LITMIR.BIZ

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had a fine cast of characters in a workable plot which actually had a beginning, a middle and an end - well at least the synopsis did. She had four and a bit chapters of a well-paced (she hoped) storyline, with carefully-placed victims, several viable suspects and one decidedly nasty piece of work who was motivated by lust - a lust for lust, a lust for power and a lust for money.

      So, she thought, the bad guy is suitably motivated - or is that typically motivated? Whatever. The bad guy is not the centre of the piece though. He is merely the thing that makes the good guy... what? That makes the good guy, of course. There would be no need for a hero if there was no bad guy.

      The thing here is that the bad guy doesn't even have to make it to the last page. The hero does, however. And what's more the reader has to care enough about the hero to want to make it to the last page with her.

      'Oh my god. What have I taken on here? I must be mad. Am I mad Thistle honey?'

      The Cat's meow was definitely in the affirmative.

      So, where was I? Oh yes. The bad guy has to be suitably motivated but the hero has to have depth. So what motivates the good guy? Or in this case the good girl. Why on earth would anyone want to be a detective? There's nothing terribly glamorous in it, that's for sure. I should know. And it's certainly not the money. Clients like dear old Celia do not grow on trees. So what then?

      Ask yourself Kit. As you say, you should know.

      'Yes,' she said, 'but we know I'm only doing it for the purpose of research and for pocket money so I can afford to torture myself with this computer every other night.'

      Kit got up and paced the lounge room floor several times just to waste time, and then did it again just to make sure. She ventured out onto the patio to see if the cool change was hiding out there. It wasn't.

      Perhaps I should forget about in-depth characterisation and just shuffle a few more bodies and suspects around my hard disk, she thought. On the other hand I could rewrite this as a science fiction detective story then Flynn Carter could be an android and wouldn't need a past, or a life philosophy or any depth at all - just a prime directive to make sure that good always wins out over evil.

      No. I suppose that's a cop out. In order for the reader, or even me the author, to believe in the notion of 'Flynn Carter to the rescue' she has to have hopes and dreams and flaws. It might seem like a great achievement to have her solve the case in hand, quite brilliantly, but she has to have another life. She can't exist solely to rescue Sweet Charlotte from the villain and push Dastardly Derek under the train thereby saving the townsfolk from a fate worse than aerobics. She's got to have a mother, or a dog, or some friends even if they're just waiting in the wings. She's got to eat, go shopping, get angry about something, or at least think about something other than the case - even if it's just about what she's going to eat, or buy or get angry about. She has got to be real.

      'No dummy, not real. This is fiction O'Malley,' Kit corrected herself. 'She has to be believable.

      'What the hell does that mean? Half my friends aren't believable. Start again.'

      She returned to her computer and typed, tentatively, the words: Depth - asparagus, toilet paper, the ozone layer.

      'Smart arse,' she said aloud and then added: Beliefs, dreams, wants, needs, desires; I need, I want, I ache...

      'Whoa, Katherine. Who are we talking about here? This is getting personal.' She saved the tiny file and went into the kitchen. She filled the sink, unloaded the dishwasher and did three days worth of dishes by hand. Now she knew for sure that she would do anything to avoid the issue.

      She felt that all she'd managed to do was set the scene, get the plot going, introduce the heroic Flynn Carter (she had a memorable name if nothing else) and the love interest. Now what? Flynn had managed to get from one side of a room or two to the other without it reading like it had taken Kit three hours to work out how to get her to walk. She knew 'depth' was not the issue here; love was. Flynn had a past, and a social life; she even had a dog and a passion for Italian food. But how did she feel about falling in love; how would she feel as she fell?

      'Pretty bloody silly,' Kit said to the saucepan. With her hands in the sink, however, there were suddenly plenty of viable thoughts floating around with the bubbles. She started to get excited; wanted the chore to be over so she could write them down. She knew in her bones, though, that when the time came - even if she stopped right now to record them - that these perfect ideas, these pearls of wisdom, these unutterably romantic notions would disappear down the plug hole with the dirty dishwater.

      She wondered what on earth it was that she was trying to achieve. This unavoidable, untameable urge to write was doing serious damage to her psyche. God, how many nights had she lain awake with the pure poetry of brilliant dialogue and unforgettable descriptions rattling around her brain. In the dark she would concoct a magic potion of verbs, nouns, adjectives and startling metaphors that would raise raw emotion and the pangs of love to new and incredible heights (E. B. Browning eat your heart out!) only to have it all evaporate the moment she turned the light on to find a pen. She often imagined there was a whole novel skulking around the ceiling or hiding in the back of her closet.

      Perhaps she was only a literary genius in the dead of night when the lights were off. Unforgettable descriptions indeed! The cold light of day was all it ever took to turn those raw emotions and her beautifully-composed, nerve jangling, gut wrenching love pangs into mushy romantic fiction.

      'So what's wrong with that O'Malley? Romantic fiction is what this is all about,' Kit said as she pulled the plug and watched her inspiration go down the gurgler with three peas and a sodden piece of cabbage.

      She'd set out to write a romantic detective novel, or was it a detective novel with a romance. Perhaps she should forget the romance and just write a detective novel; after all it was the love business that was stretching the bounds of credibility.

      'I think I'm depressed Thistle.' Kit wiped the bench down while The Cat flung her head around maniacally and tried to capture the cloth every time it swept past.

      Kit returned to her computer and started typing: How do you develop a sexual attraction on paper, using a machine? How do you convey feeling of any sort with words?

      OK, she thought, I might, just, be able to write how I feel using words that aren't vomitously sentimental but how do you convey someone else's feelings, especially when that someone is a figment of your imagination - a complete work of fiction. There has to be a tension, a tingling, a full orchestra in the background, a feeling of association like - 'Oh yes, woo, I've been there' or 'oh god wouldn't it be wonderful to feel like that'.

      Kit read what she had just written and then abandoned the file, sending it into that parallel universe which accommodates randomly discarded pieces of information, left socks, lost biros and all those numbers with lots of zeros that governments the world over claim is the real money they have saved their taxpayers.

      Kit was getting desperate. Maybe she had forgotten what it was like.

      'How do you make love real?' Kit asked, scratching Thistle's head. Hadn't someone already asked that? No, that was 'How do you make love stay?' or something like that. It was Tom Robbins in Still Life With Woodpecker, that's right. Now if he could write a love story that took place inside a packet of Camel cigarettes surely Kit could write one that takes place in a detective novel. Kit remembered finding quite a few answers in that book - way back when she was barely a quarter-of-a-century old; backing her pack around the world; believing in the romance of pyramids and the certainty that real love once found would last forever. That, of course, was when she was still looking for herself, before she found love and then lost it again in a rain-soaked Italian village. If there was only one true love in every lifetime then Kit had had hers - and carelessly misplaced it.

      She contemplated clearing the towels off the top shelf in the linen cupboard and crawling in there with the moth balls. Instead she went and stood in front of the stereo trying to decide what kind of music might quell the rising angst that was taking control of her reason. She was feeling quite seasick, which was pretty disconcerting considering she was standing in a well-anchored

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