Strangled up in blue - BBF#40

Stockholm’s Triangle Bar, on the eve of the Baltic Triangle, a yacht race to Helsinki via Riga run in never-ending daylight.

Surveying the crowd Georgia Simmond knew this year’s event contained more than the usual number of triangles, but not that it would end in tragedy.   Her affair with Erlend Olofson had begun in the dark depths of winter, after learning of her errant spouse’s affair with her one-time best friend Ingrid Borgsdottir.   Ingrid’s motives had been ulterior, her intention being to distract and thus sabotage Toby’s chances, but her husband’s affair with the wife of Finnish champion Per Alstrand divided her loyalties.

When, at Riga, midway through the race, the nubile body of Anita, Per’s teenage daughter was discovered, strangled, in an alley, at the same time as members from the British, the American and the Danish crews disappeared, questions were asked about more than basic navigation. 

[189 words]

Week #40’s response to Lisa Ricard Claro’s Book Blurb Friday challenge which, having provided the photograph and having finished NaNo (though not the book) I could not resist.  But for evidence that I could not have started this year’s NaNo without BBF see my blogpost from last Wednesady.

Each week Lisa posts a photograph which represents a book cover.   Participants are challenged to “Write a book jacket blurb (150 words or less) so enticing that potential readers would feel compelled to buy the book”  

Book Blurb Friday - truly inspirational!

I made no secret of the fact that my NaNo novel was kick-started by a response to Lisa Ricard Claro's Book Blurb Friday over on Writing in the Buff but I have just checked and as well as #16 ('Not wanted on voyage') I have included characters from #4 ('Thickness of thieves' where Luke Darbyshere and Francesca Lloyd made their first appearance), #5 ('Smile now darling, just for me' which has photographer Davey and the shivering model Fay) and #9 ('Seeing double', Rose Madigan's first appearance).   BBF #13 ('Angels fall') has more Luke and Francesca and there is also a nod back to #15 ('Parts others cannot reach').
I can thoroughly recommend the challenge as an inspiration for plots - and I shall be making an effort with this week's because Lisa is using one of my photos.
And congratulations to Lisa who has reached her NaNo total, despite having been 20,000 words behind schedule at one point.

Day 29 NaNo - 77713 - and verified

In panic mode I have put in all the notes I have made re the endings and the whole thing into one document, and hastily written a final paragraph which tells the ending completely without elegance or subtlety.  And this is the total for NaNo purposes.   But it is a LONG way from finished.   And NaNo have marked my total up by a bit too.

Day 28 NaNo - 72067

Not so much new stuff created today as already-written snippets slotted into place thus enabling them to be counted.

Day 27 NaNo - 70797

Working towards the finale ... and tidying up the anomalies!

Day 26 NaNo - 69698

850 words from today's total were the sort that makes writing so satisfactory:  having had a note in my text, saying "sort confrontation with Peter Walpole" for over a week, which I had found impossible to make progress on, suddenly this morning it all came good and ideas tumbled out.   That and a less-than-enthralling arrest mean that nearly all the loose ends should be tied by next Wednesday ... fingers crossed.

Day 25 NaNo - 67179

Another solid day's typing and a couple of satisfactory long passages which make more sense of the rest.   Thus I believe I will have the bare bones of the story in place by the end of the month while knowing that they are inadequately fleshed.   A mixed sort of satisfaction, partly because I have done better than I expected at putting some of the plot elements in place - at concealing and then revealing, and at explaining - but as so often happens, having reached one rung up the next beckons.   My hope is that I can maintain momentum to get the thing finished properly.

Day 24 NaNo - 64157

Pessimism and the art of patchwork novel writing
I began with lots of brand new, brightly patterned and totally separate oddments of characters, and gaily stitched them all together.   Quite soon I found that they were mis-matched for size, some paired into a nice tidy square and were complete, while others needed a whole new piece or two before they were a section.
And then I found that although while separate they were OK, all the pieces could not be simply stitched together, just as they were, to make a pleasingly-patterned whole, they needed to be cut and cut again and reassembled so that equal weight was more or less assigned to all.   And in between each one I needed to insert a piece of plain to sometimes add contrast but also to unite.
And now it's sort of almost done, except that I have omitted almost one whole column and two halves of other rows, and the contrast/uniting pieces are inadequate, in places.    And today I wondered whether or not I really wanted such a mish-mash of a piece at all?

Day 23 NaNo - 62209

It's been a head down slogging sort of day, progress made, reasonably happily but rarely singing.   Time for that on the next draft I think.
Last year I finished on the 22nd with 61917 words, this year there is lot more to do yet.

Day 22 NaNo - 59050

A MUCH better day - all done with long conversations in which plot details and reasons are being revealed, and yesterday's half-baked snippets were made to fit, and tweaked so as to read better too.   Thursday is three quarters done, Friday about a third.   Saturday is the day for all the loose ends to be tied up, fingers crossed, and Sunday they arrive back in Leith - a couple more surprises and The End.
[Except there are at least two more couples whose tale has to be woven in later, post NaNo.]

Day 21 NaNo - 55288

Considering I've been sat at the computer for hours today I have very little to show for it.   It's mostly been playing put and take, trying to shoehorn conversations and snippets of action into the right day so that they all progress nicely.   But they don't and I have come to the conclusion that the best thing to do is go and read a book.

Day 20 NaNo - 54541

A useful day, albeit unsatisfying.   Useful insofar as I drew up a spreadsheet of what happens when so as to get some idea of when to leak clues in; unsatisfactory because I then did little more than write scrappy outlines notes for each day.   I also completely re-wrote a description of top baddie - having last night made him little better than a stereotype I realised this morning that he just would not do as a 'real' effective person.

And from another site I learnt of the existence of the Writer's diet, which checks the 'leaness' or otherwise of a piece of writing.    Interesting and useful.

Day 19 NaNo - 52446

Slowly making progress ... I think.

Day 19 NaNo - 51018

Done the words - brief hurrah - and thankfully made some progress.   But a lot more to do ...

LOTS of words is not enough

Woke this morning not thinking 'nearly there!' but 'how am I going to tie up all the loose ends?' and currently the answers are: 
1) You won't and
2) the thing's too heavy/boring/ponderous/full of wasted characters to float so don't bother ...
One attempt to solve this will be another mind map.
And I have now cut the cruise to seven days.

Day 18 NaNo - 49386

Regrettably I've reached a point when some clever reasoning and deducing from known facts is required.    So I don't know how much to reveal in answer to the following:

‘I’ve just remembered something else about him too,’  Baz said.  ‘I should have said this before but I completely forgot … but on the first night, after we’d changed tables, I happened to catch him smiling at Fay, while he was pouring wine.   She looked really quite frightened of him.   Do we have any information on him at all?’ 

 I suspect I'll have to work backwards, starting  with the final 'Eureka' moment and then ... and then something else.   This may take some time.   I am progressing with other bits: one more murder, two denouements, at least, to go, and I am considering yet another cut in length of the cruise, to eight or even seven nights.   And tomorrow I expect to break the 50K.

Day 17 NaNo - 46080

Different again to yesterday.   Flailing a bit to find a direction, while I edit yesterday's work - the only way I can prepare to continue, despite knowing it is not recommended, and then when the idea for the next murder came to me, head down and working for the rest of the afternoon.   I had been trying to shoehorn another murder in, but it was not working and knowing something had to happen I had to concentrate hard.

Out of the blue - an unexpected death

If, having passed the several notices which warn of danger, someone sets out to climb, by means of steep, rock-cut steps on the side of a vertical cliff, steps which are uneven, which slope haphazardly and are frequently slippery as a result of guano or seaweed, and they then slip and fall to their death on the rocks below, it is, by its nature, an accident, and accidents are unpreventable.  

At least by the presence of otherwise benign group members.

And no matter how tragic, due to the youth of the victim – only twenty-four, the brevity of their marriage – just eleven days, an accident is an accident.

Except when it is not.

Except when it was not so much preventable but deliberately executed.

And not just heat-of-the-moment deliberate but planned in advance, the time and place selected, and the killer hired.   Because although, in this case, a killer might not have been thought necessary, that the obvious suspect was elsewhere at the time, although not very far elsewhere, it was useful to have witnesses who would testify, with complete honesty that what they had seen was an unpreventable accident.

[This direction for the plot occured to me in the less than a minute it took me to walk upstairs, having finished my lunch - the victim hitherto unsuspected - funny indeed this writing lark!]

Day 16 NaNo - 42660

Awake early thinking that if Penny pretends to be Italian a lot of problems could be overcome, and thus it proved.   Not easily, but eventually I got down 2500 words which adequately covered Tuesday's happenings.   Then a reward as two other characters chose to have an amusing 500 word conversation to which it seemed I contributed very little.   A good day's work.

Day 15 NaNo - 39413

An idea at how to proceed with the uncovering of a high-ranking purchaser of stolen art - corny but effective - and a decision to cut the cruise from fourteen days to ten, so I have to telescope the action somewhat.    Still haven't written the action as such ...

Tuning in

What a difference an author makes!   Having finished re-reading, with huge enjoyment and in quick succession the wonderfully poetic Andrew Greig's 'The return of John McNab and 'Romanno Bridge' which deals with some lovely-but-alien-to-me fit, mountain-climbing and adventure-minded folk (plus some nasties) I have picked up P.D.James 'The murder room'   I think I was not especially enthralled by this when I first read it, but after just half an hour of her slow-paced descriptions I find that I have begun using a similar approach with my characters.   Not, most definitely not, plagiarism, just a tuning into a more naturally sympathetic way of writing.
It embarrasses me at times to realise that even at my age there are times when I 'need permission' or (as someone said a couple of days ago in a comment on MudSpots) 'validation' to do something similar (and the commentor is the same age as me, so that's all right then!)

Day 14 NaNo - 37266

Started the day with a determined effort to fill in one of the less interesting days, a day when I need to establish minor relationships without resorting to 'and then' too many times.    After 1500 words I'd got to nine o'clock in the morning, with nothing happening.   Probably OK in the finished novel but no good for a finish in ~16 days .... 

Day 13 NaNo - 34680

Woke with much of one conversation pretty much in my head so got 1200 words typed up before breakfast.  Plus half baked pieces are coming to fruition and the plot is changing, narrowing, as I go.