I read somewhere there are only eight facial types, which explains why you always see people who look like people you know.  Could the same be said for stories?  Is there really only a limited number of tales a writer can tell?

Originality is a problem for writers.  A short list of familiar stories might look like this:

• Boy meets girl (or vice versa); boy loses girl; boy gets girl.
• Good triumphs over evil.
• Someone goes on a quest.
• A young person comes of age and rights a great wrong (or several).
• A hero fights either a monster or a powerful adversary.
• A life-altering choice and its consequences.

Any and all of these can be combined into a story.  I see agent blogs and interviews where the literary agent says he or she is looking for something “fresh.”  How can the writer avoid the clichés inherent in not only fiction, but especially genre fiction?

Different genres have elements readers expect to see.  For example, romance must end on a positive note for the couple involved.  Readers of this genre expect a happy ending and a pox on the writer who doesn’t give it to them.  Thrillers need not end happily, but the villain is expected to be vanquished, at least temporarily.  The Joker may always be back, but Batman has to thwart him for a while.

Freshness results from combining these elements in a new way.  You can’t blindly follow the latest trend.  It will be over before you get there.  Some writers despair they will never invent something new.  Maybe not, but there’s a reason people read the same stuff over and over.  They like it.  Give them something to get excited about.

Change up the narrative voice.

How interesting would it be to read the same story from Joker’s point of view?  Or Alfred’s?  Writer Valerie Martin did this brilliantly in a rework of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.   Mary Reilly is Stevenson’s story told by Dr. Jekyll’s servant.  I know a plot element is good when I am insanely jealous that I didn’t think of it first.

Take a little-known element and bring it to the forefront.

Medieval stories often follow royalty and warrior characters, life in a castle, etc.  Karen Cushman wrote two excellent books for young readers set in the Middle Ages, Catherine, Called Birdy and The Midwife’s Apprentice, which won a Newbery award.

Birdy is the daughter of a knight.  Her family isn’t rich, although they are better off than Birdy’s best friend Perkin the goat boy.  Alyce’s orgins in Apprentice are a bit more crude; when we first meet her she is in a dung heap.

Cushman’s research vanishes into her depictions of life in the Middle Ages, from the rushes on the floor of the manor house to the villager’s festival activities and the midwife’s primitive obstetric practices.  Her details make the books more interesting.  If you search for seldom-used aspects of a period or way of life, you might even find a plotline lurking among them.  Piquing your reader’s curiosity will ensure they can’t put the book down.  In Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha, not only were the story and the main character engaging, but the book detailed a profession traditionally shrouded in mystery.

Write fully-developed characters, and put them in situations that challenge them.

No person is one way all the time.  Your character could be the good guy, but he might be capable of some very dastardly deeds in his pursuit of justice.  Think Dexter.  Tons of shows and books have been done about forensic experts.  Dexter is a fresh twist.  He’s also a serial killer who kills other serial killers.  To lead a double life like this, a person would have to compartmentalize.  What happens when the walls break down?

Villains who want to kill and destroy without any provocation or reason pop up a lot in comics, genre fiction and movies.  Like a force of nature, they overwhelm and confuse the hero, who must figure out what is driving them.  If nothing is, then it just becomes a blocking exercise.  Kill the villain so he can’t blow up the dam.

Everyone has motives.  People do things because they want something in return.  What does your villain want?  What’s he trying to prove, or aquire?  Why?  If it’s power, what does he plan to do with it?  If the reason is somewhat clichéd, like revenge, at least show his way of thinking.  A real person trying to get revenge thinks he is justified in doing so.  Show why your villain feels this way.  It’s not just because he’s bad.

Besides an astonishingly great performance by the late Heath Ledger, one reason the Joker in The Dark Knight was so good is that he had a subtext.   He was evil but how anyone could miss the wall of pain pushing off the screen astonishes me.  I actually walked out of the theater feeling sorry for the guy.  There wasn’t even any concrete explanation for his scars.  His stories implied he either told part of the truth or the real reason was so awful even he couldn’t stand to repeat it.  How intriguing is that?

Turn a cliché on its head.

Bram Stoker took the walking corpse of Eastern European vampire legend and made him into a nobleman, Count Dracula.  He’s still a a monster, but now one that might go undetected.  Anne Rice did him one better by starting the vampire-as-romantic-figure trend with Interview with the Vampire.  Now vampires are lovers, not bloodsuckers.

For an even newer angle, check out the adolescent vampire in Let the Right One In.  Being heme-dependent is secondary to the plot; the story is really about the friendship between two misfit children.  In genre fiction especially, the best stuff is about people, not stereotypes.

Imbue your fiction with freshness.  Read celebrated new books in your category and try to see why they are so different.  Then make sure your writing is the best it can be.  If you have any recommendations for stories that set genre clichés on edge, please share them in the comments.

Even more than writing, I love reading.  This weekend, I devoured a new book by Dean Koontz, Relentless, a terrific thriller by one of the masters of the genre.  I’d like to share a few thoughts about it with you.

I haven’t read Koontz for a while, but coming back is like coming home.  I used to be one of his biggest fans but for a while there, he seemed to have lost something.  I suspect there was something serious going on but what it was I don’t know.  I now have a ton of things to get caught up on.

This man used to scare the crap out of me.  I read Phantoms a long time ago and nearly peed myself.  He hasn’t been able to scare me for a while (no one has), but in Relentless, there were a few parts that gave me chills. I wasn’t reading it at night; I was sitting in the waiting area at the car repair place!

Relentless doesn’t hit the ground running like a lot of suspense thrillers.  Koontz takes the time to introduce the small family—Cubby Greenwich, wife Penny Boom, son Milo and dog Lassie—with whom we’ll be spending the next 356 pages.   Soon we care about them.  They are funny, endearing, and intelligent.

Cubby and Penny are writers.  Ordinarily I can’t stand reading books about writers, or watching TV shows about people with their own TV shows.  It’s all so meta, and fails at irony most of the time.  Cubby, the narrator, is likeable and funny, so you don’t immediately think, “Oh, another writer writing about writers.”  Both Milo and Lassie are unusual, nearly magical, and we know this will be important later.  (It is.)  The special canine is a trademark of Koontz, a longtime dog lover, used most effectively in Watchers.

The premise is simple.  An eminent but eccentric critic, Shearman Waxx, writes a scathing review of Cubby’s book.  Cubby goes to the restaurant where the critic is having lunch to get a look at the man, and inadvertently, or so he thinks, irritates him.  Waxx begins a campaign of terrorism against the writer.  To survive, Cubby and his family must uncover the motives behind his bizarre behavior, while desperately running for their lives.

Koontz tells the story in first person, which provides a tight, personal point of view and keeps the focus on what is most important to Cubby.  It also serves to make the villain more enigmatic.  Who is Shearman Waxx?  Why is he doing what he’s doing?  We never get inside his head, so we can’t know.

He uses short, sharp paragraphs, many of them one-liners.  Paragraph length is a personal style choice, and also one of pacing.  Shorter paragraphs move the reader through the text quickly.   He also favors long stretches of dialogue with no tags and you have to pay close attention to remember who is speaking.  It’s a Koontz signature; I would know it was his writing even if he wrote under the name Hortense Bandicoot.

When he gets to an important flashback, he changes tense (from past to present). The entire flashback has its own chapter and Koontz takes his time with it.

These two techniques make a long flashback stand out.  A shorter one is better incorporated into the scene in which it appears.   Writers often do a quick tense change from past perfect (He had thought about it long and hard) to regular past tense to describe what is happening in the flashback (His hands trembled as he cocked the gun) and back to past perfect (It had been his defining moment) to indicate the transition back to the current events of the story.

He plants several things and waters them with hints more than once, but holds revelation back until their significance can be both realized and utilized in the battle for survival.  We think we know.  We’re dying to see if we’re on the right track.  Wisely, Koontz doesn’t explain everything but lets us find out as we go along.  A classic suspense technique, it holds reader attention and allows for character development as Cubby’s situation changes.

The supporting characters in Relentless are very cool; they have everything the pursued family needs when they need it.  This seems very convenient, but most thrillers require a suspension of disbelief the same way horror, fantasy or sci-fi does.  Scenes where the protagonists find or learn sophisticated survival techniques without any help would make the book too long.  This genre is all about fast pacing.  Certain things have to happen at the right time for the heroes to escape or win a battle.  It’s better if they can pick up what they need as they go along, like characters in a video game.

Koontz uses one device I don’t like, foreshadowing at the end of a chapter:  “And we didn’t know then about the bad thing in the future.” Dan Brown gets criticized for this a lot.  Personally, I find this device irritating; I’d much rather get to the bad thing and be surprised.  Also, if I’ve gotten more than halfway through a book, chances are I’m going to finish.  The writer doesn’t have to be so obvious about manipulating me to turn the page.

A sociopathic villain chasing the protagonist has been done before.  TONS of times.  But Koontz has found a fresh twist here.  So easy to do it the other way around; most writers would have the writer chasing the critic who gave him a bad review.  Koontz turned it upside down.  This is a great way to get a fresh perspective on a story.  Since most or all stories are variations on the same few premises, it’s a good exercise to use.

Sometimes you won’t find a twist this way, but you will find a more effective perspective on a scene or a whole book.  For example, if you’re retelling a classic conflict such as an abusive marriage, switch sexes on the characters.  Have the wife beating the husband (it happens, really).  Change the POV to a supporting character, like Nick in The Great Gatsby, or the servant girl in Mary Reilly (a retelling of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).  Have that character tell the story instead, his/her insights or misunderstandings driving the narrative.

I liked this book.  I recommend it even if you’re not a Koontz fan.  When I really get into a book, either I read it in two days or drag it out forever, depending on the length.  This was a two-day book, not too long and not too short.  It’s a good read for budding and experienced thriller writers and readers alike.  Enjoy it if you get the chance.

After I finished Rose’s Hostage, the novel I’m querying now, I realized a couple of things.

First, that the story wasn’t done, at least not in terms of the couple, Joshua and Libby. Where are they going from here?  I don’t want to spoil it, but there’s more to come.

Second, that my detective has more potential than I thought.  Pierce and his partner Rossberger can have more adventures.  They live and work in a great big city, and everyone knows great big cities are full of crime.  I could have a series on my hands.

Creating a series character is a daunting task.  You have to give a character room to grow over the course of the series.  In addition, each situation must give your character fresh challenges. And he should have the skills, the talents and the knowledge to overcome them.  A few endearing or astonishing quirks don’t hurt.

I’ve been reading thrillers because it’s the genre I want to work in, and I enjoy them.  Writing them is more fun than I ever imagined.  I’ve noticed that no matter how over the top you get, you can’t possibly go too far.  Ever.  Look at Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon series.  In Angels and Demons, Robert Langdon has to jump out of a helicopter and float down to earth using a makeshift parachute.  In The Lost Symbol, he gets kidnapped, buried alive, and appears to die.

Michael Palmer’s medical thrillers get equally crazy.  I can’t remember which one it was, but the villain trapped the protagonists in a cave filling with water and in a desperate attempt to save themselves and others trapped with them, they had to swim out through a tiny hole.

My poor detectives might have to stretch themselves.  I strove for realism in the book, which, after re-reading some of this other stuff, makes me wonder if it’s too sedate.  In real life, cop stuff usually isn’t that exciting.

My absolute favorite, by the authors other than Stephen King who would inspire a Wayne’s World-type salaam from me, is Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child‘s Aloysius Pendergast series.  These two write terrific thrillers independently, but their collaboration boasts the best character I’ve come across in years.  Pendergast is an FBI special agent unlike any you’ve ever seen before.

The man is filthy rich, impeccably dressed, cultured but not snobbish (although he has moments of condescension that somehow manage not to sully him), pale, cadaverous and spooky.  He is the kind of person to whom weird things gravitate.  An unexpected ward born in the nineteenth century, an evil brother (not a twin, thank God), various monstrous cases.  With real monsters.

Pendergast can have a quiet cup of imported tea with you and in the next two seconds disarm a crazed assassin.  He picks locks, is a master of disguise, and frequently operates outside the bounds of the law, all while maintaining a unique propriety.

I LOVE this guy.

He started in Relic as a peripheral character; the real protagonist in that one is NYPD Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta.  Vinnie ends up as Pendergast’s sidekick in the series, heavily involved in his many outrageous adventures, to the disgust of his captain and new lover, Laura Hayward.  I always feel when reading that first book that the authors liked the character so much that they ran with him.  And the results are not disappointing.

In their latest, Fever Dream, Pendergast, along with Vinnie, must solve the mystery of his wife’s murder.  You don’t see Helen in the series until now; she’s already dead.  Most thrillers rely on suspense to move the story forward.  You might already know who the antagonist is, and the momentum lies in the hero’s attempts to thwart him/her, or resolve a situation that seems insurmountable.  For example, will Cowboy Sam be able to free Pearlie Sue, tied to the railroad tracks by Mad Marvin, before the 5:15 arrives?  Fever Dream contains a genuine mystery, and the stakes are tremendously high.

Worse, it leaves bits hanging at the end.  Boo!  Now I have to wait until the next one.  It’s torture, I tell you!  Sheer torture!

I also liked this book because Pendergast comes unglued.  Every one of us has a breaking point.  For him, it’s the discovery that the one person he allowed into his cloistered emotional world was actually murdered.  Pendergast’s early life was not exactly a stereotype of comfortable wealthy leisure.  (Evil brother, remember?)  Usually, this character is an ice cube.  Here, you get to see another side of him.  And it ain’t pretty.

A strong character needs to have facets.  He’s not believable unless he does.  No one acts/feels/thinks one way all the time, and neither should a book character.  In a series, these facets are great ways to advance not only the character development, but the story arc.  Do you have something in mind for your hero?  Does he strive for a goal like Harry Potter’s revenge against Voldemort for killing his parents, or Roland Deschain’s quest for the Dark Tower?  Reaching that goal will likely end your series.  Yet the journey can wring your character out like a rag.  No fun if it doesn’t, for reader or writer.

Or you can leave it open-ended, but explore different aspects of the character.  Preston and Child let us into Pendergast’s traumatic past in the Diogenes trilogy, in which Pendergast must confront his brother.  Theoretically, they could milk his complex psyche until they die.  In the back of Fever Dream, the authors announced the coming debut of a new character, but that they would not abandon Pendergast.   That’s great, because we Pendergast fans can’t get enough.  Unless he started doing ridiculously out-of-character things, I’d certainly keep buying the books, and I don’t even wait for paperback anymore.

The key to keeping a series character alive is love, I think.  You have to love putting this person through his paces.  You must love spending time in his world.  I love Detective Pierce.  He’s a bit prickly, not exaggeratedly so, but a good man overall, trying to do the right thing.  I can’t wait to see what tips the scales for him, or how he deals with the myriad nightmares I can throw at him.

I’ll give it a shot.  Or maybe the bad guys will.