Avoiding Mistakes in Private Eye Fiction

by Colleen Collins & Shaun Kaufman
Authors of How to Write a Dick: A Guide to Writing Fictional Sleuths from a Couple of Real-Life Sleuths 


As private investigators, we both live the investigative life and love to read stories about it, too. The problem with being PIs is that we’re predisposed to catching investigative bloopers in stories, from the blatantly illegal to the curiously illogical.  We thought it’d be helpful to shed light on a few of these gaffes.

Below are five mistakes we’ve recently read in crime stories. We’ve also offered ideas for fixes, too.

Mistake #1: Successfully following a vehicle for hours, or an entire day, especially in a car the subject has seen and suspects might be following him. Mobile or rolling surveillances (surveillances conducted in vehicles) are difficult – not only does the investigator not know the subject’s destination, there are diverse traffic conditions, missed stop lights, unexpected turns, varying driving speeds and other factors. How to fix? 

Here’s a few ideas:

Have plausible reasons the sleuth successfully tracks a vehicle for long periods. (Maybe the sleuth has an idea of the subject’s routine or hangouts?)

The surveillance is conducted over a reasonable amount of time, not hours and hours.

Maybe the investigator asks a pal to help out – the success rate for a mobile surveillance increases significantly when there are two investigators, two vehicles.  Even an extra person in one vehicle is helpful – the second person can check online maps and directions, be watching traffic and other activities, operate cameras, even jump out of the vehicle and conduct foot surveillance if necessary.

Our book How to Write a Dick: A Guide for Writing Fictional Sleuths from a Couple of Real-Life Sleuths has sections on both stationary and mobile surveillances with techniques for conducting both. PIstore.com also has books on a wide variety of investigative topics, including surveillances.

Mistake #2: If a character states a legality, make sure it’s really a legality. One of us just read a story where a lead character claimed a restraining order didn’t take effect until after the petitioner and respondent left the courtroom. Actually, a temporary retraining order is already in effect when the parties enter the courtroom for the final restraining order hearing. 

A writer can check a legality by asking a lawyer, paralegal or a reference librarian at a public or law library.

Mistake #3: Impossible investigative feat. In a recent story, a critical clue was provided by a man using a walker who was forced to jump out of the way of a speeding car (which was making a turn) on a dark street in the middle of the night. While jumping and dealing with the walker, he also managed to memorize the license plate number of the speeding car making the turn. It didn’t feel real, it felt convenient.

We’ve used binoculars in the middle of the night on surveillance and still not been able to document license plate numbers, especially from a speeding car making a turn. How to fix? It’d be helpful for a writer to re-enact a scenario, see the inherent difficulties in a situation and develop plausible actions.

Mistake #4: Caller IDs can lie. These days, “faking” a caller ID (also called “spoofing”) is a service offered by numerous Internet sites – for example, Spoofcard.com, Telespoof.com and SpoofTel.com. In a recent story we read, a seasoned private investigator received a threatening call from a stranger. The PI read the number on his caller ID, recognized it as being a close friend’s number, and wondered how the caller had obtained his friend’s cell phone. Considering how prevalent spoofing is, it surprised us this experienced PI didn’t immediately guess the number had been spoofed – and that maybe the caller had spoofed the PI’s friend’s number to encourage the PI to answer the phone.  Which, after reading further, was exactly what had happened.

The only “fix” for this is for writers to better understand the world of spoofing. It doesn’t cost much to sign up for a spoofing service – a writer can experiment with it, see how it works and apply the technique in the story.

Mistake #5: Trash is ripe with clues. Sometimes we wonder why we don’t read about more fictional sleuths rummaging in trash for clues – and then sometimes we wonder why a savvy sleuth has so blithely ignored a significant whiff of the truth.

For example, in a recent story a PI, hot on the trail of a crime, noticed a small bag of garbage lying on her front porch and wondered if that was accidental or if it meant something.  Hello?  A gift of garbage and she wonders if it’s significant? The PI carried the trash around for several hours until someone else (a non-PI) said, “Hey, there might be a clue in that trash!”  Guess what?  There was!

No fix here except to recommend a writer understand that most PIs understand the value of trash hits. We discuss trash hits in detail in our book. Also, here’s a link to an article Colleen recently wrote about conducting trash hits: http://bit.ly/ige9ne


Thank you to Sandra Parshall and Poe’s Deadly Daughters for hosting us today. Feel free to post a comment or ask a question – at the end of the day, we’ll pick a name at random from the comments and forward that person a Kindle version of How to Write a Dick. If you don’t have a Kindle device, there are free, easily downloadable Kindle apps for PCs and Macs.

Colleen Collins co-owns Highlands Investigations in Denver, Colorado. Her articles on private investigations have appeared in PI Magazine, Pursuit Magazine, PInow.com and other publications. She's written 20 novels for Harlequin and Dorchester and has spoken at regional and national conferences about writing private eyes in fiction.

 Shaun Kaufman co-owns Highlands Investigations, and has worked in and around the criminal justice field for over 30 years as a former trial attorney and a current investigator. He's published articles in PI Magazine, the Denver Law Review and other publications, and has presented workshops on a wide variety of investigative topics, including crime scenes, how PIs effectively testify in trials and gang evidence.
 
How to Write a Dick: A Guide for Writing Fictional Sleuths from a Couple of Real-Life Sleuths is available on:

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00595K1UK/ (shortened url: http://amzn.to/pEhaP6 )
Nook:http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/how-to-write-a-dick-colleen-collins/1104170465?ean=2940012841513&itm=1&usri=how%2Bto%2Bwrite%2Ba%2Bdick/ (shortened url: http://bit.ly/pT3bf8)

Waiting for the Paint to Dry

Sharon Wildwind

[My apologies for the delay in posting. My service provider went down last night and no amount of cajoling, spells, or waiving my princess wand around could make any connection to the Internet until now.]

Writing is about grammar, spelling, and a flow of ideas, isn’t it?

Yes, in part, but it’s also about waiting for the paint to dry.

I am genetically-incapable of walking past a Wet Paint sign without touching the forbidden surface. When I pull away my paint-encrusted fingertip and say, “I guess it hasn’t dried yet,” my husband’s stock reply is, “Duh!”

William Perhudoff, a Canadian abstract painter is 93-years old and still painting. His vibrant, colorful works gained national attention in the 1970s. Even as his career flourished, Perhudoff continued to farm in Saskatchewan.

The reason for my life-long dedication to farming was that I had to do something while waiting for the paint to dry.
~William Perhudoff

Unfortunately, as writers we don’t have a tactile clue to tell us when our writing has “dried” or more likely “dried up.” Grammar, spelling, and idea flow aside, a lot of writing is about knowing when to start, knowing when to stop, and having enough productive and fun distractions to keep us from writing the life out of our work.

To be a good writer means developing habitual ways of getting our body in a chair, our fingers on a keyboard or wrapped around a pen, our head in a writing space, and leaving all three there long enough and often enough to do productive work.

I’m getting better at finding the Zen or going into the Zone. This morning I sat down to develop characters. Next thing I knew, it was noon. I swear it had been nine o’clock just a couple of minutes before, but since I had substantial work done on two characters, in all likelihood three hours had past.

I’m not so good yet at pulling the plug before I get tired and cranky. I suspect the underlying metabolism is akin to a runner’s euphoria, which marathon runners experience when they cross the finish line. When writing is going really, really well, I have this certainty that I can do anything, absolutely anything and everything, for ever and ever. About half an hour later I feel out-of-sorts, if not downright depressed, because glucose levels and other chemicals are bouncing around my brain like ping-pong balls.

What I need is an early-warning system, something like those pop-up indicators embedded in holiday turkeys. When the indicator pops up, the bird is done. I want an early warning pop-up that says, “Stop writing this instant. If you write one more sentence, you are going to be so out of sorts that you won’t have any fun the rest of the day.”

At least, like Perhudoff, I have quite a few fun things to occupy myself between the time I climb out of the writing chair and the time I climb back in again. None of which, I’m relieved to say, involve agricultural odors, John Deere tractors, or wheat futures. For which, all things considered, I am very grateful.

-------
Quote for the week:

Writing is a marathon. Warm up, write, cool down. Eat right. Drink water. Exercise for stamina, balance, and staying power.
~Sharon Wildwind, mystery writer, and sometimes artist waiting for the paint to dry

Secret Agent Man, Where Are You?

by Julia Buckley

This summer I've found myself longing for a really good suspense flick--a new Bourne movie or even something like Disturbia, which tries to capture the excitement of earlier suspense movies (in this case, Rear Window). But aside from a few superhero rehashes (the most promising of which, Captain America, opens next weekend), there's not much for mystery lovers to see on the big screen this summer.

Considering how well a great thriller usually does at the Box Office, why aren't they coming out all the time? Considering how many mystery writers have written amazing, edge-of-your-seat novels, why isn't Hollywood snapping them up by the dozen? Instead, I go to the movies and am treated to trailers for movies so insipid I can't believe they made it past the discussion phase--including a re-make of Footloose in which the plot seems to be that, after a terrible car crash in a small town, the town fathers have outlawed dancing. At least that's what the really long advertisement suggests.

Therefore I've had to turn to Netflix to rediscover some old movies in hopes of getting my suspense fix. Last night we saw The Notorious Landlady (Jack Lemmon, Kim Novak, 1962) which, although it is really not at all suspenseful in the modern way, has some lovely photography and moody shots of foggy London that helped to create atmosphere in this funny mystery. Novak's acting is terrible and Lemmon does too many comical double-takes, jutting out his chin to defy the world that says his sexy landlady may have committed murder. The movie is slow to start, but it picks up steam along the way and becomes a visual feast by the end, in a wonderful scene set in Penzance, with a British band playing Gilbert and Sullivan as a built-in soundtrack to the action.

We've also discovered some lovely French suspense films, including Tell No One, which is so labrynthine that you really have to pay attention to the subtitles.

But today I'm pulling out my box set of Secret Agent Man, (aka Danger Man) the series starring my first fantasy boyfriend, Patrick McGoohan. These stylish episodes have titles like "The Room in the Basement" in which "Embassy walls and diplomatic immunity hide the kidnapped colleague of agent John Drake."

Ah. Should be fun, and a nice alternative to some of the ridiculous attempts at moneymaking that are now in theatres.

Oh, and those secret agent men above, who love a good espionage flick more than I do, are now tall and unwilling to pose for their mother in fake movie posters. But in the nostalgic '90s they made awfully cute Danger Men, especially because they're wearing those coats over their pajamas. :)

Canada Calling: Jayne Barnard

Jayne Barnard is a lifelong historical mystery reader and has recently begun to write in that genre. It is fitting that she lives almost in the shadow of the Military Museums in Calgary. Her award-winning short fiction has appeared in Canadian magazines and anthologies since 1990 and she was shortlisted for the 2011 Unhanged Arthur, awarded by the Crime Writers of Canada every year for best unpublished mystery manuscript.

Jayne grew up on military bases in Canada, the USA and Europe, where visiting historical battlefields was a regular weekend activity. After visiting the site of the Battle of Waterloo, she read Georgette Heyer’s acclaimed account of the battle in An Infamous Army. Heyer’s work in that novel and in The Spanish Bride showed Jayne that it was possible to tell deeply personal stories in the midst of accurate military history. It has taken her twenty years of learning the craft of fiction to begin to tell such stories effectively.

She won the Bloody Words 2011 Bony Pete short-story contest, for her story Each Canadian Son. Bony Pete is held each year in connection with the Bloody Words Convention. The contest is open only to registered attendees and the convention’s host city—in this case, Victoria, British Columbia—must figure in the story somehow. Any time period is allowed.

Her winning story was published in Monday Magazine, a weekly Victoria, British Columbia arts and entertainment magazine. Read her story here.

For those not familiar with the Dunsmuir family, James Dunsmuir (1851 – 1920) was the heir to a wealthy coal family, and a strident anti-unionist. His businesses had a huge impact on the British Columbia economy. Eventually Premiere (highest elected provincial official) and later Lieutenant Governor (the King’s representative) of British Columbia, he eventually retired to his mansion, Hatley Castle, in Victoria. After his death, Hatley Castle was, for many years, the Canadian Royal Roads Military College, which trained officers for the Canadian Navy.

Jayne says about Each Canadian Son:
Military action does not occur in a vacuum; it is intrinsic to the society that bred the politicians, the soldiers, and the ordinary citizens who sacrifice their loved ones to the machine of war. Each Canadian Son is not primarily a story of the military, it examines some unintended consequences of the jingo-ism deliberately whipped up for World War One. The Lusitania riots were not confined to Victoria, BC. They occurred in other cities across Canada and in Britain, but not with the destructive force or resulting societal disruption of the Victoria riots where Canadian soldiers faced down other Canadian soldiers in a form of martial law that could, briefly, have resulted in a civil war, and where many German-Canadian families took tremendous financial losses when they left Victoria forever in the aftermath.

Making that wider story known through the very real, very personal experience of a great-grandfather on the Victoria Police Department is an undertaking Georgette Heyer might have approved.

For more information about Jayne, visit the Unhanged Arthur site.

RESEARCH

by Sheila Connolly

As a mystery writer, I have to do a certain amount of research.  That's fine with me, because once I aspired to be an academic art historian, and that requires a lot of research (including taking those terrible trips to peculiar foreign countries and struggling through dusty old museums and crumbling cathedrals--poor me). I love learning new things, whether or not I ever use them in a book.

The Roman Forum

But how do you know how much you need to know?  How do you know when to stop?

Let me tell you a true story.  Many years ago (twenty-six, to be exact), when my husband and I lived in California, I was enrolled in a University of California evening MBA program.  I was also working full-time, and I was pregnant and then gave birth my daughter, when I took a generous (ha!) eight-week maternity leave.  Let me say that I missed only one class, and took the make-up exam a week later (bringing along my own pillow).

In any case, one of my classes required a research paper, and I had an infant at home and no babysitter.  (This was before the Internet, remember.) There was no way I was going to be able to get to a library to do the research I needed. But...this was California, and we were much into recycling even then, so I had a three-foot stack of newspapers in the garage waiting to be bundled up and disposed of responsibly.  And that's where I did my research.  In the garage.

As I dimly remember it, the paper involved analyzing the inconsistent public positions regarding federal strategies for the regulation of the oil industry, or something like that.  And I pulled enough information from articles in that stack of newspapers to write a paper that received an A+ (the only one in my long academic career) and  enthusiatic personal comments from the dean of the business school.

There's a lesson in here somewhere:  you need to know only enough to be able to discuss something intelligently,  and you need to know the expectations of your audience.  You do not have to become an instant expert about Chinese porcelains of the early 17th century (leave that kind of thing to the academics); you need to be able to say that the blue-and-white piece lying in shards around the murder victim was most likely old and Chinese in origin.

That's not to say that you should skimp on research, especially if you enjoy it.  Since firearms figure consistently in mysteries (although I've yet to shoot anyone in my books), I have taken a few classes in handling and shooting weapons.  I found that I liked it (what can I say?  I cut my teeth on TV Westerns, and had a cap gun at the age of four), and now I have a carry permit (more research--what are the firearms regulations in a variety of states?  Massachusetts:  strict; adjacent Vermont:  nil), although I haven't gone as far as purchasing a weapon (although my husband has a couple). 

In another case, in a book coming out next year (Fire Engine Dead), I needed information on the psychological profile of arsonists.  We probably all think we know something about firebugs (courtesy of television again), but I wanted to get more details and make sure that what I wrote was accurate.  I discovered that there is a forensic psychologist who specializes in arsonists--and she lives and works in Pennsylvania, only a few miles from where my fictional protagonist lives.  Serendipity, obviously!  I've talked with her, I've read her publications, and she will get credit in the book (and appear under a pseudonym).

I believe we have an unwritten contract with our readers.  They expect us to get the details right, so they can concentrate on trying to figure out whodunnit before we reveal it.  If we don't, they write to complain.  But if we get too absorbed in trying to get everything just right, the book will never get written.  We've got to find the happy middle ground.

Have you ever written to an author to complain about a mistake?

Tips on interrogation from an NYPD pro

Elizabeth Zelvin

Joseph L. Giacalone of the NYPD enlivened a recent meeting of the New York chapter of Sisters in Crime with a nuts-and-bolts talk about the art of interrogation. Joe is a supervisor whose varied positions over almost twenty years have included Commander of the Cold Case Homicide Squad. He has an MA in Criminal Justice and teaches investigations and interrogations at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He’s also the author of The Criminal Investigative Function: A Guide for New Investigators, a textbook meant for law enforcement students but also of interest to mystery writers.

Joe is an engaging speaker who can make an audience laugh while imparting a great deal of information about what to do and not to do in an interrogation (or fictional scene about an interrogation) and—as we have come to expect from law enforcement professionals—busting a number of myths that our whole culture has come to believe thanks to TV cop shows. Here’s some of what I learned.

The interrogation (not to be confused with interviews) is the last step of the investigation, after the investigator has gathered as much information and evidence as possible. It’s not a fishing expedition but the way to use the answers the investigator already has to get an admission or confession from the suspect.

One investigator asks all the questions, in order to gain maximum rapport with the suspect and keep things from getting confused. The other investigator takes notes and stays silent. No double-teaming. No good cop, bad cop. No yelling at or bullying the suspect. The purpose of good interrogative technique is to get the suspect as comfortable as possible and therefore ready to spill the beans.

Custody + Interrogation = Miranda. On TV, the cops pounce, snap the handcuffs on, and tell the suspect he or she has the right to remain silent, whether it’s on the street or in the suspect’s home. Not in real life. They may have the suspect in custody, but the interrogation is going to take place on police turf, in the “box,” the carefully prepared small, windowless room with the uncomfortable chair for the suspect. And that’s where the Miranda warning is issued.

Once the suspect demands a lawyer, the interrogation is over. That detail, used frequently in fiction, is true. Up to that point, the police are allowed to lie, mislead, and set traps for the suspect. But they cannot fabricate evidence. (Allowed: “We found your fingerprint at the scene.” Not allowed: “See this paper with your name and a fingerprint on it? That’s your fingerprint, found at the scene.”)

Joe talked about the difference between open-ended questions (“Do you know why you’re here?” “Why don’t you tell your side of the story?”), with which the interrogation opens, and questions meant to elicit facts (“At what time did you get home?” “Do you own a gun?”), which can then be used to trip up a suspect who’s been lying. He suggested a good way to get the suspect to contradict a lying narrative, eg a story about where he was and what he was doing on the day of the murder: ask him to tell it backwards. No leading questions—that one I knew—and no unclear or compound questions. (Not “Where did you go, and what did you do?” but “Where did you go then?” and wait for the answer before asking the next question.)

The investigator avoids words that will keep the suspect closed up and on the defensive, such as “murder,” “kill,” “rape,” or “dead.” Rather, there was “an incident” in which “something happened” or “someone got hurt.”

One detail that surprised me: only recently has the NYPD started recording interrogations, using video in a pilot program. On the other hand, the investigator will want to get a written statement from the suspect at the end of the interrogation (“Don’t you want to get your side of the story on paper?”)

Joe Giacalone is due to retire soon and thinking about what next—maybe even trying his hand at fiction. He told us that someone asked him if he thought he could sell cars. “Are you kidding?” Joe said. “I’ve been selling jail for the past twenty years!”

You can find more about Joe Giacalone on his website at www.joegwrites.com.

Clues to the Inner Person

Sandra Parshall


Have you ever trusted somebody you shouldn’t have, and realized later that all the negative signs were there, if only you’d been willing to see them? It happens all the time in fiction, and it’s common in real life. Most of us probably think we’re good judges of people, and we know what kind of person we like and trust. Why, then, do so many become entangled in damaging relationships, and why do con artists never run out of pigeons?

Writers should probably be glad people misjudge each other so often – this means we’ll never run out of material for stories – but the inability to see others as they really are causes a lot of grief and nasty surprises in real life. Can we do anything to improve our odds of judging people correctly? A Psychology Today article by editor Hara Estroff Marano proposes that we can – if we pay attention to what we’re seeing and hearing.

In the article, Williams College psychologist Susan Engel says that six elements of character – intelligence, drive, sociability, capacity for intimacy, happiness, and goodness – are in place early in life and change little as people age. What you are as a child is basically what you’ll be as an adult, although people may give the impression of changing if they learn to express an element of character in a different way.

So what should you look for when trying to assess someone’s true nature?

Intelligence: This is probably the most highly valued attribute among humans. It’s easy to spot even in an infant. Intelligence shows up in a person’s ability to define problems, see the pros and cons of a dilemma, grasp complex situations, find new ways of looking at things, and set aside emotion when making decisions. Evolutionary psychologists believe a sense of humor is another sign of intelligence, because humor requires taking a novel perspective on information.

Drive: How can you tell whether a person has the drive to succeed in life? More is required than dogged determination. A person with genuine drive is motivated by passion and takes pleasure in work and achievement. She has faith in herself, trusts her decisions, and is optimistic about the outcome.

Sociability, the capacity for friendship: A person who is capable of friendship cares about people for their own sake, not for what they can do for her. She’s interested in their lives and cares about their feelings. She’s available emotionally when needed. Even an introvert who enjoys spending time alone can have a sociability isn’t whether a person has a huge number of friends, but whether he or she has any.

Capacity for intimacy: Today’s world is filled with false intimacy. We can turn on TV and hear strangers revealing the darkest secrets of their lives. True intimacy involves one-to-one trust. Psychologists agree that a child’s first caregiver sets the pattern for all future relationships. If that first relationship isn’t consistently loving, the child will have difficulty growing into an adult who can form intimate, trusting connections.

Happiness: We all joke about people who just aren’t happy unless they’re unhappy. The world is always plotting against them, somebody is always trying to bring them down – in their minds, anyway. They can rise to the top, lording it over others all the way, but it will never be enough. And boy, are they a pain to be around.

Goodness/morality: Empathy is the big factor here. If a person can’t empathize with others, he’s not going to care about their goals, welfare, and happiness. A moral person is also willing to help others, and can control negative emotions such as anger that could cause him to hurt others. These are also traits that show up early in life and seldom change.

Most of us lack one or more of these qualities. Ted Bundy, for example, was intelligent, but he wouldn’t get high marks for much else. An intelligent, “good” person might have lots of friends but lack the drive to succeed in a demanding career.

What kind of behavior in others sets off alarm bells in your head? Have you ever broken off a relationship in its early stages because you got a glimmer of what could be a very bad trait lurking beneath the other person’s surface? What kind of adult do you think your child or grandchild will be, based on the traits he displays now?

How to Postpone Writing

Sharon Wildwind

Ever get one of those months? Maybe the last month in graduate school or the first month after a new baby comes home?

With a writing deadline last week, sandwiched between two art deadlines; shift trades with my job-share partner; an on-again/off-again feeling that I’m coming down with a cold; and a raft of niggling appointments cutting into most days, I feel like Alice’s white rabbit. From the time I get up to the time I go to bed, my most compelling thought is I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date.

I know that my two sets of characters — one in a play and one in a novel — are out there somewhere, though goodness knows what they are doing with their time. I’ve barely spoken to them in the past twelve days. Since they are all relatively new characters I haven’t yet introduced them to one another. At least my two older sets of characters knew one another intimately. When I hit a spell like this they amused themselves with tales of the gosh-awful things I’d asked them to do in their respective series.

Thank goodness I had a writing teacher who insisted that I learn how not to write. He warned me that there would be days, weeks, (hopefully not) months like this, and that it was as important to know how to retain a story in my head as it was to write a story.

Just in case you ever have days, weeks, (hopefully not) months like I’m having right now, here are some tips on how write while, at the same time, postpone writing.

Initially work with a time span of a few hours. Set yourself a task like, this morning instead of writing, I’m going to take a walk and think about writing. This afternoon I’ll write what I thought about. Gradually lengthen the time frame from a few hours to one day, to three days, to five days. That’s about the limit. Most people, even those who practice doing this a lot, start to lose details after several days.

Some people are detail magpies. They collect detail after detail, rearranging them until they built a big picture, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Other people like to look at the puzzle box first. They see that one small area contains a black-and-white floor and go looking for all the black-and-white pieces first. Then they look for the red pieces that make up the rose vase on the table, and so on. The first type of learner is specific-to-global and the second is global-to-specific.

Why does this matter? Because specific-to-global learners will remember details easier and global-to-specific learners, will have an easier time remembering overviews such as theme, stakes, and character impressions. So while you’re taking that walk, focus on the easier things to remember.

Since I’m a global-to-specific learner, I find it easier to think about the big picture. That doesn’t mean I won’t notice a perfect park bench for Jason and Tiffany to sit on while having their fight, or that I’ll ignore the juicy dialog I overhear in the coffee shop, but what I’ll try to keep in my head is the bigger picture of where the story is going.

Most of us use different learning techniques in different situations, but some generalizations can be made. In North America approximately 85% of people who have participated in learning-style studies are, like me, mixed visual/kinesthetic learners. That means I learn best through a combination of seeing something and doing something. If someone forced me to sit on my hands, close my eyes, and just listen, chances are I would remember very little. Only about 15% of those tested learned best by just listening.

You’re going to need a small, portable, dedicated place to make notes. If you’re a listening learners, get yourself a recorder. If you’re a see it/touch it learner, buy a small notebook. The key here is that word dedicated. This recorder/notebook is for remembering writing only. The more you dilute this tool with shopping lists, the address of your new dentist, or a note to call Sue, the less effective it will be to helping you remember the story.

For the listening learner, life is simple. Talk anything into the recorder: snippets, key words, lines of dialog, impressions, a description of a woman’s suit that would be ideal for your protagonist, and so on. Sing song snippets. Recite poetry. Create doggerel or limericks. When it comes time to write, sit down, close your eyes and just listen. The sounds should evoke material that can be translated to pen, typewriter, or computer.

For the see it/touch it learners, practice taking notes on the fly, a few key words — Jason-Tiffany-green bench-birch tree-hot day-big argument—will be enough to get the creative memories flowing. Take photos. These days few of us run around without a digital camera. Make small drawings and diagrams. You don’t have to be an artist. Who cares if your bench looks like it’s made from popsicle sticks? You’re going to know that it’s Jason and Tiffany’s bench and that they had a big argument there.

The big pay off in all of this is not only that these techniques come in handy during the months like my July, but that you start to take advantage of the gifts that come along every day, those perfect images, words, and connections you will want to use when you sit down to write.

_____
Quote for the week:
Can anyone remember what we were working on three months ago?
~Hollywood writer, returning to work after the writers’ strike, February 2008

Rooted in The Group

by Julia Buckley

Since 2000 I have been a member of a very supportive and talented writing group. The members have ebbed and flowed over the years, but the group still exists, and the members have gradually become published, one by one.

Next week the group will meet in my back yard. My sons put up a new mini-gazebo (the last was destroyed by a storm) and re-did the Italian lights so that we can stay out there until dark. My husband has promised to make pina coladas, and we have set up the comfortable padded chairs.

Yes, ambiance helps. But once we gather around the table, it will be about the work. Usually we share our latest communications with agents. One of our members just received an offer of representation after many rejections, so this will be something to celebrate! But we will also offer condolences to those who received the all-too-familiar refrains:

--"interesting, but not for me."
--"I'm going to have to pass on this one."
--"An agent really has to fall in love with a work in order to represent it, and that didn't happen here."

That last one, despite its attempt to let one down easy, is particularly hurtful, we all agree.

We'll talk about other things, as well: First, about Kindle and the changing landscape of publishing; perhaps about conferences attended and the quality of information received; perhaps also about opportunities with small presses.

And then, finally, we'll look at the manuscripts in front of us. Next week we're looking at two: a literary mystery (not mine) and a young adult novel. We'll analyze content and react to voice and diction and deconstruct plot.

Like any good critique group, we ALWAYS start with what is good. We aren't afraid, however, to dig into what needs work, and often the second group of comments is far longer than the first. We all know that we can't succeed unless we work and re-work and then work again. One of the former members of our group revised her novel for ten years before she got it published. Once, in a graduate fiction-writing class, she was told to start again with the first sentence and throw everything else away. She did it. We learn these lessons from the members of our group; in some cases they save us the pain of going through something ourselves, and in other cases, it softens the blow to know that they have gone through it, too.

Sometimes we ask ourselves why we do it at all. The failures outweigh the successes, and even the successes have led to extremely hard work and occasional heartbreaks. So why, why, have we been meeting since 2000, and why do we all write?

The answer is--because we want to. We even like it. And when we're inside the writing, it's not about the eventual success or failure, but about the joy of creation. Together, we are able to share something that not everyone has experienced, and so we continue to do it.

Feel free to stop by and join us. We'll be under the shaded tent, bent over stacks of white paper, slightly tipsy from our icy drinks, but focused, focused as ever, on the goal.

Descendant of the Fire Goddess

By Jeanne Matthews 

“Pele” was all things volcanic to the ancient Hawaiians. She was the fire, the lava, the steam, the new-formed land, and a temperamental goddess – hard to predict and hard to appease.  Pele has spawned almost as many myths and legends as the volcanoes have spawned scientific studies. A superstitious belief in the powers of Pele has persisted in spite of the overwhelming dominance of Christianity, and not without some strong circumstantial evidence.

There are five volcanoes on the Big Island of Hawaii. Two are extinct, one is dormant, and two are active.  A sixth “baby” volcano remains 3,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, but it’s growing by leaps and bounds. Volcanologists expect it to poke its head above sea level about a thousand centuries from now.  Mauna Kea is the tallest of the island’s volcanoes. If measured from the sea floor, it would be the tallest mountain in the world, taller than Mt. Everest. And Mauna Loa, which means Long Mountain in the Hawaiian language, dwarfs every other mountain on earth in terms of volume. It is sixty miles long and thirty miles wide and comprises fully half of the land area of the island. At 13, 679 feet, Mauna Loa doesn’t soar above the surrounding terrain like a conical volcano. Hawaiian volcanoes are broad and round like native shields. When they erupt, the lava flows in all directions.

In November of 1880, Mauna Loa burst open and began discharging lava.  There was no great concern during the winter, but over the spring the lava oozed closer and closer to Hilo.  The forests west of town glowed red and the air was thick and acrid with smoke.  By June, the fiery flow had reached the outskirts of town and real estate values plummeted.  On June 26 the flow coursed down from the stream beds above Hilo, gobbling as much as 500 feet of earth each day.  Methane explosions sounded like cannon fire and the heat and glare were intense.  

The Christian inhabitants closed their shops and businesses and thronged the churches to beg the intercession of Jehovah.  The Hawaiian inhabitants sent an urgent message to Princess Luka Ke'elikolani, a descendant of King Kamehameha I and an unreconstructed worshipper of Pele. Princess "Ruth" (as she had been re-christened by the Western missionaries) was 55 years old and tipped the scales at 450 pounds, give or take.  Her nose had been crushed in a pitched battle with her second husband and her voice boomed like thunder.  She wasn't one to be overawed by the U.S. government, or the white man's Jehovah, or Madame Pele's flare-ups.

When she came ashore in Hilo in July, Princess Ruth ordered a batch of red silk handkerchiefs, a large quantity of brandy, two roast pigs, and an unrolled taro leaf and commanded her underlings to conduct her royal personage to the edge of the flow.  The horse selected to pull her carriage wasn’t up to the task and a crew of prisoners had to be released from the Hilo jail to haul her to her destination.
 
When she was satisfied with her vantage point, she disembarked and directed that a luau be held on the spot. Then, chanting a sacred poem and swaying her imposing hips in a hula, she fed the taro leaf and the handkerchiefs into the flames.  When these had been consumed, she smashed a bottle of brandy against the hot lava, sending up a hair-singeing gust of fire.  The Princess and her party drank the rest of the brandy, ate the pigs, and slept all night in the path of Pele's progress.  By morning, the lava had cooled and the goddess had retired to her mountain.

In my new mystery Bet Your Bones, my series sleuth Dinah Pelerin meets a character much like Princess Ruth, a woman named Eleanor Kalolo who regards herself as a direct descendant of the fire goddess.  Eleanor remains a defiant pagan and a bitter critic of American policies that have trampled the rights of Native Hawaiians from the early nineteenth century to the present day.  She resents the annexation of Hawaii by American businessmen, the overthrow of the Hawaiian queen, and the subsequent degradation of Hawaii’s ancient culture and its language and customs.  Ultimately, it is the Hawaiian custom of ho’oponopono, the art of healing through confession of one’s own errors and the forgiveness of others’ mistakes, that becomes the saving grace of both Eleanor and Dinah.

Jeanne Matthews was born and raised in Georgia.  She graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in Journalism and has worked as a copywriter, a high school English and Drama teacher, and a paralegal.  She currently lives in Renton, Washington with her husband, who is a law professor, and a West Highland terrier, who is a prima donna. Visit her website at http://www.jeannemathews.com.