Where am I in the mystery novel process? I finished and sent in two proposals for series mysteries in the traditional genre. Think Agatha Christie. One of those has come back with some editing suggestions, and I'm pretty excited to have the attention of an agent. We'll see how it goes.
One tool I am finding really helpful is K.M. Weiland's explanation of Scene Structure. This graph was done by Christine Frazier, keeper of Better Novel Project, who reviewed Weiland's book. Better Novel Project is a great blog I highly recommend. According to best-selling author Weiland, who also has a great blog called Helping Writers Become Authors, a scene is compose of the scene and the sequel.
The scene starts with the protagonist's goal, followed by this goal coming up against a type of conflict or opposition, followed by a disaster, which could be obstruction of the goal, an injury or a hollow victory. Essential to the scene is its sequel: protagonist's reaction, (panic? fury?), a dilemma (analyze, review, plan) and the decision to take action or not to take action. Weiland spells it out beautifully, so I suggest you high tail it over to her blog or get her book, Structuring Your Novel. If you need the visual, again, see Ms. Frazier's post How to Deconstruct a Scene like K.M. Weiland.
How am I using this graph? I am such a visual learner, that this one tool, even though I don't feel I have to follow it to the letter, reminds me of what my character should do in a scene in order to keep readers interested and build a good story. And it helped push through the panic that set in after getting the email about the edits. Some of the suggestions meant re-writing entire scenes and getting rid of a few others. Gah! But after I paced around the kitchen table about a gazillion times, I went up to my writing room, set up the graph on a little stand I found at Staples so it would be staring me in the face and plowed into the manuscript. So far so good. And get on over to Better Novel Project and Helping Writers Become Authors.
