Author: Tim Chapman

Tim Chapman is the author of the Sean McKinney series of mysteries, plus edits LitBop, a literary magazine. You can find out more about him on his website, www.timchapmanauthor.com, or by clicking here, read his last post here, and buy his books here.             Around this time last year, I wrote a blog post for blackbirdwriters.com titled Listen Up. In it, I discussed dialog and mentioned that one dialog writing tool I enjoy is eavesdropping—listening to conversations in public settings. I don’t mean using what you hear word for word but rather, getting the flavor of real conversation. It’s risky,…

Tim Chapman is the author of the Sean McKinney series and an editor for LitBop literary journal. You can find out more about him on his website. www.timchapmanauthor.com, or by clicking here, read his last post here, and buy his books here. Read the following description of a crime and the subsequent collection and analysis of the evidence. Then take the quiz. The answers will be posted in the Blackbird Writers Discussion Forum on Facebook this week.  https://www.facebook.com/groups/266333987835433 The Crime—The Wheels Are Set In Motion The police receive a 911 call from a woman who identifies herself as Ellen. She says…

Tim Chapman is the author of the Sean McKinney mystery series, as well as a short story writer. You can find out more about him on his website www.timchapmanauthor.com, or by clicking here, read his last post here, and buy his books here. I’ve been thinking a lot about dialog lately. The project I’m working on is very dialog heavy, and as I write, I’m saying the lines in my head with, what I imagine are, the accents and inflections the characters would use. Sometimes while writing, I’ll go back a few pages and read the dialog aloud. Of course,…

Time Chapman is the author of the Sean McKinney series and the editor the literary journal LitBop. You can find out more about him on his website timchapmanauthor.com, or by clicking here, read his last post here, and find his books here. Do artists have a responsibility to speak to the human condition? Lin-Manuel Miranda thinks so. In his December 2019 article in The Atlantic he writes, “Art lives in the world, and we exist in the world, and we cannot create honest work about the world in which we live without reflecting it.” He goes on to use The…

Tim Chapman is the author of A Trace of Gold. You can find out more about him here, see his books here, and read his latest post here. Over the last thirty years, I’ve worked for the Chicago Police Department, the Chicago Tribune, and Chicago City Colleges. I’ve drunk Prosecco in her overpriced restaurants and G&Ts in her jazz clubs. Chicago is the standard by which I compare other cities when I travel. When I write my little stories, Chicago appears as one of the characters. A while back, I was asked to write a short essay about using place as character and…

Tim Chapman is the author of A Trace of Gold. You can find out more about him here, see his books here, and read his latest post here. Who Took My Shorts?          I love short stories. I read them. I write them. I listen to them in the car and at the gym. There’s been talk in literary circles of late that short stories are making a comeback. With publishers tossing 600-page door stops at readers and being reluctant to gamble on single-author collections and anthologies it looked for a while like short stories were in decline. Magazines devoted…

Tim Chapman is a former forensic scientist, English teacher, and martial arts instructor. You can read more about him here, see his books here, and read his last post here. Not long ago, I was asked by the Mystery Writers of America to yak about the writing advice I’ve received over the years from professors and fellow authors. In thinking about it, I realized I’ve received LOTS of advice—some useful and some, like WRITE DRUNK, EDIT SOBER, not so much. Here are the tips I think are worth sharing. PRACTICE: One of the fiction writing classes I took was an…

Tim Chapman is a former forensic scientist for the Chicago Police Department and is the author of A Trace of Gold and The Blue Silence. You can find out more about him here, see his last post here, and get his books here. A few summers ago, at the Printers Row Lit Fest in Chicago, author Clare O’Donohue and I gave a talk about writing sex scenes. It was essentially a conversation in which we shared opinions and read the nasty bits from a few famous novels, as well as our own. To prepare, I perused books that contained well-known…

Former forensic scientist Tim Chapman is the author of two books featuring Sean McKinney. You can read more about him here., and read his previous post on Blackbird Writers here. A Trace of Gold by Tim Chapman “Law is man’s attempt to civilize society. Science is man’s attempt to reveal truth. Forensic science, then, is the intersection of civilization and truth.” —Sean McKinney: “A Trace of Gold” A lofty sentiment from my fictional forensic scientist, but the reality in both fiction and life is closer to the philosophy of Heraclitus (or Patti Smith) who said the only constant is change. Forensic…

From Tim Chapman. Read his bio here. Some of the tools writers use to tell stories are Character, Dialogue, Voice, Point of View, Tense, Scene, and Plot. Writers hope their stories are so engaging that readers will be unaware of these tools and unaware of how the writer wrestled with them. My Blackbird peers are well versed in using the seven tools, but I have a question for them and for the readers of our stories—When it comes to setting a scene, how much description is enough? Scene tells us Who, What, Where and When. It’s the same sort of…