The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing the Modern Whodunit (16 page)

Several weeks later I received this letter: “We think you are a good writer. But you’ve made several typical beginner’s blunders. The plot lacks originality. The story lacks suspense. We knew who the culprit was right away. We can’t offer you a contract for your book in its present form, but if you’d be willing to rewrite it, we’d be interested in looking at it again.”

Rewrite it? I thought. I had just spent more than a year writing, rewriting, and revising that book until it was, I believed, the very best I could make it.

And now they were telling me it still wasn’t good enough.

I read and reread that letter. I had arrived, I realized, at a crisis in my writing career. If I could rewrite the book to that editor’s satisfaction, I’d be on my way.

If I couldn’t, I would probably never write a publishable novel.

It seemed that clear-cut to me.

It took me a year to untangle the original storyline and rework it, to reimagine the characters, to refine the book’s narrative voice, to discard old scenes and to think up new ones. It was the most difficult job of writing I have ever undertaken.

But the new version of my book was accepted and, in due course, published. It even won an award. And since then, I’ve published nineteen more mysteries featuring Brady Coyne, the first-person narrator of that first one.

Writing the original—flawed—version of that book had been hard.

Rewriting it was agonizing.

But getting it accepted, signing a contract, receiving a check in the mail, and eventually, holding a slick hardcover edition of my book in my hand—all of that was a great deal of fun.

The experience taught me what it meant to be a writer: You must be prepared to sit in front of a keyboard when it’s the last thing you want to do, and do it regularly, day after day, for as long as it takes to string together thousands upon thousands of perfectly chosen and ordered words that will grab the reader and refuse to let go.

It’s work. Writers are like everybody else. Much of the time they’d rather play than work.

On the other hand, if it were easy, everyone would write books. Most people don’t, although a great many people say they would like to, and almost everyone is envious of those who do.

Thousands of unpublished manuscripts languish in desk drawers and attics and closets, and for every one of them there are thousands of first chapters and half-finished novels. Writing is like exercising: It begins with a burst of inspiration and good intentions, but it’s sustained through all the pain and self-doubt and imperceptible progress and failure by hard-nosed commitment and steely discipline.

It’s a hard job, and there’s no avoiding that fact. If you want to write mystery fiction, be prepared for it.

But because it’s hard, it’s correspondingly satisfying.

Peter De Vries said it all: “I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.”

On writing well

A mystery story that fails to present intriguing characters, a fascinating world, and a suspenseful and complex puzzle, no matter how well it’s written, will rarely be published.

The converse, however, is equally true, especially for the beginning writer: A clever storyline,
unless it’s well written
, will not sell a book.

There are exceptions to both of these truths. Marvelous writing occasionally sells flawed stories, and fast-paced page-turners that are executed crudely sometimes get published.

You should derive encouragement from these exceptions. “I can write better than
this
,” you should say. Or, “I can create a better story than
this
one.”

But never think that agents, publishers, and readers of mystery fiction don’t care about craftsmanship. Nowadays few editors have the time or the inclination to fix your verbs, cut your scenes, or sharpen your images. You’ve got to be your own editor. Take pride in your writing. Examine every word and phrase. A well-written manuscript deprives agents and editors of one reason to reject it.

A detailed analysis of the elements of good writing is beyond the scope of this book. But here, briefly, are some of the important principles of effective mystery writing:

1. Good writing
does not call attention to itself or the writer
. Flowery language, convoluted sentences, and ten-dollar words may cause the reader to think, “My goodness, this writer is awfully clever.” But if the writing distracts the reader, it fails to do its job.

2. Good writing
tells the story
. It invites the reader to become
immersed in the lives, problems, and goals of the characters. That’s its job.

3. Good writing
engages the reader’s feelings
. It evokes an emotional response. It makes readers
care
about the story’s characters and what happens to them.

4. Good writing comes from
strong, active verbs
. Test the effectiveness of your prose by circling your verbs. How many times have you used “was” and “were” and other forms of “to be,” or equally flat and flabby intransitive verbs such as “seemed” and “appeared”? Change them. Convert instances of the passive voice into the active form. In good writing, active verbs make things happen. Inactive verbs shift the burden to adjectives and adverbs, which are inherently passive.

5. Good writing
shows
. It does
not tell
. It emphasizes scenes where events occur. It minimizes exposition, explanation, description, and summary. Instead of telling us that a character is sad or angry or frightened, good writing
shows
us the character’s behavior and allows us to draw our own conclusions.
Telling
relies on adjectives and adverbs;
showing
comes from active, vivid verbs.

6. Good writing is
concise and clear and efficient
. It wastes no words. It does its job quietly. As Elmore Leonard advises, “Leave out the parts that people skip.”

7. Good writing, in other words, is
invisible
. It appears so effortless that readers don’t notice it. Good writing is a sleight-of-hand trick. It gives the illusion of ease and simplicity.

Writers work hard to create that illusion. “Easy reading,” said Nathaniel Hawthorne, “is damned hard writing.”

After the first draft

Dorothy Parker once said, “I can’t write five words but that I change seven.”

“
Nothing you write,” said Lillian Hellman, “if you hope to be any good, will ever come as you first hoped.”

Writing a novel or short story is like sculpting a statue. The first draft gives it shape and proportion. But it inevitably needs refining and polishing.

The first revision.
Once you’ve written the first draft of any piece of fiction, put it aside. Work on something else and try not to think about it for several weeks. Then read it over with a fresh eye. Try to judge it the way a reader—or an editor—might. Look for the boring parts, the inconsistencies, the dangling plot threads, the pointless subplots. Try to think about all of the elements that make stories work for readers. You’ll undoubtedly have to rewrite some scenes, delete others, and add new ones. Think about tempo and rhythm, plot development, character motivation.

Be alert to inconsistencies and errors of fact. Pay close attention to the details. Fiction readers bring to stories a “willing suspension of disbelief.” They want to enter the world you have created, and they are prepared to accept the reality of that world and the characters who inhabit it. But a single error or inconsistency, no matter how small, can destroy that willingness to suspend their disbelief. Mystery readers know their guns and poisons and forensics. Mystery writers must know at least as much as their readers. Never confuse a revolver with an automatic or a shotgun with a rifle or gauge with caliber.

Here are four rules that will help you avoid losing readers because of small errors in detail:

1. When possible, write about what you know. Choose settings where you have lived, or at least visited. Give your characters—especially your protagonists—your own profession and hobbies. Use your life experiences as the basis for plots and character conflicts.

2. When you’ve got to do research, be thorough. Inevitably, you’ll have to explore foreign worlds. Your story will require you to create characters such as medical specialists whose work you don’t understand. You’ll need to know precisely how a government bureaucracy, or a court, or a hospital deals with a situation that arises in your story.

Library and Internet research, of course, is essential. But take the next step. Solicit the help of professionals. If your story needs a scene with a forensic pathologist, interview a forensic pathologist. Ask her exactly how the situation in your story would be handled. After you write the scene, ask her to read it for you. Encourage her to identify every problem, no matter how minor. Most people enjoy contributing to the creation of a novel or short story and are flattered to be asked.

3. Don’t try to impress your readers. Having completed all of this research, it’s tempting to use it all. This typically produces long-winded and pointless passages where you show off all of the fascinating material you’ve worked so hard to master. Examine these sections carefully and be prepared to cut. Your story isn’t a catch-all for everything you know and have learned. If it doesn’t move your story forward, the passage doesn’t belong.

Sometimes you’ll find your story needs a major overhaul on its first revision. Sometimes it just needs fine-tuning. But it will always need something.

The second revision
. After you’re confident you’ve got the shape of the story right, and after you’ve double-checked it for technical accuracy, it’s time to put a shine on your manuscript. Go back to the beginning and examine each word and punctuation mark, each sentence and paragraph. Hack away flabby adverbs and adjectives, look critically at every verb, listen to your dialogue. Try for absolute clarity in your prose and delete any self-indulgent flights of literary fancy, aiming to follow Samuel Johnson’s advice: “Read over your compositions and, when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”

Some writers find this polishing process tedious, but most enjoy it. At this stage, you’ve already done the hard part. You’ve invented a complicated story and all of its elements. You’ve assembled all of the elements into a novel-length manuscript. This tinkering and refining is your reward.

When you’ve finished this final polish, you should believe you have written a perfect story.

Mentors
. But, of course, you can’t completely trust your own judgment. So when you feel that you cannot possibly improve your manuscript, ask someone else to read it—someone whom you absolutely trust to tell you the truth, an experienced writer and reader who understands the kind of fiction you write, who has a sharp eye and ear, and who knows that you
want
the unvarnished truth. You must not ask for praise from your mentor. You want honest criticism.

Friends and relatives are unlikely to serve as effective mentors. They don’t want to hurt your feelings (except for those who might, for various reasons, be eager to take a swipe at your ego). If you’re fortunate, you’ll know somebody—ideally a professional writer who is also a careful reader and astute editor—with whom you can exchange criticism. If you don’t have a mentor, consider paying somebody to criticize your work. It’s better to hear criticism from a mentor at this stage, when you can do something about it, than to be rejected by a publisher.

John Irving has said, “It’s my experience that very few writers, young or old, are really seeking advice when they give out their work to be read. They want support; they want someone to say, ‘Good job.’”

It’s
my
experience that those “very few” writers who really do seek advice are the ones who are most likely to succeed. A pat on the back and a hearty “Good job” are not very helpful.

Mentors often see flaws that you can’t see because you are too close to your story. Don’t automatically and uncritically change everything your mentor finds fault with. But consider all the suggestions and criticisms.

The last word

Now your story is finished. It is, you honestly believe, the best you can possibly make it. You’ve nurtured it and fought with it, cried with it and laughed at it. It’s time to make the final copy and send it off.

It can be a scary time. Erica Jong once admitted, “I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged.”

Those living characters, that clever puzzle with all its neat clues, all those vivid places and dramatic events and significant themes that have occupied your consciousness for a year or more—all are abruptly gone. “Writing a book,” said Daphne Du Maurier, “is like a purge; at the end of it one is empty … like a dry shell on the beach, waiting for the tide to come in again.”

Sending off a manuscript can leave you feeling empty. The only cure is to start writing something else. And if your story or novel fails to sell, keep writing anyway. Writers write. Many successful authors have trunks full of early manuscripts they could not—or didn’t even try to—sell. If they’d allowed their early failures to discourage them, they never would have kept at it.