"The Tangle" and "Mystery Solved"

"A wise man doesn't necessarily know all the answers, 

but a wise man knows how to find them."

- Jack Edwards

(My dad might have been quoting someone else when he said this to me, 

but I got it from my pops, so that's my attribution.)

I need to jump back a couple of steps...

Before I started working on the outline, I needed to figure out what I call "my genre" -- which essentially included the world in which my novel would take place and the tone of the novel -- and then I needed to figure out who my Protagonist would be.

Since me genre would be Paranormal Mystery (making my protagonist a detective), I new I couldn't proceed without knowing what the mystery was.

I could proceed, in fact.  But it would have been (I know from experience) unwise.  I had a structure to guide me through the outline stage, but that structure was more of an emotional map for the Protagonist and the Reader:

1. Protagonist asked to solve unsolvable mystery.
2. Mystery turns out to be more unsolvable than originally realized.
3. Protagonist has a viable clue.
4. Victim is covering for someone else, wants Protagonist off the case.
5. Victim is mistaken in assumption, Protagonist knows real solution.
6. Protagonist solves case, everyone happy with solution!

That's kind of a sloppy paraphrasing of the original structure (which I am, at the moment, too lazy to look up because I've got a lot to get through just now), but you can see that it doesn't actually contain any of the details of the mystery or the solution.

The most assured way to fail to complete any long-form work of fiction is to not know where you're going.  Novelists may well argue with me -- stating that they just keep writing until they have a satisfactory resolution, and then honing their resolution in the rewrites -- but I am going from my own experience of what has caused me to lose interest in a project halfway through and jump to a brand new project.  If I don't feel confident about how my story will end, I simply cannot write it.  (That doesn't mean the ending can't get better as I develop, write and rewrite it!  It simply means I don't want to invest the time without at least a fairly good ending.)

So after ascertaining who my Protagonist is, I needed to come up with first the Solution to my mystery, and then the False Solution.

This is worth explaining...

Remember me going on about how the most boring path through a story is a straight line from the Protagonist setting out to achieve her Goal and the Protagonist attaining said Goal?  Well and almost equally boring path is watching the Protagonist wander without any clue of where she is headed.  The Protagonist begins with a plan of action, and idea that causes her to believe she has a chance at attaining her Goal, and that's what tells the Reader that the game, as it were, has begun.

Now, the first action the Protagonist takes will be a false step and will end in failure.  That's good, because the Reader and the Protagonist feel the emotional stakes have just been raised.  They (Protagonist and Reader) are more invested in the Protagonist's eventual success.

Thus, the "False Solution".

The False Solution is what the Protagonist and Reader go into the story thinking needs to be done in order to attain the Goal.

Now, as the story unfolds, the Protagonist and Reader will realize that the problem is deeper and more complex than originally assumed.  As the Protagonist learns more, her actions become increasingly effective, and at the Climax the ACTUAL Solution reveals itself.

But from the Protagonist's first action right up to the Climax, the protagonist is trying to achieve the False Solution (assuming it to be the real one).

So after I knew who my Protagonist was, I sat down and created two "platform documents" -- documents intended to help me climb to the next "platform" of development, and then be altered or discarded, as necessary, once I ascend to the platform after that.

I called the first "Mystery Solved":

***

MYSTERY SOLVED

- The main ghosts are 7yo Dorothy "Doddy" Roberts and her brother 5yo Paul "Poe" Roberts.

- Doddy and Poe were murdered by their unbalanced mother in 1998, after the 23yo Crystal Roberts (nee "Chase") was abandoned by her husband 22yo husband (of 7 years) Reynold "Rain" Roberts.  Crystal was a worrier and a fighter, and Rain was a party-er.  After 7 years doing "the right thing" (to the best of his understanding of is) Rain allowed sexy 20yo Brandi Combes to talk him into "reclaiming" his life. and he left the drama-addicted Crystal for the easy-going Brandi.  Crystal beat both her children until they died (Doddy died when Crystal stomped on her chest and Poe died when Crystal shook him to death) and killed herself while incarcerated and on trial for the man slaughters.

- So Doddy sometimes manifests collapsed lungs on the living.

- Poe watched his sister die, and thought he should be able to protect her when Mommy turned into the monster (Poe could see her rage and anguish in her aura, and she didn't look to him the way she usually did (except when she was mad)) and knew he was "the man of the house now" from something his mother had told him over and over in the days immediately following Rain's abandonment.  He knew he was supposed to "take care of Doddy and Mommy", and he deeply regrets that, in his state of shock and confusion and fear, he failed to take care of Doddy.  So now that they have been dead for 16 (or 15) years, he manifests demonic phenomena to scare the living and protect his sister.

- The Lakes End Estates is owned by Tiger Group, a group of lawyers in Chicago who create developments on the outskirts of expanding cities.  None of the representatives of Tiger Group have ever been on the property; their business has been done by phone, Skype and email.  The contractors hired by Tiger Group to develop the Lakes End Estates all got a weird feeling on the land, but none of them would admit this to their bosses, who are paying them slightly more than an Austin development firm would pay.

- The land that the Lakes End Estates is built on contains a vortex between dimensions.  What we call ETs and fairies (higher and lower dimensions) both gain easy access to Physical (or 4-D) Reality here.  Before white settlers, Native Americans honored this land as sacred, and not to be breached idly.  Early settlers simply didn't take notice of the land -- though none of them would articulate a reason why they didn't feel like settling here, they all privately agreed that there were surely better places to settle.  Later, urban developers might choice not to expand out in this direction for the same unnamed reasons early settlers did.  (Not an articulated unease, really, just a vague, un-examined preference not to.)  Since the Tiger Group never visited the land (and since our society does not take "instinct" or "funny feeling" seriously) the land was finally developed in 2008.

- There is an ancient, ageless "elemental" or "fairie creature" that roams these parts via the "vortex" or portal on this land in 15, 35, or 40 years cycles.  (A record of this elemental's visits going back as long as man existed would (if such a record existed) reveal a sporadic pattern of paranormal phenomena that would boggle the human mind, and probably not seem connected at all.)

- What we call "Extra-Terrestrials" enter 4-D Reality here, both in craft and without them.

- A "fairie" type being that takes the form of a large black cat (not dissimilar to a "Bigfoot" creature, but humans have no reason to guess that) enters 4-D Reality here.

***

I cleverly titled the second "The Tangle", and I reproduce it below:

***

THE TANGLE

- 27yo Carlton Brimmes doesn't believe all this "paranormal" stuff.  He's actually afraid that his 25yo wife Britney Brimmes might be watching too much of that stuff on TV.  Carlton is afraid that when Britney showed him the scratches on their 2yo daughter Ariel's left side that Britney did it accidentally and is using the accident to fuel her weird paranormal fantasies.

- Carlton allowed a ghost-hunting demonologist (he's agnostic and Britney is Baptist) to bless the house in hopes that it would allay his gorgeous wife's overly-active imagination.  He didn't really believe there was anything going on.  But when Carlton got slammed against a wall by an invisible force, he agreed to a full exorcism.

- The exorcism -- again, conducted by the demonologist of a different (though, granted, more professional-seeming) ghost-hunting team only stirred up the activity more, Carlton came to accept that there is SOMETHING going on in their home.

- No Catholic churches in the Central Texas area will authorize an official, Papal-sanctioned cleansing of the property.

- Since Carlton's mind has opened to the reality of the phenomena, he has become almost as obsessed with it as his wife.  He now genuinely fears for the safety of their daughter Ariel, as well as the couple themselves.

***

For "The Mystery" I wanted to invent a set of circumstances that would mash together to create a combination of phenomena that any ghost-hunting group would assume to be demonic.

In ghost-hunting there are Residual Hauntings (psychic imprints on an area that replay themselves in 4-dimensional space-time), Intelligent Hauntings (presumed to be the earth-bound spirits of deceased people), Poltergeist (the "noisy" spirits with more power than residual or intelligent to affect the physical world, but popularly though to be fueled by an "agents", usually a girl in or nearing puberty), and Non-human or Inhuman entities (meaning spirits that never walked the Earth as humans, but usually a euphemism for "demons").

A ghost-hunting group can reassure a family about Residual Haunts by simply explaining that the phenomena can't hurt them.

For an Intelligent Haunt, the group can encourage the family to recognize that they, the family, have a right to live in their home and the ghost doesn't, and encourage the family to actually speak to the ghost out loud, asking or demanding that it stop whatever phenomena is disturbing them.  (9 times out of 10 this works.)

For most Poltergeist cases, the phenomena ceases when the human agent is removed from the location, and the phenomena usually ceases permanently after a few weeks/months.  So ghost hunters can inform the family about what the current theories are -- which usually makes the family feel safer immediately -- and encourage them to "wait it out".  (This seems to work.  Also, psychological counseling for the human agent helps dampen or eliminate the phenomena.)

For an Inhuman "infestation", however, a reputable ghost-hunting group will recommend a ordained minister or priest perform a cleansing of the property.  Many groups have such a person as part of their immediate or extended staff, but many more do not -- they may have a so-called demonologist on their team (being someone who has read quite a lot about demons in religion and mythology, but is not ordained by an established religious institution) but not an actual member of the clergy, and so they conscientiously step aside from such cases, helping the ordained clergy however they can, but mostly trying not to make the situation worse.  But the way one knows if a case is demonic is because religious cleansing actually works.

However, there is another form of Inhuman activity that is not covered in the popular literature (meaning, mostly, Paranormal Reality TV shows).  This is the "fairy" variety.  Fairies, elves, gnomes, brownies, pixies, nymphs, sylphs, salamanders and undines are all a bit too "woo-woo" and New Age-y to be popular by the nouveau paranormal investigator, and the fact that one's only sources for information about the denizens of "Fairy World" are, literally, ancient fairy tales makes the "scientific" paranormal investigator a bit squeamish.

So here is what I was going for in this case:

Ghosts can pretend to be evil (growling, appearing in frightening visages, maybe even causing lightweight objects to fall), but they can't really injure humans.

Fairy entities can move large objects and shove living humans around, but they can be exorcised by religious cleansing.

So I wanted tn Intelligent Haunting and an Inhuman Haunting that appeared to be demonic (only the phenomena didn't stop with a religious cleansing), and I also wanted to bring UFOs and cryptids into the mix (because ghost hunters do not know as much about either as they do about ghosts).

Leading to "The Tangle" document...

Since I was still in Creative Mode (as opposed to Editor Mode) I attempted to begin to understand the False Solution by creating scenes the victimized family would experience, and then seeing what False Solution those scenes suggested.

As this is meant to be a document of my process creating this book, I should add that I spent maybe 30 or 45 minutes on each document, stopping when I just wasn't "feeling it" any more.

If I had a writing partner, we probably could have doubled or tripled the length of each document, but I was satisfied with what I had come up with, for a few reasons:

I knew (or, at least, expected) that new details would come up as I outlined scenes and/or wrote the pages, and I also knew (expected) that these details would likely change as I outlined scenes/wrote pages.

I also knew that even if the information remained 100% in tact, I wouldn't use all of it.

Consider, specifically, the information about Doddy and Poe.  I don't imagine there is any way even Sherlock Holmes could dig up the kid's parents' names, much less figure out the exact circumstances of the children's deaths.  Paranormal investigation just never plays out that way.

(And it's worth noting, too, that if no one else reads this book, I want paranormal investigators/researchers to be able to enjoy them.  I suspect that there is a huge non-investigative audience out there who will enjoy this story, but if I'm wrong about that, I'm fine with it.  So I would rather, in this instance, write a novel that 5 paranormal investigators really enjoy than a novel that a hundred non-investigators enjoy but that those in the field scoff at.)  (Though it's just as likely no one will love this and everyone who reads it scoffs.  That's the risk one takes when one publishes.)

So I wanted to produce information that I might dip into, as it were, to give my Protagonist enough clues for him to decide what actions might best help the Brimes family.  (NOTE:  You'll notice as we go that the "Brimmes" family will become the "Brimes" family.  I think at first I was going for a "Brothers Grimme" type old-world name, and then I decided to simplify it.  My Protagonist's name is going to change, too, and I'mm tell you about why.)

I believe it was a week or so later that I sat down with my "The Tangle" document and crafted a scene that became my Prologue, which I jotted in my composition notebook.  (Which excited and encouraged me quite a bit.)

Then maybe a week later, as an exercise as much as anything else, I crafted 3 scenes from the information in "The Tangle", the third of which found an immediate home in my outline...