-      Twisty Plot

-      Shady Characters

Setting the Mood - Not Talk About

Inside Your Character’s Mind and Body - Not Talk About

Newsletter: evalangston.substack.com – can get the other two free

   (resources for writers on the journey to publication)

1st Tip – read novels of your genre with eye for what works

Main characters and suspects

Villain

Protagonist(s)/Narrator(s)-POV

Give every main character a secret they’re protecting something, not always telling the truth

Hiding something makes them seem more suspicious

Keeps tension high

Masks the villain, making it harder to identify

List main characters

- Give them a secret they’re hiding – doesn’t have to be anything connected to plot

- Hiding from everyone, only some people, from themselves

- What will happen of revealed

- How far will they go to keep secret

List main suspects

- Could there be more we don’t know about

- what made them suspicious

- anything they could do to make them more suspicious

Many mysteries start with dead body or missing person

- Villain must be hidden in plain sight

- Victim could be Villain, the Good Guy the murderer

- The Villain is the person who framed the main suspect

- Murdered could be a good person who committed an error and is trying to

conceal it

Answer the following questions

1. Who is the villain?

2. Why did they do it?

3. Why do the continue?

4. What did/do they want?

5. How do they justify their actions? To Themselves/others?

6. Does the villain believe they’re a bad guy?

7. What happened in the past they informs who they are now?

8. How do they hide their true self from others/themselves?

9. What do they look/act/sound like?

10. How do they interact with other characters in the book?

11. What are the action/history of the other suspects that make them seem a likely suspect? That make them suspicious?

Protagonist/Narrator – 1st or close 3rd person

Want to be in the head of the MC

-      What is the protagonist keeping from the reader?

- Make narrator unreliable – when the reader can’t count on the narrator

being truthful, it ups the suspense

         May be hiding truth intentionally or hiding truth from themselves

- Give narrator a flaw which makes then unreliable – often alchohol

         Can’t remember details, so makes them up

- Diary which is planted by wife when she disappears to implicate her

Husband

- Switch points of view with differing accounts of events

- give narrator a unique perspective what did she say/mean

- How will resolving the murder change them – are they afraid of that?

Keep pacing up to ratchet tension

- Give narrator a goal that gets in the way of resolving the murder

         - Give whole attention to solving mystery or divided loyalty

Plot Twists

- Brainstorm: all the different possibilities – Use an outside-the-box villain

and the rest get red herrings

- What are steps protagonist will need to take to solve and how can thongs

go wrong

- Some coincidences or misunderstandings that appear sinister

- Interim false conclusions they could draw?

- Could there be a second smaller mystery contained in the events people are hiding/misdirecting?

- Two seemingly unrelated events that really are

- False clues

- event from character’s past that could come back to haunt them?