Category Archives: writing

Miranda and the Police Interview

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streaker

No Miranda for you!? photo: Jonas Bengtsson, creative commons license

When Ernesto Miranda was arrested by the Phoenix Police Department in 1963, accused of kidnapping and rape, it’s a cinch that of all the things he thought might happen to him, the likelihood his name would become a verb was probably nowhere on the list.

In crime fiction, cops “Mirandize” suspects all the time. Too often, perhaps. Leslie Budewitz, a lawyer and president of Sisters in Crime, says that giving every character a Miranda warning is “one of the 12 common mistake fiction writers make about the law.”

Writers of crime novels and screenplays often don’t get their Miranda facts straight. The Miranda warning is based on the Fifth Amendments self-incrimination clause and the Sixth Amendment’s right to an attorney, in words familiar to any consumer of U.S. popular culture:

  • You have the right to remain silent;
  • Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law;
  • You have the right to consult with a lawyer and have that lawyer present during the interrogation;
  • If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed to represent you

As John Schembra points out in the comments below, some states have slight variations on the core Miranda rights, cited above, particularly as they apply to juveniles. Some of those interstate differences are described in this Wikipedia article (and subject to change).

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court decided (in Berghuis v. Thompkins) a controversial case involving the right to remain silent, which some scholars believe weakened Miranda protections.

At last month’s Writers’ Police Academy in Green Bay, Wisconsin, police training officer Mike Knetzger agrees that fiction provides Miranda warnings far more often than actually appropriate or used in practice. He outlined the three essential elements that must be present for a Miranda warning to be necessary.

Crime + Custody + Questioning

The occurrence of an actual crime seems an obvious prerequisite, but in many situations, police may simply want to talk to a person—for background or as a witness, not yet a suspect. Violations and infractions (civil offenses) are not “crimes.” Examples are traffic tickets and the one Knetzger gave—just possibly from on-the-job experience—running out of the Green Bay Packers’ Lambeau Field stark naked.

Individuals must be “in custody.” Even if they are at the police station, if they are free to leave, they are not in custody and, therefore, receive no warning. However, if they make “spontaneous statements” there—“He trashed my cooking one time too many and I hit him over the head with the frying pan”—those statements can be used in court.

The questioning of the individual must be intended to elicit incriminating evidence, not just make general inquiries. After a crime is committed, the police may ask a great many people about the events and the people involved. None of these are necessarily suspects—yet.

Next time you see, read—or write—that a fictional character receives a Miranda warning, ask yourself whether all three of the above conditions are met.

What Would Jimmy Stewart Do?

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Ben Long got his first potential client and his first real girlfriend on the same day in June 1952. He’d opened an accounting office on the second floor of a Nassau Street building above a clothing store. The hum of the store’s customers drifted up through the ductwork in a vaguely companionable way during the new firm’s early, idle days.

Ben wasn’t worried about the slow start to his business. He had a clear-eyed sense of the man he was, and that man would be successful. He’d graduated from a prominent West Coast business school, and his proximity to Princeton University would burnish the sophisticated and confident image he aspired to project.

During Ben’s lunch hours, he took long walks through the university campus, studying the buildings and the easy manners of the students—all male, then—lounging on the steps and lawns in their cardigans and pale trousers. Some wore straw boaters, just like his, though as a businessman, he wore a suit. Plenty of young women were about. They poured out of the administrative offices and the professors’ lairs, carrying their lunches and spreading their skirts to sit on the grass.

Princeton UniversityHe attracted unexpected attention as he criss-crossed the campus, so he kept a ready smile as he sped forward on his long legs, loosening his tie and tipping his hat to the ladies. On that memorable day, he was in a bit of a rush because of that impending first appointment.

“We’re all talking about you,” said a Breck-girl blonde, who hurried up beside him, striving to keep up. She looked like a midwestern kid—clear-skinned, bright blue eyes, illusions intact, like the freshman girls at his alma mater.

“Really. Why?” Was his outsider status so easy to detect? He plowed ahead.

“We all know you,” she said and, when he gave her a quizzical glance, added, “or feel we do.”

“Oh?” He took a second look at her and slowed.

“I mean, we know who you are.” She blushed and fluttered her hands.

He’d never seen her before. He would have remembered. “You’re sure about that?”

They were about to reach University Place, where he would turn back toward his office.

“Sure. You’re Jimmy Stewart.”

That stopped him. Her blue eyes radiated sincerity. He couldn’t meet those eyes with a lie, tempting though it was. Smiling, he said, “Hate to disappoint you, but I’m a CPA. I have an office on Nassau Street.”

“Oh, certainly.” She laughed. “Jimmy Stewart, Class of ’32.”

“Sincerely. My name is Ben.” He stuck out his hand.

She held it as if it were glass. “If you say so,” she giggled. She giggled enchantingly.

“And you are?”

“Cathy.” He could imagine her mother saying, “Speak up, dear.”

He still smiled. He still held her hand. The day was warm. The breeze made the sky-blue hydrangea heads bob agreeably. They were the exact shade of her eyes.

“Cathy, I’m pleased to meet you.” Awkwardly, he gave her hand a parting squeeze. “Well, goodbye. I have to go.”

“Sure. I know you’re busy,” she paused, “Jimmy.”

Back at the office, he studied his reflection in the men’s room mirror. Tall and lanky. Long neck with a head blobbed on top—like a safety match, his brother said. Brown hair, blue-grey eyes projecting a hefty dose of sincerity. Bland expression. Too bland, in his opinion, but perhaps it was a face on which people could project what they wanted to see.

Maybe that’s why people on campus stared. Did they really mistake him—even briefly—for James M. Stewart, Princeton ’32?

His first prospective client, Charlie Caputo, certainly did not look like a movie star: dark, compact, a little paunchy, face sweating on the warm day. Caputo launched into a long convoluted explanation of his money woes. Ben had to keep lassoing his mind, pulling it back from thoughts of Cathy and how she thought—or pretended to think—he was the famous actor, a man whose films he had seen many times.

“If I understand you correctly,” Ben broke in, “you want an accountant who will make sure you don’t pay any taxes.”

“There’s loopholes. Find them. Next time I’m in town we can discuss it further.”

֍

He ran into Cathy nearly every day after that. They’d walk together across campus, at a slower pace than he preferred, but he didn’t mind. They started eating their lunches together. He brought a blanket. She brought two five-cent Cokes from the vending machine. Under the summer trees they talked about everything and nothing. Her friends from the office sometimes joined them, and it was hard to believe they all could laugh so much.

Like Cathy, they persisted in calling him Jimmy.

“Ben,” he’d say.

“That’s not what she says.”

“Hey, I’m only twenty-four! Do I look in my forties to you?”

“Remarkably well preserved.” Cathy pushed a deviled egg into his gaping mouth, silencing him.

Business picked up. Ben hired a secretary. He joined the Rotary Club and attended testimonial dinners. He took Cathy to a Rotary picnic, and she was amazed at how easily he talked to people, how many friends he had.

“When you’re in business in a small town like Princeton, you have to have friends,” he said.

“You sound like a character from one of your movies!”

He glanced around to make sure no one had heard. “Cathy, please stop doing that. People will think—”

“They will think you’re a success at whatever you do? You can’t help yourself. You’re just so pleasant.”

“Sure.” To himself, he quoted Elwood P. Dowd’s mother: “In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant.” Under his breath, he added, “For years I was smart, I recommend pleasant.”

“Wasn’t that a line from Harvey?” she whispered.

“You may quote me.”

֍

On their first real date, Ben took Cathy to dinner and a movie, Bend of the River, featuring, naturally, Jimmy Stewart. Ben had read the book and thought it might help Cathy appreciate the part of the country he came from.

“I know where you’re from,” she said, humoring him.

“Oregon.”

“Jimmy,” she said, as if to a small child with a tall tale. “Western Pennsylvania.”

Maybe if she weren’t so darn cute, he thought, I’d make a stink about it, but it’s all so ridiculous, why bother?

Instead, he said, “What is it you want, Cathy? What do you want? You want the moon?”

As if summoned, the moonlight pooled in the tears forming in her eyes. “You know,” she said, “it’s a wonderful life.”

֍

One hot day in August, when they sat close together on the campus lawn, she said, “Having fun?”

Half of him knew it was dangerous, but the other half wouldn’t stop, and he said, “I always have a wonderful time, wherever I am, whomever I’m with.”

She laughed. “That’s definitely from Harvey. You’re too funny!”

He sighed. Being with Cathy was becoming more than a habit, it was something he needed. Like a drug. But this day he couldn’t linger. Mr. Caputo was expected.

That meeting didn’t go nearly as well as lunch with Cathy.

Caputo slapped Ben’s tax plan on the desk. “The loopholes you found aren’t enough. Not nearly enough. Why report all my income? I got enough problems without forking money over to Washington.”

“Well, I don’t know, Mr. Caputo. There’s ways to reduce your taxes and there’s ways to get into trouble.”

“You remember what I said I’d pay you?”

“Yes, I do. You said ten thousand dollars a year. That’s a lot of money, Mr. Caputo. I’m not sure—”

“How much would make you sure? Twelve thousand? Fourteen?”

“No, now, come on, Mr. Caputo. Maybe you need some other kind of accountant.”

“You think about it. When I come back, I’ll want your answer.”

Fourteen thousand dollars a year! Ten, even, would make marrying Cathy and starting life together possible—no, perfect. Ben tapped out a thinking rhythm with his pencil.

֍

September approached, and posters appeared advertising a forthcoming talk by famous alumnus James M. Stewart, ’32, sponsored by the University drama club. “Public invited.”

Here was his chance to put Cathy’s embarrassing fantasy to rest. He couldn’t be Jimmy Stewart, sitting next to her in the audience and watching the real one on stage. But as the date of the lecture approached, he hesitated to mention it. It was a harmless delusion, and did she truly believe it? She’d introduced him to her parents as Ben, and that’s what they called him.

“So I’m Ben now,” he said that night as they walked home arm-in-arm.

“You don’t think they’d let me go out with a movie star, do you? I couldn’t tell them that.”

Once again, his mischievous side won out. “I wouldn’t give you two cents for all your fancy rules, if behind them they didn’t have a little ordinary everyday human kindness,” he said. “In this case, helping us be together.”

She sighed. “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. My favorite. One of them.”

The light of the streetlamp, hidden among the sycamores, barely lit the walk up to her house.

“I’m going to your lecture next Wednesday,” she said. “All the girls in my office are going. We’ve got our tickets.”

Increasingly nervous about the lecture, he’d decided not to go with her. Maybe he wouldn’t go at all. The likelihood of disastrous disillusionment was too high. “Are you sure that’s wise? What if you don’t like the guy? Where does that leave me?”

At the top of the steps, he embraced her, and all five feet two inches of her strained upward toward him. “But I do like you. A lot.” As she said this, someone inside switched on the porch light. They kissed anyway.

The rest of the weekend was agony. What did she really believe? Whatever it was, it was bound to come to a crashing conclusion. He’d lose her, just as he was realizing how desperately he wanted her. “It can’t be anything like love, can it?” he asked himself, Philadelphia Story-style.

֍

On Wednesday, Ben closed his office at two and walked across campus to the lecture hall where his alter ego—or was it his nemesis?—was scheduled to speak. A crowd already filled most of the seats, and he saw Cathy and her friends about halfway down. He’d thought about joining them, but instead leaned against a pillar and tried to distract himself by reading the newspaper.

After a hushed moment, the most famous member of Princeton’s Class of 1932 strode onto the stage. In his homey drawl, he charmed the audience. They applauded, they cheered, Cathy and her friends were on their feet. It was over. People streamed up the aisle past him, talking and laughing.

He hid behind the newspaper again as Cathy and her friends approached. Someone called to her. “Cathy, what did you think?”

“He was great!” she said, “But he’s not my Jimmy.”

֍

Mr. Caputo came to the office at five, and Ben handed him a neat stack of papers. “Here’s the tax plan I worked out for you,” he said.

Caputo skipped to the end and looked up, fuming. “This isn’t what I asked for!”

“These strategies are all legitimate.”

“It’s not what I asked for.”

“So you’re asking me to lie and cheat?”

“If you say so.”

“And you’ll pay me well to do it too.”

“Ten thousand a year.”

“I just want to be clear about all that.” Ben imagined himself looking in the mirror again, but it was Jimmy Stewart looking back. Jimmy Stewart as Tom Destry, Jr. Big dented hat, drooping neckerchief, six-pointed sheriff’s star. He let Tom Destry speak for him: “You know what I have to say to your offer, Mr. Caputo? ‘Nobody’s gonna set themselves up above the law around here, understand?’ You go to hell.”

 

This story was published in U.S. 1, Summer Fiction Issue, July 27, 2016.

Praise for a Writing Group

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Room at the Table, Writing, Writers

The “Room at the Table” Table

Each year, our local Chamber of Commerce newspaper publishes a summer fiction issue, and this week nine members of my writing group had our work published—every one of us who submitted, as far as I know!

For some time I’ve felt the many rewards of having this close-knit writing group, which we call Room at the Table, in acknowledgement of our welcoming spirit. The irony is, there isn’t any more room at my dining table, where we meet, because we’ve gradually grown to 15 loyal members. The group is about equally divided between men and women, all of us “over 35,” and the genres we write in are diverse.

Each month we spend two hours critiquing about eight submissions by fellow group members, sticking more or less to our rule of thumb of 1500 words apiece. Some members say they come for the snacks, but they all come with carefully reviewed submissions, ready to discuss. We laugh a lot.

Group members provide enthusiasm, help people get unstuck, ask the occasional big question (Where Is This Going?) and generously share our ideas, grammatical obsessions, candid feedback, and praise.

Occasionally, we do a group exercise, and one such, which involved imagining the characters of a ghost story, created such enthusiasm among three of us that we all wrote the story and were all published. This past spring we each wrote a short story on the theme of “being stuck,” and are thinking of turning the result into a story collection.

I’ve heard woeful tales of critique groups that like to eviscerate the author. That isn’t us. Our members recognize that serious writing is a lonely task and publishing is hard. We go out of our way to be supportive even when delivering the message: “needs work.” We’re supportive outside our meetings too. One of our number recently had a short play read by professional actors, and four of us trekked into Manhattan to see it; another, a Brit, appears in local pantos, and we go see him.

In March and October, we do readings of our fiction at the local library. We’ve done this five times now, and attendance is growing! It’s great to hear applause and laughter (in the right spots). And, of course, we serve snacks.

Fueling Creativity with—YES!—Boredom

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Handwriting, boredom

photo: David Hall, creative commons license

In her faculty days, President of the Rhode Island School of Design Rosanne Somerson used an unexpected teaching tool: boredom. In a recent Metropolis essay, she says,

When I used to teach graduate students in furniture design, I would assign them an abstract problem that required them to sit in the studio and draw through free association over a long period of time without getting up from their seats.

 

After about 45 minutes, most students would start to squirm and get uncomfortable . . . I encouraged them to push through the discomfort because . . . right after the “squiggly” stage, something incredible happens.

Often, she said, students would stumble upon a completely new direction for their work, “something completely new and unexpected.” So, no getting up for a drink of water, no texting, no checking email, no snacks.

Somerson thinks of this purposeful elimination of distraction as creating time and space for the imagination to reawaken. Her drawing through free association sounds much like the freewriting practice writing gurus recommend for authors, with much the same motivation behind it–breakthrough.

Constant connectivity has made de-distracting our lives increasingly difficult. By filling our mindspace with constant and, let’s admit it, often mindless media consumption—yes, I watched the video of the cat playing the piano—we don’t clear the mental field for “creativity and discovery.” As Joshua Rothman said in a New Yorker essay last year, “Like typing, Googling, and driving, distraction is now a universal competency. We’re all experts.” Well, maybe not driving, not here in New Jersey.

If we set aside some distraction-free time, and, as Somerson suggests “bring back boredom,” we may find ourselves both more creative and more appreciative of today’s limitless fount of stimulating, intelligent, and entertaining distraction.

 

“Hush Now, Don’t Explain”

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Billie Holiday

Click photo for “Hush Now, Don’t Explain”

When I read a vivid description of a particular disease or condition, I confess I start feeling a slight pain in the target spot, an itch, a touch of malaise, a sink of nausea. (All the while being perfectly healthy.) Face it, lots of us suffer from–to put a positive spin on it–this kind of excessive empathy.

That tendency seems remote kin to the feeling I have when I read “advice for writers.” No matter how awful the writing habit is, “I do that!” “My writing is full of it!” But when I ran across fiction editor Beth Hill’s terrific essay, this time, I really, really think she’s diagnosed something important to me. Her brilliant Editor’s Blog essay is “Don’t Explain, Don’t Explain, Don’t Explain.” Let me explain.

Hill says the problem of overexplaining comes up repeatedly in fiction manuscripts. Fundamentally, her common sense advice requires us, as authors, to trust our readers to understand what we’re writing about, without banging them over the head with a 2×4 of explanation. Hill says:

  • Inherent in our characters and the events they experience are (or should be) the reasons they respond to situations as they do. If responses aren’t clear, fix the set-up or the characterizations, don’t take the easy way out and just tell the reader why they responded as they did.
  • Sometimes we do a good job of showing a character’s response, then wimp out, feeling the need to reiterate why the character responded as he did–showing AND telling. No, no, no. Trust the reader.
  • Whenever we explain, there we are (voice of God), elbowing our way into the story. When we do that, Hill says, we are “using real-world explanations for fictional-world events.” That destroys the story’s fictional reality. As John Gardner would say, it jolts the reader awake from “the fictional dream.”
  • Unnecessary explanations need not be page-length, paragraph-length, or even sentence-length. They can be one or two insidious words. Hill’s examples include “Timothy hollered in pain.” Unless the point-of-view character is Timothy or unless she has ESP, she doesn’t know that Timothy hollered in pain. We can just say a character hollered or frowned or wept and trust the reader to figure out why, given the circumstances. (No “Angela wept as if the tragedy of the situation just settled on her” either. That’s still point-of-view character speculation.)

The second part of this summary will appear Monday, June 27.

What a Character!

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typewriter, writing

(photo: c1.staticflickr.com)

This guest post by writer Robert Hebditch is excerpted from a workshop he recently conducted on developing characters for fiction. I’ve added a few examples in italics.

My way of creating character is pretty wasteful and I don’t recommend it to anyone, particularly beginners. My method leads to a lot of re-writes, restarts and a lot of cut and pasting. I often end up throwing it all away. But maybe some pieces of it will work for you!

Following Flannery O’Connor’s famous dictum that you’ve gotta “Write it down, then see what you’ve got,” I tend to write my ideas for the story first, maybe including vaguely defined characters. Then I start writing, fleshing out the characters as each new situation demands.

I draw on my own experience more than any other source. In a lifetime we are exposed to an awful lot of people—friends, lovers, neighbors, people on the street, at the club, at social gatherings, and yes, even in libraries. Most of us already know many more character types than we can invent. I take bits and pieces from these different sources and lace them together with a strong dose of imagination.

Experienced writer or not, asking yourself questions about your characters is certainly necessary, but there’s no need to have all the answers before you start. For me, the old journalistic maxim “Who, what, when, where, how and why” works well. You can selectively apply this where the situation dictates until you’ve filled out your character sufficiently to fulfill the demands of the story.

Ten Basic Points in Developing Characters in Fiction

  1. A character, especially a main character, should be “believably real,” so that the reader will suspend disbelief (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817).
  2. Some information about how characters look, and not just significant physical attributes, like body type and face, scars, tattoos, but also how they walk, dance, run or scratch their face.
  3. Robert pointed out that a great many contemporary writers prefer not to provide much physical description, following Stephen King’s advice to let the readers supply it. “If I describe mine, it freezes out yours,” King says.
  4. Similarly, Ian Rankin, in Knots and Crosses, also prefers to leave the physical appearance of his main character to the reader’s imagination. Detective John Rebus is described as having “brown hair and green eyes, like his brother.” And that’s it.
  5. What characters say, how they say it, how their speech differs from other characters, and whom they talk to. Also, what other characters say about them—a device that works best when it reveals as much about the observer as the observed. Because Robert’s insight about observer and observed  prepared me to appreciate it, I found this perfect example, in which a son is talking about his tyrannical father: “My mom had to lay [my homework] out for him next to his breakfast plate, to the left of the juice but not touching the fork, so he could scan through it with those gray eyes of his, searching for mistakes, tapping his long finger against the papers like a clock-tick.” From those few lines, you know the father’s horrible and mom and son are terrified. (from The Far Empty by J. Todd Scott). “To the left of the juice but not touching the fork”—brilliant!
  6. What characters do (their actions.) This is the key element, of course, because this is how they move through the plot.
  7. How characters act, which can be at odds with what they do, sometimes helping to create mystery or tension. For example, a man whose appearance is quiet and calm may suddenly reveal his true self by a violent action, such as knocking someone’s teeth out or kicking a cat.
  8. How character live—where they live, where they go, their history and habits, friends, relatives, work associates, hangouts and whom they hang out with.
  9. How and what they feel—emotions, moods and perceptions. At the extreme, writers have shown the emotions and perceptions of people who are insane—think of Chief Bromden’s belief in the black machinery behind the walls in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Or cognitively impaired Benjy Compson’s stream of consciousness in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. Or Dr. Jennifer White, narrator of Alice LaPlante’s masterful murder mystery Turn of Mind, who suffers from progressive dementia.
  10. Minor characters are not unimportant characters. They should always serve the story by helping the protagonist move through the plot in some way, no matter how small. In Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, the little we know about the man Thursby is from the established liar Brigid O’Shaughnessy. He makes no real appearance in the novel, yet without his death early on, the whole mystery of the black bird could not unfold.

A final thought. There are so many ways to create character and no one way is the right way. What works for us is what we must go with, with the proviso that there is always something new to learn. What matters most is how our characters make a good story better.

Guest poster Robert Hebditch is a writer of short stories, a local author and is published in US 1, The Kelsey Review and Genesis. He is a member of Princeton Public Library Writers Room and Room at the Table writing groups and a retired staff member of Princeton University.

 

Guilty Pleasures: Plot

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Dickens, writer

(photo: Alan Weir, creative commons license)

In this essay for The Guardian, John Mullan has laid bare a dirty secret I share with many of you. Why do we read fiction? Watch tv & movies? See plays? Plot.

“How we love plots—and how we look down our noses at them,” Mullan begins his essay. Sophisticates are supposed to prefer in-depth character studies, deep psychological explorations, wrenching perspectives on arid reality. I’m afraid I’ve never recovered from the childlike thrill of having a story read to me whose next installment almost made bedtime something to look forward to.

But in contemporary novels, says Mullan, “it sometimes seems that the delights of plot have been contracted out to genre fiction”—especially mysteries, thrillers, and the like. In other words, my favorites.

Of course, genre fiction with believable characters, plausible action, intriguing settings, and (my preference here) significant themes are more satisfying to read, for me it is still plot that makes them worth reading at all. “Yet nowadays we admit the enjoyment of plot as if it were a low kind of self-indulgence—irresistible but ignoble,” says Mullan. We recognize it is what makes us unable to put down certain books, “but not what we any longer expect of ‘serious fiction’” (my emphasis). However, as literary agent and author Donald Maass points out in Writing 21st Century Fiction, plots is more than “clever twists and turns [that] are only momentarily attention-grabbing.”

The many significant characters in the novels of Charles Dickens all turn out to be important to his ultimate plot, even when you don’t fully appreciate their role until the end. Though the drama may have been unfolding through a series of seeming digressions, every aspect is important to the ultimate outcome. This is quite different from presenting string of red herrings and random events. Or, as Mullan puts it, “Plot is what stops narrative being just one thing after another.”

The ending of the popular television series The Good Wife or, Mullan suggests, the evolution of Game of Thrones, appear to have abandoned the connecting thread of plot development for ad hoc-ery: “matters of ingenious improvisation rather than achieved design.” When viewers began to feel this during the six seasons of Lost, what was lost was their interest.

Must writers plan out every detail of plot development before they begin writing? Of course not. When I’m writing a story, I dump in all kinds of information that comes to me as potential plot elements. As I work toward the conclusion, some of these ideas are discarded and some minor points turn out to be essential to the final resolution. In that way, I retain the freshness of discovery, which I hope I can transmit to the reader, I have a rich array of clues and directions to draw upon, and I’ve laid the groundwork for the ending.

Sometimes that groundwork needs to be reworked and strengthened, the reader reminded obliquely of a particular point here and there, but the aim is to achieve a coherent whole in the end. And for some of those points to surprise readers, to smash their expectations head-on and veer off in a different direction, but one totally supported by the plot elements that have gone before.

Stuck in the Past? Writers’ Resources

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newspaper

photo: Sirkku, creative commons license

Does the past haunt you? Do you want it to? Feed your need to know what happened years ago by perusing newspapers from the time. It’s no longer necessary to visit distant archives or incite an attack from your dust allergies, digitization has come to your rescue!

Because of my genealogy researches, I’m deeply interested in certain past events that are only dimly remembered—if at all—in family lore. You may be interested in the history of your neighborhood, your church, or some historical episode, large or small.

A Novelist’s Quest

Author Laura Town reviewed some of these digital newspaper archives in Word, a publication of  the American Society of Journalists and Authors. For her historical novel The Renegade Queen, about the first woman to run for the U.S. presidency, she wanted both facts about certain episodes and “feel.” What was on the minds of people in the period she was writing about? How did they speak?

Her novel included notable characters from real-life—Victoria Woodhull and Susan B. Anthony. There are biographies of them, of course, but Town discovered these biographies contradicted each other. That made it especially important to find out what people said about them at the time and led her to explore the newspapers of the period.

Digital Newspaper Resources

Although some of the resources below have a cost, bear in mind that public and college libraries may subscribe to these services, enabling community residents to use them for free. Read the subscription terms carefully; sometimes these subscriptions are hard to cancel and can be costly!

  • Chronicling America – a free site hosted by the Library of Congress, covering the periods 1836 to 1922. Although it contains thousands of newspapers, it doesn’t have them all. Still, it’s a place to start. I found the search function a little clunky.
  • New York “Times Machine” – Get your questions in order before you sign up, because it costs $8.75 per week. However, it contains every issue of the paper of record since its inception more than 160 years ago up to today, since access to it comes with a digital or print subscription to the paper.
  • com – the basic subscription ($7.95 per month) includes papers from around the world going back to the 1700s and is included in a membership with Ancestry.com. Searching for an individual within Ancestry can bring up genealogical and vital records information, as well as any newspaper article in which the person appears. For more years and more newspapers, the “Extra” subscription is $19.90 per month. Many public libraries have a membership in Ancestry, although I’m not sure whether the library version—slightly different than the home version—includes the newspapers.com.
  • com – again, if your questions are in order, you can take advantage of this site’s 14-day free trial. It includes newspapers from many countries back as far as 1607 for some. If the website indicates the price after the trial period, I did not find it.

Town mentions several other, specialized and international sources in her article. If digitized sources cannot help with your questions, she also suggests the state archives for the locale in which the newspaper was published. Historical societies may have microfilmed newspapers, and if you have a narrow date range, such as seeking a birth announcement or obituary, they may be a useful resource.

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Head-Hopping: A Bad Thing

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rabbit, fancy

Doesn’t matter how you dress it up, head-hopping is still bad (photo: Ross Little, creative commons license)

Fiction-writers struggle with the issue of point of view. Whose point of view should a story or part of a story be told from? What point of view will create the most impact for readers? Should it be first person (I/we), second (you, rarely used), or third (he/she/it). Should the whole story be told from one character’s point of view or several?

The mystery/crime novels I write tend to alternate points of view between scenes or chapters (victim-detective-victim-criminal-detective, etc.). And that’s what got me into trouble. I became so comfortable thinking in different heads, I forgot I shouldn’t combine them in one scene. Or I got to the point where I couldn’t tell when I did!

Jumping from the thoughts of one character to another within a scene is called “head-hopping,” and will earn an author severe black marks from prospective agents, editors, and publishers. Why is this important? Because it’s confusing for readers.

My editor was happy to point this out. I’m just thankful I couldn’t look into her head when she was marking up my manuscript. And here I thought I was p.o.v.-savvy (previous post)! I’m leading a discussion on point of view today, and here’s an example of head-hopping I developed for the group, taking one of my scenes and making it only a teensy bit worse head-hopping-wise than the original. I’ve underlined how you can tell whose head you’re in and inserted some explanations in italic.

      “Two men in Vatican maintenance uniforms and hardhats were setting up safety barriers marked “Do Not Cross” atop both sets of crypt stairs.
“What—?” Father Maratea looked up at them from the bottom of the steps. [Since we have his name, and, to him the others are the anonymous “two men,” reader will assume we are in Father Maratea’s head.]
“Good afternoon, Father.” The shorter of the two, a remarkably pale man, smiled broadly. “We’re here to repair the wiring under the crypt floor.” He spoke quickly, and turned serious. [Father Maratea could conceivably detect that the man turned serious, so this is still in his head, but getting iffy.] “Only a matter of time until—”
Father Maratea didn’t understand any of this, but he’d caught one unexpected word. “Fire? This building is stone. Stone doesn’t burn.” [definitely Maratea’s head]
“Sure, the parts we see are stone, but underneath there’s subflooring and sub-subflooring.” The man remembered another danger, and said, [oops! HOP!] “And, we have to do it today. We can’t expose hundreds of weekend tourists to the risk of a major combustion event, toxic fumes.”
The tall man nodded, impressed by Nic’s gift for invention. [oops! Hopped into the other man’s head.]
    AThey let Father Maratea think for about a half-minute [now you’re definitely in the thieves’ heads] before the first man glanced around and sniffed the air, as if a malodorous smoke might even then be curling up the crypt stairs. [could be either thief’s head or Maratea’s.] “The quicker we get started, the sooner we’re done.”
“Oh, all right,” the priest said, perplexed by the difficulties this posed. [the thieves might be able to detect that he is perplexed, so this gets only a caution.]
Father Maratea turned to them. “How long will this take?” His tone was peevish. Something about the pale man nagged at him, but the thought wouldn’t take shape. [Oops! HOP!!]

I’m sure my editor was tearing her hair out at the merry way I jumped around here. But now I’ve fixed all that and am moving smoothly ahead, no hops!

9 Keys to a Successful Reading

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road sign, rough road

(copyright Elvis Kennedy, creative commons license)

Reading your own work aloud—even without an audience—is a helpful exercise for any writer. The sentences that seem to flow so smoothly across the page will reveal themselves to be scarred with rough patches, poor word choices like potholes, and cracks in logic.

Members of my writing group do a public reading twice a year. Not only does preparation for the reading improve the writing, the audience feedback is strongly energizing (since so often, submissions to agents and publishers evoke no feedback at all).

An audience isn’t necessary for diagnostic work; you can read a draft aloud at any stage it’s in. But if you have the chance to do a public reading, the route to success is simple: practice! The more run-throughs you do, the greater your confidence and the smoother your performance.

Key hints are:

  1. Lighting: If you’re over 40, you may need extra light. Maybe you’re thinking, I’ll use my laptop, no problem. Consider whether the laptop screen not only casts an unflatteringly cold light on you, but also sets up a perceived barrier between you and your audience. You may decide old-school is better.
  2. If you use paper, print your manuscript in a BIG font. The less light you have, the bigger your font should be. I generally print mine in 20-point BOLD, after an embarrassing episode when I couldn’t see what I was reading.
  3. Be sure you understand time constraints, and when you practice, time yourself. If you consistently bump up against your time limit, cut something. You don’t want to notice the clock and start rushing.
  4. Stand up when you practice. Even if you’re offered a chair at your reading, you’re better off on your feet. Your voice will carry farther and your breathing will improve.
  5. Plant your feet firmly, a little apart to prevent weaving (you don’t want your audience to get seasick), and use natural hand gestures. Practice them, too.
  6. Whenever you stumble over a word, circle it, so you know it’s coming and can anticipate it. If a word or phrase is too much of a tongue-twister, or you consistently read it wrong, consider changing it.
  7. Mark up your copy to indicate variations in intonation, speed, emphasis. If your piece has dialog, differentiate the voices.
  8. On performance day, have a small bottle of water handy.
  9. Smile and make eye contact!

If you’re like me and tend to yawn while reading aloud, you may need more oxygen. You probably won’t have the problem if you read standing up. I don’t. And you might also want to take a few deep breaths before you start!

Tomorrow: Polishing Your Instrument–Your Voice for a public reading.