How Do You Handle the Nasties?

This month our Round Robin blog topic is: How do you handle/use violence, or any type of danger, in your stories?

For me, being a non-violent person (read mile-wide yellow streak down my spine) I find it very difficult to write villains and villainy into my stories. Murder mysteries and thrillers with graphic content tend to make me squirm or give up reading or watching them. That’s not to say that I can’t appreciate good writing or great acting, just that I’d rather not have my sleep disturbed by bad dreams after experiencing it. Case in point – I had to stop watching Criminal Minds because of the nightmares it gave me. Yes, folks, that’s just how much it upset me.

However, conflict is a must-have to write a good story. Without conflict there really is no story. I think of the example I have given to writing classes in the past of a couple cleaning their teeth. They go into the bathroom. He takes the cap off the tube of toothpaste, squeezes the tube in the middle to get the required amount of paste on his brush, gives her the tube. She squeezes the tube in the same place and as soon as her toothbrush is loaded, she screws the cap back on. It's routine. It’s boring. Nothing happens. It does not move the story forward. Heck, it isn’t even a story.

BUT – what if they don’t go into the bathroom together? What if he goes in first, showers, shaves, cleans his teeth?

What if he squeezes the tube in the middle and she squeezed the tube from the bottom, rolling it up as each part of it becomes flattened? What if he always throws the tube on the side of the basin and leaves the cap off, allowing just a bit of toothpaste to escape and make a mess on the porcelain which causes her to yell at him? And he yells right back “it’s only frigging toothpaste!” What if this happens morning after morning until she could just shoot him? Oh, oh. Did I say, ‘shoot him’? This is not routine. It’s not boring. We have conflict. We have a story.  

When I write my own stories, I write the ‘nice’ bits first – the characters and things that come easily to me. Then I have to weave in the nefarious stuff. The nasty cousin, the thief in the night, or the blackmailer. But I work out their character lines as much as I do for my hero or heroine. I want to know what has made my characters the way they are, nice, naughty or just plain nasty. The results may never grace a page, but at least I know what makes them tick and can convey as much as is necessary through introspection or dialogue. I have to have some measure of empathy for my villains and hope my readers understand that. 

Two books that I have read a couple of times each for spine-tingling, edge-of-my-seat suspense and examples of how to build tension are Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot and Dean Koontz’s Innocence. Neither has the kind of graphic, visual hit that makes me want to peer through my fingers. Rather, it is a slow build-up of little details that draw me in. If it’s an out and out fight scene, I don’t think anyone sets that up as well as Lee Child does in his Jack Reacher books. I mostly write Regency romance, but the basics apply to any era. In my second Regency I needed to set up a sword-fight scene so went to my local sword fencing club and got so much more information than if I had just read about it or watched YouTube clips – although I have to admit I find YouTube an enormously useful tool.  

Writers are a resourceful lot and what works for one may not work for another. Let’s visit the authors listed her and see what works for them.

Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1i2
Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
Anne de Gruchy https://annedegruchy.co.uk/category/blog/
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com

Getting Through the Difficult Patches

I've been MIA from the Round Robin blog as I've been concentrating on other writing projects but am pleased to be back. This month Robin has asked: Why do you write or feel compelled to write even through the difficult parts?

Well, even before I really knew what I was doing, I wrote. Yes, I’ve joked in the past about my writing with crayons on the wall not being appreciated by my family (for obvious reasons). But making my mark by writing something, somewhere has, for me, always been a tangible expression, like handprints on the wall of a prehistoric cave, of my being here, on this planet, now. The now has shifted considerably over the years from childish drawings and weirdly shaped letters, to short stories about ponies and dogs, to prize-winning essays at school and onwards and upwards.

image by courtesy of  Shutterstock

 Writing, as an art, was something I took up when I learned calligraphy. It came out of an art class where we were encouraged to illuminate the capital letter of our first name. I chose V for Victoria, not H for Hammond as I was then. I liked the look of the letter V, and very early on picked as favorite words victory and valor. They seemed strong words to me then as they do now.

Combining the art of writing with the craft of it was something that I came to a lot later. Although I loved English classes, both literature and grammar, writing in my family was a serious business. It had to impart knowledge and instruction and, consequently, fiction and fun writing didn’t enter much into my education. However, at age thirteen I read a book whose title now escapes me although I can see the cover clearly. Anyone who remembers Douglas Fairbanks, or maybe Douglas Fairbanks jnr., would recognize the look of the handsome pirate wearing a bandanna, an open neck shirt and swinging from a rope on some ship or another. If you’ll pardon the nautical pun, it opened up a whole new horizon for me.

I wrote short stories mostly for my own benefit, sometimes showing them to friends who said I should write more. One I showed to a children's book editor who encouraged me to submit to The Argosy, a now defunct UK short story magazine. It was rejected, as were others to several different magazines, but that didn't bother me because there was always something else to write. 

So, what does keep me going when the words won’t come, or won’t come in the way or order that I want them to? I stop writing. I return to my favorite books, the ones that have left vivid impressions that can have me sobbing my socks off or laughing out loud. My most likely go-to read is Georgette Heyer’s Frederica. I know that when I’m done reading it, I’ll have more energy and enthusiasm to give to my own writing and, when I do go back to it, everything seems to flow again.

Check with these fine authors to see how they cope with the subject.

Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1gQ
Marie Laval http://marielaval.blogspot.co.uk/
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
Aimee) A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog
Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Margaret Fieland http://margaretfieland.wordpress.com
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com

A Little Bit of Nostalgia

Sitting outside early this morning, head back and sun on my face, I suddenly had an image of an old mid-60s British TV children's series, Camberwick Green, and in particular one of the characters, Windy Miller.

Windy Miller
amazon.uk

I have no idea why that image came to me. After all, there were many characters in Camberwick Green. Mickey Murphy the Baker, Jonathan Bell the farmer, Dr. Mopp, Mrs. Honeyman (the village gossip), and the miller at Colley's Mill, good old Windy. He would whistle for the wind to make the sails go round and liked his cider.

Close to Camberwick Green was Trumpton, where we found Pippin Fort under the charge of Captain Snort and who could forget the firemen? Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, and Grub. The law in town was represented by Policeman Potter while Camberwick Green had PC McGarry to keep its citizens in check.

Once all these characters started running through my head, I was toast because then I started remembering all my children's favourite TV shows, and what a list there was. The Woodentops, The Clangers, Noggin the Nog, Bagpuss, The Herbs, and a series that my late husband grew to love, Wind in the Willows, which played from 1984-88.

Based on Kenneth Graham's book, my DDH (the acronym for dear departed husband) was totally charmed by Badger, Rat, Mole and Mr. Toad of Toad Hall. But his

Chief Weasel
villains/Wiki/Fandom

most favourite character was Chief Weasel. I'm not sure, but I think Nitch identified with this character's rascally ways! Not only that, but the Weasel was voiced by one of Nitch's favourite actors, David Jason.

Anyone who has watched any British TV shows will likely have their favourites, too, but Nitch enjoyed many of the shows in which David Jason appeared like Only Fools and Horses, Open All Hours and particularly The Darling Buds of May based on the books by H.E. Bates. 

Mum and Pop Larkin and their brood of children lived on a farm in Kent. They made a living from selling scrap and doing deals and particularly devising ways to avoid paying taxes. It was set during a gentler period of life at the end of the 50s and beginning of the 60s. Catherine Zeta Jones had her first major TV role in this series, too.

All this remembering has put a smile on my face. There seemed to be much more warmth and wit in some of those old TV shows than there is today. Maybe it's a sign of the times that we have so many shows dealing with disaster and death but I, for one, am happy to visit YouTube for a real dose of nostalgia.