7 Days of Plotting a Crime

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve done a blog post, but I have been very busy plotting a crime - for a story, not real life!

I’m a part of Globe Soup’s Facebook group, LOVE-TO-WRITE, and they created this 7 day writing challenge – and what a challenge it was!

The task was to write a short story, no more than 2000 words, in 7 days based on a mystery theme and genre.

On the day the challenge started, March 1st, all participants were sent an email with their given genre and the theme. There were 12 groups, all of which had the theme of sacrifice; each group was given a different genre from one of these: Chick Lit, Romance, Thriller, Crime, Horror, Paranormal, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Magical Realism and Western, Dystopian and Historical.

My group was given the genre of Crime, which was a massive relief. There were a couple of genres I didn’t want – Western and Magical Realism – so when I saw the word ‘Crime’ on my email, I was very happy.

The problem was, I'd never written a complete short story before so it was definitely difficult to start writing. However, I am so pleased with what I’ve actually managed to accomplish.

Before I started writing, I needed to come up with a plot idea. So, I used my whiteboard and brainstormed about six different story-lines before settling on my favourite. It was hard to choose just one!

Once I'd chosen my story-line, and the crime it would include, I needed to flesh it out more, plan the events and the structure.

It took a lot of rewriting, messy notes, and imagination to come up with, but what I produced is actually good…I think!

When I had got enough information for the plot, including a timeline I had to create to stop my mind from getting confused, I focused on the characters.

With my genre being Crime, I obviously needed an investigative protagonist of some sort, whether it be an amateur sleuth, a detective or a private eye. I created mind-maps and smothered my whiteboard in all kinds of aspects of character to create my protagonist, including their appearance, motivations, stakes in the plot, and conflicts.

After I’d done the protagonist, I needed to figure out how sacrifice was going to come in to it; I wanted the theme of sacrifice to be shown through my investigator but I hadn’t thought how that would happen.

It was then that I started rambling to my sister – someone who isn’t a big fan of the crime genre – and she gave me an idea. After adding the idea to my notes, I had finished designing my main character – woohoo!

But that wasn't the end of my planning process.

Come back tomorrow to find out what I did next…