NaNoWriMo 2013, Day 24

I’m charting my daily progress on NaNoWriMo. Since you may or may not care, I’ll kindly hide it. Thanks for taking the time. :)

NaNoWriMo Progress: MCU Case Files: Death Scene
	Actual	Required
Progress
New Words Today	1686	1667
Daily Average	1679	1667
Remaining Req’d Daily Avg	1385	1667
Expected Total	50000	50000

Notes:

• I haven’t updated in several days. I wrote for most of those. I didn’t write a word yesterday, but for the others I did. I’ve been writing in the hour or two before I go to bed, and then just didn’t feel like staying up later to write an entry here.
• It feels weird to me not to be way ahead, or already done by now. I guess I’ve spoiled myself in past years. As it is, I’m only 305 words ahead of where I’m supposed to be, and this is just before the four-day weekend where pretty much no words are going to be written. So I’d better get busy.
• Several shower epiphanies and driving epiphanies have allowed me to finally arrive at what I think is the final version of whodunit. The victims were involved in something years ago that caused a death in the family of the murderer. There was a cover-up and through an accident involving the sudden discovery of heretofore unknown magical abilities, the murderer found out what really happened and decides to get justice immediately rather than waiting for the criminal justice system’s wheels to slowly turn.
• What I’ve been writing are all the background scenes that will probably never end up in the book. The murder victims and their indiscretions years ago. The murderer discovering their complicity. The mental breakdown of the murderer. But what it’s allowing me to do is identify exactly what witnesses the investigators need to talk to and what clues they need to uncover to get the full story. Because I’ll have said full story.
• I figure the “finished version” will come out right at 50,000 words, and then when I edit it, I’ll add all the secondary plot stuff and lots of conflict. I hope I can come up with some that doesn’t make the reader point at a scene and say, “I’ll bet the card was labeled ‘Scene where Nick’s ex-wife calls’ or ‘Confrontation between Chuck and her father,'” or whatever. Because that would be bad. (I have a book review I’ve been meaning to write about a book I read recently where I could literally do that.)
• Favorite thing I had to look up: I decided that my first victim was once again an up-and-coming hip-hop artist, but his road was faster: he was on American Idol. So I had to watch American Idol videos on YouTube to get an idea how they go. No, really, I had to. It was research. I totally didn’t just spend several hours watching American Idol (and British Idol and Australian Idol and . . .) because I wanted to, and then suddenly hit upon the idea of having my victim a popular contestant. Totally.
• Really. I didn’t.
• Really.