Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Mike Maden.

Mike grew up working in the canneries, feed mills and slaughterhouses of California’s San Joaquin Valley. A lifelong fascination with history and warfare ultimately led to a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at Davis with a focus on conflict and technology in international relations.

Like millions of others, he first became a Tom Clancy fan after reading The Hunt for Red October, and began his published fiction career in the same techno-thriller genre, starting with Drone and the sequels, Blue Warrior, Drone Command and Drone Threat. After spending over a decade in Dallas, Maden now lives in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee.

Tom Clancy and his unforgettable characters have been a household name for as long as I can remember, and since 2017, Maden brought his ideal background and knowledge of war and tech to the family of Clancy co-authors and collaborators, beginning with Tom Clancy Point of Contact. His books have garnered plenty of attention and acclaim, and his fourth entry in this #1 NYT-bestselling series, titled Tom Clancy Firing Point, is out now.

Once again, Mike taps into his incredible background as an author and expert to hit the trifecta of what makes a great Clancy book: Tom’s terrific characters combined with edge-of-your-seat action scenes and the over-the-horizon foretelling about world events.

In this episode Mike and I discuss:

• How to create deeply flawed characters that readers still like
• Why figuring out the stakes can help you populate your story’s universe
• His outline process and how it balances creativity and structure

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About the Author

Mike Maden grew up working in the canneries, feed mills and slaughterhouses of California’s San Joaquin Valley. A lifelong fascination with history and warfare ultimately led to a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at Davis with a focus on conflict and technology in international relations. Like millions of others, he first became a Tom Clancy fan after reading The Hunt for Red October, and began his published fiction career in the same techno-thriller genre, starting with Drone and the sequels, Blue Warrior, Drone Command and Drone Threat. After spending over a decade in Dallas, Maden now lives in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee.

Tom Clancy Firing Point 

Jack Ryan, Jr. is out to avenge the murder of an old friend, but the vein of evil he’s tapped into may run too deep for him to handle in the latest electric entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.

While on vacation in Barcelona, Jack Ryan, Jr. is surprised to run into an old friend at a small café. A first, Renee Moore seems surprised to see Jack, but then she just seems irritated and distracted. After making plans to meet later, Jack leaves, only to miss the opportunity to ever speak to Renee again, as the café is destroyed minutes later by a suicide bomber. A desperate Jack plunges back into the ruins to save his friend, but it’s too late. As she dies in his arms, she utters one word, “Sammler.”    

When the police show up they are initially suspicious of Jack until they are called off by a member of the Spanish Intelligence Service. This mysterious sequence of events sends the young Campus operative on an unrelenting search to find out the reason behind Renee’s death. Along the way, he discovers that his old friend had secrets of her own—and some of them may have gotten her killed.    

Jack has never backed down from a challenge, but some prey may be too big for one man.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 319 

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Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 319: Writing in the Tom Clancy Multiverse – Interview with Mike Maden appeared first on DIY MFA.

Too much of any one mode—clumps of description, trains of dialogue, pages of action, and dumps of internal thought—bogs down prose and makes it heavy or confusing. Or boring. Sure, there will be scenes with primarily one mode or another, but rarely will there be a scene with only one mode. Most scenes are best served by a balance of all four modes.

Most paragraphs are more interesting if they’re a combination of at least two modes. A paragraph of description is made much more interesting if there are character impressions mixed in. A page of action is made much more vivid if interspersed with bits of description. Scenes of dialogue are more interesting with description, action and internal thought around it.

Ideally, paragraphs with three or more modes are most interesting. A paragraph of internal thought interspersed among dialogue and description with actions is a much richer scene than a monologue of character musings. It makes prose that keeps the reader’s imagination more active.

I learned how to balance these four modes in Margie Lawson’s Deep Editing lecture packets four years ago, and I still think about balancing those everyday I write.

(There are other modes besides those four. Margie Lawson talks a lot about emotion as a separate category which requires its own article. A lot of people put exposition in a category of its own. For some novels, this works. These days a lot of editors prefer what they call “deep POV” where every part of the prose is intricately connected to the character point-of-view. To get exposition in deep POV, it needs to come out more as internal thought or dialogue.)

Try It Out

Let’s say we have a protagonist at a dinner party, trying to decide if she wants to eat something or go home. Here’s the description all by itself:

On a white linen tablecloth, there sat a plate full of juicy red apples.

It’s dry and lonely, and we could easily add an internal thought.

On its own that internal thought would be:

She should get home to do her dirty laundry, but there was nothing to eat there.

Insert the internal thought into the description and we get something like:

The white linen tablecloth reminded her of how dirty her laundry was at home, but those juicy red apples tempted her to stay.

Mixing the description and the internal thought together makes both of them much more interesting and helps attach meaning to what the character is seeing. Let’s see if we can get some simple action in there too.

Alone the action would be:

She touched the tablecloth and stared at the apples.

Very simple and not much going on, but if we put all three together:

She ran her fingers over the white linen tablecloth, so much cleaner than hers was at home, and she stared at the juicy red apples tempting her to stay.

Inserting some action into the sentence gives it more life. There’s now movement involved and the scene is no longer static. We can throw some dialogue in there too.

The dialogue alone would be:

“I’m leaving after I eat an apple.”

But if we put all of it together we get something much more detailed:

“I’m leaving.” She ran her fingers over the white linen tablecloth so much cleaner than hers was at home, then she stared at the juicy red apples tempting her to stay. “After I eat an apple.”

Adding two or more modes of writing to any sentence makes it come to life. Suddenly, every sentence you write is doing double, triple, or quadruple duty to help convey your character and your story. This is all a grand way of conveying the timeless rule of Show Don’t Tell. It takes a lot more time and more editing, but it makes the story much more interesting to both read and write.

Robin Lovett is a romance writer of erotic sci-fi and dark thrillers. She’s published with Entangled Publishing and SMP Swerve. She loves to chat on Twitter @LovettRomance and every Sunday evening you can find her with other romance writers at #RWChat. She is represented by Rachel Brooks of BookEnds Literary Agency.

The post Balancing The Author Voice With Writing Modes appeared first on DIY MFA.

Today I’m pleased to have K.J. Howe on the show. K.J. is the executive director of Thrillerfest, the annual conference of International Thriller Writers. This is one of my favorite genre conferences and I look forward to it every year.

Today I’m talking to Daphne du Maurier Award winner, K.J. Howe about her debut thriller, The Freedom Broker and how to craft a strong female lead in this genre. We also talk about why it’s important to give even the most heroic characters a flaw or personal obstacle and for the first time ever on this show, I share a behind-the-scenes look at a personal obstacle I have in my own life. This was such an honest and deep conversation and I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed interviewing K.J. Howe.

In this episode K.J. and I discuss:

• Some of the challenges of writing a strong female character. How do you walk that line between over-masculinizing her or making her seem like a “token” character in a male-dominated world?
• Giving your characters limitations that help them feel more realistic on the page. Weaknesses, flaws, and the ability to recognize the limits of their power are important aspects of your characters that keep them from tipping over the edge into indestructible superhero territory.
• Weaving invisible disabilities into stories. Creating characters who are real, who struggle with real health and mental health issues, but who are not defined by their disabilities.
• The dynamics and tension between characters and how to bring their relationships to life for the reader.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About the Author

K.J. Howe is the executive director of Thrillerfest, the annual conference of International Thriller Writers. A three-time Daphne du Maurier Award winner, she completed her MA in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University. She is an avid traveler who has raced camels in Jordan, surfed in Hawaii, and dove with the great whites in South Africa. She became fascinated by the kidnap and ransom (K&R) world after meeting Peter Moore, a British computer consultant who became the longest-held hostage in Iraq and the only person to survive of the five men who were taken that day. The Freedom Broker is her debut novel.

The Freedom Broker

There are twenty-five elite kidnap and ransom (K&R) specialists in the world. Only one is a woman: Thea Paris. And she’s the best in the business.

Twenty years ago, a terrified young boy was abducted in the middle of the night by masked intruders while his sister watched, paralyzed with fear. Returned after a harrowing nine months with his captors, Thea’s brother has never been the same.

This life-shattering experience drove Thea to become what she is today: a world-class freedom broker. Most hostage-recovery work is done at the negotiation table, but when diplomacy fails, Thea leads Quantum Security International’s black-ops team on highly sensitive rescue missions to political hot spots around the globe.

Her childhood nightmare resurfaces when her oil magnate father, Christos Paris, is snatched from his yacht off Santorini on his sixtieth birthday, days away from the biggest deal of his career. The brutal kidnappers left the entire crew slaughtered in their wake, but strangely, there are no ransom demands, no political appeals, no prisoner release requests-just obscure and foreboding texts written in Latin sent from burner phones.

Knowing the survival window for kidnap victims is small, Thea throws herself into the most urgent and challenging rescue mission of her life-but will she be able to prevent this kidnapping from destroying her family for good?

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase DIY MFA makes a small commission at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 143

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio or Google Play and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 143: Writing Strong Female Characters — Interview with K.J. Howe appeared first on DIY MFA.