Title Your Mystery
Tips to choose a title that engages prospective readers, is easy to remember, and suites your genre.
Dialogue Adds Character to Your Characters
Who Is Talking? How your characters speak reveals their personality. Especially in mysteries, characters reveal their character, even when they try to hide it. The challenge for writers is to make the language each character uses, appropriate to that character and distinct from other characters in the story. That way, readers understand who is talking.Dialogue is a verbal action. When a character speaks, they are actively moving the story forward. When the language, rhythm, a […]
What Makes a Novel a Mystery?
Thrillers and Crime and Mysteries, Oh My! Terminology can be bewildering. New writers need to be clear about their genre because readers of each genre have expectations about what the story will deliver. Knowing your genre facilitates marketing to reach the right readers who will appreciate and enjoy your novel. In thrillers, the clock is ticking. The protagonist is vulnerable and must achieve their goal before time runs out. Whether it’s getting out of a capture situation or […]
The Power of Sleuth Flaws
How to Add Empathy to Your Fiction Detective Every fictional detective has skills. Which skills and how they are used are up to you, the author. These skills help your reader admire your detective especially whey he meets confrontations and obstacles. But, your detective’s flaws are the intersection where readers empathize.Readers empathize with shortcomings. Your detective’s skills impress the reader, his flaws make readers care. Flaws give you opportunities to create obstac […]
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 Many Suspects is Enough?
Be Good to Your Reader Choosing suspects for your mystery novel begins when you flesh out your story idea in the planning stages. As you create your character bible adding suspects to your mystery novel you aim for a balance between enough characters to challenge your sleuth and your reader and too few suspects. If your mystery has only two or three suspects your reader won’t feel challenged. You will be challenged creating material to flesh out a novel of 65,000 to 85,000 wor […]
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 […]