Tara here. Sometimes, writing a cozy mystery goes ridiculously well. Too well.
You’re cruising along at altitude, fingers flying across the keyboard. You’ve plotted and planned and you think you’ve come up with a tight storyline.
Then, everything crashes and burns. You get seventy-five percent through the book and realize that your timeline doesn’t make sense. There are few clues pointing to the murderer because you’ve spent so much time introducing other suspects. You wonder if you even have enough clues throughout the book.
You begin to wonder if you know what you’re doing (you don’t). You toss and turn at night, trying to come up with a solution to the plot holes (you don’t). You wonder if it’s time to set the book aside and try something else, like becoming a professional snuggler or a dog food taster.
I’m here to tell you that no, you should not give up. What you should do is brainstorm.
In these kinds of dire situations, authors need a fresh brain to pick. You need to bounce all of your half-baked ideas off another person, who will then look at them through a different lens.
I did this recently for the cozy I’m writing. I was stuck and sad. Then I found out about an editor offering “brainstorming services” and I reluctantly decided to give it a go. Would I be able to explain my issues with the book in just an hour?
When the video chat started, I wasn’t so sure of the question. It took me a solid twenty minutes to outline everything and to get to my main question. Despair flooded me.
And then something magical happened. We started to riff off each other. The words “what about” and “what if” were mentioned several times. We went back and forth like this for an hour, and then we both grinned and laughed when we came onto a solution.
It was euphoric, y’all.
I now have a perfectly plotted book, one that makes sense to not only me, but to someone who doesn’t know me at all.
Now, you might want to do this at the beginning of a book. Or when you’re in the middle. Or after you’ve written the entire thing. But I’m here to tell you that a fresh brain is always a good idea.
