Thursday, December 07, 2006

outline for story

I have put together a general outline for the beginning of the story that I shared earlier. If you recall it starts off with a mystery body found in the desert. I'm still debating whether I want to use a detective or another person to solve the crime. It is a very gruesome crime and for this reason I feel it would be more appropriate to use a professional, but I'm still undecided. Anyway I think I am going to have the detective search the victims house and speak with her fiance who last spoke with her. In the house he will notice different items that he will make a note of and that will come into play later such as exercising equipment (when the victim didn't go to the gym she worked out in her home), work related files pertaining to current cases (victim was a lawyer), and other important clues. The mailman will casually drive by to deliver the mail while the victim's fiance and the detective are outside where they will exchange brief pleasantries. The detective will continue the investigation following paper trails leading to the victim's office. Here the detective will learn about one of the victim's client's ex-husbands who recently lost a divorce settlement to the victim's client and who had to pay money and relinquish custody of their children. Flash forward a little while and the detective will go to the gym where the victim used to work out hoping to learn more about the victim's final days when he sees a familiar face that he just can't place. In passing he hears the man's name as he is greeted by the employee at the front desk and he matches it with the name of the disgruntled man who lost the settlement. As the detective catches one last profile view of the man he realizes where he recognizes him from...he was the mailman. Later I reveal that his children and house were his livelihood and losing them both at the hands of the victim was a crushing blow to him giving him motive to kill her. We find out that he learned of the victim's name from the court battles with his ex-wife and later was able to match it to one of the houses on his mail route. He was also familiar with her pattern of exercising without her knowing it having attended the same gym for a few months. There are numerous other details to the story that I didn't include but this is the general framework I am dealing with so far, but I'm sure it will change a little.

1 comment:

Chris Newfield said...

Hi Eric, I think this will work. some of the clues you mention could be discovered simply by identifying the body (that she was a lawyer) so you may want to use the observation and questioning for less obvious things and for discrepencies. Killing your ex-wife's divorce lawyer could be hard to swallow unless the lawyer did something kind of terrible in the process of winning. Otherwise why would the mailman flip out like that? Why was the house his livelihood? Did he get less than 50% etc? I think these details will turn out to be important to overall plausibility (which your sample definitely had).