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‘The Top 5 Mistakes I Find as an Editor’ by Smoky Trudeau Zeidel

September 19, 2011 — Pat Bertram

Please welcome today’s guest. Smoky Trudeau Zeidel is the author of two novels, On the Choptank Shores and The Cabin. She is also author of Observations of an Earth Mage, a photo/essay collection; and two books about writing. You can find Smoky and her three blogs at www.SmokyZeidel.wordpress.com. Smoky writes:

As an editor and as an avid reader, I see a lot of mistakes make their way into print. Many, if not all, of them could be avoided by having a professional edit your manuscript before submitting it to your publisher, or putting it up on Smashwords or Kindle if you ePublish on your own.

You might think you don’t need an editor, because your next door neighbor/best friend/Aunt Thelma offered to do it for free, or because you’ve read and re-read your manuscript a hundred times and just know it’s perfect.

You’d be wrong. First, your neighbor/best friend/Aunt Thelma may spell great, but do they know all the rules of punctuation and style? I doubt it. The Chicago Manual of Style, the go-to book for American publishers for punctuation and style issues, is more than 900 pages long and two inches thick. I doubt your beta readers have that thing memorized. I refer to it frequently, and I am a professional editor.

Second, as the book’s creator, finding your own mistakes is hard. That’s because you see what you thought you wrote, rather than what you actually wrote. Even though I’m an editor, I don’t edit my own stuff. I have my best friend do it—but hold on, before you protest, let me say that my best friend is a professional editor, so she is exempt from the best friend rule.

That said, I know a lot of writers won’t hire an editor. And this really isn’t a pitch to get your business (although, of course, I am always open to that). So since you probably won’t hire me or any of my editor cohorts, I’m going to share with you a list of the five biggest mistakes I see in manuscripts, so you can watch for them, and fix them, yourself.

Mistake #1: Writers don’t place a comma between independent clauses separated with a conjunction. Independent clauses are clauses that can stand on their own as sentences, e.g., “He took the 405 freeway to work, and he exited at the Getty Museum.” Because both “He took the 405 freeway to work” and “he exited at the Getty Museum” are independent clauses—meaning they can stand alone as sentences, you must, must, place a comma before the conjunction, “and.” This is probably the biggest, most common mistake I find in manuscripts and books. Don’t make it. It’s a very easy punctuation rule to remember.

Mistake #2: Writers place commas between independent clauses and dependent clauses. This is probably the second most common mistake I see. A dependent clause is one that cannot stand on its own as a sentence. Let’s take the above example, and change it just a little: “He took the 405 freeway to work and exited at the Getty Museum.” I took the second “he” out. That makes the clause after “and” a dependent clause, because “exited at the Getty Museum” cannot stand alone as a sentence. It is dependent upon the first clause to be understood; thus, no comma should precede the “and.”

Of course, there are other places you need—and don’t need—commas, but this isn’t meant to be a comprehensive study of the comma. If in doubt, look up comma placement in The Chicago Manual of Style or other style manual.

Mistake #3: Writers don’t know their homonyms. In just the last few weeks alone, I’ve seen characters who were unphased, waiving to people, and peaking out windows. The writer’s spellchecker should have alerted her to the fact that “unphased” isn’t even a word. She meant “unfazed.” To waive means to relinquish, to set aside. The word this author wanted was “waving.” And a peak is the highest point of something; one peeks, not peaks, out a window.

Please, unless you are 100 percent sure you are using the right homonym, look it up. The wrong choice could have your characters doing some pretty strange things!

Mistake #4: Writers rely on their spellcheckers. This is a big no-no. If ewe think you’re spellchecker will fined awl yore miss steaks, your wrong. That sentence went through my spellchecker just fine, and there are no less than eight errors in it (“ewe” should be “you”; “you’re” should be “your”; “fined” should be “find”; “awl” should be “all”; “yore” should be “your”; “miss” and “steaks” should be “mistakes”: and finally, “your” should be “you’re”). Homonym spelling errors are the most common type of spelling error I find. Do not rely on your spellchecker. It will let you down every time.

Mistake #5: Writers who make errors in syntax. For example, look at this sentence: “I saw a deer driving to work today.” Uh, no—you didn’t, unless there are some very talented deer in your neighborhood! The correct sentence structure is, “I saw a deer while driving to work today,” or, “While driving to work today, I saw a deer.” Please, don’t put the deer in the driver’s seat!

Here’s another example: “If your toddler won’t drink milk, warm it in the microwave for a few moments.” Warm what in the microwave? You’ve got a choice of antecedents here. Heaven help the toddler if you make the wrong choice! The correct structure would read, “If your toddler won’t drink milk, warm the milk in the microwave for a few moments.”

Of course, if you and I were having a conversation, we’d probably understand each other if we made these syntax errors. But you can’t count on that when people are reading your words. Make sure you have them in the correct order so your meaning cannot be misconstrued.

I cannot list every error I run across while editing manuscripts. To do so would fill a book. But if you watch for these top five mistakes in your writing, your manuscript will be a lot more polished, and you can be more confident about submitting it to your publisher.

Good luck, and happy righting . . . er, happy writing!

***

Click here to read an excerpt from: On the Choptank Shores

Click here for an interview with: Smoky Trudeau Zeidel

Click here for an interview with: Grace Harmon Singer, Hero of On the Choptank Shores by Smoky Trudeau Zeidel

Posted in books, How to, writing. Tags: comma placement, commas between clauses, conjuctions, editing, homonyms, On the Choptank Shores, Smoky Trudeau Zeidel, syntax, syntax errors. 5 Comments »

How to Respond to “How Are You?”

November 3, 2010 — Pat Bertram

A month or so ago, a Facebook friend, another woman who lost her mate, suggested I write a blog on what to say when people ask a griever, “How are you?” When I first realized that people were losing interest in my sad tale, I asked a bereavement counselor that very question. She said a good response is, “I’m coping,” which is the response I used for a few months. Now I just say, “I’m okay.” Even if I’m not okay, I tell people I’m okay. Or if I’m being polite, I say, “I’m fine, how are you?” There is nothing wrong with that — it’s a rote response to a rote question. Most people who ask how you are do not especially want to know. It’s an accepted conversation starter, a way for people to show token interest so they can move on to more exciting topics — themselves, for example.

Someone who comes back at you with, “No, really, how are you?” is someone who deserves no response at all, especially if they add, “this is me, remember?” If they need to remind you who they are, you don’t know them well enough to tell the truth. Besides, if you wanted to tell the person how you really were, you would have already done so.

People who truly care will ask a more specific question: “Did you sleep well,” for example, or . . . I don’t know. Any question that shows genuine interest will suffice, and those you can respond to honestly if you wish. Or not. In the end, your grief is your business. People do not need to know you are still crying yourself to sleep every night, or that you miss him so much you can feel it like an ache in your bones, or that the world feels as if it’s aslant now that he is gone. Unless you want them to know, that is.

Even at the best of times, “How are you?” is a question without any response except “I’m fine,” or “I’m okay.” It always makes me wonder, “how am I in relation to what?” Are they asking about my health, my state of mind, my finances? With grief added into the equation, I wonder if they are asking how I am in relation to the way I was before he died, in relation to the way I felt immediately after his death, or in relation to nothing at all.

I have to admit, like everyone else, I usually ask the question, but as a part of the greeting, “Hi! How are you?” I don’t mind if someone comes back at me with, “I’m fine, how are you?” because that is the ritual. Once that is out of the way, we can settle down to a serious discussion. If the person is another griever, I don’t expect an in-depth response, I know how they are doing.

So, to recap a rather wordy and convoluted post, if someone asks how you are, “fine” is fine.

Posted in culture, grief, How to, life. Tags: "fine", bereavement counselor, Facebook, grief, how are you, loss, response to "how are you", rote question. 8 Comments »

What to Say to Someone Who is Grieving

April 11, 2010 — Pat Bertram

I mentioned to a friend that, after receiving notification of my mate’s death, few people from a certain online group sent an acknowledgement, and she said perhaps it was because they did not know what to say. This is probably true. Most comments posted to me on the various threads began with: “I don’t know what to say.” Of course, being writers, these people followed that statement with very touching responses, but I also received touching remarks from non-writers. To be honest, all responses mean a lot to me — grief is such an isolating experience, that any indication of concern helps remind me that people do care, that perhaps I’m not totally alone after all.

If you cannot think of anything eloquent to say in the face of another’s grief, say something simple. Say, “I’m sorry.” Say, “I’m thinking about you.” Say, “My heart goes out to you.” Say, “I shed tears for you.” And there is always the standard, “My thoughts and prayers are with you.”

If you knew the deceased, talk about him. The bereaved (a terrible word, so namby-pamby and doesn’t really connote how truly bereft one is after such a loss) will find comfort in your memories. If you didn’t know him, you can talk about your own experiences with the death of a loved one, though be aware that grief piled upon grief might be a bit overwhelming for the one left behind. Despite that, the stories people share with me make me realize that though the pain seems impossible to live through, it will eventually become tolerable. At least, I hope it will.

Many people told me to “hang in there,” but although well-meaning it is not, perhaps, the best thing to say to someone who is grieving. Depression is a part of the process, and “hanging in there” makes one wonder “hanging from what? And where?” (If you are one of those who used this expression, I hope I’m not hurting your feelings. Rest assured I took your words in the spirit offered, and was pleased that you thought of me.)

If you truly cannot find words of your own, share a poem that helped you get through your grief. Although grief is such a personal experience, the emotions portrayed in poetry are universal.

If you can’t think of something to say immediately, but eventually think of the perfect thing, say it then. It is never too late. Grief lasts a very long time. As the days, weeks, months pass, others forget, but the person who is grieving doesn’t. Any indication that you are thinking of her in her sorrow is comforting.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter what you say. Extending a bit of comfort, showing that you haven’t forgotten, showing that you care — those are the important things.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

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Posted in culture, grief, How to, internet, life, writing. Tags: bereaved, death, grief, what to say when someone dies. 26 Comments »

Surviving Facebook

February 8, 2010 — Pat Bertram

Social networking is now touted as one of the best ways for authors to promote themselves, and perhaps it’s true. If most of us primarily sell books to friends, it makes sense, and sometimes even cents, that the more friends we have, the more books we will sell. So we sign up for MySpace and Goodreads, Twitter and Facebook and start collecting friends like so many stamps. If a thousand friends are good, then two thousand are even better. If two thousand are good, then let’s aim for ten thousand.

While frantically collecting friends, we forget two things. First, social networking is about being social. It does no good to have connections if, to them, we are merely a nameless face, or worse, a faceless name. Too many people use their book cover for an icon, though it seems to me it defeats the purpose. How does one make friends with a book cover? You are, or should be, aiming for long-term relationships. You don’t have to waste your time playing games with your connections, but you can comment on their status updates and photos, you can post interesting links and notes on your profile, you can participate in discussions.

Second, we forget that these online sites, especially Facebook and Goodreads, were set up for real-life friends to interact. They were not set up for promotion.

Goodreads automatically limits your activity, so it’s hard to abuse their system, but Facebook is a different matter. Several of my friends have had their Facebook accounts disabled because of “abusive” behavior, though they were doing what we all do — making connections with strangers. I have become good friends with many of the strangers to whom I sent friend requests, so by limiting myself to people I know would have greatly limited my Facebook experience. Still, Facebook says they aspire to be an environment where people can interact safely with their friends and people they know. Accordingly, they expect accounts to reflect mainly “real-world contacts.” They do not endorse contacting strangers through unsolicited friend requests as such requests may be considered annoying or abusive.

To prevent this type of behavior, Facebook has limits in place that restrict the rate at which you can use certain features on the site. Your account can be disabled if Facebook determines that you were going too fast when sending friend requests despite being warned to slow down, or because your friend requests were being rejected at a high rate. Your account can be disabled if you send too many of the same message, post too often to other people’s profile, or indulge in repetitive, promotional activities.

The problem is that Facebook does not tell you ahead of time what their limits are, so it’s a matter of guessing.

So far, I have survived Facebook. I have over 4, 000 friends. I administer one group and co-administer three others. I send weekly group messages informing people of the featured discussion. I have a fan page. I post daily status updates, feed my blog into my profile page, post links to sites where I am a guest.

So, how did I do it?

Every day, I added ten to fifteen friends — no more. When I reached 2500 friends, I stopped sending requests. The rest of the connections came from my accepting others’ requests. At the beginning, I accepted everyone, but now that I am nearing the limit Facebook allows, I am a bit more careful whom I accept. For example, I won’t accept requests from icon-less people unless I know them personally. (Here is the dichotomy of Facebook. You are allowed 5,000 friends, who are supposed to be people you know personally, but who in the offline world has that many friends and connections?)

Although it’s one of the things marketing coaches recommend, I never thanked people for accepting my friend request. Besides emphasizing that you’re not friends, the comment can trigger a warning from Facebook, especially if you post too many similar comments in one day. You can post almost anything you want on your own profile, but you are constrained by Facebook’s unwritten rules as to what you can post on other people’s profiles.

The best thing I can tell you about surviving Facebook is this: if you get a warning, stop. Do not use Facebook for at least a week. If you don’t heed this advice, and you get another warning within that time, your account will be disabled, and all your work will be wasted.

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Posted in How to, internet, life, writing. Tags: book promotion, Facebook, Goodreads, social networking. 19 Comments »

Frivolous Post Month

November 29, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Writers have NaNoWriMo, bloggers have NaBloWriMo (National Blog Writing Month), which is also known as frivolous post month. Since I was going to post most of the month anyway because of my blog tour, I signed up for NaBloWriMo, though I haven’t had time to participate in the forums. Getting the articles posted every day was enough of a challenge! Today is the second to last day of the month, and I almost reneged. I’ve got nothing to say (though that hasn’t stopped me before!) Anyway, that’s why it’s called frivolous post month — because of all the people who have nothing to say but say it anyway.

Oh, wait! I do have something to say. I’ve been meaning to tell you about a way cool WordPress tip that you might not have heard of. You know how on the sidebar, there is a monthly archive? Doesn’t do much good, because if you or your readers are looking for a particular post, chances are you haven’t a clue as the the date you wrote it. Well, WordPress has a shortcode for an archive that lists all your articles. See the page here on my blog entitled “Archives — All My Posts”? It lists the title and link to every single one of my blog posts. Bet you thought it was difficult. Nope. All I had to do was start a new page, title it, and put the word archives in brackets [ ] in the body. That’s it. Magic!

So perhaps this wasn’t such a frivolous post after all!

I tried to put archives in the brackets to show you how it was done, and ended up with my archives in the body of this post, so I had to remove it. If you need any further information, check out the wordpress article: Archives Shortcode.

Posted in blogging, How to, internet, writing. Tags: archives, archives shortcode, NaBloWriMo. 5 Comments »

Questions About Writing Stories

November 27, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I received an email the other day from someone who wanted to interview me for a class project. I think he’s for real, but some of the requests I have been getting recently are questionable, so I thought I’d post my responses here to stake my claim. Feel free to respond to any of the questions. If the interviewer does, in fact, read my blog as he said he did, I’m sure he’ll be glad of the additional input.

What, in your opinion, are the essential qualities of a good story?

The most essential quality of a good story is the ability to take readers somewhere else and make them glad they went. It’s also important to make the writing easy to read, which means the writing must be grammatically correct. Nothing takes a reader out of a story faster than having to decipher convoluted sentences with improper punctuation. Ideally, a story should leave readers a bit better off than they were before, either because of what they learned about the world and themselves, or because of the respite from their everyday lives.

Do you keep those qualities in mind while you write?

The only one of these qualities that I keep in mind while writing is to make sure what I write is readable. Other than that, I focus on the story, setting the scene then developing plot and characters into a cohesive whole.

Which of those qualities do you think is the most important, if there is a ‘most important’ one?

Some people think character is most important, others think plot is the most important, but you really can’t separate the two. Plot is what happens to a character, what a character does, or both. You cannot have a character without a plot. To show who or what a character is, you need to show the character acting, and that is plot. You also cannot have a plot without a character. If an asteroid falls to Earth, that might be newsworthy, but it’s not a story until you have characters interacting with the asteroid. Who found it? What did they do with it? What happened to them as a consequence of their actions? That’s what makes a story.

How much of a story do you have in your head before you start writing it?

I know the main characters, I know the beginning of the story, I know the end of the story, and I know how I want the characters to develop, but I don’t flesh out the individual scenes until I start writing them.

Do you do any research for your writing? If so, how do you do it? (searching Internet, magazines, other books, etc.)

The research for Light Bringer, which will be published mid 2010, took me approximately twenty years. The research for my other novels took two to five years each. Sometimes I consulted maps or guidebooks, sometimes people told me what they knew, but mostly I read books on the various subjects.

How do you prefer to start a novel? For instance, do you try to start it out with a ‘bang’, or do you prefer to start out with a low point?

I start with a good hook, sort of a small bang, and I work up to a bigger bang.

How (or when) do you decide that you are done writing a story?

A story is done when it is published. Otherwise, it is never finished. The more one writes, the more one learns, and the more one learns, the more one sees how earlier works can be improved. The only thing that stops this cycle of learning and rewriting is getting published.

Do you have any specific pattern of writing, however subtle it may be, when you write? (Using specific plot devices consistently, for instance)

The only device I use now (though I did not do it in the beginning) is a theme. If I know the theme of a story, I can keep focused on the main concept and not go off on tangents. A story needs to be tightly constructed without extraneous scenes or exposition. If not tightly constructed, a story loses its power and impact, sort of like a comedian who tells a rambling joke without a punch line.

The term ‘well developed characters’ is extremely vague and the definition differs depending on who is asked. What, in your opinion, does it mean?

A well-developed character gives readers a sense of that character’s personality, feelings, and struggles. A well-developed character changes and matures as a result of all that the character experiences during the course of the story.

What is your goal for the story to be when you write? That is, how do you want your stories to say what they say?

My only goal is to write the stories I want to read. If my books do have a message, it’s that nothing is as it seems. We are not necessarily who we think we are, history did not necessarily happen the way we think it did, and what we see is not necessarily the truth. But all that is more of a side effect. Mostly I just want to write good stories with good characters.

Posted in books, How to, writing. Tags: character development, characters & plot, history/myth, plot, qualities of a good story, theme, writing. 4 Comments »

Why Mistakes Happen

August 27, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I worked hard to make More Deaths Than One typo-free, but there are at least two errors in the published novel.

“I’m Kerry. Kerry Casillas.” She eyed the obit-
ary. “How many of those children are yours?
Bob massaged the back of his neck. “None.”

And:

“I thought you were in the jungle of your nightmares.”
Bob laid a had on top of hers. “I was.”
“Then let’s get you out of there. Finish the story.”

Errors in copyediting are easy to make. One website, Regret the Error: Mistakes Happen, capitalizes on this, chronicling the editing mistakes and corrections in newspapers around the world. If professional proofreaders and editors have such a hard time, what hope is there for the rest of us? Perhaps not much. And it’s not due to carelessness so much as the way we are made.

According to Joseph T. Hallinan, author of Why We Make Mistakes, we have a very narrow angle of good vision, perhaps a thumb’s worth, which is why our eyes constantly flicker back and forth — they are trying to focus on a larger area. What this means for us is that we see the beginnings of words, pick up clues, and automatically fill in the rest — such as the e at the end of the. Hallinan writes, “people were asked to read a text and cross out the letter e every time they saw it. It turned out that the later the e appeared in a word, the more likely it was to remain undetected. Not only that, the e in the word the was very likely to be missed — 32 percent of the time.”

I also know from doing puzzles such as Word Finds that we tend to see the middle of the page more than the top and bottom lines, and we tend not to see the far sides of the text. If ever I can’t find a word, I know to look at the periphery of the puzzle. More often than not, that’s where I find the missing word. (I seldom do such puzzles any more. They’ve lost their allure after all the copyediting I’ve done this past year.) And this is where the typos in More Deaths Than One are. The first error occurs on the periphery of the page, the other error occurs in the second line from the top. (It’s easy to see here, because it occurs in the very middle of the excerpt.)

We also see what we expect to see, and the better we are at something, the more likely we are to skim. Hallinan tells the story of a distinguished piano teacher and sight reader, Boris Goldovsky, who “discovered an misprint in a much-used edition of a Brahms capriccio — but only after a relatively poor pupil played the printed note at a lesson.” Since the kid didn’t know how the piece was supposed to be played, she played it the way it was printed, not the way the experts misread it.

So what does this mean for us amateur copy editors? Go slowly, word by word. Resist the urge to skim. Double-check the first couple of lines on a page and the last couple of lines. Check the far sides of the text. And if all else fails, have your kid proofread the book for you.

***

(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)

Posted in books, How to, writing. Tags: Boris Goldovsky, copyediting, Joseph T. Hallinan, More Deaths Than One, regretting the error: mistakes happen, tips for copyediting, Why We Make Mistakes. 23 Comments »

Whew! Now I Feel Safe?

August 26, 2009 — Pat Bertram

I’ve been reading a very old book on blogging. For normal purposes, a 2006 copyright isn’t that old, but apparently when it comes to the blogosphere, it’s so old as to be . . . well, not worthless, but outdated. The only mention of WordPress in the book was the .org version. The .com version (the one most of us have come to rely on) wasn’t even mentioned. Is WordPress.com that new? I don’t know — I’ve only been blogging for two years, so anything before September 2007 is prehistoric to me.

Anyway, the author of the book suggests backing up your blog to make sure that your don’t lose your content in case the host’s computer crashes or the host goes out of business, as did someone who hosted 3,000 blogs many, many blogyears ago. (Apparently a blogyear is akin to a dogyear.) So I hied myself to the WordPress forum to find out the best way to back up my 351 posts, 4 pages, 33 categories, 1,350 tags, and 1,865 valuable (and much appreciated) comments. According to WordPress, however, the blogs are already backed up. I found this on a FAQ page:

If your blog is hosted here at WordPress.com, we handle all necessary backups. If a very large meteor were to hit all of the WordPress.com servers and destroy them beyond repair, all of your data would still be safe and we could have your blog online within a couple of days (after the meteor situation dies down, of course).

I also found this in a discussion forum:

Right now there are 3 copies of your blog in 3 different parts of the USA.

If California drops into the Pacific, your blog is still safe.
If California drops into the Pacific AND Texas gets hit by a meteor storm which destroys it you can still blog all about it.
If all 3 go down then there is something very serious going on …

There isn’t really a need to backup.

Unless, of course, you want to, in which case you go to your dashboard, scroll down to tools, click on export, and send your blog files to . . . wherever.

I feel safe now, don’t you? I won’t think about California dropping into the Pacific, Texas getting hit by a meteor storm, that unspecified meteor situation, or that even more unspecified “something very serious going on”. Not much, anyway.

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Posted in blogging, culture, How to, internet, writing. Tags: backing up your blog, blogging, blogosphere, WordPress. 9 Comments »

The Magic Of Mysteries: The Art (And Joy) Of Misdirection

August 18, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Ian O’Neill, the one-time advertising copywriter turned award winning freelance journalist, is the author of Endo, a mystery/suspense novel set in Ontario, Canada. Ian has written for newspaper, magazine, radio, television and once wrote a dirty limerick on a dusty car but didn’t sign it. Ian writes:

I worked for Parks and Rec when I was younger and on a rainy day managed to bring in a magician to entertain the kids in our program. It was fascinating to not only watch him perform but also to see the looks of amazement on the kids’ faces. Like watching a magician, reading mysteries is one of those instances where we want to be misdirected. Let’s face it, if the clues are easy and laid out for us with bold, capitalized letters, there’d be little joy in reading the book.

I was certainly old enough when watching that magician to know that he was intentionally misdirecting us. He’d open a hand and hold it high in the air like he was trying to get a teacher’s attention. To ensure we were all looking at his raised hand he’d tell us to keep our eyes on the magical hand, or something to that effect. I didn’t watch his raised hand, I tried to watch his other hand, but there was no way I could because it was either behind his back or under a cloth or behind the volunteer he’d pulled from the audience. Even knowing that I was being mislead, I couldn’t see how.

That is writing a mystery story in a nutshell. A reader knows they’re going to be mislead and as the writer, you can’t let a reader feel like they’re being mislead. Readers will be watching your magic hand, but they know you’re up to something and you can’t let them know what it is until the end of the final act. If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.

Planning The Grand Illusion

You set the mystery with a criminal act like a murder, kidnapping, theft or some other problem that needs to be solved. This is the grand illusion of the story since whatever logical reason for the crime at its discovery made by your detective will likely change. If he/she nails the circumstances of the crime immediately, it would be like a magician explaining his illusion while performing the trick. Though the detective could be right but change their reasoning throughout the story only to come right back to their first conclusion. There are always options and nothing is static.

At this point I’d suggest reading my article, Games Have Rules, Writing Has Guidelines, on the so-called ‘rules’ of writing a mystery.

MacGuffin Is Not A County In Scotland

A Maltese Falcon, a very large diamond, a chalice, a massive shark, destiny, a ring (that rules all others)…all of these have something in common. They are all MacGuffins; an object, event, or character that serves to set and keep the plot in motion. Remember, though your major plot device may be the murder, kidnapping or other crime, it won’t necessarily be the MacGuffin. Consider the Da Vinci Code. The murder of the curator was the main plot device that started the entire journey, but the Holy Grail was the MacGuffin. The major plot device and MacGuffin are not always the same thing.

Once you have sorted out your MacGuffin and your major plot device you can move on to building your story to a satisfying solution. You’ll lead your reader on an adventure, not directly to the solution, but on a meandering path you must ensure is an enjoyable one for them.

There are those capable of writing on the fly, using few notes or plans. Others go through the outlining process and use the finished product as a sort of road map to help them stay on that meandering path. I need the outline. I never consider my outlines to be carved in stone. They are malleable and easily changed. An outline for a chapter can be a single word, sentence or paragraph. I wonder why anyone would write pages for the outline to a single chapter – save that for when you write the actual chapter.

An outline allows the writer to carefully craft the slights of hand and misdirection of the story. Readers are like detectives, registering information and filing some of it under clues. The crime scene will have its clues, what the protagonist sees and hears yields a fair share of clues, interviews will have an impact, actions of characters will give up clues as well. You need to have this straightforward, legitimate clues mixed in with false ones. All of these can be worked out in an outline, then flushed out in the writing.

The Planting Of Evidence – Slight of Hand

I must admit that building a mystery story was at times both enjoyable and excruciating. There is a lot of misdirecting going on and none more powerful than the creation of suspects. My novel is filled with interesting characters, unfortunately a great deal of them are less than admirable, at least on the surface. The victim has family, friends, co-workers, bosses, current or ex lovers, who are all potential enemies. As entertaining and enjoyable as it was to create these characters, it always turned into a precarious balancing act. If I reveal too much then a part of the illusion is revealed. Keep information too close to the chest and you eliminate a suspect crucial to maintaining the illusion. That was where the outline truly was a blessing in managing the balance.

Red Herrings – The Ultimate Misdirection

Though your readers are not bloodhounds and their quarry is not an escaped convict, nevertheless they must be thrown off the trail in order to maintain the illusion and to continue the enjoyable chase. Every writer will put their own stamp on this device.

Many stories revolve around characters who inevitably throughout their daily lives come in contact with many different people and places. Was the victim involved in criminal activity like selling drugs or stealing? Did he abuse his wife? Did she cheat on her husband? Was she blackmailing someone? So many questions surround a victim, the answers to which reveal facts and inevitably, red herrings. The reader, upon discovering the answers right along side the detective, is understanding of the misdirection and likely feels closer to the detective for having gone through the process with them.

Writers of mysteries and crime novels have to be careful with how often they use any device. Readers will tire of them quickly if there are so many that they become easy to spot, redundant or just plain boring. In other words, be selective. As with the example above, use secondary characters to chase down leads and return with an answer. Yes, the questions should be followed up but the protagonist need not follow every lead in front of the readers’ eyes. Get creative and have the detective, or someone else, do some of the sleuthing off the page.

What’s Up Your Sleeve

Magicians and their assistants take oaths never to reveal how their magic works (under punishment of hanging upside-down in a straightjacket over a frozen lake). Readers need to know how all that evidence and all those clues worked to find the solution. It all must fit together like fantastical magic tricks. Once revealed, everything that lead the detective and reader to the solution must make perfect sense for if it doesn’t, the result could be disastrous to the relationship. Maybe not hanging upside-down in a straightjacket over a frozen lake, but something far worse – the loss of a reader.

Magicians practice for hours to perfect their magic. Writers should consider the rewrite their practice – time to hone their skills, the story right along with it, to the best they can possibly be. Write, rewrite and rewrite some more. Only then will you see the flaws in the illusion and be able to smooth them out. In the end, the mystery is indeed magic.

One lucky commenter, chosen at random from Ian’s two guest posts will receive a copy of Endo, which will arrive in an evidence bag with a toe tag, five fingerprint card strips and a few ‘crime scene tape‘ bandages.

Also see:
Never Be Afraid to Ask by Ian O’Neill
Keeping it Real in a Fabricated World

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Posted in books, How to, writing. Tags: Endo, Evidence, Ian O'Neill, MacGuffin, misdirection, Red Herrings, The Grand Illusion, writing mysteries. 20 Comments »

Keeping It Real in a Fabricated World

August 18, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Writing a fiction novel can be oxymoronic since we fill the fabricated story with facts. In my novel, Endo, I made up a detective, his life, the world around him, but added facts to keep the reader grounded. I used real towns and cities but fabricated the buildings and addresses he visited. I created numerous characters but gave them real jobs: park rangers, crime scene investigators, a coroner and most of all, police officers.

I didn’t kill anyone but I did research what happens after a body is discovered. In storytelling there needs to be a mix of truth amongst lies. It’s a delicate balance that keeps the reader walking a fine line between what is real and what isn’t. As writers, we must suspend our reader’s disbelief. To do that, we need to understand how far is too far. Sometimes we miss the mark and readers are more than pleased to point out the error of our good intentions.

I’m not the first writer to bend the truth to benefit his story and I know that all of the writers reading this piece will do the same. But, I caution you on just how far you’ll go to make a story plausible because too far means the reader will not believe. Even in genres where you’d think anything is acceptable, you still have to maintain the parameters that you set out in the story. So, in chapter two you introduce a woman who can read minds; any mind, anywhere, as long as the person she’s trying to read is in her sight. Then, chapter 29 rolls around and she is miraculously able to read the mind of a killer in a basement apartment in Arkansas when she’s in California. But it made the story plausible, right?

Our focus here is on crime and mystery novels and I’m not going to spend a lot of time on formula; suffice to say most mystery novels begin with a crime.

The usual suspects: murder, kidnapping, bank robbing, theft of some kind. Regardless of the crime you choose, it must be believable. If it begins with an outlandish crime then it’s your job to talk the reader into believing it could happen.

Writers have the best job in the world. We get to make stuff up for a living. We create the crime, make it seem implausible or difficult for anyone to accomplish. We throw in obstacle after obstacle in hopes of stopping our heroes from getting to a solution. We muddy the waters with all kinds of distractions including love, lust and greed to name a few. In all of that, our reader must never stop suspending their disbelief. It sounds like a very tall order and that’s because it is.

Cops and detectives are different in all parts of the world, each operating under a different set of rules and guidelines. It would be best to find out specific rules and laws in the country or area of the detectives, cops or P.I.s in your story. For the purposes of this article, let’s have our hero be a cop from the States.

A policeman being first to arrive at a crime scene acts in similar ways to a detective in the same situation. Their eyes are wide open to the possibility that the perpetrator is still at the scene. Once they check the scene and realize they are alone, what do they have at their disposal to take in the scene. Well, at first, as I said, their keen senses but eventually they’ll use what every person in law enforcement carries, a pad and pencil.

Mundane, yes, but a necessary tool not only for the cop in question, but also for the writer. Balance is key. It offers reality at a time when you’ve introduced a fake crime. Besides, the pen or pencil could be a weapon, right?

Detectives often draw out the scene as accurately as possible. Sound familiar? I’m not sure how many of the writers reading this article do this, but I draw out my main characters’ homes’ floor plans. Or, the floor plans to any buildings that appear frequently in the novel. Just as I can check back to ensure my accuracy and not test my memory, your detective can do the same.

The scene is secured. By that, the detective or policeman will ensure that no one enters the scene thereby contaminating evidence. Anyone already at the scene, including the first on the scene, will not smoke or use the sink or toilet. No one will touch anything at the scene. This is as real as it gets considering Locard’s exchange principle. Dr. Edmond Locard, considered to be the father of modern forensics, in 1910 opened the first forensics lab in Lyon, France. He postulated that a criminal would leave behind evidence and take evidence from the scene, therefore an exchange would occur. Today we call it trace evidence.

Can shit be traced?

When writing always remember that you must keep your reader’s belief suspended. It will impact every word you put on the page. I watched a show about real cops on a case and all were huddled around a door while a crime scene analyst (yeah, a CSA), took a shoe impression from a door. One of the lead detectives looked into the camera and with sarcasm dripping from every word said, “And now we’ll just enter this into the shoe database.”

This very scenario is believable if handled correctly. Remember, too, that readers want to believe. If a person’s stomach contents can tell investigators what the victim ate, they have a good chance of using that information in many ways. They can use it as a timeline or trace them to a location. This happens and is believable. A victim’s fecal-matter can be traced but you have to ask yourself if a reader wants to follow along with that lead?

I wrote a scene and posted it to my online writing group. It was in a courtroom during impact statements – when the victim’s loved ones, family and friends convey to the court how they have been effected by what the convicted person has done. These are usually part of a murder trial and my story was no different. I painted a picture of the courtroom and how, after one man had told the killer he would rot in hell and be damned forever for what he’d done, people applauded and cheered. One of my critics refused to believe this could happen. I never explained to them that I’d seen it happen a number of times in documentaries that followed murder cases to their conclusion. It wouldn’t have mattered. They had a right to not believe this situation. There is always a chance that some reader will no longer suspend their disbelief based on their own morals and sensibilities.

Situations are difficult to predict amongst readers, but using existing investigation tools and better, the personnel who perform them, will cement a reader’s belief. And, there are a lot of different experts one can draw on to balance out fiction with facts. Crime Scene Analysts are responsible for photographing a crime scene as well as recovering evidence and processing latent fingerprints. Document Examiners work mostly in a lab to examine documents and document-related evidence which includes handwriting, printing and signatures. There’s also a Firearms/Tool Mark Examiner who is responsible for performing scientific analysis on firearms and tool mark evidence. One of the least known jobs of this expert is to examine and compare footwear and tire tread evidence.

There are an abundance of individuals responsible for tracking and taking down criminals: Evidence Custodians, Criminalists, Photo Technicians, Lab Technicians and probably one of the most recognizable, Latent Fingerprint Examiner. Job descriptions are available on the internet for these positions or in several excellent books on forensics and criminology.

While crafting your mystery referring to these facts will enable you to suspend your reader’s disbelief – what could be the biggest fact about fiction.

One lucky commenter, chosen at random from Ian’s two guest posts, will receive a copy of Endo, which will arrive in an evidence bag with a toe tag, five fingerprint card strips and a few ‘crime scene tape‘ bandages.

Also see:
Never Be Afraid to Ask by Ian O’Neill
The Magic of Mysteries: The Art (and Joy) of Misdirection

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