Category Archives: Writing

HOW TO WRITE DEADLY CRIME FICTION

grodgers-write-deadly-fiction-cover-online-use-3debook-sml[1]Crime fiction is the second largest-selling book genre, slightly behind romance. It’s a craft an author must have passion for, as well as having the writing skills and subject knowledge to make their story believable—and hold their reader’s interest. Passion has to pre-exist in the writer but, thankfully, the techniques can be learned. I’m betting that 808 Killer Tips on How to Write Deadly Crime Fiction will help.

The No BS series of crime fiction guides is a project I’m passionately working on. It started as a self-teaching venture when I began fiction writing. I quickly found that, although I might be an adequate technical writer, I knew little about the tricks of the fiction trade.

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grodgers-write-deadly-cover-online-use-3dbook-sml[1]I researched and developed a list of pointers—mostly notes to self—on some of the most important tips. Thinking it would be helpful to others, I published it as a pdf under the title Dead Write with 99 tips and offered it as sign-up bait for my blogsite. It’s now matured as Guide One with a more professional look as 101Killer Tips on Writing Deadly Crime Thrillers. It’s still available free on this site.

The series goes beyond diction and syntax. It gives writers a unique look into the real side of crime writing based on my actual experience and a hell of a lot of research—never mind help from a gem of a source.

AA2My friend and fellow crime writer, Sue Coletta, generously offered to critique and edit the guides. Sue is an accomplished author on her own with a new crime thriller Marred hitting the shelves on November 11, 2015. Sue recently renovated her website and it’s an excellent source of information for crime writers and fans. Visit Sue at www.suecoletta.com and get her own free tips: 60 Ways To Murder Your Fictional Characters.

grodgers-deadly-selfedit-cover-online-use-sml[1]Guide Two is How to Self-Edit Deadly Crime Thrillers. Researching this has taken my writing knowledge to a whole new level and I hope it does the same to others. What’s opened my eyes is how the process of editing actually works. The takeaway—it’s as vital to learn editing skills as it is to develop writing skills. Editing is revision. Re-Vision.

Writing Deadly Crime Scenes is the third guide. It deals with what really goes on behind the ‘Scenes’. People. Places. Processing. It gives you tips on how crime scene investigators recognize evidence and how you can accurately portray the scenes in your books. The guide has sections on legal requirements, responsibilities of investigative roles, and how personalities intertwine on the CSI ‘food chain’.

grodgers-write-deadly-dialogue-cover-online-use-3debook-sml[1]Deadly Dialogue goes beyond the do’s and don’ts of fiction dialogue. It gives a look at how cops and crooks think, hence how they talk. There’s tips on formatting dialogue so your novel will read like a crime book and not like some soap-opera script. There’s also a glossary of crime terms to get it just right.

Guide Five is on Characters. Let’s set this straight. Plot is all about characters doing something to forward the story and their own development. It makes you think about development of your characters on three levels. One dimensional that have no names. Two dimensional with an occasional appearance as supporting cast. And the three dimensional stars of the show that your reader needs to love or hate.

grodgers-write-deadly-forensics-cover-online-use-3dbook-sml[1]With Guide Six, the series takes a scientific turn and looks at the world of Forensics which no crime story can ignore. You’ll get tips on fingerprinting and footwear impressions. A tour through the lab. Recognize bloodstains and semen stains. Microanalysis. Fires. Explosions.Trace evidence and toolmarks. Entomology, serology, and odontology. It covers psychiatric profiling and you’ll take a ride on the polygraph. (Tough to compress this into 101 single tips.)

You’ll get a bang out of Guide Seven. It’s all about Firearms where you’ll get tips on ballistics, lands, grooves, and striations. It covers types and terminology as well as ammunition and actions. You’ll learn about yield thresholds and fragmentation, the difference between GSW and GSR, and how to snipe off a suspect. You’ll never again call a cartridge a bullet, or a primer a casing, and you’ll know where to turn to for help.

grodgers-write-deadly-autopsies-cover-ebook-interior-1024px[1]Guide Eight takes on Autopsies and the role of forensic pathology. You’ll bag some bodies and slice some Y-incisions; cross-section organs with the tools of the trade and meet with who’s who in the morgue. Experience the stages of mortis (changes in death) and understand why things smell the way they do. How to Write Deadly Accurate Autopsies helps you write convincing causes of death and backs it up with scientific support from the lab.

All eight guides will be condensed into one resource titled How to Write Deadly Crime Fiction — A No BS Guide with 808 Killer Tips. The individual guides will be available online as eBooks with an internal link to printing it as a pdf. The big guy, 808, will be in both digital and print-on-demand.

Guides Two through Eight will be out in the fall of 2015, date TBA. In the meantime, help yourself to Guide One: How to Write Deadly Crime Thrillers — A No BS Guide With 101Killer Tips. I’d appreciate your feedback, so please comment with your thoughts and suggestions.

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How to Write Deadly Crime Thrillers — A No BS Guide With 101 Killer Tips.

PS – If you’re already a subscriber to DyingWords and want the new guide, email me at garry.rodgers@shaw.ca and I’ll send you the pdf direct.

WHAT THE HECK IS THE STORY GRID?

A3The Story Grid is a methodology. It’s a diagnostic tool – not a formula – designed to teach writers how to self-edit and find what’s wrong with their novel and how to fix the manuscript before it goes to a commercial editor. It’s a story CT scan, seeing at the 50,000 foot macro-level, as well as line-by-line at the micro-level, deep inside. The Story Grid is what good self-editors must know about writing a Best Selling novel.

Shawn Coyne is a highly accomplished editor who developed the Story Grid. He’s right when he says that, in today’s world, a writer must deliver publish-ready material every time. Coyne’s Story Grid system analyzes manuscripts like a left-brain editor thinks – after the creative right-brain writer finishes initial drafts.

The Story Grid focuses on genre fiction.

AA2Ah… what, exactly, is genre?

Genre is a fancy word for managing audience expectations of categories. It classifies stories – crime, thriller, mystery, romance, sci-fi, erotica – the type of stuff that literary snobs turn their nose up at, but what sells in a commercial market and makes publishers (thus writers) money.

Coyne explains the makeup of genre fiction in a five-leaf clover concept:

  1. A8Time – How long will it take to read?
  2. Structure – What’s the plot?
  3. Style – Comedy? Thriller? Tear-jerker? Fifty Shades?
  4. Reality – How much suspension of disbelief?
  5. Content – Takeaway for the reader?

The Silence Of The Lambs is a genre novel. It’s not a long read, has a complex plot, a thriller style, is easily believable, and leaves the reader remembering it forever.

SOTLThe Silence Of The Lambs is a perfectly crafted story which Coyne analyzes in his book The Story Grid and how his Foolscap, Spreadsheet, and Graph methods apply.

The Foolscap Global Story Grid is Step 1 in Coyne’s system. It represents how an editor thinks of the macro view of the story in no more space than a sheet of foolscap allows; getting the entire outline of a novel in one shot. Very simply, The Silence Of The Lambs is viewed as:

Beginning Hook – Clarice Starling gets job to interview Hannibal Lector to find Buffalo Bill.

Middle Build – Hannibal toys with Clarice, then escapes, leaving Clarice on her own.

Ending Payoff – Clarice catches and kills Buffalo Bill.

It’s the classic 3-Act structure. Expanded, but still on one foolscap page, the Foolscap Grid looks like this:

The Story Grid - Foolscap

The Foolscap Grid is a general, checking tool for identifying weakness in overall story and how the collection of scenes builds a gross curve of action with major story movements. It’s the macro analysis.

Step 2 is dissecting individual scenes and plugging them into an Excel spreadsheet. It’s the micro-analysis where the scenes are assigned fourteen values:

A9Scene number. Word count. Story event. Value shift. Polarity shift. Turning point. Point of view. Period of time. Duration. Location. Names of onstage characters. Number of onstage characters. Names of offstage characters. Number of offstage characters.

The Spreadsheet Grid clearly identifies what’s happening in each scene and how it contributes to the global story. If any particular value is weak, and not doing its job in furthering the story – not keeping the reader engaged through change and surprise – the writer is able to have a quick ‘meeting with themselves’ and fix the problem, rather than having to wait to get the message back much later from an independent editor.

A10Step 3 is taking the values from the spreadsheet and putting them in a Graph Grid. Here the rise and fall of the story are mapped and the collision of characters’ internal and external conflicts are noted. The graph is bisected by a central line running left to right across the mddle with each scene number being assigned a seperate box. In the upper half are the positive forces of the story which Coyne terms Life. In the lower half are the negative forces of Death. Life and death conflict is central to the story.

A7When the positive and negative strength of the values are plotted in relation to the scene, the overall story arch stands right out. Any interruption in the flow will show as a bend in the arch which is a red flag that something needs fixing. The flow is shown as a sine / cosine cruve. In Coyne’s analysis of The Silence Of The Lambs the beginning hook, the middle build, and the ending payoff neatly cross and coincidently seem to balance.

It’s no coincidence.

Author Thomas Harris deliberately planned The Silence Of The Lambs to have a storyline that flowed this way. It’s unknown if Harris used a similar foolscap / spreadsheet / graph system, but he arrived at a masterful result in one of the best thriller genre novels ever written.

A11There’s far more to The Story Grid than I can cover in a short blog post. The hidden genius in this system is its effective use in outlining a novel, rather than waiting till drafts are done then analyzing flow.

Here’s some links to Shawn Coyle’s The Story Grid.

Watch the Free 5 Part Video series:  http://shop.blackirishbooks.com/blogs/the-story-grid-videos/36625473-video-one

Buy The Story Grid at Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/Story-Grid-What-Good-Editors/dp/1936891352/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1440785390&sr=1-1&keywords=the+story+grid+shawn+coyne&pebp=1440785394120&perid=1VK8CDVZM7H26THBR36C

Visit Shawn Coyne’s website:  http://www.storygrid.com/

BIG RIVER – WHAT NOVELISTS CAN LEARN FROM SONGWRITERS

AB6Johnny Cash was a brilliant musician. Singer. Performer. And masterful songwriter. Johnny Cash condensed high concept ideas into short, resonating stories – ripping people’s hearts in four or five stanzas – that stayed in millions of ears and memories. Big River was his best-told story. And he played it when inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

A writer friend recently ranted about working with a Grammar Nazi. Wait – How the hell does that relate to the man in black? And why are these opening paragraphs so disjointed? Stick with me.

“Jesus Christ! My editor’s gagging my friggin’ voice.” Frustration in her email zinged through me.

“Know it.” I keyed back.

AB5“Who says we can’t start a sentence with ‘And’?” She pounded. “We’re crime-thriller writers, for God’s sakes. Not tryin’ for a Pulitzer Prize in English Lit.”

I nodded. “Remember what King says – ‘Grammar don’t wear no coat ‘n tie’.” (Stephen King’s advice in On Writing).

‘Yep. Holding m’ground.” She breathed out. “It’s my story and I’m stickin’ to tellin’ it my way.”

“Good for you!” I pecked, thinking So much of what makes a great story is the way it’s told. Take songwriting. There’s not a lick of good grammar in most songs and some songs are timeless stories. Like Big River. I bet novelists can learn a lot from songwriters. 

That night I kicked back with (a) glass of wine, headphones on, rockin’ to The Highwaymen – Live at Nassau Coliseum (1985). Their encore was Big River. 

AB4The Highwaymen: Willie Nelson. Waylon Jennings. Kris Kristopherson. And Johnny Cash. All great musicians. Singers. Performers. And masterful songwriters. 

But Johnny Cash was a one-of-a-kind musical figure, quintessentially American; able to identify with the outlaw, and vice-versa – craggy, with a voice unlike anyone’s. Waylon & Willie worshiped him. Kris Kristofferson wrote “He’s a poet, he’s a picker, he’s a prophet, he’s a pusher, he’s a pilgrim, and he’s a preacher.”

Johnny Cash’s masterpiece, Big River, was cut in 1958 and topped the charts. It has everything in one story.

Now I taught the weeping willow how to cry
And I showed the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky
And the tears that I cried for that woman are gonna flood you Big River
Then I’m gonna sit right here until I die

I met her accidentally in St. Paul, Minnesota
And it tore me up every time I heard her drawl, southern drawl
Then I heard my dream was back downstream cavortin’ in Davenport
And I followed you Big River when you called

Then you took me to St. Louis later on down the river
A freighter said she’s been here but she’s gone, boy, she’s gone
I found her trail in Memphis but she just walked up the bluff
She raised a few eyebrows and then she went on down alone

Now, won’t you batter down by Baton Rouge, River Queen, roll it on
Take that woman on down to New Orleans, New Orleans
Go on, I’ve had enough, dump my blues down in the gulf
She loves you, Big River, more than me

Now I taught the weeping willow how to cry, cry, cry
And I showed the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky
And the tears that I cried for that woman are gonna flood you Big River
Then I’m gonna sit right here until I die

AB16Re-reading the lyrics – even when I thought I understood the words – “then I heard my dream was back downstream cavortin’ in Davenport ” got me. Like, how good is that? 

Big River is a study in storytelling. High concept in a timeless, global theme of lost love. Slots into a romance genre – the largest commercial fiction market. Opens with an emotional prologue. Sharp hook in beginning act; builds tension in middle; ends in the third act by answering the central story question.

AB15Big River introduces protagonist and antagonist in the opening line of the first scene. There’s desire and conflict; hope and despair.  Stays in first person point-of-view. Past tense. Every word – Every line – Every paragraph advances the story, following a forlorn search from the Mississippi’s top to its bottom – in the heart of American country music.

Big River has implied dialogue. Adjectives that work. Not a useless, stinky-little adverb in sight. Beats become scenes; scenes sequence acts. There’s subplot and subtext. Every word counts. Setting is vivid… but time frame is everywhere in the past two hundred years. And characters aren’t named – but they’re strongly identifiable – because they could be you and me.

There’s not a lick of good grammar in Big River. Punctuation’s the shits!! There’s run-ons and cut-offs and pretty much everything a Grammar Nazi could hate.

AB8But the voice? So clear. So large. So unique. So Johnny Cash. His theme is timeless. His story universal.  Big River is told in 281 words.

Novelists can learn a lot from songwriters. 

Pour yourself a glass of wine, yes (a) glass of wine. Put your headphones on, girl, yes put your head phones on. Watch and listen to these videos, these timeless storytelling videos, and sit right there until you die.

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Johnny Cash at the Grand Ole Opry in 1962  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_21p14TAXM

Highwaymen Live at Nassau Coliseum in 1985  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hy6_b7sQuY

Johnny Cash’s induction into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 (Jamming with rocks’s best, like John Fogerty and Keith Richards) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIWBEggDFa0