First Readers and Sensitivity

Most writers have a "first" reader or readers, sometimes called beta readers, ideal readers. They are trusted voices who "get" what we do, who catch the rough spots we can miss because we're so close to the work, among other things. For some it's an editor or agent. 

We research our books. Some crime writer go on a ride-along, take FBI courses, or visit areas they want to write about, to get the little details that make verisimilitude in the story and hold the readers' suspension of disbelief, because after all, if it's fiction, they know it didn't really happen. It's our job to make it feel like it did, or bring it to life in the readers' minds. One of your first readers might be in law enforcement, if you are writing about police. They might be someone who spent time in prison, if you are writing a prison novel. Someone who lives in Alaska, if you are writing a book set there, and only had the time and funds to research it online or by reading. Someone who has lived a life similar to your character.

Which brings up what some are calling "sensitivity readers." It's a first reader who has lived a life similar to your character. But not in their profession, or in their home country or state, but their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation. And a lot of writers chafe at this idea. Some of it is the name itself. What, you sayin' I lack sensitivity? (Imagine that said in my thickest of Jersey accents).

Writers work in empathy, in the original sense. The vicarious experience of another's emotion, through our imagination. And the idea that we'd fail at this strikes at the heart of what we do. Part of what we do is create imaginary people, and they are very personal to us. And the idea that we lack "sensitivity!" That's our bread and butter! We observe, we feel, we create in response to those observations and emotions! 

Yes, but we do it through a lens. We don't actually walk in another's shoes, much less their skin. And as hard as we try to shed the beliefs and prejudices we were raised with, there are experiences we can only know second hand. Sometimes we feel like we know these experiences because we've read about them, watched them on TV, and have close friends who have lived it. But that's a lens in front of a lens. Which can be doubly distorted.

A writer I greatly respect responds to this with, "but your 'sensitivity reader' is only one person. Their experience doesn't speak for everyone of their background." And that is true, but their lens is different than ours. Personally, I think this chafing comes from fear. Not at being called a racist, but of finding a cataract in our empathic lens, a blind spot. To me, that's an opportunity for improvement. To learn something about life I can never experience firsthand. And that's why I read.

And I will admit my hypocrisy. One of my more popular characters is Denny the Dent, a hulking African-American man with a birth injury that makes people assume he is developmentally challenged. I have never used a first reader for any of those stories. They've gone directly to editors. Because Denny is based on me. Once I filled out, and my terrible striking defense gave me a pugilist's nose, I noticed that people were intimidated by me. When I went on my nightly walks, lost in my daydream writing world, people would cross the street. When I'm distracted by writing thoughts, I get what my wife calls my "murder face."

So I amplified what I felt, when writing Denny. He's a very sympathetic character. Like his pit bull Remy, he just wanted to be friendly, but the world was cruel. And now he hides inside himself, until he sees a cruelty inflicted upon another that he cannot abide.

That doesn't mean I got everything right. Denny grew up in Newark. I've worked there for decades, but I don't know what growing up in his ward was like. I've read articles by people who grew up in the Terrace projects, and talked to people who have. For a few short stories that may have been enough, but when I write the Denny the Dent novel, a lifetime Newarker like Denny will be one of my first readers. Because I want to get it right. Another lens, when positioned correctly, can let us see the stars. And that's what the right first reader can do. 

Gritty in the Suburbs

Stanton McCaffrey is a first time novelist whose book Into the Ocean recently came out from New Pulp Press. A New Jersey set crime novel from a Jersey native, it's gotten good reviews like the one at Out of the Gutter online, and no less a crime writing notable than Charlie Stella calls it "a hell of a debut novel".  In his piece here, McCaffrey talks about how important setting is in his novel and why he aimed to write not an urban crime tale or a rural crime tale, but one set in the very specific world of the New Jersey suburbs.

Gritty in the Suburbs

 By Stanton McCaffery

When starting the brainstorming process for my first novel, Into the Ocean, I knew I wanted to write something brutal, something gritty. I like the idea of morally conflicted and desperate protagonists. Even more, I like settings that don’t just feel like characters but feel like forces conspiring against characters.

For the types of fiction I like to read, those stories typically take place either in urban or rural environments. But those aren’t the places that I know. I could have done research on those places I suppose, but to me that would have been dishonest. That would have been someone else’s book.

No, I grew up in the suburbs. They’re what I know. To be exact, I grew up in Edison, New Jersey, which is in-part the inspiration for the fictional Madison Park where Into the Ocean takes place. Madison Park is an amalgam of central New Jersey towns, where we have both trailer parks and housing projects. We used to have vacant factories too, but they’ve all been turned into big-box retailers and Amazon warehouses. The poverty is there too, you just have to look for it or know people well enough.

It struck me thinking about the setting I grew up in and am still in to an extent, that I didn’t have to write someone else’s novel in order for my book to be gritty or for it to hit some of the same notes that other pieces of noir hit. Based on my own anecdotal experiences alone, with some creative exaggeration of course, I felt I could pull off some brutal and honest crime fiction.

Just like in the flashback scenes I have in the novel, there were some nasty characters around me growing up. And, man, people in the eighties and nineties in central New Jersey were incredibly racist (not to say they’re not still). There was one kid who would ride his bike through the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood making Nazi salutes. Last I heard he had a job with the township.

Also, the town I grew up in had and still has an almost comically corrupt police department where one officer recently tried to firebomb an officer from another town’s house for not getting his relative off a DUI charge. When I was a teenager I had a drunken run-in with the Edison cops myself from which I still bare the scar on my head. A detective told me that if I didn’t admit to punching a cop he would stick his pen inside the hole the other officer had put in my head.

If you decide to pick up Into the Ocean, you’ll notice that police corruption features prominently. 

It’s not just the police. The entire atmosphere in the suburbs is stifling. Growing up, if you had a conflict with somebody in elementary school that conflict carried through to high school. If you weren’t lucky enough to get out as an adult, you still worry about running into that person you tussled with in 5^th grade or one of their siblings at the ShopRite. In the suburbs like Madison Park there is no starting over.

There’s the poverty too, a staple of noir fiction and something I felt compelled to depict. In my neighborhood now, which you’d still consider the suburbs, poverty is apparent. As I write this, two of my neighbors sit with their utilities cut off because of inability to pay. Two houses on my street were abandoned when the owners could no longer cover the mortgages. My personal favorite story is that another one of my neighbors, one who my wife also witnessed smashing his car with a garden hoe in a drunken fit of rage, tore off his nipple hopping out of a dumpster after looking for food. Now, tell me that’s not gritty.

There are statistics and wider reporting to support these anecdotal observations as well. The suburbs might have once been the home of Leave it to Beaver, but now they’re home to Breaking Bad. According to Time Magazine, more and more people simply don’t want to live in the suburbs anymore. According to The Atlantic, “The number of poor in the suburbs surpassed the number of poor in the cities in the 2000s, and by 2011, almost 16.4 million suburban residents lived below the poverty line.”

This means to me that many of those that still live in the suburbs are those that for one reason or another can’t get out. They, like many noir protagonists in books from Dennis Lehane or Daniel Woodrell, are stuck.  

Add to all this the current opioid epidemic hitting much of the U.S. and particularly central New Jersey and you have a perfect storm fit for crime fiction.  

And Into the Ocean is fiction, but I like to think it portrays at least one honest perspective of life in the New Jersey suburbs where it’s not just the summer humidity that makes you feel like you’re going to explode.

You can pick up Into the Ocean here.

Bidding Adieu

My husband and I have an ongoing debate about books and shows. Or, perhaps more accurately, we have fairly firmly set opinions that are entrenched, and that are at odds with each other.

I love a great series. Brian... not so much.

The real difference centers around Brian's belief that too many series outlive their shelf life; they could end on a high note earlier, but instead they're milked for all they're worth and the overall quality suffers.

I have to admit that, while I might not be willing to always pull the plug as soon as he would prefer, that I'm starting to embrace his way of thinking.

Personally, I think it sucks that Orphan Black is taking its final bow this year, after just five seasons. I think there could have been more depths to explore in this richly layered world, but I will applaud them for staying focused. Meanwhile, a few other shows that I've enjoyed in the past are not fairing as well for me. I'm not captured by this season of Orange is the New Black yet, and I didn't find House of Cards to be quite as compelling, either.

However, House of Cards elevated the whole season with one critical ingredient; the ending. A great ending can draw things together in a way that reveals the genius of subtlety that may have been at work throughout the body of the season.

I've been thinking about that a lot as we watch this season of Fargo. The acting is brilliant, as ever. The show retains its quirkiness and its black comic moments... but something this season felt a little off. Perhaps it was my expectations. I'd anticipated season three with the expectation of declaring Fargo the greatest crime show ever made; seasons one and two are amongst the best seasons of any crime show, ever, but when faced with competition such as The Wire I felt like Fargo needed a third season to rise to the top.

Interestingly enough, Brian and I aren't the only ones who've talked about how the truth of the season's merit will be fully realized with the finale. The AV Club's reviewer "said last week that it was possible that the final two episodes of the season might tie things together" and that's the beauty of these complex, season arc shows; they must be weighed as a whole.

And much of the weight falls on their finale.

Recently, The Handmaid's Tale stuck the landing so brilliantly, I was surprised. And I do not want to give anything away, but if you're studying story arcs, if you're looking for great examples of storytelling that masters  the art of both the subtle and straightforward approach, look no further.

I think one of the reasons the endings can elevate the storytelling's effectiveness so significantly is because they can give shape to what's been hinted at that may have been missed, and that means you realize there was even more going on than you picked up on fully, and then you watch again and begin picking up on those cues.

Think of storylines that have suffered with an ending that failed to tie things together in a way that convinced the audience or elevated their understanding of the storyline. Lost comes to mind as an example, along with How I Met Your Mother, and I am not alone in those views.

Ending well is an art... and it's a storytelling skill that, when mastered, can take a good story and make it great. Knowing when to end is part of that equation; knowing how to tie together the subtle and straightforward threads is another. In order to get there, yes, the audience has to be invested in the journey, but word of a bad ending can deter an audience from giving a story a try, or finishing it.

As I was once told, the end of your story sells the audience on your next story, and it's what we all should be striving for in our craft.