One of the questions asked
at my author talk last week was why did I chose to develop three plots? There
wasn’t time to really delve into this issue, so I gave a short, but honest
answer: I didn’t think I had the experience to develop only one plot line.
That question stuck with me
through the week so I went to my personal library. Fredric Brown, writing a
section on plot lines for Mystery
Writer’s Handbook, states, “plots aren’t ‘got,’ they are constructed.”
In An Unexpected Death, I knew one plot line, but the second one
developed as I developed the character Nick. I needed him to be doing
something, and as the story developed, I read articles about China and their
need for energy, which changed Nick’s original role. And voilá, without prior
planning, I had another plot line that lead to a surprising subplot near the
end.
No comments:
Post a Comment