Clues

by Bethany Maines

Recently, I’ve been working on the sequel to my murder mystery An Unseen Current.  While thematically not that different from my other books (a young person struggles with unusual circumstances while navigating the choppy waters of family, love, and friends), mysteries bring a special level of challenge to the mix.  For one thing, people expect clues.  Oh, there’s a dead body?  Well, writer, where are the clues?  Chop, chop! Produce the clues!

However, it’s not just about clues; it’s about when to reveal those clues.  Too early and readers are bored because they already solved it.  Too late and it seems like the author is cheating and wedging information to justify who the killer is at the last second.  Then, even if the writer does pop a clue in the right place, she can’t be too precious about it.  The author can’t present it on a silver platter with a neon arrow stating: Clue Here!!  To accomplish the correct where and when of clue placement requires a stronger outline than other genres.  And that means that I must do what every writer hates doing—not writing.

Outlining and the synopsis are vital to a successful book.  But they aren’t the FUN part of writing.  The fun part is churning out scenes and spending time with the made up people who populate my brain.  Outlining requires problem solving and all the leg work of deciding back stories and motivations and the literal who, what, when, where and why of who was murdered. (It was Professor Plumb in the Library with the Candlestick, in case you were wondering.)  But mostly it leaves me thinking: Are we there yet? What about now?  Can I start writing now?

Fortunately, the answer is getting closer to being yes.  So wish me luck as I work out the kinks of how the dead body ended up behind a bar in Anacortes.

You never know what’s beneath the surface.
When Seattle native Tish Yearly finds herself fired and evicted all in one afternoon, she knows she’s in deep water. Unemployed and desperate, the 26 year old ex-actress heads for the one place she knows she’ll be welcome – the house of her cantankerous ex-CIA agent grandfather, Tobias Yearly, in the San Juan Islands. And when she discovers the strangled corpse of Tobias’s best friend, she knows she’s in over her head. Tish is thrown head-long into a mystery that pits her against a handsome but straight-laced Sheriff’s Deputy, a group of eccentric and clannish local residents, and a killer who knows the island far better than she does. Now Tish must swim against the current, depending on her nearly forgotten acting skills and her grandfather’s spy craft, to con a killer and keep them both alive.

***

Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie Mae Mysteries, Wild Waters, Tales from the City of Destiny and An Unseen Current.  You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Winging It

by J.M. Phillippe

Earlier this month, fellow Stiletto Gang author Bethany Maines posted a great blog about how she organizes her novels using spreadsheets and graphs -- all online! I was super impressed. And then intimidated. Because my organization of a novel looks a lot more like this:

Sometimes I can't even read my own writing.

 I don't even remember to put all my notes about the same story in the same notebook.

I do start out trying to be super organized. I spend a lot of time procrastinating...er...pre-writing by creating elaborate systems and files that some part of me knows I will never maintain. I understand that that the more up-front work I do, the less back-end work I'll have to do. And yet, inevitably, at some point during a writing project I find myself digging through various notebooks and poorly named Word files, trying to find that one piece of information I need to complete whatever section I'm working on. I have to scan first drafts specifically for continuity errors (like the spelling of a name), and if it wasn't for eagle-eyed readers and editors, I'd miss small changes I made in even basic descriptions (did that room have a brown leather chair or a burgundy leather chair?).

Vader is not impressed with me.

I also only ever make it half-way through a novel outline before the drafting process takes over, and characters and plots move in totally different directions. It's a little bit because I find outlines kind of boring, and a little bit more that if I get too detailed and figure out how it will all end, I lose interest. Generally, I never start with more than a vague sense of where I want to end up, and I find drafting it out so much more satisfying. And yet I know that an outline would probably make the entire process a lot less messy -- and faster -- if maybe not as spontaneous.

Of course, come revision time, I then I have to backtrack and do all the work that I maybe shoulda coulda woulda done in the pre-writing process. I create a reverse outline of my chapters and sections. I make a style sheet and finally decide on a single spelling of a name (the search and replace feature in Word is very much my friend). Changes are always intentionally planned. I invest heavily in the revision process, and the story can change dramatically from draft to draft.

In many ways, starting off by winging it and then going back and organizing what I've written lets me discover the story in two different ways -- as I write it, and after I go back and read what I've written. That process of discovery keeps me interested in the story, even if it is very labor intensive.

Still, I can't help but look at the ways other writers organize themselves and wistfully daydream about my own set of spread sheets and graphs. Sometimes though, I'd settle for remembering exactly where I put that really great breakdown of the third act I thought of while on the bus two months ago. All I have to do is figure out what notebook I had with me that day...

***

J.M. Phillippe is the author of Perfect Likeness. She has lived in the deserts of California, the suburbs of Seattle, and the mad rush of New York City.  She worked as a freelance journalist before earning a masters’ in social work.  She works as a family therapist in Brooklyn, New York and spends her free-time decorating her tiny apartment to her cat Oscar Wilde’s liking, drinking cider at her favorite British-style pub, and training to be the next Karate Kid, one wax-on at a time.

Organizing My World(s)

by Bethany Maines

An author’s job is not just to tell a story, but to decide how a story should be told. Is it better in first or third person? Is it told in one long march of words or are their chapters? We have to decide genre, tone and feeling. And once those decisions have been made an author must create and track the main plot of the story - the one that we struggle to capture in the blurb text on the back cover – as well as the sub-plots, underlying themes, and finally, the characters themselves.  All of those pieces require not just the ability to write, but also the ability to track information. Because, as any serious reader will tell you (sometimes at great length), consistency and details matter greatly to a well written book, and while we can rely on an editor for some items, they are only human and can only catch so much.  It is in an author’s best interest to provide the cleanest manuscript possible.

I’m currently working on two vastly different stories: the fourth Carrie Mae Mystery Glossed Cause and a Romance Horror novella Wild Waters.  Each story comes with an array of characters, research and plot twists that to be perfectly honest I can’t hold in my brain.  Possibly pre-production of a toddler I could have kept hold of all the details, but no longer. Now, to keep all my worlds organized, I must rely on a system of notes, plot outlines and spreadsheets.

For the Carrie Mae books I track characters with a spread sheet that notes who they are (name, basic role, job or company) and also what book they have appeared in or if they have been deleted or omitted from a book.  I also have a rather extensive style sheet that helps me keep track of how certain things, such as chapter headings are formatted and whether or not I’m consistently formatting things like “AK-47” and “INTERPOL” the same way over multiple books.

For Wild Waters I’m writing in two different time periods – WWII and Vietnam ­– and they each use distinctive slang that I organize in a couple of basic lists.  There are also multiple character points of view and it is important to keep track of what characters know and when they know it, so that each plot point is revealed at the correct time. Tracking character arcs are more difficult and sometimes require multiple ways of visualizing.  I will frequently write out the plot from each characters point of view or I will graph it out on a virtual whiteboard, utilizing the main plot points.

There is no perfect system of course, and each author must work the way that works for them. But when examining a well-written book, I am frequently in awe, not just of the beautifully constructed words or strong turn of phrase, but the underlying construction of a book.  Sometimes, I find it amazing that any books get written at all.

***

Bethany Maines is the author of the Carrie Mae Mysteries, Tales from the City of Destiny and An Unseen Current.  You can also view the Carrie Mae youtube video or catch up with her on Twitter and Facebook.