My Actual Outline for Hazel Thornfield, Book One So I shared a lot of what I've been workign on for YOU this morning and last night. Today is a show the work on what I've been working on for me. In testing interactions between software I'm starting several ideas a day and generating/writing a book about every two-three days. Desperately need to make time for the publishing/marketing step, so this is my next target for WCP and the skillset. Improve what is already tehere in WCP to be more useful and faster to production. ******* Saturday is behind-the-curtain day. Today I'm showing the actual working outline for the first Hazel Thornfield cozy mystery, before the draft existed. Not a polished retrospective. The real thing, with the gaps and the wrong turns. What I Started With The premise that survived the sharpening process was this: A retired archivist moves to a small Kentucky lake town to restore a Victorian property she's inherited, discovers a body inside the sealed basement, and realizes the dead man has been there since 1987 and the entire town knew. That's it. That was the anchor. The five structural points I locked before I wrote a word: Opening: Hazel arrives. The house is worse than the photographs. She is already regretting every decision. Inciting incident: She finds the body in the basement during the first renovation inspection. The condition of the body and the circumstances of the sealing make it immediately clear this was not an accident. Midpoint: She learns the dead man's identity and discovers that the most respected family in town had a direct connection to him. The mystery doubles back on itself. Crisis: Her investigation puts her in genuine danger and she's given a credible opportunity to walk away, hand it to the sheriff, and leave town entirely. She almost takes it. Resolution: The truth involves a crime that was understandable, arguably justifiable, and still wrong. Hazel has to decide what to do with it. That's the outline. One paragraph, five points, fits on a napkin.