The cozy process
I always wanted a useful job. Something with which I could help people. Some people get to be nurses or teachers, which I consider two of the absolute top jobs when it comes to usefulness. I, however, am not someone you want at your bedside or in front of the class. That I'm a terrible teacher is something I learned trying to homeschool during COVID lockdowns. And nursing is better done by stronger people than me. After a week of illness around me, I'd need therapy.
No, I'll have to make do with what I'm good at: intricate fluff! I can spin a story that looks like this at first
And when I'm done, you wonder how you ever saw it as anything but
And this helps people too. As a writer, I can take people away from everyday life and offer them a puzzle and a laugh for a few pages a day. With the added bonus that I absolutely LOVE what I'm doing!
So how do I do it?
I used to think I was a discovery writer, or gardener, or pantser, or any other term that means a person who simply starts writing and sees where they land. If I wrote an outline, the story was already written, and not interesting to me anymore. Problem was, I never finished anything. Once I learned about story structure, I immediately finished my first book. That is not to say I didn't change my entire outline. The lover became the brother, and the fiancé became the bad guy, and the bad guy became the dad... I don't even remember where all those characters started off. So an outline is not law. But it helps so much to know where the story is going at certain points.
My trick is to never have a blank page to stare at. I start with a whole bunch of notes. Even this blog post is the product of at least ten different bits of random thought I've had over time. I collect all my shards of plot, characters, descriptions of sounds and smells, and pretty turns of phrase in Google Keep, from where every so often they get transferred into either an existing Work In Progress, or a ginormous Google Doc that has chapters such as Characters, Phrases, Plot Ideas, and Research (mostly for historical facts on adventurers and murderers, and on random poisonous things).
By the time I open a new document, these characters have been rolling around in my head for so long, that random bit of scenes and quotes start appearing. As you can tell from that, my characters always drive my plots. As much as I love to twist those plots, they have to work with the characters in the story.
Once I have about 5000 words in loosely connected notes (if only because I think they could be something one of the characters might say at some point), I print them out, cut them up, and start to sort them. I tried doing this digitally (environment, you know), but at this point, I need the physical overview.
From there, the real fun begins. I get to make the most ridiculous connections between unconnected things to see if they might work somehow. And if there's an obvious connection, I try to find an unobvious one. I LOVE this part. It's the puzzle bit that as a reader you can only follow once the whole book is done, but I get to do it at the beginning.
Number one: the sleuth and the setting. The general setting is usually clear from the get-go. What country are we talking about? It gives the sleuth an appropriate name. And the name tells me a lot about who they will be. I once tried to rename a protagonist halfway through the story, and they were a completely different person, so I had to go back to their original name.
Then, of course, we need a victim. But as you usually only see the victim for a limited amount of time, they usually appear once I line up my suspects. Who could be someone this group of people would all dislike so much that any of them would have a motive?
That's harder than it seems when you don't want them to appear cartoonish. People may think they could murder a certain person, but actually doing it? It's a good thing that's actually not that easy! So in order to have realistic suspects, you need high-stake motives.
I pick the one that seems the most likely, or I think of a way this person couldn't possibly have done it (those are the tricky but also the most fun bits), and then I start my outline. In my case, that means finding about 7 scenes or actions that have to happen at certain points throughout the story to make sure I keep myself on track. Then I arrange all my notes around those points and I flesh out the first part. I usually get to around a third of the story before I have to start writing. At that point, I either don't know what the characters will do next, or I just get too excited and don't want to wait any more.
Once I get to that point in my outline where I'm down to bare notes, I take a step back and see if what I'd arranged before still works with how my characters turned out. I return to my outline and can usually fill in the missing parts there and then. The second half of my outline is always more Spartan as I've already laid the groundwork and just need to write my protagonist's reasoning towards the Aha moment. Well... with a nice chase or fight or other kind of delicious threat in there as well, of course!
As soon as I write the last words, I go back and work in any changes I found I had to make later. Sometimes I come up with a great red herring at the midpoint for which I have to foreshadow on the first page, that kind of thing.
With those changes out of he way, I put my manuscript to the side for at least a few days (depending on how badly my deadline with the editor is looming). Then I always have to add more description of the surroundings. I tend to get so caught up in what my characters are saying and doing that I forget to mention they're actually in a space as well. Sometimes with other people who have to be at least acknowledged. Other times, it's just really nice to enjoy the exact flavour of that ice cream they're slowly eating on that little wall in the sunshine next to that field of sheep lazily grazing... You get the point.
So there you have it. One Christa Bakker book, from start to finish. Obviously, my editor then lovingly points out where I've gone wrong, and I have more work to do, but that only makes it better.
I guess I'd better get back to it...