7 Days of Plotting a Crime: Part 2

If you read my most recent blog post, you’ll know what I’ve been up to lately, but in case you haven’t, here’s a quick recap.

This week I’ve been doing a 7 day writing challenge, where I had to write a short story on the genre of crime and theme of sacrifice, of no more than 2000 words. I started planning the plot, fleshing out the crime and the structure, and then I created my protagonist, and came up with an idea for including sacrifice with the help of my sister.

Here's the second part of my planning process.

After designing my protagonist, I needed to create an antagonist. For me, this was easier because I tend to find that I can write about the bad guys better than I do the good guys; I find it easy to get into their heads, which is strange…and some what disturbing, aha!

I went about the same routine for the antagonist as I did with my investigator, detailing their appearance, motivations and anything important for me to know. Not everything I planned is included into the short story – 2000 words is difficult to stick too – but I found it helpful to know background info in case I got confused.

I tended to get a bit confused because I was getting dates and ages muddled up. This then meant I needed to write a timeline – I was even confused trying to write this. But once I’d written it, it cleared everything up and I was able to start writing – the fun part!

When writing I tend to have trouble sticking to the word count – I almost always go over – and this time was not different. I wrote the whole story in a day, just free-writing with my notes, and I ended up going 600 words over the word count. I knew I would have to edit and redraft the story but I didn’t think I could cut it down by 600 words. Turns out, I did, thanks to tips from my degree!

I was able to cut out ‘that’ a lot, remove adverbs, change the syntax, and use contractions. All of these helped, even when I needed to add another scene, and I managed to finish my piece at 2000 words exactly!

And with the word count reached and the story finished, I was ready to submit.

If you ever want to challenge yourself, give yourself a short time frame and a theme and produce something. It can be writing, drawing, crafting. It can be anything, and I can guarantee the satisfaction you’ll feel at the end is amazing.

Until next time…