GET THEM IN TROUBLE, OR HAVE THEM EAT SOMETHING

by E.E. Kennedy

“Get them in trouble, or have ‘em eat something.” That was the sage advice given to me by a writing teacher some years ago. It was what you were to do when your plot became stuck.

Plotting is the vital job of the fiction writer and there are many ways to go about it. Some folks like to be very systematic. I read somewhere that the famous humorous novelist P.G. Wodehouse would write synopses of individual scenes on 3x5” cards, tape them in a line along the wall running around the room. Then he would move the scenes around, delete one or two, or add some. Other authors like to write detailed outlines of their plots. It provides a handy skeleton on which to hang characterizations, dialogue and description.

All that is much too orderly for yours truly. I like to start with the germ of an idea, a vague overview of a story, then plunge in writing. I know where I’m heading, but not exactly what road I’ll be taking. As I write, I find new ideas and aspects popping up.

 Nonetheless, one day, there was a moment when I became mired. The story was getting boring. What could my character do? Amelia was walking home from church. It was around noon, so I had her step into a local diner and eat something. A few pages later, Amelia is sitting in her house, trying to figure out the meaning of the elusive initials, UDJ. All well and good, but something needed to happen. Again using the above advice, I got somebody in trouble. It was Vern, Gil Dickensen’s young nephew; he had witnessed a shooting and Amelia was the first person he thought to call.

I’m a fairly straightforward person, so it takes some effort for me to work up a circuitous plot. Nonetheless, readers expect complexity, especially if your book has been billed as a mystery. Nobody can just walk across a room, they must trip over something, or encounter a cat, or find a clue. Theoretically, everything, absolutely everything, in your story should move the plot forward. The eating thing can sometimes be a bit problematic for me because as everybody knows, Amelia is a terrible cook!

Another important rule of thumb is that your characters should want or need something important. Perhaps there's something they need to find out, or locate. Maybe they just want to know why. But whatever it is, it should be important enough to make the reader care whether the character achieves his goal. There are levels to this, and sub-plots. You can have two or three characters all wanting something different. Just make sure you don’t confuse the reader. In Gone With The Wind, Scarlett O’Hara wants to have enough money to “never go hungry again.” And Rhett Butler wants Scarlett’s love. By the end, Scarlett has her wish fulfilled, but we’re in some doubt about Rhett’s.

By the end of your story, something or someone--especially your protagonist--should have been changed in some way. At the end of my first mystery, IRREGARDLESS OF MURDER, Amelia’s life is radically different. She is living a new life in another house. And she is happier. Now, I favor resolution in my stories, but having a clear, definite and positive resolution in a book doesn’t necessarily mean a totally happy ending for everybody. By the end of IRREGARDLESS, Marie LeBow has experienced both a tragedy and a miraculous, bittersweet reunion.

In the sequel to IRREGARDLESS,  DEATH DANGLES A PARTICIPLE, I got to use the "eating" device in the school lunchroom. It was fun describing how appealing--or unappealing--the food was. Plus, there's a mini-mystery about why Amelia suddenly finds coffee so obnoxious! As for getting someone in trouble, I think being accused of a brutal murder fills the bill there!

Book three of the Miss Prentice series, MURDER IN THE PAST TENSE, begins with eating. In a flashback, Amelia and her friend Lily are at the local teenage hangout, enjoying ice cream floats and contemplating being in summer theater that summer. She gets in lots and lots of trouble, too, involving the mafia, a missing person and an Adirondack hermit!

In book four, INCOMPLETE SENTENCE, I decided to do something a little different. Toward the end of the book, Amelia has gotten good and sick of running into bodies, and who can blame her? As she puts it, she has had her life threatened at least four times and has testified in two murder trials. She's just plain tired! Don't worry, though, I still got her in trouble and getting out

of it definitely involves food! 

So here I am, working on book number five (THE VILLAGE IDIOM), and I must admit, it's a challenge finding something new and fresh to befuddle the reader. I am working with the ghost of an idea, a plot twist "stolen" from Agatha Christie. It involves Amelia going back to teaching, a new and extremely obnoxious school principal and a "bad seed." And that's all I'll be saying about that!

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The Miss Prentice books are available in Ebook or paperback at Christianbook.com, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

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LOVE, WAR AND CHRISTMAS

LOVE, WAR AND CHRISTMAS

By E.E. Kennedy

Our family, circa 1955. That's me on the left.

I grew up in a very Christmas-friendly family. My mother, especially, made sure we enjoyed all the traditions and frivolities associated with the holiday. I believe it stemmed from her own childhood in the Great Depression, where a minister and his wife raising three children had very little to give each other.

Even when she became an adult, WWII shortages and rationing made things we consider common today almost impossible to obtain. “What do you want for Christmas?” her elder brother asked her one year during the war. “A box of Kleenex and a streakedy-stripedy piece of candy,” was her sarcastic reply. Sure enough, that was what she found when she pulled off the wrapping, and she never forgot her disappointment. I’m sure that’s one of the reasons she made it her mission to make our Christmases memorable--and then some.

Mommy, as we called her, was scrupulously honest the rest of the year, but when it came to Christmas, she didn’t hesitate to lie, sneak and make up stuff, all so we’d have a breath-taking Yuletide morning. “All’s fair,” she would say, paraphrasing an old cliché, “in love, war and Christmas!” Santa was one such prevarication. She wanted us all to believe in the old guy. Once, I found a cache of small toys in a bedroom drawer and asked her what these were. “Oh, Sugar, Santa must have put them in the drawer for safekeeping,” she said. “Let’s leave them there and see who he gives them to later.” I bought it. After all, I was only a kid.

We lived in Northern New York State, near the Canadian border. My mother was a wartime transplant from the Deep South—Alabama—and brought traditions from there, such as a delicious fruit dish called Ambrosia, consisting of oranges and shredded coconut. (Nothing else; she was a purist.) If it snowed, we made “Snow Ice Cream,” which seemed to also come from a popular southern recipe. A big bowl of fresh snow was doused in milk, sugar and vanilla and eaten quickly, before it melted. Another tradition was called “Christmas Eve Gift,” where the family member who said it first on Christmas Eve won. There was no prize, just bragging rights. Even today, cousins and aunts call us on the phone and yell “Christmas Eve gift!” when we answer, just to get the drop on us.  

Though you could cut her Dixie accent with a knife, she embraced the “Yankee” traditions, too. She made tourtiere, a dense and extremely rich French Canadian meat pie. It became the Christmas Eve meal. She pulled out all the stops, using heavy cream and adding my favorite, mushrooms, to the filling. In order to keep up Santa’s globe-trotting reputation, Mommy and Daddy would travel to Montreal to get candies from around the world for our stockings. (I have no idea when they had time to do this; perhaps when were in school? After all, the big city was just an hour away.) I especially remember some wonderful hard candies filled with exotic fruit preserves—quince, for instance. I’ve never encountered quince outside of a poetry book, but we had quince candy!

I remember decorations that I don’t see much of today. On a table in the living room, there was a little kind of gold-colored contraption involving a candle, which would slowly whirl little angels around in a circle and there were also thin strands of a silvery substance called tinsel which we draped generously on the tree to represent icicles.

This was before my little sister was born.
We look serious, but we were just back from the midnight service and were ready to get to sleep!
(Please also notice the tinsel!)

Of course, the real reason for Christmas was never very far from our minds. We would round up our friends in the neighborhood and stroll from house to house, singing “Away in a Manger” and “Silent Night” in well-meant harmonies. My mother was always the one who had hot chocolate and cookies ready for the singers. And we never missed the midnight candlelight service at our church. It was the one time we were allowed to stay up that late. We would each bring a “white gift,” a canned good wrapped in white tissue paper that would be given to the less fortunate.

I think my favorite Christmas Eve memory was at the conclusion of those midnight services when we would emerge from the warm sanctuary, our feet crunching on the ice and the moonlight sparkling on the surface of the newly-fallen snow. The stars would twinkle in the inky sky and I would wait until the very, very last minute to blow out the candle I carried as “O, Come All Ye Faithful” still rang in my ears.

Right before we went to bed in our new flannel pajamas, Mommy would gather the three children in the living room and my dad would read the Christmas story from the Bible. I don’t remember much about the gifts we got the next morning, but the warm, safe feeling and the joy of receiving the newborn baby Jesus into the world rings down the years in my memory.

As writers, we are instructed to write about what we know. Those who knew my mom will recognize her in Amelia's descriptions of her own late mother. And although my mother struggled with health issues during much of her life, she ended it well: loving God, always thinking of others and firmly fixing herself in the memories of her grandchildren as the "Pixie Dust Grandma." So, thank you, Mommy, for the wonderful Christmas memories. When I write my mystery series, I can't help but make it cozy. Now you know part of the reason.

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Ellen Edwards Kennedy, aka E.E. Kennedy, is the author of a cozy mystery series about a high school English teacher. The stories are set in the Adirondack region of NYS, where she grew up. The fourth one in the series, Incomplete Sentence, will be released February 1 by Sheaf House Publishers. Ellen and her husband live in North Carolina. Her website is www.missprenticecozymystery.com