How to Write a Mystery

by Mystery Writers of America

  And then I thought about the bullies who picked on me. The girls I had a crush on before I even knew what a crush was. The confusion about who I was and who I wanted to be—a person separate from my parents and my family.

  If you can tap into those feelings, you can tap into the emotions of the kids currently going through all the things you’ve already gone through.

  More random ramblings:

  Don’t try to be cool by playing to trends that are hip with tweens. You don’t want to be the obnoxious Uncle Morty dropping down to the rumpus room to rap with the kids about all the groovy things they’re doing. (Nothing is groovy anymore, Uncle Morty. Nothing.)

  Remember Silly Bandz? Of course not. And you’re not alone. But a few years ago, Silly Bandz, those brightly colored and multishaped rubbery bracelets were all the rage in every school I visited. So much so that some schools banned them because the lunchtime Silly Bandz swap scene was getting a little too intense in the cafeteria.

  Now nobody knows what Silly Bandz are. I am very glad I never built a whole plot around them.

  Same with fidget spinners. They were everywhere. They, too, were banned in many schools, the same way Super Balls were when I was a kid. Now fidget spinners are nowhere (except on the floor of the United States Senate).

  Ditto for slang, daddy-o.

  “She’s so extra” in 2020 means she’s over-the-top. By 2021, who knows. It might mean she’s a background player in a movie.

  “Fire” is now something cool. In a year or two, it’ll probably just mean a roaring blaze or a Bruce Springsteen song.

  I have found two words that have withstood the test of time: “cool” and “awesome.” That’s about it. Okay. Maybe a few more: Bogus. Random. Lame. Wimp. Weenie.

  Watch out for current cultural references. I once had to push back against an editor who wanted me to describe my red-headed hero as a shorter version of Shaun White, the professional snowboarder and skateboarder. Back in 2010 (which is literally a lifetime ago for your young readers), “the Flying Tomato,” as he was known, was the coolest, hippest red-haired ginger dude going. Today? Not so much. A fifth-grader would read that reference and go, “Huh? Shaun who?”

  You don’t want to include anything that will dramatically date your book because here is one of the many beauties about writing for this audience: There is a new group of fifth-graders every year. Your mystery has a chance to live a very long shelf life if kids, teachers, and librarians fall in love with it. My number one bestseller (other than the books I write with Mr. Patterson) was and still is Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library. It came out in 2013. Most of its first readers are in college now. But every year, thousands of new kids discover it. Don’t make it hard for the children of the future to fall in love with your mystery.

  When writing for eight-to-twelve-year-olds, I encourage you to write “up.” There is a reason that most of my protagonists are twelve. Eight-year-olds will gladly read about someone slightly older. A nine-year-old will not read about somebody slightly younger. (Because “Eight-year-olds are such babies.”)

  Speaking of characters, make your cast as diverse as you possibly can. That’s the real world real kids live in. “Own Voice” stories are being snapped up by publishers all over the kidlit world today. If you write about a cultrual group other than your own, it pays to have what are being called “sensitivity readers” check your manuscript. They will advise you about issues of authenticity. I’ve been very fortunate that my publishers use this technique to vet my work prior to publication.

  Have fun. Remember, kids love to laugh. Poop, fart, and underpants weren’t arbitrary choices for the start of this essay. I once attended a Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conference—and yes, you should join SCBWI if you’re serious about writing for kids, the same way you joined MWA because you’re serious about writing mysteries—and heard the very witty, very smart Marvin Terban give a talk entitled “Laugh It Up! Why Humor in Children’s Books Is Essential, and How to Make Your Books Funnier.” According to his research (yes, he really did research), “poop,” “underpants,” and “fart” are the funniest words for kids in our target audience. Hmmm, I wonder if that’s why F-A-R-T was featured so prominently in the short story I wrote for MWA’s Super Puzzletastic Mysteries collection.

  A few more things:

  Adults shouldn’t help kids solve the mysteries. Where’s the fun in that?

  Avoid yucky stuff. When I first started writing for kids, I told everybody I was doing YA, young adult. My editor said, “No, this is MG. Middle grades.” (Today, I might drill down even further and say that the vast majority of my books are upper elementary—third through sixth grades, not seventh or eighth.)

  I asked my editor, “What’s the difference between young adult and middle grades?”

  He told me something I’ll never forget. “In middle-grade books, the boys and girls like each other but they don’t like each other.”

  Every once in a while, we might sprinkle in a hint of romance or a crush, but we avoid all the mushy stuff, like kissing. I sometimes say I write “prehormonal” stories.

  When writing for kids, I try to remember taking my nephew Sam to see Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace. He was nine or ten at the time. Sam loved all the chase scenes and the exciting space battles and the cool gizmos. When folks started smooching? He stood up, turned around, and banged his head against the seat cushion until I advised him the yucky stuff was all done and we were back to the explosions.

  Which reminds me: Kids have video games and apps and YouTube videos and a world of fast-paced entertainment at their fingertips. Do not be boring. Do not describe things like dew droplets clinging to blades of grass. Cut to the chase scenes and space battles and cool gizmos, metaphorically speaking. As Elmore Leonard so famously said, leave out the parts nobody wants to read. That goes double for kids. A lot of kids don’t want to read at all. You have to hook them with your first sentence and take them on a ride. Your mystery has to be as exciting as a killer game of Fortnite. (If Fortnite is still a thing when this essay is published. See above: do not write to trends.)

  Finally, I leave you with the same words I tell kids who ask me on school visits how they can become a writer: Read, read, read. Write, write, write.

  Somebody on Twitter recently said you need to read at least one hundred books in a genre before you dare attempt to write one. I’m not into numbers. But I do recall that when that editor gave me the challenge of turning my creepy adult thriller The Crossroads into a spooky story for kids, the first thing I did was head to the bookstore. I picked up Louis Sachar’s Holes and Carl Hiaasen’s Hoot and the first Harry Potter book. I read them, and more important, I studied them. I tried to figure out what made their particular clockworks tick.

  As I continued to write for children, I went to the books that were winning children’s choice state book awards, because kids were the ones voting for those winners.

  If you really want to write for kids, read what kids really want to read. Avoid the broccoli books. The ones that are “good for children.”

  And think about the books you liked to read when you were young. How they made you feel. The friends you found between their pages. For many adults, the books we read when we were eight to twelve are the ones we remember all our lives.

  So wake up your child. Not the one sleeping in the next room—that’s just bad parenting. No, I’m talking about the one still hanging around inside of you.

  I’m guessing that child is eager to come out and play.

  And maybe even help you solve a mystery.

  ELIZABETH SIMS

  Occasionally I talk to schoolchildren about writing. I create suspense by asking them how many sheets of paper it takes to write a novel. They guess, and suddenly they very much want to know how many sheets of paper it takes to write a novel. No matter what they guess, they’re always shocked and horrified when I unveil the foot-high stack of handwritten pages of rough draft o
f one of my novels. They’ve just experienced suspense and a payoff, though they don’t realize it.

  When I ask what you need to write a story of suspense, inevitably one kid yells, “Put in a bad guy!” Good advice, if obvious. Readers must stick with you to the end, and suspense is the foremost element that keeps them turning pages.

  The Young Adult Mystery

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

  KELLEY ARMSTRONG

  Perhaps the biggest question YA writers get from aspiring writers is “What can’t I do in YA?” I was once on a panel where an audience member asked that question, and another author said there were only two things you can’t do in young adult: bestiality and boring. Someone then mentioned a YA romance with shape-shifters and on-the-page sex, and she revised her answer to “Boring, then. You just can’t do boring.”

  I’ve used that anecdote many times, because it accomplishes two things. First, it establishes the cardinal rule of YA: “Don’t be boring.” Second, if a writer is shocked by the bestiality joke, they may need to read more young adult fiction and divorce themselves from any idea that it is “for children.” Let’s start with that: the reading level and expectations of teenagers.

  Teen Reading Level

  The concept of teenagers is a relatively recent one. The word is first seen in the early 1900s, but the concept of a truly separate stage between childhood and adulthood didn’t really catch on until the mid-twentieth century. For most of history, teenagers have been considered young adults, and that’s the term we use for fiction aimed at readers in their teens. That’s also how we need to think of them. As young adults. Not old children.

  When I ask writing students to guess what grade level they write at, most say “high school.” They’re college educated themselves and proud of their writing ability. Yet their work rarely exceeds grade seven or eight. Most newspapers are written at a grade-five level. Commercial fiction averages only slightly higher. That isn’t an insult to the writing level—it’s proof that we underestimate how young readers are when they reach full reading comprehension. Teen readers have reached that stage. Therefore, you do not need to simplify your writing for them.

  Teens are capable of reading a mystery as complex as any written for adults. Indeed, many of us were reading adult fiction when we were teenagers. I was devouring Agatha Christie and Stephen King before I reached my teens, and that is not uncommon among readers of my generation, when there was little available for teen readers. What today’s teen thriller reader expects is a fully complex story about fully complex characters… who just happen to be teenagers, like them. You should not feel the need to complicate your prose or raise your vocabulary (and please, don’t raise it to “teach” them) but neither do you need to simplify.

  Young Adult Readers

  So, who reads young adult mysteries? The obvious answer is “young adults,” but it’s a little more complicated than that. The target audience is teenagers, but it’s estimated that at least half of YA readers are adults. While there is “young YA” aimed at middle-grade and early high school readers, most major publishers are looking for crossover appeal.

  What that means is, again, that we do not want to simplify our prose or story complexity. Adults who read YA are looking for a unique reading experience, not “an easy read.” What it doesn’t mean, though, is that we focus on the adult audience. These mysteries are intended for teens, to reflect their lives in a way adult fiction does not. Write with those teens in mind and just remember, if you’re tempted to “write down,” that half your readers may be adults.

  Diversity

  While diversity is making ripples in adult fiction, a proper understanding of the issues—and respect for them—is essential to entering the mainstream YA market. Diversity is a huge concern in YA, and I expect that will not change until we see a YA bookshelf that accurately reflects the diverse teenage population.

  Diverse books reflect the world teens see around them. For most, that is a population rich in variety of all kinds—race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, neurodiversity, and ability. That does not mean that YA writers have a checklist for characters. Instead, we naturally write the world in all its complexity because that is what teens see, and we’re striving for authenticity. If you’re new to this mindset, look at your character cast. How many are white, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, and neurotypical? If it’s “most” or even “half,” take a closer look at the teen community you’re trying to reflect.

  Now that you have a diverse cast of characters, do your research to portray them accurately, just as you would do research to make sure you portray a lawyer or FBI agent accurately. Then make sure your critique partners, beta readers, or editors include people from the communities you’ve written about to ensure you haven’t made errors. If you have a major character from a community that is not your own, consider hiring a sensitivity reader.

  (Note that in this section I’ve used terms common in discussions of diversity. If any of them are unfamiliar to you, researching them is an excellent place to start forming a groundwork of knowledge. If an editor asks whether there are, for example, any neurodiverse characters in your book, you’ll want to be able to answer authoritatively.)

  Own Voices and Cultural Appropriation

  In adult fiction, the validity of concerns about “Own Voices” and cultural appropriation is debated, often with discomfort and disconcertment. It’s much different in YA, where they are considered valid and serious issues.

  Own Voices means that an author comes from the same marginalized community as their protagonist. It is used only for marginalized characters. When an agent says they want Own Voices works, they do not mean white protagonists from white authors. They mean marginalized protagonists from authors who share that marginalized identity, such as a Black protagonist from a Black writer or an autistic protagonist from an autistic writer.

  Cultural appropriation can occur when a writer writes from a perspective that is not their own. Currently, in adult fiction, doing so is generally considered cultural appropriation only if the book is intended to tackle issues of that identity. For example, if a straight non-Muslim writer wrote a book about a young Muslim man struggling with a secret homosexual relationship, that would be cultural appropriation. Young adult fiction is different.

  Years ago, I wrote a YA trilogy with a part–First Nations protagonist. At the time, that was acceptable because the book wasn’t about her heritage. In that era, the argument was that we needed more diversity in our main characters. While having a writer of that culture would be preferable, there was a lack of diverse published authors to tell those stories.

  Now we recognize that the lack of diverse authors is the problem, not the lack of diverse protagonists. Authors from the dominant culture have traditionally been encouraged to tell their stories and found acceptance in a way that writers from marginalized communities have not. If we say we want diverse stories but we’re fine getting those stories from any writer, regardless of cultural background, then there’s no impetus to seek out Own Voices stories, which most of us can agree is the better option.

  Whether you agree or disagree with the issues of Own Voices and cultural appropriation, as a YA writer, it is important to understand that publishers will want your story to be diverse but that your main character should be from a marginalized community only if you share that identity.

  Gatekeepers

  It’s time to delve into those burning questions of maturity level. In other words, let’s talk about sex… and profanity and violence. First, a quick note on gatekeepers. This is the term used to describe authority figures who stand between young readers and books. This includes parents, teachers, librarians, and others.

  Gatekeeping can serve a very positive purpose. No writer wants their work finding its way into the hands of readers who are not yet emotionally prepared for the content. However, in some cases, gatekeeping is more about blocking books that
the gatekeeper deems inappropriate in general, rather than blocking those inappropriate for a specific reader.

  Teens are very capable of selecting their own fiction, being old enough to shop and have their own library card. Therefore, gatekeepers are less important in teen fiction than in middle grade, but they are still an issue because the library and school market is very important to publishers.

  Maturity Level

  My first YA came out in 2008, and it was considered older YA, rated on some sites as 16+ despite the absence of sexual content and profanity. Now those same books are considered more middle school than young adult. YA has become increasingly mature, in part because many YA readers are not actual teenagers, and in part to answer a question of authenticity—depicting experiences that teenagers can relate to, rather than a fantasy world where they never need to consider questions of sex or sexuality, where they never need to confront or experience darkness or violence. The teens themselves haven’t changed, but they’ve become more vocal about wanting authentically mature fiction.

  Is there room for “sweet” YA? Of course. But when I give writing advice, it is always aimed at the largest market and at traditional publishers, and unless they specifically target younger readers, they’re looking for authentic teen voices and stories.

  Profanity

  When I tackle this subject in a writing workshop, I always jokingly give the “big secret” that teenagers—gasp—swear. The reaction is usually laughter. Most of us know this from our own teen years. Yet a mother once insisted to me that her seventeen-year-old son and his friends never swore. My response, as the mother of teens, was that they did… just not around her. My kids grew up in a rural, religiously conservative area. Their friends never swear in front of adults, but you’d better believe that their language is very different when they think we aren’t around. As the author, you are not the adult in the room. You are another teenager.