By THIRSTY
Laura Benedict is the
author of seven novels of suspense and her short stories have been nominated
for both Edgar and International Thriller Writers awards. Her latest book, The Stranger Inside, has been hailed as “downright
chilling,” an “elegant scary mystery” and “compelling.” Her short stories have
appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery
Magazine, Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads, The Lineup: 20 Provocative Women Writers
and St. Louis Noir and she is
often confronted with comments like, “You don’t look like a person who writes
scary stories.” Benedict grew up in Cincinnati and now lives in Southern
Illinois with her family.
Stay
Thirsty Magazine invited Laura Benedict to participate in
our One Hundred Words project with concepts
drawn from her new novel.
STAY
THIRSTY: Distant past.
LAURA
BENEDICT: When I was three years old, my parents and I moved
onto the Marine base at Quantico. I’d only taken baths up to that point in my
life, but the house only had a shower. I remember standing outside of it,
staring into its moist black-and-green interior, and being terrified. My
parents told me I was too big to bathe in the sink and had no choice but to use
it. The memory ends there. But the first dream I remember is of being afraid to
go into a bright pink bathroom, and discovering a gorilla hiding behind the door.
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| Laura Benedict |
STAY
THIRSTY: Dark secrets.
LAURA
BENEDICT: One of my favorite fictional characters, Louise
Penny’s Armand Gamache, believes that all murders have their roots in the past.
The murders in my stories have their roots in the distant past, and that’s certainly
true for the murders in The Stranger
Inside. My protagonist, Kimber, has a painful secret that has had a
devastating effect on her entire adult life. As the cost of keeping that secret
rises, the threat to her life escalates until she’s forced into taking actions
she’ll regret. There’s no shortage of secrets in the life of the man who’s
taken over her house, either.
STAY
THIRSTY: Suspense.
LAURA
BENEDICT: Here’s how to create suspense in a novel: Pose a
question at the beginning, and answer it by the end of the story. Leave the
reader wanting more at the end of every chapter. Leave the reader wanting more
at the end of every page. Leave the reader wanting more at the end of every
paragraph. Be sure to answer the original question. If you try to appear clever
by not answering the question, or make the answer equivocal, you’ll have wasted
the reader’s time, and they have the right to be pissed off. That’s all you
need to know.
STAY
THIRSTY: Complicated web.
LAURA
BENEDICT: There’s an old slogan for paper towels that I like:
“Life’s messy. Clean it up.” Real life is deliciously messy. So messy, in fact,
that it’s tough to replicate in fiction because so much of it sounds
unbelievable. I love creating complicated plots that demand to be unraveled.
It’s a huge challenge. There’s nothing like taking an hour or two to just
daydream about off-the-wall possibilities. Some work out, some get thrown out,
some I save for subsequent stories. I once heard that it’s cheating for a
writer to go back and plant new clues/hints after a story’s drafted. Rubbish.
STAY
THIRSTY: Character study.
LAURA
BENEDICT: Secondary characters are interesting to me, whether
I’m reading their stories or writing them. It’s the reason the character counts
in my novels are always relatively high. (I reign myself in for short stories.)
Among my favorites in The Stranger Inside
are Hadley, the six-year-old daughter of Kimber’s former lover, Claudia,
Kimber’s mother, Neely Curtis, who works the desk at the locksmith office,
Jenny, Kimber’s elderly next door neighbor, and Mr. Tuttle, Jenny’s tiny dog. (Fret
not. Mr. Tuttle doesn’t die in the novel. A dog died in a flashback in my first
novel, and I still hear about it.)
STAY
THIRSTY: Compelling characters.
LAURA
BENEDICT: Is there anything more tedious than a fictional character
(or person) who appears so good that they’re incorruptible, or so bad that they
have zero redeeming qualities? In The
Stranger Inside I tried to pay very close attention to the moral and
emotional complexities of all of the characters. Kimber, the protagonist, was
fascinating to write because she wasn’t much concerned about whether the people
around her liked her—unless she already cared for them and felt she might have
something to lose if she alienated them too badly. Some might call her
calculating. I call her complex, and redeemable.
STAY
THIRSTY: Twists and turns.
LAURA
BENEDICT: I can’t bear a dull story. Can’t bear to read them,
and I live in fear of writing them. I once made the mistake of taking a
graduate level writing workshop, and every story I submitted was mocked for
having “too much plot.” Perhaps the stories were just bad, but it was that
disdain for plot that I recall. When I pick up a piece of fiction, I’m fine if
the story pisses me off or strains my credulity. I appreciate beautiful
language and interesting structure, but if a story bores me or takes itself too
seriously, I stop reading.
STAY
THIRSTY: Sisters.
LAURA
BENEDICT: Until I was in my early twenties, I was perfectly
awful to my younger sisters. The first came along when I was three-and-a-half.
While I don’t recall being immediately resentful of her, neither do I have many
fond, big-sister memories. By the time the second turned five, I was
occasionally required to babysit both of them. Too immature for the
responsibility, I terrified them because I was terrified. I screamed. I bossed.
Our childhood relationships formed in unhappy ways. Thankfully, they forgave me.
But it’s no surprise to me that the sibling relationships in my work are
fraught and destructive.
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