Write Your Own: Mystery (11 page)

  gossip, for example:
‘He used to be a teacher,' muttered Jake …

2. Dropping red herrings!

A red herring is a misleading clue that might take the sleuth, and the reader, off in the wrong direction. Mystery writers often use red herrings in mystery stories to mislead the reader and to keep everyone guessing.

3. Awesome alibis

All of your characters will need an alibi to prove that they could not possibly have been involved in the mystery! An alibi provides evidence that a person accused of a crime was somewhere else when it was committed.

Your sleuth character needs to discover where everyone was and what they were doing. Were they with someone else who could back up their story? Good alibis are ones where other people are involved.

Examples of good alibis might be:

  being at a party;

  being seen on a train or plane;

  talking on the phone to someone;

  shopping and being seen on CCTV cameras;

Your villain will need an alibi – but it will be false. For instance, the villain might claim to have been at work with the door closed and the radio on. In the end, it turns out that the villain climbed out of the window to carry out the deed …!

Decide what the villain's alibi will be and then work out what really happened.

4. Reviewing the evidence!

Your sleuth character will need to review the evidence every so often. Here are some phrases you might find useful:

I had little to go on, but I had a hunch about the old man … We were no nearer discovering why …

Part of me still wondered whether …

According to her nothing had happened, but why did I still feel uneasy …?

Mrs Jenkins had told us nothing new, and yet …

5. Detective work

Use a detective's line in questioning to help channel the reader's thinking. For example:

Had he been asleep? Where had the sound of snoring been coming from? Was it true that the parrot could speak? Did Polly really hold the key to cracking the mystery wide open?

6. Cliffhangers

Cliffhangers are a key part of mysteries. They are exciting parts of a story where something dramatic occurs, leaving the reader desperate to read on and find out what happens. Usually cliffhangers occur at the end of a section or chapter. To write a cliffhanger you need to build up to a sudden turn of events right at the end of a paragraph. For example:

Kirsty walked over the road. She was still not sure why Dr Vix had wanted her to go back for the suitcase. It was raining hard now. She had her head down and so she did not see the van pull up or the two men leap out. The next thing she knew, she was grabbed from behind and a sack placed over her head. She too, had been kidnapped!

Did you notice how Kirsty was not looking where she was going as her mind was elsewhere? A useful technique when
writing cliffhangers is to lead your character's attention somewhere else before the dramatic incident takes place. Some ideas for cliffhangers are:

  someone goes missing;

  something important is stolen;