Creating Different Character Threads to Form a Tapestry

How often have you been engrossed in an exciting part of a book only for the chapter to end, then when you start the next chapter you find the author has moved to a different character altogether?

This shifting of a novel’s emphasis is one of the many tools in an author’s armoury. It allows the author to create a cliff-hanger or two keeping the pages turning. 

Character threads don’t have to be about the hero, victim or villain. Sometimes they can be of a minor character that has an important piece of information or sub-plot to share with readers. 

These different threads can also be used to help with the ebb and flow of a novel and with the aforementioned cliff-hangers, are a great way of building a tension over a large amount of the novel. 

The best example of a book which uses this technique is the second installment of Lord of the Rings (The Two Towers). Tolkien tells the reader three separate stories by interspersing the action between various characters that had been split up at the end of book one.

Authors may also use varying points of view between chapters to add different perspectives to the same thread or multiple threads. Matt Hilton (next week’s guest blogger) writes his main character in a first person POV and all others in a third person. This lets him have different threads while retaining the urgency of first person point of view. 

When you analyse books as I do (I’m always trying to learn) then you can see the mechanics better and I cannot think offhand of many authors who continually write with just one character thread.

 

Any suggestions would be welcome.

 

P.S. It's Crime and Publishment this weekend. We still have a place or two available if anyone wants to attend.

Baiting Your Hook

As a crime reader, writer and reviewer one of the things that interests me most is that all important first paragraph. A good one grabs me straight away while a bad one turns the air a kind of sweary blue colour. 

A good opening paragraph draws the reader into the book and immerses them in the story from the get go. Small errors later in the novel are forgiven or ignored because the reader is so engrossed in the story. Beware though, when it’s bad the reader may never make it far enough to read all the really good bits of your novel or story. 

Mundane everyday routine is a serious no no in any part of a novel and doubly so in the opening chapter let alone that all important first paragraph. What the reader wants is for something to happen and it’s gotta be exciting. We want a kidnap, violence or the discovery of a body to get our pulses racing. Introspection, routine and banality are not what crime readers want to start off with. Sure, use them as character displaying tools later on to round out your novel but wait until the reader cares about the characters. 

Take for example these two opening lines I’ve just made up. One should tickle your interesting bits while the other is blander than white fish with plain rice. 

·         Detective John Harrison washed the plate, returned it to the cupboard and trudged exhausted up the stairs. Creeping into his children’s bedrooms he kissed them both goodnight before undressing in the master bedroom. The hall light shone onto his wife’s beautiful face and he was tempted to wake her, to tell her of his long boring day shuffling endless forms. Deciding against it he slipped beneath the quilt and fell asleep in seconds.

 

·         The severed head of a child bounced off my windscreen as I pursued the Corvette. Blood splattered the now starred glass. Two months I had been chasing the McAvoy brothers. Their paedophile ring was going to get shut down. Today! Reaching beneath my jacket I un-holstered the Sig Sauer I always carried.

The first instance is to my mind bland and dull. It shows Harrison as being mostly desk bound and any cop who lives at home with a wife and kids is unlikely to be interesting to a reader unless he has a double life. This could only be used as an opening paragraph if the next paragraph was the one where the action kicked off.

The second instance starts you right in the action with a car chase, murder and paedophilia (surely the most despicable crime) there is also the prospect of revenge or vigilante action and the pulling of the gun announces its imminent arrival.

Get it right and you’re onto a winner right away. Get it wrong and you are struggling to retain your reader’s interest.

Please share your thoughts as to the opening lines that have grabbed you by the throat and forced you to keep reading or the ones which have repelled you.

 

PS Don't forget about Crime and Publishment. A three day series of writing classes culminating in the chance to pitch your novel to an agent. More info can be found at www.crimeandpublishment.co.uk