It's Exciting When The Writer Doesn't Know What's Happening Next

I was writing a scene for CRIME & NOURISHMENT this week that saw the introduction of a new character. He was needed as he had to shed some light on the personality of the first murder victim where there were no witnesses to the crime. I wasn't actually sure how the scene was going to develop so I just kept writing it to find out.

Sometimes that's the best position to be in and it proved so this time too. When the scene was over I'd managed to introduce some blackmail and implicated another character as a possible murder suspect. The news of this has also caused friction between two main characters and they can no longer continue investigating the crime together.

This certainly wasn't in my initial plans for the novel but I love that a story can shift and move about. Just by creating this new scene I now have a friendship in jeopardy and it will be interesting to see if it can be saved.

I suppose for some people the thought of sitting in front of a computer screen all day, in a room on your own; just typing away, writing descriptive scenes and conversations would be a nightmare but I absolutely love it.

I'm already looking forward to the rewrites of the second draft. At the moment I know the story has become a little random in places but the point of the first draft is to get everything into the story and then start cutting and amending later on and streamlining the text down into a solid, easy to follow novel.

I'm hoping I'll have this first draft finished by the middle of August and then I'll take a break and start the rewrites at the beginning of September. My Twitter profile mentions a publication date of early 2018 and I'm going to do my best to stick to that.

At least I know who the murderer is at this stage of the story. I just hope the reader won't have guessed!