The Biggest Risk a Writer Can Take

by Sandra Parshall

I picked up the book automatically because it was written by one of my favorite authors. I didn’t look at the jacket copy. I hadn’t read any reviews. All that mattered was the author’s name.

I didn’t realize until I got home that this book wasn’t another of the insightful, character-driven “domestic thrillers” I’ve come to expect from the writer. This one was about terrorism and a government conspiracy, and part of it was set in Iraq. Not the sort of book I usually enjoy.

I was more than disappointed. I felt cheated. I felt, melodramatic though it sounds, betrayed. My reader self whined, How dare one of my favorite authors write a book I won’t enjoy? At the same time, my writer self argued that an author is entitled to write whatever he chooses and shouldn’t let disappointed readers interfere.
 
However, my rational self (I do have one, although it’s not always on display) knows that any author is taking a big chance when he or she shifts gears and produces a book that doesn’t meet established reader expectations. A popular cozy author who publishes a bloody, action-filled thriller will discover that her cozy readers aren’t as gentle and polite as their book preferences might indicate.

It’s likely, in fact, that an editor will stomp on the thriller notion before it gets past the discussion stage. Your fans won’t follow you, the editor will say, and they’ll be mad at you too. In most cases, the editor will be right. The author who achieves success in one subgenre and switches to something radically different will essentially be starting over, aiming at a new audience. If the publisher goes along with the change, in the hope that the author will break out of a narrow category and find general success, the writer may be asked to use a pseudonym to avoid confusion with the earlier books.

Even a change in tone in an established series will leave readers angry. We’ve seen this happen recently to Nevada Barr, with Burn and The Rope. I’ve read all of Barr’s Anna Pigeon books, and I noticed the tone had gradually darkened in the later ones. The series was never cozy, and Anna’s drinking problem is troubling, but cozy lovers can enjoy the earlier books because they aren’t particularly graphic and they overflow with lovely descriptions of the natural settings I which Anna, a federal park ranger, works. The violence in the later books, especially the violence aimed at Anna herself, is more vivid and prolonged, and her emotional turmoil is acute. With Burn, which got away from the park settings entirely and focused unflinchingly on sexual exploitation of children, a lot of readers said they couldn’t read Barr anymore. I’ve heard complaints about the depressing tone of the latest book, a prequel titled The Rope, although it seems no darker to me than the books that came before Burn. Barr still has enough fans to put her books on bestseller lists, and as both a reader and a writer I’m curious to see what she’ll do next.

Ending a popular series can be as difficult as switching subgenres. Success, and the expectations of fans, can create a golden cage that a writer might never break out of. While the author yearns to move on to fresh material, fans still love the familiar characters and are still willing to pay for the books, and the publisher is happy with a sure thing. Starting a second series is an option, and a lot of writers now produce two (or more) books a year in different series. But kill off a series that’s selling well? It doesn’t happen often.

As for the new book that seemed uninviting to me although it was written by a favorite author, I grudgingly gave it a chance. I discovered that everything I loved about the author’s work is there: the complex characters, the thoughtful dissection of motives and emotions, the tangled relationships. No, I don’t enjoy the descriptions of people being blown up and gunned down in Iraq, but fortunately those scenes don’t dominate the story. I’ll finish it. And I’ll look forward to his next book, which (judging from the description) will get back to what I enjoy most: portrayals of ordinary people forced to work their way out of horrific situations.

Have you ever been disappointed when a writer went in a new direction? Do you think writers should stick with what they do best and what their fans love to read?

Peggy Webb on Switching Genres

by Peggy Webb (guest blogger)

When writers gather, we always end up talking about writing. The liveliest discussion I’ve had on the topic occurred at Malice Domestic (2009) when I shared a banquet table with Sandy Parshall. Both of us are published novelists. The difference is that Sandy’s background is mystery, and I came to mystery from a background of romance (more than sixty romance novels).

I think I surprised the unflappable Sandy when I said, “Writing mystery is easier for me than writing romance.” She wanted to know more, and so this guest blog was born.

For me, the foundation of any good story, no matter what the genre, is believable, well-developed characters. I fell in love with all my heroes and heroines in romance, and I fell in love with the zany Valentine gang in my Southern Cousins Mystery Series. It was easy to switch from romance to mystery with the same lovable characters who could be your next door neighbors.

The same was true of pacing, voice, conflict, story arc, and resolution. All those elements I had used with such ease in romance followed me like obedient children into mystery.

So what’s the major difference between writing mystery and romance, and why is mystery easier for me? Romance novels are character driven and mysteries are plot driven.

In a strict category romance (this does not include romantic suspense, romantic thrillers, block-buster women’s fiction, etc.) the focus must be kept tightly on the developing relationship between the two major protagonists. Secondary characters and secondary plot lines must be kept to a minimum. It’s up to the author to write a page-turning story built on the slender premise of two people meeting, falling in love, getting ripped apart because of internal and external conflicts, and eventually finding their way back together again. Creating a story that won’t veer away from the central theme while holding readers’ attention as the romance plays out is a very tricky business.

On the other hand, a good mystery requires a dense, complex plot. After I had plotted my first mystery – Elvis and the Dearly Departed – I was astonished to discover that instead of working from a three-page synopsis as I had in romance, I would be working from an eighteen-page, carefully plotted story line. Before I wrote the first word, I knew the victim(s), the major suspects, the identity of the killer, motives and back-story of everybody involved, and how the murder tied into the lives of the Valentine gang (my series characters). All I had to do was hang the meat of my story on my lovely skeleton, who didn’t have a single bone missing. What fun! At all times during the mystery writing process, I knew what was going to happen next. In romance, I didn’t always know. Because I wrote from such brief synopses, I trusted my characters to inspire and surprise me along the way.

And they did!

Does the Valentine gang, plus Elvis, do the same thing? You bet! I’m having so much fun writing about them I can’t possibly call it work.

Writing in any genre requires talent, commitment and discipline. My experience in two genres is simply one writer’s journey.

How about you? What are your writing experiences? Your reading habits? Are you strictly a mystery buff or do you like to read other genres such as romance, romantic suspense, paranormal? I’d love to know!

The second book in Peggy's Southern Cousins mystery series, Elvis and the Grateful Dead, will be published in September. Visit her web site at www.peggywebb.com.

Using Our Words

Elizabeth Zelvin

A feature of contemporary parenting as practiced by generations younger than mine that always tickles me is the way parents deal with temper tantrums by telling a screaming toddler, “Use your words.” It’s a pithy definition of what writers do.

This piece occurred to me as I sat around the breakfast table at a country inn in Oakmont, PA with two writer friends, Rosemary Harris and Barbara D’Amato, with whom I appeared at the Mystery Lovers Bookshop Festival of Mystery. It’s always great fun to schmooze with other writers, and we got to talking about what different kinds of writers do and how it’s not as easy as it looks to the people who perennially tell writers, “I’ve got a great idea, why don’t you write it and we’ll split the profits.”

I’ve done a significant amount of writing in four distinct genres, or five if you count short stories separately for novels: fiction, poetry, songwriting, and academic or professional writing—six if you count blogging, which I consider a form of journalism, though for some bloggers it’s rather a form of journaling, not at all the same thing.

As someone said at breakfast, it’s marvelous that there are so many words in the English language that each writer comes up with something unique on any given theme. Aspiring fiction writers don’t always realize this. Newcomers sometimes worry that if they send their manuscripts out to agents and editors, these professionals may steal their uncopyrighted material. I’m told this sometimes happens with movie pitches in Hollywood, but it makes veteran novelists laugh.

One, there are proverbially only seven original plots.

Two, the ideas are the easy part: imagination, craft, organization, and perseverance in putting the words on paper (or on screen) are what distinguishes the writer from the wannabe. (Note that this pejorative term becomes less ugly when defined by the writer’s ability to follow through and complete a work, not by publication status.)

Three, I've met at least one writer who expressed concern that his manuscript, also about a recovering substance abuser in lower Manhattan, might coincidentally be too similar to Death Will Get You Sober. I assured him it didn't worry me. I believe someone else has about the same chance of coming up with my characters, my dialogue, and my voice as those monkeys who are supposed to type Shakespeare’s plays if they keyboard long enough.

Poetry, a craft I’ve been practicing for more than thirty years, allows the individual writer to create a unique work by using fewer rather than more words. The challenge is to tell a story (or paint a word picture, depending on what kind of poem one writes) in 100 to 200 words if it’s a typical free verse one-page lyric poem, in seventeen syllables (three lines divided five-seven-five) if it’s a haiku.

Song lyrics are often equated with poems, but in my experience, the crafts of songwriting and writing poetry are distinct. Without demonstrating it here, I can assert with confidence that I can pair songs and poems I’ve written on a single theme—alcoholism, love lost or found, and death, for example—in which I address the theme in two entirely different voices and ways of using words. The power of good songwriting is not only that, like poetry, it’s condensed, but that it expresses what the writer wants to say not in the most original words but in the simplest and most basic words of one and two syllables, while managing to give this simplicity a fresh twist and depth of emotion that can move listeners in much the same way as a poem moves hearers or readers.

In contrast to all of these storytelling genres, professional writing requires the writer to use specialized language—a jargon or, more kindly, idiom—with a precision that will make it perfectly comprehensible to any colleague in the same profession—and do so without telling any stories at all that aren’t true.