writing mysteries - Carol Potenza

New Year’s Resolution: Write a Mystery Challenge from Me to You

December 26, 2022 by Carol Potenza

We’ll follow Demystifying the Beats and write a mystery What made someone who’d only written scientific papers and grants want to write fiction? (That would be me) An eReader for Christmas. This gift from my sisters-in-law was amazing. It allowed me to take dozens in not hundreds of books anywhere and read anytime. Then I started to notice that the ebooks I read had major events at certain percentages in the books: 25%, 50% was usually a big one, 75%, etc. And as someone who analyzed data, this was like an epiphany. Just like in a scientific paper submitted to …

Mystery versus Suspense. Do You REALLY Know the Difference?

October 30, 2022 by Carol Potenza

Well, the modified quote from Alfred Hitchcock is a good place to start, MORE or LESS. (Heh. Basically, he had movie instead of book and audience instead of reader). MYSTERY is when the reader knows LESS than the characters in the book. A mystery plays to the intellectual, to the “little gray cells”. In a mystery, facts are unknown and it’s a puzzle to be solved a little bit at a time. You could use the blossoming of a flower as a metaphor for clues revealed or peeling layers of an onion, but I prefer layers of a parfait, like …

Demystifying the Beats Uncovers the Secrets of Mystery…

September 29, 2022 by Carol Potenza

Demystifying the Beats: Dire Disruption The Dire Disruption will be at the end of Act 2, right at the midpoint climax. And like the midpoint climax in any story, it’s a watershed. After it occurs, everything changes. It’s the point where the sleuth is on the downward slope to solving the case, and the villain knows it. For a Whodunit, the Dire Disruption will probably be focused on the sleuth. In my Nicky Matthews mystery series, when you reach the Dire Disruption, you will DEFINITELY know it. It’s a slap in the face for both the reader and the sleuth. …