24 September 2019 Diane Diary of a Novel Leave a comment

Diary of a Novel: plotting Acts I, II and III

I picked up the story bible for The Beast Within at the weekend and was mortified to see I’ve not done anything practical since the end of May. Saying that, I have been reading. I’m still on Writing the Killer Mystery by Ron D Voigts, Volume 3: Plotting the Murder. But I stalled when I got to the end of the book and didn’t know what to do next. In the meantime, I’ve been working on other projects, namely the pocket novel and the biography. […]

26 June 2019 Diane Diary of a Novel Leave a comment

Diary of a Novel: plotting the murder

I haven’t been completely idle since 10 June when I last updated the novel-writing diary. Aside from completing three large editing projects for a client, I’ve also started work on a pocket novel and joined a new writers’ group. Yesterday a short editing job arrived all the way from Hong Kong, from a new client. And this morning a longer proofreading job arrived in the post from lovely-already-client. This means I’m going to be busy next week as well. Since […]

10 June 2019 Diane Diary of a Novel 2 Comments

Diary of a Novel: advance character work done

Over the past two weeks, including the weekend, I’ve been quite busy doing a client edit that turned into a major rewrite. Writing uses up most of my creative energy. I gave up teaching because that depleted my supplies too. I try to just copy edit rather than development edit or rewrite so that I can continue to work on my own material. On Wednesday evening last week, at around 9:30pm, I completed the rewrite and submitted it to the […]

24 May 2019 Diane Diary of a Novel Leave a comment

Diary of a Novel: special characters – part 2

Okay, at the start of this week I’d hit a brick wall and was struggling with whether or not to have a “supporter” character in my story. I’ve been playing around with this all week, shuffling between various scenarios. Could my supporter also be my opponent? Could Marcie’s mom be both cheer-girl and devil’s advocate? (Of course, the answer to this is “yes”, but would it work for Marcie? Probably not.) Could I use her dad? Should it be the […]

20 May 2019 Diane Diary of a Novel Leave a comment

Diary of a Novel: special characters – part 1

Now, when I say “special” I don’t mean “special” as such, I mean “other important characters not mentioned already”. According to Ron D Voigts and Writing the Killer Mystery, these “special” characters consist of the following: sidekick opponent supporter My “sidekick” was easy. That’s going to be Woody (aka Mark Palmer/Woodstock) from Night Crawler. He was easy to jot down things about because he also features in the temporarily abandoned Catch the Rainbow, so he’s had a lot of work done […]

15 May 2019 Diane Diary of a Novel Leave a comment

Diary of a Novel: the suspects

The intention was to take The Beast Within away with us on our recent holiday and do some work here and there … Unfortunately, we were so busy enjoying ourselves that the story was completely neglected. Fortunately, before we went away, I did some extensive work on my suspects. The first of my suspects was always going to be the first of my suspects. But I always knew that this person was innocent. Because s/he also appears in Catch the Rainbow, this character […]

19 April 2019 Diane Diary of a Novel Leave a comment

Diary of a Novel: the killer

I had a lot of fun working on my killer this week. Wednesday was the day I did this work, and I didn’t even reach the end of the chapter in Writing the Killer Mystery for creating the killer. I was itching to get creating. This story, The Beast Within, has been stewing for many years, ever since I finished Night Crawler, actually. Well, I had the title and I’ve been dipping into it ever since. (I finished Night Crawler […]

17 April 2019 Diane Diary of a Novel 2 Comments

Diary of a Novel: the victim

Details of the victim have been percolating in the back of my mind this week, while I did other stuff. When I finally came to sit down and write the ideas up, I was surprised at how much I’d learnt about her. (I’m not throwing out any spoilers, remember. This will be on the book blurb.) The first reason for her death isn’t the one I ended up with. I explored her story and decided it was even a different […]

12 April 2019 Diane Diary of a Novel 2 Comments

Diary of a Novel: the sleuth

I didn’t get very much work done on the novel at the weekend as we did shopping and gardening on Saturday, the poet had a gig Saturday night, and we were out all day Sunday, walking. Saying that, I did start work on the characters on Saturday morning, writing 85 words. This was mostly writing an alphabetic list and filling in character names to make sure I didn’t have too many starting with the same letter or sounding too similar. […]

5 April 2019 Diane Diary of a Novel 2 Comments

Diary of a Novel: Great beginnings

I didn’t do any more work on the novel on Tuesday, so I wrote the grand total of 197 words, bringing my running total to 464. Instead, I carried on with the edit that I’d started on Monday. I worked on that all day Wednesday as well, and most of Thursday, submitting it yesterday teatime-ish. Before I’d finished that job, a new job came in from another client, and I was printing that off yesterday as I was finishing the […]

2 April 2019 Diane Diary of a Novel 2 Comments

Diary of a Novel: 2 April 2019

Having abandoned – temporarily – Catch the Rainbow, yesterday I started work on The Beast Within: a Marcie Craig mystery. Marcie Craig is the main protagonist and amateur sleuth in my first novel Night Crawler. Whereas that novel was set in a pub where she works as a rock DJ, this story is set in a nightclub, where she works for 2 nights a week. The title, The Beast Within, is a song by a band some of my old […]

3 September 2018 Diane Diary of a Novel 2 Comments

Diary of a novel: The Beast Within (Week 2) – planning work

We took last week off for the bank holiday. The last time we booked time off was a fortnight in June, when the heatwave was at its height. But we didn’t get to enjoy a single moment of it as we were moving house. So we decided to take last week off. And this time we were firm. We had a proper, bona fide week off, for a change. Because of that, I hardly did anything to The Beast Within. However, […]

20 August 2018 Diane Diary of a Novel 2 Comments

Diary of a novel: The Beast Within (Week 1) – planning work

I didn’t have a lot of time in week 1, which I already knew about. I had two appointments in the midlands that took out two complete days, and I had editing work to do on the three days I was in the office. Saying that, I did manage to do some planning work in week 1. Monday The first job was to gather together all the materials already started. The next job was to decide which planning system I’m […]

15 August 2018 Diane Diary of a Novel Leave a comment

Diary of a novel: The Beast Within

Here’s another new feature for Words Worth Writing, but one that has been well-received in the past, so it’s really being resurrected for the latest project. I’ve decided that my next project will be The Beast Within: a Marcie Craig mystery. When I hauled out my folders for this project last weekend, I was mortified to see I first started to jot notes down in 2003. July 2003. This is an absolute disgrace – but it’s also why I date things. I’ve […]