Zara Altair's Blog, page 8

Make Your Mystery Suspects Suspicious

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Challenge Your Sleuth With Mysterious Suspects
Suspects are the lifeblood of your mystery. Without them your mystery sleuth would have no challenges and solve the mystery in an instant. While evidence, clues, and red herrings help your reader keep guessing, the suspects provide personal interaction with your sleuth. That interaction is the story world that keeps your reader turning pages.

Your challenge as a mystery writer is to create characters that challenge your sleuth. Your detective must track down, examine, and determine each suspect’s relationship to the victim. Each interaction with a suspect drives your sleuth - and your reader - toward the final solution.
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Four Steps to Create a Suspicious Character ​
Each suspect had a relationship with the victim. Use that relationship to provide insight into the victim’s world. But, each suspect also has a private life. That private life is what drives the interaction with your sleuth.

Start your suspect by building a rich background.

Life related to the victim
Personal life not related to the victim
Secrets they want to keep hidden
Lies they tell to preserve the secrets

Go way beyond The Thug as a character. Give the thug a name, a background with relationships, a physical fallibility, and emotional weakness. Adrian McKinty creates a memorable layered hitman, Markov, in his novel Falling Glass in a relationship with his girlfriend which up the stakes of his assignment.

Authors like Ruth Rendell, Ann Cleeves, and Elizabeth George build their mysteries on deep psychological character portrayals. Even if you are not writing a “psychological” mystery, you’ll build reader engagement by delving into your characters.

The Suspense Secret
The more readers see your characters hiding secrets the more they engage in solving the mystery. Your sleuth works hard to uncover the secrets suspects hide. Your readers will work just as hard as suspects throw up screens and hide personal secrets.

The secrets your suspects harbor do not need to be related to the murder. A suspect can appear suspicious by hiding a personal secret that doesn’t relate to the victim or the murder. The very act of attempting to hide a secret creates tension in your story. Tension keeps readers turning pages.

Rich supporting characters give your readers an engaging reading experience. The obstacles they create for your sleuth are obstacles for readers who are trying to solve the mystery.

Zara Altair

Your Sleuth in First Person Point of View

Photo by Cory Bouthillette on UnsplashInside The Sleuth’s Head
First-person point of view the narrator tells the story directly to the reader. The character speaks about himself or herself and share what they are experiencing.

Create a deep connection with your readers when your sleuth tells the story. You create an intimate portrayal of thoughts and emotions.

Traditionally, first person POV stories are told from one point of view. Some writers use multiple characters, each telling the story from a personal point of view. Multiple first person points of view allows you to expand the views for readers.

​Advantages of First-Person Point of View
First-person puts the reader inside the narrator’s head immediately. You have the advantage of portraying intimate thoughts and emotions. Each moment the narrator feels, your reader feels. You deliver all the narrator’s senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.

Because your reader is inside the narrator’s head, they experience the emotions - their hopes, despair, love - with maximum emotional impact.

You create a strong sense of empathy in the reader through the narrator’s reactions to situations and other characters. Readers understand the character’s motivations behind actions and whether the narrator’s logic is right or not, the actions make sense to the reader.

The first-person voice gives the story a clear identity. You submerge your reader far into the world you create.

You can hide exposition in the narrator’s thoughts. The narrator’s thoughts about situations like class structure or social inequalities are integral to the narration. As a writer, you are spared the narrative trap of info dump to familiarize readers with the narrator’s milieu.

First-person narrators don’t have to be reliable. The story is told from the narrator’s point of view. The narrator can lie or misdirect the reader in a way that third-person narrative cannot do. Although an unreliable narrator doesn’t work well in a mystery, an unreliable narrator can tell a great crime story drawing the reader into a personal view of circumstances.

The narrator doesn’t have to be the protagonist but can be the one viewpoint that tells the story happening around them.

Drawbacks of First-Person POV
The major drawback of writing entirely from one person’s point of view is that it is limited. Because the reader experiences the world only through that character’s eyes, as a writer, you cannot share other characters’ thoughts and feelings.

Although you can describe the physical appearance of other characters through the narrator’s point of view, you can’t describe your main character. Don’t think about having them look in the mirror. The closest you can get is to have other characters periodically respond to a physical attribute.
By nature, first-person point of view is limited. As a writer, you will be challenged to present the big picture. You can’t give that character too much knowledge. Especially in a mystery you want to avoid giving away that big picture by giving your narrator too much knowledge.

The Personal Sleuth
Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther is a great example of first-person narrative. Set in Nazi Germany, Bernie offers his opinions and deals with consequences of his outspoken interaction while solving crime as a private detective.

If you decide to tell your mystery in first-person, know that you will work with limitations. On the other hand, you have the opportunity to build a strong emotional bond with your reader.

​Zara Altair 

Is Limited Third Person the Right POV Choice for Your Mystery?

Photo by Raul Varzar on Unsplash

A View from the Edge - Third Person POVHow you tell your mystery makes a difference. Point of View (POV) is the voice that tells the mystery to your readers. Third person point of view allows readers to know what the narrator thinks and experiences without going directly into their head. You limit the perspective to one person’s perspective.

Ursula K. LeGuin gives a great description of third person limited point of view in her writing manual, Steering the Craft.

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Only what the viewpoint character knows, feels, perceives, thinks, guesses, hopes, remembers, etc., can be told. The reader can infer what other people feel and think only from what the viewpoint character observes of their behaviour.

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Connect with Your ReadersThird person limited point of view creates an intimacy between readers and the characters. Even though the story is not in first person, as a writer you can reveal thoughts and responses that allow readers to sense and feel what the character does.

Using different scenes, you can tell the story from the point of view of characters other than your protagonist. Many mystery and suspense writers alternate between the protagonist and the antagonist.

​Create Mystery with Uncertainty
Because the story is told from a limited point of view, the emotions, secrets, and backstory of secondary characters - especially suspects - remain uncertain.

You challenge your sleuth to dig deeper to discover motivations and actions these characters keep hidden. Your sleuth’s challenge is to peel back the layers of understanding to solve the puzzle.

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Build TensionWhen the character has limited knowledge, so does your reader. Your reader is trapped in the head of the character. As you keep secrets from the character, you build tension for the reader. Page-turning is the key to keeping readers involved.

As your protagonist encounters challenges, your reader follows along expectant for the next discovery. Good mystery writing involves keeping your character, and your reader, in suspense.

​Reader Comprehension Evolves
As the mystery progresses, your reader’s perspective on characters and situations evolves. This evolution of understanding is exactly what mystery readers want. Because they see only what the character sees, they are tied to the discovery path of your mystery.

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Writer Challenge for Third Person Limited POV
The most common challenge, for beginning writers, to third person limited point of view is the temptation to head hop. That means changing character heads within a scene. Don’t do it.

If you go outside the view of your protagonist, use separate scenes to illuminate another character’s point of view.

Limit the number of characters you use to narrate your mystery. Besides the protagonist and the antagonist, choose wisely if you want to let your reader inside another character. The point of your mystery is to create a puzzle for your reader. Too many viewpoints muddies the waters of your story. You are more likely to confuse the reader rather than enlighten them.

Choose the point of view before you begin your mystery. If you have doubts, try writing the beginning in first person and third person to see which flows better. I tried this a few years ago thinking I wanted to be inside the protagonist’s head in first person. As I thought about how the story would unfold, I realized that third person limited would work better for the mystery.

Alternating between third person and first person is a device some writers use: third person for the protagonist and first person for the antagonist. In the hands of a skilled writer, this technique can work.

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Your Choice for Storytelling
Third person limited point of view is the standard storytelling device in popular fiction. Use this point of view to your advantage as you create a mystery trail for your sleuth.  

​Zara Altair 

Keep the Mystery in Your Mystery

Eye on the Mystery Prize
Reading other authors in your genre is a sound practice. not just for emulating story strategy but for caution on what not to do in your story.

I just finished reading a mystery by an established mystery writer. As a reader, I was disappointed. As a writer, I thought about why I was disappointed. I reviewed the mystery writing elements and discovered the reason.

Empathetic, complicated sleuth. Check.
Empathetic supporting characters. Check.
Villain. Check but overdone and not believable.

I liked the sleuth, a police inspector, and his team. But everytime the villain appeared he was snarky and overdone with throw-away lines. The villain intruded on the story rather than moving it forward. I kept thinking, “OK, let’s get back to the story.”

When readers, like me, get distracted they can and will stop reading. The only reason I kept reading was to see how it fit together because my interest as a reader was gone.

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Organize Your Story

To keep the mystery in your mystery, all the the components must move the story forward. It’s challenging to keep the balance. Read other writers to know what to do and what not to do. Learn from their mistakes.

Keep these tips in mind as you build your story.

Create distinct names for your characters. Make sure no characters in a story have names that start with the same letter. It seems like a tiny thing, but readers can become confused when two characters have similar names.Give each character a distinct personality and make it believable. For example, the villain’s snark in the story I read took away his menace and made him a caricature rather than a villain with depth.Focus on obstacles to your sleuth rather than overly complicated plot twists and character relationships. If you wander away from the story to describe obscure character relationships, it’s not mysterious, it’s befuddling. Never befuddle your reader. Your job is to tell the story, not to show how clever you are to come up with complicated character relationships.Plant clues to keep readers guessing. Readers love trying to outsmart your sleuth and guess the murderer.When in doubt, keep it simple. You are creating a puzzle about your murder, not a puzzle about the story characters. There’s a big difference.
A disappointed reader, will not come back to give you a second chance. Focus on creating a sleuth your readers like. Make her character deep and empathic. Your sleuth’s reaction to other characters has a greater chance of keeping your reader involved than creating complicated interrelationships in other characters.

Take a look a popular mystery TV series. You’ll see that the emphasis is on the sleuth and the sleuth solving the mystery. Make sure your subplots don’t overshadow the mystery.

It doesn’t matter if you are a pantser or organize every scene of your story. A pantser may do the organization in the rewrite/editing phase. Planners can eliminate story clutter by creating a storyline and sticking with it.

​Focus on the mystery. 

​Zara Altair 

The Detective’s Opponent in Your Mystery

Not the Villain, The Obstacle Maker ​
Enrich your mystery with an opponent who gives your detective problems. The opponent has a role quite different from the villain’s role. The villain in a mystery is the one who committed the murder. From Agatha Christie's Chief Inspector Japp and Hercule Poirot to the neighbor Grannen in the Swedish television series Beck.

The opponent is a character who causes trouble for your hero, the detective. They may be a rival, or a love or ex-spouse, or a neighbor… But somehow, villainous or bumbling, they are connected to the detective and oppose your central character.

Just like the sidekick, the opponent can be any age or sex. Their main role in the story is to cause problems and throw up obstacles for the detective. These obstacles force your detective to show qualities and personality characteristics that deepen your reader’s understanding of the central character.

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Opponent Obstacles
The opponent creates obstacles that personally affect the detective and often hinder the murder investigation.

Interference like a time delay causing the detective to miss an important meeting or interview with a suspect. Professional character assassination.Stealing evidence or planting false clue to deter the detective’s search.Intentional or unintentional false information.Attempting to steal the love interest.
It’s up to your writer imagination to come up with ways to thwart your detective.


Sleuth Character Expansion
Depending on the opponent’s character and role in the mystery, each obstacle creates and opportunity for the mystery writer to expand your reader’s knowledge of the sleuth.

Because the opponent is outside the sleuth’s investigation, the interactions between the two characters are personal. These interactions reveal character traits the sleuth may not use in the pursuit of a murder inquiry.

Tolerance of irritating behavior.Anger unleashed the sleuth keeps under wraps professionally.Tender feelings for other characters.Wisdom.Pride.
Again, your writer imagination is the key to creating situations that emphasize your sleuth’s traits by interacting with the opponent.


The Free Character for Mystery Writers The opponent complicates the sleuth’s life but not the mystery. The opponent can be a fun addition to your mystery because they don’t have to be part of the solution. As a novelist, you have a free hand in creating the sleuth’s opponent. Make the opponent as likeable or unlikable as you want and then insert them into the story to reveal your sleuth’s character traits. Readers will relate to your character and the misadventures created by the opponent.  



Zara Altair

Zara Altair writes mysteries set in ancient Italy. Her course for beginning writers Write A Killer Mystery is coming soon. Get on the notification list.
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Sidekick - The Sleuth’s Mirror

Photo by Gaumont - © 2000
A Sidekick Amplifies Your Sleuth and the Story
The sidekick is a traditional literary archetype that will enhance your mystery novel. The sidekick can be a working partner or a friend. The sidekick’s role in the story will vary depending on how you choose to amplify your sleuth with the sidekick. The ways your sidekick can mirror your sleuth depends on his story role.

Although some sleuths work alone, using a sidekick in your mystery can illustrate your sleuth’s weaknesses or strengthen his personal traits. When you expand your protagonist with interaction with a sidekick, reader’s engage with your story.

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​The Role of the Sidekick
The sidekick has a special role in your story and that is to accompany the hero on his quest. In a mystery, the sidekick helps your sleuth track down the murderer.

The sidekick is not necessarily a mentor. The role of the mentor is to appear periodically and provide sage advice. Your sidekick doesn’t have to do this. The sidekick wouldn’t be a sidekick if he wasn’t there through thick and thin.

Your sleuth and the sidekick have a connection that sets them on the trail of discovery to find the murderer. Even if the sidekick is assigned to your sleuth - this often happens in police crime novels - they both are set on solving the mystery.

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How The Sidekick Mirrors Your Detective ​Because the sidekick and the sleuth work together, they have something in common. It may be a knowledge of police procedure or a common interest. In the film The Crimson Rivers, thoughtful Pierre Niemans (Jean Reno) works with action-oriented Max Kerkerian (Vincent Cassel). Though they are often at odds on procedure, they both have the goal of finding the killer. John D. MacDonald created Meyer, the economist, to help readers understand Travis McGee in his long-running series.

The sidekick holds up a mirror to your sleuth by highlighting their strengths and weaknesses.  Sometimes the sidekick compensates for the weaknesses by having an opposite personality or style of response. Some sidekicks may pick up the slack, others may not. The sidekick can highlight the strengths by pointing them out when your sleuth meets an obstacle.

​Points to Consider as You Create Your Sleuth’s Sidekick
​As a writer, you have a lot of leeway as you create your sleuth’s sidekick. Your sidekick can be male or female, younger or older or the same age, new to the game or an old hand. It’s up to you to create a sidekick that will accompany your sleuth on the discovery journey.

Make the sidekick a distinct and interesting character. Give them a personality, one that interacts with your sleuth. Build their skillset in the same way you create your sleuth’s skillset. If you plan on creating a series, build a rich background in your character bible for the sidekick. As a continuing character, you’ll need to know a lot about the sidekick.
Keep the sidekick from taking over the story. A sidekick is fun to create and you may be tempted to let the sidekick take over. Resist the temptation. Your sleuth is the protagonist.
Keep your sleuth and sidekick connected. If you create an antagonistic sidekick be sure to make the connection between the two characters strong. If you create an antagonistic sidekick just to be antagonistic, rethink your sidekick or create a new more sympathetic and supportive sidekick. The sidekick and the sleuth take the discovery journey together, not separately.
Create traits that showcase the detective’s strengths and weaknesses. Create sidekick traits that complement your detective’s traits.
The sidekick’s role is to make your sleuth protagonist more likeable for your readers.
The Sidekick Supports Your SleuthYou sidekick supports your sleuth physically and emotionally as they work to solve the whodunit puzzle.  

Zara Altair

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Book Cover Design - Working with a Graphic Artist

Collaboration is the Fast Way to Book Cover Design Success
Every author wants an eye-catching cover for their book that draws potential readers to their book. Your book cover is the first step in the buying journey for many readers. Unless you as an author are also a graphic designer, Investing in a skilled graphic designer is worth every dollar spent. For authors on a limited budget finding a good cover designer is the first outside investment to take to give your book the best opportunity in a competitive market.
Prepare for Collaboration
​Your responsibility as an author is to convey the concept of your novel. If your book is first in a series, you’ll want to share the sense of your series as well so the artist can set up a replicable model that makes your series readily identifiable.  

As an independent author, you can minimize cost and speed up the design process by preparing information for your cover designer.

For the first book in the series, provide basic genre, tone, theme, and protagonist. and series information.
Even if your novel isn’t finished, provide a short list of basic story elements. Main character, theme, location, etc.
Give your cover designer some image ideas. Find royalty free images that can convey the main story elements. Your designer may or may not incorporate these images in the cover design, but the images give your designer your idea of representational images.
Stand back and let your cover designer play with concepts.

For this cover, I wanted to focus on the grain merchant’s daughter, a bodyguard, and a broken contract. We got them all in the cover.  

Co-Create The Final ImageDepending on your cover designer’s personal working style, the process of arriving at agreement for the final image requires communication. It may be through a series of messages or a brief video conference with screen sharing.

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​I’ve been working with Ryan J. Rhoades for several years with cover design for the Argolicus mysteries. This session took a little longer than usual because the conversation was typed rather than spoken. Ryan communicates with his clients through video conferencing. As he shares his screen, you can watch the cover take shape, move elements around, change colors, and other changes before your eyes.

Wait Before Final Approval and DeliveryGive the image a rest for at least 24 hours before you give final approval. Go back to revisit the cover and look for any details that may distract or need emphasis. For example, in this cover there was a squiggly line in the background that was distracting. We took it out, did some shading, and arrived at the final image.


Two Skill Sets, One Cover
As an author, you may fall into the trap of thinking your creative skills transfer to cover design. A little knowledge is not only dangerous, it can be detrimental to your book sales. If you are starting out with a limited budget consider a cover designer as an investment in your author career.

​Zara Altair

The Sleuth Triumphant - Confront the Killer at the End of Your Mystery

Skills to the Fore as Your Sleuth Apprehends the Killer
​In the first act of the mystery, you laid out all your detective’s skills one by one as new situations arose. In the middle, you frustrated all those skills by exposing your sleuth’s weaknesses. Now at the end, you can bring back those skills and strengths as your detective confronts the killer.

Your detective has learned from his mistakes in the middle. Now, as she confronts the killer all her skills come into play to reveal the killer. She knows how and why the killer attacked the victim. She must do one last task - get the killer to confess. Or, if the killer doesn’t confess, your sleuth must make it clear that the killer is the one who committed the murder.

Q&A
14:54 Q: I’m confused. I’ve heard about Aristotle’s three-act structure, but you talk about four acts. Why is that?
Pull Out All the Stops
Finally, you can reveal your protagonist’s skills. Whether it’s deductive reasoning, observation, determination or a combination of skills, get your reader to see how all the frustrations and setbacks naturally led to the final revelation.

You are about to write The End.



36       The war of attrition begins as the antagonist’s forces fight harder and your protagonist is isolated from the allies and resources he was counting on. The antagonist’s minion or resource that was neutralized is brought back into play or replaced by someone/thing even more powerful.

Your detective can’t make contact with any of her allies and has to go after the killer alone. The killer now seems to have an ironclad alibi or escapes an approach by your detective. She’s got to take this on by herself and the killer is just beyond her grasp.

You’re in the plot structure climax, stage four:  war of attrition



37       Your protagonist steps forward to battle the antagonist mano a mano. The true extent of the antagonist’s power (and the depths of his evil) become clear, and the antagonist gains the upper hand. (Twist here?)

Your detective finally finds the killer. But the killer has a surprise for the detective. Your detective may have made a false assumption or misread the killer’s intent. The killer pulls out one last trump card, one the detective didn’t expect. Whether it’s a battle of wits or hand to hand fighting, the killer plays that one last card.

You are head to head in the plot structure climax, stage five:  mano a mano.


38       Your protagonist realizes how he can strike the decisive blow and defeat the antagonist—and he does. (This is the last place in your story for a twist.)

The detective looks the killer in the eye and gets the confession. In the battle of wits, he pulls out the piece of evidence that condemns the killer. In a physical fight, he wins. Twist this up by having the opponent inadvertently supply that one last piece. The killer may hem and haw but finally admits to the crime.

In plot structure, you are there! Climax, stage six:  from the ashes of disaster.



39       Your protagonist reacts to the defeat of the antagonist who is or has been disposed of, and out-of commission allies might be recovered or revived. (Subplot A) (Subplot B)

In the aftermath of victory, your detective surrounds himself with supporters. The opponent gives up, for the moment, in the wake of the detective’s victory. The love interest may appear one last time. Any loose threads from anywhere in the story get tied up here.

Plot structure: resolution, stage one:  sweeping up.



40       Your protagonist and any surviving allies may celebrate their victory and console each other on their losses as they tie up all remaining loose ends (including a romance subplot, if there was one). Your story ends with your protagonist reaffirming how he’s changed and how he’s remained the same as a result of his ordeal (through both his words and his actions).

The detective celebrates either at a party or home alone. The love interest may join him. One last pithy thought on fighting crime from your detective.

Mysteries often combine 39 and 40. You’ll need to use your discretion. If you are tied to 40 chapters, add another chapter earlier, with a complication, of course.

You are done!  This is resolution, stage two:  reconnection in plot structure.

You Did it! You Wrote The End!
​All the planning and brainstorming paid off. The conclusion reveals your sleuth as the hero your readers will love. Celebrate all the frustrations and setbacks you dreamed up. Revel in your creation of a sleuth worthy of your reader’s attention from start to finish.

Now, put the manuscript aside for at least a week. Don’t even peak. Work on your next story. Take a vacation. Give your family your full attention. Just let the manuscript simmer. It’s OK to write possible changes - you’ll think of some - but don’t look at the manuscript. Give it a break.  That way you’ll be able to enter the editing process with fresh eyes.

You can understand how the work you did on your character background at the very beginning and any additions you made as you wrote, help deepen your character, their skills, and reader involvement.  

Congratulations! You finished your mystery.  

Zara Altair

Zara Altair writes mysteries set in ancient Italy. Her course for beginning writers Write A Killer Mystery is coming soon. Get on the notification list.

Photo by niu niu on Unsplash

The Detective Closes In - Begin the Final Act of Your Mystery

Barriers and Clear Sight

You are finally heading toward the conclusion of your mystery as you begin the final act. But, your ace sleuth still has a bumpy ride before the end. As a writer, you focus on complications, twists, and building the killer’s cunning.

First, congratulate yourself for making it through the middle without one sag. These sentences work! Writing a novel takes time. You may feel like rushing to the conclusion, but hold on, build more trouble, and keep your readers turning pages.

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Q&A
10:43 Q:  I want to write a cozy mystery but I haven’t decided on my sleuth, yet.  
13:01 Q: The sidekick?

Build Suspense
Here you go. It’s time to ratchet up the suspense. Your sleuth just had a setback. Before a triumphant conclusion, Shift your thinking from trouble to serious confrontation. If you put your sleuth in physical danger, your readers won’t stop reading.

Act Four

31       Forced to retreat or taken prisoner, your protagonist experiences a moment of hopelessness that allows him to see his misbelief for what it is:  a falsehood that’s kept him stuck in his flawed state ever since his backstory wound was inflicted.

Your detective is captured or completely blocked from finding the killer. The victim’s world becomes more of a mystery. She’s just not seeing anything the right way. If she’s trapped/captured, there’s no way out.

In story structure you’ve reached the aftermath of the second plot point, part one:  the dark moment.




32       Something rekindles his hopes:  maybe he sees a way to defeat the antagonist, or maybe he realizes he’d rather die on his feet than live on his knees. Either way, he’s ready to sacrifice everything to take his enemy down.

Your detective, trapped and blocked, sees a way to get out of the trap...if only he can… His determination, maybe it’s downright stubbornness, gets him to emotionally rally. He’s ready to take it on either the problem on the killer.

Your plot structure label is the aftermath of the second plot point, part two, the resurgence of hope.


33       Your protagonist prepares for battle:  does a SWOT analysis for both sides, identifies the decisive blow that will be needed to win the battle, and makes his plan.

Your detective puts those little grey cells to work and examines the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) for himself and the killer (whether the killer is identified yet or not). He makes his plan.

You’re flowing with story, but here’s the plot structure moment: Climax, stage one:  preparing for battle.



34       As he takes the fight to the enemy, he may indulge in one of those “if I die, I just want you to know” moments. When he arrives at the scene of the final showdown, he learns that the situation is different than he expected. (Another great place for a twist!)

The detective gets out of his trap and if he hasn’t before now knows who the killer is. He gets ready to confront the killer but...twist!...even with all that SWOT analysis he missed something and the killer has something up his sleeve.

Still clinging to plot structure?  Ok, here’s the moment. Climax, stage two:  taking the fight to the enemy.




35       No plan survives contact with the enemy—and your protagonist’s enemy has been crushing it since their last encounter. Both sides take damage, and when your protagonist redoubles his efforts, his forces manage to neutralizes one of the antagonist’s minion or resources.

Before your detective actually confronts the killer, something comes up that makes his surmise, just that, a surmise. The killer may have disappeared, or skipped town, or seemingly been somewhere else when the murder(s) occurred or someone vouches for the killer. Your detective knows the killer is dodging but can’t get to that final confrontation. For the moment, the killer survives any accusation.

In plot land you’ve reached the climax, stage three:  first contact

Use Character Depth to Build Suspense Whew! It’s a labyrinth of trouble. Once again, brainstorming what confronts your detective and a twist will deepen your story and keep your readers going. All the work you did at the beginning with your character bible can pay off when you are looking for a complication or a final twist. If you are stumped, go back to your victim and your murderer.

Going deep into your characters will help you build believable problems, confrontations, and twists. If you try to make them up out of thin air, they will seem forced. Your readers will notice.  

Zara Altair
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Zara Altair writes mysteries set in ancient Italy. Her course for beginning writersWrite A Killer Mystery is coming soon. Get on the notification list.
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Toward The Final Act - On The Killer’s Scent

The Detective Finds Clues in the Killer’s World
​Let the complications roll! Your detective screws up, asks for help from the wrong people, stumbles over his weaknesses. If it’s bad, bring it on. In the final section of Act II (Four-Act Structure) your detective dives deeper into the killer’s world as the ultimate exploration of the victim’s world.

As you are developing your story line, take some time to brainstorm some really nasty ways to confound your detective and threaten not just his discovery process, but the detective as well.13:39 Q: Is there a difference between evidence and clues?
15:49 Q: I want to write a crime novel. Should my detective be a private investigator or a police investigator?

Writers’ Guide to Homicide

Before the Confrontation It’s One Big Mess26       Your protagonist retreats in the face of his worst disaster yet, a disaster that feels so much like that thing he never got over that’s he’s having déjà vu. He might’ve noticed a chink in the antagonist’s armor, but not soon enough to take advantage of it.

There’s another murder, your detective thought she understood the victim’s world but now she feels as though she’s back to the beginning. There’s a glimpse of the killer but either the detective doesn’t notice it or doesn’t give it due attention. Time to lick some wounds and then gaze around.

In plot land you’re at the aftermath of the second pinch point.


27       As he’s gathering new allies and resources, something your protagonist did (or failed to do) in Act Two because of his misbelief comes back to bite him on the butt. (Subplot A)  

Your detective finds new connections, alliances among suspects he was unaware of earlier and now he realizes that he overlooked important information (back in Act Ii) that needs new examination. While these discoveries feel like a new beginning of sorts, his opponent jams it up with a new attack. This attack can take his eyes off the case and onto something personal like a flaw that is holding him back.

Yes, it’s complicated, and meant to be. You’ve arrived at the fifth complication in traditional story structure.



28       He’s got to eat crow, beg for help, sacrifice more resources or improvise within an already imperfect plan—and he can only blame himself. He starts to question his misbelief:  his biggest success came when he’d temporarily abandoned it, but the idea of giving it up voluntarily is terrifying. (Subplot B)

So, that flaw, emphasized by the opponent, it’s got your detective in a heap of trouble and it’s all his fault. Your detective may need to ask the opponent for a detail or help. He starts to question his vision of the victim’s world. The love interest helps him look at that world a different way. But he resists because it’s not his way.

In structure this is the aftermath of the fifth complication and it’s messy.


29       Your protagonist attacks that vulnerability that he noticed earlier, and at first it seems he’s caught the antagonist unprepared—is victory at hand? (Subplot A)

The opponent encourages the protagonist to look at the victim’s world in a new way. He notices something new about the killer. Is it that easy? Just shifting perspective?

If you’re still hanging on to story structure this is the setup for the second plot point. Yes, you are headed toward Act III.


30       Nope. (Maybe there’s a twist here?) Either the antagonist was using that weakness to draw the protagonist in, or he reacted fast enough to protect it. Your protagonist gets one clear shot at the antagonist, but he has to give up his misbelief to take it, and he isn’t able to make that leap of faith.

The killer uses a smokescreen and the clarity fades. The detective has one chance to confront the killer, but he has to clear his vision of the victim’s world and antagonist gets away because your detective is still missing a piece of the puzzle.

You’ve reached the second plot point in story structure. It’s going to get wild now.Confuse All Your Characters ​With all the confusion, hot mess, and frustrations your detective struggles in this part of your mystery. Keep the story from sagging by mixing things up. Your detective’s opponent may unknowingly give her an insight while trying to stop her. Or, her love interest may threaten to call it quits. Keep your reader guessing. But still you want to keep them guessing about how the detective will solve all these problems and solve the mystery.

Amidst all the setbacks, your detective gets close to the killer. Even though your detective may overlook the clues in the middle of the confusion, the killer feels the pressure. The killer takes on the role of antagonist and actively works against your detective... even if it’s behind the scenes.

Zara Altair

Zara Altair writes mysteries set in ancient Italy. Her course for beginning writers Write A Killer Mystery is coming soon. Get on the notification list.