NaNoWriMo 2017: Achieved

Somehow, i managed to complete the challenge. Last night around 10:30, I checked the word count on the official website, and it came to 50,017. I think I will try to sleep tonight.

Future plan: I have a list of To Do items, that need to be completed before I will be willing to call what I have a draft. When those are fine, I will set the manuscript aside for a month or 2 before trying to turn it into something that's not painful to read, then get it to some better readers for comment.

Starting a scene by breaking the rules

The “rules” say conflicting things:

• A good start for a scene is in media res, i.e., in the middle of things.
• You shouldn’t start a scene with dialog.

There’s an obvious conflict here, since the middles of lots of scenes are dialog-heavy.

My approach has been to (sometimes) start a scene with a single line of dialog that presents a challenge from the speaker to the listener.

Unthinkable started with “So you see, Mr Penfield, we can’t really be communicating, because true communication is impossible.”  There follow

• a couple of sentences about the speaker;
• a couple of sentences of setting;
• resumption of the action.

I still think it’s effective.

In Seen Sean?, the opening line was, “I hope the schedule change didn’t rattle you too badly, Corwin.”  So we establish that

• there was a change in the schedule;
• the speaker had the authority to change the schedule
• he’s speaking to someone who had a different expectation.

After the opening line, there’s an immediate establishment of characters (the victim and his assistant) and setting (the victim’s condo).

Again, I stuck with it because it worked.

It’s interesting (as an artifact) that the original opening of Seen Sean? (click on the menu above or on the book cover to  the right) didn’t start with dialog, but just with a hint of trouble: “One Tuesday in early September, about halfway between the start of school and the first hint of autumn air, a tall, broad-shouldered man with steel gray hair, deep blue eyes, and no wedding ring strode into the office of Fleming Properties with an assistant in tow. Lisa McCloskey recognized Charles Jamison, U.S. Senator, at once.”

What do you think? How much should an author break the rules in an opening?

Naming my main characters

When I sat down to write Unthinkable, I knew how the book should start: We enter the scene with a single line of dialog (I know: the “rules” say you shouldn’t do that; maybe more in another post), and a main character’s name is given in this line.  I typed “So, you see, Mr” and stopped.  I didn’t know what his name was.

With exactly four words written, I had no idea what the next word should be.  And it was a main character’s name.

At this point I didn’t want any of my characters’ names to be symbolic or referential (though this changed somewhat when I got to Seen Sean?).

Obviously, I was “pantsing,” but hey, it was my first novel and I (mostly) knew where the story was going.

I just didn’t know a Main Character’s name.

So I sat. I thought. I sat and thought.  Some more.

The first name that came to mind was “Penfeld.”  That sounded almost right, but a quick search of the 1990 U.S. Census data showed no entries for that name.  But there was a name that was close: “Penfield”  And that was that.  Though uncommon, “Penfield” had the advantage of being easier to pronounce and spell than “Crigler.”  You might not believe some of the variations we’ve seen and heard — but I digress.

My police detective, also a main character, still needed a name.  So I just pulled a name, “Mason,” out of the air and I liked it: it was common enough (it’s in the top 150 in the Census data), and it conveyed a solid, plainspoken feel.

What do you think?  Were the names chosen well in spite of my lack of method?

Why do I write traditional mysteries?

Thrillers are bigger.
Young Adult (i.e., fiction for high-schoolers) is bigger.
Romance is bigger. (Ignore the howls of laughter from my wife.)
Paranormal romance is bigger.
Heck, zombies are bigger.
And yes, I know erotica is bigger. (But I wouldn’t read that, much less write it.)

So why write traditional mysteries (sometimes called cozy mysteries)?

2 reasons:

• It’s what I love to read. I don’t mean that I read mysteries exclusively. This year I have read (partial list):
• A Tale Of Two Cities
• The Lord Of The Rings
• The Hunger Games (all 3 books)
• 212
• The Bible (I will finish the entire thing by the end of the year. It’s a foundational document for our society, and to understand the West, you must understand this book.)
• The Red House Mystery
• All The Blue-Eyed Angels
• No Time To Run
• Invisible
• Vimana
• Prophecy (ARKANE thriller by J.F. Penn)
• The Space Between
• Creative Spirit
• Disintegration
• Doctrine of the Trinity (John Owen)
• Brainrush II
• Storm World: Speaker Of The Gods
• The Flinch
See: Thrillers, YA, supernatural, SF, religious works, and, yes, mysteries. I didn’t like all these equally. One I would warn you off of because of the quality of the writing; in one I would warn you of the content.

• Traditional mysteries are appropriate for a very broad audience. I fell in love with the genre in late elementary or early junior high school. My great uncle, T.O. Dahl (who attended the US Naval Academy with Robert Heinlein), lived across the street from us; he loaned me copies of several books by Agatha Christie and Erle Stanley Gardner. I was hooked.
Mysteries, as a form, give almost infinite possibilities in story telling: All the categories that are currently “bigger” can be subsumed in the archetypal seeking for truth. Or a story that is primarily in another genre can have elements of a mystery. (Will Katniss wind up with Gale or Peeta?)

Why traditional mysteries? Why not noir or supernatural or hard-boiled or juvenile or …?

That’s easy: To have to broadest appeal. Look: fundamentally I’m telling human stories. So in Unthinkable, everybody knows the dotcom-bust victim; everybody knows the alpha-girl in high school; detective shows are so popular that a tall, handsome detective who cracks wise is easy to picture.

So that’s why. How have I done?

Turning a genre meme on its ear

You know that scene where the detective gathers the suspects for the big revelation? Hercule Poirot almost always staged one of those scenes, beginning with AC’s first book, The Mysterious Affair At Styles.

I remember the day I was thinking about how those scenes seemed contrived, artificial.  Two weeks later, I was writing one of them for Seen Sean?

I did my best to turn the meme sideways:  People come and go throughout the scene; one of my main characters gets a strong slap on the face; one of the series’s recurring charcters wants to kill someone; and in the end, no one (else) dies or goes to jail.

What do you think?  Did I pull it off?

First novel as autobiography (sort-of)

It is said that every writer’s first novel is autobiographical to some extent.  While none of the events of Unthinkable happened in the real world, the autobiographical aspect comes into the descriptions of the grief of the victim’s family.

When the direction of the story became obvious to me (this was early on), and I knew that writing about the emotions experienced by Barbara Penfield’s family would have to be displayed in some measure, I had to draw parameters around what I would describe.

• It would draw on the grief I felt over my father’s suicide.
• It would not be tawdry or maudlin.  On the contrary, restraint was the key to authenticity.
• Since this was a murder mystery (not lit-fic or chick-lit), simple external description would be sufficient.  Barbara’s family would have to stay on stage, since they were involved (ahem!) in the murder’s solution.
• When it was time for the emotional cloud to lift, it would be through an experience the family shared.
• When, after the solution is known, a reconciliation occurs, it would only come with regret.

If you’ve read Unthinkable, how did I do?

Dual main characters

When I started the Mason & Penfield Mysteries I had this notion that there were 2 people, John Mason and Ron Penfield, who would share protagonist duties.  But I wanted to avoid a certain number of relationship types that had been done before:

• Mentor/protégé — This has been done a lot. (If you’re is tempted to say mentee rather than protégé, be warned: I have snipers hiding in the ceiling where you’re reading this.  Capiche?)  Mason, the police detective, has a protégé, but he is (mostly) used as Mason’s extension.
• Movie/drinking/sports fan/etc buddies — This relationship is too casual to make sense for a murder mystery series.
• Strangers who meet and combine forces — I find this more plausible than the recreational buddies above; it offers plenty of opportunity for tension between the dual (duelling?) MCs.  But every conflict would be a surprise to them as well as to the reader. I wanted more familiarity between them.
• Partners — Again, there is plenty of room for conflict, but without some hook (like the detectives on the TV show Common Law), it’s difficult to make them unique.
• A/B partners — i.e., one partner starts the investigation, then turns it over to the other.  While this provides structure, there’s no reason for the 2 people to not be 1, since they function as 1 anyway.
• Husband/wife — think Tommy & Tuppence. Don’t think Hart To Hart.

What I settled on was 2 guys who were former co-workers, and who had a grudge between them, a grudge caused by one’s misbehavior; who had gone down separate career paths in the meantime. In Unthinkable, Mason is forced to investigate Penfield; by the end, each understands the other a little better. A few months later, in Seen Sean?, their friendship is strained by Penfield’s actions, but they wind up cooperating to reveal the killer.

My WIP (work in progress), [title redacted] is starting out a little differently: We begin with a dead body and lots of police procedure.  This puts Mason center stage, and at my current point (about 20% of the first draft is complete), Penfield is just stepping onto the stage.

Two questions:

• What do you think about the interplay between Mason and Penfield?
• What other dual protagonist types can you think of?

A writing goal I failed at

In my previous post, I mentioned the parameters I set around the Christian content of Unthinkable and Seen Sean? One goal that I tried and failed at:

• No explicit Christian “message”. When I got to Barbara Penfield’s funeral in Unthinkable, I needed to give John Mason, my (non-Christian, actually lightweight, Americanized Zen Buddhist, meaning he meditates frequently) police detective, something to react to, so we hear a little of the Reformed minister’s funeral sermon before Mason wanders off into his own thought.

What do you think: Did I go too far?

Another shot at the back cover

Over at Seen Sean? I have posted another try at the back-cover copy. Have a look and post any comments you have.

Back cover copy for Seen Sean?

Below is a first crack at the back-cover copy for Seen Sean?, the next installment in the Mason & Penfield Mysteries. I am not completely satisfied with it. Can you offer any suggestions?

---

When Senator Charles Jamison dies in an apparent accident in Afghanistan, some people mourn, some rejoice.

But when Sean McCloskey, an Atlanta teenager, overhears a conversation implying Jamison was murdered, he neither rejoices nor mourns. He disappears.

Detective John Mason is assigned to find Sean, but there don’t seem to be any clues anywhere — until Sean begins calling his family. Sean's cell phone is only turned on for a few minutes each day, but the places he calls from seem weirdly random — all over metro Atlanta and beyond.

Can Mason find the link between Sean’s disappearance and the dead senator? Will justice finally be served?

Available in more places!

My ebook distributor has announced that they have added new distribution channels: Kobo and Copia. The links will be added to the book pages as soon as I know they've gone live. Of course, all the original venues (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks and Sony) still have Unthinkable, and you can always comparison shop the paperback at ISBN.nu.

UPDATE 2012-01-25
The Kobo and Copia versions will be available starting around the second week of February. I'll announce something definite when Unthinkable actually appears on their sites.

Unthinkable

Unthinkable, which is already published is available now. Click through for information on how to get a copy.