I spend today working on the plot for a children's/YA novel set in the middle ages. I've got a few cheap second-hand academic texts but they only get you so far. So then it's the internet and that's a writer's greatest time-thief. Before I know it I'm reading fascinating stuff of no relevance to the plot.
I turn it off and go back to the strange diagrams that are emerging on the blue paper I'm using, with arrows pointing everywhere and strange little notes that even I will struggle to understand this time next week. By mid-afternoon, I'm veering towards a decision to set the story in Britain, even though I'd thought about Galicia originally, somewhere on the Camino de Santiago. Trouble is, to write about that properly I feel I ought to go there. And we spent all our money this summer. I don't think I could persuade the family to walk the pilgrim road from the Pennines to Compostela.
This is a part of writing I know I'm going to struggle with; the intricate details of a plot for a mystery novel. It's the first time I've tried something like this, and setting it in the middle ages has only complicated the issue further. Still, challenge is the best way to learn.
No clues, but . . . there was a thriving trade in stolen religious relics during the middle ages.
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