In my 10 years as a mystery writer, I learned a lot about poison, police procedure, and how a coroner works. I also, to my surprise, learned a lot about how to craft a novel that is not a mystery.
In fact, when writing my new novel Merry (commercial fiction in which no one gets murdered), I found that my mystery-writing experience kept bubbling up, guiding me to make choices in character and plot that I might not otherwise have made. Did it help?
Well, this was the first one of my books that was sold at auction. So, I think so.
Make your protagonist competent.
The hero of a mystery has the skills necessary to solve the crime. That doesn’t mean she’s a well-adjusted human being. Far from it. She might have fears, physical weaknesses, vertigo. A great example is David Mitchell’s eccentric character in the British TV series Ludwig. He comes across as a fumbling mass of anxieties, but he’s a genius at solving puzzles and because of that, he’s more than able to solve mysteries.
Where does your protagonist excel? What is she good at?
In Sally Rooney’s heartbreaking novel, Normal People, the two protagonists are wounded people. They each make a series of incredibly bad decisions. But, they are both very smart, so much so that they each win impressive fellowships at Trinity College. Knowing that they were both so competent in this one area of their life gave me, as a reader, a way into understanding and respecting them. It balanced out all that self-destructiveness and it made me feel like they had a chance of solving their problems. (If you’ve read that book, try to imagine it without their academic honors.)
Give your protagonist a skill!
Give your protagonist a specific goal.
In a mystery, the protagonist wants to uncover the murderer. He wants to solve a specific crime. He doesn’t want to solve the issue of crime in general, though he might think about it. Because his goal is so specific, it’s easy to figure out what he wants and whether he succeeds.
The goals of protagonists of commercial novels may seem more diffuse. To find self-worth. Absolution. Wealth. But I would argue that your story will resonate more if the goal is specific. In Merry, I knew that the protagonist wanted to heal her family. But how to concretize that? I decided that she wants them to put on a performance of A Christmas Carol. Her children are in their 30s. They don’t want to dress up. Having that specific thing to argue about gave the story more traction than if they just sat around arguing about nothing, which they might well have done.
What does your character want? To get married on her 30th birthday? To pay off her Visa bill. To adopt a Rottweiler. How can you make that goal as specific as possible?
Make your antagonist challenging.
Antagonists are a big reason that mysteries are so compelling. If Hannibal Lechter is chasing you, you better believe the tension’s going to go up and your protagonist is going to be on top of her game.
But the antagonist doesn’t need to be a serial killer.
In Miss Austen, by Gill Hornby, Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra must face off against her sister-in-law. Mary Austen is a piece of work and she knows exactly how to provoke Cassandra, who is vulnerable. To fight her, Cassandra must force herself out of the lethargy by which she’s been consumed. Mary’s the perfect antagonist because she knows exactly how to push Cassandra’s buttons.
Who is the best antagonist for your novel?
Give everyone a secret.
In mysteries, the protagonist spends the bulk of the novel uncovering secrets, and one of them is usually a motive for murder. But in commercial fiction, secrets add to the tension whether or not there’s a murder.
Ann Napolitano does this to beautiful effect in her novel, Hello Beautiful. One of her major characters, William Waters, is a morass of secrets, so much so that at one point a therapist tells him to make a list of all of them. Early in the novel, William’s parents give him a check for $10,000. He doesn’t spend it, but neither does he tell his wife about it. I knew the moment I read about that check that his wife was going to find out about it, and probably in the worst way possible. It kept me turning the pages.
What secrets do your characters have?
Turn up the heat!
You don’t get much more high stakes than life and death. Mysteries usually involve a murder. That’s what makes them so exciting.
But you don’t need for a killer to be on the loose to have a high stakes novel. Kristin Hannah is a great example of a commercial novelist who knows how to raise the stakes. Tension is built into the very settings she uses: Vietnam, the Dust Bowl, Nazi-occupied France.
Even an ordinary life in Chicago can be ensnared by high stakes situations, as Ann Napolitano shows in Hello Beautiful. Charlie is the father of the four Padavano sisters who are the core of the novel. When he dies suddenly, his wife’s response is so extreme that it threatens the very unity of the family. Napolitano takes emotions that are universal, such as grief and love, and then she turns up the stakes to an almost operatic level.
How can you turn up the heat in your novel? How can you make a bad situation worse?
Solve the problem.
Mystery novels can involve terrible tragedies and disturbing crimes. But at the end, the murderer is uncovered, some semblance of order is restored and usually, the good guys win. Good triumphs over evil. It’s inspiring.
There’s definitely a bias in commercial fiction toward a happy ending. I used to work with an editor at a pitch conference, and the first thing he would ask writers was, is there a happy ending? If the writer said no, he’d swear and then he’d ask, why?
I’ve loved plenty of novels with unhappy endings. Thank you, Anna Karenina, but I do think you want the reader to feel like, having gone on a long journey with your characters, they’ve come to some sort of destination and they’ve learned something. It could be: Love matters. Family matters. There are good people in the world. You’re not the only one with issues. It might also be, Nothing means anything. I just feel like the reader should be slightly changed from having read your novel.
What do you want readers to take away?
One of the most important things I learned as a mystery writer is that people love reading mysteries. Using their characteristics in your own writing, mystery or not, will make your story more vibrant.
Check out Susan Breen’s Merry here:
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