The Railway Adults, by Catriona McPherson

Do you start with a title, or does it emerge organically from your writing process? How important is a title in shaping your project—or even selling it? 

I always start with a title. But sometimes that title is New Book. 

Right now, I'm writing the first draft of a new book called The Railway Adults. But isn't a bit strange to use your book title up on a blogpost, you ask? Thing is, this is my one and only chance to put something out actually called The Railway Adults. Because I will eat my drafts if the publisher keeps it. New Book is better.

Luckily, I'm fine with giving titles up when someone from marketing says "Honey, no." I'm fine with anything on the outside of the book changing - jacket image, cover copy, quotes, bio, author photo. To me that's publishing and I'm not a publisher. It's the bit between Chapter One and The End that I'll go to bat for. 

Less luckily, I've always got a lot of emails and other bumf about the book before it gets its final title. So I've got files and labels called whatever I thought the book was going to be and somehow I never get round to changing them.

So I need to remember Hang My Hat to find correspondence about Scot Free and look for early drafts of Deep Beneath Us under "Hiskith". Yes, Hiskith. Why ever did they change that, eh?

If I want to look back over the publication journey of In Place of Fear, I need to retrieve the information that it was once called A Fountain Filled With Blood, until I remembered that the reason it sounded so perfect for a crime novel was that it was a crime novel, By Julia Spencer-Fleming.

Anyway, that's not my biggest problem with In Place of Fear. I shortened the title to IPOF, then lengthened that to International Pancake of Fear and was once caught like a rabbit in the headlights during an interview, completely unable to remember what it was really called.

The sequel, The Edinburgh Murders, is easier to remember, except that I still call it Next to Godliness, or Janey for short (by way of Janey Godley, you know). 

One title I love and never forget is Strangers at the Gate. It was gifted to me by my editor after she pointed out that someone with my talent for typos couldn't risk bringing out a book called The Cuts.

I grumped for years about my former editor's decree that every book in the Dandy Gilver series was going to be Dandy Gilver and the Dandy Word Crimey Word of Third Word. "Okay" I said, "But I'm not committing to thinking them up." I truly believed her assurances that I wouldn't have to. Huh.

Definitely the most troublesome title was when I had to have a different one for the US and UK. I thought House Tree Person was the perfect name for a psychothriller set in a psychiatric hospital. (The "House Tree Person sketch test" is a now-discredited diagnostic for sociopathy.) Terri Bichoff at Midnight Ink agreed. The editor at Little,Brown UK very didn't. She pitched hard for The Weight of Angels, which I also loved. But in the US, as Terri pointed out, people would think it was about angels. Blank stares from London. Blank stares about the blank stares, from Minneapolis. The Atlantic never felt wider.

Imagine if your patient drew this!

So it's got two different names and I've only ever had one email from someone who accidentally bought it twice. I sent her a free copy of a newer book and she seemed okay. (She was in Arkansas and she knew it wasn't about angels, by the way.)

Cx  

[insert title here]. by Eric Beetner

 Do you start with one, or does it emerge organically from your writing process? How important is a title in shaping your project—or even selling it?

A good title is crucial. A good title is the first come-on. You might hear it before you see a cover, before you know the name of the author, even. I love coming up with titles, and I think long and hard about it. Once I land on a title I like, it’s almost like a green flag to get started writing the actual book. It’s rare I’ll start a book without at least a temporary title, and if I’m not sold on it the whole thing gets off to a shaky start.

I don’t mind wordy titles. I know there is probably some marketing data that links short, punchy and easy to remember titles to book sales, but I also tend to get over-simple generic titles confused once too many books use variations on a theme. Remember how many versions of “Girl” came in the wake of Gone Girl? It got so readers couldn’t tell one from the other. Maybe that was the point, to trick readers into thinking they were buying some best seller they keep hearing about. I’d rather not gain readers by fooling them, personally.

Not that a simple one-word title isn’t perfect for the right book. Titling my own work really comes down to a feel. When I hit on the right vibe, I know it. 

They come from different places and inspirations. I’d heard the phrase “The Devil Doesn’t Want Me” spoken by a 90+ year old man on an NPR show while out walking my dog and I knew instantly that it was the perfect title for the book I was working on. My first title bit the dust right then and there.

Rumrunners seemed to fit my novel about a family of drivers for criminals who started back in the prohibition days. When I filled out that trilogy I kept things thematically and grammatically consistent with the second book, Leadfoot and the third Sideswipe.

Sitting here, looking at my bookshelf, there doesn't seem to be any hard and fast rules to titles. Some are self-explanatory: The Blonde, The Deputy, The Student. Some go for something more evocative: We Are All The Same In The Dark, The Guilt We Carry, The Devil In These Hills.

I’ve always been a fan of classic pulp titles with their lurid come-ons like: Kiss My Fist, Say It With Bullets, You’ll Get Yours. I think in those days a good pulpy title was certainly a selling point, for crime or any other genre. Titles back then told you immediately about the action in a western, the exotic worlds of a Sci-Fi novel or the tantalization in a Romance novel. Titles today may have gotten a little less overt.

In most of my novels, titles come early and stay. I haven’t had pushback from any publishers on titles, thankfully. I’ve even had some say they like my titles quite a lot. I’ve heard that from a good number of readers. I certainly do think a good title invites someone to pick up a book and learn more. 

I know certain sub-genres of crime fiction that I don’t much care for, like political or military thrillers, and one can often tell if a book is in that category from the title. So it works both ways, as an invitation and a warning.

I know some titles are thrust on an author by a publishing house. I’ve heard of authors rolling over and I’ve heard of authors standing up for a title they believe in. But make no mistake, titles are part of writing. It’s the first words of a book than a reader is going to experience, so make them count. A title should never be an afterthought. It should be memorable, evoke the feeling of the book, and set the mood for the story to come.

While writing this I’ve been glancing back at my shelves and marveling again at some of my favorite titles. It’s rare that a good book I love will have a title I don’t care for. Not that it hasn’t happened, but I’m noticing it’s not very often.

I leave you with some of my favorites from my shelf which all happen to have full books as good as the titles.

Where All Light Tends To Go

The Second Life Of Nick Mason

The Wolf Wants In

Nothing More Dangerous

The Terror Of Living

All The Earth, Thrown To The Sky

Nothing Short Of Dying

Three Graves Full

Some Die Nameless

This Dark Road To Mercy

Whiskey When We’re Dry

Everybody Smokes In Hell

Last Call For The Living

Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

Lets Talk Titles

 

Let’s Talk Titles

Do you start with one, or does it emerge organically from your writing process? How important is a title in shaping your project—or even selling it?

I’ve had titles arrive fully formed, like a gift from the muse, and others fight me all the way to final edits. And even then, I’m still second-guessing.

But let’s back up.

Take my story “Satan’s Spit,” nominated this year for an Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity. Sounds dramatic, maybe even dangerous, right?

The inspiration?

A meme about a bottle of Mercurochrome — that flaming red antiseptic from hell that haunted medicine cabinets in the ’70s, was repurposed as Satan’s Spit in a graphic online. I laughed. Then cringed. I can still feel the demonic sting. I remembered my grandmother asking, “Do you know how to dance?” before she dabbed it on my raw elbow.

Her question, that bottle, that pain? That’s how I ended up writing a Depression-era crime story involving blues music, a young girl passing as a boy to survive — and a murder. The title had to be Satan’s Spit. Nothing else burned quite right.

Sometimes a title comes first, and the story spins around it. Other times, it creeps in later.

Let me show you what I mean.

 

SHANE CLEARY MYSTERIES

1. Dirty Old Town is the first Shane Cleary mystery, set in 1970s Boston, when the city was gritty, polluted, and violent. I thought of the busing crisis, the Pogues, the Dropkick Murphys. The music gave me the mood — and the mood gave me the title.

2. Symphony Road

Named after the actual Boston street where a string of suspicious fires broke out. The novel’s about arson-for-profit. Sometimes the setting is the title.

3. Hush Hush

A mix of fact and fiction: I borrowed from Hush-Hush, the scandal rag in L.A. Confidential, and wove in the real-life murder of Andrew Puopolo and the legal fallout. Gossip, power, and justice — all in a whisper.

4. Liar’s Dice

Yes, it’s a dice game where deception is strategy, but it’s also a metaphor for every bad decision in the book.

5. The Big Lie

A tip of the fedora to Chandler’s The Big Sleep, but also a meditation on lies.

Got a ballot? This one’s been nominated for both an Anthony and a Shamus this year.

 

THE COMPANY FILES

1. The Good Man

Set in post-WWII Vienna. The title asks a question: Can you be a good man and still work for the Company, especially when your job is recruiting ex-Nazis to beat the Soviets? The Third Man and Vienna cast a long shadow here, but I wanted to show how moral ambiguity wasn’t just noir—it was U.S. policy.

2. The Naming Game

It’s McCarthy, the Red Scare, and writing for a movie studio. Who’s loyal? Who’s naming names? And who’s playing along to survive?

3. Devil’s Music

This one tormented me. I started with Diminished Fifth — a nod to both classical music theory and Lillian Hellman clever use of the Fifth Amendment. But it was too obscure, so I went full metal: think Black Sabbath’s “Black Sabbath,” inspired by Holst’s “Mars, the Bringer of War.” The two pieces of music are built around a tritone, aka diabolus in musica.

4. Eyes to Deceit (Coming November, fingers crossed)

This one fought me hard. It’s about the joint CIA/MI6 coup in Iran, 1953 — a geopolitical web of intrigue around oil, lies, and betrayal. With a subplot set in the Borscht Belt, no less. I had a dozen working titles. Some too dry, some too dramatic. I finally landed here. And it stuck.

So… How Important Is a Title?

It’s not everything. But it sure helps.

A good title sets the tone, signals the genre, and sometimes it’s lure a reader. Sometimes, it’s the one thing a reader remembers months later.

Just make sure it doesn’t sound like a lost IKEA product. (Diminished Fifth, I’m looking at you.)

So yes, titles matter. But if all else fails?

Find a weird childhood memory, or a grandmother with a sense of humor.

The story — and the title — will find you.

A Rose by Any Other Name, By Angela Crook

 

Title: A Rose by Any Other Name…

 By Angela Crook

Do you start with one, or does it emerge organically from your writing process? How important is a title in shaping your project—or even selling it?

 

The title is the second most important thing in my writing process. The first us the the emergence of the main character—protagonist or antagonist, doesn’t matter. I find that I can’t write a word until that main character walks onto the stage that is my brain and introduces themselves and tells me their story.

 

Even as the story is forming so too is the title. Kinda like giving birth, out comes the baby and very soon after we label it. Occasionally the label/title may come first, but never before the conception of the story. That’s my process. Is it weird? I don’t know, but I know the one time I’ve tried to write a story without a definite title has been hell and I’ll never do it again.

 

Why is that, you may wonder. I’ve had plenty of time to think about it over the past year and I think that for me a title means the idea or story is fully baked and ready to go. It’s like my writing brain has done all the pre-work and delivered this thing to me with clear instructions on where to go leaving me with the beautiful job of filling in the blanks that will maneuver me through all the twist and turns that will pop up. Yep, just like parenthood.

 

Writing without a title feels like I skipped a crucial step. The story doesn’t feel quite right or ready. Ever bit into a piece of chicken after taking it from the grill and seeing the telltale pink that says, not quite ready yet. Or pulled cake from the oven just a bit too early, if meat isn’t your thing. That’s me when trying to write without a title firmly in place.

 

This isn’t to say that it can’t be done. Sure, it can. But the road ahead feels a lot rockier, at least for this writer. Now, I’m sure there are plenty of writers who would read this and scratch their heads having no idea what I’m blathering on about. And maybe they’re right. Especially since we all know that it is foolhardy to become attached to a title when your publisher could be waiting to get their hands on it and change it without any regard for the work that went into naming your book baby.

 

Let’s be honest though. No method is 100%. The first book I published started out being called Fat Girl, slowly over time it evolved into Fat Chance, a decision I made on my own without any poking, prodding, or threats from any other party. As the story evolved, naturally the title did too. I’m guessing I’m not the only writer who has had this experience. It happened again with my first traditionally published novel, which started as Hurt Farm, but became Hurt Mountain in the end. A change that caused me some anxiety in the beginning. Until I heard that whisper from my characters that said, yes, this is alright.

 

To start with a title or not, that is the question. I think we all know where I stand. What about you?

Learning to self-edit - by Harini Nagendra

Choose a block of your writing—past or present—and walk us through its revision journey. What worked? What didn’t? What did you learn in the process? 

Perhaps the most important thing I've learnt over the 4 books that constitute my fiction-writing journey, is how to self-edit out my tendency to insert large infodumps of history, culture and setting into my books. Instead, I now slice the historical and setting details into chunks, and try to find places where I can insert them into different parts of the story in a way that seems natural, and helps to advance the plot, or illustrate something about my main characters - so that my readers imbibe information without feeling bored, or like they're in a classroom listening to a lecture. 

The best illustration I can think of is this passage below, from the original draft of The Bangalore Detectives Club. Here's a paragraph from the original version I sold, which my editors then took up 

Uma aunty’s home reminded Kaveri of her maternal home in Mysore. Much smaller than Ramu’s, it was set in a smaller plot, fifty feet by ninety feet. In contrast, Ramu’s home – her home now, as Kaveri reminded herself – was set in a one acre plot. A cream and white masonry building with red accents around the windows and at the border of the doors, the home was framed by an elegant bungalow, with bay windows framed with monkey tops that enabled a view of the garden. The short curved driveway ended in a portico, bordering a lush garden, where Bhargavi assiduously nurtured roses, lilies and orchids. At the back, a large kitchen garden with curry leaves, tomato, green chillies and turmeric was surrounded by fruit trees of over twenty varieties, including jackfruit, mango, jamun, tamarind, figs, guava, custard apple, coconut and banana, as well as some “English” fruit trees like avocado and breadfruit that Ramu’s father had convinced his mother to plant. A gardener came in every day for a couple of hours, chivvied around by her mother-in-law, for whom the garden was a prized possession, as dear as another child of her own. Kaveri did not know much about gardening – her home, like Uma aunty’s, was small and had space for only a tiny kitchen garden, with the obligatory tulasi, jasmine, Nandi battalu and karubevu plants that most Hindu homes contained. She liked the sprawling garden, despite the monkeys it attracted, and was slowly getting to learn the intricacies of the care each of the various varieties of trees and plants required. 

As you can see, this is an - ahem - overly ecological paragraph, inserted right in the middle of a mystery. My editor very rightly pointed this out to me, saying

Wow – this is a stunning description of the local wildlife, but sadly I do think this is one of those overly long descriptive sections that could do with being cut down slightly.

She was absolutely correct. I wanted to weave in the descriptions of garden plants into the story, but needed to find another way to do this - rather than a massive ecological infodump. 

I reworked the entire book rather extensively, changing the plot and the murderer - and ended up deleting the paragraph entirely. But I found other scenes where I could weave in descriptions of greenery, such as the one below. In this, I situate an interaction between my main protagonists in the garden to illustrate the growing closeness between Kaveri, and her husband from an arranged marriage, Ramu.

Kaveri was resting her sore feet in a bucket of hot water, when she heard the gate open. Ramu had come home early. She tried to jump out, but her sari got caught in the bucket. By the time she disentangled herself from the bucket, and stepped out, Ramu was in the compound, alighting from the car. He turned to her, impassive as ever, though she saw the sides of his mouth twitching. Kaveri murmured a hasty apology as she fled to the garden, with the bucket in tow. Just as she reached the papaya plant, Ramu called “Careful, Kaveri. Don’t cook the papaya plant. The water must be hot.”

She could definitely see his face twitching. Kaveri gave up, and began to laugh, wringing the moisture from the folds of her sari at her feet. Ramu smiled back, asking her “Did you sprain your leg?”

“It’s a long story” replied Kaveri. “Let me get you your coffee and then I can tell you the details.”

Ramu sniffed as he entered the house. The drawing room was filled with the aroma of rich, roasted curry leaves. “Have you been cooking?” he asked. “Yes. Rajamma told me how to make a different kind of rice pudi. The powder that your mother made, for us to eat with ghee and rice, is almost over and I wanted to try something different. We picked curry leaves and leaves of the lemon plant from our garden, and made a pudi with roasted togaribele.” 

I also inserted this section later in the book, to describe Narsamma and Mala's garden - using it to illustrate the caste divides that were a sadly common feature of society.

Narsamma got up and gestured to them. They followed her to the back of the house, past a dark corridor, and entered the back garden. The kitchen garden at the back was very different from the sumptuous, lush bower in the front. Here, the layout was prosaic, as befitting a frugal housewife. Banana and papaya plants, weighed down with fruit, neatly lined the compound wall. In the corner, a drumstick tree stood tall, pods hanging from it. A vegetable patch was in a corner, next to a karabevu tree.

Mala hailed them as they left. She passed over a bundle of drumstick pods, neatly tied with twine, to each woman.

“From my garden”, she said shyly. And hesitated.

“Plants have no caste or community. I hope you can accept this.”

By the time I got to writing book 4 in the series, Into the Leopard's Den, I had become more comfortable with using this approach. This book is the most ecological of my mysteries, and the history of forests, coffee and wildlife in Coorg is too fascinating for me to leave out - but I've learnt how to do this without brandishing a textbook in my readers' faces!

  

Before and After—Revising Your Manuscript from James W. Ziskin

Choose a block of your writing—past or present—and walk us through its revision journey. What worked? What didn’t? What did you learn in the process?

I believe that good writing is the result of careful revision. Sure, there may be a couple of writers out there who spit out perfect first drafts, but I’ve yet to meet one. And I’m certainly not that guy. In fact, I probably revise more than most writers. Typically, I go through three drafts of my books before I even let anyone look at them. Then I continue to edit while my beta readers do their stuff. In the end, I usually perform eight to ten heavy revisions before submitting to my agent or a publisher.

My latest book, The Prank (July 2026), is an exception in an interesting way. Since I completed the book long before I found a publisher and, since the publisher’s lead time was longer than usual for me, I found myself with many extra months to polish my manuscript. I recently finished the seventeenth complete revision of the book, which means it might be worn to the bone, more so than any of my other eight published books. But I also know it’s in better shape at this point than those other books.

Here’s the thing with revision: if you do it diligently, it’s both a line edit and a developmental edit at the same time. That’s a bargain—two for one. Over the course of nine books and several short stories, I’ve collected many examples of what you might look for/find/fix/improve during the revision stage. These may and should sound familiar to writers because I didn’t invent them.

1. Flesh out characters’ backstories. That adds depth, realism, complexity, and unquantifiable worth to your story. Readers may not even know they appreciate those elements in your work, but they do. The best stories are the ones that seduce you before you realize you’ve been seduced.

2. Root out repeated words and phrases. These pesky repetitions are like holes in the dike. As soon as we find one and plug it, Yikes! there’s another one!

3. Discover missing words. The ones your eyes skipped over while you were writing your magnum opus. Or editing it for the fifth time. I recommend using a text-to-speech app to catch these omissions. I catch about thirty missing words in a book manuscript using this technique. If you don’t do this step, phantom words will remain in your manuscript. Guaranteed.

4. Rhythm of your narration. Text-to-speech programs—Word has an excellent one built in—will also help you improve the flow of your storytelling, sentences, and paragraphs. With these apps, you can adjust reading speeds for a more natural pace, or select different voices to read back to you. The quality is not as good as a trained actor can do, but you can’t afford to pay one to read your edits anyway. Use this tool!

5. Timeline. During my latest pass on The Prank, I discovered continuity errors resulting from my not having paid close enough attention to the dates in my plot. I had written some newspaper stories into the book to dole out information to the reader. Problem was I had some of my characters reacting to those news stories in the morning or early afternoon. But the newspaper was an evening daily. 

The fix was easy enough, right? Just move some action to the next day. Problem solved. Except it wasn’t. It was the butterfly effect wreaking havoc on my novel. When I moved my characters’ actions forward one day, I inadvertently tore the fabric of the universe—the real one, not my fictional one—and nearly caused Armageddon. Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite that bad, but I found myself juggling dates in the calendar to wrestle my story’s timeline back into submission. And, since The Prank takes place in 1968, moving the action forward one day meant my characters were no longer watching Daktari on TV. They were watching That Girl.

6. Writing multiple narrators can also mess with the timeline, especially if you alternate them in each chapter. You can easily lose track of an hour or two—or five—when you switch from Narrator A to Narrator B. Then, when it’s Narrator A’s turn again, you may find it’s 2:00 a.m. instead of 9:00 p.m. in your story. And Little Johnny should be fast asleep by then. Or the ship has sailed without your heroine aboard.

7. Other issues you might find and fix during careful revision include incorrect word choice, plot holes, logic problems, and cringe-worthy turns of phrase. Or clichés. You should avoid those like the plague. (And, yes, I’m aware that using that cliché as a joke is a cliché itself.)

8. Better ideas. You might just find that you’ve come up with new twists or choices over time. Revision affords you the chance to include those ideas in your story.

9. Names. You should also check to be sure your characters haven’t snuck off and changed their names without your approval. From my first draft of The Prank to the fifth, I changed nearly every character’s name. In one case I decided to switch one character’s name for another’s. Fabric of the universe… again. Apologies if the loud boom it created startled you.

10. Miscellany. There are so many other benefits to revising your manuscript. The more times the better. Your attention might be more focused one day compared to another. Maybe you got smarter. Cleared your head. Got into the zone. Whatever the reason—and there are too many to count—revising your work is just good practice. Take musicians. Or actors. Do they rehearse? Of course they do. Think of revision as preparation, not unlike rehearsals.

11. Concrete example. But for this week’s question—no, I haven’t forgotten—we were asked to provide an example from our work. To that end, I offer one more area for improvement during the revision of your story: cutting the fat.

Below is a flabby passage from The Prank. The protagonist, a troubled thirteen-year-old boy, must sneak into his late teacher’s garage and retrieve a friend’s bike before it’s discovered there. (To find out how the teacher died, you’ll have to read the book.) He gets distracted from his mission by the teacher’s hot red Mustang. He climbs into the driver’s seat and wishes he could take a photo of himself. The text highlighted in yellow was garbage that I cut, with no damage to the story or to the fabric of the universe. That’s how you know it’s fat.

You can gasp in horror at the before, then coo with admiration at the after.

Before (Click on image for a clearer view.)

After  (Click on image for a clearer view.)

As you can see, the description of the car’s interior stinks of research and is unnecessary. It breaks the rhythm of the prose, slows the pace of the story, and bores the pants off the reader, who really should try to maintain decorum and keep it zipped. This isn’t a Roman orgy after all.

I’d love to see your snarky comments below, but I reserve the right to edit them out during revision.

514

Asfjah

Taming the Wild Draft

Cue the spaghetti western music: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Choose a block of your writing—past or present—and walk us through its revision journey. What worked? What didn't? What did you learn in the process?

By Dietrich

A lone writer squints into the horizon, ready to duel with his own words. The tumbleweeds of doubt roll by, and so, the revision process begins …

I looked at an early chapter from Nobody from Somewhere and walked myself back through its conception. The story started from a single scene and grew from there, and by the time I had the first draft I was happy with the core conflict and main character dynamics. I had a good foundation to build on, even if the execution needed work. The overall story lacked some structure, sensory details were missing, and the subplots hadn’t all arrived yet. Also, some secondary characters felt sketchy, and the tone was somewhat inconsistent in a couple of parts. Nothing unusual at this stage.

By the time I finished the second draft, I’d fixed a plot hole, cut some cliché, along with a tangent that didn’t tie back to the main story, and I evened out some clunky prose. I liked the way all the characters sounded when they spoke. Their dialogue felt on-point, added some depth and had a snappy rhythm, which is critical for keeping the pace tight in a genre where tension drives the narrative. The depth and the overall pacing also felt even. Tension built gradually through subtext and stakes, and sensory details helped ground the scenes.

The third pass was for checking, sharpening and polishing. I reviewed it all to be sure I’d covered all the bases: character dynamics, themes and aesthetics. I asked myself if I dove enough into each character. Was there the right amount of insight? Was any of the prose repetitive?

By the end of it, I felt confident that the manuscript was ready to send out. Here’s a short chapter from the final draft. It’s the second chapter and the intro to Wren, one of the main characters:

The Snows set Wren up on the Murphy bed in the main-floor den. Donna Snow wanted her feeling less like a foster kid, more like a family member. Kevin Snow making it plain he just wanted to feel her. 

Pulled down, the Murphy bed left a foot and a half between the desk and a shelf of books, mostly self-help books: the power of this, the art of that. Growing rich and awakening giants. Titles like Unfu*k Yourself, and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, with lots of asterisks. A grocery-store print above the pull-out, a still life with fruit and purplish shadows.

Next to the kitchen, Wren could hear the hum and rattle of the old Frigidaire, keeping her company those first nights when sleep dodged her. Propped against the pillow in the dark, she was thinking about her mom, praying for her. Wary of Kevin Snow from the start, something not right in the way he looked at her.

The third night, she opened her door, listened for sounds from the upstairs bedrooms, decided everyone was asleep and tiptoed in the dark past the noisy fridge, crossing the cold tiles, heading to the powder room in her undies, needing to pee. Kevin was sitting in the dark at the kitchen nook, a short drink in front of him. She froze.

Clicking on the light, he smiled, eyes sweeping up her bare legs. Wren covering up and hurrying to the bathroom, saying, “Sorry.”

“You got nothing to be sorry about, shortcake.” Kevin leaving the light on, waiting until she hurried back to her room, the hand towel held in front. Wren shutting the door hard enough, hoping to get Donna’s attention. Could hear Kevin chuckling in the kitchen.

Pulling the chair from the desk, trying to prop it under the doorknob, the way it was done in some movie she’d seen with her mother. The chair-back too short to reach the knob. Glancing around the dark room for something like a weapon, she grabbed one of the self-help books.

Finishing his drink, Kevin came to her door and tapped his knuckles, whispering from the other side, “Nighty night, now.”

Sitting on the bed, thinking if he came through that door, she’d hit him, hard as she could, with the corner of Unfu*k Yourself.

Hearing the stairs creaking as he went back to his room. Wren seeing under the door, waiting until he switched off the hall light. Knowing he’d be back.

Evolution of an Opening - by Matthew Greene

Choose a block of your writing—past or present—and walk us through its revision journey. What worked? What didn’t? What did you learn in the process?

Well, my worst nightmare has come true—I’m sharing early drafts on the internet. But I think this is a really interesting prompt, so I’ll force myself to be vulnerable and share the goods. (Or…the bads, as it were.)

Not only is this a passage from a first draft, it’s the first draft of my first novel. So, please be kind as I share the evolution of the opening paragraphs of Chapter One from There’s No Murder Like Show Murder.

“It’s just too tight,” the man was saying. “I can barely move.”

Far be it for me to second-guess a Broadway darling like Burton Stephens, but it’s hard to hear a man complain about restrictive clothing. Especially when I knew his costar would be singing right beside him wearing a tight-laced evening gown and heels. 

“I don’t know if I can go on like this,” he continued. “It just feels wrong in ways I can’t describe.”

The costume shop was crowded as members of the creative team, circled around Burton and his offending tailcoat. He frowned into the mirror, pulling at the lapels as reassuring voices came at him from every side.

“It looks fantastic,” the choreographer was saying.

“Perfect silhouette,” the costume designer chimed in.

“Burton,” came the languid voice of Arthur Winston, who hovered in the doorway of the shop, “you look fantastic. Like I promised you would.” As the Artistic Director of the Eastbridge Playhouse, part of Arthur’s job was massaging the egos of leading men and ladies, especially Broadway B-listers like Burton.

Not terribly compelling, is it? I’ll fight the urge to shit on my early work too much, since that’s what writers’ groups and therapists are for. Besides, the really vulnerable move at this point would be to identify a few things that are working.

First off, the bones of the conflict are present. Without spoiling anything, the insufferable leading man at the center of this scene will be dead by the end of Chapter Two. My instinct was always to open with his diva behavior and establish Tasha (the first-person POV character narrating) as an emotionally intelligent, canny observer of the colorful characters that surround her. The better to solve a mystery, my dear. I also always liked the quip about men complaining about tight clothes, although it’s a little buried in the above. And finally, the broader cast is coming into focus, but there’s still a long way to go to round out the zany, theatrical world of the Eastbrook Playhouse.

And now for the bad. Well, not the bad, but the needs improvement. I want to point out three big issues that I went on to address in later drafts: voice, event, and energy.

VOICE: I knew I wanted to write the story in first-person from Tasha’s POV, but you really don’t learn much about her from this passage. I mean, it reads more like a college essay than a piece of cozy crime fiction. The other characters show a bit more personality through their dialogue, but there’s something incredibly dry about my first pass. 

EVENT: If you can’t tell, this section takes place during a fitting in the cramped costume shop of the Eastbrook Playhouse. This is an inherently low-stakes environment, a setting that does nothing to establish the urgency of technical rehearsals. I only have one chance to grab the reader with a high stakes setup, and the image of a Broadway blowhard complaining in front of a full-length mirror is not going to capture anyone’s attention. (Also, did you notice I described him as a “Broadway darling” and a “b-lister” on the same page? Rookie mistake.)

ENERGY: There’s nothing here that makes the reader want to keep going. There’s no suspense, no mystery. Maybe some of my readers would be gripped by the drama of a man in an ill-fitting coat, but that’s the extent of the intrigue. I’ll spare you the rest of the chapter, but this problem persists. The entire draft is heavy on cold detail and light on drama. Big problem.

So, three drafts later, I had arrived at this:

“I can barely move!” the man called out. “It’s just too tight!”

Music stopped. Movement all around him came to a standstill as he strained against his tailcoat. A voice from the darkness cried, “Hold!”

It was the second day of cue-to-cue rehearsals for Annie Get Your Gun at the Eastbrook Playhouse and nerves were fraying all around. Our leading man stood center stage, shading his eyes to peer at the work tables that had been mounted across Rows F through H. The creative team and crew had been there for what felt like a lifetime and the rest of the cast struggled to hide their irritation. I’m no mind reader, but I was pretty sure we all shared a single thought…

What’s the problem now, Kurt?

A few improvements, I have to admit. We’re in the theater now, in the middle of a cue-to-cue rehearsal, which imbues the scene with an energy it desperately needed. The first line establishes some suspense—plants some questions, at least—and I do a bit of a better job withholding information to keep the reader hooked. And we’re getting a little more of Tasha’s voice, though there’s still a long way to go where clarity, context, andcharacter are concerned.

CLARITY: Now that we’re out of the costume shop, it’s not immediately clear what is too tight and why the narrator is moved to action by this complaint. As someone well-versed in the process of putting on a show, I don’t do a great job painting a picture for readers who don’t come from theatre. There’s music playing, movement all around, and a man making trouble, but we don’t understand well enough to care. 

CONTEXT: A related issue, and one that plagued this opening section through multiple drafts, was my tendency to pause the action to provide exposition. Sure, it’s important to ground the reader right away in a sense of place, but I wanted to find a way of doing so that felt more active and less explanatory.

CHARACTER: As I mentioned, we get a little more of Tasha’s voice, but this passage doesn’t really reveal anything about her. Sure, she’s irritated with Kurt (renamed from the original Burton), but so is everyone else. If I really want to make the most of my Page One real estate, I need to let Tasha shine and establish her as a protagonist to root for and follow.

So, a half dozen revisions later, I landed on this version right before we went to print:

“Stop! Please! I can barely breathe!”

Someone else might have ignored the voice. In fact, plenty of “someone elses” sitting near me did exactly that. But I was already on my feet, moving through the darkness to save the day. 

“Will somebody help me?” the deep baritone roared over the orchestra. The music director’s head bobbed as he urged the musicians on, like the band on deck of the Titanic. Not that we were on a sinking ship. At least not yet…

“I’m dying up here!” The words were unmistakable now. “Either this tailcoat goes or I do.”

Heads were turning, eyes were rolling, and a voice from the darkened auditorium called: “Hold!”

It’s never cute to hear a man complain about tight clothes.

We were in the second day of cue-to-cue rehearsals for Annie Get Your Gun at the Eastbrook Playhouse and nerves were fraying all around. Our leading man stood center stage, blocking the spotlight from his eyes to peer at the worktables mounted across Rows F through H. The creative team and production crew, myself included, had been huddled there for what felt like forever. Tired cast members stepped out of character, and the run crew backstage gazed out from the shadowy wings. It was like we all shared a single thought….

What’s his problem this time?

Let’s start with that first line. It’s a bit of a fake-out, and it went through several iterations before I was satisfied, but it captures the dramatic attitude of our antagonist-turned-victim and sets up Tasha’s response.

Tasha’s reaction to this line tells us a lot about her character: she’s quick to act, she takes her work seriously, and she has a bit of a savior complex. Already, within the first few sentences, we know what kind of narrator we’re dealing with and can predict how she’ll react to an impending murder.

I also worked hard to pepper the essential expository details throughout the faux emergency that gives this opening section its momentum. Placing Tasha in the house and Kurt onstage provides the perfect opportunity to set the scene without making the reader feel like I’m overloading them with information. By creating a bit of a mystery at the outset—why can’t this man breathe? what is wrong? why is no one else helping?—I give myself room to establish setting while the reader is (hopefully) leaning in for further details.

And the line about men in tight clothes, which readers and editors all seemed to enjoy, is given the space and the highlight it deserves.

Even now, I look at the published version of this opening and wish I could make more tweaks. But I firmly believe that our writing is never done; it’s simply due. The process of writing There’s No Murder Like Show Murder was more than a typical revision cycle—it was the way I learned how to write a novel. In my case, that meant multiple drafts (I counted at least ten while I prepared this post) and a constant curiosity and desire to do the best work I could.

And that requires some serious vulnerability.

The Lion and the Mouse by Poppy Gee

Who are the authors who have inspired you in how you conduct yourself as a professional writer? This is not so much the creative/writerly side of them (but could be) but how they navigate their career, and the publishing industry in general. What do they do that you find inspiring or interesting?

Many writers have helped me in different ways, big and small, over the years. 

March 2014: As a newly published debut author, I was having a rough night at the welcome drinks for the Beaconsfield Festival of Golden Words. It was in the Beaconsfield Mine Museum, which was also an art gallery, and I wandered around the artwork and mining exhibits, trying to find someone standing alone who I could talk to. For the life of me, I could not find a way to squeeze my way into a conversation. Eventually, I gave in to the social anxiety and scurried out to the carpark.

I waited in the dark for the bus which would take all the writers back to our accommodation at Grindelwald Resort. A man approached me. He was older than me, polite, gentlemanly and reserved. He said he was getting some air as he found it too intense inside. I joked and said, did you also not get the instructions on how to schmooze at an author event? We talked for a while, and when the bus came, we sat together. His name was Alex Miller, one of Australia’s most respected and successful writers. The next day, he attended my panel (he was coming anyway to hear Rohan Wilson speak about his debut The Roving Party). Afterward, Alex bought my book and asked me to sign it. The next day, he made the effort to find me to say that he had enjoyed the first few chapters. He described what he liked about (he’d definitely read it!) I’ve never forgotten his kindness. It’s something I always try to pay forward.

There are many other authors who have gone out of their way for me, reading my work, including me in their events, helping me with industry advice.

In 2020 I attended Back Room Authors online event as a reader. Hank Phillippi Ryan’s curiosity about everyone who attends led to me being invited back to be a featured author. Being on that panel alongside Stephen Mack-Jones, May Cobb and Jacquelyn Mitchard was a career highlight. Hank is a class act, she’s inclusive and genuinely excited for other authors. I also admire Karen Dionne. I like how she insists that we should write for the joy of it. When someone who has achieved as much as she has, says that, it’s validating. I especially liked meeting Stephen Mack Jones – as a professional author he conducts himself with humour, sincerity and elegance.

Eric Beetner is a person whose generous approach I admire. He invited me on his Writer Types podcast. This was really fun and another career highlight for me. Through social media, I observed Eric organising Noir and the Bar and it inspired me to do something similar here in Brisbane. Consequently, we held our sixth Crime Fiction Literary Dinner on Wednesday night. I copied Eric’s sentiment, which is to support crime fiction writers and provide a fun way for writers to catch up with each other. And that fact I writing this blog, is a testament to Eric's kindness - he invited me to join the all-star team!

 

Closer to home, I have the best group of writerly friends. Crime fiction writers who have gone out of their way to help me include Allie Reynolds, Joanna Jenkins, Dinuka McKenzie, Ben Hobson, Kylie Kaden, Michael Burge and more. From the elusive world of literary fiction my most helpful friends include Steve MinOn, Jo Skinner, Rohan Wilson, Nicole Melanson and Eleanor Limprecht.

I’ll always be grateful to the incredible writers who blurbed me – Lisa Unger, David Joy, Kali White, Jenny Milchman, Amanda Eyre Ward, and Meg Cabot. One day, maybe like how the mouse helps the lion escape the trap in the famous fable, I hope to pay them all back! If not, I'll pay it forward.

Lately, I am finding myself blurbing writers’ books, it’s an honour I never dreamed of!