Character Context
Character context defines their role in the story. Use context as your primary guideline as you create a character background.
Keep Your Mystery Reader Guessing
Tips on using characters, twists, and clues to keep your mystery reader guessing until the end.
Get Ready to be a Mystery Author: Part 1
You As An Author It’s never too early to start your transition from writer to author. Once you start writing your mystery, spend some time establishing your presence as an author. You’ll be building your author platform where you tell readers about your book. Once your novel is published, you’ll have your author platform well…
Title Your Mystery
Tips to choose a title that engages prospective readers, is easy to remember, and suites your genre.
How To Use Details In Your Mystery
Work With Details As a novelist, you have the ability to use details to create the mystery in your story. Skilful use of details can hide clues, mask suspect responses, and create impactful settings. Details give you the power to guide your reader through the story.Add details to your mystery as you write. Planning gives you broad strokes, but the writing process is the place to add details. Details Scene-by-Scene Because you build your story scene by scene, you have amp […]
Ratchet Up Tension in Your Mystery
Why Tension? Isn’t A Mystery a Puzzle? A mystery is a story. A good story of any genre needs tension. Tension is what keeps readers reading. Without tension your story can feel episodic with no push for the reader to continue.What is tension in a story? It’s the state of being stretched tight. In a story, tension applies to a character’s mental and emotional state. In order for readers to feel tension, they must care about the character. When a reader empathizes with th […]
How to Start Your Mystery Novel
How To Start the First Chapter of Your Mystery Writing a mystery is a long run to the finish. Your first chapter brings the reader into the world of the story and introduces your sleuth. As a writer, you are in for a marathon of writing. You’ll introduce suspects, plant clues and red herrings and misdirect your sleuth and your reader. When a reader starts your mystery, they feel they have an unspoken agreement with you to give them a good puzzle and an intriguing and sympathet […]
Troubleshoot Your Mystery
Get Past The Stuck Place Sometimes your story seems to throw up a big wall and you don’t know how to fix it. You’re stuck. It happens to all writers. Don’t despair.With all the character development and story planning you’ve done, your story seems stuck and you don’t know where to go next or what to write. Take action to root out the problem so you can continue writing if you know what to do. The first thing to do is not consider your story […]
Tips to Soar Through Writing
Stay In The Flow To maximize your writing time, follow two guidelines for writing your mystery. Go into the story. Stay in the flow.When you go into the story, you visualize the scene – who is there, what they say and do, and the surroundings. Your work is to translate what you visualize into words.A focus on writing keeps you in the flow. Any distractions that stop the flow slow you down.Each writer writes at their own pace. You can write faster whate […]
Background Research for Your Mystery
Research Before You Write The Story The first round of research is background material for your story. You may look for settings, hidden alleys, a great beach. Murder weapons or poison. The psychology of being a mistress. How to clean a Glock. Pharmaceutical drug research lab procedures. Base your research requirements on your story premise….