Note: The image here was created by AI that clearly didn’t understand what a two-story building looks like. This was my fifth try. You get the idea.
I don’t know how I managed it, but I wrote four chapters in about a month!
I’m in the meat of the story, right in the middle, so there are a lot of different things happening. And I have to keep them all straight!
I think one of the biggest challenges I run into as a writer is ensuring that all the threads of the story are always moving forward. You don’t want to break the chapter into four sections and give each piece of the story the same amount of weight because that would come out really silly and repetitive.
Instead, I try to focus on a couple different elements and maybe have pieces in the background that the main character notices that have to do with other parts. I like to give the reader little clues about what could be coming.
Speaking of little clues: I went to my writing group today, and one of the pieces of the story that we touched on is Cedarbrook House. Is it haunted? In a way …
So Cedarbrook House is a beautiful old mansion that sits near Snoqualmie Falls and the nearby park. I created it for my book. It’s the home of a 1940s movie star who built it and retreated there after her husband passed under mysterious circumstances decades ago. There is a rumor that she did it. The place and the stories surrounding it are fascinating to the people of the Seattle area, including Lacey, my MC. Her sisters and her cousin used to hike there, and they all thought the mansion was haunted.
Back to my original question: Was it haunted? I believe that old buildings like that, especially homes, carry the weight of the stories that unfolded there, the essence of the people who lived there, and a heaping helping of all the love. They take on a spirit of their own. And Cedarbrook House is no different.
In my book, it becomes a legend in and of iteself. And the thread of Cedarbrook’s story graces bits and pieces of Lacey’s story, here and there.
It’s important, but it just seems to be a fascination.
The cool part? It’s something that I added in after I had the first three chapters written. It was something that popped up unexpectedly. And ended up being the solution for a handfull of plotpoints that had no answer!