The Discovery Stage of Writing

In my previous post on the Five Stages of Writing, I mention Discovery, Writing, Revisions, Production and Marketing. Currently, I’m in the Discovery Stage for my next Keri Armstrong mystery. This is the process by which you discover your story. This prep time can take weeks or months, so be sure to factor this in when you set your writing goals.

For my next mystery, it means I’m defining my characters, shaping the setting, and figuring out the crime. Then I let these factors swirl in my head until there’s enough material to write a synopsis before I tackle the actual story. This helps me determine a logical path forward.

This stage is essential to my writing process. I’m a plotter, not a pantser. I can’t just sit down and scribble away at a story with only a vague notion of where I’m going. I need a roadmap for directions.

In Book #2, personal concierge Keri Armstrong is hired as a temporary personal assistant to a visiting diva who’s starring in a local musical theater production. Of course, something goes terribly wrong and a dead body shows up, but how and where?

I know the victim’s identity and whodunit at this point, but the setting details are unfamiliar to me. I’ve been researching community theaters for the layout, the crew, the production staff, a sample rehearsal schedule, the duties of a personal assistant in this milieu, and so on. It’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole of research and forget to plot the story.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

One problem in writing a series is that you want to vary the means, motive and opportunity. For this book, I need to figure out exactly how the crime occurred from the viewpoint of the killer. The motive is actually based on a news article I’d clipped, but the details don’t work as I had initially planned them. And while I have a list of suspects, I still need to interconnect their secrets to make each one seem guilty. That’s where my Web of Deceit comes into play as described in my book for writers, Writing the Cozy Mystery.

Those free calendars you get in the mail come in handy to block out the timeline. I’ll take a calendar, choose my start date for the story, and determine how many weeks pass before the finale. In this case, the story will take place over the six-week rehearsal period.

All of this preliminary work goes into a novel before I can begin writing. Once I start, the scenes should develop fairly quickly since my synopsis tells me where to go next. And if story magic happens to change things along the way, so much the better. If I’m surprised, my readers will be surprised, too. Then I’ll go back and revise the synopsis.

It’s best not to rush the creative drive. Just because you’re not writing doesn’t mean you’re not working. The discovery stage is inherent to creativity and to devising a solid foundation for your story.