I want to thank my subscriber who asked what was in my writer’s bag of tricks. I wasn’t sure, myself, what was in there, so I took a look. Mostly what I found was a very active, often obstreperous imagination, but also, in that bag was the small phrase, “What if?”
A current event, a past happening, a friend’s comment, or, as in the case of The Cemetery Club, an old legend, could start me asking , “But what if it happened this way, or what we thought was true was not, or…” You can see, the what if thing has no limitations. That’s the kernel or heart of my bag of tricks. And by the time I’m finished with that phrase, it has become a cozy mystery.
Then, there’s the fun part of imagining a setting and the people who go in that setting. Characterization takes up a lot of room in that bag we are discussing. I don’t model my characters after any one in particular, although bits and pieces of people I’ve known find their way into my make-believe people. And, I’ll admit that Flora Tucker greatly resembles my mother.
Here’s a funny thing about characters: they have minds of their own! Really! Sometimes, I don’t know what Darcy, Flora, Ned, or Grant will say in a situation, until I see it on the page. Or, at other times, I look at what I’ve written and decide it doesn’t sound like that person at all. So, I change it. Just between you and me, the people in Levi, Oklahoma or in Ednalee, take the story and run with it. I merely record what they say and do.
I am sure that other tricks lurk in the dark recesses of my writer’s bag but those are the main ones I find at the top. Writing is a fun thing, an all-engrossing thing, a heart-breaking, rooftop-shouting kind of thing that pretty much takes over this writer’s life. When everything in there is mixed together into a cozy mystery, a writer’s bag of tricks is full of fun!
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