The Writer's Life: Coming Up with the Idea for Your Novel

As Killer Nashville Special Projects Coordinator, Beth Terrell has worked with many writers. She has calculated from their successes; she has avoided pitfalls by observing their failures. And through this association and her own tenacity, Beth Terrell (writing as Jaden Terrell) has also become a Killer Nashville success story, a story that is well deserved, and a story for which we at Killer Nashville are ecstatic. We could not be prouder.

Now, Beth is passing what she has learned to you.

In this monthly column, Beth will share her journey while also referencing the paths of different writers who have come into our Killer Nashville family. It is a journey worth learning from and it will save years – maybe decades – if you will only follow her along. From writing to promoting, a writer’s job never ends.

Where is the best place to start this series? At the beginning: with The Idea.

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The Writer's Life Coming Up with the Idea for Your Novel
By Beth Terrell

SO YOU WANT TO WRITE A NOVEL?

So, you want to write a novel? Specifically, you want to write a mystery, thriller, or other type if crime fiction. Maybe you've always dreamed of being a writer. Maybe you've pursued other dreams and are just now coming to the realization that writing a book is something you'd really like to do.

Good for you!

Most people secretly dream of writing a book; yet, most never even finish a first draft.

This series of upcoming articles is designed to take you from the seed of an idea through your first draft, the revision process, publishing, and marketing your novel. I’m not going to tell you the “right” way to write a book. There is no one right way, only the way that works for you. But I can show you one way to write a novel, and then help you tailor it to your individual needs.

Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing a great novel. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are." So you won’t find any ironclad rules here, only processes that can help you clarify your ideas and organize them into a coherent, and eventually, a polished story.

Much of the process involves asking yourself questions.

WHAT DO YOU KNOW RIGHT NOW?

The first one is, what do you already know about your book? Maybe you already have a main character. Maybe you know you want to write a cozy, a thriller, or police procedural. Maybe you already have a plot sketched out, or maybe you just have an image, like the one of a little girl in muddy underpants that gave birth to William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.

However much or little you know about your book, you’ll answer subsequent questions within the context of what you’ve already decided. If you make a choice that doesn’t mesh with your previous decisions, you’ll either need to change one or more of your earlier choices, or figure out a way to make the incompatibility work in your favor.

Let’s say you want to write a gritty, high-tech thriller with lots of violence and explosions. A frail, near-sighted beekeeper with sciatica whose hobby is stamp-collecting and who is so technologically challenged he doesn’t even own a computer or a cell phone would be an unlikely protagonist.

But what if you’re married to both these ideas?

 First, you’ll need to give your beekeeper a reason to get involved in your thriller plot (maybe he saw something he shouldn’t), a motivation to continue (now his life or the life of a loved one is in danger), and a believable means of overcoming his physical limitations (perhaps with the help of a secondary character who does possess the necessary skills). He should find a way to use his knowledge of bees, stamps, or sciatica to overcome or outwit the villains. He’ll need to have strengths he never knew he possessed. And the reader will need to see a hint of those strengths early in the story.

You can write a great book by going against expectations, but you have to do some work to make it believable.

What questions you ask yourself and the order in which you ask them depends on what you already know about your story, but since we have to start somewhere, let’s start at the very beginning: what kind of book do you want to write?

WRITE WHAT YOU READ

There’s a good chance the book you should write is like the ones you like to read. If you love romantic suspense, that might be a good genre for you to start with. If you despise romantic novels, but think you could just dash one off and make a bushel of money because they sell like hotcakes, maybe you should consider another genre. It's almost impossible to write well in a genre for which you feel contempt; readers who love the genre will sense your disdain and resent it. (Bigfoot porn seems to be an exception to this rule. You might be able to haul in a boatload with money with some dashed-off Bigfoot porn.)

There are no bad genres. The best of any genre is just as literary as the best literary novel. Think The Big Sleep, In Cold Blood, and To Kill a Mockingbird. These are considered great literature, but what are they, if not crime novels?

Pick a genre or subgenre you like and feel comfortable writing in, and don’t worry about whether it’s “literary” or not. It should be the kind you like to read, but also one you can write knowledgeably about—or one that you can (and want to) research well enough to write knowledgeably about.

Sometimes the amount or kind of research you're willing and able to do influences your decision about what book to write. Maybe you like books set in ancient Egypt, but you know nothing about ancient Egypt and don't particularly want to do the intensive study it would take to find out. Then by all means, keep reading mysteries set in ancient Egypt, but choose something different to write about.

But what if you're not even sure if you're writing a detective novel, a police procedural, or a novel with an amateur sleuth? What if you're not sure what kind of book you're most drawn to? Or what if you're an eclectic reader and love all sorts of books?

Let's try an exercise.

GET OUT A PAPER AND PEN

Write down the titles of your ten favorite crime novels. Ask yourself what you like about each one and what they have in common. Do you see any patterns?

Let's say you have on your list: Janet Evanovitch, Parnell Hall, Donna Andrews, and Agatha Christie. You might be more comfortable writing a cozy mystery, possibly humorous with little graphic sex or violence, because those are the kinds of books you like to read.

But imagine you have on your list: John Sandford, John Connolly, Thomas Harris, and James Lee Burke. There's a good chance you’re going to want to write a darker, grittier story.

What if you have an equal mix of both? Then you might feel comfortable writing several different kinds of books, and other concerns, such as characters and theme (which we’ll address later in this series), will help you decide what kind of book you should write now.

My list included writers from both of the above lists, but more from the second. I noticed that my favorite books had a serious tone and complex characters I wanted to re-visit: Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware, William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor, Robert Crais’ Joe Pike and Elvis Cole. I may not remember the plot of A is for Alibi, but I do remember that Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone was orphaned at a young age and was raised by her aunt, that she likes small, enclosed spaces, and that she was once married to a gorgeous but irresponsible musician. I read Grafton's books because I like Kinsey. I read Janet Evanovitch's books, even though they’re lighter than I usually read, because I like Stephanie Plum. (Joe Morelli and Ranger have nothing to do with it. No, really... )

What this tells me is that I like books with multi-dimensional characters with deep connections and relationships. Based on my reading habits, this is what I would expect to enjoy writing, and if you look at my Jared McKean series, it turned out to be true. Jared has complex relationships with his brother, his ex-wife, his ex-wife's new husband, and his roommate (a gay man with AIDS). These relationships drive the story and provide a unifying thread through all the books in the series.

SERIES OR STAND-ALONE?

Another question to consider is whether your novel is part of a series or a stand-alone. If you plan to kill off your protagonist, you're probably not writing a series, unless your genre is paranormal.

A stand-alone novel has a story arc, in which the protagonist changes or grows in some way over the course of the story. You’re writing about the single most life-changing event in your character’s life. When it’s over, life goes on in an ordinary way, though his or her circumstances or perceptions may have changed considerably.

A series character might (and should) also undergo changes, but within a single book, these changes may be relatively small. Instead, although each book stands alone, there’s a greater story arc that covers the entire series. Think of Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder. While Scudder reacts to the events of each book, the major changes of his life take place over the course of the series. He acknowledges his alcoholism, joins AA, and learns to control his urge to drink. He dates a series of women, falls in love with a former prostitute, marries her, and begins to reconcile (after a fashion) with the adult sons of his first marriage. If all that happened in a single book, where would he have left to go?

SERIES OR STANDALONE?

If you envision a series, your main character needs to be a multi-faceted character with enough complications and entanglements to sustain a reader's interest for the long haul. If your series contains twenty-six novels (A is for Alibi to Z is for...Ziggurat?), your character had better be up to the task.

In a series, it's especially important that your protagonist is someone you like well enough to invest a hefty chunk of time with. If you don't enjoy your character’s company, how can you expect anyone else to? And what if you should be fortunate enough to write a bestseller? With a million readers clamoring for more, will you like this character enough to live with him or her for a decade or longer?

Again, look to your reading habits. Do you like to follow a favorite character through a series of books? Or do you prefer a stand-alone novel, where you meet a character for the first and last time in a single, self-contained story?

YOU CAN ALWAYS CHANGE YOUR MIND

Think about it.

Make your list.

It doesn't have to be ten writers. It could be two. It could be twenty.

As long as it helps you understand something about what draws you to a story--and what keeps you coming back for more--it's fine.

And remember, nothing is carved in stone. You can always change your mind later, if a better idea comes to you.

That’s the beauty of writing.

See you next month.

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Jaden Terrell (Beth Terrell) is a Shamus Award finalist, a contributor to Now Write! Mysteries (a collection of writing exercises by Tarcher/Penguin), and the author of the Jared McKean private detective novels Racing The Devil, A Cup Full of Midnight, and River of Glass. Terrell is the special programs coordinator for the Killer Nashville conference and the winner of the 2009 Magnolia Award for service to the Southeastern Chapter of Mystery Writers of America (SEMWA). A former special education teacher, Terrell is now a writing coach and developmental editor whose leisure activities include ballroom dancing and equine massage therapy. www.jadenterrell.com.

Creating Emotion on the Page / Author Leslie Budewitz

I’ll never forget the moment when Romeo rides past the well-intentioned Friar Lawrence with that, oh, so important communiqué about Juliet’s poisoned slumber in Franco Zeffirelli’s version of Romeo and Juliet. I wanted to yell at the screen. Even though I knew the story and what was to happen, the depth of despair from that single act of dramatic irony where no words were spoken, said it all. In this week’s blog, author Leslie Budewitz writes about evoking readers’ emotions in much the same way. As writers we don’t say, ‘And now readers, it’s time to be sad, or happy.’ Instead, the reader is guided into understanding the characters and why the actions they commit are destiny. Otherwise, as Leslie, so aptly explains, the readers won’t feel anything!

Happy Reading!

Clay Stafford,
Founder Killer Nashville,
Publisher Killer Nashville Magazine

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Creating Emotion on the Page 

By Leslie Budewitz

Story lies not in what happens to our characters—whether they lose a spouse, stumble over a body, get sold into slavery—but how they respond to what happens. How events hit them deep inside, touch an old wound, trigger a struggle, lead to more conflict, and ultimately, growth and resolution. The purpose of plot is to force our characters into those challenging situations, where they must confront their internal conflicts, externalizing them in action. This is as true in the cozy mysteries I write as in literary fiction or any other genre. The tone and depth of exploration may vary, but the heart of story remains the same.

But if we tell our readers what our characters feel, they won’t feel anything. We need to evoke emotion by showing how our characters respond to emotional situations. How do they move when struck by grief, annoyed by stupidity, or baffled by absurdity? What happens to their faces, their voices? How do their feelings influence what they say—and how they say it?

First, we can call on our emotional experience. Then, we analogize from our experience to our characters. By analogize—a term lawyers use when comparing cases where the facts differ, but the same legal principles apply—I mean we take what we know, compare it to another situation, and picture what would happen then. I remember clearly how I felt physically and emotionally, and what I did, when a man I didn’t know walked in my unlocked dorm room while I was napping. I can extrapolate from my experience and imagine how my character would respond. (Turned out my intruder was a well-known thief, not a rapist, and didn’t realize my door led to a suite, not a single room, so I wasn’t actually alone.) A character assaulted as a young child, or who had witnessed a brutal attack, would bring to the same intrusion a more complex reaction, based on her own experience.

I used a similar technique in writing Crime Rib, the second in my Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries. My protagonist, Erin Murphy, was 17 when her father was killed in a still-unsolved hit-and run. Now 32, she finds a friend’s lifeless body alongside the road, apparently the victim of a hit-and-run. Ike Hoover, the undersheriff overseeing the investigation, was the deputy in charge of her father’s case, complicating her view of him. As I wondered how Erin would respond to him, I found myself walking around the house, searching mind and body for analogous situations.

I replayed an incident nearly 30 years ago when I took a walk near a golf course, saw a man keel over on the green, and ran for help, struggling to give directions to an unfamiliar place. I remembered watching in a courtroom when an older lawyer clutched his chest, stepped back from the podium mid-argument, and died. And I recalled a collision in front of my house fifteen years ago. The loud crack broke the afternoon. Dashing outside. Seeing a young man stumble toward me. Knowing I had to check his truck, that I couldn’t rely on his dazed assertion that he’d been alone in the cab. Mining my feelings, I realized I was recreating them in my body, all these years later. My jaw tightened, my breath thinned, sounds came at me as if filtered by a fog.

“[Ike] suppressed a smile. I sat and took the statement he handed me. Rereading my description of what I’d seen and heard on Saturday night brought all the sensations crashing back. My breath went shallow, and I felt the anxiety racing through my veins, headed for my heart.  I did not want to feel this. I wanted to walk away. My self-righteous words to Kim still echoed in my ears: Stacia deserves justice, too.”

How do we tap into emotions beyond our own pale? Emotional research. I often call on my doctor-husband’s observations of how people respond to stressful situations, emotionally and physically, and the long-term effects. To explore Erin’s reactions, as a teenager and a young woman, to her father’s death, I thought about everyone I knew who’d lost a parent when they were young. Me, at 30, is very different from 17, but a good starting point. My college best friend, at 21; and a high school classmate at 22, who later lost her husband when her son was only 4. A law firm colleague whose father’s death when he was 18 set him on a much-different path than he’d planned. I wrote what I knew of their experiences out by hand to get at the physical experience. To put in my body, so my writer brain could call on it.

I also found online guides for teens who’ve lost a parent and for their teachers. Kids sometimes have a not-quite-rational feeling that something unrelated to their actions must still be their fault, somehow, or that it marks them.

“Calling him by his first name wasn’t disrespect. Undersheriff sounds too much like undertaker to me, and it had been Ike who’d come to the village Playhouse to get me, during rehearsal, after my father’s accident. The association still stuck. Childish, maybe, but it wasn’t a feeling I could logic my way out of.”

A writer friend described her own teenager, a very different girl from Erin, but whose desire for black-and-white answers helped me flesh out Erin’s best friend Kim Caldwell. Now a sheriff’s detective, Kim’s reaction cost both girls their friendship, led to her career in law enforcement, and still plagues her.

“Kim and I had been best friends all through junior high and high school. Until my father died, the winter of senior year. That had been too much for her, and the night of his accident, I lost my best friend, too. Since my return, we’d run into each other a few times, but exchanged only small talk. Why she’d chosen law enforcement remained a mystery. …

Something slid down her left wrist and she shoved it back up her sleeve. A bracelet? A memory flashed across my mental screen and vanished.

“I’m sorry to have to put you through this,” she said. “Your family means a lot to me.”

Right. My family meant so much, she dropped me like a rock when my father died. Like it might be contagious. Like I had done something to her.

I nodded. Until I knew what was going on, I needed to be very careful.”

Only when we dig into our characters’ minds and hearts, their successes and failures, their stresses, dramas, and traumas, will we know how they’ll respond to events on the page. But if we’re willing—even when it brings back up our own painful moments—we can create characters our readers will want to know.

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About Crime Rib: 

“Gourmet food market owner Erin Murphy is determined to get Jewel Bay, Montana’s scrumptious local fare, some national attention. But her scheme for culinary celebrity goes up in flames when the town’s big break is interrupted by murder…

Food Preneurs, one of the hottest cooking shows on TV, has decided to feature Jewel Bay in an upcoming episode, and everyone in town is preparing for their close-ups, including the crew at the Glacier Mercantile, aka the Merc. Not only is Erin busy remodeling her courtyard into a relaxing dining area, she’s organizing a steak-cooking competition between three of Jewel Bay’s hottest chefs to be featured on the program.

But Erin’s plans get scorched when one of the contending cooks is found dead. With all the drama going on behind the scenes, it’s hard to figure out who didn’t have a motive to off the saucy contestant. Now, to keep the town’s rep from crashing and burning on national television, Erin will have to grill some suspects to smoke out the killer…”

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If you would like to read more about Leslie Budewitz’s books please click here.

Leslie Budewitz is the national best-selling author of Death al Dente, first in the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, winner of the 2013 Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Crime Rib, the second in the series, was published by Berkley Prime Crime on July 1, 2014.

Also a lawyer, Leslie won the 2011 Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction for Books, Crooks & Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law & Courtroom Procedure (Quill Driver Books), making her the first author to win Agatha Awards for both fiction and nonfiction.

For more tales of life in the wilds of northwest Montana, and bonus recipes, visit her website and subscribe to her newsletter. Website: www.LeslieBudewitz.com   Facebook: LeslieBudewitzAuthor

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