Tag: Advice on writing mysteries

Mysteries are a Mystery!

Mysteries are a mystery

After bringing to you several new authors over the last few months, I’m glad to welcome back an old friend, Carole Brown. Carole relates how mysteries are a mystery to write until you dig into understanding the genre. Welcome back, Carole!

It was a dark and stormy night.

Uh, huh. We’ve heard this one before. But what if you start your novel like this…

Lightning split the coal-black heavens into multiple pieces as the bullet-sized raindrops pounded Jason’s hood-covered head, encouraging a mammoth headache to split his head into confusion. 

Mysteries are said to be the hardest genre to write. I believe it, but I also find it fascinating to attempt it.   A few things you have to remember when attempting this genre are simple enough to explain but harder to do. But effort, study and a determination to succeed will put you in a good place to get that mystery book written. 

Investigate the different sub-genres of mystery diligently. Know what will resound with your writing before you begin, or write a few short stories as practice until you recognize which one fits you– classic/traditional, crime, police procedurals/hard-boiled, noir, gumshoe/private detective, cozies, and capers. 

Remember, you don’t want too write like so and so. You want to stand out on your own merits. Add a new element, that coincides with the mystery genre, but makes readers straighten in their seat. Do your diligent homework, study the genre and what is necessary, find that element that will cause you to stand out from the rest, then proceed (again and again) to write your mystery. 

Here are a few thoughts on what helps:

  • Pose your mystery question at the beginning as quickly as possible.
  • Choose an ordinary character who finds himself in extraordinary circumstances OR an extraordinary character who finds himself in ordinary circumstances. Create your characters to stand out, to be ordinary or not, abled to be labeled as: 
    • a reflection of society
    • someone with a bit of sassiness
    • serious with a bent to boredom and over-thinking
    • one who is callous to murder
  • Research and pick your setting with purpose.
  • Red herrings
  • Suspenseful dialogue
  • Set the mood with descriptive language
  • Chapters that keep your reader turning pages, trying to figure out who is the antagonist, what will happen next..

I have two mystery series I’m working on, although one of them is on hold for awhile:  

  • The Denton and Alex Davies series (cozy). A fun, adventurous married couple (even if Denton is a bit grumpy) who travel the U.S. and constantly find mysteries that seem to pop up everywhere. 
  • The Appleton, WV Romantic Cozies series. (A town filled with colorful characters who find their own mystery in each book.)

There is lots more to learn about mysteries, all of it fascinating and helpful. Do your due diligence in studying about mysteries. And if you proceed, you’ll find it’s one of the hardest but most rewarding genres to write in. 

Wishes for great success to you mystery book authors! 

To read more posts on writing mysteries, click here.

*****

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Toni DeLuca, the Italian owner of DeLuca Construction, finds herself confronted with doubts about her father and his possible deceptions—all because of the mysterious pink notes she’s been receiving.

Relations with Perrin Douglas who has a troubling history—but the first man in years who’s interested her—is building to a peak. Yet Perrin’s own personal problems and his doubts about women and God, keep getting in the way.

Gossip, a Spanish proposal, an inheritance, and a sabotaged construction business may ruin Christmas for Toni’s employees as well as her own happiness.

Will a mysterious person succeed in pulling off the biggest scam Appleton, West Virginia has ever seen? And will this culprit destroy Toni’s last chance at happiness with the man of her dreams?

*****

Besides being a member and active participant of many writing groups, Carole Brown enjoys mentoring beginning writers. An author of fourteen, best selling, award-winning books, she loves to weave suspense, mystery and tough topics into her books, along with a touch of romance and whimsy, and is always on the lookout for outstanding titles and catchy ideas. She’s also published one children’s book and is in two anthologies. She and her husband reside in SE Ohio but have ministered and counseled nationally and internationally. She has found that the traveling and ministering has served her well in writing her novels. Together, they enjoy their grandsons, traveling, gardening, good food, the simple life, and did she mention their grandsons?  Connect with Carole on her personal blog, Facebook, FB fan page, Amazon, Bookbub, IG, Pinterest, Twitter, Goodreads, and LinkedIn.

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Start with the End: Leaving Clues in a Mystery

start with the end: leaving clues in a mystery

So happy to introduce to you, author V.L. Adams! In her guest post “Start with the End: Leaving Clues in a Mystery”, V.L. discusses the topic every mystery writer fears–writing a mystery that isn’t the least mysterious–and a way to tackle this problem. Take it away, V.L!

Anyone who’s read more than a few mysteries has probably read a story where they could tell you “whodunit” before the halfway point. When I started my mystery novel, The Source of Smoke, I was petrified that readers would figure out my ending, so keeping the mystery alive was always at the top of my mind. 

I wish I could say I had a beautiful outline when I wrote the book and worked off it as I made my first draft. Unfortunately, that’s not the way my brain works. I tried to plan but only had a rough idea of the novel’s middle. What I did have going for me, though, was that I knew the end.  

Once I established in my mind how and why the ending happened, I used that knowledge to determine what clues I would leave. When I thought about which hints to drop throughout my novel, I sorted the clues into two categories: motivation and logistics. 

Motivation

Why did they do it? Was it love, money, jealousy? Were they trying to keep a secret? A motive isn’t necessary to prosecute a criminal case, but prosecutors will tell you that it’s crucial to the jury. The same can be said for a mystery novel—if you don’t have it, you’ll leave your reader disappointed. 

Writing a mystery is also much easier when you know the character’s reasoning from the beginning. As you’re putting together your scenes and chapters, find the opportunity to show their motive to the reader. When done right, you can demonstrate motivation with as little as a glance or a few words in a conversation. It’s about dropping breadcrumbs. The reader doesn’t have to look down and see them immediately, but they’ll be disappointed at the end if you never dropped them at all. 

Logistics

Could A kill B? Are they strong enough? Do they have an alibi? Mystery readers are looking at every character asking these questions. There are many different ways to approach these possibilities; how you tackle them will vary with the story and character. You may create an alibi for every character but then drop clues that show how one character could have fabricated their statement. Does the corroborating witness have a reason to lie for this person? Did the person looking into the crime thoroughly check the backup details? 

Logistics is another excellent area to show your reader things. You don’t want to say, “She was so strong she could throw a grown man in the ocean,” but maybe you could show a photo of her winning her state wrestling championship in high school. 

It’s helpful to know not only how your villain committed the act but also where all your other suspects were at the time of the crime. That way, you can not only drop information as to the actual culprit, but you can also sprinkle false breadcrumbs, better known as red herrings. 

Conclusion

It may take a few passes through your manuscript to figure out which clues you want to drop and where, but that’s why you edit. If you know your ending when you begin, you can think about the different ways to leave breadcrumbs on logistics and motivation as you go. Beta readers (people who go through the manuscript prior to publishing for the purpose of giving feedback) are invaluable for testing the number of clues you use and the right places. You’ll know you’re there when your beta reader tells you they didn’t see the ending coming, but it all made sense once they were there. 

For more posts on writing mysteries, click here.

*****

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Winner of a 2022 Firebird Book Award in the New Fiction category.

What if a convicted murderer is innocent?

Since Charlie’s sister was killed, Charlie has dedicated herself to being the perfect guardian for her niece — even if it means the painful sacrifice of moving back to the hometown she’d wanted to leave for good. Her sister was murdered by her boyfriend in a crime of passion; case closed — or so Charlie thought.

A series of letters ignites Charlie’s curiosity about the convicted murderer’s innocence. As she digs deeper, she sees things others may have hidden or ignored. She comes to an impasse where she has to decide what, if anything, she’s going to do about it.

Why won’t the universe let Charlie move on? How would someone like her catch a killer anyway?

We often think of heroes as martyrs, but ordinary people can make a huge difference in the lives of others when they’re willing to ask difficult questions. Lovers of small town murder mysteries will find themselves muttering “Just one more chapter, one more chapter…”

V. L. Adams earned her B.A. in photojournalism from the University of Central Oklahoma and her J.D. from the University of Oklahoma College of Law. A life-long lover of fiction, she always dreamed of writing her own book one day. No idea ever felt quite right until her debut novel, The Source of Smoke, a story about a possible wrongful conviction and an ordinary woman asking unordinary questions. She lives outside Dallas, works in non-profit, and spends her days with her best friend and husband, taking care of their three lovely children and nurturing her Harry Potter obsession. Connect with her on her website and on Instagram.

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Hiding the Villain in a Mystery

hiding the villain in a mystery

Hiding the villain in a mystery is the toughest task when writing a story in the genre. Planting clues and red herrings effectively is hard too, but if I don’t correctly handle hiding the villain in a traditional whodunit, I’ve ruined the whole story.

Do’s and Don’ts for Hiding the Villain

Don’t have a very minor character be the villain.

Mystery author Bill Pronzini describes this pitfall in a chapter of his book Son of Gun in Cheek when writing about his love for the old Charlie Chan movies made in the 1930’s and ’40’s. He writes that often the villain turned out to be such a minor character that it was difficult to remember what scenes he or she was in.

Part of the fun of a mystery is to reread them after the solution is revealed, noting how the villain acted and what clues I missed that pointed to his guilt. If the villain hardly appears in the story, the reader has no satisfaction in seeing him unmasked. The mystery’s solution isn’t a revelation but a shock and a cheap one at that.

Now I can have a very minor character turn out to be an accomplice. That can provide a nice twist to the plot. But this character should still have enough page time for the reader to say, when revealed as the villain’s ally, “Aha!’ instead of “Who?”

Do make the villain a major player.

He should be an important secondary character, someone who has significant interactions with the detective. But if he has too many scenes in which he plays a pivotal role, the reader may get suspicious. So …

Don’t make the villain the only major player.

As I’ve written mysteries, this tip is the one I’ve found helpful: give each suspect almost equal time on the page. Creating suspects with as much reason to be guilty as the real culprit and allowing them meaningful page time helps disguise the true villain. The drawback of this method is that if a character acts suspiciously but is innocent, my detective either has to uncover to reason or the character must explain her actions. Unlike in real life, mysteries must tie up loose ends. For more on writing about clues and red herrings, click here.

What mysteries had the best reveal of the villain?

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How to Create Clues and Red Herrings

A lot of the fun of writing mysteries is creating clues and red herrings and then figuring out how to insert them so readers has a fair chance of solving the mystery but not a walk in the park. For those who are new to the mystery genre, red herrings are the false clues that are designed to mislead readers and the detective, or sometimes, just the detective.

At the Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference, I attended a panel with authors Jill Orr, Mariah Fredericks, Rich Zahradnik, and Saralyn Richard, who represented a variety of subgenres. With their advice and my own experience, here are some tips about how to create clues and red herrings.

Give clues and red herrings the same emphasis.

By that, I mean each should have close to the same amount of space on the page. If the detective finds three clues but only thinks about one in depth, the reader knows it has significance and the two others not as much. Giving almost equal space to all three will make it harder for the reader to determine which are the real clues and which are red herrings.

In “A Rose from the Ashes,” my teen detective Rae Riley must find out which one of three men is her father and the person who tried to murder her mother. One man could be both. To prevent myself from telegraphing the ending, I had share Rae two scenes with each suspect, creating interactions that might point to their guilt or innocence.

A problem with this approach is that I could waste a lot of space, and readers’ time, on a red herring. So…

The red herring should reveal something important to the story.

To the story, not necessarily the mystery. The red herring can enhance a character, revealing some aspect of his or her personality or history. For example, the detective is sure an elderly woman is guilty when associates think the detective is wrong. Later in the story, it’s shown that the grandmother of the detective abused her. Now readers understands the detective saw a similarity between the suspect and her grandmother and let her past sway her judgement.

This kind of red herring provides depth and fallibility to the main character. It’s difficult for some mystery writers to let their detective makes mistakes. No one wants to follow a detective who’s a blithering idiot. But by allowing the detective to fall for a red herring based on who she is makes the mistake more realistic and understandable.

Red herrings must be explained.

This advice was mentioned during the panel discussion, but I didn’t understand it until I was working on my novel, the sequel to “A Rose from the Ashes.”

Let’s say I have a grumpy elderly male character who was seen arguing with the murder victim shortly before she dies. Then the old man lies to the detective. If the old man is not the guilt party, the detective has to find out why he argued with the victim and why the old man lied to him.

I know in real life that all sorts of interactions with people happen that leave us puzzled, and we never find a solution for our confusion. But readers expect red herrings to be explained. It’s one of the rules of the mystery genre. That’s why it’s so important to read in my genre and understand the rules.

In my novel A Shadow on the Snow, my main character Rae is trying to figure out who is sending her nasty notes about her late mother’s notorious past. I had her discover a newspaper article about a woman who was stabbed at a wild party and Rae’s mother discovered the victim. My original plan was for Rae to conduct a minimal investigation and dismiss the story as unconnected to her stalker.

But that didn’t feel right. The article felt like a major clue. It could still be a red herring, but I had to use it better, either to seriously mislead Rae or to reveal something about her personality or background or that of another major character.

Red herrings should mislead readers, not trick them.

Above all else, writers must play fair with readers. Here is the way for me to check if I’m playing fair. This approach was recommended by the panel at Killer Nashville. Once readers have discovered the solution, they should be able to go back through the story and see how the clues pointed to the solution. If they can’t, they’ve been tricked.

For example, the solution to the mystery hinges on the detective knowing the Etruscan language. But readers don’t know this is the key until the detective says so during the climax, adding that he’s studied Etruscan for years.

If a mystery offers that kind of solution, readers have every right to throw the book across the room. If it’s an ebook, I hope they can restrain themselves.

Writers, what advice do you have on how to create clues and red herrings?Readers, what mysteries have you read that used clues and red herrings particularly well? Or ones that tricked you?

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The Best Way to Research Crime Fiction

I’ve been working on crime fiction long enough now to realize how much research I need to make my mysteries have at least a nodding acquaintance with reality. This fall I’ve had a special opportunity to discover the best way to research crime fiction: getting to know the men and women who work in law enforcement.

Once a year, the sheriff’s department in my county offers a citizens academy that’s absolutely free. All a resident of the county has to do is apply with a paragraph about why they would like to learn about law enforcement and give two references.

In the 11-week class, I’ve heard from officers and staff who work in:

  1. The detective division.
  2. The drug task force.
  3. The SWAT team which is composed of over twenty officers from various agencies within the county.
  4. The dispatch supervisor.
  5. The clerks in public records.
  6. A sketch artist.
  7. Patrols.
  8. CSI.
  9. K-9 unit.

The hands-on activities are what most crime writers needs. I’ve aimed a lidar gun at traffic, acted as an officer performing a traffic stop or dealing with a tense confrontation, and learned how to sweep a building. These activities also provide me with glimpses into behind-the-scenes details that writers love to work into stories if they can. Facts like many officers suffer from lower back trouble after years of service because when they wear their bullet-proof vest and belt, they carry an extra twenty-five to thirty pounds.

I’m standing in the top hatch of an armored personnel vehicle own by the sheriff’s dept.

What I find even more interesting are the stories the officers tells, such as the detective who was assigned to a ten-year-old cold case and how he and his partner finally solved it. Or how a K-9 officer found the people who had broken into an abandoned jail. Or what does a rookie cop learn on the job that he can’t learn at the academy.

Most most fascinating of all is hearing how the officers view their work. One detective said he was doing “God’s work.” The sheriff spoke to us on our first night. After four decades in law enforcement, he is now hiring deputies younger than his children. The dispatch supervisor conveyed how protective the dispatchers are of the deputies they are helping in the field.

Whatever crime fiction story you are writing, try to get interviews with people who work in the particular aspect of law enforcement you are writing about. My WIP novel is set in a fictional, rural county in Ohio. Not all that I’ve learned about my home county’s sheriff’s department will apply because it has a much bigger population. So I conducted a phone interview with the chief deputy from a rural county. I was very nervous about calling the office because I’m an author with only two short stories to my credit. But he was very nice and answered all my questions.

That’s an attitude all the officers I’ve met through the academy have had. They want the citizens they protect to understand their jobs. As Clay Stafford, found of the Killer Nashville mystery writers conference, said, law enforcement professionals are flattered when writers bother to try to accurately represent their work.

Writers, what research have you done for a crime story? Readers, what mysteries have you read that seemed particularly well-researched?

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