Chapter 42: Your Bug List

Note to readers: This chapter builds on themes that have been established in Chapter 40: Creating Your Suspects and Chapter 41: Weaving Your Web. If you haven’t read those yet, I recommend doing so before diving into this chapter.

At last, the time has come. You’ve got most of your plot elements on your workbench, and you’re trying to assemble everything into one big, beautiful engine. You’ve started to fasten a few things down, wire others together, and in the process, there’s a chance that your engine has started to become a touch… buggy.

So what are we going to do about it? We’re going to make another list, of course!

The Bug List is where I record every problem my plot has accumulated: every little inconsistency, question, or imperfection that’s—well, bugging me. Filing a bug is as simple as writing down a short description of the problem I’m having. Let’s see how this works by examining five bugs I’ve identified while pulling together the clues for my circus mystery.

• If the aerialist recognized the Villain from her home town, why didn’t her estranged brother also recognize him?

• Why does the Villain feel the need to kill the lion tamer?

• And why does he use the lions to do it? This will make a great scene, but it seems like the least convenient method imaginable—especially since my Villain is not a member of the circus.

• The long ago murder of the sister seems like too big a plot point to come out all at once, in the interview with the brother. I want to find ways of hinting at this mystery before it’s disclosed.

• My current plan for the Damning Clue is to have my Sleuth find the Victim’s diary, which names the Villain. Is this too straightforward—and therefore too lackluster?

You can see that my Bugs are a bit of a melange. I’ve written down things that don’t make logical sense—but also areas of the plot where I feel I could be shooting for a higher level of excellence. I could also include problems with characters, themes—or anything, really. As long as it’s an issue for me, it gets dropped straight onto the Bug List.

Keeping the Bug List does three things for me. First, it ensures that I will, in fact, get to the problem at some point; I’m not going to wind up shipping out a novel with an engine that drives like my dad’s old Suburban.

Secondly,