Fiction's Heartbeat

Fiction's Heartbeat

I once read a magazine article titled, “Action, the Heartbeat of Fiction” by Jordan E. Rosenfeld, which I thought was worth discussing. Rosenfeld said, “Action is a dynamic word that calls to mind a director hooting into a megaphone at his actors. It's also the heartbeat of good fiction that keeps readers riveted to the page. Action is comprised of all the elements a reader can 'witness' taking place. From physical movement to spoken dialogue, action transports your readers into your writing and brings your writing to life. Despite all this, many writers have a tendency to shuffle important action offstage, relying on pace-dragging narrative summaries and recaps instead.”

The solution to preventing pace-dragging scenes is to write them within a framework. By presenting scenes as though they were happening on a theater stage, all the drama takes place as it happens, not offstage and something for the characters to discuss. Readers remember what happens on stage and can make their own deductions. They needn’t wait for the characters to endlessly discuss what has just taken place.

The scene’s momentum keeps the reader reading and her heart pounding as the action accelerates if the plot situation seems real, particularly when the character is in danger. Instead of characters talking about a past experience, replay the scene in flashback action. By reliving it in living color, the reader can experience it for himself. 

Another good way to involve your reader in a scene is to reveal information in dialogue. A good plot reveals new information in each chapter and one of the best ways to deliver the news is to have the characters act it out. Give the narrator a rest. It’s much more powerful to have events happen now than to hear about it later, secondhand.

Character movement is essential in a good scene, whether the protagonist throws a chair through a window in anger, or flicks ashes from a cigarette into his cup. Don’t leave your characters standing around without something to do. Body language is a giveaway when a character’s motives are in question. If a man drops his head when asked if he killed someone, it usually means he’s guilty or knows who committed the crime. If a woman lifts a palm to her chest while denying something, changes are she’s telling the truth.

If your character comes to an important decision or suddenly realizes that he has the answer to a problem, avoid internal monologue as much as possible. The realization will have more impact if it happens in someone else’s presence because it raises the emotional stakes for all concerned, as well as your storyline. 

And finally, turn your backstory into frontstory whenever possible or delete it from the plot. It’s usually spooned in as narrative summary instead of dialogue and lacks the elements of scene writing. Because it doesn’t take place in the present, there’s no dialogue or scene setting or action taking place. When that happens, the best part of backstory is casually written off without the slightest hint of emotion. And emotion definitely drives the plot.

Do Blurbs and Reviews Sell Books?

Every writer covets a great review from Publisher's Weekly, but how many readers base their purchases on reviews? Nothing I've written so far has grabbed PW’s attention although one of my novels, Murder on the Interstate, has earned some good comments, starting with a nice blurb from bestselling mystery novelist, Carolyn Hart: "Careen into crime with two intrepid sleuths who outwit terrorists in a fast-paced plot taken from today's headlines. A page turner."                                                                                                                                                       Unfortunately, it didn’t jump start book sales, nor did Lefty Award Winner J. Michael Orenduff's colorful review, which I love:


“Murder on the Interstate burns rubber right out of the gate and exceeds the speed limit on every page. With all the car chases, gun shots, screeching breaks, and crashes, the movie version could be the sequel to one of those car-heist action-films. Except for the fact that the protagonists are two women approaching Medicare, and their vehicle is a motorhome. Dana and Sarah are stalwart, clever and funny characters, and author Jean Henry Mead caroms them from one tight situation to another as they weave along the Interstate and into a high stakes mystery.”

I thought, WOW, that ought to stir up interest, but it must have only reminded readers of the tire tracks on the first cover, which has since been changed. Marilyn Meredith’s great blurb came next:

“Full of surprising twists and turns, Jean Henry Mead has produced an RV adventure with her two senior sleuths in hot pursuit of a murderer, but the tables turn and the two women learn that not only are they in danger but so is our national security. An exciting mystery that will keep you turning pages."

Book sales numbers barely budged. I thought maybe the counter was broken or everyone hated the cover. I received several additional reviews, including one of my favorites from Earl Staggs, who said:

"I don’t expect an amateur sleuth novel to start fast. I expect to spend time getting to know the protagonist, then get a feel for the setting, and maybe get to know another character or two before the story begins to move forward. That doesn’t happen in MURDER ON THE INTERSTATE. Jean Henry Mead kicks it off in high gear and doesn’t slow down. This is the kind of novel I enjoy.”

By then I was in the midst of a virtual book tour and Molly’s online review had this to say:

“This was good. REALLY good. REALLY REALLY good. So good, in fact, that I have GOT to go back and get the first two in this series! It was a LOT better than I was expecting. It really gripped me and kept me hanging on, until I was, sadly, on the last page. I couldn't believe the ups and downs and twists and turns it took me on. FANTASTIC!”

Readers didn’t take Molly seriously, so I decided the book’s salvation rested with Kindle and Nook. Murder on the Interstate is now available on Amazon.com in this county as well as in the UK and a number of other countries ebook and print editions. And I'm hoping to attract a narrator to record the novel in an audio edition like eight of my other books.

Are readers forsaking print editions for ebooks? How about you? Do you still prefer print or have you joined the ebook revolution? I asked that question in 2012. Now I'm asking if readers are forsaking ebooks for audio books?

And do reviews influence your book buying habits? Writers (and publishers) want to know. :)

Buffalo Bill's Grandson was a Chip Off the Old Block

Buffalo Bill's grandson not only followed in his boot prints as showman, dude rancher, soldier and entrepreneur, he made history of his own. The unpretentious Harvard Law School graduate surrendered the most American troops in Europe during World War II, married more often than the average American, and lectured to more students about their heritage than any of his fellow countrymen. Among his many accomplishments, he learned to downhill ski at 65.

William Cody Garlow was born at the Scout’s Rest Ranch in North Platte, Nebraska, January 4, 1913. His mother, Irma, (Buffalo Bill’s youngest child) returned to Cody, Wyoming, with her two-week-old son and his older brother Fred and sister Jane. The children were orphaned in 1918 when their parents died two days apart during the influenza epidemic. Their grandfather, William F. Cody, passed away the previous year and his wife Louisa adopted their grandchildren and reared them until her death in 1921.

Bill Garlow was four when his illustrious granddad died. “I remember him distinctly only three times,” he said. “Once at the TE Ranch west of Cody, on his deathbed, and at his funeral on Lookout Mountain.”

Bill and his brother Fred were "installed in a military school" in southern California by their grandmother when they were six and nine. Bill continued his education at the Riverside Military Academy in Georgia, where his grades fluctuated according to the season and he studied six years, instead of four, to graduate. “Periodically I was excellent,” he said, grinning. “And other times I got lousy grades. It all depended on hunting season which started about the same time as school. I had to go hunting first.”

The trim six-footer studied pre-law at the University of Nebraska, graduating in 1936. He then enrolled at Harvard Law School. “Very early in high school I decided to become a lawyer. I visualized justice, equity and all that I wanted to participate in, but when I became a lawyer, I found that it was an entirely different ball game, so I practiced two years and quit.”

Following graduation from Harvard, Garlow enlisted in the army as a reserve commissioned second lieutenant. A platoon leader, he was later promoted to the ranks of captain, company commander and major. In 1944, he was transferred to the 106th Infantry Division and sent to Germany where his troops were caught in the Battle of The Bulge. Surrounded by German artillery troops, Garlow’s 423rd regiment, commanded by Colonel Charles Cavender, was stationed on the Schnee Eifel, attempting to fight its way west to the German town of Schoenberg.

Just before daybreak on December 19, 1944, Cavender gathered his three battalion commanders and staff in a small open field to discuss their next line of action when a German artillery shell fragment killed the officer standing next to Garlow. After the initial volley, American troops assembled to coordinate an attack westward across the hilly Schnee Eifel, but the entire command was caught in the open where artillery fire was inflicting heavy casualties. Colonel Descheneau of the 422nd gathered field officers in a bunker to discuss the graveness of their situation. Food and ammunition supplies had been cut off, and the colonel concluded that the only way to save the lives of the 5,000 men was to surrender.

Garlow volunteered to negotiate the surrender although he and several other men had planned to escape through the woods, with the colonel’s permission. He decided to hand over his gun and borrow white handkerchiefs to wave as he ran an erratic path down the side of the hill into German-held territory. There he was grabbed and stripped of “his most prized possessions.” He spoke no German and was unable to communicate his intent to negotiate a surrender until a young German lieutenant, who spoke English, came to his rescue and ordered his men to return Garlow’s watch, pint of bourbon and candy bars. He was then taken to a major who also spoke fluent English.

John Eisenhower describes the scene that followed in his book, The Bitter Woods:

Turning to the lieutenant [the major] snapped orders in German which Garlow soon learned charged the lieutenant with conducting a patrol of nine or ten men to accompany Garlow back to the American positions. Faced with a tense situation, the young volksgrenedier’s personality instantly changed. He jabbed Garlow in the back with his Schmeisder burp gun. “If this is a trick, Major, you’re dead.” Garlow winced under the painful blow: later turned out his chivalrous enemy had broken two of his ribs. But the lieutenant’s former friendly attitude returned. Keeping Garlow covered, he let the American guide his patrol up the hill to Descheneau’s CP on the Schnee Eiffel, where they found that Descheneau had prepared everything. Weapons were broken . . . 

And many American soldiers were in tears. Garlow, therefore, held what he termed “the dubious honor or having negotiated the surrender of the largest number of American soldiers in the European theatre;" surpassed only by the Bataan surrender in 1942. Members of the 422and and Garlow’s 423rd regiments spent the rest of the war in German prison camps and were awarded purple hearts for the frostbite they suffered as a result of their capture. Garlow was also “unofficially shot in the leg.”

Following the war, he returned to “Cody Country” where he practiced law for two years and helped establish the local radio station. He was one of the founders of KODI, later serving as owner-general manager and on-the-air personality. He then moved to Texas where he “got into the oil business,” the drilling end of it. He went broke after a while, he said, because of his preoccupation with “having a good time and chasing girls.” So he once again returned to the town of Cody, where he established a river float business, later run by his son Kit. In 1969, he married for the fifth time.

His first marriage lasted six months. He married again while a law student at Harvard. The union produced four sons: Bill and Jack Garlow and Barry and Kit Carson Cody. He remarried after his sons' mother died, but was divorced after only a couple of years. A fourth marriage also failed, but he remained happily married to his fifth wife Barbara, some forty years his junior, until his death. Together they purchased a rundown guest ranch and established it as one of the most highly rated resorts in Wyoming. Located on ten acres of leased government land, it lay halfway between Cody and the east entrance to Yellowstone Park, adjoining millions of acres of national forest.

He began making public appearances for the Daisy Air Rifle Company in 1968 when a new line was introduced called the “Buffalo Bill.” The promoters insisted that he legally change his name from Bill Cody Garlow to Bill Cody for the television and radio commercials as well as public appearances. “Bill Garlow just wouldn’t do,” he said. “But I may have already been a Cody because my grandmother adopted me. I never thought to check the courthouse records. So with all my marriages and the change in name, I have the Cody family book well fouled up.”

Buffalo Bill’s grandson appeared on some 3,000 television shows, thousands of radio programs and various promotions during the next nine years. He also lectured to junior high and high school students about their “American heritage” while on the road making public appearances. He talked to “more youth in person than any other American” during 1,171 lectures in forty-two states. At the time of the interview, he still had hopes of speaking to students in all fifty states.

He said, “That’s my kind of pony express.”

Ernest Hemingway on Writing

Ernest Hemingway has always been my writing role model. Not only because his work changed the face of writing, but because he was a novelist as well as a journalist, as I am. And maybe because we shared the same birthday, July 21st.

The following are a few of his quotes:

~There's no rule on how it is to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly. Sometimes it is like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

~Will work again on the novel today. Writing is a hard business, but nothing makes you feel better. 

~I love to write. But it has never gotten any easier to do and you can't expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do.

~The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life--and one is as good as the other.

~A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

~Whatever success I have had has been through writing what I know about.

And when asked what the best early training is for a writer, Hemingway answered: "An unhappy childhood." Whether his answer was tongue in cheek is irrelevant. I'm sure he meant that emotions such as sadness, anger, rebellion and depression are remembered emotions which contribute to good writing. And writing that elicits reader emotion is the primary ingredient in a successful book.

(Quotes from Ernest Hemingway on Writing by Larry W. Phillips, Scribner, 1984)

Creating Novel Characters (Without Getting Sued)

Some of us are tempted to create characters based on people we know. And that's fine as long as you don’t describe them accurately. Your relatives probably won’t sue if they find themselves in your novels, but others might. Especially if they find themselves the villain.

To successfully sue, a plaintiff must prove that your fictional character is negatively based on her, and has injured her emotionally, financially or socially. It’s safer to write about a public figure or someone deceased, although their relatives can sue for defaming them posthumously. To avoid lawsuits, disguise your characters in ways to make them unrecognizable. That includes physical appearances as well as mannerisms. By combining the traits of one person with another, you'll have a unique character.

How much disguise is necessary? There aren’t any hard and fast rules but merely changing a person’s name will not keep you out of court. The only safe way to avoid litigation is to change the character’s name, sex, age, occupation and appearance. On the other hand, wouldn’t it be better to create an entirely new character?

Creating enough characters to inhabit a novel is easier if the writer is a people watcher. A good imagination is also a plus when you flesh out your characters so they're real to your readers. It’s also true of names. You have to be careful what you name your villains because someone with the same name may take offense and claim to have been libeled. To avoid this, give your villains simple names such as Bob Smith, Joe Brown or Pat Wilson. If you’re unsure, there’s a website, How Many of Me? which lists how many people have a certain name. I also check with various people finders online to make sure no one has the name when I decide on an unusual one. I was surprised to learn that out of more than 400,000,000 people in this country, no one else has my name.

Character names are important because they conger up images in a reader’s mind. You wouldn’t name a contemporary character Ebenezer any more than you would call a Roman Emperor Mike. Sometimes you can get away with stretching the rules. In my second mystery/suspense novel, A Village Shattered, I named one of my contemporary characters Elisibub because his southern parents named him for his great-grandfather, a Civil War captain. So everyone calls him “Bub.”

Writers can create some wonderful names for their characters by reading newspapers or the phonebook. I knew a western writer, Stanley Locke, who chose Ormly Gumfudgin as his pen name. I’ve also known people with unusual names such as Fayfern Dinkle, Damery Binkle, Wakley Peacock and Sissie Muddle, but I wouldn’t dream of using them in a novel. Like my name, they’re one of a kind, but that doesn't stop me from tweeking them a little and coming up with Wilber Birdsnest, Damer Winkle and Fannie Dinkley. I like to insert humor in my work, including my nonfiction books.

Male protagonists with names like Daniel, Michael, George and David seem to instill confidence in the reader that they will accomplish their goals or overcome a problem before the end of the book. Female characters have an ever wider range of names and writers have been known to create some unusual ones. I prefer short, common names such as Dana, Sarah, Micki and Carole, which are characters in my first mystery novel. It’s only when I choose surnames that I'm creative.

Cowboy-Author Maynard Lehman, Part III

Spring and fall roundups were the best of times. "Riding fence and checking on the cattle at calving time, but it was not all work you did in the saddle, There was hay to put up and feeding the cows in the winter, but I didn't mind that too much. I enjoyed breaking in the new saddle and work horses. When I worked at Venables, he's buy a bunch of horses and a lot of times there would be saddle horses. If it looked like there was a saddle mark on a horse, you'd grab it and ride."

Grooming them was a hit and miss practice, whenever the men had time. "We'd trim their hooves and pull a long hair and cockleburs out of their manes and tails. If we were riding in the dust, like working a herd, there would be a ring of muddy sweat around the saddle blanket that we would rub off. That was about the extent of grooming."

While Lehman worked the JK ranch he received $60 a month. After the financial crash of the Great Depression in 1929, "that changed things," he said. "Before the depression the going wage was forty to sixty dollars a month. After the crash you were lucky to find work at any wage. During the early thirties, cattle wasn't worth enough to ship to market. I broke horses for five and a ten dollars each and I broke horses for hay to feed my own horses. The JK Ranch was owned by some people who had a steel mill in Pittsburgh, and when the steel mill went broke so did the ranch in thirty-one. My  job went with it and they still owed me money, the only wages I ever lost. So from then until about nineteen-thirty-seven, it was whatever you could find  to do."

The cowboy worked two winters feeding sheep and hunting coyotes. "And I worked for twenty-five dollars a month. When I worked for CBC I got forty to forty-five a month, but they figured it by the day."

Feeding sheep was a cowboy's anathema. "My dad had a band of sheep, which is one of the reasons I left home," he said laughing. The CBC job was the only job available so he took it because it included hunting coyotes. He also managed to work cattle. The JK, located on the Tongue River, ran a thousand  head of cattle as well as Shire and Morgan horses. "We had one Shire that weighed twenty-four hundred pounds and a couple of other [heavyweights]." There were no real quarter horses. Most were range horses, Morgan and Arabian blood among them. The short-legged range horses, regardless of their bloodlines, were a cowboy's favorites. They were less likely to stumble over their own feet, and made better cutting horses, much like current quarter horses.

Lehman and his cohorts worked long hours during the depression. He worked for the CBC outfit, "and they always said, 'Sell your bedroll and buy a lantern,'" because we'd get in about ten o'clock at night and were up at four-thirty. I worked for them until they cleared the range of all their horses. They ran over two hundred thousand head in seven states, with headquarters in Rawlins, Wyoming. Most of the horse meat was shipped overseas."

The CBC was owned by the Chappel Brothers, who ran a packing plant in Rockford, Illinois, "And their horses were nothing by scrubs. They didn't have a decent horse on the range. Same way with our saddle horses." Most spreads, he said, like the LO and larger ranches, had 75-100 saddle horses available and each cowboy had seven in his string. Most of them, including the CBC, had no strings at all, and "you rode whatever you could catch, whether it was broke, wind broke, it didn't make any difference. You rode it. 

That was the general rule around most horse ranches.Spring and fall roundups were the best of times. "Riding fence and checking on the cattle at calving time, but it was not all work you did in the saddle, There was hay to put up and feeding the cows in the winter, but I didn't mind that too much. I enjoyed breaking in the new saddle and work horses. When I worked at Venables, he's buy a bunch of horses and a lot of times there would be saddle horses. If it looked like there was a saddle mark on a horse, you'd grab it and ride."

Grooming them was a hit and miss practice, whenever the men had time. "We'd trim their hooves and pull a long hair and cockleburs out of their manes and tails. If we were riding in the dust, like working a herd, there would be a ring of muddy sweat around the saddle blanket that we would rub off. That was about the extent of grooming."

While Lehman worked the JK ranch he received $60 a month. After the financial crash of the Great Depression in 1929, "that changed things," he said. "Before the depression the going wage was forty to sixty dollars a month. After the crash you were lucky to find work at any wage. During the early thirties, cattle wasn't worth enough to ship to market. I broke horses for five and a ten dollars each and I broke horses for hay to feed my own horses. 

The JK Ranch was owned by some people who had a steel mill in Pittsburgh, and when the steel mill went broke so did the ranch in thirty-one. My  job went with it and they still owed me money, the only wages I ever lost. So from then until about nineteen-thirty-seven, it was whatever you could find  to do."

The cowboy worked two winters feeding sheep and hunting coyotes. "And I worked for twenty-five dollars a month. When I worked for CBC I got forty to forty-five a month, but they figured it by the day."

Feeding sheep was a cowboy's anathema. "My dad had a band of sheep, which is one of the reasons I left home," he said laughing. The CBC job was the only job available so he took it because it included hunting coyotes. He also managed to work cattle. The JK, located on the Tongue River, ran a thousand  head of cattle as well as Shire and Morgan horses. "We had one Shire that weighed twenty-four hundred pounds and a couple of other [heavyweights]." There were no real quarter horses. Most were range horses, Morgan and Arabian blood among them. The short-legged range horses, regardless of their bloodlines, were a cowboy's favorites. They were less likely to stumble over their own feet, and made better cutting horses, much like current quarter horses.

Lehman and his cohorts worked long hours during the depression. He worked for the CBC outfit, "and they always said, 'Sell your bedroll and buy a lantern,'" because we'd get in about ten o'clock at night and were up at four-thirty. I worked for them until they cleared the range of all their horses. They ran over two hundred thousand head in seven states, with headquarters in Rawlins, Wyoming. Most of the horse meat was shipped overseas."

The CBC was owned by the Chappel Brothers, who ran a packing plant in Rockford, Illinois, "And their horses were nothing by scrubs. They didn't have a decent horse on the range. Same way with our saddle horses." Most spreads, he said, like the LO and larger ranches, had 75-100 saddle horses available and each cowboy had seven in his string. Most of them, including the CBC, had no strings at all, and "you rode whatever you could catch, whether it was broke, wind broke, it didn't make any difference. You rode it. That was the general rule around most horse ranches.

Cowboy Author, Maynard Lehman, Part II

When Maynard Lehman was 16, he and two Indian boys his age decided to rescue horses from the Sioux Reservation. “Any horse not branded or not running with its mother was called a slick. It belonged to anyone who put a brand on it. That rule didn’t hold true on the reservation because slicks belonged to the agency. Every two years they held a roundup and the white guys who ran the roundup would take any horse that looked good for themselves. The Indians didn’t like the practice any more than I did, so we decided to hold our own roundup.”

Lehman paused to envision his small roan roping horse and the forty-five slicks they rounded up. Grinning, he said the three boys had first located an abandoned spread and repaired the pasture fence. Following the roundup they corralled the horses in the pasture until they learned that members of the Indian agency were on their trail.

“It was raining and dark as the inside of a boot when we got what we could out of the pasture. By  daylight we were across the state line, but we only had 36 head.“ The horses were driven to the Lehman’s North Dakota ranch where they were sold, and the Indian teens returned to the reservation. There they were arrested and placed in the county jail. Lehman wasn’t sure whether they were charged with horse theft and never returned to find out.

That spring the young cowpoke drove 12 horses on a triple plow to break up alfalfa sod that gone to grass. He said, “When we started I had four gentle horses and eight broncs. The boss rode alongside to keep them in line while I sat on the plow with a handful of reins.  After the second day the boss turned me loose with the outfit, so I learned to drive early on.”

That winter Lehman supplemented his meager income with coyote pelts. “The first winter we had pretty good luck. We got about 35.” The ranch owner had a pack of hounds “and we put ‘em on the front bobs with a rack on it. When we’d spot some coyotes, we’d open the rack and turn ‘em loose. Then they’d run the coyotes down. Coyotes weren’t that speedy but the dogs wouldn’t kill ‘em, so you had to have a killer among the pack, which was generally a Russian wolfhound. The dogs would knock the coyotes down and play with ‘em until the killer came along and grabbed ‘em.” The coyotes were skinned and sold to fur houses for $7-$8 apiece. “Pretty good pay in those days. If you could catch one a day, you were doing good.”

Good food depended on the ranch. “When I was working at the Venables, Herm had just married and his wife couldn’t boil water. She’d put on a pot of beans half an hour before dinner and they’d rattle on your plate. At the SY Ranch I was the cook so we ate pretty good. The ranch was 45 miles from town and I cooked for the haying crew, but we didn’t have bread or butter. We had syrup and I made sourdough biscuits all the time, but we had lots of good meat and potatoes.”

With abundant cattle the cowboys didn’t waste time hunting game animals, and there were always plenty of bacon and ham. “We had purtinear every kind of canned food and we’d butcher a critter, usually a two-year old and hang ‘em up at night, propped on a wagon tongue. Leave ‘em out overnight and wrap ‘em [the following morning] in a blanket or tarp  and put ‘em in the wagon. That meat would keep for a couple of weeks. It wouldn’t spoil and the older it got, the better it was.”

Lehman rode herd accompanied by chuck wagons several times before they were fazed out of cattle roundups. “Most of the ranches were smaller by then and didn’t use one. But the JK went together with the Birchers, and some others still used them for a couple more years. He knew a man whose lower arm had been blown off during the Johnson County War. “He was the cook for the LO outfit for a time. He made sourdough biscuits that would melt in your mouth. He showed me how to make ‘em but over the years I must have forgotten, ‘cause mine don’t turn out like his.”

The best part of cowboying, he said, was the comraderie among the men. “I really enjoyed it. In fact, I never enjoyed anything I’ve ever done as well. I would have chucked any job I’ve had since to go back on the range.”

(Continued next week . . .)