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Sunday, June 28, 2020

Dan is in a Psychos Head. How Exactly Did He Get There?

Warning to my readers - this article is about writing murder mysteries, but because the author gets inside the mind of a serial killer, expect the scenes, descriptions, and thought processes one finds in a horror novel. If horror is hard for you to read for whatever reason, this article will be hard for you to read, as well.


In this article, Dan Alatorre is this week's guest blogged. I have worked on several projects with him, and he is a delightful friend. 

USA Today bestselling author Dan Alatorre has published more than 25 titles and is read in over a dozen languages around the world.

His fast-paced novels have gripped readers all over the globe, from the suspenseful murder mystery Double Blind to the intense medical thriller The Gamma Sequence. Readers can’t put his books down.


Dear Dan,
How on earth did you get inside the mind of such a shocking psycho in Double Blind?I’m having a very hard time with that myself – my killers aren’t that evil.
Signed,Wondering Writer





Dear Wondering,

How did I?

Hmm…

Well, in Double Blind I laid out some parameters of what I thought he’d do and think, based on stuff I’d read online about psychos, and stuff I’d seen in movies or read in books…

And then I said, he has to have urges or whatever, like an itch he can’t scratch, that make these actions beyond his control – like a wild animal that is hungry and must eat or they starve.
Like a lion in the jungle; if they don’t kill, they don’t eat.
It’s what they do, so they have to do it.

Then I dwelled there, showing the reader what I’d see and feel if I were doing it.


So how did I figure that part out?

An author friend once had a scene where a guy had to take a car and drive over what were essentially zombies to get away, and she said, “How do I describe what it’s like to run people over?”
Having never actually run people over, I assume, she was a bit lost.

I was like, well, on Mythbusters they’re always saying pig muscles are a good substitute for human muscles (like if you need to see how far a bullet penetrates), so what would be a good substitute for running over people? People are 90% water and some hard stuff. What’s like bones? Rocks? Tree limbs? And in a car, we’ve all driven over a speed bump; I bet that’s like running over a body. So, find a speed bump or some sticks, and drive over them! You’re halfway home: you have the information. But how do you relate it to a reader?

Having driven over a few large sticks in my time, I realized you receive information in a car from the ground up: first your feet feel a jolt, then your butt, then your hands through the steering wheel; maybe up your spine – I just broke down into detail what happened so I could transfer that information to a reader.

Same in Double Blind.


If you’ve ever cut up raw chicken for dinner, or a steak, there’s a feel to it.


Meat is meat; cutting a steak feels like cutting a human body.
And who’s going to say you’re wrong? Killers?

You think in detail about the process (for a reason I’ll explain in a sec), how using a serrated knife sends information up your hand and arm – and then what else would you feel (if it were a body, and the key word is FEEL)? Warm wet stuff, if you were stabbing a body; the knife never cuts smoothly when I’m cutting a chicken for dinner, so the killer’s knife would hang up on a bone or joint. Laying that out and adding the killer’s mental impulses like having to do it or needing to do it, to get relief – and then pushing it all as a package beyond what any normal person would ever do.
Also, a lot of killers like the feeling afterward, or during, like a sexual rush, so you can add part of that.


And many times there’s a degrading aspect they need to have over the victims, so you add that.


Lots of adding, right?
But wait, there’s more!

In Stephen King’s book Pet Sematary, there’s a scene where a college student gets hit by a car and his friends take him to the main character’s clinic, and King describes the guy’s brains showing. King dwells there for a while, and I realized how gross it was for me, “seeing” the guy’s brains as he laid there on the carpet – so it would be really gross for others.


And that was the genius.


Everyone who reads that gets a little uncomfortable because King dwelled there.

When I read a book or watch a movie, if it’s scary or whatever and it made an impact on me, I’ll watch it twice.


I watch it the first time to enjoy it, and then I watch it a second time – to learn.


When did I like this character? Why did I like them? What did the author do to make me like the character?


When did I start to feel scared in this movie? What was making me scared? How did the director lay the blocks to build to that feeling?

When you find it, you usually see the author or director dwells there.

So in Double Bind, I dwelled there. A lot. In the mental stuff and in the physical stuff the killer did. Some people thought I overdid it, and maybe they were right; we’ll see in book 2 because I wasn’t planning on being so “in the mind” of the killer, but it’s not finished being written yet, either!

Great question. Hope my answer helped.


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From Amazon reviews of my murder mystery Double Blind

“Dan Alatorre is one of the best mystery/thriller writers ever!”
Cheryl Shearin, Amazon review

“Shortly into this story I had already added Mr. Alatorre on my favorite authors list.” KayBay 1096, Amazon review

“This is the first book I’ve read by Dan Alatorre; he quickly shot to the top of my must-read list!” Bibliophile, Amazon review

“This is the first book I have ever read by Dan Alatorre and I love it.” Jobear, Amazon review

not the first book I’ve read of Dan’s (I’ve loved them all) but this is probably my favorite!” Angela Kay Amazon review

“Dan is a wonderful author.”
Angela Gallagher, Amazon review

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