with David Grace
We are delighted to welcome author David Grace to Omnimystery News today.
David's new novel of suspense is Death Never Lies (Wildside Press; September 2014 trade paperback and ebook formats) and we asked him to tell us more about his writing process. He titles his guest post for us today, "How Do You Begin Plotting a Novel".
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Photo provided courtesy of
David Grace
I've used all kinds of methods to plot a novel — start with a character, start with an emotional theme (revenge, redemption, etc.) — start with a threat or an event, etc.. Some starting points have worked well for me, others less so. I think my weakest books are the thrillers which revolve around ideas that sounded interesting to me at the time: "What if someone discovered that the president was a traitor?" resulted in The Traitor's Mistress. "What if the government already had a dark energy power cell technology in one of its labs but refused to release it?" was the starting point for The Forbidden List. These are my are my two least favorite books. Whenever anyone asks me to suggest one of my books for them to read I always start with The Concrete Kiss or Death Never Sleeps. It's never The Forbidden List or The Traitor's Mistress.
I think that my books that start with an emotional idea or a unique, interesting, and, most importantly, admirable character are my best work. The Concrete Kiss began with the idea of a kidnapped child who is mistakenly thought dead and is rescued through the efforts of a decent, ordinary person. At its core Death Never Sleeps is about the relationship between a senior homicide detective, Big Jim Donegan, and his protégé, a brilliant but socially clueless young cop, Chris Hunter. Chris worships Big Jim and would do anything for him. And then … I love Death Never Sleeps.
My latest novel, Death Never Lies, started with a character, Homeland Security Agent Greg Kane. Greg is brilliant but controlling his simmering anger and hare-trigger temper are a constant problem for him. Some of my friends tell me they think that Death Never Lies is my best book ever.
So, the books that I've crafted around events or gimmicks don't work for me. The ones that I've built around a core of an emotional or human situation do. When I started plotting Death Never Lies I had so many ideas about the situations that Greg Kane would get into that I wasn't too concerned about the overall plot itself. That plan didn't last very long. You still need a detailed, interesting, intelligent plot. It took me four tries with four different story ideas to finally mate Greg Kane with the right plot in a way that the book worked.
I would urge anyone who wants to write genre fiction to take a close look at John Connolly's excellent The Wrath of Angels. Connolly not only presents interesting and emotionally engaging characters but also a plot that is built like a Swiss watch. He crafted the twists, turns and incidents in that book with beautiful care. As a crime novelist I'm usually pretty good at guessing where a story is going but Connolly was way ahead of me. I learned a lot about the beauty and value of careful plotting from that book.
I'm already at work on my next book. I'm bringing back Chris Hunter from Death Never Sleeps and after a great deal of thinking I've come up with what I think is a good plot. The emotional core of the story though revolves around Chris Hunter's personality and the challenges he faces after the events in Death Never Sleeps. The biggest challenge for me in this next book will be creating a detailed, interesting and unexpected series of plot events as the structure on which to hang the characters' actions.
Ask me nine to twelve months from now how it worked out.
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David Grace is the pen name for David M. Alexander. He graduated from Stanford University in 1967 with a major in history and a minor in economics and received a Doctor of Laws degree from the University of California Law School in 1970. He was licensed to practice law by the Supreme Court of the State of California in 1971 and before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1977.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at David Grace Author and his author page on Goodreads.
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Death Never Lies
David Grace
A Murder Mystery
