Tag Archives: writing advice

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Writing a Mystery Doesn’t Have to Be a Mystery

Today I am migraine free though sore, and I shall attempt productive procrastination instead of hiding in video games, tempting as it might be.

My love of mysteries goes way back to some of the first stories I remember reading, like Boxcar children mysteries, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys as well as all the mystery shows and movies I used to watch, including Perry Mason and Diagnosis Murder and many, many others. By middle school, I’d read every Mary Higgins Clark book I could get my hands on and eagerly looked for others like them. I shifted later to a focus on historical mysteries, though I still enjoy mysteries of all sorts.

So I am speaking from a reader’s perspective but also as a writer (and I reread my own books, so there’s that, too) but probably not an expert to anyone’s mind.

That said…

I think the best thing to remember regardless of genre is to start with interesting characters.

I’m not saying they all have to be likeable or that they should be perfect, but I have a pretty good memory and if you asked me about some of those books I read even as a kid, I could tell you now what happens. Yet I reread my books several times (never creasing the spine, I might add) and would enjoy them. However, that is only possible when I as a reader am invested in seeing the characters reach the end of their journey. If I like them or their story is compelling, I can read it again and again.

If not, forget it, I’m not even sure I’d bother taking that book to a used bookstore.

Secondly, if you’re going to write a mystery, don’t get caught up in solving it all before you start.

You don’t have to know who did it. Part of the fun of reading is figuring it out, though I am usually good at predicting it, so if all the story has got going for it is that (again, I stress having good characterization,) it’s a miss. I generally start with a general sense of what happened and why.

As long as I have a motive, I can usually figure out the rest along the way. I’ve even changed suspects in the middle of the story as long as it felt genuine to the way things and characters were developing.

A mystery doesn’t have to be complicated.

Police shows have spoiled us by convincing us that crimes get solved in an hour or less (forty minutes these days.) And they add drama by adding more deaths. That isn’t necessary at all. I’m not saying avoid tension or suspense or not to have any cliffhangers or twists. That’s not it. There’s plenty people can do over the course of a plot that leads them to their ending that doesn’t need all the fancy stuff or a lot of drama. I love amnesia plots for being able to reveal things a bit at a time, but there’s life besides investigation. Let it happen to the characters and suddenly your ten chapter story is thirty-five and twenty thousand words becomes almost two hundred thousand and you wonder where the last two months of your life went.

(I am not kidding. I have lost track of how many times this has happened.)

The world of your mystery is just as important as your characters.

Are you writing in the present? The future? The past? Those things affect how your case develops and how your characters react to things. Nothing drives me crazier than a modern attitude slapped willy-nilly on a character from the past. I’m sorry, but no. They were most likely not progressive, they’d have strong opinions based on their time period, and it would not agree with your world view. It’s a thin line to walk with female characters, in particular, because you may want a strong one, but that goes against Victorian convention. Acknowledge that as she solves the mysteries, and it’s okay. Ignore it, and people like me who have a bit of a history interest are going to be frustrated. Also, remember technological limits. Or defy them by writing in the future. Or on another planet. I’ve got some of those.

Is the setting local or far away? Is the planet itself a big part of things? I have a story where the planet itself stores the memories of everyone that has ever lived on it and special people can access them. This changed their whole system of government and world, creating a lasting but fragile peace. That’s the thing, though, where people are effects how their story plays out, so don’t forget that when you’re making a case, it can change just by adding a “road” after “street.”

(Yes, Greeley, it is still ridiculous that there are street roads and street courts and street lanes. You are a strange city.)

Mysteries do not have to be horror shows.

You can tell a mystery story without a lot of gore or violence. This is my preference, and I believe they’re called “cozy mysteries.” If you want to tell the story with gore and violence, you can, too. That’s a valid choice. Still, the shock factor and a lot of violence aren’t necessary. Implication can do a lot. Fadeouts can be used to great effect.

Also… not every mystery is a murder mystery. Plenty of things are mysteries without being about murder.

Mysteries may require research. Strange research.

I admit I enjoy watching shows like Forensic Files and learning about how they solved crimes. That fascinates me, too. And I sometimes wonder when my browsing history will get me in trouble because I’m looking up odd things that would raise eyebrows at best. I also find inspiration in tragic stories I’ve read about and other true crime stuff.

Be prepared to look into random things you never thought you’d want to know and wish you’d never seen a photograph of, ever.

Mysteries do not have be solved by law enforcement professionals, though this is common and usually amateur detectives have someone on the legal end that helps them.

If you can find a realistic way of making an amateur sleuth work, roll with it. Or maybe the mystery is one ordinary people get caught up in, and that’s interesting, too, as much as I like detective shows. I’ve got a mix of both kinds of stories, and I like them all. It can be a bit of a risk to go with the amateur even if the regular cops seem a bit overdone or cliche. An amateur who makes all the police look like fools walks a thin line. One who has unrealistic abilities and insights is not enjoyable to read about. Fandom would call them a Mary Sue/Gary Stu, and that’s become a real insult over the years.

And now I’m drawing a blank on other things I’ve learned as a reader/writer, but there are more things I could discuss if my brain hadn’t stopped working. These are also general pointers, so if someone had something more specific to ask about, they could.

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Why Two Stories Can Be Better than One

It has been a while since I did a bit like this, but I’ve had some random thoughts these days about various things related to writing. I’ve been thinking about writing a lot lately, largely because I’m not doing as much as I’d like and because I’m in yet another one of those phases where I can’t see my writing clearly and it’s just awful.

So there are a few things I do when this happens, and I don’t know if they would work for anyone else, but I’ll talk about one of them now anyway.

This is something basic, at least to me, and something I do anyway, most of the time, at least. It’s partially because I’m a multitasker. I window flip like crazy when I’m writing or I play on my phone. I can’t do just one thing at once. It’s kind of annoying, to be honest. Still, this long ago led me to work on at least two stories at once.

Crazy, some say. Most people I mention this to tell me they can barely work on one, and I understand because I have those times myself. However, for the most part, I don’t do well unless I can flip between at least two stories. I can run three. I’ve also run four, but I don’t recommend it. That was hard for me, and I’m a fast, compulsive writer.

I like having at least two stories to switch between as it can help when I get stuck on one story to change to another. Another reason I do it is because I need what I call a “palate cleanse.” What I mean by that is that sometimes stories can take emotional tolls on me as a writer or at least on the characters, and I need a break to clear my head, maybe chase away some negativity, and come back to it later. So it’s easier to have something to work on in the meantime. It shifts the tone, keeps things from getting too dark, and it can help unravel the knots in another story.

That’s part of why I like prompts so much. They can jumpstart those bits that need to be unraveled. It can help the shift between stories or just find a way back into older ones. I haven’t had much success with that of late, but I am back where I have more than one story going, and it is somewhat of a relief.

(It’s also very much not because now I have two stories to angst about and wonder if they’re any good and worth continuing.)

I won’t tell anyone that they have to start a second story when they’re stuck or that they should write two at once unless they’re comfortable with it. Still, I find it can be helpful, so I’m putting it out there as a possibility.

One thing I will also say is that mixing genres is a gray area here. I write sci fi, mysteries, and historical fiction, sometimes in combination, and one thing I have noticed is that some don’t mix well. For instance, historical and non-historical are particularly difficult to pair up because you’ll forget that the technology didn’t exist or you’ll change speech patterns and even topics of conversation that weren’t popular at the time. Or there’s advanced technology or abilties in sci fi that aren’t there in a different story. On the other hand, it can also be a great palate cleanse to jump from a historical to a modern or vice versa. It can be quite liberating one way or another.

Oh… I may also need to add this disclaimer, and for the most part my fic readers aren’t available to ask, but I would caution against expecting someone to read both stories at the same time, if you are fortunate enough to have someone who reads your stuff in progress. (And if you do have such a person, thank them and value them.) Still, some will, and that’s also very nice (and rare) and quite possibly more valuable than any suggestion of two stories could ever be.

It occurs to me that if you wanted to see an example of me doing two stories at once, I already have one in place on the site. I wrote A Perfect Sunset and The Stolen Name at the same time. I had two ideas, couldn’t pick, didn’t feel like I could disappoint the few people who voted in my poll, so I wrote them both.

I guess it worked out, right?

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A Brief Summary of Experience as a Language Student

Mine, mine alone, and I’m not an expert but I saw a post again that irritated me by assuming that people did things wrong by doing what I did daily and had to say something for my own peace of mind.

I took French and Spanish in school. I’m an English speaker by birth but I’ve wanted to learn other languages since I was a kid. Mostly French, but I once had grand ideas about knowing them all. I was going to take my French and Spanish and learn all romance languages. I learned a bit of Dutch because of the guy I was dating. I taught myself some Irish and some Italian for stories. I tried hard to learn Ojibwe/Chippewa as I am of that descent.

Now I’m older and I know I won’t be learning everything, but here’s what I know from my experience…

I was at a point where I would and did think in other languages. I would mix all three of them in the same sentence even though I knew the words in English. I would dream in the other languages.

Even today I will randomly ask “ou est mon -?” Like with my phone, even though the last word is almost always in English. I speak bits and pieces of things in other languages no matter what I’m doing or who I’m with, and yes that can be embarrassing but just because I’m around all English speakers doesn’t mean I won’t mangle some French or Spanish in there.

I am someone who doesn’t use bad language as a rule, but believe me, I abused the heck out of knowing the curse words in my other languages, especially in French at work, I swear.

I read a lot of French in the past, sight translating it. I went crazy and collected French music and sometimes randomly sing it.

My friend is learning Spanish to communicate with her step-mother-in-law, and it has sparked a reawakening of both languages in my mind, not just Spanish. I’m mixing in more words in thoughts and spoken sentences than I have in years.

I find it irritating to be told people don’t act like I did myself and that shouldn’t be in the story. I lived it like this, so it shapes my writing. Maybe I’m not the most popular example, but I’m not invalid, either. I exist. I did this. So people do it.

My point with languages like everything else is that it’s unique to the individual. Someone else’s experience as a bilingual/trilingual will be different from mine, and I accept that. I just wish I wasn’t seeing a very popular post going around telling me what I lived was wrong and telling thousands of writers not to write like I lived.

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On Giving Advice

I started this about a bit of writing advice I saw, though I think it can be stretched a bit to other things, to a point. I got done with it, and despite the headache and the way I feel right now, I thought that it was something worth sharing here, too.

I just got done seeing another bit of writing advice, and I’ve actually had this conversation and see the person’s point. Mom could attest to that, if I was going to be more specific, but I don’t want to start anything and it’s not just this one post I saw that I found upsetting. Still, Mom and I discussed the issue before, and as I said, we sort of reached the same conclusion this person had reached.

Only I did not and do not agree with the way they said it.

Here’s the thing:

Advice is your opinion.

You have experience. You know things. You’ve seen it or discussed it.

You have that knowledge. You have things you can share. You have strong feelings about it.

I get it.

Just remember, this advice you’re giving doesn’t always work for everyone. Your opinion is no more law than the one you’re so very against.

Stop and think about the words you’re using (yes, this is ironic about a post for word choice) and remember, you are talking to an audience. Maybe even a young one. An aspiring author can be more fragile than you realize.

Many writers take years to hone their skills. My skills now compared to what I did when I started are very different.

Back then, though, if I’d seen someone call the way I’d been taught to write what this post did, I’d have been crushed. Even now, after making the changes I have and even following this advice of theirs to a point, I feel hurt.

I just think that people need to remember that it is not just about what they have to say but how they say it.

You can ruin the best, most necessary advice, the thing someone needs to hear if you say it wrong.

So consider what you’re saying. How you’re saying it. Think about how it may impact someone. If you are speaking to be a force for good, do your words reflect that?

I hope mine do. I hope if anyone does read my advice it makes them think, but it doesn’t make them hurt.