Mystery books--I do believe--are my favorite books. I've loved them from childhood to the present time, and even try my hand at it. It's a work in progress for me, and I hope someday to be a great mystery writer. Time will tell about that!!
What are some of the details that need to be used when writing mysteries? Here's a short, but important list:
- The culprit's character needs to be concealed. No one--not the reader and not the detective--should know who this person is until...revealing time.
- Create revelations of clues in a chain of events, etc. Most of these should be important but not necessarily blatantly obvious.
- A nice touch is to sidetrack your sleuth. Send them down a wrong path which means they may have to backtrack or that wrong path will give them facts to lead them to the true path they are searching for.
- Show (allow) intriguing actions without any type of explanation. In other words, sometimes an action may not register with the sleuth until much later in the book. Some happening, a word, an action, etc., may bring to mind that earlier bit of action and bind together with the present.
- Write with intention in your sentence construction to build the suspense that leads to the answer of the mystery.
- Watch your dialogue. Use suspenseful, mysterious sentences to build the tension.
Most of all, practice, practice, practice (which I'm doing!)
Would you like to share a short scene--no more than 100 words--in a current mystery novel you're creating?
And have fun!
