Like a bad social disease you can’t get rid of, I’m back once again with another 101-word Story of the Week.

It was inspired by a prompt generously sent my way by long-time subscriber Doug Wisperur. Thanks, Doug.

    Knock Knock: The Truth Wants Out

They served the homicide suspect more coffee before leaving him in the cell.

“Think he’ll confess?”

“He already has. Notice the way he says, ‘I didn’t do it,’ emphasizing the ‘I.’ He’s telling us he was there—he just wasn’t the shooter. An innocent person says, ‘I didn’t do it.’”

“That’s it?”

“There’s also the slight head nod—even when he denies being there. The body says ‘yes’ while the mouth says ‘no.’ In body language, it’s called leakage.”

“Like when his knees are shaking?”

“Nah. That’s the coffee. Gonna be real leakage if we don’t give him a break soon.”

Prompt: A tomboy’s heart in a China doll’s body

Adventures in novel writing: Aside from putting together the puzzle pieces of my novel (Questionable Characters), I’ve also made a conscientious effort to do a lot more novel reading, concentrating on the type of type of book I hope to write. In that vein, I’ve been reading a lot of books by Michael Connelly. He has two popular series: The Lincoln Lawyer character (made famous by Matthew McConaughey on the big screen), and the books featuring detective Harry Bosch (also a popular Amazon TV series).

A few months ago, I learned Connelly was going to be speaking in L.A. with a couple of other writers (Walter Mosley and Laurie R. King). Since I knew it would be informative and inspirational hearing from these successful writers, I flew down to watch the show. Each writer had their own spin on how they work, with one common denominator being the fact that they are all morning writers. That made me feel good since I’m in the same boat. For whatever reason, the later it gets, the less my creative juices flow.

I’ll leave you with two other takeaways I picked up. Connelly said his first drafts are all focused on plot and story and his subsequent drafts zero in on the character, dialogue and heart of the novel. That makes total sense to me. Get the story down, then work on making it good.

Finally, when talking about editors, Connelly said he always tells a new editor, “The only notes I want from you are thank-you notes.”

I know it was a joke since he admitted that he’s only had two editors over his decades of writing, but either way, the crowd loved it. The 90-minute discussion was totally worth the trip down, and hanging with my youngest son (the inimitable Wes Leslie), wasn’t a bad bonus either.

The beat goes on.

Thanks for listening.

Scotty out

PS—Oh yeah. Almost forgot. I reached out to my developmental editor and asked if she’d be willing to review the outline I have for my next draft. I offered to send her the outline, or a beat sheet, or a 2-3 page synopsis. She graciously agreed to read whatever I prefer to send her. The idea of getting her thoughts on a detailed outline—before I launch into writing another full draft, is something I think will really help me save a lot of time up front. So glad I found her.