Writing Murder Mysteries

In November, the Writing for Page and Stage group have explored going ‘fishing in the imagination’ using poetry prompts that invited perhaps more abstract answers. We also explored the gifts of constraints, using rules and following set formats in creating poetry. As we inched into December, we responded to festive prompts (well, ‘tis the season!). This blog is going to focus on a stand-out session where we focussed on the genre of mysteries.

From the traditional murder mystery through to today’s popular ‘cosy crime’ series, the mystery genre, a sub-genre of crime fiction, is popular. In our session we looked at what we already knew about the genre, from our own consumption of TV shows, films and books. Here’s what people shared:

- The stories are often set at an event or in a special location, where people who might not normally be together are gathered for an occasion of some sort.

- The protagonist is often an amateur sleuth, someone who discovers clues or the crime and can’t let go. Sometimes they work alongside the police, sometimes they are deemed a pest by the police!

- The sleuth often has an issue, demons or is quirky in some way – this often relates to their genius and how they solve crimes.

- The genre is gentler and the pace is slower than in a crime thriller. The crimes are less graphic or the story less gritty than say a detective novel or crime thriller.

We talked about the shows, stories or books we knew and/or enjoyed (such as Poirot, Miss Marple, Murder She Wrote, Death in Paradise) and what we felt worked or didn’t work about them. We also spoke about shows that played with the genre adding dark humour or a twist (such as Dexter). We then read an article on crime fiction from The Novel Factory (available online here).

We the created our main sleuth and the situation they were in. One framework offered was to use the ‘5 W’s’ : who, what, where, when and why. For example, we might ask ourselves ‘Who is the sleuth? What do they wear? What are their quirks? Where are they from? When did they arrive at the location where the story is set? Why do they want to solve the mystery?’

We shared our answers and added a location, crime and victim. We then built on this information, working our pieces into a short starting scene, which had to:

- Introduce the murdered victim

- Introduce us to the sleuth (perhaps hint to their demons if time)

- Show a sense of atmosphere and setting (time period and location)

- Make clear the conundrum/mystery around the murder

- Drop a clue

- End on a cliff-hanger/hook to make us want to read on!

You can try this challenge yourself and see what sleuth comes to help save the day and how they go about solving the mystery. Starting with a sense of the main character seemed to prove helpful for the writers, as did starting with a bit of groundwork and sharing ideas. You can read two of the ‘set-up scenes’ written by group members in the image accompanying this blog post. The group created imaginative character sketches that resulted in distinctive narration, too. We hope you enjoy the pieces and that they inspire you to explore the mystery genre and to bring your own flair to it!

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Writing Murder Mysteries