In his seminal book about writing, Scene and Structure, Jack Bickham points out that all stories are really a series of scenes and sequels. He states,
“A scene is the unit of conflict lived through by the character and the reader.
A sequel is a unit of transition that links two scenes.”
Using our previous analysis: Scenes are mostly plot, while sequels are mostly story. To move action forward, you write a scene. To analyze its effect upon your protagonist, you add a sequel. Although we’ll talk about scenes and sequels as if they were separate elements, they often coexist in the same passage, as you’ll see in some examples later in this lesson.
There may be hundreds of scenes and sequels in your mystery, but we’ve already identified the nine most important. We called them our checkpoints.
Sequel
The sequel is the bridge between scenes where the reader learns what your character is thinking. It’s also a place for backstory. Sequels provide the logic and plausibility of your story by explaining why the character acts the way he or she does.
All sequels are transitions between scenes, but not all transitions are sequels. A transition can be a simple short linkage such as, “The next day I went to the police station to see the lieutenant.” A sequel, on the other hand, contains decision making.
The sequel usually consists of four parts in the following order: emotion, thought, decision, and action. This sequence, or a variation of it, helps you, as the writer, to communicate your character’s motivations by detailing his or her thought process.
Viewpoint
One of the most important choices an author makes is viewpoint. It affects every aspect of the story—from theme, to pacing, to suspense.
The three most common viewpoints:
third person omniscient,
third person limited,
and first person.
Third-Person Limited Viewpoint
In third-person limited viewpoint, the story is still told in third person, but the narrator can only get inside the heads of a few characters or perhaps a single character. Nothing that occurs outside this character’s perceptions may be included. In a mystery, this character would almost certainly be the protagonist.
First-Person Viewpoint
In first-person viewpoint, the protagonist tells the story. He can only describe his own physical or internal experiences.
It’s easy to see how first-person viewpoint reaches out and grabs the reader by the lapels. First-person characters just seem more real because we experience their world the same way we experience our own—from inside their heads.
Positives
First-person viewpoint makes it easy to relate to the protagonist and the nuances of his or her personality.
There is no danger of your author’s voice conflicting with your protagonist’s personality because you tell the story as the protagonist. This means that you really have to get into the character of the protagonist.
First-person viewpoint feels immediate and real. It’s the easiest way to get your readers intimately involved in the story from page one.
First-person viewpoint is the most popular choice for mysteries. It is involving and makes it easy to maintain the mystery because the reader can only learn the information as the protagonist finds it out.
Much of what we’ve talked about in this course applies to all types of fiction, not just mysteries. All good fiction needs the elements of MICE and should follow the three-act structure. So, in learning how to write a great mystery, you’ve also been learning to be a better writer in all genres. But there are elements unique to mystery writing. In this lesson, we’ll examine a few of the most important—suspense, clues, red herrings, and giving your readers a chance.
Setting and Mood
The setting you choose for your scenes has more impact on the suspense of your mystery than any other choice you make. All things being equal, two characters sitting in a living room having a discussion is less suspenseful than spending a night in the woods, or struggling through the crowd at an amusement park, or even walking through an abandoned amusement park. In short, the more unusual a situation is, the greater the suspense will be.
Similarly, the mood you impart to a given setting affects the amount of suspense. If your protagonist stands in the woods as sunlight filters through the trees and dapples the forest floor, the mood of your story is cheerful; there is no suspense. On the other hand, if the trees are choking the sunlight before it can reach the dank forest floor, the mood is dark; suspense builds.
hat’s because the chapter boundaries of your mystery are completely arbitrary. They have nothing to do with the acts or the checkpoints. You select the chapter boundaries using one—and only one—criteria:
Place the chapter breaks at spots where readers won’t be able to stop!
You do this by using cliffhangers. Whenever you get to a spot where readers are going to demand to know what happens next, that’s a great place to not tell them. Change scenes, break the chapter, or switch to another viewpoint. Just keep stringing them along. That’s how you create a page-turner.
The MacGuffin
MacGuffin (a.k.a. McGuffin or maguffin) is a term for an object or idea that drives the plot but serves no further purpose. It’s a thing, or piece of information, that the characters want but that may not be the focus of the reader’s attention. The classic example is the Maltese Falcon. The statue creates the conflict that drives the story, but it is of no actual value.