Getting Started by Lida Sideris
I was done with Book #2 in my Southern California Mystery series and at the starting point for #3, trying to figure out what to write. Did I sit behind my computer and hope for the best? Or did I carefully plot and outline the various movements of the new story? Hoping for the best is not an option. And plotting ahead isn’t much fun for me. I like to be surprised by the twists and turns. So I tackle writing a novel, or any large project, by cutting it up into pieces. My initial focus is on the opening scene. In MURDER: DOUBLE OR NOTHING (#3 in the series), I picked the location first – a movie studio in Culver City that bore a similar resemblance to the old MGM studios, a setting I knew from my own days of working on the former MGM lot. Why not open with my heroine watching a scene being shot? Something was bound to happen while she was mostly minding her own business. Of course, mystery fans know sleuths seldom mind their own business. Heroine Corrie Locke is a newly min...