Character Sallis-Style

By Sandra Ruttan

I tend to say I'm more character-driven than plot-driven in the writing of my novels.

However, if I were to say that I am a character writer, it wouldn't be true. Not really. I think most people who claim to be character writers aren't. Not exactly.

The reality is, my characters drive their own actions by their behavior, which is defined by their character. However, when I start any particular novel, there is an idea of a story I want to tell. I don't simply sit down and say I'm going to write another book with Ashlyn, or Tain, or Lara and Farraday.

Before I can revisit any of my characters in a work - be it short or long - I need a story idea that fits with their character that I believe can work together.

For me, the reality is that I see character and plot as the two horses pulling the carriage. For some writers, character might be stronger than plot, and for other writers it's the other way around. However, both are required to complete the novel.

For my money, the man who is writing character novels in the truest sense is also one of the most overlooked authors writing and publishing today, and for any writer serious about learning what it is to write a completely character-driven novel, they must dive deep into the works of James Sallis.


I didn't know what to expect when I first read Sallis. And because the reading experience was unlike anything else I'd experienced before, at first, I wasn't sure how to formulate my response to the book in any way that made sense. I was used to picking up books that were about this murder or that police investigation, or this kidnapping, or that assassination plot. Books that had a goal. A defined focus. Stop the killer before he strikes again, catch the killer and bring peace to the family. Prevent global chaos and political instability. Lofty goals with high stakes.

If you bring those expectations to a Sallis book, you won't know what hit you. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are confused as a result, and move on to more familiar territory again.

For me, I was fascinated. I recall saying that as a bass player, Sallis demonstrated he knew exactly which notes to leave out, which is at least as important as knowing which notes to put in a story.

Read the Turner books, read the Lew Griffin books, and what you will be reading are books that are about them. About Turner, about Griffin. Not about any one particular case or revelation or defining moment in a career. With the Griffin books, in particular, the character is revealed one piece at a time, the layers stripped away. This was my original review of The Long-Legged Fly.

Sitting down with James Sallis’s The Long-Legged Fly, I had no idea what to expect. I knew it was the start of a series and, in keeping with a recent trend, it was yet another PI novel to make its way to the top of my TBR pile.

From the Turner books, I was aware of Sallis’s unrivaled storytelling skills. Sallis has mastered the art of painting with words, and maximizing the effectiveness of each word chosen. A typical Sallis novel runs close to 60,000 words, and yet the words I’d use to describe the writing are lush, evocative, potent.

The Long-Legged Fly is no exception. We begin with Lew Griffin in 1964 and follow his life, in segments, until 1990. The two hundred pages highlight defining moments within Griffin’s journey, and some might argue some scenes are fictional excerpts from Griffin’s later life as a novelist. However you interpret the story, it’s impossible to deny the originality of Sallis’s approach.

When I pick up a crime fiction book, I generally have some idea of what to expect. The PI genre has its own tropes, yet has certain similarities to police procedurals. In most novels within these subgenres a crime is committed. A detective is either sent out (in the case of the police) or hired (in the case of the PI) to investigate. The story unfolds from there.

The Long-Legged Fly is not about the investigations. Anyone who picks up this book expecting to sink their teeth into a prolonged investigation centered on one case, with secrets to be unearthed as the investigation unfolds, will be disappointed. Sallis effectively turns the genre on its head, making the protagonist the mystery. The book is an investigation of him, his motives, his inability to form meaningful connections with the people around him, how he justifies his actions or lack of actions, how he lives.

I’ve recently read several PI novels, including The Price of Blood by Declan Hughes, Trigger City by Sean Chercover, The Good Son by Russel D. McLean and The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay – all solid offerings by talented writers, up-and-comers who have debuted in the past few years. Following those books with The Long-Legged Fly made me wonder if part of Sallis’s secret, what makes him so distinctive, (forgive me Mr. Sallis) lies in his age. We now live in a hyper-psychoanalytic era, where we’re constantly scrutinizing behaviour and trying to uncover motives and work out issues. At this stage, I’m unwilling to make a blanket statement, but the more I’ve considered the works of Sallis in general, and The Long-Legged Fly in particular, I’ve noted my own tendency to scrutinize motivations within my own writing. Sallis avoids this type of self-indulgence, which perhaps speaks to the era he grew up in. Griffin may be self-absorbed much of the time, and is clearly self-destructive, but he isn’t on a mission to heal himself. When his father is dying and asking to see him, he does not rush to his bedside to have that one last moment where all things can be forgiven. You get the sense with Griffin that once a door’s been shut, it’s shut for good, and even if it’s been slammed or knocked off its hinges in the process, Griffin feels no obligation to go back, undo the damage and try to have a happier ending. He’s unable to sacrifice, or to change to sustain the few positive relationships he has, and appears content to move through the cycles of good and bad in his life. At the very least, he’s unwilling to invest a lot of energy in changing the outcome.





We finished the meal without talking. As Verne fathered up dishes, she said, “I’ll be going after I’ve done these, Lew.”

“But you just came back.”

She shook her head. ”A visit. That’s all you allow, Lew. Whether years or a couple of days, always only a visit to your life.” She began drawing water into the sink, squirting in soap. ”You’ve never asked me to stay with you, not even for a night.”

“But I always thought that should be up to you, V.”

“‘Up to you’. ’Whatever you want.’ How many times have I heard that all these years – when I heard anything at all? Don’t you want anything, Lew?” She turned from the sink, soapy water dripping onto the floor in front of her, hands curled back toward herself. She closed one hand and raised it, still dripping, to chest level. ”I could be anyone as far as you’re concerned Lew – any woman.” The hand opened. ”People are interchangeable for you, one face pretty much like any other, all the bodies warm and good to be by sometimes.”




Another exit from his life, and Griffin never allows himself so much as a sentence of doubt or regret, or consideration of what Verne has said to him.

When reviewing Salt River I said myself that as someone who played bass guitar, I felt Sallis had applied the skill of a musician to his writing; he understands that often, what you leave out is as important as what you put in. This holds true for The Long-Legged Fly as well. I’ve also said that the worst crime a book can commit is to be completely forgettable, and that’s a charge that can’t be leveled against Sallis. At the end of the book, despite the number of years covered within, Griffin remains a mystery, the motives behind his actions often unstated, his feelings unanalyzed much of the time. The character is himself the curiosity, and he lingers on the brain long after the last page, asking uneasy questions, presenting the possibility of realities that make most of us uncomfortable. Griffin may not be very moral, but he’s undeniably memorable. Perhaps the only bigger mystery is why Sallis is not wider known to the American reading audience.

What's in a name?

by: Joelle Charbonneau

Welcome to DSD theme week #2. This week we are discussing characters - the good, the bad and the fabulously interesting - at least we hope!

I think we can all agree that characters are a driving force for us as both writers and readers. So many mysteries and thrillers are continuing series, which means the character must grow, change and still remain compelling from book to book. Readers look forward to the next Jack Reacher or Stephanie Plum book. Love of the character has readers pre-ordering the next book and reading it the week it hits shelves.

As writers, we try to make our characters relatable to the reader. We also want them to be memorable in hopes that our family isn’t the only one that wants to see the next book arrive in stores. We want our characters to be smart and have issues that everyone will understand. But before our characters can grow into the next Myron Bolitar, we have to give them a name.

Yikes! How do name a character that you hope will one day will be remembered by readers everywhere? The name has to be memorable, but not inaccessible. If you make a name too unusual, readers might find the name off-putting. That would be bad. When writing SKATING AROUND THE LAW, I specifically tried to create a name that had a musical lit to it. I wanted the syllables to trip off the tongue. To me, Rebecca Robbins had the cadence I was looking for. I thought Rebecca was a name that people could relate to.

With MURDER FOR CHOIR, my new series coming out on July 3rd from Berkley, I used my favorite method of picking a name. I trolled Facebook. To me, Facebook and social media are great name resources. I don’t tend to use anyone’s first and last names (unless I ask first!), but scrolling the names gives me a source to view names that I might not have thought of while sitting alone at my keyboard. Because MURDER FOR CHOIR is a musical series, I found myself looking at the names of people I have performed with in my past. Also, for this new series, I was more aware of the fact I’d have to live with the name I picked for 3, 6 or hopefully more books. So I worked hard to find a name that I thought fit the heroine and was something I loved enough to write over and over and over again. With that in mind, Paige Marshall was born.

I’m not sure if I’m the only one who uses Facebook as my source for name inspiration. And not all names I come up with are driven by my Facebook experience. But it is the place I go to when I’m stuck and looking for inspiration. Which makes me wonder – how do you come up with your character names? Do you borrow from your family? Do you troll phone or baby books? And more important – who are your favorite recurring characters and why do their names strike a chord with you?

The Plotting of a Novel

by
Scott D. Parker

Would you read some chapters of my book? That was the question a co-worker and aspiring novelist asked me one day in the summer of 2005. To that simple question, I responded immediately, without thinking, with a question of my own: Sure, if you read some of mine.

Just like that, I started writing my first novel and faced my first major obstacle. You see, while my friend had already started writing his book, I hadn't written word one of mine. I knew I wanted to write a tale where Senator Harry Truman was the main character. I wanted it to be a secret history--that is, one that could have happened, but it just never made it into the history books.

A pause. How in the world do you go about writing a novel? This was 2005, way before I started a blog, way before I met the wonderful writing community on the web, and way before I had written "The End." I'm not entirely sure how I came to my plan of action, but came to it I did. I had been through graduate school in history and the grueling process of researching, drafting, and revising a thesis. I knew what I did for that project so I applied those same skills to novel writing. Before I wrote a single word of prose, I needed to know where the story started, what it did in the middle, and how it ended.

Thus, I became a plotter. And I decided to write the novel from front to back, beginning to the end.

Soon after that decision, I had a vision of a scene. It's a crucial scene in the novel so I won't give it away here. The details of this scene were crystal clear. I knew the basic players, but I didn't know how they got to that moment. So I made my next major decision: I would not write that scene until I got to it, chronologically, in the book. I would wait and arrive at that particular place and time with Truman and his partner, Texan Carl Hancock.

Notecards and Seeing the Movie in my Head

I know there is a substantial delegation of writers out there who do not plan out their novels. They prefer the immediacy of just writing and seeing what happens. I like that, too, but I do it with a stack of 3x5 notecards in front of me. For the Truman book--which ended up being called Treason at Hanford--I sat on the floor of my guest room, closed my eyes, and "saw" the book play out. Each new scene got one notecard. I numbered them in pencil because I knew they'd change. I labeled the main POV character, the other players in the scene, and an overview of the action. I underlined all names so it would be easier to see who's in the scene.

This worked for me because I was the first audience member for Treason at Hanford. Me just seeing the "film" of this book allowed me to live it, to get excited when the action picked up, to be curious when Truman and Hancock started asking the right questions, and terrified when some of the characters started acting out on their own.

Yes, that really happened. I'll admit that, at first, I had stock characters. Truman couldn't get hurt, obviously, so I needed co-stars whose fate the readers would not know. During the notecard/scene stage, these characters did just go through the motions. But something changed along the way. They came alive. They started moving and acting in ways I had not intended. And that excited me to no end.

Writing the First Draft

I got a bit impatient and couldn't wait to start the prose creation. Remember, I told my friend that I'd be giving him new chapters of mine every week when he delivered his own work. I had to bust out some pages. So, even though I hadn't mapped every single scene in the book, I knew enough to get started.

But when was I supposed to write? I had a wife, a child, two cats, and a dog. I worked full time and had other duties and responsibilities to attend. My commute was 45 minutes one way, so writing before work was out. I could write at lunch, but I usually chose to work through lunch so I could leave at 4pm and be home for the family at five. Dinner, play with the boy, and time with the wife took up most of the evening. Carving out the time to write was a choice that ended up being 10pm to midnight every night. And here's where the notecard idea paid its true dividends.

I don't know about you, but I'm a bit tired around 10pm. The last thing I wanted to do was stare at a blank computer screen with nothing to write. With the notecards, however, I knew exactly what to write: the one scene on the next notecard. The notecards, by this time, were thumbtacked on a corkboard so I could see the flow. I colored coded the names of the characters so I could visualize how many chapters it had been since a particular character's last appearance on the stage.

Every night, I took the next notecard and wrote that one scene. Often, it took the full two hours because I let the scene wander around a bit. But each scene had to end at certain way. More than once, a character would raise their meta-fictional hand and inform me that they had more to contribute to the story. I listened and, in that first draft, I put it all in. Editing was what came later.

This notecard-per-night thing worked wonders. I gave me a singular focus for those two hours: one scene. If I blew through it and still had an hour left, I might start the next one but only if I could finish it. I didn't take Hemingway's advice of stopping a writing session in the middle of a scene.

For all the power of the notecard, there was still one more fundamental thing that helped me get over the hump.

Deadlines and the Power of Peer Pressure

Every Wednesday, my friend and I ate lunch together, my one time where I didn’t work through the lunch hour. We'd deliver our fresh chapters and return the marked-up copies from the previous week. Then, we'd dissect and discuss each other’s work. I'd offer hints on how he could tighten up his story and he'd tell me what he liked and didn't like about mine.

The criticism was immensely helpful. At one point, my friend asked me about the villains and what they were doing. Since I had my notecards and my comp book--one of those black-and-white things you get when you go to college; I had one for the Truman book and put EVERYTHING in it--I easily spouted off their activities. After I'd finished, they said "Put that in the book."

Lovely. I was nearly done with Act II and now he wanted me to go back and insert new chapters and scenes from the beginning. Sigh. Thus, my next crucial decision: instead of writing notes to get to later, I stopped my forward progress and backtracked. In the end, I preferred it that way as it enabled me to deliver a better-rounded story.

In the spring of 2006, the last piece fell into place for me. As you could imagine, there is the time in the process of a novel when you just want to stop. How, then, do you keep going? In my case, it was easy: I signed up to attend the Southwest Regional meeting of Mystery Writers of America. There were to be agents there and I wanted to give them a pitch. Knowing nothing about the industry, I assumed that you had to be finished with a manuscript when you met with an agent. The conference was on 17 June, so I made my deadline 1 June (to give me time to edit).

I made the deadline. It was a grueling slog through certain passages, but I arrived on the other side. As anyone who has ever done it can attest, writing "the end" on your first novel is a sublime experience. Cloud nine was way below where I was walking. The sheer magnitude of the accomplishment was astounding. I made my pitch and the agent asked for 100 pages. Boo-yeah!

The Calvin Carter Stories

The types of short stories I write come in two flavors. One the one hand, there is the spur-of-the-minute variety. Here, I do what others do with novels: describe a scene and just go with the flow. Those are exciting, but I don’t think I could do it for a novel. The other type of short story I write—usually my Calvin Carter, railroad detective tales—require the planning. You see, Carter is an actor and he likes a little flourish when he gives the big reveal. When he arrives at that point, he likes to show off and tell the bad guy the error he, the bad guy, did to get himself caught. Thus, I need to know the story before Carter does. Who wants to be upstaged by an actor, right?

For my short story mysteries, I do plan out the main crime, the villain, and how the crime was committed. For these, I use large spools of paper from Ikea. I unroll a 4-to-5 foot swath, tape it on the wall of my writing room, and mark it up. The good thing about this pre-planning is that I can bust out the first draft of a story in one sitting. That keeps it fresher for me.

Summary

I am a planner. For novels, I work best with a road map. Having the boundaries more or less defined enables me to blossom within them.

I use notecards to write scenes. I put the notecards on a corkboard with color coding.

I use a comp book to collect any and all thoughts.

For short stories, I use paper “worksheets” on my wall.

For the actual process of writing my first book, I used an old version of Word on an old Mac laptop (OS 9 for you Mac folk). Now, I use Scrivener on my MacBook, and export a Word file whenever I need to do so.

I use my iPod Touch as an on-the-go notebook. Whenever something strikes me for Carter or any of my other characters, I pull up the text file for that particular subject, input the new idea, and date it. Yeah, I know, weird, but I thoroughly love re-reading these notes and seeing the progress. I have re-read my Truman comp book a few times just to see how I got through it all. More times that I care to admit, I’d give myself pep talks.

Both the TaskPaper and SimpleNote apps wirelessly sync on my Mac, and I can import the text files into Scrivener where they show up in the research tab. On occasion, when I don’t want to lug my laptop out of the house, I’ll carry a Bluetooth keyboard that I sync with the iPod Touch and I’ll type directly into PlainText, my favorite app for writing out in the wild.

Book of the Week: The House of Silk: A Sherlock Holmes Novel by Anthony Horowitz. A Sherlock Holmes novel, commissioned by the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself, written by the guy who created "Foyle's War." I'm in heaven. And that Derek Jacobi narrates the audio version is icing on the cake. I'm on chapter 3 and can state Horowitz has perfectly captured the style and vibe of John Watson, er, Doyle. Read and enjoy.

Beat It

By Russel D McLean

Here’s the thing to remember:

You might want to do as I say, not as I do. Like any other human being I am given to whimsy, and find that I approach something different. Let’s look at like this:
THE GOOD SON was written one line at a time, barely knowing what was going to happen from one sentence to the next. I mean, I knew my character’s motivations and more or less what the backstory was, but I didn’t know what was happening from one line to the next. This resulted in multiple drafts and cutting and a real effort to pull the story into shape. There are several different versions of the book, but the one we wound up was the one I was happiest with.

When it came to THE LOST SISTER, however, I didn’t have time to mess about. I had to supply a plot synopsis and the first 10k words in lickety-split time. Depending on how my memory is working, “lickety split” as a unit of time can vary but let’s say that it was far less time than I was used to after THE GOOD SON. I mean, this one had to be written fast.

I was at an advantage of course. I knew – as I always do – the basic motivations for the central cast. I knew my opening scene. I knew (with minor variations) my final scene. But getting there was the trick. Especially as I had to submit a plot before the novel. Something I hate doing, for fear that I’ll run off the rails at some point in the writing.

But what I realised was that I knew how to plot. It was just something I hadn’t done in long form. Yet without thinking about it, I pretty much religiously plotted all my short stories.

See, when I was a would-be author, my dad and I both subscribed to Writer’s Digest. And back in those days a young chap name J Michael Straczynski wrote the screenwriting column (with occasional assists from another fella called Larry Ditillio). And of course I wanted to be a screenwriter, then, I really did. So I hung on these guy’s every word.

And I’m sure it was Stracsynski used to talk about story beats.

Beats saved my bacon (and still do - - I wrote the third McNee novel, which will be available in the UK late next year, using beats). Now my method may or may be the same as Straczynski’s. After all, writing is a bit like cooking. You may use the same ingredients as someone else but ten to one you’ll wind up putting your own individual spin on things.

So here’s how it works (at least for me):

you divide your story into five acts or beats. Real simple. Real clear. Something like this:

1. Introduce characters and situation.

2. First inciting incident and/or complications

3. Stick characters up at the very top of the tree.*

4. Throw those damn rocks.

5. Get them the hell down.

Then you start to flesh out those beats. One sentence and idea at a time. You write beats within beats. You answer questions about how or why things happen. You flesh out and out and out until you have something that you can then turn into a prose outline. But what you ensure at every point is that working within those beats gives your story a structure. And yes, when you start writing your story with those fascinating and stubborn characters you may have to sacrifice some beats, but at least you have a rough idea of what you’re doing and most of the time you’ll find that working to plot beats forces you to account for your characters actions in ways you never expected. Often I’ve had to swap character’s fates and destiny’s for the sake of a beat and every time its worked out better than I’ve ever expected.
If I’m working for myself, I mostly work with those five beats and sub-beats taped over the desk or open in a separate window on the computer that I can click back to. But like I say, I’m not s slave to them. If it feels right to sacrifice a beat I’ll do it. But I’ll usually make new beats to work out where this change takes the stories. And I’ll keep my beat list as a reminder, as a map, as a light in the dark world where you must balance plot and character.

But what is plot, I hear you ask? Oh, that’s simple. Plot is essential. As essential as character. Because without plot – with conflict, resolution and action – character is useless. The best characters in the world cannot come to life without something to do. And by planning out those beats, by working out the rough outline of a novel, you’ll ensure that you’re always giving those gorgeous, wonderful, flesh out creations something to do. And more than that, you’ll be able to keep track of what has gone before and what has to happen next saving you embarrassing conversations with your editor about why action later in the novel contradicts completely what happened at the start.



*For those who don’t know, one of the clichés of talking about writing is to say the essence of drama is sticking your charcaters up a tree and throwing rocks at them. Yes, to be a writer you basically have to be a complete bastard.

Gunpowder, Treason And Plot.

By Jay Stringer

I've admitted this before, I think, but I wrote my first book by accident. I'd always intended to write a novel some day, but Hadn't intended to write one then. The way I stumbled onto the first full draft taught me what kind of writer I am.

I was a film student and a failed comedian. From telling jokes, writing scripts and editing short films, I'd picked up a grasp of structure. I was confident -too confident- that I knew how to tell a story. And I had a few bold and silly ideas about writing a crime film. What would it be like, I thought, to have a P.I. film set in Wolverhampton. Where the character was walking the mean streets of a post-industrial midlands town, rather than a black and white American soundstage. Where the script was full of fast, hardbitten dialogue, but it was spoken with my local dialect. Where there were slightly crooked cops, but they were crooked in the same way as any other civil servant, bored and looking to fiddle their expenses in some way, rather than gun toting mavericks.

So I thought, one day I'll write that script. I never did.

At some point I decided to see what that plot would be like as a short story. I started to write, and it was about a bartender who works as a PI in his spare time, who gets caught up in a murder mystery, in a town where murder mysteries are unusual. And I had fun with that for awhile, but I was running on empty. I hadn't had anything more than a jokey idea of inverting a few cliche's, and the story wasn't interesting me. But there was another guy at the bar, in that first scene. He had an interesting background, and didn't want to give much away about himself. He was slightly more criminal than he wanted to let on, and wasn't the most reliable of narrators. He interested me. So I kicked the bartender to the curb and let the new guy tell his story, and before I knew it, I had a messy, broody and wordy 80,000 word first draft. That first draft bore little relation to my original idea, and the final draft bore little relation to the first draft. But when I read through it, I can see the signs, I can see the books DNA.

I learned that, if I sit down with a plot in my head, I'll struggle to write. But if I can use an idea of a theme to discover a character, then that character will lead me to a plot.

I relearn this every time I sit down. Last year McFet and I were collaborating on a project. He'd created a bunch of characters and was writing the first part of a story, and I was writing the next part. In theory. I sat and thrashed out a plot. I had a scene by scene break down of what needed to happen -the only time I've tried that- so I knew what needed to happen, to whom, and in what order. If I had the story already, surely It would be a breeze?

Nope. Nothing happened for a long time. I probably drove McFet crazy with random emails about how much I didn't 'get' certain characters, and if he could tell me what music they liked, or what they talked like. I learned again that if I didn't know the characters, at least a little bit, I couldn't write. At some point the penny dropped. I don't remember what it was, it was probably a comment from McFet, I don't know. Something happened, and I knew the characters I was writing. And then the story happened. And the characters all did pretty much what I'd planned for them to do, and the story ended with the same final scene I'd intended, but I couldn't have done it without having the characters voices in my head.

What Dave said on Tuesday is true. Each time is different. I've written two crime novels, I'm halfway through an adventure story, and I'll be writing a third crime novel next year. Each one has been different. Each one is a wrestling match. So much of the work that many writers put into preparing the plot, such as the structure, the themes, the character arcs- these are all things I do in rewrites.

I find my plot by finding my characters. How to find a character? Well, that's for another time.

I want to give a few practical tips this month, so for the sake of plotting, let's just assume you've already got your character. Now get a pen and paper. Or a laptop, I'm not fussy.

-What does your character want, more than anything else in the world? Write that down

-What is the quickest way for that character to get to what they want? Write that down.

-What aspect of themselves is your character most ashamed of? Write that down.

-Who, or what, would be the biggest obstacle to your character getting what they want?

(you guessed it, right that down.)

So you have a list. It's not a big list, but you'll find you've already got more ideas spinning around in your head than when you were staring at a blank page. The next step is also pretty simple. Write a paragraph about each item on your list. By the time you've finished, you've got enough of a plot to get started writing your story.

PLOT: The Anthodome Annihilation

By Steve Weddle

Thriller writer Ari Stotle, author of The Poetics Conundrum, The Ethics Hyperbole, and The Metaphysics Gamble, has said that plot is more important than anything – including character.

Tragedy is the imitation of an action; and an action implies personal agents, who necessarily possess certain distinctive qualities both of character and thought; for it is by these that we qualify actions themselves, and these- thought and character- are the two natural causes from which actions spring, and on actions again all success or failure depends. Hence, the Plot is the imitation of the action- for by plot I here mean the arrangement of the incidents.

These “personal agents” can be CIA, FBI, MI6, KGB, what have you. But the agents must have character and thought useful to propelling the action. In this way of thinking, characters serve to move the story forward.

I've read every Dan Brown book except the last one. I think we can consider him a fairly "plot over character" dude.

Let's take a look at a couple you might not know about.

DIGITAL FORTRESS
When the NSA's invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant, beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power.

The NSA is being held hostage--not by guns or bombs -- but by a code so complex that if released would cripple U.S. intelligence. Caught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, Fletcher battles to save the agency she believes in. Betrayed on all sides, she finds herself fighting not only for her country but for her life, and in the end, for the life of the man she loves.

DECEPTION POINT
When a new NASA satellite spots evidence of an astonishingly rare object buried deep in the Arctic ice, the floundering space agency proclaims a much-needed victory...a victory that has profound implications for U.S. space policy and the impending presidential election.  With the Oval Office in the balance, the President dispatches White House Intelligence analyst Rachel Sexton to the Milne Ice Shelf to verify the authenticity of the find. Accompanied by a team of experts, including the charismatic academic Michael Tolland, Rachel uncovers the unthinkable: evidence of scientific trickery -- a bold deception that threatens to plunge the world into controversy.

But before Rachel can contact the President, she and Michael are attacked by a deadly team of assassins controlled by a mysterious power broker who will stop at nothing to hide the truth. Fleeing for their lives in an environment as desolate as it is lethal, their only hope for survival is to find out who is behind this masterful ploy. The truth, they will learn, is the most shocking deception of all.


What we have in these books -- and those like them -- is that some big thing happens and the world is threatened. OK. So what's the thing? The threat? Figure that out.

What's at stake? Is it big? Huge? Great. Make it bigger. And put a ticking clock in there. This big, devastating thing will happen in two days. Unless someone can stop it. So we need a character. Someone who can stop The Thing From Happening. It's a nuclear thing. So we need a nuclear person. A scientist. Yes. But we have to have this person apart from the others. Oh, and make the person a chick. Chicks buy more books than guys. Oh, and make her hot, too. There might be a movie.

OK, so hot chick scientist has to stop The Thing From Happening. Who wants it to happen? Someone who has A Grudge. But why? OK. Let's just put a pin in that and come back to it. No need to slow down on characters. It's like John "I Sold A Million Books On Kindle" Locke said. People don't read his books because he's a great writer. People read them because he can entertain them. So let's entertain them.

We need a love interest for the Hot Chick Scientist. Someone she'll hate at first, but wind up climbing into the shower with on the last page. Maybe it's a rival from another agency. Yeah, that's perfect. OK. This nuclear thingy is discovered and she's a government scientist and he's a corporate scientist. So they're at odds. Conflict. Great.

Yes. So there's a discovery at a government lab and she's trying to study it. She tells one of her co-workers. Someone she trusts. About The Implications. It's something that she thinks she can use to heal crippled children. She's talking to her co-worker and he says maybe it could also be used as a weapon, so she needs to keep quiet. Why? Hmmm. Oh, because the lab is at risk of losing its funding and the Man In Charge of the lab has already joined in with BigMegaCorp for the corporation to fund some trials. The public/private partnership. So she decides to keep it quiet. But then the co-worker winds up dead. And the corporate handsome guy comes in to work on the discovery. So the Hot Chick Scientist thinks her co-worker was telling the secret. Then the nuclear discovery thing goes missing. And they have to work together to find the nuclear discovery thing before it destroys the world.

OK. So what skills does she need to do this? What conflicts will she encounter? What does she need to 1. encounter conflict and 2. overcome it? She's headstrong (duh) and so she gets herself in trouble. And she won't take help. Then something something something she has to trust the handsome scientist she started out hating.

Maybe her father was killed when she was a child. Maybe she freaked out when they led the lambs to the slaughterhouse. Maybe she's afraid of being trapped in a well.

The Anthodome Annihilation 

When the USNT’s experimental lab discovers a new nuclear anthodome, Jennifer Cox, the beautiful and brilliant scientist, proceeds with what she thinks may be the cure for cancer. Despite her attempts to keep the news quiet, word reaches her father, Senator Hugh Cox, who uses his influence to bring to the team Juan Miguel Ricardo, a charming, yet arrogant scientist from BigMegaCorp.

Trapped between her father’s presidential election campaign, the proposed dismantling of her expense-ridden agency, and her developing relationship with Juan Miguel, Jennifer plummets into a devastating betrayal as her father is murdered at his home.

Before Jennifer can reach out to her family, she and Juan Miguel are trapped in the USNT secret lab as terrorists attempt to steal the anthodome – the radioactive discovery locked deep within the impenetrable vault. As Jennifer and Juan Miguel fight for their survival, the security system of the The Vault kicks in – threatening to detonate the anthodome, bringing devastation to the eastern seaboard and destroying the new love blooming between Jennifer and Juan Miguel.

Throw It All In

Plotting is so haphazard to me. It takes drafts and drafts and drafts for me to get the plot right.

But if we're talking first draft plotting, it all boils down to this: I take what I see and throw it in the mix. A cool article I saw in the newspaper? Jam it in there.

Someone telling an anecdote about their night in the city? That'll fit somehow.

A location I've only been to a few times and is perfectly creepy? I can use that.

Basically, anything cool that's running around in my head gets thrown into the mix. Then it's a smoothing out (or altogether cutting out) process. I go over and over and over what I've done and smooth out the edges, create other more jagged edges, and then I have a plot.

Okay, that's not entirely true. There are other things too. Mostly I start with a central idea. A lot of people start with a character. Not me. I start with an idea.

A detective's mother has Alzheimer's and remembers a murder from her past.

A man is convinced his ex's new boyfriend is actually a spy.

Then I just start to build. And revise.

And revise.

And revise.

It's hard to write this all out because it changes each time. Duane Swierczynski likes to say that each time he writes a novel he has to learn how to write that novel. I agree with that. Plotting is basically a different process each time. For WITNESS TO DEATH, I really had to get to know the characters.

For THE EVIL THAT MEN DO I had to be somewhere and overhear something at the right time.

So, each time I plot, I plot differently.

Yeah, I'm no help at all, am I?

Sorry, I'm just trying to get the plot that's in my head out on to paper.... for the fourth time.