KN Magazine: Articles
2018 Killer Nashville Conference Takeaways / By Max Lopez
One of the most uplifting and simultaneously disheartening phenomena you may experience at a writer’s conference is being surrounded by hundreds of people doing the exact same thing that you are. Although it can be intimidating to see so many authors all working tirelessly to get their next book published, I was reminded this year at the Killer Nashville conference of the special community that Killer Nashville has cultivated over the years. Whether it was chiming in during lively discussions about what was and wasn’t working for them, or respectful debates between two authors living on the opposite ends of the social media use spectrum, it was easy to see why so many writers, publishers, agents and publicists find themselves returning to Nashville for this event every year.
If you weren’t able to come out this year, fret not! Here are just a few of the publicity tips and tricks for authors discussed during the informative and fun conference:
Looking for a new way to drive traffic to your site? Try Pinterest! After creating boards and pins with original content that tie to your book, you can link all your posts back to your site. One author claimed to have grown his website traffic by 50% after just a few weeks of cultivating an active account.
Team up with the authors you meet! Whether or not you have a blog, or have a blog that accepts guest posts, there are many ways to boost your fellow authors in a mutually beneficial way. Create Facebook groups to keep each other updated on your books, and maybe even team up to give away each other’s books online.
Social media may be important, but only if you enjoy it! When you’re thinking about investing time and effort into a platform ask yourself if it’s going to be something you dread doing every day. If you enjoy conversations and interacting with your audiences, try Twitter! If you have a knack for photography, Instagram may do the trick. What works for you is going to work for your brand.
Starting your online presence from scratch can be difficult but getting plugged into the communities that pertain to your book right off the bat can expose you to new ideas on how to connect with your audiences. Much like the research you do for your book, you can entrench yourself in those spaces. For instance, if your main character enjoys fly-fishing, go ahead and follow some fishing accounts or join a fly-fishing group. Thinking in these detail-oriented terms can help point you to a new group of people who will enjoy your book!
Perhaps most importantly: have fun. Writing is work, but when you’re having that writer’s block or not feeling so great about your latest sales numbers, don’t forget why you started writing!
A huge thank you to everyone that makes Killer Nashville happen, we hope to see you there in 2019!
Max López is a publicist and new author ambassador for JKS Communications in Nashville. With a degree and experience in journalism and business, he also has crisis management skills. An avid outdoorsman, he enjoys bringing energy and positivity to any team he's a part of.
Dramatic Infrastructure: Using Everyday Events to Deliver Emotional Impact / By Roger Johns
Success as a storyteller depends on understanding not only the mechanics of the story you’re telling, but also how to properly shape a reader’s responses to the events in the narrative. Readers quickly lose interest in writing that’s emotionally flat, but provoking, sustaining, and directing the reader’s emotional experience can be challenging.
One way to meet this challenge is to keep track of the everyday experiences that produce specific emotions and to examine their dramatic infrastructure to learn why they hold the power they do. Understanding events at such a basic level allows us to manipulate the facts without destroying an event’s capacity to evoke an emotional response.
This makes everyday events adaptable to situations beyond those in which we originally encounter them, greatly enlarging our toolkit. And it’s lets us separate the fiction our characters inhabit from the facts of real life. Putting real people on the page, explicitly or implicitly, can cause legal problems.
As a hedge against useful observations slipping from my memory, I keep a diary of emotion-laden experiences, along with the specific emotions they trigger, and I try to work out why they affect me the way they do, and how I can modify them to produce different emotions. Here are a few examples from my little black book.
A Suitcase Full of Sadness: The Power of Disrupted Expectations
Not long ago, two empty suitcases appeared at the foot of the bed in the guest room––a signal that my wife was gearing up for a business trip. I had been expecting to see a suitcase, but there were two instead of one. And they showed up a day earlier than I expected. These were minor deviations from the norm, yet their effect was palpable. Their power came from the fact that something was out of place (that second suitcase) and something was out of sequence (the packing was happening a day earlier than usual), and this disrupted my expectations.
After I noted that these details had affected me by amplifying my usual reaction to my wife’s imminent departure (sadness), the storyteller in me recognized their greater value and I began tinkering with the scenario. How could I modify the facts to provoke suspicion as well as sadness? The shoulder strap of an evening gown peeking out from under a business suit, maybe.
What about fear? If no suitcases had appeared (again, something out of place), even on the day I would normally expect them (something out of sequence), I might fear my wife had lost her job. Or, if there were three or four suitcases, instead of one, I might fear she was moving out and leaving me?
The key is to recognize that disrupted expectations affect our emotions, and the precise effect depends on the facts that hang on this basic scaffold. The facts could be details that are out of place or out of sequence, as they were here. But they could be anything the author cares to use. If one character uses an expression another character has never heard them use, it disrupts an expectation and raises the question of what that first character has been reading, or who they’ve been talking to, or where they’ve been. If a character who is chronically late, shows up early, an expectation is disrupted and an emotional response is triggered (surprise, happiness). Or, if a character who is chronically early shows up late a different expectation is disrupted, evoking different responses (worry, irritation).
Hey! You! Get Outta My Cab: The Power of the Totally Unexpected
The example above involved disrupted expectations, but what about completely unexpected situations?
Three or four years ago, my wife and I pulled into a parking spot at one of our favorite restaurants. Before we could get out of the car, a taxi pulled into the other end of the lot. This caught our attention because taxis in this area are uncommon. My wife and I watched as a well-dressed couple, a man and woman, exited the taxi from opposite sides.
The trunk popped open and a two pieces of luggage were lifted out and set on the pavement behind the cab. We were too far away to hear what was being said, but the couple’s gestures and facial expressions were enough. They were in the throes of a pitched argument––almost a shouting match. After less than a minute, the man climbed back into the cab and it pulled away, leaving the woman standing there with her bags. She quickly slid the strap of one bag over her shoulder, yanked up the handle of her other bag, and then stalked off, rolling one bag behind her and swaying under the weight of the other.
The overwhelming emotional response to this scenario was curiosity. Several times, over dinner, we speculated about what had happened and why. Even though it’s been years, it left such a strong impression we never fail to mention it when we find ourselves back at that restaurant.
The power of this experience came from three characteristics: its brevity, its unusual facts (a taxi so out of place, two people climbing out of a taxi to argue in the parking lot, one person abandoning the other) and rich vein of questions it exposed: What were they going on about? Why was the woman the one who was left behind? Where had they been going? Did the man continue on to the original destination or did he abandon both the woman and the destination? Were they spouses, lovers, business associates, or strangers who just happened to share a cab? What happened to the woman?
At a book talk I attended a few years ago, I had the privilege of listening to Michael Farris Smith describe the event that inspired him to write Desperation Road. He was driving down some highway in the Deep South, when he saw a woman walking along the road, a garbage bag slung over her shoulder. Due to the state of the economy at the time, this was apparently not an uncommon sight in those parts. What took him by surprise, though––what was completely unexpected––was the young girl walking hand in hand with the woman, along this busy highway. He had never seen anything like this and it haunted him until he wrote a novel in which he imagined some very interesting answers.
Both the couple from the taxi, and the woman and the girl walking along the highway, were unexpected glimpses of something far outside the ordinary, a turn of events that never fails to provoke a strong reaction. Curiosity and desperation are just two of them.
In his short story, That Bus is Another World, Stephen King leads us down the garden path through what looks like an ordinary day of being stuck in big-city traffic, and just when we’re not expecting anything much to happen, one of the characters does something utterly unexpected, leaving wide-eyed horror in its wake.
It’s brief, it’s bizarre, and it raises a ton of questions. And even though King uses this mechanism to elicit a sense of horror, I can easily envision the story producing feelings of transcendence, tenderness, hatred, or any number of other emotions, simply by changing a few facts, by having the character do something different but equally unexpected.
This three-factor scaffold, it seems, will support fact patterns that elicit just about any response you want, as long as you want the response to be intense.
No Room at the Inn: Passive-Aggression, Emotional Extortion, and Access Control
Passive aggression is an example of another fundamental structure rich in possibilities. Several months ago, I was booking a hotel room and I was doing it the old-fashioned way––by talking to someone on the phone. It should have been straightforward, but it wasn’t. The reservation clerk would ask me for a bit of information and just as the answer was coming out of my mouth, she would cut me off with a different question. If I tried to continue with the answer to the earlier question, she would cut me off again with something like “No, I need to get this first.”
This happened four times and with each interruption her tone became sharper and her sighs of exasperation got progressively louder. After the fourth time, I got fed up, told her I had to take another call, and then I hung up . . . and called a different hotel. I can’t say with absolute certainty that she was jerking my chain, but the timing of each interruption was so precise and her irritation grew so theatrical I was certain enough, and I felt justified bailing out of the call.
This was classic passive-aggressive behavior and, while it’s often just plain irritating (a sometimes useful emotion to evoke), it got me to thinking about how its fundamental structure makes it an incredibly versatile emotional trigger. This is because passive-aggressive behavior is an example of power in its most fundamental form––access control. The victim needs something, the aggressor controls access to what the victim needs, so the victim endures the aggressor’s abuse as the price of access.
Sometimes the aggressor is abusive because they feel generally powerless in life and this is a way to remedy that, albeit on a petty level. In other cases, the aggressor may have a darker motive like revenge or emotional manipulation, or the satisfaction of some sadistic appetite. With each different motive, this fundamental power equation triggers a different emotion.
Another way to use it is to explore the price the victim will be required to pay. In the case of me and the reservation clerk, her irritated tone and her dramatic sighs were her ways of letting me know she was getting what she needed. But it also told me she was charging too much. So, I cancelled the transaction and found accommodations where the price of a room didn’t include a tax on my dignity.
In Silence of the Lambs, FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling needs to stop a serial killer and her antagonist, imprisoned psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter, needs to watch people suffer. In order to stop the killer, Clarice needs access to the insights in Lecter’s head, so Lecter proposes a bargain. If Clarice will let him observe her anguish as she recounts painful childhood memories, he will grant her access to his psychiatric expertise so she will have a chance to rescue the killer’s latest victim.
But, how much emotional pain is Clarice willing to endure? Will Lecter raise the price as Clarice’s need grows more urgent? Will Clarice risk losing Lecter’s cooperation by only pretending to pay his price? Will Lecter risk losing access to Clarice’s agony by feeding her bogus information? Does Clarice control access to something Lecter is willing to pay for?
Using these price-to-be-paid elements of the power equation, Thomas Harris, the author, evokes a nearly endless sequence of emotions, keeping the reader on an emotional rollercoaster throughout the book.
Lecter’s behavior goes way past passive aggression. In fact, there’s nothing passive about it, at all. It’s pure emotional extortion. But the difference rests entirely on the facts. The fundamental framework in Silence of the Lambs is the same as it was for me and the reservation clerk: A controls access to something B must have, so B must meet A’s price. One set of facts produces irritation, the others produce shame, revulsion, fear, dread, hope, hatred, and craftiness. The emotional responses that the basic power equation can produce are probably endless.
Conclusions
Disrupted expectations, the completely unexpected, and the power of access-control are just three examples of mechanisms that can be adapted to deliver an emotional punch. They prime the pump, so to speak. Virtually any event or situation that evokes an emotional response can be used. The key is to understand the dramatic infrastructure of the situation or event so you can adapt it to your storytelling goals. After that, it’s simply a matter of dressing up the basic mechanism with the facts that produce the emotional experience you choose.
Roger Johns is the author of the Wallace Hartman Mysteries from St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books, and is the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year (Detective ▪ Mystery Category) for his debut novel, Dark River Rising. The second volume in the series, River of Secrets, will be out on August 28, 2018. Roger is a member of the Atlanta Writers Club, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, and Mystery Writers of America. Please visit him at www.rogerjohnsbooks.com.
Spoiler Alert / By Ellen Whitfield
Could spoilers be a good thing?
Mysteries and thrillers have always been my go-to reads, and when I started working as publicist for authors, I was excited to get to work with so many talented writers who craft books in my favorite genre.
What I didn’t want to reveal to them, however, is that I am the queen of spoilers. I almost always read the end of a book before I get there, usually when I’m about a third of the way through and have a grasp on the characters and main plot points. I am especially guilty of this with mysteries, because I literally cannot wait to find out what happens.
And romances with love triangles? I cannot stand the suspense and I must find out how things shake out in the end.
WHY? Everyone asks me this, and I honestly don’t have a perfect answer. I think it has to do with wanting to be able enjoy reading the book without rushing through to the end and feeling stressed out about what might happen.
Before I started my spoiler habit, I was frequently disappointed when the murder was committed by someone who didn’t fit the profile I had put together in my head for the killer, and I would feel slightly stupid for not picking up on hidden clues that obviously pointed to one character. (I would make a terrible detective.)
But now, I more often than not close the final page of a book with a contented sigh because I have been able to follow the trail that the author laid down, and everything came together in a satisfactory manner.
Does it occasionally take away the enjoyment of the book? Every once in a while, yes. Earlier this year, I read The Woman in the Window, and I feel like that one may have been more enjoyable had I waited to find out both twists presented close to the end. (I’m really sorry, A.J. Finn.)
But more often than not, I find that I feel more relaxed and can focus more on the writing once I know how the story will end. I pick up clues that I may have otherwise overlooked, and I feel better about siding with certain characters, knowing they won’t betray me in a twist ending.
If I don’t peek, I find myself itchy and distracted, and not really enjoying the book, which is kind of the whole point, right? I still enjoy the build up to the eventual reveal and I think I’m still a fair judge of the story overall.
But authors, especially mystery authors, put so much work into crafting an intriguing tale, and I always feel like I’m betraying the way a story was meant to be read when I flip to the last chapter. I took an informal poll of some of the writers I work with, and I was surprised to find that they weren’t horribly offended.
Most of them said it’s the reader’s choice as to how they want to read a book, even the thought of someone immediately finding out what happens makes them feel a little icky. But one of them even said she herself was an offender.
I read a 2011 article that cited research from a UC San Diego's psychology department study to say that spoilers are misnamed: for some people, they enhance the story rather than spoiling it.
One of my authors presented a perfect analogy: "If someone wants to 'eat dessert' before dinner, that’s fine, as long as it doesn’t spoil their appetite for reading the book from the beginning, and as long as they don’t reveal the ending to someone else.”
If you are going to eat dinner anyway, does it really matter if you eat dessert first? Grab a bowl of ice cream, flip to the end of the book, and let me know what you think.
Ellen is a publicist at JKS Communications. With a strong journalism background, Ellen balances her understanding of “the other side of the desk” when it comes to media pitching with a true love of an avid bibliophile. She has been part of the community of journalists in her more than seven years experience in print media with such well-respected outlets as The Dallas Morning News, The Advocate (Baton Rouge and New Orleans) – where she coordinated books coverage for the paper, Waco Tribune Herald and others. Her experience on the editorial side of travel, community and lifestyle sections of newspapers, social media and online media is to the benefit of authors in a variety of genres. She has an eye for design and a passion for detail. A Louisiana State University graduate, Ellen lives in Louisiana with her husband, a newspaper executive, daughter, and (ever-growing) collection of 550 books.
R.I.P Malibu Barbie / By Jennifer Dornbush
The daughter of a death investigator shares how a toy from her unconventional childhood feeds into her career as a Hollywood screenwriter and novelist.
When I told some friends about a very unusual Barbie doll accessory my sisters and I used to play, they wanted proof. Not being able to recall where it last ended up, I emailed my family to ask who was in the current ownership of … the Barbie body bag.
The next day, I received a very distressing photo and email from the Newaygo County Medical Examiner’s office (aka Mom and Dad). What started as a simple quest to find the bag turned into an unorthodox correspondence.
Before you step into this email chain you need a little background on my family.
#1. My father was a medical examiner and my mother served as his office manager.
#2. They ran the M.E. office from their home. I and my two sisters often helped out.
#3. No, Mattel does not manufacture Barbie body bags. The body bag you see in the photograph is a sample version given to us by a vendor.
The emails began….
Subject line: Miss Barbie found dead according to Newaygo County Medical Examiner report.
Message:
We are sorry to inform you that little Miss Barbie was found lying in her case without any obvious signs of what caused her death. Therefore the medical examiner was notified. He came to examine the scene and then packaged her up in this adorable "Barbie body bag" to be taken off to the morgue for examination and autopsy. If and when we get a final answer to the cause and time of death, you will be notified. If this office can be of any further help in your investigation, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Within a matter of minutes, emails about Miss Barbie’s demise were bouncing around between the family.
First came denial …
From: Reporter Dornbush (me)
From the photo you sent, that looks like Skipper, not Barbie. Please confirm her identity.
From: The Newaygo County Medical Examiner’s Office
This email is to correct a grave error on our part about the name and person of the deceased in the white body bag in the pictures that were recently sent to you. It has come to our attention that we were mistaken in the identity of the person in the body bag. Records now indicate that she was "Skipper", Barbie's little sister. We do apologize for the mistaken identity and our office will do better in the future to make sure we have the correct identity of the person/s that our office is required to investigate.
Then came blame…..
From: Detective DeVries (my middle sister)
Reports from witnesses state that Skipper was cat walking down the runway when her arch enemy dropped the disco ball on her. She was rushed to the hospital where her arch enemy switched her IV to pain meds causing Skipper to hallucinate and stumble out into the hallway where a candy striper’s cart struck her and caused a fatal hematoma in the brain.
From: Sherlock Holmes Graeser (my youngest sister)
I disagree with your evaluation of the crime, Detective. During a recent interview, Skipper’s best friend confided that Skipper had an acrimonious relationship with Ken’s new wife, Malibu Barbie. She has reason to believe Malibu poisoned Skipper at their Dreamhouse.
From: Reporter Dornbush (me)
My sources familiar with the matter concur and say they believe Ken had a hand in her demise. He was overheard complaining to his spray- tanned friend, Steven, “I’m tired of driving Skipper everywhere in the convertible. She should grow up and get her own license.”
And then, overwhelming guilt when this answer arrived….
From: The Newaygo County Medical Examiner’s Office
The official autopsy report is in and the M.E. has found that after being shut up in her doll case for over a decade, Skipper died from an acute case of loneliness. She had no one to play with; no one to pay any attention to her; no one to take her places, no new clothes to try on. She languished away from lack of attention until she just gave up the ghost.
We all speculated that perhaps this was Mom’s way of telling us to get our old toys out of her house.
Finally, we arrived at acceptance….
From: Detective DeVries
Please pass along our condolences to the remaining family of Miss Skipper. We will consider this case closed.
From: Sherlock Holmes Graeser
I am sorry to hear of Skipper's death but am delighted to see how well the white body bag goes with her 70s style, flowered halter top dress. She was well-preserved and stylish to the very end.
From: Reporter Dornbush
I accept your official document on this matter but will continue into the investigation as journalism integrity compels me to do. In the meantime, I will run a flattering obituary in this Sunday’s paper. We ask that you please hold her body and belongings just a little while longer until we can get home to claim them.
Such are the antics of a coroner’s family. The place I called home and once relegated with great embarrassment has now become the cornerstone of my storytelling. I’ve embraced my uncanny childhood and it’s warped influence on me. But before I began fictionalizing the skeletons in my closet, I spent years trying to keep them there. [And yes, we had a real human skeleton in our family. His name was Sam and he lived in the barn. But that’s for another story.]
A plaque hanging on the wall of my office reminds me: Home is where your story begins. Write from that place. Especially if it makes you cringe.
Jennifer is a writer, speaker, and forensic specialist. Jennifer has several crime drama series being developed for television. Wanting to share her love of forensics with other storytellers, she scribed non-fiction work, Forensic Speak: How To Write Realistic Crime Dramas, published by Michael Wiese Productions, hailed as a north star to creating authentic crime dramas. As a forensic specialist, she has consulted with TV writers on network and cable TV shows. She regularly leads seminars and webinars on forensics and crime fiction and has taught screenwriting on the high school and university level and mentored new writers. Sign up for her newsletter and YouTube channel FORENSIC FRIDAYS at: www.jenniferdornbush.com
The Mystery That Starts With A Secret / By Emily Bleeker
Five months ago I stood in a courtroom filled with people. I handed the bailiff a piece of blue paper. She gave it to the judge. He looked down at me over a pair of bifocals, and that is when the truth spilled out, “I’m sorry. It was a mistake. I didn’t know. It will never happen again.”
And on that day I swore that I’d never, ever…forget to renew my vehicle registration online before the expiration date. And that was my first and only run-in with the law. In my life as a mom of four, you’d be more likely to find me in the pick-up line at school than watching a line-up, and the crucial decisions in my day usually include some “edge of your seat” problems like…is it too close to dinner to have a snack?
Though my search engine history would leave an NSA agent shaking his head and putting me on a watch list, the stories I write exist solely on the page and in my mind. I’ve always been drawn to mystery, thrills, with maybe a dash of blood and betrayal in the mix. I like to think/hope that this proclivity for the morose comes not from sociopathic tendencies but from a curiosity that started long ago.
When I was younger, my mom, sister and I would watch that crime TV news magazine shows about real-life mysteries. I’d watch the beginning of the story with fascination as the happy pictures scrolled across the screen, and family members shared memories of a loved one lost, or maybe a loved one accused of a terrible crime. Though allegiances would change with each interview, the pictures didn’t. The smiles on the wedding day, the tender snuggles with newborn babies, the laughter recorded on a grainy video in a crowded room, all remained the same on the face of the victim or the suspect. In that fuzzy opening of the program, it was impossible to know, perhaps by design, who to trust.
And that’s how it works, right? Every good mystery starts with a secret and at least one person who is willing to go to great lengths to cover it up. And that is what I like to write about, this thing we all have in common—secrets. I think at first we all might say, “Secrets? What Secrets? I’m an open book!!” But they are there, deep down, things either no one knows about us or only our very trusted friends and family. Those are your secrets. And maybe you wouldn’t murder someone to cover them up, but that’s because you are you. My characters aren’t always as nice—'cause where is the fun in that?
So many of the questions I get when I talk to book clubs center around the “why” of these lies. Why didn’t she just tell the truth? Why did she hide this or that? Why? Why? Why?
As readers, we are far easier on fictional characters than we are on humans in real life or, gosh, even ourselves. Think about it—we clear away the clutter and unfolded laundry to take that picture of our kid for Instagram. We tweet about our blessed ten-year anniversary and not how we’ve thought about a divorce every day for nearly a decade. We post a grand thank you message on our birthday when most days we feel utterly alone. And these are the garden-variety secrets of our lives. Think of the vitriol and judgment that so much of social media and other online outlets vomit out at the slightest provocation.
Gosh, no wonder we are afraid to be real.
But, if I’ve learned anything from writing stories about people with secrets it is that hiding is not worth it. Though it makes for great, page-turning fiction, the only way to resolve the chaos, mystery, and turmoil in my character’s lives is to uncover the secret. Only then, when their greatest shame and fears are exposed, can there be growth and resolution in the story.
As social scientist Brené Brown explains, “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.” I like to watch my characters run from their less than perfect pasts, but that’s because they are figments of my imagination. In real life, secrets end in shame, loneliness and worst case scenario—a true crime documentary. So let’s read about those juicy, tense, mysteries that come from scandalous hidden truths, and maybe even sneak in a show or podcast to keep our brains twisting. But as for me, I’ll leave that excitement on the page or screen and instead of running from my story, I plan on living it out in the open for everyone to see. I hope you will join me.
Emily Bleeker is a former educator who discovered her passion for writing after introducing a writer's workshop to her students. She soon found a whole world of characters and stories living inside of her mind. It took a battle with a rare form of cancer to give her the courage to share that amazing world with others. Emily lives in suburban Chicago with her family. Between writing and being a mom, she attempts to learn guitar, sings along to the radio (loudly), and embraces her newfound addiction to running. Connect with her or request a Skype visit with your book club at emilybleeker.wordpress.com
Writing for Young Audiences / Kathryn Berla
In my mind, the most difficult thing to write is a young adult because the writer must always keep her focus on the adolescent voice while conveying emotions that many adolescents aren’t fully equipped to put into words. And yet, these emotions will likely be the most intensely felt of our lives, setting the stage for how we move forward in our jobs, our marriages, our parenting. Everything. The profundity of this time of self-discovery is exactly what led me to write in the young adult genre.
GOING PLACES was my first foray into the world of mystery writing. Although it’s a young adult book, the mystery involves a much older man and his interaction with the protagonist. Once I got a taste for writing a bit of mystery, I was anxious to write another, this time allowing myself more freedom to explore it in an adult way. However, with one foot firmly planted in the young adult world, I didn’t want to stray too far. I simply wanted to allow myself more leeway.
Thus, THE KITTY COMMITTEE was born.
I’m more of a psychologically-oriented person and writer. What goes on inside a person’s head is always far more interesting to me than external events. What causes a person to be cruel or commit a crime? Why do others go along with it? What are the long-term consequences beyond just the immediate action and how can these consequences change a life?
Two books that I read in my younger years had a profound effect on me, raising questions about the burdens we carry forward from childhood into adulthood. One was Margaret Atwood’s CAT’S EYE and the other was John Knowles’ A SEPARATE PEACE. Combine that with my decades-long interest in sociopaths, and I had a theme I was anxious to explore. Sociopaths are different from you and me, and yet they live amongst us in more numbers than we might imagine. Often, they’re productive and successful people, a fact that I’ve learned through my research. We tend to think of them as monsters but that’s often not the case. In THE PSYCHOPATH INSIDE, neuroscientist, James Fallon, discovers during his own study about psychopathic tendencies that his personal brain scan showed all the physical markers that placed him firmly in that category.
Reading the relatively new young adult thriller, MY SISTER ROSA, led me back to the old classic, THE BAD SEED, and a new way of looking at the disorder. Perhaps in ancient history, more of us, if not all of us, were sociopaths. How could empathy, morality, and guilt be productive when the human species was in survival mode? Once we had advanced to the point of forming civilized societies, those same traits became critical. But does evolution simply erase unwanted traits in the blink of an eye? My dentist tells me that more and more people are born without the wisdom teeth we no longer have the use (or space) for.
So, what happens to the “normal” person who gets caught in the web of a sociopath when it’s leading nowhere good? Sociopaths can be keen observers of people. They can learn to fake the emotions they know are important to others but don’t recognize in themselves. Perhaps they do this on a subconscious level, perhaps it’s conscious. But if you spend a lot of your time observing others and how they react to different situations, you’re bound to gain insights that are helpful when it comes to manipulation.
In THE KITTY COMMITTEE, I explore this concept as well as the concept of survivor’s guilt of those who get sucked into the vortex of a sociopath. Because the events take place during the intense and uncertain period of adolescence, I felt more freedom to dig deeper by looking back through the eyes of an adult. And like all of my books, forgiveness, and redemption are at the forefront as the most powerful motivators in the human heart.
Kathryn Berla enjoys writing in a variety of genres including light fantasy, contemporary literary fiction, and even horror. She writes for all ages: children, middle grade, young adult, and adult. She's the author of the young adult novels: 12 HOURS IN PARADISE, DREAM ME, THE HOUSE AT 758, and GOING PLACES, which received VOYA Magazine's Perfect Ten rating. You can follow her on Twitter @BerlaKathryn Instagram @AuthorKathrynB and Facebook @KathrynBerlaBooks
Character Development in a Series / Karen Randau
Whether you’re writing a standalone book or a series, you need believable characters who cause the reader to feel something. The characters must change—from weak to strong, devastated to overcoming, or lonely to thriving in a satisfying relationship.
In each book of a series, the change should unfold before the reader’s eyes to create a satiating experience. Characters should travel a believable arc from book to book, and each book is a building block to who the character has become.
Believable Characters Show Relatable Traits
Your key characters need certain characteristics.
While often larger than life, they must be relatable to evoke the reader’s empathy, and they are never perfect.
They encounter obstacles and conflicts and have a huge dose of fear, but they develop into someone who faces their instead of shrinking away.
They fail, but they learn from their failures and overcome the obstacles you’ve put in their path.
Start with a Name
Names matter more in allegories than in commercial fiction but give your characters’ names a lot of thought.
Ethel is a good name for a woman born in the early twentieth century, but horrible for a contemporary girl. I often Google popular baby names of the timeframe and geography of my character’s birth. Research the name’s meaning.
If you want a character who is Slavic, big, strong, and violent, choose a Slavic name that Americans could pronounce and means something similar to your character’s description. For example, the Slavic name Nicholai is a variant of Nicholas and means victorious; conqueror of the people. You could use either version. Don’t forget to Google the first and last names together to ensure the combination doesn’t belong to a famous person.
Help Readers Visualize the Character
Sure, you must know the basic physical characteristics of all your characters (hair, eye, and skin color in addition age, height, build, piercings, tattoos, the sound of the voice, and physical imperfections). Advanced writers let the reader visualize the character in their own way rather than spelling out how the writer envisions the person. When possible, reveal physical characteristics through action and dialogue (showing) rather than by telling these traits (and not by the character looking in a mirror).
Backstory: Where a Series Becomes a Challenge
Backstory is everything that happened to your character before Chapter One and is what shaped that person into who they are today. You need not tell their whole backstory, and tell little—if any—in chapter one.
For my antagonist, protagonist, and key supporting characters, I create a one or two-page summary of their birth, siblings, where they grew up, educational level, political affiliation, spiritual beliefs, occupation, income, goals, skills/talents, friends, strengths, weaknesses, triggers, flaws, hobbies/pleasures, and anything important to their personality. Pick the few most relevant and reveal them through action and dialogue.
In my summary I like to include a photo I find online, but I avoid revealing who I envisioned in my writing. Let the reader imagine your characters for themselves.
Keep track of how characters in a series change from book to book. If you’ve planned an entire series, plot the character arc from the beginning of book one until the end of the final edition. If your process is to develop your story and characters as you write, think through the character arc for each book and keep it consistent with the previous books.
In my Rim Country Mystery series, protagonist Rita Avery started as a naïve, shallow person who cared more about fashion than her neighbors, and she rarely questioned the motives of her lying husband. The challenges and obstacles in the first book changed her, and the events in following books continued her transformation. By the fourth book, Rita is a savvy and compassionate private investigator who carries both a gun and anti-anxiety medication because of what happened in the first book.
You can find templates online for character development. Feel free to use the worksheet I developed for myself, found at http://www.karenrandau.com/character-development/. For a series, update your character summary with each book to provide greater depth and to decide which traits and backstory to highlight in your work-in-progress.
Karen Randau started writing as a way of life as soon as a teacher taught her to print Run Spot Run. She received a degree in journalism/public relations from the University of Texas at Austin, and had a career that spanned the industries of high tech, mental health, and nearly three decades at Food for the Hungry. Later, a seed of an idea turned into her debut novel, Deadly Deceit, the first in the Rim Country Mystery series, published in June 2016. The series now also includes Deadly Inheritance (January 2017) and Deadly Choices (July 2017). For more information, visit http://www.karenrandau.com/.
No Fear, Ish / Robert Mangeot
In fall here, the yellow garden spiders come out. If you live anywhere in North America, you may know the beasties I mean: monster ladies in monster webs, their bodies over an inch long and their leg span a couple inches more. When summer breaks, for a few weeks they make a hunting ground of my eaves and shrubs. Despite her size, this queen lady is harmless other than to the imagination.
Most of my life I’ve been afraid of spiders. Those darting legs. Creepy egg sacs. Venom, maybe. You never know in your fear place, do you? Yep, I steered clear of little spiders, big spiders, spiders on floors, spiders in webs, leggy spiders that aren’t technically even spiders but really harvestmen but try telling that to my racing pulse. Whatever is next-level down from the full-on willies, that was me and spiders. Less so recently, and for an unexpected reason: I wrote about one.
A few years ago, I was doing passive idea-gathering on the internet (less charitably, goofing off), and I came across an article on giant tropical spiders who ate birds. A legit article from a legit source with legit pictures of the feasting in-progress. Genus Nephila, the article went. Forget my local ladies. A nephilid can boast a two-inch plus tubular body and a leg span wide around as your dinner plate, and the rain forest-y parts of Queensland and Southeast Asia are lousy with them. Birds, bats, snakes, all on her menu. Banana spiders are the common name, though more poetic minds dubbed them the Golden Orb Weaver. Their webs are super-strong and perfect for industrial uses from military to clothing to surgical supplies, which was the story hook: spider silk the stuff biotech dreams are made of.
Did I mention a leg span wide as your dinner plate? Go ahead. See for yourself. These ladies stalk plenty of YouTube clips. Inspired if freaked out, I put a giant nephilid at the heart of what became “Queen and Country,” published in the March 2018 Mystery Weekly. In the story’s early drafts, the spider queen was this malevolent force the principals searched in vain—and at some risk—to bag for Big Science. I gave the spider extra size and, with creative license, that serious venom to boot. No, my subconscious and I didn’t spare her any shock factor.
Something else happens when honing an idea: research. You know, facts and stuff. I studied nephilid diet, reproduction, hunting and feeding, day vs. nocturnal behavior, how she might walk, how she would behave in various weather conditions. And I studied her webs, the elaborate architecture spun in sun-glinting patterns, the parchment-y decorations she weaves in— stabilimenta, I would learn—that still baffle arachnologists as to exact purpose. Here was where the surprises started. The more real-world behavior I worked into my devil spider, the more rounded she became on the page. The more vulnerable. I came to root for her.
Research gives me more than just a better story. What I learn stays with me long after I’ve typed The End. I came to tolerate a spider encounter, to trap-and-release or live-and-let-live. After all, if there are spiders around, that means there’s lots of stuff spiders eat around, and those critters would be the root problem, wouldn’t they?
Look, I won’t claim to be cuddly with the things. If a house spider crawled on me now, I would leap none-too profile in courage from my chair. But I’ve come to enjoy our sharing space, with my local giant ladies especially. Every fall, my non-bird-eating queens break cover and spend their regal nights under my porch eaves. Last year, I described our resident queen’s stabilamenta pattern and web structure to my wife, how the spider would have to take her capture silk down soon, what with rain on the way. My wife asked how the hell I knew all that. And why, she didn’t add aloud.
Great questions.
The longer I’m at this whole writing thing, the more I realize what’s behind the ideas that I keep after. A desire to understand and, maybe in some cases, overcome. Thanks to a short story, these days I greet my fall spider friends with no fear. Ish.
Robert Mangeot lives in Franklin, Tennessee with his wife and cats. His short fiction appears here and there, including
ALFRED HITCHCOCK MYSTERY MAGAZINE, LOWESTOFT CHRONICLE, Mystery Writers of America's ICE COLD, and the
Anthony-winning MURDER UNDER THE OAKS. His story "The Cumberland Package" was a finalist in the 2017 Derringer
Awards. He proudly serves as current chapter president for Sisters in Crime Middle Tennessee. When not writing, he
can be found wandering the snack food aisles of America or France.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Column, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Joseph Borden and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s editorial.
On Short Fiction and Evil Masterminds / Author Robert Mangeot
Writing short fiction demands a different kind of mental training. While novels can luxuriate with expansive plots and subplots, short fiction requires jabs and punches. In this week’s Killer Nashville Guest Blog, author Robert Mangeot cleverly tells us how he went from short story unpublished to well-published. And how you can do the same. You simply have to let the masterminds do their job.
Happy Reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville,
Publisher Killer Nashville Magazine
On Short Fiction and Evil Masterminds
By Robert Mangeot
Inside us crime writer folk lurks an evil mastermind. Sure, some days the evil one may seem quiet, but always deep in our imaginations is a dimly lit chamber, walls blanketed in maps with dragons stalking the margins, a desk piled with jumbled notebooks, a shrouded figure clacking away in mad flourishes at the computer keyboard. Your inner mastermind is planning, planning, planning.
As crime writer folk, it’s likely you consider having your creative dark side pointed out as a compliment. And you should. If short fiction interests you, then unleashing that evil dude or dudette might be your call to adventure.
Flash to me outside a Manhattan bookshop, a gunmetal sky over SoHo, and an April mist slicking the rush hour streets: a perfect night for spying. You read that right. Espionage. Except I had only written a short story about spies, and the honor of it landing in the MWA anthology Ice Cold—which was launched that rain-slicked night at The Mysterious Bookshop—was borne of fruitful collaboration with my inner mastermind.
Killer stories require more than lightning bolts of inspiration. In crime writer-ese, a great short story is like a heist: intricate timetable, tricky execution, ticking clock. The story mastermind must identify and adapt to each and every obstacle in order to pull off the job.
Flashback to 2010. Flush with creativity, I had locked myself away to crank out stories. They stunk, every blessed one of them. I know that now, but in those heady days I fired off submissions, certain of a breakthrough.
Not so much.
Fast-forward through a trial-and-error montage of research, critique and useful rejection, add any Eighties arena pop soundtrack at your discretion. What kept me going was my stretch goal—selling a story to a dream market like MWA or Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Trust me, back then when I said stretch, it meant hyperextension. Whether or not I would ever get the dream acceptance letter, who knew? The important thing was the reach.
Fast-forward again through more rewrite and rejection to enlightenment. Finally I understood my stories, like heists without a getaway plan, they were never coming together. Characters, setting, plot, everything had to be crafted to bring out a connected whole. Poe—now there was an evil mastermind—called this “unity of effect.”
For that I learned to call on my mastermind, which means I also learned to pay as much attention to how I’m writing as to what I’m writing. After all, one story is just one story. My creative process is how I’ll write more and better. And so I’ve developed brainstorming rituals that summon the mastermind. He arrives feisty, demanding sharper ideas and I rewrite again and again and again. He forces me to slash away at the labor-of-love early drafts and darling sentences. The evil mastermind is editing, editing, editing.
Some key lessons from the inner mastermind about killer short fiction; he is five-fold:
The Brain: Amp up the premise until it is distinctively your own. Premises are infinite. Take risks. Have fun with voices, characters, and ideas. The price of a short story idea falling apart is pretty much zero, and if it improves your writing, I’d call that a success.
The Grease Man: Like tumblers falling in a picked lock, work every element into the connected whole. Subplots are for novels, asides for Shakespeare. Keep a short story slick and elegant.
The Insider: Do the research. Amazing next-level inspiration comes from having the context and interrelationships nailed. Also, before ever submitting somewhere, read several issues first. Know the target market cold, its submission requirements and editorial preferences. This is make-or-break with pro markets. No heist goes off without first casing the joint, right?
The Muscle: Short stories are all about compressed vibrancy. Find the compelling narrative voice that does the heavy lifting, especially with mood and characterization. Edit, edit, edit until the deeper story emerges and the words crackle.
The Getaway Driver: Start the story late, well after a novel version would open. Move quick, hit hard and get out fast, with a thematic roar that echoes long after the last word is read.
Simple, right? We crime writer folk understand simple doesn’t mean easy. But for me, that journey is becoming an adventure. The short story is dead? Feels pretty alive to me.
You know what else is alive? Your mastermind. Alive and hard at work somewhere in there, planning, planning, planning your story of the century.
If you would like to read more about Robert Mangeot’s books please click here.
Robert Mangeot lives in Franklin, Tennessee, with his wife, pair of cats, and a bossy Pomeranian writing partner. His short fiction has won multiple writing contests and appears in various journals and anthologies, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Mystery Writers of America Presents Ice Cold: Tales of Intrigue from the Cold War. He serves as the Vice-President of Sisters In Crime, Middle Tennessee chapter. Visit his website at robertmangeot.com
(Have an idea for our blog? Then share it with our Killer Nashville family. With over 24,000 visits monthly to the Killer Nashville website, over 300,000 reached through social media, and a potential outreach of over 22 million per press release, Killer Nashville provides another way for you to reach more people with your message. Send a query to contact@killernashville.com or call us at 615-599-4032. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks to Maria Giordano and author Tom Wood for his volunteer assistance in coordinating our weekly blogs. For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com)
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