 Mystery: June 07, 2023 Issue [#11966] |
This week: What's in a mystery? Edited by: Gaby  
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Our duty is to believe that for which we have sufficient evidence, and to suspend our judgment when we have not.
~ John Lubbock
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
~ H. L. Mencken
In reality, those rare few cases with good forensic evidence are the ones that make it to court.
~ Pat Brown
Hello and welcome to the Mystery Newsletter! I'm Gaby, your guest editor.
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What are the main parts of a Mystery?
 Characters
Setting
Plot
Clues
Distraction
Structure
Easy!
Not really. With those six elements, you have to come up with, let's say a book, that's at least 50,000 - 70,000 words long. Just thinking about it makes me want to run in the other direction. Here's a fun fact. The average female uses about 20,000 words a day, while a male uses about 5,000. I'm not sure about that because in my household it's vice versa unless I have something to say. Then you can probably double the number for the female, if not triple it.  You get the picture. Basically, I can write more than half a novel in one day if I wrote words down rather than speaking them out loud. With me, quality over quantity wins in real life. However, I cannot write that many words in a day. But, as always, I digress and get off the subject.
 Characters
How many characters you'd like to include into your story is up to you because it depends on the type of story you're writing. I wouldn't recommend more than fifty even if you're including half a town into it. You want your reader to keep up with the story, rather than have a notebook next to them writing all the possible names down in order to remember them. You'll have your protagonist and your antagonist. Each of these can have supporting characters. Even the bad guy is allowed to have friends. Although, if the antagonist isn't a person, then whatever it is, it's on its own most likely.
Both can be likeable. They can even be best friends. Most crimes happen within a circle of people closest to each other. Other crimes have a pattern. The human psyche is a wonder and while many would say they would never be capable of committing a crime means only that they haven't been in a situation that would make them do something vicious. Everyone is capable of murder. Remember that. Even the sweet next door neighbor might have skeletons in the closet, literally.
That brings us to the background story of your characters. They all have their own story. Not just protagonist and antagonist. This you do and write for yourself. The more specific, the better. It's how you get to know the ones you're writing about. Some of that information will be important for your story. The rest is yours. Don't overshare about you character but rather find a balance.
Mind you, there are times where your protagonist/antagonist simply pops up out of nowhere. All of a sudden you have this dark and brooding character and he sits there waiting for you to figure out his story. Let me tell you, that's the worst character type! There aren't any words coming forth but he sits there patiently in the dark, unperturbed by your lack of ability to figure his story out.
 Setting
The when and where, and maybe even what. This is the time, place, and circumstances in which something occurs or develops. Oftentimes, this comes naturally. Most times your timeline is today or a few years back. If it isn't, you better do your research. There's only so much you can write without knowing the actual timeline. This is the common sense part. If your story is set in the 60's for example, you'd know that they didn't have cell phones, but what did they have? What kind of cars were most driven in that time? Research is very important if you want to make your story believable.
When it comes to the location, there are choices as well. Are you familiar with the area you're writing about? Have you walked the streets mentioned in your story? What are you characters surrounded with? What smells are familiar? Some writers will create a place for the story. Non-existent but in an area familiar to them. Once again, most of this is your research and you'll have to know what to keep for you and what to use in your story. It is all about the visual here. The reader doesn't want to read actually, they want to be there. This is the tricky part. While you flesh out your story, you as a writer are focused on your characters and everything that's going on. What we forget to realize is that the main character is in reality your reader. Everything your character does is what the reader should experience.
Think about it. When you read, do you not want to be the main character in a story? Escape your daily life, even for a little bit, and become someone else? Books are exactly that. Your job as a writer is to provide exactly that.
 Plot
And the plot thickens, right?
Well, can you thicken it? This is the tricky part. The more the plot thickens the easier it is to have plot holes. There's nothing a reader hates more than seeing something obvious that a writer missed. It makes for a bad story. As you flesh out your story, you have to be mindful of this. Sometimes, what we see in our mind's eye doesn't always transfer onto paper or screen.
This is what makes your story moving. Make notes, keep refreshing your memory, write everything down for yourself. It's like studying for a subject you're not exactly fond of because you always have to go back and glance at it to make sure you know what you're talking about. Even if it is as simple as catching a murderer, it cannot be simple. You'd have nothing to write about. The clues play a big role here, walk hand in hand with the plot.
 Clues
Your clues are the puzzle of your entire story. It pieces everything together. If you're a visual person, this might make better sense to you. In order to get from A to Z, you have to know the puzzle in its entirety, then take it apart and start writing from the beginning. The more puzzle pieces you have, the bigger the plot, and it adds more twists. But the clues have to be there. They are subtle. You're not meant to give it all away from the start.
Your reader is like a detective who wants to solve your puzzle. How much do you give them? What do you place in the story intentionally and what is there that's important yet easily skipped over? At the end of the book you want your reader to have that face  ! For them to remember clues that they thought weren't important or they completely missed but their mind remembers. That is your success for writing.
 Distraction
Here we are! The plot, clues, and distractions. It's a Pandora's Box of possibilities. These three parts of a story are an extension of each other. While you write, you add a clue a small one. Other times the clue is there but you sprinkle it with distraction to cloud the judgement of your character and reader. Plot twist! Something happens and your character/reader may or may not remember what they missed earlier.
This is a tough one.
A standalone mystery isn't easy to write. You don't want to make it simple, as mentioned before, because there wouldn't be much interest in it. If mystery is a sub-genre, it's a bit different since you have other elements thrown into the midst, but alone, the who done it and why? It's anything but. Keeping your reader on your toes means you have to know hide things in plain sight. It's a tough measurement. How much of a plot twist do you add with a clue? Is there a clue? What's the distraction? Is the distraction a plot twist? How do you untangle it?
 Structure
The simplified version of structure is your introduction, main body, conclusion. Beginning, middle, and end. I mean, doesn't get easier! With mystery, it doesn't have to be that way. You can start at the end and weave your way back.
However, the one thing about your beginning, it's a big ball of knots, twisted, tied together. You as the writer, are starting with that and it's your job to untangle all the knots before the story is over. By the end, you'll have a line of twine, if you will, that shows where every single knot used to be. It's not straight. In order to untangle all that do you have to skip over a few knots just to go back to them later? The distraction, clues, and plot twists have some say in that.
Who helps you with it? Your character(s). It's a rough journey but one you can successfully finish.
This might have been a Mystery 101 lesson, but I feel there are times where we have to refresh our memory. How many times do you get stuck? Can't see one end from the other? You're stuck in the middle without a way forward. This it to remind you, to pull you back from what you're focusing on too much, in order to see the bigger picture.
Even if you flesh out the entire story out onto paper, once you start writing, nothing is certain. We write one scene after the next, too absorbed into it, that we can lose ourselves in it and can't find our way back. Your characters can have a mind of their own and go off in a different direction than what you had in mind. You have to recalculate, redo every step you planned because it's not going where you wanted it to go. It's the life of a writer and that's why we oftentimes struggle.
Writing is far from easy. Writing good will give you that boost you need. Writing great? You will, at some point, bang your head against your desk or a wall, shed tears, sweat, and your own blood to finish your project. Once done, you'll se it aside until you forget about it completely. When you come back to it with fresh, clear, or cataract free eyes, you'll do it all over again.
All of that can create writers block but that's not it. It's our fear that we won't succeed. Just step on it, jump over it, go around the block if you must, but keep writing!
'til next time!
~ Gaby 
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Comments to my previous "Mystery Newsletter (May 10, 2023)" :
GaelicQueen  wrote:
What a thought-provoking newsletter. I've told my husband if I should come up missing, then he and the police are not looking for me hard enough. I believe I'm a very trackable person, leaving electronic and security camera records where I've been. But, who would want to nab a 68-yr old, feisty, senior-citizen?
 In this day and age, you never know! People aren't all sane, but they better look out for the feisty in you.  Thank you for reading and commenting. 
Schnujo's NOT Doing NaNoWriMo  wrote:
I'm so sorry and do hope your friend is found safe and sound! FYI, there is such a think as a Silver Alert for older adults who have gone missing. But for regular aged people, I guess they figured they can fend for themselves? No idea...
Thanks, Jody! I do hope she's okay, because I still haven't heard from her. Perhaps it's just being overwhelmed with work. At least that's what I keep telling myself. And I didn't know about the Silver Alert! Thanks for telling me.
Don't forget to check out "Note: View this Note" for more comments to my question!
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