I was plugging along on my revisions yesterday, knowing I needed to put in some more interview scenes for my investigator. I already had a couple of characters who needed some more suspicion attached to them as red herrings, but my new scene didn’t come from those characters. Out of the blue, another character walked in and demanded some suspicion. I’m hopeful it works. I think it would make sense to interview this person as he had something to lose by not committing the crime. So, I write this new scene and it ends up being 10 pages, which necessitated a bit of juggling with where one chapter ended and another began so I didn’t have the world’s longest chapter.
Have you ever had this happen — either a character or a scene popped up out of nowhere?
And let me just say — juggling red herrings and clues so that you end up with a villain that wasn’t obvious but makes sense in retrospect is not as easy as one might think. It’s like trying to untangle a mass of Christmas lights with your brain without benefit of your hands.
All that windy, stormy weather yesterday brought the temperature back down. About 20 degrees cooler today. Good thing revisions keep me indoors and I’m not tempted by warm, sunny weather.
November 29th, 2005 at 10:47 am
There’s a very good reason I don’t write mysteries and suspense, but yeah, I often have scenes I didn’t expect pop into the plot like ripe persimmons. Take note that unripe persimmons are horrible but ripe ones — not so bad.
It always makes me feel terribly clever until I realize how much I’ll have to revise the rest of the book to match. And then I wish I wasn’t such a damn pantser.
Today my verification letters spell out “trotfly”. I think trotflies probably like ripe persimmons, and also outhouses.
Jody W.
November 29th, 2005 at 4:17 pm
LOL! Your comments always crack me up, Jody.
November 29th, 2005 at 5:00 pm
Hi Trish! Love your blog…first time here! I don’t write mysteries either, but I have had characters pop up out of nowhere…guess they wanted their share of the limelight. ;o)
November 29th, 2005 at 5:17 pm
I have characters pop up, and usually brings about a whole other subplot to write! Thank goodness I’m a panster! LOL Good luck!
November 30th, 2005 at 6:50 am
I LOVE it when the stuff comes from nowhere!
November 30th, 2005 at 8:34 am
That just happened to me, Trish. Like a week ago. I was finishing up a proposal and this minor character started getting a personality. So much so that he cannibalized another character. (I combined the two). There wasn’t even any bloodshed. It was amazing.
Tanya
November 30th, 2005 at 11:14 am
Ha ha on the character cannibalization (dude, is that a word?), Tanya. I had that happen one time, though I initially fought it.
Dorothy and Robin, thanks for stopping by! I always get so excited when I get comments from new folks.
December 1st, 2005 at 5:32 am
I love when that happens - great analogy about the Christmas lights, too!
December 1st, 2005 at 4:40 pm
Yes! I’m working on a mystery/romance too, and I had a character pop in for some suspicion a few weeks back as well. It was a woo-hoo moment, so I think my subconscious was just waiting to prod me in the right direction. But then I had to go back and layer it in and, yeah, things can look like a major rat’s nest when you start to juggle red herrings with real clues, character motivations to explain the red herrings, every uncovered artifact to have some meaning…allow me a moment to whimper in my hot chocolate.
It is like the fine edge of a blade trying to juggle information given to the reader with information kept back. Because you start to feel you are making things too obvious, and you just have to cross your fingers that the reader has an a-ha! moment at the end, and not a “who’s that? what? why?”
I love the Christmas light analogy as well. Darn bulbs!