{"id":300,"date":"2012-11-05T23:20:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T23:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bestfantasynovel.com\/2012\/11\/05\/how-to-decide-who-the-murderer-is\/"},"modified":"2012-11-05T23:20:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-05T23:20:00","slug":"how-to-decide-who-the-murderer-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/2012\/11\/05\/how-to-decide-who-the-murderer-is\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Decide Who The Murderer Is?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
I\u2019ll discuss my NaNoWriMo project as I write it. There will<\/span> be spoilers.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
My NaNoWriMo project <\/a>is a mix of familiar and new territory for me. It\u2019s a fantasy; that\u2019s familiar. Urban fantasy, but that\u2019s not a big leap. There\u2019s also a romance (subplot), and I enjoy writing romance. So far so good.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I decided to add a mystery (subplot). My MC\u2019s dad and mom were both murdered. He knows who killed his mom (his wicked stepfather), but not how his dad died. Later, he finds out that his father was accused of murdering all the Knights of the Year, and in order to exonerate his dad, the MC has to find the real murderer.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I\u2019ve never written a mystery before. In fact, I tried to work in a mystery subplot into The Unfinished Song books 4-6, and it was so awful I had to scrap the mystery part and take that whole subplot in a different direction. It caused me many painful hours of head-scratching and re-writing.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
One of my goals with this project is to master the mystery format at a simple level, so if I ever want to try it in a more complex story (like my multivolume epic where so much more is going on), I\u2019ll be less lost.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The first step for me was to read a bunch of mysteries (and watch more on Netflix) and then buy a bunch of How To Write Mystery books. If you want to learn to do something, study how others do it, don\u2019t reinvent the wheel. It\u2019s been incredibly helpful, and I wish I had done this a year ago. Better late, and all that.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The thing which the How To books really emphasized is that you need to know the murderer\u2019s story first. After all, the murder (at least the first one) has already taken place before the detective investigates, it only makes sense to write that part first.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I know who was killed. Thirteen people\u2026the twelve Knights and the MC\u2019s father. (I decided the Knights are all teens, so the dad, although once a Knight, could not be in that position at the time of the murders.) Besides, thirteen murders makes a better number for Halloween, which of course, is when they were killed. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
In addition to the murderer, I need a bunch of other possible murderers. The MC\u2019s dad is one. He\u2019s the one implicated by all the initial evidence. Even the MC will begin wonder if he was guilty. (Spoiler: He\u2019s not.) But who, then? And why<\/i>? <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
In fact, all the serious suspects need a motivation. I\u2019m looking at my plot, figuring out who my supporting characters will be, since this is the first place to stash suspects. <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ll discuss my NaNoWriMo project as I write it. There will be spoilers. My NaNoWriMo project is a mix of familiar and new territory for me. It\u2019s a fantasy; that\u2019s familiar. Urban fantasy, but that\u2019s not a big leap. There\u2019s also a romance (subplot), and I enjoy writing romance. So far so good. I decided […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[155,358,377],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-endings","category-nanowrimo","category-october-knight"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taramayastales.com\/bestfantasynovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}