problems with my current story-in-progress

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I've been working on a story in which six women get strangled to death, ending with the protagonist. But I'm having trouble making it work out right.

Premise: The protagonist (Misti) is sentenced to be strangled to death. When she gets to the prison, she learns that there is no fixed date for her execution. She gets to decide when. She makes friends with some of the other prisoners there and after a few weeks is invited to watch one getting strangled. She finds it very exciting. Over time she gets invited to four more executions before she decides it's time for her to get strangled.

My main problems:

1. It's currently in epistolary form. That is, an exchange of letters between Misti and her sister. But if I do it that way, who writes who about that final scene? And the lack of letters during the interim between stranglings.

2. How widely spaced are the executions that Misti gets to watch? If I put them too close together, it seems unreasonable that she would get tired of waiting after only a few months. But if I space them a couple of years apart, how do I avoid writing all the "nothing much happening" during that time? Or how do I fill in that time with something worth reading?

Suggestions?

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Added:	7 months, 1 week ago 12 Jul 2024 01:43 CEST

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rubbervixen

7 months, 1 week ago

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Edited 7 months, 1 week ago by Owner

1) Perhaps Misti made arrangements with her strangler (or other witness) to write her sister after she meets her end? Or perhaps Misti writes a letter prior to her end and posts it just before? Assuming Misti's family or the general public is notified of the completion of her sentence, perhaps the final missive takes the form of an entry in the sister's diary? Or perhaps she copes with the loss by scribing a letter to her sister that she'll never send/incinerate/tuck into a book/fold into a paper airplane and toss in the ocean?

2) There could be any number of explanations for long breaks between letters. Perhaps inmates have to accumulate enough 'points' to earn the privilege of sending mail? These points may be a bartering tool for various perks in the prison. She might have gambled hers to earn enough to send a message early but ended up losing them all, forcing her to start saving again from scratch. Or maybe once she decides to go through with it, it goes wrong. She survives, but whether from hypoxia or being clumsily restrained, she has to relearn how to write. By law, she won't be returned to gen pop until she fully recovers, which takes a while - but now she's even more committed.

apdamien

7 months, 1 week ago

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@ rubbervixen

Wow! Neat ideas. I like the idea of having to accumulate points to send mail, but I thought of an even simpler solution: The story will be put together from letters saved by Misti's sister. She didn't bother saving more ordinary letters, only the ones relating to Misti's eventual execution and what motivated it.

And then I thought again and decided to combine the ideas. Misti has to accumulate points to send mail, but Belinda only saved the most important ones, and the story only contains the ones that Belinda saved (including copies of the ones she wrote).

rubbervixen

7 months, 1 week ago

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@ apdamien

There you go then! : )

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