Maine Crime Writers

Have you ever arrived at the end of your novel and realized it just didn’t work? Or that you had no idea how to end it? Or who did the crime and why they did it? If the answer to these questions is yes then don’t feel like you’re alone. All of us writers feel this way at one point or another.

riting a compelling ending is hard work. It requires a lot of thought and contemplation. You have to be adaptable and willing to look at your story from different angles. How many times have we read a great novel, often one by a big name author, and been sorely disappointed by the ending? It’s almost as if they got tired of their story and just stopped. As writers, we definitely don’t want to leave our hard-earned readers on a sour note.

If writing endings were easy, everyone would be a writer. At times, I wish being a writer was like being a starting major league pitcher. You pitch the first eight innings of the game and then have a closer come in to finish the ninth for you. But alas, if you want to be an author, writing a satisfying ending is something we must learn to do.

Using another sports analogy; the best defense is often a good offense. And by this I mean that half the battle in composing a great ending is writing a great story. Making the reader care how your story ends means you’ve done a successful job holding their interest. Now you need to smoothly land this jet plane that is your plot and make sure your passengers get to their gates. You’ll need to provide an ending that will give closure and allow the reader to walk away satisfied.

The type of book you’re writing can often determine the type of ending you’re shooting for. A police procedural or cozy mystery requires that the ending be neatly wrapped up. Domestic thrillers, which I write, often have ambiguous endings, leaving the reader wondering what just happened. A great example of this is Gillian Flynn’s GONE GIRL. After all the horrendous things Nick’s wife has put him through during the course of the novel, Nick realizes at the end that he can’t just up and leave her. Amy’s gotten herself pregnant, and Nick is terrified that his child will be raised by this evil woman.

Many readers were angry that Flynn ended her novel this way. Others loved this ambiguous ending. It left the reader contemplating about will happen next in their relationship. It’s the same reaction many viewers had when watching the last episode of The Sopranos. Tony and his family are sitting in the booth of a diner. Mysterious people walk in and out. There’s something tense and scary about this scene. We wonder what’s going to happen. Will Tony and his family get killed? Then the screen goes black and that’s the end of the show. Some people loved this ending while others despised it and felt they’d been cheated for all the time and effort they put in watching the series.

The show, Breaking Bad, on the other hand, has a well defined plot arc that resembles a rainbow; at the end is a pot of gold. The writers wrapped up the show and left no question about Walt’s fate. Each show ended differently, for entirely different reasons, and each ended in interesting fashion. The ending fit the story line.

Not to get metaphysical, but what actually is an ending? If you ask yourself this question, I believe it will make writing your endings that much easier. Or at least less harder. Because, when one thinks about it, an ending is merely the beginning of something else. Consider what will happen to your surviving characters after your book ends. If it’s a series, the conclusion will impact how your characters act and think in the next book.

The most important aspect of your ending is this: how will the main characters change or be changed by the events that happened in your plot. Sometimes a violent, action-packed ending is not what’s needed. Sometimes, it’s how your character has changed that leaves the reader emotionally impacted. As in GONE GIRL, Nick is left reeling because he will have to live with his evil wife for the foreseeable future. This type of profound ending hits like a sledgehammer and keeps the reader thinking about your story long after it’s finished.

Lay the groundwork for your ending by writing a killer plot. A strong storyline will do much of the heavy lifting when it comes to crafting the conclusion. Spend time thinking about how to close out your novel even while you’re writing it. Sometimes it helps to write out a few different scenarios before you find the one that fits best. Often, it will take a few rewrites to get it just right. Then, if you’re like me, you’ll listen to your agent and editor, both of whom will give you additional input as to bring your storyline together.

Don’t get discouraged. Endings are tough. Persevere and work your way through them. And with that, I wish you the best writing that killer ending.

King Eider’s Pub, Damariscotta: a dozen Dodge Cove oysters in front of us. Hundreds of large-scale, numbered-on-the-bottom beer mugs hang from the rafters (the manager tells us it’s a couple hundred dollars for a one-time buy of the mug, the buyer gets a special hook on the ceiling and discounted beer for life). The sun’s coming in the picture window, our booth has a nice warm feel to it. We started the day moving, cleaning up dirt, grime, and mice droppings and then, I began painting and continued for eight hours, so I welcome my martini with gusto.

Clear, most of the day was painting –  funky fiber-board walls in a recently-purchased, sixty-year-old, well-loved but amateur-built, lopsided camp fifteen miles from the Pub. I decided to paint everything white – to cover up the tired, streaked, banana yellow color that, over decades, had experienced coffee sprays, detritus from a leaky roof, dog scratches and what I think must have been a few nacho fests or salsa food fights? Or was it a crazy crayon battle? Magic Marker mayhem? Catsup catastrophe?

There are these random streaks along the baseboard in the mini-sunroom. They’re reddish. They cluster in and around a corner where the wiring for an old cable hook-up still lives.

The inexpensive one-coat primer/paint I bought from the cute and efficient hardware sales guy was supposed to do the trick. He’d told me he’d been in the Navy and tasked with painting and repainting ships’ interiors for his entire years of service, so, of course he was knowledgeable about paint. He recommended this hardware-store-brand paint; said he’d painted his whole house with it, had no problems at all.

But maybe he’d never encountered this STUBBORN RED. A red that refuses to be subdued.

I painted. Let the wall dry. Painted it again. Let the wall dry. The STUBBORN RED streaks and splatters were momentarily covered and – seconds later – they rose to the surface again like corpses – the ones that float to the top of a river if they haven’t been properly weighted down.

Is it blood? I know our brains are all going there.

I don’t know.

Wikipedia tells me I can get blood off walls using Clean Magic Erasers or Scotch-Brite Eraser pads.

It also tells me that an artist in New York named Vincent Castiglia uses his own blood as paint because he wants to connect on an “intimate level” with his work and his patrons.  And since, he says, human blood contains iron oxide (a pigment found in many traditional paints) he figured “what a perfect substance to create that intimacy”. Castiglia’s work is not cheap, and it does sell, so I guess his “body-fluid presence” graces a lot of people’s homes.

Quick research also tells me that I can paint over blood. Experts say it may take one coat – at the most two coats. It should be able to be forced to disappear into the walls.

But, after four coats of paint, my STUBBORN RED has not disappeared. It does a teasing disappearance act, then keeps appearing on the surface again with a “can’t get rid of me” smirk.

The painting dilemma led me to thinking about another problem I’m facing: How much backstory should go into a book series? When should it appear and when should it disappear? I’m into the third book of my Dee Rommel Mystery series, and this question is consuming me.

I’m not a disciplined “read-in-the-order-the-author-hoped-for” person. I prefer to do that, but sometimes it’s not convenient – or I make a mistake and pick up the wrong book.

How much backstory/history does the reader want or need? Louise Penny has given us 17 (so far) books featuring great main characters. Each book sets up (reminds us) of Chief Inspector of Surete du Quebec Armand Gamache and his intense love of his wife, his pride in his children, and his worry about his right-hand man’s (Jean-Guy) former drug addiction. Also, she provides the histories of the odd assortment of villagers and the reasons for their quirky attitudes. And sometimes (sometimes not) quick re-caps of past investigations. She does remind us of the current state of mind of the characters and the current political/personal climates of their work. As the series progresses, the characters go through changes and, for me, I appreciate Penny awakening my memories of what has gone on before.

I also appreciate how Penny manages to fill these memories swiftly. But how does she decide what to include in each of the books? She’s judicious, it’s not the same in each one. I would love to be schooled in how she decides what’s to be included.

Michael Connelly’s got 20 books (so far) featuring Bosch. Connelly doesn’t linger in backstory or in catching the reader up with Harry Bosch’s life. The books focus on the current crime. Harry’s personality (prickly, smart, a loner) is front and center, but, for the most part, not his past loves, friendships or living situations.

Patricia Cornwell (her Kay Scarpetta series) and Sue Grafton (in the Kinsey Malone series) do more. The exposition is woven in, sometimes overtly, sometimes elegantly.

I love Anne Perry’s various crime/mystery series (Charlotte and Thomas Pitt (30+ books), William Monk (20+ books), Daniel Pitt (6 books) and Elena Standish (4 books), but I do find myself wanting more backstory/history for each of her characters – it would make it easier for me to jump on board the story train. I don’t want to spend time, as a reader, googling past synopses or trying to remind myself of past plots and relationship timelines, I want to be subtly fed what I need to remember.

M.C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin series keeps the reader informed of the “why” the character is in the state she’s in (relationships, career, state of mind) and then moves forward with the crime/mystery. Beaton gets the backstories “out of the way” early, and moves on.

Janet Evanovich, in most of her 27 books in the Stephanie Plum series, holds the reader’s hand a bit and provides a catch-up.  The character, Plum, has  aged and grown and changed.  If I’ve missed a book in the “proper” sequence, she fills me in.

I haven’t read Joe Nesbo for a few years, and I could be wrong, but I think Harry Hole does not get a big backstory fill-in. Let me know if I am falsely remembering the stories.

Back to my STUBBORN RED. After the fifth coat of paint, and watching the red disappear and then rise again to the surface, I figure that – in a way – the RED is telling me  there might be some interesting history or backstory to this funky cottage that I am now calling “mine”.

Now to the questions that concerns my dilemma: how much history and backstory is too much (or too little)? How do I make sure readers can jump on board the Dee Rommel series’ story train with going down the exposition rabbit hole?

Would love to know how other people handle it.