What Is A Mystery Story?

At the core of a mystery story is a question and the story itself is all about solving that question. ‘Who killed Mr. Body?’ is such a question, of course. (I think it was Colonel Mustard in the library with a candlestick.) ‘Who wants the philosopher’s stone and why?’ is also such a question, even though it has nothing to do with a crime per se.

The mystery story is built around the question. That question can be ‘who did it?’, but just as well ‘will they win the big game?’ or ‘who wrote those wonderful love letters?’. Essential for the mystery story is that the main character spends most time in pursuit of the answer to that question, even if there’s additional plots and additional things to do. Finding and interpreting new clues must be a main part of the story, not just something which turns up every now and then while the author has nothing else planned.

That is easy if the mystery story is a crime story, especially if the main character is a professional or semi-professional in the world of crime solving. Then they’re expected to solve that crime. If they’re an amateur in the world of crime solving, but stumbling over many cases, that might be suspicious instead. (I’m a big fan of the fan theory that Jessica Fletcher did all those murders in the ‘Murder She Wrote’ series herself.) The questions here are questions about motive, means, and opportunity, about why they did it, how they did it, and whether they had the chance to do it.

In other cases, the answer to the question will demand different sub-questions to be solved, but it usually comes down to finding clues and interpreting them, so clue-finding is an important job for the main character or characters in any case.

The scope of the question is also important. ‘What will I have for lunch?’ can be an interesting mystery question for a short story of the ‘slice-of-life’ variety. Unless you work with a very, very dark, dystopian future, I don’t see it carrying a whole novel. On the other hand, it will be pretty challenging to squeeze the answer to the question ‘will they save the world?’ into the roundabout five hundred words of a flash fiction piece.

The question is the most important plotline of the story, the through-line, if you want to put it like that. It has to fit with the size of the story, because while you can always bolster a novel with a few additional plots, the main plot has to carry most of it. If the question gets answered halfway through the novel (or pushed aside for other plots for most of it), then you have a problem.

Since mystery stories are built around the mystery, it’s important to give the main character or characters the means to solve that mystery. This means they need to go out and actively look for clues, for ways of solving that mystery. If your question is ‘who killed Mr. Body?’, that’s relatively easy, because your characters will go looking for means, motive, and opportunity. If your question is ‘what’s the chamber of secrets and what’s in it?’, then it’s a bit harder, because anything called a ‘chamber of secrets’ should, by its very nature, be steeped in secrets and thus not easy to find out about.

Clues can, of course, lead to more questions. The amulet lost at the scene of the theft has a symbol on it which none of the main characters can identify, so this symbol becomes a minor mystery question in itself. The sudden stop of those love letters leaves the main character with the question of not only who wrote them, but also why they stopped. At the same time, that stop suggests that, perhaps, the writer of the letters has fallen ill or left the country or was for other reasons kept from writing, which will allow for the main character to eliminate some of the suspects.

There can be misleading clues, often called ‘red herrings’, but they shouldn’t be too common in a story. Trick the reader once and they will enjoy it. Trick them five hundred times and they will despise your story. Most of the time, therefore, your clues should lead somewhere, even if the direction isn’t immediately clear. Another neat trick is the clue which seems to be a red herring, but ultimately puts the main character or characters on the right track.

With every clue the characters unveil, with every hint in the right direction, the reader, too, should be able to make an educated guess at the answer of the question. The guess might be right or wrong - most likely, it should be wrong at the beginning of the story, because there are a few twists and turns ahead.

One important part in which the reader engages with the mystery story is by trying to solve the mystery by themselves. The mystery story is a puzzle and humans do love to solve puzzles. We like the challenge for our mind, we like thinking about such a question, about such a riddle. It’s only possible to solve a puzzle, though, if we are given all the parts, so that’s another important point of the mystery story: it inherently needs to be fair.

All clues must be given in a form which makes it possible to interpret them in the right way. That doesn’t mean that they must be obvious the moment they are given, but they must be there, they must be identifiable, if only in hindsight. The main character may not at the end draw on a fact, on a clue, never given to the reader. They may not solve the question through a coincidence or by some kind of divine intervention (deus ex machina is bad, m’kay?). It must, at least from the answer to the question, the solution to the mystery, be possible for the reader to look back on the story, find the clues, and put them together to form the full picture. It should, for an experienced reader of mysteries, be possible to solve the mystery alongside the main character or characters, perhaps even interpret a clue or two earlier than they can.

In that aspect, the twenty rules of the detective story by S.S. van Dine are still true, even though some of them have outlived their usefulness (such as ‘no love stories’ or ‘no servants as culprits’). The mystery story must be fair, the reader must be able to solve it, if they pay enough attention.

The mystery story is a story which revolves around a question. It can be a crime story, but it doesn’t have to be one. Throughout the story, the question must be the main plot thread for the main characters to follow. Throughout the story, there must be clues, both for the characters and for the reader. Those clues must lead to the ultimate answer of the question, to the solution of the riddle we’re given. If you follow that principle, you will end up with an enjoyable mystery story for your readers to engage with.

Fleshing Out Characters

Characters are not born fully fleshed out and with a long and complicated back story. They start out as ideas, as a bundle of traits and skills at best. Sometimes, a lot of their development is done subconsciously, but it’s always a development.

Characters, especially if they’re main characters, need to be fleshed out. They need to have a character, to put it bluntly. If you’re not doing that, you will end up with stereotypes which are only defined by one trait and have no real character to speak of. So let’s have a look at how to flesh them out.

Some characters have a long and complicated back story from the very beginning, because the story is an integral part of whatever tale you wish to tell about them. In most cases, though, the back story is only for you, so you can gauge how the characters will act in a certain situation.

Take, for instance, Jane Doe. There’s quite a bit of her back story in the first novel, “Criminal Ventures”, because that one is about her growing into the role of Steven’s right hand as much as it is about the end of the organisation he built. Jane doesn’t know about her parentage (in either identity, Jane Browne doesn’t know about it, either). Her mother left her in the emergency room of a hospital with a note that her name was Jane and the doctor who checked her added the last name ‘Doe’ as a joke of sorts. In the Black Knight Agency series, Jane never loses that last name, whereas she’s set up as Jane Browne in the Knight Agency series when she becomes an active agent. In the Black Knight Agency series, her life as a foster child was anything but nice mostly because the social worker on her case (another one than in the Knight Agency series) had plans for her. Plans which came to a grinding halt when Jane hit an abusive foster father in the groin at age ten and ran away, meeting Steven about a week later, already starving and thus taking a big risk. From there on, her way to adulthood and up to age 25 is in the novel. Jane was always an aggressive child because of the berserk - because she was born with that trait and couldn’t control it as a child. In the two series, she trains to use it differently; Jane Doe has embedded it into her life, whereas Jane Browne has learned to lock it away until needed. It was her aggressive instinct to fight back which allowed her to survive her first meeting with Steven, as it were. Jane’s back story, as both the former criminal and the agent, is in the novels, so there’s not much else to say about her.

I haven’t really touched on Gabrielle Munson’s back story, on the other hand. Gabrielle has had three novellas already, but I have only dipped into how she got her powers and what they meant for her life before “Stray”, the first story about her. Gabrielle wasn’t born alone, she had a twin sister. She was the more ‘silent’ twin; Angelica, her sister, was the more active one. When both drowned at the age of three, they died, but Gabrielle came back - now alone in the world. Four years later, her powers as a necromancer broke free for the first time. That is in the stories already, unveiled bit by bit. There’s more to her back story, of course. Gabrielle was kicked out of her family and learned to live on her own. She had a very deep relationship with her grandmother (who’d come from India). To find out more about her own powers, she has studied necromancy and she has travelled a lot. What she learned is not yet in the stories.

Back story helps in a lot of ways with fleshing out the characters, because we all develop through what happens to us. It shapes our view of the world, our actions, our worries, our hopes. There’s more, however. There’s wants and needs, which also come from the back story. A character who has never had a real family might want one. A character who has never been trusted to lead their own life might need to learn that they can rely on their own decisions.

Traits are another aspect of personality. Is a character confident or shy? Do they like to be around others or are they loners? Do they have a talent for practical things or do they have a strong mind? It changes how they act in a certain situation. A confident character will face opposition head-on, because they’re sure they’ll master it. A shy character might try to evade opposition instead and will feel very nervous when having to deal with people. A person with a talent for practical work will just start repairing that warp core whereas a person with a strong mind might make several plans how to do the repairs first. It pays to make the traits logical. A charming person who is a loner is possible, but not quite as likely. A shy leader is an oxymoron in itself - a leader needs to be confident and able to make themselves heard. They may have doubts, but they won’t voice them for the good of the group.

Then there’s the skills someone has. Skills also interconnect with back story - what a character has done before, how and where they’ve lived, will have an influence on their skills. A character who has lived in the wild knows how to survive there, knows the poisonous plants, knows how to trap animals for food, how to fish. They may not be able to write and read and they may only speak the language to a certain degree, but they can certainly help the group get through a wilderness. A character who has worked as a hacker before will be able to hack into systems and help the group get access to information or even areas they’re not supposed to be in. A former police officer still knows all about procedure and can foresee how the police will react in certain cases, giving them an edge, should they decide to do a heist.

Back story, traits, and skills form a certain picture of your character and determine their actions to a degree. It’s important, though, that they don’t need to have all skills in place at the beginning of a story. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t learn how to ride or how to crack a lock during course of the story.

Discovering Audiobooks

I’m not someone to change her habits lightly. I find it easier to have my habits which do not require of me to think along with what I’m doing - which allows for me to think of other things, such as my stories, instead. It took me quite a while to shift from mostly printed books to e-books, even though now I wouldn’t want to miss my digital library, which is extremely useful for someone who goes through books as fast as I do. Very, very recently, I also decided to try out audiobooks.

I’ve never really gotten into books on CD, which was the early version of the audiobook. Having to change CDs regularly while listening to a story over hours didn’t really appeal to me much. Modern audiobooks are, of course, still very long, but they come in digital form and I can listen to them on my smartphone, on my PC, or on the Fire tablet (which will also partially replace my slightly damaged Paperwhite). The apps take care of keeping in mind where I’ve left off, so listening to a book over the course of, say, a week is not much of a problem. I can continue precisely where I’ve stopped before - although I try to listen in full chapters, because that means less thinking about what just happened before that sentence.

My first buy was “The Brothers Cabal”, which I got quite a bit cheaper, because I already own the e-book from Amazon. I have read this book several times already, so it’s not as if the story itself is new to me, but I certainly did underestimate what a good voice-actor or actor can do with the text. Listening to the guy who reads the book is just amazing; he brings the characters to life with his voice alone.

It’s also about the entertainment factor, though. I can’t listen to an audiobook while writing, of course, but I also enjoy computer games. Playing Viscera Cleanup Detail, House Flippers, or a casual time management game while I listen to an audiobook? Heaven. I really slip into the zone with VCD and a good audiobook. I listened to the first four hours of “The Brothers Cabal” in one go, well into the evening, simply enjoying myself. They were fun, there was nothing on TV, and I wasn’t writing, either, because I had back troubles and needed to walk around regularly. With a TV series, that would have left me with only half the information, but an audiobook is easy to listen to while you’re walking around your living room.

That doesn’t mean I will stop reading books, of course, but I can now see the draw audiobooks have for people. If you travel a lot by car or by train or by bus, if you have a long waiting time ahead of you, or just whenever you need a break - an audiobook can definitely help there. If you have weak eyes, the audiobook is a way to enjoy the story without too much of a hassle, too. I’ve always carried a book with me when I was travelling (later on my e-reader) and I have a tendency to listen to music while I’m out for a walk (which I should do more often for health reasons). An audiobook can replace the music for me, since I never turn the music up too much and am quite capable of listening while I’m on my way without being blind to my surroundings.

As a matter of fact, my parents one Christmas gave me a book on tape when I was a small kid. For weeks, my dad secretly recorded one of my favourite children’s book chapter by chapter on an array of cassette tapes (it was in the late 70s), so I could listen to him reading my favourite book when his job made it impossible for him to be home in time to read to me himself. Yes, he did that whenever he came home in time, which was most of the time, luckily.

My dad was good at reading me stories in an interesting way, just as the professional narrators on Audible are good at reading the stories in an interesting way. Well, they are better - but then, they have training for it, my dad did not.

I’m really looking forward to one more option for my evening in bed with an audiobook whenever I feel a little too tired for reading. Or just to curling up on the couch and listening when I’m not in the mood for reading or just want to close my eyes for a bit. It’ll be a little like it was in my childhood when my dad would read me to sleep at night.

I’ve had a time when I listened to radio dramas for the same reason, but audiobooks are better - with only one person talking, even if they ‘do all the voices,’ it’s closer to my childhood experience. There’s also no music and sound effects to distract me. Radio dramas are fine and can be a lot of fun to listen to, but I prefer the story and the voice of the narrator only, please.

On the other hand, I’m now wondering whether at some point my own stories might become audiobooks as well. It would be cool to have them read in a good voice, but currently I’m self-publishing and that means I don’t have the means to get them done. It depends on the future of my books. If I can ever afford it or have an offer from a creator of audiobooks to do them, I will definitely allow it.

If not, the only time they get read out loud will continue to be during my editing process - which is soon going to start anew, since “Alex Dorsey” will be coming out at the end of February.

Audiobooks aren’t something which you can listen to in one go - they’re several hours long, even if the stories are relatively short as you read them. On the other hand, they’re also something you can look forward to as a reward or just as a bit of comfort during a hectic day.

Romance, Lust, and Marriage

Today, we’re used to the idea that people should marry for romantic reasons and that if you’re in love with someone, you will sooner or later also want to have sex with them and you will eventually want to marry them. Romance, lust, and marriage belong together to a degree. They are, however, three different kinds of relationships. The romantic relationship is different from the erotic relationship and both are different from the social relationship (which is marriage, of course). What does that mean for you as a writer?

Take romantic relationships and let’s take a look at the relationship of Guinevere and Lancelot in Arthurian legends. As long as their relationship was only romantic, everything was fine. At the time at which the first version of the legends was written down, knights were expected to have a romantic relationship with a high-born lady (who often was married already) and dedicate their fights to her, at least in fiction. They’d sing her praise - if they were able to, that is - and they’d sometimes be allowed to carry a handkerchief or other little memento of her with them during their adventures. Lancelot confessing romantic feelings for Guinevere in court, even with her husband present, was perfectly fine and allowed - it even was a compliment to Arthur and Guinevere, because the women who were worshipped that way were considered pure and perfect.

The problem in Arthurian legends comes when they cross the border into another kind of relationship: the erotic one. Sex with the high-born lady one worshipped was not allowed. Guinevere ‘lowering’ herself to a sexual relationship with Lancelot was what made them both cheaters.

On the other hand, it has been considered perfectly fine for men (especially high-ranking ones) to have a sexual relationship outside of marriage, either long- or short-term. They could have a mistress or several, as long as they could afford it. Alternatively, or at the same time, they could also see a prostitute whenever they felt like it. Sex was something which wasn’t necessarily connected to marriage, either. A couple needed offspring, an heir at least, but where else the husband spent his seed (and where else the wife might find solace and fun, if discreetly so) didn’t matter.

In modern times, we still have the idea of ‘friends with benefits’ - of two people in another kind of relationship than a social or romantic one who can occasionally have sex with each other.

Marriage has been an affair to be arranged for a long time - right into the twentieth century, as it were. For an arranged marriage, the feelings of the two people involved didn’t play a role. As today with matchmaking businesses, there often were professional or semi-professional agents involved who found good matches for a marriage, even if the idea of a ‘good match’ was a different one. For farmers, that might mean the daughter of a neighbouring farmer who’d bring along a field or two in close proximity to the ones of farmer looking for a daughter-in-law or a wife. For a merchant, it might mean the daughter of another merchant who had connections to a different area of the world. For a nobleman, politics often played a role in the choice - ensuring peace, enlarging the own area, getting a few steps closer to the throne.

For a long time, marriage was a matter of finances and social standing, not of love as a such. That’s not bad per se, though. Many arranged marriages worked out well enough, because the two people entering that marriage knew what they were in for. There was no love between them, but respect can grow, nevertheless. They were living together, raising children, making memories. Instead of love and/or lust, there was familiarity and the acceptance of society. That can be enough, provided nothing more is expected - and for a long time, nothing more was expected.

For a writer, that means that not every relationship between two people must have all three components: romance, lust, and marriage. A romantic relationship which never translates in anything else is fine. Two friends who go on adventures together and sometimes spend the night with each other, too, can be a great story. A marriage which was arranged and within which a couple develops a mutual respect and faces all problems of life can make for a good story as well. It’s all a question of what you want to show, what you want to write about.

At the same time, it also doesn’t mean you need to have a romantic relationship in every story you write. Personally, I feel like a lot of stories, especially in action movies, have a romance tacked on as a sub-plot, just because either the script writer, the director, or the producers feel that every story needs that romance sub-plot, not because it makes any sense within the story. Not every action hero needs to have a girlfriend in the end. Not every female lead needs to be matched up with the male one by the time the credits roll.

Also, don’t get me started on the whole ‘will they, won’t they’ subject. It’s not so much a problem for movies or standalone novels, because they only have a limited time to spend on the relationship, but it’s a huge problem with series, no matter whether it’s TV series or novel series (or serialised novels, but those aren’t quite that common any longer). At some point, you have to owe up to the ‘will they, won’t they’ and in quite some cases, that point could have come much earlier, because it was quite obvious from the beginning. Instead, you could give them one type of relationship at the beginning and then see them move into another one during the series. Imagine starting a series with two people getting into an arranged marriage, only to have them find that they also start to fall in love with each other over time. Only here, it’s not within one story, it’s within a long series of stories during which their relationship is not the main point, but political intrigues or strange mysteries may be.

Back to the three types of relationships, though. It often helps to have an eye on the past to see whether or not all three types have to be present at all times. They don’t have to be, as I pointed out above. Even while the audience expects it today, that doesn’t mean you have to cater to that expectation. Sometimes, not doing so makes a much better story, after all. Be brave - dare to write relationships you find interesting, even if they’re not the common type.