Find The Victim’s Secrets in Your Mystery The victim is a strategic character in your mystery. Spend just as much time developing this character as you do your protagonist and the villain. Even though your victim is dead or soon dead, they are the character around whom the story revolves. The crime against the victim…
What is Foreshadowing? Foreshadowing is a literary device which is an advance hint of something that will happen later in the story. Foreshadowing creates an atmosphere of suspense as the reader continues on with expectations over later events. Foreshadow upcoming events with character dialogue, plot events, and changes in setting. Each method supplies a way…
Research is Background, Not the Story Historical research, especially for a time when not much original material from the period survives, can be daunting. At any given time my desktop may be covered with notebooks, maps, and reference books. Or I may be looking at a collection of photos I took at the Domus dei…
External wants and internal needs combine to enrich your character and drive a strong story.
A reversal at the midpoint points toward narrowing the focus in the second half of the middle.
A Setting in Time At the time of Argolicus Rome was neither the capital city of Italy nor the center of the Roman Empire. King Theoderic, ruled Italy from the north of Italy in Ravenna and the Roman Empire was centered in Constantinople. In The Roman Heir Argolicus and Nikolaos leave Rome to begin his…
