Oct 04 2008
So you want to write a mystery….
A woman in my writing group is writing a mystery novel. The story seemed to be ticking along, but the characters are acting erratically. She also made the mistake of/told me that she really wants to publish her mystery.
I decided to play “Let’s Look at the Market” and I walked with her over to the mystery section of the bookstore. What I showed her shocked her.
You see, she had decided to write a mystery novel, but she was reading them only sporadically, and she hadn’t tried to take an overview of the genre.
I explained that if you look at the mystery novels on the shelves, around 50% (for sake of argument) are the forensics/serial killer/thriller type that have words like ‘blood’, ‘danger’, and ‘kill’ in the titles. The other 50% are of the cozy, themed variety that have pictures on the covers of things like a cake with a carving knife stuck straight down into it, and a cute title about deadly calories.
That’s not to say that there are only two types of mysteries, but it does mean that the average mystery falls into one camp or the other.
She was actually most upset when she realized that men mostly write the first kind, and women write the second. I told her that was not a problem. The problem was that she needed to realize what types of books were on the market and try and decide where her story fit into the mix.
She went off with a pensive look on her face, but pleased that she had looked at her story in a context.
Each Saturday, I go to my writing group. There are usually six of us there. One is multi-published and is the leader of the group. Then, there’s me. And then there’s the woman who is writing a mystery who told me she wants to sell it.
That leaves three others (sometimes four) in the group who have not only never asked about the genres they are writing in, but have refused to pick one–and at least one person who calls genre writing, or writing any particular type of book, “formulaic crap”.
I’m taking bets on who is going to be the next person in the group to be published. Care to place a wager?
$10 on the head of the group with the PHD.
What inspires any of them to write if they don’t read?
I don’t know about anybody else but I’ve found there is quite a bit of non-formulaic crap out there too…it is usually found on those tables by the door marked down 70%. I wonder how that’s working out for a writer who wants to make a living.
Great site.
http://WritelyApplied.today.com