Now Write! Mysteries

ANDY STRAKA has published five novels. He is the Shamus Award–winning and Anthony- and Agatha-nominated author of the Frank Pav-licek mystery series featuring a former NYPD detective turned Virginia private investigator and falconer. A licensed falconer and cofounder of the popular Crime Wave at the annual Virginia Festival of the Book, Straka is also the author of Record of Wrongs, which Mystery Scene magazine calls “a first-rate thriller.” He lives with his family in Virginia.

Call your mother? Talk to your writers’ group? Rack your brain to come up with a great logline or blockbuster title? Jot down some poignant thoughts? How about just sit down and start writing the story?

Many would argue—especially when it comes to writing the mystery—that your first task is to build a detailed outline of your book, fleshing out each of your characters and meticulously planning every plot twist. After all, you can’t build a house without a blueprint. A detailed outline allows you to anticipate any potential conflicts or difficulties, to think globally without being weighed down by the minutia of each scene, and to avoid wasting precious time on subplots that turn into dead ends. Indeed, a simple online search will uncover dozens of tools, from books to software programs, purporting to help you accomplish this apparently critical yet daunting task. It all sounds logical, doesn’t it?

There is a great deal to be said for the value of outlining. I outline some myself. But just as often I don’t, and in my experience if you ask published crime novelists, many of them quite successful, whether they outline, you may be in for a surprise: their answers will be all over the board.

The late great Donald Westlake, for example, was once asked a question about outlining at a prestigious book conference affiliated with a major university. In the audience were scores of literary writers, each looking to glean precious bits of information to help them with their own fiction.

All around her other members of the audience—the serious writers at least—sat a little taller in their seats as well, papers at the ready, pens raised. They were hoping the questioner had uncovered Westlake’s magic formula, the secret that allowed him to pen over a hundred novels and books of nonfiction, winning the Edgar Award three times, and earning the distinction as a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of the America.

Whether Westlake’s technique will work for you, the truth is we’ve all read books or seen movies where the action appears to clip along in picture-perfect cadence, the characters seem pulled straight out of central casting, and everything is supposed to blend together in some grand and glorious scheme guaranteed to leave us dazzled.

Except it doesn’t. Not only does the story fail to dazzle, it falls flat. Overscripted and overwritten—we the audience sense that the life has been drained from the story. We feel duped. Living, breathing characters don’t behave like that, actions and events don’t pile up so neatly, and we’ve been cheated of the spontaneity that breeds sleight of hand and the element of surprise.

So, to outline or not to outline, that is the question. Whether (as Shakespeare more skillfully put it) “’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles.”

This is the real alchemy of creating a novel—each writer must take blank sheet in hand and through trial and error come up with the technique that works best for them. Some writers will use a series of note cards. Some will use a storyboard. Some will just dive right in and write until they can write no more. While others may sit in a dark room for hours imagining the tale and then craft a meticulously detailed outline before ever starting the story.

Still others, such as myself, may use a hybrid technique, writing a little, then outlining a little, mixing in organizational notes with the prose, using the story as driver but stepping back on occasion to outline a few chapters ahead.

Whatever method is used, the details you map out must serve to make the story stronger. A finely crafted mystery will build tension and suspense, layer upon layer, without the reader being aware. The best crime novels contain surprises, maybe a startling twist, and for good measure a red herring thrown in. They do not achieve this magic in any formulaic manner, but in a way that is true to the characters and setting. If a plot point is not organic to the story, it must be eliminated.

Many ask if I have an ending in mind as I write, and I always answer yes, but it is often a murky generality that is best characterized by E. L. Doctorow’s oft-quoted trope about writing a novel: “It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” In my novel Cold Quarry, for example, all I had starting out was the opening line: “The ski-masked man balanced the business end of the twelve-gauge Mossberg Persuader against my temple with a shaky hand.” I had an idea that the man might be young and might be part of some extremist or paramilitary group, but nothing more. Even the details of the shotgun-toting character’s life were unclear at the start—he was behind a mask, after all.

As the writer, you will need to know your own mind to discover what works best for you. In the beginning all you may have is a silhouette—a special character and an inciting incident, maybe a great surprise ending. To go from vague shape to rich Technicolor will not be an easy journey, but it will be worth the effort.

EXERCISE