Hey everyone,

Every Crooked Path is a work of fiction, and yet, in a very real sense, it also tells the truth about our world today. While the characters and situations in this story are made up, the nature of the crimes is not.

As a parent, I found this book particularly difficult to write, since it involved research into cybercrimes against children. However, because of the impact of this issue on modern culture, I felt it was an important story for me to tell—perhaps my most important one so far.

Finding out what’s really out there lurking online was a wake-up call to me. Rather than describe any exploitative images in this book, I chose to show the reactions of the characters to seeing them. I’ll trust your imagination to fill in the rest.

During my research, I came across an organization called the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. It’s dedicated to rescuing children and catching those who target them. NCMEC is a nonprofit organization that depends on private donations, so please consider supporting their work. For more information, go to www.missingkids.com.

Together we can make a difference in protecting the next generation from those who would steal their innocence from them.

I think you’ll enjoy Every Crooked Path. It’s a thrilling ride, a redemptive story, and shows the power of good over evil. Let me know what you think.

—Steven James

International Thriller Writers On-line Craft School

I am honored that I was asked to be one of the teachers for the International Thriller Writers On-line Craft School. This is a great opportunity for any writer, especially a thriller writer, to take advantage of...without having to go all the way to New York City for Thrillerfest.

Check it out: International Thriller Writers On-line Craft School

When you were first starting out, did you ever have any self-doubt in your writing ability? If you did, how did you deal with it?

I’m not sure if the self-doubts that have lurked around the edges of my consciousness since the very beginning of my career will ever fully disappear. Despite how many books I write, I still approach every project with a trembling hand.
Will it be any good?
Will people like it?
Will I ever actually finish it?
Will it be better than the last one?
Over the years I’ve written more than three dozen books and hundreds of articles, but still I don’t have the confidence in my ability that you’d think would come naturally at this point.
Maybe that’s encouraging to aspiring writers, and maybe it’s disheartening. Depends on how you look at it—on the one hand, the apprehension might never go away, but on the other hand, you won’t be alone in feeling that way.
However, there’s a paradox to all of this. Intermingled in with all that hesitancy there has to be a certain sense of confidence in the process, or we wouldn’t know where to begin each day. And also, there has to be a certain degree of ego.
After all, every writing project is in a certain sense an exercise in egotism. When I write a novel that will take someone ten hours to read, and I encourage that person to buy it, I’m basically telling her that there’s no better way for her to spend ten hours of her all-too-short time on this planet than reading my story. If there was something better, I wouldn’t feel right trying to get her to read my story than to do that other thing.
If that’s not egotism, I’m not sure what is.
The truth is, if you like long hours in solitude, emotional turmoil, constant self-criticism and bouts of heart-wrenching disappointment, you’ll make a good writer. And if you can actually tell an engaging story, you might just make a great one.

Is it better to start a novel with a fast pace and suspense or a slower pace with more background information?

The answer to this question might seem obvious at first—well, you want the story to start in an exciting and gripping way, I mean, otherwise won’t people get bored? You need to hook your readers’ attention, right?

Once I was at a writers conference and a woman gave me her manuscript to look at. The opening was an exciting car chase that really grabbed my attention. It ended with a car crash, and I said, “So this is an action story?” But she shook her head. “It’s a romance. After she gets to the hospital she falls in love with her doctor.”

Now, in a sense when you set out to write a book you’re making a contract with your readers that you are going to entertain them, that you’re going to fulfill or exceed their expectations, and that you’re not going to cheat. I told the woman, “Well if that’s the case, then you just broke your promise because the beginning of the book promises me that it’s going to be action-packed.” She looked exasperated. “My writers critique group told me I needed to have a more exciting hook.”

Many aspiring writers (and even accomplished ones, unfortunately) listen to this advice about a great hook and they start their stories with an exciting opening, but then they have to slow the story down to a snail’s pace to fill readers in on what’s going on and why.

On the other hand, you don’t want to start at a slow pace and dump background information on your reader. So, here are a couple of principles that I keep in mind when I’m shaping the openings to my stories.

(1) The length of the hook is determined by the length of the book. This means that if I’m writing a 500 page novel I don’t need to be clever in the first line or two. Readers will understand that there’s a lot of story to tell and they will give me some space to set up the story. I try not to rush the opening, but set it up to serve the story as a whole.

(2) The opening must not just grab readers’ attention, but must also introduce them to a character they care about, help them picture the story world, and introduce the mood, voice, pace and genre of the story.

(3) Escalation is just as important to a story as the opening scene, or hook, is. If I start a story in an exciting way and then drop way back to fill in the background information, I’ve brought the story’s pace to a grinding halt. I can’t do this if I want to keep readers flipping pages. So, however I start the story, I need to orient the readers to the story at a place where I can quickly escalate the story and propel it forward toward its eventual climax.

So, writing an effective story opening has many facets and if any of them are dropped out, the story will suffer. Grab the attention of the readers, help them see what’s happening, introduce a character we can identify with or aspire to be like, give us a feel for the mood, set the readers expectations in the right place for the story arc you’re working with, and then get on with it. Don’t stall out giving too much background info. Press forward, fulfill your promises, and leave your readers hungry for more.

Unmet Desire: The Core of Every Good Story

This is from my recent post at RomCon.com

Unmet desire.

It’s not just the secret to writing a good romance story; it’s also the key to writing a thrilling suspense novel—which is where I’ve found my home over the last couple years.

At its core, every story is about a character who wants something but can’t get it. As soon as she gets it, the story is over. My specialty is penning crime and psychological suspense novels (although each of them has a strong romantic element as well!). Both romance and suspense stories deal with this unmet desire, and when they meet in the same novel, it can be very satisfying.

Since I believe so strongly in this idea of struggles and unmet desire propelling the story forward, when I craft my stories I’m always asking myself what the character wants rather than what the character should do. The action of the story grows out of the desires of the characters, not the other way around.
Very often when writing instructors talk about stories, they refer to stories as being “character-driven” or “plot-driven.” I know what they’re trying to say, but I don’t believe any story is driven forward by character or by plot—and no, I don’t think that stories are both plot- and character-driven.

They’re neither.

For example, if I spend five pages describing what a character is like without ever telling you (or showing you) what that person wants, you’ll eventually start to think, “Who cares? Get on with the story!” In the same way, if I write one chase scene, then another chase scene, then another chase scene, but don’t make it clear what’s at stake, the story won’t be propelled forward; it’ll get boring.

But if stories aren’t driven by character or plot, what drives them forward?

Tension.

Always tension.

And tension comes from a character pursuing the object of her desire, not getting it at first, and then finding new ways to pursue it even as the clock ticks and the stakes continue to rise.

In a romance story, when that long-awaited romance begins, when the characters get the loving relationship they so badly want, the story is essentially over. So in a very real way, romance stories are not about romance, they are about romantic tension. (But I suppose that would be a rather awkward way of referring to them. I’ll give you that.)

And this place of tension is such a good place for romance and suspense to meet, where the two genres that can so easily and inextricably intertwine. When a character that we care about is in peril, we feel apprehension. That peril can be a threat to her life (as often happens in a suspense story) or to her personal, emotional well-being (as in a romance story).

All of this came into play and presented me with an unusual dilemma when I wrote my latest suspense novel Opening Moves. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the novel, it’s a prequel to the series that already features the thrillers The Pawn, The Rook, The Knight, The Bishop and The Queen. All of the books focus on FBI Special Agent Patrick Bowers and his unique 21st century way of analyzing crimes and tracking down serial offenders (killers, arsonists, rapists, and so on).

Remember how I mentioned a moment ago that when the romance begins, the story is over? Well, at the end of The Queen, Patrick proposes to his love interest, an FBI profiler named Lien-hua Jiang. I hate to give anything away, so I’ll just say that her response, after five books of Patrick being interested in her, sets up the entire storyline for The King, which comes out next year.

So what could I do with Opening Moves that wouldn’t be anticlimactic? If readers already know the resolution of the main romantic subplot of the series, what romantic element could I include in Opening Moves that would still satisfy them—when the events of the story happen ten years before he ever met Lien-hua?

As I wrestled with that, I went back to the question I referred to earlier—asking myself what the character wants. I needed a new love interest, but also one that would create enough tension to carry the story as well as set up the relationships he would have later in the series.

I ended up with a story that bristles with suspense, but that also leads Patrick into his first serious relationship in the series. It’s all about desire, and when characters pursue what they desire most, great stories of all genres, are born.

The Patrick Bowers series has a beautiful combination of action, thrill, and compelling story. How do you find this balance? What advice can you give to writers who struggle keeping their story moving without getting to the end result too quickly?

First of all, thanks for the kind words about the series. I really appreciate them. Glad you enjoy the series.

So, you ask a good question: how do we maintain a balance between action and suspense while keeping the story moving and not ending it prematurely?

Stories are built on promises. These can come in many forms: comedic, dramatic, horrific, etc. For example, if we start a story showing a woman in an ideal marriage with a husband who loves her and she’s satisfied and at peace, we’ve made a promise to readers: something is going to go wrong and disrupt her idyllic life. Perhaps her husband will die, or succumb to his old addiction to alcohol, or leave her, or have an affair. Something will throw things out of balance. If you drag it on too long before keeping the promise you’ve made, readers will get bored and annoyed.  

You can make a promise by showing how blissful things are, or how unbalanced they are to begin with. So, we could have the daughter of a congressman get abducted—it’s a promise that the authorities will be in a race against time to save her.

One of the keys to storytelling is making promises that matter and then keeping them when the readers expect them to be kept. Suspense is really the drawing out of a promise of peril to a character whom we care about. It’s that apprehension we feel about impending danger. Action is what happens during the fulfillment of that promise. The action escalates to a climactic moment that drives the story forward into the next scene. Remember that in the interludes between scenes you will either need to keep a promise or make one.

A story ends when there’s no logical place for it to go based on the promises that have preceded that moment in the tale. If we make promises and don’t keep them, it’s likely that readers will feel frustrated at the end of the story. If we drag out a story after all the promises have been kept, readers will get bored.

So, as you analyze your story, ask yourself about those promises—have you made big enough ones on which to build a story? Have you kept the promises in ways that surprise readers and still please them? Have you done so at a time and in a way that will make readers clamor for your next book? You’ll need to stop and ask these questions throughout your writing process, but if you do, in the end you’ll have a well balanced story.

When writing a thriller/mystery, where the killer’s identity is kept from the reader until the end, do you feel the killer should be included in “X” amount of scenes, so your readers don’t feel cheated? For example: building clues toward several different people throughout a story, and then pulling the killer from “left-field,” who up until this point hasn’t really been involved in too many scenes. In your experience, do readers feel cheated, or do they like the twist of the unknown?

First of all, as far as including an unidentified or unknown killer throughout the book, keeping him (or her) on the fringes and then revealing at the end that he was responsible for the crimes—but doing so in a way that is both surprising and satisfying to readers—is very difficult, but if you can pull it off, it’s also very satisfying.

There’s no rule-of-thumb specifically for how many scenes you will want to include him, but it tends to make it more satisfying to readers if he is present throughout the book. I try to introduce him in the story as early as possible, and then have him reappear several times so that when the reveal comes it isn’t out of left-field.

You must always satisfy the reader by giving him more than he expects. Never let them feel cheated. In one of the paradoxes of fiction (and this is especially true with mysteries and thrillers), readers want to predict how the story will end, but they want to be wrong—yet still satisfied.

To make the twist work, it must be inevitable (the only possible conclusion when it appears at the end of the story), unexpected (so that no one sees it coming), and a revelation that adds meaning to what precedes it in the story.

I reread my stories as I’m working on them, usually printing out the novel once a week or so and glancing it through from the first page, so that I can grab hold of the context and try to experience it as the reader does—asking myself what the reader is hoping for, expecting, and wondering about. Then, I put my motto into play and try to always give readers what they want or something better.

There are several types of twists, and one of them is as you describe—giving clues that point toward the guilt of several people. This creates uncertainty in the mind of the reader. Another type of twist is to make all the clues point toward one person so that readers will be sure it is him. In this case, you are striving for certainty in the mind of the reader. Both types of twists can be satisfying, as long as the logic of the story supports that ending.

When you write a suspense novel, how do you develop your story without moving too quickly, yet also not moving so slowly that readers lose interest?

Building suspense is really a process of making and then keeping promises.

Suspense isn’t so much about “making things happen” as it is about promising that they will. It’s more about creating worry, apprehension, and anticipation than it is about adding more action. When readers are bored with a book or when they complain that “nothing’s happening,” they don’t usually mean that nothing is occurring but rather that things aren’t escalating. We solve this problem not by adding more action but by making more promises.

In a mystery you might have someone beheaded before the book begins and the detective (or team of detectives) must work to solve the crime. In a horror story you might show the beheading in all of its grisly detail. In suspense, readers learn that someone is going to be beheaded and the protagonist must try to stop the crime before it occurs. See the difference? The first (mystery) appeals more to intellect—it’s a puzzle that needs to be solved. The second (horror) deals with a more raw, visceral gut-wrenching reaction. We’re not kept in suspense, we see the horrific detail. It’s almost like we’re afraid to look because of what we are being shown.

Suspense, however, deals more with the emotions. It appeals to the concern of the reader for the wellbeing of the character/s. So instead of being afraid to look, readers are afraid to look away because they’re afraid they might miss what is going on.

When readers care about a character and that character is put in peril, suspense is born.

Now, how do we make sure that we don’t lose the interest of readers? How do we make sure that we don’t move too slowly? I have a maxim that directs all of my writing endeavors—always give readers what they want or something better.

So, as I work on my story, I make promises of things that will go wrong (a killer might threaten or abduct someone; terrorists might develop a weapon, hack into a computer, leave a ticking bomb, etc…) then, as I write, I continually ask what the readers want, and I give it to them—or try to surprise them with something better than they ever imagined.

The keys to pacing include making and keeping promises when readers expect them, relentlessly escalating the tension of the story, raising the stakes, and balancing the amount of exposition so that it occurs after climactic scenes when readers wants a break and need a chance to reorient themselves for the next scene.