Finding the Secret Hiding in Each Tale by Martha Reed

Human brains are hard-wired to consider unseen possibilities. What was that sound? Was something moving in the shadows beyond the firelight? It’s probably how we survived as a species. Couple that with our ability to use our imaginations to create possible solutions and you have the definition of a mystery reader.

Suspense and mystery stories are like a puzzle, containing secrets hidden within secrets. Authors are sleight-of-hand magicians, serving up surprising revelations until the final and amazing reveal. But if there are only seven basic plotlines and story archetypes, how do authors build stories that still delight and surprise astute mystery readers?

I start building stories by thinking of them as word architecture. Once I’ve laid out the pieces of the story (e.g., characters, short- and long-term goals, plot points, and twists) I begin weaving in the simple initial clues and foreshadowing so that a reader will feel satisfied by its ending.

According to the brilliant short story writer, Art Taylor: “But an ending … you’re balancing various strands of a story by that point, working against a reader’s predictions and expectations, trying to make sure your resolution is both surprising and inevitable.”

Presenting an inevitable truth at the story’s end is what has a satisfied reader sitting back in their chair, slapping their foreheads, and saying, “Of course!”

How can a writer achieve an inevitable ending?

1. Foreshadow the twists into the story’s initial paragraphs or section. The reader hasn’t grasped the story yet, so slipping in subtle clues sets up their unconscious expectations while still keeping the clues off the front-of-their-mind radar.
2. State each character’s personal stake in the outcome.
3. Use a surprise twist and up the stakes on the characters.
4. Use another twist and up the stakes again.
5. Mid-story, use more succinct dialogue and shorter sentences to pick up the pace. This also increases the tension.
6. In the final third of the story, present a logical denouement that the reader has already anticipated from the story’s setup. They will feel disappointment that they figured it out. The important thing here is that they are hooked into feeling an emotion.
7. Present the final and inevitable twist. This triggers a new and better emotion, delighted surprise.

How do you create a final and inevitable twist? This prompt has been working for me:

1. Identify a short-term goal for each character. Share these goals with the reader as part of the general exposition. Short-term goals should be stated and obvious since they reveal each character’s desire which drives their actions.
2. Identify a hidden long-term goal for each character. Insert and layer these hidden desires into the story in dialogue and internal monologue. This adds character depth and reader insight.
3. The final inevitable twist is generally wrapped up in the protagonist’s hidden long-term goal. If you’ve layered enough long-term clues earlier in the story, the final twist becomes inevitable.

One last suggestion on developing a final inevitable twist is to consider using the opposite of the protagonist’s hidden long-term goal. This final twist may end up surprising even you, the writer.

What stories have you read that offered great final twists?

Transitions by Marilyn Levinson

If you were to ask me what aspect of writing a mystery novel I find the most difficult, I would have to say transitions. A mystery requires many changes of time and place because sleuths and investigators are constantly on the move as they check out clues and speak to various suspects. I often manage shifts of this kind by starting the next paragraph with phrases such as "after eating a quick lunch in the diner" or "I spent the rest of the afternoon going over emails" or "the following morning, I decided to talk to Mary Smith again." These simple phrases provide a time and place as well as setting the stage for the next scene.

We mystery writers can't simply introduce a murder, offer up an array of plausible suspects, go on a few wild goose chases, get hit over the head for our troubles, then reveal the guilty party. We are storytellers first and foremost. It behooves us to make sure our readers engage with our characters, building up tension and suspense as we first throw suspicion on Suspect A then on Suspect B, until the final denouement. As the author of cozy mysteries, I'm obliged to cover a lot more territory than just the murders my sleuth is trying to solve.

For example, in my Haunted Library series, my sleuth Carrie Singleton is head of the library's programs and events. I transition from scenes of her everyday work to those of  her sleuthing. Carrie has many relationships, and they are all essential to the series. I need to interpose scenes featuring Carrie and her friends, her boyfriend, her relatives, Evelyn the ghost, and Lieutenant Mathers, the police chief among scenes related to the mystery. These all require transitions. So do scenes of action segueing into passages where Carrie is mulling over some new development in the case or wondering if she and Dylan Avery will ever marry. Then there are the transitions to the secondary theme that appears in each book in the series.

The trick is to make each transition clear, even obvious—perhaps telling why your sleuth is now doing this—so that your reader is never at sea. And that, despite all the various elements you have introduced in your novel, they all dovetail so that your reader has a complete vision of what your sleuth is experiencing as she or he goes about solving the mystery to a satisfying conclusion.

Backstory-itis by Carla Damron

I just completed a rewrite of my novel! (Cue the parade, the fireworks, and the champagne corks popping to the ceiling!) This has been one of the most challenging journeys of my writing career. I blame it on the pandemic, which has polluted everything about our lives, including my creative process. I write every day, but the words don’t flow--they stutter. My focus scrambles on other things: I’ll work on this online jigsaw puzzle. Should I vacuum? A quick check of Facebook again. What’s happened in the news? (The unrelenting, God-awful news). All this prevents me from zeroing in on the page in progress.

But despite all this mind clutter, I COMPLETED a draft! At this phase of my wacky process, I like to listen to my words, so I have the computer, or my Kindle, read it aloud to me. Right away, I heard a problem, and it was a big one: I had developed a severe case of backstory-itis.

For those of you who don’t know, backstory is the history of the character, or the what-happened-before in terms of scene. Most writers I know struggle with this in one form or another. Beginning writers want to load the opening with backstory details: The reader MUST want to know where my opening character was born, who her parents were, and what her favorite childhood memory is! or Let me just explain the history of this town, including that Civil War battle, and the time the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile drove through. I know this because I’ve done it.

As we mature in our craft, we understand that most backstory is simply what WE understand about the character or the situation. While I discovered  that my protagonist had a distant relationship with her father and was completely traumatized by the death of a pet at age twelve, I use that information to make her real on the page. I may never mention it in text. If I do, it will appear at a carefully crafted time: When the reader has grown curious enough about her to wonder. When tension can be amplified by the painful memory.  When what happens in the scene makes more sense in the context of a preceding incident.

Yet here I am with this rewrite, and backstory is polluting the first fifty pages! I know better than this!

I understand how it happened. I gave an introductory chapter to a writing group and they peppered me with questions: Why does she act like she doesn’t care? How could she afford that kind of car? Where did she come from? I mistakenly thought I should answer them, so I did. I inserted backstory into the narrative and, as a result, slowed the momentum to a disastrous halt.

It is fixable. The chapter will be much more engaging to the reader when he/she has the same questions my writing group did—but they have to wait for the answers. They will come as they get closer to the character and begin to understand her odd circumstances. And maybe, it will come in a flashback (I know some of you HATE flashbacks, but bear with me)—probably a single, pivotal moment—that highlights how desperate she once was and reveals what it took for her to become the survivor she is now.

So sorry, online jigsaw puzzle and Facebook, it looks like I’ll be tied up with a backstory-ectomy for quite a while.

What do you think about backstory? How do you judiciously insert it?

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