WRITING: 12 THINGS I’VE LEARNED IN 12 YEARS

Wed--Kwei 

Writing is always an exercise in getting better. Authors continuously learn from both good and bad experiences, and from their editors and readers. Here are some of the lessons I've learned in the approximately twelve years since my debut Inspector Darko Dawson novel in 2009, WIFE OF THE GODS.

1. A bigger publisher isn't necessarily better

In 2012, CHILDREN OF THE STREET, my second novel in the Inspector Darko Dawson series had been published. It didn’t do well, following the traditional pattern of the “second-semester slump” in which the second novel, unlike the first, crashes so badly that it's barely noticed. Compared with the glitzy WIFE OF THE GODS debut, it was a painful letdown for me, and Penguin Random House (PRH), the publisher, wasn't happy about it either and chose to drop me from their author list.

Although PRH’s action seemed catastrophic at the time, it turned out to be a good thing, because my agent then found Soho Press, who took me on. Soho is a much smaller press with high production values and meticulous editors. I’ve met them all in person, which might never have happened if I had still been with PRH. Soho is very loyal to its authors and allows them to stretch the span their wings and fly.

2. When writing, follow every thread to the end

In my first draft of WIFE OF THE GODS, I introduced Darko’s beloved son Hosiah who had a congenital heart disease. And then I just dropped him from the story. The “Reader,” someone who does a screening read-through of the book to see if it’s worth passing up the chain to the editor, pointed out that everyone reading the novel will want to know what happened to the kid. Follow that storyline through to the end. It’s an appealing part of the story.

3. Make every character count.

Even “minor" characters must have some relevance to the story. If it looks like two characters play a similar role in the plot, consider combining them into one. When I say “character,” I don’t just mean the name of someone we meet in passing in the narrative. To me, a character is someone who matters now and will likely matter later. In my latest novel, LAST SEEN IN LAPAZ, which is going to galley soon, a character who appeared earlier popped up toward the end without my planning it, suddenly opening up an entire new dimension. I had been at risk of having that character disappear somewhere midway through the novel.

4. On the other hand, don’t let a character eclipse your protagonist!

As I was writing WIFE OF THE GODS, I noticed that Dawson’s assistant, Chikata, began to seem more interesting than Dawson. Chikata, who smoked marijuana, was rough around the edges and sometimes engaged in beating suspects up, i.e. police brutality. I transferred both vices to Dawson, who then began to seem more complex.

5. In murder mysteries, sex is controversial.

Frankly, many mystery devotees just don’t like sex in crime fiction, especially that involving the protagonist. A hint of sexual desire is okay, but not the act itself. [Colin Dexter did that well with his character, Inspector Morse]. During a book-signing for my novel MURDER AT CAPE THREE POINTS, one reader came up to me to object strongly to a sex scene in that story and told me “not to do that again.” I guess her admonition didn’t work because sex keeps showing up in my novels. I feel that the modern crime fiction landscape has changed from the “old days” and allows for some of these “rules” to be broken, e.g. I believe it was Chandler who said a detective or PI should never be married. The fact is that readers do want to know about the protagonist’s life outside of detective work, and in the same fashion, movie and crime shows in which the hero has a complex background life are always the most interesting

6. The [my] first draft is always crap.

I’m echoing Ernest Hemingway, who famously said, “The first draft of anything is s**t,” but I think the draft for the upcoming novel LAST SEEN IN LAPAZ tops them all in the Department of Crappiness. I tried to stuff too much story into one and tried to do it too quickly. It takes place in three different countries and there are something like twenty major characters. Thankfully, as painful as it was rescuing LSIL from the figurative trash, it’s now just about ready to go.

7. The publishers will ask the author if they approve of the jacket design . . .

but if the author doesn’t like it, the chances of the design being changed are slim to none. Stick to the writing, bro.

8. Rely on your readers to spot any errors/typos post-publication.

They will do it anyway, so be gracious about it and thank them. This way, the error can be fixed for the paperback. We see continuity errors in even some of the best movies, so it’s not such a big deal. It happens.

9. Apparently, I can’t completely conquer dangling modifiers.

“Walking down the path, the sky became dark with rain clouds” is a simple example of a dangling modifier--it’s not the sky walking down the path, so the sentence that comes before that is “dangling.” Nowadays I look for them in my drafts with the eye of a hawk, but the editors always get me on at least one! Grrr!

10. Darko’s cult following

I suppose I didn’t realize there was a hardcore group of “Dawsonites” who were dismayed by Darko’s near-death/death? at the end of DEATH BY HIS GRACE. The scene was somewhat ambiguous, but most took it as the death of Darko, and it was not well received. Dawsonites howled with protest and demanded the return of Darko, à la Sherlock Holmes. FYI, Darko isn't dead, but to be honest, I’m not sure when he’ll return. If only I could write as fast as Cara Black! *wistful sigh*

11. Book clubs are dope!

Whether virtually or in person, I encourage authors to join book clubs in their discussions of their novel. Book club discussions are great fun. There will be insights you, as the author, hadn’t perceived before, even some about your protagonist. Women make more incisive observations than men about a book or its characters, so listen to the women. For instance, one measure I took after attending a book club was to include a map in my subsequent novel, because the club members gave me the feedback that they appreciated maps in the first pages of a novel. Also, if the novel includes a significant degree of local languages other than English, as mine and Michael and Stanley’s do, a glossary is essential.

12. The author doesn’t need to know or understand everything about their protagonist.

Without comment, I’m throwing out that possibly controversial notion for discussion!

Cultural Tightrope

Kwei Quartey has done a couple of guest blogs for us before.  He lives in Los Angeles and writes mysteries set in Ghana.  But the issue he discusses here is important to any author writing about a culture outside the reader’s home culture, and particularly relevant in South Africa (or Botswana for that matter).

Kwei Quartey’s first book WIFE OF THE GODS introduced a memorable new detective, Darko Dawson. That book met enthusiastic critical acclaim, and was followed by the quite different but equally intriguing CHILDREN OF THE STREET. Michael Connelly said: “Kwei Quartey does what all the best storytellers do. He takes you to a world you have never seen and makes it as real to you as your own backyard. In CHILDREN OF THE STREET he brings a story that is searing and original and done just right. Inspector Darko Dawson is relentless and I look forward to riding with him again.”

Here Kwei talks about the issues he thinks about as he takes you to that other world.

Michael - Thursday.

The Cultural Tightrope

Writing outside the culture of my readers can be a balancing act

My Inspector Darko Dawson mystery series is set in the West African coastal nation of Ghana. The first in the series, WIFE OF THE GODS, was published in 2009, the second, CHILDREN OF THE STREET, in 2011, and if all goes well, the third, MURDER AT CAPE THREE POINTS, will come out next year. I grew up in Ghana, leaving in my late teens for the States, where both my writing and medical careers began. My late father was Ghanaian, and my mother is black American. Both were lecturers at the University of Ghana in the suburbs of Accra, the capital.

Slum housing at Agbobloshie, Accra

Luxury gated housing at Takoradi

            Like any mystery writer, I strive to create good plots and full, intriguing characters. However, the holy grail for me is to convey the Ghanaian essence authentically without confounding Western readers or relying on too much exposition. The fact is that I am writing primarily for an American audience. Although a certain niche of readers loves being transported to foreign lands via a good mystery, I need to bring them along with me for the ride and not drag them behind me in the dust. 

            In my novels, some aspects of Ghana’s nature cannot be extricated from the story. That was clear in WIFE OF THE GODS, where beliefs in witchcraft and traditional healing, apart from being part of the plot, highlight how Ghanaians are often comfortable with the coexistence of old and modern ways. However, whether to include certain tidbits of Ghanaian life in my stories can take some deciding. To shake hands the Ghanaian way, you finish up by snapping your thumb and ring finger against the thumb and ring finger of your fellow hand-shaker, while he (it’s more common among males) is doing the same thing at the same time. It’s characteristically Ghanaian, but some might argue that, cute as it may be, its inclusion in a novel doesn’t advance the story. Do I put that in a novel, and does anyone really care?

Big trade: Takoradi Harbor

Small trade: Sekondi Harbor

           Like the special handshake, extending a greeting to someone rather formally – good morning/afternoon/evening - is quintessentially Ghanaian, but I must be careful that I don’t overdo it. One of my New York editors crisply commented, “While I realize Ghanaians are more gracious than the average New Yorker, you need to take out some of the greetings and polite chit-chat.”

            Other Ghanaian-isms would seem odd or incorrect to my editors and readers and are probably best omitted. “I’ll pick you at the bus station” means, “I’ll pick you up at the bus station.” Affirmatives can be confusing as well. In response to the question, “This meal isn’t spicy?” a waiter might say, “Yes, please.” A Westerner could interpret that as, “Yes, it is spicy,” but the waiter more likely means, “Yes, you are correct. It isn’t spicy.”

Poverty meets the internet
Homeless youths use computers at a refuge

Pidgin English, popular among hip youth, educated or not, can be tough to decipher if one is unaccustomed. I have included it in my novels, but with caution. If I write “I dey go house,” I must use it in enough context that the reader understands it to mean “I’m going home.” Could readers take a whole page of pidgin? Probably not. In the same way, when quoting a character speaking in one of Ghana’s indigenous languages (English is the language of instruction and commerce), is the best approach a single word here or there with an obvious meaning in context, or whole sentences followed by a translation?

In this regard, Westerners often use the word “dialects” to describe the languages of different African ethnic groups, but in Ghana for instance, referring to the languages Ga or Twi as “dialects” is as ridiculous as saying that Swedish is a dialect of Norwegian.

    

While small traders ply Accra's traffic jams

... a once viable rail system rusts

            Ghanaians use a wide range of exclamations to express emotion. Several variations of “oh,” “ah,” and “ei” express indignation, excitement, sadness, or disapproval, depending on how they are said. They are a distinctive element of speech in Ghana, but tonally, they are difficult, if not impossible, to represent on the page.  

Pacing is important in crime fiction. If I were to accurately represent the true pace at which business is generally conducted in Ghana, my novels would be unacceptably slow for the average western reader. In reality, there’s a lot of “s/he’s not in, come back tomorrow” in Ghanaian life, sometimes delivered with a nonchalance that foreigners might take as rudeness. Although that is usually not the intention, it can be irksome. I do make use of this “delay of services” to some extent in the Darko Dawson series, but in general, Darko gets in touch with people and finds things out a lot more efficiently than he would in the real Ghana.

Neighborhood dirt track 

George W Bush highway
(courtesy of the US & China) 

Darko also lives more comfortably than he would in real life as a detective at his rank and salary level. Policemen and women in Ghana do not make much money. Even some chief inspectors, a respectable rank, live in cramped and dilapidated single-room barracks. Although the Dawson family has its financial constraints, it could be much worse. Nevertheless, I made a conscious decision that I did not want dire economic conditions to be so overwhelming in my novels that they distract from Darko’s raison d’être: solving mysteries.   

As the pairs of pictures illustrate, Ghana is an evolving country full of contrasts, progressing in some ways while coming up short in others, which is what makes it so interesting to me as a setting. My job is to portray all that complexity in a comprehensible and entertaining way, and keep my readers coming back to see how Darko, his family, and his country grow.

Kwei Quartey, MD

Discover more about Kwei and his work at www.kweiquartey.com

(Dr Quartey's article first appeared in a different form in the ITW Newsletter - The Big Thrill)

What would Chandler have written...

Today's guest blog is by Kwei Quartey whose first book Wife of the Gods introduced a memorable new detective - Darko Dawson - in Accra, Ghana. That book met enthusiastic critical acclaim, and everyone (including me) has been waiting impatiently for the next book in the series.  So this blog is wonderfully timed because this week Children of the Street was launched in Kwei’s “other” home town – Los Angeles.  It’s already getting great reviews. Michael Connelly said: “Kwei Quartey does what all the best storytellers do. He takes you to a world you have never seen and makes it as real to you as your own backyard. In Children of the Street he brings a story that is searing and original and done just right. Inspector Darko Dawson is relentless and I look forward to riding with him again.”

            So over to Kwei to see what he thinks Chandler would have written...

            …if he had lived in Accra? He was the master novelist who created the private investigator Philip Marlowe and had a particular style that became influential to the hardboiled genre. You know it when you hear it; spare language that packs a punch with its wittiness and irony. My favorite among many in The Big Sleep: “Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains.”

            Chandler’s Marlowe worked in Los Angeles, which arguably is the noir capital of America, or at least that’s what we Angelinos like to think. But I wonder hypothetically how Chandler would have managed the radically different setting of Accra, Ghana’s capital.  

            In my new novel, Children of the Street (COTS), Inspector Darko Dawson investigates a suspicious death in a section of the blighted, deadly Accra slum called Agbogbloshie. The members of the crime scene unit are “framed apocalyptically against dense black smoke billowing from somewhere upstream.”

            That description might be a little clunky by Chandler standards, and I have no doubt that he would have brought the scene to life more brilliantly and crisply than I did. There’s a descriptive line in The Big Sleep: “…The central walk was lined with Italian cypresses trimmed short and chunky, something the shape of the oil jars in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” That’s nice, but with all due respect to LA where I’ve lived for years, and to Raymond Chandler, Accra is a much more interesting place. Mr. Chandler would have had a lot more to play with. Alas, he’s long gone, and we can only imagine how he would have done it.
            A week before the launch of COTS on July 12, 2011, I returned from a six-week visit to Ghana. You can read about some of my experiences on my blog under “2011 Trip to Ghana” http://www.kweiquartey.com/category/2011-ghana-trip/.  There really is never a dull moment in Ghana, particularly in Accra. Even crossing the street is an adventure. In contrast, on returning to LA, I was aware of a despondent, anticlimactic feeling over the routine and mundane nature of “developed living,” the sameness and yes, the relative dullness of it all. I wouldn’t go as far as to use the word dead, but there is a certain flatness, like music with little dynamic range. Your mind can easily zone out as you crawl along in Wilshire Boulevard traffic in L.A., but not a chance that would happen on Accra’s Independence Avenue, a street equivalent to Wilshire in importance.

            Besieged by hawkers selling everything from road maps to Granny Smith apples and by the polio victims who sit on homemade skateboards and effortlessly weave in and out of car lanes asking for money, some drivers consider them a nuisance. In fact the government recently tried to get all hawkers off the street  - good luck with that. However, these people of the street are of considerable fascination to me. I don’t relish poverty, but I do have an affinity for those caught up in it. I watch them carefully, studying their faces, their posture and gait, wondering about their backgrounds. Once when a skateboard beggar sailed up to my vehicle for money, I asked him about the polio that had afflicted him. He responded not with a woeful “poor-me” story, but with warmth and a bright smile that touched me.   

Now we go from the Agbogbloshie slum to here:
           

            Beverly Hills, you say? No, it’s Accra, a mansion in an area called Trasacco Valley. What a great name to include in a title, by the way: The Trasacco Valley Murder. Trasacco is an Italian company http://www.trasaccovalley.com/. Someone told me about a rumor that the Costa Nostra has its hand in the Trasacco cookie jar. Really? Is that true? I have no idea, but it sounds good to me! Mafia and money in Accra - a winning combo. There’s bound to be a murder somewhere along the way.
            Now, take your pick, you can place your dead body in Trasacco or Agbogbloshie (or both) or anywhere in between, but I still have a personal preference for seamy and messy over wholesome and neat. I’ll take narrow, shadowy alleys any time over a posh drawing room with velvet curtains. Just look at these photos of Nima, a bustling town within Accra, and tell me you don’t sense that something wicked this way comes, or will later on, at least. If there isn’t a body yet, there’ll be one soon.

           
            Accra, and indeed Ghana as a whole, offers wonderfully rich cultural and economic contrasts against which to set a story. In COTS, the murder suspects come from all socio-economic levels, and that’s because life in Ghana lends itself to that kind of social mix. But there’s something else that fuels the milieu and makes writing about it so exciting: the evolution of Ghanaian society and the development of the country as a whole. It’s a country in transition – almost scary transition. People throw out GDP growth rates of anything from 13% to a ridiculous 22%. Change, rapid change with the upheaval that comes with it, is in large part what makes Ghana such a thrilling place to chronicle Darko Dawson’s adventures.
            This year, there is a brand new DNA lab in Accra. I paid it a visit, and although I was asked for security reasons not to give a full description of the building (not quite sure what that was about, but I digress) I will tell you that it looks fabulous both outside and in and still has that new furniture smell.
            One can’t very well speak of DNA labs in Ghana in the blasé fashion we talk about them in the States. In Wife of the Gods, there is no mention of DNA, in COTS, it assumes more importance even though the bulk of the DNA samples are still being flown out to South Africa for analysis, but in my next novel, all DNA analysis will be done locally in Accra. See the arc? It’s dynamic and has energy, and as we follow Darko, we experience these changes in almost real time as they unfold.
            All right, I’ve just talked myself out of a proposition. Leave everything be. Raymond Chandler has Marlowe in Los Angeles. Kwei Quartey has Dawson in Accra and wouldn’t change anything about that arrangement. Rest peacefully, Mr. Chandler. All is well.

Kwei Quartey

for

Michael - Thursday