This week: Strategic Scene Building Edited by: Carol St.Ann  
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| A well designed mystery reveals everything with strategic design and singular permissions. Novitiate writers tend to believe that a mystery is one of the easiest novels to write - until they realize the amount of research, strategy, and skill it takes to write a true mystery story. |
| ASIN: B01CJ2TNQI |
Product Type: Kindle Store
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Amazon's Price: $ 5.99
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The true mystery is a series of who did it, how did they do it, and why did they do it.
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Building Dramatic Scenes
One of the best ways to captivate your reader is to allow them into the story. Allow the action to unfold right before their eyes. The reader becomes your first witness, recording the facts as they are presented to arrive at the conclusion.
But how do you get the reader to that magical zone where your story is more important than all the other things they should or could be doing?
The Outline in any form is your best friend.
When developing your mystery story an outline of the plot will allow you to develop the scenes – this happens, -- then this happens next, -- and then something else happens next = three scenes. Depending on the length of detail you put into each scene this could result in an entire chapter or part of one.
When you’re writing mystery, it’s much easier to think in terms of scenes rather than chapters. By completing each scene as it should unfold, you can sort them into chapters at a later time. This also makes writing more complete. Writing the scene alleviates concern (anxiety) about word count and length to finish the chapter. It’s quite possible, you’ll have many different scenes within a chapter, although a chapter could in fact be just one scene.
If you remember, a scene reveals a story of its own. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A scene will involve conflict and tension builders. Basically you create a sense of drama within your scene by using the standards of the 5 Ws.
By creating scenes you choose how much mystery you will reveal to the reader, while leading them in a controlled reveal of what’s going on and why. You don’t want your reader to get the wrong mental picture, and end up being confused half way through your scene.
Three important reminders for the start of your scenes:
Who is in the scene?
 let the readers know who the characters are
let readers know if characters come and go during a scene
Where is the scene taking place?
give readers the setting location (city, country)
give readers the scene location (dark alley, back shed)
When is the scene taking place?
let the readers know what time of day it is
inform readers when you switch between dates and time frames
Time is of a greater importance in a mystery novel, than probably any other type of novel. In order for the detective to arrive at a believable solution, the events, and how the details of those events unfold must be done in a chronological order.
Think about it for a minute . . . you find a dead body, and now must figure out why they are dead, right? . . . so you retrace every step of that individual in order to determine:
Who they were?
What they were doing prior to their death?
When was the last time they were seen alive?
Where did the murder weapon come from, or better yet where did it go?
Why they were murdered?
Every scene has a purpose in moving the story forward. Each scene must produce results and therefore should have one or more of the following in it:
introduce a character
reveal the characteristics of a character
provide a plot requirement, whether it be, a resolution or complication
a situation in which a character must respond
create conflict or raise the stakes for one or more characters
reveal a clue
present some form of vital information key to the story
By figuring out what task is of importance to the scene, you can focus on the action of the scene. If there is no specific action in the scene, then you are left with nothing more than random word fillers, which could, if not designed to perfection, will halt your story process. Start your scene with a piece of dialogue or a peek at a character in action. Prove to your reader that the beginning is the start to something interesting about to take place. It will be necessary to maintain that pace in order to keep your reader captivated. Remember, action can be as simple as chopping an onion while deep in thought. The slow action of the knife as it slices through. The sound of the knife as it hits the cutting board as the thoughts become angry. The smell of the onion as it reaches the nose of your character and reveals an important clue in the case. The ease of tears from the cutting motion, could that be how the murderer was able to show compassion through eyes of hate.
By developing your action within your story, you can build the key effects into workable habits or clues for your detective to entertain your readers, as they see through his/her eyes a murder take place or be solved. Remember overkill can be damaging. There is no need to provide your reader with every detail of a scene.
Too much detail can be overwhelming and dull. At times, you can ask yourself the following to determine if you need to include a specific detail.
Answer YES to these questions:
does it bring the reader into the scene
does it clarify which characters are present
does it clarify where and when the scene takes place
does it provide an impact to the story
does it provide an emotional impact
does it divert readers from the obvious clues
Answer NO to these questions
does it interrupt the story
does it slow the pace of the story
You want to provide your readers an entertaining story by placing them in the scene both physically and emotionally. By carefully selecting your details you will bring the desired effect to your reader with jam-packed action scenes providing a realism of drama to the reader.
Kudos and thanks to Max Griffin, oldseadog, John Yarber, Tim Mathews, Barb Taylor, wannabe, Patrick Bernardy, tolimar, Sophie, Stephan, and Mrs Monks who were and are my teachers, reviewers, instructors, and advisers - who never let me get away with less than my best.
•=======•=======•
Thank you for reading!
One Last Thing!
Remember to nominate great mysteries!
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If the wheels fall off your mystery when you get to the middle, where’s the first place you’d look for the defective part?
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Mystery: December 28, 2022 Issue [#11729]
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