Author: Elizabeth Spann Craig

First of all, I wanted to mention that Cleo’s interesting discussion on genre blending continued far into the comments section yesterday. She made some fascinating points about transitioning into a mainstream author if you’re starting out as a genre writer. And why is some genre fiction published as mainstream fiction (for example, Janet Evanovich)? Find out in the comments: Genre Blending and Your Character’s Love Life.

I have a feeling I’m not going to inspire pity in many of you when I say that it’s snowing here in Matthews, North Carolina. And we might even get five inches, y’all!

Snow here means an obligatory run to the store for bread and milk. My father says Southerners act like we’re preparing for the Siege of Leningrad when we get snow. I did make the pilgrimage to the store…but mainly because I was actually out of bread and milk and knew the shelves would be bare by 10 a.m. once news of the approaching snow leaked out.

Weather has just never been a focal point of my stories before. It’s always been a complement to the plot—I’m fond of hot, sticky, graveside funeral services in my books. Lots of people dressed up and sweating profusely, full of discomfort from the heat and humidity (and possibly because they murdered the dear deceased.)

This may have to change. Lately, I’ve felt assaulted by the weather. It hasn’t stayed in the background like it usually does. It’s been sassily sticking its tongue out at me. It’s making me pay attention.

So I’m mulling over my possibilities.

Weather could…

Cut people off from other people. Leave them stranded. This might be a good way to create some conflict. If you are stranded with people? They might get on your nerves.

Cause accidents and health issues (heat stroke and heat exhaustion occur here in the South.)

Change plans. The weather could provide an avenue for changing the course of a story—a canceled flight. An impassable roadway.

Affect pace. Wonder why people in the American South move and talk so slowly? It’s the heat and humidity. It’s honestly even hard to think down here when things really get heated up. Life moves at a slower pace.

Create power outages. Which can be a real bummer. I can think of all kinds of problems power outages could trigger. For my fellow crime writers, blackouts could create the right opportunity for a murder or other crime.

Affect characters’ moods. Too much rain can make you down. Heat spells can result in fights breaking out and tempers flaring.

Be symbolic. Well, we’ve all seen the huge storm that symbolizes a character’s inner turmoil. But there are ways to turn trite symbols on their heads. Maybe the weather is determinedly sunny—like the character determined to plaster a smile on his face during his personal tragedy.

Does weather play a major role in your books, or is it relegated to the background as it normally is in mine?

A former journalist, Alice Alfonsi is a multi-published author in several genres and a New York Times best-selling media tie-in writer. Under the pen name Cleo Coyle, she pens two nationally bestselling mystery series for Penguin in collaboration with her husband, Marc Cerasini, the first of which, On What Grounds: A Coffeehouse Mystery, is now in its fourteenth printing. Her most current project under her own name is an adaptation of the screenplay for the upcoming feature film Tron: Legacy into a junior novel.

Genre Blending and Your Character’s Love Life

Differences in genres are sometimes easy to recognize and sometimes not so easy. A small percentage of bookstore customers may puzzle over why the trade markets something as a fantasy versus a mystery, especially when the fantasy has a mystery in it and the mystery has a fantasy element. Most of the reading public probably doesn’t care. They simply want to be told a good story.

To an author seeking to publish, however, the question of what defines a genre is not a casual one. Understanding why a publisher puts a book in one genre as opposed to another may mean the difference between an acceptance call and a rejection notice.

A short time ago, mystery author Mary Jane Maffini posed a question to a group of published mystery authors. She then conveyed our answers in a workshop for a group of aspiring writers. To paraphrase MJ’s question:

“What is the difference between a romance with a mystery and a mystery with a romance?”

As I typed out my answer for MJ, I realized it would make an informative opening for a blog post on genre blending. Given Sunday’s date, let’s start with romance…

What defines a romance?

In the most basic terms, the main plot of a novel in the romance genre focuses on the protagonist’s love life. Countless permutations are possible in such a novel: small casts, epic tales, historical or contemporary settings. The style of the telling can be poetic, colloquial, melodramatic, stream of consciousness, epistolary. The couples involved may be straight or gay.

The protagonist in a romance may have other ongoing concerns. The book may feature additional subplots—a mystery or thriller element, a family drama, terminal illness, struggle for societal standing—but the love affair is the driving force. The engine of the plot is driven by encounters between the protagonist and his or her love.

Ultimately, what defines a romance is this primary plot question: Will the main character win or lose love? These days, romance novels almost always deliver a happily ever after ending for the reader.

What defines a mystery?

Again, in the most basic terms, the plot of a novel in the mystery genre focuses on the main character’s quest to uncover the guilty party after a crime has taken place, usually a murder but not always. The engine of this plot is driven by the protagonist following clues toward the solution of the crime.

Many writers describe the ultimate goal of a mystery protagonist as finding justice, but I don’t think that’s the best way to define the genre for writers who are new to it. I’m not entirely sure that all mystery protagonists are out for justice, which can be a complex and subjective idea.

In Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, for example, Poirot reveals the murderers and allows them to walk away. Were the murderers executing justice upon the victim? Certainly that can be argued, especially given the lack of a defining jurisdiction on the train. From an objective viewpoint, however, one can also argue that killing a man in his sleep is closer to vengeance or vigilantism.

Antiheroes in the mystery genre may not seek justice in the traditional sense, either. What they will always seek in the course of the story is the truth. The mystery protagonist may be involved in other subplots and have other concerns, including a love affair, but the main desire line for the protagonist should be discovering the guilty party (or parties), uncovering the lies, untangling the schemes, and excavating the answers to any questions surrounding the crime.

Sex and the Human Condition

Every day when I sit down to work, I do so with the understanding that I am writing a novel in the mystery genre, but ultimately (regardless of the apparent rules and strictures of genre) I am writing a novel.

A work of parody or avant-garde surrealism may intentionally use caricatures and stereotypes with little depth. For the most part, however, today’s readers expect multidimensional characters in their novels. This is where genre blending has served me well.

As experienced writers know, in order to portray a character as dimensional (characters that feel real, if you will), we must create traits that humanize him or her. A character’s sexuality is a powerful way to convey your character’s humanity—certainly not the only way, but a compelling one for many readers.

Exploring your character’s sexuality does not mean your character is “sexy” or even that your character will engage in sex during the course of the story. For many authors, exploring a character’s sexuality (and the basis or “back story” for it) is simply a way to build dimension.

The protagonist of my first series (Clare Cosi) is a divorced single mother in her forties. Clare didn’t have much of a love life in the decade before the series began. For years, her main concern was raising her daughter, and she subverted her own needs to that end. As Clare’s newly adult daughter moves along with her own life, however, Clare begins to explore her post-forty sexuality, which is complicated to say the least. BTW…Age need not be a factor in the romantic arena: The Coffeehouse Mysteries also feature a lively but fickle octogenarian (Clare’s former mother-in-law) who is presently on her third beau.

Exploring Character, Building Depth

Even asexual characters can yield fascinating back stories when you explore the reasons for their human condition, for instance: aversion to being touched because of past abuse; a failed marriage with residual hostility toward the opposite sex; contented virginity; unbearable virginity; impotence; frigidity; an expression of religious belief.

In my second mystery series, my protagonist is a widow in her late thirties (Penelope Thornton-McClure). Pen has a young son and no sex life. My widow has sexuality. For various reasons, including her lousy marriage and husband’s suicide, it’s repressed.

What Pen does have is a fantasy life in the form of a ghost. At times she wonders whether the ghost is real. PI Jack Shepard seems to have stepped right out of the pages of the Black Mask-era hardboiled mysteries that she sells in her book store. Has Jack appeared in her life as an alter ego, a kind of imaginary friend who will express her deeply repressed thoughts and feelings and fulfill her acute psychological needs? Or is Jack a true manifestation of a paranormal phenomenon? With every new title in The Haunted Bookshop Mysteries, Pen and the reader must decide for themselves.

The Best of Both Genres

Finally, if you do decide to blend genres and unfurl a romantic subplot for the main character in your mystery, this storyline should not dampen your character’s burning desire to solve his or her crime. Nor should it take away from your painstaking plotting of the mystery. If you blend the genres correctly, your protagonist’s love life should simply be part of the creation of a dimensional character in a well written novel.

Do you blend genres in your writing? Do you enjoy it or find it problematic? Comments welcome or come join the discussion this Sunday when Dead Air author and clinical psychologist Mary Kennedy shares insights into developing her character’s personal life at www.MysteryLoversKitchen.com

Text copyright © 2010 by Alice Alfonsi

Cleo, thanks so much for this terrific and helpful post. It makes me want to do some genre bending, too! So how about it—do y’all blend genres? How is it working for you?

Be sure to check out Cleo’s awesome website (I haven’t seen an author site to rival it). She blogs with me at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen and her posts always POP with fun.

Today I have the pleasure of having Margot Kinberg guest post on the blog. Margot is a mystery writer (her newest, B-Very Flat has just been released.) But Margot is also a mystery novel expert—and I don’t use that word lightly. If you check out her blog, Confessions of a Mystery Novelist, you’ll see what I mean.

One of the first steps in writing, at least for me, is figuring out the major events in the plot. Since I write murder mysteries, that means deciding who is going to be the victim, who is going to be the murderer, and how and why the crime will be committed. Once I have those basics settled, I start adding detail and then I begin drafting what I write. One of the big advantages of planning this way is that it helps me figure out where I can use knowledge that I already have, and where I need expertise that I don’t have. Then, it’s time for me to do my preliminary research. That’s one thing I really enjoy about writing, because I always learn.

I call it “preliminary research” because I’ve found that I do research throughout the writing process. Probably the easiest way to explain how I do research and what I learn from it is to give you a look “behind the scenes” at the research I did for B-Very Flat, my newest novel. As soon as I’d decided who my victim was going to be and had thought about the kind of person she is, I decided she would die of anaphylactic shock caused by a violent allergic reaction to peanut dust. That meant I had to learn about anaphylaxis and peanut allergies. I was lucky in my research, because I have a close friend whose son is dangerously allergic to peanuts and peanut products. She was kind enough to give me lots of helpful information and some extremely useful web sites (e.g. http://www.peanutallergy.com). Lesson learned here? Ask around. You probably know someone who has answers you need.

Then I realized that someone with such a severe allergy would probably not knowingly eat anything with peanuts in it, so I was going to have to figure out how the murderer would expose the victim. That led me to do some research on peanut flour. I found out some fascinating information, too. For instance, you may not realize it, but many, many products use peanut flour; ready-to-serve spaghetti sauce is just one example. There are some helpful online sources for this, too, as well as some online places where you can buy peanut flour. It’s more popular than I thought, too; many people like peanut flour because it’s high in protein.

I also realized that someone who’s seriously allergic would probably carry what’s often called an Epi-pen. It’s a dose of epinephrine, which counteracts the effects of a severe allergic attack. I didn’t know much about Epi-pens or other auto-injectors, so I visited several online websites that sell auto-injectors. Not only did I get the information I needed about how they work, but I also found some high-quality photos of them that allowed me to get a helpful mental picture. Lesson learned here? The better you know your characters, the better you’ll know the kind of research you need to do. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to do any research on peanut flour or auto-injectors until I learned more about my victim.

Now I had the background I needed to start drafting my book, so I got busy with my writing. As the book progressed, though, I realized that my research wasn’t done. Not at all. So I also learned along the way that it’s important to be willing to stop at any point in a book and get your facts straight before going any further.

Here’s an example. Part of the evidence that points to the murderer in B-Very Flat comes from video surveillance film – the kind that stores use to prevent shoplifting. Well, my husband used to be a retail manager, but that was many years ago, and I knew that surveillance procedures have changed a great deal since then. So I visited a few local businesses and got some updated information about how they protect their premises and employees.

I faced a similar challenge when I was planning the part of my book where the murderer is brought in for questioning. I wanted to get my facts straight about exactly how that happens. So I visited our local police precinct. My visit there taught me a lot, and it was helpful to see how a station is laid out. Again, I got a mental picture that made writing that part of the novel easier.

My local research was a very positive experience. Several helpful people took the time to answer my questions, tell me a little about their work, and set me straight where I was wrong. For that, I’m grateful. Lesson learned here? Don’t be afraid to tap local businesses and other community resources. Go. Visit. Ask. Most people are flattered at your interest in their expertise, and are only too happy to give you answers. Especially if you tell them you’re a writer who’s doing some research.

So how did I benefit from doing the research for B-Very Flat? The plot got stronger. For instance, once I learned about peanut flour and how and where to buy it, I was able to develop a whole set of scenes and action sequences that I hadn’t thought of adding. I was also able to include a few characters that I think add to the flavor of the book.

I also got unexpected opportunities to tell people about my writing. That’s sometimes quite a challenge for a writer, especially a writer who’s not a “household name.” But I found that when I told people why I wanted the information I asked for, they got interested in what I do. “Oh, you’re a writer? What do you write? Is it on Amazon?” Lesson learned here? It is really worth the time and effort to do some research when you write. The plot gets stronger and more believable, and you get the chance to spread the word. On, and carry some business cards or a flyer about your book(s) when you go out to “get the facts.” People pass those things around.

Doing research for a book can be time-consuming. It can also feel as though one’s not really making any progress. After all, making progress on a book means writing, right? Not driving around, interviewing people, looking up things on the Internet or going to the local police station. But the fact is, research helps make a book richer and more real. It teaches one a lot, and helps one make lots of important connections.

Thanks so much for guest blogging today, Margot! And for the excellent reminders on researching—and the promotional opportunities it can afford, too.

Tomorrow, the talented Cleo Coyle will be guest blogging a special Valentine’s Day-related post: Genre Blending and Your Character’s Love Life. What defines a mystery? A romance? What should you consider when blending genres? Please pop by and join us.

Literary snobbery has been a topic on a couple of blogs lately. So today, I’m blogging at A Good Blog is Hard to Find about how writers can handle encounters with book snobs. I hope you’ll pop over and visit me there.

Also, I’ve got all kinds of excitement coming down the pike this week here on Mystery Writing is Murder. Thursday, the wonderful Margot Kinberg will be guest blogging for me on Prewriting and Research. Margot gives us a glimpse at how research can make our novels stronger.

Friday, the talented Cleo Coyle will be guest blogging a special Valentine’s Day-related post: Genre Blending and Your Character’s Love Life. What defines a mystery? A romance? What should you consider when blending genres?

I was in—as usual—the grocery store on Saturday afternoon. As soon as I walked in the door, I was greeted with a big smile by a couple of men at a table. I did a mental groan—they wanted me to do something. Sure enough, it was time to update that plastic discount card the grocery store assigns us.

I was at the deli counter getting some ham and trying to put the little loyalty card on my keychain. One of the deli workers said, “So you got your card updated?”

And I said. “Mm-hmm. Last time I came in I just pretended I didn’t see them.” Then I’m sure I looked really cross because I don’t say things like that, I think things like that. Some evil sprite possessed me and made me say something rude.

The counter guy just laughed. “Yeah, you were probably ignoring me. Because I’ve been working that table until tonight.”

Which made me even more cross at myself.

It also made me think that frequently we’re our own worst enemies.

Writing cozy mysteries, I really like to do things on a small scale. Because of the nature of the books, I’m not doing any Hollywoodesque car crashes, explosions, or chase scenes.

I don’t have cataclysmic events in my books—no natural disasters, terrorism, or ghastly epidemics. Although I really enjoy reading books like these, they just don’t fit my genre.

A horrific day in my books? Someone’s slip of the tongue results in their murder. They knew too much.

Think of all the uses faux pas can have. Because we’ve all said things that came out wrong or that people took the wrong way.

A slip of the tongue could result in someone really getting furious with an in-law or other family member. Maybe it represented the last straw for the person—the one that made them decide to end a relationship.

Faux pas can end friendships. Maybe a friend blabbed about the protagonist’s secret. Maybe the slip is viewed as a betrayal by another character.

A slip of the tongue could result in someone getting fired. Maybe someone leaked something that their office wanted to keep strictly confidential.

Military men and women who accidentally disclose too much information involving location during a war, you’re actually endangering lives.

Think of all the politicians who end up saying, “I misspoke.” So many have said thoughtless things, or uttered racially insensitive statements when “misspeaking.”

There are so many different ways to plot around someone sticking their foot in their mouth. And the reader? They won’t think the results are unbelievable at all. Because we all make our little faux pas.