Diary of a Novel – Words Worth Writing

24 September 2019

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...

Diary of a Novel

26 June 2019

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...

Diary of a Novel

10 June 2019

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...

Diary of a Novel

24 May 2019

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...

Diary of a Novel

20 May 2019

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...

Diary of a Novel

15 May 2019

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...

Diary of a Novel

19 April 2019

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...

Diary of a Novel

17 April 2019

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...

Diary of a Novel

12 April 2019

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...

Diary of a Novel

5 April 2019

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,...

Diary of a Novel

2 April 2019

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...

Diary of a Novel

3 September 2018

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...

Diary of a Novel

20 August 2018

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...

Diary of a Novel

15 August 2018

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...

Diary of a Novel