Monday, May 30, 2016

Review: Writing Mysteries, A Handbook by the Mystery Writers of Amerca

Last time I wrote about how I selected the point of view for my murder mystery, and why I did not use the first-person point of view loved by many mystery writers and their readers. This time, I'm providing a book review relevant to mystery writing.

Monday, May 23, 2016

Point of View, or Through Whose Eyes Do I Present My Murder Mystery?

Last time I reviewed the writing guide Don't Murder Your Mystery. The time before that I wrote about the advice to "write what you know" and why I found the advice less limiting than it first sounded. This time, I'm going to talk about point of view options for a murder mystery and how I settled on the one I would use in writing my first murder mystery.

Monday, May 16, 2016

Review: Don't Murder Your Mystery

I like to read books on writing craft, so it was an instinct of mine to find some books on writing mysteries since I am new to writing the genre. One of them I just read was excellent but, I think, misnamed. The Agatha award-winning Don't Murder Your Mystery by Chris Roerden could have been titled Don't Murder Your Prose. (Roerden went on to publish Don't Sabotage Your Submission, which has much the same content but is written for fiction writers of any genre. Roerden advises people to not bother buying both books.)

Monday, May 9, 2016

Why Writing What You Know is Not the Same as Playing it Safe

I last wrote about deciding the sub-genre of my story and deciding whether my sleuth had a Watson. In this post, I will talk a bit on what it means to "Write what you know."

Monday, May 2, 2016

Picking the Sub-genre of My Mystery and Do I Have a Watson?

Last time I wrote about the importance of working out the solution to a mystery before beginning to write the story. This time, I'm going to write about the following two things:

  • picking the sub-genre of the mystery I am about to write .
  • deciding if my sleuth has a Watson, and how to make their relationship interesting.