Now Write! Mysteries

THOMAS B. CAVANAGH’s novels include Murderland, Prodigal Son, and Head Games, which, among other recognition, won the Florida Book Awards Gold Medal for Popular Fiction and was a Shamus Best P.I. Novel nominee. Thomas has also written award-winning children’s television shows for Nickelodeon, the Walt Disney Company, and many others. He lives in central Florida with his family.

Some mystery novels are suited for a leisurely pace. Well-mannered English countryside and cozy American bed-and-breakfast whodunits lend themselves quite naturally to a story that builds slowly and gains momentum gradually as the narrative progresses.

However, there are many other genres of mystery—thrillers being the prime example—where the pace can and should be much faster. As an author, though, knowing that you want your story to be a page-turner and actually creating the conditions for a fast pace are two different things.

I once had a job where I traveled somewhere almost every week. In fact, most of my first novel was written on airplanes. I intentionally chose what I believed to be fast-moving novels to read on these flights so I could pass the time more quickly. When I began to think seriously about writing a novel of my own, I knew that I wanted to write the same sorts of stories that I had been reading.

Here are just a few of the techniques I’ve observed other authors using to create page-turners. I’ve done my best to emulate these while keeping the voice and story uniquely my own, and you can, too.

Forward Momentum. John Grisham typically avoids subplots and flashbacks in his legal thrillers. While I might not go so far as to say you should never, under any circumstances, use a flashback (there are many examples where they have been used brilliantly), these strategies seem to be working out pretty well for Mr. Grisham. The point, of course, is that you don’t want anything to detract from your story’s forward momentum. You want your plot to start rolling like a boulder down a steep hill. Once it picks up speed, there should be no stopping it. A clumsy flashback or some ill-placed exposition will derail all that momentum and kill the pace you worked so hard to create.

Relentless Urgency. For me, perhaps the most important element for creating a fast pace is a relentless sense of urgency. I mean this as an internal pressure on the writer more than on any character in the story itself. In filmmaking, screenwriters and editors must fashion stories out of scenes, maximizing economy to minimize overall screen time. Novelists do essentially the same thing.

When you start writing a scene, ask yourself two questions:

1. When is the very latest that I can possibly enter this scene?

2. When is the very earliest that I can exit it?

As an author, you want to spend only as much page time on a scene as is necessary to accomplish the point of the scene, whether the goal is to advance the plot, reveal character, plant a false clue, or otherwise. If the important part of a scene is a conversation between two characters at a laundromat, do you really need to describe the two entering the building, waiting for their washing machines, inserting quarters, and pouring in detergent?

Consider jumping into the conversation just before the critical information is revealed. Imagine a clock that starts ticking as soon as you begin writing a scene, imploring you to hurry up, hurry up, get out.... Many authors tend to overwrite, starting their scenes far too early and then not knowing when to end them.

Multiple POV. One way to facilitate this cutting into and out of scenes (to borrow a film term) is to jump between character points of view. By switching to another character’s POV, you create a new scene for pacing purposes, even if the characters remain engaged within the same overall metascene.

This works best in stories told in third person, where you can jump into the head of a different character in each scene. However, the same effect can be created in a first-person story (common in private eye novels, for example) by using transitions in time and location, even if the character POV remains the same.

Cli ffhangers. Finally, one of the most effective methods to create a page-turner is to make readers want to continue reading just at the point where they would naturally put your book down: at chapter breaks. By intentionally ending a chapter in the middle of a scene, without any resolution, you create the classic cliffhanger. Your goal is to tantalize readers so much that they cannot resist turning that page to see what happens next. You can conclude the interrupted scene at the beginning of the subsequent chapter, keeping in mind the still-ticking clock and the need to move on as quickly as possible.

An alternative strategy is to cut away at the start of the next chapter to another, unrelated scene. The idea being your audience will be motivated to read through the unrelated scene to find out how the previous chapter is resolved, turning pages all the while. Of course, if not handled well, the risk in this strategy is compromising forward momentum.

Once you persuade readers to turn that page, to see what happens next, to stay up just a little later than they had planned, then you’ve done it. You’ve created the type of novel where your readers will look up and realize in amazement how many hours have passed since they started reading and that the flight is now making its final approach for landing.

EXERCISE