The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing the Modern Whodunit Read Free Page A

clues to their inner feelings, attitudes, philosophies, and motives. You draw conclusions about others based on the clues they present to you. If you see a man crying, you might conclude that he is sad, or frustrated, or angry, or even happy. You take into account the context of his behavior and everything else you know about him—including the possibility that he might lie to you. Then you make your interpretation. You have no all-knowing narrator to tell you, “He is crying tears of joy” or “He is depressed because he killed his friend.”
    If a woman slams her fist on a tabletop or curses loudly or clenches her teeth, you might conclude that she’s angry. You might be wrong. In fact, she might be trying to make you believe she’s angry when, in fact, she is trying to manipulate your emotions or make you believe something that isn’t true. You can’t be sure. You have to consider the clues—the observed behavior and everything else you know about that person—to arrive at your best interpretation. In actual life, no narrator stands at your shoulder whispering in your ear, “That person is angry” or “She’s only pretending to be angry.”
    Just as you show your readers the characters in your stories, so should you create settings for them. Show your readers a restaurant with a jukebox playing a Patti Page tune, candles in Chianti bottles, and red-and-white-checked oilcloth tablecloths, then allow them to draw their own conclusions about the place. Do not tell them, “The restaurant had an old-fashioned ’50s atmosphere.” Readers can—and want to—deduce that for themselves.
    Words such as “sad,” “manipulative,” and “old-fashioned” tell readers more than they want to know. Let them draw their own conclusions, the way they do in real life. Otherwise you’ll turn your readers into passive spectators—and turn them off.
    Make your story a series of experiences for your readers. Give them sensory impressions. Show them some significant details of people and places, but resist the impulse to tell them what those details mean. Write scenes in which characters act and interact, and put your readers in the middle of those scenes. Allow them to participate, to interpret, to draw conclusions, and to fill in the blanks. Trust them to think for themselves. Respect their intelligence.
    Showing without telling gives contemporary readers what they want from a mystery story—a fair chance to participate in the puzzle’s solution.
     
     
     
     
     
     

 
    Chapter 2
     
    Finding Your Story
     
    The question writers are most often asked by non-writers is: “Where do you get your ideas?”
    Typically, writers reply, “Why, ideas are everywhere. The newspapers. Television. Cocktail party conversation. Dreams. The problem isn’t finding ideas. The problem is recognizing those that can be converted into a story, and then knowing how to create that story.”
    Sometimes they just smile and say, “Serendipity.”
    The most honest answer to the question is: “Ideas come from inside my head. If you want a story idea, that’s where you have to look.”
    Sure, there are plenty of ideas. But the workable idea, the one that will sustain a compelling mystery plot, is rare and precious. To recognize a good idea and develop it into a story requires a lot of hard, critical thought and planning.
    Sometimes writers are fired by the inspiration of what strikes them as a good idea and are so eager to begin writing that they don’t stop to think. They rush to their keyboards and begin writing. They expect their idea to sustain them. They are devastated when, after a few pages or a few chapters, they run out of steam. Their idea did not sustain them, because they failed to nurture and develop it into a fully imagined story.
    Planning your story requires more than the inspiration of a good idea. The creative process that precedes actual writing is unique to each writer. Here’s how I do it:
    Brady Coyne, the