When I started writing mysteries I told myself I'd be more disciplined and make sure I knew all the red herring characters and the murderer. I didn't want to have a mystery that went off on different paths. I wanted to make sure I stayed on a logical trajectory.
Knowing I wanted a logical path while creating the story, I made a character chart. By listing my murder victim and all the possible killers and their motives on a chart it would help me introduce the characters to the story and using their motives make the reader and sleuths think they've found the killer only to find a reason they didn't or a stronger motive in another character.
This is the chart I made for the first mystery,
Double Duplicity.
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Victim
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Suspects
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Motive
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Death
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Red Herrings
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Paula Doring, owner of the Dowing Art
Gallery
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Ted Norton, owner of Dimensions Gallery
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Paula had just wooed his second best
client to her gallery and it wasn’t the first time.
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Stabbed
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Naomi Norton, Ted’s wife and co-owner
of Dimensions Gallery
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Believed Paula had something to do with
her sister’s suicide
(sister was in love with Oscar Rowan)
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Shandra sees Naomi leaving the area.
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Oscar Rowan, disgruntled Artist
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He was sleeping with Paula with hopes
of being her featured artist at the summer event. It is his statue’s spear
that is the weapon
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Sidney Doring, soon to be ex-husband,
part owner of Huckleberry Lodge
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He was furious with her affairs and the
stipulations in the divorce papers. Killing her saves him money and a messy
legal battle.
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Juan Lida, Paula’s assistant
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Jealous type, knew of her conquests but
she promised once the divorce was final she’d bring him on as an equal
partner.
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If you've read
Double Duplicity you know that some of the motives changed as I wrote the book and the person I picked to be the killer changed. The murderer ended up being a character that was added to the book as I wrote it.
So the second book I told myself I would make sure I stuck to my chart.
I didn't.
As the story progressed it made more sense to make the killer be someone other than the person I picked in the beginning.
Same with book three that I am just about finished writing. I was so carefully picking my red herrings, the why's of the character's motives, and again, the murderer has turned out to be someone different.
I've deduced that what happens is; as the story unfolds and subplots and character traits are revealed the motives and the reasons for the characters to act the way they do doesn't always gel with what I started out with. But that's the fun of writing. The characters come to life and the next thing I know they are behaving differently than I'd anticipated.
I'm sure I'm not the only writer who has sneaky characters. And I'm sure there have been books where the reader has thought the character would act one way then realized when the character didn't that it was set up that way, but they hadn't noticed until that one act.
www.patyjager.net
Writing into the Sunset
