Criminal History

by Sheila Connolly

I spent much of the past few weeks on the road, both at the Malice Domestic conference (where I saw two other Daughters, Sandy and Liz, if all too briefly) and doing research for my current work in progress, the nameless #5 in the Museum Mystery series, which in this particular case is set both in Philadelphia and in one of its suburbs.

In the first book of that series, Fundraising the Dead, part of the plot hinged on the creation of a new history museum in Philadelphia.  I didn't make this up:  it was a concept that was talked about within the Philadelphia museum community (which I was once part of) for quite some time, over a decade ago.  Happily it finally came to fruition, and the new and improved Philadelphia History Museum opened in 2012.  This trip gave me my first opportunity to visit it.

It was a slightly weird experience because the new museum acquired many of the paintings and other objects that once belonged to The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, where I worked for several years, so at every turn I kept meeting old friends and familiar faces. Everything was handsomely presented, and I was glad to see that they had found a new home.

But I also encountered some items on display that were new to me, and one in particular intrigued me:  a police mug book from around 1900. (Note: I took several pictures, a practice that was once prohibited in most museums, but the advent of the cell phone has made it all but impossible to regulate, so in this museum at least it's permitted.) A quick online search reveals that it was Allen Pinkerton who invented the mugshot in the 19^th century. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency first began using these on wanted posters in the Wild West days. By the 1870s the agency had amassed the largest collection of mug shots in the United States.

The mug book in Philadelphia was both familiar and unfamiliar.  As you can see, it's a large bound volume.  Miscreants are included in the familiar two photographs, from the front and from the side. The first thing that struck me was that all criminals were allowed to wear their hat for the frontal photo.  Given the era, some of those hats, particularly among the women, were rather elaborate.

Yes, there were women criminals in the mug book.  Regrettably it was possible to view only the one double page on display (from December 1903), so I couldn't do a meaningful assessment of the ratio of men to women, but those two pages included four women. All were respectably dressed and behatted.  I couldn't decipher the crimes, save for one: Ethel Larson (wearing a very strange hat) was accused/convicted of Larceny. I presume the "Sus." that appears under many of the photos means "Suspect."  Other crimes included pickpocket, burglary, embezzlement, conspiracy (of what was not recorded), and breaking and entering.  There were two black faces on the pages.

The pictures are crisp and clear, the details written in legible script.  To a genealogist this is a strange treasure trove; to a mystery writer it's a delightful glimpse of crime in another time. There is a curious aura of respectability to the photos, despite the fact that the people depicted are accused of a crime.  All were allowed to clean up and dress up for the important act of being photographed.  Contrast that with the quick and dirty mugs shots of today.

How I wish it were possible to spend time leafing through this book, and others like it!  Would we find differences between the faces of then and now? Did a psychopath look different in 1903?  

How do writers create their characters?

Elizabeth Zelvin

One of my blog brothers on SleuthSayers, Louis A. Willis, wrote a post in which he wondered “how you give each character a personality that distinguishes him or her from other characters, even minor ones.” He wondered if “in order to create him or her, to give them personalities, including the various emotions each must have to be believable,” the writer has to build or rather become each character. His bemusement sparked a number of interesting comments from some of our blogmates.

Fran Rizer said, “When writing...new characters, I generally need to let them float around in my mind for several days to become real enough to me for their representation to seem right in the writing.” Fran also mentioned how easily she writes her recurring series characters, because she already knows them well.

R.T. Lawton, who has a background in undercover law enforcement, said, “I've learned to compartmentalize some of my brain, therefore writing different characters and their emotions and actions may come a little easier for me. Many times, in the grey wolf hours of early morning when my mind is not yet fully awake, it will dream up an interesting conflict situation which requires a certain type of character. This then also requires certain other characters as antagonists (or protagonists depending upon the situation). At that point, I usually reach back into the past, mostly for criminals and street people I've run across and how they would act/react to that scene. Sometimes these story characters are a composite of several real people, but even so they get bent to fit the story.”

Leigh Lundin said, “I like getting into the head of characters...becoming a character for a little while.” Herschel Cozine, who sometimes guest blogs on SleuthSayers, agreed, particularly with respect to writing a character whose basic profile differs from the writer’s, eg man writing woman, straight writing gay, white writing black etc. He said, “Become the character, no matter how much you may know about his/her wants and needs. There are certain universalities that allow you to do this.”

Dixon Hill used that discussion as a jumping off point in a later post, in which he said:

(1) My writing seems to function best when plot grows organically, through character interaction.

(2) When characters refuse to drive the plotline where I desire, I tend to let the characters carry the day -- unless this pushes the plot into dimensions unfit for the story as I’ve come to perceive it.

(3) If things get too far out of control, I try to plant something farther forward in the narrative, which I hope will lead one of the characters to alter behavior in a way designed to organically correct the plot growth in the desired direction.

He then admitted that all of the above was only half the true description of how he writes. “The second part of my true answer,” he said, “is: I daydream.”

My own contribution to the discussion was this:

For me, it's a matter neither of "building" nor "becoming" my characters, including my two male series protagonists, a recovering alcoholic in present-day New York and a young marrano sailor with Columbus. The voice comes from that creative well of inspiration some call the muse and others the unconscious, and the character starts talking in my head. I simply write down what he or she says and delete anything he or she wouldn't say. One of the reviewer comments I'm most proud of was when Steve Steinbock referred to me in EQMM as a "female writer who has mastered the male voice." As the classic line from the movie Shakespeare in Love puts it: It's a mystery!

I’ve had the opportunity to take a close look at my series character lately in the course of revising the three novels for new e-editions. The process has confirmed my sense that for me, the creation of character is intuitive and organic. It’s very much a matter of voice, especially with recurring characters. I’ve lived with Bruce, Barbara, and Jimmy for a long time, and I have a strong gut feeling about what each of them would or would not say or do. I’ve also seen how much they have developed over the period in which I’ve kept returning to them (three novels, four short stories, and a novella), each time with a little more mastery of the fiction writer’s craft.

Apart from the mystery plot and how the characters drive each story, the friendship between Bruce and his two sidekicks is a crucial element in the series. In a scene near the end of Death Will Help You Leave Him, Barbara and Jimmy are trying to comfort Bruce, who has just suffered a devastating loss.

“Why don’t you go home and get some sleep?” Jimmy said. “Come over in the morning.”

“We’ll have bagels and lox,” Barbara said.

“And maybe take in a meeting,” Jimmy said.

Barbara being Barbara and Jimmy being Jimmy—now, that did make me feel better.

Why Gatsby makes a lousy movie

by Sandra Parshall

Filmmakers seem to think they can make a good movie out of anything, and they aren’t deterred by past unsuccessful efforts with the the same book.

The Great Gatsby is the latest example of this triumph of ego over material. It was made into a movie in 1926, the year after the book was published, and was filmed again in 1949 and 1974, then turned into a TV movie in 2001. Did those lackluster adaptations deter Baz Luhrmann, the Australian master of gaudy spectacle? Did he study them to determine the reason why the book simply will not come to full-bodied life on the screen? Apparently not, because he went right ahead and made all the same mistakes, only more so.

Everyone is seduced by the beauty of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s narrative prose. Six passages from the novel, including the unforgettable final line, appear in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. But the dialogue, transferred to screenplays word for word, is virtually impossible for actors to speak convincingly. The performances in Luhrmann’s film are almost embarrassing to watch. I have never seen so much wooden acting outside of a high school drama production. Surely the director is partly to blame for the falseness of it all, the stiff delivery, but honestly, what can any actor do with Fitzgerald’s dialogue? People simply don’t talk that way.

The only time a genuine performance threatens to break free of the script’s constraints is when Leonardo DiCaprio, as Gatsby, explodes in the hotel room scene and grabs Daisy’s husband Tom, ready to kill him. Red-faced and snorting like a bull, DiCaprio is, for at least thirty seconds, mesmerizing. Alas, it doesn’t last, it can’t last, because the script must remain faithful to the book. The accident scene that follows is unaffecting because the characters haven’t become real on the screen.

Add Luhrmann’s taste for excess to the book’s inherent flaws, and you’ve got a sparkling, dazzling mess.

The novel is revered – perhaps more than it should be – not only for Fitzgerald’s lyrical narrative style but also because it captures the amoral, culturally hollow lives of a certain social set in the years before the stock market crash brought on the Great Depression. Gatsby, born poor, has done what a lot of Americans have: reinvented himself in the process of amassing a fortune. But Gatsby is not admirable. The driving force behind his ambition is his desire to reclaim a woman who is not in any way worthy of love. Daisy is selfish and shallow, willing to sacrifice anyone to preserve her own easy life, and Gatsby is a pathetic fool for loving her. That is perhaps the novel’s greatest weakness, and the reason it doesn’t translate well to film: the characters are despicable. The story is a dark tale of destruction, with no hero and no heroine. 

A gifted writer can keep readers engaged with such characters in a novel. Put those characters on screen, in the form of real, breathing human beings, make them speak dialogue that is awkward at best, and it’s hard to persuade the viewer care about them. (I couldn’t help hoping Daisy and her husband would end up penniless when the stock market crashed.)

Compare Gatsby to Mystic River, a great novel that was made into a great film. Dennis Lehane’s characters are so real that we recognize bits of ourselves in them. They may be flawed, sometimes profoundly, but they are always struggling to be better than they are, and even when they do the wrong thing we can understand and sympathize. It doesn’t hurt that Lehane writes pitch-perfect dialogue and it moves to the screen without a glitch.

Mystic River has what The Great Gatsby lacks: genuine emotion, so deep that it haunts you long after the story ends. 
********************************
Note: When Fitzgerald saw The Great Gatsby's original cover art, shown above, he liked it so much that he added the optometrist's billboard, showing a pair of eyes, to the story. The novel received mixed reviews and sold poorly. It is now a staple of American literature courses. Recently it passed out of copyright and is now in the public domain.

Advice Plus Ten Years

Sharon Wildwind

Ten years ago being a writer seemed simple. To paraphrase the often-quoted and likely apocryphal quote from Michelangelo, “I just remove everything that doesn’t look like being a writer.”

I was reminded of that last week when I found a misplaced and forgotten computer file “Tips on Being a Writer,” dated 2003 February 4, in which, I’d compiled advice from other writers.

Naivety provides a certain protective quality. It surrounds us like bubble-wrap and cushions us for the journey ahead.

The advice I’d received ten years ago included

Cut back on your day job

I’d already done that, but no vast swaths of spare time ever emerged. Working full-time, working part-time, being retired doesn’t  matter. Life expands to fill the week. Writers learn to work around that.

Live on less

This turned out to be good advice. Writing always pays less than you think it will.

Exercise on a regular basis. Eat healthy. Get more sleep, on a regular schedule.

Strangely enough, these worked, except for getting more sleep on a regular schedule. That new job I’d taken in order to have more spare time turned out to demand less sleep, on a more irregular schedule. Many writers have survived far worse.

Join a group related to writing

Only one? By last count I belong to nine.

Find the best time of day to write.

The best time of day (or night) to write is any time I have two writing neurones to rub together. The Muse doesn’t wait. Incidentally, the Muse of writing is named Calliope. She’s usually depicted with a writing tablet.

Determine if you are more productive as a writer when writing for short or long periods.

What I learned since then is that extroverts can rarely write productively longer than an hour at a time; introverts usually need a three to four hour block to do anything productive. I aim somewhere in the middle, about two to two-and-a-half hours at a time.

Don't interrupt writing time for lunch with friends, or to run errands, or to do house work.

On further reflection, always interrupt writing time for lunch with friends; then reschedule the writing. Most errands can be rescheduled. Housework can fall off the edge of the universe and no one much cares.

Develop more computer skills, such as being able to type faster, or how to use more features in word processing programs.

At the time no one mentioned web site set-up and maintenance.  Blogging. Tweeting. Googling. Pining. Skyping. Linking-in. As I said, naivety offers a lot of protection.

Set up a home office so there is a formal place to write.

Except for the days when your desk is so cluttered that you have no room to write, in which case you end somewhere else, with your trusty writing tablet in tow. Calliope probably understood this.

Find ways to inspire yourself about writing. Post little cards or quotes that mean something to you where you can see them.

The absolute best writing inspiration is to read another author who writes so much better than I do. The sound of the competition drives me to the computer faster than all the quote cards in the world.

Today's writing advice?

Write.

Play.

Pay attention.

Be in the moment.

Roll with the punches.

------

Quote for the week

Art and life are subjective. Not everybody’s gonna dig what I dig, but I reserve the right to dig it.

~ Whoopi Goldberg, American comedienne, actress, singer-songwriter, political activist, author and talk show host

Mother's Day Sentiments

by Julia Buckley

We spent a lovely Mother's Day visiting my parents out in the more countrified suburbs of Chicago.  My mom, who turns 80 this year, had expressed an interest in getting necklaces as a gift, so of course she got a slew of them; she decided to wear them all, which gave her a distinctly regal look. 

My own Mother's Day morning had been quite nice.  My sons gave me a gift trilogy of chocolate, a candle and a necklace, and then, as an afterthought, jotted down some sentiments.  Since they are eighteen and fourteen, their cards are filled with ironic detachment.  I thought I'd share them (with their permisssion) to give you a sense of the way my sons see the world (and how they express their love through humor).

Dear Mom,

Thanks for keeping me. I feel that was a good start to our relationship. After that you provided for me for a solid fourteen years.  I think this is a good day for me to tell you that you're good at being my guardian.  Pretty good. Thank you for the time, effort, and thought you put into raising that &$%#  Ian and me.  Ian's not that special, but you got us to last this long, and you made me great.

Love,
Graham Lincoln

(Ian's letter, below, was written on the back of a cash register receipt, probably to annoy me).

Mooma,

Happy Falcon Day. I can assure you that everyone here on the Buckley Family Team is appreciative of all the work you've done this past fiscal year.  We all think you're terrific.  Congratulations!  We love you and what you bring to the table.  In the words of Marty Shakespeare: "One or two boys are good enough, but a mother is most pleasant."  I share in that sentiment to a reasonable extent.

Louvre,

Yan

Yes, gone are the days when my children might have just written "Happy Mother's Day" on a construction paper card. These are all attempts at Theatre of the Absurd.

And yet these are kind sentiments, expressed in honor of the occasion, so I'll treasure them as I do all of the goofy cards from my sons.

They will both graduate this year--Graham from 8th grade and Ian from high school--so it's rather a momentous time in our lives.

What did YOU do on Mother's Day?

When Fiction and Reality Collide

by Sasscer Hill
Author of the Nikki Latrelle mysteries

When I heard a recording of Amanda Berry’s desperate 911 plea for help, I wept for this girl who was abducted, torn from her family, and abused for ten years. 

I’ve watched every episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, I saw the 2005 documentary Human Trafficking, I wrote The Sea Horse Trade, a just released novel where underage girls are abducted and forced into the sex trade, so I think I’m pretty tough. 

Yeah, right. I heard Amanda’s voice pleading with the dispatcher to have the cops save her "before he comes back,” and I lost it.

Those words, “before he comes back,” are laden with terror, with evil, and with desperation. These are the kinds of words authors hope to use in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to grab their readers with the kind of emotion I felt listening to Amanda’s plea.

The idea of female abduction and slavery has always fascinated and horrified me. How could I weave the subject into a story about my jockey Nikki Latrelle? 

As a breeder, owner, and avid fan of race horses, I had occasion to visit Gulfstream Park racetrack in Hallandale Beach, on the coast between Fort Lauderdale and Miami. I spent time at the track, toured Fort Lauderdale and Miami and saw the glitz, the glamour, the sex, the horses, and the money. A man could work at a desk for forty years and not earn a fraction of what it would cost to buy the immense yachts and huge mansions I saw there. Who owns something this valuable? Where does the money come from?

One morning, I got up early and walked down to the beach. A cold wind blew off the sea. Far, far out on the horizon, I saw a huge container ship shrouded in mist. It was creepy, like seeing a ghost on the water. The white caps were roiling, and a keen awareness of the depth of the water, the distance to the yacht, and the ice cold spray made me wonder how anyone could possibly feel safe out there on the ocean. 

What if Nikki Latrelle was working the January meet at Gulfstream? What if her oldest friend’s daughter was missing, a girl Nikki has never met? What if on that first night in Hallandale Beach a girl is shot dead at Nikki’s feet? The story all came together. What a perfect safe harbor a city like Fort Lauderdale would be to spawn the trade of human trafficking. 

I had to write this story. 

I flew home to Maryland and rented the documentary, Human Trafficking. It was appalling, but it was fascinating. It was shocking, but it was engaging. It was disgusting, but it was believable. More than ever, I wanted to write my story, so I did.

I hope you will take The Sea Horse Trade for a ride! You can hear me read the first chapter on my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SasscerHill. You don’t have to be a member of Facebook to go to this page. Just click the link and leave me a note!

Learn more about Sasscer and her books at http://www.sasscerhill.blogspot.com/.

Dearie

by Sheila Connolly

Recently I've been reading Bob Spitz's excellent biography, Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child. It's a massive book (576 pages), exhaustively researched and full of detail, but it's not to be hurried.  I'm somewhere in the middle at the moment.

No, this post is not about cooking, although I adore Julia Child.  I own three copies of her groundbreaking Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and it has shaped my culinary life.  I attended a lunch-hour demonstration she gave in San Francisco many years ago, and I still have the handouts.  I was never privileged to run into her on the streets of Cambridge when I lived there, but I did visit her local grocery store, and I kept a picture of her kitchen taped to my refrigerator in my Cambridge apartment.  Smith College, which she (and my daughter) attended, holds an annual Julia Child Day.

Many of us who have grown up with Julia Child, either through her cookbooks or from the PBS televisions shows, don't realize the impact that one cookbook had on the way Americans cooked—or how much work went into the making of it.  And as I read Spitz's book, I came to view the cookbook as a "book" rather than a tool.

Think back to the distant 1960s, when quick food was the norm and TV dinners were in their heyday.  Fast = good.  Women didn't want to be chained to the stove.  As a result, a lot of women sort of forgot how to cook, and worse, they lost the pleasure of cooking.

I first visited France in 1971, and while my mother was a good plain cook, who (to her credit) used fresh fruits and vegetables and didn't overcook everything, I realized with my first meal in Paris (coq au vin in a small restaurant on the Left Bank) that there was a lot that I'd been missing. I never looked back.  When I moved into my first apartment (with a tiny kitchen), the first thing I bought was Mastering the Art of French Cooking, even before I bought a bed.

But to return to the literary side, Julia Child demystified French cooking.  She laid out step by step instructions, and explained in simple terms why each step was necessary.  Her recipes worked, and turned out exactly as described, with portions sized for people with normal appetites.  On occasion she would say things like, this may curdle during this step, but don't worry—it will smooth out later.  And it did.

What Spitz makes abundantly clear is the prodigious amount of research and testing that went on in Julia's kitchen (or many kitchens, in different countries, over several years).  She could write authoritatively about how to do something because she had done it over and over herself until she knew it worked.

And then she could explain it, clearly and simply.  What's more, Spitz points out that there is a story behind the whole book.  Julia loved French cooking, and she wanted other people to love it, rather than being scared by it.  So her book is a love story, and she gives little anecdotes and comments all along the way, to make us feel closer to the food, and she succeeds admirably.  The cookbook is worth reading even if you never pick up a sauté pan, and if you want to know how it achieved its elegant simplicity, read Spitz's book.

(BTW, Bob Spitz is mystery writer Nancy Martin's brother-in-law)

Pace

Elizabeth Zelvin

Pace is one of those elements of a story that readers may not be aware of as part of the writer's craft, but which makes the difference between a story that drags and one that keeps readers turning the pages. I've been writing my whole life and editing the writing of others for what feels like almost that long. But it's only since my first novel was published that I have become fully aware of all the details that can make or break the pacing of my novel or story and how I can tighten a scene or a chapter in revision so that it sweeps the reader along.

Backstory is everything about the characters and setting except what happens during the period in which the story is taking place. In a mystery, it may include the protagonist's whole history, information about his family, and the events that took place in earlier books in the series. In crime fiction, current opinion seems to be that the less backstory, the better. Some writing mavens even say that NO backstory is the right amount. I wouldn't go that far, but I have learned how leaving it out can improve pace. In a literary novel, all those details that have nothing to do with the immediate scene form the texture of the narrative. In a mystery, they may slow it down.

Suppose my protagonist, Bruce, says: "Jimmy walked into the coffee shop ahead of me. Just inside the door, he stopped short." I might like to have him tell the reader a lot of digressive detail about Bruce and Jimmy's relationship to each other, how they feel about coffee, that the coffee shop used to be a neighborhood candy store when they were kids.where it was a big treat to go in there with a dime or quarter to spend and the old man behind the counter would let them take as long as they wanted choosing the candy. This could be great stuff. But not now. We want to move the reader right on to what or who in that coffee shop takes Jimmy by surprise.

One bad habit I let myself make in a first draft but have learned to change in revision is starting a scene in the middle. Suppose Bruce says:

We were stalled in traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, and Jimmy was cursing softly. He had promised to drive me to to the funeral in Brooklyn, even though he had been reluctant to leave his personal briar patch, Manhattan. I had told him it would only take twenty minutes, but I had kept my fingers crossed when I said it. I had told him I needed his moral support, and Barbara had backed me up.

That "had" is a clue that I need to revise. I can improve the pace by taking the events in sequence. When does the scene start, with the discussion about going to Brooklyn or on the bridge?

The discussion:

“Drive me to the funeral tomorrow,” I suggested.

“In Brooklyn?” Jimmy sounded horrified. He hated to leave his personal briar patch, Manhattan.

“We could be there in twenty minutes,” I said, keeping my fingers crossed. “And I’d owe you big time. I need your moral support, dude.”

“He’s right, Jimmy,” Barbara said. “We can’t do this without you.”

The next morning...

On the bridge:

Jimmy leaned on the horn and used the F word, not his usual style. We were stalled in traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.

“I hope you mean the guy in the Lexus, not me,” I said.

Jimmy growled and muttered the Serenity Prayer. That was more like it. His Higher Power must have been listening, because twenty minutes later, we were opening the ornate front door of the funeral home.

Another bad habit is starting a scene BEFORE the beginning. If the scene is about what happens in Brooklyn, why not start the scene in Brooklyn?

The funeral home stood on a king-size corner lot. The front door wasn’t locked. Jimmy pushed it open. We walked into a sumptuous entrance hall. A gentleman with a bald head so shiny it looked polished greeted us with an inaudible generic murmur and an outstretched hand.

All the words in this passage appear in the book, but I have to admit it took me 1,873 words to get there, including two paragraphs of “had” and two paragraphs of Bruce thinking about the puzzle of who killed the deceased. In other words, I’m still learning.

The chapter started:

“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” I bellowed over the clamor of the train.

When I’m writing the first draft, I have a tendency to rev myself up by starting a scene with the phone ringing. The first sentence of Death Will Help You Leave Him is “I scootched into the back of Jimmy’s Toyota.” In the first draft, before Bruce got into the car, he answered the telephone, engaged in some banter with Jimmy and Barbara, and ran down the stairs from his walkup apartment into the rain before getting into the car.

Luckily, I ran that chapter past a workshop group that included a very experienced short story writer. (Short story writers had better know about pace.) He looked at Page 1 over my shoulder, put his index finger on “I scootched,” and said, “The story starts here.”

Blending Careers: Therapist and Author

By Dennis Palumbo, guest blogger
Author Night Terrors

I must admit, I’ve had an interesting career journey. 

For many years I was a Hollywood screenwriter, after which I became a licensed psychotherapist in private practice. Now, after 24 years listening to hundreds of people’s most intimate stories, I’ve fulfilled a life-long dream and begun a series of crime novels. The first, Mirror Image, featuring psychologist and trauma expert Daniel Rinaldi, appeared in 2010 from Poisoned Pen Press.  This was followed by Fever Dream, and now the latest, Night Terrors.

Which begs the question: what, if anything, do a psychotherapist and a suspense novelist have in common? Actually, quite a bit.

For both a therapist and a crime novelist, it’s the mystery of character itself that intrigues, puzzles, and continually surprises. As a therapist, I’ve borne witness to the awful suffering, painful revelations and admirable courage of my patients---many of whom have survived unbelievable abuse, neglect and loss. Not to mention those whose lives have been marred by substance use, violence, and severe mental illness. 

How people cope with these issues and events, how well or poorly they meet these challenges, goes directly to the heart of the therapeutic experience. My job as their therapist is to help identify self-destructive patterns of behavior, and to empower them by providing tools to address these patterns and, hopefully, alter them.

So much for my day job. Moonlighting as a suspense novelist, I find myself doing pretty much the same thing with my fictional characters. As a mystery writer, I believe that crime stems from strong emotions, and strong emotions stem from conflict. Kind of like life. Which means the secret to crafting satisfying thrillers lies in exploring who your characters are (as opposed to who they say they are), what it is they want (or think they need), and the lengths to which they’ll go to get it.

Moreover, using my experience as a licensed psychotherapist, I’ve woven many of the situations and people I’ve encountered into my crime novels. I’ve also used aspects of my personal life as well. Although my practice is in Los Angeles, the novels take place in Pittsburgh, my home town. In addition, Daniel Rinaldi shares a similar background to my own---from his Italian heritage to his love of jazz to his teenage years spent working in the Steel City’s sprawling produce yards. (Though, as each novel’s narrative hurtles Rinaldi into a vortex of murder and conspiracy, he reveals himself to be a lot braver and more resourceful than I am!)  

But there’s another connection between my role as a therapist and my role as a mystery writer. Namely, the fact that issues and trends in the therapeutic community can often inspire the stories themselves.

For example, in Night Terrors, Rinaldi is asked by the FBI to treat one of their recently-retired profilers. After a twenty-year career inside the minds of the most infamous serial killers, Special Agent Lyle Barnes can no longer sleep through the night. He’s tormented by a cascade of horrifying though indistinct images, along with intense feelings of dread and imminent danger. Until, sweat-soaked, heart pounding, he wakes up screaming...

He’s not alone. Once considered primarily a pediatric diagnosis, more and more adults are currently being treated for night terrors. As researchers report, a nightly experience of disturbed sleep can result in chronic fatigue, emotional fragility, a weakened immune system and reduced concentration.

Why the upsurge in night terrors in adults? Many clinicians---including therapists like myself---are blaming the increased uncertainty of contemporary life. The economy, terrorism. Even natural disasters, like tsunamis, earthquakes, and super-storms. The daily anxiety suppressed by adults during waking life, now invading their sleep.

Most experts believe the condition is caused by a sudden disruption in the central nervous system, usually triggered by stress, sleep deprivation, or substance abuse. With such a broad range of potential causes, treatment options are limited to medication, hypnotherapy, stress management techniques, and good old talk therapy. That is, as long as you have something to talk about.

And there’s the problem. Patients suffering from garden-variety nightmares can usually recount the content of their dreams, which perhaps leads to interpretation. Often, once the meaning of a patient’s dream becomes clear, the therapist can aid the patient in working through its various themes.

Unfortunately, people with night terrors can’t find the same solace, for the simple reason that, unlike nightmares, they don’t occur during REM sleep. Typically, night terrors erupt during Stage Four of the sleep cycle. Which means the sufferer doesn’t remember the dream images, giving both patient and therapist very little to work with.

In my novel, Rinaldi’s approach is to get the retired FBI agent to open up about his years as a profiler. His thousands of hours of contact with the most heinous and notorious serial killers. Since Barnes’ work was his life, Rinaldi believes that the best way to address his nocturnal demons is to get him to open up about the real-life demons with whom he spent most of his career.

Not an easy task, since Lyle Barnes is also the target of an unknown assassin who’s already killed three others on a seemingly-random hit-list.

A fictional reminder that in crime novels---as in life---the real terrors occur when we’re awake.

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Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter (My Favorite Year; Welcome Back, Kotter, etc.), Dennis Palumbo is now a licensed psychotherapist and author of Writing From the Inside Out (John Wiley). He  blogs regularly for The Huffington Post and Psychology Today. His mystery fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Strand, Written By and elsewhere, and is collected in From Crime to Crime (Tallfellow Press).  His acclaimed mystery thrillers (Mirror Image, Fever Dream, and the latest,  Night Terrors), feature Daniel Rinaldi, a psychologist who consults with the Pittsburgh Police.  All are from Poisoned Pen Press. For more information, please visit http://www.dennispalumbo.com.

Inexorable Journey

Usually I put a quote of the week at the bottom of my blog, but this week, the quote is the blog.

This comes from material that the author, agent, and teacher Donald Maass said at a workshop over the weekend.

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Writing is about custom-building the hardest journey our protagonist can make. Too many writers write what happens next. This is a plot journey, which is a skeleton. Plots and skeletons are important, but if all you have is the skeleton, the story is going to be boney and incomplete.

The inner journey is an inexorable voyage from one strongly-held mindset to an even better and, usually, more flexible world view, equally strongly-held, but which requires more compassion, understanding, and humanity than the protagonist though him or herself capable of possessing.

~ Condensed from presentation by Donald Maass, 2013 May 4

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I believe this is true. Care to discuss it?

How do we switching from writing plot-based stories to journey-based stories?