The 20 Rules

As a reader and writer of mystery stories for most of my life, I have long ago learned about the basic rules of the genre. Every now and then, however, I stumble over a piece of information I find highly useful. Like “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories” by. S.S. van Dine.

I stumbled upon this essay by S.S. van Dine while browsing one of my favourite sites for free e-books, Feedbooks (click here to find the e-book). I downloaded it and read it, realizing that part of the rules still are correct while others have changed over time. Let’s have a look at the twenty rules and see how they are today, shall we?

1. The reader must have equal opportunity to solve the crime. That one still is absolutely right. All clues must be visible and all information the detective gets must also be available for the reader.

2. No tricks or deceptions might be played on the reader safe for those also played on the detective by the criminal. That’s very much the same as ‘equal opportunity’ in my books, but it’s right, of course.

3. There must be no love interest in the story. Boy, that one flew right out of the window later, didn’t it? Van Dine argues that a mystery story is a venture for the mind and not for emotions, but I have to admit that a little bit of relationship stuff in a mystery story can surely spice things up.

4. The detective himself or one of the official investigators should never turn out to be the culprit. That one is a ‘yes, but’ case for me. Yes, the detective who is the main character of the story should never turn out to be the culprit. I have, however, read some mystery stories in which one of the official investigators turned out to be the culprit and they worked quite nicely.

5. The culprit must be found by logical deduction, not by accident, coincidence or an unmotivated confession. That one is definitely true. A good mystery story should never rely on accident or coincidence for the solution, it all has to be ‘there’ to be seen.

6. The detective novel must have a detective in it (read: a person who detects and searches for clues and logically interprets them). That basically goes without saying, as it were.

7. There must be a corpse in the story, the deader the better. Another of those ‘yes, but’ cases in my opinion. You can start a crime story with something less than a murder, but sooner or later the murder should come. It’s the most interesting crime to most readers and they expect at least one in a crime or mystery story.

8. The crime must be solved by naturalistic (read: scientific) means. This one is definitely right, but a patina of supernatural sometimes goes well with the story. Old-fashioned deduction can go a long way, even with all the help of a modern CSI unit.

9. There must be but one detective. I’ve seen stories with various detectives (adding up to ‘one’ detective) done very well, but there should be, in essence, one detective entity pitted against the reader.

10. The culprit must turn out to be a person who has played a more or less prominent role in the story. This one is absolutely right. There’s nothing worse than a story in which the culprit jumps out of the shadows at the end and has never been seen before. It falls under the rule of ‘equal opportunity’, by the way – for the reader has to meet all important characters and the culprit definitely is important.

11. Servants should never turn out to be the culprit. Another rule the change of times has done away with. Servants are rare today, outside the houses of the very rich (and usually very famous). As they’re not that common today, there’s no real reason to exclude them from the list of possible culprits.

12. There must be only one culprit. I don’t completely agree with this rule. It should be obvious, though, in some way after a while that there have to be two criminals around. I have read stories that work very well with two or more criminals.

13. Secret societies or criminal syndicates have no place in a detective story. I partly agree here. The culprit should not have a syndicate behind him and secret societies are fit better for a thriller or adventure story. There’s no reason, though, why one should not play a very minor role.

14. The method of murder must be scientific and logical (so it can be detected). Van Dine meant by this that there should be no ominous poison never seen or heard of before. He’s right about it, because otherwise there’s no way the reader can solve the crime.

15. The truth must be visible at all times, provided the reader is clever enough to see it. Clues must point at the right person, if you really think about them. The means of committing the murder must be there, visible to the detective and the reader. That’s absolutely right, of course.

16. A detective story should not contain long descriptive passages. I don’t really agree with van Dine here. I like to slip into the setting, so descriptions of the surroundings and the people are of essence to me. But that one might be off today mostly because we’ve grown more used to psychological solving of crimes than at van Dine’s time. Today, we need worked out characters, so we can see who has the motif on top of the means and also has the right characteristics to kill.

17. The culprit should never be a professional criminal. Yes, that would be too easy. A professional criminal is one of the usual suspects and will be in the focus of the police far too soon. Mystery novels are not about how the police got Mr. X again, they’re about an unusual suspect committing a crime.

18. A crime must never turn out to be an accident or a suicide. That one, I think, goes without saying as well. Mystery stories are about solving crimes, not reconstructing accidents or analysing suicides. That does not mean, however, that a crime is not allowed to pose as an accident or a suicide.

19. The motif for a crime has to be personal. That’s still true today. If a motif is not personal, the story is more fit for a thriller (be it about a serial killer or some political murder). The ‘Why’ is the link between the victim and the culprit.

20. consists of a list of devices never to be used in a detective story, such as the evil twin, a false séance or planted evidence. Only the first in the list, finding the criminal by comparing traces from the crime scene to something the culprit has at his or her disposal (van Dine manages cigarette ash) has to be taken off the list. That’s how modern forensics work. Modern mystery stories have to accept this fact as a fact, but the detective doesn’t have to analyze this clue himself (or herself). He or she can be told.

Twenty rules for writing a mystery story. Some might not really be important today, but they’re still worth considering.

Surprising Success

When I published two stories on Feedbooks (see the links on the side), I hoped for a few readers, but I am very surprised at the number of downloads they have reached now – especially Twin Sisters.

This is actually quite motivating for me. I have started writing more lately – and more regularly as well. If any of you who read this blog have also downloaded the stories, I hereby thank you very much.

Announcement

… of some kind. If you take a closer look at the left side of the blog, you might realize I have added another link to the ‘posted at Feedbooks’ category.

With “Twin Sisters” I’ve now published my second story, others will follow – both in English and in German. “Twin Sisters” is a story about murder and revenge, quite bloody, but shorter than “Phoenix Song”.

My next project now is to overhaul my very first long story, a German one. Within a week or a week and a half at the outmost it should be ready for publication, too. After this one (a fantasy story), I might edit the large number of slash stories I wrote, both in English and in German, and publish them in two collections.

Keep an eye out for the list, if you’re interested in my stories.

Phoenix Song published

Yes, I have done a final step with a story I wrote some time ago – Phoenix Song.

Unfortunately, it’s not as great as the title of this post suggests: I merely published the story as a free e-book at Feedbooks.com. So, no big contract and no heaps of money coming in … but people will have a chance to read my story, all the same. No editor to go over the whole thing again, either, so there might be quite some typos left.

On the whole, I was positively surprised, though, with how easy it all was. I registered over there (have been downloading books from the site before – they have a great number of free e-books, both classics and new ones) and soon afterwards, I could start publishing my first story. I will, however, publish other stories over there as well – once I’m done with them. A few short stories are ready for publishing, so they should be up in a few weeks at the outmost. Others are still ‘work in progress’, so they will be published once I’m done.

You might have spied that new and currently rather short list beside the posts. This is where I will post direct links to my stories, once they’re published at Feedbooks, so keep an eye out for updates!

E-Books

… and me. Up until very recently I thought I would never own an e-book-reader or think about getting one. I love books, you see, the real ones. I love the feeling, the smell, the whole thing. There’s nothing better for me than curling up on my couch with a good book and some lemonade, tea or hot chocolate (depending on temperature and general weather outside). But now I might also curl up with an e-book-reader.

I have quite some .pdf files on my computer’s hard disks which I created myself. Most of them are either my own stories or fan-fictions I have downloaded and converted from various sites for easier reading. Up until now, I have only been able to read them at my computer, so I was looking for a way to read them somewhere else, too. Most of those files I printed out, though, are A4 format, which is quite big, so not exactly a good idea for reading on your way somewhere. Over the last couple of weeks (two months or so), I therefore researched e-book-reader and realized that all of them can also read .pdf files. So, with the money I got as a present from my parents for Christmas, I went to the nearest electronic market and took a closer look last Friday.

I had set my eyes on a Tekstore model – least expensive and they have colour for graphics, not just electronic ink in black, white and grey. Tekstore was out, though, so I experimented a bit with the cheaper Sony e-book-reader, the PRS-350. Unlike the Oyo, offered in Germany by the chain of Thalia bookstores (which I tested in one, some weeks ago), the Sony reacts rather fast. Flicking through pages is rather easy, too, with the touch-screen. So, to make a long story a bit shorter (and not a bit too early), I bought it.

It has turned out that some of my .pdf files (the ones I found through Forgotten Books) don’t work all too well with my new reader. Most of those I did myself, though, are fine (even though I might recreate some for it). But then I did some internet research and now I’m really loaded on free e-books, as I found some pages where you can legally get old classics (books that have been around for 70 years and more) for free. I have by now loaded a couple of books I always wanted to read (including Varney the Vampire and the Fu Manchu novels by Sax Rohmer), a couple of books I have read before, but will want to read again (like S.S. van Dine’s Bishop Murder Case and Greene Murder Case) and quite some books I had never thought about reading before (like The Mask of Zorro). There’s so many more books waiting for me, once I have made my way through those I already have…

I have also returned to the old custom of reading in bed. The reader is much easier to handle in bed than a normal book. No 50 pages loss when I’m turning a page, rather lightweight and easy enough to hold with one hand. I still need light (e-ink screens have no light of their own, which is good for energy saving), but I can read much easier – especially as I can also set various font sizes, if I find the regular one too small.

I still love real books and will never completely leave them behind, but an e-book-reader also has its merits.

NaNoWriMo

…and how I missed it. I have only heard about the NaNoWriMo this year when one of the people over at the Pub mentioned it. And I only investigated the site today, too late to enter the contest this year.

50,000 words (about 175 pages of story) are a long endeavour for me. I have not written any story high above 100 pages in my life – and the longest I’ve written was written in stages, it actually consists of three stories connected by common main characters. When I brought that story together, I changed a few things back in the first story to make sure it all fit together well.

The idea of writing 50,000 words in 30 days (about 1670 words a day) is a bit scary for me. It’s overwhelming, to be honest. Yet I know I can write that many words a day, I know I can write a long story. I have penned out whole novels, but I somehow can’t manage to write them. I have a very strong personal critic in my head. And, just maybe, NaNoWriMo might be exactly what I need to exorcise it. Because this is not about writing the perfectly polished novel – nobody can do that in a month, not even the most productive novelists out there. It’s about writing a mass of text, about letting it all out. It’s about quantity, not quality. And that’s what could help me to finish my novels. If I learn to ‘let it all out’ for the first draft, I know I can write my novels without being afraid of not being ‘good enough’ to write.

Hell, I’m writing a lot of stuff for my blogs, am I not? And all I write here and over at the other two is published basically instantly, is available to every person with access to the internet. So why can’t I just let the stories out and worry about the style and the right wording and grammar problems later on? I don’t really know.

I will try to write along my own NaNoWriMo this year (and maybe enter the contest next year, we’ll see). Maybe this will help me to exorcise the inner critic and become a better writer.