You Can Write a Mystery - Softcover

Characters. A story happens to and because of someone, so characters are a basic ingredient.

Conflict. The fundamental element of all drama is conflict, the clash between what's wanted or intended and what prevents or frustrates that desire. The basic conflict represented by the crime that moves your story engine is only one of many large and small conflicts that will be in the book. There will be both internal conflicts and conflicts of human interaction.

Causality. The reason why the murder happened, why the detective is passionately involved in this case, why his actions produce still more difficulties, are examples of causality. Events simply do not happen and hang there. They happen because something else happened, and the reaction to what happened affects still more, including your detective's life. There has to be this internal logic - things happen because other things happened.

Complications. These further problems are called complications. The danger the sleuth is trying to prevent grows ever more possible, its threat more serious. The evolving picture of what really happened seems to be clarifying - but the steps the sleuth take to prevent, explain or end the danger are all only partial solutions.

Change. With each complication, the sleuth adds a bit of knowledge. The picture of the situation is readjusted; the opinion of the character altered.

Crisis. Eventually, when the complications and changes have produced an increasingly tense situation, we reach a point where, once and for all, one side or the other is going to triumph. This is the crisis - the point of no return.

Closure. And then your story is over, its question answered, and you have a sense of what the significance was. Things have changed at the end of the story from how they were at its start.