How To Write A Mystery – What The Heck Is A Plot Point?

When writing a mystery you want to feature around 300 to 350 pages. Depending on the subgenre, that can change, so you’ll need to figure out which publisher you want to target and check the average length of their books. To make it easier, we will say that your book will have 350 pages.

You’ll want your first plot point to come around page 100, your second at 200, your darkest moment at 300, and then you have 50 pages to wrap up and resolve the book.

What is a plot point? It is a significant event within a plot that deepens the action and turns it in another direction. Your hero is doing great trying to hit his target, when you throw a spin, you change direction, you make it impossible for him to move forward. Be mean to him! Make him sweat. After all, the conflict is what moves the story forward and makes the reader turn the pages. His book will be a “what if” series.

Wow, you finally figured out what to do now that you’re moving forward. He is pretty sure that he knows who he was, why and with what. He is going to save the beautiful lady and she will surely fall in love with him. Then you hit the 200 page mark (this isn’t exact, so don’t worry. Page 194 is fine) it happens again! You put another elephant in your hero’s path and once again he is stuck, or so it seems. Everything I thought was true is wrong. Naturally, he will find a way to move on.

Just when he has almost achieved his goal, we reach the darkest moment around page 300. All is lost, there is no hope that the hero will reach his goal. It seems impossible, but of course it is not. Now you have around 50 pages to get your hero out of the terrible mess of it and see it through to the end. Our hero solves the crime, gets the reward, or the woman, maybe both, the promotion, whatever. The reader can breathe a sigh of relief and close the book with a happy smile on his face.

As I’ve said before, you want to have a lot of conflicts in your book; it is what keeps the reader reading. My first writing teacher explained it to me like this.

“The reader of your book got into bed and wants to read just one chapter before going to sleep, but finds she can’t put the book down! Suddenly it’s two in the morning, she has to get up in a few hours.” to go to work, but you HAVE to read, just ONE MORE CHAPTER.”

That’s the kind of book you want to write, isn’t it?

Along the way you will have to plant false leads, introduce characters who COULD have committed the crime, situations that challenge the detective. Today we are lucky to have the Internet. With the click of a mouse, you can find an undetectable super poison to use to
kill someone or find out how long it takes for a body to go into rigor mortis and come out again.

Now that you have an idea on how to lay out a book, I can hear several of you saying, “But I HAVE to?” No, you don’t. I do not. Sue Grafton doesn’t and neither does Tony Hillerman. Like me, they have an idea, sit down and write. You might want to try that method too, but I’ll tell you from my experience, it’s easier in the end to have at least the semblance of a plot. If you sit down and write your book from chapter one to the end without a plot, you’ll find yourself going back again and again to put things in the book, like red herrings or characters. Those who write through their noses spend more time writing the book than those who plot. So you need to decide what is the best way to write, but try plotting first. It’s easier to keep track of everything that way too.

I think it was Alfred Hitchcock who warned, “If there’s a gun on the wall in chapter one, it had better be fired by the end of the book.” That’s a paraphrase, but close enough. What does it mean? We have all seen it. Sally walks into the creepy old house and sees…a butcher knife on the kitchen counter and…is that blood on the blade???? We have the bloody knife in the back of our minds because it has been pointed out to us. We read and read, and continue to think well, where is the knife? We got to the end and found out that it had nothing to do with the plot! That knife isn’t a red herring unless you can explain at some point why it’s in your book. Maybe the cook had been cutting up chickens, okay, but give us that information at some point or we’ll be mad when we finish the book and realize how much time we spent thinking about that bloody knife and it had nothing to do with the killer.

Please don’t bore your readers. That’s easy to say, I know, but it’s amazing how many books I read that start off with a bang, have interesting characters, a dynamite premise, but still sink in the middle and get boring. Why? There probably isn’t enough conflict. I know I keep coming back to that word, but conflict is what makes your book sing. It’s what keeps people reading. But first of all, it’s what makes a publisher buy the book from him.

Alfred Hitchcock said, “Drama is life without all the boring bits.”

So when you’re writing your book, remember to leave the boring parts out. I’m still surprised when I read books where Bill and Sally have been on the phone and Sally says, “I have to tell you something, but it has to be in person. Can you come to my house?”

“Sure,” says Bill. He pulls his coat out of the front closet, shrugs, and goes in search of his keys. Outside, he walks to his car, gets in and starts the engine. it’s only seven o’clock
blocks to Sally’s house, but there’s construction on Maple Lane, so she decides to take the long way to Chandler and down Nobel Drive. He parks in front of Sally’s, walks up the sidewalk and knocks on the door.

Have your eyes glazed over yet? My fingers almost froze typing this! It’s boring. Instead, do something like this:

“Bill dropped the receiver on the cradle and ran to Sally’s house.”

Now you’ve accomplished the same thing with far fewer words. We don’t care or need to know how Bill got to Sally’s house. And yet I keep reading books that give me a long description of streets and avenues, cornfields and whatever. I don’t mind. Just get your characters from point A to point B and skip the boring parts.

What happens with time? The same thing. You can end the chapter or section with something like:

“I love you,” Bill said and took Sally in his arms.

The next day, Sally was in the kitchen, a frilly pink apron tied around her small waist, cooking grits for Bill.

Clever! No boring parts.