Self-edit

Self-Edit

With no time to backtrack, Paul improvised and reached for his phone in his back pocket. He set up the phone to record live as he looked around the kitchen. He pointed the phone towards the glass in the sink and then went down to the floor at the trail of footprints he followed into the kitchen. He then looked through the phone screen as he did a 360 view of the cabinets, appliances, and ceiling. There were no more footprints in this thoroughly cleaned kitchen. How could the muddy footprints enter the room and not exit? The person must have realized the mess they were leaving behind and removed their shoes. Why not clean up the shoe prints already left behind? A maladroit way to clean up after yourself so you don’t get caught. Thank you for helping us.

Paul exited the kitchen area and continued door the hallway. There were three closed doors. The first door on the right was a bathroom. Paul quickly searched the sink and the tub for anything, the garbage can and opened the linen closet door. Everything seemed to be in order. There was nothing on the counters and the toilet seat lid was placed down. However, Paul did notice that there were no towels on the towel bar or hanging from the shower door. He used his phone video camera to do a 360 view of the bathroom in its current state.

The above excerpt was written with the intention of painting the scenery for the audience to see what character is experiencing during his investigation of the room within the house. I used both third person narratives to walk through the room with some character thoughts to make the audience have a direct connection.

My creative thought process at the time was to keep the story from being 2-D. As I have read and enjoyed in many novels, the feeling of being in the moment of the feelings or actions that the character is living through at that moment.

What would I think? What would I say? What would I do? What do I want the character to do? The element of surprise when the story changes a little bit in a different way than expected. When the reader can place themselves in the story, then the imaginary guides them through the scene as if they were looking for clues too. It is like watching a movie and you yell out loud at the television to correct the behavior of the character on the screen.

Then I second guess what I have just created and wonder if I should have made the actions of the character and the scene not so predictable. Maybe throw in a curve ball or something to change from the stereotypical crime scene as seen on popular television series. The writers for these television shows are just so creative and as the story develops within that sixty minutes you find yourself asking yourself, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Sometimes I wonder if I could ever write a story so riveting that the reader does not want to put the book down.