When the Words Won’t Come

By Lois Winston

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This is not an article about writer’s block. That’s a topic for another day. Today, I’d like to discuss Brain Block, that deer-in-the-headlights moment when you suddenly find yourself at a loss for words, no matter how well-prepared you thought you were. Or how unprepared because you never thought you’d need to prepare.

There are those people who always seem to pull a snappy rejoinder from their gray matter whenever the situation presents itself. Not me. I’m the person who thinks of the perfect response hours or days later. Sentences may flow from my fingertips onto my computer screen, but rarely do they trip off my tongue in the same pithy manner.

Back in my school days, no matter how well-prepared I was, I morphed into a complete failure during oral book reports, once even forgetting the name of the main characters, even though one was the title of the book! Then there were the dreaded oral exams. I could easily fill several blue books with my knowledge on a topic, but stand me up in a one-on-one with the teacher who held my GPA in his hand, and Brain Block took hold of me.

As writers, we’re told to craft an elevator pitch, that concise short paragraph that will catch the attention of an agent or editor who might turn to you while waiting for the elevator at a conference and say, “Tell me about your book.” Memorization has never been my strong suit. If I couldn’t whip out my index card and read my pitch, Brain Block would take over. 

I’m also the person who never remembers the punchline to any joke. Heck, I never even remember any part of the joke! Which makes it quite ironic that for nearly two decades, I’ve spent my days writing humorous amateur sleuth novels.

I started my writing career penning emotional, angst-driven romance and romantic suspense, but my heroines always relied on a sense of humor to help them cope with their problems. Laugh and the world laughs with you; weep and you weep alone. It’s good advice when crafting characters. No one wants to read about a woe-is-me heroine for 400 pages. 

I suppose that’s why my agent called one day to suggest I write a chick lit novel. However, coming up with a little humorous dialogue now and then is quite different from writing a humorous novel. Since none of my romances or romantic suspense novels had yet sold, I agreed to try my hand at chick lit. That’s when I discovered somewhere in the deep recesses of my DNA lurked an untapped humor gene.

I may not be able to tell a joke in real life, but on the page I’m the Dutchess of Double-Entendres, the Baroness of Bon Mots, the Princess of Puns. My characters routinely engage in witty dialogue. And they always come up with that perfect rejoinder, no matter the situation. My foray into chick lit eventually resulted in Talk Gertie to Me, my first published novel.

Harnessing my latent humor gene changed the trajectory of my writing career. After one of my romance novels finally sold, my agent called one day to tell me I should write a humorous amateur sleuth mystery series with a crafting theme. She knew an editor looking for one, and she thought I’d be the perfect person to write it. 

It’s one thing to write chick lit or to employ a bit of humor to break up the tension in a romance or a romantic suspense, but humorous murder mysteries? Most people find nothing humorous about murder. Or if they do, you might want to steer clear of them. However, an amateur sleuth mystery by its very definition is a fish-out-of-water story, and the fish-out-of-water trope lends itself to situational humor. So I gave it a try. The result was Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series.

I have not been kind to Anastasia. I’ve saddled her with debt greater than the GNP of a Third World nation. I not only saddled her with a nasty diehard communist mother-in-law, but her mother claims descent from Russian nobility and is also a member of the DAR. I then forced the two women to share a bedroom in Anastasia’s home. I’ve also added two teenage sons, a Shakespeare-quoting parrot, and a possible government operative. 

And of course, there are the dead bodies, a pre-requisite of murder mysteries. Every time Anastasia makes some headway whittling down her debt, I throw another corpse in her path. Although she sometimes feels tempted to climb into bed and pull the quilt over her head, she copes with all the mayhem I’ve heaped on her by harnessing her quirky self-deprecating and observational Jersey Girl sense of humor.

However, humor is very subjective. I always hold my breath, fingers crossed, that my readers will get the humor in my books. Some do; some don’t. That’s the nature of humor. All I can do is hope more readers laugh than don’t. Besides, one of the first lessons you learn as a published author is that no author is ever going to please every reader, so don’t even try.

This brings me back to the title of this article and the recent Killer Nashville conference. This year A Crafty Collage of Crime, the 12th book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series, won the Silver Falchion Award for Best Comedy. Here was a golden opportunity to tell a captive audience of several hundred people about Anastasia and the thirteen books and three novellas I’ve so far written about her, especially since this book features her on a trip to Middle Tennessee.

I should have jotted down an acceptance speech to read, but I didn’t because I never expected to win. With a few rare exceptions from back in my romance writing days, I have a long track record of always being the bridesmaid, never the bride. But hey, it’s still an honor to be nominated.

So when my name was called, Brain Block accompanied me to the front of the room, and I wound up giving what can only be described as the shortest acceptance speech in the history of awards ceremonies. I doubt if it even qualified as a “speech.” As I walked away from the mic, Clay Stafford commented that I was “a woman of few words.”

Well, at least I didn’t bore anyone with a too-long, rambling monologue where I thanked everyone in my life, going all the way back to my kindergarten teacher and my pet goldfish!

Later that night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I came up with a perfect acceptance speech—pithy, witty, and including a few bon mots. Too bad no one was around to hear it.

Moral of the story: Even if you think you have no chance of winning, always, always prepare an acceptance speech. AND WRITE IT DOWN!

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USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston has taken part on many writing panels, taught dozens of writing workshops, and given quite a few solo talks over the years, but she always relies on her notes, never her memory. She writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry. Her most recent release is Sorry, Knot Sorry, the thirteenth book in her humorous Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series. Learn more about Lois and her books at www.loiswinston.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter and follow her on various social media sites.

Three Rules for Creating Cozies that Stand Out in the Crowd

By Lois Winston

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Life’s journeys are rarely along a straight path. The same can be said for our writing journeys. I began my career firmly entrenched in the world of romance. Then, one fateful day, I received a phone call that changed my life. My agent asked if I’d be interested in writing a humorous crafting-themed mystery series featuring an amateur sleuth. She knew an editor looking for one. My agent went on to say that she thought I’d be the perfect person to write such a series because I worked as a crafts designer for various publications and manufacturers, and my award-winning first novel, Talk Gertie to Me, was a humorous fish-out-of-water tale.

The closest I’d ever come to writing mystery was my three romantic suspense novels. However, there’s a huge difference between mysteries and suspense. Also, I wasn’t someone who had grown up reading Nancy Drew, and it had been years since I’d watched Murder She Wrote. Still, the challenge intrigued me, and I set out to learn all I could about amateur sleuth and cozy mysteries, specifically, those that involved crafts.

Armed with a stack of books from both the library and my local bookstore, I immersed myself in the sub-genre. I discovered that most crafting cozies centered around a craft shop or a group of crafters, such as quilters, knitters, or scrapbookers. Some featured a production crafter, such as a potter or stained-glass artisan. All took place in small towns, and the amateur sleuth always had a sidekick, usually a friend or relative.

Years ago, I’d been told that it’s never a good idea to follow a trend. If I wrote this series, I’d be competing against well-established authors. To succeed, I needed to stand out, and to do that, I needed to think outside the box. What could I do differently that would set my series apart, yet still be embraced by readers of the genre?

This brings me to Rule One: Give a unique spin to your protagonist, her profession, and/or the setting of your series.

I started out by switching up the setting. Instead of a small town, my series would take place in a metropolitan area, a suburb of New York City. Rather than having a sleuth who owned a craft or needlework shop, I’d make my sleuth the crafts editor at a women’s magazine. 

But I didn’t stop there. In the romance genre, clueless heroines are dubbed TSTL, Too Stupid to Live. These are the women who suspect danger is lurking around a dark corner, in a dank basement, or in spooky woods, yet they deliberately turn the corner, descend the staircase, or head for the trees, where they are then usually confronted by an escaped murderer, monster, or serial killer.

As I read through dozens of cozy mysteries, I came across a similar phenomenon—the busybody snoop who is convinced she’s smarter than local law enforcement and will do a better and quicker job of discovering whodunit. I did not want to write a busybody sleuth. Instead, I decided to create a reluctant amateur sleuth, a woman who wants nothing to do with crime-solving but is forced into it by circumstances beyond her control.

Rule Two: Set up an overall situation that will allow the protagonist to make progress toward reaching her goals and resolving her conflicts as the series progresses from book to book.

Writing an ongoing series means the protagonist needs a reason to keep sleuthing. I set the stage in Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries. It opens with Anastasia yanked from her comfortable middle-class existence after her husband drops dead in a Las Vegas casino. That’s when she learns about his affair with Lady Luck. He leaves her with massive debt and a bookie demanding fifty-thousand dollars. 

In each book in the series, Anastasia works at whittling down her debt to keep a roof over her family’s heads. But as she moonlights and takes on side gigs, she keeps running across unsavory characters and the corpses they leave in their wake.

Which brings me to Rule Three: Develop secondary characters that add depth to your series and create additional problems for your protagonist.

I also discovered that in addition to every amateur sleuth needing someone to play Watson to her Sherlock, she also needs to interact with members of her family and her community. However, many of the books I read kept these secondary and tertiary characters to a minimum. The only new characters introduced in each book were always specific to that book’s murder plot and rarely, if ever, appeared again. Throughout my series, I’ve often introduced new characters who have provided ongoing subplots that are intertwined within the mysteries and add layers of depth to the series as they, too, evolve. Not every character appears in every book. They come and go based on the plot of each book, but they’re available when I need them.

Sorry, Knot Sorry, is the thirteenth and latest book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series. In each book, Anastasia continues to be motivated toward reaching her goals and resolving the conflicts that impede her from doing so, and she has continued to grow as a person. But of course, the dead bodies keep coming.

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USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry. Her most recent release is Sorry, Knot Sorry, the thirteenth book in her Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series. Learn more about Lois and her books at her website www.loiswinston.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter and follow her on various social media sites.

The Writer’s Playbook | A Ripe Kumquat

By Steven Harms

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“Fumble at the thirty-two-yard line! Rod Smith jumped on that ball like it was a ripe kumquat!”

That line was uttered during a radio broadcast of a Detroit Lions home football game. And I’d bet my life savings that “kumquat” hadn’t been used in an NFL broadcast prior and would never be again. The Lions radio color announcer, Jim Brandstatter, made that rather pointed reference to a Lions defensive player recovering the fumbled ball. The idea of a kumquat on a football field conjures up a comedic image. A fumbled football is sort of one itself: as the ball bounces around, players scramble to get it; sometimes they accidentally kick it or refumble it as they frantically try to hold on. In the context of a fumbled football, using a kumquat simile was perfect.

Why did he say it that way? Well, he and I had a weekly challenge when I was working for the Lions. Each week during the season I would give him a word that he had to weave into the broadcast. I wrote it out on a small piece of paper about an hour before kickoff, entered the broadcast booth, and subtly handed it to him. It was our “thing.” If he was able to insert the “word of the game” into the broadcast each week during the season, I owed him lunch. If he missed one game, he owed me the same. As the weeks wore on, I had to get more creative if I wanted to win, and I thought I had him trapped with “kumquat.” The fumble happened in the fourth quarter, no less, of that game. Jim told me afterward he was on the verge of losing but for that fumble.

The point is, using a kumquat as a descriptive simile worked. In fact, it worked very well. Reimagine the utterance if it was a ripe apple, green bean, onion, or ear of corn. Not quite the same for some reason, is it? Or worse, if he stated “like a ripe egg” or “like a noisy kumquat.”

Bad similes are story killers and can take an author’s credentials down a few notches on the reader’s scale. They undermine a reader’s engagement with the story and implant in them a negative distraction that may carry throughout the rest of the book. 

However, a well-written simile can evoke just the right emotion. As a creative tool, it paints a picture that resonates in readers’ minds—good or bad—but it clicks. Similes can be quite powerful if written well and deployed at the perfect intersectional moment. 

A few rules to follow in writing similes (and there may be others):

KEEP THEM LOGICAL

The simile must be logical in comparison with the moment described, and it must have an immediate connection for the reader. If the reader needs to pause to think through the comparison because it doesn’t compute, don’t use it.

USE THEM SPARINGLY

Overuse of anything is generally not an effective strategy. I’ll relate it back to sports. If a football team always runs to the left on first down, the maneuver becomes boring and predictable and unsuccessful. 

STAY WITHIN COMMON KNOWLEDGE

A simile that uses unique or uncommon elements in the comparison can destroy the moment because the reader can’t grasp what it is you’re trying to say. If Jim Brandstatter had said “Rod Smith jumped on that ball like it was a timorous mangosteen!” (a real fruit from Southeast Asia), he may have been fired the next morning, or at least ridiculed for a full week.

STAY CLEAR OF SIMILARITY

When you’re deciding on a simile, ensure the two components of your comparison are different enough to drive home the point. As an example, a sentence that reads “She ran up the hill like an athlete in training” doesn’t give the reader much clarity on what that character was doing, since athletes do run up hills as part of their training regimen. There’s not a lot of separation. Conversely, “She ran up the hill like a wounded deer” creates an image of a frantic person, hobbled by fear as she’s trying to get somewhere fast and out of sight.

Whenever similes are deployed, read them to yourself to see if they’re effective. As an example, one of my characters in The Counsel of the Cunning voices his feeling that what he and his assistant detective are experiencing during their hunt for a missing person isn’t adding up. He amplifies this and says, “it’s like a duck in robin’s nest.” The point being that while a duck and a robin are both birds, their distinctions are profound, and a duck would never, nor could ever, be in a robin’s nest. He instinctively knows something is “just off,” and he uses this simile to make the point. He’s saying a bird in a nest is right, but the type of bird is wrong, or the nest should be in the water and not in a tree. In other words, their hunt is going in a direction that gives him pause, that makes him think something’s amiss, but he can’t quite put a finger on it.

Similes are a great tool to propel a story or a moment or a character description. But they are a unique tool and need to be done with precision if used. Don’t shy away from using them as writers, but be tactical in placing them and intuitive in writing them.