How to Start Your Mystery Novel
|

How to Start Your Mystery Novel

ByZara Altair

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
|

Troubleshoot Your Mystery

ByZara Altair

​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

Tips to Soar Through Writing

ByZara Altair

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
| |

Background Research for Your Mystery

ByZara Altair

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….

Mystery Character Secrets and Lies
| |

Mystery Character Secrets and Lies

ByZara Altair

Character Dimensionality Mystery is all about puzzle. Deeper characters provide more puzzling challenges to your sleuth. Your sleuth is challenged by the obstacles the other characters throw his way. One of the best ways to create a puzzle for your sleuth is to give each character a secret and a lie. Or more than one….

Get Your Cop Right
| |

Get Your Cop Right

ByZara Altair

Derek Pacifico conducting Homicide School for Writers Real Cop Details in Your Fictional World Unless you have worked in law enforcement, writing realistic cops for your mystery involves getting to know law, law enforcement procedures, and a realistic picture of how cops think, act, and work.  Reading and online research will give you a general…

Get Inside Your Character’s Body
| |

Get Inside Your Character’s Body

ByZara Altair

Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash Body Details to Improve Your Story Most writers don’t think of anatomy and physiology when they are creating a story, but you can enhance reader engagement with body part details. If you find your characters all nodding in agreement or sighing in resignation, try expanding your view of the…

Read to Write

Read to Write

ByZara Altair

Why Read? You read long before you started writing. You probably started writing because you are a reader. Jane Friedman, writing and publishing coach/blogger underscores reading as the basis for good writing: ​ Establish a reading habit that matches roughly what you hope to write and publish. Make it as important as anything else you schedule…