YOU KNOW HOW it works in those detective novels, right? The detective sets out on some seemingly minor crime. But the clues lead deeper and deeper, into a web of corruption and into the lives of the rich and powerful, into long-hidden secrets and family shame and of course multiple murders.
Writing is sometimes like that. I was working up the "New Mombasa" scene but I had problems. Besides all the timeline and plotting problems, it seemed to require me to change tense.
For three novels, I've been telling this story in "immediate past" tense. Now I was contemplating a lengthly flashback because I didn't see any other way to get this feeling of being alone in the mysteries of Paris after the cafes have closed.
As it happened, Quora popped up a couple of questions about handling tenses in writing and I got chatting with some of the regulars about it. That started a whole long chain of discoveries of different ways to handle that sequence. And the surrounding sequence. And multiple scenes both already in draft and yet to be written.
And it is still leading me. On the drive back from work I realized there's a different reason to go to the Louvre which saves the "mummy's secret" thing I was playing with -- and the Louvre is where I want to introduce Jane Dieulafoy.
And Colette is still in the plan. As is Jane Avril. And la Feé Verte.
This is why we do this. Why we agonize over what seems meaningless. I could have written the scene as it stood in the outline and it would have been okay. But by following up on that one lead and seeing where it went I discovered not just a better scene, but a dozen.
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