How to Write a Mystery Novel
In this post, learn how to write a mystery novel from beginning to end, including developing a fascinating premise, ways villains justify crimes, writing a mystery series, and more.
In this post, learn how to write a mystery novel from beginning to end, including developing a fascinating premise, ways villains justify crimes, writing a mystery series, and more.
Whether you want to write about a missing jewel or murdered uncle, there are a number of practical strategies for starting your novel, constructing your plot, and landing a satisfying finish. In this post, learn how to write a mystery novel using some of the best advice on WritersDigest.com.
Starting Your Mystery Novel
While a great opening will not guarantee a successful novel, a bad opening will usually guarantee a failed novel. That's because writers have a limited amount of time to hook their audience before they abandon a story and move on to something better. Fair or not, this reality places a great deal of emphasis on a compelling beginning.
As such, here are a few posts related to starting your novel:
- Develop a Fascinating Premise for Your Mystery Novel, by Hallie Ephron. Ephron starts off by sharing an epiphany she had for an award-winning novel that was turned into a Lifetime movie before diving into how writers can turn their ideas (including real-life and market-driven ideas) into premises.
- 4 Approaches for the First Chapter of Your Novel, by Jeff Gerke. In this article, Gerke shares the four primary approaches for beginning a successful novel: The prologue beginning, the hero action beginning, the in medias res beginning, and the frame device. Of course, there are other approaches, but these are the most common that tend to work time and time again.
- 5 Great Tips for Starting a Novel Right, by Jessica Strawser. In this post, Strawser shares five great tips for starting your novel from bestselling novelists, including James Scott Bell, Karen Dionne, and Lee Child. For instance, Bell advises novelists create a "doorway of no return" for their protagonist in the first 1/5 of the book.
- Famous First Lines of Novels and 7 Tips for Getting Started, by Zachary Petit and Jacob M. Appel. The first half of this post shares excellent opening lines from novels to use as inspiration and reference for your own. Then, the second half shares seven strategies for starting your novel on a sentence level.
If you need to start at an even earlier step in the process, check out Cheryl Pon's 5 Ways to Start Writing Your Novel Today, which is focused on the sometimes stifling step of just getting started.
How to Write Your Mystery Novel
Once you've worked through those first pages, most novelists find there's a lot more to the process of novel writing than an excellent opening scene and compelling protagonist. For mystery, this is just as true as any other genre, because there's a chance you're dealing with a mysterious murder or disappearance, along with introducing new characters, suspects, and suspicions.
Here are a few posts to help you through that process:
- Writing a Mystery Novel: Creating a Villain & 5 Ways to Justify a Crime, by Hallie Ephron. Learn how to create a villain worth pursuing (and worth reading) along with five ways a villain could justify committing a crime.
- 7 Tips on Writing Great Mystery and Suspense Novels, by Tony Lee Moral. Moral shares seven things for writers to consider when assembling their mystery novels, from delivering information to readers to keeping your story moving.
- How to Do Excellent Research for Your Mystery Novel, by Peter James. Bestselling novelist Peter James shares five tips on completing the essential research needed for a mystery novel to really come to life and feel fully realistic.
- 5 Tips for Building a House or Setting That Comes Alive for Readers, by D.M. Pulley. Sometimes a mystery novel is filled with colorful characters, but sometimes the setting itself becomes a character that factors into the storytelling itself. Pulley shares five ways to build such a location.
- 7 Ways to Add Subplots to Your Novel, by Elizabeth Sims. While not specifically mystery, this post is applicable to all novel genres and the need for seamless subplots. Sims shares tactics, such as the isolated chunk, the swallowtail, the bridge character, and others.
- How to Write Flawed Characters & Antiheroes, by David Corbett. While a great novel (in any genre) doesn't need to have a flawed protagonist, they can often make for a fun read and more convincing and endearing character. In this article, Corbett shares his advice on creating these characters in fiction.
- How to Stay Sane When Writing About Dark Topics in Thriller and Mystery Novels, by T.R. Ragan. The bestselling author of the Lizzie Gardner series shares how she keeps her sanity in check even while diving into the depths of her antagonists' souls and motivations.
- 5 Tips on How to Write a Cunning but Cozy Mystery Novel, by Jennifer J. Chow. Not all mysteries are the same, and there are special rules and considerations for authors who wish to write the cozy variety.
- The Dos and Don'ts of Novel Endings, by James V. Smith. In this piece, Smith shares very practical advice on how to successfully finish a novel (regardless of genre). These include dos like "resolve the central conflict" and "enmesh your reader deeply in outcome," as well as don'ts like "introduce any new characters or subplots" and "resort to gimmicks."
- The Five Types of Novel Endings, by Scott Francis. In this brief post, Francis shares the five common novel endings available to writers, including "the lead sacrifices his objective for a greater good" and "the lead gains his objective but loses something more valuable."
How to Finish Your Mystery Novel (and Beyond)
Since I included the "The Dos and Don'ts of Novel Endings" above, you may have guessed that by finishing your mystery novel, I'm thinking more in the sense of finishing the writing process, which includes typing "The End" (even if not literally) and revising the manuscript. Plus, there's the whole possibility of turning your one mystery novel into a series of novels.
- 4 Tips for Staying Motivated and Finishing Your Writing Projects, by Sara Wigal. For some writers, starting is the hardest part of the writing process; for others, the difficulty comes with finishing what they started. This post is about that.
- 4 Things to Avoid When Finishing Your Novel, by Emily Adrian. Adrian shares some things to avoid as you near the end of the revision, edits, and submission process. This includes avoiding Googling yourself or haphazardly deleting sections of your manuscript at the last moment.
- How to Write a Series: 5 Lessons I've Learned, by Susanna Calkins. In this post, Calkins shares lessons she's learned through mistakes she made in writing her own Lucy Campion historical mystery series.
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Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
