A few years ago, I found a trio of intrepid characters, and they have lived in my mind ever since. Over the course of three years, mostly written in the two short months of November, I created a story. I liked the characters, and I like the story.
Then I tried to get clever, and thought my story was a little shiftless.
I owe several people a debt for inspiring me to this point, and the most intrepid has already read a very bad erotica that I wrote on vacation beside her in Cuba, and she still travelled with me again later!
So I thought about where my story could go, because the plot seemed a bit lacking, and I gave her the following options: romance, mystery, or historical fiction. She picked mystery, and I expected her to pick romance, and I have been struggling ever since.
(I am currently writing in a quiet darkened house with my daughter studying science for her final exam tomorrow and my sleeping cat in a box that she can just barely squeeze into but that she has claimed as her own. Outside the rolling thunder and winds have come and gone, and I have no power.
I regret not boiling tea when I first thought of it, and I had just discovered that using the water in my house during a thunder storm has some risk, so the shower that I could use now is also off the table for options.)
It turns out that I have learned the trick to writing (don’t think about it, just write!), but I have a lot to learn. I am not yet flexible or imaginative enough to take an idea and bend it to my will, even if it is a good idea or a familiar one. I am also struggling to edit my work. It feels like I am a raccoon with cotton candy. I do what I am used to, and before I know it, the act of rewriting words that I kind of liked the first time, but disappeared into nothing in my hands. Like the raccoon washing its food only to watch it dissolve, my editing results in no words that are worth keeping. It has been discouraging, and I am not able to get down to it as I was able to write.
I even revisited the group that inspired me to write, but all the incentives and expectations are about writing and word counts. How do I inspire editing? By words, time, quality? Every time I diverge, I am dissatisfied. I write parallel stories, but they characters walk around aimlessly like an early version of SIM family. I can’t seem to give them purpose. It all seems so frustratingly pointless. I think like a reader, and I am certain that this is badly written and not even that great of an idea.
Authors are follow tend to be serialists, and most of those have been murder mystery. Agatha Christie chastises me from the grave. “I would just come up with an idea, and sometimes I would write the story in a weekend!” Argh!
So I lay down with a few ideas after a walk home one night. I thought about all the books I had read that worked for me: Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Trixie Beldon, Inspector Gamache, Kinsey Milhone, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Encyclopedia Brown, Commisario Brunetti, Jeanette Oke’s intrepid female pioneers.
Here are my thoughts today on The Mystery at Chateau Laurier
Don’t tell the story as it happens. The trick is to keep some of it to the end for a revelation.
There is isn’t enough room for all 3 characters. Stephanie is the protagonist. She could have a physical disability that is obvious, but relieved in the pool. She may not join her friends for this story. It is often necessary to be alone for some things to happen.
Don’t be afraid to be outrageous, romantic, dramatic. That’s fun to read!`
Set the treasure hunt from the memory the a child who had done the hunt, and now was creating it.
The front desk, the room with Kirsch’s photographs, a table with fake books, fireplace, swimming pool plants or fountain.
So for Sarah T, I am still thinking and plotting and reading and writing and editing and rewriting. One day, when I think it’s a completed thought and not too painful to read!
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