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Posted on Wednesday, June 12, 2019 5:17 PM
How does a mystery writer go about planting clues and red herrings, fill the book with the usual suspects and the right amount of foreshadowing, enough conflict and suspense to keep the reader guessing whodunit, with a twist at the end? Follow along on the series of blogs, coming up in the next several weeks, to see what worked for me.
This week's blog is titled "Outline or Not, but Have a Plan." Whether you're a plotter or a "pantser," when writing a mystery you can't leave |
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Posted on Wednesday, June 27, 2018 5:22 PM
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Suzanne: Posted on Sunday, June 03, 2018 5:08 PM
ARE YOU A PLOTTER OR A PANTSER?
What does that mean? To a writer, it describes how you go
about your writing process.
A “plotter” means that the writer starts by making an
outline before the first sentence of the novel is written. She knows how the
story starts, where it’s going and she knows the ending. She knows every
character, what they’re going to do, where they’re going and when. Sure, once
and a while she might change her mind and stray from her outline—she’s not inflexible,
after all—but there will still be a revised outline and a clear ending in mind. |
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Posted on Tuesday, January 23, 2018 3:41 PM
Call it flow, pacing, or
movement—your scenes, chapters, paragraphs, and sentences should be varied in
length and technique. As a musician, I prefer to call it rhythm.
Short, choppy sentences and
fragments add tension to a scene. In real life, sentences tend to grow shorter
as we become more upset. We speak in fragments, sometimes uttering single words
at a time. Especially when used in dialogue, this can add a sense of reality to
a scene. |
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Posted on Friday, December 29, 2017 8:12 PM
THE POWER OF PROOFREADING
Never underestimate the importance of the time you spend on proofreading
your work. It’s the final, and most crucial, step in the writing process. Face
it, we’ve all fallen victim to the occasional typo, misspelling, and grammar or
punctuation errors that might even change the meaning of your text.
Time, or more accurately, the lack of time, is the main reason
proofreading tasks are ignored. But if you take the time to proofread
carefully, you show your reader that you care enough about them to pay
attention to details. |
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Posted on Wednesday, May 31, 2017 12:42 PM
Anyone recognize this blast from the past? Do you know who the organist is, or any of the skaters? |
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Posted on Wednesday, September 28, 2016 8:41 PM
Missy Jenkins is a piano teacher who lives in the small community of Twin Pines, located on the outskirts of Middletown, Pennsylvania. She is in her thirties, married to a construction worker and has two young boys. The Missy Jenkins musical mystery series is set during the late 1970s so the music that weaves throughout the series includes disco, rock and classical themes. Missy teaches her students, and her readers, bits of musical history and trivia along the way. Every protagonist needs strengths and weaknesses, and for Missy, her character strengths are also the flaws that get her into trouble. |
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Posted on Saturday, July 23, 2016 12:21 PM
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Suzanne Flaig: Posted on Monday, June 13, 2016 9:30 PM
The second book in the Missy Jenkins musical mystery series, "Death in 3/4 Time," takes place in December of 1979. The following excerpt is from Chapter One: The sparkle of ice on the bedroom window softened the deep blue of the winter night. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Two a.m. With her husband on a business trip and her teenagers spending the night with friends, this was her opportunity to indulge her secret passion for ballroom dance. Taking a deep breath, she inhaled the cool, clean pine scent of the Christmas garland looped around the upstairs bannister. |
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Posted on Friday, June 06, 2014 10:20 AM
The first novel in the Missy Jenkins mystery series, TERROR IN DOUBLE TIME, is finally published on Amazon, Kindle and in print version. Look it up by title at either the Amazon or Kindle sites to buy it, or for a signed book, email me at missymysteries@hotmail.comand I'll send an order form. I'm especially excited about the cover photo because it's a snapshot I took in 1978 before the Three Mile Island accident. I was driving up the same stretch of road that I describe in Chapter One of the book, when I thought, "What an awesome view" and stopped the car to take that picture. |
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