It's the first Wednesday of December, which means it's time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group, the brain child of
Alex J. Cavanaugh.
All are welcome to participate. Just click on Alex's name above, sign up on the list, and post about your writing insecurities. There's a convenient optional question in case you're just not sure what to say, but want to take part.
Thank you to this month's co-hosts!
Be sure to visit, Alex, the co-hosts, and some of the other participants, so you can meet some new folks!
Last month was busy, and this month is shaping up to be the same. To get back to previous writing levels, I'm trying to guarantee myself one solo writing date out of the house per week at a local cafe, plus a writing date with friends, hopefully also once per week. A guaranteed two days per week is all I can do right now, but I get a ton done when I make the time.
My office had also become crammed full and messy due to having to move things to have windows put in. Plus, I came off several appearances, and had just shoved my stuff from each engagement into the office and hastily packed what I needed each time. I find I avoid my office when it gets in a messy state like this, because it overwhelms me. I freeze up, because I feel like I can't get anything done until I clean/tidy it. I've now tidied it up, and am looking forward to getting back in there.
So my insecurities this month involved making time and making space. Now that I've completed that, I'm optimistic about getting some writing done!
Now that we've discussed my insecurities, I've got a guest post from Damyanti, delayed from what was to have been an earlier posting. It's about writing crime fiction, and her journey to publishing You Beneath Your Skin.
On Amazon USA:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07X8WCKH6/
It is not easy for me to speak about my
journey into fiction, because I never imagined I’d be a writer. And ten years
ago, if you’d have asked me if I’d be a crime writer I would have laughed.
I’d started writing by then, but I thought
I would write realistic, literary stories.
Always been a compulsive reader—it is hard
for me to survive without reading—even on days I don’t have time to eat or
sleep—I read a little, of something. It is mostly reflex action. One of the
reasons I write fiction is because I’m insatiably curious, and curious about people.
Reading does not always satisfy this curiosity. I want to know what makes
people tick, to figure out why humans do the mundane and extraordinary things
they do. In my writing, my effort is to render the mundane extraordinary, and
to examine the unusual and make it familiar.
Stories come to me from characters and my
urge to understand them-- and in so doing, in a curious, intangible way, to
understand myself.
Some of my first crime stories began as
attempts to make sense of human nature—I wrote about a voyeur first, ( we had a
voyeur in our neighbourhood) and then another story about an unrequited lover avenging
the death of the woman he’d been devoted to. Yet another was a traditional
woman, a forensic expert, who realised that the long-distance online
relationship she’d been having was with a fraud, who’d been cheating her for
money. She avenges this by shooting him and burying him in her backyard. I
proceeded to write about a husband taking care of his moribund wife—we do not
know if he mercy-kills her in the end, but we suspect it.
The turning point came with reading In
Cold Blood by Truman Capote. This was literary writing, but it described
horrors we humans are capable of. It made me think of writing about the
characters who had haunted me over the years. Anjali, specifically. And she
appeared in Delhi, a city I’d spent many years of my life in, and one rather
infamous for crimes against women. As the novel evolved, and I worked with
Julia Bell, my mentor from Birkbeck University, I realised I had a crime novel
on my hands.
I studied under various tutors, understood
POV and characterization, plotting and dialogues, and the novel kept changing
shape and size, morphing into the being it is today.
Engaged in telling the best story I could,
I found acid attack as a plot point, and being the obsessive sort of person I
am, I wanted to meet at least one acid attack survivor before I wrote the
draft. That changed many things, because having met acid attack survivors,
heard their stories and held their hands, it was impossible to turn back. I was
still writing a crime novel, but you cannot reduce horrific pain and devastation
into plot devices—you must either write about them exclusively, or if they fit
into your story, write about them with the greatest respect and as much authenticity
as possible.
 |
| Book Launch with Acid Attack Survivors |
This is how You Beneath Your Skin came
about. The framework is of a crime thriller, and it can be read as one. But my years
of supporting Project WHY has somehow trickled through—the alleyways I’ve
visited, the people I have met there. The acid attack survivors and their pain
has seeped into the story as well, and all my proceeds of the novel go to
Stop Acid Attacks and
Project WHY.
Writing a crime novel, here’s what I have
learned:
- Characters are everything. Many readers
have written to me about how much they cared about the characters, how pleased
or disappointed they were for these fictional people—Anjali, Jatin, Maya,
Pawan, Nikhil. How the novel stayed with them. So I believe characters must be
4-dimensional, unique, independent beings.
- Setting. No one thinks of New Delhi as a
cold place, but it gets close to freezing in winters. For the last few years
smog has been a huge issue—New Delhi now has the dubious distinction of being
the world’s most polluted city. All that grime and dark lent well to You
Beneath Your Skin. When writing crime novels—whether cosy or hard-boiled or literary,
the setting needs to be a character, and be used for the plot. In You Beneath
Your Skin, the smog and traffic become effective blocks against the protagonists.
- Motivations are important. Whether you’re
writing a traditional whodunit, or a literary whydunit like my novel you must
know what motivates each one of your characters. Who is doing what is important,
but the novel becomes stronger if the reader knows why they’re doing it.
- Pace is crucial. Not imposed pace, but
pace that comes from all the story questions raised. Each chapter must end on a
story question or a revelation that leads to more questions. The plot must
follow this path: Incident> Insight> Decision> Consequences>
Insight> Decision> Consequences.
- You can’t be didactic. You Beneath Your
Skin raises many issues, but that’s because New Delhi is a very complex city
and all the issues are part of its fabric. In a crime novel, story trumps
everything—if you raise issues, they should be a corollary of the story, not
its main thrust.
- Research. Make your novel as real as
possible. If the details are right, the reader sinks into a fictive dream,
believing all of that happens in the story is real. That’s what you need in
order to keep them turning the pages.
Writing crime fiction is not for everyone,
but it can be a very rewarding experience. It leads to tons of fascinating
research, a deep insight into human nature and the thrill of creating scenes
that lead neatly from one to the other.
About the author: Damyanti Biswas lives in Singapore, and supports
Delhi's underprivileged women and children, volunteering with organisations who
work for this cause. Her short stories have been published in magazines in the
US, UK, and Asia, and she helps edit the Forge Literary Magazine. She has
recently been shortlisted for The Fay Khoo Award in Penang, Malaysia.
Her debut literary crime novel is an Amazon bestseller, and all the
author proceeds from You Beneath Your Skin will support the education and
empowerment of women at Project WHY and Stop Acid Attacks.
What about you? Do you read or write crime
fiction? What kind of crime novels do you read or write? Why or why not?
What are your insecurities this month? Do you find that a mess keeps you from writing?
