Writing From Your Fears: Turning Vulnerability into Impactful Scenes

Turning vulernablility into impactful scenes

On November 15, my latest Rae Riley novel, A Threat at the Feast, releases. So this month, my posts will be about the process for bringing my Thanksgiving mystery from an idea in my head to a book in your hands. Today’s post concerns writing from your fears: turning vulnerability into impactful scenes.

I knew it was coming, and I dreaded it. Since I write my novels in order from beginning to end, I knew I was slowly closing in on the scenes that twisted my stomach when I thought about them.

Why was I dreading those scenes? Because I was confronting some of my deepest fears.

I’ve always hated being accused of something I didn’t do. In elementary school, if the teacher decided I’d misbehaved, and I hadn’t, there wasn’t a thing I could do. Or when one classmate misbehaved, the teacher would ask the other students to report the guilty party. That’s a tall order for a child, to snitch on a classmate. Nobody would, especially in front of the other students. So the teacher punished the whole class. I found it so frustrating, and as a seven-year-old, I didn’t have the nerve to argue with an adult. Looking back, it wouldn’t have done me any good any way. Teachers rarely reverse a discipline. Being unable to defend myself was a helplessness that has stayed with me my whole life.

In my YA Christian mystery, A Threat at the Feast, my twenty-year-old sleuth, Rae Riley, investigates the murder of a movie director, who is also the estranged grandfather of her deputy boyfriend, Chris. He comes under suspicion for the crime and then is arrested by the chief of police, who is a rival of Chris’s boss and Rae’s father, Sheriff Walter “Mal” Malinowksi.

I didn’t want to write about the trapped feeling Chris would experience when he was unjustly accused. I didn’t want to write how helpless Rae felt as she watched someone she loved face prosecution for something he didn’t do.

But I also knew if A Threat at the Feast was going to be a novel worth reading, I had to include those scenes. The stakes for Rae and Chris had to be high. So I poured my fears and frustrations into Rae, as if Chris was my boyfriend and I was living the nightmare with him. Because my emotions were genuine, ideas and reactions to the way I set up a scene would pop up into my mind. For example, my research uncovered that few jails in Ohio have a room where a visitor sits on one side of a plexiglass partition and the inmate sits on the other. All visits are either conducted through a video kiosk at the jail or through a video call from the visitor’s home. I had a deep aversion to that fact, and I gave that aversion to Rae.

Another fact I uncovered was that jail security must be very tight because of the wide variety of offenders who could be incarcerated there. Jail staff must protect the nineteen-year-old who is serving a month for a DUI charge from the person awaiting sentencing for murder. Also, people who can’t make bail and must wait for their trial in jail are under the same restrictions as people who have been convicted of crimes. That seems unfair, and Rae points that out.

If you face writing a scene that cuts deep, don’t be afraid to put it on the page. Despite the emotional grinder I went through to write those scenes, I also knew that such turmoil would make the resolution that much sweeter and deeper, imitating our journey through life. And when a story accurately imitates life, a writer can’t ask for more than that.

Here are more tips on writing different kinds of scenes.

Here’s the landing page to learn how to order A Threat at the Feast and receive free gifts.

November 5, 2026 0

Write a Poem About November

A prompt to write a poem about November is a great way to start the month. I was going to prompt you to write a haiku for November, but while working on one, the poem below came to me, and it works better outside of the haiku form. What’s your inspiration for a poem about November?

Leaves are almost gone.

Grass is almost brown.

Year is almost done.

But best is yet to come.

Here are more writing prompts for poetry.

November 2, 2026 0

Guide to Tracking the Plot When Writing a Mystery

The complexities of a mystery plot can scare off writers. But with organization, you can keep track of the twists and turns and avoid even the smallest holes in your plot. Follow the tips in this guide to tracking the plot when writing a mystery.

Write down characters’ movements–whether they appear in the novel or not.

What do I mean by the above statement? I write from the first-person POV of my amateur sleuth, Rae Riley. Readers follow the mystery only from her perspective. But as the author of the novel, I need to know what all the major characters are doing when they aren’t on the page. It makes the movements and dialogue that do appear in print more realistic and believable.

This is especially true for the culprit of my mystery. I like to write down what he or she is doing while Rae conducts her investigation. Rae can’t possibly know every move the culprit makes before, during, and after he commits the crime. But since I do as the author, I know what’s critical for Rae to uncover during the course of the story.

For example, let’s say I need Rae to see a blue convertible on a particular day. The most plausible way for her to see it is in the town where she works. So I write a scene where she goes to work at the library and has lunch with a friend and spots the car

But how did the car get there? On the right, I write what the other characters have done so Rae can see the convertible in town. Those reasons may not have to appear in the book for readers to make sense of the mystery, but it helps me understand my plot and the motivation of my characters.

You can break this technique down to hours or even minutes if your plotting requires it.

Another example: you’re writing a mystery in which someone had to have been murdered between 11 and 11:30 p.m. Select your day and then the times to schedule what the detective, victim, culprit, and suspects were doing.

Again, not all that action may appear in the final draft, but it helps me keep track of what my characters are doing.

Plot with a calendar.

The seasons of the year my mysteries are set are critical to the story. For example, for my Halloween mystery, A Riddle in the Lonesome October, I knew I wanted it to end on Halloween. Rae’s uncle has a serious riding accident on the first day of the novel, so I also knew I needed a realistic timeline for his recovery. On top of that, Rae is trying to solve a riddle involving a lost inheritance. So her progress should occur over a believable period of time.

Using a calendar, paper or digital, is a great way to track all those points when a mystery that takes place over weeks instead of days. You can see what each character is doing each day and if the story is unfolding at a reasonable pace.

In Riddle, I have something occur every day for about two weeks. Then I jump ahead in time by a week as I build to the climax on Halloween. There were several reasons for the jump: Rae’s uncle needed time to heal, the family is frantically helping Rae’s aunt with the harvest that her farmer uncle can’t perform this fall, and Rae’s dad, the sheriff, is getting nowhere in his criminal investigation. All those facts needed to be addressed, but I didn’t need scene after scene showing them. I summed up a week, and then plunged into the next important scene in the mystery. Having a calendar to make clear where I jumped and what had gone on during that period was very helpful.

Writers, how do you keep track of plot when writing a mystery?

Here are all my tips and prompts for this month’s theme of writing mysteries.

October 29, 2026 0

What Crime is This Character Hiding?

My last writing prompt to feature this month’s theme of crime fiction is what crime is this character hiding? I deliberately chose a photo of someone who looks kind and harmless, so my prompt would be a challenge to your imagination.

Does she know about a crime and is afraid to come forward? Is she protecting a criminal because that person is a loved one? Or is the kind expression merely a mask and the character is not what she seems?

Let me know in the comments.

Here are all the tips, prompts, and recs for this month’s theme of mystery a crime fiction.

October 26, 2026 0

Writing a Detective Duo: 3 Key Steps for Mystery Writers

If you want to write a mystery, I’ll state the obvious: you must have a detective. But detectives come in all shapes and sizes, so you have a lot of room to maneuver. As you write, you might find your story is better if you have a duo of detectives. When I began my first novel, my detective was 19-year-old Rae Riley. Since my mystery was aimed at teens, my amateur detective had to be one. But as I wrote, I realized Rae’s father, since he is the sheriff of their fictional Ohio county, had to join her in the investigation or else he’d look incompetent. So I stumbled into a mystery-solving team, and my stories are the better for it. So here’s my writing a detective duo: 3 key steps for mystery writers

Decide if you write from the POV of one member or both.

POV (point of view) is critical to how you plot your mystery. Rae is my main character, and I write in first person. The story has to happen to her, and she has to make the story happen. Her father, Mal, can provide her information, but readers only see him through her eyes.

If I was writing from both of their POVs, then I could have scenes with just Mal and have him discover things that Rae may not be aware of, but the reader would be. Who my POV character is and how many I have affects how I lay out the clues.

The team should have contrasts.

If you’re two detectives are too much alike, then you only need one of them. Holmes and Watson have appealed to readers for over a century because the characters contrast.

Rae is a quiet, thoughtful amateur photographer. She has a photographer’s eye for noticing details. She also has a drive to help people, which draws her into cases.

Mal is more outgoing, confident, and carries a lot of authority in his manner. He’s also very protective, especially of his children.

Because of the contrasts in personality …

The team should have conflict.

Nothing’s more boring than two characters who never disagree. One of the delights in the Nero Wolfe mystery series is how the eccentricities and quirks of the great detective Nero Wolfe aggravate his right-hand man Archie Goodwin.

Rae’s desire to help people in trouble brings her into conflict with Mal, who wants her to stay safe. This conflict brings some needed tension to a warm relationship that could get too cozy to stay interesting.

Creating a detective team is a lot of work but a lot of fun. What detective teams do you love to read?

October 22, 2026 0

Tag: YA author JPC Allen