The Plot Sickens

Years ago I read a mystery story a night.  After a year or so of reading mysteries that way, I'd read the first couple of chapters, guess the ending, and check the last chapter to see if I’d got it right.  This saved time, but didn't show me how authors structure novels.

For a few years now, I’ve written bits of a murder mystery.  After reading so many mysteries writing one should be easy - Pfaugh!  While writing the people and settings is interesting, getting characters to move out of their chairs and do anything is a different matter.  What on earth is going to happen next in this story?

The person I was when I started isn’t the person I am now.  The story too, is changing as I go along.  Sometimes I get lost in the story.  When I come up for air the story feels like congealing lava.  Part of the problem is that I don’t want to kill anyone off.  Another problem is that the story has changed from a straightforward poisoning story to the story of the insidious growth of jealousy.

A long time ago I dealt with the destructive and consuming feeling of jealousy.  I worried that reexamining this feeling would revive it; It hasn’t.  I can examine the insanity that lasted for a while with me.

I don’t plan easily. I write and write and don’t really know where on earth the story is going. The fix for this problem might be to pay attention to the plot.  How?  Plan one?  Me?  I bought three how to plot books.  Steal This Plot, No Plot? No Problem! and Just Write, here’s how!  All have excellent advice.  I made the lists from Steal – story spicers and motivators.  But I can’t decide what plot to steal.  I filled the six boxes from Just Write.  I keep telling myself that I must write, then edit and remind myself that it’s not all crap, just a work in progress, advice from No Plot? No Problem!  My brilliant younger sister advised that I outline the story from the end working toward the beginning.  I'll end up doing that too;  it seems the best way to get where I'm going.

Until I get hopelessly bogged down again I'm going for the reductive sculptural approach - just write at least twelve hours a week (No P? No P!) and trust that form will happen or can be imposed on the story later.  In any case the project seems worth doing to me.  Maybe after 100,000 words I can cut out enough solidified lava and rearrange events to make a coherent story that moves.