By now, you have hopefully discovered that the basic plot of a crime novel is not that terribly complicated. If you peel away all the surrounding stuff, you’ll see that it’s about coming up with a motive, a murderer and a modus operandi (or two). Let’s now take this skeleton and put some flesh on it. We’ll start with the most important component...
Build the tension
Building tension is the very essence of the craft of the crime writer, whose greatest fear is to bore the readers. There are many tricks you can use to create tension:
Change external environment
The external environment is what we normally simply call “setting”. You might want to change town, country, culture – whatever. In The Preacher I have two parts of the Hulth family live in totally different environments. One branch of the family lives in a manor house, with all that entails, while the other branch live a neglected life of poverty and petty crime in a grotty little shack. In The Ice Princess, I chose instead to set part of the story in Göteborg, where I had some of the principal characters live. Both are examples of how tension can be created by changing the external environment.
In other words – there are lots of ways to vary the setting than simply the geographical. Use your imagination!
Change internal environment
Our internal environment comprises the things we have inside us: thoughts, ideas, personality, etc. The internal environment you can change by simply observing events from the perspective of different characters. This is something I like to do in my writing. In both The Ice Princess and The Preacher I am constantly swapping the person whom the readers follow. This also creates natural variation in tempo, tone, etc.
Throw out some red herrings
There are a number of ways to exploit this tension tool. One is to create a character who totally lacks the means and opportunity to murder, and who seems completely innocent. According to the old “The killer’s always the one you least suspect” theory, the readers will be watching this person like a hawk...
Another kind of red herring is a person who is exposed as having a false alibi. The readers’ suspicions are immediately directed onto that person, but really he has nothing at all to do with the murder, and lied about his alibi to cover up, say, an extra-marital affair.
Perhaps a character is the victim of an attempted murder and the police are on the trail of the one who tried to kill her. But really, the victim is the murderer and has staged her attack. Making the killer look like one of his or her potential victims is a classic example of a red herring! (Read, for instance, Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None”, in which we are even led to believe that the killer has himself been killed...)
As you can see, the sky’s the limit for what can be done to mislead people, with a little imagination. The purpose of red herrings is therefore to lure the readers’ suspicions in the wrong direction. Properly used they are one of the best tension tools at a crime writer’s disposal.
Several suspects
Make sure that there are more than one person in the story with a motive to kill. If there’s only one person with a motive, an experienced reader will discount him or her straight away.
Insinuation
A very effective tool. Insinuate, for example, that someone is carrying around a secret. The readers don’t know what it is, or even if it’s got anything at all to do with the murder, but they won’t be able to contain their curiosity. What you do in practice is to tell the readers just a small part of the truth. In The Preacher, for example, this is what I wrote at the end of one passage:
“But something else had caught Martin’s attention and was hovering at the back of his mind. He feverishly searched through the sensory impressions from his visit to the camp-ground but remained puzzled. There was something he’d seen that should have registered. Annoyed, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, but he finally had to give up trying to pin down the elusive memory. They rode home in silence.”
Doesn’t that just make you curious about what he saw but can’t yet remember...?
Cliff-hangers
A personal favourite. This is a technique that involves closing a sequence on a climax. The term comes originally from the world of TV, when producers would end an episode with someone literally hanging from a cliff to make sure that viewers tuned in again to find out the character’s fate.
In the world of the crime writer, the principal character, for example, hits upon something vital to the case towards the end of a chapter – but the chapter ends before the readers find out exactly what. Or a person might end up in a sticky situation, and be left there for a while while the author, to the readers’ frustration, turns to other parts of the story. Here, too, the only thing holding you back is your imagination. But the cliff-hanger can’t be praised highly enough as an excellent way of turning a book into a real page-turner – although to make things exciting there have to be parts that give the readers a chance to rest too. To illustrate what I mean, here is a short passage from The Preacher. Note that this is a section ending, where the cliffhanger has maximum effect.
“But just as he got up to leave, the phone rang again. This time it was Forensics. With trepidation he steeled himself to listen to what the lab had to say. Maybe they would finally have the piece of the puzzle they were looking for. But never in Patrik’s wildest imagination could he have predicted what he heard next.”
EXERCISES:
1. Choose one of Agatha Christie’s books and read it TWICE. The second time, once you know who the killer is and which clues have been used, you’ll see how elegantly she places out her clues – often completely openly.
2. Write four short passages of at least half a side of A4 in length, each of which is to end with a cliff-hanger. Vary the form of cliff-hanger you use. The passages don’t have to be connected in any way.
3. Describe how a woman goes shopping with her daughter. Write four variations in different settings. Change country, culture, time period, or whatever you can think of. Note how the same event can be totally dependent on the external environment you have chosen for its content, style, etc.
RECOMMENDED READING:
1. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Suggested reading:
1. Writing mysteries by Sue Grafton, pages 109-116, 126-131
2. How to write mysteries by Shannon O’Cork, pages 56-86