E is For Evidence, Evil and...

E is For Evidence, Evil and Elle Dowser in My Brother's Keeper.

If you watch any courtroom dramas, real or fictional, you will know there are categories of evidence. Substantiated, circumstantial, hearsay, and degrees of each that are considered by police, defense, prosecution, judge and jury.

My Brother's Keeper

Evidence, real or perceived, planted or present by default, creates its own trail for the detective or those investigating a crime of any sort. Deciphering what it means is the detective's job. The writer plants the evidence, but it needs to meet certain criteria. Yes, it can be a red herring [there's that reference again, more later] or something planted to appear true as in My Brother's Keeper—a friend seems to be helpful, as does her boyfriend or male friend, except—neither is as they seem to be to Elle Dowser. 

Clues to solving Elle's dilemma some false, some misunderstood, some deliberate plants, must be sifted, sorted, discarded or believed at face value. Can she sort out the mess and stay alive to prove what the real evidence says? 

Of course, you know it won't be a clear, straight path from real clue to solution, or the book would go nowhere. Some evidence will seem to be, and yet, it turns out not to be—it's a dead end for your sleuth. 

Some evidence will be deliberate wrong turns meant only to deceive. As the writer, you are in charge. Make all the evidence work for you and your story and you are sure to keep your readers along for the ride.

C is for Clue and Crime and Cauldron...

C is for Clue or Crime or a Cauldron of evil. Clues come in all shapes and sizes. The very observant person will see them, extract them and lace them together to provide an "aha!" moment for you the reader.

 The reader may have thought the red herring was the real clue [look for more on red herring later in this tour].

A clue might be two nearly empty wine glasses on the counter by the sink when only one person was supposedly present all evening. Were there enough other dishes to suggest a couple days of accumulation? Was there a faint lipstick smudge on one in a man's apartment? While it doesn't mean he had feminine company (he might be a transvestite,) it doesn't necessarily mean she provided the arsenic laden drink that killed the man.

A cauldron of stew present on the range. Was any of it eaten? Was it the source of his poisoning? Was it merely food poisoning and accidental lethal dose of death?

A Mystery Thriller  novel

Even if the woman, of the lipstick smudge, was seen leaving the apartment early that morning, you might ask did she? Again other facts and suppositions need to be examined, among them motive, access to the method—in this case poison—if indeed it was poison and not food poisoning by tainted food, and opportunity.

Will you find rat poison residue in the same woman's purse or jacket pocket? Rat poison contains arsenic, which could be the source of the arsenic found at the scene or in the wine glass, but why wouldn't she rinse the glasses if that were the case? So many questions. Clues should help a sleuth sort through them. 

Observe well, but decipher your clues carefully. That makes for an intriguing story. Unwrapping the clues as if you were unwrapping a much hoped for birthday present, thrills the reader and keeps them turning pages long into the night.

The Painted Pony Analysis of Chapter One

Watch For The Raven

Let's examine The Painted Pony for a minute. Hopefully, without killing the story. As readers and as writers we come to the story with different expectations.

The read in us, swallows up the words a t a pace that's comfortable, digestible and curious about character, plot, setting and depending on the story, a myriad of other details, all perhaps, subconsciously.  If the writer is good, all these things pull the reader, you, into  and  through the rabbit hole of story into a world you, the reader, want to savor. 

As a writer you may enjoy the same joy of reading and yet somewhere you are thinking. Hook, okay, hook is in place. Horses foster a more or less universal interest. Whether it's a wish for the freedom and  adventure of the old west, or a churning desire to lift our head and stir the wind with an abandoned gallop without the tethers of life and its responsibilities. You, writer/reader, may have your own reasons to be drawn in by that first sense of horse and the thunder of hooves shaking the ground beneath your bare feet.

Not only do we know we're observing a painted pony, why not a pinto, is there a difference? Couldn't it instead be an Arabian stallion, or a Clydesdale, the thunder of his/her hooves would certainly rumble the ground if it were a Clydesdale.  For the moment we must assume the writer has a reason for using a paint, over the others. Does it suggest an era, or a custom, or culture?  My mind is drawn to the graphics, hieroglyphics', on cave walls, some, at least, the horses look like painted ponies, is that the reason for this image? My experience and knowledge will try to reason out the choices as critics try to do as they examine works of deceased authors. I never interpreted any of Shakespeare's works the way my high school English teacher did. Does that mean I was wrong?  I don't think so, now, I think my experience, my creative imagination, saw what it could have been when Shakespeare wrote it originally.

Back to our Painted Pony. Immediately the author names the pony so you, the reader, will get a sense of this horse as opposed to any other. Embers, the glowing coals left in a fire, they aren't blazing fire, though, with the right conditions, they could be. And what of Daisy, she loves me she loves me not, wild flower or garden cultivated, again love by many, thrown away as a weed by others. Both horses could show us dual personalities. Is that the author's reasoning?

The third paragraph grabs emotions. Nearly everyone has felt grief. And there are so many sources and depths of grief. What is Jamie's grief? How does Ember trigger this memory? Or, why?  It's obvious, at least to me, horses play a significant role in Jamie's life. The words she, the author uses to describe Jamie's thoughts of horse, delightful creature, magnificent, not beast, but creature—tell the reader subtly how she feels about horses or at least this horse.

Characterization is a tricky business for writers, especially new writers. How do you describe a person without telling? What has the writer shown us so far about our main character. How did it become part of the character Jamie Lynn without becoming description told to the reader?  The first clue is the way you find out about people in real life—it's through their actions. As the old saying goes, "actions speak louder than words."

We see Jamie slide form Daisy's saddle to feel the earth, sensitive to subtle earth changes I think. We learn Jamie is familiar with mountains, especially these mountains. 

Word choice surfaces as we find out Jamie is Native American and that perhaps that has cast a stigma on her development, at least, in part. But now we see her as a business woman in bare feet, riding a horse, chasing or at least following another horse…why didn't she wear cowboy boots or, given her heritage, moccasins? Subtle things develop your character even when written stream of consciousness.

You can list more things we learn about Jamie form this short chapter. What else do you notice as a reader and/or writer? 

Her father's words, what do they add to the story besides word count? Was the message twofold? Does it tell us more about Jamie? And her father? Maybe even hint at the relationship?

The last sentence is the hook that makes us want to turn the page—a child's distress call –why didn't the author use different words, scream, beller, cry, sob, how many synonyms can you think of that could have said similar, if not the same thing?

As writers our tools are words. Precise, words, not flowery (thank you Mrs. Sartorus) words, but precise, strong, colorful, but not gaudy, words that don't parade themselves in front of the reader telling of their literary prowess with a huge vocabulary base, but instead showing the reader what precisely the writer's imagination sees. 

Showing, never telling, never say never-- because there are times when the narrator needs to condense and summarize to move the story forward quickly. We don't need to see Jamie getting her feet wet in the dew laden grass as she goes to saddle Daisy for her morning ride. We didn't need to know Jamie had bare feet. We didn't need to see her saddle Daisy or feed her sugar cubes, not this time. We didn't need to see Jamie's bare feet or any of the earlier stuff to inform our story, but if it had been important to the later story we could have had our narrator tell us all this—otherwise, showing by action, is the preferred and better choice.

As a mystery writer, pointing your reader's mind and eye is essential. You play fair with your reader by directing their attention where you want them to focus, hiding clues in plain sight.

Next we'll try to get our author to turn her muse loose on chapter two.