Plus Ça Change – July 27, 2026
That title is gonna raise some bot’s attention.
I know how the story ends. I’ve known for a long time, really for a couple of years. Sorta. There’s a murder. This isn’t a murder mystery, and certainly not a true-crime detective story. But there’s a murder, and I need to know how that’s going to work.
I’m at a pretty good spot in the overall story. I figure I’m about half done. I stopped writing, went back, read everything with an eye to consistency and coherency, made some changes, the usual obsessive-compulsive nonsense authors enjoy. With an eye toward answering the question, before moving on, where have I been?
Calling the ending amorphous is a kind description. I know there’s a murder. I had a motive (inspired by real events), and I have a victim (complete fiction). I think I know who the killer is, and he’s got to finger an innocent man. Or does he? Is he really the killer? Maybe he isn’t.
I have no idea how any of this going to happen. It is so amorphous that I know it’s going to come back and bite me.
So I decide to bite first, and chew on the closing story arc. If I know the details, I can channel the story to reach that end. Now that the characters are well-developed (often by pantsing), I need to know who the killer really is (plotting). What’s the scheme? Where does it happen? Who’s the real killer? What’s the murder weapon. How does the killer redirect attention to get an innocent man arrested, accused, convicted, and sentenced to death? It all has to be plausible, and simple. Some of this will happen off-stage as it were, but as the writer I need to know the whole story.
Once upon a time I worked as a court stenographer. I’ve sat through several murder trials; gruesome thing, a murder. Most killings are spontaneous, which is why the idiots are on trial. But one of the perps was a devious sonofabitch. It took the coroner days to figure out how the victim died. It looked like a cascading medical disaster. It wasn’t, it was murder. The weapon: water, and no, it wasn’t drowning.
That is the kind of deviousness I require. The scheme has to be, as much as possible, untraceable and foolproof.
I spent a couple of days exploring choices. But what about…. actually, no I don’t need that. If I do X, then Y goes away. But that means… What about… and so on. Back and forth, mostly in my head, getting ideas, following them to logical or illogical conclusions, what feeds the story, what goes awry, writing a few notes, discussing with my first-co-conspirator, floating balloons, shooting them down,
In the end, I have a new character, a different killer, a simpler motive, a murder weapon, fewer failure points, backstories to create, a subtlety of personal grooming that needs to appear, where the murders scene is, all kinds of neat stuff. I’m pleased. In the end–and this is a very good sign–the plot is simpler than I imagined.
What remains is a solid core of evil that will not be uncovered. Because the bad guy is like that. Now that I know how that’s going to work out, I have to figure out how to get there. 🙂 Details, details….
