Writing a Christmas Mystery

Since I’ve been reviewing Christmas mysteries, I thought I’d repost this article on writing a Christmas mystery.

For some reason, Christmas and mysteries go together like silver and gold on a Christmas tree. Christmas mysteries are a very old tradition in the genre. One of the first, and best, is “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”, a Sherlock Holmes story. Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple had Christmas cases. So did Nero Wolfe, Ellery Queen, V.I. Warshawski, Brother Cadfael, and Father Brown. Maybe the mystery of God coming to earth, fully God and and fully human, gives the whole season an air of the unexplainable. If you’d like to try your hand at this very specific sub-genre, here are a two tips about writing a Christmas mystery.

The Story Can’t Take Place at Any Other Time

The best Christmas mysteries take advantage of what the season offers. In “A Christmas Party” by Rex Stout, the boss of an interior design firm is murdered during the Christmas office party. The man who was working the bar in a Santa Claus outfit disappears during the confusion created when the boss collapses from cyanide poisoning. Santa was so heavily made-up no one at the party can describe him.

Christmas gives Agatha Christie the perfect reason for warring members of an extended family to gather at the family estate in the country in Murder for Christmas. It’s hard to imagine another plausible reason for relatives who dislike each other to come into contact with each other, except maybe, a funeral or wedding. In “The Flying Stars”. author G.K. Chesterton uses the English Christmas tradition of the pantomime as the key plot point.

One of the many fun qualities of “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” is how well it incorporates characteristics of Christmas that existed at the time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote it. A commissionaire who is an acquaintance of Holmes, finds a precious stone, the blue carbuncle, in the crop of the goose his wife was going to roast for Christmas dinner. Holmes and Watson follow clues through a bitterly cold London night to figure how the jewel, stolen from a luxury hotel, ended up in the goose.

Include Themes of the Season

Another quality you can take advantage of are the meanings of the season. One aspect of “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” that makes it so special is the offer Holmes extends to the culprit once he uncovers him. “The Killer Christian” by Andre Klavan is about redemption. In my Christmas mystery, “A Rose from the Ashes”, I used themes of mercy and forgiveness as my teen detective Rae Riley attempts to discover who her father is and if he tried to murder her mother when she was pregnant with Rae.

Writers, have you written a Christmas story? What was it about? Readers, what Christmas story uses the holiday setting effectively?

December 19, 2024 0

Troubleshoot an Ending You Hate

After you’ve spent weeks, months, or years writing a story, you want to like what you’ve written. What if you hate your ending? First, you need a thorough understanding of the three parts of the an ending. You may hate your ending because you don’t understand the function of each part. If that’s not the problem, ask yourself the questions below so you can troubleshoot an ending you hate.

Do you love the beginning and middle of your story?

Review the beginning and the middle. If anything isn’t working in either of these sections, it may be reflected in your ending. Fixing a problem that far back in the story can be a lot of work, but it is more than worth it.

Do you hate the climax?

Maybe the climax isn’t really all that … climactic. If you start your story with your main character finding out her mother isn’t her mother, then the climax must be more intense. If your climax isn’t the most intense or exciting part of the story, you need to rethink it. Or you may need to tone down other high points in the story to make the climax more thrilling or intense.

Maybe the climax bores you. It seems much too typical of your genre. Review what readers expectations are in your genre. How can you give your ending a fresh twist while still giving readers what they want?

Do you hate the wrap up?

The wrap up, or denouement, is when all the loose ends not addressed in the climax are tied up. Have you left a few loose ends dangling, allowing them to trip up readers? Review your story to see what loose ends need addressed.

Is it taking too long to wrap things? As a mystery writer I often have a ton of loose ends to tie up. So I’ve learned not to leave the explanation for all of them during the wrap up. In A Storm of Doubts, I spread the explanations over the climax and wrap up, where it makes sense to insert them during the course of the narrative.

Have you not really wrapped up the story at all? The climax happens, the hero grins, and the story simply quits. Most readers like some time to say farewell to the characters. Give them some kind of closure.

Do you hate the final lines?

I think final lines are the most difficult part of a story to write. When I reach the last chapter, and especially the last few paragraphs of the last chapter, I often feel like I’m composing music. I want depth to my final lines, but I also don’t want to linger so long that readers are rolling their eyes and flipping to see how many pages are left. It’s a balancing act, like balancing the brass against the woodwinds and keeping the percussion from drowning everyone out.

A good guideline in the final lines is to echo a theme of the story. In “A Rose from the Ashes”, the first Rae Riley mystery, the final lines echo a Bible verse from the Christmas story. Since it’s a Christmas mystery, that’s appropriate. It’s also funny, which echoes the upbeat ending. Rae is concerned with being accepted by her new family in A Shadow on the Snow, and the final lines echo that. Rae has doubts about her father’s love in A Storm of Doubts, and you guessed it, that’s what I echo.

Writers, how do you troubleshoot an ending you hate?

For more advice on writing endings, click here.

September 26, 2024 1

Use Characters to Write a Satisfying and Surprising Ending

I’m a character writer. I start with characters and let their personalities suggest plots. If you come to the end of your story and don’t like it, use characters to write a satisfying and surprising ending for your readers. How? By revisiting your characters to see if there’s some quality in their background that will change your ending from dull or typical to memorable and remarkable.

A Shadow on the Snow

When I reached the end of my first novel, I knew I wanted an action-filled climax. I was writing a teen cozy mystery, so I could add more action than you might typically find in a cozy mystery. The first ending had my heroine, Rae Riley, fight the bad guy. Ho-hum. That’s been done before. The second time Rae had help come from an unlikely source during the fight. A bit better, but it didn’t sit well with me. The action seemed mean. I didn’t like it, and it seemed wrong for the story.

So I reviewed what Rae Riley was like and who the bad guy was. Rae is moved to help people out of compassion–she can imagine herself in their situation and knows she’d like help if this bad experience happened to her. Rae also knew the background story of the bad guy. So using those aspects of both characters, I was able to write an ending that, I hope, satisfies and surprises. Satisfies because the bad guy is revealed and the mystery is solved. Surprises because the ending is atypical.

The Great Man (1957)

Another example of a satisfying and surprising ending comes in the movie The Great Man. I’ll tell you the ending because most people have never heard of it and it’s extremely hard to find a copy of it. But if you like character studies and actors who have parts they can really bring to life, search for it.

The beloved radio and TV host Herb Fuller dies in a car crash. His network wants to wring as much publicity out of his death as they can. Herb’s manager Sid persuades another radio host on the network, Joe Harris, to tell the top brass that he was a close friend of Herb’s and wants to put together a radio tribute to great man. The top brass approve the project, including the network head Phillip Carleton, who runs the network with a quiet voice and an iron fist.

So Joe dusts off his reporter skills, interviewing the people who worked with Herb. And discovers what an utterly despicable guy he was, completely at odds with his public image. Joe grows more and more conflicted. Sid says if his live show goes over well, the network will give Joe Herb’s shows. If Joe doesn’t create the tribute, Sid will run a show that is a highlight reel from Herb’s old shows.

Joe also learns from Carleton that the network won’t hire him for Herb’s shows unless he breaks his contract with Sid. Carleton does not want to work with Sid, who is a bully. He thinks he can get Joe out of the contract by letting people think the network isn’t interested in Joe. Carleton explains the charade he’s put in place and the build up he’ll give Joe if he gets out of the contract. Joe comments that it’s cold-blooded. Carleton disagrees, saying it’s a business that sells time for products and those are promoted by on-air personalities.

On the night of the live broadcast, Joe decides at the last minute to roll the show that reveals who Herb Fuller really was. This won’t surprise many viewers–the hero of the story doing the right thing. This ending is satisfying because Herb is so repugnant that viewers are glad he’s going to get his comeuppance, even if it is posthumously.

The surprise comes in Carleton’s office. Sid hears on the radio what Joe is doing and rushes to the phone to have them cut Joe off and run the back up show. Carleton stops him. He says Joe has just made himself a household name across the country. Sid’s only power came from covering up for Herb’s horrible behavior. Now that the world knows, he’s go no hold over the network. The network can use Joe’s integrity to sell products just as easily as Herb’s avuncular act. Both are good for business.

This ending surprises because we are used to stories in which characters in power react angrily at being thwarted. But Carleton’s view of how to run the network is established earlier. The network is just a business to him. And he’ll use whatever necessary to stay in business.

What stories or movies have satisfying and surprising endings?

For more tips on how to write endings, click here.

September 19, 2024 0

Writing a Satisfying and Surprising Ending

Writing a surprising and satisfying ending

Writing a satisfying and surprising ending? It sounds like a conflict in terms. If it’s satisfying, how can it be surprising? That’s the biggest obstacle when writing an ending–an author wants readers to close the book with a feeling that they’ve spent their time well and enjoyed the story while also delivering a story that delights with a surprise. A good ending also encourages readers to look for more books and stories by that author. So what’s a writer to do?

Know your genre. I repeat. KNOW YOUR GENRE.

If I say my book is a mystery and don’t provide a solution for it, mystery readers will definitely be surprised. But they will also feel betrayed. The mystery genre comes with the promise of solving the puzzle in the story.

Authors cannot satisfy readers with their endings if they don’t understand the promises implicit in each genre. A romance in which the heroine doesn’t end up with the hero because she decides she’s better off alone isn’t a romance. You have to know your genre from A to Z. If you write it, you probably like reading it, so you’re are familiar with the rules even if you haven’t sat down and thought about them critically. But you should as a writer. You should also know the endings for the classics in your genre and the typical ending for currently published books.

Review endings that surprised you.

This is probably the best way to dissect a good ending. What endings have surprised you and yet left you satisfied? Treat the dissection like an assignment for a class. Underline the elements the author used. Take notes about why it worked.

The Midnight Visitor by Robert Arthur

My sixth grade reading teacher read my class this very short story, and it has always stayed with me because the ending was so surprising. Because it’s short, it’s easy to analyze.

Fowler is a writer who has spent an evening with spy Ausable to do research. Ausable is fat and sloppy, the last person Fowler would think of as a spy. Ausuable tells him he’s receiving important papers that night, so Fowler will finally see some real spy stuff.

But when Ausable and Fowler return to Ausable’s hotel room they find an intruder holding a gun. Max has come for the papers. But instead of acting afraid, Ausable is simply irritated. Max is the second person in a month to gain access to his room from a balcony that runs for Ausable’s room to an empty room two doors down.

At this point, the reader is wondering if Fowler will do something heroic or if Ausable will prove he really is a great spy. Max talks about the papers and Ausable complains about the balcony until there is a knock at the door. Ausable says it’s the police. He asked them to check on him at the time he was supposed to receive the papers. Max tells him to get rid of them or he’ll kill Ausable and Fowler and risk taking on the police. He’ll wait on the balcony.

So Ausable has proved himself to be a clever spy after all. This meets readers expectations for a spy story. Readers may be expecting a shoot out, or the police waiting on the balcony for Max. But Mr. Arthur doesn’t leave it at that.

Max steps out the window and screams once. Ausable opens the door to a waiter and accepts the drink he brings in. The waiter leaves. Fowler is worried Max will return.

“No,” said Ausable, “he won’t return. You see, my young friend, there is no balcony.”

In this very brief story, Mr. Arthur meets the expectations of his genre and then adds a surprise that still works within the genre.

Which have endings have surprised you?

For more tips on writing endings, click here.

September 12, 2024 0

Why Are Endings Hard to Write?

It might seem odd to have endings as my theme in September instead of December. But if you’re like me, most of your usual habits get sidetracked in the preparations for Christmas. And I think mastering how to end a story is crucial to good writing. When you pick up any book on writing, there’s usually a ton of advice on how to begin a story. Because if you can’t hook readers at the beginning, they will never make it to the end. But endings are just as important as beginnings, but I think they are more difficult to pull off successfully. Why are endings hard to write?

The beginning and middle determine the ending

The ending pulls together all the elements that have come before. So if one of those aren’t working, then the ending will reflect that. With a bad beginning, you only have to go back a few chapters to figure out what’s wrong. If the ending isn’t pulling together, you have much more story to excavate through.

Writers run out of inspiration

The ending is usually the last thing you write for a story. By the time you’ve fought through the beginning and middle, you may feel like you have nothing left to say and just want the whole thing to be over with like a bad cold. With no inspiration to fuel your writing, the ending can come across as rushed or incomplete.

Endings have to surprise and make sense

Accomplishing those two objectives in an ending is what makes it so much harder than a beginning. There are limitless ways to begin a story–with action, a provocative remark, and stirring appeal to the senses–and you have the whole story to build out from that hook.

With an ending, you have to work with what came before in a way that readers will see as logical. But to make the ending a surprise, you have to reveal that logic in an unexpected way. When you can use logic and the unexpected effectively in an ending, you will provide readers with deep satisfaction and the kind of ending they remember with fondness.

So we’ll be exploring endings with all the challenges and rewards. Writers, are endings are hard for you to write? Readers, what are some memorable endings?

For more posts on writing endings, click here.

September 5, 2024 2

Tag: How to write a story