Day two. I wrote 1150 words yesterday but at the moment they're in scenes rather than continuous prose. I'd wanted to use Scrivener to help me with this but as I'm on retreat in Holland and only carry hand luggage I couldn't fit my copy of Scrivener for Dummies in the case. Bad decision. However, it's not deterring me from my task, it's just going to make it slightly more difficult to assimilate all my ideas later.
Back to yesterday. I researched a lot of Chinese names and their meanings, found out about surnames, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the one child policy (which may or may not be significant as it doesn't fit the current time frame), the history of Hong Kong and the handover. I've written fragments of the opening murder, a scene with one of the protagonists and her husband, and made a start on another. I'm building the antagonist and his back story but don't want to set him in stone yet as I've a lot of other things to consider before then.
Without giving my plot away, I need it to be a series of 9 very specific murders committed at different times, but found in a specific place at the same time. For this I need to create the 9 victims, their back stories and their relationships with the antagonist. If I have an idea that fits a couple of victims I then might need to change the antagonist's history a little, or reject the idea and find another. This is a slow process, so I'm writing scenes to help solidify the ideas and then test them against each other. It's incredibly complicated at the moment, until definite decisions are made, and once I get going I have to force myself to stop and take a break, to let ideas settle a little, then go back to them.
Today I've set myself the task of writing fragments of 3 more murders and writing more about the second protagonist who will eventually be working with the first. I need to create her world, build up more of the first protagonist and plot how the two will collide. The time line is important too so I need to write it down in a line with dates and juggle things around until they fit. What I sometimes do is write each event on a small piece of paper and then lay then out in front of me so I can see how/where/why they fit and move then round until they do or add more. The I stick them down onto a large piece of paper and pin this up on the wall in front of me so I can keep referring back to it. I'm not at that stage yet, but I'm working up to it.
What's really good about staying here is that on TV there's a channel that is dedicated to real life crime, autopsies and investigations. It's American, so procedures will differ, but the medical stuff is very useful. I also brought with me Dead Reckoning by Dr Michael Baden and Marion Roach, which is a great resource for autopsies and crime scene evidence collection. Hopefully my 3 murders will be authentic and my clues realistic.
Okay, I'm off to work. See you tomorrow.
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