Reality Blog Challenge #1

Can you feel my words wrapping around your neck, a noose of meaning pushing against your trachea, focusing your attention on their very existence and how they have taken your breath away?

The opening line of any writing is very important. With mysteries, it can also immediately create suspense or just be wicked good fun.

The first sentence can establish an instant connection with the reader. Take Pari Noskin Taichert‘s beginning in The Socorro Blast:

If hell exists, it’s filled with old boyfriends…and a cat.

Just from those 11 words, I bought the book!

Wayne Arthurson began Fall From Grace with:

“Do you want to see the body?”

The speaker of these words is not identified in this first line. So a reader wants to know who is saying this. Yes, I’m taking it for granted we mystery lovers were expecting a body, and frankly are delighted to have found one so soon! Wayne earned bonus points with me, because, having read the book, I know these words actually drive a great deal of the plot, suspense and character. Who can resist wanting to read more?

Your challenge, should you choose to rise to it….Find and post a gripping first line from a mystery.

I encourage all of our team to rally around good examples or razz any weak ones. Deadline is June 27th.

With this dare, I hereby relax the verbal rope snaked about you. As your heart pounds and your lungs fill, remember the thrill. Go forth and seek it anew!

Action First

“Write what you know dear.”

Umm, maybe.

But maybe that works better for more ‘literary’ novels than our favourite mystery genre.

Literary novels in fact are often very factual, very much based on what the writer actually does know and the kind of people he or she hangs out with. Alas, most writers live ordinary lives. They pick their kids up from daycare, win or lose at office politics and worry about their sex lives or who’s cutting the grass. They aren’t captains of industry, showgirls, women police officers, private investigators or SAS Special Forces parachute jumpers deployed behind enemy lines. Sometime it is hard to care in much contemporary literary fiction whether the boy will get the girl and a job at the plant or the lady with the green flowered curtains wins the bakeoff down on the farm or leaves her husband.

But mystery or suspense authors grapple with life and death, betrayal and honor in darkly compelling settings most of us writers, like most readers, will never inhabit. As a kid I fought giant snakes with Bomba the Jungle Boy, and escaped danger piloting a speedboat with Frank and Joe Hardy. I was also presented at Napoleon's court with Desiree and later married the king of Sweden. Action and adventure, outsize settings like jungles and palaces, hospital emergency rooms or parliament let you dream a little bigger whatever your age.

Because the more important half of “write what you know” is write characters that you know, characters with flaws, ambitions, illicit desires, feelings of loss, joy and satisfaction. Then place those characters in exciting situations and watch things start to boil.

When you give your readers a tantalizing puzzle to solve, life and death situations plus scenery or even fashion then you capture their attention so together you can delve into your characters’ hearts and the myriad decisions they, and we, make each day for good or ill. Those are the memorable stories, when you write what you know.

Hard Core Mystery Writer Defects to Soft Core Sizzle

by Melodie Campbell

Sizzling suspense, not erotica.  Rowena Through the Wall may be hot, but there’s plenty of plot in this adventure.  Which brings to mind the topic of novel classification.

We already know the difference between mystery and suspense novels.  In mysteries, the focus is (usually) on the solving of the crime.  In suspense novels, the crime (usually) hasn’t happened yet, and the focus is on the threat of danger and the need to escape from it.  But other genres cross over, and can appeal to a variety of reading markets.

So what makes the difference?  How do you define what genre a novel fits into?  I’ve heard it explained this way.  Disassemble the thing. Consider a book that contains both mystery and romance.  Many mystery and suspense novels have a jolt of romance in them.  And romance novels often benefit from suspense in their makeup.  So how do you tell which is which, when it comes to novel classification and market? 

If you take the romance out of a mystery book, do you still have a strong story?  If so, it’s a mystery novel.  On the other hand, if you took the mystery/suspense out of a romance novel, would you still have enough story for a novel?  Then it’s romance.

Rowena Through the Wall is comic paranormal suspense novel, no doubt.  Without the fantasy of falling through the wall to another world, there would be no story.  Would the novel hold together without the sex?  Difficult.  You could do the dot-dot-dot thing and gloss over it, but the theme of several men wanting Rowena feeds the action and drives the conflict in this alternate world.  So…calling this a hot paranormal suspense novel works too.

But what happened to the hard core mystery writer?  She’s still there, working on a second novel called The Goddaughter, a comic crime caper.   At least that one is easy to classify.  But I might sneak some sex in there too.

Melodie’s novel Rowena Through the Wall (Imajin books) is AVAILABLE for $3.99 in ebook on Smashwords, and on Amazon.com. Trade paperback to follow in July.  Follow Melodie on funnygirlmelodie.blogspot.com

and www.melodiecampbell.com

Introducing...Melodie Campbell

by Wayne Arthurson

I’ve never met Melodie Campbell, but I get a lot of e-mail from her. That’s 'cause Melodie is the General Manager of Crime Writers of Canada, and as a member myself, she sends me information that I need.

Melodie likes to describe herself as a former bank manager, marketing director, association executive, college instructor, and possibly the worst runway model ever. You can also add comedy writer to that and not just because that line is funny. Melodie has this parallel career as a humourist and has written over 100 columns for various North American newspapers. She was the opening speaker for the 1999 Canadian Humour Conference in Hamilton, Ontario, which also proves she’s funny. Check out her humour blog at funnygirlmelodie.blogspot.com, if you don’t believe me.

She’s got a comic suspense novel out this month (Rowena Through the Wall) plus she’s had over 30 short stories published, including a few in great magazines such as Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and New Mystery Reader Magazine.

So even though I haven’t met Melodie in person, I like her, and not just because of the membership thing. I know you'll like her, too.

Why Blog?

Recently I was at Left Coast Crime Writers Conference in Santa Fe. I was able to talk to some wonderful writers who shared what they thought every one should know. When Charlie Newton told me to set up a blog, I wasn't sure I could do it.

Now I believed his advise was sound, I just wasn't sure I could do it. I'm not the most technical person in the world, so where would I go to set up a blog?  How do I find other writers who were interested in a blog? And what type of a blog would it be?

Luckily for me I was sharing a room with Janet Costello and we talked about the merits of a blog and she came up with the reality blog idea. Absolute brillliance.

When we got home we asked serveral authors to join in the fun and the blog was born.

My next question was what would we all blog about?

Because we have such a diverse group, we have a diverse blog. Some of the writers are funny, some are serious, but everyone is interesting and brings their uniqueness to the group.
My problem will be to keep up with the brilliance of the others.

Character Is Key

Heather Mac Archer is bang on when she says suggests some of the finest literature in the world contains the elements of mystery fiction: from Brontë to Dickens to A. S. Byatt authors give us flawed characters and hide crucial plot elements until the appropriate moment that reveals things we need to know to understand the story and if we are lucky something of ourselves.

Closer to home, we have The Bishops Man by Lyndon McIntyre from last year. As our sisters in crime colleague Rosemary McCracken points out the question of who is the real criminal, the sex offender who has left a trail of broken hearts and suicide in his wake that is at the heart of the novel is only resolved at the very end. So literary fiction and mystery fiction partake of a common heritage and vocabulary. The important thing now is to up our game, do something different as Heather says with living breathing characters acting from a sense of justice.

Pinpointing the protagonist

It could be argued that all works of fiction are mysteries: from Bronte to Fielding, Dickens to Byatt, the finest literature in the world is a collection of words that include a gathering of elements similar to the mystery genre: characters with flaws, origins unknown; enigmatic drama; furtive plot components that wind to a denouement, not necessarily happy, and not necessarily with the sense of justice we wish to find for the characters involved.

But the mystery genre, with its black and white dichotomy of crime and punishment, its sense of right and wrong, is somewhat formulaic and quite unlike any other genre.

Altering the prescribed expectations of whodunits and yet keeping within the format of what the reader wants is where the challenge arises for fledgling crime writers. You don’t want to get mired in the generic aspects of the genus, but you do want to do something different, something that might also catch the eye of an agent so at some point down the road, readers can share your musings.

So, do you create a protagonist so winsome, so droll and intelligent, so wise and knowing that the character alone is irresistible? Maybe. But a regular old Joe or Jill might be a better solution; a central character who struggles with the everyday, just as we do.

My favorite books include diverse and quirky casts of characters with personality flaws and deep-seated troubles: Ian Rankin’s Rebus comes to mind. Martha Grime’s Richard Jury and his sidekick Melrose Plant are others; then there’s Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch, and Kate Atkinson’s beset Jackson Brodie. Each struggles with something from the past, an episode or personal tragedy that drives their sense of justice and the need to right wrongs. Those flaws drive the spirit of the books.

Relatively newbie author Elly Griffiths’ protagonist, forensic archeologist Ruby Galloway, has certainly got herself into a delicate dilemma. Unwavering in her professional skills, she is floundering in her personal life as she has had a child with a married police officer with whom she has worked to solve a number of crimes; a touchy matter. She’s an admirable and independent spirit, despite her self doubts.

We’re all weak, strong, adventurous, sedate. If you’re of any age, you’ve seen it all, done most of it, suffered the slings and arrows, rejoiced in life’s good things and figured out a mystery or two of your own.

And so should our protagonists be much like us: fearful and wise, unsure and certain, helpless and strong, funny and sad, and clever enough to make all that’s bad in our mysteries see justice.

Oh yeah. And they should be durable enough to get us through the plot and help us get it ‘write’ to the end!