Fast Typing but Longer Thinking

Oh, how much faster the writing flows now that I can type with both hands at full speed! At the same time, I've moved into the tricky area of the suspect line-up for the case Angel is working on. As mentioned earlier, she needs to talk to each person at the firm she's investigating for and form an opinion about them as to which one is the culprit. I have her ready to start her second interview while she reflects on the first one.

So now I must figure out who the culprit actually is and what their motivation is. What is this person's background? What are his/her aims, loyalties, secrets? Since there is already a murder involved, what motive would make this person kill someone? What was that person's role to begin with? How did they connect? All those questions point up just how little plotting I've done so far! I suppose I must take a break and do some character development around my potential suspects, and that might lead to reducing their numbers to something more manageable.

The pace of this story kind of intrigues me because a great deal seems to be happening over a short time span. I find most of my plots extend over a week or more, but this one started on a Friday and now it's Tuesday in Chapter 8. I didn't put in much about the intervening Sunday; just sort of glossed over it with a passing thought from Tabitha about how she and Jack spent it. One of my favorite reference books on writing was one I read long, long ago. I know the title was "Writing Fiction" but I can't recall the author. I'll try to find out for a later post. Anyway, in the chapter on pacing, she starts with a recounting of how she and her daughter set about defrosting the freezer one day. Her daughter said, "I wish this was a book, because then we'd just say 'they defrosted the freezer' and it would be all done." In "Janus Rule," nothing happened on Sunday that would move the story forward, so the rules of pacing say to leave it out. I have actually read published books that include long passages where things happen but none of them push the story on. In some instances, too much "filler" will make me turn to the last chapter to see how it came out, if I'm interested in the characters enough, and then quit. While writing my own books, if I find myself feeling bogged down by a passage that is keeping me from getting to "the good part," it's time to re-examine it to see if it can be summed up in a single sentence or two and then just move on.