Writing Tips

One of the pitfalls of writing without a plan, and going where the story leads you, is that sometimes you write yourself into a corner.
Nothing feels worse, fifty-thousand words into a novel, to find that a decision that seemed like a brilliant plot twist twenty-thousand words earlier, has rendered the fantastic idea you’ve been building towards unworkable.
The gut-churning feeling that your awesome story might need to be completely re-tooled or even scrapped, and the feeling that finally, this will be the book where your wing-and-a-prayer method might finally let you down, can lead to sleepless nights and a crippling attack of imposter syndrome.
Yet it happens to the best of us, and although it may feel like the end-of-the-world, it usually isn’t.
Sure there are plenty of horror stories of people scrapping their work in progress. Of writers filled with professional shame as they email their agent or publisher to break the news that the manuscript they’d confidently promised three months ago will not be delivered on time. Of publishers having to push back publication dates.But what you don’t hear about is those writers that overcome the hurdle. Who have a sudden flash of inspiration that fixes everything and leads to the best book of their career. We tend not to talk about it. Perhaps we should? Perhaps we shouldn’t be embarrassed to brag about it?

In fact, I would go as far to say that writing yourself into a corner can be a good thing!
Yes, you read that correctly! Because we writers are fighters. When our backs are against the wall, we come out swinging. Solving that insurmountable problem forces us to be more creative.

So how can we solve the unsolvable, and salvage months of work? Here are a couple of suggestions. Think of them more as a basic principle, rather than a concrete suggestion.

Shoot Someone.
There is a quote, widely attributed to Raymond Chandler, “When stumped, have a man come through a door with a gun.”
There are questions over whether this was advice, or just a description of how he used to work when writing pulp fiction.
But, it can solve a problem. If you are heading down an alley with a dead-end, then shake things up. Add a big twist, like a man with a gun. Coincidences are frowned upon in crime fiction – yet sometimes they do happen. So why not acknowledge that your investigator has been chasing a spurious lead and give them another victim or a clue that makes them realise they were on the wrong track? A need to reset and start again. Do it right and your error becomes a twist that your readers never saw coming, because you had no idea it was going to happen either!
Change The Culprit.
Even pantsers who start with little in the way of a plan often know who did it. But with no clear route  plotted, it’s all too easy to end up in that corner, with thousands of words that no longer lead anywhere. It’s rather like setting out on a road trip knowing roughly which direction your final destination is in, but missing the correct exit on the motorway and having to either double-back or take a tortuous route cross-country on poorly-lit, narrow backroads.
So ask yourself, how wedded are you to that culprit? Again, done correctly, your misstep becomes a fantastic twist that takes everyone by surprise.
Bring In A New Character.
Sometimes the problem is a result of having eliminated too many suspects too early on. In which case changing the culprit (as above) can change the game. Alternately, perhaps invent a new character. Introduce them early in the story as a potential suspect and shift some of the spade work you’ve done eliminating another character onto their shoulders.
For example, imagine you have two brothers, both suspects (but ultimately innocent), one of whom you want to be in the running until the last couple of chapters. You’ve been busy setting up the reasons why they will ultimately be eliminated, and suddenly, with a hundred pages to go, neither of them are viable suspects anymore, meaning that the real culprit is now too obvious! You could go back and remove all that deduction. Or they could have a third brother. Then two brothers are eliminated, but the third one is still a plausible suspect.
The caveat. One of the informal rules in crime writing is that the culprit should be introduced early in the book. To give your readers a fighting chance, this new character must at least be mentioned in the first few chapters. Suddenly introduce them after the half-way point, and the chances are your readers will feel cheated.
It Was All A Dream.
Just kidding, that’s a really bad idea.

How do you write yourself back out of that corner?
As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next time,
Paul

One of the weirder debates I got sucked into on a Facebook book group was about the necessity of prologues.
One poster stridently announced that they always skipped the prologue, as it never contained anything useful.
I was gobsmacked.
In pretty much all of my books, the opening murder takes place in the prologue. Some would argue that’s fairly useful. Most other participants shared my view, but the original poster would not be moved in their opinion.
To this day, I can’t decide if the person was a troll, or just as mad as a box of frogs.
Some members of the group claimed they disliked books with a prologue, even to the point that they will avoid reading them.
“Just start at chapter one!” they implore.
Suggestions that if it really offends them that much, they could just mentally renumber the chapters so that the prologue is called chapter one, fell on deaf ears.
The thing is, in my DCI Warren Jones books at least, the prologue isn’t chapter one. My novels are, for the most part, set out in a linear fashion. I divide the story into sections, typically headed with a date. So for the initial murder to take place on an as yet undisclosed date, it needs to exist outside that structure. The prologue deliberately doesn’t have a date attached, so that if I wish, I can tease with an opening scene that may not be referenced again until well into the book. In my sixth book, A Price To Pay, the prologue has a woman running through a darkened forest being shot at and chased by dogs. The scene ends before we find out what happens to her.
The story then progresses to chapter one, where DCI Warren Jones is called to a murder in a massage parlour. As the book unfolds, readers will be wondering about that woman, looking for hints at what her fate is ,or the role that she will eventually play.
I’d suggest that skipping the prologue because of some irrational prejudice is going to seriously impact your understanding of what’s going on and rob you of that anticipation.

Lee Child, creator of the phenomenally successful Jack Reacher series, said at a literary festival that one of the reasons he made Reacher a drifter was to avoid the constraints of a traditional police procedural. Specifically he mentioned how a typical police procedural would start with the detective being called to the crime scene and the case unfolding from there.
It was a valid observation. Any police procedural that wishes to be realistic has an inherent structure. A Reacher novel can start from any point. In The Killing Floor, Reacher steps off a bus in a Georgia town, orders pie in a diner, and is promptly arrested. The Enemy opens with a heart attack, One Shot with a man carrying a rifle driving to a car park.
And that is the other reason why I always have a prologue. Each of my books starts differently. A Price To Pay has the woman in the woods. Forgive Me Father has two teenagers breaking into the grounds of a ruined abbey. The first in the series, The Last Straw, has the blood-soaked discovery of a body, the second, No Smoke Without Fire, starts with somebody released from prison.
Of course I strive to make chapter one original each time as well, but with one or two exceptions it usually starts after the discovery of a victim, when Warren is called to the scene.

But That’s Not The End.
One of the distinctive – and sometimes derided – features of Golden Age crime is the big final reveal. Agatha Christie’s Poirot novels are (in)famous for their closing ‘library scene’ (or similar), where all of the suspects are called together and Poirot goes through their motives one at a time, before discarding them. Eventually, whoever is left, is unmasked as the killer. It’s an effective and enjoyable device, not least because he ties up all the loose ends.
But of course it isn’t really appropriate or realistic for most stories. Gathering all the suspects together can feel contrived, and the tension of the reveal aside, isn’t especially dramatic. And attempting to wrap up everything in a neat bow can rob the final denouement of its momentum, as you seek to explain exactly what the final clue was that led to the killer.
But skipping that explanation isn’t a good idea. Your readers have earned the right to know exactly how the case was solved and perhaps even the motives behind the crime. Some readers like to ‘play along’, and will want to see if their thoughts mirrored the detectives. Simply having the killer presented, followed by The End, would be unsatisfying and frustrating.
So that’s where the epilogue comes in. The problem is that it can feel like an after thought. You need a way of getting across what you want to explain without it feeling like a list of bullet points. My own device is to have Warren debriefed by Assistant Chief Constable Naseem. He is openly collecting details of interesting cases for his future memoirs. It is usually a chat in his office a few days after the conclusion of the investigation. It has evolved over the years, with it becoming more philosophical in tone. I sometimes use it as way to foreshadow what may happen in future novels in the series (Out of Sight ends on a teaser about Warren’s future).

Most books have some sort of epilogue, but it may not be marked as such. It could just be the wrapping up at the end of the final chapter. I label mine epilogue simply because I like the symmetry of a book starting with a prologue and ending with an epilogue.

What are your thoughts on prologues and epilogues? Are they important to a book or a distraction? Do you use any particular devices?
As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
All the best, Paul.
Epilogue:
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