Countdown to
Breaking
Point
6/24/05
18
days (and counting to Breaking
Point, in stores
on July 12th)
Quote of the day:
"Hey, Karen, it's Max." Just from his voice, she could picture
him, sitting with his feet up on a table in front of him, lazing back in a chair
propped on two legs. He probably wore his shirtsleeves rolled up and his
hair long and pulled back in a ponytail and was twenty pounds overweight.
Mr. Don't-Sweat-the-Small-Stuff." Gina Vitagliano's point of view,
from Over the Edge
Note
from Suz: Let's talk about subplots! (By the way, the picture on
the left has nothing to do with today's countdown. I was just going
through my photos, looking for something different to put here and found this
one of me and Jason, taken last winter. Yesterday (your yesterday, not
mine, since I'm writing this a few days in advance! LOL!) Ed and I dropped Jason
off at school in New York City. Last night he spent his first night in his
dorm room. Ed and I are in the car -- with our faithful Schnauzer, Sugar -- driving down to
Florida right now, in hopes that a week at the beach will distract me from the
empty nest blues...)
SUBPLOTS!
Okay, by this point in the
countdown, you are probably aware that there is no WWII subplot in BREAKING
POINT. And that there is a subplot that features Molly and Jones,
who first appeared in OUT OF CONTROL.
Today, let's talk about subplots
-- and how BREAKING POINT is structured a little bit differently than my other
books in the Troubleshooters series. But let's see if we can do it without
giving any vital information away.
But those of you who really
don't like to know much of anything before a book is released, consider this
your SPOILER ALERT!
Here we go:
During my Target: Tampa
event in Florida, I spent some time talking about writing with the group of
readers who had gathered for the weekend. During one of our Q&A
sessions, I gave an explanation for
something that I call off-screen action that has a lot to do with my
secondary characters and subplots.
See, because I write an ongoing
series of books featuring recurring characters, and because I can't include
every single character in every single book, there is action that occurs
"off screen" for many of the characters in my universe.
The term "off
screen" is obviously a movie reference. I tend to think in movies, so
I use quite a number of screenwriting terms when I talk about writing.
Obviously, there's no screen, but you get what I mean, right? (I suppose I
could call it "off page action," but the phrase just doesn't have the
same ring to it!)
Let me give you an
example.
The book is INTO THE NIGHT. The main romantic story is that
of Mike Muldoon, the gleamingly handsome young SEAL, and Joan DaCosta, White House
staffer. The external conflict, or plot, deals with a presidential visit
to Coronado, in which the men of Team Sixteen are going to be part of a
"dog and pony" show, highlighting the SEALs' skills. There will
be stands filled with spectators, and of course the U.S. President will attend.
Unknown to our main characters, terrorists decide that this high profile visit provides a perfect opportunity
for an attack.
If you remember this book,
you'll note that Navy SEAL Sam Starrett's then-wife, Mary Lou, had a major
subplot in this book. Early on, she comes face to face with both FBI agent
Alyssa Locke (Sam's former lover) and Jules Cassidy. They are in
California to deal with some work problem -- and since their work is for a
counterterrorist team, that problem eventually turns into a
confrontation between their FBI team and a cell of terrorists --
right in downtown San Diego. In fact, there's a firefight (a gun battle),
in which Jules is badly injured.
But that battle (and nearly
everything leading up to it) takes place "off screen." It's
talked about by the SEALs as the news of the fight spreads among the Spec Op
community, but this particular scene isn't in the book.
Why?
Because INTO THE
NIGHT isn't about Alyssa, Max or Jules -- even though they put in a brief
appearance early in the book. (I make them appear only to torture Mary Lou
-- and Sam -- more thoroughly, by the way.)
Still, even though INTO THE
NIGHT isn't about Alyssa, Max or Jules, these people exist in my
Troubleshooters universe, and are moving forward with their own lives and
conflicts
even as Mike and Joan's stories (and Mary Lou and Sam's) are being played out.
And just because INTO THE NIGHT
doesn't focus on Jules, doesn't mean that I've put him into stasis.
Does that make sense? (In the same way, as INTO THE NIGHT is taking place,
somewhere in Laguna Beach, Cosmo Richter's mom is cooking dinner as she listens
to the soundtrack from Les Mis.)
Think of it like this:
Picture all of my characters in all of my Troubleshooters books -- everyone from
Tom Paoletti in THE UNSUNG HERO to Adam Wyndham (Jules's ex) in HOT TARGET,
standing in a line, shoulder to shoulder. Imagine them walking forward in
that long line, and imagine that each step they take is a single day in their
lives. As the days pass, they continue to march forward -- as we all do --
living their lives. Sometimes their lives include a life and death
shootout with terrorists and sometimes the most exciting part of the day is when
they break a glass while washing dishes.
As the writer, it's my job
to shine a spotlight on only a handful of characters in each book -- in THE UNSUNG HERO,
the hero was Tom
Paoletti. We got to watch his progress as he moved forward through
several very intense days in his life. And while that spotlight is on
Tom, other characters interact with him, momentarily stepping into the light, too.
Jazz, Sam and Alyssa, for example, become part of the story told in
TUH when they travel to Baldwin's Bridge, Massachusetts as a favor to Tom.
And, remember -- even during THE UNSUNG
HERO, before you really knew he existed, Senior Chief Stan Wolchonok was
out there, moving forward in his life, too. Again, the things that happened to him on
those days that THE UNSUNG HERO took place weren't as exciting or remarkable as
the stuff that was happening to Tom. In fact, I believe I mention that
Stan's having surgery on his
knee -- not a lot of fun.
But Stan stepped into the
spotlight during OVER THE EDGE, and at that point I gave my readers an up close and personal
look at a few very intense days in his life. And even though Stan got his
happy ending in OTE, he also appeared as a minor secondary character in many of
the later books, including GONE TOO FAR. He had a "walk on"
part in HOT TARGET -- he and his wife, Teri, come to pick up Kelly Paoletti,
after Murphy and Angelina are shot in the driveway of the Malibu beach house --
and it's clear (at least I hope it is!) that he and Teri are very happy
together, really enjoying that no-longer-new hot tub, and occasionally breaking
glasses now and then.
So that's what I mean by
off-screen action.
Now, another technique that
I usually use in the Troubleshooters books is something that I think of as "writing
in real
time." For example, when I was writing THE UNSUNG HERO, I knew that
it was going to be released in the summer of 2000. So I purposely had most of the action take place in August of 2000.
I included a "date line" at the top of each scene in which a new day
begins. In THE UNSUNG HERO, a lot of action takes place over a very short
amount of time, and my hope was that including those "date lines,"
would help readers remember that. (I'm not sure that it was necessary...)
Anyway, THE DEFIANT HERO,
the second book in the series, was released in February 2001, and the book
purposely takes place in the spring of that year.
OVER THE EDGE came out in
late August -- the action in that book is about six months after THE DEFIANT
HERO.
See how that works?
That's what I mean by "real time." If I'd wanted it to, I could
have made four years pass between THE DEFIANT HERO and OVER THE EDGE. But
I chose not to. (Writing is all about making choices!)
Okay, with that in mind,
let's talk about BREAKING POINT.
BREAKING POINT is set in the
present day. (Actually Chapter One, scene one is June 20th, 2005.
For the purposes of this book, that is the "Present Day.")
Like the other books, the present day action throughout this novel happens over the course of a
relatively short amount of time.
Also like the other
Troubleshooters books, there
are two major subplots -- two secondary stories that are told along with the main
conflict of Max getting dreadful news that Gina has died in a terrorist attack
in Germany.
Unlike the other books in
the Troubleshooters series... Well, it might help if you know that my original
title for this book was FLASHBACK. <ggg>
Remember that line of
characters moving forward? Remember the concept of off-screen
action? Well, with BREAKING POINT, I wanted to do something a little
different. I warped backwards in time, so I could shine a spotlight on Max and Gina during the
days and weeks immediately following Max's
near fatal gunshot wound that he received in GONE TOO FAR.
Since GONE TOO FAR had been
released (in the summer of 2003), I had written both FLASHPOINT and
HOT TARGET.
Max doesn't appear in
FLASHPOINT, but I purposely gave readers a
glimpse of him during HOT TARGET. In those brief scenes in that book, I let the readers know that a) Gina finally left
for her volunteer gig in Africa, b) whatever happened between Max and Gina
during those months after
GONE TOO FAR ended was enough for Jules to think of them as being together (he mentions that
Gina left Max), and c) Max is miserable.
With that understood, I
don't feel as if I'm giving a whole lot away to say: Here's what you're going
to get in way of subplots in BREAKING POINT:
