Writing Popular Fiction

by Dean Koontz

5. Is the method of murder or the way the body was found unique and attention-getting? It should be. Not every mystery must contain a clever murder method, but those that do have another plus. You should be anxious to acquire as many story values as possible, and you should try to think of something unique, something besides a simple stabbing, shooting, or strangling. An axe murder? Hit-and-run in a supermarket parking lot? A forced drowning? A murder made to look like a suicide, but so obviously bungled that the killer intended the police to know it was murder in disguise? A case of deliberate poisoning?

  In the first chapter of Donald E. Westlake's Don't Lie to Me, the body is discovered nude, in the middle of a museum, as if it had been dropped out of the sky. Since the victim was strangled, he would have eliminated from bowels and bladder as he died, yet here he is clean as Christmas. Evidently, he was killed, then washed carefully, dried, and brought here in the dead of night, with the guard on duty. Why? How? And by whom? The circumstances of the body's discovery are startling enough to carry the reader through the book, wondering about the answer.

  6. Do you introduce at least one potential suspect by the end of chapter two? You should, so that both the hero and the reader will have something to mull over. This doesn't necessarily mean that the suspect must be blatantly obvious (though he may be). You need only introduce an associate, friend, relative, or lover of the dead man, someone who might conceivably have a motive for killing him; this person may seem like a very unlikely prospect for the role of the killer, at first, but the important thing is that he remain at least a possibility.

  7. Do you introduce a second suspect by the end of chapter three? The sooner you expand the list of possible killers, the more difficult the puzzle becomes-and the more firmly your narrative hook is implanted. For this reason, you should establish murderous motives for at least three characters. Even four or five suspects are easier to work with and better for the creation of a real puzzle.

  For example, if in chapter one the president of a prosperous and busy city bank is found dead in his office immediately after his lunch hour, you might have the following suspects for your detective to question. The president's own Private Secretary, a beautiful young woman who has been angry with the president of late because he's been vacillating about his intentions of marrying her. She was out to lunch, but can't prove where she was when the murder took place. The Vice-President of the bank, who has long coveted the top job and feels the board would put him in if the president retired or left for another position in another bank. The banker's "cousin," who turns out to have been his Mistress. This girl often visited him during his lunch hour, for the purpose of quick sexual relaxation, and might have been there today-and might have been mad at him because he vacillated about rejecting the notion of marrying his secretary. The banker's desk drawer contains a typed note indicating that his ex-brother-in-law had borrowed $20,000 from him a year ago, agreeing to pay it back in twelve months. Perhaps the Brother-in-Law couldn't pay back the money and was there to plead, unsuccessfully, for an extension on the loan. Here you have four characters with murderous motives; in the course of this story, others could easily arise.

  8. Have you provided legitimate clues to the killer's identity? You should hide at least three in the course of the story. These may be introduced so quietly that the reader never picks them up. Perhaps, for example, your story opens with a body found in a muddy flowerbed behind a mansion. When the detective covertly steals a glance at the shoes of each member of the household, as he questions them, he may notice that they are wearing scuffed or dusty shoes, that one man's shoes are freshly polished, but that no one is wearing muddy shoes. Later, it may dawn on the hero that the man with the freshly polished footwear had, just before the interrogation, scrubbed away the traces of mud; his shoeshine could have been to eliminate the evidence. This is, of course, an exaggerated example, but it should give you an idea of how the clue can be presented deceptively, the meaning quietly covered until later.

  A clue may also be introduced with fanfare. A pair of work gloves, covered with garden mud, might be found in the room of the dead man's stepson, for example. This kind of thing is usually used to throw the reader off the track, to get him looking in all the wrong places. Later, it will turn out that the blatantly delivered clue was false; the muddy gloves could have been put there by the killer to throw suspicion on the stepson, or the stepson might have some perfectly legitimate explanation for them.

  Likewise, the very obvious clue can be used to make the reader think: "Well, I'm supposed to suspect the stepson. That much is obvious. Therefore, it couldn't possibly be the stepson." Then, in the end, it is the stepson, after all.

  The idea is to give the reader the pertinent data but to try to fool him into employing it incorrectly. When the real killer's identity is disclosed at the end of the book, the reader should be able to go back, spot check you, and say, "Now, why didn't I see that?"

  9. Does your narrative tension come from the reader's desire to know who more than from his desire to know how to stop him? It should. The killer's identity, the why of the crime, is more important to the reader than any chase or race against time or anticipation of a violent event. Again, the Nero Wolfe books, or anything by Agatha Christie (especially The Mystery of the Blue Train, Murder in the Calais Coach, and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd) serves as a fine example of this.

  10. Does your hero exhaust one avenue of investigation after another until it seems impossible to assign guilt for the crime? He should reach this point no sooner than halfway through the book. He should seem stumped, or so confused by new developments that the reader almost suspects the killer will get away with his crime.

  11. Is your police and laboratory procedure genuine? Does your detective follow established investigatory procedure, as it is known in most public and private police agencies across the country? If you're writing about an autopsy, do you know just how one is done? Do you know what all the police can learn from an autopsy: old injuries, evidence of rape, traces of the killer's skin and hair, a thousand other useless and valuable bits of data? Do you know what surfaces take fingerprints well, what others take them poorly, and which ones don't take them at all? Do you know the different techniques for lifting fingerprints? Do you know how or why a shoe print or tire track can lead the authorities to the villain? All these and hundreds of other things can easily be researched in a university, city, county, or state library. If they do not have any books on criminology, they can borrow them from other libraries for as long as you will need to study them and make notes. One of the best resources on criminology is Jurgen Thorwald's Crime and Science, a Harvest Book published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in a moderately-priced, over-sized paperback. Thorwald's book is not only a valuable reference work, but an entertaining compilation of famous crimes that were solved through the clever application of forensic science.

  12. Does your hero's sudden realization of the killer's identity evolve from a juxtaposition of events that he has been playing with, in his mind, all along but which he has been unable to interpret, thus far, because of some preconception or character flaw of his own? It should. You must never drop the solution into the hero's lap through some twist of fate or stupid mistake made by an otherwise clever villain. His own best efforts should solve the puzzle, his own wit.

  (This is similar to the advice I gave in Section 2 of the preceding chapter, when we were considering the suspense novel. To gain some additional insight on mysteries, you should read Chapter Three as closely as this one.)

  13. Does the revelation of the villains identity come close to the end of the book? If it comes in the first third, or in the middle, you are probably writing a suspense novel and not a mystery. Remember, the mystery reader wants to be kept guessing until the end.

  14. Is the revelation of the killer's identity delivered in an action scene, as opposed to a dry, verbalized accounting made by the hero to other people in the story? Long summations, after the detective has called all the suspec
ts into one room, are trite and tend to slow the plot nearly to a standstill. It is true that your reader, having come that far in the story, will read to the end no matter how you present the last few scenes. But it is better to leave a reader perfectly content with the final chapter, for it is this last sequence of events that he will most clearly remember. If he was displeased with your handling of the conclusion, he will not rush out to buy your next mystery novel. Instead of a tell-'em-about-it climax, incorporate the detective's summation into an action scene.

  For example: The hero goes to the suspect's apartment, breaks in, and searches for that one last piece of evidence that will clinch the case. He finds it, but he is surprised by the villain before he can steal safely away. At the antagonist's mercy, perhaps at gunpoint, he bargains for time by trying to unsettle the killer. He laughs at him and tells him how inept he was at trying to hide his identity; in the course of delivering this ridicule, the detective explains how he came upon the clues, how he put them together, and why he decided the killer must be Mr. X. Like this:

  I rested my hand on top of the paperweight, on the desk, getting an idea of its weight. It would make a good missile; even if I could not hit him with it, I could distract him long enough to close the short distance between us.

  "But how did you know Rita was my old girlfriend?" he asked.

  "You provided that clue yourself," I said. I gripped the paperweight, ready to throw it. "Do you remember when we were talking about-"

  "Let go of the paperweight," he said, smiling. "I'd have a bullet in your chest before you could pitch it."

  Reluctantly, I did as he said.

  "Now, go on," he said.

  As you see, there is a dramatic element intertwined with the explanation. As the detective tells how he put two and two together, he also searches for a way to turn the tables on the antagonist. This is much more readable than a dry summation.

  15. In the course of your story, does your hero gain some piece of data from every interview and avenue of investigation that he conducts? Some new mystery writers construct paper suspects who can easily be proven innocent in the detective's first confrontation with them. Then they propel their protagonist through a series of interviews and surveillances that lead absolutely nowhere-except that the hero can say, at the conclusion of each dead end, something like: "Well, Walters, we don't know anything more about Lady Randolph's death now than when we started. But at least we can be certain that Lord Biggie is not the man we want!" It is acceptable to have your protagonist follow up a few bum leads, for this gives the story a realistic touch; but the majority of tacks he takes must provide some information, no matter how minimal, that has a bearing on the solution of the case.

  Again, I must stress, these rules and requirements of the form will not be all you need to know to write a salable mystery novel. As important as knowing what pitfalls to avoid is your familiarity with the writers who have been successful in the genre. Toward that end, you should have read something by each of these writers: Ross MacDonald (The Goodbye Look, The Underground Man, The Moving Target, The Zebra-Striped Hearse, The Ivory Grin), Agatha Christie (And Then There Were None, The A.B.C. Murders, By the Pricking of My Thumbs, Passenger to Frankfurt), Georges Simenon (any of his Maigret stories), Evan Hunter (Shotgun, Jigsaw, Killer's Choice, all under the pseudonym Ed McBain), John Dickson Carr (The Problem of the Green Capsule, The Dead Man's Knock, The Man Who Could Not Shudder), Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep, The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye), Nicholas Freeling (Death in Amsterdam, The Dresden Green, Strike Out Where Not Applicable), Harry Kemelman (Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home), Cornell Woolrich (The Bride Wore Black, The Black Angel, The Black Curtain, Deadline at Dawn), Colin Watson (Charity Ends at Home, Coffin Scarcely Used, Lonelyheart 4122) and Dashiell Hammett (all five of his brilliant novels: Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key, and The Thin Man). This is, of course, only the barest of lists, and should be supplemented with as many other mystery writers' work as you can find and can find time to read.

  CHAPTER FIVE Gothic-Romance

  In my third year as a freelance writer, the science fiction market temporarily dried up, due to editorial overstocking at several of the houses with the largest monthly science fiction lists. Since I was selling far more science fiction than anything else, I was caught in the pinch. I was learning the suspense form, but had not yet had great success with it, and I was several years away from writing the big, serious novels I'm now concentrating on. I needed new markets, fast. The previous year, I'd dabbled in erotic novels, as a sideline, but I did not feel like returning to that category and, besides, it was not flourishing as it once had. What to do?

  For a year, an editor friend had been urging me to try a Gothic novel since the form is perennially one of the most popular in the paperback field. I declined, principally because I didn't think I could write believably from a woman's viewpoint, but also because I simply did not like Gothic novels. I felt they were so formulized as to be mirror images of one another, and I didn't see how I could write in a field for which I had no respect. When the science fiction market remained tight, however, I finally tried my hand at a Gothic. I finished the book in two weeks, attached a female by-line (half the Gothics published today are written by men, but the by-line must always be female), and mailed it off. The editor read it, made a few suggestions, and bought it for $1,500. That's $750 a week; not a fortune, but a pleasant enough income to make it worth most any genre writer's time.

  Three months later, I wrote my second Gothic, again in two weeks, and received a $1,750 advance. My third Gothic, a few months later, took me one week from first page to last and earned another $1,750 check. Within a single year, taking only five weeks away from my serious work, I made $5,000 from my Gothics, enough to relieve immediate financial problems and let me get on with my more important work.

  Herein lies the great advantage of writing category fiction. Financial worries are the most common causes of writers' blocks. If a writer cannot pay his bills, he usually cannot create. He either has to take a second job or a part-time job (if he is already a full-time freelancer) until his bills are paid and the tension relieved-or he must set aside his serious work and write something that will turn a fast dollar. Since he can probably earn more money, more quickly, by writing a Gothic than by working as a clerk, he is foolish not to take advantage of his talents. I know of writers who say they will not "prostitute" their talent by writing anything just for money. When they get desperate to meet the bills, they take a job for five or six months until they're financially solvent again, then launch into full-time freelancing once more. So far as I can see, they are doing worse than prostituting their talent; they are denying it altogether for unnecessarily long periods of time. In four weeks of Gothic writing, they could earn more money than they do in six months of office work, and be back at their serious creation five months sooner.

  Lest I give you the impression that anyone can sit down and bat out a marketable Gothic novel in two weeks, let me point out that the Gothic form requires the same five basic elements as any other category novel. If you have already familiarized yourself with the basics of other categories, and if you've written and sold a novel or two in them, you will find Gothics relatively easy fare to create. However, if you're starting your writing career as a Gothic novelist, you will find it as taxing and demanding to achieve sales as if you had started in any other genre. Remember, though, that anyone who can write and sell a Gothic can also write and sell in at least one other category. Because it usually contains a crime committed early in the plot and because the villain is not revealed until the climactic scene towards the end, the Gothic resembles the mystery story and is subject to many of the techniques and rules of that form. Because it usually contains some supernatural events-which may or may not be explained away as natural phenomena or tricks of the villain-the Gothic often resembles fantasy. Because th
e reader is lured on, not by fights and chases so much as by anticipation of disaster, the Gothic bears many similarities to suspense novels.

  Just as you must not underestimate the job of a Gothic novelist, you must not underestimate the Gothic readership. That audience cannot be summed up in a phrase like "dewy-eyed schoolgirls," because it includes women of all ages. Likewise, you cannot think of them as "dull, unimaginative women," because some men and many bright ladies have been bitten by the Gothic bug. I do believe that a large percentage of the Gothic readership is composed of housewives who, growing weary of the sameness of television programming, begin to read. These are people who have never been readers before, and they prefer to start out with books that seem familiar to them. (Gothics resemble television soap operas, though they are considerably less insipid than those daytime serials.) A percentage of this audience will remain content with the Gothics, while others will move on to different kinds of novels. As a result, all writers benefit by the growing audience, and the Gothic author can be certain of a constant flow of new readers.

  By far, the majority of Gothic novels are published as paperback originals. Here, the advances range from $1,500 to $2,500 for new Gothic writers and as high as $3,000 and $3,500 for a popular paperback author like Dorothy Daniels. Because the demand for Gothics is so great, the successful Gothic novelist can obtain multiple-book contracts, such as Dorothy Daniels' 12-novels-a-year deals with Paperback Library. Advances, for the most part, are the sum total of the paperback Gothic author's earnings, for subsidiary rights are seldom picked up in this field.

  At one time, only the best Gothic writers were published between hardcovers, those whose talent for characterization runs deep and who manage to stretch the formulized plot into moderately unique arrangements that give the genre more life and excitement than it usually has: Elizabeth Goudge, Victoria Holt, Daphne Du Maurier. Recently, however, the hardcover market has opened up to a whole range of Gothic talents, and the new writer has a better chance of being published there. Periodically, hardback Gothic novels achieve long runs on the bestseller lists, with all the subsidiary money that means, including huge paperback advances, book club sales, and foreign editions. The new Gothic novelist, however, should understand that these are dishes he will not taste for some time, if at all.