Character Context
Character context defines their role in the story. Use context as your primary guideline as you create a character background.
Before You Write A Scene
As you build your story alternate between action and reaction. Before you write a scene you need to know the basic structure of the type of scene that comes next in your mystery.
Keep Your Mystery Reader Guessing
Tips on using characters, twists, and clues to keep your mystery reader guessing until the end.
Do You Know Your Mystery Victim?
The Victim is The Center of Your Mystery The victim in your mystery is more than just a dead body. The victim is the fulcrum for your entire mystery. Without your victim, your sleuth has no mystery to solve, no clues, no suspects to interview, and no killer. Everything in your novel pivots around the…
Location Scout for Your Story
How to gather story setting details and use them in your mystery to keep your reader engaged.
Control Your Characters
When Characters Try to Take Over The Story Every writer has the experience of characters acting and speaking in unexpected ways. With the most detailed story outline, once you begin writing a scene, characters do something that you hadn’t planned in your outline. When the protagonist or the antagonist speaks pithy words or acts in…
Want to Write a Mystery? You Can!
Join The 3% That Finish Their Mystery It’s a long journey from a story idea to writing The End of a novel. One story idea needs to grow with setting, characters, and plot to reach a satisfactory conclusion. Because a mystery novel is a large writing process, most writers who start a novel in any…
How to Work Backstory into Your Mystery
What Came Before Every character arrives in your story with backstory. Backstory is what came before in their lives before the story begins. Long ago or maybe just last week, something happened that impacted your character. In a mystery, you need to know the backstory of your sleuth and each of the suspects, including the…
Get Ready to Be a Mystery Author: Part 2 Email
Build your reader fan base with email before your mystery is finished. Keys to setting up your email connection.
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…