Time and Motion Studies
A couple of nights ago, the amazing beauty of the lunar eclipse. And, co-incidentally, one of the fiddling little parts of writing a murder-mystery: time-lines. And the moon. Just finished the nit-picketty task of figuring out, How many days after the murder does the heroine realize she's been followed, and how much can she see once she leaves her car on the road and dashes off into the sagebrush of the Hollywood Hills? Where's the moon that night? I often find myself clocking back the timeline on a story by figuring out, at what point do my heroes need enough moonlight to see what's going on when they're outside at night? In movies, being outside at night is often VERY well-lit. IRL, not so much. (Even more so when you're trying to read someone's expression by the light of a single candle, or see what someone's doing on the other side of the room.) I pin THAT event, then count forwards and backwards from there. (We won't even get into details like w