by Lynne | Jun 16, 2015 | Uncategorized
Did you ever find yourself reading a book, a good book, but find that something is bothering you about it? You can’t quite put your finger on it, so you sigh, throw it down for a while then pick it up later. The story is compelling, the descriptions atmospheric, the characters well-drawn. So what’s the problem?
This has happened to me a number of times and I finally decided it was time to solve the mystery. Ha! After all, as a writer, I could be doing exactly the same “wrong” thing. My readers could be throwing down my book . . . and not picking it up again.
So I decided to become a detective, a writing sleuth. My plan: the next time I came across this dilemma, I would stop and carefully dissect the pages and analyze the situation. Well, as it turns out, this happened on my very next book. I started reading a British WhoDunnit, one with good reviews, which means it’s good, right? Since I paid $12.99 for the e-version, I knew it was not a self-published book. Ahh, a real book. It must be good.
I will not name the book, because I don’t think that’s fair to the writer. In fact, it is pretty good so far. (I’m only a quarter of the way through at this writing.) The book is dark, historic, lots of murders, a country manor, an inspector with baggage. Hmm. Could be any book. But seriously, it’s nicely written and I keep turning the page.
Enter the problem. Point of View. I am in the head of the inspector as he visits one of the key characters, an attractive woman, in the story. I see the room through his eyes, hear the world with his ears, and think his thoughts about the situation as he speaks to her.
Suddenly, I am looking at the inspector through the woman’s eyes. No space break, no page break, just boom. In one sentence he notices her good looks, etc. etc. In the next, she is unnerved by the dark look on his face. She is thinking about what he’s like, etc. etc. Then back to the inspector.
Aha. Caught you! Because this writer is skillful, it wasn’t easy to discern exactly what the problem was. But these subtle POV shifts are disconcerting and give the book an uncomfortable edge. Frankly, they just annoy me, now that I recognize them for what they are.
I have no doubt that many authors are guilty of this POV faux pas. And some may be able to get away with it. I say may because I doubt it. Some of the more acclaimed literary authors like Pat Conroy, whose southern saga, South of Broad, I just finished, or Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, would never shift POVs in this choppy manner. I haven’t read Stephen King or John Grisham in a while, but I’m betting they don’t shift this way either. It’s actually amateurish and indicative of inexperienced writers.
Why do authors do it? It’s tempting to try to get a lot of information to the readers quickly and to establish who your characters are early. If you go back and forth between characters and get inside each one’s head, the reader will learn a lot right away. The problem is the reader may very well quit reading because they’re confused and never learn anything more. You’re also doing an injustice to your characters by giving them only a few lines of introspection or a brief emotional outburst, rather than a whole scene to themselves. Think about your characters. What’s the best way to get to know them? Flip-flopping inner thoughts with another character? Or devoting a whole scene, even a short one, to them? Tight, snappy dialogue can also give truer insight into a character than myriad POV shifts.
I’m tuned in to these pesky POV shifts now, so I spot them easily. When you start reading your next book, keep this concept in the back of your mind. If something is bugging you and you can’t figure out what on earth it is, see if POV shifts aren’t the reason.
And, more important, you might want to keep it in mind when you start writing your next book.
Ideas welcome.
by Lynne | Jun 8, 2015 | Uncategorized
152 years ago next month the brutal battle at Gettysburg was fought. In only three days, 51,000 men were killed, wounded or gone missing; 5,000 horses were slaughtered on the battlefield.
I visited Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to gather details for my book, Time Exposure. I roamed the sites of its bloody history, Cemetery Ridge, Devils Den, Big Round Top, Little Round Top. The excursion provided me with background elements to set the scene. But it also elicited dark, yet poignant emotions to help me paint the picture of the grim aftermath.
I used the technique of letters and diary entries to bring out the human side of the Civil War. I excerpt here a letter from my fictional Civil War photographer, Joseph Thornhill, to the love of his life, Sara Kelly. All other characters and events are real history. This letter might well have been written at the time.
July 3, 1863
My Dearest Sara,
I felt I had to write you today, after three of the bloodiest days I have ever witnessed. I must get it off my mind, and I might not even post this letter, lest you be terribly offended. But I feel I must unburden myself somehow.
Rumors have it that General Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia suffered great losses, maybe one third of their forces dead, wounded or captured. The Union Army is said to have lost a good deal, maybe one quarter of their troops, but it is safe to say we won the battle of Gettysburg. Lee’s army is retreating back to the South and Mead’s men are elated. Finally, victory, and an important one.
It is sad to think that this particular battle may have been fought over something as simple as shoes. There was rumored to be a large supply of shoes in the town of Gettysburg and on July 1 an officer under Ewell’s command led his men there to confiscate these shoes. Unfortunately for them, they ran into the Union Army.
I was slightly wounded today, some shrapnel lacerating my arm. But don’t worry. The doctors have bandaged me up and say I will be fine, no permanent damage, and I take a bit of laudanum for the pain. Luckily my camera, which was caught in the crossfire suffered no harm.
I must admit that until now I had no real concept of the power our modern weaponry wields. The force of the injury knocked me clean off my feet. I think this experience will prove useful to me in my work.
The wound has not stopped me from working, however, although it is a bit difficult with one arm in a brace. I rely on my apprentice more. I’ve been busy photographing the town and its people. Now I’ll begin, once again, to shoot the battlefield remains. I am steeling myself to this task slowly, but have not made much progress.
Both Alex and Tim O’Sullivan–you remember, I mentioned this fine young man and competent photographer to you–will arrive in the next few days. I look forward to working with them.
Now, other gruesome scenes await my camera. Embalming surgeons, as they call themselves, have arrived. Although many of the dead soldiers are hastily buried where they fall, many end up in mass graves. Some are later exhumed and buried in military cemeteries, whether they’ve been identified or not– often with the headstone reading only: “A Union Soldier” or “A Confederate Soldier.” It is hard to imagine–dying in the name of one’s country but that country not even knowing your name.
On a lighter note, I have also photographed some of the Union soldiers and officers after the final skirmish, and they were truly in high spirits–dirty, sweaty, exhausted, some wounded, but all euphoric. There was optimism in the air and hope, hope that this war would soon end. But for now we must deal with the brutal aftermath of this battle. Hospital tents crowd the countryside and the small population of Gettysburg is inundated with the sick and wounded. I doubt this town will ever be the same.
Tomorrow is July 4. I wonder if anyone, in the midst of all this furor, will appreciate the irony that this day marks the eighty-seventh year of our nation’s birth.
I miss you, my dearest, and long to see you this Christmas. You are always in my thoughts as I pray I am in yours.
Yours ever truly,
Joseph
While letter or diary writing is a device to take the reader back in time, it is an opportunity for the writer to truly bring the past alive. All ideas welcome.
by Lynne | Jun 1, 2015 | Uncategorized
Two weeks ago, I posted a blog called Dusting off an Old Manuscript. I got many replies from readers – – which leads me to believe that many writers struggle with this issue. The overwhelming feeling, however, was that it is, indeed, worth re-reading and most likely re-writing the old novel.
This gave me hope and I’ve been inspired to allow my old manuscript to see the light of day. I’ve begun reading it and making notes and decided to re-write. Not an easy job, especially in a series where one or more characters appear in my other books.
So, first I had to create a new timeline. Where does this book fit in with the others? What year does the book take place (the modern story, in my case, since the back story can be any time.) What is the main character’s role in this book? Is this a prequel or a sequel to the others?
Once the timeline makes sense, I have to get many things straight. If the protagonist is the same as other books, how old is she now? Is she still living in the same location? What has changed in her life? Career, relationships with others, marital status. How has she changed personally? Does she now have a Zen approach where previously she was a stressed-out nutter? Plus, I must do the same with all re-appearing characters who play significant roles.
This particular dusty manuscript is tricky because of the ending of the previous book. I plan to rely on science to help me out of a jam here! I shall say no more.
What about location? Am I locked into a particular location for the modern story? Did the main character move to a different city, house, street? Why? Does it matter to the story?
A lot of work needs to be done, but it would also need to be done in a new story if I continued the series. The only way around this is to write a new mystery with completely new characters. Maybe even a new series.
For now, I plan on blowing off the dust on the manuscript and writing Book Five of my current series.
Wish me luck!
by Lynne | May 24, 2015 | Uncategorized
I recently read a mystery that had me completely riveted. I wasn’t able to put it down for three days, and I was bummed when I finished. Fortunately, a sequel is coming.
The title: “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.
by Lynne | May 18, 2015 | Uncategorized
Some years ago, I wrote a follow-up novel to Time Exposure, a mystery about the Civil War. However, because I had changed the ending of Time Exposure just before it was published, suddenly my new story, the follow-up, would no longer work.
I know what you’re thinking. Silly, as a fiction writer, you can make anything work. You can change names, faces, hair color, locations, and personality traits. You can even kill off a character and bring him/her back to life. Hmm.
So, if I want to complete this new, older manuscript, I would, by necessity, have to revisit my earlier work and see how I could take the ending as it is currently written and revise it (believably) in the follow-up book.
Since my mysteries take place in the past but are solved today, I can use science and technology to do exactly that.
Take DNA, for instance. As a rule, if DNA is found at a crime scene, it may be matched to a suspect. However the percentage of DNA certainty diminishes when siblings are involved. Since full siblings share 50% of DNA, it is difficult to narrow the suspect pool to one person (or sibling.) Aha! This gives me wiggle room for a revised ending. I shall say no more.
The next big question is, do I seriously want to dust off this old manuscript and re-write it? Or do I want to write a completely new story? I’ve got mixed feelings. Part of me wants to re-visit the old story and not leave it buried in a drawer. Perhaps it deserves the light of day and with a total re-write, it is really a new book. Right?
The other part of me wants to jump into something completely new and banish the old manuscript to obscurity.
I’d love to hear what you think and what you have done, or what you might do, in a similar situation. Did you dust off your old manuscript, polish it up, and publish it? Or did you re-bury it in your desk drawer and begin afresh?
Ideas welcome.
by Lynne | May 11, 2015 | Uncategorized
While I was preparing for my talk at the Bowers Museum on the Nazi confiscation of art and my book, Deadly Provenance, I came across the following link about a battle between a museum in Norway and a family demanding the museum return a Henri Matisse painting, said to have been seized by the Nazis under the direction of Hermann Goering during WWII. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/matisse-norwegian-museum-was-once-nazi-loot
Almost seventy years after the War, art pieces are still being recovered, and, hopefully, being restored to the original owners or descendants thereof.
You might consider this situation a no-brainer. The painting winds up in museum, which believes they bought the piece legitimately from a collector or dealer. Paperwork seemed in order. And then suddenly a family or individual fights to reclaim it. What’s really going on?
Let’s back up. The Nazis looted about twenty percent of all Western art during the Second World War. Today, more than tens of thousands of items remain displaced, destroyed, or missing. At the end of the War, many of these confiscated pieces were found and returned to nations Germany had occupied, with stipulations that they be returned to individual pre-war owners. However, after the first few years, instead of continuing to track down the owners (many of whom died in the war) or their families, (many of whom died in the war,) some governments and museums chose to keep the works in storage or on display, effectively appropriating them as their own.
Despite a number of world and national “conferences” on this issue, there is a wide array of outcomes from restitution claims ranging from decade-long legal battles to resolution through mediation or arbitration. Why all this confusion?
Probably the easiest answer is “provenance.” Defined, provenance is a list of the previous owners of a work of art, tracing it from its present location and owner back to the hand of the artist. Think about this. How often and for how long do you keep receipts for items you purchase? Even important, high-priced items. Now consider — your country is at war. You and your family are arrested, taken from your home. Your home is then ransacked and used for enemy purposes. What would have happened to those receipts?
In many ways, it’s fortunate that the Germans (here the ERR or Einsatzstab Reichsletter Rosenberg, the agency in charge of confiscating the art and cultural objects from undesirables) kept such immaculate records. Lists exist of the items they hoarded, from whom they were stolen, when and where they were stored ie: the Jeu de Paume in Paris, etc. Without these documents and lists from heroines like Rose Valland, (photo of Rose and of Cate Blanchette who played Rose in The Monuments Men) a French curator who kept track of the plundered works of art, this work would have been lost forever.
More and more lost pieces of art are being recovered every day around the world. It remains to be seen, whether the original owners or their descendants will ever get them back.
So I decided to become a detective, a writing sleuth. My plan: the next time I came across this dilemma, I would stop and carefully dissect the pages and analyze the situation. Well, as it turns out, this happened on my very next book. I started reading a British WhoDunnit, one with good reviews, which means it’s good, right? Since I paid $12.99 for the e-version, I knew it was not a self-published book. Ahh, a real book. It must be good.
Why do authors do it? It’s tempting to try to get a lot of information to the readers quickly and to establish who your characters are early. If you go back and forth between characters and get inside each one’s head, the reader will learn a lot right away. The problem is the reader may very well quit reading because they’re confused and never learn anything more. You’re also doing an injustice to your characters by giving them only a few lines of introspection or a brief emotional outburst, rather than a whole scene to themselves. Think about your characters. What’s the best way to get to know them? Flip-flopping inner thoughts with another character? Or devoting a whole scene, even a short one, to them? Tight, snappy dialogue can also give truer insight into a character than myriad POV shifts.
