Category Archives: Genres

When asked why I write, a favorite quote comes to mind from the movie Shadowlands. “I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time—waking and sleeping.”

My answer for writing is much the same. I write because I can’t help myself. I write because I’m helpless. I write because the need flows out of me all of the time—waking and sleeping. I write to understand. I write to process. And in writing I find peace and clarity.

A couple years ago, just before I picked up writing again, I had lunch with a dear friend. She told me that she had been depressed and was struggling in her marriage. I gathered that she had been contemplating suicide. Around that time I had a phone conversation with her husband who indicated that he had also been depressed and had toyed with the idea of suicide. Perhaps this hit me so hard because just a year earlier, a good friend of mine had ended his life. The idea of two great people wanting to die weighed heavily on my mind. Of course I offered encouragement and support and plead with them to get some psychological help. I believe they did and to my knowledge they’re doing better, but the thought of taking one’s own life continued to demand attention in my mind until I dealt with it in writing.

It was the first thing I had written in several years, a piece of flash fiction. I’ve never told anyone the meaning of the story until now. The underlying thought that my discovery-writing mind concluded was this: who’s to say that after the fact, after the suicide is complete, that anything changes? I mean, if life does continue after this existence, who’s to say that the problems, the depression, and the trials of this world end with this life?

I’m sorry, this is probably too philosophical for a writing blog, but my point is that writing has taken a question, a conflict in my mind and processed it through my tapping fingers into text. Since writing, The Passing Therapist, I’ve processed many stressors the same way. I’ve started a couple blogs where I post my developed thoughts.

The best part of it all, even if no one reads what I have written, is that I am finding myself happier. Writing has become my sanctuary, my confession. Writing helps me realize that those things that I stress about are not as bad as they seem and easily dealt with when my mind is clear and resolved. The resolution comes after I have conquered the conflict through prose. Writing is my therapy. I write because the need flows out of me all of the time.

Four Lords of the Diamond

May 20, 2014

Colette Black

Colette Black Genres Reading Science Fiction The Writing Life 6 Comments

Jack L. C Four Lords of the Diamond halker was a pretty well-known author, so I’ve found it surprising that very few of the writers I’ve interacted with are familiar with his Four Lords of the Diamond series. In all honesty, when I picked up the first book I wasn’t much of a science fiction fan. I gravitated more to fantasy and didn’t usually have much to do with stories involving science and technology. What truly intrigued me in Chalker’s work was the psychology aspect. There aren’t many books I remember from over twenty years ago, but these have stuck with me. Here’s why:

The premise of the story centers around a government agent, an assassin, who has his mind replicated. Four convicts destined for four separate prison planets are mind-wiped to be replaced with the agent’s replications. Each of them has an assignment to assassinate some prominent public figure for the cause of the intergalactic government. As they carry out their assignments, their minds are connected to the original agent. He watches as their new genetic make-up, along with their various environments, changes them. In the process, it changes him. This study of genetics and environment’s influence on behavior, as portrayed through this one man, fascinated me.

After all these years, I can’t tell you what they did on each planet, only that each story caused me to look deep within myself. I analyzed the influences in my life and carefully considered my goals. I identified some of the hurdles in my way, both genetic and environmental, and I decided how to overcome them. I don’t think I did this consciously, but I thought so much about what I had read that at some unconscious level I formed a resolve.

Some books have a lasting effect in our lives. It doesn’t happen with everything we read, and sometimes we find our own meanings within a story, but oftentimes the storyline is lost in memory because the deeper meaning is so profound. That’s how it was for me with Four Lords of the Diamond. Maybe it was my age. Maybe it was my mindset while reading a particular volume. Maybe it was just random happenstance. Whatever the reason, whenever you ask me about science fiction to make you think, this will top my list. If this is a series you’ve read, I’d love to hear your impressions. Let me know if it affected you as much as it affected me.

Making the Fear Personal

February 26, 2014

Leigh Galbreath

Character Craft & Skills Horror Leigh Galbreath Storyline The Writing Life No Comments

Over the last month we’ve been looking on the darker side of things, and at the way love and terror go so very well together. And they should, really. They are the most basic and universal of human emotions. They are intertwined and hardwired into our psyches, a part of the survival instinct that keeps our species alive and multiplying. They transcend culture, class, and temperament.

For instance, people feel envy over different things and react to it in different ways. I may never sympathize with someone enraged by some slight or another, even though I may understand it on a logical level. But someone who is terrified?

Absolutely.

The funny thing is that, many of us silly humans, seem to still feel that our emotions are unlike anyone else’s. “No one else can understand my heartache or my terror,” we tell ourselves. “They can’t know what I feel. Not really.”

Well, actually, yes, they can. That’s the basis for group therapy, after all, but we do like to feel like we are all the beautiful, unique snowflakes our mothers told us we were, don’t we?

From a writer’s perspective, the universality of these emotions and the vaulted position people like to place their own emotional experiences rather works in our favor. Love and fear are so ingrained in the human psyche that it’s hard to write compelling fiction without tripping over them both while gazing off into the clouds of our imaginations.

Fear is probably the first and most vital of emotions. The need to not get eaten by something big and bad, after all, is the primary instinct of most creatures on this planet. The fear of death, failure, disappointment, loneliness, and pain is prevalent across the fiction board. Fear is the root of tension and plants doubt in every protagonist in just about every book ever written. Small or large, incidental or monstrous, we all recognize the people we’re reading about when their fears are put on the page, and we all hope they overcome their fears somehow, even if (or especially because) we often cannot overcome our own.

At the same time humans are pack animals, and so it’s no surprise that we feel the need to include the binding emotion of love in our stories. The characters don’t necessarily have to be involved in the affair of the century. They simply have to care about something or someone. A character who cares for nothing, is…well…rather boring, to be honest. The anti-hero, Riddick, doesn’t care about anything or anyone when we first meet him in Pitch Black, but it is through his slow turn toward caring for the individuals around him that he becomes human to us, someone to sympathize with. I don’t think anyone could ever say that his caring strays to the romantic—the man is, after all, a psychopath—but his attachments motivate and drive him through multiple films. He changes from a monster himself, into one of us.

Or rather, I should say, his attachments mixed with the inevitable fear of losing those attachments, is what motivates him. It all comes back to the fear in fiction, doesn’t it? Loving or needing something might be readily recognizable, but it’s the fear of losing those things or of them turning against us, that really makes it worth reading.

Anytime love and fear end up on a page, we’re using the universal to make a moment personal. We give the readers something almost subconsciously familiar, made interesting by being seen through someone else’s eyes. We show a window into emotional lives that, at first blush, looks nothing like the reader’s, but in actuality uses their personal experiences to pull them further into the story.

We writers often struggle to write something compelling and moving. It’s nice to get a free-bee every so often.

How to Build a Murderer

February 25, 2014

Nancy

Character Craft & Skills Horror Nancy Greene The Writing Life No Comments

Horror and mayhem are all about the villain. Your murderer has to be as real as and smarter than your hero, whether your hero is a street smart cop, a yoga teacher framed for the killing or a busy body old lady. And really, why would anyone invite Ms. Jane Marple (Agatha Christie’s heroine) or Jessica Fletcher (Murder She Wrote) to a party? People are falling down dead all around them. All the time.

But I digress.

The challenge in writing a murderer is to push past your own personal revulsion at what the character does and see why he does it.

Why do we love Professor James Moriarty as much as Sherlock Holmes?

Because Moriarty is a whole and terribly wounded person. He has wants, needs and his own (internal) code of conduct. He is at least as clever as, if not more clever than, Sherlock. Moriarty is who Sherlock could have been if he’d been nudged down a different path.

My current work in progress is an urban fantasy thriller. So how did I create a murderer? I did what any writer would do. Research.

I’m probably on the NSA’s watch list based on the serial killer searches I ran from my computer. I read lots of thrillers, murder mysteries, and true crime novels. I took notes. I read craft books including James N. Frey’s How to Write a Damned Good Mystery: A Practical Step-by-Step Guide from Inspiration to Finished Manuscript. I highly recommend Frey’s book to anyone writing in this genre.

My research confirmed a lot of what I suspected. What makes a good murderer? According to Frey:

“1. Our murderer will be evil.” Frey defines this as someone who is acting out of his or her best interests. I’ll add that this drive toward self-satisfaction will be overwhelming. Our killer doesn’t care who he hurts as long as he gets his selfish desires.

“2. Our murder will not appear to be evil.” Sadly, real life bears this principle out. Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Aileen Wuornos all looked respectable. Bundy worked a crisis hotline. The idea of evil lurking just under the skin is central to horror stories. Also, if the bad guy is the obvious suspect you fail to create the tension needed to maintain a horror, mystery or thriller.

“3. Our murderer will be clever and resourceful.” Sherlock would not spend his life trying to catch Moriarty if he wasn’t clever or resourceful. The near miss, the hero arriving moments too late, creates tension and makes the chase all that more thrilling. We read thrillers and murder mysteries for the chase and inevitable capture.

“4. Our murderer is wounded.” A deep psychological wound drives our murderer. After all, he’s taken a step (or several dozen) past the line. He’s gone from thinking of ending someone’s life to actually doing it. Like Jack the Ripper, he may take his crime beyond mere murder and mutilate his victims. He’s shattered the veneer of civilization we all live with, and something outside the normal has made him do it. He (often) justifies killing because of this emotional wound. This is probably the step that most “failed” (defined as stories that didn’t capture my attention) stories miss. Without this driving force shaping your murderer he will feel like a two-dimensional character or a cliché.

“5. Our murderer is afraid.” Even with the thrill of the kill the murderer must worry about apprehension. His fear mixes with an intensifies his other emotions. Your character needs to feel fear whether fear of discovery, losing what he’s built or something else. Fear is a defining human trait. We all fear something. Often many somethings. Fear of failure. Fear of being not good enough. Fear of being discovered as a “fraud.” Without fear a character is a sketch.

Lots of craft books spend time on getting you to flesh out your characters. Your killer should be the most fully realized. You need to know his history and all his actions even though most will never make it into the story – only the results. The psychology of a killer is in many ways more important than his physiology. Merely hitting the high points of psychopathy – like most serial killers in their youth have tortured or killed animals – isn’t enough. Merely hating women isn’t enough. Something in the killer’s path has pushed him over the line from malcontent to murderer.

Did he accidentally kill someone in a fit of temper and “get away” with it but now he has to kill again to protect the life he’s built since (the example Frey uses in his book)? Did he like the thrill? What is he afraid of?

Simply put, if you don’t know how your killer got to the point we find him in this story he’s not going to be very compelling.

Frey spends about 20 pages on developing your murderer and becoming intimate with him. Obviously, I can’t do justice to Frey’s advice in the space of a blog post. But let me leave you with this:

Murderers are three-dimensional characters. They are clever, not just lucky. They are “evil” in the sense that their desires are the most important thing in the world to them. They are highly damaged people. Unless you know what drives your killer (his wound) you can’t know how he kills and won’t keep your reader engaged.

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