‘Plotting Crime Fiction’
“Plotting Crime Fiction”
To outline or not to outline. Does preplanning affect character creation and raise the stakes of the story? Does pantsing–writing by the seat-of-one’s-pants–allow more freedom and improvisation for the author? What about a combination of the two? Plantser, anyone? What are the advantages or disadvantages of either writing process, and does plotting change with a standalone novel vs. a book series?
Come and join what will undoubtedly be a lively discussion!
Panel participants:
Naomi Rand: Naomi Rand’s latest mystery is Goodbye to Me (Bedazzled Ink). She is also the author of Surviving Amelia (Bedazzled) and the Emma Price mystery series: The One That Got Away, Stealing For A Living, and It’s Raining Men (Harper). She has mystery stories in Brutal and Strange: Stories Inspired by the Songs of Elvis Costello , Crime Plus Music, and Hard Boiled Brooklyn . She’s also written short fiction, lit-crit, poetry, essays, and anything that paid, including a pregnancy guide. She lives in Brooklyn, where she’s currently swimming, walking, and planning her next great meal.
Lori Robbins: Lori Robbins is the Amazon bestselling author of the On Pointe and Master Class mystery series and a contributor to The Secret Ingredient: A Mystery Writers Cookbook. She is an Agatha Award nominee and the recipient of three Silver Falchions, the Indie Award for Best Mystery, and a silver medal in the Daphne du Maurier Award for Mystery and Suspense. Short stories include “Leading Ladies,” which received honorable mention in the 2022 Best American Mystery and Suspense anthology. Her experiences as a professional dancer, English teacher, and mother of six have made her an expert in the homicidal tendencies everyday life inspires.
Laura Joh Rowland: Laura Joh Rowland is the author of two mystery series. The first, set in seventeenth-century Japan, chronicles the adventures of samurai detective Sano Ichiro. The second features photographer Sarah Bain and her motley crew in Victorian England. Her new book is a standalone thriller titled Resurrection Kill, set in upstate New York in 1953. Laura’s books have been published in fourteen countries and selected for The Wall Street Journal’s list of top ten historical mysteries. Laura is also a painter and cartoonist, working on a graphic novel inspired by her Chinese-American family in Detroit in the 1940’s. She lives in New York City.
Charles Salzberg (Moderator): Charles Salzberg is a former magazine journalist and nonfiction book writer. His articles have appeared in New York, Esquire, and The New York Times. His nonfiction includes Soupy Sez: My Zany Life and Times and From Set Shot to Slam Dunk, An Oral History of the NBA. He is a three-time Shamus nominee, for Swann’s Last Song, Second Story Man (winner of the Beverly Hills Book Award), and Canary in the Coal Mine. Devil in the Hole was named one of the best crime novels of the year by Suspense magazine; Man on the Run won the NYC Big Book Award for Crime Fiction. A founding member of New York Writers Workshop, he was a visiting professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. His latest novel is The Beginning of Everything.
Monday, November 2, 6:00-7:30 pm
New York Society Library
53 East 79th Street, New York, NY 10075
