Concept Writing

Years ago, we became fans of the show Face Off. We were at the height of the kid-friendly-but-not-cartoon programming era in our house and latched on to shows that everyone was interested in watching. And Face Off had a lot to like. For me, I enjoyed seeing the creations contestants came up with each week in the challenges. I always felt like it inspired writing, and that I could end up with a good idea for a horror story or something outside my wheelhouse.

Recently, Face Off dropped on Hulu, thank the TV gods. I'm always looking for a good streaming show with lots of seasons, because if I'm having one of my rough nights I have something I can watch or (hopefully) fall asleep to. I was happy to add it to my queue.

Something I had forgotten from the show was how important concept was. It might be easy for people who aren't in that industry to think of this as slapping on some paint and make up and costumes. As molding a bump for the nose or whatever it takes to make a person look like an alien.

It was never that simple.

Time after time after time, as the judges evaluated the characters contestants made, the started off wanting some specific information.

What was the concept?

The judges expected every single creative decision to be grounded in the character's story.





Now, these guys missed the mark, but notice that the evaluation started based on concept. Story.



This one is a better example, in a way. While it doesn't focus on the judges talking to the creator, the judges express all the reasons why this was such a memorable creation. As Neville Page puts it, the success was in the character.

Writers can really take something away from this. Some people might think of writers as making up stories and artists as drawing pictures or molding clay or whatever. Yet the origin is often the same. We're creating characters, and when you look at what they do on Face Off you see that every decision made in design is supposed to be informed by factors related to the character.

Writers could really do worse than to watch the first few seasons of the show and listen to what the judges have to say.

I found myself thinking about how concept writing applies to my own work. My recently published short story, 'Crossing Jordan', was centered on two factors. One was that the objective was to write something that fit the anthology theme (noir, police procedural or crime-related, with a kick-ass dame as your character). I chose noir, and opted to write about a post-op trans woman who wants to die, because I have a family member who is trans.

I was ecstatic to see someone really get the story when a recent review came out.

Crossing Jordan by Sandra Ruttan doesn’t feature murder or a shoot-out but does get us inside the head of a trans sex worker as she tries to unsuccessfully kill herself. But it’s not just A Man Called Ove done up in high heels.  It is a story of persistence and strength in the face of misunderstanding, rejection, and violence. A story that will stick with me.

It meant a lot to see how much of Jordan's character came through for the reader.

When I wrote The Spying Moon, my character presented different challenges for me. In many respects, reading a book can be like stepping straight into a character's mind, particularly if there is a single POV character. But what do you do when the character is an exceptionally focused person? Moreau was tough because of her background and upbringing. As a person who is part-Native, who spent much of her life in foster homes without family or a cultural anchor, she's almost like a blank slate. Instead of figuring out who she was and what she was interested in, she focused on getting answers about what had happened to her mother. She set a goal and every single thing she did, from working hard in school to earning good grades to becoming an RCMP officer, was in service of that goal.

Moreau doesn't think about clothes or music or relationships. She doesn't think much about having a personal life.

She simply focuses her energy on doing what she needs to do to get the answers that she seeks.

The only variation to that goal and her choices stems from principles that her mother did impart in her, things she does remember her saying and telling her to do. She strives to be the person that she believes her mother wanted her to be, while having a singular personal mission. And when the job she needs to properly investigate her mother's disappearance interferes with her ability to further that investigation, she remembers what her mother told her about doing the right thing.

In many respects, Moreau was a hard character to write because she's a hard character to know because she doesn't know herself. What I really found was that her story was a journey of discovery.

“The Spying Moon is a welcome, gritty addition to Canadian crime fiction. Ruttan is a thoughtful and original writer, and Kendall Moreau is a compelling detective in the vein of Jane Tennison and John Rebus.”
– Sam Wiebe, award-winning author of Cut You Down, Last of the Independents and Invisible Dead

"With a keen eye for Canadian detail, Ruttan crafts a grim thriller with a unique social conscience. We need more stories like this one. Kendall Moreau is a Mountie you won't soon forget." --Sarah L Johnson, bestselling author of Infractus and Suicide Stitch: Eleven Stories

It's cool to see others relate to the strength of the character. It speaks to the strength of concept. I've worried that readers may find her a little distant as a POV character because of her lack of personal indulgences.

One of the things that is really important for me is to show how poorly Indigenous people are treated. In the midst of the #metoo movement, there's a lot more to talk about than just sexual harassment; racism is rampant and it is something that many people have to deal with every single day. Since Moreau had been cut off from family and her cultural heritage for many years, The Spying Moon focuses on all the barriers she must overcome. They're layered throughout the story. Detours from road construction, stacks of boxes from building renovations, bad attitudes from co-workers and sexist and racist remarks from potential witnesses and suspects are just some of the examples of obstacles Moreau faces. They're purposeful, because they represent the challenges she's had to face and the ones that she still has to deal with on a daily basis.

No single group of people in Canada is at greater risk of violent death than Indigenous women.

Given her concerns, I can see Moreau connecting to what Iskwe has to say. I hadn't seen this when I first wrote The Spying Moon but it certainly got to me when I did listen to this interview.




I can't change my own cultural heritage, but one thing I can do is make sure that my stories reflect real challenges that real people face and model inclusion, with characters of different ethnic backgrounds, genders and issues.

When people are cut off from their language and culture, they lose a part of themselves. It was a specific tactic used by the English, when they outlawed Irish. It was a tactic used by the Canadian government when they put Indigenous people on reservations and took their children away and sent them to residential schools.

When we talk about crime we think of murder or assault or drug-dealing. We rarely talk about the crime of robbing people of their cultural identity and sense of self.

That's Moreau's origin. Should her story continue, I expect she'll have a soundtrack in the future, as she fills in the missing pieces of her life.

PS: The book comes out next Monday. Amazon lost pre-orders of many titles, including mine, so if you did pre-order it that may have been canceled. That's the last I heard (as of a few weeks ago). 

***

As Anthony-Award winning author Kellye Garrett recently said on Twitter, "There have been just 81 black writers traditionally published in mystery all time. Of those 81 many aren't publishing today." 

Congratulations to Kellye on her Anthony win. May this be indicative of a turning of the tide, and a big step forward for inclusion in crime fiction writing.

Watching Our Words

By Sandra Ruttan

Believe it or not, there was a point in my life when I didn't swear much. One of the hardest adjustments was understanding for myself that if certain words came from a character's mouth in a story I wrote, they still weren't my words.

I got over the swearing. 

It's been much harder dealing with other language.

Remarks made against women or racist comments are the hardest thing to put in a character's mouth. You'd think I might be used to it because The Spying Moon has a lot of it, but making Moreau be female and half Native were deliberate choices to multiply the number of ways she's alienated in the story. 

I still find myself worrying. Worrying someone will take a character's remark personally or think their sentiments are my own. When I wrote it initially that wasn't something I thought about as much, but so much has changed in the last two years that it's clear we aren't moving past racism as a society. Discrimination, on multiple levels, seems to be more rampant than ever. And in some circles it's even acceptable, if not encouraged.

Having a character tell a woman to get in the kitchen or make an assumption about someone based on their race while the POV character and others recognize that as wrong is different from writing something based on your experiences, with a POV character who shares your name and expresses racist sentiments. 

In the wake of the ALA decision to rename an award there's been good reason to think about our racial language in what we write. I think that first, the ALA can call their award whatever they want. Second, no books are being banned. They changed an award's name to make it more inclusive and in line with their mission as an organization.

The fall-out was far and wide, with uproars on Twitter and Facebook, and in organizations like Sisters in Crime. 

Backlash over the name change shows that people can be reactive. Some may be racist and others may just be insensitive.

It has heightened my awareness. My friend count recently went down on Facebook when I asked people who support putting babies in cages to unfriend me. I consider that the best kind of housecleaning possible. I don't need to engage with blatant racists to know how they think.

But what it shows is that this type of thinking is far more prevalent than some of us realized. And that, for me, is the definition of white privilege. I don't always think about how people are treated based on race because I am white.

In order to address prejudices we have to acknowledge they exist and that will come into what we write sometimes. I trust readers to see that treating a person differently based on gender or skin color or sexual orientation or anything else is wrong. 

But I will still think carefully about racial language in every work I produce. We send messages with our words. The subtext of any work worth reading shouldn't be that it was just an excuse to make crude or derogatory remarks.

The ALA's decision, particularly given the current climate, has heightened our awareness of how far there is to go to really change attitudes and embrace equality. I'm thinking about the nuances of language more than ever and, while I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, the reason for it is. Hopefully the future will see a more inclusive writing community, as well as a more inclusive world.

Your Best Self

Sometimes, I think about creating a pseudonym and writing in a different genre, under a different name.

In part because there are some things I want to do that fall more under different genres than mystery/crime. And in part because I'd like to have an anonymous life.

I grew up in a small town. I went to school with the same class of 27 kids (give or take the odd one who'd move to town for a few months or move out of town... sometimes permanently, sometimes not) for the first 9 years of my life. If you didn't know someone yourself you knew them by reputation.

Kids today talk about their mistakes being immortalized on social media. I'm not discounting that, but there was no hiding from yourself where I grew up. The poor kids from the wrong side of the tracks kept those labels and the cool kids retained their power.

Reinventing yourself was a hard thing to do. Especially when you started a new school year only to have your teacher tell you what they expected of X's sister. My sister not only works in a library, her purview involves deciding what books the library stocks. You'd think we grew up in a book-loving family, but you'd be wrong. We both found escape in novels.

I escaped later, to Europe, and lived overseas. In fact, I haven't set foot in my hometown in over 21 years.

I think that's part of the reason I've been drawn to fictional cops who have messed up lives they're trying to avoid or change. Trying to bring order to personal chaos, or being swept up by the chaos. I can relate to those things in my own way.

For someone who finds the idea of disappearing, in a manner of speaking, appealing, I've actually written something very personal. The good folks over at Crimespree ran my article, Writing Our Way to Where We Belong. In it, I talk about a few things I have coming out this year.

One is a short story in an anthology called the dame was trouble. I talk about what motivated me to write Jordan's story.

I also talk about some of the creative decisions I made for Moreau in the Spying Moon and what influenced my choices.

I think that one of the most distinct things about the writing I've been doing recently is that it's more personal than ever. Many writers start out with a protagonist that's a thinly veiled version of themselves. That was never my aim with earlier works. I was more likely to create characters who were what I wanted to be.

In many respects, Moreau is the closest character to me that I've ever written. It's an odd thing - once you put some things out there you can never take them back. But, like life growing up in a small town where everyone knows you or knows of you, you can never truly change a public past.

All you can do is focus on being or becoming your best self, and being at peace with that.

Promoting Your Book Through Thematic Thinking

Last time I dropped by I blogged about writing visually because visual writing not only enables your readers to have a strong sense of the setting in your story, but it also helps when it comes time to produce your cover.

Today, I want to talk about writing thematically.

This is another important thing you can incorporate in your manuscript that will help you in several ways. First, many works are categorized thematically. There are stories classified as coming of age tales. There are works focused on conflicts. Others may focus on dangerous philosophies or political schools of thought that are emerging.

Being able to readily identify themes in your work is something that many readers will connect to. It's also something that can add depth to your material.

More importantly, it can give you something specific to talk about when it comes time to promote your latest release.

Now, I love a great story. I love great characters. The greatest joy in a read is discovering a new character that I want to spend time with who has an intriguing story to tell, like Dana and Jana in Terror is our Business: Dana Roberts' Casebook of Horrors.

Lately, however, I've also been taking note of some of the themes that have been prevalent in works I've been reading. Terror is about more than the supernatural. It's also about understanding our beliefs, confronting our disbeliefs, and restoration.

Freeze-Frame Revolution is a great commentary on the dangers of technology. The author can talk about the environment and how we're destroying the earth and what that's going to mean for generations to come. He can also talk about how technology may - or may not - save us.

Right there I've mentioned two books that are entertaining as hell that have some solid themes the authors can talk about. I mean, you don't want to give away the plot in an interview; you just want to tease it. So when you have themes in mind you have other things you can talk about that can pique the interest of potential readers without giving away the elements of your story that will keep them turning the pages.

Another example of a recent read, for me, is The Oddling Prince. Where do I begin with the themes? It's a coming-of-age story. It's about loss. It's about forgiveness. It's about evil and restoration and love and so much more. All jammed into this delightful quest story that turns the quest construct on its head.

When I wrote The Spying Moon I thought about themes. Loneliness. Exclusion. The things that keep us from fitting in, from our goals, from doing our job, from being happy. What I hoped was that incorporating these themes would add depth to my protagonist and it was nice to see these two specific hopes I had reflected in a blurb I received:

"With a keen eye for Canadian detail, Ruttan crafts a grim thriller with a unique social conscience. We need more stories like this one. Kendall Moreau is a Mountie you won’t soon forget.”
- Sarah L Johnson, bestselling author of Infractus and Suicide Stitch: Eleven Stories

Remember that people want to be entertained and they also want to find characters that they either idolize or relate to in some way. Identifying the themes and talking about those aspects of your work is a way of widening the appeal for potential readers who are hearing about your new novel.