11 July 1994
Ruth is becoming troublesome, which is usually the first sign that a character may be worth keeping. When I began, she was a woman returning to a house with a key that did not belong to her. Now she has opinions about the house, the key, the inheritance, and, most inconveniently, the tone of the story.
There are three possible routes. One: confession, with Ruth telling the whole thing after the damage is done. Two: pursuit, with another character following her through the family wreckage. Three: social comedy with a knife under the napkin, which is the most difficult and therefore the most attractive.
The danger is making her admirable. Admirable women are often dead on the page, even when they are moving about and saying sensible things. Ruth should be clever, vain, brave in bursts, and capable of a cruelty she can explain beautifully to herself.
I may take the story toward the comedy and keep the weather of dread underneath it. A reader should be able to laugh and then wonder why the laugh had a hook in it.
This is the happiest kind of uncertainty: not failure to choose, but too many live wires in the hand.