Writing a mystery series: golden arcs

Writing a mystery series: golden arcs

by Meg Mims

What does it take to write a mystery series? An eccentric detective like Sherlock Holmes? A domestic cat like Sneaky Pie (Rita Mae Brown) or a quirky dog like Chet (Spencer Quinn)? Maybe focusing on an interesting job like a coffeehouse barista, or a tea shop owner, a haunted bookshop owner, a minister’s wife, a clutter expert, a miniature house maker, knitter or a cleaning woman?

Ask Sue Grafton about writing her way through the alphabet with her PI Kinsey Milhone series (also Carole Nelson Douglas in her Midnight Louie cat series), or Janet Evanovich’s Plum by the numbers. What’s the key? Keeping a reader’s loyalty, for one thing, despite lackluster plots – but one major trick is to create a “series arc” for the amateur or professional sleuth, the featured animal who assists the hero/heroine, or for the entire cast of characters.

Take Stephanie Plum. Sure, you remember her escapades with Joe Morelli and Ranger – but readers also keep returning to learn what’s new with Grandma Mazur, Lula and her poor, suffering parents. Take Cleo Coyle’s Coffeehouse series which takes Clare Cosi, long post-divorce, back into her ex’s arms and then out again, flirting with the cop and then deepening their relationship. Or take Coyle’s Haunted Bookshop series, which explores a ghostly link between owner Mrs. McClure and the dead-but-not-gone detective Jack Shield.

Let’s examine the “character” arc vs. a “story” arc vs. a “series” arc. In every book, a hero or heroine should undergo a change – either learning something about themselves (besides solving the mystery, of course) or resolving an issue, or making a decision over the course of the story. The “story” arc is basically the mystery (or any genre) plot – from inciting incident to developments to twists and turns to the black moment and climax/confrontation with villain and the resolution. The “series” arc expands beyond that.

If your amateur detective has a secret past, one way to extend a series is to drop hints about it over several books before uncovering that secret. The character may not even be aware of that secret – take Kinsey Milhone. Part of her basic character is her “loner” status, yet Grafton drops hints of Kinsey’s dead parents, the aunt who raised her and then drops a bomb – she does have family after all. Cousins who drag her into their lives, and force her (indirectly) to deal with the past.

Why? Subplots deepen a story as well as round out the hero or heroine. The series avoids plodding through “the usual suspects” and storyline to give the reader a more realistic picture of the character’s life. Read S. J. Rozan’s Lydia Chin and Bill Smith series of PI mysteries for a masterful series arc. Even these two characters keep secrets from each other, due to their complicated family relationships and cultural differences, despite being partners for years.

One of the strongest ways to build a series is to choose a specific location, a la “Cabot’s Cove” in the Murder She Wrote series (just as popular with readers as with television viewers). JoAnna Carl created “Warner Pier” based on a small town in western Michigan for her Chocolate shop mystery series and explores interplay between the town residents. Charlaine Harris introduces readers to “Shakespeare” in Arkansas while Carolyn Haines explores “Zinnia” in the Mississippi Delta area. The writers mine their own experiences of living in these areas to infuse the flavor and hook readers.

Writers who are willing to invest their time, energy and loyalty to a series might find themselves weary after several books. Think Arthur Conan Doyle, who killed off Holmes and then had to resurrect him after he “died” at Reichenbach Falls! But you can’t knock reader loyalty.

It might just carry a writer all the way to the bank.

Mystery genres: part one

Mystery genres: part one

by Gunnar

“What’s in a name?” Juliet asked the velvet night. A rose, after all, would delight us with its scent no matter what we called it.

But in the crime fiction genres, the name tells us a lot about what we’ll find between those covers. Mysteries, for example, range from delightful cozies to hard-boiled police procedurals — but a thriller is something else entirely and romantic suspense something else again. And capers aren’t only found in the woods, you know. So for your delectation, here’s a brief discussion of the categories that are generally lumped together under the heading of crime fiction.

Mystery is the original and classic of these genres, invented by Edgar Allan Poe with his 1841 short story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” These are detective stories, where a crime’s been committed and someone must figure out whodunit so that justice may be served, and the reader’s fun lies in pitting wits against the book’s main characters, the detective and the villain. Arthur Conan Doyle made these stories popular in Victorian times with his celebrated consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, and a slew of brainy writers made them the most fashionable books to read in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. In the United Kingdom, everyone was reading Agatha Christie (first published in 1920) and Dorothy L. Sayers (1923). In the U.S. Ellery Queen brazenly told his readers when they should have solved the mystery, if they’d been paying proper attention. (This “Challenge to the Reader,” introduced in 1929, was a page near the end of the novel where the author stated that only one solution was now possible.)

But even as these writers perfected the classic mystery tale, the genre began to shatter. These brilliant stories, so perplexing and challenging, were also cerebral and unrealistic. Murders happened, but in the most bizarre of manners and always (always!) offstage, with no visual violence to mar the serenity of the tale. They happened in locked rooms, where no one entered or left, in theater companies, in art galleries — in civilized places rather than dark alleys. Amateurs drawing on their life’s experiences out-detected police professionals, usually in English country villages or Manhattan parlors. And would a murderer really hang around the scene of the crime long enough to strip the victim and replace all his clothing the wrong way around? (The Chinese Orange Mystery by Ellery Queen, 1934. All the furniture in the room was reversed, too.)

Dashiell Hammett didn’t think so, and he was a Pinkerton operative so he should know something about this. In 1923 he began writing a different type of detective story, one with a focus on police stations, private detectives, forensics, weaponry, and the law. He was followed by other writers who felt the same: Earle Stanley Gardner, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane. Their stories were dark, violent, often stark commentaries on modern city life, and distinctly American. Although these stories fascinated a different audience, they became just as popular as their gentler counterparts.

Today these two different categories of mysteries form the two ends of a genre spectrum. On one end is the so-called cozy, with an amateur detective and the violence covered by a lace tablecloth; on the other end is the hard-boiled police procedural, with autopsies on cold metal slabs. Most modern mystery novels fall somewhere between these bookends, with varying degrees of realism, police involvement, and on-screen violence. Cozies tend to focus on the puzzle, with the story’s climax coinciding with the revelation of whodunit, while police procedurals may reveal the criminal’s name earlier and instead focus on the take-down and evidence collection. Female readers tend to lean toward the cozy end of the spectrum, male readers toward the hard-boiled end, but like all other generalizations, this one shouldn’t be considered absolute.

"To Dr. Lee McClain of Seton Hill University's Writing Popular Fiction Program, for insisting I learn all this no matter how much I whinged."
http://www.setonhill.edu/academics/fiction/faculty_get.cfm?FacultyID=67