Writing Down the Nitty Gritty

You've always got to assume everyone in the English speaking world is going to read your novel. Well and good. You must also make the assumption that your readers will have an intimate knowledge of every place you mention, every intersection, every stretch of road, and the geography, flora, fauna, and all the details you have so carefully harvested in the research you do for your writing.

And the readers will all be critics and they'll be outraged in you don't have the most mundane fact correct.

That's why I made my trip to Florida which probably cost at least a dollar a word. Now my characters are leaving Florida in a motor home, heading up I-95 to Boston. Have I driven this road? Mostly. In a motor home? Never.

So I'm researching campgrounds like crazy, and all the little travel details of motor home life. We actually went to an RV show a few years ago when we wanted to rent an RV to go to Burning Man (book was Festival Madness, still looking for agent). I had no idea of ever writing another RV book. Shows what I know.

Now, the RV parks are all on the web, with photos and rates and amenties. The RV in question breaks down and I have to research where you can get these suckers fixed. And the distances, so everything makes sense. Jacksonville to Myrtle Beach. Myrtle Beach to Fayetteville, NC. Fayetteville to Philly. Philly to Boston and a huge backup on I-95 around New Haven. O.K., been there, done that.

Because, you see, I need to put the screws to my characters, make them late, make them sweat, make the crazy, so a few things can happen. Man, I've said it before, this plotting is hard work, and all the underpinnings, the towns, the campgrounds, life on the road, it's, well, it's work, so when I thought, I have to get the group from Boca Raton to Boston, that seemed easy enough, but plot points are huge and I better not screw up the versimilitude or the story.

Easier said than done. So we're slowly getting to Boston, one word at a time, and I'm surprised at how hard it is.

Because in a genre novel, every little detail is subservient to the plot and the whole story and of course, the characters, and I've just about forgotten about Lotto, by now in Colombia inspecting his fabulous drug sub kits from Russia. Ah, what a tangled web we weave!

Grapeshot

The Difficulties of the Genre Novel

Naturally you want your crime fiction novel to be exciting. The use of pacing is giving me fits right now.

I have been humming along alternating action and excitement with moving the plot along. There is a budding romance, a road trip, trying to escape from the bad guy, and setting up the story for the next scenes.

Just wrapped up some drama in Jacksonville, FL, and now the characters need to be sitting in the CVS parking lot in a Boston suburb. I don’t want to describe the rest of the trip in any detail, (alas, it's not a Road Novel), but need to tell the reader, notice I said tell, not show, that my trio stopped in Myrtle Beach and that the romantic relationship has now expanded to include sex. That the little girl has got one of her heart’s desires, that the motor home has broken down causing a day’s delay. That a short day's drive has expanded due to a nightmare mess on I-95 in Connecticut, a not uncommon event, making the characters almost late to get to the bank before it closes to get the account number for the Cayman Islands bank where huge gobs of illegal drug money is stashed. Remember this is a crime story. Suspense!

Now the characters have to get to Chicago on the double, but hurry to get to the bank has created a huge PLOT Point.

Man, this writing business is hard work.

So I think what I’m going to do is set the van down in the middle of the traffic jam and let the characters sweat a little and tell us about Myrtle Beach, and the prior two days in a few short paragraphs. Then the race to the bank. All hell breaks loose. Of course the way they’ve been robbing banks in suburban Boston, I could even have a bank robbery. Hey, that’s a good idea. A man with a gun comes through the door. Yowsa! Oh boy! Yes!

Grapeshot, who is closing in on 220 pages and lots of words.

In a Key West Hot Tub

Literary characters are a breed all their own. First of all, Maxine, who insisted on being called that name, appeared just as I had completed the first chapter of my 1928 California book. She talked to me and began telling me her story. Naturally I began writing it down, and Maxine and I are off on a little adventure, maybe even a big adventure involving drug lords, lost sisters, murder and mayhem and even a little romance.

Maxine is in Key West now, in June of 2008 and she's come to see a woman who can tell her about . . . well, never mind. Suffice it to say that these two need to have a little heart-to-heart. I could have done that scene with everything hunky dory, just sitting on the patio having this nice friendly chat, but that's not what writing is about. The chat is not friendly and there's a bottle of champagne and a hot tub and a lot of angst and unexpected happenings that move the plot forward.

Everything is subservient to the forward motion of the story. There are surprises and many aren't very pleasant. Maxine, and now Nicole, are both surprising me, and all I do is tell their stories.

God, it's weird.

And in the meantime, poor Carla Curby sits on that Santa Fe train heading to California and I sure hope that when Maxine and I are finished, Carla will be as eager to tell her story.

I'm making pumpkin tarts tomorrow and a very fancy iceberg lettuce salad, and our guest is bring not the bacon but the fish, a whole red snapper that will be baked with garlic and thyme and lemon.

The rain has been general over the South Shore and environs, and we are just glad it's not the white stuff, except for the kids, who crave the white stuff.

Iris is bereft and bawls all the time because her baby is gone. The herd of eleven has been culled to seven. Some old cows, some new. Mary Ann's baby is undoubtedly sad, too, as her playmate is gone. All summer and fall they were calves together and hung out and did calf stuff. So sad.