Author: Elizabeth Spann Craig

I was really enjoying Masterpiece Mystery Sunday night.

That’s because the episode of Case Histories featured a writer with a big role. And the screenwriters for the episode had clearly been having fun—writing in winks for other writers.

At one part of the show, the writer (portrayed as extremely insecure and hesitant) is a visitor in a hospital. The nurse frowns at him and tells him he looks familiar.

“I’m a writer,” he says, looking anxious.

The nurse studies him. “I’ve always wondered about writers,” she says, “Where do you get your ideas from?”

I’m sure all the writers watching the show were laughing…and that no one else thought it was even supposed to be funny. :)

It reminded me that I’ve enjoyed reading books about writers and watching films about writers, too. Sometimes it’s just nice to watch something written just for you.

I don’t have a great memory for titles of movies and books, although I remember enjoying Stranger than Fiction (although it’s sort of a disturbing movie for a writer to watch) and reading Misery (decidedly troubling!) Oh, and that great moment in The Shining where we see what the writer has been busily typing for so long.

I found some lists online of books and films that featured writers:

Films About Writers or Writing:

14 Great Movies About Writers

20 Greatest Movies About Writers

Films About Writers

Novels about Writers or Writing:

6 Memorable Books About Writers Writing

Ten Terrific Novels About Writers, Writing, and the Writing Life

Novels about writers

40 Books about Writers and Writing (for children)

Have you read books or watched movies about writers? What have you enjoyed?

by Victoria Mixon @VictoriaMixon

I’m reading an Ellery Queen today, after a whole pile of other pulp mysteries, and I’ve also started re-reading Hillary Waugh’s Guide to Mystery & Mystery Writing. Waugh was one of the great American mystery authors of the twentieth century (he died only a couple of years ago), and he dissected the mystery genre with great insight and intelligence.

One of the things he discusses is a crucial aspect that was missing from some (but not all) of Edgar Allan Poe’s seminal works, from which the entire Western mystery genre sprang, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” “The Purloined Letter,” “Gold Bug,” and “Thou Art The Man”:

Fair Play.

But what is Fair Play?

Fair Play is letting the reader know what’s going on. Even more than that, Fair Play is planting the clue to the solution early—preferably on one of the first pages.

Now, the general understanding of Fair Play is that we have to do it to keep the reader’s loyalty. If we don’t Play Fair, the reader gets mad at us and goes away. Birdcages throughout the ages have been papered with books by writers who ignored the Rule of Fair Play.

But Fair Play has an even more important job than that. After all, writers get away with all kinds of crap with their readers, and if they’re good enough writers the readers take it, pay for it, and keep coming back for more. No. Fair Play is based on something even closer to the reader’s heart than fairness, and that is. . .

Having a good time.

As an Australian friend of mine discovered when he visited me years ago in downtown San Francisco, a grand adventure, whether real or fictional, is all about having a good time.

Whatever else goes on in our story, our reader wants to enjoy the experience of reading it.

Of course, people’s ideas of enjoyment vary widely, and readers in general tend to enjoy a lot more of being ejected from their chairs, dragged around, thrown against the walls, and smacked silly than you’d ever believe.

But, more than anything else, readers enjoy resonance.

That’s when they get to the end of the story and find there, unexpectedly and yet inevitably, the beginning of it. That clue the writer planted on the early pages.

Putting our reader inside a brass gong and giving it a good, hearty clang.

Readers love this! It’s possibly the single most important reason for the popularity of mysteries throughout the past 150 years. A devastating event. And the key to that event.

Give the reader a whiff of something tantalizing, lead them a merry chase in all the wrong directions, and then smack them in the face with the whole tantalizing pie.

It’s that wonderful, visceral sense of familiarity, that whisper in the back of the mind: this ending was inevitable. It’s the seductive implication that, if they’d just paid close enough attention (and they will the next time they read it, they promise themself!) they could have figured the ending out before we showed it to them. It’s that magical authorial sleight-of-hand, creating a positive emotional response in the reader by what we’ve left out as much as what we’ve put in.

Planting a clue to the Climax in a story’s Hook is the simplest, most powerful fiction technique I know.

It makes the story a relentless progression always forward toward a Climax both unexpected and inevitable, a living, breathing thing in the reader’s hands, the story of an ending that appears to have been manifested out of thin air by sheer genius.

Thanks so much to Victoria for guest posting today and for sharing with us an excerpt from her insightful writers’ resource, The Art & Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual.

Victoria Mixon has been a writer and editor for thirty years and is the creator of A. Victoria Mixon, Editor, voted one of WritetoDone’s Top 10 Blogs for Writers. She is the author of The Art & Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual and the recently-released The Art & Craft of Story: 2nd Practitioner’s Manual, as well as co-author of Children and the Internet: A Zen Guide for Parents and Educators, published by Prentice Hall, for which she is listed in the Who’s Who of America. She spends a lot of time tracking clues on Google+ and Twitter.

by Porter Anderson, @Porter_Anderson

Appointment With Death is Agatha Christie’s travelogue-gone-wrong, set in the “rose red city of Petra.” And some years ago, when I directed Christie’s 1945 stage adaptation of it, I reached for Vivaldi.

I wanted some big, noisy, precisely orchestrated suspense to get my big, noisy, endlessly patient actors into an opening tableaux. And by setting this whole thing in the swamp-gassy gloom of a weird hotel lobby, I could also show off the smart elevator our designers had rigged up for the stage.

So I used the first movement of the Winter concerto from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Sounds like the kind of blizzard that gets Mayor Bloomberg into trouble. Worked like a charm. We managed to get the “detestable” Mrs. Boynton into her seat right on the button of that string-section snowstorm every time. Image: Flickr, National Library NZ

But how I wish I’d had Q2 Music then. Because I’d have used something far more atmospheric, closer to the exotic locale. Petra, an ancient city carved from rock in Jordan, has little to do with Vivaldi’s Europe. And I’d also like something less bombastic, more intimately sinister.

Something like composer Dohee Lee’s “HonBiBaekSan (The Ritual of White Mountain).” After a very eerie, quiet start, she uses a beautiful woman’s vocalise, throbbing percussion, queasy glissandi and electronically generated tones oozing through the air. Every sound, like Christie’s characters, a suspect. If you don’t see the audio file from Q2 here to click on, just go to this page at Q2 Music and scroll down to Dohee Lee’s name. That’s the amplified quartet Ethel playing it, in a live performance.

Q2 Music is a completely free, 24-hour online stream of “contemporary classical” music. And don’t be scared off by either word. WQXR, the major classical-music NPR affiliate in New York, created Q2 just over two years ago, to stream the work of living composers, taking advantage of the Internet to tap into a global audience that Salieri might gladly have murdered Mozart to get.

For my money, it’s the best friend a writer who enjoys music could have. And one characteristic of a lot of today’s best composers’ work is that they’re fearless about sonic “colors,” the use of instrumentation to create those nerve-scraping effects associated (a bit too simplistically but not without reason) with avant-garde work.

For mystery writers? Heaven.

Take prize-winning composer Ken Ueno’s terrifying “(X)igágáí ” Again, if you don’t see the audio clip from Q2 Music to click on, just go to this page at Q2 Music and scroll down to Ueno’s name. This recording is from a live performance by the delightfully named ensemble Alarm Will Sound.

After one of those big piano-scary chords at the open, hear that white sound, a little like wind? Partly created by tearing paper slowly. And if you make it two-thirds of the way through, you’ll hear what sounds like the sort of wind chimes a killer might just hit on an airless night when he was making his escape into the darkness. Waking up the household. To find the piano-crash shock of another body in the parlor, you know.

But, hey, I’ve spooked you with loud noises and scraped your nails over enough blackboards. I should give something more mellifluous, right? Still unsettling—after all, we’re getting ready for Hickory Smoked Homicide here, Ms. Craig’s next one (as Riley Adams).

How about a little ghostly piano work, something like that lonely ditty the victim might have been playing when you-know-what happened to her? Try Valentin Silvestro’s “Bagatellen,” here in an excerpt at Q2.

And in fact, let me offer you not only some fine piano work, but also the kind of spine-tingling little electronic edge that few composers do better than Missy Mazzoli. This is called “Orizzonte” for piano and tape. You can read about her as well as hear it, on her Q2 Music introduction page.

Like a car alarm left squealing after that murderous attack in the parking lot, isn’t it? Goes right through you like those sounds always do.

Needless to say, as time goes by it’s not as easy to match modern-day mystery to old-timey music. And if you’re like me and you find the work of composers and musicians helps you to explore your own creativity, I can recommend Q2 Music and its diverse composers without any back-alley dodges or ducks around the double bass.

As long as you’re sitting at your computer, give its speakers a workout. What streams in to your workspace might just hold enough clues to your latest goose-bumper that you’ll head to the playlist to see whocomposedit.

—–

Porter Anderson—whose Writing on the Ether appears at JaneFriedman.com on Thursdays—has issued a matching grant to Q2 Music listeners who donate during the autumn pledge drive through Wednesday. You do NOT have to pledge a penny. This is not a pitch. Porter’s much more interested in bringing together new music with new writings. If you do feel interested in contributing to the work of this unique NPR affiliate (an online streaming service of WNYC/WQXR in New York), each $1 you donate will be matched with $1 from Porter, up to a total of $5,000, at Q2Music.org. And Porter would love to thank you. Drop him a line on Twitter.

More on the first photo:
Boethius, De musica, f.43v, (211 x 144 mm), 12th century, Alexander Turnbull Library, MSR-05. This is a manuscript about the theory of music. It was copied probably in England at Christ Church, Canterbury, in the second quarter of the twelfth century. Its main focus is the mathematical basis of music, and the beautifully-drawn diagrams with their graceful arches illustrate the mathematical ratios which produce the various intervals in the musical scale. Sometimes these diagrams take on animal forms such as here.
-p.

Hope y’all can join me today at Victoria Mixon’s blog. Victoria interviewed me on the subject of mysteries—which writers I’ve found inspiring, what techniques I’d love to try, my favorite mystery writing resources, and what qualities mysteries share with other genre fiction.

While you’re there, poke around a little on Victoria’s blog. She’s got some fantastic posts for writers there. Check out these posts, for instance: 4 Tricks for Improving Your Fiction in One Day, 3 Tricks for Ratcheting Tension in One Day, and 8 Ways Your Story Needs to be Tweaked.

I’m looking forward to Victoria posting here on Wednesday. And tomorrow, I’ll have a guest post from the always-fascinating Porter Anderson.

Below are the writing-related links I tweeted last week.

The Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine, designed by software engineer and writer Mike Fleming, makes all these links searchable. Sign up for the free monthly WKB newsletter for the web’s best links and interviews: http://bit.ly/gx7hg1 .

Recent news: Progressive Dinner Deadly is a Myrtle Clover mystery, available for $2.99 on Kindle and Nook. The 3rd book in the Memphis Barbeque series will release November 1—Hickory Smoked Barbeque (available now for preorder).

Things Science Fiction Film Has Ruined for John Scalzi: http://bit.ly/n1IpZh

3 pitfalls for freelance writers: http://bit.ly/q0EF27 @MarlaBeck

Dos and don’ts for the climax of your book: http://bit.ly/pJHev5 @AimeeLSalter

With social media, communication should go both ways: http://bit.ly/ni6kZ3 @propagandahouse

“Price Pulsing”: the Benefits of Dynamic Pricing on Amazon: http://bit.ly/oloUiP @craftycmc

Scheduling Time To Write: http://bit.ly/nGQc7L @Ribeezie

Amanda Hocking on her epublishing success–& how the books get overlooked: http://bit.ly/pq0K4c @amanda_hocking

Not sure how to get started writing fiction? A writer with tips (Guardian): http://bit.ly/qsNVgP

The Purpose of Blogging for Novelists: http://bit.ly/nzFlwg @JodyHedlund

How Writers Can Conquer Uncertainty: http://bit.ly/oP1ldG @TiceWrites

Editing your novel: Notes from the frontline: http://bit.ly/r7xdf8 @novelmatters

Some WordPress Plugins Worth Using: http://bit.ly/otV3zz @CuriosityQuills

Going Back to College to Sell Your Book: http://bit.ly/oQ4nsg @hopeclark

Is Your Second Line as Good as Your First? Making the Most of Your Paragraphs: http://bit.ly/oX2rR9 @Janice_Hardy

32 Ways to Tweak Your Blog This Afternoon: http://bit.ly/mUyBYe @MarianSchembari

Better Writing through Cheap Technology ( tools): http://bit.ly/qmka1i

Hitting the Wall: 5 Ways to Get Inspired: http://bit.ly/nKKUfX @writeitsideways

An agent on how long you can delay deciding on an offer: http://bit.ly/mOtPDU @BookEndsJessica

Narrative Structure Cheat Sheet: http://bit.ly/nfnw0j @AlexSokoloff

How to Kiss Writing Jitters Goodbye: http://bit.ly/qg4SKv @jodyhedlund

An agent on author marketing and platform: http://bit.ly/oJ0ny9 @RachelleGardner

Don’t Confuse ‘Quirks’ With ‘Characterization’: http://bit.ly/nlQLmq @storyfix

3 Things You Need to Know About the New Publishing Industry: http://bit.ly/mRCn4o @victoriamixon

An agent explains what she looks for in a manuscript: http://bit.ly/onkJoj @Kid_Lit

50 Redundant Phrases to Avoid: http://bit.ly/r7sl3P

If writers were to adopt Wall St. practices: http://bit.ly/nC3Kq3 @BTMargins

PUBLICATION: 9 Lessons for the Road: http://bit.ly/oYm4jv @jhansenwrites

Publication: 9 Lessons for the Road: http://bit.ly/oYm4jv @jhansenwrites

1 writer’s 4 step process after receiving edit requests: http://bit.ly/pF61H4 @keligwyn

Try the snowflake method for writing a novel: http://bit.ly/qNmDbN @bubblecow

Structure–Introducing the Opposition: http://bit.ly/o1zsv6 @KristenLambTX

Is a no from 1 agent a no from the entire agency? An agent explains: http://bit.ly/qyQ0rO @literaticat

3 Blunders That Can Kill Your Author Platform: http://bit.ly/nXNzIY @kristenlambtx

How to speak publisher – D is for Draft: http://bit.ly/oGOPns @annerooney

Writing A Financial Thriller: http://bit.ly/qWH9Wt @TheCreativePenn

5 mistakes mystery writers make regarding law: http://bit.ly/nrqrE1 @junglereds

Are You Worried Your Ideas or Work Will Be Stolen? http://bit.ly/ngCdCy @JaneFriedman

4 Ways to Add Caffeine to Your Story: http://bit.ly/rkfQJn @JodyHedlund

Self-editing checklist–word choices: http://bit.ly/oryEcj @SarahForgrave

4 Steps For Organizing Plot Ideas Into a Novel: http://bit.ly/qLAo3I @JodyHedlund @jhansenwrites

11 elements of a great proposal: http://bit.ly/rseor8

10 Power Tips for Critique Groups: http://bit.ly/o05DhQ @jhansenwrites

Don’t overdo the literary devices: http://bit.ly/riRd7A

Breaking Down Authorial Voice: http://bit.ly/pljbft @TaliaVance

7 Tips for Landing Corporate Writing Jobs: http://bit.ly/pgI5aB @fuelyourwriting

An agent warns against info dumps: http://bit.ly/mYhmwa @greyhausagency

Time management–the essence of with children: http://bit.ly/nHbYXA @Mommy_Authors

Ideas for beating writer’s block: http://bit.ly/qEBvBf @LynnetteLabelle

Get More Out of Google+: http://bit.ly/qn4Ymw

Foreshadowing your story’s climax: http://bit.ly/nfFEmD @KMWeiland

10 tips for writers’ conferences: http://bit.ly/p9gxtX @bookviewcafe

Long Live The Introvert! Why Being “Anti-Social” Is Also A Skill: http://bit.ly/o3tSCh @lisa_rivero

1 writer’s obsession with ellipses: http://bit.ly/qM8GOQ @FantasyFaction

Literary Names: Do Characters Name Themselves? http://bit.ly/ohcxMD @joannelessner

Tips for surviving a pitch: http://bit.ly/ojbtZm @deejadams

Beyond Jane Austen: The Real Regency Romance: http://bit.ly/oFBb7i

Literary Agency Sells 520 Books In One Deal, Raising Questions: http://bit.ly/oJdWK3 @DavidGaughran

Social networking for writers: http://bit.ly/oLC0A8 @AshKrafton

Tightening Your Narrative Focus: http://bit.ly/ovsAyW @Janice_Hardy

10 Terms for the Common People: http://bit.ly/poSqix

How Amazon Makes Money From The Kindle: http://read.bi/qiyJOb @biresearch

10 Surefire Ways to Overcome Blogging Procrastination: http://bit.ly/n0WLwy @problogger

Nanowrimo: Elements of Act One: http://bit.ly/pxadiG @AlexSokoloff

Killing the Mystique: Can You Know Too Much About Your Favorite Authors? http://bit.ly/n1LpZz @RoniLoren

Numbers Are Our Friend–Writers and the Wild World of Metrics: http://bit.ly/oQUnKD @KristenLambTX

Writing Lessons From The Late Great Stephen J Cannell (Creator of The Rockford Files): http://bit.ly/oZRqSj @Jhansenwrites

How to make your own book trailer for free: http://bit.ly/o7xXVb @junglereds

When Landing an Agent Lands You Nowhere: http://bit.ly/o9sRwG @AnneRAllen

Movie Story Type–Chase: http://bit.ly/pgGriW

Are You Talking to Yourself or To Your Computer? (Voice Recognition Technology): http://bit.ly/n7HL4V @PassiveVoiceBlg

Writing for children? 10 Real-World Stresses Faced by Kids: http://bit.ly/qnGVEo @CherylRWrites

One Key to a Writer’s Success: Find Your Community: http://bit.ly/n7y90L @ChristiCraig

A flooded book market?Agent/publishers?Author metrics? @Porter_Anderson sorts publishing news/views for @JaneFriedman: http://bit.ly/r4TjXx

The Setting for Your Story: http://bit.ly/pL50As @chrisbrogan

6 Ways to Reconnect with Your Work-In-Progress: http://bit.ly/ncba0h @writeitsideways

The Insanity Behind the Pressure to Have “Numbers”: http://bit.ly/pk8pDY @JamiGold

Getting rejections? An agent reminds us that our writing may not be all that good: http://bit.ly/q3zg5I @greyhausagency

Don’t Avoid Painful Writing: http://bit.ly/mUa55v @JeffGoins

Help with sketching out your characters: http://bit.ly/r7PjBB @Jodie_R_Editing

True Confessions of a Multi-Published Author: http://bit.ly/q6y1Iw @YAHighway

Tips for writing a killer thriller: http://bit.ly/qQpyp4 , http://bit.ly/oYjbks , http://bit.ly/ojsnn2 @Jodie_R_Editing

Uncertainty: Turning Fear And Doubt Into Fuel For Brilliance: http://bit.ly/r1QXUG @TheCreativePenn

All eReading apps are not created equal: http://bit.ly/nxIkcE @bsquaredinoz

Do writers need to worry about SEO? http://bit.ly/plZJnV @emacphe

Authors to Get Sales Data Online From 3 Big Publishers (NY Times): http://nyti.ms/nlhr4e

7 Classes of Phrases: http://bit.ly/pGiFVP

Freelancers: Make an Editor Love You By Offering Solutions, Not Problems: http://bit.ly/nUsLl5 @lformichelli

The Business of Screenwriting: Trailer Moments, Set Pieces and Bits Of Business (BOBs): http://bit.ly/qenzRC

The Picasso Guide to Becoming a Social Media Legend: http://bit.ly/roBoUR @copyblogger

5 ways to banish drama from your scenes: http://bit.ly/pKY3f8 @jammer0501

What you can learn from the Universal Story: http://bit.ly/oeKed3 @plotwhisperer

Tips for love triangles: http://bit.ly/ru1gBc @Sarafurlong

Struggling with your NaNo concept? Some tips: http://bit.ly/n91uyR @StoryFix

Setting the Scene for a Productive Day: http://bit.ly/r2VQBR @the99percent

Why 1 writer fired his cover designer: http://bit.ly/qSOp12 @Rule17

The “Oh No!” Chapter Ending: http://bit.ly/qN1FQk @BookEmDonna

An editor reminds us of the importance of character flaws: http://bit.ly/pt3nYw @TheresaStevens

Why Researching Articles to Death Is A Waste of Time: http://bit.ly/nN6IS3 @zen_habits

Tips for using metaphors & similes: http://bit.ly/qF25rF @authorterryo

Tips for keeping your POV consistent: http://bit.ly/nUfsVw @authorterryo

Why crime fiction writers would make good sleuths: http://bit.ly/q4PabQ @mkinberg

Best Articles This Week for Writers 10/21/11: http://bit.ly/qw2vSd @4kidlit

Encouragement for Aspiring Writers: http://bit.ly/oHHnhN @JosyHedlund

Do all YAs have to be in first person? http://bit.ly/q9tmDH

Tips for writing deep POV: http://bit.ly/pnQa6Q @camytang

Does your novel use each of the five senses? http://bit.ly/qBaK83

The Worst That Can Happen Isn’t Always Best for the Story: http://bit.ly/pFhxc6 @Janice_Hardy

Digging Deep to Find the Voice: http://bit.ly/ppC8oZ @BretBallou

5 tips from an editor: http://bit.ly/pJGo6O

On ordering author copies: http://bit.ly/pHhIhS @LAGilman

Vanity Press vs Self Publishing vs Print Publishing: http://bit.ly/pPoqch @marshacanham

A series on global drug trafficking: http://bit.ly/oenAyk http://bit.ly/q6s2dP http://bit.ly/o2PorE http://bit.ly/rkRJQA @manon_eileen

2 steps for battling procrastination: http://bit.ly/pK1hyh @JaneFriedman

Writing Superstitions and Rituals: http://bit.ly/mYR800 @catewoods

10 Dos and Don’ts for When Someone Else Has Already Written (and Published) Your Novel: http://bit.ly/onouSa @mesummerbooks

The Critique Mindset http://bit.ly/oOoLaD @bluemaven

Finishing NaNoWriMo: http://bit.ly/pWBNkb @p2p_editor

3 Characteristics of Successful Modern-Day Press Releases: http://bit.ly/n8YgWL @sarahskerik

7 easy ways to keep dialogue sharp: http://bit.ly/odhyPt @frugalbookpromo

5 Rarely Remembered Rules for Building Your Freelance Brand: http://bit.ly/pjc32M @passivepanda

Movie Story Type: Spoof: http://bit.ly/riHzwJ

Show-Don’t-Tell Examples: http://bit.ly/pGFsvu @CherylRWrites

The agent’s view–the thrilling world of pitching: http://bit.ly/qDhJGq @jennybent

On Writing Well: Repetition: http://bit.ly/qHUNCK

Am I providing enough information for the reader to get into the story immediately? http://bit.ly/pTahge @Janice_Hardy

Stare Down Your Limiting Beliefs: http://bit.ly/qqcLMs @storyfix

Why Writers Should Get Over Pop Music: http://bit.ly/ofe8rf @Porter_Anderson

Publishing–the worst business in the world: http://bit.ly/poXffC @bentarnoff

How Many Copies Is My Book Selling? Now Authors Have More Answers: http://bit.ly/oMjSbj @laurahazardowen

Amazon, Libraries and Ownership in the Digital Age: http://bit.ly/mR2idY @glecharles