Straight talk from the sisters about blood, sweat and ink
Welcome back to Masterplots Theater! Is your story about a someone on a mission to stop a murderer? Great! But do you know whether it’s a thriller or a mystery? If you’re like me, you might have answered, “It’s both — a mystery thriller!” Thing is, I’ve discovered that mysteries and thrillers are not the …
Continue reading “Masterplots Theater: T is for Thriller”
Heist fiction is not easy to write. It’s fast paced and twisty, and it takes a lot of characters. Over the last two Wednesday posts, I’ve been throwing open the vault and letting out all crime writing secrets. If you need to catch up, you can get more help for your story with Tips for …
Continue reading “Writing The Heist Novel: 7 Character Tips”
As I mentioned last week, I’ve amassed a huge collection of tips on writing a heist. Now, I’m throwing open the vault and letting all my research secrets out. I hope these tips can help my fellow crime writers craft the caper of their dreams. Today it’s all about: The Loot! The prize in a …
Continue reading “Writing a Heist: 5 Tips for Picking the Perfect Loot”
I don’t know anyone who would call a private investigator mystery a cozy. Now there might be some, but I am unaware of them. However, Jinx Schwartz has a series with a snarky female PI that is tightly plotted and fun to read. Similarly, in Sue Grafton’s series, the violence is not graphic. I guess …
Continue reading “The Mystery of Mysteries: 11+ Elements in a Private Investigator Mystery”
In the dictionary “caper” is to “dance or skip about in a lively or playful way.” The caper mystery is the one that plays most with the mystery genre definition. Capers fit into the cozy mystery category. Think of the movies, “Topkapi” or “Ocean’s 11.” O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief” is a classic …
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The traditional mystery is sometimes referred to as a cozy mystery, as I explained in last month’s The Mystery of Mysteries post on the 12 steps to writing a traditional mystery. However, that seems to be more of a U.K. designation. In the U.S., cozy mysteries have special elements that differentiate them from traditional mysteries. …
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Last month, I gave you some homework to be prepared for writing your mystery. If you haven’t yet completed it, there’s still time. To write the mystery that fits your needs, you need to answer these questions. Now on to today’s category: the traditional mystery. Traditional mysteries are reminiscent of mysteries written during the Golden …
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In last month’s post, I described how to pay attention to genre elements when writing a novel. Certainly I don’t mean to imply there are actual rules for how to write mysteries. I think the number of mystery subgenres is evidence enough of that! And just how many mystery subgenres are there? Four. No, no, …
Continue reading “The Mystery of Mysteries: Part 2”
If you search for “how to write a mystery”, 43,900,000 links pop up. It’s no mystery then to conclude that lots of people write about writing mysteries. Maybe there are so many links because there are so many kinds of mysteries. Maybe there are so many links because more people write about writing mysteries …
Continue reading “The Mystery of Mysteries, Part I”
I was hooked on mysteries with my first Nancy Drew (Carolyn Keene). Who wouldn’t want to be her, zipping around in her little red car with her girlfriend, George, and boyfriend, Ned? She was intrepid, daring, smart, and very independent. In the 1950s, when I was reading Nancy Drew books, there weren’t many examples for …
Continue reading “Nancy Drew: Detective…and Writing Teacher?”