Lead me to the keyboard

[John Dean]

This is where writing comes perilously close to madness but I am a strong believer that fictional characters, if allowed their head, can tell their own stories and all the author has to do is type!

It does not happen every time you write, which is why authors must value it when it does, but it happened to me today when writing an account of a Zoom conversation between four investigators, including DCI Jack Harris, the lead character of my series set in the north Pennines and published by The Book Folks.

Key to developing Harris from book to book has been my willingness to let him evolve as a person and it happened today as part of a plotline which sees him confront his past.

There are two pitfalls to bear in mind here, one of which is the importance of making sure that the back story is relevant to the narrative and that you are writing a story for today even though it delves into the past.

The other pitfall is that some readers like their detective stories to focus exclusively on the crime and are put off by personal details. My experience, gleaned from large numbers of reviews of my novels on Amazon, is that most of them like to be treated to glimpses of the life of characters they have grown to love – it certainly worked on this occasion.