The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing the Modern Whodunit

by Tapply, William G.

  Remember, something absolutely fascinating happened to this character: He got murdered.

  Sidekicks, lovers, and friends

  Holmes has Watson, Nero Wolfe has Archie, Travis McGee has Meyer, Spenser has Hawk. Every mystery sleuth, like every real-life person, has relatives and lovers, casual acquaintances and best friends, adversaries and enemies. These secondary characters make your sleuth’s life full and complex and interesting. Most of them serve several functions at once.

  Mystery heroes cannot be in more than one place at a time. They also need sounding boards, trusted friends in whom they can confide, allies who can offer them insights and interpretations, raise doubts, and worry about them. Archie Goodwin, for example, does Nero Wolfe’s leg work. Meyer is an economist who can explain complicated business and financial matters to Travis McGee. Hawk opens doors into Boston’s criminal netherworld for Spenser. Police officers have their snitches and their fellow officers. Reporters have their sources.

  The growing and shifting relationships between sleuths and their acquaintances help define them and make them human and accessible to readers. These secondary but important characters offer material for the subplots that deepen and define your sleuth, who may, for example, be a bold and decisive investigator but a hesitant and flawed lover, or who may find himself torn between family commitments and the demands of his investigation.

  Relationships and interactions among friends, family members, lovers, business associates, and even rivals will help to define and complicate and individualize your sleuth and add texture to your story. If secondary characters do none of these things, they don’t belong there.

  Minor characters

  Some characters appear once or twice to serve specific story functions. The taxi must have a driver. The gangster has his bodyguard. The politician has a press agent, the business executive a receptionist. When you draw these characters on your pages you can sketch them with a couple of quick strokes, since you know they’re unimportant.

  But wait. Your readers don’t know that these characters aren’t, in fact, key players. The Senator’s press agent could be the one who hired the hit man to bump off the woman who was blackmailing his boss. The bodyguard might turn out to be an undercover police informant. The receptionist might actually be the CEO’s mistress.

  Shrewd mystery readers trust no one. Everybody’s a suspect. They know that a seemingly minor character can turn out to be the villain.

  Don’t disappoint them.

  You can’t—and shouldn’t—create elaborate backstories for every taxi driver and waitress who accepts a tip from your hero. Don’t exaggerate their importance, and don’t introduce them for the sole purpose of complicating your plot and misleading your readers. Play fair. You know they’re minor.

  But recognize every character’s potential as a suspect. Make those quick descriptive strokes and snatches of dialogue memorable enough to stick in your reader’s mind.

  Mystery readers, like writers, enjoy creating and discarding scenarios. Don’t deprive them of their fun.

  Creating memorable secondary characters

  Mystery readers understand that bartenders and secretaries, cousins and stepdaughters, auto mechanics and family doctors—and, in fact, every character who steps onto the page—could be a suspect. Readers look for clues to the mystery’s solution in these characters. They understand that hastily and carelessly drawn characters, besides being uninteresting, do not make valid suspects. If you ignore the potential of minor characters by making them flat, one-dimensional cut-outs, you will not only write lifeless stories, but you will also deprive yourself—and your readers—of a rich source of suspects.

  If all of your characters except the bad guy are caricatures, readers will solve the case too easily. If none of your minor characters is carefully drawn, they will all be instantly eliminated as suspects by discerning readers. In neither case have you fully exploited the opportunity to create the complexity that mystery readers love.

  Give even your minor players the depth and texture to be possible suspects. Take care to draw none of them as transparently and one-dimensionally good or bad. Let your readers interpret them with some uncertainty.

  The case of the whistling janitor

  Your protagonist enters the lobby of an office building, looking for information. He notices a janitor. Who would know the people who work in this building better than a janitor? Who would be in a better position to have seen or overheard things that can help your sleuth?

  At this point, your shrewd reader thinks, “Yes, and who would have a better opportunity to commit crimes here?” Your janitor thus becomes an instant suspect if you introduce him cleverly. Only you know for sure whether he’s a red herring or the actual villain. Be careful not to give it away too easily. Let your reader wonder about this janitor.

  You might proceed this way:

  A janitor wearing a starched gray shirt and matching pants puttered nearby. He looked about seventy. He was short and wiry, with iron-colored hair slicked back tight against his scalp and white stubble sprouting on his cheeks. He chewed an unlit cigar butt with his stumpy gray teeth. He had sad brown eyes and shaggy eyebrows and a long nose that looked as if it had been broken a few times.

  Inexperienced writers tend to confuse detailed physical description with deep characterization. In this passage, the writer draws a clear picture of the janitor’s physical appearance. But it is a flat, one-dimensional, rather typical portrait that opens no window into the man’s character or life.

  He’s a cliché who offers no surprises, no different from the bubble-headed blonde, the whore with the heart of gold, the wine-guzzling panhandler, or the unscrupulous used-car salesman. Readers yawn at clichéd characters. They’ve met them before.

  Some writers go to the other extreme, writing exaggerated physical descriptions in their effort to create memorable minor characters. They might introduce our janitor this way:

  A janitor wearing a Hawaiian shirt and plaid Bermuda shorts puttered nearby. He was barely five feet tall and weighed at least 300 pounds. He sported a Fu Manchu mustache, and his scalp had been shaved to the skin except for a strip down the center, which was dyed purple and hung behind him in a long ponytail tied with a pink ribbon.

  Grotesquely obese (or emaciated) waitresses, seven-foot (or five-foot) lawyers, and purple-haired (or skull-shaven) teenagers, or characters who are incredibly beautiful (or ugly), smart (or stupid), graceful (or awkward), do not strike the reader as true-to-life. At best, they’re utterly boring; at worst, they make the narrator or point-of-view character (and, by extension, the author) seem superficial and mean-spirited, and they will alienate rather than attract the reader.

  Complicated and interesting characters can be created with quick and simple strokes by giving readers something they don’t expect. For example:

  A janitor wearing a starched gray shirt and matching pants puttered nearby. He was pushing a big canvas basket on wheels. He bent close to me and emptied an ashtray into his basket. He was whistling softly.

  “Pachelbel,” I said.

  He turned. “Huh? You talking to me?”

  “The canon by Pachelbel,” I said. “It’s what you were whistling. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  Major characters can—and should—be developed gradually. But writers need “tags”—quick, deft, unexpected strokes—to bring minor characters to life. A janitor who whistles classical tunes while he sweeps the floor, a beautiful actress who bites her fingernails, or a professor of Renaissance literature who carries a confession magazine under his arm will etch themselves indelibly in your readers’ memories.

  These characters are established and ready to be more fully exploited if and when you choose.

  Remember: In real life, we learn more about people through how they behave and talk than by how they look. How people appear, in fact, is often deceiving; the same is true of fictional characters. If you focus on your characters’ speech, mannerisms, actions, an
d responses to situations in the story, you won’t need to paint detailed physical descriptions of them or make them look strange for them to be memorable.

  Avoid the trap of telling readers what to think about a character. Instead of calling a cab driver “grouchy,” show him acting grouchy through what he says and how he behaves. Don’t call a woman “flirtatious”; instead, show her flirting with a man.

  Mystery readers want to figure it out for themselves, and they resent a writer’s depriving them of the opportunity to draw their own conclusions about characters. The writer’s golden rule—“Show, don’t tell”—is never more important than in creating interesting minor characters.

  Secondary characters play a limited but crucial role in your story’s development. You needed that whistling janitor to give your hero vital information, or to tell him the location of a businessman’s office, or to direct him to the fire escape. He’s a player. He might have a bit part, but without him the story will not work. He deserves your attention.

  Some minor characters, of course, are simply walk-ons. They are the bus drivers, ushers, clerks, waitresses, and others who anonymously populate your story. They serve a function, and should be thought of as objects rather than characters. If a bartender’s only function in your story is to deliver a drink, don’t describe him or give him dialogue. Just call him “the bartender,” as you’d call a passing vehicle “an automobile.” Characterizing him further is not playing fair. It intrudes on your narrative and distorts it by suggesting that the bartender might be more significant than he really is.

  Playing Mr. Potato Head

  When my children were little, they had a toy called Mr. Potato Head. It came with plastic noses, ears, mouths, hats, moustaches, hairpieces, and glasses that they’d mix and match, sticking them onto a potato to create a face.

  To create memorable minor characters, try playing Mr. Potato Head. Draw your characters from your experience. Mix and match the mannerisms, life experiences, and appearances of your friends and the people you encounter. Take note of how people around you act and react, speak and behave. Observe their table manners, reading habits, gestures, expressions. What do they watch on television? How do they spend their free time? What do they read, sing, and drink? How do they dress and wear their hair?

  Don’t seek bizarre combinations or you will create cartoons rather than believable characters. Encourage your reader to wonder about them and care about them. Don’t present too much information; choose a few details, then allow your readers to use their imagination to create their own interpretations.

  Why, for example, does that actress bite her nails? Did her parents mistreat her? Does her husband abuse her? Is she afraid or insecure or guilt-ridden?

  Does the English professor with the confession magazine actually read it? Does he write confessions under a pen name? Is vital information coded into one of the magazine’s stories?

  And the janitor who whistles Pachelbel—were his parents classical music lovers? Was he—or is he—a serious musician? Did an accident, or an enemy, or a cruel trick of fate deprive him of a career as a concert violinist?

  When a quick sketch prompts your readers to ask questions such as these, you’ve done your job.

  Chapter 5

  Point of View: Giving Your Reader a Place to Stand

  The next time you find yourself in a crowded restaurant, take note of which sense impressions have registered on your consciousness. Perhaps you’ve tuned into the restrained argument between the young couple at the next table. Your waitress has a bawdy laugh and an engagement ring on her left hand. From the direction of the kitchen comes the aroma of sautéed garlic, which conjures up ancient memories of your grandmother’s kitchen and reminds you that you skipped lunch.

  Now ask your dinner companion what she notices. The Vivaldi they’re piping in through the speakers is nice, she says, but the clank and clatter of silverware and crockery are terribly annoying. What about the waitress? Oh, she wears too much makeup and her roots are showing. The smell of garlic? Now that you mention it, it is a little unpleasant, isn’t it?

  You and your dining companion bring different memories, interests, sensitivities, moods, and expectations to the simple experience of sitting in a restaurant. Each of you notices different things. Your reconstruction of the evening is therefore radically different from that of your friend.

  You can report it only as you experienced it—from your own point of view. That’s why eyewitness accounts of events often conflict wildly with one another. For a great many reasons, all of us perceive and interpret things differently.

  Of course, in reconstructing your evening at the restaurant you could also recount your dinner companion’s impressions—but only as she chose to share them with you. You probably wouldn’t know why she chose to be critical of the waitress’ grooming or why she failed to notice the argument at the next table, although her facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice, and body language might give you clues. Perhaps she was jealous of the attentions the waitress received from her male customers. For all you know, your friend was eavesdropping but didn’t want to admit it to you.

  You experience your life only through your own point of view. Part of that experience, of course, comes through your interactions with others. But you can never crawl into other people’s heads and experience what they experience, nor can you trust their reports to be entirely accurate or complete. People lie, distort, omit, and otherwise fail to say exactly what they really think. You must impose your interpretations on what others tell you, basing your conclusions both on what you know or infer about them and on your own preconceptions about human nature. In your interactions with others, you must rely on your own point of view.

  In fiction, events are filtered through the five senses of the point-of-view characters and then reported to the reader. Establish your story’s point of view immediately—preferably in the first sentence. Let your readers—the participants in your story’s puzzle-solving quest—know whose shoes they will be walking in as they move through your story, whose eyes and ears and nose they’ll be using to witness your story’s events. Choosing your story’s point of view is one of your most crucial storytelling decisions.

  First person

  The first-person narrator is the character who experiences the events of the story and who interprets and explains them to the reader in his or her own words.

  Kinsey Millhone, for example, is the “I” in Sue Grafton’s popular mystery series. Readers walk—and sometimes run—through the stories in Kinsey’s shoes. They go only where she goes, know only what she knows, see and smell and hear only what she experiences and is aware of and believes is important. Readers don’t know what any of the other characters is thinking or feeling or experiencing. They can only speculate based on what the characters say and how they act in Kinsey’s presence.

  Grafton begins A Is for Alibi by immediately establishing Kinsey’s first-person narrative voice:

  My name is Kinsey Millhone. I’m a private investigator, licensed by the state of California. I’m thirty-two years old, twice divorced, no kids. The day before yesterday I killed someone and the fact weighs heavily on my mind.

  The very first word in Grafton’s book is that first-person possessive pronoun “my,” clearly establishing the first-person point of view. Kinsey is straightforward and candid from the beginning. Readers trust she will tell them the truth, and they have faith that she will share important information with them.

  Through the eyewitness reports of the first-person narrator, readers accumulate information. They test it, interpret it, link it with other bits of information, and formulate theories. Readers understand that things are happening offstage that Kinsey cannot tell us, and they assume that the story’s other characters do not share all of their thoughts with her. Some characters, in fact, may mislead Kinsey. Others could be lying.

  First-person narrators are not omniscient. As a young female California private investigator, Kinsey Mil
lhone has her own ways of perceiving the world. She notices and understands things differently from the way John D. MacDonald’s first-person narrator Travis McGee and Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski do.

  Readers who want to solve the case must take into account Kinsey’s personality and limitations as well as the facts as she recounts them in her narrative.

  It’s no coincidence that so many successful mystery stories are told by first-person narrators. Readers readily identify with the “I” of these tales; it’s a powerful alliance. If readers like and trust the first-person narrator, they feel that they have a friend. It makes for strong reader loyalty.

  Readers meet and learn about other characters directly through the experiences and perceptions of the first-person narrator. For example, early in Linda Barnes’s A Trouble of Fools, Carlotta Carlyle’s doorbell rings:

  It was slightly past noon on a late September Sunday that had no business being so cool, and I wasn’t expecting anybody. I squinted my left eye shut and pressed my right one to the peephole. If I had been expecting someone, it wouldn’t have been the cozy old lady who perched on my front stoop like an inquisitive bird. As I struggled with the last deadbolt, always sticky, she turned up the collar of her woolly pink coat, and got ready to hit the buzzer again. She wore white cotton gloves. I haven’t seen a pair of white gloves in ages.

  “Coming,” I yelled, forestalling the buzzer.

  She was too old for a Mormon missionary, so I steeled myself for the Jehovah’s Witnesses pitch. Possibly Antivivisection. I hoped she was antivivisection. I wondered if I could keep a straight face while I asked her where to donate the parakeet for lab research.