The LadyKillers

The Beginning of the End

So, I'm just starting on the sixth -- and final -- book in my Underworld Detection Agency series when my agent sends me a benign little email, "BTW, forgot to ask: how are you feeling about ending the series? Happy? Sad? Somewhere in between?"

I had decided long ago to end the series on the sixth book, which will finish the natural arc the characters have been on for the past five. And in those past five I have pulled my hair out, swore up and down that I'd never write another series, wistfully dreamed about all the story lines I could write and molest once I wasn't tied to a town, a gang, a particular food choice (Sophie is a sucker for chocolate marshmallow pinwheels). But now that it's here... I'm not happy. I'm not sad, either. I'm somewhere in between, suspended in that "my children will never leave me" headspace, yet terrifyingly aware that in 70,000 short words, I'll have to type the two I'm beginning to dread: The End. Because it will be the end.

And I'd like to be all adult and philosophical and say something worthy of engraving or bellowing in impassioned speeches like, "A character, once inscribed, will never die!" But I'm hardly the bellowing type.

Sort of.

I also know that I've fallen in love with characters well past their prime -- like Anne, who had been in those Green Gables a good 75 years before I cracked that spine, and good ole' Freddie and Flossie Bobbsey who were probably tossing one back at their local while I was engrossed in their Red, White, and Blue Mystery (vol. 64).

But it's still hard to let go. I love answering fan questions about Sophie -- who she'll end up with (it happens in books six!), will she ever catch a break (not likely), will she ever look like the chick on the covers? (in her dreams). I like hearing, "Will would be so happy with the way Arsenal played today," and, "Steve the troll reminds me of my boss!" I know Sophie and the gang will live on -- literarily, through the series, and live actionally (no, seriously, they're totally words.) with the new web series based on Vlad's early adventures. (check out the UDA Channel on YouTube!)

I would love for someone to fall in love with Sophie's misadventures 20 years after the fact. I hope that I've created characters and story lines that connect with readers now and years from now. And for everything I write after the Underworld Detection Agency series, I'll have to thank Sophie for. I cut my fangs on the Underworld and if it weren't for that series, I wouldn't be able to crack open a new book, start a new series, turn the page in a new genre.

I'm still not sure if I'm happy or sad, but I am satisfied that Sophie and the UDA will end on a high note with a great adventure. And I'm happier still that we'll go out with a good title, never having to resort to the lowest common Under denominator -- Under Wear.

 

Trying to Get to the Last Draft

By Margaret Lucke

She's gone. Vanished. Disappeared without a trace.

Sitting alone in my office, I drum my fingers on the desktop. I sort papers from one stack into another and back again. I stare at the blank page on my computer screen.

Where could she be?

Finally I type two words: Chapter Twenty. At least the page isn't blank anymore.

What if she never comes back? What will I do then?

Just as I'm about to file a missing person report, my Muse comes strolling in, wearing a flower lei and drinking something pink and frothy out of a glass topped with a paper umbrella.

"What?" she says when she notices that I'm glaring at her.

I say, "Where the heck have you been?" or words to that effect.

"Such language," she says, turning away. "Just for that, I'm not going to give you a sip." She starts to walk out of the room again.

"Wait!" I jump up and run to the door, blocking her exit. "Don't leave. I need you."

"You don't have to get all excited. I just went out for a little walk."

"Looks more like you took a swim. All the way to Hawaii."

She swirls her hips in a hula move. "I need to recharge my batteries sometimes, just like you do."

 "You were gone for days. Weeks. No goodbye. No postcard."

"What's the big deal, anyway?" To my relief my Muse walks to my desk and sets down her glass. I'm so glad she's back that I want to hug her, but that might just drive her away again. She's nothing if not temperamental and capricious.

I sit back down in the desk chair. "I'm trying to get to the last draft of my novel. You know that."

The last draft is my favorite. Writing the first draft is hard work. It means figuring out who these people are whom the Muse has set running, or sometimes slinking, around inside my head, and then cajoling her into explaining what they're up to. For the next draft--and the next, and sometimes another--I have to take the huge mess that we created in the first go-round and turn it into something logical and coherent. Not to mention suspenseful and compelling. But the last draft is easy; it's polishing the diamond you squeezed out of that big lump of coal.

"You're already up to the last draft? Good for you." The Muse claps her hands. "See, you don't really need me." She leans over my shoulder and stares at the computer screen as she reads the words aloud. " 'Chapter Twenty.' Really? That's it? All you've written is those two words?"

"Well, I'm still working out the details of the scene in my head … "

"Last draft!" She snorts. "When I left you had just finished chapter nineteen. You haven't done a thing."

"I've been busy," I say in my defense. "And you were AWOL."

"If there's one rule about writing I've tried to drum into your thick skull it's this one: There's no way to write the last draft until you've written the first one."

"I didn't say I was there yet," I mutter. "I said I'm trying to get there."

My Muse heaves a sigh of exasperation. "Get out of the way," she orders as she pushes me out of the chair. She sits down and begins to type: The detective's heart pounded as she crept into the creepy old house. Could the killer be hiding inside?

"That's terrible," I point out helpfully.

"Of course it is," my Muse says. "It's first draft stuff. We'll fix it later." She takes off the flower lei and puts it around my neck. "Here. This is getting in my way. You might as well finish my drink, too."

"Thanks," I say. "I mean, for coming back." The sweet scent of jasmine and plumeria fills the air. In my next novel, maybe I should send my detective off to a tropical island.

"I never really left. I was hanging out in your imagination the whole time, just like I always do. That place could use a good dusting, by the way."

My Muse scoots over in the chair, making room for me. She pats the seat. "Sit down," she says. "Now let's get to work."

"Final?"

-from Susan the procrastinator

The Final Draft

I stand in awe of Penny Warner, Camille Minichino, and my fellow LadyKillers who march through their manuscripts in what seems to me double time, meet tough deadlines, get their plots and characters right, and build loyal audiences who can count on them to produce another terrific book in nine months, like a brand new bouncing baby.

How do they do it? I’m the wrong person to ask. If I had an ounce less discipline than the six ounces I have, I’d never be ready to pronounce a manuscript finished. I have a tendency to circle back to the beginning to nip and tuck a plot issue, sharpen or better conceal an early clue, or make some other vitally important (to me at least) change again and again. It drives me crazy. My agent is a patient woman, but I fear I test her elegant manners and strong support.

I want to be done, but I don’t want to send something that isn’t my best. And that’s a moving target, one that can never be met, really. It is also a way to avoid tackling that one troublesome scene somewhere after the middle of the manuscript, the part that really isn’t anywhere near my best, the one that at this minute I’m fighting with. So I go back to chapter one and tinker with it, or to chapter four…and so avoid chapter fifteen, which is, simply put, a mess.

That’s where I’m headed today, honestly. No more fooling around with the beginning or the name of a minor character or the uneven lengths of chapters. I tell myself, no one cares about those. They will care about the characters bumping into walls in chapter fifteen, and so I’m summoning my small reserves of self-discipline and wading in to fight the good fight.

Getting to the final draft? I am the wrong person to ask. Stay tuned this week for the real experts!

 

The End of the Story

Staci here, thinking about how tricky the end of a mystery novel can be, with so much to accomplish in those last few chapters.

Foremost, of course, is the revelation of who killed the victim and why. This information has to be kept secret until as close to the end of the book as possible while making the reader think it’s a host of other people. The victim’s cousin has offered the detective a car ride home. She must be the killer! Oh, wait, she dropped him off safe and sound. But the victim’s jealous ex-husband is waiting for the detective when he arrives home, claiming he wants to talk. He’s the killer! No, never mind, he really does just want to talk. Now the detective is inside, alone, enjoying a scotch on the rocks. The phone rings. The victim’s coworker asks to meet at the victim’s office because she’s found new evidence. Is this it? Will the coworker turn out to be the killer? Yes!

But getting the detective to a dark, secluded place is another thorny part of the novel. The reader loves that confrontation at the end (or at least I do), when the detective and the killer struggle, with the detective’s life in danger. Even cozy mysteries have this adrenaline-filled ending. But why would the detective endanger himself in the first place? The reader needs a plausible reason for why he would show up at the designated meeting place, surely knowing that he’s being lured into a trap. That can be quite a challenge for the writer.

Once the killer and detective are face to face, the detective reveals all the clues and tidbits that led him to the identity of the killer. And, of course, the motive is revealed, oftentimes by the killer trying to justify his or her actions. Here, the writer must be sure that the motive is substantial enough to warrant a death.

And let’s not forget those subplots! Either before or after the big confrontation, all other secrets must be revealed. The other characters get a last chance to speak, their stories given a sense of closure.

With the killer carted off to jail, the detective reflects on the case and what he might have learned and where he goes from here, then he wraps up any personal storylines and calls it a day.

Whew! I’m exhausted just thinking about all those loose ends to tie up!

Is it the End or the Beginning?

Ending are tricky.  Not just writing them but also identifying them.  Everything that seems like an end: a graduation, a harvest, a fire or flood, even a death, can be viewed as a beginning.  The idea that events are linear is actually a strange and recent one. (By recent you understand that I mean anything less than 500 years ago).  And it’s really only in Western culture that this odd idea exists.  It must have taken a great deal of effort to convince people not to believe what they saw - that everything in life is a cycle. 

In the Middle Ages, the concept of a Wheel of Fortune (no letters involved) was everywhere.  Not even kings or popes were exempt.  The seasons turned, the stars revolved in yearly patterns.  Everything moved in a circle or a spiral.  In religion and philosophy, not just Christian, each event resembled one past and presaged a similar one to come.  Even death was definitely not at end but a gateway into something probably wonderful.

So what has this to do with writing?  To my medieval mind, everything.  Ending a book is more of a pause, generally occasioned by a deadline and/or the need to feed oneself and one’s family.  With my Guinevere books, I was really ready to make an end.  I took the story long beyond the death of Arthur, killed off the main characters and most of the minor ones. (There was a convenient plague about 540ce) I was sure the story was over.  Other people didn’t think so.  I was asked for short stories about bits I hadn’t talked about enough.  Some people even wanted a prequel. 

Well, I was young then.  I didn’t understand about endings.  Now I know that whatever I write won’t be finished, even when it’s taken away from me and published.  One of the joys I’ve recently found, that is when I master the technology, is that I can rewrite my earlier books as they are digitized.   I’m looking forward to adding photos, music, editorial comments and, maybe, even alternative endings.

 

As a serious codicil to this, I have been reading reports about how Terry Pratchett, in my opinion the most brilliant writer of my generation, has decided to end his life before his Alzheimer’s robs him of his amazingly wonderful mind.  It breaks my heart but I think I would do the same.  After all, I do believe that nothing ever really ends.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1203622/Ill-die-endgame-says-Terry-Pratchett-law-allow-assisted-suicides-UK.htm

 

[Sharan argues this particular point of view about our inablity to believe in endings in her recent non-fiction book THE REAL HISTORY OF THE END OF THE WORLD  Berkley, 2010]

The End is Nigh

Ann Parker here, every other Thursday at The LadyKillers.

"The End" is a touchy subject for me right now, because I just finished making corrections to my "uncorrected proof" (otherwise known as the Advanced Reader Copy or ARC) of my next book, Mercury's Rise. As Mary Anna noted earlier this week, the ARC provides the last chance for the author to catch errors before the final printed (or electronic) copy is let loose on the world.

Personally, I hate this part of the process.

Because, no matter how often I (or others) have gone over the draft, there are always plenty of little tweaks to make and "oopses" to rectify, even in the ARC version, where everything is typeset and neatly bound. The problems are usually on the "small" scale of things, but I'll tell you, it's the little things that drive me crazy—a character moves to the right, but then references are made as if she's moved to the left. People sit in a certain order on a bench, but that order gets all kerfluffled with "who's sitting next to who" kinds of interactions. Apostrophes are mysteriously missing or wandering (Pike's Peak vs Pikes Peak; Williams' Canyon vs William's Canyon). A hotel that only has two stories suddenly sprouts a third level.

 As this stage of the game, I become fixated on the minutiae, and my friends receive frantic emails late at night, asking:

In this sentence... should it be who or whom? (Answer: whom)

Did they call "English breakfast tea" English breakfast tea in 1880 in the U.S.? (Answer: yes)

Could oleander grow in Manitou, Colorado, in 1880? (Answer: no)

This doesn't even begin to cover those lovely little passages when a character rises from her chair... and then a paragraph and a half later, rises again... and on the next page, rises again... How did THAT happen?

  I drive myself and everyone around me batty, until the deadline looms and the ARC, bleeding red-ink inserts, delete marks, and notations, is mailed overnight to Poisoned Pen Press and I can truly say "good-bye."

Now it's time to catch my breath and catch up at work (more text-tweaking minutiae to mull over). It's also time to focus on beginning the next book in the Silver Rush series. Endings and beginnings: one leads to the other.

T.S. Eliot said it better (and far more eloquently):

"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from."