24 October 2009

Rereading Mysteries for Research: The Project

I always said this blog would be about whatever didn't fit in my dog blog. This may get boring for some people, but I don't really have a gumption to start a new blog right now. If it seems necessary at some point, advise me. I have a complicated brain and a complicated life and am not very good at compartmentalizing. But I will try to index intelligently to make the blog more useful for readers.

In case you don't know this already, I am trying to write a mystery. To help myself on this goal and occupy times when pain keeps me from writing, I've decided to go back through all the mysteries I have, which I have read at least once already for pleasure, and start trying to get more useful tidbits out of them.

The things I look at will probably vary with time based on whatever is worrying me most about writing, but so far I am working with a rough note scheme with the following categories.

  • POV
  • Tense
  • Deaths (who, how, what page)
  • Suspects
  • Whodunit
  • Other

I am going to post these on my blog as I do it in case the info is useful to anyone else. However, I suppose I must have the Whodunit part only in my notes. I refuse to put out total spoilers right now.

I guess you could say I'm not ready to share my work with the world, but I will share my research! The notes won't exactly be reviews, but may interest someone. Who knows.

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