Mystery Fiction With A Supernatural Twist

I realize that this post is somewhat long in coming, and not very timely, but I just haven’t felt like I had anything worth saying.  Not that NaNo isn’t a worthwhile topic, but the fact that I got my ass handed to me again was something of a foregone conclusion, at least in my own mind, and so not really worth mentioning all on its own.

I hate bringing this up, because talking about a story I’m working on seems to be the surest way to sabotage it, but I’m working on something brand new.  I don’t want to say too much about it – there’s a reason the title is Jinx, after all – but I will say that I just hit the 10,000 word mark, which is pretty cool.  For me, anyway.

And here are a couple of articles from Brian Keene’s website: How to Avoid Bad Markets and Bad!HWA is Bad (That’s not the real title, just so you know).  The second article won’t be of much interest to people who don’t write horror, but the first one has a lot of good advice for aspiring writers of any genre, and is definitely worth the read.  Oh, and I found these linked on Ian’s blog, so thanks, Ian, for digging up all the good stuff.

It didn’t feel right putting up a post without talking about writing, so here’s a post about writing.

When it comes to the mystery novel I was working on, it turns out that the third time is not the charm.  It usually is for me, but apparently not this time.  I think I’ve figured out what I need to do to make it work, but I’ve also got a different idea that I’d like to try, and have stupidly signed up for NaNo again this year – despite the fact that I get my ass handed to me every year – so the mystery is going to be on hold until December 1st.  But that’s okay, because, while I haven’t been working on the mystery, I’ve actually managed to finish two short stories.  One I wrote from scratch in about a week and a half, and it’s already out on submission.  The other had been sitting on my hard drive since July, and it will be going out either today or tomorrow, as soon as I figure out the most suitable place to send it.

I don’t really know why I bother to do NaNo, except that it’s fun to be involved in something so big.  My inner editor is extremely critical and never shuts up, which makes it next to impossible for me to churn out the amount of words needed to finish in time.  But so far I have three friends who’ve signed up for it, at least one of whom is almost guaranteed to kick my ass, and so I’ll continue with my annual tradition of beating my head against the wall for the sake of fun.  Reading that back, it occurs to me that I seem to have a bit of a masochistic streak.  Tiff is going to have a ball with that comment, I can see it now…

And, speaking of Tiff…  I normally wouldn’t dream of mentioning the names of one of my beta readers in a public forum.  Not because I don’t appreciate their hard work, and not because I don’t think credit should be given where it’s due.  It’s because, in a world where every writer serious about their craft would kill to find a good reader, doing so is akin to throwing that friend into shark-infested waters and then dumping chum on their head.  But, in a total of three days over the past week, Tiff has edited – with a fine-tooth comb, I might add – both of those short stories I finished, which total 13,000 words.  That’s a lot of line editing in a short amount of time, and I wouldn’t have made the deadline for the first story without her help, so I just wanted to take a moment to say thanks.  I <3 you, Editing Wench.

I was over on duotrope the other day, and I found a listing for an anthology called Dark Jesters: An Anthology of Humorous Horror.  They want real horror fiction – not stories making fun of the genre – but with a humorous angle, maximum length 2,000 words.  I’d love to try to write a story and submit it.  The low word count would keep me from getting too complex, and since I’ve been stuck on the writing lately, a deadline might help me get my ass in gear.  It probably wouldn’t be accepted, but it would be fun to try.

But you see, I have this problem.  I’m not sure what’s funny.  I don’t mean that I have no sense of humor.  I find a lot of things humorous and I love a good laugh – often at my own expense – but I have a hard time defining what makes something funny.  And my sense of humor is different than a lot of people’s.  For example, when I used to work at the book store, a bunch of us were in the back room, looking for a particular book.  Our manager was digging through a box, and was just about to move it over and go on to the next one, when my friend looks over and says, completely deadpan, "Don’t forget to lift with your back."  I burst out laughing, and a second later he did, too.  Everyone else just stared at us like we were idiots.

So, what makes something funny to you?  Does someone falling on their face make you laugh?  Or are you more about the witty banter and the caustic comebacks?  Do you prefer your humor to be slapstick or intellectual, dry British style or raunchy toilet humor?

p.s.  Credit for the title of this post goes to Tiffany.

So I’ve had this idea in my head off and on for about two years now.  The first time I tried to write it, the idea was too contrived and extremely heavy on back story, and I spent too much of my time trying to shoehorn everything into the shape I wanted it.  Obviously that isn’t the way to write a story, but I couldn’t get the first incarnation out of my head in order change it around, so I put it aside and started on something completely different.

A while later I decided to give it another try.  There was a lot less shoehorning that time around, but although the protagonist had the same basic background as the first time, the plot itself was much softer, leaning more toward cozy territory than I liked.  So I put it away a second time, knowing I’d be back at it sooner or later.

A couple of weeks ago I decided it was time to take another crack at it.  But this time I thought it might be a good idea to do a bit of an outline first.  That way, I can realize I’m on the wrong track before I write 20,000 words.  So now I’ve got my outline, which is very basic, and my main characters, which are the same characters that I started out with.  But this time I think I have a plot that fits.  It’s relatively simple, compared to the first one, and has almost no back story, but it’s got a much more dangerous feel to it than the second, which is what I was aiming for.

But now the doubt is creeping in, and I’ve started wondering if this is the right idea after all.  So, if there’s anyone out there who’s been in the same boat, I’d love to hear your take on this.  How do you know when the story you want to write is a good one?  Is it just a gut feeling?  Do you take it on faith?  Or do you just not worry about that and write the story anyway?

I’m trying to put together a plot outline for a mystery, and I’ve run into a bit of a problem. I have the main cast of characters, including the killer, and the basic plot, but when it comes time to give the killer a motive, I grind to a screeching halt. Not because I can’t come up with one, but because I start to wonder which of my possible options would be considered more believable.

The characters and set-up are sufficiently angsty and dark that the mystery itself can’t fall on the cozy side of things and still work, which means – I believe – that my killer has to set out to kill his victim with malice aforethought, rather than fall into the situation accidentally. On the other hand, I’m not looking to make my killer an evil beast who gets his jollies from the pain of others.

The way I see it, I have two basic choices. I can go with the "he killed so-and-so for the sake of money/lust/etc. and then knocked off a few more people to cover it up" theory. Or I can go with the "sociopathic personality who finally snaps and becomes a serial killer" theory. Neither one is particularly realistic – although I’ve seen examples of both in real life – but what I’d really like to know is, does one seem much more believable than the other? If you’re reading a book about a serial killer, how much background do you need in order to accept that some dude is running around offing people? Do you need a really good reason, a logical reason, for the murders, or is it enough for you to know that the reason seems logical to the killer? For that matter, as long as the killer poses enough of a threat to the protagonist to keep the reader on the edge, is why he’s doing what he’s doing much of a consideration at all? Some of the fiction I’ve read lately – from some big names, I might add – would indicate that the answer is no. What would you say?

A lot of people have their shorts in a bunch over the final book of "that big vampire saga", which was released a couple of weeks ago. A friend of mine was kind (read: evil) enough to provide me with a whole pile of links, most of which were comment threads filled with disappointed readers airing their grievances. I won’t go into all the details here, but I will say that some of the most common bones of contention were these: contrived plot, main character acting out of character, and pissing off half the fans by putting the main character with the "wrong guy".

Reading all the comments got me thinking about a number of issues, and one of those issues was this: can a character act "out of character"? On the one hand, the character is created entirely by the writer. The writer decides how they speak, how they act, what they wear, the hobbies they have, the causes they support, etc. They can easily decide to have the character act differently than in the past. But is that necessarily acting out of character? People do unexpected things. They go through phases where they act in ways they haven’t previously. Good children become rebellious teenagers. Happy people can become depressed. Nasty people can have a change of heart. So if a character starts doing things a reader doesn’t expect, is it really a case of being out of character? Or is it just art imitating life?

What do you guys think? Can a character be out of character? Or is it just people complaining because the story didn’t go the way they wanted it to?

Obviously I’m new at the being published thing, and relatively new at the blogging thing, too, but I’ve learned a lot over the years from reading people’s writing and publishing blogs – and obviously from reading and writing fiction as well – and I’m hoping that maybe I can give just a little bit back. With that in mind, a couple of links:

First, over on J.A. Konrath’s blog we have How Not To Start a Story . And then, over on Sherryl Clark’s blog we have a five-day workshop on the same subject but with the opposite slant, starting with Good Beginnings – Day 1 .

Both make excellent points about the subject, but not all of the people leaving comments can seem to agree on what makes a good first sentence. There’s also some dissension over whether or not the first sentence is indicative of the quality of the entire story, or if a good story can survive a bad beginning.

My own favorite first sentence is from The Gunslinger by Stephen King: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." To me, this is an absolutely brilliant first sentence, because it gives you the protagonist, the antagonist, sets up the conflict, and gives a vivid mental picture, all in 12 simple words. That’s a sentence that does a whole lot of work, and a sentence that works is important. Especially when it’s the first sentence. (And even more so if it were the first sentence of a short story.)

An example of a first sentence that other people think is good, but that doesn’t work for me, is from Neuromancer by William Gibson: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." Now I’m sure some people would say that this isn’t a good sentence because it’s not action, and/or you should never start a story by describing the weather, but that’s not the problem I have with it. I have a problem with it because I’m not sure how to envision a television tuned to a dead channel. In the old days of television antennae, I would assume this was supposed to be "snow", that black & white fuzz that you got when a broadcast station was too far away for you to receive anything. But I’ve never seen a sky that looked anything like that. And in the case of cable television, I’m not sure what a dead channel looks like. (In my house, we went straight from antenna to satellite dish.) This probably sounds nitpicky, but my point is, especially in the first sentence, an image should be vivid, and it should be specific. There shouldn’t be room for interpretation. When you read that sentence you should know what you’re supposed to be seeing, you shouldn’t have to guess. The same thing can be said about the first sentence in Uglies by Scott Westerfield: "The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit." Again, I don’t know how to visualize the color of cat vomit, and not because I haven’t seen it before. I’ve seen far too much of it, in my opinion, and it always looks different depending on what my furry friend has been eating recently, or how much of the hairball he’s actually managed to yack up. Or maybe I’m just being far too picky.

What do you think? What’s your favorite first sentence and why? Can a story start off bad and get better? Or does a bad beginning guarantee a bad ending?