Voice Friday: Word Sounds

Today, in discussing voice, I want to return to the two examples with which we started the discussion of words.  But now, we’ll look at sentences.

Voice Friday: Sentences
Voice Friday: Sentence Control

From The Boggart by Susan Cooper:

The little boat crept closer, over the grey-green water of the loch. Tommy could hear the slow creaking of the oarlocks, and see the white hair of the lean old man bent over the oars. His father said the MacDevon was one hundred years old, but Tommy had never had the courage to ask if it were true. The MacDevon was a clan chief, the last of his line, and you didn?t ask a clan chief a question like that. ?Good day, Mr. MacDevon.? He caught the bow of the dinghy as it crunched into the small stones of the beach. This was a weekly ritual: the old man?s shopping trip from the island of Castle Keep.

From
The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread

This story begins within the walls of a castle, with the birth of a mouse. A small mouse. The last mouse born to his parents and the only one of his litter to be born alive. ?

“Where are my babies?” said the exhausted mother when the ordeal was through. “Show to me my babies.”

The father mouse held the one small mouse up high. “There is only this one,” he said. “The others are dead.”

“Mon dieu, just the one mouse baby?”

“Just the one. Will you name him?”

“All of that work for nothing,” said the mother. She sighed. “It is so sad. It is such the disappointment.” She was a French mouse who had arrived at the castle long ago in the luggage of a visiting French diplomat. “Disappointment” was one of her favorite words. She used it often.

Sentences

After a consideration of words, the next level is sentences. Studying sentence patterns is one of the best things I/ve done to improve my writing. Look at our examples. Boggart has only three short sentences and two simple sentences. Despereaux has 24 short sentences, 21 simple sentences.

We can start to describe the differences in the voices of these two pieces when we say that Boggart has a more complicated sentence structure, but simpler diction. Despereaux has a more difficult diction, but very simple sentence structures. In other words, either option can work, depending on the voice demanded by a story. In fact, even within severe restrictions, a strong voice can carry a piece.

Dona Hickey, writing teacher and author of Developing A Written Voice, gives the assignment that writers do a piece using only single syllable words and sentences ten words or less. Given such restrictions, what kind of writing would you expect? Easy readers. Primers. What type of subject matter would you expect to find? Simple subjects. Topics with little emotion.

When I give speeches, I read an example from Hickey?s book entitled, “Pink Old Girls” by Winston Garland. Garland talks about the upcoming death of the “pink old girl” from lung cancer, the “black that preys on pink.” This emotional piece follows the rules of single syllable words and sentences of ten words or less, but tugs at my heart each time I read it.

What I find fascinating is Garland’s ability to vocalize what she attempted to do in creating this voice: “I tried to alternate hard consonant and soft sounds at the end of words placed at the end of sentences. Most of my shortest sentences ended in hard consonants. This adds emphasis.” (Hickey 40).

In other words, Garland is using words to their maximum impact, while concentrating on sentences. In other words, Garland had control of the voice of her piece. It wasn’t a mystical experience of trying to “find” her voice!

Next week, we’ll look at sentences in more detail. For this week , try writing something with only single syllable words and sentences of ten words or less. Try to pack in as much emotion as possible. It doesn’t have to be long–just a couple paragraphs. Post it here–if you want–so we can all see what the exercise produces!

Voice Friday: Sentences
Voice Friday: Sentence Control

This was sent to members of the Author’s Guild his afternoon. As you can see, The Author’s Guild still objects to the new S&S rights reversion clause.

UPDATE ON SIMON AND SCHUSTER

Simon & Schuster is irked that we went public with our information about their unannounced new contract language. They’ve sent a release (you can read it below) accusing us of “perpetrat[ing] serious misinformation.” That’s a heavy charge, so we went back and double-checked.

We stand by every word of our statement. Simon & Schuster’s release pretends that the argument concerns “print on demand.” That isn’t the issue. We like print on demand: we encourage publishers to sell books in every permissible way. You wouldn’t know it from reading its release, but Simon & Schuster already has the rights–as they have for years in their standard contract– to take advantage of print on demand and e-book technologies.

The issue is what happens when a book goes out of print, when the publisher is no longer selling it in meaningful numbers. Traditionally, rights then revert at the request of the author, who often is able to give the book a new life elsewhere. Simon & Schuster is trying to change the rules of the industry so that they never have to admit that a book is out of print.

We meant what we said in our press release and our alert to members:

1. Simon & Schuster’s new contract would indeed allow it to retain exclusive rights to a book even if it were no longer in print. Simon & Schuster?s contract says, “The Work shall not be deemed out of print as long as it is available in any U.S. trade edition, including electronic editions.” Having a book available for sale in some database, without the obligation to sell a single copy. is not keeping a book “in print” as common sense and the industry have defined that term.

Simon & Schuster would, under its new contract, be empowered to exclusively control your rights even if your books aren’t available for sale through traditional bookstores. E-book availability (read any good e-books lately?) would be enough to fulfill Simon & Schuster’s contractual commitments under its interpretation of “in print.” Roy Blount is plainly right, this contract would allow Simon & Schuster to squirrel away rights.

2. Simon & Schuster’s press release avowals about its promotional efforts as it pursues “incremental income” for backlist titles are not legally binding. Simon & Schuster goes on at some length about efforts to market backlist titles including “regularly review[ing] inventory opportunities with all our accounts” and engaging in the “distribution of online assets (cover, bios, synopses, chapters) and data feeds about basic information? on backlist titles to retailers. Whatever the merit of these efforts, Simon & Schuster carefully avoids committing to them on behalf of authors with books relegated to the backlist.
3. Simon & Schuster’s efforts to alter the true core deal of a trade book contract, that a publisher controls the right to sell an author?s book only so long as the publisher effectively exploits that right, demanded exposure. Agents reported to us that Simon & Schuster had slipped the change into its contracts without alerting agents to the alteration, which was quite subtle and easily missed. Agents also reported that when they discovered the change and questioned the publisher about it, Simon & Schuster played hardball, saying the clause was non-negotiable and wouldn’t be discussed. In its release, Simon & Schuster seems miffed that we didn’t discuss their new contractual language with them before exposing it to sunlight. Engaging in discussions with a conglomerate playing hardball while authors may have been unwittingly signing rights away would, in our view, have been irresponsible.

We welcome and will take Simon & Schuster up on its offer to discuss this matter. We hope to report soon that it has rejoined the ranks of publishers who behave as responsible stewards of their authors? copyrights. In the meantime, if you have an offer from Simon & Schuster, remember that the publisher has now said it will negotiate this clause on a book-by-book basis. If you’re fortunate, Simon & Schuster will offer you a reasonable out-of-print clause. (Feel free to discuss this with us or talk to your agent about the adequacy of the clause.)

If not, it’s in your interest to explore your options: other publishers have reaffirmed that they’re not following Simon & Schuster’s example. If you have a manuscript that may be auctioned, it’s in your strong interest to ask your agent to exclude Simon & Schuster imprints unless they agree before the auction to use industry standard terms. Here?s Simon & Schuster’s release in its entirety, which we forward to you at the publisher’s request. Feel free to forward and post this alert. The Authors Guild (www.authorsguild.org) is the oldest and largest organization of published book authors in the U.S.

—————– SIMON & SCHUSTER’s OFFICIAL RESPONSE

TO OUR COLLEAGUES IN THE AUTHOR AND AGENT COMMUNITY

The Authors Guild has recently perpetrated serious misinformation regarding Simon & Schuster, our author contracts and our commitment to making our authors? books available for sale. Unfortunately, these distortions were released by the Authors Guild without their having undertaken any effort to have a dialogue with Simon & Schuster on this topic. In recent years, Simon & Schuster has accepted, at the request of some agencies, contract language that specifies a minimum level of activity for print on demand titles. Our experience with the current high quality and accessibility of print on demand titles indicates to us that such minimums are no longer necessary. Our position on reversions for active titles remains unchanged. As always, we are willing to have an open and forthright dialogue on this or any other topic.

When considering this issue, we ask you to please keep in mind these important points:

• Through print on demand technology, publishers now have the ability, for the first time in history, to actually fulfill the promise which is at the core of their contracts with authors– to keep the author’s book available for sale over the term of the license. We view this progress as a great opportunity to maximize the sales potential for slow moving titles, and some of the best news for authors and publishers in a long time. The potential benefit for all concerned in incremental income for the publishing partnership far outweighs any imaginary negatives purported by the Authors Guild.
• We and others are investing heavily in digitization so that authors and publishers can reap the maximum benefit of publication over the long term. New technologies including print on demand will extend the life of a book far beyond what has been possible in the past. Contrary to the Authors Guild assertion, using technologies like print on demand is not about “squirreling away” rights, nor does it mean that “no copies are available to be ordered by traditional bookstores.” Print on demand is simply a means of manufacturing a book, making it widely available to retailers and consumers. Publishers must and will continue to invest in sales and marketing organizations that work on behalf of its books regardless of how they are manufactured.Among the activities that publishers regularly undertake for backlist titles:
  – Keeping them available for sale everywhere books are sold, through brick and mortar and online stores.
  – Our Sales team regularly reviews inventory opportunities with all our accounts.
  – Distribution of online assets (covers, bios, synopses, chapters) and data feeds about basic information to both online and traditional retailers.
  – Books are cataloged and regularly featured and solicited in category promotions.
  – Re-promotion of books to tie in with seasonal and current events.
  – Re-promotion of an author?s backlist titles together with new frontlist releases.
  Print on demand, digital archives, and virtual warehouses support greater flexibility and effectiveness in making books available. Simon & Schuster has already had instances where a high level of sales activity of print on demand titles has led us to go back to press for larger quantities.
• Most importantly, we hope you know that we view authors and agents as our partners in the publishing process. We have always been open to discussion and negotiated in good faith at every point in the life of a book.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions. May 21, 2007

by Darcy Pattison

I am working on my teacher resource book. One topic is how to plan a mystery.

Oh, my, gosh! Mysteries are so complicated.

Two time lines: what really happened;the detective’s timeline of figuring out what happened in the first time line.

Three characters: victim, villain, detective.

I had broken it down into sections and then let D. read it, who writes more mysteries than I ever will. She suggested break it down even further. She’s right. When I’m revising, I often break down a chapter or scene into components and work on them in smaller segments, before re-integrating everything. For example, I might think about the word choices. Then go back and edit for continuity and flow and rhythm.

by Darcy Pattison

Do you listen to music while you write? I find that music with lyrics takes my mind off the words that I’m writing. Instead, I like soundtracks from movies. Something about that kind of soundtrack works. I think it’s because the music is echoing the narrative arc of the story. But I’m going to read and write, read and write all summer. I’m looking for something new to listen to–when I can listen and still think. Any suggestions on what I should try?

by Darcy Pattison

Novel Secrets Series

Author Nancy Sharp has designed a series of three retreats, which is unique in the writing world. It takes writers from an initial idea to a finished manuscript and an evaluation by an agent or editor–in JUST ONE YEAR. Awesome! Cynsations website is running a series of interviews with the speakers. One of the retreats will be my Novel Revision retreat. Interview with N.L. Sharp, author. Interview with Elaine Marie Alphin, author and teacher. Interview with Darcy Pattison, author and teacher. Interview with Rebecca Sherman, agent at Writer’s House.