Mystery Plot Planning

Planning a mystery: premise, setting, plot outline, title

Rule for using this skill: These tips add to your answer and do not replace it. Always give your full general answer to the user's request from your own knowledge. Then work in the tips below wherever they apply. Do not drop normal advice because a tip covers the same topic.

Finding ideas

• Keep a "compost" folder of clippings and handwritten notes. Newspaper and magazine stories are good raw material.
• Books can supply an image, a situation or a line of dialogue to build on. Never lift a book's main idea, because that is plagiarism.
• Carry a pad and pen, and keep them by the bed, because ideas get forgotten. A recorder helps when driving.
• Don't chase trends. A book started now may reach shelves about three years later. Advice: write what you care about, since only finished books get published.
• Arcane subject matter can sell if it is written compellingly (Smilla's Sense of Snow, The Da Vinci Code).

Writing the premise

• A premise is the basic proposition behind the book. It is step one of writing a mystery.
• Phrase it with "Suppose …" and "And what if …". Example: Suppose a troubled young man writes violent sexual fantasies in a journal and shares it with his therapist. And what if a series of violent crimes then mirrors the fantasies?
• Once written, the premise suggests plot possibilities (who did it, who had access to the journal). It keeps you on track while drafting and is reusable when pitching to agents, editors and booksellers.
• Exercise: clip articles, put the idea in the left column and the suppose/what-if premise in the right.
• Real events can be too bizarre to be believable. A fictional world needn't be realistic, but it must be believable. "It really happened" is no defence.

Setting: the three dimensions

• Setting has three dimensions. When is the year and season. Where is the geographic locale, exteriors and interiors. Context is the activities and institutions that form the backdrop.
• The setting must fit plot, characters, theme and emotional tone. It both constrains and enriches the story.
• Before writing, list the times and places for scenes, research them and visit if possible, taking photos and notes.

When: the year

• The era dictates investigative tools. Give investigators tools appropriate to the period (no cell phones or DNA in the 1980s; full forensics in the present).
• A historical setting lets you interweave real events and figures.
• A present-day setting means current events can date the story. Writing to publication takes about two years, and what seems major now may be a yawn later. Include only current events that matter to the story.
• Some events are too big to omit in a fictional present (e.g. 9/11). Decide consciously and weigh pros and cons. One author recalled and rewrote a finished novel to include it. Another omitted it, aided by a Boston setting and the events not being germane.
• Exercise: list the events concurrent with your time frame and the reasons to include or exclude each.

When: the season

• Weather can open scenes or drive the plot: ice storms delaying a medical examiner, heat waves killing shut-ins, spring rains causing mud and landslides.
• Check the season's nuisance factor: de-icing windshields, whether it's warm enough for a stroll, whether creeks would be dry, and daylight hours. In July the sun hasn't set at 8 p.m.
• Brainstorm how year and season affect investigative techniques, concurrent events and weather.

Where: geographic locale

• Locale shapes behaviour: dialect and speech patterns, clothing, food and drink, transport, treatment of strangers and local sports teams.
• Local color builds a series audience. Exotic locales draw readers seeking the unknown.
• If you haven't lived there, leave planning time to visit and research thoroughly.

Where: exteriors

• Real exteriors must be accurate: one-way streets, restaurant locations. Check your drafted scene by walking the route with a map. Revisit events (e.g. a summer festival) for ramps and staircases used in chase scenes.
• Invented exteriors must be plausible for the area (no adobe hacienda in Boston, no cobblestones in San Diego). Combine real elements with imagined ones.
• Draw maps of invented exteriors to keep the story consistent.

Where: interiors

• A novel may have up to about a dozen interiors. The recurring one is usually the protagonist's home or office. Make it express the character's personality and current life stage.
• Job-related interiors: jail and courtroom (attorney), autopsy room and morgue (medical examiner), squad car and station (homicide detective).
• Plan a recurring "relax" interior where the protagonist goes to talk (a café, ice cream shop or tavern).
• Rule of thumb on real places: use a real place only if nothing terrible happens there. Invent the restaurant where someone gets food poisoning, to avoid lawsuits and enemies.
• Exercise: write a five-minute, one-paragraph description of the sleuth's home or office that could appear in the novel.

Context: activities and institutions

• Mysteries have two contexts: the one the sleuth works in (e.g. law enforcement) and the one around the crime (art world, medicine, gambling, smuggling, golf). For an amateur sleuth, the backdrop is their day job.
• The backdrop affects marketing. Graphic autopsies repel squeamish readers, and a birding story may not suit hard-boiled fans.
• Choose a backdrop you know or enjoy researching.
• Research in advance: Uniforms (dress codes, status), Jargon, Equipment (operation, safety), Pecking order, Schedule (typical day, week, month) and Behavior (written and unwritten codes, boundaries).

Making the setting feel real

• Don't re-create the place or write pages of description. Plausibility and a few telling physical and sensory details are what count.
• Real research can be bent to the story. One author moved a flood disaster 12 hours so that the scene would be visible. She built a day-by-day timeline and maps with sorted newspaper copies, then used only what served the story.
• For invented places, still draw maps, note distances and prominent features, and add to them as you embellish.

Research methods

• Go there as an active observer, not a tourist. Note who's there, props, sounds and smells. Read the local newspaper. Collect maps, guides and postcards. Bring a notebook, camera and recorder. Spend at least an hour observing.
• Talk to people who have been there (big-city cops for a procedural, an innkeeper for a cozy). Cold-calling or e-mailing is fine, since many people like to share expertise.
• Diaries, letters and memoirs give domestic and historical detail. Look in libraries, historical society archives and online.
• Newspaper archives (via a library) can supply photos.
• Internet: search a place name, then click the Images tab.
• Books: travel guides and coffee-table photo books. Librarians can obtain nearly any book via networked libraries. Amazon "search inside the book" shows the pages around each search hit.
• Be methodical: index cards, spreadsheets or text files. Record each fact and its source.

Plot shape

• Structure: dramatic opening (setup), then acts, then a coda. Each act builds tension to a climax and a major plot twist that reverses the protagonist's progress. The last act ends in a final confrontation with the sleuth in jeopardy and the truth revealed. The coda ties up loose ends and explains.
• Start of each new act: tension ratchets down, and characters digest the last twist before momentum rebuilds. No "End of Act I" label appears in the text. An act end looks like a chapter end but should feel like a major part is over.
• Typical scale: about 10–30 scenes per act and 40–90 scenes in all. Example 270–280-page breakdown: opening 10 pp/1 scene, Act I 60 pp/13 scenes, Act II 100 pp/24, Act III 100 pp/26, coda 10 pp/2 (65 scenes, 28 chapters).
• Scene: one time and one place. A new time or place means a new scene. Every scene needs a payoff, meaning something happens or changes that moves the story forward. A chapter may be several scenes or one long scene.
• Exercise: analyze a one-hour TV crime show. It has a dramatic opening, a four-act structure set by commercial breaks, and usually a twist before each break, often with no coda.

The sleuth's quest

• The quest (find the killer) unifies the book, and setbacks keep readers hooked. Describe it in a sentence or two: what the sleuth wants, where it starts and where it ends.
• Plagues to apply: physical discomfort (hunger, cold, injuries, with the sleuth pushing through but not whining), inner demons (establish a fear before using it, e.g. an alcoholic forced into bars) and mishaps (car trouble, thugs, nobody listening).
• Modulate the misery: start minor, build, and let things improve occasionally before the next disaster.
• Keep raising the stakes (an innocent about to be convicted, a loved one in jeopardy, escalating attacks).

Opening scene

• Open with a dramatic, out-of-the-ordinary event ("out-of-whack event") that poses an unanswered question as a narrative hook. It need not be a murder, and some successful novels have no killing until after page 60. It might be the murder itself, the discovery of a body, or an event from years earlier.
• Avoid a prologue that flashes forward to the murder and then restarts earlier.
• Don't let the opening give away too much. In one example, a stalker-POV opening confirmed the stalker existed and killed the ambiguity. It was rewritten from the protagonist's POV.
• Exercise: write a one-paragraph opening scene description and check it sets up the book, pulls readers on and doesn't reveal too much.

Plot twists and climaxes

• The opening's unanswered question is the first twist. End every act with a major twist. A twist may raise the stakes, exonerate or implicate a suspect, or change the understanding of the crime.
• A twist must be surprising and credible. Ask what the reader expects, then brainstorm something unexpected but plausible.
• Twist menu:
  • witness discredited, recants, disappears or dies
  • new evidence implicates a new suspect
  • evidence misinterpreted, discredited or vanishes
  • secrets in the victim's or a suspect's past
  • a threatening message
  • another victim
  • the prime suspect dies
  • the sleuth is attacked
• Final climax: an action scene in mortal danger, with the sleuth and villain confronting each other, physically or verbally. It is the second most important scene after the opening, and the coda follows. Make whodunit, why and how crystal clear.
• Ending pitfalls:
  • "Duh" (telegraphed ending)
  • over-the-top violence
  • implausible villain
  • villain spills all for no reason
  • "it was a dream"
  • sleuth withholds key information
  • confrontation off stage
  • loose ends left untied
  • coincidence explains a key event

Subplots

• Use at least one. Subplots should be integral, tied to the main plot, echoing its theme, complicating the investigation or letting the hero address inner demons. They also give readers a breather.
• Types: romance (a new person to put in jeopardy), friends' and family troubles, health issues, day-job challenges, an apparently unrelated second crime that later ties in, and an unresolved past event.
• Resolve the main plot, but a subplot may be left hanging, which is useful for a series.

Outline (working document)

• An outline is for the writer's eyes only, not for agents. It's easy to revise by cut-and-paste. Revise it as you write.
• Per-scene fields:
  • scene number, in sequence
  • day number (elapsed days since the start)
  • time of day
  • setting
  • characters in the scene
  • what happens
  • narrator and point of view (POV)
• You need not outline everything up front. Alternate between planning and writing, and outline the next act after finishing one while updating the outline to match what you actually wrote.
• Initial outline contents: the opening scene, all Act I scenes (each with a payoff), the Act I climax and twist, brief summaries of Acts II and III with their climaxes and twists, and the solution (whodunit and why).

Before-the-fact synopsis

• It tells the story dramatically from start to finish, in present tense, with enough detail to expand into a book. Lengths vary: 15 pages for a 300-page novel, or 50 pages for one author.
• It can be shown to agents or editors, and some publishers require one as the first deliverable.
• As a working document it is weaker than an outline: no scene breakdown, no time frame, and it is hard to revise. Its value is forcing you to think through twists and connections, so you are less likely to write yourself into a corner.
• Build it up gradually:
  1. Write one paragraph covering the opening, crime, investigation and solution.
  2. Expand to one page, adding each act and its major twists.
  3. Add the subplots.
  4. Keep expanding until everything is on paper.

Title

• A title can be a working title, since authors, publishers and agents change them. Typing it at the start helps momentum.
• A title should accurately pitch the book, intrigue potential readers and be easy to remember. It should not promise what the book doesn't deliver.
• Think short. Two-word titles are the most common among best-sellers.
• Techniques: a series element (alphabet, colors, one-word psychology terms, a recurring word such as "Dead", numbered ordinals), a glimpse of setting, a theme image or double-meaning phrase, alliteration, and quotations or references (Shakespeare, the Bible, nursery rhymes, fairy tales, history).
• Author name sells more than title, so unknown authors need a great title.
• Titles can't be copyrighted, but avoid instantly recognizable ones. Reusing the title of a forgotten book is fine.
• Process:
  1. Brainstorm using the premise, backdrop and setting, major plot points and main character. Free-associate, circle 5–10 words or images, and make titles of them.
  2. Check each candidate in an online bookstore or Books in Print to see how often it has been used.
  3. Search the Internet and check each word in an online slang dictionary for second meanings (e.g. "shag").
  4. Pick one, write it in the final blueprint field and type it on the manuscript's first page.

Blueprint sections

• Planning forms in the source are completed in order: Premise, Setting, Plot, then the title in the final field.