Plotting or Pantsing? Or both? by Guest Author Michael Stanley (aka Michael Sears and Stan Trollip)

Michael Sears

Stanley Trollip

Please welcome authors Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip, who write under the name Michael Stanley. Their award-winning mystery series, featuring Detective Kubu, is set in Botswana, a fascinating country with magnificent conservation areas and varied peoples. The latest book in the series is a prequel, titled Facets of Death. It starts the first day Kubu joins the Botswana CID, and he’s immediately thrown into solving a violent heist of rough diamonds from Jwaneng—the world’s richest diamond mine. Their latest thriller Shoot the Bastards introduces Minnesotan environmental journalist Crystal Nguyen. Set mainly in South Africa, it has as backstory the vicious trade in rhino horn.

Michael has lived in South Africa, Kenya, Australia, and the US. He now lives in Knysna on the Cape south coast of South Africa. Stanley splits his time between Minneapolis and Cape Town. For more information, check out their website or their Amazon author page. You can also find them on Facebook, Twitter, and at the blog Murder Is Everywhere.
-----------------------------------

When we started our first book, A Carrion Death, we didn’t have much idea about how to write a mystery. We’d written lots of non-fiction, but we’d never tried our hands at fiction. What we had was a premise. The premise had come to us in Botswana’s Chobe National Park after watching hyenas devour a young wildebeest. They ate everything except the horns and hooves. We speculated on what they would do to a human corpse. Nothing would be left. Nothing at all. What a wonderful way of getting rid of a body, we thought! Especially if you had a particular reason that the body should not under any circumstances be recognized.

Michael wrote the first chapter and sent it to Stanley. He was as intrigued and puzzled about the half eaten corpse found in the desert as were the ranger and scientist who found it. What happens next? he asked. Michael didn’t have the faintest idea...

What happens next??

When Detective Kubu went out to the area to investigate, we still didn’t know. We had lots of ideas, but we were coming to grips with all the issues around writing fiction. We’d been told to write about what we knew, so our plan was to have the scientist as hero. But Kubu ignored us and took over, shouldered the academic out of the limelight, and started investigating. He made one discovery after another, leaving a trail of dead plots in his wake.

We can’t imagine a more seat-of-the-pants (pantsing) approach than this. Kubu pulled us up by his bootstraps. Or is that our bootstraps? It was great fun! Maybe there was a freshness and excitement that came from the plot twisting and turning around us as it coalesced. It was also scary, but we weren’t working to a deadline. In the end, after three years, we were left with a plot that we were comfortable with, but also with a strong feeling that this was a very inefficient way to write a book.

When we started the second book, we were convinced that all this chaos was a spinoff of the fact that we knew nothing about writing fiction. It was only much later that we discovered that many

Mind maps!

mystery writers do it that way—pantsing to enjoy the discovery of what’s going on as much as the reader. By the second book, we thought we were experts. We knew better. We spent a lot of time plotting and arguing, rejecting ideas, following twists, taking turns. We had mind maps that couldn’t fit on the dining room table. And eventually we had a plot that we felt held up and that would lead to none of the dead ends that had cost us tens of thousands of discarded words in the first book. We sent our publisher an outline of The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu and while a few extra embellishments occurred during writing as the characters developed and insisted on doing things their way, the final manuscript followed it pretty closely. We felt that now we understood how to write mystery novels. This, we decided, must be how all the professionals do it!

Our third book was a compromise between the two approaches. The first book was chaos, enjoyable chaos, and ultimately successful chaos—a true example of writing by the seat of your pants. Our second was planned and manicured. Successful too, we believe. An example of plotting and careful execution. Our third was somewhere in between. Our careful plot didn’t work, and we had to pants it out in the end.

Since then, we’ve become committed pantsers.

One result of this rather unstructured writing style, and the fact that Kubu took over as our protagonist without asking us, is that Kubu was quite unplanned. As we went along, we learned more about him, his school, his parents and his wife, but we had no idea how he’d developed into the Criminal Investigation Department’s star detective. Did he make mistakes? How did he learn? We felt that we needed to know the answers, so we decided to write a prequel that starts on the day Kubu joins the police as a new detective in 1998 (Facets of Death).

We also had the idea of a huge diamond heist from the Jwaneng mine in Botswana—the world’s richest diamond mine. If that had happened at the height of the diamond boom, could it have led to a collapse in the Botswana economy? That was a premise we could explore in a pantsing style. We started with the heist and let it play out, feeling the familiar panic when we neared the end of the book and realized that we had no way of catching the kingpin behind the crime.

The book had a plotting aspect as well, forced on us by it being a prequel. We wanted to explore Kubu as a young detective, but we knew where he would end up. He had to become a successful detective. He had to find his wife. His boss had to become director of the Criminal Investigation Department. In short, he had to develop into the present-day character our readers know and enjoy.

What we’ve learned over eight books is that there is no right or wrong way to develop a story. The majority of mystery writers seem to be pantsers, but there are plenty of big names who are plotters. For example, Jeffrey Deaver writes an extensive outline of each book, and then fleshes it out over a few months to get the complete novel.

Writing is a very personal process. Probably each writer (or writing team) has to find the style that works best for them. And it may change from book to book… 

A Story Forms: Point-to-Point or Dot-to-Dot

Being somewhat at loose ends for a post this week, I turned to the Historic Colorado Newspapers online to see what was up with Leadville in February 1880. Here's what the Colorado Miner (Georgetown, Colorado) had for Saturday, February 21, 1880, in a little column titled "Colorado. Points Pertaining to People and Places":

• Leadville reports for one week arrivals by the various stage lines at 832, and the departures at 501.
• D.W. Fuller, a Boston capitalist, fell from a bucket as he was ascending from a mine at Leadville, and was instantly killed.
• The State Bank of Colorado filed articles of incorporation yesterday.  The bank will do a general banking business in Leadville. The capital stock is $100,000 divided 1,000 shares at $100 each.
• At a ball of the Union Veterans Association in Leadville, a vote was taken to decide who was the handsomest lady in the room. The decision was rendered in favor of Mrs. Judge W.R. Kennedy, formerly Miss Lou. De La Mar, of this city.
• A man named W.E. McIvor was found dead in his bed in a cabin near Leadville, with his face badly torn and eaten by mountain rats. It was thought he was from Georgetown, but this is probably a mistake.
• An installment of 32 bunko-steerers, among whom were several noted highwaymen, reached Leadville on Monday last. Another hanging bee would be in order and do good.

Fairest of them all? - At the Ball, by Berthe Morisot

While typing these random bits into the post, I felt a story forming... completely fictional, of course. This is how it unwound in my mind:

 What if the Boston capitalist's fatal plunge down the shaft was not an accident? Maybe he came to Leadville because of the incorporation of the State Bank. Maybe he goes to the Union Veterans ball, and recognizes the judge's wife when she is named "fairest of them all." Maybe there is something dark in her past, something her husband knows nothing about, but the Boston capitalist does. He uses that knowledge for a little leverage. (Question to self: Leverage for what? Something to do with the bank incorporation, perhaps? Or something completely different, perhaps to do with the mine?)

Maybe the judge's wife, who is not the "shrinking violet" she appears to be, hires one of the "noted highwaymen" to neutralize said capitalist, so her secret remains hidden.

But what about McIvor, dead in the cabin? And, is it really McIvor or could it be someone else? In which case, where is McIvor? And are mountain rats really to blame for the lack of an identifiable face on the corpse?

I do believe there's a story here, built out of imaginary connections, from dot-to-dot until the picture is clear. Perhaps morning (and some caffiene!) will provide further insight.

A title would be nice as well!

Do It Now

... I decided to take my own advice (DO IT NOW) from my comments to Sylvia Dickey Smith on Examiner.com and update this blog as well as buckle down on my other writing tasks! As I mentioned in my remarks to Sylvia, once I tipped over that magic "50" age marker, I could no longer fool myself that there's as much time ahead as behind.

Too, there's something about Autumn's arrival that gets me moving and focused again. Autumn puts me in mind of new beginnings—more than January 1 or the first day of Spring. Perhaps it has to do with September being the start of the school year. When I add it all up, between my own school-attending years and those of my children, more (much more) than half my life has been ruled by the school calendar.

So here it is, October already. Nights are shorter, days are (marginally) colder, the light outside is different. Time to begin again.

One of the things I'm preparing for is the upcoming Bouchercon convention in Indianapolis (October 15–18). I'll be in two panels:

• Thursday, October 15, 9 a.m. MEN, WOMEN AND MURDER THROUGH THE AGES (Concept Room)
• Friday, October 16, 4 p.m. THE ART OF THE WESTERN MYSTERY (The Eiteljorg Museum: off-site)

Other than that, I'll be at the Librarians' Tea, the SinC breakfast, and just wandering around in general, listening to what readers and authors are up to these days.

I encourage you to check out Sylvia's Austin Writing Examiner column and leave a comment or two; there are a lot of "over 50" authors with some interesting takes on life and writing. And I hope you can take time to enjoy the changing of the seasons, perhaps reflecting on what Autumn brings to you in way of a harvest of the soul...

Of POV and gender ...

Another little tidbit I picked up from the recent Mayhem in the Midlands conference involved writing characters not of one's own gender, again from the What Authors Get Wrong panel. One of the authors (male, I'm thinking, although I'm not going to throw out a name, because I'll probably mis-remember!) related a story about a woman in his critique group who wrote a scene with a "manly man." The rough, tough testosterone-driven protagonist enters a home to interview a suspect and notices ...

The lovely pattern in the drapes.

The critique group pointed out that a guy is not likely to notice (much less comment on) the print curtains.

Writing characters from a gender differing from your own is a topic of some discussion. Here's a sample of blog posts and discussions:

• Writing a POV character of the Opposite Gender on Crimespace (Brian Thorton, back in 2007) ... check out the comments and discussion
• Gender, Author, and Characters on Author Intrusion (Rod Duncan, recently)
• A Writer Can be Anyone or Anything on Daily Writing Tips (by Maeve in 2008)
  

And now, here's something fun! Copy/paste a 500 word sample of your writing into The Gender Genie (on BookBlog) and it will analyze your work and "determine" whether you are male or female.

I slapped in the first 800 words for the as yet nascent 4th Silver Rush book ( first chapter drafted and I know where the second is heading). I checked the "fiction" button and punched "submit."

... Here's what popped up ...

Score: Female: 796 Male: 1046
Result: The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

I'm intrigued (but not male)!

The results list "feminine keywords" and "masculine keywords" and the occurrence of each in the writing sample. The words are apparently weighted according to an algorithm. What I take away from this is that I am comfortably balanced between the two worlds.

Try it and let me know what your results are....

Stay away from these...

Here's a tidbit from Mayhem in the Midlands that I picked up in the What Authors Get Wrong panel. One of the speakers (at first I thought it was Michael Black, but I have been corrected: it was none other than Margaret Grace, aka Camille Minichino) recited lines of dialogue oft heard in TV crime drama shows—deathless questions, comments, statements, that should be retired. Here are the few I scribbled down:

• "Let's go, let's go, let's go!" (said with increasing intensity)
• "I never meant for this to happen." (bloody corpse lying at the feet of the speaker)
• "What do you mean by that?" (well, duh)
• "Are you okay?" (said to someone who has 1. been hit over the head, 2. caught in a tornado, 3. survived an explosion, 4. received a paper cut, 5. ...)

I wish I'd captured more of these, but alas! I'll have to admit, I've used a couple of these myself on occasion (no, don't go looking for them now!). I think, perhaps, it's a case of "lazy writing," and also of being raised on television back in the days of yore. When the stories roll out like a movie in my mind, those lines just automatically pop up in certain circumstances.

And, just for fun (because it is the weekend) here's some other (non-Mayhem) sites to visit that discuss dialogue and situation cliches in movies and TV.

• The Movie Cliches List
• Roger Ebert's Glossary List (lots of good ones here!)
• The Definitive List of Cliche Dialogue (by Kevin Lehane)
• ScreenwriterGuy's Top 10 Worst Cliche Lines of Dialogue
  
• TV Tropes in Dialogue (Technically, a trope is not a cliche, but hey, "Beam me up, Scotty!" and take a gander at these)

Wander on through them and see what catches your fancy or sounds familiar. And then vow not use them in your own writing. There's always another way to say it!

Mothers to end all mothers ...

Well, my blog-a-day good intentions got whacked into left field Friday night when I opened the front door to find my college kid, home for a surprise Mother's Day weekend visit! Saturday and Sunday went by in a whirl.

Now that said college kid has departed again, I'm faced with blogging on Mother's Day. Determined not to become maudlin (it would be very easy to do so... there's a sudden empty space where "da kid" was rattling around just minutes ago, gathering laptop, clean laundry, various electronic chargers, etc. etc.), I've decided to point you-all to this great BookFinder blog post on the worst mothers in literature. Hey, we can all take comfort that none of these ladies are the LEAST like us. Or our mothers. Right??

Anyhow, I had been thinking about it before I peeked at the list (having first seen mention of it elsewhere). My fave for a "top 10" pick wasn't listed: the stepmother (or, in the earliest version, the mother) of Snow White. Yes, I'm talking about her royal highness The Queen (of some mythical fairy-tale land). I mean, just because her daughter/stepdaughter is young and beautiful ... "Take her out in the forest and bring me her heart!" Yikes! And honestly, Snow White sounds like a lovely girl—does housework, friends with the animals, sings. Think about it: no snarky teen "eye-roll." No snippy "You're not the boss of me!" No sex, drugs, rock-n-roll ... What does The Queen have to complain about?

I do see Hansel and Gretel's mother/stepmother makes mid-list, though, at #5.

Guess we all can appreciate our own mothers and give ourselves a break for our little faults today!

The Accursed Apostrophe

Yes, I am one of those people who knows the difference between it's and its. I'm a writer and an editor, so I'd better know how to use 'em correctly. Most of the time, I simply go along and do what I have to do, but there are times, when I am in editing or proofing mode, when I become hypervigilant and (dare I say) hypersensitive to apostrophes, commas, semicolons, quotemarks, and other matters of punctuation.

This, for better or worse, is one of those times. Not only am I carving my way through a safety manual, pen a-twitching (although since I'm working on an electronic file, perhaps pen isn't the right word here), I am also editing/critiquing two-and-a-half manuscripts or parts thereof, and making a last past (which feels more like a last gasp) through an ARC of Leaden Skies, the next book in my Silver Rush historical mystery series. (ARC, for those who don't know, stands for "Advance Readers Copy" otherwise known as an "Uncorrected Proof.")

For some reason, misused and abused apostrophes are raining down upon me in nearly all these projects. Including, alas, my own.

The problem with Leaden Skies came about from turning apostrophes in my electronic file from "curly" to "straight" (in Word parlance). I have more than a few characters who, in dialogue, drop parts of words, as in "Don't let 'er get away with misusin' and abusin' those bits of punctuation, 'cause it ain't right." Where a backwards apostrophe leads the way, disaster struck, in the form of some mysterious electronic plague that automatically made what should have been backwards NOT.

In looking around, I find there are others sensitive to this, my current obsession. However, most other folks who remark upon the sad and sorry apostrophical fate are typesetters or fans of typography. Such as here, on John D. Berry's Easily Amused blog. And here, on the I love typography blog (which also has, I see, a post titled "Who Shot the Serif?" . . . I think I've found a new blog to follow).
It's nice to know I'm not alone.

Happy Friday the 13th! (really!)

Friday the 13th! One of my most favorite days!

And why not? My husband was born on a rainy, stormy, Friday the 13th. That gives me all the reason I need to look forward and celebrate each TGIF day that bears this most elegant of numbers.

Beginning of slight digression:
Why elegant, you may ask? Well, to begin with, there's the contrasting visual form of the number "13": a straight line, unbending, paired with such lovely curves. And then, "1" is such an interesting number, mathematically speaking: not prime, not composite, in a class by itself. As for "3" ... it's the first ODD prime number. And think of all the things that come in threes in this world. I won't enumerate (ha! little joke), but will let you contemplate and come up with examples, if you wish.
End of slight digression

I find superstitions, in general, fascinating and like to take a contrarian view, when safety isn't involved. For instance, walk beneath a ladder? Nooo thank you, but not for superstition's sake. (I'm editing a safety manual for the nonce, and believe me, I could obsess for a long time here about the safety aspects of ladders and scaffolds.) Same goes for breaking a mirror, which can lead to nasty slivers in the feet if it happens in the bathroom. But equating these to bad luck? Bad luck happens randomly, just as good luck does. At least, that's how I look at it.

I've nothing against black cats—those little bits of living shadow that can be friendly, stand-offish, or downright nasty (as can cats of any other color). As for cracks in the sidewalks? I recall as a young child regarding the cracks in the sidewalks quite fondly. I tried to mentally shape them into recognizable shapes and pictures, and, after school, traveled the continuous straight-line crack between sidewalk paving squares to home.

To keep this on topic (sort of), here are some Victorian superstitions I found at the Friends of Oak Grove Cemetery site.

Large drops of rain warn that there has just been a death.

Having only red and white flowers together in a vase (especially in hospital) means a death will soon follow.

Dropping an umbrella on the floor or opening one in the house means that there will be a murder in the house.

A diamond-shaped fold in clean linen portends death.

... And here are two more (not necessarily Victorian) from a superstition-a-day calendar I have lying around:

Prevent nosebleeds by tying a pure lead ball on a ribbon around your neck, so that it rests in the hollow of your collarbones. If someone already has a nosebleed, cure it by putting a key down their back.

Don't knit socks for a loved one, as wearing them will make that person walk away from you.

As a writer of fiction, I figure all this is fair game for scheming, plotting, and character development.

What about you? Do you have some favorite/interesting/unusual superstitions to share?

Death and Taxes

Certainty? In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes.
—Benjamin Franklin

In the modern mystery, death is usually a critical element, a certainty. If there isn't a body somewhere pretty early on in the story, most mystery readers get a little itchy and twitchy and wonder what's up. And, truthfully, I love exploring death (fictionally speaking). I can spend endless hours researching sneaky ways to kill people circa 1880 and thereabouts, and I love setting up and (ahem) executing the murder scene(s) in my books.

However, regarding the second half of Benjamin Franklin's observation, all I have to say is Bah!

I have a technical/scientific background, so you'd think that taxes would be a snap, right? It's only numbers. It's math. It's logic. For heaven's sake, we're talking basic arithmetic here—add, subtract, multiply, divide—not calculus or complex number theory. The financials of my writing/editing consultancy business (which includes my fiction efforts) should theoretically be neatly bound, gagged, and overdosed with Quicken and Excel. All those little numbers showing profit and loss, income and expenses, should be subdued and ready for delivery well before mid-April.

Unfortunately, my financial process is akin to my process for researching methods of death and destruction. Usually, when researching for fiction, I'm bouncing from book to book, website to website, landing on random facts, thinking "hmmm, that's interesting, and perhaps useful," stashing it away mentally (or on a random sticky note) before zipping off in another, tangential direction. In the financial realm, my approach is similarly random. Receipts are crammed willy-nilly into my wallet until the wallet is too full to close, whereupon the crumpled bits of paper are regurgitated into a paper bag (yes, that's what I said, a paper bag). Now, the wallet is free to feed again, and the process repeats. As for statements, consulting contracts, and so on, they alight on whatever surface is at hand upon my entering the house. There they linger, to become buried beneath equally important papers, until I can corral them into the all-consuming paper bag.

When the time comes to "deal with it," the paper bag is emptied onto the dining table, which cannot be used for dining until taxes are done.

In fiction writing, it's fun to toss motives, method, characters, location and era all into a big jumble, shake 'em up, and see what comes of it.

Unfortunately, the same process when applied to taxes does not yield a very satisfying result.

And that, dear Benjamin, is a certainty.

For love of words

Over the past few days, I've been thinking a great deal about my publisher's gift of tens of thousands of books to the Florida schools.

Then, I began to wonder, what do I do to encourage a love of and support the written word? Particularly regarding kids?

Okay, so here we go:

List at least five things you do to support and spread a love of the written word, and tag five people. (If you list something that touches youngsters, you get a bonus letter!)

1. I am a writer of fiction, science, and technology.
2. I always keep the reader in mind and craft my prose accordingly (particularly for the last two).
3. I go to schools and classrooms and talk about careers in writing/editing (being sure to mention more than just "author of books" route . . . after all, SOMEone writes the copy in a catalog, right?).
4. Over the years, I've volunteered in elementary school classrooms, helping kids who are having difficulty reading.
5. I've gone to the library regularly, all my life (so far!), and made sure my kids did the same.
6. I've been a judge for poetry and young adult fiction awards.

Wow! Two bonus letters! I pick and "S" and an "R" (for the Silver Rush)!
Okay, I'm tagging ...

1. Chester Campbell
2. Kris Waldherr
3. Adonya Wong
4. Dani
5. Marvin D. Wilson

Author Notes? Do you read 'em?

I am thrashing through the draft of a much-belated Author's Note for Leaden Skies (good thing my notes appear at the end of my books), and have a question:

Do you read Author Notes/Afterwords/whateveryoucallem ... those little essays at the end of books that discuss references, give more background on time/place of a novel/reveal a bit of the author's thinking for that particular book?

See my little survey, off to the left, and let me know.

I've been told reviewers don't read them. I guess I'm wondering about readers in general, and if these notes are worth the fuss and bother of writing them. It does take a fair bit of time to plow through my old notes (e-notes and hard copy), pull together the references I've used, and then try to weave it all into a coherent essay. So, I'd love to know what you think.

Thank you, one and all!

What's in a name? ...

... Looking back on my noodling/thrashing around with titles for my Silver Rush mysteries, I've realized that, in all cases, my first attempts have never quite "hit it."

The first book in the series, Silver Lies, started life as Dead in Leadville. Then ... after some thrashing around ... it became Silver Lies in Leadville. That was quickly shortened to Silver Lies.

The second in the series, Iron Ties, started as Iron and Blood, inspired by a quote from Otto von Bismarck:
"The great questions of the time are not decided by speeches and majority decisions. . . but by iron and blood."
Ooooo, I still love that quote. It's perfect for the book. But, Iron and Blood? What is this, a vampire book or ...? Iron Ties was suggested by a reader, and it works.

But.

I could see where this was heading, and I was a little nervous. Silver, Iron. Lies, Ties. Uh-oh. Elements (metals, in particular) and -ies of some kind. How long could I keep this going?

So, for the third, I tried to make a break, and lit on Lead into Temptation for starters. I liked it because (again) of a quote:

"Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." And temptation and evil are core elements of this third book.

But... there were problems. The word "lead" (the element or the verb?) worked into my love of wordplay, but in a title ... confusing. And perhaps too "romance-y" sounding. So, we had to start considering other possibilities. From Lead to Leaden (no confusion on pronunciation there) and ... oh no, here we go ... Leaden what?

Dies, cries, sighs, eyes ...

No, no, no, no ...

Well, it rains a lot in the book. The weather is a curse, but also a blessing (read the book when it comes out, you'll see). Gray gray skies. There we go: Leaden Skies.

So, the die (-ie?) is cast; I've accepted that the "-ies" have it.

Guess I'd better buy a rhyming dictionary.

Applied fiction?

A random musing from the West Coast....
A recent discussion at work today concerning "pure physics" vs "applied physics" set me to thinking about parallels in the world of fiction writing (and publishing)...
There's a tendency, according to my work colleague, for those on the "pure physics" side of things to look down upon those from the "applied side" of the house. Ah yes... this rang faint bells, from my years ago at Cal. I remember how the theoretical types would sniff disdainfully at the applied types.
So...What is applied physics?
From Wikipedia:
"Applied physics: a general term for physics which is intended for a particular technological or practical use."
Note the word practical.
Turning from the world of science to that of fiction....
What would be the parallels of "pure" and "applied"? How about "literary" and "genre"? More and more these days I see literary fiction titles structured to read "Blah Blah Blah: A Novel". The "A Novel" tag seems to be pointing out that is no mere work of fiction ... but literary or "pure" fiction.
On the other side of things we have:
Crime fiction. Mysteries. Romances. Suspense. Science Fiction. Fantasy. Westerns. Thrillers. Or....
Plots with a purpose. Or genre fiction. Or practical fiction. Or perhaps Applied Fiction.
... signing out from the West Coast (which was doing a little "rock and roll" last night, geologically speaking).