Editing tip? Lessons from Tess Gerritsen

This month's presentation at Spokane Authors featured  local writers Tina Bratcher and Sue Eller talking about character.

Sue suggested we build depth into our characters by thinking about four basic personality tests -- and recognizing the diversity of each individual. Tina followed by discussing four levels of character reaction -- physiological, physical, emotional, and mental. 

Both ideas sent me back to an exercise I've been playing with for my suspense/thriller (a summer editing project), Mothers Don't Die.

EXERCISE: What can I learn about editing my opening from reading the first few pages of a highly rated suspense thriller? What really grabs me as a reader?

I chose Tess Gerritsen's Die Again because the cover was compelling, and I've enjoyed her stories in the past. Imagine that once-in-a-lifetime safari to Africa. What could possibly go wrong? 

Gerritsen had my attention with the first page! Her narrator, on safari in Botswana, finds a leopard print just outside her tent. Gerritsen skillfully introduces her theme (predators), setting (deep in the wilds of Botswana), and 9 characters by page 7. I'm hooked, and I don't really know yet which character is primary.

Gerritsen easily sneaks in her narrator's discontent with her lover and her situation. Characters are deftly described so you know their physicality AND their emotional life, revealed through summary, action, and dialogue. 

Conflict spills out everywhere, sorting out which characters are alpha male/female, and all the characters are bundles of emotion as they feel their way into this new, potentially very dangerous situation: Doubt, irritation, fear, anger, frustration, and contempt. 

Perhaps one among this group of untried tourists is a predator.

According to Julie Beck, in her article "New Research Says There Are Only Four Emotions" (The Atlantic): "Conventional scientific wisdom recognizes six "classic" emotions: happy, surprised, afraid, disgusted, angry, and sad." But studies conflate four of these emotions to two: surprise/fear (eyes wide open to gather information), and anger/disgust (nose primary to avoid breathing in pathogens). These older emotional/physical reactions are driven by our survival instinct, what Beck calls "early biologic" rather than social. Interesting.

NOW to return to editing that first chapter in Mothers Don't Die:

1. How many emotions do my characters reveal through dialogue and inner thought? 
2. How is conflict shown? By character actions? Reactions?
3. What unforgettable images set the scene? Do descriptions of people and places draw on the five senses? on emotion?

After doing a little more online reading about emotion (and how do readers connect to our stories except as our stories appeal to their emotions?), I'm realizing that writers do reveal their own emotional experiences through their writing, regardless of setting. Yes, we do tend to write what we know. And we may face curious blocks in expressing a full range of emotion.

So how do we develop fuller characters? Perhaps by investigating models of emotions and thinking about our characters, their inner emotional life, their needs, their motivation, and their behavior. Psychology again! And we can read writers we admire to peek behind the curtain, perhaps to discern how others create a compelling story. Die Again is not an easy read, but I think Gerritsen has the reader by the throat! Now, back to my own editing . . .

Read more about Die Again by Tess Gerritsen at Amazon.
Julie Beck's article on emotion is at The Atlantic.

Weds Check In . . . August 1

Crazy world out there. Bombs. Shootings. Road rage.Sometimes I think writing is a way to create a world that's separate from all that, though my story has darkness as well. What history doesn't? I'm buried in edits, slogging my way through, but encouraged by first readers' reactions, positive enough that I'm back on the fence, agent or self-pub all over again!

Still July went by in a flash. My little tiny baby grandchild (now 8 weeks old) has grown by a third, coos and gurgles, and nearly holds her head up most of the time, and I can change her diapers before she realizes what's happening! She's a tranquil soul, still blue eyes, and I realize that I named one of my characters for her before she was even thought of.

Today is also our anniversary. 37 years! That passed by in a flash as well. We're going to the Milk Bottle Cafe, a landmark here in Spokane that was built in 1935. According to Wikipedia, this representational architecture was "designed to build better men and women by making dairy products attractive to boys and girls." Ah, the innocence! We're going because their milkshakes are unforgettable and  they fry up the best bar-b-que hamburgers in town.

So, goal setting for the week by WEDS 8/5:
1. Complete edits and add one major scene to Section 2 Years of Stone.
2. Revise two last stories for The Mermaid's Quilt and Other Tales.
3. Do two CRITS for NOVELS-L on the Internet Writers Workshop and participate in ROW80.

Writing thought for the day:  What does a writer do when the scene doesn't unfold, the characters don't talk to each other, the conflict lies flat on the page like a pancake? (Sorry, still thinking about that Milk Bottle Cafe).

If I've worked hard enough, I jump on the internet to look for a FACT that relates to this scene. Maybe an image of a street or an old house. In my current work, old newspapers online are a gold mine of trivia for local controversies, street names (a sense of place), shops that are going out of business, governesses that need to be hired, confirmations of ship sailings. Sometimes I'll search for biographies of key historical people and read through where they were born, how they grew up, when they married. Often the wives (mid 19th Century) died in childbirth. Sometimes the husbands remarried immediately. Sometimes they never married again. I found a lovely image wandering through a museum. Somehow a prison door had been preserved and now was on display. Prisoners had carved graffiti into the wooden doors of the prison -- the outline of a ship, a year, the names of their sweethearts. Some lines were cut deeply, as if the prisoner had a knife; other lines were faint. Paintings, portraits, photographs of old buildings, city histories -- and an unexpected wealth of PDF reports, doctoral dissertations, studies, all help prime the pump. TIP: No matter how much you download or save on your trusty computer, please, please remember to back up your stuff!

And, sadly, that old standby, interlibrary loan, doesn't always come through with books that no one else (apparently) in the world wants to read. So never pass a used book store without checking out what they might have in your area! My most recent find, a lovely collection of aboriginal folktales, The First Sunrise: Australian Aboriginal Myths by Charles P. Mountford (paintings by Ainslie Roberts). One of these will prompt me to add something to a character, a memory from childhood, a recurring dream, maybe a night terror.

May your writing go well.

Guest blogger at Rick's . . .

I'm a guest blogger this Friday at Rick Bylina's blog. The link:

"Up Against the Wall, Baby!"

If you're working on a massive writing project, you may find using "the wall" another way to stay organized and to keep those words flowing.

Thank you, Rick, for your interest in writing and kindness to me. And, as Rick would say, "Writers write!" So write on, and may your writing go well!

F is for Firestorm . . .and Fleas

I've been told to write what I know. How was I to know that a short story about selkies would take me to a three-novel plan about the Industrial Revolution, clearances, and transportation to Van Diemen's Land?  The actual writing becomes a kind of intuitive blend of what I've read (research) and experienced and try to integrate what "good writers" do. And an excuse to travel, though Tasmania just now seems very, very far away.

So this morning, thinking about F, I was reminded about a piece of writer's advice. Go back to the basics. Conflicts internal and external -- against other characters, against nature.  Earthquakes, natural disasters. Fire.

A few years back, we (that is my DH (dear husband) Allen and I) went camping in California's Siskiyous, the first trip in a long time. Actually, the trip was more a disaster. We carried, yes carried backpacks and canned food and a small propane stove (I can't believe we did this) UP four miles of a mountain trail to set up our tent by a lake. No can opener. No matches. No fire. But the lake was pretty and later the stars came out.

In the morning, the air was a strange color of blue, very hazy everywhere. We were just taking down the tent when a ranger came by and told us to get out, a fire was headed our way. Was our campsite taken down fast? Yes! The fire was a big one. We drove through it at one point with fire on both sides of the road. So, a little research and I found that Tasmania is susceptible to bushfires, several tragic fires have occurred there, and I wondered what might have happened out in the bush in 1842.

My "F" is also for fleas. We stayed in some nameless lower-than-budget hotel on one trip. Allen refused to sleep under the covers; he's fastidious, but I was too tired to care. In the morning, my entire body was covered with flea bites. The hotel owner had some hokey story about his wife and her dogs and some fight they had. I didn't care. I love dogs anyway, and the bites healed. But the shock of seeing those bites everywhere stayed with me.

Such experiences large and small shape our writing.

So I do write what I know, but I also write to learn, to expand my understanding of how others have lived and struggled and survived great calamities. Somehow that's reassuring, maybe cathartic. Do you write what you know?

Today is Day 6 of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. Visit to read what other writers have written.

D is for Deception

This morning, gray rain fills the sky, and I'm thinking the weather forecasters are predicting a little snow sometime over the next several days. I'm always surprised, not having grown up in snow country, when rain becomes these funny white fat flakes, a somewhat magical transformation that turns all things white and new.

Writing about writing does not advance the story.

But plopping that butt in the chair may lead to writing. Not necessarily good writing, but once those words are on the page, and the story is done, a writer revises, following that inner sight that says this works and this does not.

Discipline, training, creativity, and tenacity -- these are the gifts I wish you.

Discipline to write every day for then all parts of your mind are brought to the task.

Training to bring to the writing the full complex of tools that will meld story from character, conflict, plot, pacing, setting, dialogue, and action. Of these, we writers could say one or more present challenges. Most of the time, I like my conflict off stage as I generally hate conflicts of any kind, except when something threatens those I love. And under the umbrella of training I would put a command of English -- grammar and syntax, the tools to play with, and later, the tools needed to revise and edit with a very cold eye.

Creativity is a gift, a certain way of seeing or expressing or something mysterious, like a guest we so want to visit, some call her 'the muse,' but we know this guest will arrive on a whim, unexpectedly, full of drama, and she will leave, just as unexpectedly.

Finally, tenacity. That small inner voice that says "Yes!" when someone tells you that being a writer is frivolous or impossible or won't pay the rent. Well, in my case, such stubbornness may stem from Swedish roots, but I suspect many writers are tenacious. At least some of the time. Enough of the time?

So D is for Deception for sometimes we deceive ourselves. Our characters do not speak truth. Our job is to push through and write. Ah, outside I see a soft snow that flickers white and then gray with rain. A man walks by my apartment wearing a red knitted hat, his dog in front, a German Shepherd with tail lifted, happy to be outside. It's time to write.

Today is Day 4 of the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge. Visit to read what other writers have written.

Visiting Tasmania . . .

So what's a writer to do when actually visiting the locale of your current work in progress is impossible? Ask if you are a visual person and jump on the internet. This panorama of paintings showing Hobart Town between 1820-1860 helped me "see" into a very different time and place where my characters live and struggle.



This day trip to Port Arthur by Tim Hoosier helps me to visualize what was once a harsh and forbidding prison. Few escaped for the wardens and guards perpetuated the idea that the waters surrounding this stubby peninsula were shark-infested.



This grisly National Geographic video highlights the dreaded Tasmanian Devil. In photos, this small cousin to the more familiar kangaroo is rather cute. But after seeing this video, I now have a scene where Mac goes out into the night to investigate what sounds like a woman screaming.



National Novel Writing Month was good to me. After a month of not writing at all (due to travel and family illness), November kicked me back. Years of Stone is now at 36,000 words and I'm facing my next challenge: Making sure the historical underpinning is dead accurate.

May your own writing go well.