April 2020
Tucson Sisters in Crime Program for April, 2020
Since we can’t meet at our usual time and place, we are helping to stave off boredom and keep our minds sharp by hosting a short story writing workshop. Our own “damn good short story writer” Kate Thornton is on standby to help us with the process.
My task is to suggest websites and other places a quarantined sleuth can (legally) go online to solve her mystery:
She’s bored, doing random searches when she stumbles upon earthcam.com, and finds the feed “Live from 4th.com” and sees the real-time view of Tucson’s 4th Avenue streaming on her monitor. Mildly interested, she watches the nearly deserted street for a few moments, idly watches a person walking toward the camera on the left side of the street... and recognizes her best friend—who disappeared two years ago.
Determined to find her, our intrepid sleuth opens her favorite privacy-oriented search engine [DuckDuckGo or Gigablast or Peekier], enters www.faganfinder.com, locates the social media heading, clicks on Social Searcher, waits moments and moments for it to load, enters her friend’s name and …
Perhaps your heroine is worried about the newly increased comings and goings she sees at a house across the street that has been vacant for a few months...she opens her laptop and goes to www.tucsonaz.gov, and searches for the owner’s name…
If you’re curious about other ways of using the internet for open source intelligence that investigative reporters, process servers and others use to find an individual, send me an email (katesteele49@gmail.com) and I’ll tell you what I know.
A professional private investigator I interviewed recently recommended the website familytreenow.com as an excellent resource for relatives of an individual who may lead you to the missing party.
Happy writing! Here is Kate Thornton’s outline:
TUCSON SISTERS IN CRIME PRESENTS:
QUARANTINED TO DEATH
HOW TO WRITE THIS SHORT STORY
by Kate Thornton
- Short Stories – What Are They?
- Things they are not: novels, articles, newspaper stories, bits of your diary, shopping lists,
- For this project, you will write a quarantine mystery.
- Basic Story Structure
- All stories – whatever the length – have a beginning, a middle, and an ending
- Vignettes are not stories (although they can be enjoyable) Make sure it makes sense.
- Get a GRABBER! Start your story with a memorable first line. Remember, you an always go back and make it more interesting once the story is finished. But that first line should grab the reader
- All stories – whatever the length – have a beginning, a middle, and an ending
- Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
- Use your head. And your hands and feet, too – and everything you've ever read
- Use the Guidelines!
- Get the Story Written
- Sty in your chair until you write something!
- Just do it now vs. Lemme get it absolutely perfect
- Just write what you are thinking of – then go back and make it work.
- Are We There Yet?
- How do you know when it's done?
- When it meets the guidelines and you are satisfied.
- How do you know when it's done?
GUIDELINES
Send us your short story!
We are looking for up to 2,000 words – shorter is okay
We are looking for a mystery set in our current world of Social Distancing and Quarantines. It can feature a murder, but any crime will do.
This can be a current take on the classic locked room mystery or something entirely new – use your imagination!
Prompts:
How long could you stay cooped up with someone before the urge to kill overcomes you?
While cooped up, you see something fishy out your window, ala Rear Window…is it murder?
While isolating and spring cleaning, you come across evidence of a crime…
You are isolating when someone breaks into your house…
