THE PLOT THICKENS

What do plots and gravy have in common? Both need to thicken or you’ve got thin soup. I’m reminded of this every time I’m nodding off while reading in bed, a sure sign I’m not fully engaged. Other times I can’t get to sleep because the book I’m reading has my adrenaline pumping and I’m racing to get to the end of a chapter. That’s when I know the author has done his or her job in grabbing my interest.

I’m mindful of this, too, in plotting my novels as a writer. However terrific a premise, at some point in the first fifty pages or so, the plot has to thicken in order to go from intriguing to fully engaging. My first novel, GARDEN OF LIES, is a good example. It’s about baby girls switched at birth, one of whom grows up rich, the other poor.

Intriguing? Sure. But it’s only when the girls’ paths cross as adults, when they’re both in love with the same man, that things get really interesting.

In my novel THE SECOND SILENCE, the parents of a kidnapped child are in a desperate race against time to find her. Here’s where the plot thickens: Mom and Dad have been divorced for years and have to heal the wounds of the past in order to work as a team to save their child. In the process the passion they once knew as a couple is rekindled. Nothing like a romantic entanglement to up the ante!

In my work-in-progress, set in a fictional town in the California gold country, my heroine arrives in town after driving across the country, not knowing a soul. She’s escaping an abusive relationship. A familiar plot perhaps, but my plot thickens with her discovery that she has a hidden talent as a forensic sketch artist. As she’s working with the police to catch criminals, she’s living under her assumed name so her husband won’t find her, seeking to escape her past with the help of her new friends.

My recipe for writing a page-turner is fairly simple and works with any combination of plot twists: Start with your list of ingredients: sympathetic characters, a setting that will draw the reader in, and a hook. Throw your characters into hot water, add thickener and stir continuously until thickened.

Good gravy, do we have a plot? Yes, we have a plot. Take it to the bank.