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(This post contains a spoiler for a chapter that went up today).

Going Alloway has been one of the more interesting writing challenges I’ve had recently. For those who haven’t followed the thread, Will and his girlfriend Niamh are playing hide and seek in a boarding school. They’ve both disguised themselves – and they are guessing each night who the other could be. Will pretty much instantly narrows the field to 15 names, but then is on his own.

The twist? I did not know who Niamh disguised herself as.

Seuzz’s masterful suggestion was that we literally play hide and seek: he had the 15 names (6 suggested by him, 9 by me), and picked one (with a third party to confirm no horseplay). I then had to write the chapters with Will trying to narrow it down. Apparently, this is what Agatha Christie used to do: write the story, then work out who did it from there. That way you aren’t feeding the audience red herrings without complete intellectual honesty.

So I had to write a plausible case for Niamh being 15 different people. And, if I am honest… I kind of failed at it. Fifteen people is an insane number of people to try and winnow down, and so naturally a few of the periphery characters didn’t end up doing anything remotely suspicious. But, I think, I managed to make a plausible case for at least half of the characters being Niamh.

I played to win. I tried to think of ways Will could eliminate suspects: the hair test, the fake tantrum, the clues other people said. This took a lot of emailing back and forth with Seuzz to check who could be eliminated without telling him I was trying to eliminate a specific person (for example, I said ‘I want something Kate said to eliminate one of the prefects’ – at the time, three were suspects). In fact, this underplays just how much Seuzz did; he suggested some minor and major revisions, pointed out parts where the story jumped, and rewrote some of the dialogue to make it pop. You’re probably reading 80% my stuff, 20% his stuff, and honestly the 20% is better.

Gradually, perhaps inevitably when you do something like this, I winnowed my list down to three names that made sense to me as Niamh (but could make a case for the other five). And on Thursday… *spoilers* I guessed right.

Once the game was over, I mapped back what Will did. Actually, there’s a neat progression: his first guess is too obvious; second too obscure; third logical but not right; fourth thinking through logically as well as using his disguise and his knowledge of Niamh’s capabilities. And some of the ‘clues’ that led me to the right suspect weren’t, in fact, correct; in that way (and, honestly, only that way), it reminded me of Umberto Eco’s masterpiece The Name of the Rose, where the protagonist makes deductions that seem logical, but are not always correct or, sometimes, correct but for entirely wrong reasons.

Anyway, after seven chapters, Going Alloway has concluded – albeit with a little sting in the ending. I have no idea how many people expected that twist, but, again, I hope I’m playing fair and you can look back and see why Niamh, and Will, responded in the way they did.

What’s next? I don’t know. I have a continuation for the Going Alloway storyline that takes things in a *very* unexpected direction. I also have some material ready following Seuzz’s Vee is for Visit – I won’t spoil what that means, though. Or I could go somewhere completely different. I guess we’ll see.