"Now For a Little Personal Detective Work"

Harry Stephen Keeler's 1934 Dutton Clue Mystery, THE RIDDLE OF THE TRAVELING SKULL, "begins when a poem and a mysterious handbag lead a man to the grave of Legga, the Human Spider — and things just get stranger from there."

Based on that description, I would understand if you left the blog right now to grab a copy. Keeler's one of those "so bad he's good" authors. Here's a snippet from NPR: "Among the classic Keeler plots: A man is found strangled to death in the middle of a lawn, yet there are no footprints other than his own. Police suspect the 'Flying Strangler-Baby,' a killer midget who disguises himself as a baby and stalks victims by helicopter."

If you're still here -- bonus points if you happen to be a teacher or librarian looking for fun activities for students -- I'd like to show you a wonderful quirk of Dutton Clue Mysteries circa 1930.

Partway through each book in the series, a tear-away coupon invited the reader to "enter the story" and predict the ending by mailing their deductions and the reasoning behind them to the publisher. When three such correctly solved cards were received, the reader won a free Dutton Clue Mystery.

A friend sent me a postcard of the tear-away from THE RIDDLE OF THE TRAVELING SKULL, below (image reissued in 2005 by the Collins Library, an imprint of McSweeney's Books).

Next time your book club, summer reading challenge club, or literature class chooses a mystery, why not insert a similar card for extra credit or prizes? Readers will get the fun of analyzing clues, discussing possible answers, and laying out the method behind their theories.

You can follow this format:

Sarah Skilton lives in California with her magician husband and their young son. Her debut young adult novel, BRUISED, about a 16-year-old black belt in Tae Kwon Do who freezes up at an armed robbery, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and is available now!

Mystery Monday #33: Prompt: Think Like A Bad Guy

It's Mystery Monday! For you regulars here, you know that's when we'll give you a writing prompt. Just in case you needed a little creative kick in the ol' behind.

Today, I want to talk about bad guys. I love a good bad guy--why else does your hero need to save the day, right? But writing a bad guy can be quite the challenge, so here's a prompt for this week:

Write your story from the perspective of your bad guy. Okay, so maybe you don't have to actually write the whole thing, but just imagine the story from his or her perspective for this prompt.

1. What's his motivation? What does he want? Make it so in his eyes, your bad guy (or girl) is totally justified.

2. What would be his happy ending? Think how your bad guy could get what (s)he wants. This happy ending can be a plot point in your story-in-progress: by making things very hard for your hero, you can up the stakes and conflict.

3. What's your bad guy's Achilles Heel? Is he afraid of cockroaches (that would be me...), or of losing his kid? This is ammunition for your hero--try to think of a moment where this weak spot can become a tool.

For more ideas, look at your favorite bad guys. Me, I've been watching Justified lately, and Boyd Crowder makes such great multifaceted bad guy. You can almost see his point of view as a completely valid one. Almost.

How 'bout you? Any favorite bad guys? We'll allow TV, movies or books, since it's Monday.

Mystery Monday #30

Welcome to our regular Monday feature, where you'll find different kinds of writing prompts and exercises. Each week, we'll give you something to help exercise your mystery-writing muscles.

One thing we mystery writers wrestle with is how to write about crime in books for young people. We want the crime to be plausible and compelling, but we may need to adjust the dials when we consider the ages of our audience. 


Here's a little dial-adjusting exercise. Consider this basic information about a crime:

A college student vanishes after a study session with friends at a campus library. He was last seen at 11 pm heading back to his dorm, and then he seemingly disappeared. His study group reported he seemed tired but in good spirits about an exam he would take in the morning. He left no note. He had no travel plans that anyone knew of. He had few friends on campus, but his roommate reported the guy would often get up in the middle of the night and slip out for hours, sometimes not returning until morning. Three weeks later, the body of the vanished student was finally discovered half-submerged in a nearby lake.


1. Imagine how you would write about this crime for an adult audience. 


2. Now imagine how you would write about this crime for a YA audience.

How much detail would you use in describing the body? How close to the crime scene would you get? Would you change the age of the victim or lower it to high school age? If you didn't change the age, what could you do to help draw teens into reading about this situation?  


Would you make different choices depending on whether you were writing for younger YA (12-14) or older? (15 up).

3. Imagine how -- or if -- you would write about this crime for a middle grade audience. 


Is it possible to write a murder mystery for younger readers? How close to the crime scene would you get? Would it be possible to use any of the basic facts in this scenario for a middle grade mystery? 


You can also try this exercise with crimes that don't involve murder (e.g., a lost object, vandalism, kidnapping, etc.) For more ideas, check out our past "Mysteries Among Us" posts. Decide which of them could become the basis of a YA mystery, which might be more suited for a middle grade mystery, and which might be used for either audience -- but think about what adjustments you might make to characters, detail, or the circumstances of the crime.

Mystery Monday #29: Photo Prompts

Welcome to our regular Monday feature, where you'll find different kinds of writing prompts and exercises. Each week, we'll give you something to help exercise your mystery-writing muscles.

This week's prompts are all visual. You know about Flickr Creative Commons, right? As of this morning, there are 32,841,954 photos people have uploaded that you can use and do what you want with--free! no copyright worries--just as long as you link back, stating who the artist is.

I did a quick search for for the term "mystery." My favorites are below. Get writing!

 
 



 

Mystery Monday #27

Welcome to our regular Monday feature, where you'll find different kinds of writing prompts and exercises. Each week, we'll give you something to help exercise your mystery-writing muscles.

Our Tuesday blogging theme this month is settings. So today's prompt is designed to help you use your story setting to the best advantage.

Setting as Character

Great settings have as vivid a presence in a story, and will be as memorable to readers as characters. Choose a setting for your story and describe it as you might a character, by writing a few paragraphs as a dossier. What does it look like? What are its personality traits? Is it rich or poor? Bright or dark? Moody or easygoing? Dangerous or safe? Reliable or unpredictable? Easily accessible or hard to reach? How does it interact with your protagonist? Does it support the events of the story in a logical way, or does it present unexpected challenges? What could make your setting even more memorable?

Mystery Monday #21

Welcome to our regular Monday feature, where you'll find different kinds of writing prompts and exercises. Each week, we'll give you something to help exercise your mystery-writing muscles.

Cultivating Mystery

As readers, our instincts are to always try to solve the mystery at hand. As writers, we must ultimately provide some kind of resolution or answer for our characters. But it is a mistake to rush to solving the mystery too soon, to "knowing" before you "don't know." Part of engaging our readers in the story is cultivating the mystery—deepening it, allowing it to expand, and exploring all of its possibilities. Before you sit down to write your next mystery story, try the following exercise, which we've adapted from "The Making of a Story" by Alice LaPlante.

I Want to Know Why

Goal: To identify interesting gaps in your understanding or knowledge in order to generate raw material for stories.

What to do:

1. Create a list of at least ten items that fit into the category of things not known: "I want to know why." Important: impose constraints to avoid abstraction or otherwise "large" topics. For example, you might want to limit the things not known to the events of that week or to family encounters. For instance, why the man in the coffeehouse never smiles; why the house on the end of your street never sells; why your mother always sounds angry on the phone.

2. Do a freewrite based on one of these items. Complete one to two paragraphs filling in the details of the idea. Explore why it bothers you. What compels you about this mystery? Why is it important?

3. Based on the paragraphs you wrote, now deepen the mystery. What would make it even more strange or compelling or confusing? What elements could you add to the setting or the characters involved to keep the reader (and yourself) guessing?

Mystery Monday #20

Welcome to our regular Monday feature, where you'll find different kinds of writing prompts and exercises. Each week, we'll give you something to help exercise your mystery-writing muscles.

Our Tuesday theme this month is sleuths in mysteries for young readers. So today's prompt is designed to help you start dreaming up a fictional investigator, OR to get to know your main character better if you have a mystery in progress. 


Here are some questions. You can write answers in your own voice, or interrogate your fictional sleuth and answer in his or her own voice.

• What is your young sleuth's name? Any nicknames? How does your sleuth feel about this name?
• What does your young sleuth look like? Does he like his appearance? What, if anything, would she change? Does the sleuth's appearance or self-esteem impact her ability to carry out amateur detective work and solve a crime?
• What would the sleuth like to study in college, or to be when he/she grows up? Is the sleuth already a professional-in-training? (Taking EMT courses? Devouring law books or forensic textbooks in her spare time? Or is the sleuth pursuing something that seems unlikely to lead to an investigative career . . . like ice hockey?)
• How does your sleuth generally react under pressure? Is she confrontational? Does he avoid confrontation . . . or flee?
• What is your sleuth's primary motivation to solve a mystery or stop a crime? (For more ideas on motivations, see my post on this topic from two weeks ago).
• What are some age-appropriate challenges or obstacles this young sleuth faces in trying to solve a mystery? (For more ideas on challenges/obstacles particular to teen and pre-teen sleuths, see last Tuesday's post on this topic).
• What is the sleuth's general personality type? Is this sleuth more introverted or extroverted? Shy or congenial? How might personality impact her ability to do detective work?
• What skills or abilities does the sleuth have? List as many as you can think of, from piano playing to good listening skills. Then circle those that might come in handy for amateur detective work.
• What are the sleuth's weaknesses? List as many as you can think of, then circle those that might get in the way of amateur detective work.
• What does the sleuth fear more than anything? Why?
• What makes this sleuth really, really angry? Why?
• List significant life experiences that have affected the sleuth so far, both positive and negative. For example, moving cross-country, getting lost in Europe, throwing up in front of everyone at a party, etc. Could any of these events -- or the people involved in them -- relate to a mystery or crime that the sleuth will investigate?
• Does the sleuth have a secret or a dark past? What is it? What would happen if anyone found out?
• Who could the young sleuth turn to for help? Are there adults or resources available? 
• Does this sleuth fly solo, or is he/she a team player? Will the sleuth work best alone, with one sidekick, with multiple sidekicks at different times, or with a group? (Or with an animal?) 

Now write a short biography of your sleuth, either in your narrative voice or in the sleuth's voice. 

Mystery Monday #16

Welcome to our regular Monday feature, where you'll find different kinds of writing prompts and exercises. Each week, we'll give you something to help exercise your mystery-writing muscles.


As MG mystery author Dan Poblocki pointed out in his interview in The Interrogation Room earlier this year, the local crime blotter can be a rich source of material for potential mystery plots. I subscribe to a local neighborhood watch crime e-mail list and frequently scour the crime blotter for ideas. While I've yet to base a story on the scenarios I find there, they do kick-start my imagination and put me in the right mystery-writing mood.


For today's Mystery Monday prompt, you're going to play detective. Below is a sampling of strange scenarios I've come across in local crime blotters and neighborhood watch e-mails from a (overzealous!) volunteer. Choose one that appeals to you, then try to imagine both what events might have led up to the crime -- and how it might be solved. 


1) "House burglarized in 500 Block of XXX Avenue. Shotgun shells and four strands of pearls were the only items reported missing. Shotgun left standing in hallway. Burglars brought in newspaper from the driveway and left it on porch. Police suspect the burglars were wearing gloves, as no fingerprints were found."

2) "100 Block of XXXXX Road. Two plants were dug up and stolen from the front yard, one a rare orchid, the other a Sego Palm. A delivered FedEx package containing documents was also taken from the front porch."


3) "Police report that a band of minors are burglarizing houses under the direction of an adult. Kids are instructed to solicit door-to-door to raise money for non-existent school projects and, when no one answers, break-in to look for gold jewelry. At 2:00 p.m. on November 10, a home was broken into on XXXX Avenue and several gold necklaces and bracelets were taken. On November 12 on the same street, a homeowner encountered a pre-teen boy in her backyard who claimed he had just moved to the neighborhood and was lost. When she asked his street name, he did not answer and turned to leave. A moment later, he turned back and asked if he could use her bathroom. The homeowner immediately called the police. Please be aware of all teens who are not neighbors."  


Some questions you might consider:

• Who might have committed the crime and why? (Or has a crime even been committed? Scenario #3 sparks as many questions about neighborhood paranoia as it does about actual crime.)
• What might the police be leaving out of their report? 
• Who discovered the crime scene? What relationship might they have to the criminal? Where had they just been?
• Were there any witnesses? To what extent are they reliable?

Brainstorm as many other questions as you like, and jot down any notes that come to mind. Then, when you're ready, pick a potential character's point-of-view (the police, a teen sleuth, the criminal, the victim, the person who discovered the crime), set a timer, and free-write for 10 - 15 minutes. Hopefully some new ideas -- and maybe even a full story -- will begin to develop.


None of these interest you? Take a look in your local paper or head to police crime blotters online, and try the same exercise. The stories you'll find there are often stranger than anything you could make up on your own...

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Kristen Kittscher’s debut middle grade mystery THE WIG IN THE WINDOW (Harper Children’s) will be released in 2013. It follows the comic misadventures of two tween sleuths who suspect their school counselor is a dangerous fugitive — and just might be right! A former middle school English teacher, Kristen lives in Pasadena, California with her husband, Kai. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her running her after-school tutoring business or taking orders from her hopelessly spoiled pets.