Getting It Right on Page One

A couple of weeks ago I began a working on a new mystery featuring a series character who has shown up in a number of short stories. The opening scene told the reader everything she needed to know and moved the story forward, but I wasn't happy with it. I kept writing scene after scene, exploring the characters and pleased with the ideas that came to me as I was writing farther into the story. I kept notes, deepened the characters and complicated the plot. But still, though I could feel the story was developing the way I wanted it to, I wasn't happy. I made more notes.

When a story idea feels like a good one to me, little pieces of the plot, snippets of dialogue, visuals show up waiting to be put in place. I don't try to force the ideas to come, sitting down and deciding this is the motive or that is the backstory. I let the ideas unfold. It's a slow process in the beginning but I pick up speed once I have the basic idea. The problem I was having was with the beginning--the scene that tells you what's going to come sooner or later, the promise and the expectations. I trust my process and I trust my ideas.

We've had wonderfully warm days lately, so my midday walk with the dog is especially enjoyable. A few days ago as we strolled down a quiet side street a helicopter flew overhead. This isn't terribly unusual here. Occasionally a news copter shows up and we all wonder what's been going on. I looked up and watched it hover and move on, not in any great hurry, as though the pilot were looking or perhaps teaching someone how to fly. Watching the copter from below as it flew nearly directly overhead I thought it looked like a tadpole. And just at that moment I had the opening of my new mystery--a young woman racing to get home before curfew who sees a copter flying overhead and stops to wonder why.

I won't tell the rest of the opening, but I knew I had it right by the the scene that took shape in that minute and the eagerness I felt to get to my computer and get to work. Because I had things I had to do at the end of the dog walk, I couldn't go back to work, but the idea stayed warm and grew warmer, with little details coming along to vivify the moment when the main character looks up and sees the copter overhead.

Because of the actions of the main character in the new opening scene, some of what I've already written needs to be recast. This is not unexpected, and I already know how I'll change a few things, adding and deleting. But the relief and excitement at having found the perfect opening for this tale is buoying. It feels like a different mystery now, and it is.

I need this kind of energy to keep the story flowing so the writing, the construction of the story, doesn't start to feel mechanical. The total narrative now has a somewhat different arc from my original intent, but the new one is much better. My desk is now littered with notes, a map of my fictional town, and research tidbits to work into the story. The month of November promises to be productive.

My New Series Character

Over the summer I came up with the idea for a new mystery, a stand-alone I thought, but as the story line itself evolved, the woman at the center of the investigation or conflict grew hazier and hazier. I couldn't seem to get a handle on her. I let the idea sit and germinate, and one day, while I was straightening out my husband's studio, onto the stage of my stalled novel walked a character I knew, a woman who had already appeared in two short stories with a third on the way to publication. 

 

Social worker Ginny Means first appeared in "How Do You Know What You Want" (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, March/April 32017) as a walk-on. Her job was to deliver a teenage girl to a new foster home, and not much else. I didn't think about her again for a while until I got another idea for a story, and there she was, ready to introduce the setting and problem in "Just Another Runaway" (AHMM November/December 2019), and now scheduled to appear again in AHMM in "The Deacon's Mistake." 

 

Ginny Means has evolved in each story. The details of her life appeared as needed, but I kept track of them, and now as I look over my notecards I can see she's ready for her own novel. She's the middle of three girls, unmarried and childless, and prone to casual attire. Her mother and sisters are yard salers, scouring the countryside on weekends for their "finds." Her case work focuses primarily on teenage girls in foster care. 

 

When my imagination plucked Ginny Means from the list of possible main characters I was reluctant to consider her because, after all, who really wants to read about teenage girls getting in and out of trouble all the time. Aside from being depressing, it could also be monotonous. Ginny needed more in her life, and that turned out to be easier to solve than I at first expected.

 

In Massachusetts at least whenever there is a severe budget crunch, the state lays off vast numbers of social workers. Many never return to the field, and others limp along on part-time work. Ginny became one of those, supplementing her reduced hours with a small counseling business on the side. With a MSW in social work from a major university and several courses toward her PhD, she earned for a license as a counselor. Now a LICSW, she comes into contact with a much more varied population of troubled and troubling individuals, mostly adults. And that's where my novel stuck in a ditch climbed out and began to move forward.

 

But not all my problems are solved. A character who works in a short story may not expand well into a novel. I have yet to spend enough time with Ginny Means and her family to know her well and anticipate what she'll do, how she'll face other problems and challenges. Her thoughts and inner life are still mostly unknown. An additional consideration is that I located her and her work in the Pioneer Valley, where my short-lived third series featuring Felicity O'Brien is set. I'm not inclined yet to move her (a decision that can be made at almost any time), since I like what I've seen (created?) so far. The most important element, however, is my new-found enthusiasm for Ginny as a lead character. I like the way she thinks and confronts people and problems, and I like spending time with her. It's time to let her take over the story and see where it goes.

Definitions of the Cozy Mystery

A spirited discussion on the Short Mystery Fiction Society list led to several short or longer definitions of the beloved cozy mystery. I collected most of them, and list them here. Some are tongue-in-cheek, some are serious, but all give insight into the genre. I've omitted the writers whose definitions are quoted and edited lightly.

 

A cozy mystery is one in which the blood is dry before it hits the page.

They are a place for the reader to escape, a place the reader will like being. The language used is soft, not harsh, the people are those the reader would like as neighbors, and the killer has a very good reason--at least in their own head--for doing the deed. That pleasant place where order will be restored.

 

A cozy is a mystery in which someone gets killed but no one gets hurt.

 

I think of the word cozies as mysteries to which the word "cozy" applies in two ways.

First, cozy in the sense of comfortable. They're not disturbing to read. Violence happens offstage, sex is only suggested, the language is mild.

Second, cozy in the sense of close and contained. The story takes place in a community of limited size, such as a small town and there is only a handful of suspects.

Life as it should be with a little excitement added in (murder).

 

There’s a lot of hairsplitting over the definition of a cozy and the difference between cozies and traditional mysteries.  The lines are definitely blurred. Basically a cozy has no on-page sex or violence, with little or no profanity (preferably none). They often take place in a small town. I never heard the bit about no one getting hurt. Traditional mysteries are grittier and perhaps more realistic. I would put Agatha Christie’s Jane Marple in the cozy category. Sayers more traditional.

 

I would also note that cozies have a strong element of female empowerment. The protagonists are busy making a life for themselves, often a new life after a tragedy, and often against the odds. They run businesses and libraries and community theaters, and sometimes families. Their world is disrupted, and they do everything it takes to put it back together. They get sugar done. 

 

"Cozy" is essentially synonymous with "traditional mystery."

 

I do want to say that although the cozy genre is very heavily weighted towards female protagonists, there are some authors who have done a great job making male protagonists work in a cozy as well. I’m thinking about M.K. Wren’s Conan Flagg series, Jack Ewing’s Primed for Murder, Stephen Humphrey Bogart’s R.J. Brooks mysteries, Matt Witten’s Jacob Burns mysteries and many more.

 

Cozies have nothing in them that will upset *anybody,* even the most strict reader.

For traditional mysteries, the most important thing is the puzzle. 
The level of action and danger varies, and we don't always like the protagonist that much, but the puzzle needs to hang together. The reader gets intellectual satisfaction from the solution of the puzzle.

For cozies, the most important thing is that the reader feels that the protagonist is a friend, and they feel comfortable in their company. 

Cozies can have some mild action, and some danger, and they have a puzzle, but all of that is subordinated to creating an emotional bond between the protagonist and the reader.
The reader gets emotional satisfaction from having spent an enjoyable few hours in the company of their friend.

 

A cozy is a book you can read before going to sleep at night, and still be able to go to sleep at night.

Both cozies and traditionals: no excessive, graphic, gratuitous sex or violence on the page, plus very little or, preferably, no “expletive deleted” words. Usually a small-town setting. Emphasis on backstory, character development, whydunit as well as whodunit.

Difference between cozies and traditionals: in a cozy, the sleuth is always an amateur, generally female. In a traditional, it is a professional, sometimes a police officer, but more often a private investigator, and more often male. 

Christie’s Poirot books are traditional; Miss Marple books are cozies. 

 

Someone dies, no one gets hurt.

There’s a lot of hairsplitting over the definition of a cozy and the
difference between cozies and traditional mysteries.  The lines are
definitely blurred. Basically a cozy has no on-page sex or violence, with
little or no profanity (preferably none). They often take place in a small
town. I never heard the bit about no one getting hurt. Traditional
mysteries are grittier and perhaps more realistic. I would put Agatha
Christie’s Jane Marple in the cozy category. Sayers more traditional.

Sunburn by Laura Lippman

Laura Lippman is one of my favorite writers, so much so that I have to remind myself not to give away too much, so no spoilers here. 

Sunburn by Laura Lippman William Morrow, 2018 

In Belleville, Delaware, in 1995, a man and a woman meet in a bar. Both are just passing through, but each one for different reasons decides to stay. Polly gets a part-time job in the Heigh Ho bar, and Adam signs on as a chef who turns out to be creative enough to draw customers from beyond the small town. They are soon enmeshed in each other's life. 

But both are lying about who they are and why they are in that small town in the first place. Gradually their histories--or parts of them--are revealed, and at each stage one or the other faces the challenge of accepting this unexpected truth about the other. As the passions deepen, the seesaw increases. 

Told from multiple points of view, the story moves through Polly, Adam, Adam's secret employer, and Polly's abandoned husband. Each character is focused on one goal, and through that focused determination Lippman explores their character, the twists in a life that have brought them to this point. Polly, who at first seems the worst of the lot for abandoning her husband and three-year-old child, grows on every page into a complicated woman whose goal isn't fully realized until the final chapters. Her husband, Greg, also turns into someone he probably didn't expect to become. 

The writing is graceful, the pace steadily increasing, and the twists and revelations very satisfying. Highly recommended.

Here's the Thing about Stuff

Back in the late 1980s, when Reagan left the White House and it was evident he was in decline, a journalist reported that others had noted the mental failing much earlier because the president began using the word stuff, dropping it in more often rather than developing the rest of the sentence. Instead of being precise and clear, he used the word as a shortcut, making his sentences sound informal rather than incomplete. This, apparently, is a sign of declining mental skills, and an early sign of dementia.

Well, that got my attention. With a grandmother who died with Alzheimer's, and later a mother in the early stages before she died, I took note of the signs I could look for in my own speech. When the use of the word stuff and others like it turned out to be one of them, I hopped on that bandwagon and have been riding it ever since. I have long been uncomfortable with the sloppy use of the word thing, and avoid it whenever possible, so now I had two words that made me cringe when I heard them skidding into place in a sentence.

Changes in contemporary American vocabulary are obvious to anyone who reads an old newspaper from the 1950s or earlier. I'm not convinced this is a sign of the shrinking of our language skills, but it is certainly an indication of their changing. Our writing and speech are much simpler, more casual, blunter in many cases, more often laced with slang. Linguists may argue about the size of the English vocabulary--half a million words or fewer than two hundred thousand if most of the inflections are skimmed off--but in daily transactions our chosen words are few. The ever-present stuff and thing may be a sign of change and nothing more.

A professor in graduate school, in the 1970s, remarked a few times on the tiny vocabulary of a particular Slavic language. I haven't been able to track it down, but I did come across a language thought to have the fewest vocabulary items. Toki Pona is a language created by Sonja Lang, and has 123 words. It takes usually about thirty hours to learn and the speaker must rely heavily on creating metaphors to get his or her point across. I can't say it appeals to me. Even though language grows through metaphor and borrowing  from other languages (one of the reasons English vocab is so large and rich), I think I'd be frustrated at not having more words to play with, especially technical terms. This particular language strikes me as replete with versions of stuff and thing.

A writer who captures a character's linguistic oddities--speech patterns and rhythms, vocabulary and inflection--wins my eternal admiration. This doesn't mean the author demonstrates a vast vocabulary; only that she captures the peculiarities of an individual in words. The first time I read George Higgins I felt like I was in the room with his characters and at any moment they'd be menacing me as though I were in the story.

The news about Reagan may have startled me out of a complacency I didn't know I had. But in the end it made me a more conscientious writer, alert to moments of laziness in thinking and writing that can be corrected and thus perhaps improve the work in ways not imagined. Whatever challenges me to be more alert is good, regardless of the original motivation.

The Writer Wasting Time

There was a time in my life, not so long ago, when I could say that I never wasted time. I couldn't because I simply had so much to do. I worked full time, produced a semiannual literary journal with a colleague and later an anthology of crime fiction with two other colleagues, ran a monthly writers' group, critiqued friends' mss, and oversaw my mother's health care during a critical time. And I wrote.

My focus was on crime fiction, novels in two series with a few short stories based on the main character in one, Anita Ray. I wrote both stories and novels during the brief interlude between arriving home from work and dinner, after taking snatches of time during lunch or while walking to a meeting or waiting on hold to think through what I wanted to write in the next scene or passage when I got home. When I could I attended writers' conferences and participated in a few volunteer projects. And then I retired.

I have long felt that writers' block is an indulgence. I may not feel like writing, but once I sit down and begin, the words come. No matter how bad the writing might seem at the moment I know I can always return later and rework it. The point for me is to keep going. Once I retired I didn't feel the same pressure, but I also didn't stop writing. While working I had to use every minute I could find but now I could begin earlier in the day, whenever I wanted, and take more time working through what I was trying to say. I might still sit down unready to write, as it were, but I still wrote no matter what. I wasn't at my desk to play solitaire. Nothing changed in retirement, just my attitude to time now that I had more of it. I let myself daydream more, stare out the window more, talk to the dog more.

Did having more time make a difference? Did I write more? Did I write better? Did I think more deeply? The only question I'm sure about is the latitude retirement gave me to try new things--new characters, new settings, new problems. And then last year I began thinking differently about how to construct a story, and that produced a very different novel from my usual fare. 

Last summer I set aside the reliable and much enjoyed cozy/traditional format and pulled up one character and got her into trouble in the first line and kept her there. The story is obviously suspense and not a cozy. I learned a lot about a different style of writing but in the end I also learned about me. I see the world in a certain way, and even in a suspense novel with danger in every room, threats at every corner, the main character is going to have a certain world view and certain beliefs that might be shaken but won't be destroyed.

Writing suspense meant going deeper into certain characters but it also meant uncovering the roots of principles, the drive leading to the goals that can be misdirected, and inchoate beliefs that can underlie a life and be twisted before being recovered in a truer form. I spent a lot more time thinking about these issues before I began writing--weeks, even months.

Being willing to take the time to explore these discoveries in fiction might not have happened in earlier years when writing another cozy seemed the obvious choice, the easier path. I might have ended up wasting a lot of time--months if not years--in producing another series that was okay but not much more. But in the end I finished with a novel that is different from my usual work and a level above it. And now comes the test. My agent has it and now I wait. Once again, the issue is time. Waiting time. 

And also thinking time, thinking about the next character who will be in trouble in the first line and stay there until a few paragraphs from the end. Time is set only as we choose to set it.

Out and About in the Neighborhood

Various forms of social media now bedevil just about every writer I know. We have to decide what to participate in from among the many options, how to participate, and find the discipline to maintain the effort. All this is in the service of promoting ourselves and our books. It sounds ludicrous and it is. So, how do I, for one, go about it?

About a year ago I signed up for Instagram. It was obvious at the outset that most writers were using the site to post about their books—lots of covers and writer selfies. I have occasionally posted the cover of a book or a magazine containing one of my stories, but that pales pretty fast, at least for me. I enjoy posting pix of stacks of books I’m reading, or a photo of strangers deep in a book at a local park, but I’ve learned Instagram has more to offer. 

With the pandemic worsening, I wanted to enjoy what I could do and not think always about promotion. I used my walk to entertain myself, and I’m very glad I did.

At the beginning of the pandemic people in my neighborhood were learning to hunker down, avoid the playground, and find ways to entertain themselves and their children. First, a group of over three dozen families settled on decorating front doors for spring and Easter. I photographed a number of them, and posted those. 

Next came the teddy bears and other stuffed animals propped up in windows for children to spot on their walks or bike rides. Not exactly a treasure hunt but close enough. I had a good time finding those, including some life-sized bears settled on porches and rows of stuffed animals filling windows. 

Gardens bloomed and animal statues popped up under the azaleas and by the tulips. I’ve never been one for garden creatures but I’ve come to enjoy the hunt to find them in other people’s gardens, and I have pulled out an old sprinkler in the form of a tin frog to use in mine.

But my favorite of all my discoveries during this time are the flamingos. A woman several streets away has nine plastic flamingos which she presents in various poses—dining out, dancing around a maypole, going on vacation, sitting around a campfire. She puts time and effort into these tableaux, and I love them. We have never met but occasionally if she’s there when I walk past, I tell her how much I enjoy her work.

I have spent years walking around India with a camera, looking for interesting shots and unusual perspectives, but the flamingos have taken a special hold on me. And I’m not the only one. In staid, reserved New England, no one would expect bright pink plastic lawn toys to become popular, but they’re popping up now throughout my little city. I’ve come across three other “families” of the birds but no one else has animated them in scenes as creatively as the first neighbor. The original nine are still the standouts.

Why does this matter? The last year didn’t seem a problem for me and my husband. We’re both retired and engaged in our long loved creative work, he with photography, and me with writing. But the limitations on our activities have forced us, just like millions of others, to stay close to home and that means noticing more of what is happening around us. Unexpectedly I learned a little bit more about myself this past year. I have liked my neighborhood since we first bought our home in the late 1970s for practical reasons—location. I can walk to the library, restaurants, the train, and friends. But now it means a lot to me for other reasons—for how people live and interact, how much creativity goes into their ordinary lives that we don’t always notice, and how closely neighbors who don’t know each other well will reach out to collaborate and cooperate during unusual times. In previous years, being wrapped up in my job and my fictional worlds, creating stories and meeting deadlines, has meant paying less attention to the worlds around me, those of my neighbors. Walk two to five miles every day along the same streets, past the same houses, and you are guaranteed to see and learn more. And what you pick out from among the thousands of images that pass in front of your eyes will tell you even more about who you are and how you see the world. But it will also teach you a lot about the people around you. Some are more creative than others, and some are far more houseproud than others. 

Community, humor, joy, generosity come to the fore in this collection of streets and homes. And I intend to keep looking for how it is expressed long after the pandemic has receded.