PecanSpringsJournal

Point of view

One of the first things a fiction writer has to do is to choose a point of view: the character from whose perspective the story will be told. Sometimes the point of view is anchored in one character or another. Sometimes it floats from one character to another, either tightly or loosely. The author needs to decide how much control she wants to exercise over the point of view. For much more on this technical subject, go here.

When I started the China series, I chose first-person POV. Mostly, this was because I wanted to create a distinctive voice (both internal speech and speech) for China, but I have to confess that I was also operating under the influence of Nancy Pickard (the Jenny Cain series) and Sue Grafton, who was up to "F" when I began to think about China. And to tell the truth, FP POV is somewhat easier for a novice novelist, because the novel (except for other characters' dialogue) takes place in one character's brain--so to speak. That is, when you read a China novel, you're getting all (and only) China's take on everything in the world, except when another character speaks.

You can see the advantages, especially in a series of books. Once I got to know China, it was really easy to slip into her character and let her tell the story. And readers enjoy it, too because once they get to know China, they find it easy to slip into her character. If the POV character is friendly and inviting, FP POV can have a "friendly" feel to it that readers enjoy and look forward to. (Conversely, if the POV character is angry, ugly, bitter, readers are likely to be put off.)

On the other hand, FP POV is devilishly hard to work with when you're writing a mystery. To be fair, I have to put out all the clues, not hold anything back. The readers know everything that China knows, and if I'm not careful, they will solve the mystery before she does. (I handled a clue clumsily in Rosemary Remembered and got lots of mail from people who thought China was totally dumb for not spotting the give-away clue when they did.)This is a real problem because I have a mix of readers (don't we all?): people who work hard at solving the mystery, read a lot of mysteries, and are very good sleuths; and people who read for the characters and don't give a flip for the mystery. I have to write for both.

And it's also a problem over a long series, like China's, when readers (and/or this author!) get a little . . . well, bored with the China-only books. In Nightshade (comes out next April), I told part of the story from McQuaid's point of view. He and China are working to solve the same case, but from different angles. He knows things she doesn't know, and vice versa, and the readers get to know it all (but are still, I hope, surprised by who-dunnit). To easily distinguish between the two voices, I chose to tell McQuaid's story in third-person POV, present tense. I'll talk more about that when you've had a chance to read that book.

I've set it up differently in Wormwood (the book I'm working on now), where there is the present story (told from China's familiar FP POV) and the past story, told from several points of view. The two stories intersect much more loosely than do the China/McQuaid stories in Nightshade. I'm eager to know how you'll respond to both of these experiments. Some readers will probably prefer the simpler FP POV. I'll hear wails of "not enough China!" Others will welcome the experiment. So we'll see.

Writing log. I had to spend several writing days this week paying attention to my upcoming blog tour (scheduling, writing posts, setting up web pages, etc.). The announcement goes out tomorrow, but you can have a preview peek at the schedule here. And since the announcement of the new book review website went out on Monday, Paula, Linda, and I have been deluged with queries that had to be handled. As a result, I've only logged three writing days in the past six, with a total of 3k words--not much forward progress. But I straightened out some plot snarls, added some in-depth characterization, and thought of another twist. So I'm feeling okay about it. I'm up to 43k words, about 50% done, and pretty much on schedule, aiming to complete the book by the first or second week of December. I'm out Tuesday-Thursday in the coming week, too (Lubbock and Dallas). Friday will be catch-up, and Sunday is the Texas Book Festival. I'll be glad when I can arrange more consecutive writing days!

Reading note. And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.--Sylvia Plath

Book review site relaunched

The big "secret" project I've been telling you about just went public!

We (Paula, Peggy, Linda, and I) have relaunched the Story Circle Book Review site, with a fresh new look and lots of new features. This is a site that Peggy and I put together for Story Circle five or six years ago. Paula took it over and expanded it to over 400 reviews, making it the largest women's book review site on the Internet. Now, we're expanding even further, with added categories for women's non-fiction and fiction (including mysteries, historical and mainstream novels, and Christian fiction), a new look, and lots of new features--and more on the way!

To handle this expansion, we're looking for reviewers to supplement our existing team of 20-plus reviewers. Reviewers may receive free advance reading copies and new books--and of course writing reviews is a great way to add to your portfolio of publications. We're featuring our most active reviewers by giving each one a webpage of her own, and will soon be launching an eletter with more opportunities to showcase our reviewers. Interested? You'll find all the info here. If you've just read a book that you've enjoyed and want to share, we'd like to read your review.

Writing log. The launch has kept me pretty busy, but I'm making forward progress on China's mystery. I'm up to nearly 40,000 words (28 writing days), and have a pretty good handle on the story--on all the stories, that is, for this is a "duplex" book, with present-time and past-time mysteries. I'm playing with point of view again, so the next post will be on that topic.

Reading note. A story told in another character's voice creates a new story.--Bonnie Goldbert

Recipes, herbs, and other embroideries

Sorry. I'm writing, just not writing as much about writing as I planned. We're enjoying a huge pecan harvest here, and dealing with these wonderful nuts (my job: shucking) is cutting into my blogging time. Also, I'm weaving, which effectively accounts for the rest. You can read about all of that kind of stuff here.

I've been wanting to write here about what I think of as the "embroideries" of the China books: the herbs, herb lore, and recipes that so many people enjoy. When I started the series in 1992, mysteries, by and large, didn't include these domestic "extras." The focus was mostly on the plot, ma'am, just the plot and not much else. In fact, in the 1930s, much-revered mystery author Dorothy Sayers decreed that the mystery shouldn't even include any romance, since it was a distraction from the story--meaning, from the mystery plot. No extras, please, no embroideries. Nothing that might distract the detective from the pursuit of the perpetrator. Plot comes first, last, and always in these early mysteries.

But over time, the whodunnit has ceased to be merely a plot-driven puzzle. By the time I started the China series, readers had become more interested in characterization, and since there were many more women readers (and since publishers were interested in selling books to these readers), it became possible for women characters in mysteries to do practice some of the domestic arts. With her herbs and the emphasis on foods, China was among the first of these "domestic" mystery divas (although I like to think that she's edgier than most of the other domestic detectives). She wasn't quite the first gardening sleuth; that honor goes to Celia Grant, the protagonist in a 10-book British horticulture series that ended in the mid-90s. And I wasn't the first to include recipes in mysteries: Virginia Rich did that in her first Eugenia Potter mystery in 1984, and she did a darn good job of it, too. But China has certainly continued longer than most. And if you ask me, the "embroideries" go a long way toward explaining her success. (Sorry about that, Dorothy Sayers.) Judging from my mail, lots of people read China's mysteries just for the recipes.

But I have never wanted to use the plants and foods in these books as merely distracting extras that keep the reader entertained while the detective searches for clues. For me, the challenge has always been not just to "embroider" the mysteries with odd bits about plants and cookery, but to build this material into the plot, characterizations, settings, and all the other business of a novel. I want my embroideries to be useful.

Plants are particularly wonderful in this regard, because they carry so much additional baggage. Many plants have strongly symbolic meanings--wormwood, for instance (the title of the book I'm working on), which carries the traditional connotations of bitter repentance, unhappiness, sorrow, and guilt. Or nightshade (the title of the April 2008 release), a plant family that is deeply ambiguous, containing dire poisons (belladonna, datura, henbane) and nourishing food (tomato, potato, eggplant). Plants aren't just beautiful, they do things. Bloodroot stains like blood and you can't wash it out. Dill keeps the witches (and evil) away. Rosemary helps us remember. So I try to build these characteristics into the books, a practice that usually, in the course of the research, teaches me much more than I already knew and helps me to broaden my characters and give their actions a deeper significance.

Wormwood is strongly symbolic. Here is the headnote to Chapter 4 (it may not stay there): The name wormwood is said to have derived from the legend of the Garden of Eden, where it sprang up from the track made by the serpent as it was driven out of the garden. When Adam and Eve were expelled, too, wormwood formed a dense hedge, barring their return.

Think about this in terms of the Shaker village I'm writing about, a kind of Utopia (at least, that's how it looked from the outside), a paradise. But there's a serpent in this paradise (isn't there always)? And once you've been tempted, have fallen, and been evicted, you'll never get back in--wormwood (bitter guilt) will keep you out. I love the way symbolic elements like these, derived from the plants themselves, suggest stories. For me, discovering the stories hidden in these "embroideries" is a wonderful part of the writing process.

Writing log. 20 writing days, 29,000 words--which means that I am about one-third finished with the book. Time for the first body to appear. (My dear D-I-L kids me about finding the body around page 100 in every book--and yes, here it is.

Reading note. I was gravely warned by some of my female acquaintances that no woman could expect to be regarded as a lady after she had written a book. —Lydia Marie Child, author of The American Frugal Housewife (1802-1880)

Franchises and other mystery matters

Once upon a time, a long time ago, when Bill and I were writing for the Hardy Boys series, we had a great editor named Bill McKay. Bill was a Hardy Boys fan from way back, and was wise in the ways of the series. Wise in writing mysteries, actually. He understood how a mystery worked, unlike some of the editors we worked with on the Nancy Drew series, who were sometimes more interested in Nancy's wardrobe and love life than in the mystery. He always gave us good advice about plots and characterization--helpful, back in those days when we were pretty much just starting out.

One of the things that sticks in my mind from those days was Bill McKay's smart advice about the detective's "franchise." Every detective, he used to say, has to have a very good reason for being involved with the case. He (or she) has to be motivated. The cop's franchise is simple, right? Solving the crime is his job. It's what he gets paid to do. Private eyes also get paid to solve the crime: somebody shows up in the detective's office with a mystery, slaps down a retainer, and the PI gets down to cases (usually a little more eagerly if he is broke or bored or both).

But amateur sleuths--the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Miss Marple, China Bayles, Kate and Charles Sheridan, et. al--have to have a different reason for being involved in the investigation of a crime, what Bill McKay called the detective's franchise. Miss Marple's friend is unjustly accused of murder, and Miss Marple has to find the real killer. Somebody is sending poison pen letters to Nancy's pal George, and Nancy has to get to the bottom of it. A man shows up and announces that he's China's brother and he thinks their father was murdered--what's she going to do about it? A baby is left on Beatrix Potter's doorstep: why? whose? who left it there?

Bill McKay used to insist that the franchise be believable (within the context of the story), and never let us get away with a sloppy, unrealistic franchise. That was twenty years ago, but to this day, I never sit down to start writing a mystery without thinking about the franchise. The mystery I'm writing now, for instance. For very good reasons, I want to set it in a Kentucky Shaker village, which I've named Zion's Spring. By what believable mechanism do I get China there? She and Ruby and Cass are busy on the home front--why will she agree to go to Kentucky? Who wants her at Zion's Spring, and why? The answers to these questions involve Bill McKay's "franchise," and answering them takes me the better part of the first two chapters, and I'm pretty well satisfied with the way they turned out.

I hope, when you read the book, you'll agree that it's a realistic, believable situation. I also hope that you'll think about this issue the next time you read a mystery--any mystery. Does the detective--cop, PI, or amateur--have a strong franchise, or a weak one? Do you find the situation credible? Maybe yes? Maybe no? Maybe sort of? I'll bet that the answers to that question will have a big influence on your reading of the book.

Writing log. Making progress: 12 writing days, 17,000 words. I worked on the back story today, trying to alternate between that and the main story (worked on that yesterday), to keep in touch with both. My big concern is that I have too much material, and that I won't be able to tie the two stories together (maybe that won't matter?) I ran across a mention of "gift drawings" yesterday, and hung one on a (fictional) wall, although I don't have any clear idea how I'm going to use it. Also ran across a novel called The Believers, published in 1957 and reissued by the University of Kentucky Press, which I am happily reading. Giles is a strong regional writer with a full understanding of the period and place (the South Union Shaker village in the 1830s). Wonder why I've never come across her before. I often learn more from a good novel than from a history book.

Reading note. Motivation means what-do-they-want-and-why? With strong motivation, you'll have strong conflict. Your main character, first of all, should be striving for some life-or-death issue. Perhaps literally; perhaps only because happiness is at stake. In the long run, happiness is always at stake.--Phyllis A. Whitney