Write A Novel with Me – Innocent Suspects Update

Write a Novel with Me – Update

 I am posting so that you know I am still here.  I have been struggling with balancing work and writing, again.  I have to confess that I have also been struggling with this step – developing the innocent suspects. 

 I have decided that maybe I chose my villain a little prematurely.  And because, though I want to share the experience of writing this novel, I may not want to share all of the details because when this master of the mystery genre is completed, I want all of my followers to run to the bookstore and buy it.

 I am still in the middle of this step but I do want to share what I have been doing.  I have also been reading a few how to write books, like Phyllis A. Whitney’s ‘Guide to Fiction Writing’ as well as ‘Bang the Keys’ by Jill Dearman.  One thing I have decided to do is use a book journal.  I am writing down all of my ideas as I go so that I don’t lose them.  That was an idea I picked up from ‘Guide to Fiction’.  I don’t normally journal but I rather liked this idea.

 As far as the innocent suspects, my character Ben, the English professor is now one of those suspects instead of my villain.  I think I’ve come up with a much more interesting villain.  Someone the reader can really fear.  I’ve also discovered that for me to continue developing characters, I had to develop more of my story and that is what has been taking me so long.  It feels like a puzzle that is missing a few pieces and it is driving me crazy.  So I had to step back for a day or two to let it all settle.  While I wasn’t obsessing about it, an exceptional idea came to me.

 Because this is a mystery, that part I can’t share but I can share the process I used to come up with it. I needed a villain who had a grudge against my protagonist, so I devised different scenarios.  Maybe the protagonist was involved with a group of friends who accidentally killed someone after drinking, maybe when the protagonist was a teenager, she was babysitting a child who was kidnapped and later murdered, or at least a bloody garment was found indicating a murder.  Maybe the protagonist was kidnapped along with another child, she escaped but the other child was murdered.  Those are a few ideas that I came up with while I played the what if game.

 Feel free to share some of your ideas with me but don’t tell me what you actually chose to use for your story because I want to be surprised when I read your published story too.

 I plan to post again, this weekend after I have more thoroughly developed the other innocent suspects.  Just know that one of those suspects is the real murderer. 

 I do look forward to hearing from you.  Let me know what is working for you and maybe what isn’t, maybe I can make some suggestions to help you. 

 In the meantime, keep writing.

 Virginia

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