Did you ever see a beautiful painting of a ship with white sails billowing, the prow slicing through the waves, colorful banners fluttering behind? I’ve seen some beautiful paintings like that. Of course, those paintings are absurdly wrong, and that irritates me. A sailing ship is wind-driven. That means the banners and flags are blown in the same general direction the ship is moving and the sails are billowing—not streaming along behind the ship. A wind-driven vessel can not move faster than the wind. A painting like this, however well otherwise done, shows the painter does not know his subject. Continue reading “Getting it Right”
Tag: author research
Inside the Mind of a Killer: Researching your Antagonist
So there I was, minding my own business writing one of those truly twisted novels that grabs hold of you and has to come out when I came to the killer’s debut. I’d never attempted to write a character quite so creepy and wasn’t relishing that first passage. In fact, I continually wrote around him, putting off the scene until I felt I could do justice to him instead of creating a killer cliché. Yes, I could have abandoned the effort and gone on to something else, but a disturbing dream I’d had several months prior provided the inspiration for the story and I felt compelled to follow it through.
How do you write a fresh psychopath? Readers today have been clubbed over the head with serial killers (pardon the pun) to the point that it’s become a joke in many literary agencies and publishing houses. The only way I could think to do it was to go to my default: research. Continue reading “Inside the Mind of a Killer: Researching your Antagonist”