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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…
Meeting The Possibilities All of Act II in a novel can be a big muddle for first time novelists. It’s easy to get lost in your own story, forget conflict, or pace in uneven leaps from one scene to another. Your protagonist goes here and then goes there in an episodic attempt to get to…
From Murder to Trouble in Your Mystery In the first five chapters you introduce your detective, connect your detective with the murder, and start your detective off with a plan to find the murderer.Your main goal in those beginning chapters is to bring the reader into your story world, get them empathizing with your detective—even…
Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash Where The Story Starts Today’s readers want a good story. Your beginning sets up your reader for the rest of the story. Lose them at the beginning and you won’t get them back. Your goal at the beginning, is to get the readers involved in the story.Beginning writers can struggle…
Individual Characters and the Story In a mystery, supporting characters provide conflict for the detective. Their role in the story is to confound, confuse, lie and make trouble for your protagonist. They enhance the story context and color how your story is revealed. The Character Bible A character bible is the place where you…
Setting – A Force In Your Story Setting is like a character in your story that has no dialogue. Setting not only grounds your characters and your readers, setting interacts with characters to enhance your story. Setting is what makes readers feel like they are there.Beginning writers often overlook the depth that setting adds to a…
Readers Want One Thing From a Scene – Change Scenes are the building blocks of your story. Each scene moves the story forward and shed a no light on the main character. Each scene is a mini-story with the same overall sequence as the main story—beginning, middle, end. Within that mini-story a change happens. …
Listening Is a Writer’s Best Dialogue Skill An emotional teenage girl, a befuddled oldster, a patronizing matron, and an Oxford don all speak differently. The fiction writer’s task is to convey their speech with idioms, syntax, vocabulary, and language. When does a character pause? Why does a character pause? Do they use run-on sentences? Speak…
Subplots in the Story Subplots add depth to your mystery story by giving readers a deeper vision of your protagonist, the detective. They can Add dimension to the main plot Test the protagonist’s motivation and ability to solve the puzzle Create different points of view on the central murder victim and suspects In a mystery,…
From Story Idea to Story Summary Once you create your one-sentence story idea, build out to a summary paragraph to include characters, main story points, and the climax. Expanding your story idea builds your story writing momentum. Years ago Randy Ingermanson proposed a way to summarize your story highlighting the important pivots: three disasters plus…
