Novel Research Details: Curb Your Enthusiasm
How to integrate research details into your mystery novel to keep readers reading.
Starting Your Novel? Start Your Author Platform Now
Important points for starting your author platform early and how to get started.
The Mystery Protagonist’s Tools: The Secret of the Things in Their Life
Match your protagonist’s tools to his personality and skills to make them believable and relatable for your reader.
Listen to Your Muse: Transform Inspiration Into Working Strategy
How to capture story inspriation wherever you are. Create a system so ideas are not lost.
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…
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…
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 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 […]