Mystery

Drawing from the Well

Queries Sent: 0
Total Queries: 35
Rejections: 9

Scenes Mapped: 11
Total Scenes: 315

Yesterday was a bangin’ mapping day. Querying is kind of on hold while I read the Guide. Mapping however continues in earnest. Last night was great because I made it through the Second Pinch Point. Another Eighth is DOWN. From here, things should start cascading faster and scenes should be easier to write. I hope. I planned out the Sixth Eighth notecard style as is now my practice and I’m ready to dive in.

Filling the Well

Bloodwitch: 35%
The Raven Boys: 90%
Guide to Literary Agents 2019: Page 26

Bloodwitch feels like it’s about to fall off a cliff with its pacing. And I mean that in the most positive way possible. Things feel like they’re about to get out of control and be incredibly exciting. I can’t wait.

Polishing the Well

THIS is what we did yesterday and it was absolutely amazing. The elephants were sweet, beautiful, wonderful animals. We got to feed them, ride them, wash them, and spend a few hours with them. This encounter was on my wife’s bucket list. Consider it checked off!

Well Chat

The Journey Is the Reward

Mysteries are a whole other ball of wax from speculative fiction. I’m not going to act like I read a lot of them. The thing about mysteries is that they’re woven into all the best stories. Expert authors weave a mystery into all their stories. It’s what leads to the big reveal. The better the mystery, the better the reveal and more satisfying the ending. For the mystery genre, though, the journey to that reveal is the crux of the story.

So what makes a mystery? Well, the mystery, first of all. Usually it’s a murder with a limited group of suspects. Those are the common elements of everything in the mystery genre. Everything else is ancillary and adjusts the subgenre accordingly. The important part is the journey. The suspects, their connections, the clues, it’s all part of what makes a great mystery. That and a character that’s smarter than anyone else who figures it all out a la Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express.

So let’s talk about a few of the subgenres within Mystery. You’ve got your various detective stories: hardboiled, cozy, amateur, and bumbling. That would be Same Spade and The Maltese Falcon, Angela Lansbury from Murder, She Wrote and Shawn Spencer from Psych, Aurora Teagarden, and Columbo. All of these involve someone with incredible intuition and intelligence figuring out the mystery.

A turn on detective stories is the murder mystery, my daughter’s personal favorite. This is more of a niche of the detective story (a sub-subgenre?) that specifically deals with a mysterious murder. Solving that murder is the core of the subgenre.

Contrary to the murder mystery is the heist. This can be told from within the heist like The Italian Job or from the perspective of the person trying to stop or solve it like The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. In this subgenre, someone is trying to steal something. It gets interesting when the motivation is emotionally wrapped up with the item being stolen. It gets even MORE interesting when the thief’s motivation is wrapped up with detective’s. There are a lot of different slices and turns on this subgenre.

Finally, on the other end of the spectrum, there’s the police procedural. This is your Law & Order (dun dun) all the way. The nineties and early millennium television was rife with these. NYPD Blue, CSI, Criminal Minds, and many others popularized this genre. It’s all about a crime being solved by the police. The crime can run the gamut which is where many of the interesting elements come from. From there, it’s the police personalities that give the book/show/movie its charm.

Think about mysteries and what you’ve seen on TV and in movies (and any mystery books you’ve read) and try to weave those elements into whatever you’re writing. You could stumble onto something superb.

May the tide carry you to safer shores.

BSG