Don’t think it’s all been done before or what can you add.

Certainly some plots are familiar, but you

and your life experience are unique.

This short guide introduces topics that will arise before you tackle your first mystery. Some will be familiar;
others will have you scratching your head and doing some real thinking. How to write is beyond the scope of
this little book. There are many helpful guides, online courses and workshops. Make use of them.

I wrote my first mystery after I had written four novels, all unpublished and probably unpublishable. I wrote
them to teach myself how to write. Of course I didn’t know they were unpublishable at the time. I thought they
were pretty okay. Now I know better. In the process I discovered I loved both reading and writing mysteries. I
hope you do too. You must love mysteries and have read dozens and dozens, maybe even thousands before you
write your first mystery.
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 There is an insatiable appetite for crime fiction. Thousands are published every day. This is both the best
and worst time in human history to have a story to tell: the best because of self-publishing – you can make your
work available quickly and reach your readers directly without the barriers of finding an agent and a publisher;
the worst time because so can everybody else who can self-publish. Without determined efforts to market your
book, readers will never find you in the sea of new publications. But how to sell your book is another story...for
my next ebook.

The best preparation you can do to write your first mystery is to be an avid reader of all kinds of mystery
fiction, from the classic era of crime fiction with Agatha Christie to the newest ones available that feature
vampires and serial killers and ghostly murderers. Read and read and read. Figure out the ones you like and why
you like them. Take time to study the first five pages, the first chapter. A snappy beginning that hooks the
reader is essential.

Each of my five mysteries took about a year to write. At this point in my life I don't have a full-time job and
I'm not writing to pay the mortgage so I could afford to take my time. What sort of writing schedule are you
able to establish and more importantly, maintain?

Contemporary mysteries are commonly around 300 pages long. Of course there are exceptions. Chances are
you have a few mysteries on your bookshelves now or on your night table. Take a look at them. How many
pages?

What’s your writing experience? How does the prospect of writing 300 pages hit you?

Think you can do it? It’s eating the elephant one bite at a time, one paragraph at a time, one page, and one
chapter at a time. Sure you can do it. If I can, so can you.

I can’t tell you that it will all be fun, but some of it will. Once your characters begin to live and breathe in
your mind, you will have a whole new dimension in imagination, a private place to entertain yourself.

1. Plotting

Are you a plot outliner or a seat-of-pantser? There is no right way to write a murder mystery.

Do you have an idea that’s really got hold of you and you can’t wait a moment longer to start writing? Do
you think you’ll figure out things as you go along? That’s a seat-of-pantser. Your idea is so urgent that the
characters, the plot, the way the scenes link up together is firmly fixed in your head.

Go ahead then. Launch into it. You will surely write yourself into blind alleys and plot holes, but have the
confidence that you'll figure it out. I would still urge you to write character sketches first. Chances are you don't
know your characters quite as well as you think you do. But I would be the last one to stall that kind of feverish
momentum.

How do you outline a plot?

Once you know your sleuth and the killer and your victims well, the motive, means, and opportunity will
line up.

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 Many writers I know work with index cards on which they might note down the sequence of events that led
up to the murder(s), interviews that comprise the investigation, the clues, the red herrings, the chase and capture
of the murderer. The last few index cards might outline how you will tie up the loose ends in the short epilogue
following the capture of the criminal.

The more detailed you can work through the plot, the more time you will save scratching your head and
trying to figure out how to get out of this plot hole.

There are others I know who use an Excel spreadsheet to outline a plot; and where there is a need, clever
software designers will fill it. Do some research online to see the many software packages that supposedly make
outlining a plot easy. (I don’t think plotting can ever be easy. For me, it’s real intellectual manual labor.)

Speaking from experience, I don't seem to be a natural outliner. I have tried to do it but I find it too
frustrating. I want to write while my idea is hot and burning. I'll write more about plotting in my second ebook
called Plotting Your First Mystery.

Another way to write an outline is to write your mystery like a treatment, the way that screenwriters set
down the idea of their movie in about 10 to 15 pages. Just start writing. As you tell your story the plot becomes
clearer. You see where it's weak and thin, but keep going. You can go back to those points where daylight is
showing through and fix them later. Perhaps while you're writing, pieces of dialogue will occur to you, new
scenes, even new characters.

Don't worry about handing this into somebody as if it were homework. Just tell your story like a kid does.
‘And this guy, see, he kills this other guy, and then this lady, and then, and then. And the cops, they…” If you're
excited about your idea, the words will come.

There are methodical people in the world who just naturally see how A leads to B which leads to C. Bless
them, I'm not one of them. Nonetheless, I know that thoughtful work prior to actually laying out your story
saves a lot of time.

You will figure out which one works for you, maybe a combination of both outliner and the seat-of-
pantsers. The important thing is that you just get going and start putting lines of words on paper. Some of it will
be embarrassing junk and you know it. But no one needs to see this but you.

To add complexity to the straight-ahead plot you’ve just devised, I must tell you that a subplot is almost
always required. Watch any TV show until you can spot the subplot immediately. The same is true in a mystery.

A simple one is the development of the detective’s love interest taken to a crisis point. Crisis may mean that
your protagonist and the love interest fall into each other’s arms: or, they turn at a crisis point in the story and
walk away from each other. A subplot is a story all its own.

The subplot can be used to reveal information about your main characters to the reader, speed up or slow
down your story’s pace, or provide plot twists. More about subplots in my second ebook Plotting Your First
Mystery.

2. Kinds of Mysteries: They’re called “genres”

Do you want to write from a law enforcement point of view? These are called police procedurals.

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 Do you have in mind an amateur sleuth? A village setting with all the violence taking place off screen?
These are called cozies.

What about a thriller? With thrillers the reader generally knows who the villain is. They involve large
stakes, lots of explosions and car chases, and huge crimes that can topple governments, and generally a ticking
clock.

Or a private investigator mystery. Your main character (protagonist) is a private detective who usually has
a law enforcement contact to feed him the information he needs, such as an autopsy report.

There are more genres and I will mention them as we go along. See the end of this document for a link to a
Writer’s Digest compilation of mystery genres.

3. Your Detective: Your protagonist, the main character

Think about who is going to tell your story. If it’s from the police point of view, you have a lot of latitude. It
could be a cop working for a city police department, a game warden, a sheriff’s deputy, a coast guard officer,
even military police. Reporters, teachers, and academics get involved in crimes too.

This is the character you must know best. In many senses, he or she is you, speaking in your fictional voice.
The protagonist must be strong enough and interesting enough to carry your story for perhaps 300 pages or
more. He must be intelligent, curious, and resourceful. Most of all he needs to detect or decode hidden clues
from the murk of the investigation. All the information to solve the crime cannot fall into his lap. He has to be
smart enough to go out and find it, i.e. detect.

Does it seem more natural to you to write a female detective? I greatly enjoy Sarah Paretsky’s V.I.
Warshavsky. I also enjoy Robert B. Parker’s Spenser. If you’re female, do you feel comfortable writing a male
character?

My detective is a 37-year-old male homicide detective in the glitzy city of Santa Monica, a beach suburb of
Los Angeles. I know something about men and how they think and act. After all I’ve been studying men since I
was about 13 years old.

And how old is the protagonist? And what is his work history and experience in solving crimes? Is she a
fun-loving, joking person, or is she a burnt-out wreck on the edge of retirement? I doubt you will devise a main
character sleuth who is unique to literature, but you may. This is what makes crime fiction so entertaining. By
opening the pages of a mystery, you can immerse yourself in worlds to which you will never have entrée.

You’ve heard the term backstory? This is the information you feed into your mystery–bit by bit–telling
where your protagonist came from and how he got to be the way he is. Is he married or divorced? Does he have
brothers and sisters? Parents who may have a hand in telling the story? Does she finish high school or have a
graduate degree? What are his hopes and dreams? What does he do for fun? What’s he eat for breakfast? What
kind of car does he drive? What is his living and work space like? Is he handsome? Does she talk fast? Have an
accent? What kind of clothes hang in his closet? What kind of dog or cat does she have?

I like stories with pets as long as they don’t get too icky-sentimental. Cats solving crimes is not to my taste,
but you may. One hard and fast rule as far as I’m concerned: no animal abuse. I will not read another word after
that.

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 Most mystery authors write a detailed character study of the protagonist, and I encourage you to do the
same. The more you write in preparation, the clearer your protagonist’s voice and way of speaking will sound in
your head. No one needs to read this but you, so write freely from your imagination.

Give your detective some flaws, but nothing too crippling. He leaves the seat up. He’s addicted to fried
Snicker’s bars. (That’s pretty awful.) He’s afraid of clowns. He cheats on his income tax, or thinks about
cheating on his girlfriend. These flaws make him human, unlike James Bond in the spy story genre. Does James
Bond have flaws?

When I first began writing mysteries, I talked to a detective in the Santa Monica Police Department. He
said, “Please don't make your detective alcoholic, depressed, and divorced. We're not all like that.” You want
your detective to be likable, somebody you'd like to have a beer with, or a coffee, and somebody human your
reader can identify with. Your reader has flaws too. But overwhelmingly, despite his flaws, your sleuth must be
likable. You want readers to urge your sleuth on, root for her. You want her to win.

What compels your detective to solve the crime? Think long and hard about this because it's important.
Most commonly your detective, in contrast to your murderer, has a deep sense of justice. He cannot abide an
injustice. But it must be specific. He must be compelled by something within himself that drives him to miss
meals, go without sleep, work without pay, perhaps even skate close to committing a crime himself.

Does his backstory include a brush with child abuse or animal abuse? Was his sister raped or murdered?
Does he have an affinity for sufferers of PTSD? Does he have PTSD?

You will need to find some driving need within your detective to solve the crime. It can't be just a job. It
may start out being just another job, but at some point she must catch fire and drive herself relentlessly to catch
the criminal.

4. The Antagonist: The villain, your killer

It is a hard and fast rule that you must introduce both the detective and the murderer early on in the book to
play fair with the reader.

Your antagonist must be the equal of the protagonist. They are in a dark dance together. Your cop or
detective is going to be chasing him for 300 pages. The murderer must also be intelligent, resourceful, and hard
to catch. He can’t be a leering devil wearing fangs and horns. Often the villain passes for one of the good guys.
Maybe your reader will like him at first.

You need to write a similar character study of the villain. How did he get to be the way he is? What led him
to break the law, become a burglar, vandal, embezzler, or even a killer? What are the forces operating in his
life?

Ask yourself the same questions? What are his hopes and dreams? His work history? What kind of clothes
does he wear? Does he have tattoos, arthritis, and a limp? Twelve Armani suits? How does he talk? Where did
he go to high school? What kind of women does he like? Or does he like men? Is he asexual?

Picture him in your mind. Cut out a photo from a magazine. Draw him. What actor would play him in a
movie? Make him live and breathe in your mind.

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 What if your murderer is a serial killer? This idea is popular, so popular in fact that it may have reached its
peak. There are no nice guy serial killers. A serial killer is a grisly human being to live between your ears for an
extended period of time. And how are you going to make your serial killer different from all the rest? The serial
killer story by its nature almost always involves the police, making it a police procedural. Remember, the FBI
makes it a police procedural genre. Lots of research.

Once you have your main characters firmly in mind and pages and pages of character study, think about
names for your characters and where things are going to take place.

5. Naming Your Characters

There’s nothing wrong with classic names for contemporary characters: John Ames, Mary Hall, Ann Beatty,
Robert Smith. But what do these common names tell you about your protagonist? For one thing, her parents
didn’t have much imagination. Look at Michael Connelly’s protagonist LAPD Homicide Detective Hieronymus
Bosch. Even though he’s called Harry pretty much in Connelly’s books, you don’t forget a name like
Hieronymus.

What if Mary Hall’s middle name was Golightly? Robert Smith’s alias was Steadfast Smith? Think about
introducing your character by names common in contemporary American culture and then using a nickname
like Quickdraw, or Ace, or Chuy. Or making up a name that you simply like the sound of. For example, I like
Malinqua.

It’s helpful to make up a character roster to keep track of names. That way you’ll notice that you have
named one crook Donald and another Don, which will confuse your readers.

Chances are the names you choose in the beginning may not be the ones you are using in the final, final,
final revised final version once they are clearer to you and you hear them speaking in your head. (No, writing a
mystery will not make you schizophrenic. It may make you tear your hair out, however.) And yes, you will
rewrite your final version many, many times.

6. The Setting

If this is your first mystery, “write what you know” is sound advice. Say it’s set in the town where you live.
People in your town will love to read about thrilling events that happen on the streets where they drive home
and they will be your best audience and book buyers. You can do it well because you know those streets, those
back alleys, those dark corners where something evil might happen.

If it’s a small town, readers in big urban centers relish what seems like the quiet simplicity of village life. If
you live in a big city, throw in some landmarks and make the most of the hustle-bustle, 24-hour roar and
excitement of the urban scene. The whole world has an appetite to read about glamorous American cities like
New York and Los Angeles, even if the glamour has long worn off the place where you live.

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 And if you don’t live in an American city, even better.
The market for murder mysteries is international.

Think of the worldwide sensation of Steig Larsen’s “The

Girl Who…” books. Did you ever think that the Swedish
legal system could be made so interesting? He did it. So you
live in Thailand or Australia. Sometimes when I’m sick to
death of what America is doing in the world, I gobble up
mysteries that are not set in North America and places I am
unfamiliar with. I like to experience vistas I will never see.
Don’t you?

7. The Time Period

When does your story happen? Writing about

contemporary life is the easiest and most natural, unless you
love research. And it happens that I do. Recreating the past
and writing about it in a lively way has never been easier,
thanks to internet resources. Make the Research Librarian
your best friend.

Think of what you need to know to write a period

mystery. These are sometimes called historicals.

You need to know what things cost and where you

bought them. How did people get around? How common
was ownership of a car or a horse? If your protagonist is a
woman, she faced barriers the modern woman can easily manipulate. She would not find it easy to question a
man who was a stranger to her, or invent errands that would take her out of the home. More than likely her
children would always be with her. It would be unlikely she had a job. What thrilling chase scene could you
devise?
You need to be able to feed in information about the events and issues of the day. You need to be an avid
reader of the history of the period that captures you. You have to love this stuff to write it well.

8. The Mood or Tone of Your Book

As you write your character sketches describing your detective, the murderer, and the time period and
setting in which the story occurs, you will be making decisions about the mood or tone of your book. There is a
genre of mystery call noir which, like pornography, you know it when you see it but it's difficult to describe. I'm
going to drop in the definition of noir from Wikipedia because I think it's a good one, and I'm not sure I can
write one much better.

Noir fiction (or roman noir) is a literary genre closely related to hardboiled genre with a distinction that the
protagonist is not a detective, but instead either a victim, a suspect, or a perpetrator. Other common
characteristics include the self-destructive qualities of the protagonist. A typical protagonist of the noir fiction
is dealing with the legal, political or other system that is no less corrupt than the perpetrator by whom the
protagonist is either victimized and/or has to victimize others on a daily basis, leading to lose-lose situation.

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 Need I mention the tone and mood of noir crime fiction is dark? There are few good guys, the lawyers and
the cops are often on the take. In the end the sleuth is often worse off than when he began and justice is an
elusive and much derided quality.

Even when the crime is revealed, not much happens to change the world. Justice for everyone seldom
prevails. You have to be a special sort of person to write noir. Your worldview is dystopian.

Cozy mysteries never have a noir quality. (And every time I say ‘never’ somebody sharp will pounce on me
to deliver an example of the exception.) The world they depict is often sunny and populated by good people.

Yes, there is a killer, but the killer fits in this world, often a small town. She is just one of the cast of
characters, until the sleuth begins to uncover her dark deeds. Murder in this world is shocking and turns
everything upside down, but when the killer is caught, justice prevails and the world is sunny again.

You have a lot of latitude writing a private detective’s story. Think of private detectives in fiction: Kinsey
Millhone in Sue Grafton's A-Z series. She works alone for the most part and describes herself as a grown-up
juvenile delinquent. Grafton chose to set her series in the 1980s. She had an engaging cast of characters who
were already old in her first books which were instantly popular. Time passes. Those characters would
eventually die and Kinsey would grow older. It was a courageous decision, but one which, to some extent, has
handicapped Grafton’s storytelling. In the late 1980s cell phone technology and personal computers were in
their infancy.

Never mind. She can spin a story that keeps me engaged for 300 pages and wanting more. And plenty of
other readers as well.

Another popular private detective lives in the Spenser series written by Robert B. Parker. Parker's genius
has been calling in socially marginal characters such as Hawk and Chollo, one African-American, and the other
Mexican-American. Maybe that's where your genius will lie. Think about the people you know. Who’s a real
character?

Robert Crais writes a series involving Elvis Cole, a Hollywood hipster, and a wise-cracking, very smart
private investigator. He has a law enforcement informant who very reluctantly feeds him information. Joe Pike
is the taciturn muscle of the pair. They operate really close to edge of the law and sometimes way beyond.

As you write your character sketches, it will become clear to you the characters you need to develop to tell
your story. Time spent writing character sketches is never wasted.

9. The Victim or Victims

Victims, too, must be thought through carefully. Victims connect to your killer’s motivation. Ask yourself
why they were chosen as victims. Your choice of victims will of course connect to the plot. Why does the killer
need this particular person out of the way? Why then? And how?

If this is a serial killer book, your killer will have a type of victim, i.e. blondes, women his mother’s age,
prostitutes. Even though the victims may seem random, it will be your job to make them come alive during the
investigation. They have families and people who love them. Your job is to make the reader identify with them
and care about them. You must have a sense of them as people and this means more character sketches.

10. Your Narrative Style

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 Your narrative style refers to how you tell your story. First person: “I” tells the story.

I will go into narrative style more fully in my next book ebook, but for now, keep this in mind: the value of
writing detailed character sketches is that you will slip into a natural narrative style once your pen is moving
freely and you forget yourself. If you find yourself writing about he or she as the person telling the story, you
have moved into third person.

If you tell your story in the first person, as is common in detective fiction, it solves the problem of how the
detective learns information. Using the first person, your detective is present at the interview with the deli
owner, the guy at the junk yard, the cop with the stony face who wants to arrest her. Your plot does not have to
depend on her learning information in some other way. As clues emerge, detective and reader judge their
importance together or miss them completely.

11. Supporting Characters

Your detective and murderer are not alone in the world you are creating. In a police procedural, the
detective works in a law enforcement organization.

Police procedurals, to be convincing, require a lot of research and reading and preferably a good friend
who’s a cop. Consider taking the Citizen Academy course that is offered in many cities–Santa Monica for one. I
mention Santa Monica because most of my mysteries take place there. Most police organizations allow
interested citizens to ride along for a shift with a patrol officer. Both are interesting things to do and a quick and
entertaining way to peer behind the blue curtain.

Say you want to write a cozy about the Lace Guild in the village of Forest Glen. Most cozies feature an
amateur sleuth, but one who has a connection to a law enforcement officer who is willing to share forensic
information. (But not every single one. In every genre there are exceptions.) In the world of the Lace Guild, for
example, who would be your sleuth and who would be your killer? And what would the stakes be, the motive
for the murder?

Your detective has relationships with other people, his fishing buddies, his partner if he's a cop, his
girlfriend, his mother perhaps who advises him on cases. Who are these people? It would be a good idea to
write character sketches of the supporting characters as well. The more detail you can realize in the world you're
creating, the more interesting it will be for your reader. After all, don't we all want to lose ourselves in a world
that we will never live in? Why else do we read crime fiction? Or fiction of any kind?

Your protagonist needs somebody to kick ideas around with. Writing a lot of internal monologues where the
detective is thinking and wondering slows things down and requires an experienced hand. Dialogue that is
nervy and sharp is fun to read and gives you a chance to show off your sense of humor, although a sense of
humor is not a requirement to write a good mystery. P.D. James writes excellent whodunits but she’s hardly a
laugh a minute. For that I love Elmore James or Carl Hiassen.

To spare your reader confusion, introduce your supporting characters gradually, not in a cocktail party
scene, for example. Invent reasons why they enter stage left one at a time. Perhaps one character can arrive late
breathlessly skidding in on two wheels in a red jalopy. Another can come down the stairs carrying a Yorkie
after the others have arrived. Make sure, if you have two old men characters, that they are physically quite
different from each other.

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 Characterization is beyond the scope of these few pages and one I’ll deal with in another ebook. Briefly
though, if you’re not already a watcher and a note taker, start carrying a notepad with you. Note down brief
snatches of conversation overheard at Denny’s, or a more upscale eatery. What are people doing with their
hands? What do they look like rear view? Does a fancy lawyer always drive a Mercedes? It’s all grist for the
mill. If you were to fall dead in front of me, I’d probably take notes.

It helps to pass the time while you’re waiting for your breakfast to arrive and will perplex your friends.

12. The Love Interest

Ah, the love interest. Has your detective or your villain been married a long time? Happily or unhappily? Is
he in the beginning of a scorchy love affair? Does he encounter the woman of his dreams during the course of
the investigation? What if she’s all wrong for him? Why is your detective or sleuth attracted to the love interest?

You must paint a picture of a person who is worthy of the interest of your main character. The love interest
doesn’t have to be a knockout, long-legged blonde. Nor does your male love interest have to have six-pack abs
and long legs. And what is this thing with long legs anyway?

Who is the love interest for your murderer? Is there one? This must also be a person of significance. Here
you can really exercise your imagination.

What's the backstory on the love interest? More character sketches. Believe me, you will not regret taking
the time to let your imagination flow on the page. It may be that you can extract phrases, or whole sentences, or
even paragraphs from these character sketches when you begin to write your first mystery. Bits of dialogue will
occur to you.

13. The MacGuffin

This is Alfred Hitchcock’s term to describe what the story is about. It is also what gives the murderer the
motive for a series of criminal actions, his goal, desired object, or other motivator that the protagonist pursues.
In the Maltese Falcon it’s the golden statuette. What gets these events started? What are the crooks after? Does
revenge motivate the plot? Greed? A cache of diamonds? A missing child?

What does the detective uncover in the end? Does he find the diamonds, the missing child? Revenge,
jealousy or envy, protecting one’s prestige, covering up a crime, frustration or anger, and definitely, love or hate
can motivate your antagonist.

For example, in my book Rip-Off the detective finds a van full

of Chechen women being trafficked to the U.S. In On Behalf of the
Family the crime is an honor killing. The MacGuffin could be
money, a promotion, glory, perhaps retaliation. Whatever it is, the
motivator for the crime cannot be trivial. The stakes must be worth
the crime and the retribution if the criminal is caught.

I had a writing teacher in the master’s degree creative writing

program at the University of Southern California who defined the
following formula for bestselling fiction.

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 Create a likable character who faces almost overwhelming odds to pursue and reach a worthwhile goal.
Keep each of these elements in mind.

14. Conflict

Set your characters at odds with each other. I had an editor who insisted there be some antagonism,
some conflict in every scene and I’ve done my best to follow this good advice. People want different things
from each other in the sense of competing agendas. Sometimes it’s clear what your characters want: a
promotion, $12,000, or red sneakers. Sometimes the agenda is unexpressed and your scene is operating on two
different levels: the known and the hidden.

This creates conflict. Even if you’re writing a cozy where two or more characters are planning a Lilac
Festival, one can hate the other for some reason in the past, but smile nicely while she’s grinding her teeth and
sharpening her claws under the table. Two guys can be leaning over an engine on a Saturday afternoon working
on the carburetor. You can say a lot about their relationship by the way one slaps a wrench into the hand of the
other one.

Use physical details to show that your characters hate each other. For example, a look of venom that washes
over a face and then is gone, clenched fists, a hand touching a gun in the waistband of a pair of khakis. Conflict
doesn’t have to be a life or death issue. Conflict can be scorn and contempt, turning your back on someone, a
nasty aside to a sidekick.

Let me say more about conflict with this “pass the salt and pepper” dialogue.

He: “Pass the salt, please.”

She: “Sure, here you go. Nice day, eh?”
He: “Yep, sure. And the pepper, please.”
She: “Here you go. Like the eggs?”
He: “They’re great.”

Here’s five lines of wasted dialogue. What have you learned about this man and woman? What if you had
something like this instead?

He: “Pass the salt, please.”

She: “Sure, here you go.”
He: “Well, you didn’t have to throw it at me!”
She: “Don’t I always do what you want? The moment you ask?”
He: “All I did was ask you to pass the salt, for heaven’s sake.”

Where did your imagination take you reading the second bit of dialogue? Watch people in social situations.
What happens when people lie? Do they flush? Do they look at the ceiling? Some people can tell barefaced lies
with a look of innocence. How does anger show on the face of someone you love? Nice people who like each
other, scene after scene, isn’t interesting. When you think about it, nice people in fiction aren’t interesting at all.
Spice it up to keep your readers turning pages.

15. Suspense

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 An editor I worked with wanted me to design a cliffhanger for the end of every scene. Good advice I pass
on. Not so easy to do, but work at it.

What if your reader knows something the sleuth doesn’t? Have you ever bitten your fingernails in a movie
where the heroine is carrying a candle down the dark hallway of a castle following the killer? You want to
scream out loud, “No! No! Don’t do it!” What if the reader knows the bomb will go off at midnight? Impending
danger and threat is suspense. Your protagonist has to be working under pressure, say from his boss, a forest
fire that is nearing town, a wheel rolling off his car as the killer flees.

Stretch it out so that there is a stillness and a waiting between something awful coming and waiting for it to
happen. Like a balloon stretching farther and farther, make your reader wait for the pop, make the reader wait
for that moment when the new husband discovers his wife has been married four times before, and once to a
gangland boss.

16. Pacing

Pacing relates to suspense. Pacing is the rate at which

your story moves forward.

Think again of how a kid tells a story. “See, this guy

kills this other guy, and then he… and then, and then, and then.” It’s all a breathless rush at breakneck speed to
get the story out because it’s so exciting.

But you want to give the reader a break ever so often from relentless action and revelation. Have your
protagonist and the new love interest float down a river in a canoe and get to know each other. Feed your reader
a bit of backstory here. This is where your subplot is useful.

To slow things down, describe the day, the weather, the scenery, the bird song. You’ll want a slower pace
for romantic scenes, for an important point in the plot you want to be clear, for that moment when you want to
drop an important clue that gives the plot a twist.

Pacing will ensure that you don’t rush to the end–and run out of story too quickly.

Novellas and shorter mysteries are becoming very popular. If you can tell a fully developed story in 50-
70,000 words there’s a good market for that.

17.  Clues  
 
How is your detective going to solve the mystery? You may not know this when you begin writing.

Any investigation, including even a cozy mystery where the detective is an amateur sleuth, includes a
number of scenes where your detective interviews the cast of characters, interspersed with some action.

In the beginning we have a mystery to be solved. Who killed the Bishop or the CEO of a big conglomerate?

I'm going to give you a quote from On Behalf of the Family (2013) which describes how the mystery
appears to my Detective Dave Mason of the Santa Monica Police Department.

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 They had a high profile case and intense media pressure. Mason felt as though someone had flung him a
box of loose puzzle pieces. The cover on the box showed a photo of a horse in a desert. He opened the box,
discovering as he started looking for pieces of a horse, that what he was carefully fitting together looked more
like a snow blower, or a cabbage. Now that he was assembling the edge pieces that would pull it all together,
Mason wondered if the jigsaw wasn’t actually looking like a photo of the Eiffel Tower.

What are the clues that are going to cause your detective to home in on the killer? Many clues center on the
detective finding a discrepancy in the alibi.

Early in the book it looks as though the alibi removes this person of interest from committing the crime. It
just can’t be that he’s the killer. But later, the sleuth uncovers a lie.

A clue can be a casual mention of a link between murderer and victim that looms into importance much
later. Anything, in fact, can be a clue. The murderer’s ability to sew, or scuba dive, or read a financial
statement. A red checked hunting jacket. The BMW with the dent in the right front fender.

Dropping clues is a process of misdirection. Many readers like to solve the mystery along with the detective,
in fact, to outsmart the detective. What is the final Aha! moment for your detective when everything becomes
clear?

Sometimes the clue is obvious to you before you even being writing. Don’t delay writing if it isn’t. In the
process of getting your plot down clues will come to you as part of the process. Trust the process.

18.  Red  Herrings  

The term comes from the use of a kipper (a strong smelling smoked fish) used to train hounds to follow a
scent. The origin of the term doesn’t matter; the important thing is that a red herring distracts the detective (and
of course the reader.) Your detective fixes his attention on one character who looks good for the crime, but it
turns out he has an unbreakable alibi for the time of the murder. Oh. Now what, he thinks?

That’s your first red herring. The second may be a character who has motive, means, and opportunity, but it
turns out someone is using his identity and he is really a 600-pound invalid confined to his bed. The third red
herring, well, you see now. A red herring is a false clue that leads readers or characters towards a false
conclusion.

Commonly there are three red herrings to be eliminated. Then your sleuth is on the track of the real
murderer.

Think of Agatha Christie’s classic book And Then There Were None. Who in your closed circle of
characters has motive, means, and opportunity? Don’t make it easy for the detective. The clues shouldn’t whack
him upside the head with a two-by-four. Pile on the obstacles.

It’s often said in crime fiction writing courses that you should get your protagonist up a tree and then start
shooting at him. Make it hard. Make him go without sleep, drive 900 miles in the rain, and have to choose
whether to get the killer or visit his dying father. Amp it up and up and up.

19.  The  Crime(s)  

The murder, or the discovery of the body, must take place very near page one. This draws your reader in to
working with the detective to solve the crime. Too much backstory in the beginning makes the reader impatient
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and apt to set your book down. After all, we read mysteries expecting to have the action center around a dead
body. Make it happen quickly.

Figure out in detail how the murder was committed. In detail. Step by step. Was it daylight or dark?
Moonlight? Is the light in the dining room on or off? Exactly where in your setting does it happen? Draw a map
of the crime scene? Where is your killer standing? And your victim? Is the victim surprised, or does she see it
coming? Is the murder the culmination of a chase scene? Is this murder physically possible? Do you need an
accomplice?

As close as you can without injuring someone, try to reenact the murder. I have a friend who writes
mysteries who alarmed her husband by insisting that he smother her with a pillow.

Who discovers the body? Whoever it is becomes the first person of interest to the police. What if there are
two murders? The second murder is often committed to cover up the first. How will they be the same? How are
they different?

What happens to the instrument which deals the killing blow? A gun, the vial of poison, the blunt
instrument? Is it left there or does the murderer take it with her? Does your plot require that the detective find
it?

20. The Murder Method

You will have to make a lot of decisions here and much will depend on the kind of person you are and the
story you’re telling. Do you shudder and say, “Eeeuw, yuck” at the sight of blood? Are you more sanguine?

Deciding on how the murder will happen is a decision you will be living with the entire time it takes to write
your mystery so make it thoughtfully. Does the killer use a gun? Where did she get the gun? What kind of gun
is it? A Dirty Harry .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 29? An Ak-47, a lady’s derringer? What do you know
about guns? Do you know enough to make the commission of a crime by a gun convincing?

If not, start researching guns and ballistics and GSWs enough to pull off a murder with some sort of firearm.
Is this research going to be interesting for you, or a chore? The research will take effort and time.

There are myriad ways to kill someone and most have been explored. But remember your work is unique.
The important thing is to get your victim dead so the story can take off.

What about poison? Poison also means many hours of reading and research. But perhaps you are a chemist
or a pharmacist. Does the way you make a living offer up any ideas? Perhaps if you know a lot about cars or
planes you could jigger the brake line or landing gear in a believable way to engineer the murder.

Perhaps your line of work has brought you into the world of explosives. Whatever murder method you
chose your murderer will leave tracks. Nowadays a forensic specialist will be bagging and tagging any trace
evidence at the crime scene and they rarely miss things.

Thus the way the murder happens spins off a number of considerations. Is there a lot of blood? How does
your murderer escape from the scene if he is covered in blood?

There is also the consideration of how to remove the body. If your murderer happens to be a frail old lady,
she will need an accomplice. If you leave a body where it fell, what clues are you leaving behind? Do you know
how long it would take to dig a grave to bury a body? Find out.
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 The crime and the murder should be believable. What is believable may be a little different for me and you,
but if I see the victim tickled to death with an eagle feather during a pillow fight, I would be disappointed.

21.  How  Does  Your  Detective  Get  Information  

If you’re writing a private detective genre, you must know that private investigators do not ordinarily have
access to police records, forensic analyses, or autopsy reports. In your reading of other private detective stories
you’ll see the clever ways that wily private detectives get around these restrictions. They are not bound by the
same laws and procedures as sworn law enforcement officers, which is the basis for antagonism between them.
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It is not to my taste to use dream sequences or the appearance of a ghost or a dead grandmother to point the
finger at the murderer. To me that’s as lame as the butler did it. I have seen it done effectively by other authors,
but I still wince and lose interest in the story. You decide based on the story you want to tell. Paranormal
mysteries are very popular.

Detectives, including amateur sleuths, get information from interviews with witnesses, confidential police
informants, databases, the Department of Motor Vehicles, priests, girlfriends and old friends with axes to grind.
It takes some practice to vary the ways your sleuth learns things. She can get information from unwilling
informants by trading information or holding exposure over the informant’s head. An anonymous phone call or
email works? A kid playing in the street might have seen something. Are you comfortable writing a tip off from
a gang banger?

This is where your skills as a life observer will pay off. Instead of saying “a waitress brought over the coffee
pot,” say “a waitress with a tired smile and sore feet shuffled over to the table.” Paint a picture to bring the
setting to life. Every character your sleuth meets should be an individual who is memorable. Takes practice, but
you can do it.

22.  Evidence.  Forensic  Examination  

 
This is a tough decision. Some types of mysteries demand a thorough working knowledge of modern
criminal forensic techniques. And readers seem to have an appetite for laboratory methods to solve the crime,
judging from the many CSI shows on TV.

These shows make lab forensics sound so glamorous. What I’ve learned and witnessed in visits to forensic
labs is that the work is tedious and exacting, and the responsibility of clearing a murderer or sending an
innocent person to prison weighs heavily. Slaphappy, casual people are not forensic examiners. The same is true
of pathologists, medical examiners, and coroners. Make sure you know the difference between these roles.

If your protagonist is an amateur sleuth and the mood of your story more light-hearted, as in a cozy mystery,
there will be less emphasis on forensic solutions to the story. The amateur sleuth generally has a law
enforcement lover or brother or close friend willing to bend the rules to share forensic information.

You wouldn’t be expected to write a scientific treatise on fingerprints in an amateur sleuth story.

Whatever the case, make sure you get it right. There are many good books and online references to learn
about criminal forensic analysis. Think about who you know. Cultivate a stable of informants. Many police
officers love to tell war stories. You don’t have to interview homicide detectives in urban police departments.
Patrol guys and gals have great stories as well. Nobody knows their beat and the street characters they deal with

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every day like officers driving a Crown Vic. In Payback, my police procedural set in the village where I live, a
security officer is drawn into sleuthing with the Sheriff’s detective.

And when you feel that you’ve learned quite enough to make your description of the forensics of the case
accurate, don’t show off for the readers. Pull yourself back from dumping everything you’ve learned into your
story just because you’ve made a real effort to learn it. A little goes a long way for readers who may not be
quite as fascinated as you are.

Many contemporary mystery plots revolve around cellphone, Internet, and social media technology. The
risk of spinning your plot around these is that in a few years they will be dated. But you should know that law
enforcement—and the crooks—can unravel a victim’s life and identity with an iPhone. So don’t ignore
technology, just don’t wade into it as a plot device unless you’re sure of yourself.

23. Know the Ending in Advance

Having a firm grasp on how the sleuth captures the murderer allows you to plot towards that climactic
moment. Make it a cliffhanger. Most crime fiction has an exciting chase and capture scene of some kind at the
end. With thrillers, the bomb is ticking and your hero must disarm the bomb in time to save the heroine—and
perhaps even the world as we know it.

You have your characters, your setting, the motive, the crime. How does the detective catch the culprit?
What is the final clue? The Aha moment? Physically, where does the chase and capture that leaves the sleuth
and the reader panting take place? And how? By car, boat, plane, by foot?

The chase scene must be fully realized and there are techniques for writing thrilling action scenes. Short
sentences for one. Sentence fragments. Few adverbs and adjectives. Study the mystery you are reading right
now and the ones in a pile on your night table. Watch how the author does it. No extraneous information, I’ll
bet. No description of the setting, the weather or what the villain is wearing. It’s pared down to the essential
characters, their five senses, and their emotions as they face the final encounter between the villain and her
capture. Both women are breathing hard, they’ve run seven blocks, the protagonist has broken a heel, the villain
has stepped on a nail. Details like this create a sense of immediacy and urgency, and for sure make a chase
scene move.
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24.  Explanation  of  the  Crime:  The  Big  Reveal  at  the  End  
 
  The detective should solve the case using only rational and scientific methods. This includes ordinary
common sense. She must detect, ideally outwit the murderer in a thrilling chase. The clue can’t drop on her
head like an anvil. She must figure it out for herself.

Mysteries of the classical era (Agatha Christie and Erle Stanley Gardner) had the explanation of the crime
take place in the library. The detective assembled the cast of characters and explained how the locked room
murder took place and pointed a finger at the murderer.

You owe an explanation to your reader. Here is the place where you tie up all the loose ends and explain the
detective’s process of elimination and deduction. Long-winded reveals become tedious.

This is not the place to show off how clever you are. Nowadays the big reveal may take place as the
detective is snapping cuffs on the murderer, or the law enforcement informant is rescuing the amateur sleuth
from the grasp of the murderer.

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 Epilogues, if you notice in bestselling fiction, are often short as well, a few pages. Here you will want to
suggest the course of a new relationship, show the reunion between the missing child and his parents, knit up
the relationships between the cop and his partner in the squad room.

24.  The  Title  of  Your  Mystery  

 
Don’t be too eager to title your mystery before you even start writing. A better one may occur to you as you
work your way through. Think about about some of the keywords related to your story (characters, setting, plot,
events, inciting event, etc.) and play around with them.

Think about how your imagined title will look on the cover of a book or on the spine. How will it look on
your Facebook Author page, on Amazon? Is it too long to show up in a thumbnail size? Does your title give
everything away? Has somebody else recently used that title? Drat!

25.  The  Satisfying  Ending  or  the  Possibility  of  a  Series  

While you’re writing your mystery the possibility of other adventures featuring your detective will occur to
you. Your mind will be racing ahead, already plotting and deciding on who your next murderer will be. This is
where you might review the character sketch of your protagonist, the love interests, and supporting characters.
Series mysteries are very popular. Make sure the stage you are setting your mystery upon is a broad one and
available for your next story.

Now it’s your turn to start writing.

Good luck to you. If I’ve helped you please send a note telling me you liked this brief ebook. Write to me at
marpreston@frazmtn.com. I will be delighted to hear from you.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Mar Preston divides her time between glitzy Santa Monica and her cabin in a peaceful mountain village in
Central California where she is a co-founder of the local SPCA, a network of low-power radio stations, and
picks up road kill for her wildlife rehab buddies to feed the big raptors.

Preston is the author of No Dice, Rip-Off, On Behalf of the Family and A Very Private High School featuring
Detective Dave Mason of the Santa Monica Police Department and his girlfriend Ginger McNair, a community
activist.

Payback, the debut of a second series, features a Kern County Sheriff’s detective and takes place in a village
somewhat like where she lives.

She would like to tell you that she has a fixed writing schedule that she adheres to rigidly. This is not true.

Click here for Writer’s Digest’s website compilation of mystery genres.

Click here for Plotting Your First Mystery and the third book in the series Writing Killer Characters in Your
First Mystery

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