I’m finding that more research is must making my story more difficult. Since I chose South Carolina, set in roughly the last 50-60 years, I can’t avoid the issue of desegregation.
Actually, I don’t want to ~avoid~, but I don’t want that to be the primary focus. That’ll be tricky because there’s enough info there to keep me going for a good while if I get stuck on the word count.
One thing that I need to keep reminding myself is that *most* authors fudge the details a little. You don’t need to tell the reader that it takes x amount of a poison to work, for example. They don’t typically care. And for that matter, there aren’t a whole lot of people out there who will say, “Hey, that’s not possible, I happen to *know* that a fatal amount of x would taste too strong to be hidden in a cup of coffee!”
Plus it’s NaNo, and doesn’t need to be anywhere near good or accurate. But I still want to know, ya know?
I’m also trying to think of ways someone could be framed for a poisoning, besides just a few fingerprints on the bottle. So there’s that.
You don’t really have to explain much because it’ll be normal to the characters. There might be a racially-charged event and it could be true to the character to not react much at all.