Alexandra Sokoloff's Blog, page 27

Blood Moon - FREE 5/6 - 5/-8

For the next three days you can get Blood Moon,  Book II in my Huntress/FBI series, for free on Kindle as part of an Amazon launch promotion.


Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon DE


(I know, I'm sorry, exclusive to Amazon for the first three months.  It's the financial reality of it.  But for readers of this blog - you know me - if it's a Nook or Kobo version or pdf you need, just e mail me at AXSokoloff  AT  aol  DOT  com and I will get it to you!).










Blood Moon



Twenty-five years have passed since a savage killer terrorized California, massacring three ordinary families before disappearing without a trace.


The haunted child who was the only surviving victim of his rampage is now wanted by the FBI  for brutal crimes of her own, and Special Agent Matthew Roarke is on an interstate manhunt for her, despite his conflicted sympathies for her history and motives.


But when his search for her unearths evidence of new family slayings, the dangerous woman Roarke seeks - and wants - may be his only hope of preventing another bloodbath.











And it you haven't read Book I in the series, Huntress Moon (just nominated for a Thriller Award!) it's on sale for 99 cents this week so that everyone can catch up.  (Again, if you need a different e format, let me know.)







Amazon US 

Amazon UK   
Amazon DE









People who read this blog are always asking me to talk about writing series.  I haven't so far because - well, I didn't feel qualified enough. The Huntress series is actually my first.  Apart from The Keepers paranormal series, which I write with two other authors, so it's not the same, I've always written standalones, although there are a couple of those that I will write sequels to eventually. For whatever the reason, the series is unfolding almost continuously: the action of Huntress Moon  takes place over the course of eight days,; Blood Moon picks up the action two weeks later and takes place over two weeks, with the moon cycle always determining the action. And I know that Book 3 will start a few weeks after that. It feels to me like the pace of a TV series.  



I don't think I would have done it this way if the series were traditionally published. You have to wait SO long for a book to come out from a traditional publisher. But even though I'm not a particularly fast writer (not with novels, anyway), I know I can have Book 3 out by the end of the year (especially since I don't have to sell a house in the middle of the process as I did with Blood Moon!). That's not a huge amount of time to wait for a book, so I'm pushing the envelope a little with cliffhangers. 



At the same time, one of my of this series is to leave readers thinking about what they really want to have happen next, emotionally and morally. And what they want morally may not at all be what they want emotionally.  It's that conflict that I'm exploring.



A bit of a risk, but luckily readers seem to be going with it. I'm sorry that I don't write faster, but aren't we all!



I didn't read series books for a long time; I preferred standalones (which pretty much explains why I write them...) Now I have several crime series I'm fanatically committed to (by Denise Mina, Val McDermid, Mo Hayder) and my own feeling is that I wish there WEREN'T so much time in between the action of the books.  So I guess I'm writing the way I want to read.





I'm interested in hearing from writers and readers -  do you like books in a series to stand on their own? Or are you interested in a fairly continuous, connected storyline?  Authors, if you write series, how do you handle the time issue?




- Alex

Fourteen Killer Thrillers, just 99 cents each!

Rabbit rabbit!  (Google it if you don't know...)



And a very happy Beltane, everyone!  (May Day, to the unwitchy...)



To celebrate May Day, Beltane and Cinco de Mayo -  the Killer Thrillers Author Collective is having a 99 cent bash: we're offering up 14 thrillers from award-winning, bestselling, internationally published authors, all just 99 cents each from May 1-5.









Karen Dionne - Freezing Point
Katia Lief - Waterbury
C.J. Lyons - Nerves of Steel
Daniel Judson - The Poisoned Rose 
Daniel Judson - The Bone Orchard 
Daniel Judson - The Gin Palace
Bob Mayer - Chasing the Ghost
Grant McKenzie - No Cry For Help
Keith Raffel - Drop By Drop
J.D. Rhoades - Lawyers, Guns & Money
J.D. Rhoades - Breaking Cover
Alexandra Sokoloff - Huntress Moon
Zoe Sharp - Killer Instinct
Mark Terry - Hot Money





Browse the entire 99 cent thriller list here.

















So you can grab a sinfully cheap copy of  Huntress Moon  to catch up on...



















.... before you start on Blood Moon!























And now I'm off to the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention with a suitcase full of wonderfully over-the-top clothes.  Hope to see some of you there!!



Happy May!



- Alex

Blood Moon - out now!!

(So sorry if anyone gets this post twice - we are trying to fix a problem in the RSS feed!)



Yes, Book II in my Huntress/FBI series, Blood Moon, is now live and available to buy, although my official launch is not until May 6.


Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon DE


(I know, I'm sorry, exclusive to Amazon for the first three months.  It's the financial reality of it.  But you  know me - if it's a Nook or Kobo version you need, just e mail me at AXSokoloff  AT  aol  DOT  com and I will get it to you!).

















I have been doing a million interviews (it feels like!) about the book, and about  Huntress Moon,  since the Thriller Award nomination.







Amazon US 

Amazon UK   
Amazon DE




At first you resist this kind of thing, and then you start getting into it.  After the frenzy and despair of writing and then the massive adrenaline crash/release of finishing, it's kind of fun to remember how the whole thing got started.


Here are three of by far the most frequently asked questions:




* What inspired the book?


I've been researching serial killers for years.  I'm really much more interested in what causes human evil than I am in supernatural terror.  And I've wanted to do a story about a female serial killer for just about as long.  But if you talk to FBI profilers, some will tell you that from a psychological and forensic standpoint, there’s no such thing as a female serial killer.  Women commit homicide, but not sexual homicide.  That’s a little-known fact that has interested me for a long time.  So all this time I’ve been looking for the right story to explore that issue.


The idea of how I could do it came to me in a flash at the San Francisco Bouchercon, always the most inspiring of the mystery conferences for me. One afternoon there were two back-to-back discussions with several of my favorite authors: Val McDermid interviewing Denise Mina, then Robert Crais interviewing Lee Child. (Can you even imagine...?)




There was a lot of priceless stuff in those two hours, but two things that really struck me from the McDermid/Mina chat were Val saying that crime fiction is the best way to explore societal issues, and Denise saying that she finds powerful inspiration in writing about what makes her angry.

Write about what makes you angry? It doesn't take me a millisecond's thought to make my list. Child sexual abuse is the top, no contest. Violence against women and children. Discrimination of any kind. Religious intolerance. War crimes. Genocide. Torture.


That anger has fueled a lot of my books and scripts over the years.


And then right after that, there was Lee Child talking about Reacher, one of my favorite fictional characters, and it got me thinking about what it would look like if a woman were doing what Reacher was doing. And that was it—instantly I had the whole story of  Huntress Moon .


* What is your creative process like?


This may come as a huge shock but I actually do take my own writing advice!  My usual creative process is to outline extensively using the story structure method I blog about here and write about  in my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbooks. I was a screenwriter for eleven years, and there’s no way to do that job without precise outlining.  You need to be able to tell the whole story to the studio long before you get to sit down to write.  I use index cards, the three-act, eight-sequence structure, a story grid, the whole nine yards.  But once I have that outline, the first draft can and often does take off in directions I never anticipated. The characters have their own ideas about what needs to happen.  You’d be a fool not to go with the flow in the heat of the moment, to mix a metaphor.


* Did the story require a lot of research?




Tons. I made this series hard for myself by making the main character an FBI agent, which means I had to cram a lifetime of forensics and law enforcement procedure into several months of catch up.  Luckily author and former police detective Lee Lofland has created a fabulous program for writers to experience hands-on police and forensics training under the supervision of an incredible professional staff, the annual Writers Police Academy. I couldn’t write this series without them.




And here's a question I don't get often, but that I found interesting:






* What will the reader learn after reading your book?


What will the reader learn?  Well, the first thing they'll learn, factually, is that women aren't serial killers, not per the FBI Behavioral Science definition of sexual homicide.  This sometimes generates some fierce argument.  ("Well, they WOULD if they COULD!"  Um... okay...)




But also, the series seems to force readers to question their own beliefs about justice and punishment and retribution. I am thrilled that so many people find themselves torn about what they want to see happen to my killer, and that they even find themselves hoping for a love that really shouldn’t ever happen.  So I guess what readers learn is that there may be some vast gray areas between good and evil. 




So authors, what questions do you find coming up over and over in interviews?  What's the best question you ever got?  What about what the reader will learn after reading your book?




And readers, what's the question YOU always want to ask authors?




- Alex

Blood Moon, out now!

Yes, Book II in my Huntress/FBI series, Blood Moon, is now live and available to buy, although my official launch is not until May 6.



Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon DE



(I know, I'm sorry, exclusive to Amazon for the first three months.  It's the financial reality of it.  But you  know me - if it's a Nook or Kobo version you need, just e mail me at AXSokoloff  AT  aol  DOT  com and I will get it to you!).



























I have been doing a million interviews (it feels like!) about the book, and about  Huntress Moon,  since the Thriller Award nomination.



























Amazon US 

Amazon UK   

Amazon DE







At first you resist this kind of thing, and then you start getting into it.  After the frenzy and despair of writing and then the massive adrenaline crash/release of finishing, it's kind of fun to remember how the whole thing got started.



Here are three of by far the most frequently asked questions:




* What inspired the book?



I've been researching serial killers for years.  I'm really much more interested in what causes human evil than I am in supernatural terror.  And I've wanted to do a story about a female serial killer for just about as long.  But if you talk to FBI profilers, some will
tell you that from a psychological and forensic standpoint, there’s no such
thing as a female serial killer.  Women
commit homicide, but not sexual homicide. 
That’s a little-known fact that has interested me for a long time.  So all this time I’ve been looking for the right story to explore that issue.



The idea of how I could do it came to me in a flash at the San Francisco Bouchercon, always the most inspiring of the mystery
conferences for me. One afternoon there were two back-to-back discussions with
several of my favorite authors: Val McDermid interviewing Denise Mina, then
Robert Crais interviewing Lee Child. (Can you even imagine...?)




There was a lot of priceless stuff in those two hours, but two things
that really struck me from the McDermid/Mina chat were Val saying that crime
fiction is the best way to explore societal issues, and Denise saying that she
finds powerful inspiration in writing about what makes her angry.

Write about what makes you angry? It doesn't take me a millisecond's
thought to make my list. Child sexual abuse is the top, no contest. Violence
against women and children. Discrimination of any kind. Religious intolerance.
War crimes. Genocide. Torture.



That anger has fueled a lot of my books and scripts over the years.



And then right after that, there was Lee Child talking about Reacher, one
of my favorite fictional characters, and it got me thinking about what it would
look like if a woman were doing what Reacher was doing. And that was
it—instantly I had the whole story of Huntress Moon .



* What is your creative process like?



This may come as a huge shock but I actually do take my own writing advice!  My usual creative process is to outline
extensively using the story structure method I blog about here and write about  in my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbooks. I
was a screenwriter for eleven years, and there’s no way to do that job without
precise outlining.  You need to be able
to tell the whole story to the studio long before you get to sit down to
write.  I use index cards, the three-act,
eight-sequence structure, a story grid, the whole nine yards.  But once I have that outline, the first draft can and often does take
off in directions I never anticipated. The characters have their own ideas
about what needs to happen.  You’d be a
fool not to go with the flow in the heat of the moment, to mix a metaphor.











* Did the story require a lot of research?























Tons. I made this series hard for myself by making the main
character an FBI agent, which means I had to cram a lifetime of forensics and
law enforcement procedure into several months of catch up.  Luckily author and former police detective
Lee Lofland has created a fabulous program for writers to experience hands-on
police and forensics training under the supervision of an incredible
professional staff, the annual Writers Police Academy. I couldn’t write this
series without them.




And here's a question I don't get often, but that I found interesting:
















* What will the reader
learn after reading your book?



What will the reader learn?  Well, the first thing they'll learn, factually, is that women aren't serial killers, not per the FBI Behavioral Science definition of sexual homicide.  This sometimes generates some fierce argument.  ("Well, they WOULD if they COULD!"  Um... okay...)




But also, the series seems to force readers to question their own
beliefs about justice and punishment and retribution. I am thrilled that so
many people find themselves torn about what they want to see happen to my
killer, and that they even find themselves hoping for a love that really
shouldn’t ever happen.  So I guess what
readers learn is that there may be some vast gray areas between good and evil. 




So authors, what questions do you find coming up over and over in interviews?  What's the best question you ever got?  What about what the reader will learn after reading your book?




And readers, what's the question YOU always want to ask authors?




- Alex

Story breakdown: Sense and Sensibility, Act I

I just did Sense and Sensibility with my film class and it occurs to me that I haven't posted a film breakdown in quite a while.  So let's do it, shall we?  It's spring, and this is the perfect rollercoaster of a love story.






Sense and Sensibility



Screenplay by Emma Thompson

From the novel by Jane Austen

Directed by Ang Lee

Starring Emma
Thompson, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman and Kate Winslet

1995

Running time 136
minutes




Now this is a love story: a classic book and a perfect adaptation.
There’s real emotion, real chemistry, fun comedy, real hope and fear all the
way through; the story puts us through the emotional wringer, plunging us to
the depths and lifting us back up to the heights. Get out the Kleenex and let’s
see what we can learn from this gem.








I am going to start with some
general notes first — some things I suggest you look for as you’re watching
this film — particularly in terms of THEME, HOPE, FEAR and STAKES.





Some writers who take my workshops
and read my blog complain about the films I use for examples of story elements
and structure. I’m particularly apt to use Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon and The Silence of
the Lambs — to the horror of some romance writers who wouldn’t be caught
dead (sorry, I’ll stop now) reading those books. But I always try to get
writers to understand that they can learn just as much from stories outside
their own genre, because the elements of story — and suspense — are the same no
matter how many bodies are or are not falling or how many creatures are or are
not lurking in the basement.



            Personally,
I find serious horror in Sense and
Sensibility  (and any Austen book),
and it’s not a horror of romance, either. I am, however, horrified at the Netflix
description of the film as “Austen’s classic tale of 19th century etiquette.”
This story is more about monsters in the basement than it is about etiquette.



            Actually,
it is about an evil much bigger than a monster in the basement, and if you ask
me, the fact that that monster is lurking under the romance and comedy is what
makes this story a masterpiece.



ACT ONE



            Just
wanted to note for the filmmakers among you that the credits sequence is just
titles on black, with period music underneath. This is a technique often used
with period films, I think used deliberately to slow the audience down and put
them squarely in another time. Music is a pure time machine from — or to — the
period it was written; it works on us in a way that no visual or dialogue ever
could.



PROLOGUE



            I
would say that the first short sequence (4 min.) is a prologue — and a hugely
important one.



            The
film opens at the deathbed of Mr. Dashwood, the father of our not-yet-seen
heroines. Mr. Dashwood has called in John Dashwood, his son from a previous
marriage, to whom Mr. Dashwood’s entire fortune and houses will pass under the
law of primogeniture, which bars women from inheriting property and keeps both
the patriarchy and the aristocracy intact by mandating that family fortunes
pass undivided to the eldest son of a family, with only minimal livings carved
out for any remaining male children.



            Before
he dies, Dashwood extracts a promise from John that he will take care of the
present Mrs. Dashwood and her three daughters, Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret,
who by this law of primogeniture are only allowed to inherit 500 pounds. (THE
DEATHBED PROMISE, in this case, promptly broken.)



            John’s
original intention is to give the Dashwood women, his stepmother and
stepsisters, an additional 3000 pounds so they can live comfortably on the
interest, but in the course of a carriage ride up to Norland Park, where John
and his wife will take over the Dashwood house, John’s harridan of a wife,
Fanny, whittles weak-willed John’s gift down to nothing at all: “Twenty pounds
here and there should be ample. What would four women need with more than 500
pounds?”



            (Also
in this carriage ride, John also voices the FEAR that Marianne will lose her
bloom and end up a spinster like Elinor.)



            This
series of scenes is a beautiful — and outwardly funny — dramatization of greed
in action, and Fanny makes a detestable villain. But more importantly, the
scenes introduce the real villain of the story, and every Austen story:
primogeniture, which kept the rich superrich, the poor practically or literally
indentured as servants to the rich, and women enslaved to men, for centuries.



            Stylistically,
Jane Austen was writing comedies, but the stories are built on social outrage,
and I believe it’s that canny blend that made and keeps these books classics.




            So the death of Mr. Dashwood, and the
Dashwood women’s subsequent disinheritance, is the INCITING INCIDENT. (4:30)



            One
more note as you’re watching this film: pay special attention to how the
storytellers use weather to create mood and emotion, and also pay attention to
the set decoration: the paintings on the walls behind the characters constantly
comment — often hilariously — on the story and themes.



SEQUENCE ONE:



            The
whole next sequence is very filmic, played at first almost as a montage, with
fast cuts between extremely short scenes. We are introduced to the extremely
sympathetic Dashwood women: Mrs. Dashwood, Elinor, Marianne and 11-year old
Margaret, as they are reduced to guests in their own house in the midst of
their deep grief over the loss of their husband and father. While Fanny
steamrolls through the house claiming everything in it as her own, the Dashwood
women scramble to find other living arrangements on their tiny inheritance.



These are great character introductions to Elinor and Marianne, Emma Thompson
and Kate Winslet. The filmmakers deftly find comedy even in this tragic
situation, eg. Elinor’s first line to Marianne as Marianne plays the world’s
most doleful dirge on the pianoforte: “Would you play something else, dearest?
Maman has been weeping all morning.”



            I
see this movie as having a dual protagonist, even though Elinor is clearly the
more dominant one and the point of view character. But Austen, and Thompson in
the adaptation, are using the sisters to demonstrate a theme: literally, sense
and sensibility. At the beginning of the story the sisters are out of balance:
Elinor is all sense and Marianne all sensibility (passion). By the end of the
story (and partly through the crucible of love), they have each gained some of
what the other has, to make both of them more fully realized women.



            This
is what you could call a “character cluster,” like the three-brother or
three-sister structure you often see, especially in stories with a fairy tale
structure like the Harry Potter books/films. If you’re thinking about writing a
dual protagonist, this is an excellent example to study.



            Note
also the restatement of THEME when Margaret asks Elinor why John and Fanny are
coming to take over Norwood when they already have a house of their own. Elinor
tells Margaret, “Houses go from father to son. It's the law.” That extra
emphasis on how this is the law makes it very clear what the problem is, and
keeps this societal FORCE OF ANTAGONISM very present in the story.



            Now,
enter Edward Ferrars, Fanny’s intelligent but very reserved brother, Hugh Grant
at his diffidently charming best. (The scenes become longer here.) Edward’s
formal bow, and the Dashwood women’s polite curtseys in return, become a
RUNNING GAG in the film (a running gag is a staple of comedy). Each time the
action stops as Edward does his best at this bow, but there’s something always
just a little off about the timing.



            Marianne
wants to hate him, especially because Fanny has kicked Margaret out of her own
room to give her brother the best view in the house, but Edward has already
noticed the offense and quietly moved himself to a guest room.



            Edward
instantly understands the pain of the Dashwoods’ circumstances, bonds with and
draws out youngest daughter Margaret, and falls hard — albeit reservedly — for
kindred soul Elinor. In a beautiful scene in the library, Edward and Elinor
coax Margaret out from where she has been hiding under a table by pretending
ignorance of the source of the Nile, and we see that Edward and Elinor are
perfectly, beautifully matched: intelligent, witty, sensitive, kind, and
off-the-wall. They are at their most charming when they’re together. This is a
common and I think crucial scene in any romance or romantic subplot —THE DANCE
— where we see that two people are perfect for each other. So much more
meaningful than “meet cute”!



            And
this scene gives us our great HOPE for Elinor: that she has found the great
love of her life and they will make a true, encompassing marriage. It’s also, I
would say, her CALL TO ADVENTURE (separate from the INCITING INCIDENT) —
meeting her true love.



            But
there’s more to this than love. In her circumstances, Elinor’s life and her
family’s lives depend on her making a good marriage, because women are
prohibited from earning an income. A happy marriage to a well-off man is the
dream, the best possible outcome — but the stakes couldn’t be higher, and
Elinor’s situation is more than tenuous; she has not the slightest power over
her future except to marry. So this is the unstated but clear PLAN: to marry
for love and secure the family’s future. (15 min.)



            We
see the couple’s feelings deepen when Edward catches Elinor crying as she
listens to Marianne play their father’s favorite song on the piano. He gives
her his handkerchief (which becomes what Joseph Campbell calls a TALISMAN: a
significant object for a character, like Luke Skywalker’s light saber and Harry
Potter’s — well, lots of things, but the cloak of invisibility, the Nimbus
2000, etc.).



            The
ANTAGONISTS, Fanny and Mrs. Ferrars (Fanny and Edward’s mother), immediately go
about preventing this match. (Mrs. Ferrars is never physically present, only
offstage, but very present in the form of the threat of disinheriting Edward if
he makes an “unworthy marriage.”) (18 min.)



            The
Dashwood women receive an offer of a cottage in Devonshire for minimal rent
from Mrs. Dashwood’s wealthy cousin, Sir John, but Mrs. Dashwood has seen the
“attachment” forming between Elinor and Edward and tells Marianne that they
will put off the move. (Look at the painting of a man on the wall right behind
Mrs. Dashwood as we see her thinking this over: it’s almost like a comic book
bubble showing her thoughts. This is the PLAN — to give Elinor opportunity to
engage with Edward, to make a happy marriage but also secure the family
fortune.)




            You could say that there is one long
sequence here at Norwood (from 4:30 to 26 minutes), but you could also say it’s
two sequences. This is where I would say it breaks, at 19 minutes.




SEQUENCE TWO



            Edward
and Elinor spend more time together and continue to fall in love; this is
accomplished in an amazingly short amount of film time.



            The
horseback riding scene is especially interesting thematically: Elinor states
plainly "We (women) have no choice of any occupation whatsoever. You will
inherit your fortune, we cannot even earn ours." But we also see that
Edward is constrained by the threat of complete disinheritance if he does not
make a career and a marriage that his mother approves of. The scene also shows
that these two can talk honestly of deep issues.



            We
also see another antagonist to the match: Marianne, who thinks that Edward is
not passionate enough for Elinor, and that Elinor’s feelings are too tepid to
be real love.



            When
Marianne asks Elinor how she feels about Edward, Elinor says that she greatly
esteems him. Marianne chides her for being so dispassionate. (Settting up
ELINOR’S CHARACTER ARC: Elinor is not completely honest about her feelings,
which will get her into trouble down the road.)



            In
another scene, Marianne asks their mother: "Can he love her? To love is to
burn, to be on fire." Marianne just comes right out and says what she
believes, and this sets up Marianne’s CHARACTER ARC. There’s also some
FORESHADOWING and FEAR for Marianne here when her mother replies that
Marianne’s passionate role models Juliet and Heloise made “rather bad ends.”



            But
despite her objections, Marianne says she will support her sister’s wishes with
her whole heart.



            Meanwhile
evil Fanny actively works to thwart the relationship by telling Mrs. Dashwood
that their mother has made it clear she will disinherit Edward should he marry
beneath his station. (22 min)



            It’s
a devastating move because we are already so invested in Elinor and Edward’s
love — and oh, do we hate Fanny. There are also two PLANTS here: that Edward
will in fact be disinherited, and that he is too much of a gentleman ever to go
back on a promise, which will become very significant later.



            At
dinner, Mrs. Dashwood announces they will leave immediately for her cousin's
estate. (NEW PLAN.)



            The
next day Edward finds Elinor in the stable, saying goodbye to her horse, which
the family cannot afford to keep. (Horses are a classic symbol of perverse
sexuality, so this is a sly hint of Edward’s youthful romantic liaison that we
will learn about — not here, but eventually.) Edward says that he must speak to
Elinor, which we and Elinor think will be a marriage proposal. Instead Edward
tells a rambling story of his early education under the tutelage of Mr. Pratt
(PLANT), and before he can get to the point, Fanny races in telling him their
mother needs him immediately back at the family home. Edward obeys Fanny (JUST
SAY SOMETHING, STUPID!), and the Dashwoods move from their home to a cottage on
the estate of Mrs. Dashwood’s wealthy cousin, without a marriage proposal from
Edward to Elinor.  (26 min.)



CLIMAX SEQUENCE TWO



(As I said, you could call that all one long sequence.)



SEQUENCE THREE: (27 min. to 45 min.)



            This
sequence sets up Marianne’s story, as the first sequence, or two sequences, set
up Elinor’s.



            The
Dashwoods arrive at Barton Cottage, their new, much smaller home (but I’d still
take it any day!) with gorgeous shots of the Devonshire countryside. (CROSSING
THE THRESHOLD and INTO THE SPECIAL WORLD.)



            They
are heartily welcomed by the crass, noisy, but warm-hearted Sir John and his
mother-in-law, wealthy Mrs. Jennings, surrounded by their pack of dogs (dogs
are a classic symbol of the id and instincts, here run rampant). These are
ALLIES, and Mrs. Jennings is also the MENTOR/FAIRY GODMOTHER. There’s a great
moment when Margaret says later that she likes Mrs. Jennings because “She talks
about things. We never talk about things.”



            They
settle into their new life: Elinor struggles to make ends meet for the family
and secretly pines for Edward (though she tells her mother that it’s more
sensible to be practical about the barriers to Edward marrying a woman without
a dowry. Again, Elinor’s character WEAKNESS — she’s practical against the
wishes of her own heart.)



            Fiery
Marianne catches the eye of Sir John’s good friend, the county’s most eligible
bachelor, wealthy and cultured Colonel Brandon (a completely dreamy Alan
Rickman). (Just a quick aside — look at the paintings of dogs behind Sir John
and Mrs. Jennings in this scene as they tease Elinor.) Marianne scorns
Brandon’s attentions, dismissing him as too old (he’s 35 in the book). Brandon
is a perfect gentleman (and like Edward, very charming and attentive to young
Margaret, a CLUE). Elinor likes him, but is not immediately won over. And Alan
Rickman is great casting, here; he so often plays villains that there’s an
ambiguity about his performance which keeps us in suspense about whether or not
he’s a good man, and right for Marianne — after all, marrying for money often
leads to tragedy.




            Elinor asks Mrs. Jennings about
Brandon and Mrs. Jennings tells Elinor that Brandon has a tragic past: as a
youth he fell in love with his father's young ward, and the family broke up the
lovers by sending Brandon away to the military and turning the girl out of the
house. She was “passed from man to man” and when Brandon returned from the West
Indies he searched for her and found her dying in a poorhouse.



            This
is our FEAR for Marianne, and it’s a big one. In Austen’s time “ruin” for women
meant prostitution and the attendant poverty and syphilis – the worst possible
life.



            Mrs.
Jennings’ unsubtle matchmaking turns Marianne away from Brandon. Instead she
falls hard for the young, handsome and dashing Willoughby, whom she meets in a
stormy romantic scene on a moor right out of Wuthering Heights (SETPIECE).
Willoughby also seems very well-fixed financially (set to inherit an older relative’s
nearby estate) and outspokenly shares Marianne’s passion for poetry and music.
Mrs. Dashwood and Margaret are instantly charmed; Marianne is openly adoring.
Elinor, though, has doubts …




CLIMAX OF ACT ONE - (45 minutes
into a 2-hour, 15-minute film)



            There’s
HOPE but also FEAR, here — I felt Willoughby was a bit over the top in a way
that might backfire badly — might even lead to her “ruin.” Plus — this guy over
Alan Rickman? I think not. Still, what I love about this casting and
characterization is that he seems a good match for Marianne; it’s a legitimate
romantic dilemma, and keeps us in SUSPENSE about which is the right man for
her.




---------------




So what did I miss? 




- Alex

NaNoWriMo Now What?

YAY!!! You survived! Or maybe I shouldn’t make any assumptions, there.




But for the sake of argument, let’s say you survived and now have a rough draft (maybe very, very, very rough draft) of about 50,000 words.




What next?




Well, first of all, did you write to “The End”? Because if not, then you may have survived, but you’re not done. You must get through to The End, no matter how rough it is (rough meaning the process AND the pages…). If you did not get to The End, I would strongly urge that you NOT take a break, no matter how tired you are (well, maybe a day). You can slow down your schedule, set a lower per-day word or page count, but do not stop. Write every day, or every other day if that’s your schedule, but get the sucker done.




You may end up throwing away most of what you write, but it is a really, really, really bad idea not to get all the way through a story. That is how most books, scripts and probably most all other things in life worth doing are abandoned.




Conversely, if you DID get all the way to “The End”, then definitely, take a break. As long a break as possible. You should keep to a writing schedule, start brainstorming the next project, maybe do some random collaging to see what images come up that might lead to something fantastic - but if you have a completed draft, then what you need right now is SPACE from it. You are going to need fresh eyes to do the read-through that is going to take you to the next level, and the only way for you to get those fresh eyes is to leave the story alone for a while.




I am tempted to jump write in and post the blog I am thinking about on a process for reading and revising, but I will resist, at least for today, so that you really absorb what I’m saying.


1. Keep going if you’re not done –

OR -

2. Take a good long break if you have a whole first draft, and if you MUST think about writing, maybe start thinking about another project.




And in the meantime, I’d love to hear how you all who were Nanoing did.




Me? I bashed my way through a second and third draft of Blood Moon, my sequel to Huntress Moon. Of course it's not as done as I want it to be, but I managed to get through that "I will NEVER finish this bloody thing" stage into the "Wow, I may not be done yet but this is way too good to abandon now" stage, which is not exactly the home stretch yet but it is a major corner to turn.  A good month!




- Alex

NaNoWriMo: The Final Battle (Elements of Act Three)

So if you're gotten this far with Nano, you're probably heading for your climax.  (Sorry, there's no way to talk about this without sounding like Fifty Shades.) 



I'm actually heading into the rewrite of my own Act III of Blood Moon, so it looks like I'll be finishing Nano at the finish line, in my own weird way!



So I thought it would be a good time to review what an Act Three Climax does. In general:


ACT THREE CLIMAX

- Is the final battle.

- The hero/ine is very, very often forced to confront his or her greatest nightmare.

- Takes place in a thematic Location - often a visual and literal representation of the Hero/ine’s Greatest Nightmare

- We see the protagonist’s character change

- We may see the antagonist’s character change (if any)

- We may see ally/allies’ character changes and/or gaining of desire

- There is possibly a huge final reversal or reveal (twist), or even a whole series of payoffs that you’ve been saving (as in BACK TO THE FUTURE and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE)





Let's take one of my favorite climax examples - the ending of JAWS - the film.



(And if you haven't seen “The Making of Jaws” , I really urge you to check it out. I swear, DVD bonus features are the best thing that EVER happened for writers and film students. No one needs film school anymore – just watch the commentaries on DVDs.) 




Peter Benchley, the author and co-screenwriter, was talking about the ending of the film. He said that from the beginning of production Spielberg had been ragging on him about the ending – he said it was too much of a downer. For one thing, the visual wasn’t right – if you’ll recall the book, once Sheriff Brody has killed the shark (NOT by blowing it up), the creature spirals slowly down to the bottom of the sea.


Spielberg found that emotionally unsatisfying. He wanted something bigger, something exciting, something that would have audiences on their feet and cheering. He proposed the oxygen tank – that Brody would first shove a tank of compressed air into the shark’s mouth, and then fire at it until he hit the tank and the shark went up in a gigantic explosion. Benchley argued that it was completely absurd – no one would ever believe that could happen. Spielberg countered that he had taken the audience on the journey all this time – we were with the characters every step of the way. The audience would trust him if he did it right.

And it is a wildly implausible scene, but you go with it. That shark has just eaten Quint, whom we have implausibly come to love (through the male bonding and then that incredible revelation of his experience being one of the crew of the wrecked submarine that were eaten one by one by sharks). And when Brody, clinging to the mast of the almost entirely submerged boat – aims one last time and hits that shark, and it explodes in water, flesh and blood – it is an AMAZING catharsis.

Topped only by the sudden surfacing of the beloved Richard Dreyfuss character, who has, after all, survived. (in the book he died – but was far less of a good guy.) The effect is pure elation.

Spielberg paid that movie off with an emotional exhilaration rarely experienced in a story. Those characters EARNED that ending, and the audience did, too, for surviving the whole brutal experience with them. Brilliant filmmaker that he is, Spielberg understood that. The emotion had to be there, or he would have failed his audience.

This is a good lesson, I think: above all, in an ending, the reader/audience has to CARE. A good ending has an emotional payoff, and it has to be proportionate to what the character AND the reader/audience has experienced.

















IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is another terrific example of emotional exhilaration in the end. Once George Bailey has seen what would have happened to his little town if he had never been born, and he decides he wants to live and realizes he IS alive again, the pleasures just keep coming and coming and coming. It is as much a relief for us as for George, to see him running through town, seeing all his old friends and familiar places restored. And then to see the whole town gathering at his house to help him, one character after another appearing to lend money, Violet deciding to stay in town, his old friend wiring him a promise of as much money as he needs – the whole thing makes the audience glad to be alive, too. They feel, as George does, that the little things you do every day DO count. 

So underneath everything you’re struggling to pull together in an ending, remember to step back and identify what you want your reader or audience to FEEL. I cannot stress this highly enough. 

Another important component in an ending is a sense of inevitability – that it was always going to come down to this. Sheriff Brody does everything he can possibly do to avoid being on the water with that shark. He’s afraid of the water, he’s a city-bred cop, he’s an outsider in the town – he’s the least likely person to be able to deal with this gigantic creature of the sea. He enlists not one but two vastly different “experts from afar”, the oceanographer Hooper and the crusty sea captain Quint, to handle it for him. But deep down we know from the start, almost BECAUSE of his fear and his unsuitability for the task, that in the final battle it will be Sheriff Brody, alone, mano a mano with that shark. And he kills it with his own particular skill set – he’s a cop, and one thing he knows is guns. It’s unlikely as hell, but we buy it, because in crisis we all resort to what we know.

And it’s always a huge emotional payoff when a reluctant hero steps up to the plate.

It may seem completely obvious to say so, but no matter how many allies accompany the hero/ine into the final battle, the ultimate confrontation is almost always between the hero/ine and the main antagonist, alone. By all means let the allies have their own personal battles and resolutions within battle – that can really build the suspense and excitement of a climactic sequence. But don’t take that final victory out of the hands of your hero/ine or the story will fall flat.

Also, there is very often a moment when the hero/ine will realize that s/he and the antagonist are mirror images of each other. And/or the antagonist may provide a revelation at the moment of confrontation that nearly destroys the hero/ine… yet ultimately makes him or her stronger. (Think “I am your father” in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK)

The battle is also a chance to pay off all your setups and plants. Very often you will have set up a weakness for your hero/ine. That weakness that has caused him or her to fail repeatedly in previous tests, and in the battle he hero/ine’s great weakness will be tested. 

PLACE is a hugely important element of an ending. Great stories usually, if not almost always, end in a location that has thematic and symbolic meaning. Here, once again, creating a visual and thematic image system for your story will serve you well, as will thinking in terms of SETPIECES (as we’ve talked about before) Obviously the climax should be the biggest setpiece sequence of all. In SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, Clarice must go down into the labyrinth to battle the monster and save the captured princess. In JAWS, the Sheriff must confront the shark on his own and at sea (and on a sinking boat!). In THE WIZARD OF OZ, Dorothy confronts the witch in her own castle. In RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, Indy must infiltrate the Nazi bunker. In PSYCHO, the hero confronts Tony Perkins in his basement – with the corpse of “Mother” looking on. (Basements are a very popular setting for thriller climaxes… that labyrinth effect, and the fact that in psychological parlance “basement issues” are our worst fears and weaknesses).

And yes, there’s a pattern, here - the hero/ine very often has to battle the villain/opponent on his/her own turf.



Do you know what your hero/ine's greatest nightmare is? Is there some way you can make the location and situation of your final battle a visual and thematic depiction of that nightmare? It really pays off to spend some quality time figuring out how to bring your hero/ine's greatest nightmare to life, in setting, set decoration, characters involved, actions taken. If you know your hero/ine's ghost and greatest fear, then your should be able to come up with a great setting for the climax/final battle that will be unique, resonant, and entirely specific to that protagonist (and often the villain as well.)



A great, emotionally effective technique within battle is to have the hero/ine lose the battle to win the war. AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN did this beautifully in the final obstacle course scene, where the arrogant trainee Zack Mayo, who has always been out only for himself, sacrifices his own chance to graduate first in his class to help a classmate over the wall and complete the course, thus overcoming his own flaw of selfishness and demonstrating himself to be true officer material.

Another technique to build a bigger, more satisfying climax is is to have the allies get THEIR desires, too – as in THE WIZARD OF OZ.

And a particularly effective emotional technique is to have the antagonist ma have a character change in the end of the story. KRAMER VS. KRAMER did this exceptionally well, with the mother seeing that her husband has become a great father and deciding to allow him custody of their son, even though the courts have granted custody to her. It’s a far greater win than if the father had simply beaten her. Everyone has changed for the better.

Because CHANGE may just be the most effective and emotionally satisfying ending of all. Nothing beats having both Rick and Captain Renault rise above their cynical and selfish instincts and go off together to fight for a greater good. So bringing it back to the beginning – one of the most important things you can design in setting up your protagonist is where s/he starts in the beginning, and how much s/he has changed in the end.

I bet you all can guess the question for today! What are your favorite endings of screen and page, and what makes them great?  Make a list!




And especially - what are great examples of final battles that are the hero/ine's greatest nightmare?



Good luck, Nanos!  Go for it!



- Alex







=====================================================








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Holidays in the Dark

Well, the holiday season has started - I'm just waiting for the Black Friday death toll numbers to post.








You're not going to catch me out there shopping. Instead I thought I'd blog a little about holiday books.








It’s a little strange for me to think of myself as a holiday writer,  first because my own family is so exceedingly casual about holidays. The actual date means very little; as long as we celebrate within a month or so of the day, it counts.  A typical Christmas for us has traditionally been munching down avocado and turkey sandwiches while reading the (now sadly defunct) Weekly World News (Bat Boy! Alien Spawn!) aloud around the table, and ending the evening with an Absolutely Fabulous or Fawlty Towers marathon.








And since I cross mystery, thriller and supernatural, and my books fall very much on the darker side, I’m not the first person you would think to put in that cheery holiday category, either.








But then, I don’t write cheery holiday stories. True to form, my take on the holidays is a little, well, warped. And yet holidays figure prominently in almost everything I write. I’m not trying to be outré about it, honestly, it’s just that there’s so much more to most holidays than the “Good tidings to all”, overcommercialized surface we usually get.








The truth is, holidays are like candy for a supernatural author because they are so metaphorical and simply dripping with thematic and visual imagery.  You don’t have to work half as hard to create an atmosphere because the imagery and meaning have been there for thousands of years – it’s all imprinted on our unconscious.








My first novel, THE HARROWING, takes place over a long Thanksgiving weekend.  It’s an anti-Thanksgiving weekend, really: five troubled students at an isolated college have decided to stay in their creepy old Victorian dorm over the holiday break because they don’t want to go home to their dysfunctional families.








While I have to say up front I have a great time at Thanksgiving NOW, in the past it’s always been an anxious time of year for me.  Any holiday revolving around food (and what holiday doesn’t?) is fraught with tension because, to be perfectly blunt, I was a dancer, with all the attendant food issues.  I also have this theory that Thanksgiving became a major holiday mostly to give married couples a way to split up their annual holiday visits between the two different sets of in-laws. 



  



Take that familial power struggle, add football and drinking and the necessity of someone, meaning the women, being chained to an oven for a  good two or three days - and the potential for disaster is I believe higher than average.








But that makes Thanksgiving an almost perfect holiday for me, in a genre sense.








I write (and read) supernatural stories with a strong psychological component, so I’m always on the lookout for psychological crucibles.  The premise of THE HARROWING is that five lonely and troubled college students combine to attract an equally troubled spirit, and I wanted to create an atmosphere that was so tense that whatever haunting was  taking place might be explained simply as the collective neurosis of the young characters.  Thanksgiving instantly provided all the gloom, bad weather, abandonment and anxiety I could possibly hope to cram into a concentrated time period.








And it’s a completely realistic situation right from the start:  students do stay at college over the holidays, they usually do so  because they don’t WANT to go home, and there is nothing on earth spookier than a deserted campus. Perfect for a ghost story.








But on the warmer side – the story is also very much about completely disparate people coming together as a true family, the first real family any of them have ever had, and Thanksgiving is a perfect setting for that theme, as well.








I’m sorry to say that in my second novel, THE PRICE, I may have  corrupted the happy holiday ideal even further. THE PRICE is set in a labyrinthine Boston hospital, where someone who may or may not be the devil is walking the wards, making= deals with the patients and their families.   Because I figure, if there is such a thing as the devil, and if what he wants is human souls, then trolling in a children’s hospital would be like shooting fish in a barrel. What wouldn’t you do if your child was dying?








In THE PRICE the featured holiday is Easter, and of course a key theme is resurrection.   Idealistic Boston District Attorney Will Sullivan is the golden son of a political family, with a stellar reputation, a beautiful and devoted wife, Joanna, and an adorable five-year-old daughter, Sydney.  Will also has a real shot in the Massachusetts  governor’s race… until Sydney is diagnosed with a malignant, inoperable tumor.  Now Will and Joanna are living in the twilight world of Briarwood Medical Center, waiting for their baby to die, and going out of their minds with grief.   But around them, patients are recovering  against all odds, and the recoveries seem to revolve around a



mysterious hospital counselor who takes a special interest in Will and his family.








Then one terrible night Sydney is rushed into emergency surgery and is not expected to survive… but instead almost overnight she goes into remission.  Except that Will doubts this miraculous recovery, and must race to uncover the truth in order to save his family.








Easter is the season of miracles, and perfect for the story, which goes from the bleak, cold, stark hopeless dead of winter (in Boston!  The very thought strikes terror into my Southern California soul…) to warm, lush, colorful, abundant spring when Sydney miraculously starts to recover (and believe me, the one actual winter I ever spent on the East Coast, it really was a miracle to see spring arrive seemingly overnight).  The themes of sacrifice for love, redemption through suffering, salvation, return from the dead, and above all, what we are truly willing to do for those we love - are all part of the deep mythos of Easter.   It’s also easy to get your main characters into church (those gorgeous Boston cathedrals…) where certain moral and thematic  issues can be played out, and the idea of the devil in the flesh – or perhaps just in the main characters’ minds – does not seem so far-fetched.








As an added bonus, Easter is an incredibly visually rich holiday to mine when one of your main characters is five years old.   Easter bunnies, chocolate eggs, fluffy flowery dresses… the latent set designer in me just had a great time with that one.








And to further stand the idea of happy holidays on its (their?) head… or maybe I mean take it back to the source, my police procedural BOOK OF SHADOWS revolves around pagan holidays (that is, literally, Holy Days):  the Summer Solstice, Lammas, Mabon.  Good grief, I can’t even do Halloween in the traditional sense… it’s got to be Samhain.








But I guess that’s my point, here.  Holidays are so much more than  tinsel and glass balls and getting trampled to death at WalMart to the canned soundtrack of holiday music that malls and radio stations and elevators and grocery stores bombard us with relentlessly (now starting Christmas carols before Thankgsiving, please someone just kill me). There are layers of meaning to every holiday that resonate to the very core of human existence. And it’s all there for every author to explore and every reader to experience.








Give me the off-beat holidays, any day.








Wishing a profound, mythic, and non-fatal holiday season to one and all.

















Five troubled college students left alone on their isolated campus over the long Thanksgiving break confront their own demons and a mysterious presence... that may or may not be real.




Nominated for the Bram Stoker Award (horror) and Anthony Award (mystery) for Best First Novel.



“Absolutely gripping...It is easy to imagine this as a film. Once started, you won’t want to stop reading.”

--London Times




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An ambitious Boston homicide detective must team with a beautiful, mysterious witch from Salem in a race to solve a satanic killing.  



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“A wonderfully dark thriller with amazing is-it-isn't-it suspense all the way to the end. Highly recommended.”

---Lee Child


















What would you give to save your child? Your wife? Your soul?







A Boston District Attorney suspects his wife has made a terrible bargain to save the life of their dying child.







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"A heartbreakingly eerie page-turner." - Library Journal

Femme Noir (The Next Big Thing)

I’ve professed my undying love for Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, many a time on this blog, but I do have a serious beef with this year’s line up.

The noir panel was all men.

I mean, really? In 2012? When Megan Abbott and Kelli Stanley and Cornelia Read are attending? When Christa Faust is not only in the room, but up for an Anthony?

I guess all the women were stuck in binders or something.

(Kudos to the one panelist, John Rector, who knows a little about noir himself, who jumped to point this absence out.)

Bouchercon was over a month ago and this noir sans femme thing is still rankling me, so I decided to blog about it.

This is also partly because I was asked (multiple times) to take part in the latest author blog hop, The Next Big Thing, in which authors post their answers to a set of ten questions about their latest books on their blogs and then tag five more authors for the next week, and possibly Kevin Bacon is involved, and then we take over the world.

So my horror/thriller author pal, the wildly dark, or darkly wild, Sarah Pinborough, tagged me two weeks ago, and I did my ten question interview on Huntress Moon last week - here - and now it’s my turn to tag five authors and link to their interviews this week.

And because I am still seething over the noir panel, I chose a theme of fantastic dark female characters, and tagged my authors accordingly:

- Michelle Gagnon is a thriller writer who has recently brought her powerhouse female perspective and adrenaline-charged storytelling to the YA thriller genre with her latest, Don't Turn Around. Noa is a terrific teenage role model; I hope we'll see more of her. Read her Q & A here http://michelleagagnon.tumblr.com/#36...



- Christa Faust knows noir backward and forward, and has virtually created a whole new direction for the genre and its characters. Angel Dare is an alt heroine who brings OUT everything that noir anti-heroines like Gloria Grahame were doing in a coded sense, and Butch Fatale takes the "two-fisted detective" archetype to a new meaning. Read her Q & A here http://faustfatale.livejournal.com/27...


- Wallace Stroby. As anyone who reads this blog knows, I am VERY picky about men writing "strong women", and on the dark side, Stroby is as good as it gets, both shattering and reversing noir gender stereotypes. His Crissa Stone series presents a thief who doesn't just hold her own, but leads and controls motley collections of doomed male gangsters. And I'm even more fond of Stroby's Sara Cross, who mirrors the classic noir paradigm: she's a truly good woman whose near-fatal flaw is a tragically bad man. Read his Q & A here http://wallacestrobycom.blogspot.com/

- Zoe Sharp actually DOES write a kick-ass female lead, Charlie Fox, who works as a bodyguard and makes the physical reality of her job perfectly plausible (I've learned a lot about self-defense from these two...) while she battles uniquely feminine psychological demons. And her new installment in the Charlie series is set in New Orleans! http://zoesharp.com/


(Right, that’s only four. I can count, at least up to ten, but getting authors to do anything on deadline is like herding cats.)

I really encourage you all to click through to their interviews, especially for the fun question on who they would cast in a film or TV version of their books. Always a good exercise for any writer, you might get inspired!

So not everyone above is writing noir, exactly. , definitely. Faust has a lot of noir influence but I’d say her work is more like female-driven pulp, with a strong emphasis on camp humor, too. Sharp and Gagnon write dark and intense, but it’s not noir any more than I’m writing noir, which is not at all.

I’m also no way a noir scholar, and let’s face it, the lines are blurry (Is it noir? Pulp? Neo-noir? Just a good old B movie?) and I’d like to leave the question open for everyone to jump in and define it for us in their own words. Personally, I know it when I see it! No, really - for me, the key difference is that, for example, in Zoe’s and Michelle’s story worlds, there is the possibility and even probability of redemption, while in the classic world of noir, there is none, or very little. Doom and fate figure predominantly.

I liked John Rector’s capsule summation on that B'Con panel: “Noir pushes people to extreme circumstances and there is no happy ending. The hero/ine is fighting the good fight... but loses.”

So I guess the personal line I draw between “noir” and “dark” is about that possibility of redemption and at least temporary triumph. You can win the battle even when you know the war rages on. In my own books, there’s plenty of dark, but not noir’s overwhelming sense of inexorable fate; my own themes are more about the people caught up in a spiritual battle between good and evil. And no matter how dark it gets, there’s always the presence of good.

In fact, some of my favorite dark thriller writers: Denise Mina, Tana French, Mo Hayder, Karin Slaughter, Val McDermid, seem to me more fixed on exploring that spiritual evil than fate. As dark as they get, I wouldn’t call what they’re writing “noir”, because it IS more spiritual, they’re dealing with a more cosmic evil. Or maybe the evil they depict is so rooted in a feminine consciousness and feminine fears and demons that it doesn’t FEEL like noir. But that could be me splitting hairs, you tell me! That’s what this blog is about.

And there’s another element that I consider classic noir:

Threatening women.

Threatening to men, anyway, apparently!

But the presence of shadowy – or maybe the word I mean is shaded – women is key. For my money some of the most interesting women ever put to page or celluoid are noir femmes, and part of that is because quite a few noir writers and filmmakers and actresses actually made a point of exploring the dark sides of women.

And noir takes on significantly different meaning when the leading roles are played by women instead of men. These days Sara Gran, Megan Abbott, Gillian Flynn, Christa Faust and Wallace Stroby are all doing really exciting work genre-bending by putting women in the protagonist’s seat and then absolutely committing to what it would look like and feel like and mean for a woman to take that lead in circumstances we don't usually see women in.

I was enthralled by Sara Gran’s Dope, which explores a noir standard, addiction, and the noir paradigm of the tarnished white knight committed to a hopeless and destructive person - all from a completely feminine point of view. Likewise Wallace Stroby’s Sara Cross (in Gone Til November) is a committed knight... lawman... lawperson... who very nearly falls because of a fatally seductive man, and any woman who’s ever been tempted will understand her struggle.

Gran has created another classic yet entirely unique noir heroine in her latest, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead; I can’t think of another noir character so reliant on my favorite force in the world: synchronicity. But also, back to addiction: is that synchronicity drug-induced? Claire’s pot habit might be useful juice for her detecting instincts, but one gets the feeling it’s playing hell with her personal life.

Megan Abbott layers a specifically feminine addiction, the pathological narcissism that anorexia can be, into her latest, Dare Me - to chilling effect. And I’ve never seen anyone else portray the feminine counterpart of criminally sociopathic male athletes, but you better believe these cheerleaders are exactly that.

Abbott, Gran and Flynn (in Sharp Objects) are also sometimes writing female protagonists battling female antagonists, with men relegated to secondary roles. I find it a deliriously welcome reversal of the traditional order.

I suspect it's easier, or really I mean more natural, for women to achieve a genre bend with noir and thrillers because we're working against a very entrenched male tradition. If we're just fully ourselves, it's going to look new to the genre.

But men can get there. I think Dennis Lehane did a brilliant genre bend with his male characters in Mystic River by going places that men don't usually go in their own psyches - they'd rather assign that scary stuff to female characters to distance themselves from the experience instead of having to put themselves into those vulnerable positions. Which personally I think is cheating.

And as Stroby is proving, consciously committing to the physical and emotional reality of a female protagonist is possible for a male author, too.

By looking at crime through a specifically feminine lens, these authors are creating a new genre. I don’t know what to call it, but I know I love it.

And I know there are more of these authors and books out there, and I want to hear about them, so let’s have it. Who are your favorite dark female leads – and villains? Which authors in our genre do you think are portraying ALL the facets of women, black, white, and every shade of gray in between?

And yes, what is your definition of noir? I'd love to know.

- Alex

NaNoWriMo: Best Writing Advice

I recently discovered that the Amazon pages of my books are continually compiling the most highlighted quotes from my books.




To explain for those of you who might not have an e reader - yet - you can highlight passages of books that you read on your Kindle to refer back to at your leisure. Whether or not you, the reader, know that this information is being compiled online is a different question. Some books you might not want to have those special passages highlighted, if you see what I mean.




But the Big Brother aspect is a different post. This highlighted quotes feature is actually totally EXCELLENT news for me because it means today, instead of a long blog post on what I think is important advice, I can just give you a pithy list of what readers think is the best advice in my Screenwriting Tricks books. And you all know how much I love lists.




So here you go:





Top Ten highlighted quotes from Screenwriting Tricks for Authors.





On LOGLINES/PREMISES --




- The premise sentence should give you a sense of the entire story: the character of the protagonist, the character of the antagonist, the conflict, the setting, the tone, the genre.




- All of these premises contain a defined protagonist, a powerful antagonist, a sense of the setting, conflict and stakes, and a sense of how the action will play out.




- Write a one-sentence premise that contains all these story elements: protagonist, antagonist, conflict, stakes, setting, atmosphere and genre.




On a character’s GHOST or WOUND




- We all unconsciously seek out people, events and situations that duplicate our core trauma(s), in the hope of eventually triumphing over the situation that so wounded us.




On CHARACTER ARC:




- The arc of the character is what the character learns during the course of the story, and how s/he changes because of it. It could be said that the arc of a character is almost always about the character realizing that s/he's been obsessed with an outer goal or desire, when what she really needs to be whole, fulfilled, and lovable is _______ (fill in the blank).




On HOPE and FEAR




- Our fear for the character should be the absolute worst case scenario:




- The lesson here is - spend some quality time figuring out how to bring your hero/ine's greatest nightmare to life: in setting, set decoration, characters involved, actions taken. If you know your hero/ine's ghost and greatest fear, then you should be able to come up with a great setting (for the climax/final battle) that will be unique, resonant, and entirely specific to that protagonist (and often to the villain as well.)


On PLAN (and ACT II)







- This continual opposition of the protagonist's and antagonist's plans is the main underlying structure of the second act.




ON CONFLICT/ANTAGONISM




- STACK THE ODDS AGAINST YOUR PROTAGONIST. It's just ingrained in us to love an underdog.




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- Top ten highlighted quotes from Writing Love




- “Every genre has its own game that it’s playing with the audience.”




- The game in the romance genre is often to show, through the hero and heroine, how we are almost always our own worst enemies in love, and how we throw up all kinds of obstacles in our own paths to keep ourselves from getting what we want.




- A great, emotionally effective technique within the final battle is to have the hero/ine LOSE THE BATTLE TO WIN THE WAR.




- This continual opposition of the protagonist’s and antagonist’s plans is the main underlying structure of the second act.




- I’m a firm believer that just ASKING the questions will prompt your creative brain to leap into overdrive and come up with the right scenes. Our minds and souls long to be creative, they just need us to stop stalling and get our asses in gear.







- So once you’ve got your initial plan, you need to be constantly blocking that plan, either with your antagonist, or the hero/ine’s own inner conflict, or outside forces beyond her or his control.







- Very often in the second act we will see a battle before the final battle in which the hero/ine fails because of some weakness, so the suspense is even greater when s/he goes into the final battle (climax) in the third act.







- The final battle (climax) is also a chance to PAY OFF ALL YOUR SETUPS AND PLANTS. Very often you will have set up a weakness for your hero/ine. That weakness that has caused him or her to fail repeatedly in previous tests, and in the final battle (climax) the hero/ine’s great weakness will be tested.







- “Get the hero up a tree. Throw rocks at him. Get him down.”







- After I’ve finished that grueling, hellish first draft, the fun starts. I do layer after layer after layer: different drafts for suspense, for character; sensory drafts, emotional drafts, each concentrating on a different aspect that I want to hone in the story, until the clock runs out and I have to turn the whole thing in.




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And that happens to be the step I'm on right now, pass after pass after pass. Sometimes it feels more like sewing than writing. But miraculously, it's coming together! How's everyone's Nano going?




- Alex




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Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.









- Kindle




- Amazon UK




- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)














- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)




- Amazon/Kindle




- Barnes & Noble/Nook




- Amazon UK




- Amazon DE




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