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You walk a fine line, when writing a mystery. Too much information, and your readers figure it out before your character does and think he's stupid. Too little, and they're feeling betrayed and wondering "Okay, where the hell did that come from?"

I stuck a clue in there that would have made it, I think, way too obvious who the person pulling the strings behind this story really was. So, I cheated (just a little) and had Ben hear only the first part of the sentence that would have given the whole thing away. I think it works better now. I may run it past my (published) Mom (the mystery writer) to see what she thinks. Still tweaking it, still trying to keep it under 10K. It's at 9,995 right now. Argh.

Part of my problem is still that Ben is really in no physical danger through this thing (the villains are run-of-the-mill humans), and so it kind of feels like the stakes aren't high enough, personally, for him. I've ameliorated that somewhat by having him need to fight his wolf off at every turn or risk having it go tear-assing through my villains and thus put him in a very awkward spot, legally speaking. But it still doesn't feel like enough, somehow. It's not a story unless my protag ends up bleeding? At least, if it's Ben? Hell if I know.

In other news, the Hubby has six days off, and he's shanghai'd me into going to Colorado to visit his Mom. So I'll be AFK until Monday evening. Y'all try not to have too much fun without me.

adfkja;dfja;fj

You walk a fine line, when writing a mystery. Too much information, and your readers figure it out before your character does and think he's stupid. Too little, and they're feeling betrayed and wondering "Okay, where the hell did that come from?"

I stuck a clue in there that would have made it, I think, way too obvious who the person pulling the strings behind this story really was. So, I cheated (just a little) and had Ben hear only the first part of the sentence that would have given the whole thing away. I think it works better now. I may run it past my (published) Mom (the mystery writer) to see what she thinks. Still tweaking it, still trying to keep it under 10K. It's at 9,995 right now. Argh.

Part of my problem is still that Ben is really in no physical danger through this thing (the villains are run-of-the-mill humans), and so it kind of feels like the stakes aren't high enough, personally, for him. I've ameliorated that somewhat by having him need to fight his wolf off at every turn or risk having it go tear-assing through my villains and thus put him in a very awkward spot, legally speaking. But it still doesn't feel like enough, somehow. It's not a story unless my protag ends up bleeding? At least, if it's Ben? Hell if I know.

In other news, the Hubby has six days off, and he's shanghai'd me into going to Colorado to visit his Mom. So I'll be AFK until Monday evening. Y'all try not to have too much fun without me.