Writer to writer: From think to ink - Gail Carson Levine 2014

Mysterious
Aspects of story

Have I mentioned that I love to fool my readers?

A great way to fool them is with a mystery. I bring this up because Amanda posted this comment: “I’m thinking about writing a mystery novel, but I’ve never written a mystery before. Do you have any tips on how to write one?”

At the heart of every mystery is a who question. It’s the reason a mystery story is also called a whodunit.

The crime can be anything from murder to betrayed friendship to a stolen cupcake. More questions follow who? Why was the crime committed? What was the motive? How was it done?

In my mystery A Tale of Two Castles, Count Jonty Um, the victim, is hated by all the citizens of the town of Two Castles, and the reader doesn’t know whom to trust. But we could go the other way. The victim could be beloved by everyone. Who would hit such a saint over the head? Or steal from him? Or spread lies about him?

All the citizens are too many suspects for our reader to keep track of. Three or four or maybe five are plenty. We can narrow the field simply by using our authorial spotlight. The characters we shine our beam on become fishy to the reader; the others we ignore, and so does the reader.

Is this fair? Maybe not, but we’re in charge and what we decide rules.

As we write, we pile on puzzles and clues and red herrings (false clues that are meant to confuse the reader). In A Tale of Two Castles, several characters wear rings and bracelets made of twine. Narrator Elodie wonders if they belong to a secret society. A character who presents herself as poor is seen buying an expensive bracelet. A honey-tongued man speaks harshly. A gate is left open. An ox is mauled.

Even in stories that aren’t primarily mysteries, there are likely to be puzzles. Somebody dislikes Mack, our MC, and he wonders why. His sister keeps coming home late from school and won’t say what she’s doing. His father stops playing the piano, which has always been his great joy. When asked, he says he’ll get back to it, but months pass without music.

We can plan out our mystery ahead of time or we can solve it along with our sleuth. I’ve done the latter. When I wrote A Tale of Two Castles, I didn’t know who the villain was until I’d written two-thirds of the book, which worried me, as you can imagine. But then this character did something revealing, and I knew, although the reader didn’t yet. The advantage of discovering as we go is that the bad guy’s identity may come as more of a surprise to the reader if it was also a surprise to us. The disadvantage is that we can lose our way for a while, which, sadly, has happened to me more than once.

Even if we’ve outlined and have settled the mystery for ourselves, our detective—let’s stick with Mack—doesn’t know who the perpetrator was. We want him to find the evildoer, so we have to help him, but we don’t want to make it easy, either. How can we do that? Here are some ways, and I bet you can come up with more:

• The nature of the crime itself can help lead to the criminal. If our dastardly deed involves great physical strength or, going the other way, small stature, some suspects will be eliminated. (Or a clever villain may use these limits sneakily to direct the investigation away from her.)

• We can switch POVs. Carmella, the victim, knows a small piece of the puzzle; her cousin Nora knows something else. The villain knows most of all, and we can tantalize the reader with tidbits from him. One charm of this POV-switching is that the reader learns more than Mack knows, which creates tension. Oh, no, the reader thinks, watch out, Mack! Look under the bed! But Mack has no reason to look, and so the reader suffers. Yay!

• We can give Mack particular traits that help him figure things out (a brilliant brain, extra-sharp hearing, understanding the speech of animals, or whatever else we come up with). And we can also handicap him in some ways (a habit of insulting people, physical weakness, sleepiness, or anything else) to increase reader anxiety. As an example, suppose Carmella is poisoned at a party. She’s in the hospital, recovery in doubt, and the poisoner may strike again. Thirty people attended the party, including Mack. His special advantage is that his mother is a pharmacist who’s shared facts with him about poisons, so he has knowledge to guide him.

• The setting can provide clues. Suppose the crime isn’t poisoning. It’s the theft of a famous painting from a museum. What’s the museum’s security system? Where was the painting hanging? Where does the guard usually stand?

• The nature of the victim can also lead to the perpetrator. In the poisoning scenario, is Carmella well liked? Despised? Rich? Poor? Kind? Mean? Does she have enemies? On the day of the party, did she say anything odd? Did she seem different from her usual self?

• There are the obvious questions asked by detectives: Who benefits from the poisoning? The villain may gain if Carmella dies or may benefit simply from breaking the party up. Who was present? Who may have seen something suspicious?

• We, in our wisdom, can plant physical evidence. At the party, for instance, Mack can find a bowl with a few drops remaining of a greenish, smelly liquid.

Mystery readers pay attention to possible villains. Some will hope to identify the villain before Mack does. Our job is to prevent them from doing that. We want to produce the villain the way a magician pulls something surprising out of a hat—not a rabbit but a dozen butterflies.

Let’s imagine that Mack investigates and we help him pick out four likely suspects. We’ll name them after herbs and spices to make them easier to keep track of: Clove, Basil, Parsley, and Oregano.

If Clove is unpleasant, the reader may think, It will be too obvious if Clove did it. She can’t be the thief.

If Basil is nice, the reader may think, He’s too sweet to poison anyone; he can’t be the one—except maybe the author will think I won’t suspect him, and he really did do it.

If it turns out that Basil is the villain, the reader will think the outcome was predictable and be disappointed. If Clove did it, the ending may feel too easy. Maybe Parsley is the right choice. She wasn’t at the party, but she hates Carmella, and Mack figures out how she could have gotten the poison to Carmella via Oregano, who had no idea Parsley was using him. The reader is amazed. Cool!

Mysteries with a detective combine two stories: the story of the crime and the story of the sleuth. In such tales, the MC is generally our detective, in this case Mack, and most readers will care more about him even than about the mystery. If Mack hardly knows Carmella and he’s trying to find the poisoner’s identity just out of curiosity, well, many readers may yawn and close the book.

But we don’t want to lose them! How to pull them in?

Suppose Carmella is Mack’s sister or his best friend or his girlfriend. He loves her and he’s frantic over her condition and desperate to discover who means her harm. She’s essential to his well-being. The reader is not yawning.

Or suppose Mack has a lot riding on solving this case. Maybe his friends have stopped believing in him. Nobody will ever ask him to solve anything again if he doesn’t succeed now. He’s even losing confidence in himself. The reader is eagerly turning pages.

For extra tension, although this won’t work in every mystery, the villain can turn his attention to Mack when he feels Mack closing in. Now our hero himself is in danger. Oh, no!

In some mysteries our MC is the victim. Carmella recovers from her poisoning but knows someone is out to get her. There is no Mack. It’s all up to her. The advantage here is that we don’t have to juggle two tales, and our heroine is constantly at risk. The disadvantage is that we don’t have the pleasure of creating a master sleuth and showing him work, unraveling clues, setting traps, confounding everyone—and making mistakes along the way.

So both are fine. Your choice. Or write one sort and then the other.

Writing time!

• You may know the kids’ game “Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?” One child after another is accused. It goes like this:

“Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?”

“Maddie” (or the name of any child present) “stole the cookie from the cookie jar.”

“Who me? Couldn’t be. Wasn’t me.”

“Then who?”

Another child is accused and the game continues until everyone is named. Turn the cookie theft into a story and solve the mystery. The trouble, of course, is that the most important evidence has been eaten.

• Mack’s dalmatian has been kidnapped while Mack was visiting a friend and his parents were at work. Their house has an alarm system, which was not set off. A ransom note was left on the kitchen table. Write the investigation.

• Hope’s younger sister, Eva, has gone missing, and the police are beginning to fear for her life. Eva was last seen on her way to a tutoring session with algebra teacher Jim Kilcannon. Hope visits Mr. Kilcannon’s home to find out if he has any ideas about what may have befallen her sister. Write a scene in which you make Hope and the reader be alternately creeped out and reassured by Mr. Kilcannon. Use the setting as well as Mr. Kilcannon himself. If you like, keep going for a full-fledged murder or kidnapping mystery.

• Pick one or more of these scenarios from earlier in the chapter to write about and solve: Somebody dislikes Mack and he wonders why. His sister keeps coming home late from school and won’t say what she’s doing. His father stops playing the piano, which has always been his great joy. When asked, he says he’ll get back to it, but months pass without music.

Have fun, and save what you write!