Category: Feature
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Feature
The Soundtrack of My Writing Life
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“Where and how do you write? Office? Coffee shop? Laptop? Notebook? Magic pencil?” I love to hear authors answer these questions from readers. Like most humans, I’m a sucker for a hot tip. I figure there’s a secret out there ...
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My Characters And Personality Typing
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Those with familiarity of the Myers-Briggs system of personality ordering will recognize a couple of things about me right away. For one, I’m an introvert—I need lots of solitary time to recharge and rejuvenate. I am comfortable making decisions ...
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Just the Right Amount of Detail
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Screenwriters have a big advantage over those of us who write for print. That fact was brought home to me recently while watching one of the many excellent British mystery programs on PBS. A recurring sequence in these dramas: The ...
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The Smart Detective Conundrum
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Fresh from binge-watching Jenji Kohan’s Netflix series, Orange is the New Black and looking for more of the same, I started on her earlier Showtime effort, Weeds. This show is every bit as wild and crazy and compulsively watchable as I ...
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When Smuggling Meets Screwball Comedy
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I love Romancing the Stone. I love Charade. I don’t care that loving movies from the 80s, the 60s, or even the 40s (Bringing up Baby or The Lady Eve) dates me, because strong, screwball heroines, thrown out of their element, ...
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How to Start Writing a Mystery Novel
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The hardest part of writing a mystery novel is starting. I have a friend who dreads launching into the actual text of his book so much that he’s been writing ever more complete outlines for more than five years. The ...
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Found and Bespoke: When Mystery Writers Mislead
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People at book signings often wonder if there’s some trick or secret technique for writing a mystery. They ask about plot, as if that were the key. The plot is an engine, but engineering the spark plugs is the more ...
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A Thief in Cleveland: Writing My Debut Novel
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Where do I get my ideas? I steal them. One of the metric ton of things I’m fussing about with the release of my first novel, Too Lucky to Live, is: What sort of questions am I likely to get ...
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Diana Gabaldon Discusses “A Clash of Spheres”
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The following essay is by New York Times best-selling author of the Outlander series, Diana Gabaldon. This is one of the most entertaining, elegant and deeply emotional books I’ve read in years. (I’m tempted just to write “EEEEEEEEE!” to ...
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Cultural Diversity in Mystery Novels: Part II
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In December, I wrote about including real life diversity in mystery fiction. Depictions and plots that reflect that are an important part of the issue, but it does not end there. Deeper and more complicated is the question of how ...
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Staying Human: Orwell’s “1984” Revisited
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George Orwell’s 1984 is riding the bestseller lists again, spurred by Kellyann Conway’s ominous reference to “alternative facts” when discussing the crowds at President Trump’s inauguration. This passage from 1984 leapt to many people’s minds: In the end, the party would announce ...
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Pulling Out the Nail: Writing Lessons With Irvin Kershner
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I’ve been thinking about film director Irvin Kershner, as I work on a flat scene that desperately needs a jump start. Kershner died a few years ago, and even then I hadn’t seen him in decades — since an extraordinary ...
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Cultural Diversity in Mystery Novels
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While it is possible to find mysteries, from fluffiest to darkest, that take place in the author’s version of never-never land, I prefer mysteries set in some semblance of the real world. There, diversity equals reality. How do we incorporate ...
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Where Did Joey Getchie Come From?
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Joey Getchie may be 16 years old, but he’s been with me more than three decades. He first appeared on a manuscript page—and in 1983 it was an actual sheet of paper rolled into a typewriter—as one of the protagonists ...
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My First Literary Crush
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As a kid I read hungrily and furtively, devouring comic books and Hardy Boys novels the same way I gobbled Mounds bars and Ring Dings. I borrowed every Albert Payson Terhune novel I could excavate from the dusty stacks of ...
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Where Do Characters Come From?
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When I first met Tai Randolph, the protagonist of my series, I didn’t know her name. I knew only that the person I was meeting was quick and smart and had a head full of riotous dirty blonde curls. I ...
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When Writing is Like Landing a Plane
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Writing a transition for my book as I flew into Kennedy airport, I realized that my job and the pilot’s job weren’t all that different. Of course his takes years of training, the mastery of a highly complex machine, and ...
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When Setting Becomes a Character
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For those of you in the market for indispensable elements of mystery writing, you’ve come to the right place. As I see it, a mystery is composed of six indispensable elements: characters, dialog, plot, point of view, setting, and tension. ...