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Excellent. Thanks for the correction. You're right.
Now my story seems to flow very fine so far. The protagonist is given a clue by someone which sparks the mystery which in turn leads to a series of clues that reveal a bigger part if the mystery. But it all flows too fluid and perfectly in my opinion. There's no red herring or a false lead. Each piece of revelatory info reveals another major puzzle piece. No backtracking or retracing steps either.
A murder mystery is a puzzle for the reader to try to solve. If you can follow a trail of clues, give all the information needed to solve the crime, and still prevent the reader from guessing who the murderer is, then you can probably get by without red herrings and misdirection.
You are going to have to be a clever puzzle writer to prevent the reader from guessing who the criminal is if there is absolutely nobody else it could have been (misdirection).
It's going to be a very complicated crime to follow clues and never go down any false leads and still have enough material for an entire novel.
Not saying it can't be done. I've seen it done successfully, just not often.
The best (in my opinion ) mystery writers are master of "palming the ace". That's telling the reader right out who did it and why, and yet doing it so that the reader doesn't realize they have the information until after they finish reading. Agatha Christie is a master at palming the ace.
Tony Hillerman, on the other hand, is really bad at palming the ace. The reader always guesses who did it and why, almost from the get-go. I read his books because I love his writing and his characters., not because I am curious about who did it.
More advice: if the flow is too smooth, put your protagonist in danger. Real life threatening danger, and then get them out with some difficulty.
Yes, you're right that is exactly what I did.
Also, what I am writing is not technically a generic murder mystery. The reader already has a clue as to who did it. The mystery is the why was a main character killed and the story is mostly about revealing the scheme behind the murder. The hero is discovering it bit by bit, just how far it goes and the lengths the other side is going through to cover it up.
I'll give it a shot. Maybe you don't need the misdirection because you're withholding information; i.e., by not letting the reader know why the victim was killed. You want to be careful with how you treat that maybe? Like leave clues and "hooks" throughout the story to make the reader want more without giving away the secret.
I'll give it a shot. Maybe you don't need the misdirection because you're withholding information; i.e., by not letting the reader know why the victim was killed. You want to be careful with how you treat that maybe? Like leave clues and "hooks" throughout the story to make the reader want more without giving away the secret.
Bingo!
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