Give Me a Clue With Your
Mystery Fiction Books

You can't be clueless and write mystery fiction books. Although a few I've read leave me wondering...

What exactly is a mystery in this sense? For the purpose of making it simple, a mystery fiction book is one where a crime is committed and we go about discovering who did it. Which is why they are also called "whodunits".

In a sense, this makes it easy for the mystery writer. Figure out the crime and whodunit, present the crime's "riddle" and you're off.


Hook Me, Or Lose Me

Mystery fiction books should start with a bang. Quite often literally. But we should only see the victim, not the one holding the smoking gun. If done well, you readers will then ask "Who?" and "Why?". They'll be hooked.

This is a variation on the point of every novel written. We read because we want to know what's going to happen; or in this case, because we want to know who, why and what happened.

If you write your first page well, your readers will know exactly what your book is going to be about, and thirst to find the answer to the riddle you've set them. But they don't want to figure it out too far in advance of the hero. So be sure to use plenty of twists and turns to hide your intentions to the end.


Confusing the Trail

My daughter used to read Nancy Drew books, a mainstay of mystery fiction books for children. (My series of choice was the Trixie Belden line.) Problem was, my daughter's very bright and soon understood how these books worked. And had solved the mystery to them long before Nancy ever did. So she got bored.

You don't want bored readers (unless you're deliberately creating dull bedtime stories to lull them to sleep). You want to keep them biting their nails, pulling their hair and gnashing their teeth while they try to figure out the convoluted trail of clues you're leaving them.

Just how do you accomplish this? By offhand mention of the ivory handle sticking out from under the pillow on the bed. By the detective's pointed question that gets a knee-jerk response the culprit bites off halfway. By making sure the clues you leave are only on the periphery of the reader's attention, so they'll be missed or barely remembered.

It also helps to have a broad enough cast of characters who move in many directions, intersecting with each other frequently. Who saw whom talking to the victim? Who watched while another crouched spying? Who followed whom to keep an eye on them because they acted suspiciously? The more tangled the web of characters you weave, the better.


Leading Them On

In mystery fiction books, as in many others, it works best to pull your readers along by leaving them hanging at the end of each chapter. You hooked them with your opening, now you want to hook them every time they might put the book down.

To do that, each chapter basically needs a problem to solve. But solving that problem should only create another. This is the rising action used to develop any plot. Each scene builds the basis of the next. Each action causes a reaction, causes another reaction leading without fail to the climax.

If you do it right, your readers won't be able to put the book down until the end. And if you do it really well as a mystery writer, you'll leave them gasping that you managed to fool them up to the last minute.


Mystery Solved

Now that you're near the end, double check that all your clues are in place. If you have a last minute change of plans (she couldn't have done it, she was out of town!), be sure you reconfigure any scenes that need it so that your plot is driven to this end relentlessly.

If you forgot a clue, figure out where it fits in, slip in in unobtrusively and slink quietly away. Make it clear there was no other way it could have happened, no other person, who could possibly have done it.

Then sit back and smile as your readers go "Aha!" If you can leave your trail of clues deftly enough, you'll be writing winning mystery fiction books.

Here's to your next Whodunit!