The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing the Modern Whodunit

by Tapply, William G.

  Now it’s time to assemble these elements into a plot.

  Planning and outlining

  Some successful mystery writers are able to start writing a story with no more than an interesting character, a dramatic first scene, a snatch of witty dialogue, a compelling premise, or even just an opening line. They proceed on the faith that what they write will give them impetus to write more, and that the more they write, the more quickly the momentum will build.

  It’s a process of discovery for them. Their characters say and do surprising things and come to life as they emerge on the page, urging the writer forward.

  Those who feel they don’t need to know where their stories are going when they begin, who rely on their intuitive judgment, unquestionably have powerful instincts. As the words they have written push them along, schemes and concepts that reside in the fuzzy area between conscious and subconscious thought pull them forward. They develop and refine plans as they write. They need to get their story underway before they

  can fully imagine it. As they write, their minds begin to buzz with ideas, options, fragments, and images.

  Other writers take the opposite approach. They will not write a single line until they have meticulously planned and outlined every scene in the story. They know exactly how the story will begin, how it will build to its climax, how it will be resolved, and how it will end. They know the life histories of all their characters and everything they will do and say. In effect, they finish all the creative work before they sit down to write the first page.

  Planning and creativity

  For beginning writers of mystery fiction, the most sensible approach emphasizes thorough planning and structuring while welcoming creativity and spontaneity. Think through and carefully organize the shape and development of your story, but always remain open to new ideas as you proceed. If you prefer to work from a long detailed outline, be willing to shift directions and alter it once your story is underway. Nothing fires the imagination like unleashing characters on the page. You should always listen to your imagination.

  You can begin writing once you have asked all the “what if” questions, so you know how and why the crime was committed; you have thought hard and long about the dynamics between villain and victim; you know who your key characters are and how each one will either help your hero or complicate his quest—or, in some cases, do both.

  At this point, your writing plan is a sequence of several key scenes that proceed according to cause-and-effect logic. These are the confrontations and major turning points that change your story’s direction and are essential to its progress.

  You know where you’re going. You have a destination in the form of a climactic scene where the pieces of the puzzle will come together.

  Don’t begin writing until you have fully imagined these elements—sequence, the key scenes, and the climax. Write them down, expand them, give them detail. Before you try to write the first line of your story, construct a narrative outline. There may be plenty of gaps—unimagined scenes and bridges that you know must occur between the key plot points, characters you have not thought much about, subplots that you trust will grow organically from your story’s central spine.

  Outline and plan until you’re sick of it. You’ll know you’re ready to start writing when you cannot bear the thought of planning and outlining for another minute.

  By then your first scene is vivid in your mind, and you’re eager to get it down on paper. You are confident that you will find the route to your story’s first plot point, and from there you’ll find your way to the second, and so on to the climax.

  No matter how fully you’ve imagined your scenes or how excited you are about executing them, don’t write scenes out of sequence. Let your key plot points work as writing goals for you. Let them pull you forward. They’ll motivate you and make you eager to keep writing.

  Know where you’re going, and have at least a general idea of how to get there. But remain open-minded. Listen to your characters and follow the new ideas that emerge as your story unfolds. Be prepared to follow the new directions that did not occur to you in your original plan.

  As you gain experience, you’ll develop your own ways of combining planning with spontaneity. You may, for example, write your climactic scene first. Or you may write several key scenes, then fill in the spaces between them with the bridges and other scenes that link them. The more you write, the more likely you will be to develop an approach that combines careful planning with spontaneity. Learning how to take maximum advantage of thoughtful planning without stifling your own creativity comes from practice and experience.

  Tempo, rhythm, and pace

  Like a complex symphony, effective mystery fiction should unfold in ever-changing rhythms and tempos. It should alternate movements in allegro, andante, presto, and adagio. The tense dialogue scene needs a contemplative bridge before the car chase. The intrusion of the burglar is more dramatic when it interrupts a quiet love scene.

  The sequence in which scenes occur must take into account pace and tempo as well as the demands of the storyline. The tense scenes in which Robert Parker’s Spenser tracks down and confronts dangerous killers, for example, are broken up by quiet times in the kitchen and tender moments with Susan Silverman. Between interviewing suspects and witnesses, Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone goes jogging or visits Rosie’s, her neighborhood bar. John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee takes a break from his confrontations with evil men to have a drink with Meyer, his philosophical friend. Many writers use humor to provide relief from suspense.

  These changes of pace allow readers to pause, take a deep breath, process what has happened so far, and build up their anticipation for the next conflict. Your story is an experience for your readers. It shouldn’t put them to sleep—but it shouldn’t exhaust them, either.

  Cliffhangers and other momentum builders

  Thomas Harris ends a chapter in the middle of The Silence of the Lambs in the intimate point of view of Catherine Martin, who is imprisoned in a deep pit in a dark cellar:

  Except for shock and disorientation, it would not have been so long in coming to her. As it was, the skin emollient did it. Skin. She knew who had her then. The knowledge fell on her like every scalding awful thing on earth and she was screaming, screaming, under the futon, up and climbing, clawing at the wall, screaming until she was coughing something warm and salty in her mouth, hands to her face, drying sticky on the backs of her hands as she lay rigid on the futon, arching off the floor from head to heels, her hands clenched in her hair.

  The next chapter begins:

  Clarice Starling’s quarter bonged down through the telephone in the shabby orderlies’ lounge. She dialed the van.

  Catherine Martin is left there, trapped and screaming, for the reader to worry about while the story shifts to Clarice Starling’s search. This is a classic cliffhanger.

  In multiple point-of-view stories, scenes often end with the hero figuratively (and sometimes literally) hanging from a cliff by his fingertips. Will he manage to crawl to safety before the bad guy finds him and stomps on his hands? Will the heroine get there in time to rescue him before he loses his tenuous grip?

  Sorry. He’s left hanging there, and the story shifts to the abandoned warehouse, where the heroine finds herself tied to a chair with a time bomb ticking under her. She struggles to untie the knots. The clock ticks away the seconds. …

  The scene shifts again, this time to the villain, speeding across the desert in his pickup truck, pursued by his vengeful former partner. His tire blows out, he skids, his truck careens off the road. …

  And so on. Every scene ends before it’s resolved. Provided readers have come to care about what happens to the characters, cliffhangers keep them turning the pages.

  Cliffhangers don’t work the same way in the single point-of-view mystery. Readers walk only in the shoes of the heroine, who cannot proceed to search for her partner until she escapes from the warehouse. The hero cannot confront the vill
ain until he pulls himself to safety from that cliff.

  Some mystery writers, understanding that readers tend to stop reading at the end of chapter, keep them turning the pages by ending their chapters at a tense moment in the middle of a scene. Readers cannot put down a book when a character they care about has only ten seconds to extricate himself from that chair and race out of the warehouse before the bomb goes off. They must see how—or if—he does it. And so they keep reading.

  The cliffhanger can be overused. If every chapter ends in the middle of the dialogue, or with the unexpected intrusion of a mysterious stranger, or with the ringing of the telephone, or with a gunshot, readers will begin to feel manipulated. They don’t keep turning the pages just to see who says what next, or whether the mysterious stranger is friend or foe, or who’s calling in the middle of the night, or whether the bullet hits anybody. They keep reading because they care about the characters, are puzzled by the mystery, and have an emotional investment in the hero’s quest.

  If each scene does its job, it moves through the stages of goal, conflict, resolution, and new obstacle. It advances the story and creates a new problem for the hero, which builds genuine momentum and suspense and impels readers to move on to the next scene, and so on to the end of the story.

  When it’s done well, readers will say, “I couldn’t put the book down.” But if they decide to mark their place at the end of the chapter and turn out the light, that’s O.K.—as long as they look forward to picking up your book again.

  Cliffhanger chapter endings build short-term momentum. They work best in long complicated scenes—especially near the story’s climax. Toward the end of A Trouble of Fools, for example, Linda Barnes ends a chapter this way:

  Damn. There was the matter of the bartender. If it was the same bartender, old Billy what’s-his-face, and if he remembered me, recalled my questions, my license, my card, I’d be sunk.

  Maybe I’d have gone in anyway. Maybe I’d have taken some Pulitzer Prize photos, maybe I’d have gotten zip. I’ll never know.

  Flashing blue lights appeared out of nowhere, racing up behind me.

  Shit. I smacked my horn in pure frustration, pulled over. The cops. Always there when you need them.

  Readers are unlikely to stop reading here. But cliffhangers do not create a page-turning frenzy in readers if the story’s other elements aren’t working. And if those elements are used effectively, you don’t need many cliffhangers to keep your readers’ attention.

  Climax

  The climax of a mystery story is the scene in which the key puzzle piece is found, enabling the hero or heroine to identify, confront, and subdue the villain. The final obstacle has been hurdled. The villain is revealed and justice is done.

  Effective climactic scenes combine surprise, suspense, and satisfaction. Everything that has come before has led to this moment. Here, finally, the puzzle pieces all come together. The climax cannot be a let-down.

  If readers have already solved the mystery, there is no surprise. It’s an anticlimax, the sign of a failed story.

  A suspenseful climax keeps readers in doubt until its resolution. Does the hero know what he’s doing? Has he solved the puzzle correctly? Will the villain escape? Will the hero survive?

  A satisfying climax brings together the thematic threads of the story. The puzzle pieces are assembled, the villain is identified and brought to justice, and the hero or heroine triumphs. When the story’s moral questions are complex and contradictory, its resolution may be correspondingly ambiguous and ironic. But in mystery fiction, justice is served.

  Climactic resolutions to avoid

  Your heroine has solved the mystery. She’s verified her suspicions, tracked down the villain to his hiding place, and now she confronts him. The problem, of course, is that this villain has killed one or more people as the story has progressed. He has proven to be a worthy adversary for your sleuth—elusive, clever, powerful, skilled, and determined to get away with his crimes.

  Meanwhile, you have portrayed your heroine as smart and stubborn and highly motivated to solve the puzzle, but otherwise an average person, someone your readers can easily identify with.

  Now she faces this worthy villain. How will she triumph? Avoid these solutions:

  1. Deus ex machina. Greek plays sometimes ended with a character playing Zeus or Apollo or Hera being lowered by ropes and pulleys onto the stage. The god character then overpowered the villain, saved the heroine, and solved all of the other problems that had been created in the play. Greek audiences accepted the intervention of a god in their plays because they believed that the gods actively controlled the events in their own lives.

  Few modern readers believe in meddling gods. They will not accept an ending in which coincidence or luck resolves what appears to be an impossible predicament. In western movies, the cavalry arrives just as twelve evil men are about to cut the throats of a helpless pioneer family. In detective stories, the police break down the door just as the villain is about to pull the trigger on the handgun he holds to your heroine’s head.

  If the arrival of the police or the cavalry or the night watchman or the heroine’s loyal German shepherd has been planned, or if the savior’s appearance makes sense because you’ve prepared your reader for it in advance, then it will not appear to be coincidence. If it flows logically from the story, in other words, it can work.

  Here are some other examples of unsatisfactory endings that are tantamount to divine intervention: Your heroine, who has no particular experience with guns, kills the villain with a lucky shot; the villain, normally athletic and sure-footed, trips and falls and cracks his head on the corner of a table; an unexpected thunderstorm knocks out the electricity just as the villain reaches for your heroine’s throat; the villain’s car, in which he’s carrying the bound-and-gagged heroine, runs out of gas in front of a police station.

  Endings such as these are easy to write but hard for readers to swallow.

  2. The suddenly invincible hero or heroine. You have created a desperate and resourceful villain. He has outwitted and overpowered and murdered several strong and capable people already. Now your heroine, using, for example, her skills at computer programming, has identified him. When she tells him what she knows, he says he must kill her to protect his secret. Your heroine then subdues him with karate kicks. Unless her karate expertise has been clearly established earlier in the story, this resolution will seem as contrived as the arrival of the cavalry.

  3. The suddenly fallible villain. The police and the FBI have failed to bring your villain to justice. Everyone who has confronted him has been killed. Now, at the climactic moment, your heroine faces him—and he does something stupid or clumsy that allows her, unlike all those who have previously tried and failed, to subdue him.

  This sort of unmotivated change in the villain is as unconvincing as the sudden invincibility of the heroine.

  4. The conversion of the villain. Your heroine confronts the man who has murdered several people in cold blood. She condemns his evil ways. He nods and says, “You’re absolutely right. I’m ready to give myself up. Take me in.”

  Unless you have portrayed your villain as a morally complex man, perhaps highly religious and tortured by his deeds, his sudden conversion will strike your reader as lucky and coincidental—another variation on the intervention of the gods.

  Writing effective and believable climactic scenes requires all of your creativity. There is no formula. Your story’s resolution must follow logically from the strengths and abilities and personalities of the characters and from the events that have come before. And yet it must not seem preordained. The climax must bring all of your story’s tension and conflict to a peak. It’s the moment when the forces of good and evil confront each other. Make it believable, make it logical—and make it a surprise.

  Denouement

  In the denouement that follows the climactic scene, the mystery’s solution is explained and order is restored. Here the stray puzzle pieces are
gathered and sorted and the tangled threads are unraveled. All of the confusing and seemingly random events that have occurred, and all of the characters who have appeared in the story, are rearranged into a logical pattern. Subplots and secondary conflicts such as romantic relationships are resolved. The order destroyed by the murder at the story’s outset is now reestablished.

  In some cases the climax can incorporate the story’s denouement. The hero or heroine assembles the clues in a logical way. She tracks down the villain, confronts him, subdues him, and levels her accusation. The villain admits his guilt and confirms the heroine’s suspicions. Remaining questions of motive and means and the roles of other characters are answered in the climactic scene.

  When the climax leaves significant questions unanswered, however, an additional scene, the denouement, is necessary. Readers are disappointed if the story ends with plot threads left dangling.

  Beware of long rambling confessions. In real life, villains don’t typically bare their souls to the good guys who best them. Fictional villains shouldn’t, either. Avoid denouements in which the point-of-view character—either in question-and-answer dialogue with another character or in narration directed at the reader—explains how he or she figured it all out. The climax should resolve as much of the story as possible, and the denouement should be completed in two or three short scenes.

  Remember: The story is the sleuth’s quest of detection. When he or she solves the puzzle, the story is effectively over.

  Prologues and epilogues

  A prologue is usually a short, focused, single scene showing an event that occurred before the time in which the story itself unfolds. Similarly, an epilogue concerns events that occur after the story’s climax and denouement.