Pen, Spoon & Dagger

Total word count for last 2 days:  too embarrassed to post. It's been pouring rain here in the Northeast for the last 2 days and I've spent more time in the basement vacuuming up water (no sump pump) than writing. I did sit down with my laptop 2 nights ago, but I couldn't seem to get motivated.  I've got some serious plot issues that have me stymied.  I've also been rethinking my protagonist, wondering if I should change her background/personality.  These are major hurdles, at least for this writer. I tried free writing.  I don't know how that works for others, but it doesn't seem to do the trick for me.  I can write.  Give me a topic and I'll give you 1,000 words whether I know anything about the topic or not -- that's one of the things that got me through college.  My problem is relating the free writing back to my own manuscript.  Just doesn't seem to happen.. Monday night I decided to free write about a super power - a theme sugge...

Current word count:  3,791. Now that I've got my protagonist down on paper, I need to flesh out the secondary characters.  These are the people Kensing will interact with on a day-to-day basis; turn to for help, advice or a shoulder to cry on. Kensing is a neophyte caterer.  This means she'll need help not only with catering knowledge, but also with legal/police matters in order to solve the mysteries she'll face.  And, of course, we need a potential love interest.  What's life without love? To that end, she is going to meet her future business partner, Abby, early in the first book.  At the same time, she will be meeting her second partner, AnneLise, a French woman who just happens to be married to the local District Attorney.    Love interest?  How about a handsome, unattached police captain?  Maybe several years older than Kensing, but still young enough to give her a run for her money.  Friction between the two can gradually sh...

Yesterday's writing total: 1,076 words.  And half an hour's research into my chosen weapon - but that's a secret. Characters need to change throughout a series, to develop and grow.  That keeps them interesting and real.  Characters succeed if they're vivid (if they have likes, quirks and habits the reader can relate to).  They need physical traits and internal motivation (what makes them do what they do).  When I wrote my first mystery -- Never Eat Fish on Monday -- I carefully plotted out character descriptions for my protagonist and the three recurring secondary characters.  I found myself constantly revising the charts as my manuscript progressed and the characters evolved.  For 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall , I'm starting with the protagonist I developed last time.  It's a very detailed chart, running some five pages in total.  It covers everything from physical appearance to where she lives.  I also made a list of ten things ...

I've set myself a quota of 1,000 words per day -- wishful thinking -- but it's something to aim for. Most days, I'll be lucky to 500 words down on the page, and I expect most of those will be revised or deleted down the road. But at least I'll be writing. Big drum roll: yesterday I wrote Chapter 1, Scene 1, a total of 1,249 words. About fifty percent of them have a chance of surviving the editing process. When I was a journalist, many, many years and careers ago, I learned not to obsess about getting it right the first time, especially the opening paragraph. Just start typing and let it flow. You can always go back and make it pretty. And it's a lot easier today with word processors than when I started with an IBM Selectric and a big bottle of White-out. Chapter One opens with: "Help! I need help. Please!" I'm sure I can do better, but for now, I'm going to work with that. Believe me, it's a vast improvement over my first attem...

So.  I'm going to write a mystery.  Sounds easy enough.  All I need is a plot and about 70,000 words.  No sweat. Yes, I know I'm delusional, but that's an asset when it comes to plotting. I am an unashamed Type-A personality.  Translate that into meaning that I will be working from an outline.  Said outline will become more and more detailed as the plot develops in my head.   That's why they include the outline numbering function in MS Word, right? My genre -- cozy or traditional mystery - says my word count should be between 60,000 and 80,000 words.   I'm going to target 75,000 and cut from there.  This equates to about 300 pages in a paperback. Ross Mahler is an author and screenwriter who has come up with a theory and a tool called the Script Beat Calculator . You type the number of pages in your script and Mahler’s Calculator will give you a guide (within a typical 3-act structure) of the page numbers by which the various “be...

The critical aspect of any book, plot aside, is the characters.  For a book to succeed, its characters must be either a) likeable, b) memorable, or c) both. Not only is the character's personality important, but also his or her name.  Take the obvious Hannibal Lecter.  Not a particularly likeable character, but definitely memorable.  Read The Silence of the Lambs and you will never forget him.  Thomas Harris could have, I suppose, named his character John Davis, but would that have had the same effect? Hannibal rhymes with cannibal; Hannibal was also a fierce warrior.  Lecter?  Say it out loud.  It has a clean, slashing sound.  On another level, maybe we want to equate it to the church lector, the person who delivers the word of….Hannibal? Harris' second character is Clarice Starling.  Clarice is a fantasy name, one a writer might give to a fairy princess, yet it derives from the Latin claritia or fame.  It can also mean illustrio...

Earlier today I was sitting in the dentist's chair. On his ceiling was a pseudo newspaper with witty items and games, presumably to keep you amused while you're waiting for the real show to start. After I figured out the mathematical quiz (about 3rd grade level), one item caught my eye, a quote by Will Rogers: "Even if you're on the right track,  you'll get run over if you just sit there." That made me think about my writing career. My stalled writing career. Some two years ago, having sold my software consulting company, I decided to fulfill my dream of writing a book -- a mystery. Had I known at the time the amount of sweat and tears (no blood so far) it would take, I probably would have taken up painting instead. I didn't just decide to become a writer one day -- I'd worked as a reporter for several years before going back to school for an MBA -- but I was blissfully ignorant of what it took to write a book .  So, I started writing. And I pl...