Sleuth, page 3
For me, a single sentence in a tv interview with a famously shrewd ceo was so powerfully revealing that it inspired a character. When a reporter asked the ceo about the employees who would be laid off by his restructuring of the company of which he was assuming control, he said “There are always casualties” and moved smartly along to his next point. Those four words took me into the mind of someone whose outlook could not have been more different from my own. At first, I was simply gobsmacked by the executive’s ruthlessness, his indifference to the lives of the men and women who would be displaced, but then I stepped back and tried to see the situation from his perspective. The company he was restructuring had been skimming the trees for months, and it was about to crash and burn. The ceo saw what needed to be done, did it, and saved the company and the jobs of over 100 people. That ceo became the model for Leland Hunter, a significant character in my novel Kaleidoscope. Leland is a multimillionaire developer whose motto is “Never ask permission; if it becomes necessary, ask forgiveness.” His principles are antithetical to everything my protagonist believes, but in creating Leland I was governed by the gentle words of Philo of Alexandria (25 b.c.e.–50 c.e.): “Be kind, for everyone you meet is carrying a great burden.” It was tempting for me to make Leland a villain, but remembering Philo’s sage advice I looked kindly at the ceo on whom Leland was modelled, and when I understood more about the burdens that ceo carried I was able to make Leland a character about whom Joanne (and the reader) could care.
Insights into the mind and heart of “the other” are always worth recording in your notebook. These revelations will help you to develop “layered” secondary characters who will add breadth and depth to your novel, and sometimes these insights will lead you to create a character strong enough to play a significant role in your work.
The character of Charlie Dowhanuik, a hip, brilliant, angry young man with a birthmark that covers half his face, had its genesis in a two-minute encounter I had on a train to Vancouver. A stunningly beautiful young woman and her boyfriend boarded the train at Jasper, Alberta. Both were dressed for hiking. The young man had a large port-wine birthmark that covered his right cheek like a blood mask. He was wearing a T-shirt, and like too many of us I didn’t know where to look, so I lowered my eyes and read the message on his shirt. “Beauty is in the eye of the be-holder.” He saw that I’d noticed the words and smiled. “Do you want to check out the back of my shirt?” He pivoted, and I saw that the back showed the logo of a popular brand of beer. I was puzzled until he turned again to face me, and I realized I’d misread the message on his shirt. The sentence was “Beauty is in the eye of the beer-holder.” “Love it,” I said. We both laughed, and the young man and his girlfriend went to their compartment.
I never saw him again. However, the memory of that young man and of the grace with which he carried his burden stayed with me, and Charlie Dowhanuik, the angry, funny, deeply empathetic host of a late-night radio call-in show was born. Charlie is a recurring character in the Joanne Kilbourn series, and, when I was asked to write a mystery novella for Orca’s high-interest/low-vocabulary series of Rapid Reads, I chose Charlie as my protagonist. Readers liked Love You to Death, so I wrote three more Rapid Reads for the Charlie D series and two Charlie D mystery plays for the cbc. A small but vivid fictional world grew from one brief train encounter.
Taking note of the telling details that reveal the minds and hearts of our fellow and sister human beings will provide you with tasty and nourishing chunks of this and that to throw into the stew that the boys in the basement wolf down with such gusto. And the boys will reward you. When—finally—you get a chance to open your laptop, you will have all sorts of material to help you fill that blank screen. As P. D. James said, “Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other people. Nothing that happens to a writer—however happy, however tragic—is ever wasted.”
One of the many virtues of prewriting, of course, is that you can do it anywhere. A friend of mine schooled by the Ursulines remembers the Mother Superior impressing on her girls the truth that no opportunity should be wasted. “When you’re on a bus, pray for the conversion of the people on the bus,” the good sister would say. These are useful words to remember. As a mystery writer, you’re spared the imperative to save the souls of your fellow passengers, but you can take note of their physical appearance and your speculation about their inner lives. Why is that mountain of a man with the tattoos and the ponytail immersed in a knitting book? Does the bass fiddle case that scowling girl is struggling with really contain a bass fiddle or something more sinister? Is anybody on the bus looking at you through narrowed eyes?
I have found inspiration in a pleasant, matronly woman dusting off plastic fetuses as she set up a pro-life booth at the university; in a politician taking a drink of water from a thermos at a political picnic (in fact, my first novel, Deadly Appearances, is set in motion by that single act); in a woman in my gynecologist’s office who told me she was dealing with her ex-husband’s defection by visiting every city and town she and her once beloved had lived in together so she could work out exactly when the fault line in their marriage had deepened into a crevice.
Without breaking into a sweat, I could give you 100 similar examples, but I hope my point is clear. None of these potentially fruitful moments came from a time when I was closeted away in my office. All came from times when I was fully engaged in the ordinary tasks and rhythms of living.
I once told a Grade 8 class that one of the things I liked best about being a writer was the fact that it made me a good live-er. They thought I was hilarious, but it is the truth. Good writers are good live-ers. They live life to the fullest: eyes bright, ears flapping, nose twitching, antennae on full alert. As screenwriter and novelist Nora Ephron famously remarked, “Writers are cannibals. Everything is copy.” Everything that comes into the writer’s world is potential material, so keep your world large, and take notes.
Researching Your Novel
Research, factual accuracy, lays the base for plausible fiction, for it actually enables suspension of disbelief in readers by building their trust.—Helen Benedict
Research plays a key role in all three parts of the writing process: prewriting, writing, and editing. For the crime writer, the prewriting phase is a continuous act of discovery—of acquiring accurate knowledge of police work, forensics, law, and scores of other things about which most of us know very little. And accuracy matters.
There’s an old saying that a fly in the soup doesn’t spoil the soup, but it does spoil the experience. Don’t spoil your reader’s experience. Don’t stint on the research. I learned this lesson the hard way.
Only 1 of 3,000 tortoiseshell cats is male. In an early novel in the Joanne Kilbourn series, Joanne finds a feral cat and takes it to a vet to have it checked out before it becomes part of her family. After a thorough examination, including a peek at the cat’s genitals, the vet declares that the tortoiseshell cat Joanne found is a male. Her daughter names the cat Benny. A happy ending—that is, until the book was published and the letters chiding me for my mistake started to roll in. Alert cat lovers pointed out (1) that tortoiseshell cats are almost always female and (2) that even the biggest dolt who ever wandered into the School of Veterinary Medicine would be able to lift a kitten’s tail. The opening just under the tail is the anus. Below the anus is the genital opening, a round hole in males and a vertical slit in females. So now I know, and so do you.
By training, I’m an academic. I once picked up a mystery in which members of an English department were being bumped off because a colleague was desperate to become chair of the department. Anyone who has ever sat through a university departmental meeting knows that no one has ever been driven to murder by the desire to become a department chair. Most of us (including me) grimly take our turn as chair and leave the office saying “never again.” I did not buy that book.
I have heard more than one writer excuse sloppy research by saying that, because they are writing fiction, it doesn’t matter if they just “make stuff up.” Lawyers know that isn’t true. A maxim from Roman law is as true for crime fiction writers as it is in the courtroom. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus—“False in one thing, false in everything.” For lawyers, this principle means that a witness who is false in one matter will be false in other matters. For readers, it means that a writer who gets something verifiable wrong can’t be trusted when she creates the events of her story. The need to “get it right” will lead you into unfamiliar territory. The insights you gain from your journeys will make you a stronger writer and a more complete human being.
The experts I’ve consulted are immensely generous about answering questions and offering information. I welcome the facts, but even more I welcome the glimpses into their world their answers give me. A young doctor of my acquaintance told me that, when a large number of ambulances arrive at the ER carrying critically injured accident victims, the medical team makes quick judgments about which of the injured are “salvageable”—the cool pragmatism of that word gave me more insight into that young doctor’s world than a dozen journal articles ever could.
In recent Joanne Kilbourn novels, a retired police officer has helped me to verify police procedure. His information about the protocol of police work is always detailed and accurate, but his informal comments about the inner lives of police officers are invaluable. Without him, I never would have known how the rush of emotion officers experience when they arrive at a crime scene often causes them to misread information and pursue leads that go nowhere. He also said that, as days of an investigation turn into weeks, a smouldering anger envelopes every officer on the case.
The last time he and I were together, my friend told me about going into the morgue and watching as a pathologist performed an autopsy on a two-year-old who had choked. As the autopsy continued, another pathologist stroked the boy’s leg gently and continued talking to the boy as if he were still alive, not just a dead body. That image will stay with me forever.
When you step away from the “write what you know” rule, research becomes inevitable, and it can add a lot to your story. Just don’t end up with the tail wagging the dog: remember that you are writing a novel, not a research paper. The story always comes first.—Stephen King
A final word about the proper use of research. Many years ago I co-wrote a novel called 1919: The Love Letters of George and Adelaide. My co-writer and I spent many long hours at our respective university libraries reading old newspapers on microfiche, a thoroughly dispiriting activity, but by the time we started writing we were filled to the brim with facts about Canada from the moment the armistice was signed in 1918 to the end of the year 1919.
Our editor was not impressed. “Your research is drawing attention to itself,” he said. “A good steak is marbled with fat that brings flavour to the meat; good writing is marbled with research that brings flavour to the piece. Your research is a glob of fat in the middle of your narrative. Your readers will want to spit it out, and I don’t blame them.”
Make your research an integral part of your novel, enhancing its flavour and deepening its meaning. Use research wisely, and you will be rewarded both professionally and personally. As a writer, you will gain a solid base upon which to build your fictional world. As a human being, you will discover the truth in Hamlet’s words: “There are more things in heaven and earth . . . than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
English 100 Redux
Take out the five mystery novels you’ve most enjoyed, and sharpen your pencils. Analyze the books you’re reading as if you were back in English 100, keeping one particular question in mind: Why?
Why did the writer choose this narrative perspective? If he chose first person, why did he choose to write from this particular character’s perspective? Would the writer’s purpose be better served if events were seen through the eyes of a different character? Did his choice work or not work?
Why this setting? Why this location? Why this time of year? If the action moves from place to place, why does it move? If most of the novel centres on one particular setting, why did the writer choose to keep his focus narrow? Why did his choices work or not work?
Why this protagonist? Why did the writer make the choices he made about revealing the character of his protagonist? (Is the character revealed through actions? words? thoughts? relationships? words and thoughts of others?) And—yet again—why did his choices work or not work?
Why did the writer choose this particular gallery of secondary characters? Are they fully realized? In a well-written novel, every character serves a purpose (more about this later). Is the function of each secondary character clear in this novel? Why or why not?
If we define plot as “what happens” and structure as “the order in which what happens is presented to the reader,” has the writer told us what happens as effectively as possible? Does the plot lag anywhere? Does it make sense? Is the pacing of plot points effective? Does the structure serve the plot? Why?
Look at the openings of those five mysteries that knocked your socks off. Notice how often they begin in medias res—“in the middle of things”—with an ongoing situation that draws you in and makes you want to turn the page. Your grandmother was right: you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Don’t blow it! Remember always that the writer’s first task is to keep the reader reading. How do the openings of the novels you’re exploring hook you?
Why do the five books you chose conclude as they do? It’s a given that at the end of a mystery the murderer must be brought to justice, and the motivation for the murder and the strategies by which the murderer committed the act and by which (for a time at least) he evaded detection must be made clear. That said, to paraphrase Dr. Seuss’s Grinch musing about the meaning of Christmas, what if the denouement is “something more” than a simple tying together of loose ends? What if it is the place where the writer offers the reader an insight into the complex business of living a life?
As you sit down to write, reflect on what you learned from the English 100 Redux exercise. How can the choices of the writers you admire help you to shape your own writing and create work with your own stamp? Give yourself plenty of time to make your decisions. Remember the old carpenter’s axiom: “Measure twice, cut once.”
Mapping Your Novel
I always know the end of the mystery before I begin to write. Tension should be held within the novel, and there should be no longueurs of boring interrogation.—P. D. James
When I do a Q&A after a reading, one question I’m invariably asked is whether I work from a detailed outline or just make a start and let my imagination take flight. It’s a fair question. I know crime fiction writers who fill the walls of their workrooms with note cards detailing each scene in each chapter. I also know others who simply follow their muses.
My process is somewhere in the middle. Mysteries are plot driven. They give the reader a story, and mysteries have always had a fair-play rule. The reader’s opportunity to solve the mystery must be equal to the detective’s opportunity. And for me that means the writer must have control of his or her material.
In a good mystery, there is always the “aha” moment. When the lion asks the fox why he doesn’t follow the example of the other animals by entering the lion’s den, and the fox says “I see many footprints going into your den but none coming out,” that is the “aha” moment for both the fox and the reader. For me, giving the reader this moment means I have to know before I begin writing who the killer is, who the victim is, and why the murder is committed.
Rather than blather on in abstractions, I’m going to risk my publisher’s ire and illustrate the point with specifics from my sixteenth Joanne Kilbourn novel, What’s Left Behind. The victim is Lee Crawford, a striking thirty-three-year old farmer continuing the breeding of heritage animals that was the lifelong work of Colin Brokenshire, the man who raised Lee and her identical twin, Maisie, after their parents were killed in a car accident. The murderer is Bette Stevens, a strong and attractive farmer in her late fifties who has been a presence in the lives of Lee and Maisie since Colin became their legal guardian. Bette and Colin had a relationship that ended when Colin and Lee fell in love. When Colin told Bette he and Lee were planning to marry, Bette killed him in what appeared to be a farm accident. Eleven years later, when Bette’s son Bobby tells his mother Lee has accepted his proposal of marriage, Bette kills Lee.
As P. D. James says, “A first class mystery should also be a first class novel.” The fact that I know not only the identity of the murderer but also her motivation gives me a strong foundation upon which to build when I turn to developing characters and their relationships, writing individual scenes, and working out the plot and its subplots—in short, when I begin writing the novel.
Chapter 4
Writing Your Mystery
What good is a poet/What good is this pen, this yellow paper, if I can’t fashion them into tools or weapons to change our lives?—Beth Brant
Your Goal in Writing
Beth Brant’s haunting lines point to what I suggested earlier should be the first question all writers ask themselves: “What do I hope to accomplish with this piece of writing?” If your goal is to bring readers diversion and pleasure, and you have written a solid, absorbing novel that keeps them turning the pages until they close your book with a satisfied sigh, then you’ve done your work. If, however, your answer, like Brant’s question, involves enlarging readers’ minds and/or moving readers to action, then you must ask yourself a few more questions. “Is there something I want to say here about human nature, human conduct, and the business of living?” “What’s the big idea behind my novel or story?” “What is my thesis?” “What is my theme?”
