Scene Science
The six basic scene components and how they help you create a tight, focused scene for your novel.
Give Your Story Reader Room to Imagine
Allowing your reader to imagine character details in the theater of the mind develops connections with your story.
First-Time Writer Mistakes to Avoid So Readers Love Your Story
How to create a great protagonist, smooth dialogue, keep readers engaged, and trim info-dump to write a novel readers love.
Keep Time in Your Mystery
Don’t overlook time elements in your story. From time of day in a scene to the timeline of the entire story. Tips to keep time in your mystery.
Red Herrings in Your Mystery
What’s A Red Herring? In logic, a read herring is a fallacy of distraction bringing up another point to distract the argument. In the financial world, a red herring is a prospectus of an upcoming business that is not complete but indicates the future stock. In a mystery, a red herring is a false clue…
What Readers Love
The Best Sleuths Have Character Beginning mystery writers work hard to get their clues lined up, create suspicious characters, and overall construct a puzzle for the sleuth and readers to solve. It’s easy to forget that readers fall in love with characters. The most important character in your mystery is your sleuth. You want your…
Discovery Dialogue in Your Mystery
Discovery and Your Sleuth Once a crime is discovered and your sleuth takes on finding the killer, his next step is to unearth possible suspects. As he visits close friends, work colleagues, the coffee shop owner where the victim went each morning, your sleuth begins to create a picture of the victim’s world. The picture your sleuth…
What’s Your Mystery Subgenre?
Do You Know Your Subgenre? If you don’t know your subgenre, you won’t reach the right audience. The mystery genre contains a variety of subgenres. When you are clear about subgenre, you’re prepared to write a story that appeals to the right readers. Someone who loves a cozy mystery may have no interest in your…
Get To The End of Your Mystery
Photo by Matt Botsford on Unsplash The End That Satisfies A mystery novel is all about a puzzle. As the story unfolds you put more and more pieces in place that lead your sleuth toward discovering the killer. Once the sleuth reveals the killer, the puzzle is complete. As far as your reader is concerned,…
The Detective In the Victim’s World
The Detective In The Victim’s World Without A Map As you take your detective and your readers deeper into the story in the first half of Act II, your detective enters a new world, the victim’s world. As he wanders the victim’s world he gathers bits and pieces of information, meets suspects and in their…