Mysteries That Influenced My Writing

Since I began my blog, I’ve written about the mysteries that influenced my writing. Although I’m still on the hunt for good mysteries, I find the ones I discovered in my teens and twenties have had the most impact and not just because I was more impressionable when I first discovered them. When I reread my favorites, I still learn techniques I can use in my storytelling.

My First Mysteries

In the seventies, my mystery education started with Scooby Doo and continued with Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Trixie Belden, and the Three Investigators. In seventh grade, I read my first adult book, which was a mystery written in 1975 by Dorothy Gilman, entitled A Nun in the Closet. Balancing mystery and humor, the novel relates the investigation of Sister John and Sister Hyacinth into a mysterious bequest to their abbey.

It had to be shortly after that that I plowed my way through every Agatha Christie story I could get my hands on. Now I reread her books first, for fun, and second, to learn plotting techniques. That was always Mrs. Christie’s strength. Although her detectives Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple have achieved immortality, in many books, her other characters aren’t as well-developed. Death on the Nile and A Holiday for Murder are my favorite novels because the rest of the characters are more complicated and more human, and therefore, more interesting.

At seventeen, I discovered Sherlock Holmes and there was no stopping me. I read all 60 of Sir Arthur’s stories and have read a huge amount of pastiches written by contemporary authors. The lesson I learned: my detective must be a character people want to spend time with. For more about my love for the Sherlock Holmes canon, click here.

When I was in college, I took a class called “Detective Film and Fiction.” (When you’re an English major, you can take classes like that and earn credit). I was assigned to read Too Many Cooks by Rex Stout and couldn’t get enough of the world Mr. Stout created for Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Although Nero Wolfe is the detective, it was Archie’s unique voice that hooked me. The lesson I learned: the Watson character can be as interesting and more relatable than the detective character. For more on Archie Goodwin, click here.

Mysteries in Middle Age

I was twenty-one when I tried a collection of Father Brown short stories and didn’t like them at all. They weren’t fair-play mysteries. In some cases, they didn’t seem like mysteries at all. Fast forward twenty years. I tried them again, and they lit up my mind like few stories ever have. I realized that Mr. Chesterton wasn’t trying to write realistic fiction, although his stories highlight realities of life.

His favorite device is paradox, like in the short story, “The Strange Crime of John Boulnois.” When Sir Claude Champion is found stabbed to death, the police assume the killer is John Boulnois because Sir Claude was pursuing his wife. But Mrs. Boulnois insists her husband is innocent. He was never jealous of Sir Claude, a childhood friend, although Sir Claude was wealthy, aristocratic, accomplished, and celebrated. Father Brown understands and quotes from the book of Esther. “And Haman began to tell them … of all the things wherein the king had honored him; and he said: ‘All these things profit me nothing while I see Mordecai the Jew sitting in the gate.”

I learned that if I can make a character, clue, or plot point appear one way but then reveal that it indicates the exact opposite, it surprises the reader and gives that part of my story greater weight.

Around this same point in my life, I dove into the mysteries featuring the detective Uncle Abner. These short stories, set in West Virginia before the Civil War, have some of the best descriptions of settings I’ve read. I feel like I’ve entered the world that existed in the Appalachian mountains more than 150 years ago. For more on the Uncle Abner mysteries, click here. I learned not to overlook my setting. Settings can perform certain literary tasks, like setting the mood, much more easily than character or plot.

Now it’s your turn. What stories have influenced your writing? Or what stories have stayed with your through the years?

October 7, 2021 1

Favorite Books — Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

This book changed my life. I can’t say that about a lot of books, but Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis did. No book, outside of the Bible, has had more impact on me. Through logic, Mr. Lewis reasons his way into why Christianity is true. He addresses many objections he had when he was an atheist.

My dad gave me a copy of Mere Christianity in college, but I didn’t read it until just after I was married. I’m sorry I didn’t read it earlier, since it was a gift, but I’m not sure if I could have handled the weight of the subject at a younger age.

I had never read such an intellectually challenging book. I loved it. My brain couldn’t get enough of it. Apart from the way it changed my life, this book also influenced how I write my fiction.

Creating Precise Images

Mr. Lewis writes about some extremely difficult theological concepts but makes them accessible through his use of precise analogies.

One of my favorites is comparing human society to a convoy of ships. The convoy is only a success if it reaches its destination. It can’t do that if the ships don’t watch each other to prevent collisions or if the crew of each ship doesn’t maintain its internal mechanisms.

Humans operate the same way. We can collide when we don’t care about other people or when we have so many internal problems that we can’t help but create conflict with others.

Such well-constructed, clear images inspire me to create metaphors and similes like that for my fiction. I want to describe people or settings or even explanations of a mystery so well that readers see it like a sharp-focused photo.

Building Better Villains

Mr. Lewis has many sections on the nature of evil. Although I know when I’ve done sinful things, it was helpful to learn the reasons why. Not only does this give me insight into my spiritual life, it also helped me build better villains.

In a passage, the author explains that one huge difference between good and evil is that people will do good even when they don’t feel like it, or when it won’t benefit them. They do good because they know they ought to.

No one ever did bad because they thought they ought to, when they didn’t feel like it. Every evil action benefits the person somehow. Even cruelty, which seems like evil for evil’s sake, provides satisfaction or pleasure to the person or else he wouldn’t bother.

Those explanations about evil have helped me climb into the skins of my villains and understand their motivations, helping me create believable characters.

What books have changed your life?

March 10, 2020 4

Writing Tip — Imagery

The lesson I learned from P.G. Wodehouse is that a vivid description, especially a humorous one, not only makes the subject come alive but also makes it memorable.

Mr. Wodehouse was a master at creating with imagery that crystallizes a character or a situation. Here are some of my favorites:

He “looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say ‘When!’”

“Jeeves and the Impending Doom”

To describe someone completely taken by surprise, he wrote “Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down-express in the small of the back.”

“Aunt Agatha Takes the Count”

Describing an angry school teacher who thinks a guest is about to tell her students an inappropriate story, he writes that the teacher cut off her guest, “rising like an iceberg.”

“Bertie Changes His Mind”

“As a rule, you see, I’m not lugged into Family Rows. On the occasions when Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps …”

The Inimitable Jeeves

“The Duke of Dunstable had one-way pockets. He would walk ten miles in the snow to chisel a starving orphan out of tuppence.”

“In moments of excitement she had that extraordinary habit of squeaking like a basketful of puppies”

“He resembled a frog that had been looking on the dark side since it was a slip of tadpole/”

compiled in Plum Sauce by Richard Usborne

I especially like the one comparing feuding aunts to mastodons. All these images are funny and memorable, and half the fun of reading Wodehouse is finding nuggets like these.

In My Own Writing

My novel is crime fiction and not humorous, but I gave my main character a sense of humor, so some of his descriptions can be funny. Because he lives in the West Virginia mountains and loves nature, he describes people in terms of animals, “like a toad ready to pop” or someone is “grinning like a grizzly.”

Even when humor isn’t appropriate for a scene or story, I still try to follow Mr. Wodehouse’s style, summing up a person in a brief but vivid way, what my writer friend Michelle L. Lavigne calls “a handle”.

In a short story I wrote recently, I needed a way for my teenage main character to describe two people he had seen for the first time. He call one man in his twenties “Mr. Smooth” because of his slicked hair, clean-shaven, pretty face, and fashionable clothes. He calls a well-dressed woman “Fashion Model”.

What are your favorite kinds of imagery? How do you use them in your writing?

February 13, 2018 0

Writing Tip — Favorite Authors — P.G. Wodehouse

Whenever I want the literary equivalent of comfort food, I turn to the works of P.G. Wodehouse. He created a comic world unique in literature, as much as a fantasy world as Middle-earth and Narnia.

In the 1990’s, when the BBC produced a series about two of Mr. Wodehouse’s most famous characters, Bertie Wooster and his gentleman’s gentleman, Jeeves, the stories were set in a kind of alternative universe which looked a lot like the 1920’s but operated with it own rules. In Plum Sauce, a great book for readers just discovering the wacky land of Wodehouse or ones who are dedicated fans, author Richard Usborne outlines some of the rules of this world:

“It is always hay-harvest weather in England: for 54 holes of golf a day, or for a swim before breakfast in the lake, morning in the hammock under the cedars, tea on the lawn, coffee on the terrace after dinner.”
“Money is something you should inherit, get monthly as an allowance from an uncle, win at the races, or borrow” from a friend.
“Country pubs are open all day long and their home-brew ale is very potent.”
“All decent-sized country houses have cellars, coal-sheds and potting sheds for locking people up in.”
“Most handsome men have feet of clay.”
“Men and girls in love think only of marriage.”
“No decent man may cancel, or even refuse, an engagement to a girl.”
“A country J.P. can call the local policeman and have anybody arrested and held in a cell on suspicion of anything.”
The night you go to a nightclub is the night it gets raided by the police.”

I prefer Mr. Wodehouse’s short stories to his novels, and my favorite ones are about Bertie Wooster, the idle rich young man who always gets himself into trouble because he’s not too bright and his friends take advantage of him, and his servant Jeeves, who always comes to the rescue. Bertie is the narrator of his stories and he’s such a likable character that it’s easy to be carried along on his escapades.

My other set of favorite characters is the vast Threepwood clan. Most of those stories concern Clarence, Lord Emsworth, Earl of Blandings, and his many relatives. Lord Emsworth is a widower in his sixties who would like nothing better than to hang out in his castle, smell his roses, and raise his prize-winning pig, the Empress of Blandings. But his troop of strong-minded sisters wants him to behave like a respectable member of the aristocracy. Not being the sharpest knife in the drawer and lacking a spine, Lord Emsworth is often at his sisters’ mercy, but his younger brother Galahad can be counted on to come to the rescue.

Because Mr. Wodehouse made his living at writing, he wrote A LOT. So you don’t have to wade through mediocre stories to find the gems, here are my recommendations:

From Wodehouse on Crime:

“Strychnine int the Soup”
“The Crime Wave at Blandings”. This may be my absolute favorite Wodehouse short story.
“The Smile That Wins”
“Without the Option”. A Wooster and Jeeves story.
“Aunt Agatha Takes the Count”. Another Wooster and Jeeves story.

From Blandings Castle: The first six stories all concern the escapades at Blandings Castle. Two of my favorites are ” PIG-HOO-O-O-O-EY!” and “The Go-Getter”, but read them all because it makes the last one “Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend” that much sweeter. For once, Lord Emsworth finds his courage.

From The Best of Wodehouse:

“Honeysuckle Cottage”. This story is a hoot for writers.
“Jeeves and the Impending Doom”

Over Seventy is Mr. Wodehouse’s autobiography and may be the funniest thing he ever wrote.

On Thursday, I will write about what I learned from reading P.G. Wodehouse.

Continue reading “Writing Tip — Favorite Authors — P.G. Wodehouse” →

February 8, 2018 10

Writing Tip — Favorite Author

The opening of Murder on the Orient Express in theaters tomorrow reminded me of a time when I inhaled Agatha Christie mysteries. In high school, I read almost all of them. Over the years, when I wanted a comfort food book, I often returned to my favorite novels and short stories. As I’ve grown older, I find more flaws in the storytelling than I did as a teenager, but some of the novels still can’t be beat for plotting in a mystery.

That was Mrs. Christie’s strength, mystery plots. Her characters were often one-dimensional but characters, unless they were the detectives, were not why people made Mrs. Christie the best-selling author after Shakespeare. They loved her plot twists and the opportunity to solve a puzzle along with her detectives.

Of her two main detectives, I like Miss Marple better. I like the idea of this elderly spinster being so good at reading people from her experiences in a small English village that she could apply her knowledge to just about any person she met. Like in Pocket Full Of Rye, she becomes suspicious of woman’s husband when she realizes the woman is the nice kind who always falls for troubled men.

If you want to write cozy mysteries, you must read some of Mrs. Christie’s novels and short stories. If she didn’t invent many of the conventions for cozies, she at least made them popular, such as the nosy amateur detective and gathering all the suspects together so the detective can reveal the identity of the murderer.

Category: Favorite authors