KN Magazine: Articles
Raising the Stakes for Your Writing Skills / M. Elizabeth Lee
Writing a thriller has proven time and time again to be one of the most mind-boggling and challenging genres to write. With a thriller you need to keep your reader reading while building up to an exciting event slowly. Keeping your reader interested during this escalation, while at the same time keeping your twist well-hidden, is the challenge we are tasked with overcoming. In this week’s guest blog, author M. Elizabeth Lee gives some fantastic tips and tricks for building a compelling thriller.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Raising the Stakes for Your Writing Skills
By M. Elizabeth Lee
Writing suspense is like trying to climb a ladder while simultaneously building it. Do it correctly and you lead your reader on a thrilling journey where the stakes grow higher as dangers known and unforeseen press ever closer. If a thriller is successful, the reader leaps from the top of the ladder, filled with exhilaration after the crazy ride he or she has just completed. But when thrillers go wrong, and readers are not pulled along by a taut plot, compelling mystery and believable characters, they have no incentive to keep climbing the ladder, and instead, slide limply back to earth, where they use their last ounce of squandered energy to assign a one star rating. Sad!
The desire to know what happens next is the driving force of all fiction, and no more so than in the suspense genre, where the whole point is to keep the reader so spellbound that they miss their train stop or forget to walk the dog. That addictive sense of what happens next is the benchmark of great suspense writing, but creating that feeling is a feat like none other. Executing suspense successfully requires a complex mind trick; crafting your twisty, surprise-laden story while hiding what you’re doing from the reader, and simultaneously attempting to distance yourself enough to evaluate whether any of it is working. It’s enough to make a suspense writer wish for a second brain, or a timely case of temporary amnesia.
But as most of us have only one mind at our disposal, the evaluation process must be sidelined for the majority of the writing process. It’s much more beneficial to focus on the juggling act/magic trick of creating suspense, which has everything to do with manipulating reader expectations.
Expectation is tricky in thrillers, because serious fans of the genre a.) Love surprises, and b.) Have read it all before. In a typical thriller, some misdeed has been committed and the protagonist must figure out who did it and why before something even more horrible happens. Thriller writers are ingenious at ways of finding fresh angles to explore this basic construct, but to be successful, most thrillers do these four things:
Establish High Stakes (and then raise them) — Tension is at its highest when everything is on the line. Start with a big problem, and make it bigger. For example, in Love Her Madly, Glo, the protagonist, is faced with either losing her best friend or the guy she thinks might be her true love. That’s a tough decision, but it’s kid stuff compared to the choice Glo faces later when she must either follow her best friend into the clutches of armed strangers or swim across a dangerous channel to get help. Boxing characters into near hopeless situations and forcing them to act is a foolproof way to create dramatic tension. Extremes are interesting and characters are (fortunately) not real, so writers can push all they want and no one gets hurt.
Taut Pacing — Opening with a tight focus helps build momentum quickly. Keep extraneous detail to a minimum. Remember that bestselling European author who devoted pages to descriptions of computer hardware? Don’t do that. Your story is stronger without it.
Mystery — Readers will be happiest if they can’t guess by chapter two who the villain is and why he plans to poison the reservoir. Shocking twists are the genre’s beating heart. Come up with a good one, and gain a fan for life.
Payoff — Thrillers don’t have to end with an epic warehouse shootout, but they should have a climactic payoff. It doesn’t have to tie up every loose end, or even signal that the protagonist’s quest is over, but it should resolve the plot’s main mystery. Show your readers some love by giving them a payoff that will cast the journey they’ve taken in an entirely new light. Or conversely (or perhaps, perversely), keep a little extra mystery simmering on the back burner. By the final pages of Love Her Madly, Glo finally learns what has become of her lost friend, but a final discovery throws the truth Glo thought she had gleaned back into question. A little residual doubt can make a novel linger, ghostlike, long after a book has been shelved.
Thriller writers are constantly finding new ways to advance the genre. While a traditional “lone wolf overcoming adversity to find the truth” tale is a trope that is here to stay, I’m a fan of unreliable narrators and enjoy both writing and reading this style of thriller. Using a suspect narrator provides a tricky “Can I trust this?” intimacy with characters who might be lying through their teeth, half-crazy, deluded, or all of the above. When I was writing Love Her Madly I had to decide how truthful to make Glo about the night her best friend disappeared. Will readers take her story at face value? I can’t say. With this type of thriller, part of the fun is trying to suss out all the manipulations that are in play. The truth may be out there, but unless your narrator permits, you might never discover it.
Whatever the approach, readers of suspense want that thrill, and it’s our job to bring it. As mentioned earlier, one of the most difficult aspects of authoring suspense is handling doubt. After working on a story for months, sometimes years, it would be wonderful to automatically know that all those painstakingly placed dominoes will topple just right. But the truth is, you can’t know. You must wait for your readers to tell you their experience, keeping in mind that it is the rare author who nails it perfectly the first time.
It’s why our fellow writers, agents, editors and loyal reader friends are so essential to the work. They want to help us excavate the outstanding thriller lurking just beneath the surface of that killer draft. Accept feedback. Make it better. Keep reading. Keep writing. That’s our path.
Suspense writers are daredevils at heart, and the stakes are incredibly high. When a thriller doesn’t thrill, it’s a failure. But for those focused on the high wire act of creating a visceral thrill from words spun on paper, nothing else will satisfy.
Elizabeth Lee is a novelist, screenwriter and actress living in New York City. Her thriller, Love Her Madly, was released this August from Atria Books/Simon & Schuster. Reach her at www.melizabethlee.com
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Raising the Stakes for Your Writing Skills / M. Elizabeth Lee
Writing a thriller has proven time and time again to be one of the most mind-boggling and challenging genres to write. With a thriller you need to keep your reader reading while building up to an exciting event slowly. Keeping your reader interested during this escalation, while at the same time keeping your twist well-hidden, is the challenge we are tasked with overcoming. In this week’s guest blog, author M. Elizabeth Lee gives some fantastic tips and tricks for building a compelling thriller.Happy reading!
Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Raising the Stakes for Your Writing Skills
By M. Elizabeth Lee
Writing suspense is like trying to climb a ladder while simultaneously building it. Do it correctly and you lead your reader on a thrilling journey where the stakes grow higher as dangers known and unforeseen press ever closer. If a thriller is successful, the reader leaps from the top of the ladder, filled with exhilaration after the crazy ride he or she has just completed. But when thrillers go wrong, and readers are not pulled along by a taut plot, compelling mystery and believable characters, they have no incentive to keep climbing the ladder, and instead, slide limply back to earth, where they use their last ounce of squandered energy to assign a one star rating. Sad!
The desire to know what happens next is the driving force of all fiction, and no more so than in the suspense genre, where the whole point is to keep the reader so spellbound that they miss their train stop or forget to walk the dog. That addictive sense of what happens next is the benchmark of great suspense writing, but creating that feeling is a feat like none other. Executing suspense successfully requires a complex mind trick; crafting your twisty, surprise-laden story while hiding what you’re doing from the reader, and simultaneously attempting to distance yourself enough to evaluate whether any of it is working. It’s enough to make a suspense writer wish for a second brain, or a timely case of temporary amnesia.
But as most of us have only one mind at our disposal, the evaluation process must be sidelined for the majority of the writing process. It’s much more beneficial to focus on the juggling act/magic trick of creating suspense, which has everything to do with manipulating reader expectations.
Expectation is tricky in thrillers, because serious fans of the genre a.) Love surprises, and b.) Have read it all before. In a typical thriller, some misdeed has been committed and the protagonist must figure out who did it and why before something even more horrible happens. Thriller writers are ingenious at ways of finding fresh angles to explore this basic construct, but to be successful, most thrillers do these four things:
- Establish High Stakes (and then raise them) — Tension is at its highest when everything is on the line. Start with a big problem, and make it bigger. For example, in Love Her Madly, Glo, the protagonist, is faced with either losing her best friend or the guy she thinks might be her true love. That’s a tough decision, but it’s kid stuff compared to the choice Glo faces later when she must either follow her best friend into the clutches of armed strangers or swim across a dangerous channel to get help. Boxing characters into near hopeless situations and forcing them to act is a foolproof way to create dramatic tension. Extremes are interesting and characters are (fortunately) not real, so writers can push all they want and no one gets hurt.
- Taut Pacing — Opening with a tight focus helps build momentum quickly. Keep extraneous detail to a minimum. Remember that bestselling European author who devoted pages to descriptions of computer hardware? Don’t do that. Your story is stronger without it.
- Mystery — Readers will be happiest if they can’t guess by chapter two who the villain is and why he plans to poison the reservoir. Shocking twists are the genre’s beating heart. Come up with a good one, and gain a fan for life.
- Payoff — Thrillers don’t have to end with an epic warehouse shootout, but they should have a climactic payoff. It doesn’t have to tie up every loose end, or even signal that the protagonist’s quest is over, but it should resolve the plot’s main mystery. Show your readers some love by giving them a payoff that will cast the journey they’ve taken in an entirely new light. Or conversely (or perhaps, perversely), keep a little extra mystery simmering on the back burner. By the final pages of Love Her Madly, Glo finally learns what has become of her lost friend, but a final discovery throws the truth Glo thought she had gleaned back into question. A little residual doubt can make a novel linger, ghostlike, long after a book has been shelved.
Thriller writers are constantly finding new ways to advance the genre. While a traditional “lone wolf overcoming adversity to find the truth” tale is a trope that is here to stay, I’m a fan of unreliable narrators and enjoy both writing 
and reading this style of thriller. Using a suspect narrator provides a tricky “Can I trust this?” intimacy with characters who might be lying through their teeth, half-crazy, deluded, or all of the above. When I was writing Love Her Madly I had to decide how truthful to make Glo about the night her best friend disappeared. Will readers take her story at face value? I can’t say. With this type of thriller, part of the fun is trying to suss out all the manipulations that are in play. The truth may be out there, but unless your narrator permits, you might never discover it.
Whatever the approach, readers of suspense want that thrill, and it’s our job to bring it. As mentioned earlier, one of the most difficult aspects of authoring suspense is handling doubt. After working on a story for months, sometimes years, it would be wonderful to automatically know that all those painstakingly placed dominoes will topple just right. But the truth is, you can’t know. You must wait for your readers to tell you their experience, keeping in mind that it is the rare author who nails it perfectly the first time.
It’s why our fellow writers, agents, editors and loyal reader friends are so essential to the work. They want to help us excavate the outstanding thriller lurking just beneath the surface of that killer draft. Accept feedback. Make it better. Keep reading. Keep writing. That’s our path.
Suspense writers are daredevils at heart, and the stakes are incredibly high. When a thriller doesn’t thrill, it’s a failure. But for those focused on the high wire act of creating a visceral thrill from words spun on paper, nothing else will satisfy.
Elizabeth Lee is a novelist, screenwriter and actress living in New York City. Her thriller, Love Her Madly, was released this August from Atria Books/Simon & Schuster. Reach her at www.melizabethlee.com
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Raising the Stakes for Your Writing Skills / M. Elizabeth Lee
Writing a thriller has proven time and time again to be one of the most mind-boggling and challenging genres to write. With a thriller you need to keep your reader reading while building up to an exciting event slowly. Keeping your reader interested during this escalation, while at the same time keeping your twist well-hidden, is the challenge we are tasked with overcoming. In this week’s guest blog, author M. Elizabeth Lee gives some fantastic tips and tricks for building a compelling thriller.Happy reading!
Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Raising the Stakes for Your Writing Skills
By M. Elizabeth Lee
Writing suspense is like trying to climb a ladder while simultaneously building it. Do it correctly and you lead your reader on a thrilling journey where the stakes grow higher as dangers known and unforeseen press ever closer. If a thriller is successful, the reader leaps from the top of the ladder, filled with exhilaration after the crazy ride he or she has just completed. But when thrillers go wrong, and readers are not pulled along by a taut plot, compelling mystery and believable characters, they have no incentive to keep climbing the ladder, and instead, slide limply back to earth, where they use their last ounce of squandered energy to assign a one star rating. Sad!
The desire to know what happens next is the driving force of all fiction, and no more so than in the suspense genre, where the whole point is to keep the reader so spellbound that they miss their train stop or forget to walk the dog. That addictive sense of what happens next is the benchmark of great suspense writing, but creating that feeling is a feat like none other. Executing suspense successfully requires a complex mind trick; crafting your twisty, surprise-laden story while hiding what you’re doing from the reader, and simultaneously attempting to distance yourself enough to evaluate whether any of it is working. It’s enough to make a suspense writer wish for a second brain, or a timely case of temporary amnesia.
But as most of us have only one mind at our disposal, the evaluation process must be sidelined for the majority of the writing process. It’s much more beneficial to focus on the juggling act/magic trick of creating suspense, which has everything to do with manipulating reader expectations.
Expectation is tricky in thrillers, because serious fans of the genre a.) Love surprises, and b.) Have read it all before. In a typical thriller, some misdeed has been committed and the protagonist must figure out who did it and why before something even more horrible happens. Thriller writers are ingenious at ways of finding fresh angles to explore this basic construct, but to be successful, most thrillers do these four things:
- Establish High Stakes (and then raise them) — Tension is at its highest when everything is on the line. Start with a big problem, and make it bigger. For example, in Love Her Madly, Glo, the protagonist, is faced with either losing her best friend or the guy she thinks might be her true love. That’s a tough decision, but it’s kid stuff compared to the choice Glo faces later when she must either follow her best friend into the clutches of armed strangers or swim across a dangerous channel to get help. Boxing characters into near hopeless situations and forcing them to act is a foolproof way to create dramatic tension. Extremes are interesting and characters are (fortunately) not real, so writers can push all they want and no one gets hurt.
- Taut Pacing — Opening with a tight focus helps build momentum quickly. Keep extraneous detail to a minimum. Remember that bestselling European author who devoted pages to descriptions of computer hardware? Don’t do that. Your story is stronger without it.
- Mystery — Readers will be happiest if they can’t guess by chapter two who the villain is and why he plans to poison the reservoir. Shocking twists are the genre’s beating heart. Come up with a good one, and gain a fan for life.
- Payoff — Thrillers don’t have to end with an epic warehouse shootout, but they should have a climactic payoff. It doesn’t have to tie up every loose end, or even signal that the protagonist’s quest is over, but it should resolve the plot’s main mystery. Show your readers some love by giving them a payoff that will cast the journey they’ve taken in an entirely new light. Or conversely (or perhaps, perversely), keep a little extra mystery simmering on the back burner. By the final pages of Love Her Madly, Glo finally learns what has become of her lost friend, but a final discovery throws the truth Glo thought she had gleaned back into question. A little residual doubt can make a novel linger, ghostlike, long after a book has been shelved.
Thriller writers are constantly finding new ways to advance the genre. While a traditional “lone wolf overcoming adversity to find the truth” tale is a trope that is here to stay, I’m a fan of unreliable narrators and enjoy both writing 
and reading this style of thriller. Using a suspect narrator provides a tricky “Can I trust this?” intimacy with characters who might be lying through their teeth, half-crazy, deluded, or all of the above. When I was writing Love Her Madly I had to decide how truthful to make Glo about the night her best friend disappeared. Will readers take her story at face value? I can’t say. With this type of thriller, part of the fun is trying to suss out all the manipulations that are in play. The truth may be out there, but unless your narrator permits, you might never discover it.
Whatever the approach, readers of suspense want that thrill, and it’s our job to bring it. As mentioned earlier, one of the most difficult aspects of authoring suspense is handling doubt. After working on a story for months, sometimes years, it would be wonderful to automatically know that all those painstakingly placed dominoes will topple just right. But the truth is, you can’t know. You must wait for your readers to tell you their experience, keeping in mind that it is the rare author who nails it perfectly the first time.
It’s why our fellow writers, agents, editors and loyal reader friends are so essential to the work. They want to help us excavate the outstanding thriller lurking just beneath the surface of that killer draft. Accept feedback. Make it better. Keep reading. Keep writing. That’s our path.
Suspense writers are daredevils at heart, and the stakes are incredibly high. When a thriller doesn’t thrill, it’s a failure. But for those focused on the high wire act of creating a visceral thrill from words spun on paper, nothing else will satisfy.
Elizabeth Lee is a novelist, screenwriter and actress living in New York City. Her thriller, Love Her Madly, was released this August from Atria Books/Simon & Schuster. Reach her at www.melizabethlee.com
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Was, Had Been, Is / Fran Stewart
Over time the way that we use words and phrases has a tendency to change. Ideally this would work towards the evolution and continued improvement of the language. As of late, however, the more common trend is bending the rules and taking shortcuts until these incorrect methods of writing become the accepted norms. In this week’s guest blog, author Fran Stewart shares her thoughts on the subject.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Was / Had Been / Is
By Fran Stewart
The English language expands and contracts, usually without our being aware of it. Language always evolves, with the additions of new words as new technologies come into their own, as musical forms or pop cultural icons rise or wane in popularity.
This recent change, though, seems more basic to me than the simple addition of words. We seem to have forgotten what it was to remember the past. I’d noticed the change in newspaper quotations, in magazine interviews, and in the conversations of people around me. But it all came to an explosive awareness recently when I heard a Public Radio commentator – that’s right, National Public Radio, that bastion of proper speech and erudite ideas – say, “So here I am walking down the street yesterday, and . . .”
Whatever happened to past tense? There I was yesterday, walking down the street. The street experience happened yesterday, so wouldn’t past tense be appropriate in reporting it? Apparently not. More and more, I find that people tend to think in present tense, speak in present tense, and write entire novels in that same tense. The use of the present tense is so ubiquitous now, that I’ve experimented with mentioning it to writers with whom I’ve been speaking, calling their attention to their own use of the present tense, only to be met with incredulous denials. “I don’t do that,” they’ve said. “Do I?”
Maybe I’m more aware of past versus present since I began writing the ScotShop Mysteries. A Wee Murder in My Shop, the first book in the series, introduces Macbeath Donlevy Freusach Findlay Macearachar Macpheidiran of Clan Farquharson, otherwise known as Dirk. Did I mention that Dirk is the wonderful ghost of a 14th century Scotsman? The 14th century was a time during which the English language changed drastically, from the almost entirely incomprehensible (to us) Old English to the Middle English used by Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales.
I’ve had great fun listening to Dirk talk and watching as he struggles to integrate 21st-century Americanisms into his ghostly psyche. He’s in the process of gradually enhancing the vocabulary of Peggy Winn, owner of the ScotShop, with words like whinge and beceorest. When Dirk tells Peggy Ye needna whinge so, or Why d’ye beceorest when ye canna do any the thing about it? she can usually decipher the meaning from the context in which he says these things. (I’m happy to report that the narrator for the WEE MURDER audiobook got Dirk’s voice and accent exactly right.) Whinge and beceorest are similar in the same way complain and grumble are—they’re both nuances of the same sort of idea. But each one adds its own flavor, one closer to a whine; the other nearer to a grouch. And those nuances are part of the beauty of the English language.
For decades, I’ve had a personal vendetta against the Smurfs, who taught an entire generation that the use of an exact word was never necessary when one could simply use smurf as a verb, a noun, any part of speech. Now, I don’t consider this move to expressing oneself almost exclusively in present tense to be nearly as insidious as the dumbing-down of our language by the little blue critters (or rather, by their TV script-writers). It does give me pause though, to wonder whatever will happen to a handy little word like had. As every writer knows, or should know, when we write in past tense, if we have to go even farther back in time, we stick in a had (or two) to make the timing clear. After that, we can dispense with the auxiliary word. Here’s an example:
Gladiola Grim played the piano at every social function. We hated it. Her sense of rhythm had always been atrocious, but the last time I heard her play, just before she was murdered, she exceeded our lowest expectations when she executed her variations on Moonlight Sonata. I use the term executed judiciously, of course, since poor Beethoven would have gleefully strangled her if the stranger wearing a black cape hadn’t obliged shortly after the musical fiasco.
There is no need, as you can see, to put another had before the word exceeded. The timing is perfectly clear. Without the past tenses and past perfects, though, the chronology becomes harder to follow:
Gladiola Grim plays the piano at every social function. We hate it. Her sense of rhythm is atrocious, but the last time I’m listening to her play, just before she’s murdered, she exceeds our lowest expectations when she executes her variations on Moonlight Sonata. I use the term executes judiciously, of course. Poor Beethoven misses out on strangling her because the stranger wearing a black cape beats him to it.
I would like to keep had in the running. If English has to evolve—and what language doesn’t?—Dirk and I would vote for clarity rather than what I see as a lazy approach to tenses.
Fran Stewart is the author of the Biscuit McKee Mysteries – Gray as Ashes is the seventh book in that series – as well as a standalone mystery – A Slaying Song Tonight, set during the Great Depression. Her non-fiction work includes From the Tip of My Pen: A Workbook for Writers. Her new ScotShop Mystery Series from Berkley Press began with A Wee Murder in My Shop. The second book in that series, A Wee Doe of Death, was released in early 2016. Book number 3 of the ScotShop Mysteries, A Wee Homicide in the Hotel, will be released February 7, 2017. Fran lives quietly with various rescued cats beside a creek on the other side of Hog Mountain, Georgia, northeast of Atlanta. She is a member of the National League of American Pen Women, Sisters in Crime, and Mystery Writers of America. Read more about Fran and her works at www.franstewart.com
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Was, Had Been, Is / Fran Stewart
Over time the way that we use words and phrases has a tendency to change. Ideally this would work towards the evolution and continued improvement of the language. As of late, however, the more common trend is bending the rules and taking shortcuts until these incorrect methods of writing become the accepted norms. In this week’s guest blog, author Fran Stewart shares her thoughts on the subject.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Was / Had Been / Is
By Fran Stewart
The English language expands and contracts, usually without our being aware of it. Language always evolves, with the additions of new words as new technologies come into their own, as musical forms or pop cultural icons rise or wane in popularity.
This recent change, though, seems more basic to me than the simple addition of words. We seem to have forgotten what it was to remember the past. I’d noticed the change in newspaper quotations, in magazine interviews, and in the conversations of people around me. But it all came to an explosive awareness recently when I heard a Public Radio commentator – that’s right, National Public Radio, that bastion of proper speech and erudite ideas – say, “So here I am walking down the street yesterday, and . . .”
Whatever happened to past tense? There I was yesterday, walking down the street. The street experience happened yesterday, so wouldn’t past tense be appropriate in reporting it? Apparently not. More and more, I find that people tend to think in present tense, speak in present tense, and write entire novels in that same tense. The use of the present tense is so ubiquitous now, that I’ve experimented with mentioning it to writers with whom I’ve been speaking, calling their attention to their own use of the present tense, only to be met with incredulous denials. “I don’t do that,” they’ve said. “Do I?”
Maybe I’m more aware of past versus present since I began writing the ScotShop Mysteries. A Wee Murder in My Shop, the first book in the series, introduces Macbeath Donlevy Freusach Findlay Macearachar Macpheidiran of Clan Farquharson, otherwise known as Dirk. Did I mention that Dirk is the wonderful ghost of a 14th century Scotsman? The 14th century was a time during which the English language changed drastically, from the almost entirely incomprehensible (to us) Old English to the Middle English used by Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales.
I’ve had great fun listening to Dirk talk and watching as he struggles to integrate 21st-century Americanisms into his ghostly psyche. He’s in the process of gradually enhancing the vocabulary of Peggy Winn, owner of the ScotShop, with words like whinge and beceorest. When Dirk tells Peggy Ye needna whinge so, or Why d’ye beceorest when ye canna do any the thing about it? she can usually decipher the meaning from the context in which he says these things. (I’m happy to report that the narrator for the WEE MURDER audiobook got Dirk’s voice and accent exactly right.) Whinge and beceorest are similar in the same way complain and grumble are—they’re both nuances of the same sort of idea. But each one adds its own flavor, one closer to a whine; the other nearer to a grouch. And those nuances are part of the beauty of the English language.
For decades, I’ve had a personal vendetta against the Smurfs, who taught an entire generation that the use of an exact word was never necessary when one could simply use smurf as a verb, a noun, any part of speech. Now, I don’t consider this move to expressing oneself almost exclusively in present tense to be nearly as insidious as the dumbing-down of our language by the little blue critters (or rather, by their TV script-writers). It does give me pause though, to wonder whatever will happen to a handy little word like had. As every writer knows, or should know, when we write in past tense, if we have to go even farther back in time, we stick in a had (or two) to make the timing clear. After that, we can dispense with the auxiliary word. Here’s an example:
Gladiola Grim played the piano at every social function. We hated it. Her sense of rhythm had always been atrocious, but the last time I heard her play, just before she was murdered, she exceeded our lowest expectations when she executed her variations on Moonlight Sonata. I use the term executed judiciously, of course, since poor Beethoven would have gleefully strangled her if the stranger wearing a black cape hadn’t obliged shortly after the musical fiasco.
There is no need, as you can see, to put another had before the word exceeded. The timing is perfectly clear. Without the past tenses and past perfects, though, the chronology becomes harder to follow:
Gladiola Grim plays the piano at every social function. We hate it. Her sense of rhythm is atrocious, but the last time I’m listening to her play, just before she’s murdered, she exceeds our lowest expectations when she executes her variations on Moonlight Sonata. I use the term executes judiciously, of course. Poor Beethoven misses out on strangling her because the stranger wearing a black cape beats him to it.
I would like to keep had in the running. If English has to evolve—and what language doesn’t?—Dirk and I would vote for clarity rather than what I see as a lazy approach to tenses.
Fran Stewart is the author of the Biscuit McKee Mysteries – Gray as Ashes is the seventh book in that series – as well as a standalone mystery – A Slaying Song Tonight, set during the Great Depression. Her non-fiction work includes From the Tip of My Pen: A Workbook for Writers. Her new ScotShop Mystery Series from Berkley Press began with A Wee Murder in My Shop. The second book in that series, A Wee Doe of Death, was released in early 2016. Book number 3 of the ScotShop Mysteries, A Wee Homicide in the Hotel, will be released February 7, 2017. Fran lives quietly with various rescued cats beside a creek on the other side of Hog Mountain, Georgia, northeast of Atlanta. She is a member of the National League of American Pen Women, Sisters in Crime, and Mystery Writers of America. Read more about Fran and her works at www.franstewart.com
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Was, Had Been, Is / Fran Stewart
Over time the way that we use words and phrases has a tendency to change. Ideally this would work towards the evolution and continued improvement of the language. As of late, however, the more common trend is bending the rules and taking shortcuts until these incorrect methods of writing become the accepted norms. In this week’s guest blog, author Fran Stewart shares her thoughts on the subject.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Was / Had Been / Is
By Fran Stewart
The English language expands and contracts, usually without our being aware of it. Language always evolves, with the additions of new words as new technologies come into their own, as musical forms or pop cultural icons rise or wane in popularity.
This recent change, though, seems more basic to me than the simple addition of words. We seem to have forgotten what it was to remember the past. I’d noticed the change in newspaper quotations, in magazine interviews, and in the conversations of people around me. But it all came to an explosive awareness recently when I heard a Public Radio commentator – that’s right, National Public Radio, that bastion of proper speech and erudite ideas – say, “So here I am walking down the street yesterday, and . . .”
Whatever happened to past tense? There I was yesterday, walking down the street. The street experience happened yesterday, so wouldn’t past tense be appropriate in reporting it? Apparently not. More and more, I find that people tend to think in present tense, speak in present tense, and write entire novels in that same tense. The use of the present tense is so ubiquitous now, that I’ve experimented with mentioning it to writers with whom I’ve been speaking, calling their attention to their own use of the present tense, only to be met with incredulous denials. “I don’t do that,” they’ve said. “Do I?”
Maybe I’m more aware of past versus present since I began writing the ScotShop Mysteries. A Wee Murder in My Shop, the first book in the series, introduces Macbeath Donlevy Freusach Findlay Macearachar Macpheidiran of Clan Farquharson, otherwise known as Dirk. Did I mention that Dirk is the wonderful ghost of a 14th century Scotsman? The 14th century was a time during which the English language changed drastically, from the almost entirely incomprehensible (to us) Old English to the Middle English used by Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales.
I’ve had great fun listening to Dirk talk and watching as he struggles to integrate 21st-century Americanisms into his ghostly psyche. He’s in the process of gradually enhancing the vocabulary of Peggy Winn, owner of the ScotShop, with words like whinge and beceorest. When Dirk tells Peggy Ye needna whinge so, or Why d’ye beceorest when ye canna do any the thing about it? she can usually decipher the meaning from the context in which he says these things. (I’m happy to report that the narrator for the WEE MURDER audiobook got Dirk’s voice and accent exactly right.) Whinge and beceorest are similar in the same way complain and grumble are—they’re both nuances of the same sort of idea. But each one adds its own flavor, one closer to a whine; the other nearer to a grouch. And those nuances are part of the beauty of the English language.
For decades, I’ve had a personal vendetta against the Smurfs, who taught an entire generation that the use of an exact word was never necessary when one could simply use smurf as a verb, a noun, any part of speech. Now, I don’t consider this move to expressing oneself almost exclusively in present tense to be nearly as insidious as the dumbing-down of our language by the little blue critters (or rather, by their TV script-writers). It does give me pause though, to wonder whatever will happen to a handy little word like had. As every writer knows, or should know, when we write in past tense, if we have to go even farther back in time, we stick in a had (or two) to make the timing clear. After that, we can dispense with the auxiliary word. Here’s an example:
Gladiola Grim played the piano at every social function. We hated it. Her sense of rhythm had always been atrocious, but the last time I heard her play, just before she was murdered, she exceeded our lowest expectations when she executed her variations on Moonlight Sonata. I use the term executed judiciously, of course, since poor Beethoven would have gleefully strangled her if the stranger wearing a black cape hadn’t obliged shortly after the musical fiasco.
There is no need, as you can see, to put another had before the word exceeded. The timing is perfectly clear. Without the past tenses and past perfects, though, the chronology becomes harder to follow:
Gladiola Grim plays the piano at every social function. We hate it. Her sense of rhythm is atrocious, but the last time I’m listening to her play, just before she’s murdered, she exceeds our lowest expectations when she executes her variations on Moonlight Sonata. I use the term executes judiciously, of course. Poor Beethoven misses out on strangling her because the stranger wearing a black cape beats him to it.
I would like to keep had in the running. If English has to evolve—and what language doesn’t?—Dirk and I would vote for clarity rather than what I see as a lazy approach to tenses.
Fran Stewart is the author of the Biscuit McKee Mysteries – Gray as Ashes is the seventh book in that series – as well as a standalone mystery – A Slaying Song Tonight, set during the Great Depression. Her non-fiction work includes From the Tip of My Pen: A Workbook for Writers. Her new ScotShop Mystery Series from Berkley Press began with A Wee Murder in My Shop. The second book in that series, A Wee Doe of Death, was released in early 2016. Book number 3 of the ScotShop Mysteries, A Wee Homicide in the Hotel, will be released February 7, 2017. Fran lives quietly with various rescued cats beside a creek on the other side of Hog Mountain, Georgia, northeast of Atlanta. She is a member of the National League of American Pen Women, Sisters in Crime, and Mystery Writers of America. Read more about Fran and her works at www.franstewart.com
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration / Alex Dolan
As writers we know that inspiration can come from anywhere at anytime. It’s important to be alert and soak in the details of the world around you. Often times we draw inspiration from our non-fictional surroundings to power us through creating our fictitious tale. In this week’s guest blog, author Alex Dolan shares the story of how he got inspiration for his upcoming novel, The Empress of Tempera, and how you can get inspiration for yourself.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration
How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration
By Alex Dolan
A few years ago I wandered into the Weinstein Gallery in San Francisco to kill time during lunch. I was staring at the work of an artist I’d never seen, and noting my interest, one of the staff shared his story.
The artist was a man named Rudolf Bauer, a German painter who rose to fame before World War II, and someone who was influential to some artists who have become household names, such as Kandinsky, Chagall and Klee. In fact, Bauer was so significant, his primary benefactor, Solomon Guggenheim, commissioned Frank Llloyd Wright to design a modern art museum on 5th Avenue in Manhattan to house his collection.
Yep, that Guggenheim Museum was built for this guy. So why haven’t you ever heard of Bauer?
He was a popular painter while Hitler was coming to power. As an artist, especially an artist whose primary benefactor was a Jewish American, he was a target. He was arrested for his “degenerate” art and spent several months in a Gestapo prison. With help from Guggenheim, Bauer found passage to the United States, and signed a contract that set him up with a house and Duesenberg convertible.
The problem was, Bauer didn’t read English, and signed a contract he didn’t fully understand. The contract also stated that Bauer couldn’t earn any income in the U.S. as a painter. All of the money he made through his works would go to the Guggenheim family.
Bauer sunk into depression and stopped painting, and the Guggenheims ended up boxing up the collection and storing it in the basement of the museum, where it festered in anonymity for decades. It was only when the museum changed curators and unboxed the archive that they rediscovered an artist who had been condemned to obscurity by one of the wealthiest families in America.
I thought the story was fascinating. I went back several times to get more details, and read as much as I could about Bauer. In the end, the story provided the seed that grew into my novel, The Empress of Tempera (Sept. 13, 2016 release).
I didn’t want to retell Bauer’s story (just in case anyone’s wondering if I just gave spoilers for my own book), but I was driven by the idea that a family with wealth and influence could expunge the memory of a prominent artist. It’s an old story — the rich versus the underprivileged. I played with the idea of what might happen if a painting from a forgotten artist was discovered, and that discovery stirred up a blood feud that had been dormant for decades. David and Goliath. Rocky and Apollo Creed. The underdog story. I added my own spin on it by inserting a protagonist who was a kleptomaniac, who becomes obsessed with the painting and needs to steal it for herself. Then, the mayhem was easy to release.
All of this came from a willingness to go somewhere new and talk to someone.
I believe that fiction and storytelling is a way of mirroring back what’s happening in our world. So it makes sense that the inspiration for your next great story can come from the real world. As part of my show, “Thrill Seekers,” I interview thriller writers who have been at this for a lot longer than I have, and I often hear how they found their initial creative inspiration in a headline, or when they were visiting a new place, or when they had a novel experience. All of these writers seem to have the universal trait of being curious to digest what’s happening in the world. Eventually, something they learned or someone they met worms its way into fiction.
I also think it’s easier to find inspiration when you’re looking for it. So, I’m nosy. If someone’s telling me something interesting, I ask her for all the gruesome details. I’ll let him talk himself hoarse. Maybe this will become the start of something wonderful, and maybe I’ll just learn something interesting to share with another friend. Eventually, when I listen hard enough, I find something.
I recommend anyone who’s trying to come up with new story ideas to soak up as much of the world around you as possible. The more you read, watch, talk, and listen, the more likely the Isaac Newton apple will fall on your head.
Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors only the prepared mind,” and I agree. Inspiration can find you at any moment. But it helps if you’re looking for it.
Alex Dolan is the author of The Empress of Tempera and The Euthanist. He’s also a California-based musician and the host of Thrill Seekers, part of Authors on the Air Global Radio Network. Reach him here.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration / Alex Dolan
As writers we know that inspiration can come from anywhere at anytime. It's important to be alert and soak in the details of the world around you. Often times we draw inspiration from our non-fictional surroundings to power us through creating our fictitious tale. In this week’s guest blog, author Alex Dolan shares the story of how he got inspiration for his upcoming novel, The Empress of Tempera, and how you can get inspiration for yourself.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration
How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration
By Alex Dolan
A few years ago I wandered into the Weinstein Gallery in San Francisco to kill time during lunch. I was staring at the work of an artist I’d never seen, and noting my interest, one of the staff shared his story.
The artist was a man named Rudolf Bauer, a German painter who rose to fame before World War II, and someone who was influential to some artists who have become household names, such as Kandinsky, Chagall and Klee. In fact, Bauer was so significant, his primary benefactor, Solomon Guggenheim, commissioned Frank Llloyd Wright to design a modern art museum on 5th Avenue in Manhattan to house his collection.
Yep, that Guggenheim Museum was built for this guy. So why haven’t you ever heard of Bauer?
He was a popular painter while Hitler was coming to power. As an artist, especially an artist whose primary benefactor was a Jewish American, he was a target. He was arrested for his “degenerate” art and spent several months in a Gestapo prison. With help from Guggenheim, Bauer found passage to the United States, and signed a contract that set him up with a house and Duesenberg convertible.
The problem was, Bauer didn’t read English, and signed a contract he didn’t fully understand. The contract also stated that Bauer couldn’t earn any income in the U.S. as a painter. All of the money he made through his works would go to the Guggenheim family.
Bauer sunk into depression and stopped painting, and the Guggenheims ended up boxing up the collection and storing it in the basement of the museum, where it festered in anonymity for decades. It was only when the museum changed curators and unboxed the archive that they rediscovered an artist who had been condemned to obscurity by one of the wealthiest families in America.
I thought the story was fascinating. I went back several times to get more details, and read as much as I could about Bauer. In the end, the story provided the seed that grew into my novel, The Empress of Tempera (Sept. 13, 2016 release).
I didn’t want to retell Bauer’s story (just in case anyone’s wondering if I just gave spoilers for my own book), but I was driven by the idea that a family with wealth and influence could expunge the memory of a prominent artist. It’s an old story — the rich versus the underprivileged. I played with the idea of what might happen if a painting from a forgotten artist was discovered, and that discovery stirred up a blood feud that had been dormant for decades. David and Goliath. Rocky and Apollo Creed. The underdog story. I added my own spin on it by inserting a protagonist who was a kleptomaniac, who becomes obsessed with the painting and needs to steal it for herself. Then, the mayhem was easy to release.
All of this came from a willingness to go somewhere new and talk to someone.
I believe that fiction and storytelling is a way of mirroring back what’s happening in our world. So it makes sense that the inspiration for your next great story can come from the real world. As part of my show, “Thrill Seekers,” I interview thriller writers who have been at this for a lot longer than I have, and I often hear how they found their initial creative inspiration in a headline, or when they were visiting a new place, or when they had a novel experience. All of these writers seem to have the universal trait of being curious to digest what’s happening in the world. Eventually, something they learned or someone they met worms its way into fiction.
I also think it’s easier to find inspiration when you’re looking for it. So, I’m nosy. If someone’s telling me something interesting, I ask her for all the gruesome details. I’ll let him talk himself hoarse. Maybe this will become the start of something wonderful, and maybe I’ll just learn something interesting to share with another friend. Eventually, when I listen hard enough, I find something.
I recommend anyone who’s trying to come up with new story ideas to soak up as much of the world around you as possible. The more you read, watch, talk, and listen, the more likely the Isaac Newton apple will fall on your head.
Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors only the prepared mind,” and I agree. Inspiration can find you at any moment. But it helps if you’re looking for it.
Alex Dolan is the author of The Empress of Tempera and The Euthanist. He’s also a California-based musician and the host of Thrill Seekers, part of Authors on the Air Global Radio Network. Reach him here.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration / Alex Dolan
As writers we know that inspiration can come from anywhere at anytime. It's important to be alert and soak in the details of the world around you. Often times we draw inspiration from our non-fictional surroundings to power us through creating our fictitious tale. In this week’s guest blog, author Alex Dolan shares the story of how he got inspiration for his upcoming novel, The Empress of Tempera, and how you can get inspiration for yourself.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration
How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration
By Alex Dolan
A few years ago I wandered into the Weinstein Gallery in San Francisco to kill time during lunch. I was staring at the work of an artist I’d never seen, and noting my interest, one of the staff shared his story.
The artist was a man named Rudolf Bauer, a German painter who rose to fame before World War II, and someone who was influential to some artists who have become household names, such as Kandinsky, Chagall and Klee. In fact, Bauer was so significant, his primary benefactor, Solomon Guggenheim, commissioned Frank Llloyd Wright to design a modern art museum on 5th Avenue in Manhattan to house his collection.
Yep, that Guggenheim Museum was built for this guy. So why haven’t you ever heard of Bauer?
He was a popular painter while Hitler was coming to power. As an artist, especially an artist whose primary benefactor was a Jewish American, he was a target. He was arrested for his “degenerate” art and spent several months in a Gestapo prison. With help from Guggenheim, Bauer found passage to the United States, and signed a contract that set him up with a house and Duesenberg convertible.
The problem was, Bauer didn’t read English, and signed a contract he didn’t fully understand. The contract also stated that Bauer couldn’t earn any income in the U.S. as a painter. All of the money he made through his works would go to the Guggenheim family.
Bauer sunk into depression and stopped painting, and the Guggenheims ended up boxing up the collection and storing it in the basement of the museum, where it festered in anonymity for decades. It was only when the museum changed curators and unboxed the archive that they rediscovered an artist who had been condemned to obscurity by one of the wealthiest families in America.
I thought the story was fascinating. I went back several times to get more details, and read as much as I could about Bauer. In the end, the story provided the seed that grew into my novel, The Empress of Tempera (Sept. 13, 2016 release).
I didn’t want to retell Bauer’s story (just in case anyone’s wondering if I just gave spoilers for my own book), but I was driven by the idea that a family with wealth and influence could expunge the memory of a prominent artist. It’s an old story — the rich versus the underprivileged. I played with the idea of what might happen if a painting from a forgotten artist was discovered, and that discovery stirred up a blood feud that had been dormant for decades. David and Goliath. Rocky and Apollo Creed. The underdog story. I added my own spin on it by inserting a protagonist who was a kleptomaniac, who becomes obsessed with the painting and needs to steal it for herself. Then, the mayhem was easy to release.
All of this came from a willingness to go somewhere new and talk to someone.
I believe that fiction and storytelling is a way of mirroring back what’s happening in our world. So it makes sense that the inspiration for your next great story can come from the real world. As part of my show, “Thrill Seekers,” I interview thriller writers who have been at this for a lot longer than I have, and I often hear how they found their initial creative inspiration in a headline, or when they were visiting a new place, or when they had a novel experience. All of these writers seem to have the universal trait of being curious to digest what’s happening in the world. Eventually, something they learned or someone they met worms its way into fiction.
I also think it’s easier to find inspiration when you’re looking for it. So, I’m nosy. If someone’s telling me something interesting, I ask her for all the gruesome details. I’ll let him talk himself hoarse. Maybe this will become the start of something wonderful, and maybe I’ll just learn something interesting to share with another friend. Eventually, when I listen hard enough, I find something.
I recommend anyone who’s trying to come up with new story ideas to soak up as much of the world around you as possible. The more you read, watch, talk, and listen, the more likely the Isaac Newton apple will fall on your head.
Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors only the prepared mind,” and I agree. Inspiration can find you at any moment. But it helps if you’re looking for it.
Alex Dolan is the author of The Empress of Tempera and The Euthanist. He’s also a California-based musician and the host of Thrill Seekers, part of Authors on the Air Global Radio Network. Reach him here.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration / Alex Dolan
As writers we know that inspiration can come from anywhere at anytime. It's important to be alert and soak in the details of the world around you. Often times we draw inspiration from our non-fictional surroundings to power us through creating our fictitious tale. In this week’s guest blog, author Alex Dolan shares the story of how he got inspiration for his upcoming novel, The Empress of Tempera, and how you can get inspiration for yourself.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration
How to Prepare for Accidental Inspiration
By Alex Dolan
A few years ago I wandered into the Weinstein Gallery in San Francisco to kill time during lunch. I was staring at the work of an artist I’d never seen, and noting my interest, one of the staff shared his story.
The artist was a man named Rudolf Bauer, a German painter who rose to fame before World War II, and someone who was influential to some artists who have become household names, such as Kandinsky, Chagall and Klee. In fact, Bauer was so significant, his primary benefactor, Solomon Guggenheim, commissioned Frank Llloyd Wright to design a modern art museum on 5th Avenue in Manhattan to house his collection.
Yep, that Guggenheim Museum was built for this guy. So why haven’t you ever heard of Bauer?
He was a popular painter while Hitler was coming to power. As an artist, especially an artist whose primary benefactor was a Jewish American, he was a target. He was arrested for his “degenerate” art and spent several months in a Gestapo prison. With help from Guggenheim, Bauer found passage to the United States, and signed a contract that set him up with a house and Duesenberg convertible.
The problem was, Bauer didn’t read English, and signed a contract he didn’t fully understand. The contract also stated that Bauer couldn’t earn any income in the U.S. as a painter. All of the money he made through his works would go to the Guggenheim family.
Bauer sunk into depression and stopped painting, and the Guggenheims ended up boxing up the collection and storing it in the basement of the museum, where it festered in anonymity for decades. It was only when the museum changed curators and unboxed the archive that they rediscovered an artist who had been condemned to obscurity by one of the wealthiest families in America.
I thought the story was fascinating. I went back several times to get more details, and read as much as I could about Bauer. In the end, the story provided the seed that grew into my novel, The Empress of Tempera (Sept. 13, 2016 release).
I didn’t want to retell Bauer’s story (just in case anyone’s wondering if I just gave spoilers for my own book), but I was driven by the idea that a family with wealth and influence could expunge the memory of a prominent artist. It’s an old story — the rich versus the underprivileged. I played with the idea of what might happen if a painting from a forgotten artist was discovered, and that discovery stirred up a blood feud that had been dormant for decades. David and Goliath. Rocky and Apollo Creed. The underdog story. I added my own spin on it by inserting a protagonist who was a kleptomaniac, who becomes obsessed with the painting and needs to steal it for herself. Then, the mayhem was easy to release.
All of this came from a willingness to go somewhere new and talk to someone.
I believe that fiction and storytelling is a way of mirroring back what’s happening in our world. So it makes sense that the inspiration for your next great story can come from the real world. As part of my show, “Thrill Seekers,” I interview thriller writers who have been at this for a lot longer than I have, and I often hear how they found their initial creative inspiration in a headline, or when they were visiting a new place, or when they had a novel experience. All of these writers seem to have the universal trait of being curious to digest what’s happening in the world. Eventually, something they learned or someone they met worms its way into fiction.
I also think it’s easier to find inspiration when you’re looking for it. So, I’m nosy. If someone’s telling me something interesting, I ask her for all the gruesome details. I’ll let him talk himself hoarse. Maybe this will become the start of something wonderful, and maybe I’ll just learn something interesting to share with another friend. Eventually, when I listen hard enough, I find something.
I recommend anyone who’s trying to come up with new story ideas to soak up as much of the world around you as possible. The more you read, watch, talk, and listen, the more likely the Isaac Newton apple will fall on your head.
Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors only the prepared mind,” and I agree. Inspiration can find you at any moment. But it helps if you’re looking for it.
Alex Dolan is the author of The Empress of Tempera and The Euthanist. He’s also a California-based musician and the host of Thrill Seekers, part of Authors on the Air Global Radio Network. Reach him here.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Murder as a Secondary Storyline in the Novel / Shana Thornton
Sometimes when we get done writing we sit back, look at the finished product, and wonder what’s missing. We wonder what is keeping this story from being the suspenseful piece of work that we want it to be. Often times, that answer can be that a story is perhaps too linear. It can, of course, be comfortable to stay in our comfort zone and stick with an easy-to-write plot. What we sometimes must do instead is keep the reader turning pages with a secondary plot. In this week’s guest blog, author Shana Thornton shares her experience with doing just that.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Murder as a Secondary Storyline in the Novel
By Shana Thornton
Writers often say they have a finished novel, but it’s missing something to make it a more suspenseful story. Maybe there’s not enough action in the book to hold your attention as the writer, and your fears could materialize if a reader stops reading your book due to lack of tension to make them turn those pages. Consider adding a crime, specifically, a murder as a secondary storyline. The murder does not have to happen to your character or even someone they know, and it can still be a captivating, secondary plot line for your readers.
When murder is a secondary storyline in your novel, you enrich your story with an event that could motivate your character(s) to make different choices. As with real life, when a murder takes place nearby, people are naturally preoccupied by the investigation happening in their community or on the news. Your main character could easily become obsessed with a murder, and you reveal more about the character’s mind to the reader. Simply by showing fear in the character’s mind, you increase the tension of the story.
A murder as a secondary story line adds suspense to a book that may not have any or enough, and the murder keeps the reader on edge, wondering if the crime will become more important and in essence, take over the story. For example, in my first novel, Multiple Exposure, my main point for writing the book was to show how fear and war affect the family members of soldiers who are deployed. I wanted to focus on the heightened state of fear caused by 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I decided to show those themes through a narrator, Ellen Masters, whose husband is a Special Forces medic and photographer. He is deployed for the majority of the present-day action of the book. During that time, Ellen teaches classes at a university and three students are brutally murdered at a park near her home.
This secondary plot line can also help with character development. The character experiences fear in my book. For Ellen, the murder becomes an obsession that leads to heightened anxiety. When she arrives home, she looks under the beds, in the closets, behind doors, waiting for a murderer to come after her. You could also show a character’s compassion, courage, and/or shock and disconnect to a murder.
You could also push the suspense beyond a focus on the main character(s), and develop the tension in the larger community. For my book, not only does the reader face the murder and fear through Ellen’s eyes, but she goes on to show the reactions of the community where she lives. She describes how the college students on campus react to the loss of the murdered students. This reveals more about the setting and the people who live in that setting. In the reader’s mind, the story can become expansive as you show the community, press coverage, and how groups deal with the aftermath of a murder in differing ways.
Two storylines can be intimidating, especially in the beginning of the writing process. To maintain both storylines, keep the main plot line simple and weave in enough to entertain your readers and keep them guessing about what may happen next. Eventually, the two storylines will become entwined, even if only in the character’s mind. You will create added depth and tension to your characters and the overall story.
One common mistake when pitching a book with a secondary storyline is that we writers often forget to highlight that plot line when describing the book. Recently, I was at a book event and continuously pitched my book as a war novel from the point of view of a soldier’s spouse. Later, as more readers stopped to talk, someone asked me if I had any murder mysteries, and that's when I realized that I had been giving a book spiel that didn’t include the murder suspense part of my novel. Work on a pitch for your book that incorporates both storylines into the description. Chances are that readers will be interested in one or the other. You’ll gain readers who enjoy the murder mystery/suspense side of your story, and they will turn those pages as quickly as they can read the words to find out what happens next.
Shana Thornton is the author of two novels, Poke Sallet Queen & the Family Medicine Wheel (2015) and Multiple Exposure (2012), and co-author of the nonfiction creativity book, Seasons of Balance: On Creativity & Mindfulness (2016). Shana is a native middle-Tennessean. She earned an M.A. in English from Austin Peay State University. She was the Editor-in-Chief of Her Circle Ezine, an online women's magazine featuring authors, artists, and activists. She is the owner of Thorncraft Publishing, an independent publisher of literature written by women (thorncraftpublishing.com). Shana lives in Tennessee with her family.
To read Shana’s interviews with women authors and activists, visit Her Circle.
To read more of her nonfiction, visit her blog.
Follow her on Twitter @shanathornton
Instagram @shana_trailbalance
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Murder as a Secondary Storyline in the Novel / Shana Thornton
Sometimes when we get done writing we sit back, look at the finished product, and wonder what's missing. We wonder what is keeping this story from being the suspenseful piece of work that we want it to be. Often times, that answer can be that a story is perhaps too linear. It can, of course, be comfortable to stay in our comfort zone and stick with an easy-to-write plot. What we sometimes must do instead is keep the reader turning pages with a secondary plot. In this week's guest blog, author Shana Thornton shares her experience with doing just that.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Murder as a Secondary Storyline in the Novel
Murder as a Secondary Storyline in the Novel
By Shana Thornton
Writers often say they have a finished novel, but it’s missing something to make it a more suspenseful story. Maybe there’s not enough action in the book to hold your attention as the writer, and your fears could materialize if a reader stops reading your book due to lack of tension to make them turn those pages. Consider adding a crime, specifically, a murder as a secondary storyline. The murder does not have to happen to your character or even someone they know, and it can still be a captivating, secondary plot line for your readers.
When murder is a secondary storyline in your novel, you enrich your story with an event that could motivate your character(s) to make different choices. As with real life, when a murder takes place nearby, people are naturally preoccupied by the investigation happening in their community or on the news. Your main character could easily become obsessed with a murder, and you reveal more about the character’s mind to the reader. Simply by showing fear in the character’s mind, you increase the tension of the story.
A murder as a secondary story line adds suspense to a book that may not have any or enough, and the murder keeps the reader on edge, wondering if the crime will become more important and in es
sence, take over the story. For example, in my first novel, Multiple Exposure, my main point for writing the book was to show how fear and war affect the family members of soldiers who are deployed. I wanted to focus on the heightened state of fear caused by 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I decided to show those themes through a narrator, Ellen Masters, whose husband is a Special Forces medic and photographer. He is deployed for the majority of the present-day action of the book. During that time, Ellen teaches classes at a university and three students are brutally murdered at a park near her home.
This secondary plot line can also help with character development. The character experiences fear in my book. For Ellen, the murder becomes an obsession that leads to heightened anxiety. When she arrives home, she looks under the beds, in the closets, behind doors, waiting for a murderer to come after her. You could also show a character’s compassion, courage, and/or shock and disconnect to a murder.
You could also push the suspense beyond a focus on the main character(s), and develop the tension in the larger community. For my book, not only does the reader face the murder and fear through Ellen’s eyes, but she goes on to show the reactions of the community where she lives. She describes how the college students on campus react to the loss of the murdered students. This reveals more about the setting and the people who live in that setting. In the reader’s mind, the story can become expansive as you show the community, press coverage, and how groups deal with the aftermath of a murder in differing ways.
Two storylines can be intimidating, especially in the beginning of the writing process. To maintain both storylines, keep the main plot line simple and weave in enough to entertain your readers and keep them guessing about what may happen next. Eventually, the two storylines will become entwined, even if only in the character’s mind. You will create added depth and tension to your characters and the overall story.
One common mistake when pitching a book with a secondary storyline is that we writers often forget to highlight that plot line when describing the book. Recently, I was at a book event and continuously pitched my book as a war novel from the point of view of a soldier’s spouse. Later, as more readers stopped to talk, someone asked me if I had any murder mysteries, and that's when I realized that I had been giving a book spiel that didn’t include the murder suspense part of my novel. Work on a pitch for your book that incorporates both storylines into the description. Chances are that readers will be interested in one or the other. You’ll gain readers who enjoy the murder mystery/suspense side of your story, and they will turn those pages as quickly as they can read the words to find out what happens next.
Shana Thornton is the author of two novels, Poke Sallet Queen & the Family Medicine Wheel (2015) and Multiple Exposure (2012), and co-author of the nonfiction creativity book, Seasons of Balance: On Creativity & Mindfulness (2016). Shana is a native middle-Tennessean. She earned an M.A. in English from Austin Peay State University. She was the Editor-in-Chief of Her Circle Ezine, an online women's magazine featuring authors, artists, and activists. She is the owner of Thorncraft Publishing, an independent publisher of literature written by women (thorncraftpublishing.com). Shana lives in Tennessee with her family.
To read Shana’s interviews with women authors and activists, visit Her Circle.
To read more of her nonfiction, visit her blog.
Follow her on Twitter @shanathornton
Instagram @shana_trailbalance
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Murder as a Secondary Storyline in the Novel / Shana Thornton
Sometimes when we get done writing we sit back, look at the finished product, and wonder what's missing. We wonder what is keeping this story from being the suspenseful piece of work that we want it to be. Often times, that answer can be that a story is perhaps too linear. It can, of course, be comfortable to stay in our comfort zone and stick with an easy-to-write plot. What we sometimes must do instead is keep the reader turning pages with a secondary plot. In this week's guest blog, author Shana Thornton shares her experience with doing just that.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Murder as a Secondary Storyline in the Novel
Murder as a Secondary Storyline in the Novel
By Shana Thornton
Writers often say they have a finished novel, but it’s missing something to make it a more suspenseful story. Maybe there’s not enough action in the book to hold your attention as the writer, and your fears could materialize if a reader stops reading your book due to lack of tension to make them turn those pages. Consider adding a crime, specifically, a murder as a secondary storyline. The murder does not have to happen to your character or even someone they know, and it can still be a captivating, secondary plot line for your readers.
When murder is a secondary storyline in your novel, you enrich your story with an event that could motivate your character(s) to make different choices. As with real life, when a murder takes place nearby, people are naturally preoccupied by the investigation happening in their community or on the news. Your main character could easily become obsessed with a murder, and you reveal more about the character’s mind to the reader. Simply by showing fear in the character’s mind, you increase the tension of the story.
A murder as a secondary story line adds suspense to a book that may not have any or enough, and the murder keeps the reader on edge, wondering if the crime will become more important and in es
sence, take over the story. For example, in my first novel, Multiple Exposure, my main point for writing the book was to show how fear and war affect the family members of soldiers who are deployed. I wanted to focus on the heightened state of fear caused by 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I decided to show those themes through a narrator, Ellen Masters, whose husband is a Special Forces medic and photographer. He is deployed for the majority of the present-day action of the book. During that time, Ellen teaches classes at a university and three students are brutally murdered at a park near her home.
This secondary plot line can also help with character development. The character experiences fear in my book. For Ellen, the murder becomes an obsession that leads to heightened anxiety. When she arrives home, she looks under the beds, in the closets, behind doors, waiting for a murderer to come after her. You could also show a character’s compassion, courage, and/or shock and disconnect to a murder.
You could also push the suspense beyond a focus on the main character(s), and develop the tension in the larger community. For my book, not only does the reader face the murder and fear through Ellen’s eyes, but she goes on to show the reactions of the community where she lives. She describes how the college students on campus react to the loss of the murdered students. This reveals more about the setting and the people who live in that setting. In the reader’s mind, the story can become expansive as you show the community, press coverage, and how groups deal with the aftermath of a murder in differing ways.
Two storylines can be intimidating, especially in the beginning of the writing process. To maintain both storylines, keep the main plot line simple and weave in enough to entertain your readers and keep them guessing about what may happen next. Eventually, the two storylines will become entwined, even if only in the character’s mind. You will create added depth and tension to your characters and the overall story.
One common mistake when pitching a book with a secondary storyline is that we writers often forget to highlight that plot line when describing the book. Recently, I was at a book event and continuously pitched my book as a war novel from the point of view of a soldier’s spouse. Later, as more readers stopped to talk, someone asked me if I had any murder mysteries, and that's when I realized that I had been giving a book spiel that didn’t include the murder suspense part of my novel. Work on a pitch for your book that incorporates both storylines into the description. Chances are that readers will be interested in one or the other. You’ll gain readers who enjoy the murder mystery/suspense side of your story, and they will turn those pages as quickly as they can read the words to find out what happens next.
Shana Thornton is the author of two novels, Poke Sallet Queen & the Family Medicine Wheel (2015) and Multiple Exposure (2012), and co-author of the nonfiction creativity book, Seasons of Balance: On Creativity & Mindfulness (2016). Shana is a native middle-Tennessean. She earned an M.A. in English from Austin Peay State University. She was the Editor-in-Chief of Her Circle Ezine, an online women's magazine featuring authors, artists, and activists. She is the owner of Thorncraft Publishing, an independent publisher of literature written by women (thorncraftpublishing.com). Shana lives in Tennessee with her family.
To read Shana’s interviews with women authors and activists, visit Her Circle.
To read more of her nonfiction, visit her blog.
Follow her on Twitter @shanathornton
Instagram @shana_trailbalance
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Murder as a Secondary Storyline in the Novel / Shana Thornton
Sometimes when we get done writing we sit back, look at the finished product, and wonder what's missing. We wonder what is keeping this story from being the suspenseful piece of work that we want it to be. Often times, that answer can be that a story is perhaps too linear. It can, of course, be comfortable to stay in our comfort zone and stick with an easy-to-write plot. What we sometimes must do instead is keep the reader turning pages with a secondary plot. In this week's guest blog, author Shana Thornton shares her experience with doing just that.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Murder as a Secondary Storyline in the Novel
Murder as a Secondary Storyline in the Novel
By Shana Thornton
Writers often say they have a finished novel, but it’s missing something to make it a more suspenseful story. Maybe there’s not enough action in the book to hold your attention as the writer, and your fears could materialize if a reader stops reading your book due to lack of tension to make them turn those pages. Consider adding a crime, specifically, a murder as a secondary storyline. The murder does not have to happen to your character or even someone they know, and it can still be a captivating, secondary plot line for your readers.
When murder is a secondary storyline in your novel, you enrich your story with an event that could motivate your character(s) to make different choices. As with real life, when a murder takes place nearby, people are naturally preoccupied by the investigation happening in their community or on the news. Your main character could easily become obsessed with a murder, and you reveal more about the character’s mind to the reader. Simply by showing fear in the character’s mind, you increase the tension of the story.
A murder as a secondary story line adds suspense to a book that may not have any or enough, and the murder keeps the reader on edge, wondering if the crime will become more important and in essence, take over the story. For example, in my first novel, Multiple Exposure, my main point for writing the book was to show how fear and war affect the family members of soldiers who are deployed. I wanted to focus on the heightened state of fear caused by 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I decided to show those themes through a narrator, Ellen Masters, whose husband is a Special Forces medic and photographer. He is deployed for the majority of the present-day action of the book. During that time, Ellen teaches classes at a university and three students are brutally murdered at a park near her home.
This secondary plot line can also help with character development. The character experiences fear in my book. For Ellen, the murder becomes an obsession that leads to heightened anxiety. When she arrives home, she looks under the beds, in the closets, behind doors, waiting for a murderer to come after her. You could also show a character’s compassion, courage, and/or shock and disconnect to a murder.
You could also push the suspense beyond a focus on the main character(s), and develop the tension in the larger community. For my book, not only does the reader face the murder and fear through Ellen’s eyes, but she goes on to show the reactions of the community where she lives. She describes how the college students on campus react to the loss of the murdered students. This reveals more about the setting and the people who live in that setting. In the reader’s mind, the story can become expansive as you show the community, press coverage, and how groups deal with the aftermath of a murder in differing ways.
Two storylines can be intimidating, especially in the beginning of the writing process. To maintain both storylines, keep the main plot line simple and weave in enough to entertain your readers and keep them guessing about what may happen next. Eventually, the two storylines will become entwined, even if only in the character’s mind. You will create added depth and tension to your characters and the overall story.
One common mistake when pitching a book with a secondary storyline is that we writers often forget to highlight that plot line when describing the book. Recently, I was at a book event and continuously pitched my book as a war novel from the point of view of a soldier’s spouse. Later, as more readers stopped to talk, someone asked me if I had any murder mysteries, and that's when I realized that I had been giving a book spiel that didn’t include the murder suspense part of my novel. Work on a pitch for your book that incorporates both storylines into the description. Chances are that readers will be interested in one or the other. You’ll gain readers who enjoy the murder mystery/suspense side of your story, and they will turn those pages as quickly as they can read the words to find out what happens next.
Shana Thornton is the author of two novels, Poke Sallet Queen & the Family Medicine Wheel (2015) and Multiple Exposure (2012), and co-author of the nonfiction creativity book, Seasons of Balance: On Creativity & Mindfulness (2016). Shana is a native middle-Tennessean. She earned an M.A. in English from Austin Peay State University. She was the Editor-in-Chief of Her Circle Ezine, an online women's magazine featuring authors, artists, and activists. She is the owner of Thorncraft Publishing, an independent publisher of literature written by women (thorncraftpublishing.com). Shana lives in Tennessee with her family.
To read Shana’s interviews with women authors and activists, visit Her Circle.
To read more of her nonfiction, visit her blog.
Follow her on Twitter @shanathornton
Instagram @shana_trailbalance
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Writer Research - Is it Worth the Effort? / DiAnn Mills
When writing we have numerous factors to think about before we can accurately translate our ideas to paper. Sometimes it can help to itemize things and think independently about each aspect of a scene in order to make everything come together and fit naturally. Few things can take away from a story more than something that seems out of place or factually inaccurate. In this week’s guest blog, author DiAnn Mills discusses her in depth knowledge and experience with doing proper research before you start writing.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville MagazineWriter Research - Is it Worth the Effort?
Writer Research - Is it Worth the Effort?
By DiAnn Mills
A novelist who explores research, explores life — and life is story. Research allows us to deepen characterization by guiding the character toward crucial decisions. Plot twists with credible and realistic points keep the reader glued to the page. Dialogue and point of view offer unique perspectives about the story line. Setting with an antagonistic edge reinforces story structure. Add emotion and body language with a distinct purpose, and detailed research takes a priority in the writing process.
Writing is a challenge beyond technique. Those tools of the craft can be learned behind a computer screen or sitting in a comfortable chair at a writers’ event. But research means lacing up our boots and stepping into an unfamiliar world.
A writer needs three essentials before scaling a mountain called research:
A positive attitude.
A temporary personality change from introvert to extrovert.
A list of questions that demand answers.
The easy path, and that’s not necessarily bad, is to search the Internet. Accuracy doesn’t take a backseat to any research, so writers verify facts and use trusted sites to eliminate errors.
But the real grit of the process is reaching out to experts. Making phone calls and visiting where our characters work, play, and fear. This is the plus that adds a smile to our reader’s face. Since making a commitment to research, my stories stand solid.
In my latest novel, Deadly Encounter, the first book in the FBI Task Force series, I had to stretch beyond my comfort zone. The storyline involves Houston’s FBI forming a task force with the health department and Laboratory Response Network (LRN) to determine the source of a genetically engineered disease.
My hero is FBI and my heroine is a veterinarian. The best place for me to start was at the beginning:
Houston’s FBI
Veterinarian who volunteers for Houston’s Airport Rangers
Houston Airport Rangers
Houston’s Health Department
Laboratory Response Network (LRN) — which works with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Where my characters live — city, country, neighborhood etc.
Sorta makes a writer tired when our goal is to write an incredibly suspenseful story that foremost entertains the reader.
Some years ago, I forged a relationship with Houston’s FBI, specifically the media coordinator. She expressed the FBI’s goal to enlist community support to keep Houston safe and protected. She’d help me with every novel containing FBI elements to assure accuracy. She’s read each story and offered feedback — even typos. With Deadly Encounter, she and I met for breakfast with the director of domestic terrorism. Oh, the stories I could write simply from this man’s enthusiasm and passion for his job. In short, this treasured friendship has given me story ideas and relationships that will last long after a novel is completed.
Let me digress for a moment. We writers love to talk about what we do, right? Every person I’ve ever interviewed was eager to discuss his/her expertise.
Back to my research for this novel …
In my association with the FBI and being a part of their Citizens Cadet Program, I made great friends with those involved in various careers. One of my new friends works with animals and is a volunteer for Houston’s Airport Rangers. She helped me with veterinarian care and insight into the Airport Rangers. Stacy (yes I named my heroine after her) shared some of her life experiences, and a few of those made it into the book.
George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) Airport Rangers, an equestrian volunteer program, was created to keep the airport safe through community involvement. They are the only group of this kind in the US. The volunteers ride outside the perimeter of the airport in twos and threes. Their role is to report anything unusual or potentially dangerous to law enforcement. I visited their stables, took pics, and simply enjoyed myself. You can read about the group here.
I chatted with the health department about their policies and methods of keeping the people healthy and informed as it pertained to my story.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) required phone calls and e-mails to learn about their involvement in a disease threatening environment. They referred me to the LRN, and that research brought me a third point of view character.
Are you tired yet? Or excited about researching your next novel? As I write this, my mind is whirling with the faces of all those who made the research for Deadly Encounter possible.
My advice is to pull out your note-taking gear and start your research climb. The view at the top is grand.
How do you conduct your novel’s research? Let’s share ideas.
DiAnn Mills is a bestselling author who believes her readers should expect an adventure. She combines unforgettable characters with unpredictable plots to create action-packed, suspense-filled novels. Her titles have appeared on the CBA and ECPA bestseller lists; won two Christy Awards; and been finalists for the RITA, Daphne Du Maurier, Inspirational Readers’ Choice, and Carol award contests. Library Journal presented her with a Best Books 2014: Genre Fiction award in the Christian Fiction category for Firewall.
DiAnn is a founding board member of the American Christian Fiction Writers; a member of Advanced Writers and Speakers Association; International Thriller Writers, and the Faith, Hope, and Love chapter of Romance Writers of America. She is co-director of The Author Roadmap with social media specialist Edie Melson where she continues her passion of helping other writers be successful. She speaks to various groups and teaches writing workshops around the country. DiAnn has been termed a coffee snob and roasts her own coffee beans. She’s an avid reader, loves to cook, and believes her grandchildren are the smartest kids in the universe. She and her husband live in sunny Houston, Texas. DiAnn is very active online and would love to connect with readers on any of the social media platforms listed at www.diannmills.com.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Writer Research - Is it Worth the Effort? / DiAnn Mills
When writing we have numerous factors to think about before we can accurately translate our ideas to paper. Sometimes it can help to itemize things and think independently about each aspect of a scene in order to make everything come together and fit naturally. Few things can take away from a story more than something that seems out of place or factually inaccurate. In this week's guest blog, author DiAnn Mills discusses her in depth knowledge and experience with doing proper research before you start writing.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Writer Research - Is it Worth the Effort?
Writer Research - Is it Worth the Effort?
By DiAnn Mills
A novelist who explores research, explores life — and life is story. Research allows us to deepen characterization by guiding the character toward crucial decisions. Plot twists with credible and realistic points keep the reader glued to the page. Dialogue and point of view offer unique perspectives about the story line. Setting with an antagonistic edge reinforces story structure. Add emotion and body language with a distinct purpose, and detailed research takes a priority in the writing process.
Writing is a challenge beyond technique. Those tools of the craft can be learned behind a computer screen or sitting in a comfortable chair at a writers’ event. But research means lacing up our boots and stepping into an unfamiliar world.
A writer needs three essentials before scaling a mountain called research:
- A positive attitude.
- A temporary personality change from introvert to extrovert.
- A list of questions that demand answers.
The easy path, and that’s not necessarily bad, is to search the Internet. Accuracy doesn’t take a backseat to any research, so writers verify facts and use trusted sites to eliminate errors.
But the real grit of the process is reaching out to experts. Making phone calls and visiting where our characters work, play, and fear. This is the plus that adds a smile to our reader’s face. Since making a commitment to research, my stories stand solid.
In my latest novel, Deadly Encounter, the first book in the FBI Task Force series, I had to stretch beyond my comfort zone. The storyline involves Houston’s FBI forming a task force with the health department and Laboratory Response Network (LRN) to determine the source of a genetically engineered disease.
My hero is FBI and my heroine is a veterinarian. The best place for me to start was at the beginning:
Houston’s FBI
Veterinarian who volunteers for Houston’s Airport Rangers
Houston Airport Rangers
Houston’s Health Department
Laboratory Response Network (LRN) — which works with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Where my characters live — city, country, neighborhood etc.
Sorta makes a writer tired when our goal is to write an incredibly suspenseful story that foremost entertains the reader.
Some years ago, I forged a relationship with Houston’s FBI, specifically the media coordinator. She expressed the FBI’s goal to enlist community support to keep Houston safe and protected. She’d help me with every novel containing FBI elements to assure accuracy. She’s read each story and offered feedback — even typos. With Deadly Encounter, she and I met for breakfast with the director of domestic terrorism. Oh, the stories I could write simply from this man’s enthusiasm and passion for his job. In short, this treasured friendship has given me story ideas and relationships that will last long after a novel is completed.
Let me digress for a moment. We writers love to talk about what we do, right? Every person I’ve ever interviewed was eager to discuss his/her expertise.
Back to my research for this novel …
In my association with the FBI and being a part of their Citizens Cadet Program, I made great friends with those involved in various careers. One of my new friends works with animals and is a volunteer for Houston’s Airport Rangers. She helped me with veterinarian care and insight into the Airport Rangers. Stacy (yes I named my heroine after her) shared some of her life experiences, and a few of those made it into the book.
George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) Airport Rangers, an equestrian volunteer program, was created to keep the airport safe through community involvement. They are the only group of this kind in the US. The volunteers ride outside the perimeter of the airport in twos and threes. Their role is to report anything unusual or potentially dangerous to law enforcement. I visited their stables, took pics, and simply enjoyed myself. You can read about the group here.
I chatted with the health department about their policies and methods of keeping the people healthy and informed as it pertained to my story.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) required phone calls and e-mails to learn about their involvement in a disease threatening environment. They referred me to the LRN, and that research brought me a third point of view character.
Are you tired yet? Or excited about researching your next novel? As I write this, my mind is whirling with the faces of all those who made the research for Deadly Encounter possible.
My advice is to pull out your note-taking gear and start your research climb. The view at the top is grand.
How do you conduct your novel’s research? Let’s share ideas.
DiAnn Mills is a bestselling author who believes her readers should expect an adventure. She combines unforgettable characters with unpredictable plots to create action-packed, suspense-filled novels. Her titles have appeared on the CBA and ECPA bestseller lists; won two Christy Awards; and been finalists for the RITA, Daphne Du Maurier, Inspirational Readers’ Choice, and Carol award contests. Library Journal presented her with a Best Books 2014: Genre Fiction award in the Christian Fiction category for Firewall.
DiAnn is a founding board member of the American Christian Fiction Writers; a member of Advanced Writers and Speakers Association; International Thriller Writers, and the Faith, Hope, and Love chapter of Romance Writers of America. She is co-director of The Author Roadmap with social media specialist Edie Melson where she continues her passion of helping other writers be successful. She speaks to various groups and teaches writing workshops around the country. DiAnn has been termed a coffee snob and roasts her own coffee beans. She’s an avid reader, loves to cook, and believes her grandchildren are the smartest kids in the universe. She and her husband live in sunny Houston, Texas. DiAnn is very active online and would love to connect with readers on any of the social media platforms listed at www.diannmills.com.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Writer Research - Is it Worth the Effort? / DiAnn Mills
When writing we have numerous factors to think about before we can accurately translate our ideas to paper. Sometimes it can help to itemize things and think independently about each aspect of a scene in order to make everything come together and fit naturally. Few things can take away from a story more than something that seems out of place or factually inaccurate. In this week's guest blog, author DiAnn Mills discusses her in depth knowledge and experience with doing proper research before you start writing.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Writer Research - Is it Worth the Effort?
Writer Research - Is it Worth the Effort?
By DiAnn Mills
A novelist who explores research, explores life — and life is story. Research allows us to deepen characterization by guiding the character toward crucial decisions. Plot twists with credible and realistic points keep the reader glued to the page. Dialogue and point of view offer unique perspectives about the story line. Setting with an antagonistic edge reinforces story structure. Add emotion and body language with a distinct purpose, and detailed research takes a priority in the writing process.
Writing is a challenge beyond technique. Those tools of the craft can be learned behind a computer screen or sitting in a comfortable chair at a writers’ event. But research means lacing up our boots and stepping into an unfamiliar world.
A writer needs three essentials before scaling a mountain called research:
- A positive attitude.
- A temporary personality change from introvert to extrovert.
- A list of questions that demand answers.
The easy path, and that’s not necessarily bad, is to search the Internet. Accuracy doesn’t take a backseat to any research, so writers verify facts and use trusted sites to eliminate errors.
But the real grit of the process is reaching out to experts. Making phone calls and visiting where our characters work, play, and fear. This is the plus that adds a smile to our reader’s face. Since making a commitment to research, my stories stand solid.
In my latest novel, Deadly Encounter, the first book in the FBI Task Force series, I had to stretch beyond my comfort zone. The storyline involves Houston’s FBI forming a task force with the health department and Laboratory Response Network (LRN) to determine the source of a genetically engineered disease.
My hero is FBI and my heroine is a veterinarian. The best place for me to start was at the beginning:
Houston’s FBI
Veterinarian who volunteers for Houston’s Airport Rangers
Houston Airport Rangers
Houston’s Health Department
Laboratory Response Network (LRN) — which works with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Where my characters live — city, country, neighborhood etc.
Sorta makes a writer tired when our goal is to write an incredibly suspenseful story that foremost entertains the reader.
Some years ago, I forged a relationship with Houston’s FBI, specifically the media coordinator. She expressed the FBI’s goal to enlist community support to keep Houston safe and protected. She’d help me with every novel containing FBI elements to assure accuracy. She’s read each story and offered feedback — even typos. With Deadly Encounter, she and I met for breakfast with the director of domestic terrorism. Oh, the stories I could write simply from this man’s enthusiasm and passion for his job. In short, this treasured friendship has given me story ideas and relationships that will last long after a novel is completed.
Let me digress for a moment. We writers love to talk about what we do, right? Every person I’ve ever interviewed was eager to discuss his/her expertise.
Back to my research for this novel …
In my association with the FBI and being a part of their Citizens Cadet Program, I made great friends with those involved in various careers. One of my new friends works with animals and is a volunteer for Houston’s Airport Rangers. She helped me with veterinarian care and insight into the Airport Rangers. Stacy (yes I named my heroine after her) shared some of her life experiences, and a few of those made it into the book.
George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) Airport Rangers, an equestrian volunteer program, was created to keep the airport safe through community involvement. They are the only group of this kind in the US. The volunteers ride outside the perimeter of the airport in twos and threes. Their role is to report anything unusual or potentially dangerous to law enforcement. I visited their stables, took pics, and simply enjoyed myself. You can read about the group here.
I chatted with the health department about their policies and methods of keeping the people healthy and informed as it pertained to my story.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) required phone calls and e-mails to learn about their involvement in a disease threatening environment. They referred me to the LRN, and that research brought me a third point of view character.
Are you tired yet? Or excited about researching your next novel? As I write this, my mind is whirling with the faces of all those who made the research for Deadly Encounter possible.
My advice is to pull out your note-taking gear and start your research climb. The view at the top is grand.
How do you conduct your novel’s research? Let’s share ideas.
DiAnn Mills is a bestselling author who believes her readers should expect an adventure. She combines unforgettable characters with unpredictable plots to create action-packed, suspense-filled novels. Her titles have appeared on the CBA and ECPA bestseller lists; won two Christy Awards; and been finalists for the RITA, Daphne Du Maurier, Inspirational Readers’ Choice, and Carol award contests. Library Journal presented her with a Best Books 2014: Genre Fiction award in the Christian Fiction category for Firewall.
DiAnn is a founding board member of the American Christian Fiction Writers; a member of Advanced Writers and Speakers Association; International Thriller Writers, and the Faith, Hope, and Love chapter of Romance Writers of America. She is co-director of The Author Roadmap with social media specialist Edie Melson where she continues her passion of helping other writers be successful. She speaks to various groups and teaches writing workshops around the country. DiAnn has been termed a coffee snob and roasts her own coffee beans. She’s an avid reader, loves to cook, and believes her grandchildren are the smartest kids in the universe. She and her husband live in sunny Houston, Texas. DiAnn is very active online and would love to connect with readers on any of the social media platforms listed at www.diannmills.com.
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Researching Nashville / Caroline Fardig
As writers we get a lot of advice. A phrase that we are all too familiar with is, of course, “write what you know.” We hear it often enough that it can become something we don’t think critically about. In this week’s guest blog, author Caroline Fardig offers us her insight on how to familiarize yourself with a location that you would like to be a focal point of your writing. If you paint the picture of the world around you well enough, it can become as integral to the story as the characters themselves.
Happy reading!
Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville
Publisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Researching Nashville
By Caroline Fardig
Write what you know.
As writers, we hear that advice over and over again. It’s good advice, because if you’re well versed in your subject matter, you’re less likely to provide incorrect facts, or worse, be compelled to make things up. However, even when we’re firmly inside our comfort zone, we still need to do some research. I find it’s especially important to research and get to know the setting of your story. (That is, unless your story is set on the planet Nebular, in which case you CAN in fact make up ridiculous things.) If written well, the setting can come to life and become as much a part of your story as your characters.
In preparing to write my latest series, the Java Jive Mysteries (Death Before Decaf, Mug Shot, and the upcoming A Whole Latte Murder), I’ve had to do some pretty intense research on my setting. And by intense, I mean serious hands-on, in the trenches, in depth VACATIONING in Nashville, Tennessee. A writer’s life can be tough sometimes.
My Java Jive series is a cozy mystery series following failed musician turned coffeehouse manager Juliet Langley. It’s set in a fictional coffeehouse in the Midtown area of Nashville. Midtown is just southwest of downtown, in and around the lovely Vanderbilt and Belmont University campuses. Whereas downtown can be glittery and rowdy at one end of Broadway, the campus/residential area at the other end is anything but. The area boasts dozens of mom and pop shops, from bars to boutiques, many of which are run out of restored old houses. That’s where I got the idea for the Java Jive coffeehouse.
I love coffee, so of course I had to visit every coffeehouse in the area—for the sake of research, of course. All coffeehouses have their own signature concoctions, my favorite being The Frothy Monkey’s White Monkey Mocha, an espresso drink flavored with white chocolate and banana syrups, which I recreate every morning at home. (In trying to learn about the life of a barista I also bought an espresso machine and learned to craft drinks and pour latte art.) At the coffeehouses, I researched their food and bakery offerings and their processes of serving and delivering the food to their customers. Again, a rough job. I paid attention to their hours of operation and employee work schedules. I drank in the atmosphere. Ultimately, I was able to glean a wealth of ideas to make Java Jive believable enough as a functioning coffeehouse.
Like Café Coco, Java Jive offers an open mic night for area musicians to perform. That was the only actual serious research I did. Each book in the series includes an original song I wrote, and I decided the best way to fully be immersed in the open mic experience was to perform myself. Talk about nerve-wracking! A forty-something mom of two getting up and performing in front of a bunch of young, talented Nashville musicians was almost more than I could handle. (I do have a music degree, so I’m not a total hack.) I never felt more empathy for my heroine, Juliet, and her crippling stage fright than in those few minutes I was up on that little stage.
Speaking of music, you can’t set your series in Nashville and ignore the unending supply of live music pouring out of the many bars and clubs downtown. My friend Karen (a Nashville area resident) was the perfect tour guide and partner in crime for a couple of unforgettable visits to the heart of Music City. Tin Roof is my favorite bar, and it made its way into A Whole Latte Murder. And speaking of “writing what you know,” the scene in A Whole Latte Murder where a bird defecates on Juliet on Second Avenue really happened to me the last time I was there. True story.
For outdoor locales, I’ve absolutely fallen in love with Centennial Park. It became the setting for the death scene in Mug Shot. To research for the scene, I walked the beautiful grounds of the park, scouting out where everything would take place, from where actual benches are to what my characters would see when they sat on the steps of the Parthenon facing Lake Watauga. As for other outdoor landmarks, in one particular scene in Death Before Decaf, my heroine follows someone from the Vanderbilt Library lawn past sorority row to the Office Depot on West End. I dragged my husband along on the exact route my characters took, making sure I had all the details right. I also found the perfect semi-secluded area behind the library to have my heroine narrowly escape being kidnapped.
Thanks to the Killer Nashville Conference, I was introduced to the Omni Hotel downtown. The whole place is gorgeous, especially the library in the lobby, a reader’s dream full of books, overstuffed chairs, and a fireplace to die for. In Mug Shot, Juliet ends up at the Omni while spying on one of her suspects. She hides in the library, pretending to read. Of course I had to recreate the scene when I was there for last year’s conference.
Research doesn’t always have to happen in front of a computer or at the library. Venture out. Look at the world around you, even if you’re simply people-watching. And if you come for August’s Killer Nashville conference (which is moving to suburban Cool Springs/Franklin, about 20 minutes south), make sure to take advantage of what Music City has to offer. You might find Nashville becoming your new favorite vacation spot or the setting for your next novel.
Caroline Fardig is the author of the Java Jive Mysteries seriesand the Lizzie Hart Mysteries series. Suspense Magazine recently named Fardig’s Bad Medicine as one of the Best Books of 2015. She worked as a schoolteacher, church organist, insurance agent, funeral parlor associate, and stay-at-home mom before she realized that she wanted to be a writer when she grew up. Born and raised in a small town in Indiana, Fardig still lives in that same town with an understanding husband, two sweet kids, two energetic dogs, and one malevolent cat. Find Caroline on the web at www.carolinefardig.com
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Researching Nashville / Caroline Fardig
As writers we get a lot of advice. A phrase that we are all too familiar with is, of course, “write what you know." We hear it often enough that it can become something we don’t think critically about. In this week’s guest blog, author Caroline Fardig offers us her insight on how to familiarize yourself with a location that you would like to be a focal point of your writing. If you paint the picture of the world around you well enough, it can become as integral to the story as the characters themselves.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Researching Nashville
By Caroline Fardig
Write what you know.
As writers, we hear that advice over and over again. It’s good advice, because if you’re well versed in your subject matter, you’re less likely to provide incorrect facts, or worse, be compelled to make things up. However, even when we’re firmly inside our comfort zone, we still need to do some research. I find it’s especially important to research and get to know the setting of your story. (That is, unless your story is set on the planet Nebular, in which case you CAN in fact make up ridiculous things.) If written well, the setting can come to life and become as much a part of your story as your characters.
In preparing to write my latest series, the Java Jive Mysteries (Death Before Decaf, Mug Shot, and the upcoming A Whole Latte Murder), I’ve had to do some pretty intense research on my setting. And by intense, I mean serious hands-on, in the trenches, in depth VACATIONING in Nashville, Tennessee. A writer’s life can be tough sometimes.
My Java Jive series is a cozy mystery series following failed musician turned coffeehouse manager Juliet Langley. It’s set in a fictional coffeehouse in the Midtown area of Nashville. Midtown is just southwest of downtown, in and around the lovely Vanderbilt and Belmont University campuses. Whereas downtown can be glittery and rowdy at one end of Broadway, the campus/residential area at the other end is anything but. The area boasts dozens of mom and pop shops, from bars to boutiques, many of which are run out of restored old houses. That’s where I got the idea for the Java Jive coffeehouse.
I love coffee, so of course I had to visit every coffeehouse in the area—for the sake of research, of course. All coffeehouses have their own signature concoctions, my favorite being The Frothy Monkey’s White Monkey Mocha, an espresso drink flavored with white chocolate and banana syrups, which I recreate every morning at home. (In trying to learn about the life of a barista I also bought an espresso machine and learned to craft drinks and pour latte art.) At the coffeehouses, I researched their food and bakery offerings and their processes of serving and delivering the food to their customers. Again, a rough job. I paid attention to their hours of operation and employee work schedules. I drank in the atmosphere. Ultimately, I was able to glean a wealth of ideas to make Java Jive believable enough as a functioning coffeehouse.
Like Café Coco, Java Jive offers an open mic night for area musicians to perform. That was the only actual serious research I did. Each book in the series includes an original song I wrote, and I decided the best way to fully be immersed in the open mic experience was to perform myself. Talk about nerve-wracking! A forty-something mom of two getting up and performing in front of a bunch of young, talented Nashville musicians was almost more than I could handle. (I do have a music degree, so I’m not a total hack.) I never felt more empathy for my heroine, Juliet, and her crippling stage fright than in those few minutes I was up on that little stage.
Speaking of music, you can’t set your series in Nashville and ignore the unending supply of live music pouring out of the many bars and clubs downtown. My friend Karen (a Nashville area resident) was the perfect tour guide and partner in crime for a couple of unforgettable visits to the heart of Music City. Tin Roof is my favorite bar, and it made its way into A Whole Latte Murder. And speaking of “writing what you know,” the scene in A Whole Latte Murder where a bird defecates on Juliet on Second Avenue really happened to me the last time I was there. True story.
For outdoor locales, I’ve absolutely fallen in love with Centennial Park. It became the setting for the death scene in Mug Shot. To research for the scene, I walked the beautiful grounds of the park, scouting out where everything would take place, from where actual benches are to what my characters would see when they sat on the steps of the Parthenon facing Lake Watauga. As for other outdoor landmarks, in one particular scene in Death Before Decaf, my heroine follows someone from the Vanderbilt Library lawn past sorority row to the Office Depot on West End. I dragged my husband along on the exact route my characters took, making sure I had all the details right. I also found the perfect semi-secluded area behind the library to have my heroine narrowly escape being kidnapped.
Thanks to the Killer Nashville Conference, I was introduced to the Omni Hotel downtown. The whole place is gorgeous, especially the library in the lobby, a reader’s dream full of books, overstuffed chairs, and a fireplace to die for. In Mug Shot, Juliet ends up at the Omni while spying on one of her suspects. She hides in the library, pretending to read. Of course I had to recreate the scene when I was there for last year’s conference.
Research doesn’t always have to happen in front of a computer or at the library. Venture out. Look at the world around you, even if you’re simply people-watching. And if you come for August’s Killer Nashville conference (which is moving to suburban Cool Springs/Franklin, about 20 minutes south), make sure to take advantage of what Music City has to offer. You might find Nashville becoming your new favorite vacation spot or the setting for your next novel.
Caroline Fardig is the author of the Java Jive Mysteries series and the Lizzie Hart Mysteries series. Suspense Magazine recently named Fardig’s Bad Medicine as one of the Best Books of 2015. She worked as a schoolteacher, church organist, insurance agent, funeral parlor associate, and stay-at-home mom before she realized that she wanted to be a writer when she grew up. Born and raised in a small town in Indiana, Fardig still lives in that same town with an understanding husband, two sweet kids, two energetic dogs, and one malevolent cat. Find Caroline on the web at www.carolinefardig.com
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
*Killer Nashville is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. If you purchase a book from the links on this page, Amazon will give Killer Nashville a small percentage of the total sale. Killer Nashville receives zero compensation (other than sometimes the book to review) from publishers who have been selected for the Book of the Day.
Researching Nashville / Caroline Fardig
As writers we get a lot of advice. A phrase that we are all too familiar with is, of course, “write what you know." We hear it often enough that it can become something we don’t think critically about. In this week’s guest blog, author Caroline Fardig offers us her insight on how to familiarize yourself with a location that you would like to be a focal point of your writing. If you paint the picture of the world around you well enough, it can become as integral to the story as the characters themselves.Happy reading!Clay StaffordFounder Killer NashvillePublisher / Editorial Director Killer Nashville Magazine
Researching Nashville
By Caroline Fardig
Write what you know.
As writers, we hear that advice over and over again. It’s good advice, because if you’re well versed in your subject matter, you’re less likely to provide incorrect facts, or worse, be compelled to make things up. However, even when we’re firmly inside our comfort zone, we still need to do some research. I find it’s especially important to research and get to know the setting of your story. (That is, unless your story is set on the planet Nebular, in which case you CAN in fact make up ridiculous things.) If written well, the setting can come to life and become as much a part of your story as your characters.
In preparing to write my latest series, the Java Jive Mysteries (Death Before Decaf, Mug Shot, and the upcoming A Whole Latte Murder), I’ve had to do some pretty intense research on my setting. And by intense, I mean serious hands-on, in the trenches, in depth VACATIONING in Nashville, Tennessee. A writer’s life can be tough sometimes.
My Java Jive series is a cozy mystery series following failed musician turned coffeehouse manager Juliet Langley. It’s set in a fictional coffeehouse in the Midtown area of Nashville. Midtown is just southwest of downtown, in and around the lovely Vanderbilt and Belmont University campuses. Whereas downtown can be glittery and rowdy at one end of Broadway, the campus/residential area at the other end is anything but. The area boasts dozens of mom and pop shops, from bars to boutiques, many of which are run out of restored old houses. That’s where I got the idea for the Java Jive coffeehouse.
I love coffee, so of course I had to visit every coffeehouse in the area—for the sake of research, of course. All coffeehouses have their own signature concoctions, my favorite being The Frothy Monkey’s White Monkey Mocha, an espresso drink flavored with white chocolate and banana syrups, which I recreate every morning at home. (In trying to learn about the life of a barista I also bought an espresso machine and learned to craft drinks and pour latte art.) At the coffeehouses, I researched their food and bakery offerings and their processes of serving and delivering the food to their customers. Again, a rough job. I paid attention to their hours of operation and employee work schedules. I drank in the atmosphere. Ultimately, I was able to glean a wealth of ideas to make Java Jive believable enough as a functioning coffeehouse.
Like Café Coco, Java Jive offers an open mic night for area musicians to perform. That was the only actual serious research I did. Each book in the series includes an original song I wrote, and I decided the best way to fully be immersed in the open mic experience was to perform myself. Talk about nerve-wracking! A forty-something mom of two getting up and performing in front of a bunch of young, talented Nashville musicians was almost more than I could handle. (I do have a music degree, so I’m not a total hack.) I never felt more empathy for my heroine, Juliet, and her crippling stage fright than in those few minutes I was up on that little stage.
Speaking of music, you can’t set your series in Nashville and ignore the unending supply of live music pouring out of the many bars and clubs downtown. My friend Karen (a Nashville area resident) was the perfect tour guide and partner in crime for a couple of unforgettable visits to the heart of Music City. Tin Roof is my favorite bar, and it made its way into A Whole Latte Murder. And speaking of “writing what you know,” the scene in A Whole Latte Murder where a bird defecates on Juliet on Second Avenue really happened to me the last time I was there. True story.
For outdoor locales, I’ve absolutely fallen in love with Centennial Park. It became the setting for the death scene in Mug Shot. To research for the scene, I walked the beautiful grounds of the park, scouting out where everything would take place, from where actual benches are to what my characters would see when they sat on the steps of the Parthenon facing Lake Watauga. As for other outdoor landmarks, in one particular scene in Death Before Decaf, my heroine follows someone from the Vanderbilt Library lawn past sorority row to the Office Depot on West End. I dragged my husband along on the exact route my characters took, making sure I had all the details right. I also found the perfect semi-secluded area behind the library to have my heroine narrowly escape being kidnapped.
Thanks to the Killer Nashville Conference, I was introduced to the Omni Hotel downtown. The whole place is gorgeous, especially the library in the lobby, a reader’s dream full of books, overstuffed chairs, and a fireplace to die for. In Mug Shot, Juliet ends up at the Omni while spying on one of her suspects. She hides in the library, pretending to read. Of course I had to recreate the scene when I was there for last year’s conference.
Research doesn’t always have to happen in front of a computer or at the library. Venture out. Look at the world around you, even if you’re simply people-watching. And if you come for August’s Killer Nashville conference (which is moving to suburban Cool Springs/Franklin, about 20 minutes south), make sure to take advantage of what Music City has to offer. You might find Nashville becoming your new favorite vacation spot or the setting for your next novel.
Caroline Fardig is the author of the Java Jive Mysteries series and the Lizzie Hart Mysteries series. Suspense Magazine recently named Fardig’s Bad Medicine as one of the Best Books of 2015. She worked as a schoolteacher, church organist, insurance agent, funeral parlor associate, and stay-at-home mom before she realized that she wanted to be a writer when she grew up. Born and raised in a small town in Indiana, Fardig still lives in that same town with an understanding husband, two sweet kids, two energetic dogs, and one malevolent cat. Find Caroline on the web at www.carolinefardig.com
(To be a part of the Killer Nashville Guest Blog, send a query to contact@killernashville.com. We’d love to hear from you.)
Thanks to Tom Wood, Arthur Jackson, and publisher/editorial director Clay Stafford for their assistance in putting together this week’s blog.
For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com, www.KillerNashvilleMagazine.com, and www.KillerNashvilleBookCon.com.
And be sure to check out our new book, Killer Nashville Noir: Cold-Blooded, an anthology of original short stories by New York Times bestselling authors and newbies alike.
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