I’ve written the first 20 pages of my new story, but now I’ve come to a halt. I’m nearly to the point where I have to introduce the suspects, and I need to get to know them better first. I’ve made a list of the people who were family or acquaintances of the victim. Next, I gave them each a dirty secret so they all appear to have a motive for murder. The next step, and one at which my subconscious comes into play, is to try to connect the suspects to each other. This is when the story really starts to get more defined. Think of the Milky Way, and all the planets swirling in a big sweeping motion around the central core of our sun. They start to condense, tighten, draw together. That’s what is happening in my head. The story is coming into focus.

Here is where personal experiences come into play as well. A new acquaintance recently told me she sells an anti-aging product, and she handed me a flyer. Cool. One of my characters, a pharmacist, will be a snake oil salesman who markets a false product he claims is derived from water beneath the Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine. That’s where he lives, and I’m going there next month on a research trip.

Then I overheard a conversation in our beauty salon recently. Marla would have been proud of me. An old lady was talking about how someone was running down ducks in her neighborhood and the cops were trying to catch him. The police would arrest him on charges of animal abuse. I gave this nasty act to another one of my suspects. It shows his perverted character.

For my people’s occupations, I used a book called The Fiction Writer’s Silent Partner by Martin Roth. This reference is a great source of inspiration. It lists all kinds of things related to character background, plotting, slang, genre conventions, and more.

Once I had the bare bones of my suspects, I searched for pictures to represent them. Here I rifled through my character file, where I keep photos I’ve cut out from magazines. I wait for that "Ah ha!" moment when the person’s face matches my character. This will inspire the physical description and maybe some more background on the individual’s personality. Each suspect gets a page in my notebook with their picture and a brief description. The heroine/sleuth gets a full page or more, and maybe the victim. I also have to develop my sleuth’s friends, family, office colleagues, and love interest.

Once the character development is done and the relationships defined, the plot takes shape. Then I can write the synopsis. At this point, the words are ready to spill out on paper.