Writing Mysteries

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"Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him to the public." - Sir Winston Churchill

WHAT LED YOU TO WRITE MYSTERY NOVELS? Reading mysteries. My day job involved frequent air travel. Needless to say, this gave me lots of waiting on late planes and plane-travel time to read. Airport bookstores were filled with mysteries -- much more interesting reading than the stuff in my briefcase. And I fell into the wrong crowd at work -- mystery readers everyone. They read mysteries, passed them around, talked about them at lunch. So I read mysteries. Soon I found myself addicted to reading mystery novels. This went on several years until I fell into an even worse crowd -- fiction writers.

A friend, who was writing a novel "as a hobby," invited me to her writers group meeting. She said several members were published authors. I was curious as to what "published authors" looked like. Turned out that group looked like perfectly normal people -- several even had responsible day jobs. They were writing their novels a dozen or so pages at a time, engaging in group analysis of what they had done right and what they had done wrong, then writing another dozen pages. I went a few more meetings and learned that the true process of structuring a novel involves trial and error, something just about anybody prone to error can do.

Short story long, I rationalized writing a novel was a harmless enough activity; if all those other people were doing it, I could too; fiction writing is a low-impact sport and I have bad knees; fiction writing isn't any worse an addiction than fiction reading; friction writing is a more honorable pursuit than watching television; I wasn't going to go to the gym anyway because going to the gym always left me in pain; I was old enough to have known a few real characters and to have a few stories that might be worth telling if they were highly fictionalized and all the names changed to protect the guilty. Lots of reasons. None of them well thought out. Anyway, I gave it a try. For better or worse, here we are.

DO YOU OUTLINE THE PLOT BEFORE YOU BEGIN? No. Not me. I prefer to do it the hard way. When I first started writing fiction, I gave outlining a try, because that's what other fiction writers and books on writing fiction tell you to do. But I soon realized that, for me, creative writing is an exploratory process. Worse yet, once created, my characters have minds of their own.

I usually have my opening scene and a "preliminary" ending in mind when I begin, but I figure out the details as my character figure them out. When he or she gets stumped, we take time out to mull the problem over. No doubt it would save time if I could make myself outline, do a story board, draw a road map. But that would make writing fiction as interesting as driving down an Interstate highway where all exits lead to gas stations. I'd rather take a longer, winding, twisting, scenic route and take my chances on serendipity leading me to a delightful byway along the journey.

HOW DO YOU COME UP WITH YOUR PLOTS? I do what most mystery writers do; I start with a murder and the likely crime-solving characters. My principal character is usually an attorney with a day job in the criminal justice system either as prosecutor or defense attorney. By the end of the first chapter, I've usually figured out what his/her other "real life" problems are besides dealing with this "work related" problem. Like real people with 24/7 jobs, my main character has complicated family relationships to sort out. Like real people with 24/7 jobs, my protagonist would much rather be doing something else, but I make him/her stick with the hard work of problem solving anyway.

HOW DO YOU FLESH OUT THE STORY? As the protagonist sets about doing whatever is necessary to solve the crime, he/she reveals more things about him-/herself, the way we learn about friends -- a little at a time and often by the choices made rather than what is said aloud. In the course of the investigation, the protagonist runs across people important to the case and I toss them and their agenda into the mixed salad. Eventually there's enough facts and analysis to figure out who committed the murder and why and I can write "the end" to the story.

HOW DO YOU CONTROL YOUR CHARACTERS? I don't. I'm their mother -- I create them and have ambitions for them and boss them around a little, then I kick them out of the nest and hope for the best. Sometimes a characters manages to change the life I initially had in mind for them. When that happens, the plot morphs into something that I hadn't originally intended, and I go along for the ride.

"Books, the children of the brain" - Jonathan Swift, Tale of a Tub

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L.B. Cobb

"The commonplace becomes extraordinary due to the identities and emotional intensity of the characters" - Midwest Book Review

"A wonderful mix of characters highlights this memorable mystery" - Mystery Scene Magazine