That’s what I need help with this week fellow bloggers, faithful followers and curious guests.
You see, I’m stuck. I’m roughing out the outline for my next manuscript and I have most of the requisite parts. What I can’t figure out is: how to kill someone who’s already dead. Um, sort of. Someone thinks she killed him but then the body disappeared, but then reappeared. It’s confusing. Keep reading.
My protagonist (Q) gets into a physical altercation with a man (X) who she believes had something to do with her sister’s (T) disappearance. Q thinks this because X is seen wearing T’s very unique (one-of-a-kind) amulet around his neck. During the altercation, Q hits X in the head with a rock then crawls back to her car (she’s hurt too) and calls her then boyfriend (G) for help disposing the body.
When G gets to the scene of the altercation, there is no body. He follows a pair of footprints (presumably X’s) into the desert but the gusting wind eventually erases all tracks. G assures his lady love (Q) that she did not kill X because he walked away. Presumably.
Fast forward several years; the very dead body of X is discovered in a shallow grave in the middle of the desert in almost exactly the same place Q had the altercation with him. No amulet is found on the body. Q calls G to help investigate what might have happened (no, it’s not alien abductions and no they are not still a couple. That’s right a necessary reunion after a very bad break-up).
G’s investigation leads to the discovery of a human trafficking ring (the most likely explanation for T’s disappearance).
Super short synopsis of what is learned during G’s investigation:
X was found wandering on the side of the road by an unsuspecting teen-aged boy (Z) (coincidentally T’s boyfriend at the time she disappeared). Z also noticed the amulet. When Z realized that X was bleeding all over his car and most likely going to die (from a head injury), he drove X out into the desert and dumped him out of his car. (He didn’t want to get stuck with a dead body even if he didn’t kill him.) Coincidentally, where Z dumped X is almost exactly the same place Q thought she killed him. Z kept the amulet that’s why it was not on the body and that’s how G eventually comes to suspect him; G sees Z wearing the amulet.
Here’s the problem: What is the cause of death?
Q hit him on the head with a rock. Z pushed him out of a moving car. Scavengers, weather and time destroyed most of the remaining human evidence.
X can’t have died from the head injury, because Q is the protagonist of the story and cannot go to jail for murder. She has to think she is going to jail for the duration of the story.
Z is a very minor character and really only here as a red herring. The shove out of the moving car did not kill him. He is the number 2 suspect though, behind Q.
What else could have killed X? Coyotes? Vultures? It has to be definitive and eventually ruled as the cause of death over the head injury. The head injury turns out, was not a lethal blow. But something was definitive – what?
So there you go. That’s what I need help with. Put on your thinking caps and give me your thoughts. What ultimately killed X?
What do you do fellow writers when you get stuck? Have you ever killed off a character? It’s hard to get inside the mind of a murderer and virtually impossible to do any research.
Word of the Day: Yegg
Fun fact about me: I’ve never killed anyone. Well, real anyone anyway.
Original post by Jansen Schmidt, February 2016. Photos courtesy Google Images.
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