Help for Writing a
Mystery
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Mystery Writing Lessons (click on each chapter title below) “Once
Upon a Mystery...” When people ask why I like to write or read mysteries, I reply that “in a mystery something is guaranteed to happen.” It’s also obvious that both mysteries and life often reflect a struggle between the forces of good and evil. Present day mysteries read like the front page headlines of the morning newspaper. By the last chapter of the mystery, people usually reap what they’ve sown, as is usually true in real life. Of course, the fabulous thing about writing mysteries is that you get to play God a little. You can duly reward the good guy every time. Even better, you can make the bad guy pay! Heavily. Since justice is unpredictable in real life, control freaks like me secretly enjoy this aspect of writing mysteries. Kids and adults alike devour mysteries because they can count on something happening. However, a mystery is not just “what happened,” (e.g. “a kidnapping occurred”), but “what happened to someone” (like “Baby Josie was stolen from her crib!”) Mysteries are really about people. In general, there are three main characters in a mystery, and your reader needs to care about all three: your hero (or detective,) your villain (or bad guy,) and your victim (who suffers the crime or “mysterious circumstances”.) In this column we’ll focus on three critical qualities of your hero: his appearance, his motive for solving the crime, and his unique abilities. (Just a note: in children’s mysteries, our heroes are amateur sleuths, rather than private detectives or policemen. A middle grade mystery, for example, has a hero around 12 or 13, which automatically makes him an amateur.) First, create a thumbnail sketch of your hero’s appearance. Heroes come in all varieties: hard-boiled PI’s, sweet Miss Marple-type spinsters, genius teens, or handicapped youngsters. The heroes I personally love don’t look at all like heroes: the class misfit, the unpopular boy, the shy babysitter. The majority of your readers won’t belong to the “popular” crowd and will enjoy rooting for the hero like them: ordinary, perhaps overlooked, not rich or popular by current standards. This “ordinary” amateur sleuth is effective for an additional reason. People open up to the questions of less intimidating heroes. And when tracking down clues, a shy wallflower sleuth can be overlooked entirely. (While it’s a bummer at a school dance, this invisible quality is very helpful when digging up evidence.) When describing your hero, make the details unusual without being garish or wild. Why? You want your hero to be remembered by his unique traits (like how he cracks his toe joints, or that he keeps a pet caterpillar in his pocket.) However, if your hero is extremely odd (with green hair in glittery spikes, for example), it will prevent him from blending into his surroundings enough to do his sleuthing. Motive is Everything Second, answer this crucial question very early in your planning stages: why does the hero even want to solve the mystery? Is there a connection between the hero and the victim? How do they know each other? Why does he care about what’s happened? Will it honestly matter if your hero solves the mystery or not? IT MUST! For example, contrast these two mystery ideas: Idea #1: A twelve-year-old and his parents are staying for a week in a resort hotel. The second morning they are there, the boy overhears at the front desk that a jewelry theft occurred the night before. With a whole week of vacation and nothing else to do, he decides to solve the mystery. (This idea is lame, not because you couldn’t write a gripping mystery around this kernel, but because there’s no connection between your hero and the victim. It won’t matter at all if your hero solves the mystery. If he doesn’t, the victim will file for insurance and the boy will return home. He has nothing at stake.) Idea #2: The same twelve-year-old boy and his parents are staying for a week at a resort hotel. On their first day, a jewelry theft occurs. The stolen necklace belonged to the boy’s mother, who left it in the hotel room while swimming. This is no ordinary necklace. It’s a special locket. Inside is a picture of a toddler, the hero’s baby brother who died in a house fire three years ago. That fire burned the house to the ground, destroying all the family photos. The only photo the hero’s mother was in that locket, and she’s devastated that it’s gone. NOW your hero has a reason to solve the mystery and get the necklace back. He is connected to the victim--his mother. Now, since the hero himself cares deeply about solving the crime, so will the reader. Special Skills Third, what special skill or knowledge does your amateur detective possess that will help solve the mystery? For example, in my first Carousel Mystery, A Spin Out of Control, Lauren Burk knows about the history of the antique carousel and how it was restored, and this special knowledge helps her pinpoint the kidnapper. Or in my book The Haunting of Cabin 13, a paralyzed boy has very strong arms and some skills associated with being in the wheelchair, special skills that help trap the villain at the climax. So as soon as you know your ending (how the mystery will be solved,) work backwards and give your hero a unique skill or talent, or some special knowledge (perhaps through a hobby like stamp or coin collecting) that can assist him in a critical moment to outsmart your villain. Be sure to plant this special skill early in the book. A boy who miraculously transforms into Houdini at the climax and escapes after being trussed up like a turkey won’t be believable--unless we’ve seen this young hero early on working on a Boy Scout merit badge in knot tying. “Amateur Sleuths: Tricky Traits” Creating a convincing amateur sleuth is tricky! Your pint-sized hero must have special abilities that allow him to outsmart the police--or other authority figures--in your mystery. And your amateur detective must do it in a believable way. He can, if you endow him with a few tricky traits. Be a Good Listener “There is nothing so dangerous for anyone who has something to hide as conversation,” claimed Agatha Christie. The longer a person talks, the more they tend to slip up and give out unintended information. Since amateur sleuths know this, they willingly listen to stories and gossip. Most people, villains included, can’t resist revealing themselves to interested parties. Your young detective, regardless of personality and gender, must be able to disarm people, make them relax and open up. How is this accomplished? A soothing voice, a quiet manner, gentle humor, a plate of cookies offered, a sympathetic look: all these encourage people to talk. Your hero may normally be an outspoken loud mouth, but give him the ability to consciously emit warm fuzzies when necessary. Create scenes that make it easier for your amateur sleuth to be a good listener and gather facts. Emotional situations--either positive or negative--can lend themselves well to the “good listener” technique. People under heavy emotional stress blurt out information! And they often don’t care who they talk to. Any scene containing tears, hysteria, or even joyful hugging will make it easier for your amateur sleuth to gather information. High emotions also add drama to scenes that could be dull “Q & A” sessions. In adult mysteries, the detective may be a curvy female who uses her feminine wiles, causing male witnesses to babble information. While this is not recommended behavior for your juvenile hero or heroine, a variation of this tactic can be very useful. For example, in my Carousel Mysteries, the young boy hero is suave and attentive when he wants to be. With flattery and hand-kissing, he weasels information out of cranky old ladies (who often see a lot while parked for hours on front porches or in front of their picture windows). Human Lie Detector Suppose a witness is gushing with information. That’s good--except your amateur sleuth must decide where the truth lies without the benefit of lie detector tests. In essence, your juvenile hero must become a human lie detector. How? Make your amateur sleuth very observant of people’s body language. While chronic liars can train themselves to avoid the standard give-aways (blinking, fidgety feet, no eye contact) the truth comes out in other ways. Your young hero can observe this because the lies come out in behavior changes. For example, when interviewing a witness, does this normally vivacious lady become suddenly calm? Is a grandfather’s normally steady voice now trembling, stuttering and broken as he searches for words? When answering a series of questions, does the witness’s voice abruptly change (from normal to high-pitched, from soft to loud, from slow to fast)? These changes often signal lying. When describing witnesses through your hero’s viewpoint, take note. Are the witness’s hands fluttery? Do his feet shuffle or legs swing wildly back and forth? A liar’s nervous energy is often hard to control and so comes out in his body language. Is the person’s face and neck red or blotchy? Your observant hero will evaluate all these clues to detect liars. (For more details, read books on this subject like Never Be Lied to Again by David J. Lieberman, Ph.D.) True Confessions Since your young hero must unveil the villain without the aid of bamboo shoots under the fingernails, he must have other skills to produce a confession. But can a child actually coax a confession out of a villain, and do it believably? Yes, by using techniques like the following. Let’s suppose your villain has no idea the heroine suspects him or has any evidence. She could lull him into a false sense of security during a charming conversation. When he is most off guard, the amateur sleuth inserts a pointed question or piece of evidence that startles him, and he slips up and reveals his guilt. Or the heroine suddenly reveals concrete evidence that proves some of the villain’s statements were lies. Also, often in juvenile mysteries, the villain is another child or teen. Less sophisticated than adult villains, they can often be tricked into confessing when your hero pretends to know more than he actually does. Your amateur sleuth may have some pertinent facts and suspect the villain, but not be able to prove his guilt yet. However, a convincing speech that relates the facts the hero does have, can often prompt the young villain (out of fear or anger) to fill in the missing pieces. Another way your amateur sleuth can force a confession is the old “good cop/bad cop” routine. This works especially well when your heroine has a sidekick or best friend helping. The gruff questioner is impatient, makes pointed inquiries, and is accusatory. (The other detective is sympathetic and kind, sooooo concerned.) After being attacked by the aggressive “cop,” the witness will tend to trust the kind questioner and spill the beans. “Villains: the People You Love to Hate!” My favorite childhood cartoon hero was Dudley Do-Right of the Mounted Police. Yet no one captured my attention like the slithering, evil Snidely Whiplash who obsessively tied Nell to the railroad tracks. (Ever notice how Nell’s hands flailed wildly about as the train bore down on her? All she had to do was reach down and untie her own ankles. But alas! Idiot victims belong in the next column.) In simplest terms, your villain -- second in importance only to your hero -- is the bad guy, the one who commits the crime or is behind that mysterious “happening.” When creating effective villains, concentrate on the following three traits. Description Your character description includes, name, age, size, height, hair color, hairstyle, and clothing style. Important: Most villains look and act like normal people. Few resemble Snidely Whiplash, with tall black hats and long black mustaches. The villain in today’s juvenile mystery could be the baby-sitter, the man next door, the mail carrier, or the girl in biology class. These villains blend in with foolproof camouflage because they were part of the story before it started and have a role (even if minor) in the ongoing story line. Villains are real people with real backgrounds and feelings. Just watch the TV news when a crime is solved and the neighbors are interviewed. They’re always stunned that their “normal” neighbor turns out to be a drug dealer or child molester. The average villain has many values of the law-abiding citizen or well behaved child. The villain needs to appear normal, or your reader will know “whodunit” long before you want him to. So if villains seem so normal, even likable, how do you create the necessary fear and hatred for your villain? You can do this throughout the story (without painting him as Evil Personified) by focusing on the crime and the victim. You hate the villain in absentia. The evil deed he or she committed produces feelings of outrage and fear in the other characters: “What kind of person could have done this thing?” they ask. Even scarier, “Which of us will be next?” Motive Why does the villain steal, or kidnap, or blackmail? Villains have reasons for what they do, even though we won’t agree with them, and they usually believe that the end justifies the means. So what is the primary EMOTION behind what they do? Greed? Hate? Jealousy? Whatever it is, this motive won’t be revealed till very near the end when the crime is being solved. But you, the writer, must know what drives the villain. This will influence his personality, and will guide you in the types of clues you will create (and hide!) so that the motive is believable when revealed at the conclusion. Caution: Don’t let the motives make the villain too sympathetic. Don’t give him such a strong motive that it justifies the crime in the reader’s eyes. Just give enough to explain his wacky thought processes. Otherwise sympathy can override, and the reader won’t want the villain caught, and your story tension will be lost. If the villain has a truly sympathetic reason for what he’s done, don’t let it come to the surface until the very end, the last page or two, when the suspense is already gone. Second caution: In children’s writing, no matter how sympathetic the villain is, don’t give the impression that the crime -- theft, bullying, kidnapping, arson -- is ever justified. Depending on the age of your villain and your intended audience, be aware that there is no reason why the villain has to be a criminal in the legal sense. Often the villain is a mixed-up contemporary of the main character (like a bully) who is causing mischief and can be straightened out with some understanding and help. Connection And third, how is the villain connected to the victim? A villain who is a stranger that blows into town, commits a random crime, then leaves or goes into hiding is not your best choice of villain. It will make him a cardboard character. Instead connect your villain to your victim. Make it personal. He or she could be a relative, neighbor, someone at the same job or school, someone on the same sports team, or in Girl Scouts or dance class. Make a connection. Is the villain a greedy relative with a grudge? An angry neighbor across the street? A jealous child on the hero’s basketball team? Choosing a villain who is connected to your victim (and possibly to your hero as well) gives the ending a much more powerful impact. The surprise is more horrifying and the implications more complex. If the thief turns out to be a total stranger needing money, who really cares? On the other hand, what if the police apprehend your rotten stepbrother Martin for stealing from you? Think of the family drama yet to unfold! The Perfect Victim: Do’s and Don’ts A solid mystery sets on a three-legged tripod. It sets most firmly when each leg-the hero, the villain, and the victim-are strong. So far we’ve developed likable heroes and believable villains. Now let’s explore the psyche of the victim. For the purposes of writing a juvenile mystery, the victim is simply the person who suffers the injury or loss. The crime happens to this person. Victims can be any age, and they are often naive or easily deceived. Following some simple guidelines, you can create victims that add an important dimension to your fiction. Consider the following DO’s and DON’Ts. DON’T Idiot Victims: Being innocent or easily deceived does NOT translate into being an idiot, or a dumb character who won’t help himself. There’s no faster way for a reader to lose sympathy for your victim (and lose interest in your hero solving the crime) than to have what I call “idiot victims.” One type is the victim of a “misunderstanding” that could be cleared up easily at any point in the story. (Roxanne thought she heard Mr. James threaten to kill Miss Brown. It turns out in the end that he was talking to his annoying myna bird.) Other idiot victims don’t have the common sense of a mushroom. This type of victim wanders stupidly into abandoned warehouses at night, or “hears a funny noise” and unlocks the front door when the villain is trying to break in. Readers won’t sympathize with such idiot victims. In fact, when they suffer the consequences of their stupidity, readers will mutter “good riddance.” “Poor me!” Victims: It’s hard for readers to empathize (put themselves in the place of) victims who have a “poor me” attitude. You seldom feel sorry for characters (or people you know) who already feel sorry for themselves. Instead, create strong story people who have been victimized, but do not have a victim mentality. This is not just semantics. You want your reader to really care that your victim was injured in some way. So don’t create a victim who moans and groans about what happened to him. Readers won’t care what happens to this type of victim. He got blackmailed or robbed? So what? It’s one less whiner to listen to! DO Logical Victims: The victims in your mysteries can be any age or sex. In Danger at Hanging Rock my kidnapping victim was a small boy. On the other hand, in Stage Fright it was elderly ladies who were robbed of their jewelry and savings. Age and physical looks and background are not important in your victims, except as they make a good “fit” for the villain and the crime. (For example, it would be more believable for a teenager to kidnap a small boy than a 300-pound wrestler.) Connected Victims: While it’s workable to have your hero solve a mystery where he didn’t know the victim, your story will be more gripping if he does. Do find a way to connect the victim to the hero, if at all possible, so the hero has something at stake in solving the mystery. Then the reader (who identifies with the hero’s viewpoint) will care more about the outcome. (For example, in Cast a Single Shadow I could have had the twins simply solving a jewelry store theft. However, since it was their single mother who was accused and arrested, they had a much higher stake in finding the villain. They had more to lose if they failed-their home and only parent-which automatically involves the reader more.) Studies showed that the most popular Nancy Drew mysteries were this type, such as when Nancy rescued her kidnapped father. You want your reader involved, so don’t overlook the easiest way to accomplish this: make the victim known personally to your hero. For example, have the blackmailer target the heroine’s best friend-and the heroine herself (as in my Mystery by Mail). Or make the sabotaged canoe sink and nearly drown your best friends (as in The Haunting of Cabin 13). Character Flaws: When creating a victim to fit your mystery, keep in mind one thing: someone, either openly or in secret, dislikes this person enough to commit a crime against him/her. That person is, of course, your villain. However, you need at least two-preferably three-suspects with motives for committing the crime. So when creating victims, use character traits or flaws and back story that lend themselves to annoying a few people. Even likable victims will aggravate people, sometimes by their very “goodness.” It causes jealousy and vengeful feelings in some people-perfect motives for crimes! Popular Vs. Unpopular Victims: One last hint: to heighten the suspense in your mystery, it is helpful to make your victim one of two things: either someone nobody likes or someone everyone likes. Why? Because this will make it tough on your hero to solve the mystery, thus increasing the story tension. If the victim is someone nobody likes, like the grouchy man on the block who yells at kids and kicks dogs, then your hero will have too many suspects when his best friend is accused of breaking the man’s window. (Anyone on the block had a motive for doing it.) On the other hand, if your victim is a sweet child or old lady that everyone seems to love, you will have too few suspects, making the mystery just as challenging for the hero-and the reader. So when creating your mystery, give sufficient attention to the third party of the crime: the victim. It will give your story depth, add more tension, give your hero a solid motive for acting, and increase your reader interest. Mysteries don’t happen in a vacuum. Settings can be exotic or mundane, in the past, present, or future. Whatever you choose, the story’s setting must be integrated with the crime, the plot, and the story’s mood. Crime and Setting: Do They Fit? Weave your setting together with the mystery’s crime. You must convince the reader that your story could not have taken place anywhere but this particular setting. One easy way to accomplish this is to set your story in a well known place. For example, you can’t have your villain bomb the Empire State Building without setting your story in New York City. But you can be just as convincing using more commonplace settings. Beginning writers will find their best settings in familiar places. It’s easy to duplicate sensory details when an actual place is close at hand. Oddly enough, common settings can be scarier too. The more familiar your setting, the more horrible the story can actually become. (Examples include the hero’s home or bedroom, a mall or park, the local fast food place or school.) Young readers tell me that my Iowa mysteries (like The Haunting of Cabin 13 set in Backbone State Park, and Danger at Hanging Rock set in Effigy Mounds) are frightening because they happen where the kids live and so the events could happen to them. Since I lived in Iowa, I could easily add details that grounded my stories in these particular places, like how cattle rustlers once hid in the caves on the Devil’s Backbone or details about the Indian burial mounds. Some settings come with built-in mystery potential: abandoned cabins in the woods, ancient castles, dark caves, cobwebby attics, deserted parking ramps, empty warehouses, and damp basements. But other places, even those considered fun, can easily become sinister settings. Consider the family cruise ship miles out at sea--after a mangled body is discovered in the life boat. Or an amusement park--after your hero is trapped with your villain in the House of Mirrors Maze. No setting is off limits for a mystery, although some settings automatically create an eerie mood. Details Equal Reality and Mood Once you’ve chosen your setting, take plenty of time to “flesh it out” with details, as if it were a main character in your story, for (if well chosen) it has that much impact. Describe your setting, choosing details that will contribute to mood. (For example, which morning detail creates a mysterious mood: daisies with droplets of moisture on each petal OR thick white swirling ground fog?) Focus on mood when choosing your details for particular scenes. How do you want your reader to feel: happy, frightened, exhausted, shocked? Choose setting details in the following categories to evoke those feelings. What is the weather like in your chosen setting? (And how can it contribute to plot?) Is it stormy? Lightning knocks out electricity, and toppled trees take out phone lines. Hurricanes wash evidence up on the beach. Hot sweltering afternoons can be dangerous--especially if your hero is bound and gagged in a deserted shack. Heavy rain washes out crucial footprints--or leaves the ground wet enough to make some. Settings common in mysteries--especially at the climax--often make use of weather: thunder, lightning, fog, and anything creating darkness. On the other hand, don’t shy away from “good” weather in your mystery. The shock is double for the reader if the hero’s at a baseball game on a bright sunny day--and finds a body under the bleachers. Is your mystery setting flat or mountainous? It’s easier for villains to hide in the mountains, in caves and ravines. Mountains also have treacherous drop-offs and rock slides. A get-away is easier on flat ground, yet flat ground has its own dangers: quick sand, flash floods, and alligators. Does the setting you’ve chosen have rich or poor neighborhoods? Mansions with locked gates and guard dogs challenge your hero when gathering evidence and interrogating people. Poor neighborhoods allow your hero freedom to track down clues and question people--but he runs the danger of gang fights and dark alleys. What is the transportation in your setting? Does it include horse-drawn stage coaches of the past? If so, your villain’s escape will be markedly different than if he zips through the galaxy in a futuristic Land Speeder. Is your present day setting the city, where your characters ride subways and hail cabs? Or does your young farm boy drive a tractor or pickup? Transportation affects your plot. Does your setting have one race or a mixture of races? Conflicts arise in multicultural settings that don’t happen in WASP communities. Last, make a list of sensory details. What sights, sounds, tastes, and smells typify your setting? Are you at the beach, with surf pounding and gulls screeching, the salt on your lips, sand scorching the soles of your feet, and the smell of rotting seaweed in the air? Or are you in the city, where skyscrapers blot out the sun, city busses honk at cabs, and acrid exhaust fumes make your eyes water? Use these sensory details, selecting them to create a specific mood in each scene. It will bring your setting alive. Think detail and mood. The more you can make the reader feel as if he’s really on the scene in your mystery, the more involved--and tense--he will be! When you ask mystery lovers why they read this genre, 95% of them reply, “Because I can count on something happening in a mystery!” That “something happening” is your crime, the “it” part of your whodunit. Two Types of Mysteries When readers choose a mystery, they know that they’ll be reading about (1) a crime that was committed, or (2) a mysterious happening that threatens your hero. When you choose the first type, the crime is often introduced by the end of the first chapter so the hero knows what he is trying to solve. (For example, I used the crime of kidnapping in Danger at Hanging Rock, and by the end of the first chapter, the small boy was missing.) On the other hand, in a “mysterious occurrence” book, odd things do happen in the first chapter, but it more closely resembles a scary puzzle to put together than a crime to solve. Subsequent chapters add more eerie happenings as suspense builds and the hero works (often against a ticking clock) to figure out what’s happening before someone is hurt! I used this type of plot in The Haunting of Cabin 13, with its increasingly serious ghost notes and eerie lights bobbing over the lake and cave. Crime Criteria What kinds of crimes can you use for children’s mysteries? Almost the same crimes used in adult mysteries, but the specifics depend on the age of your readership and hero/ine. Take the crime of theft: a preschool picture book might show the family dog stealing the hero’s socks from his dresser drawer; an early reader might center around the second grade hero’s lunch being stolen from the coat closet; a fifth grader might have his bike stolen; and a YA hero might be missing his ATM card or cell phone. Possible crimes could include blackmail (as in my Mystery By Mail), the forging of signatures or paintings, arson, kidnapping (A Spin Out of Control), con artists or swindlers (Stage Fright), vandalism, shoplifting, stealing (Cast a Single Shadow), smuggling, poisoning (Deadly Disguise), or pranks that go wrong (such as throwing objects from an overpass and causing a fatal car accident). Choose Your Crime The crime or mysterious happening you choose is pivotal. Your plot hinges on it and will revolve around it, so choose carefully. Take into account the following considerations: A. Does the crime fit your setting? In an article called “Writing Mysteries for Children,” Mary Blount Christian said, “Writers of children’s mysteries should keep in mind certain basic facts: Youngsters are usually confined to their neighborhoods; depend on their bicycles for mobility and transportation; have limited physical strength; and are in the most part under the watchful eyes of adults, both at school and at home.” Even when you change the setting (on a Disney cruise with the family, at a mountain cabin on vacation), your hero is likely to be with parents or grandparents and limited in mobility. Keep your setting in mind when choosing your crime or mysterious happening. B. Does the action involved in solving the mystery fit your hero? Is cracking the crime compatible with his age, health, and size? Can s/he believably solve it? (Note: I said believably, not easily.) You do want solving the mystery to challenge your hero, or it won’t hold your reader’s interest. For example, in The Haunting of Cabin 13, the boy confined to a wheelchair helped catch the villain when he rolled downhill after him, knocking him over. The boy’s previously shown skill in handling his wheelchair made this believable, although the rough ground and the villain’s size still made it a challenge. Just be sure you don’t go overboard. If solving the mystery is so challenging that it’s rendered unbelievable, you’ll lose your reader in disgust. For example, had I chosen instead to have the young paraplegic throw himself from the wheelchair and climb up the side of the cliff using only his arms, the readers would have scoffed and closed the book. C. Does the crime fit your villain? Is the deed something your villain could pull off (and almost get away with?) While a dog can certainly be the thief when it’s socks missing from the hero’s bedroom, it’s too much of a stretch to have the family pet steal the ATM card and charge up a storm at the local mall. Also, some crimes require adult villains because of the preplanning involved, even if a child or teen had the capability to commit the actual crime. Modify your crime or suspenseful happening until it fits with your hero’s abilities, your villain’s capabilities, and the age of your readership. In previous columns, we’ve worked on heroes, villains, victims and your setting. Now it’s time to choose your crime! Next time we’ll discuss the nuts and bolts of the most fun part: plotting your mystery! Mysteries, by definition, are plot driven. While you can begin writing the rough draft of many stories with just an intriguing character or a theme you want to explore, successful mysteries take more planning. Save yourself multiple migraines by allowing the necessary time (days or weeks) to outline your plot. And before you do that, “pre-think.” Brainstorm Think of many possible angles to various crimes, experiment with different viewpoints, decide on your basic “whodunit” and “howdunit.” Scribble on scratch paper as you restructure original ideas, toss others out, go deeper, make things more complicated, more unexpected. Then (after brainstorming and before you outline your mystery), ask yourself some basic questions. Write down the answers. Rewrite and revise until you’re satisfied with your answers. (In the following examples, I will answer the questions using my mystery, The Haunting of Cabin 13.) 1. What is your story’s mysterious happening or crime to be solved? In Cabin 13 the mystery revolves around a young girl’s drowning, odd goings-on in the park, and who (or what) is writing the ghost notes supposedly signed by the victim. 2. Is your setting conducive to creating fear and suspense? Laurie, the heroine, is spending the week in a state park, and tracking down the clues lead her to caves, cliffs, dark woods, and deep lakes. Many of the frightening events happen at night. 3. Can your hero solve such a crime? Because the events take place in the park, little adult help is needed, other than occasional transportation. Laurie is assisted by her best friend, Jenny, and the paralyzed boy in the adjoining cabin, as they research the history of the park and follow various suspects. The three of them are strong enough to overpower the villain. 4. Who is your villain? Does s/he work alone? In Cabin 13 there are two “villains.” Jacqui (the sister of the drowning victim) is actually leaving the ghost notes. The villain responsible for the thefts and Eleanor’s drowning is the park ranger, who is driven by his own personal problem. 5. Does your main character struggle with an inner conflict as well? The book will be stronger for it. Laurie’s a socially awkward tomboy, unlike her poised and popular best friend, which makes it hard for her to interview people and interact with the boys living in the next cabin. 6. Does the main character face many problems and complications as s/he solves the mystery? Laurie is endangered when their canoe sinks, she encounters mysterious bobbing lights at the cave, and she has a nasty run-in with a boy renting boats. Laurie is also in conflict with her best friend (who wants to chase boys and forget the drowned girl), her younger brother, the woman at the museum, and the lifeguard. 7. Is your plot heavy on action (versus just sitting and thinking and interviewing people)? Laurie is in constant movement as she figures out whodunit: hiking the trails, swimming at the beach, canoeing, exploring the museum and the cave, feeding fish at the hatchery, all the while hunting down clues. 8. Do you have some “mysteries within the mystery” that are solved before the climax? Laurie discovers that Jacqui, the girl at the beach kitchen, is really the dead girl’s sister and why she’s leaving the warning notes. Laurie observes a black cloaked figure across the lake burying a box; using her knowledge of the history of the Backbone Trail, she discovers what he’s really doing. Laurie also discovers that the handicapped boy’s father has a motive for stirring up trouble in the park and has the opportunity, and Laurie discovers what he is up to. 9. Do numerous real and false clues add suspense, confuse the reader, yet lead the reader logically to the conclusion? The handicapped boy’s father has a motive for wanting to ruin the park’s business, and Laurie finds false clues in his cabin. The boy renting boats also has a motive and opportunity, leaving false clues which Laurie discovers at the beach kitchen. The cloaked figure appears to be digging up some kind of buried treasure, when he is actually burying some important artifacts to be “discovered” later and make the park famous. Real clues are found in the museum and brochures. 10. Is the climax the most exciting, suspenseful scene in the book? Laurie and her sidekicks lure the park ranger to their campfire one night and trick him into exposing his guilt. When he tries to escape by racing down the slope to the lake, the boy in the wheelchair rolls after him, overtaking him and knocking him to the ground, where he is captured. A combination of physical action and dialogue keep the reader “on the scene” throughout the climax. As mystery writer Mary Roberts Rinehart once said, “The mystery story is two stories in one: the story of what happened and the story of what appeared to happen.” In last month’s column I had you consider this question: Do you have some “mysteries within the mystery” that are solved before the climax? These mini-mysteries are your subplots. The plot (your main mystery) and subplots (the mini-mysteries) each have their own clues and red herrings (or false clues), and they require careful plotting to blend together. Your main mystery is introduced near the beginning and runs throughout the book, remaining unsolved until the end. But the minor mysteries, which add to the suspense and keep the middle from sagging, will be solved along the way. Occasionally a subplot will tie in so closely with the central plot that it can’t be solved until the central problem is solved. Subplots take you off in a wrong direction, leading the reader to believe one of your innocent characters is, in fact, the villain. This is done with false evidence (either planted by the real villain, or lies told by the suspects, or “evidence” misinterpreted by the hero), incorrect recreations of the crime, overlooking clues when searching the crime scene or victim’s home, etc. While police officers and private eyes making such mistakes look stupid, it is completely forgiven in amateur sleuths, especially amateur children sleuths. So how do you find subplots? Look in these four areas. 1. Back story: Before your story ever started, have the victim, villain and suspects make connections so they already know each other. The hero may discover that a suspect (seemingly without motive) once went to the same boarding school as the victim (and was suspended because the victim lied about him). Maybe last summer the victim and one suspect worked at the same job, and the victim stole his girlfriend. Perhaps the victim saw a suspect shoplift something, and blackmailed the thief instead of reporting it. Back story can give suspects motives and help build subplots. 2. Your characters: What else is going on in the protagonist’s life beside foiling an evildoer? Is he also facing a love, health, family, school or money problem? How might that enrich or further complicate the main mystery story? Include the other characters in your subplots. For example, in my three Carousel mysteries, the heroine must also deal with her mean older brother. As she stands up to him, she becomes braver on all fronts. Subplots can come from angry characters, busybodies, comics, etc. Anyone in your story can be developed into a subplot character. 3. Objects: Sometimes in the course of an investigation, an object turns out to be so interesting that you can create a subplot around it. My Carousel mysteries are set in my hometown, and for settings I used our antique wooden carousel in A SPIN OUT OF CONTROL, and our historic opera playhouse in STAGE FRIGHT. When researching the history of both things, I found so many intriguing facts that both objects developed into subplots. 4. Theme: In A SPIN OUT OF CONTROL, it isn’t just the carousel (the story’s climax scene) that spins out of control. It’s the theme of the young heroine’s life as events and people at home keep her existence in a tizzy. While dealing with the chaos her older brother causes, Lauren discovers he lied about being at work at the time of the kidnapping, and she also uncovers a motive. The theme (her life spinning out of control) leads Lauren directly into a subplot tied to the crime. Weaving your plot and one or more subplots together takes careful planning. They must blend, not seem like several different stories running parallel to each other. Before you outline, try this exercise: 1. On a large sheet of paper, name your crime and identify your victim; write down the victim’s name in the center of your paper and circle it. 2. In one corner, write down the name of the villain. 3. In the other corners, name at least two (preferably three) other people who had reason to dislike/hate the victim. (Jealous of the victim? Bullied or blackmailed by the victim? Beaten out of a leading role by the victim? Suffered harm because of the victim’s gossip or lies?) These suspects either actively hate the victim or simply act suspicious for hidden reasons of their own. They have no alibis. 4. Draw lines from the villain and the other suspects to the victim in the center. These “lines” are subplots and tie your suspects to the victim. The subplots are the actions and reactions that occur for each suspect. (Hint: have every suspect lie, either outright or by omission. Everyone is hiding something, either minor embarrassments or real offenses they don’t want known. Have all the suspects twist the truth to serve their own purposes, thus making your hero’s job--and the reader’s--that much harder.) Do you HAVE to outline your plot? Not if you don’t want to. It’s your choice. But “winging it” and totally going with the flow WILL entail a great deal more rewriting after you figure out your plot, so be prepared for that. As mystery writer Tony Hillerman says, “You don’t have to be able to outline a plot if you have a reasonably long life expectancy.” “Avoid Plot Clichés Like the Plague” Mysteries come in two distinct types. One has a predictable plot, heavy-handed foreshadowing, and a less-than-bright hero. The other has unexpected twists and turns, subtle clues, and a quick-witted hero. If your mystery is to be the second type and rise above the common and ordinary story, you must avoid plot clichés. Adult mysteries abound with clichés: the hard-driving, hard-drinking private eye, the blundering gothic heroine, bullets, bodies, booze, blondes, and blood. Juvenile mysteries have their own clichés to avoid, but identifying them is the trick. Here are a few of my “favorites”: 1. Avoid naive heroes. Heroes should be brave and courageous and gutsy, but that doesn’t mean stupid. Readers get disgusted at heroines who agree to meet villains alone at night in the woods and heroes who confront armed villains when unnecessary. 2. Avoid the plot twist where someone tells the sleuth that they possess vital information that they’ll share--but later. Of course, that someone will be dead or have disappeared before a word of it is uttered. 3. An idiot police force is also a cliché. The officers may not be privy to information the hero has, and their methods may not be state of the art. That’s fine and fair. But the bumbling policeman who is outsmarted by a clever kid is a cliché. 4. Avoid villain monologues. Beware the villain who pauses before killing the hero to give a LONG speech on how clever he’s been, or how he was wronged and his revenge is justified. The author hasn’t tied up loose ends, so uses the villain as a mouthpiece to explain the whole book to the reader. (Of course, during this long-winded explanation, the clever kid hero figures out how to outwit the windbag villain--another plot cliché.) 5. Nix the “twin brother” solution. Don’t produce a long-lost twin of one of your characters as the surprise solution to your mystery. 6. Avoid a Lone Ranger victim. This character refuses to get help or tell anyone about the crime, but insists for no apparent reason on pursuing the villain himself and putting himself in unnecessary danger. What if all YOUR ideas sound like plot clichés? Take heart! Mystery writer Margaret Manners puts the business of clichés in perspective when she says, “Every blessed cliché has been used, and will be used again and again. The good writer will use it in a fresh way. Invert it. Turn it upside down, inside out. There are infinite combinations possible.” Your job as a mystery writer is to avoid clichés by adding your own clever twists and turns. Let’s take the clichés above and be creative: 1. Instead of your hero stupidly volunteering to meet the villain alone in the dark parking garage or empty building, make sure he plans ahead--but his plans are foiled. Perhaps he plans to have his sidekick standing guard at the abandoned warehouse when he meets the villain. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to the hero, his sidekick is detained, causing our hero to unknowingly walk into the situation alone and unprotected. Now the reader roots for the brave hero, rather than closing the book in disgust at his stupidity. 2. If you need to withhold information from your hero, don’t kill off the informant just before he spills the beans. Withhold it in another way. Perhaps you can have the hero ask someone a question. That person doesn’t give him a straight answer, but reacts violently instead and warns the hero to NEVER mention this person (or incident) again. Two things are accomplished this way: the hero doesn’t get important information, and you throw suspicion on the secretive character. What is he trying to hide? 3. Give your heroes logical ways of uncovering information denied the police, rather than making the officials appear lame-brained. Perhaps the hero leaves his bedroom window open a crack at night, and so hears an argument outside that he normally wouldn’t have heard (and the police wouldn’t be privy to.) Your hero can also observe and overhear things at his best friend’s house, in school, in the Little League dugout, and at the city park that your police officer would not hear. 4. Eliminate the lengthy villain monologue at the end. Instead, as you approach the climax scene, tie up or explain all possible loose ends, wrong clues, and false suspects. Narrowing the possibilities heightens suspense at the same time. 5. While surprise twin brothers are cliché and unbelievable, you CAN make use of mistaken identities. Characters can appear in disguise. Mistaken assumptions can be made, based on out-of-date photographs or someone’s altered appearance (shaving off or growing a beard, cutting or dying hair, sustaining an accident that caused a limp, etc.) 6. Story suspense seems contrived when the victim or hero refuses, for no good reason, to involve the police and instead hunts down the villain alone. Instead, have your hero try to get help--but be thwarted. Perhaps your a hero tries to enlist help (from where he is held captive in a car trunk or attic), and the hero is nearly rescued, but something causes the rescuer to go away JUST BEFORE the hero is found. Or perhaps the victim goes to report the crime, but she spots a police officer in friendly or secretive conversation with her attacker and suspects the police of being involved in the crime. Now the reader roots for the desperate character who is forced to go it alone. When your plot steps come to you easily, chances are they’re clichés. However, don’t throw them out. Instead, twist them, flip them upside down, ask what if?, and turn your plot clichés into an original plot of your own. As a child, I devoured Nancy Drew’s The Clue of the Black Keys, The Clue in the Diary, The Clue of the Broken Locket, and The Clue in the Crumbling Wall. Just the mention the word “clue” and I was hooked! Nose buried in a book, I feverishly tracked down leads (with a bit of help from my sidekick, Nancy) to solve the mystery. Mysteries are plot-driven. In past columns we’ve discussed pre-thinking your plot, interweaving plots with subplots, and avoiding plot clichés. (See below for information on obtaining previous columns.) Now it’s time for that tricky--but fun--job of planting clues to prepare the reader for the mystery’s solution and fool the reader at the same time. When revealing the identity of your villain, you have to do two things simultaneously: keep the villain’s identity hidden as long as possible, certainly till the last chapter, yet play fair with the reader by planting sufficient clues so that a truly astute reader could solve the crime. You, the writer, must plant clues in such a way that they are hidden--yet in plain sight! Ways to plant clues effectively: l. Hide them in plain view. Put the clue right under the hero’s--and the reader’s--nose. Perhaps an important clue at the scene of the crime is something in the victim’s address book. When the protagonist visits the victim’s den or bedroom, he reaches for the ringing phone on the desk and accidentally knocks a pen and an address book to the floor. Your reader won’t think a thing about it--but a scribbled notation in the address book will be an important clue later. 2. Hide clues in a list. Make the clue just one item of many in a long list. For example, one clue in solving a murder or theft might be a spade with a cracked handle. You don’t want to call attention to the spade, but you must play fair and mention that it’s available. So hide it in a list. One way, for example, would be to have your hero follow after a cat or dog who disappears into the gardener’s shed. Your hero follows the animal, who crawls out of reach to hide behind a hoe, a bucket of gravel, a broken spade, and a bag of fertilizer. 3. Create a diversion immediately after planting a clue. As soon as the clue is revealed, create an emergency for the hero. Perhaps the hero is interviewing someone who gives him a solid lead, but without warning a screaming fire engine comes down the street and stops next door. In the noise and confusion of racing outside, checking on the neighbors, and tending to anyone injured, the clue is forgotten by both the hero and the reader. Forgotten, that is, until the story’s solution is revealed later and the reader suddenly recalls that clue. (The diversions can also be minor, such as a ringing phone, a doorbell, or someone screaming in another room.) 4. Place the villain in the wrong place at the wrong time. Your villain seems like an average person, but place this person somewhere so that he or she seems to be out of character. Does your villain claim to be timid, yet you spot him riding recklessly in a convertible on icy roads? Does your villain say she hates dogs, yet you spot her at a pet store buying a Doberman pinscher? Is your villain a high school student, yet she’s spotted canoeing a shallow river on a school day? These things will perhaps puzzle a reader, but he won’t recognize the significance of the clues till the solution is revealed at the end. 5. Let the villain hang himself with his own words. Casual comments from the villain can reveal a knowledge that only he or she could have about the crime. Perhaps a valuable necklace is stolen, and the description given in the newspaper as “14-karat gold and heart-shaped.” The villain slips during a conversation with the hero (or within the hero’s hearing) and refers to it as a locket, but he couldn’t have known that unless he stole it himself. Such comments slide by the average reader--and are not seen as important till the ending is revealed. 6. Refer to the villain’s past, giving seemingly unimportant details. These details (such as where he was born, a former occupation, a skill or hobby, former relationships or problems) seem inconsequential when they are mentioned in passing, but they become important facts later in the story when other clues are added. 7. Focus on someone else (or several others) in the meantime. Get the reader to detest or fear at least one other character, thus turning attention away from the villain and muddying the mystery waters. Stir up negative feelings for one character or more who behaves badly, is nasty and rude, or downright abusive. Also use “red herrings” (phony clues) to lure the reader down a meandering rabbit trail that focuses on the probable guilt of one or more innocent parties. Clues must be slipped into the story in such a casual way that the reader is not alerted. Yet the final revelation of the villain cannot come out of the blue, but instead must give the reader that “Aha! Of course!” reaction as the pieces of the puzzle fit together. These tricks of the trade will help you play fair with your reader while keeping the suspense strong till the very end! Many mysteries have beginnings that hook the reader and middles where tension mounts, but endings that fall flat at the climax or final resolution (the denouement). Pay specific attention to these two sections of the plot. The climax is that crucial moment of peak intensity near the end of your story or novel where the villain is usually revealed. The denouement is the final wrap-up where the detective explains how he solved the crime. Mistakes Made at the Climax Your entire novel or short story leads up to your climax. Problems and complications have been piled on your hero until his situation appears impossible. To write an effective climax scene (one of the most important scenes in your mystery), avoid the following common mistakes: First, don’t downplay the climax. Beginning writers tend to condense the climax by quickly reporting what happened and reassuring their readers that it ended well for their main characters. Some new writers skip the climax scene entirely, leaving blank white space to indicate the passage of time, then resuming the action after the scene is over. No, no, no! It’s essential to show this scene taking place with action and dialogue; it’s not enough simply to tell about it. Readers want to participate. Second, don’t switch horses in midstream. After you embroiled your characters in a problem in the opening, then developed these same characters and heightened their conflict in the middle, don’t suddenly bring in a stranger or the police to rescue them at the climax. The growing suspense has promised a coming clash between your hero and your villain, and to sidestep this collision cheats and irritates the reader. Keep your main characters in the thick of things throughout the climax scene. Third, don’t settle for a peaceful solution. In real life, when conflicts escalate, we hope that the people involved will be mature, talk things out and reach a compromise. Not in fiction! For example, at the very end of your story, the hero may unearth the villain’s motive for the crime (like stealing money to give to a sick grandmother.) However, don’t cheat the reader out of a rousing climax scene by having the hero and the culprit discuss the wrongdoing and work out a job for the villain so he can stop stealing. That might be a fine last-page solution after the climax scene, but not instead of the climax scene. Tied Together At the climax, the hero points to someone and says, “You’re the guilty party!” This is often followed by high intensity action, dramatic chases, ticking clocks, and near-death experiences. The climax tells the reader WHO committed the crime. When the guilty party is finally caught, the denouement begins, which tells the reader WHY the crime was committed at this particular time and place. In the denouement, you tie up loose ends to make a satisfying conclusion for your reader. In a short story, your denouement may be no longer than a paragraph. Your mystery novel make require a full scene or two. Denouement Downfalls First, don’t whip out some illogical explanation that cheats the reader. You must play fair in your final explanations about how your detective figured things out. The answer to the mystery cannot be an unheard-of twin sister pulled out of a hat at the last moment. Also, do not suddenly introduce a ghost for your culprit, nor have your hero wake up and find the ordeal “was only a dream.” Second, don’t go on too long. The denouement, which tells how the hero figured out the solution, should be as tightly compressed as possible. Eliminate boring details. Remember, the story has already peaked at its climax--that’s what made it the climax--so no matter how dramatic you make the denouement (and the suspense must remain high here), it is still at a lower tension level than the climax. So keep it short. Third, don’t tack on a chunk of explanation to serve as your denouement. Instead, reveal explanations and changes in your main characters by showing them in action. Let the reader see and hear how your story turns out. Note: be aware that the “drawing room” type of ending, in which the detective gathers all the suspects and, after a monologue describing all the clues, points to the villain, has gone out of style. Young readers want action throughout their mysteries, and they won’t stand for this. Fourth, don’t leave your reader hanging. Loose ends should be tied up in the last few pages of the mystery novel. Leave your readers with a sense of closure, a feeling that they know enough about the main characters and their probable future to feel satisfied. Characters--even minor ones--should not be left dangling. Don’t leave it ambiguous, claiming you’re letting the reader decide how it ends. You’re the writer--you decide. Fifth, remember that you’re writing for children (and editors and parents). In a mystery written for kids, you may want to include some natural consequences if your child hero’s actions broke family rules (like sneaking out of the house to track down clues) or he did something dangerous (like going to meet the villain alone). This won’t detract from your satisfying ending--the parents or school officials needn’t be harsh--but if your plot absolutely required your hero to break rules, include consequences for his actions. Rewrite and revise your climax and denouement until you’re fully satisfied with the pace and tension level. If you do this, not only will your reader love that particular mystery, he will close the book and hunt immediately for your other stories. If you want to write mysteries, skip the oft-repeated advice to “write what you know.” Unless you’ve committed a rash of crimes, you won’t have much experience to draw from. No problem! I’ve had eight mysteries published (which included poisonings, kidnapping, and theft,) and I’ve never so much as gotten a speeding ticket. It doesn’t matter. According to Gillian Roberts in You Can Write a Mystery, “Story ideas are eternally recycled, adapted and made new via fresh characters and the voice and world view of their author.” That’s you! Mysteries, no matter what the age of the audience, deal with intense emotions that have run amuck. A strong desire for love, money, or power has gone haywire. This is just as true for a middle grade mystery as adult suspense. A child’s greed may result in stealing lunch money while an adult might use credit card theft, but the motive is much the same. When choosing an idea for your mystery, focus on ONE core idea around which the story is built. A mystery is more than a series of scary incidents. So what kind of idea can furnish you with the kernel or core of a whodunit? And just where do mystery writers find such ideas? Here are some good places to start looking. 1. |