Genre Guide — Mystery

The PI. Classically hard-boiled, male, often drunk, and frequently violent. Living on his wits in a rough, tough town, surrounded by crooked cops, corrupt politicians, and organized crime.

For the foundational stuff, you’ll want to acquaint yourself with Dash Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

Cops, being cops. And you have to get those little details right if you are going to write in this field.

However—and this is where the fun begins—the cops understand that these days. Most police departments of any size will frequently hold “Mystery Writer Events,” often as part of Mystery Writers of America (MWA), so you should look at locating and joining your nearest chapter.

Firstly, and possibly most importantly, the entire canon of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is now in the public domain. That means that you can write any Holmes story you want. (Since Winnie-the-Pooh and Cthulhu are also now public domain characters, I have seen some really weird mashups.) There have been anthology collections of Holmes stories published in the last few years.

For this exercise, you should have a document open where you can write. Now copy the text in the box below and paste it into that document. This will be the blueprint  for your story. You'll fill it in as you go through the exercise and end up with a basic outline for your mystery novel. You may want to post your story outline in the forums to get some ideas from other forum members.

Originally, our meta-genre was called crime, with mystery and thriller being two sub-genres underneath it. Very recently (2020+), thriller has been pulled off and become its own top-level BISAC code. Mystery remains, but caper (the Heist category on Amazon) falls into a strange corner case that you need to be aware of.

Please note that there are a number of famous mystery novels that don't follow this blueprint exactly, and most don't follow it perfectly. If your book still keeps readers guessing with a few pieces missing or added, or with some of them done differently or in a different order, feel free to do your own thing. This blueprint is just so that you can understand the basic format that readers expect from a mystery novel.

Remember to read the articles in the Essentials section. These cover all the essential skills you’ll need as a self-published author. They are not just for beginners either. They go in depth on how to successfully write, publish, and market your own books.

Cozy mystery a genre that might be more popular with writers than any other genre, past, present, or future. This is probably due to the fact that it is the easiest genre for a writer to insert themselves into. What other genre regularly has the protagonist be an introverted, book-loving, cat person?

Back to mystery One of the most important standing rules of cozy mystery is that you never see the body of the dead guy. Ever. My mother primarily read cozies because she didn’t want any blood or gore. In her case, she also didn’t want any sex, violence, profanity, or nudity. About as G-rated as you could manage. Maybe PG, but the sort of thing that showed up on network television before 9 PM, with all the classical restrictions thereof. If a murder has occurred (and those are quite popular in this genre), the detective in question is usually a...

Back to mystery Amateur sleuth is a category of mystery where the main character solving your crime is not a professional. (Easy enough, right?) As in cozy, they might have skills that help them more than the average Jane off the street, but not the training in crime solving. Or the experience. (Or, probably, the firepower that cops and private detectives can bring to bear when they have to.) Instead, you have an everyday person who has become involved in a crime. They can be a witness, a suspect, or even a friend of the deceased. They might be a...