Step 9: Create Final Scenes

You learned last week that your sleuth has failed. A suspect has been arrested for the murder, and she knows he didn’t do it. She is crushed. Just when all seems hopeless, your sleuth picks herself up again. This time it will be all or nothing. She will push herself to the limit to solve the murder.

Now it’s time to pick up the pace. She’s either settled her family problems or someone else will have to take care of them. If they fire her from her job, so be it. She has only one goal: to catch a killer. All else falls by the wayside.

Backed into a wall, she reaches deep inside herself to strength she didn’t know she had to use every ounce of emotional and physical strength she can muster. She is becoming a new and better version of herself, one able to leap tall buildings…uh, not quite that…but close.

If you’ve prepared her with previous tests and you’ve foreshadowed events to come, the ending should reveal itself as inevitable but surprising. All the pieces of the puzzle come together in the final scenes, called the climax.

Climax

Rushing toward the climax, your sleuth thinks of nothing else but catching the killer. Nothing stops her. My sleuth was locked in a burning building in Cover Her Body, but still she escaped to follow the killer’s trail. I’ve had my sleuths attacked from behind with crippling injuries, chased down on foot by a car in a parking garage, and battered by a killer wielding a bat. Each and every time, she picked herself up and went at him again. I can’t wait for Adelaide to face the killer in Tree of Heaven, my work in progress!

Once he’s caught (spoiler alert: she catches him) and dies or is carted off to prison, time to wrap up any loose ends. Do it quickly. Readers don’t want to linger long after all the excitement. Leave them hungry for more!

What’s left to tell about writing a mystery in 10 (easy?) steps? You’ll see in next week’s final step.