I love to watch mysteries. I’ve watched all of Poirot with David Suchet several times. I’ve watched two different Miss Marples. I’ve also watched all three Morses (Morse, Lewis, and Endeavour). I’ve read a number of mysteries too (mostly Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, and the Inspector Morse books). Finally, in Spring 2024, I decided to write my first mystery novel. I’m surprised it took me so long.

Most of my books have some element of mystery or suspense in them, but solving the mystery wasn’t the central point of the story. I discovered that writing my first mystery was far more challenging than I had suspected. I thought that since I already knew how build characters or create a sense of place that I was already more than halfway there. I realized that writing a mystery is more exacting than other kinds of fiction. Mysteries require a certain precision that I don’t necessarily have at the beginning of a new project. I’ve become more of a pantster over the years, and my writing process has become more of a flying by the seat of my pants experience. But the plot in mysteries needs to be more carefully constructed because of the expectations of the genre. 

When we write a mystery, we are making promises to the reader. The mystery will be solved, there will be clues, both real and misleading, along the way. Fair play means that the clues to solve the mystery will be there (but hopefully not too obvious) for the reader to find. 

I’m pleased to say that I finished my Gothic mystery, The Professor of Eventide. It will be released on Tuesday, April 7, 2026. If you’d like to join the ARC street team for The Professor of Eventide, fill out this Google form. ARC copies are now available.

My first mystery was more challenging to write than some of my other books. It took five full drafts to gather all of the pieces together in the right order. Here are some of the challenges I faced while writing my first mystery. 

Discovering Structural Problems

To be fair, when I’m going through the stages of drafting a novel, I often do have structural problems. Remember, I’m a pantster, so I don’t start with a detailed outline. I write a brief outline and then jump in, trusting that I’ll see how the pieces fit together in time. I’ve discovered that mystery novels are less forgiving. If the structure doesn’t work and the clues don’t align then everything collapses, which is never a good thing in a novel. The challenge is making sure that everything is logical but also not so obvious. As I discover more about the motives of the characters, I find that I need to keep going back into earlier chapters to plant the clues readers (and my character) will need to solve the puzzle. 

Knowing the Ending Changes Everything

Even though I’m a pantster, also known as a discovery writer, I almost always know the ending before I begin. I’m not sure why, but I just do. I know other discovery writers find the ending as they go and they’re perfectly happy that way. The funny thing was, as I was writing, nearly everything about the book changed except the ending. The story is a murder mystery, and the murderer changed. The reason for the murders changed. Nearly everything changed but the ending. The ending is the final piece of the puzzle, so everything else in the story needs to lead toward that. While that’s true in most fiction, it’s particularly true in a mystery. Readers need to see that there was no other way for things to end. 

There are a few things I needed to know in order to pull all of the pieces together. Who committed the crime and why? How did they do it? And what clues and red herrings need to be planted along the way? The story wouldn’t come together until I had clear answers to each of those questions. I’ve found that it’s all too easy to plant clues that lead nowhere. More than once I wrote my way into corners that required implausible explanations and so I had to drop those ideas and rewrite those sections when I found something that made more sense. 

Clues Should Be Fair 

As a mystery reader, I appreciate the concept of fair play. We should be able to look back after the reveal and see that the truth was there all along. What makes writing a mystery a challenge is that even though we need to plant the clues, those clues shouldn’t be easy to spot. Sounds easy, but it isn’t. As I was working through my drafts, I found that I was either making clues too subtle or making them too obvious so that the mystery collapsed too early. I’ve discovered that writing a mystery is a bit of a sleight-of-hand trick.

Every Character Could Be a Suspect

As I was writing, I wanted several of the characters to appear as if they could have committed the crime. I tried to give each one a believable motive. Every character in ths story has their  secrets, even if they’re innocent. If you’re keeping a secret, you may appear guilty even if you’re not. This helps to add heightened tension in the story because every word, spoken or not, becomes important. The relationships between characters become important.  Writing the mystery forced me to think about why the characters are behaving the way they do. 

The Big Reveal

One of the aspects of the story that I played with a lot is the reveal of the murderer. I intentionally structured things so that the reader should figure it out before the sleuth does. If things go to plan, the reader should think, “Oh, that’s what happened…” getting there a little bit ahead of the amateur detective at the heart of the story. I’m doing that on purpose because it matches some other things going on in the story that I can’t yet talk about. 

The reveal really is the most important part of a mystery because it’s where the promises of the mystery converge. It’s what we’ve been working toward all along. The reveal tests the structure, clues, and characters. Will readers believe that this is where we were headed all along? 

Even though it has taken me longer to write the book than I expected, I’ve found writing my first mystery to be extremely instructive. The experience has taught me to pay attention to the forward motion of the story in a way I hadn’t before. Usually, I’m all about inspiration, but this time I had to keep the finish line firmly in sight. 

Normally, when I write a novel, my first draft is the sloppy copy, the second draft is where things start to come together, and I have things pretty close to right by the third draft. For my first mystery novel, it took five drafts for things to start to come together. More than anything, writing my first mystery has taught me patience with the process. Things come together in their own time. 

I’m glad I gave myself the challenge of writing my first mystery novel. I’ve learned a lot about the structure of storytelling from the experience.