Percolating and Planning

My stories begin long before I put pen to paper or print words on a screen. They start in my head. Dreaming. Often with a dream. Or a vision. Or a “what if”. Or a memory.

My latest novel venture into crime fiction, began with a dream. Then developed with a “what if” and some memory thrown in. Fourteen years ago, my mum and I would discuss what if a child were given up for adoption, traced their birth parents and the reunion wasn’t the rosy one imagined it would be for the child. We had a certain character in mind when musing this situation. This person had their life together and would see their former “mistake” as an intrusion and something they’d rather forget.

Around this time, I had a dream about finding a body under a bridge. It was so vivid that I drafted a short story about the “experience”. I read out the story at writers’ group and received both honest feedback and harsh criticism for my efforts. The story was filed away.

Years went by and the ideas of the story percolated. Meanwhile I concentrated on my Sci-fi “War on Boris” series and the “Intrepid T-Team Travel Memoir” series. I travelled with my family and got on with life. In the background, I mulled over the characters and the world in which my Under the Bridge characters lived. I allowed the characters to move about and interact in the world of my imagination. I realised that I could marry the idea of an adoption reunion gone wrong with the body found under the bridge.

As ideas and situations emerged, I shared them with my mum and others. Along the way I began research into the issues around my crime fiction story. I familiarised myself with the genre. Read books and newspaper articles, watched crime shows, and listened to podcasts. All this absorption of information helped with the percolation process.

Five years ago, I sat down with pen and paper and began planning. After writing a sentence encapsulating the main idea of the book, I fleshed out the characters on paper. By this time in writers group, we had been given a sheet of paper that had set out how to write a character profile. I found this helpful in describing what my characters looked like, their main motivation and desires, their habits, personality, backstory and even fears. As I did this, the characters began to interact with each other, and the story began to take shape.

I decided to set Under the Bridge, being my first crime novel, in a place in which I was familiar. My home town, Adelaide. After all, the city has much going for it, and could be equated with “Midsommer” in the British Midsommer Murder series. It does have the reputation for the strangest and grizzliest of crimes—the Beaumont children (never solved), the Family murders, the Truro murders, and the bodies in the barrel murders, just to name a few. Come to think about it, I don’t know how I’ve managed to survive in Adelaide.

Into this I spent time planning the story line, timeline and chapters. Last year I wrote a synopsis and shared it with my Indie Scriptorium big-picture editing friend, Elsie King. She loved the premise, but gave helpful feedback on developing the characters more, giving them depth.

So back to the process of percolating, dreaming, visioning and having conversations with my characters in the shower…And research. As I have mentioned previously, part of that research has been delving into my family history. Although, in doing so, I have opened a Pandora’s Box of more stories that have started to percolate. Watch this space…We have so far: riches to rags (more than once), destitute to convict to doctor, missing on the Russian Front (or is he?), and mistreated orphans (sounds like another Dickens tale only this time it’s Dutch). I hope to write up short stories of these ancestors over time and after sufficient research and again, percolation.

Back to Under the Bridge, I then began to plot the chapters and timeline of the story. But I will deal with this part of the World-building process in Part 2.

© Lee-Anne Marie Kling 2024

Feature Photo: Flinders Dreaming © L.M. Kling 1984