We’ll also create a photo gallery page and post comments from those who attended all three sessions. We learned a lot from this first venture into a unique workshop structure and expect to make the next one even better. (Stay tuned for updates for that this summer.)

I personally only got five pages into my short story (having missed a week by being out of town, then the following week by being out of sorts!), but know where I’m going, I think, and hope to finish it by the end of May. We had a mix of people working on short stories and novels, and that seemed to work fine.

John

Two things inevitable, today (for taxes) and Saturday (for our mystery workshop there will be some murders afoot).

It’s tax day (and I’ll get mine sent in before the midnight deadline) and we’re winding up for the workshop that will begin in 2 days! Everyone’s excited and looking forward to a great experience. Thank you to all who are participating and to everyone who checked out our website. This marks our first excursion into this type of workshop format, and we’ll post updates during the workshop weeks about how it is going, with a wrap-up at the end. (How many others do that?)

Thanks for your support,

John

Because we have to plan for a specific head count, and prepare our editors for who they will be working with, we need to know as soon as possible if you are going to attend.  This is shaping up to be an exciting workshop, and I hope you can make it. If you email us your writing sample we’ll know you’re heading our way and that the registration is ‘in the mail.’

Hope to see you soon!

John

Why, you ask? (And I may have answered this before, but will answer it again.) We will be ordering materials the Monday or Tuesday after Easter in order to have them in for the first meeting. The plan is to order a few extra, as we still have slots open, but if … well, you get the idea!

Anyway, I hope to see you there!

John

The next noise is not thunder, it’s a rap on the pane glass in the door, the shadow of knuckles just above my stenciled moniker: JAMES Q. DARMAN, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. The door opens and in walks the smoothest legs…

How many times has that opened a story? More than once too many, and it’s too old now. But setting plays an important part in your story and can be revealed very quickly. There’s no need to describe every little detail for the reader to draw a picture. What picture did you draw of the office JQD was sitting in? See? I left that to your imagination. But you probably drew your picture from the description of the door with the name on the glass, recalling all those old TV shows and movies that started out in a very similar fashion.

And that’s the key. A small setting detail will give the reader enough to build their own location. It might be slightly different than yours, the house may be blue instead of brown, the trees twenty feet tall instead of thirty, but the overall feel will be what you impart.

Good luck on your story, and I hope to see you soon!

John

Note: Part of the above was copied from his website. The winner will receive one of his books plus another book, Don’t Sabotage Your Submission, by Chris Roerden.

The entries will be numbered and sent to him after the 2nd workshop meeting (May 1), with the winner announced at the closing meeting on May 15.

Good luck to everyone!

John

I came across the third reason this weekend when reading about how to write a mystery. (Yes, I’m new at this, I need all the help I can get.) And actually, it was something I was familiar with, but had forgotten. In a short story, every word counts. Every word has to count. The model forces you to write better. It forces more discipline in the telling of the story because you have a limited number of scenes to tell it, so you’ve got to pick the most important ones (if you imagine squeezing a novel down into a short, for instance) and make them as precise as possible.

And while I was writing this, I came up with a fourth, related to the second. You don’t need an agent.

Hope to see you there,

John

I like to think this is your workshop, not ours. You, the attendee, will be putting in the work to come up with a great story, and we are here to guide you on that way. When you walk out on that 3rd day, you’ll be able to hold up a story and say, “I’ve done this!” If you’ve still got work to do on it, you’ll know what that is. If you’re ready to submit, you’ll have identified your markets.

It’s the weekend, here’s to your writing!

John

My story is located in a neighborhood, possibly a sleepy, quiet one. A body is found, but the cause of death is unknown. The spouse is distraught. Several neighbors can be linked to the couple (now a single, as one is deceased). Both have motivations to kill the man. Neighbor A due to the man’s occupation and how it affected that neighbor’s life. He was an automechanic, and fixed neighbor A’s car, only to have A’s wife get in an accident and end up wheelchair bound. (The husband blames it on the dead man.)

Neighbor B has personal problems and needs to sell his house. But living right next door to the dead man, whose upkeep habits were poor, B’s house value is not enough to cover other problems he’s in.

Our hero enters the scene as a friend or relative of neighbor C. Maybe he’s a retired detective and helps out the local police. He reveals the killer through expert deduction and analysis, and the killer is arrested before he can kill our hero.

****

Okay, that’s a sample. Need more work? Of course. I have several things I need to nail down, including how our hero goes about poking around and finding the killer. Maybe the hero is a retired engineer, and this knowledge helps him. (It’s special knowledge now, that the other neighbors, and maybe even the police, don’t have readily available.) Then I’ve got to come up with the actual murder weapon. Choose who did it, A or B. (Or is there a D?) Decide how and why our hero is threatened by the real killer. Or maybe his friend or relative, neighbor C, is the one in trouble? I think I need to put our hero in danger in some way.

The sample above, as it stands, is enough to send in for the workshop. It will give me time to continue thinking about it and working it, and it will give an editor time to review it so they can ask me the same questions I’m asking myself, or even some ones I don’t know about!

Hope to see you there!

John

I finished watching The Departed, an action-packed mystery, and was almost disappointed at the end when it looked like the villain was going to get away. I think that’s critical in mysteries: Your hero has to win, and win with their own wits and intelligence.

I find one preparation tip worth sharing, and it has nothing to do with your style of writing, or your method of producing a story. First and foremost, especially for someone like me who doesn’t normally delve into the mystery genre, I read. I read as many mysteries as I can, and in this case I’m looking at short stories in particular.

I love crime novels, the ones from Connelly and Hillerman, Crais and the older Patterson ones, and other authors, too numerous to list here. But for this workshop, I’ve been reading short stories, and I’m going to make a trip to the library to see if they have any mystery anthologies I can pick up.

One benefit to attending this workshop: each participant will receive a copy of both Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. You can see for yourself what is selling to these two outlets. I think it would be beneficial to study several of the stories that appeal to you as an aid in crafting your story. (They didn’t all interest me, though I forced myself to read most of them.)

In more than one story, the hero set up the villain to reveal who it was, and left it to the police to make the arrest. I’ll be announcing some more exciting news on Wednesday, as I go to a three times a week schedule, posting M-W-F.

Okay, I’ve got to work on who my bad guy is, and how I’m going to disguise him. (Or her.)

Hope to see you there!

John