When Killing People Isn’t Enough

A few people have approached me online to ask about my writing process. Granted, they’re mostly bots trying to do God knows what, but still…

And today seems like a good day to talk about it since my process, as it were, recently all went to hell in a handcart.

 When writing a novel, people typically fall into two categories: plotters, who plan everything in advance, or pantsers, who prefer to write spontaneously. Personally, I fall under a third category—the planster. I like to plot a novel out so I know where I’m going, but leave myself open to new story or character ideas. 
             (Images by heidijergovsky and  Abbie Paulhus from Pixabay)

For instance, the character of Dearg, a Scottish eventing legend in “Cause for Elimination”, was supposed to be in the story for one scene. His sole purpose was to teach the clinic where Emily gets back her jumping mojo. Then it became two scenes, because for every step forward she needs to take two steps back, so back he came for day two, where he drives her to have a breakdown. But that wasn’t enough for my Scottish hottie. He wheedled his way into my and Emily’s heart until…well, read the book. You’ll find out. 

So that worked out okay, right? He’s one of my favorite characters, after all. (Note the inspiration for Dearg - no wonder I couldn't get him out of my mind!)

Fast forward to a few years later and I started work on the second book in the Pine Cove mystery series. I had one clever idea and then just ran with it. There were so many twists, no one short of Sherlock Holmes would see where I was going. I mean, I was on FIRE!

Until I wasn’t. I meant it back in April or May when I said I had the first draft for the next in the series completed. And I really wanted to like it. I worked on it for months, after all. But you know what? I just didn’t. It had taken a dark turn on its uncharted path and I could not figure a way out of it.

So I did the only reasonable thing I could do and blew up the entire thing to start over. It was hard, but I’ve finally gotten the outline done and you know what? It’s a lot better. 

I’m still working on cannibalizing what I can from the first draft while creating a new, simpler outline. Because it’s easy to overcomplicate things in the race to create new story twists and more layered, conflicted characters.

The bottom line—sometimes just killing people is enough. 

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