Square One on the Detective Story

Okay, sports fans. It looks like once again, I'm scrapping most of the work I've done so far on the story I was tentatively entitling "Firewater." It was nearly done this time, too, but somehow, it still wasn't right. So after a few days of working through it, I decided to wipe the slate clean and start from the beginning. First, I did some research on the genre by dowloading actual detective stories from the 1920s and 30s and reading through them to get a feel for typical stories in the genre. Though this seems obvious, I hadn't actually done it up till that point. Then once I read a few, I started afresh. I was amazed how quickly I was able to get the voice of my character. I've found that with my best stories, once I have the "voice" of my character or characters, the story practically writes itself, as I always have a really good idea what they're going to do or say. I have a general idea of where the story is heading, but I let my characters take me there.

Anyway, I'm encouraged. The new story's clipping along nicely and it feels like a much better story, too.