I’m trying to put together a plot outline for a mystery, and I’ve run into a bit of a problem. I have the main cast of characters, including the killer, and the basic plot, but when it comes time to give the killer a motive, I grind to a screeching halt. Not because I can’t come up with one, but because I start to wonder which of my possible options would be considered more believable.

The characters and set-up are sufficiently angsty and dark that the mystery itself can’t fall on the cozy side of things and still work, which means – I believe – that my killer has to set out to kill his victim with malice aforethought, rather than fall into the situation accidentally. On the other hand, I’m not looking to make my killer an evil beast who gets his jollies from the pain of others.

The way I see it, I have two basic choices. I can go with the "he killed so-and-so for the sake of money/lust/etc. and then knocked off a few more people to cover it up" theory. Or I can go with the "sociopathic personality who finally snaps and becomes a serial killer" theory. Neither one is particularly realistic – although I’ve seen examples of both in real life – but what I’d really like to know is, does one seem much more believable than the other? If you’re reading a book about a serial killer, how much background do you need in order to accept that some dude is running around offing people? Do you need a really good reason, a logical reason, for the murders, or is it enough for you to know that the reason seems logical to the killer? For that matter, as long as the killer poses enough of a threat to the protagonist to keep the reader on the edge, is why he’s doing what he’s doing much of a consideration at all? Some of the fiction I’ve read lately – from some big names, I might add – would indicate that the answer is no. What would you say?

A lot of people have their shorts in a bunch over the final book of "that big vampire saga", which was released a couple of weeks ago. A friend of mine was kind (read: evil) enough to provide me with a whole pile of links, most of which were comment threads filled with disappointed readers airing their grievances. I won’t go into all the details here, but I will say that some of the most common bones of contention were these: contrived plot, main character acting out of character, and pissing off half the fans by putting the main character with the "wrong guy".

Reading all the comments got me thinking about a number of issues, and one of those issues was this: can a character act "out of character"? On the one hand, the character is created entirely by the writer. The writer decides how they speak, how they act, what they wear, the hobbies they have, the causes they support, etc. They can easily decide to have the character act differently than in the past. But is that necessarily acting out of character? People do unexpected things. They go through phases where they act in ways they haven’t previously. Good children become rebellious teenagers. Happy people can become depressed. Nasty people can have a change of heart. So if a character starts doing things a reader doesn’t expect, is it really a case of being out of character? Or is it just art imitating life?

What do you guys think? Can a character be out of character? Or is it just people complaining because the story didn’t go the way they wanted it to?

Obviously I’m new at the being published thing, and relatively new at the blogging thing, too, but I’ve learned a lot over the years from reading people’s writing and publishing blogs – and obviously from reading and writing fiction as well – and I’m hoping that maybe I can give just a little bit back. With that in mind, a couple of links:

First, over on J.A. Konrath’s blog we have How Not To Start a Story . And then, over on Sherryl Clark’s blog we have a five-day workshop on the same subject but with the opposite slant, starting with Good Beginnings – Day 1 .

Both make excellent points about the subject, but not all of the people leaving comments can seem to agree on what makes a good first sentence. There’s also some dissension over whether or not the first sentence is indicative of the quality of the entire story, or if a good story can survive a bad beginning.

My own favorite first sentence is from The Gunslinger by Stephen King: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." To me, this is an absolutely brilliant first sentence, because it gives you the protagonist, the antagonist, sets up the conflict, and gives a vivid mental picture, all in 12 simple words. That’s a sentence that does a whole lot of work, and a sentence that works is important. Especially when it’s the first sentence. (And even more so if it were the first sentence of a short story.)

An example of a first sentence that other people think is good, but that doesn’t work for me, is from Neuromancer by William Gibson: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." Now I’m sure some people would say that this isn’t a good sentence because it’s not action, and/or you should never start a story by describing the weather, but that’s not the problem I have with it. I have a problem with it because I’m not sure how to envision a television tuned to a dead channel. In the old days of television antennae, I would assume this was supposed to be "snow", that black & white fuzz that you got when a broadcast station was too far away for you to receive anything. But I’ve never seen a sky that looked anything like that. And in the case of cable television, I’m not sure what a dead channel looks like. (In my house, we went straight from antenna to satellite dish.) This probably sounds nitpicky, but my point is, especially in the first sentence, an image should be vivid, and it should be specific. There shouldn’t be room for interpretation. When you read that sentence you should know what you’re supposed to be seeing, you shouldn’t have to guess. The same thing can be said about the first sentence in Uglies by Scott Westerfield: "The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit." Again, I don’t know how to visualize the color of cat vomit, and not because I haven’t seen it before. I’ve seen far too much of it, in my opinion, and it always looks different depending on what my furry friend has been eating recently, or how much of the hairball he’s actually managed to yack up. Or maybe I’m just being far too picky.

What do you think? What’s your favorite first sentence and why? Can a story start off bad and get better? Or does a bad beginning guarantee a bad ending?

Issue #4 of Nossa Morte has gone live.