Susan Shea's Rules

Today the Pens are happy to welcome Susan Shea, a lovely member of our local writing community and someone who writes a clever, twisting, mysterious tale about one of my favorite subjects: the clever, twisted, mysterious ways of the art world. Susan has her first novel coming out THIS MONTH: Murder in the Abstract (an Avalon Mystery). Booklist calls it: "...a series to watch."

Plus: Susan is generously offering a signed copy of Murder in the Abstract to a randomly chosen commenter! So leave a comment (with your email in the text) and answer this question: what rule(s) make YOU freeze?

“Rules.”

Immediately, I’m suspicious. Oh, yeah? Who says?

Next, I’m nervous. What happens if I mess up?

Then, I’m confused. What are they? Who has them?

Clearly, I don’t do rules well. I don’t have the traffic tickets or IRS penalty notices to prove it because I’m not stupid. Those kinds of rules cost more time and money to thwart than I want to spend unless there’s a moral issue involved. However, this wonderful blog site is about writing and writers, and I’m a guest, so I’ll stick with rules for writing and why they only sometimes make sense to me.

Here’s a recent, true demonstration of my attempt to follow the rules. I’m having trouble with the pacing of my second book, especially because the end is sort of tricky. I like the scenes and the order in which they take place. But fitting them into chapters is getting awkward, never mind into three acts. See, someone smarter than I am told me to divide my book into three acts. There’s a crisis at the end of the first act. There’s a defining situation at the end of the second act that makes the pursuit of the villain a personal quest - no turning back from this point on. And, of course, there’s the climax and resolution at the end of the third act. So far, so good.

But another, equally successful author wrote that the big moment comes halfway through the book, which brings up another of my weak points: math. What’s half of a third and does that mean the highest drama comes before the second act’s climax? I’m now completely frozen. Never mind chapters – I’m not sure where the periods go! So I call yet another smarter-than-me author who obviously understands this stuff. She’s patient and I almost get it after a half hour.

Two weeks later, any clarity I had has evaporated. So I scrap all the rules and decide to reread the entire manuscript in hard copy and do it by instinct. End the chapters with a flourish where my protagonist sticks out her tongue, metaphorically. Consider a third to be a moveable point at which someone brandishes a knife or finds a body. And the midpoint? Oh, well, it’s in there somewhere. Maybe a kind editor will point it out to me during revisions. I’m going with my gut and remembering that the point of all these rules is to establish and maintain a rhythm, mounting tension, and belief in the characters and their intentions, good and bad.

The writers who host this site have proven they can do all of that and, if they follow rules, they do it so gracefully that I’m not aware of the structure, just caught up in their stories. Maybe one rule we authors can all follow, even if we’re not so good at fractions, is just that: write a great story and make the hard work invisible to the reader.

Thanks for letting me visit Pen Fatales!

Susan C. Shea is the author of MURDER IN THE ABSTRACT, the first in a series of crime novels. She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and Romance Writers of America and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. www.susancshea.com