Voltaire Said it Best
Writer: Erika Hoffman
When you reach a certain age and have met career goals and completed family obligations, you find yourself on the threshold of seniorhood. If you’re without infirmities and without time-sapping household chores, you turn your attention to endeavors put on the back burner during the heady halcyon days of youth.
After I stopped teaching to welcome my elderly dad to our home and after I said “fare thee well” to my last of four, racing off to college, I penned a novel. Then, I attended my first writing conference— to learn how to write. There it was drilled into us conferees to start small. Oops! Ergo, I began inking personal essays. I reflected on past trips and authored a few pieces. Next, I addressed the subject of caregiving and researched issues regarding dementia; I composed articles on that. Sometimes, I’d scribble educational diatribes and sold those. Often, I wrote slice-of-life stories about kids, pets, friends, thoughts.
Yet, what I itched to produce, the thing that would give me a tingle up my leg, was a mystery, a fabricated murder story. I’d always admired Agatha Christie whose ability to articulate enabled her to create fascinating puzzles with memorable sleuths. Once I decided mysteries were my destiny, I drove to another writing conference, only this time not a generic one. The lure of attending a mystery conference compelled me to leave my comfort zone. Keeping panic at bay, I pulled out of my driveway in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and accelerated up I-85 and I-95 to New Brunswick, New Jersey. There, I donned a badge that read Deadly Ink.
The keynote speaker was Hank Philippi Ryan whom I didn’t even know was a woman and a TV personality. I recognized the name as an author of mysteries. First, she told us she didn’t begin writing thrillers until age 55, and she’d had five published with the sixth about to be released. Secondly, she told us there were three rules for writing we all needed to know, but the trouble is… no one knows what they are. Her humor was contagious. Ryan emphasized there’s no special secret to turn us into mystery writers, but she attributed her success to talent, perseverance, education, luck, timing, and … MAGIC!
She gave us pointers: 1.) Write a page a day. 2.) Distill your book into a 25-word logline. 3.) Have a great first line. 4.) Keep a timeline of your story so there’s some structure. If a book’s going to be 350 pages long, she knows she needs to start wrapping up loose ends by page 275. 5.) Think about the three acts of a novel like this: Act One— “Wow! That’s strange!” Act Two— “Yikes! Now what?” — Act Three: “How exciting! So, that’s what happened?” 6.) While writing you should ask yourself: “What would a real person do here?”
Ms. Ryan reminded us that the start of the book presents the world the characters live in and the problem that must be solved. In the second act, red herrings abound, and that middle of the book must be filled with twists and increasing difficulties for the protagonist. By page 36, she warned, you got to have a story going or you’ll have the dreaded “muddle in the middle.” Ryan likes to call the middle “the end of the beginning” and “the beginning of the end.”
She emphasized to us wannabe Agatha Christies that by the last chapter, the reader wants to know that justice has been served. You story must make sense, she emphasized. Horror tales can be more open ended but not so with mysteries. If someone asks what happened at the end, and the reader answers, “I have no idea,” Ryan says, “That’ s not good, not what you want to hear.”
Impressed, I bought her book The Other Woman. It keeps your attention. Suspense builds and the ending is satisfying.
So, if you aspire to pen a mystery, I suggest a few things first: Go to a mystery writers’ conference; read a bunch of mysteries; and join Sisters in Crime where the magical Hank Phillipi Ryan had been a past President.
Before I scribble out a mystery, I glance down at a scrap of paper, taped to my desk, with Voltaire’s words: “The Secret of Being a Bore is To Tell Everything.”
Let your reader deduce and infer! It’s a mystery, after all! (Besides this being good advice for writing fiction, it’s also good counsel for dinner conversation and cocktail hour chatter).
About the Writer
Erika has compiled her published stories and essays into several collections: My Sassy Life; More Sassy Stories; Erika’s Take on Writing; Erika’s Take on Writing, Take 2; Erika’s Take on Travel. All are sold on Amazon. Her mystery, Why Mama, published by Library Partners Press is also available through Amazon. Erika is a graduate of Duke University; a past high school teacher; married to her college sweetheart; a mother of four; a mother-in-law to three; a grandma to eight— all under the age of five; and a longtime resident of North Carolina although raised in New Jersey.
Website: Erikavhoffman.weebly.com