How to Write a Mystery

by Mystery Writers of America

  How much is too much? Never confuse the reader. Including too much research in your book can do that, mislead simply by the preponderance of words, descriptions, and explanations. Another way to look at it is: don’t throw in a bunch of stuff that’s pointless, even though you like it. In the end, we novelists use perhaps a tenth of a percent of the research we’ve done for any one book. That’s a sobering but realistic figure. Love your research. Know a lot of it is background enabling you to create a believable fictional world, and only a tiny fraction of the details will actually make it into your book.

  How can I organize my research? One of the biggest challenges is remembering where you put your research so you can find it easily again. There are software programs that enable you to scan printed documents into searchable files that can also contain saved online documents. Some authors sort their printed research into labeled piles on tabletops and shelves or even the floor. I label manuscript boxes into which I toss clippings, notes, and printouts. Other writers use index cards and file folders. Arrange your research books by subject matter on shelves or in stacks on the floor. Most of us flag the pages of books to remind us what’s inside that we may want, or we scan the pages into searchable files.

  Is it necessary to travel to research scene locations? Yes and no. Go if you can. But even if you do, you’ll likely want guidebooks, flyers, and insider accounts and descriptions either printed or online for reference, and also to prepare you to take advantage of your on-site research. I use AAA books and maps a lot, as well as National Geographic, travel magazines, travel blogs, and travel websites. My best research finds often come in the comments sections of websites and from the people I talk to before I go or after I arrive. CIA.gov has an open-source library with a lot of information about foreign countries. I’m often asked whether I visit every location in my books. The answer is I travel to some, but I seldom reveal which. It seems to me I’m doing my job well if readers and fellow writers believe what I’ve written and can’t tell the difference.

  Where can I find insight and analysis about politics, power, and espionage today? Read current news reports, of course. I particularly like to compare different perspectives, different sources. One can deepen and broaden one’s understanding of the forces at work that way, and doing so feeds the imagination and the ability to create subplots and characters of differing opinions. Asking yourself as author how we got to this point in politics and global dynamics is also a valuable question, and that means history, culture, and geography, too. That sort of deep analysis usually is found in books. But there are also valuable online intelligence-gathering resources like Stratfor.com.

  Don’t get lost in your research. You’ll be tempted to. It’s not only easy but seductive to discover one interesting situation or detail after another. Also, research provides an excuse to procrastinate. Trust the voice that comes into your mind and announces, Enough is enough. Get back to writing. You may not be finished with the research, but you have enough to push forward in the book. Also, look at your calendar. When is your deadline? That sobering question is sometimes enough to jerk oneself back into reality and resume writing. And finally, some of us often experience an escalating desire to write, wanting to get back to the story, feeling the pull of imagination, the demanding joy of creativity. Yes, it’s time to write!

  And finally…

  For me, writing in the spy field is a lifestyle, a constant intake of information, finding one nugget and pursuing it as it dies a natural death or explodes into more nuggets. I read. I listen. I watch. Most of all, I enjoy. Still, for all of us authors, our ability to work waxes and wanes during writing. We get exhausted, or are beset by fears that the work is no good. It’s all part of being a professional writer—we learn the emotional depths as well as heights of our highly creative pursuit.

  When your energy is low and you wonder why you ever thought your current manuscript would be any good, fall back on your research; it can rekindle your interest and remind you why you hungered to write the book in the first place.

  And also, there’s a bonus to all of your research: you’ve become something of an expert, which means you’ve got interesting topics, experiences, and insights to talk and write about as you do publicity and make appearances.

  Research is a chance to satisfy your curiosity.

  Research is an adventure into the unknown.

  Through research, you discover and expand not only your thriller but yourself, the writer.

  STEPHANIE KANE

  Writing what you don’t know forces you to go out and learn it, an excitement that translates onto the page. Being too familiar with the culture in which you write limits your capacity to bring it to life. Fresh insights elude jaded eyes, and it’s easy to overlook the kinds of details a stranger would find telling. In researching settings, don’t just go there; watch how people act.

  Other Mysteries

  Susan Vaught—Mysteries for Children: An Introduction

  The kids’ mystery, from picture books to YA—expectations and some hints.

  Chris Grabenstein—Unleash Your Inner Child

  Middle-grade mysteries: you, too, can become a rock star for ten-year-olds.

  Kelley Armstrong—The Young Adult Mystery

  Complex, authentic stories for the young adult—emphasis on adult.

  Dale W. Berry and Gary Phillips—Graphic Novels

  The mystery within the panels: your conversation with words and pictures.

  Art Taylor—The Short Mystery

  What do the characters (and readers) want in your mystery short story?

  Daniel Stashower—Ten Stupid Questions about True Crime

  Building a vivid page-turner, out of nothing but facts.

  Mysteries for Children: An Introduction

  The kids’ mystery, from picture books to YA—expectations and some hints.

  SUSAN VAUGHT

  I want to write for children. What are the rules?

  Sooner or later, all authors who write books for children get a version of that question—and then they get a version of the confused look produced by the answer:

  There aren’t any, and they change all the time.

  No, seriously. There isn’t a style guide or set of bullet points we can hand you, but we can tell you this much: there are conventions, and these shift like slang, rapidly and unpredictably. You need to know the conventions so that if you decide to break them, you’re making an informed choice. Oh, and you’ll have to keep up with the landscape, but here’s the big secret:

  It’s a lot of fun!

  The label “children’s book” refers primarily to the audience for the story, not the story’s complexity, vocabulary, or concepts. Children’s writing encompasses books for a wide range of ages, conventionally viewed as birth to eighteen years. However, these lines have grown very fuzzy, and the upper numbers often sneak toward the mid-twenties. Most people who buy children’s books are adults, purchasing either for a child or for themselves. Roughly a quarter of any children’s book readers will be grown-ups.

  Currently, there are four basic divisions in children’s writing, rooted generally in age and reading level, but also in the characters and themes presented.

  Picture books. Picture books (including their younger siblings, board books) are geared toward children eight years of age and younger, and generally are designed to be read to eager little minds. Ages of characters in picture books vary widely, especially when considering nonfiction and biographical pieces. Currently, picture books average 500 or fewer words, and most do not rhyme. For reference, Goodnight Moon, still selling well after 48 million copies and seventy-three years, contains 131 nonrhyming words. But before you think about sitting down on a weekend to whip out a few sentences that will handily support several generations of your family, remember that you have 500 or fewer words to introduce an unforgettable character and lead readers through a compelling situation with a satisfying beginning, middle, and end. Most children’s writers agree that
picture books are the hardest stories to do well, for just that reason.

  So, can you write mystery-themed picture books? Absolutely! Check out Jon Klassen’s award-winning I Want My Hat Back, or Alphabet Mystery by Audrey Wood. Scholastic has a list of excellent mystery-themed picture books here: https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/books-support-mystery-genre-study/

  For picture book mysteries, lost items and mysterious (often ultimately funny) situations predominate, and for the most part these books avoid violence, darkness, and crime or theft (by humans—animal thefts are common, though possibly overdone).

  Side note: Most authors do not illustrate their own picture books. Artists are chosen by publishers and share equally in the book’s profits.

  Early readers and chapter books. There are many subdivisions within these categories, encompassing books that serve as stepping-stones from picture books to independent reading of text. Aspiring or early readers, stories for emergent readers, and increasingly less illustrated chapter books are usually geared toward children six to eight years old, and range from 1,000 to 2,500 words. As with picture books, the number of words should be what is needed to tell the story—but they still need to be exactly the right words. Typically, characters in these stories are eight to ten years old, and themes in the stories relate to the basic developmental tasks of this age group: exploring the world, making new friends, dealing with being nervous or mad or having other big emotions, being scared of new things, and other earlier childhood growth edges. Mystery stories for kids really get rolling at this level, from timeless classics like Gertrude Chandler Warner’s The Boxcar Children to more modern offerings like Doreen Cronin’s J.J. Tully mysteries. From gross and hysterical to slightly spooky, these books give readers a few more challenges, but mystery situations still tend to revolve around missing items, strange happenings, and other situational, non-crime-based conundrums. Violence and darkness are not prominent, although children can face some actual peril.

  Middle grade. Conventionally, middle-grade books have a target audience of children ages seven or eight to twelve years. Target word count is 35,000–45,000, though this varies widely (and yes, several of the doorstop Harry Potter books are considered middle grade). Most children still seem to enjoy “reading up,” or reading about characters slightly older than themselves, so many middle-grade protagonists are twelve or thirteen years old. Booksellers can be very rigid with classifications, and push any story with a teen character toward young adult shelves, which has resulted in fewer tales featuring kids ages twelve to fifteen. Developmentally, themes of sampling identities, finding “who you are” at a basic level, dealing with next-level emotions like terror or even infatuation, lying versus truth, basic ethics—all game at this level. Mysteries are one of the most popular genres for this audience, and puzzles and clues and searching for solutions can be deeply satisfying to young readers. Murders and violence still aren’t prominent for this age group, though. Middle-grade conventions (and the virtues of poop and underwear) are discussed in excellent detail in Chris Grabenstein’s contribution following this chapter, and I encourage everyone to suck in a bunch of air for fake burps and give it a read.

  Young adult. Typically, young adult novels are 45,000–70,000 words, and target readers ages thirteen to eighteen or nineteen. Most YA characters are sixteen to nineteen years old and dealing with issues of autonomy, coming of age in a modern sense, and real-life stressors ranging from grief, to gender identity, to sex, drugs, and rock and roll—basically anything at all writers want to write and readers want to read. No, really. Trying to figure out what “can’t be written” in a YA novel is basically just tempting the forces of the universe to be sure a book on just that topic becomes a bestseller less than a week after you decide the concept is too risky. Also, it is very important to remember that today’s adolescents are a diverse and globally connected group, pushing older artists to provide them with works that truly represent them and their experiences, and that are free of tropes and stereotypes. Traditional crime, homicide, global conspiracies—you can do it all for teens. Very successful YA writer Kelley Armstrong addresses these and other conventions related to YA storytelling expertly in her essay later in this book, and I wish it could be required reading for aspiring YA writers.

  C. M. SURRISI

  If you are writing a mystery for kids, remember that your protagonist can’t drive and has a curfew, and no one will believe them or let them be involved.

  Unleash Your Inner Child

  Middle-grade mysteries: you, too, can become a rock star for ten-year-olds.

  CHRIS GRABENSTEIN

  Underpants. Poop. Fart.

  If any of those words made you smile, you might be ready to write mysteries for upper-elementary/middle-grade readers!

  I started my author career in 2005 writing mysteries and thrillers for adults—including the Anthony Award–winning Tilt-a-Whirl, the first in my John Ceepak/Jersey Shore series. In 2007, however, an editor was looking for a middle-grade ghost story. One of the (several) rejected manuscripts stacked on my bookshelf was a Stephen King–ish ghostly thriller for adults called The Crossroads.

  The editor thought it would make a good ghost story for kids if…

  I got rid of all the grisly violence.

  I cut the adult language.

  I made the kid in the story the protagonist.

  And… if I cut the manuscript from 110,000 words down to about 40,000 or 45,000 (yes, that’s the length of all of my children’s books).

  I did all of those ifs and The Crossroads was published as my first book for young readers in May 2008. It also won an Anthony Award, plus an Agatha. Since then, I have published about fifty different books for kids (including two dozen with James Patterson), had a few number one bestsellers, and filled my bookcase with three more Agatha Awards and lots of children’s choice state book awards instead of just rejected manuscripts.

  I’ve also never made it back down the shore for another Ceepak adult mystery. I’m having too much fun writing for kids. Your fans treat you like a rock star. They come to book signings hugging your books. They laugh at all your fart jokes.

  What follows will be my random ramblings, trying to piece together what I think I’ve learned over all these years. Take what you like and leave the rest.

  So how do you write mysteries for eight-to-twelve-year-olds?

  The same way you write them for adults.

  Start with a great main character. After all, that’s the only thing anybody, kid or adult, really remembers a year or so after they read your book. For instance, I read all the Sherlock Holmes short stories. I vaguely remember a few plot points. A snake slithering down a rope (or was it a bedpost?). A league of redheads. But I distinctly remember Holmes, Watson, and the Baker Street Irregulars.

  Give your young readers an interesting sleuth, one they can see themselves in.

  Kids love a good puzzle. Teachers love mysteries because, in addition to teaching reading skills, they also encourage deductive reasoning. Logical thinking.

  So, first and foremost, make sure your mystery makes sense. Give the kids a fair play problem with real, workable clues. A mystery they might’ve solved before your sleuth if your sleuth weren’t so darn clever. Don’t just slap on a solution at the end. Your readers should see clues (and red herrings, of course) and be able to solve the riddle.

  Kids know when they’re being cheated or, worse, talked down to.

  Make the game fun and fair.

  A big difference between kid and adult mysteries: No dead bodies. Especially no dead pets. There are plenty of other crimes to deal with. There’s no need for killing folks or animals. Your stories, of course, can be gruesome and gross and full of slime and nasty body odors. Just no corpses.

  Another tip: Try to remember how you felt when you were eight to twelve. That’s how you felt, not what everybody was wearing or the most fascinating and memorable thing you did when you were a fifth-grader. Kids t
oday want stories about kids today. Of course, there are exceptions to every semi-rule—kids love historical mysteries and time travel stories. But, in general, kids who are kids today want to read about kids today. Resist the urge to write your memories.

  But, as I said, remember what it felt like to be eight to twelve. This is when kids start separating from their parents and begin the sometimes painful process of turning into their own persons. This is often the age when kids wonder how their parents could possibly be their parents. It’s one of the reasons why Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (the first book in the series) is probably the best example of a mystery written for this group of readers. Of course Harry is an orphan who’s really a wizard! Eleven-year-olds always think they must be orphans (even if they’re not) because their parents suddenly seem so strange and alien. And, yes, all eleven-year-olds have superpowers that dumb adults just haven’t realized yet.

  How you felt when you were in third, fourth, fifth, or sixth grade is exactly how kids at that age feel today. The emotions have remained the same. But the props and window dressing have changed. For instance, don’t put a chalkboard in your classroom scene. Nobody uses chalkboards anymore. They are dusty relics. Do try to remember how it felt to be in front of a class, unable to solve a math problem because, oops, you didn’t do your homework.

  The feeling is the same.

  The props are different.

  Another tip? Travel back in time. When I first started writing for younger readers, I dug up my old fifth- and sixth-grade class photos. I looked at my friends. Tried to remember their names and all the goofy, stupid, and sometimes dangerous stuff we did because we were growing up. I listened to music by the Monkees, because “Daydream Believer” was huge when I was in the sixth grade. It was a time when friends were, for the first time, becoming more important than family. I remember more about hanging out with my buds and raiding a slumber party or pulling pranks on Halloween than I do about where my family and I went on vacation during those years.