by Lynne | Oct 5, 2014 | Uncategorized
Using Artistic License to Alter History
Writing historical mysteries is a juggling act. Writers must create a fictional plot with fictional characters around a historical time period with real people . . . and somehow suspend the readers’ disbelief.
Many writers of historical fiction choose a particular time period and stay with it. I’m thinking Anne Perry, Phillipa Gregory, Charles Todd. I, on the other hand, am intrigued by so many time periods, I skip around. Each of my mysteries takes place in a different place and time, which enables me to do the thing I love most: research. The risk, of course, is that I will know only a little about each time period as opposed to Anne Perry who knows a great deal about Victorian England.
Once I settle on a time period, I read and read and read about it. I visit the places in question, interview experts, historians, and read and read and read some more. By this time, I usually have a kernel of an idea for the plot and maybe even a character sketch or two.
Building fictional characters around authentic ones is key. Unless your character is transported from modern times to the past, he/she must act, speak, dress like the time period. In using real people from the time period, they must be as genuine to history as I can make them.
As the story develops and takes twists and turns on its own, I find I am bending the truth a bit – creating an “alternate history.” This is fiction, after all. The book I am working on now, “Pure Lies,” will be a totally new take on history. It is about the witches and witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 and will provide a different motivation for the girls’ hysteria. The backdrop and many characters are authentic, but the storyline meanders considerably from what we know to be historically accurate.
The questions I ask take the form of “what if” and I let my imagination run free. It’s a rare writer that can devise a plotline that hasn’t already been done. But even a clichéd plot can be made new and fresh with unusual twists, powerful characters and exceptional prose.
As I put the final touches on “Pure Lies, I realize I am bending history to fit the story. That’s the advantage of fiction. And its strength.
by Lynne | Sep 28, 2014 | Uncategorized
The World Awaits
I recently returned from two weeks traveling in the Pacific Northwest. Starting in Canada and ending in the U.S., I find myself anxious to start scribbling ideas for a future book. The settings were amazing, from large, modern cities, to small, more manageable ones. From dense rainforests to rocky coastlines. From museums, to sky towers, to suspension bridges and ziplines, the backdrops are there for a new book.
But just as important as settings, are the people. We’re all familiar with the concept, true or not, that often people resemble their dogs (or vice versa.) Well, I can testify to the fact that people “resemble” the place they live in.
In cities like Vancouver, BC, I noticed that people were more formally dressed (at least the working locals.) They had sharp edges to their clothes, suits, shoes, just like the tall, glass, high-rises of the downtown. They didn’t meet your eye as they brushed past you in the street (much like NYC, where I grew up.)
Victoria, BC, was quite a bit different. Without the tall skyscrapers, people seemed more intent on immediate surroundings, including nodding at passersby. The buildings were shorter and stouter and had a very British feel. So did the locals. You can take that to mean whatever you like.
From Canada we ferried across to Washington and then drove to Olympic National Park. Amazing crystal clear lakes, thick and tall evergreen forests that blocked out the sun, and myriad green colors that could shame Scotland. Most folks were travelers like us so we couldn’t discern any particular likeness to the environment. Oddly, the few natives seemed to not know much about other parts of the Park. So they worked and played in one area only. I guess, like the grand old trees, they are rooted to one spot
After the wilderness we ferried back to big city: this time Seattle. Much bigger and more built up than I remembered from visits twenty years ago. Almost overpowering in downtown now, with giant skyscrapers of glass and stone. Still, there was the old, more comfortable feel of its former, smaller self. Seattle has so many attractions, it’s hard to pick and choose. The Pacific Science Center was a dear old friend from my museum days, but we didn’t visit this time. Instead we went to the Chihuly Glass Museum and Garden. OMG. Check my FB or Pinterest page- I will be posting photos.
Again, it was hard to gauge the people since many were from other places. But I think it’s safe to say that Seattleites are a bit cool, aloof and keep to themselves, what with huddling under umbrellas and all. Many carry a Starbucks coffee cup, however, which is no surprise.
And finally, we took Amtrak to Portland, Oregon. Portland is a cozy, warm and friendly town, with lots of environmentally friendly businesses and people. And then there’s Powell’s Bookstore, of course. The most amazing place to spend some hours (days, even.) They were nice enough to set out my bookmarks!
Portlanders like to chat. They like to smile, despite the often gloomy weather. And they have the greatest ice cream shop in the world. “Salt and Straw,” where you can get a cone of salty, caramel ribbon ice cream. My kind of people, indeed.
The next time you travel, study the setting, study the history and architecture, wildlife and gardens. And study the people. They could be the inspiration for your next characters.
by Lynne | Sep 6, 2014 | Uncategorized
Ramping Up the Tension
“Amanda stepped off the elevator on the lower level of the parking garage. At ten o’clock on a Saturday night, the level was empty except for her car . . . and one other she didn’t recognize. A sound of dripping water and the soft scurrying of animal feet – rats? – made her throat close.
She swiveled her head in search of anything or anyone nearby then took a tentative step toward her car. Then another step and faster, faster, until she was almost at a sprint. Her high heels clicked on the concrete floor and echoed in the cavernous space. Finally, she reached her car. Damn, why didn’t she have her keys ready?
Amanda fumbled through her bag, her heart now ratcheted up, pumping blood through her ears. All she could hear was the furious whooshing sound of her own fear.
There, her keys, at the bottom, now in her hand. She clicked the fob and the latches opened. She reached for the handle, but before her fingers closed around it, she detected a breathy squeak of rubber soled shoes behind her. She dropped her bag, swung around with a gasp, hands clenched into fists, ready to defend herself and . . .”
So, what do you think? Tension? I always love the late-at-night parking garage scene. Scares the heck out of me, even now.
What is tension, really, and why is it so important in writing? Even if you’re not writing a mystery. Even if you’re writing non-fiction.
The noun tension has its Latin roots in “tendere,” which means to stretch, and tension occurs when something is stretched either physically or emotionally to its limits. Strained relations between countries can cause political tensions to rise. Tension can be added to a rubber band by stretching it to its limits. By the way, you can release nervous tension by shooting that rubber band at the local bully.
Tension is the means to get your reader to turn the page, particularly if it’s used at the end of a chapter as a cliffhanger. People, for the most part, don’t like to leave things unresolved. They want to find the solution, even if it’s an unsatisfactory one (that’s another story.)
While you cannot (or should not) distort facts when writing non-fiction, tension around real events can ramp up the readers’ pulse just as thrillers can. Take “The Monuments Men,” for instance. How tense can a situation be when you have a group of men and women trying to save the art and monuments of a Europe at war? When, finally the fighting ends, and they discover, in a dark, damp mine in Austria, a cache of hidden loot that would make King Midas gasp? When, they manage to “derail” an art train bound for Germany with stolen paintings of Masters like Leonardo.
Now that’s tension. That’s real life. Whew.
I welcome your feedback and samples of tension in your writing.
by Lynne | Aug 25, 2014 | Uncategorized
I’m nearing the end of a mystery that has me completely riveted. I haven’t been able to put it down for three days now, and I know I’m going to be bummed when I finish.
The title is “A Killing in the Hills” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Julia Keller. The prose is distinctive and original, the characters intense yet believable, and the story is artfully compelling. But when I analyze why I am so enjoying this book, I have to say, it’s the location. It takes place in a small, poverty-ridden town in West Virginia. Keller paints a grim and sorrowful image of a backwards country town thrown into chaos by a horrifying triple murder.
The idea made me think of other books in which the location kept me turning the page. Peter May’s “The Black House” takes place on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. A forbidding and dark, cold place and perfect for murder. Then there are TV series like “The Killing.” The Killing takes place in Seattle, but somehow the filmmakers managed to film only on days when it was raining — pouring buckets, actually. Bleh.
I guess I have a penchant for dark, cold, wet, poverty-stricken and forbidding places. It seems like crime would be rampant. But crime is pretty darn rampant in Las Vegas and Los Angeles and they’re not exactly dark and cold locations.
I also like big city grit. New York, LA, Chicago but there’s something about small, isolated towns that calls to me. To prove that location is an important factor for me, I’ve tried three of Louise Penny’s books now and really haven’t been thrilled. But I keep trying because they’re set in Québec and I’m fascinated by the area.
I’ve enjoyed the Amish series by Linda Castillo, which takes place in a small town, Painters Mill, in Ohio. Love the backdrop. And Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” Trilogy. I guess I love cold and snow as well as dark, dirty and cold.
Obviously, my feelings about location feed into my own writing. First book, the poverty-stricken tenements of the Lower East Side in NYC, second, the Civil War battlegrounds with its dead and dying, and third, Nazi Germany and France during the occupation. Can’t get much grimmer than that.
How about you? Does location fit prominently in your choice of where to set your stories? Do you pick places that are familiar, or those that are foreign and exotic, so you have to learn about them? A good trick for getting a travel write-off. How do you select the books you read? Does location play a role? Think about it.
Now, lest you think I live in one of these cold, dark, grim places . . . you’d be wrong. I don’t want to live there. I just want to read about them. Jeez, in San Diego, if the sun isn’t out 350 days, I’m depressed.
Hmm, I wonder if Jack the Ripper would have equated our morning marine layer with London fog.
by Lynne | Aug 18, 2014 | Uncategorized
A young writer friend, beginning her first foray into a novel, asked me: “What’s the difference between conflict, tension and suspense?” Since these are such crucial concepts in any fiction or non-fiction work, I thought I’d take a stab at responding in a series of three blogs, one for each element.
I start with conflict and the best way to define a word is, yup, the dictionary. Here is one simple definition: “A conflict is a struggle or an opposition.”
Conflict comes from the Latin word for “striking,” but it isn’t always violent. Conflict can arise from opposing ideas. If your character is torn between two different desires, say, marrying a woman who lives in Boston, but dying to take a job offer in Saskatoon (where is that, anyway?) he’s conflicted.
Conflict is key to your characters’ relationships. If everyone gets along beautifully and there are no differences of opinions, arguments, debates, fisticuffs . . . no screaming, pulling hair, beating up or murdering someone, well, there’s not much conflict. And not much interest.
Conflict can occur within a person’s mind. This is the most interesting of conflicts and defines the character’s character, if you will. When a character confronts another character, there is drama. When a character confronts his/her own self, there is drama plus. Now, the stage is set for future interactions with everyone he/she meets.
In The Triangle Murders, my protagonist, Frank Mead is overwhelmingly conflicted about his relationship with his daughter, whom he feels he has abandoned after his wife’s suicide. The daughter feels similarly. However, circumstances bring the two of them together, creating not only conflict, but often tension. There is great strain between them and the reader must wonder if it will ever be resolved.
Emotions play a large role in portraying a character’s conflict. If a character keeps his emotions hidden, any conflicts he faces may stretch these hidden emotions to a breaking point. As a reader we need to know what’s happening in his head – how this conflict is affecting him. We also need to see how it manifests itself in his behavior. Does serious money problems cause him to drink more, beat his wife and kids, or retreat further into himself? How your character handles conflict makes him unique . . . or not. Unique is better, by the way.
Conflict between characters can take many forms. It can be job-related, school- related, socially-related, sexually-related, family-related, or other (everything else) -related. Often all. However, too many conflicts in too many places can cause the reader to get worn out. Give your character, even a cranky one, at least one amiable relationships, even if it’s with another cranky character, please, or we won’t like him very much.
I like to find new ways to help my characters resolve their conflicts. For instance, in Frank’s case above, he enlists his daughter’s help to solve an ancient murder. They form a tentative truce to accomplish this, which may, or may not, last into another book.
My advice is to maximize the use of conflict in your story. It is a great tool to keep readers turning the page.
As always, I welcome your feedback.
by Lynne | Aug 9, 2014 | Uncategorized
If you’ve been following the Amazon-Hachette dispute you might be interested in this. If you are an author on Amazon, you have no doubt received this, but I thought I would include it in my blog for discussion purposes. What do you think? Let’s get a conversation going.
“Dear KDP Author,
Just ahead of World War II, there was a radical invention that shook the foundations of book publishing. It was the paperback book. This was a time when movie tickets cost 10 or 20 cents, and books cost $2.50. The new paperback cost 25 cents – it was ten times cheaper. Readers loved the paperback and millions of copies were sold in just the first year.
With it being so inexpensive and with so many more people able to afford to buy and read books, you would think the literary establishment of the day would have celebrated the invention of the paperback, yes? Nope. Instead, they dug in and circled the wagons. They believed low cost paperbacks would destroy literary culture and harm the industry (not to mention their own bank accounts). Many bookstores refused to stock them, and the early paperback publishers had to use unconventional methods of distribution – places like newsstands and drugstores. The famous author George Orwell came out publicly and said about the new paperback format, if “publishers had any sense, they would combine against them and suppress them.” Yes, George Orwell was suggesting collusion.
Well… history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Fast forward to today, and it’s the e-book’s turn to be opposed by the literary establishment. Amazon and Hachette – a big US publisher and part of a $10 billion media conglomerate – are in the middle of a business dispute about e-books. We want lower e-book prices. Hachette does not. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there’s no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out of stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market – e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can and should be less expensive.
Perhaps channeling Orwell’s decades old suggestion, Hachette has already been caught illegally colluding with its competitors to raise e-book prices. So far those parties have paid $166 million in penalties and restitution. Colluding with its competitors to raise prices wasn’t only illegal, it was also highly disrespectful to Hachette’s readers.
The fact is many established incumbents in the industry have taken the position that lower e-book prices will “devalue books” and hurt “Arts and Letters.” They’re wrong. Just as paperbacks did not destroy book culture despite being ten times cheaper, neither will e-books. On the contrary, paperbacks ended up rejuvenating the book industry and making it stronger. The same will happen with e-books.
Many inside the echo-chamber of the industry often draw the box too small. They think books only compete against books. But in reality, books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more. If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive.
Moreover, e-books are highly price elastic. This means that when the price goes down, customers buy much more. We’ve quantified the price elasticity of e-books from repeated measurements across many titles. For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000. The important thing to note here is that the lower price is good for all parties involved: the customer is paying 33% less and the author is getting a royalty check 16% larger and being read by an audience that’s 74% larger. The pie is simply bigger.
But when a thing has been done a certain way for a long time, resisting change can be a reflexive instinct, and the powerful interests of the status quo are hard to move. It was never in George Orwell’s interest to suppress paperback books – he was wrong about that.
And despite what some would have you believe, authors are not united on this issue. When the Authors Guild recently wrote on this, they titled their post: “Amazon-Hachette Debate Yields Diverse Opinions Among Authors” (the comments to this post are worth a read). A petition started by another group of authors and aimed at Hachette, titled “Stop Fighting Low Prices and Fair Wages,” garnered over 7,600 signatures. And there are myriad articles and posts, by authors and readers alike, supporting us in our effort to keep prices low and build a healthy reading culture. Author David Gaughran’s recent interview is another piece worth reading. http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2014/08/09/self-publishers-arent-killing-the-industry-theyre-saving-it-2/#more-3335
We recognize that writers reasonably want to be left out of a dispute between large companies. Some have suggested that we “just talk.” We tried that. Hachette spent three months stonewalling and only grudgingly began to even acknowledge our concerns when we took action to reduce sales of their titles in our store. Since then Amazon has made three separate offers to Hachette to take authors out of the middle. We first suggested that we (Amazon and Hachette) jointly make author royalties whole during the term of the dispute. Then we suggested that authors receive 100% of all sales of their titles until this dispute is resolved. Then we suggested that we would return to normal business operations if Amazon and Hachette’s normal share of revenue went to a literacy charity. But Hachette, and their parent company Lagardere, have quickly and repeatedly dismissed these offers even though e-books represent 1% of their revenues and they could easily agree to do so. They believe they get leverage from keeping their authors in the middle.
We will never give up our fight for reasonable e-book prices. We know making books more affordable is good for book culture. We’d like your help. Please email Hachette and copy us.
Hachette CEO, Michael Pietsch: Michael.Pietsch@hbgusa.com
Copy us at: readers-united@amazon.com
Please consider including these points:
– We have noted your illegal collusion. Please stop working so hard to overcharge for ebooks. They can and should be less expensive.
– Lowering e-book prices will help – not hurt – the reading culture, just like paperbacks did.
– Stop using your authors as leverage and accept one of Amazon’s offers to take them out of the middle.
– Especially if you’re an author yourself: Remind them that authors are not united on this issue.
Thanks for your support.
The Amazon Books Team
P.S. You can also find this letter at www.readersunited.com “
Writing historical mysteries is a juggling act. Writers must create a fictional plot with fictional characters around a historical time period with real people . . . and somehow suspend the readers’ disbelief.
As the story develops and takes twists and turns on its own, I find I am bending the truth a bit – creating an “alternate history.” This is fiction, after all. The book I am working on now, “Pure Lies,” will be a totally new take on history. It is about the witches and witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 and will provide a different motivation for the girls’ hysteria. The backdrop and many characters are authentic, but the storyline meanders considerably from what we know to be historically accurate.
