Taxes are done, and now I can move on to the other nagging tasks in my life.
I learned last night that the worst time to have a bad foot cramp is when you're holding two little girls in your lap. I think I scared them a bit, but I had to stand up and get my foot flat on the floor immediately or I'd start screaming (and that would also have been scary). The foot is not designed to curl into a fist. It's still twitchy this morning, which may make ballet interesting tonight. Oh, and we didn't resort to twirling and dancing, but we played a lot of musical chairs. We did a variation where when kids started being eliminated, we started a second circle and had two games going, and when there were approximately even numbers in each group, we had it so that getting "out" meant joining the other group, so no one was ever really out. They just went back and forth between groups. We still had the kids who were frantically trying to win (who would fight tooth and nail to get a chair) and the kids who were practically fighting to get out (they'd just stand there near a chair and refuse to get in it), and then the kids who seemed to have no idea what to do. There were also rhythm sticks and lots of noise, and I earned my glass of wine.
Since I get twitchy (and not just my feet) if I'm not plotting something, we're back to planning the mystery series. Today's topic: romance. I've found in reading what people have to say about various mystery series that while they read each book for the mystery in that plot, they buy the next book more because they want to see how the main characters' personal lives progress. Mostly, that has to do with the romantic subplots. One thing I find interesting is that in all the mystery series I've read, I haven't found any that handle the ongoing romantic relationship in the standard TV way -- the will they/won't they, where there's one main couple from the start that are total opposites in many ways -- or maybe even in opposition -- and who spend a lot of time bickering while having "chemistry," and over time they may almost get together a few times, but then have roadblocks flung in the way. They may or may not ever actually get together, and by the time they do get together, it's nearly impossible to do it in a way that pleases all the fans. See Remington Steele, Moonlighting, The X-Files, Bones, Castle, and just about every male/female partner team on TV.
Not that not having this is a bad thing, but the mystery book series do something almost as bad: the triangle. There are usually two main romantic possibilities in the sleuth heroine's life, and she's drawn to both of them or torn between them. In some series, she wavers back and forth between them. In some, she's involved with one but is tempted by or drawn to the other and I get the feeling she's going to start with one and maybe end with the other. Quite often, there's the good boy vs. bad boy thing, where one guy is the cop she runs into during her investigations and the other is the just slightly shady or mysterious one who's generally on the side of right but who isn't bound by the same regulations as the cop. A motorcycle and longish hair may be involved. Otherwise, if there's just one guy, it seems like the relationship is established in the first book, and from there it's more of a "Nick and Nora" thing, where they work together as a team with no doubt about their romantic relationship.
I would rather avoid either of those models, but I don't know how much is genre convention and if something different would fly. The current TV mystery relationship model I like best is what they've done on Haven, where it wasn't an obvious done deal from the start that the two main characters would get together, but it also wasn't a will they/won't they thing or a triangle. They hit it off from the start, but with just about zero sexual tension. She had a more flirtatious relationship with the bad boy, but it never came across like she was actually romantically interested in him, and we later learned that he had a plot-related agenda in cozying up to her (though I doubt he'd have rejected her if she'd taken his flirting seriously). The main guy was dating someone else for a while, and his partner was supportive in that and even played wingman for him, then was compassionate in the aftermath of the breakup, which was what really solidified their friendship. The outside relationship that usually is used as a temporary romantic roadblock for the main couple in this case was a stepping stone for them. Then later she started dating someone else, and though he was kind of hurt because he had started developing feelings for her by then, he was still supportive and was nice to the boyfriend, then was there for her in the breakup. Again, what could have been the romantic roadblock was actually a stepping stone because it showed her the real worth of her partner, that he was the one who was always there for her, who trusted her absolutely and who "got" her on a fundamental level. Plus, with their crazy jobs and schedule, they were always having to run off to work, which meant leaving any other romantic interest and running toward each other. As we left them at the end of last season, they were finally getting together. I guess if we translated this into a series of mystery novels, that would have been at about book 12 (since I figure you could fit two episodes into a standard-length book), which is a really, really slow build now that I think about it -- except in the world of the series, in which both seasons so far have taken place in one summer, so all this has happened in a few months.
So maybe something not that slow, but still, I like the idea of the slow development with the person who's always there while they still interact with other people and even have other involvements, but with those other involvements being less Mark Harmon opening the door (the big roadblock in Moonlighting that derailed the relationship) and more steps along the way to finding the right person who was there all along. Then once the main couple gets together, if the series continues beyond that I wouldn't want them breaking up and making up or her being drawn to someone else. I figure once you're sleeping with someone, you need to stop getting yourself into compromising positions with another person who really turns you on. I really don't like the going back and forth between guys, which has turned me off from a couple of mystery series, where it feels kind of like the author is afraid to commit, for fear of turning off the readers who pull for the other guy.
I guess the result of what I would want to do would be a slightly slower build than I did with Katie and Owen -- though there was still a lot more relationship development and conflict that happened after that first real kiss in book 2 -- but still along those lines. I refuse to include a long-haired guy who rides a motorcycle, though. I might even get crazy and mix things up and have the seemingly super-nice guy be the one who's slightly shady and the one who's a little more rough around the edges be the boy scout. I don't know yet. My heroine is very clear to me, but the people surrounding her are still blurry.
Showing posts with label mystery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mystery. Show all posts
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Monday, April 02, 2012
Further Developments
I've got a crazy week ahead of me. I've sort of declared it "vacation," but that really means I'm not writing a book this week. I need to finish my taxes and clean my house, plus it's Holy Week, which means choir rehearsals and extra church services, so my week "off" is going to be busier than my usual weeks. I'm trying to do half days -- finish all the work in the morning and allow myself some afternoon free time.
It seems like those of you who responded to my last post are thinking along the same lines as I am. The doctor scenario was what I came up with initially, but I don't like to stop at my first idea because the next one could be even better, so I like to at least toy with other possibilities. I did realize upon further thought that the reporter scenario is self-limiting. If she solves a crime that the police couldn't and then publishes the story, you'd think that after doing that a couple of times she'd be able to get a better job and would be out of there, ending the series (or else it would mean forgetting that one of her main character traits that got her into investigating crime in the first place was ambition). Not to mention that once she publishes a story that even hints at revealing the town's secrets, people are going to be far less likely to talk to her in the future. On the other hand, if she decides that the secrets need to be kept and doesn't publish the story, then that removes her motivation for investigating crimes. Why stick her neck out and put herself at risk if she can't do anything with it? She might be sympathetic to their situation, but if she's ambitious, then she's going to try to find another job, even if it's a lateral move. Plus there's the fact that I'd like to structure this a lot like the current TV paranormal procedurals, Grimm and Haven, where each episode/book has a (mostly) self-contained case that's solved in that episode/book, but then there's a larger big-picture mystery that they get insight into through the investigating they do on each case. For her to understand enough about the town's secrets to not publish the story after the first book, I'd have to reveal more than I'd like to from the start.
So, my heroine will be a doctor. But don't worry about this turning into a CSI or Bones thing because she's a family physician, not a pathologist or medical examiner. She might get called to scenes of violence because she's the only doctor within about 50 square miles, but I think her crime solving will have more to do with the fact that her work gives her a lot of access and insight to people. Plus, the set-up I have in place forces her to stay in town unless she wants to pay back the cost of her medical education. And since the heroine of a paranormal mystery generally needs to discover some abilities of her own, it makes more sense if she was hand-picked to come to this town. I suppose the reporter who happens to turn out to have these abilities only being able to find a job at this one newspaper could have been arranged, but then that's getting at Haven levels of conspiracy and freakiness, and I don't quite want to go there.
One trick will be to avoid the usual fish-out-of-water tropes without being dull. I don't want to do a full-on Northern Exposure thing where it's a complete culture clash and she hates being there. This is someone who planned to be a family doctor in a small town, and this deal she made just made it possible for her to do it by dictating which small town. Maybe some of the conflict comes from the fact that she's a little overly idealistic about what being the town doctor will be like rather than from her resenting having to be a small-town doctor. I also don't want her to be a big-city sophisticate type, the sort who'll spend a lot of time bitching about not being able to find sushi or complaining because the local cafe's coffee menu consists of decaf and regular, and there's a little pitcher of creamer if you're into that sort of thing. I think she's going to be a lower middle-class suburban girl -- someone who falls into that gap where she's not poor enough to qualify for financial aid but not rich enough to actually pay for medical school, and smart enough to get into medical school and do well but not so brilliant that she can rack up the merit-based scholarships (since "brilliant" is pretty much the baseline for medical school). Again, maybe the culture clash is that she's idealized small-town life from living in the suburbs full of tract houses and retail chains and then finds that people are people, wherever they live. It's not so much that she doesn't want to live in a small town as it is that she wants the small town to be the way she imagined it would be and is a little disappointed that it isn't -- and then maybe a little freaked out when it is. The idea of people looking out for their neighbors is lovely, until you realize it also means your neighbors knowing all your business.
Now I need to figure out who the romantic possibilities are, since there do seem to be at least a couple in series like this. I want to avoid the standard love triangle, where the heroine wavers back and forth between them. Maybe something more like them both being possibilities as she's getting to know them, but then as things progress she finds herself drifting toward one. I think one will be that ambitious reporter -- with him not being the hero, he doesn't have to solve the case, and that avoids the problems inherent with the reporter as heroine scenario. I may even go out on a limb and try to write him as a sexy bad-boy type. Can I do that and still have a character I like? The other one will likely be a local cop. I think there's going to be a mystery about him, that he's the kind of person you have to get to know in layers, and that will have something to do with the mystery of the town. Maybe I could play with surface vs. reality, where the guy who initially seems better is only that way on the surface but as she gets to know both of them her feelings shift. I hesitate to plan how it's going to work out before I start. After all, Owen was supposed to just be a co-worker until I started writing and he came to life. And in a book I just finished, I ended up changing allegiances mid-way through.
Of course, the real trick will be to find out if publishers actually want things that don't go with the usual tropes. They say they want something different, but they generally don't want anything too different. Oh, and I need to come up with a crime. The fun part for me is developing the characters and situation. Plot is the real challenge.
It seems like those of you who responded to my last post are thinking along the same lines as I am. The doctor scenario was what I came up with initially, but I don't like to stop at my first idea because the next one could be even better, so I like to at least toy with other possibilities. I did realize upon further thought that the reporter scenario is self-limiting. If she solves a crime that the police couldn't and then publishes the story, you'd think that after doing that a couple of times she'd be able to get a better job and would be out of there, ending the series (or else it would mean forgetting that one of her main character traits that got her into investigating crime in the first place was ambition). Not to mention that once she publishes a story that even hints at revealing the town's secrets, people are going to be far less likely to talk to her in the future. On the other hand, if she decides that the secrets need to be kept and doesn't publish the story, then that removes her motivation for investigating crimes. Why stick her neck out and put herself at risk if she can't do anything with it? She might be sympathetic to their situation, but if she's ambitious, then she's going to try to find another job, even if it's a lateral move. Plus there's the fact that I'd like to structure this a lot like the current TV paranormal procedurals, Grimm and Haven, where each episode/book has a (mostly) self-contained case that's solved in that episode/book, but then there's a larger big-picture mystery that they get insight into through the investigating they do on each case. For her to understand enough about the town's secrets to not publish the story after the first book, I'd have to reveal more than I'd like to from the start.
So, my heroine will be a doctor. But don't worry about this turning into a CSI or Bones thing because she's a family physician, not a pathologist or medical examiner. She might get called to scenes of violence because she's the only doctor within about 50 square miles, but I think her crime solving will have more to do with the fact that her work gives her a lot of access and insight to people. Plus, the set-up I have in place forces her to stay in town unless she wants to pay back the cost of her medical education. And since the heroine of a paranormal mystery generally needs to discover some abilities of her own, it makes more sense if she was hand-picked to come to this town. I suppose the reporter who happens to turn out to have these abilities only being able to find a job at this one newspaper could have been arranged, but then that's getting at Haven levels of conspiracy and freakiness, and I don't quite want to go there.
One trick will be to avoid the usual fish-out-of-water tropes without being dull. I don't want to do a full-on Northern Exposure thing where it's a complete culture clash and she hates being there. This is someone who planned to be a family doctor in a small town, and this deal she made just made it possible for her to do it by dictating which small town. Maybe some of the conflict comes from the fact that she's a little overly idealistic about what being the town doctor will be like rather than from her resenting having to be a small-town doctor. I also don't want her to be a big-city sophisticate type, the sort who'll spend a lot of time bitching about not being able to find sushi or complaining because the local cafe's coffee menu consists of decaf and regular, and there's a little pitcher of creamer if you're into that sort of thing. I think she's going to be a lower middle-class suburban girl -- someone who falls into that gap where she's not poor enough to qualify for financial aid but not rich enough to actually pay for medical school, and smart enough to get into medical school and do well but not so brilliant that she can rack up the merit-based scholarships (since "brilliant" is pretty much the baseline for medical school). Again, maybe the culture clash is that she's idealized small-town life from living in the suburbs full of tract houses and retail chains and then finds that people are people, wherever they live. It's not so much that she doesn't want to live in a small town as it is that she wants the small town to be the way she imagined it would be and is a little disappointed that it isn't -- and then maybe a little freaked out when it is. The idea of people looking out for their neighbors is lovely, until you realize it also means your neighbors knowing all your business.
Now I need to figure out who the romantic possibilities are, since there do seem to be at least a couple in series like this. I want to avoid the standard love triangle, where the heroine wavers back and forth between them. Maybe something more like them both being possibilities as she's getting to know them, but then as things progress she finds herself drifting toward one. I think one will be that ambitious reporter -- with him not being the hero, he doesn't have to solve the case, and that avoids the problems inherent with the reporter as heroine scenario. I may even go out on a limb and try to write him as a sexy bad-boy type. Can I do that and still have a character I like? The other one will likely be a local cop. I think there's going to be a mystery about him, that he's the kind of person you have to get to know in layers, and that will have something to do with the mystery of the town. Maybe I could play with surface vs. reality, where the guy who initially seems better is only that way on the surface but as she gets to know both of them her feelings shift. I hesitate to plan how it's going to work out before I start. After all, Owen was supposed to just be a co-worker until I started writing and he came to life. And in a book I just finished, I ended up changing allegiances mid-way through.
Of course, the real trick will be to find out if publishers actually want things that don't go with the usual tropes. They say they want something different, but they generally don't want anything too different. Oh, and I need to come up with a crime. The fun part for me is developing the characters and situation. Plot is the real challenge.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Starting the Creative Process
Progress continues on my spring cleaning. The downstairs "public" areas are mostly livable, and the loft is significantly improved. I have way too many books -- and yes, there is such a thing as too many books when most of them are books you aren't really interested in. I have hundreds of books obtained through conference goody bags or publisher hype mailings, and few of them are books I would have bought for myself, but I can't seem to make myself get rid of them without at least trying to read them. I have had a few times when I've started to box or bag some up to donate to the library sale, and then I read a later book by one of those authors and realize that I have that author's first book somewhere in a bag. I have, on occasion, found a gem I would have overlooked otherwise. So I can't just get rid of them, but they're on the bottom of my reading priority list. I did start tossing those books into a large shopping bag, so that I now have a to-be-read grab-bag. If I'm ever out of reading material (ha!) I can just reach into the bag, and if I don't like the book after a few chapters, I'm allowed to get rid of it. That's making a little more room on the bookcases for the books I want to keep.
Today's epic task: Cleaning the kitchen. So that I can cook dinner tonight and immediately mess it up again.
I think I'm going to declare next week "spring break." I'm between projects, with everything in someone else's hands, and my house will be mostly clean, so I can relax. I had all these requirements in place for when I got to take a "vacation," but then I decided that was silly and my weird perfectionism was creeping in -- unless everything is perfect, I won't do it at all. I may not make this the true at-home vacation with excursions and all, but I may allow myself some down time to read, watch movies, etc., before I gear up again and get back to work.
However, I'm already getting twitchy about not having a book in progress. I started brainstorming an idea yesterday. And then I thought it might be fun to share the creative process. I'm developing that possible mystery series, and since it's not a book in my existing series, it's not like there will be actual spoilers. I may or may not even get around to writing it, depending on what happens with other stuff. Feedback, comments or questions are welcome, so I guess this is sort of a focus group, but I may or may not use it. No story or character ideas, please. Just feedback on my ideas (I wouldn't be able to use any of your ideas for fear of getting into a "you stole my idea and now you owe me money" situation, and that would suck if you happened to propose an idea I'd already had).
So, I'm planning to set this series in a fictional small town, in part for practical reasons, as I can make everything up instead of having to stick to reality, and in a mystery I don't have to use specific policies or procedures of any particular police department. There's a lot that can be swept under "this is how we do things here." Also, since this is going to be a paranormal series, it's going to be a town where Things Aren't Quite Right. I've always been a sucker for the odd little town story (thus my Haven obsession). I think it's something of a survival mechanism when you are stuck in a small town. Even normal small towns have real secrets and open "secrets" that everyone knows but no one talks about, and imagining that there's something truly odd about those secrets makes a boring little town a lot more interesting. Plus, the Things Aren't Quite Right angle explains a per capita murder rate that's higher than that of any big city (which happens when you have to kill at least once person per book) and it provides motivation for an amateur sleuth to get into the investigation, if she thinks the police are in on the Things That Aren't Quite Right and therefore justice won't be served if she doesn't get involved.
My heroine the amateur sleuth will be an outsider, a newcomer to this town who's there for career desperation reasons. But I can't quite decide on her actual role. One possibility is that she's come to work for the small town newspaper (or possibly the chain of newspapers covering small towns in the region, which opens up more crime possibilities -- one of my former bosses is running a chain of small-town papers like that). With journalism being one of those dying career fields, a young reporter may not have a lot of job options and will be fighting to make the most of this job. Figuring out that Things Aren't Quite Right in this town and trying to uncover that while solving the crimes might be her chance at getting a better job at a big paper or maybe even her own TV show. It would certainly be easier for me to write, since I know about journalism and have dealt with small-town papers. But I'm not entirely sure I would like that character enough to make her my heroine. In books, I tend to dislike the "ambitious journalist who'll do anything to get her story" character. Then again, if I write her, she may come out a different way, where maybe her initial motivation starts to change once she learns a few of the secrets and she might even start helping protect those secrets (like Vince and Dave on Haven).
My other idea was that she's a young doctor, just finished with her residency, and she's done a kind of "Northern Exposure" thing where the local doctor paid her way through medical school in exchange for her agreeing to come take over his practice when she finished her training. She's supposed to have spent a few years working with him and gradually taking over from him, but he dies soon after she comes to town, and his death could be the thing that gets her accused of murder so she has to clear her own name, which sets her on the amateur sleuth path. Then as the doctor in a small, fairly isolated town, she'd be the one called when there was someone dying or dead, even if she isn't officially a medical examiner, which gets her into other cases. In this scenario, the reporter for the chain of small-town papers who's determined to uncover the Things That Aren't Quite Right is a potential love interest who may also become an antagonist (though not the villain) or irritant. This one would require more research, though I do have a lot of medical background from working at a medical school. I'd probably need to find a small-town doctor to interview about what her life is like, and I'd need to be more specific in detailing things like wounds or cause of death, since it would be from an expert's perspective. But I also think this would be a more sympathetic character who'd get woven into the life of the town, and I like that idea of a fish out of water who finds herself getting a lot more than she bargained for when she's essentially had the training wheels yanked off before she's ready (mixing metaphors -- now I'm picturing a bicycling fish). Plus, I have this sense that she was hand-picked by the doctor for certain reasons that relate to the Things That Aren't Quite Right, so maybe she's not entirely Right herself (since usually the heroine of these paranormal mysteries has some abilities).
Any thoughts on these possibilities? Which would you rather read?
Today's epic task: Cleaning the kitchen. So that I can cook dinner tonight and immediately mess it up again.
I think I'm going to declare next week "spring break." I'm between projects, with everything in someone else's hands, and my house will be mostly clean, so I can relax. I had all these requirements in place for when I got to take a "vacation," but then I decided that was silly and my weird perfectionism was creeping in -- unless everything is perfect, I won't do it at all. I may not make this the true at-home vacation with excursions and all, but I may allow myself some down time to read, watch movies, etc., before I gear up again and get back to work.
However, I'm already getting twitchy about not having a book in progress. I started brainstorming an idea yesterday. And then I thought it might be fun to share the creative process. I'm developing that possible mystery series, and since it's not a book in my existing series, it's not like there will be actual spoilers. I may or may not even get around to writing it, depending on what happens with other stuff. Feedback, comments or questions are welcome, so I guess this is sort of a focus group, but I may or may not use it. No story or character ideas, please. Just feedback on my ideas (I wouldn't be able to use any of your ideas for fear of getting into a "you stole my idea and now you owe me money" situation, and that would suck if you happened to propose an idea I'd already had).
So, I'm planning to set this series in a fictional small town, in part for practical reasons, as I can make everything up instead of having to stick to reality, and in a mystery I don't have to use specific policies or procedures of any particular police department. There's a lot that can be swept under "this is how we do things here." Also, since this is going to be a paranormal series, it's going to be a town where Things Aren't Quite Right. I've always been a sucker for the odd little town story (thus my Haven obsession). I think it's something of a survival mechanism when you are stuck in a small town. Even normal small towns have real secrets and open "secrets" that everyone knows but no one talks about, and imagining that there's something truly odd about those secrets makes a boring little town a lot more interesting. Plus, the Things Aren't Quite Right angle explains a per capita murder rate that's higher than that of any big city (which happens when you have to kill at least once person per book) and it provides motivation for an amateur sleuth to get into the investigation, if she thinks the police are in on the Things That Aren't Quite Right and therefore justice won't be served if she doesn't get involved.
My heroine the amateur sleuth will be an outsider, a newcomer to this town who's there for career desperation reasons. But I can't quite decide on her actual role. One possibility is that she's come to work for the small town newspaper (or possibly the chain of newspapers covering small towns in the region, which opens up more crime possibilities -- one of my former bosses is running a chain of small-town papers like that). With journalism being one of those dying career fields, a young reporter may not have a lot of job options and will be fighting to make the most of this job. Figuring out that Things Aren't Quite Right in this town and trying to uncover that while solving the crimes might be her chance at getting a better job at a big paper or maybe even her own TV show. It would certainly be easier for me to write, since I know about journalism and have dealt with small-town papers. But I'm not entirely sure I would like that character enough to make her my heroine. In books, I tend to dislike the "ambitious journalist who'll do anything to get her story" character. Then again, if I write her, she may come out a different way, where maybe her initial motivation starts to change once she learns a few of the secrets and she might even start helping protect those secrets (like Vince and Dave on Haven).
My other idea was that she's a young doctor, just finished with her residency, and she's done a kind of "Northern Exposure" thing where the local doctor paid her way through medical school in exchange for her agreeing to come take over his practice when she finished her training. She's supposed to have spent a few years working with him and gradually taking over from him, but he dies soon after she comes to town, and his death could be the thing that gets her accused of murder so she has to clear her own name, which sets her on the amateur sleuth path. Then as the doctor in a small, fairly isolated town, she'd be the one called when there was someone dying or dead, even if she isn't officially a medical examiner, which gets her into other cases. In this scenario, the reporter for the chain of small-town papers who's determined to uncover the Things That Aren't Quite Right is a potential love interest who may also become an antagonist (though not the villain) or irritant. This one would require more research, though I do have a lot of medical background from working at a medical school. I'd probably need to find a small-town doctor to interview about what her life is like, and I'd need to be more specific in detailing things like wounds or cause of death, since it would be from an expert's perspective. But I also think this would be a more sympathetic character who'd get woven into the life of the town, and I like that idea of a fish out of water who finds herself getting a lot more than she bargained for when she's essentially had the training wheels yanked off before she's ready (mixing metaphors -- now I'm picturing a bicycling fish). Plus, I have this sense that she was hand-picked by the doctor for certain reasons that relate to the Things That Aren't Quite Right, so maybe she's not entirely Right herself (since usually the heroine of these paranormal mysteries has some abilities).
Any thoughts on these possibilities? Which would you rather read?
Friday, March 09, 2012
Friday Geeky Odds and Ends
Oh, man, ballet was tough last night. I woke up already a bit sore. I don't know that we did anything particularly difficult, but the teacher was really focusing on technique, and when I focus on doing things exactly the right way, I know I'm a little more tense. Plus, if you've been doing things the wrong way, you use a different set of muscles when you do things the right way. Thus, the sore thighs. It probably doesn't help that I got there early and was watching the really advanced class in the adjacent studio. Those are the teens who are probably going to dance professionally. I should know I can't do anything close to what they can do, since they're young enough to be my children and have been dancing far longer than I have, but having seen them made me try harder -- possibly harder than I should have. And now I have a week off because of spring break. I've told myself that I will exercise this week so I won't suffer too badly when I go back, but we'll see how that goes.
I also get a week off from choir, starting Sunday morning. I drew the short straw in being assigned to the quartet singing at the early service on the morning of Daylight Savings Time, but the choir isn't singing at all Sunday, so instead of having to do two services, I get to go home when I'm done with the music for the preschool Sunday school. Then there's no rehearsal or children's choir on Wednesday. If I get groceries on the way home from church, I won't have to leave the house all week! Other than to go walking or to a movie, or something like that. Anyway, my quartet is singing Aaron Copland's arrangement of "At the River," and it's pretty easy for me because sopranos sing the melody, except for this one descant part that's a little tricky.
I finally got around to watching the pilot of Awake, the series in which a cop seems to be living two parallel lives -- one in which his wife died in a car accident and one in which his son died. In each life he's got a different partner and a different psychologist, but clues from one life bleed into the other. I'm kind of iffy. It's on when I'm out, so it will be an OnDemand show, and probably one I'll catch a full week later, since NBC is now putting the as-aired versions OnDemand for the first few days, complete with commercials and network promos for things that have already been on. I like Jason Isaacs from the British mystery series Case Histories, and I like him here, even with American accent, but the series didn't grab me as much as I expected, since I love those "what if?" parallel lives plots (and still want to write one). Strangely, I like the cop part better than the parallel lives part, and the clues bleeding over aren't actual clues but just strange connections, so I suspect they're going for one reality being a dream instead of a science fictiony premise where they're both somehow real in alternate universes. However, this series probably has the highest Harry Potter Score on American television right now, with Lucius Malfoy starring.
Meanwhile, the current highest Doctor Who Score on American television is probably The Office, with Catherine Tate (Donna) as a recurring character (who seems to be set up to become a regular next season). It's rather ironic that it's the American version of an originally British series that has the highest Doctor Who score.
By the way, the Harry Potter/Doctor Who Score is a game I play when watching TV or movies after I noticed that almost all British productions involve at least one cast member who's been in either Doctor Who or one of the Harry Potter movies. It's kind of a geeky "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" thing, only you seldom have to resort to degrees. Now that Mark Sheppard has been in Doctor Who, it makes it a little too easy for American series to have a Doctor Who score, so I do have a clause for him where it has to be a recurring role instead of a one-episode villain to count. Otherwise, every series on American television would have a Doctor Who score, and that's just not right. I may have to institute a similar rule for Alex Kingston, except she's a recurring Doctor Who character, and a rather pivotal one at that, which makes excluding her from the scoring more problematic. And that means CSI has a Doctor Who score, no matter how hard I try to avoid it -- though it's still lower than The Office, since she had a one-episode role on CSI and Catherine Tate is a borderline Office regular.
In the meantime, while reading the book on forensics, I think I came up with the murder plot for the book that will kick off my potential mystery series. Now I just need a good evil scheme for another thing I'm working on. I had a dream of one last night, but it turned out to be The Matrix, and I don't think I want to go there.
I also get a week off from choir, starting Sunday morning. I drew the short straw in being assigned to the quartet singing at the early service on the morning of Daylight Savings Time, but the choir isn't singing at all Sunday, so instead of having to do two services, I get to go home when I'm done with the music for the preschool Sunday school. Then there's no rehearsal or children's choir on Wednesday. If I get groceries on the way home from church, I won't have to leave the house all week! Other than to go walking or to a movie, or something like that. Anyway, my quartet is singing Aaron Copland's arrangement of "At the River," and it's pretty easy for me because sopranos sing the melody, except for this one descant part that's a little tricky.
I finally got around to watching the pilot of Awake, the series in which a cop seems to be living two parallel lives -- one in which his wife died in a car accident and one in which his son died. In each life he's got a different partner and a different psychologist, but clues from one life bleed into the other. I'm kind of iffy. It's on when I'm out, so it will be an OnDemand show, and probably one I'll catch a full week later, since NBC is now putting the as-aired versions OnDemand for the first few days, complete with commercials and network promos for things that have already been on. I like Jason Isaacs from the British mystery series Case Histories, and I like him here, even with American accent, but the series didn't grab me as much as I expected, since I love those "what if?" parallel lives plots (and still want to write one). Strangely, I like the cop part better than the parallel lives part, and the clues bleeding over aren't actual clues but just strange connections, so I suspect they're going for one reality being a dream instead of a science fictiony premise where they're both somehow real in alternate universes. However, this series probably has the highest Harry Potter Score on American television right now, with Lucius Malfoy starring.
Meanwhile, the current highest Doctor Who Score on American television is probably The Office, with Catherine Tate (Donna) as a recurring character (who seems to be set up to become a regular next season). It's rather ironic that it's the American version of an originally British series that has the highest Doctor Who score.
By the way, the Harry Potter/Doctor Who Score is a game I play when watching TV or movies after I noticed that almost all British productions involve at least one cast member who's been in either Doctor Who or one of the Harry Potter movies. It's kind of a geeky "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" thing, only you seldom have to resort to degrees. Now that Mark Sheppard has been in Doctor Who, it makes it a little too easy for American series to have a Doctor Who score, so I do have a clause for him where it has to be a recurring role instead of a one-episode villain to count. Otherwise, every series on American television would have a Doctor Who score, and that's just not right. I may have to institute a similar rule for Alex Kingston, except she's a recurring Doctor Who character, and a rather pivotal one at that, which makes excluding her from the scoring more problematic. And that means CSI has a Doctor Who score, no matter how hard I try to avoid it -- though it's still lower than The Office, since she had a one-episode role on CSI and Catherine Tate is a borderline Office regular.
In the meantime, while reading the book on forensics, I think I came up with the murder plot for the book that will kick off my potential mystery series. Now I just need a good evil scheme for another thing I'm working on. I had a dream of one last night, but it turned out to be The Matrix, and I don't think I want to go there.
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Mama, I Just Killed a Man (and other murder scenarios)
Oh, this should be a good writing/reading day. It's really dark and it just started raining.
I showed off a little to the preschoolers last night. There's a man in our church who collects musical instruments, and he brought his flutes to show them. We're working on the concept that smaller instruments make higher sounds, so we compared the sound of the flute to the sound of the piccolo, etc. Since flute is my instrument, when he was letting the kids try them, I picked up the "regular" flute and played the main theme from Star Wars (one of the few things I can still play by memory). I think at least a few of them recognized it, and I knew one would because his parents are geeky. The kids weren't allowed to touch the glass flutes, but he let me play one. Most of the kids couldn't get a sound out of any of the flutes because they never did grasp the concept of blowing across it instead of into it, but our special needs girl was the one who did it perfectly and even got a really nice tone out of it.
Then there was a very interesting dinner discussion in which a cop, an accountant (both men) and I were trying to figure out how you could do a "jukebox" musical based on the music of Queen. We figured "Bohemian Rhapsody" could give you the basis for a plot ("Mama, I just killed a man"), and the way you could actually use the epic song would be to break it into its components (because it's a lot of smaller songs put together) and use those at various parts of the story, sung by different characters, and then either for the act one finale or the big pre-finale number, bring them all together, kind of like "Tonight" near the end of West Side Story.
And now I really need to get Queen on CD because I have a sudden craving to hear "Bohemian Rhapsody."
Because my brain tends to fry if I do too much brainstorming all at once, I've been alternating with reading those books I got as background for writing a mystery. One is by a forensic pathologist who's brought in, kind of like a private investigator, to go over evidence before a trial, particularly when the defense isn't happy with the way the investigation is done. This guy warns them that he'll testify on what he finds, good or bad. He's not taking sides, just looking at the evidence. I'd thought that the general way of getting the amateur sleuth into the story in a mystery, which is often that the wrong person has been arrested but the police are so convinced that it's the right person that they don't even look further, was a literary device, but it turns out to be frighteningly common. This guy would show up, look at crime scene and autopsy photos and ask really obvious questions that no one seemed to consider because the original investigation took it at face value and didn't look beyond their initial assumptions. Sadly, in real life it doesn't work out the way it does in books. By the time they figure out the oops, it's usually too late to find evidence that could lead to what actually happened, so the real killer is never found. Most of the time, there's no malice involved in the sloppy investigation, just investigators who are busy and distracted and who are focused on too many other cases to question one that seems like a slam dunk. Apparently, it's relatively easy to stage something to look like suicide and have it accepted as a suicide as long as nothing looks too terribly out of whack and as long as the person behaved in such a way that suicide might be a possibility. The investigators are prone to accepting it on face value (though it would be dangerous for a killer to assume this because any investigation at all can reveal that it's not suicide). That was kind of eye-opening. So, it's not at all unlikely in the real world for the police to fixate on one thing and not look beyond it. The person wrongly arrested may not be convicted (though there have been way too many cases of that happening), but by the time the case goes to trial and it shows up how weak the case is, the trail has gone cold and finding the real killer will be more difficult. Thus, the reason for the amateur sleuth to step in during the investigation while the police are distracted.
I feel strangely relieved to find that the scenario isn't so contrived, and I've already figured out a plot reason for a relatively high murder rate in an unlikely place, so I may be able to pull this off.
I showed off a little to the preschoolers last night. There's a man in our church who collects musical instruments, and he brought his flutes to show them. We're working on the concept that smaller instruments make higher sounds, so we compared the sound of the flute to the sound of the piccolo, etc. Since flute is my instrument, when he was letting the kids try them, I picked up the "regular" flute and played the main theme from Star Wars (one of the few things I can still play by memory). I think at least a few of them recognized it, and I knew one would because his parents are geeky. The kids weren't allowed to touch the glass flutes, but he let me play one. Most of the kids couldn't get a sound out of any of the flutes because they never did grasp the concept of blowing across it instead of into it, but our special needs girl was the one who did it perfectly and even got a really nice tone out of it.
Then there was a very interesting dinner discussion in which a cop, an accountant (both men) and I were trying to figure out how you could do a "jukebox" musical based on the music of Queen. We figured "Bohemian Rhapsody" could give you the basis for a plot ("Mama, I just killed a man"), and the way you could actually use the epic song would be to break it into its components (because it's a lot of smaller songs put together) and use those at various parts of the story, sung by different characters, and then either for the act one finale or the big pre-finale number, bring them all together, kind of like "Tonight" near the end of West Side Story.
And now I really need to get Queen on CD because I have a sudden craving to hear "Bohemian Rhapsody."
Because my brain tends to fry if I do too much brainstorming all at once, I've been alternating with reading those books I got as background for writing a mystery. One is by a forensic pathologist who's brought in, kind of like a private investigator, to go over evidence before a trial, particularly when the defense isn't happy with the way the investigation is done. This guy warns them that he'll testify on what he finds, good or bad. He's not taking sides, just looking at the evidence. I'd thought that the general way of getting the amateur sleuth into the story in a mystery, which is often that the wrong person has been arrested but the police are so convinced that it's the right person that they don't even look further, was a literary device, but it turns out to be frighteningly common. This guy would show up, look at crime scene and autopsy photos and ask really obvious questions that no one seemed to consider because the original investigation took it at face value and didn't look beyond their initial assumptions. Sadly, in real life it doesn't work out the way it does in books. By the time they figure out the oops, it's usually too late to find evidence that could lead to what actually happened, so the real killer is never found. Most of the time, there's no malice involved in the sloppy investigation, just investigators who are busy and distracted and who are focused on too many other cases to question one that seems like a slam dunk. Apparently, it's relatively easy to stage something to look like suicide and have it accepted as a suicide as long as nothing looks too terribly out of whack and as long as the person behaved in such a way that suicide might be a possibility. The investigators are prone to accepting it on face value (though it would be dangerous for a killer to assume this because any investigation at all can reveal that it's not suicide). That was kind of eye-opening. So, it's not at all unlikely in the real world for the police to fixate on one thing and not look beyond it. The person wrongly arrested may not be convicted (though there have been way too many cases of that happening), but by the time the case goes to trial and it shows up how weak the case is, the trail has gone cold and finding the real killer will be more difficult. Thus, the reason for the amateur sleuth to step in during the investigation while the police are distracted.
I feel strangely relieved to find that the scenario isn't so contrived, and I've already figured out a plot reason for a relatively high murder rate in an unlikely place, so I may be able to pull this off.
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