Card Games

It's plotting time again, which means that I've taken over the dining room table to play with my scene cards.

I'm a very visual plotter. Each card is a scene, and each suspect has his or her own color. Sometimes I give a suspect their own color of card, but this time I simply used little colored flags. The colored Post-It notes on the top of the scene cards also mean something--pink ones are dead bodies, and orange ones are fight/attack scenes. All of this color enables me to see the story arc and structure at a glance. And the blue cards? Those are clues or twists that are still looking for their proper place in the scheme of things; this is very early stage, with only the first dozen or so cards on the far left actually in place. The rest are still in a holding pattern.

This book is proving to be a bit different as it has a very involved "backstory"--the details of the victim's life before she is killed--that also needs to be worked out. Of course, in any mystery, there are always two stories going on at the same time--the events the reader and the detective see, and all the stuff that's happening off stage.

As for a title, that's still open. I'm thinking about using the word "silence" in there, or maybe "children," perhaps with a WHEN or a WHERE, but I'm still waiting for inspiration. Hopefully it will strike soon.

As for Angel, his tests results are back and his numbers are stable, so it's good news!