Now Write! Mysteries

GRAHAM BROWN has been a pilot, an attorney, and a ditch digger (it’s a long story). An avid reader, he decided to write a novel, thinking, How hard can this be? Ten years later, Random House bought the rights to his first book, Black Rain. The sequel, Black Sun, offers a unique twist on the concept of a 2012 apocalypse. Currently, Graham is at work on his third novel and a pair of screenplays.

There are many important facets to a successful novel, and by successful I mean interesting, memorable, enjoyable, not necessarily bestselling.

In general we have to focus on a broad swath of the entire project, even as we fine-tune the details of the writing. And while we all know that concept is “king,” plot twists need to “astound,” and pacing must be “breathless,” we often get so busy focusing on these things that many writers seem to forget about character.

Sometimes it’s intentional. I have spoken with authors who insist the story is “what happens” and not how the people feel about what happens, or how it affects them.

Other times it’s unintentional. We know our characters so well that we end up not articulating their human nature. They become devices, just there to propel the plot along, to discover the clue at the right moment, and so on....

Perhaps some minor characters can fit that description, but your major characters should never be that way, not if you want them to resonate with people. Not if you want them—and your book—to be remembered.

If readers connect with your main characters, identify and mentally put themselves into the place of those characters—in other words, feel their pain—then, when your heroes overcome whatever deadly and impressive obstacles you’ve put in their path, your readers will feel the great endorphin boost that goes along with succeeding, as if they’d done it themselves. And that’s what makes them remember your book, because the triumph of your novel is the reader’s victory as well as the character’s.

Just think of sports fans talking about the year “They won it all”—even though they did not play a down or throw the ball. Writing is the same.

Lesson One: Take the characters you already have and break them. You have to make them less than perfect. You have to give them flaws, errors, and regrets. You have to give them a past with a few marks in the loss column. In essence, you have to make them human.

I’ll use some movies to illustrate, only because with 150 movies out per year, versus 60,000 books or more, movies are more universal. And, because an average script is basically 110 pages of mostly dialogue, the hits and misses can be more easily spotted.

A perfect example is one of my all-time favorites, James Bond. I love the movies: a lot of great stunts and action scenes; some fantastic one-liners; extremely attractive women; and a fast, relentless pace. It’s a formula that has been good for nearly five decades and a couple of billion dollars. It also influences a lot of novels, including mine. But for the most part, many of the recent Bond movies are just kind of a hazy blur to me. They were fun while I was watching, but I can’t say they really stuck with me long after the credits rolled.

Enter new writers and Daniel Craig as the new James Bond. Suddenly we have a Bond who isn’t perfect anymore. He’s more of an outcast, not exactly at the top of his profession and even considered a thug by M, who feels she made a mistake promoting him to 00 status.

So Daniel Craig’s Bond starts out with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. Things go downhill from there, until this Bond, unlike any of the others, falls desperately in love with the female lead: Vesper Lynd. He almost dies for her, only to find out that she’s betrayed both him and country. The bitterness he feels literally seeps from the screen (in a book, of course, it should literally seep from the page), and this Bond, with his flaws and weaknesses and failures, strikes a chord in us. We remember him. We remember perceiving him as if he were a gun ready to go off, not because we were told this but because we can feel what he feels.

Lesson Two: Make those flaws matter to the plot. A perfect example of this comes from one of the best thrillers of all time: The Bourne Identity . Everyone has seen the Matt Damon movie, and it’s fantastic. No less fantastic is the original novel by Robert Ludlum.

The threat in this story is not all that unique: a master terrorist is going to kill a bunch of people in New York. What is unique is the character of Jason Bourne. Not only is he flawed. He is ALL flaws.

His main flaw, of course, is that he has amnesia. That becomes hyperrelevant because people are trying to kill him and he doesn’t know who they are, or why they’re trying to kill him. This makes him vulnerable, another flaw. He is also on the tragic side because if he doesn’t remember who he is, something terrible will happen (the terrorist shootings), but if he does, the truth may drive away the only light in his life, the woman who has befriended him.

There is little success in Jason Bourne’s life, but because he is essentially good and trying to do the right thing, whatever he once was, we identify with him. Who isn’t trying to make up for a few past wrongs? So the readers pull for him and feel his success with him and they don’t forget it.

EXERCISE