A Mystery is a Puzzle
The basis of a mystery story is a puzzle. There’s at least the main puzzle, and maybe even one (or two more) contained in the story as subplots – smaller plots generally connected to the main story.
Your job as a mystery writer is to start with a scrambled mess, the way it looks when you dump the pieces out of the puzzle box. There’s a body, an attack, a disappearance, etc. Somebody — or maybe more than one somebody — is guilty. But who could it be: the wife, the husband, the girl/ or boy/ friend? Or maybe it’s someone who owes money to someone else.
As the story’s writer, you need to make the pieces fit together by the end of the story. So, you begin to work it out on the page. But sometimes what you thought would work, doesn’t, and you have to toss the pieces back in the box and start again. You take a different approach or look at your story from a different angle. You might change the POV (point of view) from first to third person or vice-versa, or multiple POVs. A warning about multiples: This is difficult to manipulate and sustain, so probably not a good idea for a new mystery writer. You might change tenses from present to past, past to present; use flashbacks or a prologue to set the scene.
A word about red herrings: For example, just when everything points to a certain person, that person turns out to be a cop. Or was somewhere else at the time of the murder. Or ends up as the next victim.
Used judiciously, red herrings can give the story more tension. You want to keep upping the tension, so that when the reader thinks everything (the pieces) looks like they’re going to come together – bang, the whole thing falls apart. There’s another crime — an attack or a murder. First this person looks guilty. Everyone is terrified, each person suspects everyone else. Take a look at an Agatha Christie Poirot mystery. In many of them, Poirot gathers everyone together and points out how each person could be the guilty one, before he finally reveals the real killer. Or in at least one Poirot story, there’s more than one guilty person.
Here’s a confession: I’m terrible at jigsaw puzzles, being one of those people who process information auditorily, rather than visually. But I’m good at the crossword kind, which, when you think about it, isn’t too different: Here you have blanks that need to be filled in and have to fit together to solve the puzzle.
Another confession: When I begin writing, I don’t know how the puzzle will work itself out. I have to wait until my characters tell me, in their thoughts and actions. So I just wait. And listen.
There are usually plenty of clues. But reader, beware. Just like in a jigsaw puzzle, what first looks like it will fit, might not.
The Murder Blog
Philomena Wolff was 17, walking home from school with her best friend, when her friend disappeared, ending up as one of several young women abducted and murdered in upstate New York by a clever killer who eventually disappeared from the area.
Philomena was terrified that the man caught a glimpse of her when he took her friend.
Many years later, young women have been ending up dead again.
Philomena, now an investigative reporter, hosts a crime-solving blog, “Who Killed Who?” With the help of her friend, a psychic gravedigger, her friend’s boyfriend, a P.I., and the blog’s readers, Philomena is on a mission to hunt the killer down. Her readers are with her. But so is the killer, posting vile notes and vicious threats on the blog.
Could the killer be the same one who murdered her friend long ago, trolling for more young women – and Philomena?
Buy links: https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Blog-Suspense-Novel-ebook/dp/B0CK9RVT9V
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-murder-blog-sandra-gardner/1144100569?ean=9781685133450
Sandra Gardner is the author of seven traditionally published books: four novels and
three nonfiction books.
Gardner’s new suspense novel, The Murder Blog, was published by Black Rose Writing in December 2023. Her last two novels — both mysteries — Dead Shrinks Don’t Talk and Grave Expectations were published by Black Opal Books in 2018. A coming-of-age novel, Halley and Me, won the Grassic Short Novel Prize from Evening Street Press and was published in 2013. Her nonfiction books include Teenage Suicide (Simon & Schuster); Street Gangs (Franklin Watts); and Street Gangs in America (Franklin Watts). Street Gangs in America received a book award from the National Federation of Press Women. Previously, she worked as a journalist and was a contributing writer to The New York Times.
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