Planned a Crime Novel in a Morning

A quick report back on the Grace Dieu workshop yesterday.

This workshop - planning a crime novel - is the one that gives me the most fear in prospect. What if the participants aren't responsive? What if they don't come up with any ideas for the novel plan? What if they come up with an idea that just isn't going to work?

This is the fourth time I have given this workshop, so I should know better by now (or is it the fifth?). Every group is brimming full of ideas to fit into crime novels. Worryingly, may of these ideas concern methods of killing people - though the ability to think these things and talk about them is probably very healthy. (At least, I hope so. :-) ) Either way, the group yesterday came up with a great outline for a crime story. A murder victim with a multi-layered past. Someone we don't meet in the story, but who would nevertheless have cast a long
shadow over everything that happened.

Home in the evening and exhausted. Riding the wild horse of this particular workshop does tend to leave me mentally zapped. Happy though.