What All Good Things Should Do

Whenever I have trouble imagining scenes for a story, I listen to music and try to visualize a scene set around the music. I have been able to flesh out many story details this way and even realize plot holes and find ways to fix the story more. I may even try to visualize a commercial or trailer, trying to figure out what the highlights of the story might be. But the most important thing that my muse - music - can do for me is to help flesh out the end of a story. I have learned enough to realize that it's important to have the ending of a story planned well before you flesh everything else out, to help leave clues to build up for the finale.

However, this may have also been a bad thing, as one perfect ending actually creates a bit of a cliffhanger; most story and character threads are tied up nicely, but the story ends right before a huge action scene. (There is no point in showing the action scene, honestly. It would not service the story at all.) The next installment in the series would not end on a cliffhanger, but rather, on an extremely sad and operatic note. Another story had a Lost-Alias-like sudden reveal at the end, a twist that makes you question everything that you saw. (Maybe not to that degree, but you get the idea.)

But so far, I'm stumped for one story, a murder mystery, as I have no clue who I want to kill the man in question. All of my suspects could be, either obviously so, or for being "so obviously not the murderer that he is" that I'm having a hard time figuring out whodunnit. And obviously, that's a huge chunk to the story to figure out! Especially since the murderer wouldn't be revealed until the last pages/seconds of the story, there'd be a lot of clues to throw in throughout. I've re-read their back stories, changed them, done all sorts of things to them and they all seem like murderers. Which might make for a compelling story, mind you. It's just that *I* can't figure out who the murderer should be - and I'm the one coming up with all these characters. *sigh*