How Do You Write a Whodunit?

If I knew the answer to that, I’d bottle it and make a fortune. But I can tell you how I write them if that’s any help.

When I first hit on the idea of the STAC Mysteries, they weren’t mysteries at all. I had the first title planned as the antics of a gang of third-agers let loose for weekend in Filey. Then I realised I needed something more, so how about a nice murder mystery. Nothing too gory, something which would maintain the light-hearted approach of the original idea.

Easy-peasy.

Laugh? I thought I’d never start. The moment I threw in a couple of killings, it complicated the plot to hell and back and I had to go back to the drawing board.

That was eleven books ago and once I decided on a series of whodunits, my approach had to change.

So what is that approach.

I’m not a planner, but whodunits demand planning. Before you put pen to paper, or fingertips to keyboard, you need answers to all the questions. Who did what to whom, how, why and when? The final three compose the classic crime triangle: Means, motive, opportunity.

Means: I write British mysteries because I’m British, and despite newspaper headlines determined to make us think otherwise, firearms are not easy to get hold of in this country. In the entire STAC Mysteries series I think there are only two references to firearms (Murder at the Murder Mystery Weekend and My Deadly Valentine). Most of the murders are by blunt trauma or strangulation with the occasional stabbing thrown in for good measure.

Motive: It’s a sad reflection on this world, but people kill for the most trivial reasons. Because I write cosy mysteries, I avoid the more serious motives, such as the sexual and/or mob warfare, and I’ve only used serial killing in once instance. Even then it was treated lightly. In the main I work with money, jealousy, unrequited love and blackmail/threat of exposure as a primary motive, from where it’s simple enough to entangle the issue further. Note, I use the word entangle, not complicate. In the end, the reader needs to understand the motive, and I don’t go for complex psychological reasons.

Opportunity: This is where I sometimes find the balance hard to handle and of the three corners, it’s the most difficult to work out. Make it too obvious and the reader will guess within a matter of a few pages, make it too obscure and the reader will be left dissatisfied with the end result.

There’s one final item you need to decide on. What particular piece of evidence or clue leads your detective to unmasking the perpetrator? I like to go for something obscure, but it’s not always obscure to the reader, so a little care is needed when planning it.

Remember, all this takes place before a single word is written, and it’s only a starting point. I frequently find that by the time I get to the other end, it was someone else whodunit and for different reasons to the one I had planned.

Next in this series of post: picking your sleuth.