Being a Better Writer: Mysteries

I think it was inevitable that this post was going to happen sooner or later.

I've not written too much about genre thus far on BaBW. It just ... hasn't happened. I've written about other, closely critical elements of story, such as pacing, stingers, hard and soft openings, or what drives a story forward, but to date I've not actually talked much about genre-specific writing. Not so directly, anyway,

Maybe that needs to change. Perhaps starting with today's post. Which would be a fitting one to begin with, considering that of my earliest five major works, three of them were direct mysteries while the other two contained trace elements of it. So, when it comes to writing mysteries, I have more than a passing bit of experience with what goes into them.

So, with that in mind: what is a mystery?

You can read the rest of this post at Unusual Things

Comments

[Oroboro]

I should really write another mystery one of these days.

Pretty much everything I've learned on the topic comes from the Japanese Visual Novel 'Umineko No Naku Koro Ni', which is an insanely long metafictional magic murder mystery that, in some ways, is a murder mystery about writing murder mysteries. It's a rather excellent exploration of the genre, though it takes awhile to get started.

[Lauri_P]

3898622
Oh yes, Umineko is wonderful mystery with unique angle to the genre. And link you posted makes it easy for people to start reading (a bit too easy. I lost 45min of my life re-reading one of my faforite scenes, now with voice acting and new sprites)

I should really write another mystery one of these days.

This made me check your works and I found one story with nice shout-outs in chapter names :). Congratulations, you have a new reader.