First big decision: Do I use the NaNo badge with the typewriter or the laptop? They don’t have one with a desktop.  

Another completed draft! The novel is not as long as it looks. For visual impact, I stacked all the chapter copies returned by my critique group. Thanks, Dave, Manfred, Sylvia and Cindy!

Great stuff. She uses the neighbor’s truck and borrows his gun and his boxing bear. There’s lots of action, a few bullets are fired (no blood shed, though) and everything turns out pretty good for the sleuth and pretty bad for the villains.

But what exactly does Morgan overhear?

The first conversation I came up with didn’t work. The  villains stood in the parlor discussing how bad their situation was. OMG! Bad guys under the gun don’t stand around chitchatting (unless they want to get caught ,in which case they ought to forget committing crimes and go for therapy). If they’re villains worth reading about they ought to run out of the house, leap in their cars, and spew dust all the way to Juarez.

(Meantime, the heroine is left standing outside the parlor door, trying to find the safety on the gun she doesn’t know how to fire, never realizing the villains are already shopping for pinatas in some tourist trap.)

After I finished rolling my eyes at the dialogue I’d originally come up, I knew what I needed to do. I needed to write the behind-the-scenes stuff. I needed to tell myself the villains’ side of the story.

I keep these behind-the-scenes scenes short and sketchy with bits of dialogue and inner thoughts. When I’d worked out what the villains had been up to, I saw that my sleuth had thwarted their plans three times in less than a day. They had to react quickly to the most recent frustration (one of them was killed). They did need to communicate with each other. My new dialogue looked like this:

Neilson: I found Paris.

Dottie: (impatient) Well? Where is he?

Neilson: Dead. Dying. Out there. Looks like he fell from somewhere.

Dottie: (long pause) Okay, we’ll proceed without him. Get the cars started.

Neilson: Which cars?

Dottie: Paris’ and mine.

Neilson: What about the body?

Dottie: Leave it where it is.

Neilson: But I had to put it in the front seat.

Dottie: Frankly, I don’t give a damn where you put it. Just get the cars started. I’ll be right there.

Neilson: Where you going?

Dottie: We’re going to need money.

I like this much better. My sleuth still learns the villains are about to run for it and she still gets to use the neighbor’s truck and  his boxing bear as well as take out a windshield and a porch post with the gun. The villains are a little more on the ball. Well, except when it comes to hiding bodies.