Barbara Appleby

My Novel Idea Barbara Appleby

You have an idea for a mystery with a collection scribbles on whatever came to hand. How do you pull your notes together to create a mystery fans will enjoy reading? Acquire medium size sticky notes, legibly write or print an idea on a single sheet and mount them on first two idea working pages of (Title). Move on to Act and Character pages - moving your sticky notes as they are needed. Ask your writer self all kinds of questions as you move through the pages - where story takes places, who is killed and why, who is the sleuth (amateur or professional). Who are the supporting characters who move the story along or buildroadblocks. You now have the nucleus of a structure of a novel or short story. Work your way through the pages, building as you go and when you finish you will have a sound draft for your first or your tenth mystery novel. This I can promise you, because it's the methodI developed over a period of years from both success and failure for my own stories.