on Dan Koboldt:

Original Image: Grave-digger, by Viktor Vasnetsov (1871)

There comes a time in most people’s lives, certainly in most writers lives, when they’ll need to start thinking about how to bury a body. A dead body that is. It can’t be that hard, can it? After all, we’ve seen them do it on TV. A brief shot of a spade (or is it a shovel?) in action, a brief cut in the film, and the body is next to the grave ready to be disposed of. The sides of the grave are always nice and neat and self-supporting as well, so how hard can it be?

The answer may surprise you! No, click-bait aside, it probably won’t surprise you at all – that’s if you’ve tried to dig anything, ever.

So, how long is it going to take you to dig that grave – before you can move on with the action?

Brief answer: a pretty long time, depending, of course, on quite a few different factors. Here are the main ones you need to take into account when you have that non-essential character to inter.