The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing the Modern Whodunit (4 page)

From this lineup of characters I selected a murderer.

Then I was ready to write a detailed narrative summary of this story, complete with all of the characters’ life histories, personalities, and strongly felt needs and desires. The process took me several weeks of difficult and frustrating trial-and-error thinking.

Only when I felt I knew this story thoroughly did I begin converting it into a mystery novel which, I knew, would be propelled by the puzzle question: Who killed Mary Ellen Ames?

Because I have a series character, my lawyer Brady Coyne had to serve as the puzzle-solver. So the first question I had to answer was: How would Brady get involved with the case?

I decided that Susan Ames would ask Brady, her family lawyer, to track down her daughter. The story of detection was underway.

Then came the puzzle’s development, the unfolding of clues, false trails, and red herrings. Brady tries to track down Mary Ellen. He learns where she lives, but she hasn’t been home in more than a week. He convinces the building’s superintendent to let him into Mary Ellen’s apartment, where he finds a bottle of prescription medicine. This leads him to Dr. McAllister, the psychiatrist, who eventually confides in Brady that he’s been having an affair with Mary Ellen but insists that he doesn’t know where she is.

Eventually, Mary Ellen’s body is found in a New Hampshire pond. Based on the medical examiner’s report, the police call it an accidental drowning, but Brady has his doubts. By now, he’s encountered some of the people in Mary Ellen’s life, all of whom could have a motive for murdering the young woman.

As Brady investigates, the stakes grow higher. What began as a search for a missing woman becomes a desperate race against time and a murderer who will kill again. Ultimately, Brady finds himself endangered.

And so forth, to the ultimate revelation.

I wrote a narrative summary of this story of detection, too, taking elements of the first storyline and placing them into the second. I laid out the story’s various turning points—the opening scene with the dying mother, Brady’s encounters with each of the people in Mary Ellen’s life, the discovery of Mary Ellen’s body. I converted facts from the first story into clues, dead-end trails, false suspects, and misleading assumptions.

As the story took shape, it transformed itself into a sequence of scenes, each of which moved the story forward, introduced new information, raised new questions, complicated the puzzle, and jacked up the stakes.

When I summarized all of the scenes, I was ready to write the book. I knew my story. I had direction and purpose.

Of course, some things changed. As the characters began to participate in actual scenes, they came to life. I discovered that some of them had depths and contradictions and motivations I hadn’t originally imagined, which suggested modifications in the plot. I was receptive to changes, but skeptical, too; I considered them carefully before incorporating them into my story.

In the end, when the solution to the puzzle was revealed, I hoped that readers could say that everything fit together, the clues were fair, and they knew as much as Brady did. They had experienced my story as a participant, not a mere spectator. I also hoped they would then say, “I should have figured it out for myself. But it fooled me.”

The case of the short story

The elements of mystery short stories are no different from those of novels. No matter how short, every story has a plot, a setting, and characters. It contains a combination of narrative and dialogue. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

To say that a short story is the same as the novel except that it is shorter, however, is to ignore some fundamental differences between the two forms. The short story makes special demands on the writer.

Some of these demands are relatively obvious. The short story involves just a few characters—perhaps only one or two. It typically uses only one setting and a single point of view. It occurs over a short period of time—often as a single event that unfolds without interruption. Descriptions are spare. Characters and settings are drawn with a few deft strokes. Every detail must serve a purpose. Dialogue is spare and to the point.

In other words, nothing is wasted in the short story, which typically runs from 1,500 to 5,000 words—twenty or more times shorter than an average novel. Regardless of the story’s length, the writer must strive to make every paragraph, every sentence, every word serve a purpose. Rarely can the short story accommodate extended descriptive passages or flashbacks, rambling dialogue, extraneous secondary characters, or subplots. Short stories can be difficult and time-consuming to write, but they are meant to be read in a single uninterrupted sitting. The short story contains a single, focused narrative purpose.

The “purpose” of the short story is to dramatize just one point, which can usually be stated as the story’s theme: Crime doesn’t pay (or, crime sometimes
does
pay); a crisis will bring out the best (or the worst) in people; revenge is sweet (or bitter); love conquers all (or hatred conquers love). The story is written with the single-minded aim of dramatizing its point. It teaches a lesson in human nature, it contains a moral, it offers an insight.

The payoff of the mystery short story comes in the form of a surprise or twist at the climax. It gives the reader a “punch.” The entire story is written to dramatize the meaning of that climactic revelation.

Anything that does not contribute to maximizing the impact of the punch should be eliminated.

The punch of most mystery short stories dramatizes the simple theme that things are not what they appear to be. In the classical whodunit story, for example, the most likely suspect is innocent (although in the focused, economical short story, the actual villain may not be revealed if that is not the story’s point). Other mystery storylines focus on the discovery of an unexpected motive for murder, or the surprising meaning of a single puzzling clue, or the unforeseen relationship between the villain and the victim, or a revealing event in one character’s past.

Things are not what they seem. Dramatizing what they actually are is the story’s point. It offers the reader a new insight—into human nature, into the ironies of life, into the meaning of love, or hate, or death, or greed. After reading an effective short story, the reader should stop for a moment and think, “Ah, yes. I never thought of it that way before.”

The short story contains the same structural elements as the novel:

1. Situation—Virtually all fiction of any length focuses on an interesting character with a problem. A detective is hired to solve a crime. A murderer attempts to escape detection. A husband seeks to find his missing wife. A compulsive gambler seeks to win back everything he’s lost. Short-story situations can be less dramatic and highly charged than those that move novels. The situation in a short story is often commonplace, something that the average reader can identify with. But the situation must be important to the story’s protagonist, whose goal (to resolve the problem) gives momentum to the story.

2. Complication—The situation creates the story’s motivation. It forces the character to act to achieve his or her goal. This action produces more and greater problems. Obstacles arise in the form of a new situation and/or another character (the antagonist) who opposes the protagonist.

3. Climax—The protagonist arrives at the crisis, the turning point in the action, the moment when he or she must make the right decision or fail to achieve his or her goal.

4. Resolution—If the protagonist took the right actions, the problem is solved. If not, the problem remains unresolved, or even more complicated than it was at the beginning, depending on the point the story is making. In any case, the story’s resolution must relate directly to the situation it began with, and it must result directly from the actions of the protagonist.

You can achieve interesting short-story effects by altering the natural chronological order in which these structural elements occur. For example, you can begin with the climax (the moment when the protagonist must decide whether to break into his boss’s office or walk away) or even the resolution (the protagonist is being pronounced guilty by the jury), then tell the rest of the story as flashback. Or you can use the complication (the protagonist is confronted by the antagonist) as your narrative hook.

Many mystery writers find the short story form, with all of its constraints and demands, more difficult than the novel. They think in terms of novel-length fiction, and when an idea attracts them, they develop and complicate it for the novel form. Others are drawn to the focus and discipline of the short story. Most writers, however, agree that the short-story form forces them to write well, and for this reason alone, even if your goal is to publish a novel, you should try to write short stories.

Chapter 3

The Protagonist: The Sleuth
As Hero or Heroine

An editor rejected my first novel with these words: “I think it would take something really unusual to convince us to take on a new mystery series—an Armenian/Jewish plumber who solves cases by listening at people’s drain pipes, or something like that.”

The point, of course, was this: Publishers—and readers—look for unusual and fascinating protagonists. In fact, in mystery fiction appealing sleuths are at least as important as clever storylines.

A compelling protagonist can sell an ordinary plot. Characters make stories seem real. Readers invest their emotions in characters, not plots. They experience strong feelings—happiness, sadness, anger, worry, fear—because they care about what happens to the characters.

In the case of mystery fiction, the character readers care most about is the sleuth.

A mystery plot is basically the story of the hero or heroine’s problems. The most compelling problem, of course, is the puzzle, the “whodunit” question. Mystery storylines are driven by the process of detection. The story belongs to the detective. The sleuth is the one with the problem.

In the mystery, things happen because the protagonist
makes
them happen. Your heroine is the story’s catalyst. She is active, not reactive. She doesn’t sit around waiting for things to happen to her. She works hard to uncover and interpret clues—they are never given to her gratuitously. She is not passive. She desperately wants to solve the puzzle, and she strives passionately to do it. She has goals and she struggles against powerful obstacles to achieve them. She takes risks, confronts threats, and doesn’t quit.

Things are never easy for the heroine or hero.

Make your readers worry about your protagonist and you’ve got them all the way to The End.

The mystery is a quest story. The sleuth strives to uncover a villain who doesn’t want to be uncovered and will do anything—even murder the sleuth—to prevent it. The mystery builds tension and suspense as the sleuth confronts danger in pursuit of the quest.

The sleuth typically has many of the characteristics of the mythical hero—purity of purpose, courage, conviction, and single-minded commitment to ideals. John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee, for example, thinks of himself as a crusader. In
The Dreadful Lemon Sky
, MacDonald writes:

The stories of most successful mystery writers similarly hinge on their hero or heroine setting off to solve a mystery with a “sense of mission,” a “clean purpose,” and a “noble intent.” Robert Parker’s Spenser is clearly a hero from the Travis McGee mold. So, in their own ways, are Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone, Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski, Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder, and many others.

Think of your sleuth as a noble—but human and accessible—knight errant. Make your mystery stories journeys—for your hero or heroine, for your readers, and for yourself.

This is the storyline of virtually every successful mystery story: The sleuth has big problems, and as the story unfolds, these problems grow bigger and more baffling and dangerous. But the sleuth perseveres.

Readers convert the sleuth’s quest into a question: Will he or she succeed? Make readers care, keep them in doubt, and you’ll keep them reading.

Mystery heroes and heroines can be many things—lawyers, hairdressers, children, or Armenian plumbers—but they cannot be weak-willed, passive, or indecisive. Sleuths make things happen. They do not wait for things to happen to them. They succeed because they’re aggressive and stubborn—not because they’re lucky.

Mystery protagonists, in other words, are not wimps.

Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes weren’t wimps, nor were Nero Wolfe or Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe or Travis McGee, Perry Mason or Mike Hammer. Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone and Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski aren’t wimps. Neither are Tony Hillerman’s Jim Chee or Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta or any of Ed McBain’s cops at the 87th Precinct.

Idiosyncratic, yes. Distinctive, definitely. Flawed, human, and accessible. Some heroes and heroines welcome physical confrontations, while others prefer mental contests. But none of them is a wimp.