Savannah Suspense

This is the first book where I haven’t had a title pop into my head before the book was started. Having said that, each of the other three book titles changed by the end of the book, so I should count myself lucky.

This new project is fun and very different from what I’ve written in the past. I’m learning a new sub-genre, and have developed characters that I’m giving free rein to on the story. I have no idea where the plot is going, and I’m not concerned. When I get in the groove with the characters, each chapter writes itself. So I’m taking it just one chapter at a time.

In talking with one of my beta readers and mentioning how difficult it was to manage a large manuscript, he suggested I keep the chapters as separate documents. I’m trying that with the Savannah suspense, and so far I like it. When I think of something to add to a chapter, I don’t have to scroll until I find it. I just pop into that chapter and add what I want.

Each chapter has a short description title so I know exactly what it is about. I am also keeping a timeline document with a short synopsis of each chapter to keep careful track of what day it is and what happened. To add another level of tension, the story is set around a holiday, so to get things to work out, I’ve already had to back up the dates. Easy to do with individual chapters and a timeline.

I’m on Chapter Seven, where protagonist Alaina Carter and her former CDC partner Denton Parker are part of a team to help the city as it faces a potential crisis. They are meeting with the city’s emergency team to put plans in place should the possible scenario play out. Stay tuned.

Timelines for Writers

As a genealogist I’m familiar with how helpful timelines are to keep track of each individual ancestor. By developing a timeline for each person, the researcher can quickly see where the holes are in that person’s life.

For example, you find your ancestor on the 1850 census, but then don’t find him again until the 1870 census. Where was he during those twenty years? Did the family relocate, travel abroad, did the census taker miss them or misspell their name so much it became unrecognizable? That is an important hole to fill in your ancestor’s life.

As I work through what I hope to be one of the last final edits in my first Caitlyn Jamison mystery, I realized writers need to utilize timelines as well.

I have read through this manuscript so many times, one would think I could recite it by heart. Not so. Thanks to my first readers, I have incorporated a lot more information, deleted chapters, combined chapters, added description, etc.  As I read through the hard copy, I am reading slowly, inserting myself into the story in order to catch typos and inconsistencies.

I got to a part where I mention a senator and his supporters. I couldn’t remember whether the senator had died yet or not, and it was at that point I thought – aha – if I had developed a chapter timeline reference tool as the story developed, I could quickly answer that question.

When I first started this book several years ago, I did write up a short synopsis of each chapter as it was done. That’s a lot of work, and so I didn’t follow through when I redeveloped the characters and story line. I now know a timeline/chapter synopsis is worth the extra time it takes.