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.