by Swati Avasthi

Voice is the circulatory system of a YA novel:  it streams from one vital organ to the next, gives us the novel’s pulse, and brings oxygen and life to otherwise sluggish words. Without voice, the energy is drained; with it, anything is possible.

An interview with CanarySing

Canary Sing, the Seattle-based duo of artist-activists Hollis Wong-Wear and Maddy Clifford, will be the headliners for the next Equilibrium spoken word performance at the Loft on May 15.

They took time out from promoting their EP to answer some questions about craft and their busy lives.

by Denny Stockdale

Life on the Road

The open road was calling me. In the midst of a typically harsh Minnesota winter, I was eager to introduce myself and my new book to those in warmer climes. I settled on an itinerary taking me from the West Coast to the East Coast, and my publicist began work on arranging book events and setting up interviews.

A View From The Loft interview with Ann Rosenquist Fee and Catherine Lundoff

Love is in the air at this time of year. Love of all varieties. So the View team gleaned the inside scoop on how to write well about sensuality, romantic love, and sex. Two Loft teaching artists, Ann Rosenquist Fee and Catherine Lundoff, teach the art of erotica. Here are some of their insights.

by Ellen Hart

For the past 13 years, I’ve been teaching “An Introduction to Writing the Modern Mystery” through the Loft. Often, during the last class, I give my students a printout of a quote from B. F. Skinner, the renowned psychologist, author, inventor, social reformer, and poet: “To maintain the powers of the mind into old age, you must risk the contempt of your younger acquaintances and freely admit that you read detective novels.” Bravo to Dr. Skinner!

Mystery is the quality that keeps us reading any novel. Good stories pose questions: What does this mean? Where is this leading? What’s going to happen next? Because a sense of mystery is so central to storytelling, when you give it center stage, as you do in a crime novel, you get a step-up in grabbing a reader’s attention. That’s one of the reasons why mystery novels remain perennial bestsellers.

Humans are captivated by mystery. The whodunit, however, goes hand in hand today with another aspect of crime fiction: the whydunit. We are fascinated by what motivates us to do what we do, so much so that the focus of many modern crime stories is less on who the criminal is, although that’s still necessary, and more on why he did what he did, what led up to it, and what the ramifications are, not only for the victim, but also for the victim’s family and the victimizer. When sudden violence occurs, the investigation, the detection, is like a light shining down from above, one that begins to illuminate all the secret cracks and crevices in the lives of all the people connected to the crime. It also makes for a cracking good story.

Are there rules to writing a modern crime novel? Is there a universal template that publishers hand out to would-be authors? I once sat in on a meeting of writing teachers. A member of the group piped up and said exactly that. She was dismissive of genre fiction in general, and mystery fiction in specific. I, of course, tried, not terribly patiently, to point out that mystery fiction runs the gamut from light, pure entertainment to dark meditations on difficult moral issues. As with all genres, some books are better than others. But good fiction is never clustered solely in any genre of writing. We find good books where we find them—across the spectrum.

As my friend, the award-winning crime writer William Kent Krueger, likes to point out, modern mystery fiction is broad in scope. In fact, the modern crime novelist must do everything any other novelist must do to create memorable fiction. The mystery author must provide the reader with full, believable, complex characters, use powerful language, provide a distinct sense of place, give the reader dialogue that sings, and, at the heart of it all, deliver to the reader a puzzle—and then solve that puzzle in a way that’s logical and satisfying. Believe me, it’s a tall order. Hillary Waugh once said: “The mystery is to fiction what the sonnet is to poetry.” By that, I believe he meant that mysteries have a tight construction—a specific architecture.

What makes a mystery a mystery? While I don’t believe there is a universal template for writing crime fiction, I do believe there are expectations for various forms of the genre. First, an author needs to build a story around a crime. That crime has to be significant. Second, the story must contain a detective, willing or otherwise, who spends his time actually detecting. This could be an amateur sleuth, a homicide investigator, a P.I., a lawyer, or a snoopy old woman in a small English village. The third element all mysteries should have is a satisfying solution. Within the paradigm of crime/detection/solution, the writer is free to go anywhere her imagination leads. The story starts in chaos. At the end, we may not have moved from sadness to happiness, but there is a solution. Mysteries give us something CNN can’t: resolution.

Of course, there is a lot more to say about writing crime and detective fiction. That’s why I teach a class on mystery fiction every year at the Loft. But this year, the Loft is giving us something new and exciting.

On Saturday November 14, and Sunday, November 15, The Loft Literary Center will present its first intensive Mystery, Crime, and Thriller Festival. Some of the best crime writers in the Midwest will be featured presenters. The keynote address will be delivered by New York Times bestselling author Vince Flynn. Other authors presenting include Mary Logue, Philip Donlay, William Kent Krueger, Jan Dunlap, Erin Hart, Ellen Hart, Carl Brookins, Julie Kramer, Richard A. Thompson, Lois Greiman, Masha Hamilton, and Susan Runolt. A number of sessions will be taught by professionals in the community, such as medical examiners and criminal psychologists. If you love a good mystery, if you’ve been thinking about writing one, or if you’ve actually begun putting pen to paper and are looking for information on craft, publishing, and networking, check out the Loft’s website for more information. Mystery, Crime, and Thriller Festival

Ellen Hart is the author of 25 crime novels in two different series. She is a five-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award, as well as a three-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award. Entertainment Weekly has named her as one of the “101 Movers and Shakers in the Gay Entertainment Industry.” For the past 12 years, Ellen has taught “An Introduction to Writing the Modern Mystery” at the The Loft Literary Center.