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Tag Archives: Fiction Plot and Characters

Looking at story endings

25 Apr

Click on the book cover to go to amazon.com

Click on the book cover to go to amazon.com

Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.

— Rod Serling

Last evening I had a discussion with members of the book club at the Albert Campbell Branch of the Toronto Public Library. One of the many interesting questions from one of these readers was about the ending to my short story “Porcelain Doll” from Beyond the Tripping Point. And the ensuing discussion got me thinking.

I’ve blogged about the beginning and middle of short stories and novels, but endings are just as important for the writer and especially the reader. You want to have your readers hanging onto every word of your story but you don’t want to disappoint them in the end. That doesn’t necessarily mean a main character shouldn’t die but…

Let’s look at endings. Without completely spoiling the ending of  “Porcelain Doll,” when the protagonist Sarah Holden is reunited with her father she has mixed feelings – relief, love – lots of heavy emotions – but when she sees him being led out in handcuffs and sees ”a glimmer of the old Daddy in his eyes,” she shudders. (Copyright 2012 Sharon A. Crawford Beyond the Tripping Point)

The book club member and I explored this ending where Sarah Holden has these mixed feelings about reconnecting with a father who for years she thought was dead because of her, a father who was a nasty piece of goods in that he was verbally abusive to her and especially to her mother. But he had one redeeming quality – he loved his daughter. He found it difficult to express his love so did the one thing he thought would please her – try to win a big porcelain doll through a poker game.

This ending works because it brings out the mixed feelings Sarah has for her father. If she completely forgave him and ignored the pain he caused her, particularly for deserting her and her mother which left her with feelings of guilt, it wouldn’t be realistic. His arrest is minutes after she is reunited with him so she has little time to digest all that happened and is happening. Perhaps if it was a few years after the reunion and Daddy and Sarah got to know each other…maybe.

What can we learn about endings?

1.      They must be logical and follow through with the plot and characters.

2.   That point doesn’t eliminate surprise endings but again the plot and characters must point towards what happens in the surprise. Killing off a bad character or even a superfluous one because the author can’t figure any other way to deal with him or her doesn’t work. Killing off a bad character in a “shoot-out” type of scene might work if the antagonist corners the protagonist and it is a “kill or die yourself” situation.

3.   Happy versus sad endings – both can work, but being a so-called “romantic” at heart (some of you will have a hard time believing that), I think often the sad ending could actually be turned into a better ending, even of hope – especially if the author is writing a series. For example, a steamy relationship that occurs in the novel or a blossoming relationship, is ended at the story’s finish. Why not leave it up in the air somewhat for readers and give them some hope and a hook to read the next book. Pamela Callow is good at that in her thriller mystery novels, Damaged and Indefensible. The protagonist has professional run-ins with a former lover, whom she still has feelings for, in both novels, but there is also a blossoming relationship with another character.

4.      No long drawn out endings. We don’t need a line-by-line account of the “steamy relationship” couples’ marriage or an injured protagonist’s recovery. Watch this with Epilogues. It can bore the reader. Just a few sentences or a few paragraphs where the fellow proposes and the woman just had to say “yes,” or “of course we got married six months later.”

5.      Balance – with plot and character – is the key word.

I discuss some of my characters in this Liquid Lunch interview part.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xMhcTRANMY&feature=youtu.be

.Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
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Posted by on April 25, 2013 in Beyond the Tripping Point, Plot and Characters, Sharon A. Crawford, Short Story Collection, Writing

 

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Getting inside your nasty fiction characters

18 Apr

Click on the book cover to go to amazon.com

Click on the book cover to go to amazon.com

If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There’s a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you’re dealing mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they’re the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not.

– Anthony Burgess

We’ve talked about character development in previous posts and how you have to get inside your characters’ heads to see what makes them tick. That can be a pleasure if the character is basically a good person with some flaws. But what if one of your major fiction characters – such as a serial killer – is a nasty piece of goods and so unlikeable you cringe.

If you just skim the surface of Mr. Nastiness, that is all your readers will see. Worse, they may think he and his actions are superfluous, perhaps somewhat unbelievable, and maybe he comes across as merely thrown into the plot as a solution for a crime.

You need to get under Mr. (or Ms.) Nastiness’s skin – even if they don’t appear in many scenes but are pivotal to your plot and to the reaction of your major characters.

Or the nasty character can be the main character.

In my short story “Missing in Action,” the main character, Chrissie, has a middle-aged uncle who left his family and ran away with his secretary and the secretary’s son, 15 years ago. Unlike most of these scenarios, this secretary was not a sexpot half the uncle’s age. Instead, as this news report states:

One is led to wonder why Roger Stuart ran off with Anita Perez. The name sounds exotic but Perez was not a Mexican beauty. She was on the heavy side, about six inches taller than Stuart’s five foot eight inch slim build. She had been previously married and had a son, Anthony. She was also two years older than Stuart. Stuart’s wife, Sheila, 47, on the other hand, is a petite blonde, slim, with a heart-shaped face. (Copyright 2012 Sharon A. Crawford. Excerpted from Beyond the Tripping Point, Blue Denim Press, 2012).

From this description you can tell that there is something “off” about Ms. Perez. She is taller than her lover and on the heavy side. That could convey that she might have control over Roger Stuart, perhaps even abuse him. Add in she is older, not younger than Stuart’s wife and the reader may wonder what the attraction is…and if it has something to do with Stuart almost emptying his bank account (that’s in the same news story Chrissie finds archived online) and running off with her. Ugly people fall in love, too.

Of course, Ms. Perez appears later in the story and when she does and has a violent confrontation with Chrissie with her son Anthony present, the reader finds out she is a controlling bitch. There are other instances in the story that show Ms. Perez as being Ms. Nastiness. But no more story details. You’ll have to read the book to find out.

If I hadn’t gotten inside Ms. Perez’s head and “dissected” her, she might have come across as a “so what?” character, i.e., what is her relevance?

Then there are the serial killers. I have one in my pre-quel novel (still in rewriting stages) and I had to get inside his head. How do you do this without turning violent yourself?

Here are a few tips for getting inside the head of your nasty characters.

1.      Read about other nasty characters for information and yes, to help get you in the mood.

2.      Pull in any nastiness from what has happened in your life, and the lives of your family, friends and colleagues. But don’t create a character just like them.

3.      For serial killers it does help to watch Criminal Minds if only to see a variety of backgrounds and motivations for serial killers. But don’t copy.

4.      Get inside your nasty character’s head and feel their emotions – rage, anger, unhappiness, resentment, etc. Get a sense of what they look like and speak like.

5.      To help with 4. create a full character outline of Mr. or Ms. Nastiness – their background (for example were they bullied as a child, where they went to school and were they a good student, how they interacted with their parents, siblings, friends, where they work now; are they married or not, gay, heterosexual). Also their physical appearance, traits, likes and dislikes, etc.

6.      Then take a break from Mr. or Ms. Nastiness.

7.      When you write your short story or novel, the nasty character may change from your character outline. Go with that flow. Mr. or Ms. Nastiness is evolving.

8.      When not writing about your nasty character, try not to constantly think about him or her. He or she is not you…or is he? Maybe you are basing your nasty person on you.

For my upcoming events with Beyond the Tripping Point, go to my BTTP page on my website – http://www.samcraw.com/Articles/BeyondtheTrippingPoint.html I continually update it. In particular:

This evening, Thursday, April 18, 2013, 7 p.m.

Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Awards Short List Party Toronto http://crimewriterscanada.com/awards/annual-awards-events/shortlist-events

I’m reading a short suspenseful excerpt from Beyond the Tripping Point. Eleven other CWC readers are reading excerpts from their books as we anxiously await the names of who made the short list. Our books are for sale, too.

Location: Indigo Chapters in the Manulife Centre, Bay St. at Bloor St. W., Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
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Posted by on April 18, 2013 in Beyond the Tripping Point, Credible Fiction Characters, Fiction Characters, Plot and Characters, Sharon A. Crawford, Writing

 

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Rewriting your fiction

11 Apr
Click on the book cover to go to amazon.com

Click on the book cover to go to amazon.com

Proofread carefully to see if you any words out

–          Author Unknown

In previous posts I’ve talked about when you write that first draft you need to keep on writing and never mind fixing it up. At some point, you will need to wake up the editor inside your head and rewrite. Here are a few tips I’ve learned over the years and in particular while working with the editor at the publisher (Blue Denim Press) of Beyond the Tripping Point.

  1. What you think needs rewriting and others think may not always mesh. And that’s a good thing because you want many readers for your book.
  2. You don’t have to do exactly as someone else suggests – for example in my story “16 Dorsey St.” my editor suggested making the seniors younger. That would mess up the story’s timeline, so I compromised – I took three or four years off the seniors’ ages and worked in that they were not frail.
  3. Often someone else’s suggestion makes the story better. My editor suggested deleting out a very long ending to “My Brother’s Keeper” with an alternate shorter ending, plus deleting and/or changing parts of “Porcelain Doll.” I complied and had two better stories.
  4. Get feedback from other writers – joining a writers’ critique group (online or in person) is helpful here.
  5. When you get right down to it, you will be doing the rewriting and BEFORE you show it to anyone you should do some rewriting:
  6. When rewriting look for:

a)      Too wordy phrases – can you say it in one or two words?

b)      Anything that doesn’t make sense to you.

c)      Repetition – in action, scenes, words (do a “Find” for the latter – you’d be surprised how many times a “was” or my problem word “but” appear).

d)     Watch for any scene, etc. that makes you yawn (outside of when you are tired).

e)      In line with d) pace yourself in rewriting. Don’t try to rewrite a whole novel in one go.

f)       Make sure your plot and character actions make sense to you and aren’t vague and inconsistent. Sure, you want to leave your readers guessing about some things but having your character suddenly start karate-chopping a villain when you’ve already presented the character as slight in build, meek, with no interest in martial arts, oh…oh.

g)      However, make sure your characters undergo some change. This might sound counter to f) but show some characteristic that would motivate their actions despite a weakness. For example, in “Unfinished Business,” my main character, Lilly, avoids confronting her past until her past threatens her 12-year-old daughter. The story up to then shows that Lilly loves her daughter.

h)      Can whole scenes, parts of scenes, parts of chapters, even whole chapters be eliminated? Here look for a plot thread or tangent that isn’t really necessary to the story. In my prequel novel (still in rewriting stage), I removed whole scenes connected to one thread – another murder. Instead of having  PI Dana Bowman do a long trip down to Toronto to find a specific person (and finding her body), I had her computer savvy twin brother Bast Overture find a news story on the Internet about it. All it needed was a follow-up with Detective Sergeant Fielding for the police end to include an important plot part without all the extras. If your novel manuscript is longer than say 75,000 to 90,000 words (and the latter is pushing it), that might be an indication to cut. Or maybe rewrite it all into two books. (Note: as an editor I turned down copy editing a novel manuscript that was 205,000 words – gulp, although I had a time issue here too).

i)        For short stories, remember they are short stories, so even with the longer stories (6000 words and over) make sure every word counts – no tangents. A specific word count from your targeted market (contest, publisher, etc.) can be used here.

j)        On your later rewrites, do a line check for extra words and phrases. Be ruthless.

These are my 10 pointers for rewriting fiction. Does anyone have a pointer to add? How do you rewrite your fiction? Please share.

For my upcoming events with Beyond the Tripping Point, go to my BTTP page on my website – http://www.samcraw.com/Articles/BeyondtheTrippingPoint.html I continually update it. In particular:

Thursday, April 18, 2013,7 p.m.

Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Awards Short List Party Toronto http://crimewriterscanada.com/awards/annual-awards-events/shortlist-events

I’m reading a short suspenseful excerpt from Beyond the Tripping Point. Eleven other CWC readers  are reading excerpts from their books as we anxiously await the names of who made the short list. Our books are for sale, too.

Location: Indigo Chapters in the Manulife Centre, Bay St. at Bloor St. W., Toronto

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
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Posted by on April 11, 2013 in Beyond the Tripping Point, Plot and Characters, Rewriting Fiction, Sharon A. Crawford, Writing

 

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Making your fiction funny

04 Apr
Click on the book cover to go to amazon.com

Sharon A. Crawford’s book. Click on the cover to go to amazon.com

The funniest things are the forbidden … The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.

— Mark Twain

I use humour in many of the short stories in my mystery collection Beyond the Tripping Point. My goal is not necessarily to be funny but the characters and their situations need humour, often the black comedy type. My characters are a little off from normal and get themselves in spots where they well, go beyond the tripping point in life and then have to sort it all out. Throw in crime and some of these characters need to go on the light side of life.

One of these stories “The Body in the Trunk” focuses on two close friends, Kelsie and Sally. Kelsie wants to dump her cheating husband but the normal divorce route doesn’t sit well on her shoulders. As she tells Sally,

“Divorce?” cried Kelsie when I’d said as much. “I’d have to split the house, the cottage, the golf set, the home entertainment centre, the BMW and,” she glared at me, “the dog. How do you split a dog? If Harry gets prison for life, he gets nothing and I get everything. And I really want that BMW.” (Excerpted from Beyond the Tripping Point, copyright Sharon A. Crawford, 2012).

\So Kelsie drags Sally into her plan so that Harry will… You didn’t really think I was going to tell you the story, did you? You’ll have to get the book.

Basically I created an original situation which is humorous and had my characters act in offbeat ways that are funny. For example, in a few scenes in the story Kelsie wears a clothespin on her nose. But it ties in with the plot and Kelsie’s character.

So, if you want to create humour in your fiction, your characters must be funny in character. None of this having a character tell jokes unless the character is a stand-up comedian. Otherwise it is forced humour and will fall flat on your reader’s eyes and mind.

Your whole plot can be something offbeat and lend itself to humour (as does “The Body in the Trunk”). And you don’t necessarily want all characters to be funny. Kelsie is, but she is balanced by Sally who while thrust into the ridiculous situation, is not a funny person. The formula for humorous skits applies here – the funny person needs a straight (and I’m not referring to sexual orientation here) person to play against. Of course, there are some humorous skits where both characters are funny. Some of you may remember the skits on the old Carol Burnette TV show. Of course Carol Burnette just has to appear on stage and she gets laughs, but until your characters get well-known in the reading world, it is better to play the funny one against a straight character. The Janet Evanovich series featuring bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is a good example. Stephanie is always getting herself into situations and the humour bounces off the pages.

Which bring me to Point of View – tell the story from the funny character’s POV or another character’s? That depends on who the funny character is – a main character or minor character, protagonist or antagonist, or in the case of mystery-crime stories – one of the suspects. With novels you can have multiple points of view (one POV per scene), so there is some choice. You can get into the funny person’s head and/or the straight person’s head   – with the latter you can get their take on the humorous character. If it is short story you are writing, you need to tell the story from one point of view but either the funny person’s or the straight person’s could work. Unsure which? Try writing your story twice – once from each character’s POV. Then read each out loud and see what seems to work best.

Whatever way you use humour in your novel or short story, make sure it isn’t forced. Readers will pick up on it.

One good thing with humour in book fiction – print, e-book or audio book – readers don’t have to suffer from that awful canned laughter on TV sit-coms…not yet anyway.

And I’m going to relent a little; you can hear me read the beginning of “The Body in the Trunk” from my reading on Liquid Lunch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgOKYgBfAwY&feature=youtu.be

For Sharon A. Crawford’s upcoming events with Beyond the Tripping Point, go to the Beyond the Tripping Point page– http://www.samcraw.com/Articles/BeyondtheTrippingPoint.html I continually update it.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
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Posted by on April 4, 2013 in Beyond the Tripping Point, Blue Denim Press, Credible Fiction Characters, Fiction Characters, Plot and Characters, Point of View in Fiction, Sharon A. Crawford, Short Story Collection, Writing

 

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Do your research and get your information correct

14 Mar
Amazon.com link to Sharon A.'s short story collection

Amazon.com link to Sharon A.’s short story collection

Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.

–           Rod Serling

If you think writing fiction eliminates any research, think again. Especially if you are writing mystery and science fiction. Do you want your police procedure to be incorrect, especially in connection with a crime scene?

According to police, that is a biggie with many authors (TV series are especially bad). Just watch some of the shows. Even a “lay person” can pick out some of the no-nos at a crime scene.

An older version of my short story “For the Love of Wills” from my mystery short collection Beyond the Tripping Point had glaring police procedural errors. I didn’t know that. Then I heard Toronto Police Constable Brent Pilkey, author of the Rage series of police procedural novels  http://www.brentpilkey.com/ talk last June on a couple of panels at the Bloody Words Mystery Writers Conference. One of those panels also featured a Chicago PI turned author. Their topic covered where fiction (mainly TV) gets the crime scene investigation wrong. I thought “oh, oh,” about the “Wills” story and with Brent’s permission, emailed him the first part of the story – just enough so he could see what the heck I was doing. He emailed back with the correct procedure and some suggestions – he was very polite and helpful. He also helped me clarify some skidmark issues in another story “Road Raging” in the same short story collection.

So, he became my police consultant, got acknowledged in my book as well as a complimentary book copy and also has helped me with police procedure for my prequel novel, which is set in the summer of 1998. Some of the procedure and set-up was different then. The one that really grabbed me was how wire-taps were done using reel-to-reel tapes that had to be turned on as the ransom call came in.

That one I should have had an inkling of because of my days as a journalist using reel-to-reel tapes, albeit the smaller cassette versions.

Then there is science fiction. Here, you want to make sure what you are writing about is actually still science fiction and not science fact – even if you take a science fact and spin it out beyond into fiction. A master novelist in that area is the award-winning Rob Sawyer  http://www.sfwriter.com/. Once you have established that you are writing science fiction, you will probably need to do research on how the details would pan out. Even though it is fiction, it has to make sense. The late Isaac Asimov http://www.asimovonline.com/asimov_home_page.html was also a master at that with his Foundation novel series.

You can do research in several ways:

  1. Interview/work with an expert in the area.
  2. Do research on the Internet – Google is a big help (but be careful – check the credentials of the website or blog poster). If you get a good one, you might want to email them for more information.
  3. Read newspaper and magazine articles; also books on the subject. (For my prequel novel, I read a book on serial killers; I didn’t want to rely 100 per cent on Criminal Minds. Also with the novel set in 1998 I didn’t want to mention serial killers and FBI etc. procedure that is post 1998). These three sources can also provide experts for you to contact to obtain further information.
  4. If you are writing historical fiction, or like me, even something 15 years before now, you will need to do a lot more research about what the social economic conditions were at that time. Plus little details – my favourite (although not for my novel) – was canned food available at specific times in history. You would be surprised how far back tinned food goes. You certainly wouldn’t want to have the Countess of Whatever flying around in a plane in 1789, although maybe a hot air balloon as the first one was supposedly invented in 1783 – unless you are writing science fiction.
  5. Time travel can also be tricky as you are bringing a character or character(s) into a past or future time. Besides the obvious of the time-traveller’s reaction to the “primitive” or “futuristic” conditions, you must get the right information into each time period. Diana Gabaldon  http://www.dianagabaldon.com/with her Outlander novel series is an expert at doing this and keeping the reader interested in the story.
  6. And that’s my last point. Don’t bore or bog down your fiction with research. Weave in the research with the story and characters and skip the expository, the character explaining, or worse the author as narrator explaining. It can turn away your reader or at least cause him or her to skip paragraphs, even pages. You know the old adage – it is easier to learn when you are having fun or being entertained.

How do you do research for your fiction?

For my upcoming events with Beyond the Tripping Point, go to my BTTP page on my website – http://www.samcraw.com/Articles/BeyondtheTrippingPoint.html

And clicking on the book logo at the beginning of this post links directly to my entry on amazon.com. Book is available in print and e-copy.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
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Posted by on March 14, 2013 in Beyond the Tripping Point, Blue Denim Press, Plot and Characters, Short Story Collection, Writing

 

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Putting your social causes into your fiction

07 Mar
Cover of Sharon A. Crawford's mystery short story collection

Cover of Sharon A. Crawford’s mystery short story collection

We care what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are. — Henry James

Many of the short stories in my collection Beyond the Tripping Point deal with children who get the short end of the stick – missing children, abused children – and trying to save them as well as punishing the perpetrators. For example, in “Unfinished Business,” the protagonist has run away from something terrible that happened to her as a child. When the same evil threatens her daughter, she is forced to do something. Two of the linked stories (“Gone Missing,” “Saving Grace”), featuring fraternal twins Dana Bowman and Bast Overture, and Dana’s seven-year-old son David also focus on finding and saving children. These two stories have an extra kicker as David has been left psychologically mute because of his own bad experience in the prequel novel which I am now working on.

My cause is the safety of children. When I started writing my short stories and the novel I didn’t set out to include this cause. I didn’t realize it was my cause. Many authors have a social cause and they want to get their point across in a short story or novel. The trick is to do so without lecturing or preaching. You don’t want your story bogged down by a character going on ad nauseam about capital punishment, global warming, etc.

How do you get around this?

Make your cause a part of your character and plot. For example, if you are against capital punishment, your protagonist could be a defence lawyer who tries to get the death sentence off the table, or better still, prove the client is innocent. And I don’t mean copying Perry Mason. Or if your cause is justice isn’t there or doesn’t work in the legal system, your protagonist could be a private investigator who goes beyond the law when catching guilty perpetrators. For global warming, your protagonist could be a meteorologist or a geoscientist who has a passion for global warming – for or against.

That’s the characters. Now you have to work them into a plot. The global warming could be a “what if “story, even science fiction (although these days what is happening with weather may kill the science fiction angle – unless you take it to extremes, the world freezing over into snow (already been done in a movie starring Dennis Quaid. Use your imagination. Your protagonist can be the one predicting something like this will happen. Or he or she could be called in by the government to help solve the problem. Or for a twist – he or she could be doing something to escalate or cause the problem (there’s an idea for science fiction).

What runs through stories involving a cause is timeliness. If you set it in the present, your “cause” needs to be something that is going on in the world now. If the cause is something that was dominant in the past, you need to set your stories then. This is something I do with the fraternal twins’ stories and novel. In the novel, part of the plot has to do with something that was big news in the late 1990s, I’m not telling you what, but I will say that it does have to do with children in danger and I also work in other aspects of children in danger, such as kidnappings – something that is unfortunately, always timely.

Another angle for your protagonist and plot is to build in some foreseeing of the future with your protagonist and plot. In the popular Murdock Mysteries TV series, set at the turn of the century (that’s going from the 19th to the 20th century) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the protagonist Detective William Murdock, has great respect for the murdered victim (he is a staunch Catholic who makes the sign of the cross when he first sees the dead body). So he is motivated to find the killer and bring him or her to justice. However, Detective Murdock is a far-seeing investigator who uses pioneering methods (some of which he devises, some already just coming into investigating procedures elsewhere) such as fingerprints to help solve the crime

I suggest you read books by authors who do some of the above and watch some TV series, although with the latter, especially, you need to be careful the writers did their research and got it right. But that is a subject for a future post.

Meantime, check out the three parts of an interview I did last fall (links below), just as my short story collection Beyond the Tripping Point (Blue Denim Press, 2012) came out. I talk about my characters, plots and yes, Murdock Mysteries, one of my favourite TV series. Read some of the books by its creator, Maureen Jennings – she has other series’ mysteries published as well and co-developed a story concept which became the Bomb Girls TV series. Check out Maureen Jennings at http://www.maureenjennings.com/

And check out my online TV interview on thatchannel.com posted in three parts on You Tube at:

Sharon A Crawford Beyond the Tripping Interview No. 1 on Liquid Lunch on thatchannel.com.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScuE2g4cWtc&feature=youtu.be

Sharon Reading from Beyond the Tripping Point on Liquid Lunch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgOKYgBfAwY&feature=youtu.be

Sharon A Crawford Beyond the Tripping Interview No. 2 on Liquid Lunch on thatchannel.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xMhcTRANMY&feature=youtu.be

And don’t forget: clicking on the book cover at the top of this post, links you to Beyond the Tripping Point on www.amazon.com.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
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Posted by on March 7, 2013 in Beyond the Tripping Point, Blue Denim Press, Credible Fiction Characters, Fiction Characters, Plot and Characters, Sharon A. Crawford, Writing

 

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Creating the actual story from real life ideas

14 Feb
Cover of Sharon A. Crawford's mystery short story collection

Cover of Sharon A. Crawford’s mystery short story collection

In last week’s post I discussed how much of yourself goes into your fiction and listed overall guidelines, especially when the idea isn’t taken from your life. Today, I’m going to show how I gelled a plot idea with the main characters to write a story.

“The Couch,” the first story in my mystery story collection Beyond the Tripping Point, originated with something I kept reading in mystery novels that annoyed me. This was 11 years ago – “The Couch” was previously published in an anthology – but the idea is still relevant today. Too many fictional private investigators seemed to have a hard time making ends meet. I decided to turn that issue around – my PI, named C.U. Fly, called “C.U.”, would be raking in the money from too many clients and was burnt out. C.U. first tried conventional means to downsize and when that didn’t work, C.U. turned to an unusual take on crime. I also used the axiom of “crime doesn’t pay” as my underlying theme. C.U. was 25, so the good fortune wasn’t from many years of work. I threw in one more main “character” an old horsehair couch – that idea came from a horsehair couch that sat in the living room of my late grandfather’s farmhouse. Of course, Grandpa’s couch didn’t have adventures like the fictional old horsehair.

Here’s the beginning of “The Couch.”

I blamed the whole business on that old blue couch. An heirloom on my mother’s side, it was stuffed with horsehair. She’d given it to me when I opened this office. “Old Horsehair” settled in permanently until the bitter crackling end.

How else could I explain my actions? I had no choice. Some days I spent 20 hours in the office. No partner took the load off my shoulders. Only that damn three-seater couch, which sucked in my clients like a magnet. I had repeat clients related to repeat clients.

Or was Ms Everglades to blame?

The story’s theme is set up with the first sentence. The main character’s name and profession aren’t revealed until a few paragraphs down and are done in two ways: first, the PI’s name and a reference to the profession in Ms Everglades’ dialogue.; second, the profession is revealed in a short backstory in Fly’s mind to show how the situation started. How the state-of-affairs progresses is shown in a parade of clients – via dialogue, action and C.U’s inner thoughts. The point of view stays with Fly.

Here’s another excerpt with one of these quirky clients.

Take Guido “Ratty” Rattali, a self-professed blackmailer. Ratty hired me to dig up dirt on well-heeled people. Then he threatened them with their dirt, collected the payoff and limped into my office. He heaved his Blue Jays cap onto the floor, shoved his greasy locks behind his ears and pushed his grimy beige trench coat off his shoulders and down over his ass. Then he dived face-down onto the couch. His sobs alternated with sneezes as his nose rubbed into Old Horsehair.

“I’m only the poor son of a poor greengrocer, achoo, excuse-a-me,” he said.

When his sinuses were completely blocked, he jumped up, tripping on his trench coat, and handed me a wad of cash for my fee—less his take, no doubt. (both excerpts copyright 2012 Sharon A. Crawford,  from Beyond the Tripping Point, Blue Denim Press, 2012)

 

 You can also see how Old Horsehair fits in. And Ratty is an example of the type of clientele, although he is more bent than some of the others. I also add a dog who chews into Old Horsehair and a furnace repair man who comes in to check the furnace downstairs – all necessary developments that foreshadow and lead to the credibility of what Fly eventually decides to do.

Does it work? You’ll have to read the story to find out.

From the above, we can learn the following:

  1. Use a combination of what annoys, scares, or concerns you with perhaps one other item from your life (I used the complaining poor PI’s from fiction and the horsehair couch from my past.)
  2. Use your imagination for your characters – you don’t want a replica or yourself or someone you know – but you can “steal” a few characteristics here (I used imagination only).
  3. Devise a plot for your characters that is not run-of-the mill. (I turned the situation around, using the “what if?” approach.
  4. Lighten it up with humour – it can balance some of the nastiness in the story (It helped with the presentation of a quirky story with quirky characters).
  5. Make sure your story follows its theme (mine was “crime doesn’t pay) but do it in an original way (sorry, not telling here).
  6. Use “show the reader” features – dialogue, action, inner thoughts but some narrative is okay.
  7. Let your readers be surprised by the unexpected – but make it credible.

The first part of No. 7 occurred in a well, unexpected way. Tuesday evening I did a reading presentation from Beyond the Tripping Point entitled “Where do characters come from?” at the Runnymede Branch of the Toronto Public Library. When introducing me, the head librarian mentioned that her husband had been reading the stories and then looked at my photo on the back cover and said, “I can’t believe that sweet-faced woman wrote those stories.”

It’s the same photo of me as at the top of this blog page. The stories in BTTP contain murder, sexual assault, missing persons, kidnapping, revenge, suicide, vehicular mishaps, etc. You be the judge.

Cheers.

Sharon. A. Crawford

 
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Posted by on February 14, 2013 in Beyond the Tripping Point, Blue Denim Press, Credible Fiction Characters, Fiction Characters, Plot and Characters, Sharon A. Crawford, Short Story Collection, Writing

 

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Keeping your plot and characters consistent

31 Jan
Cover of Sharon A. Crawford's mystery short story collection

Cover of Sharon A. Crawford’s mystery short story collection

Be obscure clearly.

–          E.B. White

Nothing can be more frustrating to a writer (except maybe writer’s block) and a book editor too, than characters and/or plot starting to display inconsistencies. My favourite when doing manuscript evaluations for clients is the lady with short red hair in Chapter 2 who suddenly appears with long brown hair in Chapter 10. Did she suddenly don a wig? If so, say so…if it is consistent with what this character would do.

Or take these scenarios.

Does Tom suddenly appear in a conversation you thought was between Belinda and Sandra? James has a heart attack and is rushed to the hospital in Chapter 2; in Chapter 3 he is jogging down the street. Does Cathy arrive home in her car when in the previous chapter it was stolen? Then there is the “Who he? Who she? Syndrome” where one character makes a splash appearance near the beginning of the novel, does a disappearing act (from the writing, not the story) for the rest of the novel and then turns out near the end to be the murderer.

Oops.

I’m struggling with some inconsistencies in my prequel mystery novel. Part of the problem is the novel is complex. So I run into “How did Bast (one of the fraternal private investigators) find out about Y factor or how would he know? Didn’t I have some videotapes back in an earlier chapter? What happened to them? And one character, a TV reporter, who is not a major character and not the killer, has a history with Bast which creates conflict when they meet up after no connection for a year. After hinting at the conflict from this main character’s point of view and a couple of scenes where the two have an actual confrontation in the first half of the novel, “conflict character” all but disappears from the story. I call this inconsistency by deletion.

Readers will pick up on inconsistencies.

What should a writer do?

I’ve touched on this a few blogs ago, but it is important to have a follow-up list of any inconsistencies you notice as you write or pick up later in the first rewrite. Then, you can go back and fix the inconsistencies and mark “done” on the list.

It might also be a good idea to do an ongoing list of your characters and include their conflicts with each other and/or a brief ongoing chapter outline. When you are creating, your organizational skills take a backseat in your brain. This is not the time to multi-task or tell yourself  “oh, I’ll remember to bring Tom home in a later chapter,” or  “This scenario isn’t going to work with what has  happened before.” You also don’t want to stop the creative flow to fix an inconsistency.

How do you keep track of your characters’ interactions, conflicts and location so your final manuscript isn’t full of inconsistencies? Let’s compare notes. We might all learn something new.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
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Posted by on January 31, 2013 in Beyond the Tripping Point, Fiction Characters, Plot and Characters, Sharon A. Crawford, Short Story Collection, Writing

 

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Dialogue or narrative – that is the dilemma

24 Jan
Cover of Sharon A. Crawford's mystery short story collection

Cover of Sharon A. Crawford’s mystery short story collection

We care what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are.

–           Henry James

My publisher wants me to make my prequel mystery novel a bit shorter. Part of the problem is my two main characters, fraternal twins Dana and Bast, get too chatty in some places, especially when they are bringing each other up to speed on their separate investigations.

When do you use dialogue and when do you use short narrative to summarize what characters tell each other so that your novel or short story flows and doesn’t bore your reader? You want to make your reader care about your characters, not have your characters put your reader to sleep. Here are a few (but not only or all) guidelines to consider:

  1. Do you need to show anything with their actual dialogue and any accompanying actions? For example, if one character is giving the other some bad news and their reaction includes what they say and how they say it, you might want to go the dialogue route.
  2. Don’t drag out the dialogue exchange between characters. It can turn into the equivalent of repeatedly driving your point home to your reader. For example, I have Bast and Dana often repeating the same setup ad nauseum when they are comparing notes – each are reacting the same way and sometimes their dialogue covers what is told elsewhere in the novel. Summarizing that Dana brought Bast up to speed on whatever situation would suffice.
  3. A caveat to the above two points: there is a fine line from using dialogue to bring out the character’s reactions to something when necessary and when the dialogue shows as repetition. Ask yourself: is the dialogue best to show foreshadowing and move the plot along? You might be better to use dialogue then. Also dialogue and/or action might work better if the character is changing – perhaps trying to be stronger than wimpy or holding in his or her anger.
  4. With mystery fiction where the police detective or private investigator is interviewing a number of “persons of interest,” summarize in narrative the ones who have little or no information to contribute and use dialogue where something of importance to your plot shows up in the interrogation.
  5. Be careful you don’t overdo the narrative just to contain your dialogue. You don’t want to overdo the telling and bore your reader this way. However, with narrative you can include the character’s inner thoughts and actions.
  6. Sometimes you can combine narrative with summary. Here’s how I did it in the short story Digging Up the Dirt, with the fraternal twins. Instead of Dana repeating to Bast her “interrogation” by the constable and what led up to it, I wrote:

“And you actually let that constable order you around,” my fraternal twin, Bast, said later.

“Well, I had to listen to Fielding’s interrogation, especially of Aunt Doris.” I smiled.

(copyright 2012 Sharon A. Crawford. Excerpted from Beyond the Tripping Point, published by Blue Denim Press, 2012)

If you want to show how characters relate to each other under various circumstances and bring out their distinctive traits, dialogue with action might work best. If it gets too long, you can intersperse it with narrative. I do this in another story in Beyond the Tripping Point. Below is the link of my reading the opening scene in “Body in the Trunk,” clipped from my interview with Hugh Reilly on Liquid Lunch from thatchannel. The reading and the short preview before is three minutes long.

Sharon A. Crawford  Reading from Beyond the Tripping Point on Liquid Lunch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgOKYgBfAwY&feature=youtu.be

Now I need to get back to my own novel and follow my advice.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
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Posted by on January 24, 2013 in Beyond the Tripping Point, Blue Denim Press, Dialogue in Fiction, Fiction Characters, Plot and Characters, Sharon A. Crawford, Short Story Collection, Writing

 

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What motivates your characters?

17 Jan
Click on the book cover to go to amazon.com

Click on the book cover to go to amazon.com

A novelist is a person who lives in other people’s skins.

–           EL Doctorow

Why do your fiction characters do what they do? Are they acting/reacting in character or way out of character? How do you “make” your characters behave?

First of all, you only have some control over your characters. As you are writing, often a character will “take over” and “decide” just what they are going to do. Fine, but you still need to make sure they aren’t acting outside of who they are. Or that you, as the author, aren’t manipulating what they are doing, especially having them do something just to move your story along or worse, just to write something.

Let me give an example.

Take Dana, the PI In “Gone Missing” and “Saving Grace,” two of the four linked short stories in my short story collection, Beyond the Tripping Point. Dana is also the mother of a seven-year old boy. So her dual role must factor in what her character thinks and does. Add to that the fact that her son is psychologically mute because of something that happened to him in the prequel novel (more on that shortly) and my work was cut out for me. In a critique of “Gone Missing” a few years back, I was chastised for not making Dana more professional. But with her problems with David, she wouldn’t be operating as a PI only – all professionalism –unless she is a “bad” mother – finds her son an impediment to her life, etc. Dana is not that and is always torn between her two roles, something readers can identify with in real life. So I have her wrestling with David and helping him as well as trying to solve the missing persons’ cases in those two stories. In “Saving Grace” she has a bit of a meltdown at one point chastising herself for being a bad mother. And to add insult to injury, another character Great Aunt Doris, who is a traditionalist where mothers are concerned, calls her a bad mother.

What is a mother/PI to do? Be human. Act in character.

In the prequel novel which I am rewriting for my publisher to look at, the actual occurrence which causes David’s muteness and all its implications has Dana roller-coasting a lot more than in the short stories. She does some stupid things, briefly goes into a catatonic state and sometimes gets more aggressive than usual. But – and it’s a large “but” all this change, all these actions and reactions come from her basic character and who she is. I don’t pull them out of the air. She is acting in character and characters have to deal with hurdles and change. So do people in real life and maybe that is a bottom line.

Make your characters real. What motivates them? Are they acting in character even when they don’t seem to be?

And go to my publisher’s page for a link to my interview with Hugh Reilly on thatchannel.com where I talk about some of these characters and where they and the plots originated. Eventually I’ll get that video up in the main part of this blog.. For now go to http://www.bluedenimpress.com/sharon-crawford.php and click on the link at the bottom of my bio.

Cheers.

Sharon A. Crawford

 
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Posted by on January 17, 2013 in Beyond the Tripping Point, Credible Fiction Characters, Fiction Characters, Sharon A. Crawford, Writing

 

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