Back to the drawing board

It's all Agatha Christie's fault. The night before I began to read Dead Man's Folly. I'm only on chapter two and already I can see what's lacking in my own mystery novel. There are not enough suspects. I've been focussing so much on the actual villian that I've forgotten to introduce other possible villians and even to flesh out the other characters properly, aside from the heroine of course. What this means, is that I've had to work around the murdered character, and come up with possible murderers as well as motives etc. This has caused me to want to change some of the existing characters as well.

So, now I have to go and research once again. This time I'm researching characterisation. I did a little of this well before I started to write, but obviously not enough. I'm finding it difficult to strike a balance between the research aspect of writing and the actual writing. When do you know enough is enough? It looks as though I haven't done enough, otherwise I wouldn't need to go back to the drawing board so to speak to continue with the research.

So, this week I will continue with some research. I will decide who my cast of characters will be once and for all and what part exactly they play in my murder mystery.

Writing and the order of things

I'm trying to organise myself and the way I write. Over my mid-year break I found this to be a fairly easy thing to do, but with other classes and work, I'm finding it difficult to find time to write, yet alone strike a balance between my other subjects and work

Something I discovered only recently, is that I can write from my head into the computer. Everything I wrote prior, was in long hand. A subject I did last semester called Electronic Writing, forced me to think differently in relation to writing. At first I found this idea really going against the grain, but over the break, I tried writing my story straight into the computer. Admittedly, there were bits and pieces that I had written in my journal and in an excercise book, specifically bought for the writing of my detective mystery. I found that I suddenly had a freedom of writing, and that my typing could keep up with the sentences coming out of my head. I didn't do my typing lessons in school in vain! So, with this tool, if you like, harnessed, I found I was able to write, add the bits and pieces from my journal, change things around, and more importantly, delete. Deleting writing is the hardest thing to do.

As the title of this post is 'writing and the order of things', I thought I would list a bit of a to-do-list. I need to research more. Not just write. Therefore, I will begin researching the following:

• Historical journals from Australia's Victorian past. Dates approximately 1850 onwards
• Old architecture in Australian rural towns

As well as the research, I need to keep writing. Otherwise I feel like I will lose the impetus of the story. That brings me to ordering my day. How to work writing around my other academic projects - that seems completely frivolous in comparison. I've struck upon the idea of writing on Saturday afternoons/evenings/nights. Unless my social life intervenes. Although, it is semester time so the social events should really be curtailed. Anyway, this seems like a good time to at least aim for. Thus, this post has now allowed me to get some sort of order in my mind in relation to my writing.