Getting the little grey cells working

[John Dean]

Writing has the capacity to continually surprise the author who is doing it, and that can often take them somewhere unexpected.

Sometimes that means a nod to the past, which is why I have found myself using an Agatha Christie technique without setting out to do so.

What was planned for my latest DCI John Blizzard novel was a series of disparate plot lines with no obvious connection, which I hope will intrigue the reader. The problem was that I had also baffled myself!

The way to break through what had become an impasse in my writing was to place all the investigators together in the same room and let Blizzard take them through the plotlines, in the way that Agatha Christie’s private detective Hercule Poirot does with his suspects.

That gave my story focus and impetus and excited my ‘little grey cells;’, as a certain Belgian would say. Yet again, Agatha Christie’s approach to detection had proved its worth.

In fact, a tip from me; watch out for the name Agatha Christie. We have not heard the last of her, I’ll wager!