Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude - the appearance of being true or real, as in "the detail gives the novel some verisimilitude" (definition from Oxford Languages)

Over the past few weeks I've been re-reading Robert Parker's detective series, and the more I read the stories that Parker has written about Spenser, the more impressed I am with the amount of details that he includes in the stories.

All of these details give the narrative its texture and its uncanny resemblance to reality. 

Wall colors, cracks in sidewalks, the contents of a room--these kinds of details give a reader confidence in an author's ability to see the world with accuracy and let the reader trust him as a narrator.

Here are three examples from A Savage Place, the Parker novel that I'm reading now:

1) The office was on the first floor and had a little bay window framed with gray drapes that looked out onto Sunset and people on the sidewalk. There were several autographed pictures of actors on the wall and a bookcase liquor-cabinet-stereo set up along one side of the room. Besides a desk with two phones there were two more of the leather-and-wood sitting room chairs. Zeke was behind his desk, we sat in the chairs. The walls were pale gray, the rug was charcoal.

2) We went to The Palm on Santa Monica. The walls were covered with clumsy murals of show-biz celebrities in caricature. But my plate was covered with medium-rare butterflied lamb chops and asparagus with hollandaise.

3) Oceania Industries had executive offices high up in one of the towers. The waiting room had large oil paintings of Oceania's various enterprises: oil rigs, something that I took for a gypsum mine, a scene from a recent Summit picture, a long stand of huge pines. On the end tables were copies of the annual report and the several house organs from the various divisions. They had titles like Gypsum Jottings and Timber Talk.

There was no one in the reception room except a woman at a huge semicircular reception desk. Her fingernails were painted silver. She looked like Nina Foch. 

Unlike the newspaper editor, who told me years ago when I was starting out as a reporter not to report on the color of the walls in the borough hall, Parker would have told me just the opposite. 

Give your reader the color of the walls, the arrangement of furniture, the number of windows, the way the paint has been brushed on the ceiling, the type of soda machines in the lobby, the number of stairs to the second floor, the wood used to make the doors to the offices, the signs on the doors. 

Parker's eye is like a vacuum cleaner. He inhales these kinds of details so his pen can put them on the page. He sees everything. 

So, how can you practice "seeing" this way? 

What if you keep a notebook with you wherever you go and write down what you see, say, the next time you are at the train station or in the supermarket or sitting at church or walking your dog in the park? 

What is the color of the walls? How many windows are there in the room? How would you describe the shape of a roof? What kind of benches are in the park?

Try it. What have you got to lose? 

See if adding these kinds of details to your story can help give your narrative a greater sense of verisimilitude, heightening your reader's sense of reality and his or her trust in you as a narrator. 

And if you're willing to share some of your favorite details from a book that you're reading now, perhaps you'll leave them in the comments for us to study, too?

On Resistance

Since hearing about the death of Robert B. Parker a few months ago, I’ve eased the pain of losing one of my favorite mystery writers by going to my shelf and taking down a stack of his books and immersing myself again in the worlds that he spent his life creating.

His novels about a private detective named Spenser have captivated me over the years with Spenser’s brashness, his wise-guy humor, and his tough exterior hiding a sensitive (and highly literate) soul. Only in Parker’s novels will you find a sharp-shooting hulk quoting lines from writers like e.e. cummings, T.S. Eliot, or Henry David Thoreau as well as being conversant in the nuances of Freudian psychology.

Spenser is a bit of a modern-day knight, chivalrous to a fault (even while being unapologetically sexist), as well as a combination of Philip Marlowe, Sherlock Holmes (with Hawk, his African-American cohort in detection in place of Watson), and Humphrey Bogart, all mixed into one.

Add to the mix Parker’s dexterity at constructing plot-lines that keep the pacing quick, the reader’s curiosity high, and the tension taut, and you’ve got all the ingredients for the successful writing career that Parker carved out for himself after publishing his first novel more than thirty years ago.

After reading almost a dozen of Parker’s books in the past few weeks, I started thinking about why I find myself so drawn to his work (aside from the reasons listed above), and I believe it has to do with a concept that, for lack of a better term, I’ll call resistance (in keeping with our water and swimming metaphor).

If you read enough books on writing, you know that for a plot to work successfully, the author has to offer the main character a number of obstacles to stand in the character’s path and keep that character from easily attaining his or her goal.

It was while re-reading Spenser that I began to see how these obstacles function in relation to the character. They don’t simply stand in his way like a parking meter or a lamp post that he can simply walk around. No, the obstacles themselves are obstacles precisely because they keep Spenser from obtaining the knowledge that he needs to solve the crime.

In other words, these obstacles offer him resistance. They give Spenser something to push against (and, often, they push back) while giving the reader a sense of Spenser’s courage and determination and fortitude to keep pursuing what he needs. They are obstacles because they require Spenser to push past them –and to keep pushing harder and harder until he can overcome their resistance– in order to move forward and get closer to understanding the mystery that he’s been hired to solve.

What constitutes an obstacle strong enough to offer resistance to Spenser? Well, often, it’s simply his own ignorance, not knowing how to move forward to solve a particular case. He’ll know someone is dead but not why, or he’ll know someone is skimming money but not why, or he’ll learn someone is blackmailing someone... but not why. And as the story unfolds he has to come up with a plan to overcome his ignorance (move past this resistance) to learn more.

But ignorance isn’t the only obstacle he faces. Often, he’ll face a thug or gang of thugs who have orders to keep him from finding out what he wants to find out. And his personality, naturally, resists such suggestions, even when resistance might end up getting him killed, because his job requires that he not be afraid or turn away from danger. So he needs to push hard against the thugs, needs to conquer them (and the resistance that they provide) in order to maintain his own integrity, not merely gain the knowledge that he seeks to solve the crime.

Time–or lack of time–to solve a crime is sometimes a point of resistance, an element that may prevent Spenser from gaining his goal. Lies–or lack of truthfulness–from witnesses or from people hiring him or from dishonest lawyers or cops are also elements that stand in his way, offering resistance.

What I’ve learned from Parker’s novels over the past few weeks is that as a reader I need to feel this resistance in my bones, need to feel part of the action as Spenser goes about his business of trying to overcome the various obstacles that stand in his way of solving the crime. And I've learned that if I feel strongly about Spenser and his knight’s quest, it’s as much because of how he responds to the resistance as the things offering resistance.

Resistance is essential if you want to keep your character afloat... and your reader turning the pages... from the first page to the last.

For more on resistance and the connection between characters, obstacles and plot, visit:
http://killzoneauthors.blogspot.com/2010/02/plot-thickens.html
http://www.writing-world.com/children/obstacles.shtml
http://thereadingzone.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/character-wants-vs-obstacles-minilesson/
http://www.danbarden.com/?page_id=18
http://www.blairhurley.com/2009/08/do-you-deny-or-accept-obstacles.html

And for more on Robert B. Parker, visit:
http://www.robertbparker.net/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/books/20parker.html

Creating Suspense

With the release of The Boxer and the Spy, his second book for children following Edenville Owls, award-winning mystery writer Robert B. Parker shows once again why he’s a master of creating suspense.

Parker introduces the mystery in the first chapter, showing readers how a nameless boy comes to his untimely death. But Parker doesn’t show the murder itself. Instead, he lets the reader eavesdrop on the scene.

Here’s what you’ll hear as the first chapter ends:

“You,” the man said. “You were there...”
The boy was frozen. He could hear the heavy rasps of the man’s breath.
“You heard everything,” the man said.
“I didn’t hear anything,” the boy said.
“Yeah,” the man said. “You did.”

And so the story begins with the reader wondering who killed the boy and why.

In the next chapter, the body washes up on shore, and we learn the boy’s identity. And when the boy’s classmates learn the “official” reason for his death–suicide caused by an overdose of steroids–two of the children, Terry (a ninth grader learning to box) and his girlfriend, Abby (who eventually helps him spy on the murder suspects), find it hard to believe the explanation and are told to stop asking questions.

For Terry, though, it’s as if the unsolved murder has upset the moral fabric of his universe. Only by fighting for justice can he help the universe regain its moral balance.

He must pursue the killer, if only to maintain his own moral equilibrium, even when a host of people–the school principal, the school’s top football player, his girlfriend, and his coach– warn him to stop investigating his classmate's death.

At every turn of the plot, Terry’s willingness to take risks heightens the drama. Each time he places himself in danger while getting closer and closer to the truth, the momentum of the story quickens, pulling the reader forward at a faster and faster pace. (It doesn’t hurt that Parker uses sharp, crisp dialogue to advance the plot, as well as short, snappy chapters.)

The pacing intensifies, especially in the fight scenes, each time Terry refuses to back off.

Here’s one of the fight scenes:

Terry went into his stance. Left foot forward. Hands high. He heard Carter laugh. It wasn’t about Carter now. It was about him and Gordon. They circled each other. Gordon seemed a little stiff in his movements, Terry thought. Maybe he’s a little scared too. Gordon lunged at him. Terry put a left jab onto his nose. It stopped Gordon. Terry followed with a straight right, again on the nose, torquing his forearm, turning his hip in, keeping his feet under him, breathing out hard when he threw the punch. Gordon yelped. The blood spurted from Gordon’s nose. Gordon put his hands to his nose, and Terry landed a heavy left hook on his cheekbone and Gordon fell down.
My nose,” Gordon said. “He broke my damn nose.”

When this attempt at intimidation doesn’t send Terry scurrying for cover, Carter takes things into his own hands. How could a puny freshman, after all, stand up to a varsity letterman with a full football scholarship to the University of Illinois?

Here’s how:

Carter tried to grab him with his right hand, but Terry stepped into him, which Carter didn’t expect, and turned and blocked the right hand hard with both of his forearms. Then he drove his right elbow up and across, catching Carter on the cheekbone. Carter staggered. He followed with his left forearm, turning with the natural torque of the movements, and Carter staggered backward. His arms dropped and Terry, his feet still under him, holding his stance, hit him in the middle of the face with a straight right. And Carter went down. A kind of sigh went up softly from the circle of kids.

Terry refuses to shy away from these challenges, despite finding himself overmatched again and again. In the end such scenes, as well as Terry’s courage and determination to keep to his plan until he finds the murderer, contribute to the story’s suspense.

Parker has learned over the years how to wind a story tighter than a tensely coiled spring.

If you want to learn how to create suspense in your story, you might take a look at The Boxer and the Spy to study a master at work.

For more on creating suspense, visit:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/177667/how_to_create_suspense_in_fiction.html
http://www.fictionfactor.com/articles/keepthemreading.html
http://www.writerswrite.com/fiction/michelemartinez.htm
http://www.sff.net/people/saswann/text/plot.htm#Suspense
http://www.writing-workbench.com/suspense.html
http://www.thrillerwriters.org/2007/01/ten-rules-for-suspense-fiction.html

Skipping Stones

Have you ever tried skipping stones across a pond or lake?

For a few seconds the stone seems to come alive, suspended above the water in a series of invisible arcs, leaving only the memory of flight in the viewer's eye.

It takes practice to skip stones across the water in such a way that the stone barely touches the surface instead of plunking like a lead ball on the first throw.

First, you have to search the shoreline for just the right rock or pebble--not too large, not too small. What works best, I've found, is a relatively flat stone with rounded rather than sharp edges so it won't slice into the water.

Then, you have to throw the rock hard at just the right angle, using a side-arm motion combined with a delicate flick of the wrist, so the stone sustains enough momentum to skim the surface and skip across the water in a series of gravity-defying steps ... one, two, three ... sometimes four, five or ... six... depending on the thrower's skill.

Writing requires the same kind of practice and artistry. If you set the words down at just the right angle, they will pull a reader's eye across the surface of the page much like a well-tossed stone draws the eye skipping from one splash to the next in its flight across the water.

Very few writers can skip stones better than Robert B. Parker, the author of the Spenser mystery novels, who has just written his first novel for children, Edenville Owls.

If you've read any of the Spenser novels, you've already met Bobby Murphy, the main character and narrator of the Edenville Owls, because he resembles a younger version of Parker's successful adult protagonist, Spenser, a valiant sleuth who lives by a chivalrous code of ethics as he pursues criminals in the fight of good versus evil.

Bobby is already grappling with this code of ethics as he tries to figure out a way to protect his eighth grade teacher, Miss Delaney, from a man who appears one day outside his school and begins physically abusing her.

Bright and brave, Bobby enlists the help of his basketball teammates, the Edenville Owls of the title, as well as a girl--Joanie--who gives Bobby the courage and confidence (much as Guinivere inspired Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table) to do what he thinks is right to help Miss Delaney.

Parker is a master of plotting even if, at times, the characters appear to find their way through the thicket of tangled plot-lines with the not-so-hidden hand of the author. (Some reviewers complain that Parker's writing has the feel of a first draft, and while that may be true, he succeeds in getting most of the words right the first time.)

Much like Raymond Chandler, one of Parker's own literary heroes, and Hemingway, whose style is reflected in Parker's own spare prose, Parker crafts sentences that can take your breath away with their elegant conciseness. Again and again, he manages to weave an invisible hook within his sentences, deftly pulling the reader deeper into the story.

Here, for example, is how Parker writes about Bobby after the young boy discovers that staking out a house isn't the easiest thing in the world to do:

Standing alone in the dark on the empty street, I felt like a fool. My eyes teared a little. What a jerk, I thought. You thought it would be like the movies. Stake out the house and in two minutes the bad guys show up and the action starts. The movies didn't show you the hero standing around in the cold hour after hour, needing to take a leak, wishing he had something to eat. Getting nowhere. Seeing nothing. Doing no good. And what about friendship? All those war movies where guys were heroically dying for each other. A little boredom. A little cold weather and the Owls flew away in the night. The hell with them. But I couldn't say the hell with them. We had a game tomorrow. I looked at the blank ungrateful front of the two-family house where Miss Delaney lived. There were things you can't do anything about. The thought scared me. It made me feel kind of helpless. But there it was. I turned and headed home.

Parker's especially gifted at revealing the feelings of an adolescent boy first encountering the stirrings of love, as in this scene:

Nick was the first one of us to have a regular date, and the first one of us to ever be invited to the Boat Club. The rest of us sort of followed Nick and Joanie at a distance, and hung around outside. I don't know quite why. Wanted to see what was up, I guess.

The thing was, I felt funny about it. I felt funny about her asking Nick and funny about feeling funny about it. I didn't exactly wish she hadn't asked him. And I didn't exactly wish she had asked me. I guess I wished she hadn't asked anyone and had, instead, come down and sat on the deserted bandstand with me.

He's also amazingly adept at crafting scenes with dialogue to move the plot forward:

I was with Joanie in the bowling alley, sitting in the back row of benches, having a Coke, watching them bowl.
"I went to see Miss Delaney," she said.
"You did?"
"After school," Joanie said. "The day after we found out about that guy Richard Kraus."
"You didn't say anything did you?"
"Nothing bad," she said. "I told her I was starting to think about college."
"College?" I said. "We're in the eighth grade."
Joanie ignored me.
"And she said that was wise, it was never too early."
"Okay," I said.
"So I told her I was wondering where she went," Joanie said.
"Miss Delaney?"
"Yes, and she told me Colby College."
"Where's that?" I said.
"In Maine someplace," Joanie said.
"Who wants to go to college in Maine?" I said.
"And I said did she have a yearbook or something I could look at, and she gave me hers. She brought it in the next day."
"Her college yearbook?" I said.
Joanie reached into her book bag and pulled the yearbook out...

As a result of obtaining the yearbook, Bobby and Joanie can examine not only Miss Delaney's college picture but the pictures of other members of the class in the hope of identifying the man who is abusing her. It's with this kind of sleight of hand that Parker advances the plot.

And then there is the seemingly effortless way that Parker skips details across the page. With just a flick of his wrist, he paints a scene. The words have a kind of zing, an energy that pulls the reader along, as here:

He had been behind the wharf office shed, and now he was in full view in the moonlight walking up toward the bandstand. Tupper was holding his big knife low in front of him, moving it back and forth toward us. When he heard Nick, he pivoted in that direction and waved the knife at him.

Or here:

I wasn't as scared anymore. My heart was still beating very hard. But I didn't feel so sick to my stomach now. In the moonlight everything looked pale. But I thought that Tupper looked paler than the rest of us. And even though it was kind of chilly, there was sweat on his face. He backed up onto the bandstand again.

So, if you want to study how a writer constructs a sentence, take a look at Parker's newest effort.

He's the kind of writer who is always luring readers deeper into the story with words that skim across the page like well-thrown stones skipping across the water.

For more information about Robert B. Parker and his work, visit his blog at:
http://robertbparker.typepad.com/

Or his website, which contains this interview: http://www.robertbparker.net/interview.htm

Or this interview in Booklist Online: http://www.booklistonline.com/default.aspx?page=show_product&pid=1986705

Plus, here's what other bloggers are saying about Edenville Owls:
http://melodom.blogspot.com/2007/04/new-robert-b.html
http://www.mysteryinkonline.com/2007/05/tribute_to_robe.html