Generating Suspense Through Conflict

Suspense. Every story needs some. As Kurt Vonnegut said, "Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water." Suspense enters with the question: Will the character get it?

Suspense is an emotional state created in a reader/viewer when an obstacle is put in the way of a character, one they care about, achieving something they desperately want or need. 

In Gravity (2013) Ryan Stone (played by Sandra Bullock) wants to return to earth. Alive. A number of complications put this outcome in question. At one point in the movie:

"High-speed debris strikes the Explorer and Hubble, and detaches Stone from the shuttle, leaving her tumbling through space. Kowalski, using a Manned Maneuvering Unit, soon recovers Stone and they make their way back to the Space Shuttle. They discover that it has suffered catastrophic damage and the crew is dead. They use the thruster pack to make their way to the International Space Station (ISS), which is in orbit only about 1,450 km (900 mi) away."[2]

Unfortunately "As they approach the substantially damaged but still operational ISS, they see its crew has evacuated in one of its two Soyuz modules. The parachute of the remaining Soyuz has deployed, rendering the capsule useless for returning to Earth."[2]

In my previous post, Three Ways to Create Suspense, I mentioned that Lee Goldberg held that three things were needed for suspense:

a) A real danger to the hero and 

b) the possibility that the hero will escape the danger. 

c) A finite amount of time (/a ticking clock)

Gravity has all three. The space debris provide a cascading series of dangers to Ryan. Usually, though her situation is desperate, one feels there's a chance--perhaps a vanishingly slim one, but still a chance--to escape the danger. Also, there is a finite amount of time in which to do so because she is running out of oxygen.

Great setup.

I think this shows us something else: Suspense (a state created in the reader) is created through conflict. That is, suspense is created through a character's efforts at getting what they need/want being blocked. 

So lets look at the different kinds of conflict we can set up in our stories. What kind of conflict do we want? Is conflict 'one size fits all' or are some kinds of conflict compelling and other kinds less so?

Before I go on to examine that, though, I'd like to take a step back and quickly point something out about MacGuffins.

The Care and Feeding of MacGuffins

If you're not familiar with the term "MacGuffin" see my article The MacGuffin: A Plot Devise from Screenwriting or go to the article on tvtropes.org.

A while ago I read through the articles in Uncle Orson's Writing Class (I highly recommend it) and--though I can't remember which article I read it in--came across something to the effect that a MacGuffin was a thing that one's characters cared about (and, of course, something that doesn't need much of an explanation; treasure, jewels, and so on). 

The only reason I, as a reader, care about whether the character gets the MacGuffin is because I care about the character and the character wants it. 

Granted, if you're anything like me, many times the MacGuffin takes on a life of its own. For instance, the briefcase in Pulp Fiction or the golden falcon in The Maltese Falcon. But that's beside the point. Those movies work because what I care about is the character achieving their goal. I'd care about that even if I had no interest in that goal for myself.

Kinds of Conflict: Complex vs Simple, Unique vs Common, Interesting vs Boring

I made that digression--the one about MacGuffins being something that the character cares about--because I think it lies at the heart (or at least very near the heart) of what Lee Goldberg says about suspense. 

In a recent Google Chat Lee Goldberg said:

"You have to be careful that you're not going with easy conflicts. It's easy to have someone with a gun walk in, it's easy to have a hurricane or earthquake or monster. Those are cheap conflicts. The best conflicts are the ones that truly come from character.

"A cliched version would be the guy who is afraid of heights and has to go to a high building to rescue someone. You want a conflict that is based on character not conflict that could arbitrarily be applied to anyone and would work for anyone. You want conflict that is unique to the characters that you are writing about. That's how you want to invest the audience in what happens to them [the characters]. You don't want a conflict that is wholly exterior and homogenous, a conflict that anyone would find [scary]." (Lee Goldberg)

At first I was surprised. We don't know who our readers are going to be so it would seem a good idea to find a conflict that anyone could relate to: one's spouse and children being killed by a bomb that a terrorist set off, for example. Who couldn't relate to that?

Here, though, Goldberg argues the opposite. Later on in the talk he uses Monk, a character with an obsessive compulsive disorder who is afraid of ... well, pretty much everything! ... as an example. Not everyone is terrified of walking through sewer water. Yes, this is something we'd like to avoid; the idea is revolting; but for Monk it is terrifying. 

My point is that Monk has desires and goals and fears that no normal person--and certainly the lion's share of the series' readers--have. And yet it was a popular series, filled with suspense. 

Here's the key, the takeaway: Remember what I said about MacGuffins. We, readers, don't need to care about what the character cares about. (There's probably a better way of putting that!) We only need to care about the character achieving it. And if the writer has gotten us to identify with the character, we will. (I've written about how to get a reader to identify with a character here and here.)

A Technique To Build Conflict: Cross-Cutting And Point of View

Before I end this post I'd like to talk about a practical technique Lee Goldberg mentioned for creating suspense.[1] 

Third Person

Imagine a camera cutting between the hero and the villain, then between the villain and the hero. Cross-cutting in third person allows a writer to share information with the audience--in our case, the reader--that other characters don't know. Lee Goldberg says "You can control point of view to create suspense."[1]

First Person

Lee Goldberg continues:

"When you write a book in first person the essential element of suspense is understanding the conflict within the lead character. You have to establish who he or she is, what they want, what they're afraid of, what they stand to lose. And then create a situation where all those fears and risks come to a head. So if you are in the heart and soul of the hero or heroine and you see the events that are happening around him or her you feel the suspense that they feel.

"There it's a manipulation of the information you share about your hero combined with the conflict you put them in that's going to make that information have relevance.

"That's a harder thing to pull off. Suspense--I believe--is much easier to do third person than it is first person."[1]

Lee Goldberg

Lee Goldberg recently teamed up with Janet Evanovich to write the New York Times bestselling books "The Heist" and "Pros & Cons" and is now a #1 New York Times bestselling novelist. 

Lee Goldberg is a rare find, a senior writer who has done it all, and who still takes the time to pass along his thoughts on the craft of writing.

Well! That's it for now. If you'd like to sample Lee's writing wares, sign up for his newsletter and he'll send you a free electronic copy of "McGrave." It's a fast paced, engaging, and (of course!) suspenseful, thriller. 

Links/References:

1. Google hangout: Secrets to writing top suspense:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/cvcsqh3pj7ihv6ocaoponb606mo

2. Gravity, Wikipedia.

Photo credit: "The Race" by Vieira_da_Silva under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Parts of Story: Tags And Traits: The Dominant Impression

"A tag is a label, but a limited, specialized label. It identifies a character and helps your readers distinguish one story person from another."

-- Dwight V. Swain, Creating Characters: How To Build Story People

Dwight V. Swain, in Creating Characters, describes tags and traits as having three main functions. First, they identify a character. Second, they identify each character uniquely. Third, they help recall a character to your reader's mind after an absence. He uses Kojak as an example; that character's tags were his ever present lollipop and his shaved head.

One of the most effective ways of using tags and traits is through formulating a dominant impression for each character. In this chapter I'm going to go over what a dominant impression is and how it achieves its effect.

The Dominant Impression

A dominant impression contains the sort of information that stays with you--that you remember--after you meet someone for the first time. It is the cluster of qualities that makes a character memorable.[1] 

What qualities make a character memorable? (I also talk about this in my chapter on Creating Interesting Characters.) DVS writes that it's some combination of a character's name, gender, approximate age and primary attitude. Let's examine these.

1. Name 

Names should be descriptive and unique.

Descriptive. Names should help characterize our pseudo-humans; they should give our readers an idea of the kind of people they are and, if possible, their role in the story. 

This can also be used to misdirect readers. For instance, it would be easier for me to think of a character named Damian Black as a villain than one named Christopher Holmes. These associations can be used to throw suspicion on an innocent person or to nudge the reader to give someone who is guilty the benefit of the doubt.

In my opinion, J.K. Rowling is phenomenally good at using names to tag her characters. Take Severus Snape for example. Severus is used as a red herring in the first Harry Potter book. The name "Severus" reminds me of "sever" and "Snape" sounds an awful lot like "snake." Neither of those words has terribly positive or cuddly connotations. 

Rowling really is a past master of the dominant impression. Here's how she introduces Snape: "Professor Quirrell, in his absurd turban, was talking to a teacher with greasy black hair, a hooked nose, and sallow skin."[2] 

But Rowling doesn't leave it there. She has Percy tell Harry that: "He teaches Potions, but he doesn’t want to--everyone knows he's after Quirrell’s job. Knows an awful lot about the Dark Arts, Snape." So Quirrell's nervousness is passed off as being caused by Snape's proximity and we don't suspect for a moment that Quirrell is reacting to Harry and that the mild-mannered Professor Quirrell is really Lord Voldemort's helper. But when we go back and re-read the book it's right there staring at us, we just misattributed Quirrell's reaction.

To sum up, a name is--or can be--a part of a dominant impression. It can be used to shape our readers expectations about a character, who they are, how they will act and react. And, as such, it's one of the most powerful tools writers have.

Unique. It goes without saying that having two or more characters with the same name would be maddening for the reader, but so, often, is having two or more names which look or sound the same. Mary and Marty for instance. Even Darren and Dwain might throw a reader off, especially at 2:30 in the morning when they're feverishly reading your book desperate to find out the identity of the villain, or to discover whether the protagonist will put aside her pride, forgive her love interest, and find true love. 

The rule-of-thumb I've adopted is this: have each name begin with a different letter and make sure they sound different. The only exception to this is if you want to use similar names as a clue. (Agatha Christie does this to great effect in A Murder is Announced.)

2. Gender

One of the ways Thomas Harris characterizes Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs is by making her a trainee in the, at that time, male-dominated FBI. That Ms. Starling could survive and thrive in what Harris portrays as a hostile environment shows us her drive, her intelligence and her determination.  

Since gender is part of certain stereotypes it can also be used to subvert them. For instance, take the idea of a stripper with a heart of gold. I plugged that phrase into Google Image Search; all the images of strippers that came back were female. 

What would happen if we created a kind-hearted stripper who happened to be male? Here's an example of where gender can be very important, not in perpetuating a stereotype, but in breaking one and, at the same time, creating a unique, interesting, story person.

3. Approximate Age

Personally, when I meet people I only notice whether they are much older or younger than I am. When I read a book I don't need an exact age, but I do appreciate knowing what decade they're in since that influences so many things. For example, one would not expect a person in their mid-20s to hold a high level position in, say, the CIA. 

I went looking for an example of how one can use a dominant impression to characterize a person's age without actually telling the reader their numeric age. But I found much more than that. First let's look at the example and then I'll say a few things about it. 

Here's how Stephen King introduces George Denbrough in It: 

"A small boy in a yellow slicker and red galoshes ran cheerfully along beside the newspaper boat. The rain had not stopped, but it was finally slackening. It tapped on the yellow hood of the boy's slicker, sounding to his ears like rain on a shed roof ... a comfortable, almost cozy sound. The boy in the yellow slicker was George Denbrough. He was six."

This is masterful. Not only does King use tags and traits (small, boy, yellow slicker, red galoshes, cheery) but King uses free indirect speech to give the reader a peek inside the character's mind (something that, ordinarily, we can't do when using a third-person perspective). He does this when he writes: "sounding to his ears like rain on a shed roof ... a comfortable, almost cozy sound." That's giving us George's interior feelings and thoughts.

Taken together, King, using only a few lines, has conjured a picture in our minds of an adorable child, cheerily running through the rain absorbed in watching his newspaper boat, being serenaded by the rain as it dances, rat-a-tat-tat, on his yellow slicker.

King's description gives us an excellent idea how good descriptions can be. But, back to my point about age. In the passage, above, Stephen King tells us George's exact age but, even if he hadn't, I think we'd still have had a pretty good idea how old he was.

And, yes, as you can likely tell, Stephen King is one of my favorite authors. 

4. Primary attitude/Dominant feeling

I was at a party the other day and fell into conversation with someone I knew slightly. This wasn't the first time we'd met, but it was the first time we had a chance to exchange more than awkward pleasantries.

After a minute or so my dominant impression of him was fixed: he was not a person who suffered fools gladly. It was an observation that didn't set me at ease since I was keenly aware that what constitutes a fool in someone's mind is distressingly relative. For example, my great-grandfather thought that anyone who believed a human would walk on the moon was (and this is a polite way of putting it) being silly. 

Keeping in mind that our characters are pseudo-people and so tend to be more black and white than their flesh-and-blood counterparts; if a character's primary attude is fearfulness, then that trait, that quality, will find a way (or should find a way) to insinuate itself into everything he or she does. If a character is, say, irascible then he should snap at other characters over minor slights or inconveniences. Other characters might be prone to gossip about him behind his back and his house should be the one school children are gently but firmly steered away from on Halloween. 

This isn't to say that an irascible character can't be kind or considerate, but there would have to be a reason. It would require an explanation. For instance, perhaps one of the neighborhood children reminds him of his daughter as a young girl and so he has a soft spot for her. He's sentimental. It's the child's birthday so he bakes her his daughter's favorite cookies--chocolate chip with extra chips. 

Here's another example, this time from the TV show Friends. I would say that Monica Geller's primary attitude was that of being obsessive compulsive when it came to cleaning. Informally, we would call her a neat freak. Everything had to be just so and she'd clean and scrub and re-arrange until it was. She was compulsive about it. Monica didn't need a reason to clean, no explanation was required. If she didn't clean up a mess, that would require an explanation.

One last example: Mr. Monk from the TV show Monk. Mr. Monk's primary attitude was, I would say, fearfulness. He was obsessive compulsive with an uncanny knack to remember even the most minute detail of his environment, but he was also scared of just about everything. Even milk. Milk! I think that one reason for the success of that show is that, in practically every scene, they demonstrated Monk's primary characteristic and tied everything else to it.

The point is that once you've picked a character's dominant attitude it should be shown, reinforced, in practically every scene.

*  *  *

This post will end up as a chapter in my upcoming book, Parts of Story. If you'd like to read other sections I've placed online, go to the index, here: Parts of Story.

Links/References

1. Creating Characters: How To Build Story People, by Dwight V. Swain.

2. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, by J.K. Rowling.

How To Write Like Agatha Christie: Motifs

Today I examine certain structural elements of Agatha Christie's murder mysteries. Specifically, I look at two things. First, how soon the initial murder tended to occur and, second, a common plot device; namely, a way she diverted suspicion from the murderer early on in the story.

This is the third and last instalment of my series on Agatha Christie--though, that said, I've had so much fun writing these articles I'm sure I'll blog about her, and the secret of her remarkable success, again. In case you want to read them, here are links to the first and second articles:

How To Write Like Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie's Secret: Break The Rules

The Murder Tends To Occur Later In The Story

As I mentioned in my first post, though many (perhaps most) murder mystery authors have a corpse turn up within the first few pages it was not uncommon for Christie to hold off introducing the first murder until well into the second act. 

To double-check this, I looked up where the first murder falls in a few of Agatha Christie's novels. Here's what I discovered:

(1920) The Mysterious Affair at Styles: 14%

(1923) The Murder on the Links: 8%

(1924) The Man in the Brown Suit: 9%

(1926) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: 1%

(1927) The Big Four: 6%

(1928) The Mystery of the Blue Train: 30%

(1930) The Murder at the Vicarage: 15% 

(1931) The Sittaford Mystery: 9%

(1932) Peril at End House: 34%

(1933) Lord Edgware Dies: 20%

(1936) Murder in Mesopotamia: 24%

(1937) Death on the Nile: 46%

(1941) Evil Under The Sun: 23%

(1944) Towards Zero: 48%

(1950) A Murder Is Announced: 13%

The percentage indicates how far into the novel the first murder occurred. If I were doing this scientifically I would list all of Christie's 66 mystery novels. As it is, from this far-from-random sample, the average percentage is 20%. It seems that, on average, Christie waited until the end of the second of the three acts to bump off her first victim.

It seems as though the more Christie wrote the more comfortable she became with delaying the first murder, sometimes even until the middle of the book!

Her reasoning for this? For Christie, the murder was the culmination of the murderer's plot and so needed to be built up to. It wasn't the beginning of the story, it was the middle; the first part belonged to the murderer (though his/her identity was hidden from us) while the second belonged to the sleuth. 

It's a trade-off. Risk losing your reader by not providing something exciting up front or risk losing them because they don't care enough about the characters for it to matter one was snuffed out.

A Common Plot Device: The character whose life appeared to be in danger was really the murderer.

Although this doesn't happen in all or even the majority of Agatha Christie's stories it does happen in quite a few. (Spoiler warning.)

a. The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

The victim, Emily Inglethorp, dies of strychnine poisoning and her husband Alfred Inglethorp, a man many years her junior, is immediately suspected. He will benefit financially from her death and he was seen purchasing strychnine in the village. Poirot, though, proves that Alfred could not have purchased the strychnine and the suspicions of the police settle elsewhere. However, it was Alfred Inglethorp who, along with Emily's companion Evelyn Howard, killed his wife.

b. The Murder at the Vicarage (1930)

When Colonel Lucius Protheroe is killed the first suspect is his wife, Anne Protheroe. Lawrence Redding, her lover, confesses to the murder (we are led to believe he did so because he thought Anne was the murderer and wanted to protect her). Then Anne Protheroe confesses (ostensibly to protect her lover, Lawrence). However, after many entertaining twists and turns, we find that Anne and Lawrence are, indeed, the murderers.

c. Peril at End House (1932)

This is one of my favorite and, I believe, best plotted, Poirot mysteries.

Shortly after Poirot meets Magdala "Nick" Buckley he comes to believe that someone is trying to kill her. But, really, Nick has planted false clues to give Poirot that impression. Her goal is to prevent her prize possession, End House, from going to reck and ruin. To this end she murders her cousin, Maggie Buckley, to gain access to a fortune the girl recently inherited. This plot is complicated by several factors, not the least of which is a drug smuggling ring. But Poirot unravels this knotty problem and arrives at the truth.[1] 

d. Lord Edgeware Dies (1933)

When Lord Edgeware is found dead in his study his estranged wife, Jane Wilkinson, is immediately suspected of the murder. After all, she had come to his house the night before, announced herself, and visited him in his study at around the time he was killed. 

The problem: Jane couldn't have killed him because she had a cast-iron alibi: at the time of the murder she had been at a dinner party with thirteen other people. Poirot believes the true killer hired a master of disguise to impersonate and incriminate Jane. The plan went wrong because the mastermind hadn't known Jane was going to be at the dinner party. 

In the end it turns out that Poirot was correct but he'd gotten it the wrong way around. The killer had hired an impersonator to pretend to be Jane, but that person was Jane herself! While everyone thought she was at the dinner party she had actually been murdering Lord Edgeware.

e. Three Act Tragedy (1935)

The murderer, Sir Charles Cartwright, tests his method of murder at his cocktail party. He puts poison in a cocktail and then watches as a random guest, Reverend Babbington, drinks it and dies. Although Cartwright does his best to get Poirot to suspect murder, since no poison is found in the glass, the Reverend's death is ruled to be due to natural causes. 

Emboldened, Cartwright (wearing a disguise) uses the same method to kill his lifelong friend, Dr. Bartholomew Strange. His motive: Love. He wanted to marry Hermione Lytton Gore (called "Egg") but was already married to a woman he could not divorce. The only person who knew this was Dr. Strange.[2] 

Here are a few other novels where Christie used this motif:

f. Death on the Nile (1937)

g. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940)

h. Towards Zero (1944)

i. The Hollow (1946)

j. A Murder Is Announced (1950)

k. Ordeal by Innocence (1958)

l. The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (1962)

m. At Bertram's Hotel (1965)

n. Curtain (1975)

3. The Reveal

Though I don't believe it was unique to Agatha Christie, it was a mark of her stories that all the suspects gathered together, at the end, to await the sleuth's dramatic unravelling of the case. The sleuth generally did three things:

a. Recounts all the clues and reveals whether they were irrelevant, a red herring, or genuine.

b. As the sleuth recounts the clues he exposes the secrets of all those gathered. Perhaps this is a kind of payback for everyone lying to him! 

c. The sleuth unmasks his hidden adversary, the killer, and turns them over to the police. (Occasionally the killer will kill himself rather than be apprehended and hanged.)

Now, as their evil deeds are laid bare, the murderer shows his/her true face. Where before they seemed sweet and caring now they show themselves to be self-involved and contemptuous of others.

Agatha Christie's Plot Devices

At some point in the future I would like to write another post--or series of posts--on the plot devices Agatha Christie used. In the meantime, here are a couple of excellent articles on the subject:

Plot devices in Agatha Christie's novels

Agatha Christie - Plot Devices

Thanks for reading!

Links/References

1. As in A Murder is Announced, Christie uses nicknames vs real names to set up a vital clue early on.

2. Another motif in Christie's stories (this is evidenced in A Murder is Announced as well) is that often the murderer is forced to kill someone they love dearly in order to obtain something they love even more.) 

Photo credit: "Ghost..." by Thomas Leuthard under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Parts of Story: The Structure of Genre

Every story has a unique structure; no one structure fits them all. That would be boring. Good writing, good stories, may be a lot of things--thought provoking, exciting, uncomfortable--but they aren't boring. 

That said, stories of the same genre have a structure in common. Which really is just another way to say that all stories within a certain genre follow certain broad, general, rules. That is, after all, an important part of what makes a genre story a genre story! 

Genre

I know it's obvious, but for a story to be a murder mystery it must have both a mystery and a murder. There will also be various clues as well as a sleuth who investigates them. Certain characters will be suspects and there will be at least one murderer. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the sleuth will, at the end, reveal not only the solution of the mystery but how he winnowed away the lies and subterfuge to arrive, finally, at the truth. As a result, order is restored.

But there are different kinds of murder mysteries, each with a more particular, more exact, set of requirements.[5] A cosy or whodunit (think Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. Sayers) should have all the above plus a logical, rational, solution. No hocus pocus, no unfounded intuitions, are allowed. Also, the focus is on the mystery of the murder (it seems impossible that the person was murdered yet they were) as well as how the sleuth goes about solving the crime. In these stories it is crucial that the storyteller play fair with the reader and tell them everything the sleuth learns as he (or she) learns it.[7]

A hardboiled detective story, on the other hand, often focuses less on the mystery and it's solution and more on action and gritty realism. Thrillers are different. Though they generally crank up the suspense, thrillers have about as much mystery as any other kind of story. 

Another popular genre is romance. Breaking that down further, there's contemporary romance, fantasy, erotica, gothic, historical, military, paranormal, regency, and more. 

The thriller genre, on the other hand, breaks down into legal, military, political, (my favorite) psychological, suspense and techno-thrillers. And many, many, more.

My point is that each genre--mystery, thriller, suspense, romance, horror, etc.--breaks down into sub-genres and each of these sub-genres have their own conventions, their own requirements. Their own structure.

If one writes a book and then markets it as a psychological thriller but doesn't talk about their characters' psychological states, if they don't do a study of their characters emotions and how they change over time in response to the (multiple) tensions in their environment (as exemplars of this see William Golding's Lord of the Flies or Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club), then while they may have written a thriller there really wouldn't be anything uniquely psychological about it. As a result, anyone who bought the book who wanted to read a psychological thriller would be disappointed no matter how good the book was.

As Lorenzo Semple Jr. said in his interview with Lee Goldberg, if he sat down in a restaurant and ordered fish but the server brought him, instead, a beautifully cooked steak he'd be upset no matter how good the steak was. Why? Because he wanted fish! He'd feel deceived. Ripped off.

If a reader feels mislead about the kind of books they've bought then they aren't going to be happy with the book or, most likely, the author. Personally, I think that's the reason for the lion's share of one star reviews: a reader's expectations were not only disappointed, they were taken out behind the barn and shot. 

Since there are so many different genres and sub-genres I won't even try to talk about a typical structure for every one. Though, that said, I do talk in some length about mysteries--whodunits in particular--and what the requirements of that form are.

Further Reading/Links/References

1. Write Your Own Murder Mystery, by Lindsay Price over at theatrefolk.com.

2. List of literary genres, Wikipedia.

3. Talking About Detective Fiction, P.D. James.

4. Mystery Fiction, Wikipedia.

5. It is often said that the primary distinction between genre and literature is that genre is plot/structure driven while literature is not (mainstream is often viewed as moodily occupying a no-man's-land between the two). Humbug! Literary stories simply don't have as rigid, or as much, of a structure, but they do have a structure. I love reading Ursula K. Le Guin on this subject and agree with her completely:

- Le Guin’s Hypothesis, by Ursula K. Le Guin over at Book View Cafe. In part she writes: "Plot is not the reason I turn to novels and is often the least interesting element to me in them. Story is what matters. Plot complicates and extends story; plot is indeed pure artifice. But Mr Krystal seems to say that only genre writers are aware that a certain level of artificiality must prevail in fiction. Does he mean that literary writers don’t use artifice? That they don’t know, just as as surely as genre writers, the absolute, imperative, marvelous artificiality of their art?" Yes. That. Exactly.

- On Serious Literature, by Ursula K. Le Guin. I found this gem on Ms. Le Guin's website (ursulakleguin.com). It is a piece of flash fiction (only 577 words). Marvelous. 

6. Storyville: What is Literary Fiction? by Richard Thomas over at litreactor.com.

7. See my series How To Write A Murderously Good Mystery as well as How To Write Like Agatha Christie and Agatha Christie's Secret: Break The Rules.

6 Tips From A Legend: Lorenzo Semple Jr On How To Write

In 2008 Lorenzo Semple Jr. was hailed by the Writers Guild of America as a Living Legend.[1] 

Semple was one of the writers for the original Batman series (1966 - 1968). He also worked on the screenplay of King Kong (1976), Flash Gordon (1980), the James Bond movie Never Say Never Again (1983) as well as The Parallax View (1974) and Three Days of the Condor (1975).[2] Mr. Semple died two days ago at the age of 91. 

In 2011 Mr. Semple sat down with writer and TV producer Lee Goldberg and passed along some of his writing wisdom. (See: Lorenzo Semple, Jr.) What follows is my transcription of a small portion of that talk.[4]

Lee Goldberg Interviews Lorenzo Semple Jr

LG: What is the best piece of advice you've ever given and what's the best advice you could give someone just starting out writing for television?

Semple: With TV, it really depends on who you have involved in the project. If I wrote a two paragraph idea for a series, everything would depend on who I got enlisted for the project.

1. Be likeable.

Networking, the politics of television, is very important. That and, these days, having an original voice helps. Programs like Monk and Weeds are trying to be more original.

But, generally, here's what you want to do: improve your personality. I don't care about your writing. Making television is difficult, it's arduous. I'm talking about working with all the people involved in the process, getting notes and all that. Some of the people you'll work with will be detestable.

Anyone in their right mind wants to work with someone they like rather than someone they don't.

Be likeable but don't lick boots. They like to be insulted a bit if you do it wittily enough.

One line I always used selling pitches to movies: This movie probably will fail, most movies do, but if it succeeds, what an upside!

That's what they really want to hear. Most movies are going to fail, but if you can appeal to their greed ... They don't want to know that if it's good it'll win an award, they want to know its going to be huge!

That's a piece of advice I would give writers. 

And don't be self-pitying. Many writers say they're the only ones who face the agony of the blank page. I say you're idiotic. The blank page is the greatest moment of writing a script. It could be the greatest script in the world. Be happy that you have the privilege of having the blank page. That should be your approach to writing.

2. If you want to understand a movie then read the script. 

I'm not talking about the Syd Field's type of thing, about something having to happen on page 23 or all that. That's all very useful, and required, particularly in television, but that will come naturally as you read scripts.

I'm a great believer in reading scripts rather than watching movies to learn about them. You're distracted by the movie. 

3. The first 10 minutes of a movie should establish the characters, their basic motivations, and the genre.

My favorite thing I would do in class, I would show the first 10 minutes of any movie and at the end of 10 minutes I would stop it and say So, what has been established? What do we know now? What kind of story is this? What do we think this is going to be about?

A lot of things should have been established. The characters. Not by direct exposition, but you should have a strong idea of the movie you're going to see.

When you start a movie you're making a contract with the reader/viewer. If you go into a restaurant and order fish and they bring you a wonderful steak you're going to say Hey! I didn't order this, take it back. You're going to feel cheated. So I think it's very important to be clear about the kind of thing you're writing.

4. Do a bullet point outline of each scene.

And that's an argument in favor of outlines. Which I'm too optimistic, too hopeful, to write myself. I find it very hard to go through the thing I'm writing and outline. But I do believe strongly in outlining the scene before you. I believe they call that using bullet points. Outline what's going to be in the scene.

5. How to avoid writer's block: never quit writing for the day when you're stuck, always quit when you know what the next sentence is going to be.

Another thing. Never quit writing for the day when you're stuck. Quit when you know what the next sentence is going to be or the next little scene is going to be. Then you don't get blocked.

I've never done it, but I know a couple of people who do.

6. Stand up when you write.

I also believe in writing standing up at a lectern. That way it's more like painting. You write something, walk away from it, walk around the room, think, come back. I think its a much more flexible, a much more artistic and fluent way to write.

LG: But you don't do that.

Semple: I have trouble standing up now. In my day, I hadn't thought of it. [laughter] I've read many maxims I think are very good that I don't do.

One person said that in every scene every character should think he's the main character in that scene. That's a wonderful idea but I don't know how you do it. That's one of those things that sound great when you're giving sage advice.

But, anyway, that's how I sum up my view of writing and my career.

That was the end of the interview. I'd encourage you to watch the YouTube video since so much was communicated through tone of voice and gesture. 

My favorite bit of advice was the part about letting your readers know right away the genre your story is in. That's two points, really:

a. Be clear about the genre from the first paragraphs and 

b. market the book accordingly. 

Even if one writes the best romance this world has ever seen, if it's marketed as a murder mystery readers are going to be disappointed and (militantly) upset. Which means the number of one star reviews will skyrocket even though the book was well written and tells a compelling story.

That's it for today! 

I'll publish another post on Wednesday as usual (my regular posting schedule is Monday, Wednesday, Friday) but I'm also attempting to blog chapters of my upcoming book, Parts of Story. I'll put those out Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. 

At least, that's the plan. I'm not sure if I'll put those posts through Twitter; if you're interested in seeing them then you will as long as you've subscribed to my blog feed. Also, if you're not interesting in reading these 'blogging my book' posts, they'll be clearly marked with the prefix "Parts of Story." (For example, Parts of Story: The Structure of Genre or Parts of Story: Choosing a Theme and so on.)

Thanks to everyone for your patience as I try this out.

Links/References

1. Lorenzo Semple, Jr., Wikipedia.

2. Lorenzo Semple Jr, IMDb.

3. Lorenzo Semple, Jr, EmmyTVLegends.org.

4. This is not a word-for-word transcription. Certain points are, but, overall, it is more of a paraphrase. Anything that reads well is due to Mr. Semple, anything that is awkward or incorrect is my fault. Thanks to Lee Goldberg who mentioned Mr. Semple's death on his Google+ feed and gave the link to his previous interview with the writer.

Photo credit: "Capdepera" by *Light Painting* under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Crafting Interesting Characters

As you've probably guessed, no one quality or characteristic can make a character interesting. Jim Butcher puts it like this: While no one characteristic can make a character interesting, there are five qualities that "consistently make a team contribution".

Let's examine each of these qualities in turn.

1. Exaggeration 

Interesting characters are extreme characters. Think of Stephen King's character, Carrie, from the book of the same name. Carry White, a traumatized young girl, is pushed too far, snaps, and kills half her town. Carry isn't just telepathic, she's the most powerful telepath who ever existed! 

That's extreme. 

Or take Lee Child's hero, Jack Reacher. Reacher is 6'5'' tall, has a 50-inch chest, and weighs about 250 pounds. He is a physical wrecking machine. 

That's extreme.

Jim Butcher uses one of my favorite detectives as an example when he writes "Mister Monk is not merely fussy and unstable, he is fussy and unstable to an insane degree". He really is. This is the only character I know who is scared of ... wait for it ... milk.

Rick Gekoski writes:

"The major pleasures of a Reacher book are relatively simple. The ex-army major and MP, a peripatetic loner who leaves no traces except in the hearts of those he has touched, is a one-man wrecking crew, hurling bad guys into the darkness with breathtaking efficiency. In one scene, a fight in a bar, five roughnecks are dispatched within a minute. How cool is that?"[2]

Very cool!

Why does exaggeration work? Two reasons:

i. Wish fulfillment.

Humans crave excitement. Most folks would rather read about a 6'5'' mountain of man-muscle who is a vagabond on a mission than about Joe Milquetoast, a man who makes a good wage, has 1.6 kids, takes a vacation a year; a man for whom a speeding ticket is a major event.

ii. Exaggerated traits are memorable. 

An exaggerated, extreme, over-the-top trait captures one's imagination. 

This quality of being memorable is critical. What, as storytellers, are we trying to do? Among other things, we're trying to recreate a world, our story world, inside our readers' minds. The more readers remember about our characters, the more vivid and appealing this world will be.

2. Exotic Position/Exotic Setting

Exotic position is a kind of exaggeration, but one that is focused on place and occupation. All things being equal it's more interesting for a character to be a wizard or a CEO or even an archaeology professor than to be an ordinary dad or mom with an ordinary job. 

That said, it seems to me that this particular principle is especially true of action heroes and, perhaps, less true of the work-a-day characters that often populate comedies.

3. Introduction

First impressions count. When your character comes onto the page for the first time take the opportunity to do something characteristic, unique and memorable.

Characteristic: We can make a character's introduction characteristic by using tags and traits.[1] Which tags and traits are most important to the telling of the story? Those are the ones you want your readers to remember so those are the ones that should be showcased when introducing the character.

Unique: In order for an action to be characteristic it must be unique to the character. For example, if white-blond hair is one of a character's tags then no other character should have white-blond hair. Similarly, if one of your character's tags is their beaten up leather jacket, then no other character should have a beaten up leather jacket. (That said, your antagonist could have a pristine leather jacket, this would help to compare and contrast the two men, who they are, their characters, their values.)

Memorable: Although just about anything can serve as a tag, it helps if it is memorable (something exaggerated, fun, or linked to a significant event in the character's life). So, for instance, Jim Butcher has made Harry's staff one of his tags, as well as his shield bracelet. He gets bonus points for linking these tags to significant events in the character's backstory.  

Example 1: Indiana Jones in Raider's of the Lost Ark

Although Indiana Jones is on-screen from the movie's beginning, the character is introduced the first time we see his face. In that scene he uses his whip to disarm an associate who is about to shoot him in the back. This scene introduces many of Indy's tags and at least one trait. His whip is a tag, as is his leather jacket and high-crowned, wide-brimmed, sable fedora. Traits that are consistently reinforced in the trailer are his keen sense of hearing, a well-honed survival instinct and a sense of compassion and fair play.

(I find it interesting that in the revised third draft of the script for Raiders that Indy kills his would-be executioner, Barranca, rather than, as happens in the movie, letting him go. I think the writer's final choice was the best; it shows Indy's compassion without taking away his sense of danger.)[5]

Example 2: The sisters in Frozen

One sister, Anna, pushes the other, Elsa, to use her gift and, ultimately, attempt to do things she doesn't have the control to do. At the same time, we see that Elsa has an unusually strong ability to "create and manipulate ice and snow." 

Throughout the movie Elsa struggles to conceal and control her abilities. Elsa's actions throughout most of the story are driven by her fear that she will harm others, especially her younger sister, Anna, who she loves dearly.[3] All this is encapsulated in the scene that introduces Anna and Elsa. We see Anna's naive exuberance as well as Elsa's budding gift and the potential for disaster that lies within it.

Characteristic Action

We've seen that each character should have a few memorable qualities which are depicted using tags and traits. Further, since we're likely to remember the first time we catch a glimpse of the character--and since we're likely to remember it more clearly than any other moment--it's good writing practise to use a character's introduction to indelibly inscribe the essence of that character in our readers' minds. (No pressure or anything! This is why I hate writing openings.) 

All things being equal, the character should be doing something that only they do, something that is exaggerated, over the top. Something that will allow the reader to grasp--and remember!--the essence of their character. Butcher does this with his wizard, Harry Dresdon. 

In the 6th book of his wonderful Dresdon Files series, Blood Rites, Harry Dresdon is in the midst of fighting monkey demons trying to save a litter of ... can you guess? That's right, puppies. I guess he read Blake Snyder's other book, Save The Dog! (I jest, of course) 

But, still, puppies. Can you get cuter than that? A litter of them. Talk about pulling one's heartstrings. It's a terrific read; not a bad one to start the series with.

If you haven't read Butcher's Harry Dresdon novels, think James Bond. If you've never heard of James Bond, the opening sequence of the movie will tell you everything about him you need to know. Curvy young woman (not wearing enough to clothe a toothpick) swoon over him, he is suave, a skilled fighter, and a stone cold killer.

In general, you want the reader to be able to think, afterward, "Yes, that was so them." Like Harry Dresden nuking a huge demon-monkey in the opening pages of Jim Butcher's Blood Rites.

4. True to life

Even though your character is a pseudo-person they need to be true to life. If a character isn't true to life they're not going to be believable and unbelievable characters are boring characters. 

A character has to be believable in their actions, their responses, their thoughts and their dialog. Showing a character's emotions to the reader is a huge part of creating a character that is true to life.

There are two tools of the trade that can help a writer out here: first, what I'm calling mini-sequels and, second, tags and traits.

4a. Mini-sequels

Jim Butcher writes that the best way for giving the reader the sense that your character is "a whole, full person with his own life outside the purview of this particular story" is by showing your character's emotions, reactions and decisions. That is, show how the one leads naturally into the other. Events happen and rounded characters react to these emotions believable in a way unique to them.[1]

If you haven't read Jim Butcher's posts about scenes and sequels and aren't quite sure what they are, I highly recommend them. 

4b. Tags & Traits

Tags

Jim Butcher writes:

"TAGS are words you hang upon your character when you describe them. When you're putting things together, for each character, pick a word or two or three to use in describing them. Then, every so often, hit on one of those words in reference to them, and avoid using them elsewhere when possible. By doing this, you'll be creating a psychological link between those words and that strong entry image of your character."

That's a great description. Here's another, this time from Dwight V. Swain and his book, Techniques of the Selling Writer:

"A tag is a label.

"You hang tags on story people so that your reader can tell one character from another. An impression [...] is created by the tags a character bears.

"Black hair is a tag. It helps distinguish the raven-tressed girl from another who’s a blonde.

"A stutter is a tag. It sets apart one character from others who speak without impediment.

"Shuffling your feet is a tag. It keeps people from confusing you with your friend, who strides along.

"Pessimism is a tag. It marks its victim as different from the joker.

"Tags also may translate inner state into external action. Each time the brother in Arsenic and Old Lace shouts “Charge!” and dashes up his imaginary San Juan Hill, we’re reminded that he lives in a private world."

Dwight V. Swain goes on to describe four different categories tags fall into: appearance, speech, mannerism and attitude, but that is outside the scope of this article. 

Jim Butcher writes:

"This [tags] is a really subtle psychological device, and it is far more powerful than it first seems. It's invaluable for both you as the writer, and for the construction of the virtual story for the reader."[1]

Traits

So far we've looked at tags. What are traits? Dwight V. Swain calls them tags of attitude and writes:

"Tags of attitude—sometimes called traits—mark the habitually apologetic, fearful, irritable, breezy, vain, or shy. Obsequiousness is an attitude, and so is the habit of command. Here, too, are found the men and women preoccupied with a single subject, whether it be golf or babies, business or yard or stamps or fishing. For all preoccupations, in their way, represent habit of thought or view of life.

"The key thing to remember about tags is that their primary purpose is to distinguish . . . to separate one character from another in your reader’s eyes."

After all, if the reader has trouble telling one character from another--or, worse, can't remember the character--then they can't be very interesting.

5. Empathy

Jim Butcher calls empathy the Holy Grail of character design. He writes:

"If you do your job, you will create a sense of empathy in your reader for your characters. This is what makes people burst out laughing while reading. It's what makes readers cry, or cheer, or run off to take a cold shower.

"Like V-Factor [verisimilitude], empathy takes time to build and it relies heavily upon the skilled use of sequels. But if you can get the reader to this point, as an author, then you WIN. Big time. This is the ENTIRE GOAL of all this character work, because the reader's emotional involvement is the single most important factor in how well your story is going to fly.

"Or put another way, if you can make people love who you want them to love and hate who you want them to hate, you're going to have readers coming back to you over and over again."[1]

That's it! I said, in the beginning, that this post was about characteristics that make a character interesting but, really, I think it's more about avoiding things that could make your character boring. 

Notes/Links/References

1. Jim Butcher, Characters.

2. Why I love Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels. The Guardian, August 2013.

3. Elsa (Disney), Wikipedia.

4. Dwight V. Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer.

5. Lawrence Kasdan wrote the screenplay for Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark while George Lucas and Philip Kaufman created the story. (See the entry for Raiders over at IMDB.)

Agatha Christie's Secret: Break The Rules

Today I'm continuing with the second part of my two part series on how to write like the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie. Today I want to look at three things:

1. Agatha Christie the rebel

2. Christie's story structure

3. The reveal

I feel that each of these elements contributed not only to her astonishing success but to the uniqueness of her work.

By the way, my title is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I truly don't believe there was a secret to Christie's success; no formula exists for reproducing her phenomenal achievements. That said, I do believe that part of her success was due to her willingness to flout the conventions of her craft and risk the ire of critics as well as her peers.

(Note: Though I did try to get through all these points, I only made it through the first. As a result this article is actually part two of a three part series.)

1. Christie did the unexpected, even the forbidden

There is a story making the rounds that Agatha Christie was nearly thrown out of the Detection Club because she so thoroughly and regularly broke their rules of fair play in writing, specifically her novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. According to the story it was Dorothy L. Sayers (then club president) who cast the vote that saved her from the disgrace of expulsion.

While this is a terrific story, I doubt it ever happened. (Since this is off topic, I'll put my reasons for disbelief in footnote 9, see below.) The reason I mention the story is because the tale nicely illustrates an essential truth about Christie's work: she wasn't afraid to break rules or flout conventions. For example, although I doubt anyone wanted to expel her for it, she did likely break the rules of the Detection Club more than any other writer. [11]

Let's take a look at each rule of the detection club (these seem to have been less like rules and more like ethical guidelines) and see whether, and how, Christie broke it.

(Spoilers ahead)

Rule #1: "The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know."

Famously, Agatha Christie broke this rule in her masterpiece, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. That book is told by the killer who is acting as Hercule Poirot's assistant--his Watson--in the case. Further, it is told using the first person, so one does know the innermost thoughts of the narrator/killer. 

This certainly didn't seem to hurt the book! This is from Wikipedia:

"It [The Murder of Roger Ackroyd] is one of Christie's best known and most controversial novels, its innovative twist ending having a significant impact on the genre. The short biography of Christie which is included in the present UK printings of all of her books states that this novel is her masterpiece. Howard Haycraft, in his seminal 1941 work, Murder for Pleasure, included the novel in his "cornerstones" list of the most influential crime novels ever written. The character of Caroline Sheppard was later acknowledged by Christie as a possible precursor to her famous detective Miss Marple." (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd)

Not satisfied, in 1967 Christie broke the rule again in her critically acclaimed Endless Night.

Rule #2: "All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course."

Off the top of my head, The Idol House of Astarte and Dead Man's Mirror violated this rule. Yes, the final solution didn't involve anything supernatural but the supernatural wasn't ruled out until the very end. That is, a supernatural explanation wasn't ruled out as a matter of course but, instead, seemed to be taken seriously. (Also, The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb)

Rule #3: "Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable."

Christie had a lot of fun with secret rooms and passages, but (as far as I can recall) nearly always used them as a red herring, something the murderer used in an attempt to throw the sleuth off the trail. For example, Three Act Tragedy and Peril at End House. However Christie did use them more seriously in The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly.

Rule #4: "No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end."

I don't think Agatha Christie broke this rule. 

Rule #5: Do not use stereotyped boogymen. [This is my paraphrase of the original rule.]

Just last night I re-watched the BBC's excellent adaptation of Cards on the Table which breaks rule number five, a rule which I take as saying that one must not use fictional stereotyped boogymen like Fu Manchu. One's villains (in this case Mr. Shaitana) must be three-dimensional. 

In Cards on the Table Christie subverted the stereotype. Though I have never read a book that Fu Manchu appeared in, it seems he was, fundamentally, the kind of character who killed people and did all sorts of dastardly deeds. Christie cleverly subverts that stereotype in Cards my making Mr. Shaitana do the completely unexpected--he arranged for his own murder. This is made plausible by the psychological state of the man and what he hoped to accomplish by the act.

(Future me: In an earlier version of this post I had written that Shaitana killed himself. A keen eyed reader pointed out that wasn't true. And that's correct. Shaitana set up a little drama with the intention that one of his guests would kill him and then he drugged himself because he didn't want to feel the dagger as it was slipped into his body. Shaitana did, in a sense, commit suicide, but, still, he was murdered.)

(August 2021 Note: In the above I had mixed together the excellent television adaptation of Agatha Christie's Cards on the Table with Christie's equally excellent book. In the book, Shaitana does not anticipate that one of his guests will kill him, that only happens in television adaptation (Poirot, Season 10, Episode 2) staring the wonderfully talented David Suchet. Thank you to all those who pointed this out.)

Rule #6: No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.

Though I have to say that Christie didn't always play fair with the reader--in at least one of her stories I swear there was no way a reader could have guessed the solution--I can't think of a book of hers in which this occurred. (Can you? If so, please leave a comment.)

Rule #7: "The detective himself must not commit the crime."

Christie shattered this rule more than once. She did this first and most spectacularly (as we have seen) in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, but also in Endless Night. 

Rule #8: "The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover."

I think Christie tended to play fair with this. Her detectives shared all their clues with the reader, but almost never shared the inferences drawn from them, except at the end.

Rule #9: "The 'sidekick' of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader."

As we have discussed, Christie shattered this one in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Rule #10: "Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them."

I think Christie played fair with this. One of the books she used this idea in (though they aren't, strictly speaking, twins) with great effect is A Murder is Announced.

Agatha Christie's Score: How much of a rule breaker was she?

What is Agatha Christie's score?

Rule 1: Broken

Rule 2: Broken

Rule 3: Subverted

Rule 4: Kept

Rule 5: Subverted

Rule 6: Mostly kept

Rule 7: Broken

Rule 8: Kept

Rule 9: Broken

Rule 10: Kept

(By "subverted" I mean that while Christie technically broke the rule she still played fair with the reader. By "broken" I mean to indicate that, strictly speaking, she did not play fair.)

Well, 4 out of 10 isn't bad! (grin) So she broke the rules more than she kept them, but she did it intelligently, creatively and with wit.

Thanks for reading and I promise to wrap up this series in one more post. (Perhaps not the next post--I think I'll blog about something else next time--but soon.)

Links/References

1. "The Writing Style of Agatha Christie," by FreelanceWriting.com.

2. "Agatha Christie - Her Method of Writing," over at christiemystery.co.uk.

3. "Agatha Christie," Wikipedia.org.

4. "Random House employees get $5,000 bonuses, thanks to ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’," by Caitlin Dewey over at The Washington Post.

5. "Fifty Shades of Grey," Wikipedia.org.

6. "Creator: Agatha Christie," tvtropes.org.

7. "Mystery Tropes," tvtropes.org.

8. Some accounts have the Detection Club forming as late as 1930. Either way, however, my point stands.

9. First, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was published in 1926 and the murder club didn't start up until 1928.[8] Presumably the other authors had read, or at least knew of, Agatha Christie's work and wouldn't have invited her to join if they so disapproved with her methods.

     Second, Dorothy L. Sayers became president of the Detection Club in 1949, 23 years after Christie published The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I find it difficult to believe that it took (at least) 23 years for the members to become so incensed at the flouting of their rules that they clamoured to expel her. 

     Third, in the documentation I have read about Christie and the Detection Club [link to post on murder site], the members--especially by 1949--seem to have been in awe of Agatha Christie so I doubt any of them would have demanded her removal.

     But, I could be wrong. As they say, life is stranger than fiction. If anyone has any concrete information about this please do leave a comment or use my comment form to contact me privately.

10. The oath and initiation ceremony of the Detection Club. A-Z Challenge – Rules of the Detection Club (circa 1929), by elegsabiff over at Quite Contrary.

11. S.S. Van Dine also formulated a set of rules. See: Twenty rules for writing detective stories.

Photo credit: "Breaking the rules" by Karen Woodward under Creative Commons ShareAlike 2.0. The original photo is "Chicken Run" by Alison Christine under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

How To Write Like Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time and one of my favorite authors. I've spent many a night curled up in front of a roaring fire, cocoa close at hand, reading and re-reading her now familiar tales. 

Although no one can write exactly like she did--and who would want to? The goal of each writer is to develop their own voice--time and again I have wondered about the secret of her success. I'm not suggesting she employed any sort of formula, but I believe that there were certain elements, certain characteristic regularities, to her work that may have contributed to her phenomenal success.

Before we turn our attention to this, though, let's take a quick look at Agatha Christie's accomplishments.

Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie's novels have sold 4 billion copies making her the best-selling novelist of all time. Since her books have been translated into over 100 languages she is also, to date, the world's most-translated individual author. [3]

That kind of success is difficult to grasp! Christie's best selling novel--And Then There Were None--is also the best selling mystery novel ever with 100 million in sales. To put that in perspective, the 50 Shades of Grey series has sold 100 million copies to date. Those books did so well that "Random House CEO Markus Dohle" awarded "$5,000 bonuses to every member of his staff, from top editors to warehouse workers."

Even though Christie passed away in 1976 her influence has not waned. Just last year her novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd "was voted the best crime novel ever by 600 fellow writers of the Crime Writers' Association." [3]

So! Hopefully I've whet your appetite. The question is: How (apart from hard work and luck) did Agatha Christie write books with such universal appeal?

The Structure of an Agatha Christie Murder Mystery

I'm in the midst of writing a series that discusses the building blocks of a mystery novel (victims, sleuth, murder, and so on) so I don't want this post to cover territory I've already gone over. As a result, I'm going to concentrate on only those aspects I feel are characteristic (though perhaps not unique) to Agatha Christie.

- Setting

- A, B, & C Story

- Murder (Inciting Incident)

- The Psychological Method

- Trickery

- The Unexpected

- A Unique Structure

- The Reveal

Setting

These points about setting aren't unique to Christie but they are so important that I think they bear repeating. If you're writing a cosy (and cosy's are the kind of mystery I'm focusing on) then the setting needs to be:

a) closed, and

b) something that provides a contrast

I go over these points in detail in my article, The Importance of Setting In Writing A Murderously Good Mystery, but, briefly, you want a setting that will exclude the possibility of a character from the outside coming in and committing the murder and, also, you want to maximize the disruption the murder will create in the society. For example, the murder of a presidential candidate on the eve of the election, one executed somewhere public such as a parade route, would cause a lot of disruption to society compare to, say, the murder of a John Doe in an alleyway in a crime infested part of town.

Main Plot & Subplots: The A, B & C Story

In "The Writing Style of Agatha Christie," Evelyn Hepburn writes that Agatha Christie generally has two main threads in her books. One thread involves the murder while the other, a subplot, "involves a psychological trickster: a character that intentionally creates fear and chaos for the other characters. Usually this character is not the one that committed the murder, as this conclusion would be too obvious; rather, it is an individual with a hidden vendetta against the rest of the party." [1]

As soon as I read this I thought, "Yes! Why hadn't I noticed that?" 

Myself, I think Christie often (though not always) had three distinct threads interwoven throughout most of her plots. Let's call these the A story, the B story and the C story.

A Story --> the murder (the whodunit)

B Story --> a romance

C Story --> a touch of evil

The A story is the main story, the story of the murder. The B story is a subplot that includes one of the main characters in a romance. The C story is another subplot, one about a character who has malign intentions toward one of the other characters. These intentions aren't related to the murder--perhaps this is suspected but, in the end, the 'touch of evil' character will not be intimately connected with it.

Yesterday I watched a BBC program based on Christie's Greenshaw's Folly. In that story (the BBC version at least), the main story was the 'touch of evil' plot. A mother (Louisa Oxley) and her young son flee her abusive husband. Miss Marple put them up for a night and then found the mother a job at Greenshaw's Folly where, of course, a number of suspicious deaths occur. Throughout the story, the young mother is terrified that her husband will find her and take her son away. Louisa thinks she sees her husband's face several times, peering in at her through a windowpane.

In Greenshaw's Folly the main subplot involves the murders and continues to grow in importance until around the 75% mark where this subplot and the main plot dovetail.

The second subplot is the romance that is slowly developing between the main character, Louisa (who, interestingly, is not the sleuth), and her object of romantic interest, Alfred Pollock. Since Louisa is, technically, still married the romance itself is downplayed but Alfred is shown to be an excellent role model for her son and a steadfast friend. It is a rocky romance, though, since Alfred is suspected of the murders and, were it not for Miss Marple, he would have hanged for them.

One thing that I like about Agatha Christie's stories is that, while her sleuths are strictly celibate, many times there is a (very mild) romance between two of the characters. Though other authors do include a romance in their mysteries or thrillers, I appreciate the way Christie intertwined this romance with the main thread of murder, making the outcome of the romance dependent on finding out who the true murderer was.

The Murder (Inciting Incident)

Many of the murder mysteries I read (and watch) have a relatively short interval between the start of the story and the murder. Not so for Agatha Christie's books. She often had an extended interval between the first character walking on stage and someone getting knocked off.

I found this over at tvtropes.org:

"Author Filibuster: Christie novels tended to have long Start to Corpse times, something which she was occasionally criticized for. She used the first chapter of Towards Zero to respond to these criticisms by having a character deliver a lengthy speech on how a murder is the culmination of a murderer's plot rather than the instigating point, and thus should come as late in the book as possible." [6]

Received wisdom these days seems to be that one should get to the murder as soon as possible, but a late start certainly did work for Christie. 

The Psychological Method

Hercule Poirot often refers to his "little grey cells." This harkens back to the idea that a true detective needs nothing more than the facts and a comfortable armchair to solve a case. Though Poirot fits within this tradition, Christie added a twist: the psychological method. 

It wasn't through facts alone--the overturned candlestick in the bedroom, the list of toiletries in the bathroom cabinet, etc.--that the murderer was discovered, it was also through a deep understanding of human psychology. In Christie's later books Poirot holds that certain types of crimes are committed by certain types--certain psychological types--of people. 

In contrast to other detectives (notably Monsieur Giraud of the Sûreté in Murder on the Links), Poirot arrives at the identity of the murderer by looking at two things: a) the nature of the victim and b) the psychology of the murderer. (Hercule Poirot, Wikipedia)

Trickery

Poirot--and to a certain extent Miss Marple--wasn't beneath using deception if it would help him unravel the psychological puzzle before him. To this end, Poirot sometimes got people to talk to him by giving out false or misleading information about himself or his background. (Hercule Poirot, Wikipedia)

Also, HP would make himself seem more foreign or vein to make other characters underestimate, or even despise him. As their estimation of his ability lowered so did their guard and they often let slip something they never would have if they thought he was an upstanding, competent, member of English society.

Poirot would do things Hastings (the Watson) viewed as very un-English, like rummaging through a woman's belongings without her permission and reading her love letters to find a clue.

I thought I was going to be able to get through this material, but there's no way! I want to talk (briefly) about Agatha Christie doing the unexpected, even the forbidden, and what the result of that was. Finally, I want to share certain points about the structure of Christie's novels that were, if not unique, characteristic of many of her works. 

Links/References

1. "The Writing Style of Agatha Christie," by FreelanceWriting.com.

2. "Agatha Christie - Her Method of Writing," over at christiemystery.co.uk.

3. "Agatha Christie," Wikipedia.org.

4. "Random House employees get $5,000 bonuses, thanks to ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’," by Caitlin Dewey over at The Washington Post.

5. "Fifty Shades of Grey," Wikipedia.org.

6. "Creator: Agatha Christie," tvtropes.org.

7. "Mystery Tropes," tvtropes.org.

Photo credit: "Dubler" by Thomas Leuthard under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.