I had a lot of fun working on my killer this week. Wednesday was the day I did this work, and I didn’t even reach the end of the chapter in Writing the Killer Mystery for creating the killer. I was itching to get creating.
This story, The Beast Within, has been stewing for many years, ever since I finished Night Crawler, actually. Well, I had the title and I’ve been dipping into it ever since. (I finished Night Crawler in 1996 …)
And I thought I had my killer sorted. But then lightbulbs started to go on all over, particularly this past week or so, and now my killer has changed.
That’s fine. It’s great, in fact. Because, thinking about it, my original killer might have been too obvious. But now I have a new killer, it means I have an extra suspect in the original killer. And all of that means added depth as well.
So, what killer work did I do this week? (Do you see what I did there? Killer – get it?) Well, I had to come up with a new name for a start. Then I thought of a brief description. Added some personalty traits, some likes and dislikes.
I gave them a history and a backstory, a reason for killing and a reason for killing this particular victim. I gave them some killer skills, and I gave them an accent and a dialect.
In all I wrote 293 words, bringing the total so far to 2,093.
On Thursday I started work on the suspects, but that may take a little longer now as I now have this extra suspect. At the moment, I have three other suspects. So that’s three lots of characters to work on.
We actually broke up yesterday for 3 weeks’ holiday. Next Thursday we go away camping for 2 weeks. (We have house-sitters sorted, thankfully.) If I can get all of this planning work done by then, I may start writing the first draft while we’re there – or continue with it if I’ve already started.
The first draft will be in longhand, so I don’t have to worry about charging batteries or glare from sunshine/daylight. This is the only work I’ll be taking with us.
Have a great Easter!
