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Writing Tips Oasis

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How to Write Crime Fiction: A Beginner’s Guide

By Georgina Roy

how to write crime fiction

Welcome to Writing Tips Oasis and our newest guide – this time around, on Crime Fiction.

Crime Fiction as a genre is often confused or mixed up with other genres or its own subgenres/categories, like mysteries, which we will talk about later. The Crime genre is an umbrella that entails everything that is related to a crime: from mysteries to thrillers, although in thrillers, the crime is often ongoing, while in crime fiction , the crime is already perpetrated and the protagonist is looking for the perpetrator. For that reason, we will look at thriller as a separate genre that crosses with crime, rather than as a part of the crime genre as a whole.

On the whole, we will divide this guide in three parts. In the first part, we will focus on the crime itself, because that will define the category (or subgenre) of your novel. The second part will focus on the plot of a crime fiction novel, and the third part will focus on how to build a crime puzzle.

Without further delay, let’s move on to the first part and try to tackle the task of writing a crime fiction novel.

Table of Contents

Part One: The Crime

1. what crime fiction encompasses, 2. choosing the crime, 3. crime fiction categories, part two: building the crime plot, 1. choosing a protagonist, 2. creating the world, 3. portraying secondary characters, 4. creating ambiance and mood, 5. balancing plot and character, 6. twists and resolutions, part three: building the crime puzzle, 1. how to create a crime puzzle, 2. usage of unreliable narrators, 3. using foreshadowing, 4. creating the usual suspects cast, 5. red herrings and chekov’s guns, 6. avoiding clichés, 7. avoiding plot traps.

how to write a crime novel

The crime is the most important element of a good crime fiction novel. Although, it’s worth noting that the crime, in this case, comes after compelling plot and characters, which are necessary for any kind of novel. The crime in a crime fiction novel, however, needs to provide two things:

  • interest in the readers as to how it was done;
  • interest in a compelling protagonist who will solve the mystery for the readers.

Here is the thing, you can have a compelling protagonist and interesting characters (upon which we will talk extensively in the second part of this guide), but unless you have an extraordinary crime, you are not giving your protagonist and characters anything to work with. For that reason, let’s start by distilling all the separate elements of crime fiction novels before we move on to creating one.

The list of what a crime fiction novel needs, or what the crime fiction in general encompasses, can be way too long. For that reason, let’s begin by analyzing what a crime fiction novel provides for the readers.

First, we mentioned the compelling protagonist and interesting characters. The compelling protagonist is usually a detective/investigator/agent in a secret/clandestine organization, usually a government institution, and in legal organizations like PI agencies or various different police departments. That means your protagonist will be the readers eyes and ears (and emotions) in the legal process.

The interesting characters fall into different categories. First category is victim/eyewitness, the second is the bad guys (or just one bad guy) among many suspects, all of which need to have motive to perpetrate the crime, the means to do it, and finally, alibis or lack of them, which leads to the protagonist investigating these people in order to find out what happened. The thing about these characters is that they become the readers’ mediums for experiencing what it’s like to be an eyewitness or to be a suspect in a crime (and as much as we like to say that the world has become a horrible place, most people don’t actually want to be eyewitnesses or suspects in a crime. For this reason, crime fiction along with romance are among the best-selling genres in the world – they provide escapism for the readers in realms that they don’t particularly want to visit).

Third is the crime itself. Here is the thing: a crime that is easily solved by the protagonist will be even more easily solved by your readers, most of which will be crime fiction fans, and if you write in a crime that can be easily solved, the readers will lose interest.

Next in line are ambiance, setting, worldbuilding, and the way that you handle them need to fall in line with the story you want to tell.

And by choosing the crime, we don’t really mean decide if your novel is going to revolve around a murder or a theft, for example. Nor do we mean decide if the protagonist is going to be a man or a woman. What we mean is the crime as a whole: what (murder, theft, kidnapping, etc.) it is, who did it, who will investigate it, and how will they go about it. These three things will decide in which crime category (or subgenre) your story will belong in. And these categories have their own markers that the readers will expect, and knowing that gives you, as a writer, the chance to subvert their expectations and surprise them.

Moreover it will keep you from making rookie mistakes, like for example, having a spunky 22-year-old private eye investigate someone’s murder instead of a detective, going to morgues and other places, investigate witnesses and so forth. A private eye will never have the authority to investigate someone’s murder. When private eyes are hired to investigate someone’s murder, it means that the police have closed the case and have been unable to solve it, or have locked up an innocent man or a woman as the perpetrator. However, a private eye would not investigate the murder right after it happened. Unless the private eye is closely related to the victim, which would give her a personal motive.

And so forth. A spunky 22-year-old female private eye as the protagonist will shoot your novel straight into the chick-lit crime mystery pile, or the cozy mystery. On the other hand, make the woman a little older, late twenties, for example, and make her a legit investigator, and then you have a crime novel that would belong in a different subgenre, like legal or police.

In conclusion, the category your story will belong in will ultimately be decided by your story itself. Deciding on a category before starting to write your will enable you to:

  • read other novels in the same/similar subgenre, enabling you to know the most common expectations and plots;
  • outline your novel, so you do not end up involving psychics to give your protagonist clues to the antagonist;
  • find ways to subvert known clichés and tropes and storylines.

Let’s take a look at the most common categories or subgenres of crime fiction and their expectations and common themes.

There are many different subgenres or categories when it comes to crime fiction. Some of these are more prolific than the others. For example, we can look at mystery as a separate genre, as well as detective, and thriller as well. All of these, however, involve two things: crime and the legal system, and protagonists who need to solve the case, no matter what.

The mystery genre is easy to describe. Everything starts with the perpetration of a crime: someone has been murdered, or something has been stolen. A good mystery will involve both, for example. Then, the investigator comes along and begins to investigate the crime. Your job as the writer here is to throw hurdles and obstacles at the protagonist, even go as far as to make it personal for the protagonist to solve the case to provide more motivation. In addition, you need a cast of the usual suspects, and the more unusual you can make them, the better. The faker their alibis, the better. However, be careful not to make everyone fake their alibis just for the sake of it. Red herrings are fine as long as they do pay off in some way. Keep the readers engaged by creating a mystery that seems impossible to solve at a first glance.

One of the best things about the crime fiction genre is the possible overlap within its categories, as well as the possible mixing of crime with different genres. A detective crime fiction novel always features a detective who is most often investigating a homicide. Along the way he has to go through many obstacles in order to get to the truth, and if he is dealing with a serial killer/a ring of organized crime, the bodies will continue to drop. And even the seemingly natural death of the victim’s neighbor turns out to be a murder. There are two things to be careful of: if there are too many murders and victims, your readers might get lost in the details. Second, if the murder is too complicated to be solved, you might fall into the deus-ex-machina trap. In addition, you don’t want to make the murder too simple – that would make your detective not up to his job.

  • Thriller (as cross-genre)

A good example of a thriller and crime fiction mix is a novel that revolves, for example, around a kidnapping. The reason why we’re looking a thriller novel as a separate genre is because usually, a thriller novel happens while the crime is being committed. It’s a conflict between the villain and the victim, and, if the victim loses, that’s when the legal department becomes involved. That fact, by default, separates the crime genre and the thriller genre.

However, for example, if the police are involved and trying to prevent a serial killer from committing another murder, and if the novel also focuses on the serial killer’s next victim to be (who he probably has already kidnapped), then you have a novel that is both crime and thriller.

Police procedural fiction novels revolve around a police department that’s trying to solve a crime. Usually, you have the cast of a detective (who may or may not have a partner, who may or may not be a sidekick), a couple of forensics and at least one pathologist, and maybe even additional lab people like a toxicologist, etc. The crime and the perpetrator are usually shown in a prologue, and the readers follow the story of the police department solving the crime. Police procedural fiction allows a glimpse into the world of the police and the story is more about how to catch the murderer through evidence and investigation.

Legal crime fiction novels are a specific subgenre of crime novels. They still involve the same elements of crime fiction: a crime has been committed, and an organization is involved in solving that crime. This time, that organization is the legal department. This means that the action is all in the court room, and usually, the conflict revolves around a lawyer trying to prove that the accused is innocent of the crime, sometimes to the extent of solving the mystery and finding the real murderer, putting himself or herself and their close friends or coworkers in danger.

  • Locked room

Again, there are many overlaps in crime fiction categories, and the locked room mystery is one of them. It can overlap easily with all the other subgenres. All it needs is to have a crime committed in a locked room (though not necessarily an empty one). This means that the perpetrator could not have easily come and gone from the scene of the crime. What really sets this subgenre apart is the impossibility of the crime. They almost always revolve around a murder, and the readers are presented with the same puzzle – the locked room – as the detective. The puzzle is what entices the readers to read more, hence the major overlap with other subcategories, from detective to legal to cozy mysteries.

  • Cozy mystery

What sets the cozies – or cozy mysteries – apart is the setting and the ambiance. The violence is toned down, and the murders are usually through poisons or other means, and the motive is almost always personal. Another element that sets them apart is the protagonist, who in this case can be anyone within a community. Usually, the cozies are set in small towns in scenic locations, where the ambiance plays just as big of a role as the characters themselves. The protagonist is usually in a position to solve the mystery: a sheriff, a librarian, a doctor – someone who will have a lot of contact with almost all of the people in the community.

Whodunit refers to the subgenre of crime fiction where the plot revolves solely around discovering who murdered someone. As with other categories, the protagonist is the detective who is investigating the crime, and the usual suspects are making difficult to tell, well, whodunit.

There are other categories of crime fiction. Chick-lit mysteries, where the protagonist is a female, hardboiled crime fiction, where a cop in the Prohibition era has to deal with both the crime gangs and the crooked crime system, the caper crime fiction, where it’s more about committing a petty crime (theft) and getting away with it, and many other categories.

writing crime fiction

Many different writers define plot in different ways: we all know it when a novel has a tight plot, and when the plot is not right, all readers know it. Here is the thing – plot is what your story depends on. You can think of plotting a novel as putting all elements of one story into a linear grid and knowing which event of the plot happens when in the novel. You can have a good story, but if you don’t put each element of it in its proper place in the grid, you have a jumbled novel with a very loose plot.

A well balanced structure will have three acts: the exposition, or act 1, which is the beginning of your novel. During this part, your protagonist needs to be introduced to the problem. In the case of crime novels, regardless of category, the problem will always be a certain crime – murder, theft, both, or something else. You have created a situation – a problem, and now the protagonist has to solve it.

In the real world, whenever we face a problem, we go for the easiest solution. It’s human nature to take the shortest path to solve a problem. When your protagonist decides to go for the easiest solution to the crime leads you to the first plot point – where the easiest solution to the problem – the easiest explanation for the crime – is actually not right.

However, not all is lost, for the protagonist – be it a detective, an investigator, a private eye – will have other clues to follow. The continued investigation in the case is what will make up the second act of your novel. The second act is very important because here you will present the readers with two things: one, what your novel is really about, and how the protagonist managed to solve the crime and discover who did it. Often, the closer the protagonist is to the truth, the more in danger he or she will be (or their loved ones, like friends and family). Someone – usually the villain, or depending on the connection between the protagonist and whoever committed the crime, the antagonist. The closer the connection between them, the more personal the story will get, thus increasing the stakes for all characters involved.

The closing of the second act is when the protagonist solves the crime. The third act – the resolution – is all about catching the villain, making a valiant attempt at rescuing or saving someone, and for wrapping up all the other secrets and red herrings that were bound to prop up in the first act.

In the next two parts, we will talk about everything from plotting to worldbuilding – to how to create red herrings and use other storytelling tools to plot your novel just right and give your readers a great thrill of a read.

When it comes to choosing a protagonist, we don’t really refer to making up a cast of characters and then deciding which one of them will move the plot forward. Stories often dictate who gets to tell them, and the same thing applies in this case as well. For example, you cannot tell a cozy mystery story if you choose the neighborhood gossip as the protagonist. Every category has its own share of most common protagonist. The neighborhood gossip or the old spinster that lives around the bend might get to be a protagonist of a cozy mystery novel if the crime and the perpetrator are directly connected to her. But, you can also place a dazed city detective as the new head detective in a small town and tell the story through his eyes. The detective would be a better candidate in this particular example, simply because of two reasons:

– the detective, as a newcomer, will have a great perspective on the little town, enabling you, as the writer, to fully immerse the reader inside the world you’ve built;

– the detective has more potential to change, due to the fact that he has recently moved to a new place to live. An added bonus is the fact that he is moving down in his career by moving to a small town where he is bound to have less work, which immediately poses the question as to why he would do that, hinting a dark and possibly traumatic past in the big city. (An additional added bonus is the opportunity to connect said dark traumatic past to the present mystery that the detective has been presented with).

In conclusion, by choosing your protagonist, you’re choosing what kind of a crime story you will tell. However, make sure that your protagonist is in the best position to tell a story. Due to the fact that crime fiction is all about giving the readers a taste of crime investigation, your protagonist needs to be in the best position to tell the story and give the readers that glimpse, and, in addition, make sure that the protagonist is in a good position for a change. This means ensuring that there is a certain inner conflict in the protagonist that prevents him from solving the crime. Thus, dealing with that inner conflict becomes paramount to the resolution of the story, and giving a satisfying answer to the mystery.

The creation of the world in a crime fiction novel depends, for starters, on the genre that you’ve chosen. A cozy mystery demands a small town, a police procedural novel will be more colorful and the mystery more difficult to solve if it happens in a big city. Meanwhile, you need to determine if you’re going to mix in other genres – paranormal, science fiction, medical science, or maybe even romance – which will further define the parameters of your world. For example, a paranormal crime fiction novel will need a crime that was paranormally done, and by default, you need characters that will be equipped with the right paranormal tools to solve the mystery.

However, when it comes to pure crime fiction that has not been mixed with other genres, the world is all about the crime. For this, you will need to do a lot of research into investigative procedures, and, depending on the story you want to tell, you should find people who have had personal, real experiences, either as witnesses or as investigators. And while the internet has become an enormous resource for writers, it is best if you can have real-life interviews to get a recount of such experiences in real life.

Because here is the thing: no decent investigator will fail to look for prints, clues and DNA at the scene of the crime. Of course, the best mysteries revolve around the lack of clues, prints or any kind of DNA to point the protagonist in the right direction. However, your readers will immediately catch onto an amateur investigator, and if that’s the kind of story that you want to tell, then you need to present your protagonist as an amateur from the start – and have him or her become better and better at their job as the novel progresses. On the other hand, if your characters are supposed to be experienced investigators/detectives/crime solvers, they need to act and do things that would show that, rather than have them blunder and wander around the case like amateurs.

This means that your world will be made up of two sets of characters: the protagonist and the usual cast of people who will help him or her solve the crime (fellow investigators, partners, friends, forensic people focusing on different fields that will do tests and provide the protagonist with clues coming from analysis, mentors, family members who may or may not contribute to the drama, or, in fewer words, the good guys), and the characters who are connected to the crime: suspects, victims that hide something, shady characters who may or may not be connected, and the villain and his collaborators, of course.

The protagonist will be flung into a world of laboratories, interviews with suspects, and a lot of going back and forth as he or she is trying to solve the crime. Remember, the world you will create will need to be the perfect place for the crime to be committed, but you also need to figure out the scale of the crime. Then, there is also the impact that the crime would have on an established community – a small town, a precinct, a county, or a big city neighborhood. The people from a big city neighborhood that sees crime daily will react differently to a crime than people from a small town that has not seen any crime for years.

The world needs to be consistent, especially in locations, time, and the daily life of the characters. Moreover, in most stories, the protagonist is flung into a different world than the one he knew before when he or she is introduced to the problem (in this case, the crime). However, in a crime fiction novel where the protagonist is usually a detective or an investigator, the world of crime investigation will be familiar to them, so make sure that you’re presenting the protagonist with a highly unusual case that forces him or her to go out of their comfort zone, both personally and professionally, to solve the crime, and explore a new world along the way.

Besides the protagonist, we will divide the rest of the cast into several categories.

1) The Suspects

The suspects are very important. The more suspect they are, the more difficult will it be for the protagonist to dig the truth out of them. The mistake that you might make here is to make all the suspects unwilling witnesses and unwilling to talk to the protagonist just for the sake of making things difficult. Remember, if people are shady and secretive, then there must be a good reason for it. They might be protecting something, like the existence of an affair, or maybe they were stealing money and are afraid of that fact coming into the light. Regardless, whatever it is, the secret needs to be big enough and have enough impact for the suspect to do whatever they possibly can to keep the protagonist from discovering it.

2) The Helpers

Or, people who will help the protagonist to solve the crime. The helpers can be other professionals, as we mentioned before, or they might even be family members with the right insight at the right moment. The right information at the right moment has to be delivered in a way that makes sense in the plot, otherwise you’re looking at characters who are only there to be the writer’s deus-ex-machina and help the protagonist achieve his or her goal easily. Remember, a good mystery will present obstacles even in the process of obtaining clues. The best way to bring these characters to life is to present them with clues that make matters more confusing, rather than more clear.

3) Other characters

Not all of the characters in a crime novel will be part of the suspects or the helpers group. If you keep your characters strictly into those two categories, your novel will lack color and vividness. However, make sure that you’re not creating extra family members and friends for the protagonist just to make sure that they are present in the novel. Make sure that even the side characters that are not directly related to the plot are still needed in the story.

The reason why we put the suspects as number 1 is because you need to know and develop these characters just as much as the protagonist and the villain. A decent villain has a deep reason as to why he or she is doing things, and the suspects will need an equally compelling reason and motivation to keep their secrets. When it comes to the other characters, the more you develop them as characters, the easier it will be for you to discover their voices and traits. Make sure that each character is unique – otherwise, your readers will feel like they are reading a long two-sided monologue rather than a dialogue.

In a crime novel, there are several ways to create the right ambiance and mood.

Creating ambiance and mood in a novel begins with the right location. Choosing a beach town for a cozy mystery is a good idea, especially if the events happen during winter and you have fog rolling in from the ocean. On the other hand, if your story happens in the middle of summer in Vegas, the atmosphere will be a lot more different. The first location helps create the cozy mood needed for that type of a crime novel. The second location (Vegas), on the other hand, would be a perfect setting for a police procedural and create an ambiance of speed and thrill, helping you make the readers feel excited about where the story is going.

The pacing of a novel is important in many different ways, but here, we’re looking at pacing as a tool to create ambiance. Here is a very simple rule in pacing: action scenes demand a fast pace, which means using shorter sentences to convey the speed of the action itself. Longer sentences, on the other hand, are used to slow the pace down, to allow time for reflection, on the side of the characters. Both fast and slow pacing of a novel need to be used when creating the mood and ambiance in your story.

Different PoV’s:

you can use multiple point of views in a crime novel: the protagonist, the villain, and you may even offer point-of-view chapters through the eyes of a victim. However, you need to be careful when you choose to add different PoV’s. If you follow the villain, you might reveal so much that the mystery will be obvious to the reader. This is not a good idea, unless you’re writing a story about how the villain was caught, while his or her identity is not that really important in the overall course of the story.

Or, in other words, on the structure of individual scenes and how to build them. One of the easiest ways to understand scenes is to divide them into two parts. The first part of a scene is the disaster, where the protagonist tries to achieve a goal but fails. The second part of the scene is called reflection: where the protagonist faces the new problems and makes a decision and creates a new short-term, immediate goal for himself (or herself). The first part of the scene focuses on the plot (achieving a short term goal that will take the protagonist one step closer to the resolution), and the second part of the scene focuses on the protagonist’s reaction to not being able to achieve the goal (or he or she does achieve it, but that only leads to more problems that the protagonist needs to face), hence, the second part focuses on character.

What makes each story unique is the characters that are in it, not just by what happens in it. What makes characters pop and come to life are their reactions to the events that happen to them. Balancing your scenes in the form of disaster/reflection allows you to move the plot forward and to offer insight inside the protagonist’s mind, further bringing that protagonist to life.

In a crime novel, the protagonist is faced with the problem of solving a crime. A twist is when the protagonist solves the crime either wrongly, or only partially. He may arrest the apprentice, but he has not arrested the master yet – and sometimes, the protagonist is not even aware of this fact. In other words, be careful not to make your twist cause the readers to believe the protagonist is incompetent. If the protagonist catches the wrong guy, then make sure that the protagonist has very compelling evidence against him.

This, however, does not mean that you need to pull of mind blowing twists in order to have a satisfying conclusion and resolution to your novel. Depending on the plot and your story, you might choose to go in one direction only to offer a twist right before the end. However, a twist is not that easy to pull off, so make sure that the twist makes sense in hindsight, and then make sure that you both hide and present all the clues leading up to it beforehand. Otherwise, the twist will not belong in the story, and can really be a havoc to the final resolution of the plot and the story.

how to write a crime story

The crime puzzle is the puzzle you present the readers with when you present them with the crime that propels the start of the story. In other words, the more unusual the crime, the better are your chances at creating a puzzle. The reason why it’s important to treat the crime as a puzzle is because your readers will automatically do that, and as they read your novel, they will try to guess who did it. If you reveal too much, you will enable the reader to figure out who did it before your protagonist does. It’s good if this happens towards the end of the novel, however, if your readers discover by themselves that the villain is the character who seemingly randomly appears on page 15, then you have revealed way too much way too soon.

In this section, we will focus on the tools and elements that can help you build up a great puzzle in the course of the story that will be just as difficult for the reader to solve as it will be for your protagonist.

The best crime puzzle in a novel begins with the crime itself. An unusual crime will present a better puzzle than a usual one. This does not mean that you need to go out of your way to create a crime that is out of the ordinary. For example, you can start your novel with a seemingly random shootout on the street, where the murderer decides to take his own life. Then, the puzzle that needs to be solved would be why the murderer acted that way, so the focus befalls on the murderer and the secrets he was keeping while he was alive. Not every crime needs to be committed behind locked doors without forced entry and without any immediate physical evidence besides a dead body. Often, unusual circumstances will do: a children’s Halloween party ends on a bad note when one of the children is found to have been drowned in an upstairs bathroom.

In a novel, anyone can be an unreliable narrator, if the writer decides so, even the protagonist. However, in a crime novel, an investigation will depend on witnesses. People might have been at the crime scene, or nearby, and they may or may have not heard or seen something. That’s when you get the opportunity to use unreliable witnesses. Their unreliability can be a result of many reasons, which means that the unreliability must be a part of their character. Maybe someone down the alley heard something, but he is a homeless man fighting off a hangover, and his recalling of events is not ideal. He may have seen a man when in fact he was looking at a really tall woman, for example.

However, remember that here, we are talking about building a crime puzzle. Unreliable narrators do not always lie – but make sure that your unreliable witnesses do offer some useful clues. Otherwise, you will have both your protagonist and your readers stumbling about in the dark trying to solve a crime without any real clues whatsoever.

Foreshadowing is a tricky tool to use in a novel, because it always needs a pay-off. You cannot foreshadow a big showdown between a corrupt system in the city and a small-time investigator without delivering on it.

In addition, you might foreshadow too much – so much that your foreshadowing has become foretelling, or, letting know your readers exactly what is going to happen. Foreshadowing as a tool can be used to steer your readers in one direction through use of symbolism, only to pull the plug on them and deliver the payoff in a way that they did not expect. As a storytelling tool, you can use it to foreshadow anything from significant moments to the actual resolution of your novel, maybe even through a simple painting that the protagonist will pay minimum attention to.

Usually, there is a vast array of suspects in any crime novel. The more unusual the crime, the more unusual the suspect list will be. In fact, the crime might even cause the protagonist to look in unusual places for the perpetrator. In the example of the Halloween party from above, depending on the age of the children, the suspect list might range from teenagers who were at the party to the elderlies. This is the moment when the protagonist chooses which suspects to discard as the possible criminals, and which ones to keep investigating.

This means that among the suspects, there will always be some who will be discarded: due to a strong alibi, or because of other reasons, like lack of physical health. It’s not necessary for the protagonist to discard the real criminal as a suspect, but when that happens, the suspect is revealed in a twist at the end.

However, in order to create a better crime puzzle, the serious suspects need to have a motive to commit the crime, the means (physical strength, location, etc.), and proximity to the crime scene. In addition, they need to keep their secrets close and be unwilling to tell the truth when they’re being interrogated. Some might keep secrets that can put them in jail, others can keep secrets because of other reasons. But, like all the other tools, the use of unreliability in characters needs to be sparse and limited to when it’s really needed.

Red herrings are clues that you place in the novel in order to steer the protagonist and the reader in the wrong direction. Red herrings are your best friend when you want to write a novel with a good twist at the end. Here is the deal about red herrings: they mustn’t be too obvious, but they also need to be effective. A red herring that is too obvious will make the protagonist look incompetent when he follows it. On the other hand, the red herring is useless if the reader and the protagonist completely miss it.

The elements that actually should be missed – or not paid much attention to – are the Chekhov’s guns. The rule of Chekhov’s gun is easy to remember: if you introduce a gun in the first act of your novel, by the end of the third act, that gun needs to fire a bullet. However, the bigger the introduction of the Chekhov’s gun, the more obvious their firing will be. For that reason, it’s best to introduce these elements as minimally as possible, and then when the gun does fire off, it’s both a surprise for the readers.

Like all other genres, the crime genre is also filled with tropes, situations, twists, resolutions, and character clichés. There are many common ones that appear in almost all crime fiction novels.

– The estranged wife – the detective is such a workaholic that all he ever thinks about is the job – the crime, the missing person, the theft – and he almost never sees the kids, he never pays attention to their home anymore. They may be divorced, if they’re not, they probably will by the end of the novel.

– The hospital situation – a key witness has been so severely injured that the doctors are not sure if he or she is going to survive. The detective has to go to a hospital to check on the witness, all the while dodging and dealing with family members who are outraged that all that the detective cares about is solving the crime.

(The above two examples offer a very good glimpse into the rule of clichés: once you start, it’s easy to build a cliché on top of a cliché until your whole novel ends up being nothing more than a string of clichés – which does not guarantee you a big audience)

– The good cop/bad cop combo – often seen in police procedural, a suspect or a witness is being interrogated by two cops, one of whom is playing bad cop. A good subversion of this cliché is when the two partners consciously decide to play those roles for a reason (maybe to manipulate a manipulative suspect), however, if you’re going to use this cliché, then maybe you need to rethink the whole story.

– The veteran gets a new rookie partner – and from then on, you can continue building on top of the clichés: the partner might throw up at his first autopsy, he might feel too much empathy for other people, something the gruff, old, veteran detective cannot stand anymore because the streets have hardened him.

The danger with clichés is that you will easily start building on them. The best way to avoid clichés is to first recognize them, and then turn them over. Make the rookie be able to deal with anything, while the older detective is tired of all the evil he has seen. Make the rookie reckless and get into danger, while still managing to solve a crime, reminding the old grizzled detective that the cause they’re fighting for is noble and brings good. There are many ways to subvert a cliché with a little thinking outside of the box. The more you apply it, the easier it will be for you to detect clichés during the writing of your novel and subvert them in interesting ways.

Here is what happens when you fall into a plot trap – i.e when you write a crime that is proving to be impossible to solve. First, you might get stuck during the writing process and may have to fall back on deus-ex-machina to solve your problem, or, to fall back on another gem: when stuck, have a gunman come in and stir things up. If you need a gunman to come in to stir things up, then you’re in trouble, plot-wise.

In order to avoid plot traps, it’s advisable to plot your novel before you write it. This will help you foresee possible problems. Since the novel will revolve around a crime, you will need to plot the course of the protagonist’s investigation. Then, you will need to know exactly what the villain will be doing during this time: will he take action against the protagonist, forcing him into a reactive position, and if so, how and when will that action take place, how will it enable the protagonist to continue with the investigation, and how is the villain able to pull such a thing off.

Another way to deal with plot traps is to make drastic changes in order to eliminate them. This usually happens when you discover plot holes during the editing process of your novel, and it might take a lot of time (months even), to deal with them. Be wary of the solutions that come out of nowhere, because they are bound to anger your readers. In other words, do not have a psychic come up with clues for your protagonist, unless you’re writing a story where the evidence of psychic people is recognized as legal by the law.

Writing a crime novel is not an easy process. Compared to other genres, like romance, a crime fiction novel demands that you do your research into crime and the investigation process. If you’re going for a courtroom crime novel, then you need to have really good insider knowledge of what really is happening in a court room. In addition, you need to read as many novels from the crime fiction genre, because that will enable you to recognize clichés easily. It’s a lot easier to recognize clichés when you’re reading them, and it’s even easier to unconsciously regurgitate clichés in your writing without even realizing it. Having a good basis of research and reading to fall back on will help you write a better novel – and if it’s your debut novel, it will help you attract more readers.

This concludes our guide to writing crime fiction. We hope you will find it useful when writing your crime fiction novel. Make sure to give yourself enough time to prepare with research, so you do not need to look up random (but important facts) when you’re writing your novel. In addition, do not forget that in a crime novel, everything revolves around the crime, however, it is the characters that will bring your story to life, so, make sure to focus both on plot and character (and the balance between them) in order to tell  a tighter – and more profound story.

Georgina Roy wants to live in a world filled with magic. As a screenwriting student, she is content to fill notebooks and sketchbooks with magical creatures and amazing new worlds. When she is not at school, watching a film or scribbling away in a notebook, you can usually find her curled up, reading a good urban fantasy novel, or writing on her own.

Rachelle Stewart Ramirez

How to Write a Crime Story

What is a crime story, what are the global values of crime.

how to write a short crime story

What are the Controlling Ideas of Crime?

What is the core emotion of crime, what are the obligatory scenes of crime, what are the conventions of crime, what are the subgenres of crime, why do internal genres, go well with a crime story.

how to write a short crime story

Additional Notes on Writing the Crime story:

On characterization:, on moving to the next level in your writing:, about the author.

how to write a short crime story

8 thoughts on “ How to Write a Crime Story ”

I thought I was writing a Thriller until I came across some articles by you about how to write a Thriller – and discovered I’m actually writing a Crime Story – Wow! Now, thanks to this article, I know specifically what needs to be included in my Crime Story – much of which I did not know about. I’m going to seek out more articles, etc by you, and when I get further along in my story, I’ll be giving you a call. Thank You!

Hello Rick! Thanks for commenting. You can find most of what I’m working on right now at Pages & Platforms. You can download a free Introduction to Genre Guidebook and an overview of the Seven Story Types there.

did you have ready story about crime to write them in tests

Sorry, can you rephrase your question? I am not sure what you are asking.

I’m in school and i need a crime story but i don’t got any ideas at all my brain isn’t right today

Can you start with the discovery of a theft? The planning of a theft? Think of a Crime story you loved and see if you can play with different characters and circumstances with the same storyline. Your story can grow and change from there. At least it’s a starting point.

Lots and lots of insight into writing crime novels and about the craft in one place. Intend to use this.

Great. I’m glad the resources helped. You can email me at rachelle.s.ramirez@gmail.com and I can send you a free copy of The Story Grid book.

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WriterWiki

How to Write a Mystery Short Story: 8 Steps with Examples

Last Updated on January 16, 2023 by Dr Sharon Baisil MD

A great mystery novel gets readers involved as amateur sleuths from the crime scene to the clues to the perpetrator. Mystery tales have particular aspects that drive their plots and keep readers engaged, using literary techniques that deliver an interactive experience and create maximum anticipation. A principal character is on a mission to solve a crime in the center of mystery tales. A mystery is a tale that pits the reader against the antagonist, who is only revealed after the narrative. Readers are invited to participate in the mystery by mystery writers who distribute clues along the plot.

You’ve come to the right place if you want to write a mystery short story. This post will provide eight steps to help you write a quality mystery story. We’ll also give you an example to illustrate each step. So, let’s start with the essentials of a mystery genre without any further ado!

What type of story is a mystery?

For hundreds of years, readers have been enthralled by the mystery genre. Edgar Allan Poe, with works such as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” from 1841, was an expert in mystery writing. A good mystery incorporates certain literary elements to heighten the mystery and build up to a significant conclusion. These elements include:

1 – An atmospheric environment

To heighten the dread of an unknown adversary lurking in the darkness, stories in this genre should establish an unsettling, uneasy mood. Picture Sherlock Holmes sliding through the London fog in pursuit of a murderer, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described. Placing hints and red herrings in mysteries is also possible.

2 – A compelling hook

A great mystery should entice the reader to want to figure out the crime, and a fantastic beginning is essential for capturing their attention. The first paragraph of a mystery should contain enough information about the crime to pique interest. The opening chapter should hook the reader into the plot, putting them in the shoes of the principal detective on their investigation.

3 – Involve sleuth

The principal character, committed to discovering the crime, is at the center of every mystery. Mystery novelist Raymond Chandler created private investigator Philip Marlowe as a detective who solves crimes. The sleuth’s backstory, which ties them to the crime or the murderer, and their motivation for solving it are critical elements of their character development.

4 – Crime conflict

In a mystery book, a crime is an occurrence that fuels the story. The main character is sent on their quest by a crime, which fuels the narrative arc and creates the central conflict that begins the investigation.

5 – Foreshadowing

Hints about future events are frequently dropped in Mysteries. This is known as foreshadowing. With a little hint or via character dialogue, a writer may imply the possibility of a future occurrence. With foreshadowing, writers may be more or less blunt, either lightly implying future occurrences or plainly announcing what will happen.

6 – Villain

Since the perpetrator is unknown until they are apprehended, a mystery is often referred to as a whodunit. The plot advances thanks to their activities, which are depicted in the story. The protagonist and the reader discover the criminal’s identity near the story’s conclusion.

7 – Narrative flow

Because of a cat-and-mouse narrative thread, a mystery plot is in constant motion. As the plot approaches the climax and the main character gets closer to solving the crime, the pace will quicken.

8 – Clues throughout the plot

The detective follows a trail of clues as an amateur sleuth to figure out who the perpetrator is. To manage what clues they’re generating, when they arrive, and who knows what while writing mysteries, an author must have a well-organized writing process.

9 – Red herrings

The reader is thrown off course by a good mystery. In mysteries, red herrings are a required component. This misleading evidence generates new suspects, distracting the investigator and diverting him or her from the actual perpetrator, thus increasing the tension. By emphasizing an item, event, or character that draws a reader’s interest and making it seem more important than it is to the plot, a writer creates red herrings.

10 – A satisfactory end!

The big reveal is the sleuth’s discovery of the culprit after great mystery books. To strengthen the identification of the actual killer and eliminate uncertainty, a conclusion should also provide an alibi for all other suspects.

What makes a good mystery novel theme?

The basic premise of the mystery is straightforward to understand. A dead body, a precious item, or a riddle invites attention among the earliest finds. The reader knows that questions will have been resolved after the story, which is reassurance in any murder case.

Here are some story ideas you can take clues from to continue your mystery pieces!

1 – The remains of murder victims, like those in Viking culture, are discovered buried with some of their worldly goods.

2 – Two guests at the wedding party have been slain, and the ceremony will be held at a beautiful place.

3 – Someone replaced the lady’s contact lens solution with a harmful liquid.

4 – A detective tracks down a thief who has stolen something that doesn’t seem to be worth anything for a high fee.

5 – An abandoned bunker with security cameras and a generator is discovered in the middle of a wilderness.

6 – Since every unmarried lady at the ball wished to dance with him, it’s a pity the duke was discovered stabbed in the garden.

7 – This investigative reporter’s death seems a little too convenient.

8 – A lady gets a headache upon awakening and goes to work but soon discovers she’s been gone for a month.

9 – On the phone with the inspector, his friend is murdered.

10 – His new, considerably younger wife was the only one on board who even knew him when he was slain aboard a cruise ship on his honeymoon.

11 – At the distillery, the victim was discovered drowned in a whiskey barrel.

12 – A wife sets up a romantic “scavenger hunt” for her spouse, but some of the clues are changed by someone else.

13 – The wrong body is in the casket during the visitation. Nobody knows who the other body belongs to or where it is.

14 – The killings were human-caused, but they resembled animal assaults in several ways.

15 – Although she believes she has never met the author of the book she is reading, it appears to be telling her own story.

The ultimate 8 steps to writing a mystery short story

Fascinating characters, dramatic suspense, and a puzzle that makes you want to keep reading are all hallmarks of a good mystery tale. However, creating an exciting mystery tale may be challenging, especially if you’ve never attempted it. You may build a page-turning thriller of your own with the appropriate planning, brainstorming, and outlining.

Step 1: Prepare yourself to write and identify the characters.

The difference between the mystery and thriller genres is first essential to understand. The majority of mysteries start with a death. Who perpetrated the crime is the most critical question is a mystery. Thrillers often start with a catastrophic occurrence, such as an assassination, a bank heist, a nuclear meltdown, or another catastrophe. In a thriller, the primary issue is whether or not the protagonist can stop the disaster from occurring.

Try reading some of the outstanding mystery tales available to get a feel for a well-plotted, well-developed mystery. Some of the renowned examples include:

  • The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Chandler is a master of the private investigator genre, with his novels about Philip Marlowe’s difficulties and tribulations being some of the best. P.I. Marlowe is a hard-boiled, cynical investigator. A General, his daughter, and a blackmailing photographer embroiled him in a conspiracy. Sharp dialogue, fast pacing, and a fascinating protagonist in Marlowe are all qualities of Chandler’s writing.

  • A Crime in the Neighborhood by Suzanne Berne

In the 1970s, suburban Washington is the setting for this story. The murder of a small child is the focus of the story. Berne manages to make the narrative anything but plain or dull by mixing a coming-of-age tale with the mystery of the death of a young boy in drab, dull suburbia.

  • The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

One of the most well-known investigators in the genre, along with his equally well-known sleuthing colleague Watson, solves a series of mysteries and crimes in this collection of tales. Throughout the route, Holmes and Watson inject their individual character traits.

Consider how the author introduces and characterizes the main character.

Step 2: Consider the plot and check for any obstacles.

Consider when and where the narrative takes place. Marlowe, for example, puts the reader in the period and setting in the second paragraph of The Big Sleep’s first page: “The main hallway of the Sternwood home was two floors high.”

What crime is the protagonist investigating or dealing with? A suspicious suicide, a dead body, or murder might be the case. A good mystery will keep readers engaged by presenting complications or obstacles to the significant character’s goal (to solve the crime). Also, consider how the plot concludes after the tale. The answer to the enigma should not be too self-evident or pushed, yet it should not be too out of the left field or unbelievable.

Step 3: Create your sleuth and analyze the setting

Your primary character may be a private individual or an innocent bystander who gets embroiled in trying to figure out a mystery. What distinguishes your character from the others? Creating a primary character who stands out to your reader and is interesting enough to keep several pages of a narrative or book is critical. What does your character like and dislike?

Maybe your female detective is secretly bashful and strange at parties because she loves reptiles. Perhaps your detective isn’t strong or intelligent, but he is a klutz.

Set the narrative in a familiar place, such as your hometown or school, if possible. Alternatively, research if you’re unfamiliar with a specific time or place. Focus on specific settings, such as a 1970s California home or a 1940s British boarding house, if you use a setting you haven’t experienced firsthand.

Step 4: Create, complicate, and entertain the mystery

A murder or significant crime is not required for all mysteries. The higher the stakes in the narrative are, generally, when a more significant crime is committed. High stakes are essential since they pique a reader’s interest and provide him or her with a reason to continue reading. By making it difficult for your main character to solve the puzzle or mystery, you may build up tension in the narrative. Other people, suspects, false leads, misleading clues, and other crimes are all examples of obstacles you can use.

A cliffhanger is a scenario in which the primary character finds themselves in a predicament that binds or puts them in jeopardy. Cliffhangers keep readers interested and propel the narrative forward, which is crucial in a mystery.

Step 5: Create an ending followed by a story outline

Finish the narrative by solving the puzzle’s solution. The main character’s viewpoint shifts or improves after most mysteries. Create a clear plot outline after reviewing all of your story’s elements. Before you start writing the tale, it’s vital to figure out how the puzzle will be solved in great detail; otherwise, there may be inconsistencies in the puzzle. Your story’s events or plot points should be listed in the order they occur.

Step 6: Start writing the mystery story.

One of the best ways to create a setting or atmosphere is by focusing on the five senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Descriptions of sensory details may also create the backstory for your character. On the early pages, skip lengthy paragraphs about location or character description. Starting your story in motion, as your main character does, is an effective way to hook your reader.

If you tell someone “the detective was cool,” the person will have to believe you. However, describing the detective’s attire and mannerisms as she enters a room may demonstrate how calm she is to your reader. Showing your reader particular facts is far more forceful than merely informing him what to believe.

Step 7: Don’t confuse your readers

The resolution of a mystery shouldn’t feel sudden or cheap when it’s being created. Rather than bewilder your reader, always strive to play fair and surprise him. Even though there might be red herrings and false leads, the hints provided in the tale should lead to the answer in a logical and transparent manner. If you make your reader think, “It’s so evident; I should have recognized!” he or she will enjoy the conclusion.

Step 8: Revise the draft

Look for critical aspects, such as story, characters, turns, and pace, once you’ve produced the first draft of your mystery tale. Make sure your tale begins, progresses, and finishes according to the outline. After the tale, you should check your central character’s changes or shifts.

The pace at which the story’s events unfold is referred to as pacing. Good pacing will go unnoticed by the reader. If the story seems too quick, the scenes last longer, allowing the characters’ emotions to develop.

The twist might ruin an excellent mystery tale, or it might improve. While there is no obligation to do so, many of the greatest stories have a surprise twist. Make sure that the twist isn’t “cheesy.” It’s easier to write a more unique twist.

Final Words

Mystery is one of the most popular genres among readers. As a result, it’s no surprise that this literary form has received a lot of attention in recent years.

We hope you enjoyed reading about how to write a mystery short story and will start writing your own stories soon! In case you want more tips or need some editing help on your work, don’t hesitate to leave a message in the comments section below.

How to write a murder mystery short story?

When planning to write a murder mystery short story, it is essential to start by thinking about the main characters. Who are they, and what kind of person would do such a heinous thing? Once you have determined who the murderer is, it’s time to develop the plot. How did they find out about incriminating evidence? What was their motive? So, how are they going to execute their evil plan?   It’s time to flesh out your scenes after you’ve answered these questions. Where does the victim live and work? What are local landmarks that could possibly be used for cover purposes?) Is there anyone nearby who may be suspect?) Are any of those people friends or relatives of yours?) How well do you know them?). And finally, what happens during each scene – from inside the victim’s home until after they’ve been killed)?   All of these details need to be meticulously planned in order not only to make sense as a written piece but also to provide clues that will lead readers towards discovering the whodunit before it’s even revealed!

Where can I find examples of other people’s works and learn from them to improve my own work?

One of the most significant ways to improve your work is to take inspiration from other people’s work. This can be accomplished by looking at examples of their work online or visiting a library and reading their manuscripts. You may also communicate with them through social media and provide feedback. By doing this, you will gain valuable insights that will help you improve the quality of your own work.

Any tips for writing a short mystery story?

One of the best ways to improve your writing skills is by participating in online forums and submitting short mystery stories. By doing this, you will get feedback from other writers and learn from their mistakes. Additionally, read critically and make sure that every scene contributes to the overall narrative. Don’t give too much away early in the tale while building suspense. Build slowly, then in a climactic moment, everything falls into place all at once.

How many words should the first book be?

Generally speaking, a first book should be between 50,000 and 100,000 words in length. This may seem like a lot, but it will go faster if you write consistently and avoid shortcuts or filler content. Make sure to research writing styles before beginning (e.g., fiction vs. nonfiction), keep an eye on grammar rules, pay attention to pacing issues, etc., so that your manuscript flows smoothly from start to finish. Remember: Quantity does not necessarily equate to quality! So don’t be discouraged if your 1st draft isn’t perfect – there’s always time for revisions later down the road!

How long should it be?  How many pages should it be?  What genre is best for my mystery short story?

Sticking to the genre guidelines when writing a mystery short story is essential. This means that your story should be set in the contemporary period, have a plot with suspense and thrills, and be written from the first-person point of view. Additionally, ensure that your protagonist is engaging and likable so that readers will want to discover what happens next. Your ending should also resolve the mysteries while leaving enough room for future stories in this series or further exploration of this character’s backstory.

https://www.creative-writing-now.com/how-to-write-a-mystery.html

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/59582-the-10-best-mystery-books.html

https://prowritingaid.com/red-herring#:~:text=Here%20are%20some%20examples%20of,blackmail%2C%20or%20an%20unpaid%20debt.

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Niall Leonard

How to write the perfect crime story

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The crime novel, as a visit to any good bookshop will tell you, is a huge category, and I would never claim to know the definitive method of constructing and writing one; I can only go from my own experience of writing for TV shows like Silent Witness and Wire in the Blood, and the crime novel trilogy that started with Crusher .

The best place to start is with a story that fascinates you as a writer. If you feel excited writing it there's a far better chance your readers will feel excited too. Real life is always the best source of stories, but never rely on newspapers or TV for the whole truth: journalists often omit inconvenient facts, or simply get stuff wrong, and TV writers constantly cheat and fudge reality to make their story work better, or to fit a timeslot or a budget. Recycling other writers' work is not good writing any more than reheating a supermarket meal in a plastic tray is good cooking – research is essential if you want your tale to ring true.

That means getting as close to an original source as possible. If you want to know what happens in a post-mortem, go to a hospital and talk to a pathologist. If you want to know about police procedure, speak to a detective at your local station. Be persistent, and you'll find a contact. Experts love talking about their work to intelligent, interested listeners (and that's true of ex-criminals too.) Good research will lead you to stories far more interesting and original than anything you could dream up at your desk.

That said, never let authentic details drown out your story; your job is to entertain your readers, not lecture them.

To write a crime novel, of course, you need a crime. The murder story is as old as the Bible (if you count Cain and Abel) and the crime I chose to kick off Crusher. Next you need a protagonist to unravel the mystery – not just whodunnit, but why. You might use a copper, or a criminal, a private eye or (as in Crusher) a relative of the victim who feels compelled to seek justice. It might even be a combination of all three, if you want to get clever – but the audience will always want to follow a character who drives the story forward, whether they are doing good deeds or bad.

Next, you need a motive for the crime – or preferably several motives, all equally feasible. In Crusher the possible motives were jealousy, anger, or cover-up. These various motives in turn suggest various suspects: who was jealous, who was angry, who wanted to cover up what? All these motives should spring from their own stories, so when your protagonist unpicks them even the false leads have a satisfying payoff.

Rather than waiting for the answers to fall into his or her lap your hero should pursue these leads actively, by talking to suspects, uncovering lies, and examining the evidence for clues. The trick, of course, is to try and make these clues obscure and ambiguous, so they only make sense in hindsight when the villain is revealed; that's what gives the most satisfaction to the attentive reader.

In the same way, it's more satisfying for the reader if the killer features in plain sight from very early on (ideally with a 'rock-solid' alibi) rather than appearing from nowhere towards the end of the story. This annoying cop-out is known as deus-ex-machina, from old dramas when an actor playing a god would be lowered by a crane onto the stage to tie up the play's loose ends, and it leaves your audience feeling cheated.

Always try to resolve your story through the actions of your characters, rather than by coincidence or accident.

If you know before you start writing exactly who did what (and I always have to) it's relatively straightforward to hide the clues that will lead to the ultimate revelation; but sometimes as you are writing a new more satisfying resolution to a storyline will occur to you. In that case you have to work backwards through the text planting new clues that lead to the new payoff. It's hard work, but when you get it right you create a roller-coaster ride for your audience – and the buzz you get from that is like nothing else on earth.

That's just as well, because few writers make a good living from their novels; even today's most successful crime novelists took years to get established. Perseverance, patience and resilience are essential. The best reason to write is because you love it – and if you really love it, you won't be able to stop yourself, and the more you do it, the better you'll get.

• If you aren't a member of the Guardian children's books site then do come and join us . Members can send their own stories in to [email protected] and we'll publish the best on the site.

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Author Interviews

Police raided george pelecanos' home. 15 years later, he's ready to write about it.

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Andrew Limbong

how to write a short crime story

Writer George Pelecanos reads The Washington Post every morning in his home. Keren Carrión/NPR hide caption

Writer George Pelecanos reads The Washington Post every morning in his home.

It was August 2009 when the police raided writer George Pelecanos' home in Silver Spring, Md., just outside of Washington, D.C., with a no-knock warrant.

He was performing his daily ritual of sitting on the couch reading The Washington Post when he saw cars enter the driveway. "I saw these guys wearing black and holding automatic rifles and battering rams," he said in an interview at his home. The police broke down the door overlooking the driveway, and the basement door, too. Pelecanos said they put him on the floor and zip tied his hands.

The police were looking for his then 18-year-old son, Nick. The younger Pelecanos was a part of the robbery of a weed dealer, with a gun involved. So, the cops executed the no-knock warrant looking for evidence of guns or drugs.

After not finding anything, George Pelecanos said the officers started needling him about his liquor cabinet, his watch, his home. "One of the SWAT guys was looking at my books, and he goes 'maybe you'll write about this someday.' And he laughed," Pelecanos said. "And right then I knew that I would write about it. He challenged me."

No knock warrants have been banned in multiple states

Pelecanos is known for his gritty, realistic crime stories. For television, he co-created The Deuce , about the burgeoning porn industry in 1970s New York City, and We Own This City , the mini-series detailing a real-life corrupt police ring in Baltimore. As an author, he's known for his deep catalog of stories set in the streets of Washington, D.C.

His new short story collection is titled Owning Up . And it features characters grappling with events from the past that, with time, fester into something else entirely. There's a story about two guys who knew each other in jail, crossing paths years later. Another has a woman digging into her own family history and learning about the 1919 Washington, D.C. race riots.

how to write a short crime story

Many of Pelecanos' crime fiction book are set in Washington, D.C. Keren Carrión/NPR hide caption

Many of Pelecanos' crime fiction book are set in Washington, D.C.

But Pelecanos said he wanted to write about the August 2009 incident because he wanted to further show the effects of no-knock raids. The Montgomery County police department confirmed they executed the warrant but they didn't immediately provide any additional details. Pelecanos did share a copy of the warrant, which states: "You may serve this warrant as an exception to the knock and announce requirement."

The practice of issuing no-knock warrants has been under increased scrutiny since the police killings of Breonna Taylor in Louisville in 2020, and Amir Locke in Minneapolis in 2022. They're banned in Oregon, Virginia, Florida and Tennessee.

"They don't accomplish anything except mayhem and violence," Pelecanos said.

The story "The No-Knock" starts with a journalist named Joe Caruso drinking his coffee and reading the morning paper when the vehicles pull up. The same beats follow — the guns, the zip ties, the pinning down on the floor. Pelecanos writes like he remembers every sensation from that night, because, he said, he does.

It deviates further into fiction from there. Caruso wants to write about it, but he can't. He's too close. He starts drinking heavily, instead. Pelecanos, on the other hand, knew he could write about it, easily. But he waited for over a decade on purpose. He wanted his son's permission, first.

"I wanted my son to grow up," he said. "And so that I could say to you today – he's fine."

Owning Up to the past

"He allowed time for me to grow as a man, and develop myself as a responsible person," said Nick Pelecanos in an interview. He now works in the film industry as a director and assistant director. He got his start working on jobs his dad helped him get. So he's attuned to his father's storytelling style — how he favors details and facts over sepia-toned nostalgia.

"When he writes something, you know that it's technically correct," he said. "And has come to his objective, as non-biased as possible opinion."

how to write a short crime story

In Owning Up , Pelecanos writes about a non-knock incident inspired by real events. Keren Carrión/NPR hide caption

In Owning Up , Pelecanos writes about a non-knock incident inspired by real events.

As personal as "The No-Knock" is, Pelecanos calls the title story in the collection his most autobiographical. It's about a kid in the 70s named Nikos who works a job where he gets in with a bad crowd, and eventually gets talked into breaking into a guy's house.

"It's just the way my life was in that era and on this side of Montgomery County," Pelecanos said. "It was about muscle cars, playing pickup basketball, drinking beer, getting high."

Listening to Pelecanos talk about this story, it sounds familiar. You get the sense that history does repeat itself. That the same lessons get taught again and again. But that's O.K., because some lessons bear repeating.

"I got in trouble occasionally," he said. "But I always came home to the warmth of my family, you know? That's all you need."

Meghan Collins Sullivan edited this story for radio and the web.

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The True Crime Canon

The 25 best crime books, podcasts, and documentaries of all time..

True-crime fandom may be booming, but that doesn’t mean that our cultural fascination with evil and transgression is new. Most innovations in media have taken up notorious crimes as a favored subject, from the cheaply printed broadsheets of the 18 th century to the serialized magazines of the Victorian era to the cable TV networks of the 1990s. Now tales of crime and punishment inspire internet forums, podcasts, and streaming miniseries.

The creators of true crime, and the fans who consume it, will always exist in an ethical gray zone. Haters of the genre complain that it’s voyeuristic, intrusive, and crudely sensational, and they have a point. Defenders maintain that the best true crime illuminates dark corners and instigates change—even, sometimes, saving lives. They have a point too. What began in penny dreadfuls has evolved as it has flourished. Yes, some of today’s true crime doesn’t rise above lurid sensationalism. But the best of it exhibits sensitivity, intelligence, and empathy—while still tapping into the primal narrative power of the crime story.

As we created this list, we debated: What do we love about true crime? Despite the genre’s reputation for lingering over bloodshed and horror, crime engages every facet of human nature. Sometimes we relish the panache, the sheer nerve, of the master con man. Sometimes we marvel at the unfathomable callousness of the killer. There’s the baffling docility of Charles Manson’s followers, the spirited eccentricities of participants in a scheme to defraud McDonald’s, the dangerous hubris of “experts” who will put a defendant away based on pseudoscience. There’s even the courage of an attorney fighting against the odds to save clients crushed by an unfair criminal justice system. True crime does, from time to time, showcase the good guys.

You may notice that some long-celebrated works of true crime—or your own personal favorites—do not appear here. Some works, even from this millennium, did not hold up to our current standards for true-crime reporting, or for how to characterize victims and perpetrators. Some works were left out because we feel that another work sheds clearer light on a particular crime. We aimed to encompass the spectrum of wrongdoing with this list, but in the end, not everything could fit. And of course, as with any human endeavor: A lot of true crime is just bad.

The ugly aspect of the true-crime boom—the lazy, flippant podcasts; the exploitative and dishonest docuseries (e.g., the Investigation Discovery channel in toto); the rabid fan base of amateur internet sleuths—is undeniable and deplorable. But it is not damning. It’s a reflection of true crime’s power, the flip side of the genre’s ability to move and inform—and sometimes even to change the world.

A killer takes a life, the authorities jail an innocent person, a political movement decides that the ends justify the means, a man steals a rare flower. Each of the stories we’ve chosen for this list hinges on a person or persons violating the social order, breaking the bonds of the civic and human community. And all of these stories ask what, if anything, can be done to make things right. In some instances, they end with justice delivered, a demonstration of how things can work out. And stories about unsolved crimes, like several of the masterpieces listed here, stoke the demand for answers and fuel investigations. Each tells us something about the nature of the world and the fabric of our social order, helping us peer beyond the limits of our own experience into the darkness.

📚 Book (1966) In Cold Blood

Written by Truman Capote Midcentury crime reporting tended to read either as a dry litany of facts or as sensationalized claptrap. Then came In Cold Blood , and suddenly reporting on murder could be an art. Originally published in four parts for the New Yorker, Capote’s tale of a grisly murder on a Kansas farm offered exquisite, meditative insight into the minds of killers and the community upended by their violence—a far cry from “If it bleeds, it leads.” Capote called the book, an instant sensation, a “nonfiction novel” ; now you’re likely to find it shelved in creative nonfiction, a genre that Capote arguably created. Today the manipulative tactics Capote likely used to get sources to speak to him, and his blurring of the line between fact and what reads beautifully on the page, would give most 21 st -century magazine editors pause. But the book still sings, and its influence can be felt everywhere: TV’s antihero obsession, the depth of detail in documentaries like The Staircase , the insertion of the reporter into the story as in Serial .  In Cold Blood made true crime a personal endeavor and a literary feat—for better or for worse.

Buy from Bookshop.org .

🎧 Podcast (2014–present) Criminal

Created by Phoebe Judge and Lauren Spohrer Created by public radio veterans interested in the experiences of “people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle,” Criminal tells a new story in each episode. As a result, it casts the net of “true crime” wide and creatively, with consistently fascinating and enlightening results. Recent subjects have included the disappearance of two endangered wolves; the first house in the U.S. to be legally declared haunted; a man who walked into a police station to confess to a murder committed 17 years earlier; and what it was like to grow up as the child of two prisoners serving time for helping the Black Liberation Army rob an armored car. Each episode is built from interviews, many conducted on location in places ranging from the Florida Everglades to the English countryside. In a podcast landscape full of padded, serialized true-crime narratives and tipsy hosts rehashing Wikipedia entries, Criminal —still going strong in its 10 th year—stands out for its professionalism, compassion, integrity, and imagination.

📺 Television series (2005, 2013, 2018) The Staircase

Directed by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade A group of French documentarians were given extraordinary access to the defense team and courtroom during the trial of Michael Peterson, a North Carolina novelist accused of the 2001 murder of his wife Kathleen. Exquisitely edited down from untold hours of footage, the first eight episodes became one of the most admired documentaries of its time, an exceptionally intimate look at how a criminal defense is conducted, as well as how a trial affects the accused’s extended family. Years later, when developments warranted, de Lestrade tracked the case’s twists and turns in five more episodes. (Skip the HBO dramatized version starring Colin Firth; it unfairly impugns the integrity of the documentary team.) Peterson’s is a seemingly simple case that entails coincidences that may not be coincidences and evidence that cannot be accounted for by either side’s version of what happened, making The Staircase a decades-spanning whodunit that has generated endless debate. That lingering mystery has a primal power to hook viewers, but in essence The Staircase is a portrait of how the American legal system works: a dramatic conflict between two disparate stories, each vying to be declared the truth.

Watch on Netflix .

🎧 Podcast season (2018–19) Bear Brook: Season 1

Created by Jason Moon Podcasting may have delivered a glut of true-crime content, but the medium doesn’t always lend itself to the genre. Without the arresting visuals of a televised documentary or the page-flipping appeal of a book, podcasts can feel weighed down with repetitive exposition or, worse yet, become a confusing cluster of names and timelines. But Bear Brook , produced by New Hampshire Public Radio, takes the challenges of telling its story of multiple murders across decades and makes that its strength. Beginning with the discovery of two bodies in a barrel in a remote woodland near Bear Brook State Park, the show could have easily teased us right away with “But there’s more to the story.” Instead, Moon lingers with his characters, immersing the listener in the story of this barrel, the town, and its people, before kicking you in the chest with the discovery of a second barrel. The result is a true master class in evidence and criminology reporting, untangling a web of genetics and genealogy in an effort to bring peace to the families of the four unidentified victims.

🗞️ Magazine feature (2015) “An Unbelievable Story of Rape”

Written by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong This incredible piece of reporting, a partnership between ProPublica and the Marshall Project, is framed around Marie, an 18-year-old former foster kid and rape victim who was coerced by police in her small Washington state town to recant her story. “Unbelievable” provokes outrage in its portrayal of the shocking way poorly trained police officers can, and do, treat victims of heinous crimes. But “Unbelievable” is also the story of two dedicated women detectives in Colorado determined to crack the case of a serial rapist in their neighborhoods. The two narratives are intertwined, until straightforward, dogged police work solves the Colorado crimes—and brings justice for Marie. The ending, and the piece, is a triumph—a reminder that true crime isn’t only about evildoers. Great reporting and writing can and should focus on, and humanize, the victims of crime and the investigators who try to help them.

Read at ProPublica .

📚 Book (1980) The Stranger Beside Me

Written by Ann Rule Rule befriended Ted Bundy in the early 1970s, when she, a divorced mother of four supporting her family by writing hard-boiled crime stories for True Detective magazine, and he, an articulate college student, worked the night shift together on a suicide hotline. A few years later, she learned that Bundy had been arrested for the kidnappings and murders of young women in multiple states and was suspected of a string of unsolved Seattle crimes she had been contracted to write a book about. At first, Rule found it hard to believe that her thoughtful, cultured young friend could be a murderer; The Stranger Beside Me is an account of her eventual acknowledgment of his guilt. It also launched her career as a true-crime master, specializing in stories like Bundy’s, in which seemingly respectable middle-class professionals are revealed to be the perpetrators of unspeakable crimes. Instead of the degenerate misfits and thugs portrayed in True Detective , Rule wrote books about men (and some women) her readers could easily imagine as neighbors, friends, and even lovers. Anyone could be a murderer, and it became part of the true-crime writer’s task to figure out how and why. Although the psychological terms in many of Rule’s books now seem outdated, by considering the criminal’s inner life at all, Rule changed the genre forever—and while she was at it, she brought true-crime writing a huge new audience of women.

📚 Book (2018) I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer

Written by Michelle McNamara Bad things can happen when amateurs decide to play detective. Look no further than the immediate aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, when armchair sleuths identified the wrong man on Reddit as the bomber. Those types of internet detecting gone wrong are the rule. But McNamara’s quest to find the Golden State Killer is the exception. Meticulous, thorough, and above all unobtrusive to the police investigation itself, McNamara traced leads, tried out theories, and communicated with other obsessives who couldn’t stop thinking about the case. Her book documenting her search should be aspirational for all true-crime writers—a textbook in how to toe the line between being invested and being careful. But even leaving aside McNamara’s own tragic end—she died in her sleep before finishing the book —her descriptions of her “Talmudic study of police reports” and admission that the case consumed her should serve as a warning for others who dive into tragedy. It’s not a game of Clue. The crimes are real, and investigations can overtake you if you aren’t careful.

📚 Book (2013) Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery

Written by Robert Kolker A persistent complaint about the true-crime genre is that it glamorizes killers, obsessing over the details of their crimes and personalities while the victims are essentially forgotten. When Lost Girls —about the Gilgo Beach serial murders—was first published, this was impossible: The investigation into who had concealed several bodies in the scrubland along a Long Island highway had apparently stalled out, unsolved. Instead, Kolker focused on the women who seemed very evidently to be victims of a single murderer. They were sex workers but also daughters, sisters, girlfriends, mothers. They led complicated, difficult lives that offered them few options despite their individual talents, hopes, and dreams. After their bodies were discovered, their fractious families banded together to publicize the investigation, despite an often callous and indifferent media and the incompetence and corruption of the Suffolk County Police Department. “A missing girl is missing only to the people who notice,” Kolker writes in Lost Girls . In the long, dark period between their disappearance and the arrest of the alleged murderer in July 2023, Lost Girls helped make sure no one would fail to notice these women.

📚 Book (2022) Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth

Written by Elizabeth Williamson Fatal school shootings remain a signature American crime, a symptom of our national addiction to firearms and rage. No school shooting is more notorious than Sandy Hook, in which a mentally ill 20-year-old killed 20 elementary school children and six adults who worked at the school. But Williamson’s book is not exactly about the shooting. It’s about the wrongs committed afterward. Sandy Hook was so horrific it created real momentum for gun control legislation, and as a result, a right-wing disinformation campaign was launched, led by the radio personality Alex Jones. Williamson follows the travails of the victims’ parents as they attempt to achieve some social good as a result of their tragedy, only to be met with accusations that their children had never existed, or had not really been killed. This is a story that naturally provokes ire, but Williamson keeps her cool, meticulously documenting the ordeal of the parents and Jones’ long career of lies and hucksterism. Equally troubling, though, are his followers and minions—like a Tulsa woman who says the grieving parents “just rub me the wrong way”—and the social media platforms that did nothing to stem the viral conspiracy theories. Increasingly in our connected world, a terrible crime can be followed by terrible cruelty; Williamson’s story feels more urgent by the day.

🎥 Three movies (1996, 2000, 2011) The Paradise Lost Trilogy

Directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky To watch the first film in the Paradise Lost trilogy now is to lament what documentary filmmaking has become in 2024. That’s because Paradise Lost represents the form at its purest. No filmmakers on screen, no metacommentary, no fancy lighting, no styling. Just cameras on subjects. Traveling to West Memphis, Arkansas, in the wake of the terrible murder of three 8-year-old boys, filmmakers Berlinger and Sinofsky wrangled access not only to the teenagers accused of murdering them, but also to the families of the suspects and the victims, and even the prosecutors and defense attorneys who were part of the initial prosecution that sent the “West Memphis Three” to prison. The untrammeled access is stunning, as is the filmmakers’ refusal to intervene, even as they become part of the story: The first film spawned a small, committed national movement to free the young men, the work and ultimate success of which is captured over the following two movies. Together, the Paradise Lost films are a remarkable, unglossed look at how the American justice system failed—and, ultimately, sort of worked—as well as an intimate portrait of one struggling community ripped apart by an indescribable tragedy, then ripped apart again by lazy police work, reckless prosecution, and widespread paranoia.

Watch on HBO .

🎥 Movie (1988) The Thin Blue Line

Directed by Errol Morris It’s the rare true-crime work that both freed a wrongly accused man and revolutionized its art form. Morris’ elegant documentary persuasively makes the case that Randall Adams, a man serving a life sentence in Texas for shooting a police officer in 1976, was in fact innocent, and that another man had committed the crime. A sensation when it was released, The Thin Blue Line was disqualified from the Academy Award for documentary film because Morris’ use of reenactment scenes was frowned upon by traditional documentarians. In retrospect, reenactment proved to be a dangerous innovation that would be exploited by less scrupulous directors in the future. But the highly stylized nature of Morris’ reenactments—which include slow-motion interludes and film noir cinematography—work because they encourage no confusion with his more straightforward interview scenes. These scenes are abstractions—images not of what happened but of how to think about it. They illustrate how Morris evaluated various witness testimonies, weighing them against one another and the physical evidence. No relativist or postmodernist (as some critics have claimed), Morris believes in irreducible facts. To determine them, he made a powerful, intelligent work of art that is also a quest for objective truth.

Watch | Buy from Criterion .

🎧 Podcast season (2018–20) In the Dark: Curtis Flowers

Produced by American Public Media The second season of In the Dark , which followed the relentless and almost ritualistic prosecution of a poor Mississippi man for murders he did not commit, is seared in the memory of every person who has listened to it. Host Madeleine Baran relocated to Mississippi to tell the heartbreaking story of Curtis Flowers, who was tried six different times for the crime of shooting four people inside a furniture store—resulting in 23 years behind bars, most of them on death row in one of the most notoriously awful prisons in the country. Baran sensitively captures the grief of Flowers’ family, who never gave up on him. On the other side of the story sits District Attorney Doug Evans, and Baran tirelessly investigates the absolute arrogance that led the D.A. to deprive Flowers again and again of justice, and the broken legal system that aided him in his ferocious vendetta. Originally just 11 episodes, the season expanded as the case evolved, culminating in Flowers’ release in 2020. In a sea of true-crime podcasts, In the Dark stands out for its mission: not just to explore an injustice and document our dysfunctional judicial system, but to keep pushing until that injustice is corrected.

🗞️ Magazine feature (1995) “Orchid Fever”

Written by Susan Orlean You probably remember that Charlie Kaufman’s movie Adaptation was adapted, sort of, from Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief . But that book was an expansion of “Orchid Fever,” a basically perfect example of the comic, exuberant, sneakily profound true-crime magazine story. Orlean’s writing vibrates at a frequency to match its subject, the twitchy, obsessive horticulturalist John Laroche, who runs afoul of the law after collecting incredibly rare ghost orchids. From the beginning, we assume that it’s going to go bad for Laroche, who “has the posture of al dente spaghetti and the nervous intensity of someone who plays a lot of video games”; he’s just that kind of guy. But even that pall can’t darken Orlean’s uninhibited prose as she navigates through a Florida swamp we’ll never visit with a dude like no one we’ll ever meet to find a flower we’ll most likely never see in real life. ( These are not normal orchids !) Sure, the stakes are low; for his literal trespasses, Laroche pays a fine and gets probation. But the ride-along is an absolute high—a goddamn delight.

Read at the New Yorker .

🎧 Three podcast episodes (2017, 2020) Reply All : “Long Distance”

Created by Alex Goldman and PJ Vogt Scam calls are extremely, annoyingly common these days. But in 2017, they were novel enough that receiving just one sent Reply All host Goldman on a mission to understand where it came from. No surprise: The robo-voicemail claiming that Goldman’s “iCloud has been compromised” was not from Apple, and his iCloud was just fine. Chasing down the message leads Goldman to develop an almost obsessive relationship with a call center employee named “Alex Martin” and ultimately takes him all the way to Delhi—where he and a producer attempt to visit the actual storefront where the call originated. The whole thing is a romp; you’ll marvel as Goldman relays the story to co-host PJ Vogt, and laugh at the absurdity of Goldman sweating through the streets of Delhi, finding periodic refuge at Starbucks. Of course, he can never truly crack the case! This wholly modern, international crime exists because of super-shady perpetrators operating across the barriers of distance, culture, and anonymity. But then, three years later, in a surprise episode, the real “Alex Martin” is revealed, and we get the full backstory of how and why young Indians end up trying to scam Americans out of a couple hundred bucks. The result is a deeply weird, engaging, and surprising investigation of a singular type of crime that just about all of us fend off every day.

Listen: Part 1 | Part 2 | The Real Alex Martin .

📺 Television series (2020) McMillions

Directed by James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte While it’s easy to think of the Mafia as being all about murder, drugs, and probably prostitution, mob life is really about obtaining money and power by any means possible, no matter how unglamorous. (There’s a reason Tony Soprano works in “waste management.”) True-crime Mafia stories often lose sight of that fact, but the HBO documentary series McMillions seizes on it with gusto. McMillions tells the story of the McDonald’s Monopoly promotion and how, in the 1990s, the Mafia exploited a trick to cheat the game, cashing in ill-gotten Monopoly pieces for almost a decade, reaping millions of dollars. (Before the series, a 2018 Daily Beast story brought the case to a wide audience.) Directors Hernandez and Lazarte recognize that a con like this requires a level of skill and artistry that, in this case, was matched by the intricate sting operation the FBI used to catch the perpetrators, and the result is wildly entertaining. They’re aided by a colorful cast of characters, from archetypical brass-and-crass mob wife Robin Colombo to FBI agent Doug Mathews, who you’ll swear is actually part golden retriever. It all adds up to a madcap yarn that seems too wild to be true. But it is.

📚 Book (2023) Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World

Written by Yepoka Yeebo The pitch has become so familiar it’s almost a joke: There’s a pile of money I can get access to, but I need a little upfront cash so I can travel to the bank, or pay my lawyer, or resolve an outstanding fee. If you chip in, I can reimburse you a hundredfold. Just send me your bank information, and we’ll be in business. British-Ghanaian journalist Yeebo recounts the life and exploits of one of the great masters of this scam, known as advance-fee or 419 fraud: John Ackah Blay-Miezah. A Ghanaian smooth talker, Blay-Miezah convinced an astonishing array of wealthy and influential people in Africa and the U.S. that with a little help from them, he could liberate a fortune deposited in a Swiss bank by his country’s late president. Yeebo seamlessly moves from the fun of a classic con-man yarn—Blay-Miezah struts through these pages in his tailored suits, pulling on fancy cigars in luxurious hotel rooms from which he will evaporate when the bill comes due—to an equally engrossing history of the West African state and its rocky path to postcolonial independence. Her sharpest point: that Blay-Miezah succeeded so handsomely by exploiting the stereotype of Africa as a source of ill-gotten wealth, ripe for the picking.

📚 Book (1991) Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets

Written by David Simon True-crime stories often get so wrapped up in dramatic individual cases and characters that they forget about the institutions, the machine that solves (or doesn’t solve) crime. That’s what makes Simon’s Homicide so unique and revolutionary. This book, the result of a year’s worth of daily reporting inside the Baltimore Police Department, doesn’t just follow one cop or one case, but delivers an inside look at all the arms and legs of a homicide division. In Simon’s immersive writing you can smell the blood and bad coffee, hear the cries of victims’ families and the groans of overworked sergeants. In today’s cultural climate, some might be inclined to dismiss Homicide as copaganda, but Simon is brutally honest in his depictions of the cops, never shying away from some officers’ casual racism, jaded outlook, and, at times, outright bad police work. Homicide begot a remarkable TV show, and after it The Corner and The Wire and, in some ways, Oz and Mindhunter and True Detective . You really can’t begin to understand what investigating dozens of murders a year does to a cop—or what experiencing hundreds of murders in a year does to a community—until you’ve read Homicide .

🗞️ Two magazine features (2009, 2018) “Trial by Fire” and “Blood Will Tell”

Written by David Grann (“Trial”) and Pamela Colloff (“Blood”) Each of these stunning feats of reporting debunks a type of expert testimony that has put innocent people in prison for crimes they did not commit; we’re pairing them because together they show the power of true crime to affect the nuts and bolts of the criminal justice system. Grann’s devastating article tells the story of Cameron Todd Willingham, a poor Texas father of three who was convicted of—and eventually executed for—the crime of setting his house on fire and killing his three children. Grann heroically dismantles the infuriating, flimsy case against Willingham, especially its dependence on “expert analysis” of flame patterns in the remains of his home. This kind of analysis, Grann reveals, is endemic in arson trials—and incredibly subjective and misleading. In “Blood Will Tell,” meanwhile, Colloff details the case against Joe Bryan, a beloved school principal in a tiny Texas town convicted of killing his wife, Mickey, in 1985. Here the culprit is “bloodstain-pattern analysis”—a questionable type of forensic science that is widely used in cases even today. The piece had impact: Although the parole board’s deliberations are confidential, it’s surely no coincidence Bryan was finally released from prison in 2020, at the age of 79. Bryan can’t get that time back, and Willingham is gone forever. But these investigations restored their good names—while showing that true crime can interrogate the tricks and traps prosecutors often use to steal defendants’ freedom.

Read “Trial by Fire” at the New Yorker | Read “Blood Will Tell” at ProPublica .

📚 Book (2014) Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

Written by Bryan Stevenson In the 1980s, as a freshly minted graduate of Harvard Law, Stevenson went to work defending poor Southern clients who had been wrongly convicted of crimes, as well as guilty clients serving draconian sentences. His memoir Just Mercy offers a stark, heartbreaking corrective to the valorizing of the criminal justice system in pop culture. His clients are the victims of police officers and judges who are racist, classist, and just plain lazy. Running all through Just Mercy is a single narrative, the story of Walter McMillian, a Black Alabama man wrongfully convicted of murdering a white woman, and the havoc that conviction wreaked on his family and community. Despite its focus on legal battles, Just Mercy includes some good old-fashioned detective work , as Stevenson and his team investigate the murder themselves in order to clear McMillian’s name. Unlike crime fiction, whether on film or in print, true crime is far less likely to treat the police and courts as heroic, diligent, or infallible, but no list like this one would be complete without a serious consideration of the many ways law enforcement goes wrong, as seen by someone working inside the system.

🏛️ Criminal trial (1994–95) The O.J. Simpson Trial

The saga of former football star Simpson’s pursuit, arrest, and trial for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman has spawned any number of adaptations, from bestselling books to tawdry TV movies to a starry Ryan Murphy series to an eight-hour documentary that won an Oscar. But none of them compare in intrigue, in spectacle, and in drama to the trial itself, a kind of proto–reality show that America watched together for nearly a year. The characters—gregarious Johnnie Cochran, doofy Kato Kaelin, circumspect Judge Ito—became household names. The dialogue—“If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit”—was indelible. It all inspired Saturday Night Live parodies , frequently distasteful merchandise , explosive watercooler conversations about race and domestic violence, and some pretty repulsive media tactics. But the daily airing of the trial was also many everyday Americans’ first exposure to the real criminal justice system, not the fictionalized version they’d watched on L.A. Law . The televised trial’s popularity proved to entertainment executives that there was a hunger for even the minutiae of courtroom drama, if the case was salacious enough. It’s a lesson they’ve taken to heart.

Watch on Court TV .

🎧 Podcast season (2015) You Must Remember This: Charles Manson’s Hollywood

Created by Karina Longworth Perhaps no crime has spawned more true-crime content than the hideous acts of Charles Manson and his “family.” But this season of You Must Remember This , Longworth’s long-running podcast exploring the less-told stories of 20 th -century Hollywood, is the best thing out there on the subject. The key isn’t that Longworth uncovers new material or solves a mystery; it’s that she knows Hollywood and, with a critic’s eye for connecting the dots, elegantly intertwines Manson’s unquenchable desire for fame with the dramatic cultural shifts of the era, to show how late-’60s L.A. made Charles Manson possible. Longworth manages to convey the absolute horror of the Manson murders while also pointing out how ridiculous Manson himself was, and how the performative hedonism of Los Angeles at the time—which literally opened doors for Manson and his followers to wreak havoc from Sunset to Death Valley—is, looking back, almost embarrassing. Even Manson-philes will find something new in Longworth’s telling; she takes a familiar, famous story and weaves it into the fabric of place and time in a way that makes Manson’s evolution seem almost inevitable, rather than a horrific outlier to the cultural movements of the late ’60s.

📚 Book (2013) Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief

Written by Lawrence Wright Cults belong to a gray area in the true-crime world. It can be difficult to pinpoint the criminality in persuading people to willingly ruin their own lives for the sake of a charismatic leader—it’s only in the aftermath, whether an extreme event like group suicide or simply a financial fleecing, that the crime becomes clear. Because of the secretive, isolationist nature of cults, though, there are seldom disinterested witnesses to their misdeeds. Pulitzer Prize winner Wright’s thoroughly fact-checked exposé, begun as a feature for the New Yorker, remains the definitive account of Scientology, from its origins as a scam concocted by the wily science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard through its unhinged efforts to steal unflattering records from government agencies to the many allegations of violent and abusive behavior leveled at the church’s current leader, David Miscavige. Wright pays particular attention to the church’s wooing of celebrity members, who are carefully shielded from its shadier activities and employed to lend an aura of legitimacy and glamor to an organization that otherwise has none. Given the church’s history of harassing its critics, the legal and personal risks Wright took on were considerable. Not all the dangers true-crime writers face come in the form of ruthless killers.

📚 Book (2012) People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished From the Streets of Tokyo—and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up

Written by Richard Lloyd Parry Sometimes you can’t fully understand how a society’s rules work until they clash with the rules of another culture. Parry, a British foreign correspondent stationed in Tokyo, covered the 2000 disappearance of Lucie Blackman, a 21-year-old British former flight attendant working as a bar hostess in Japan. Embedded in the city and eventually becoming a trusted confidant of Blackman’s fractured family—who launched a high-profile campaign to pressure the inept Tokyo police department to find her—Parry knows this story deeply. In evocative prose, he shows how Japanese attitudes toward criminal justice, gender relations, and immigrants tangled with expat culture, and how the British tabloids imposed an expectation on family members to perform their fear and grief for the media in a way that bewildered the Japanese. At once the portrait of a single lost girl and a vivid picture of the world that made her and the world that consumed her, People Who Eat Darkness encounters only one mystery it can’t plumb: the strange cipher of the serial rapist responsible for Blackman’s death. Less a man than a void in human form, he haunts the Tokyo that Parry loves so well, the unknowable center of this unforgettable story.

📚 Book (2019) Say Nothing

Written by Patrick Radden Keefe Ireland’s Troubles can feel impossible to fully grasp if you’re not someone who lived through them. The conflict was sprawling, but Say Nothing ’s narrow focus on the disappearance of one young mother allows Keefe to weave the battle through the lives of real people on both sides. When citizens commit crimes under the aegis of war, Say Nothing asks, who is allowed to be forgiven? What does redemption even mean? At times a heart-pounding true-crime thriller, at others a devastating reflection on loss and the human price of rebellion, Say Nothing leads you through decades of violence without ever losing sight of the people affected the most. The best true crime serves as a lens through which to see the society it portrays; in Say Nothing , Keefe shines a light on one crime and illuminates a complex, intractable political and military dispute—while telling a deeper story of what war and political violence can do to the human psyche and heart.

🎥 Movie (2012) The Act of Killing

Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, and an anonymous Indonesian filmmaker At once surreal and much too real, this celebrated documentary considers the cost of committing a crime that isn’t technically a crime. The filmmakers asked members of death squads hired by the Indonesian government in the 1960s to kill “Communists” (some of whom were merely members of the nation’s Chinese minority) to make a fictionalized film about their deeds. Gangsters rather than zealots, the men begin by cheerfully recounting the practical challenges in taking hundreds of lives. In one scene, a bubbly TV talk show host interviews them about the movie project, asking them their favorite film stars and whether they picked up any good execution tips from the movies. “Morality is relative,” one impervious minor character explains. “War crimes are defined by the winners. I’m a winner. So I get to make my own definition.” Then, cracks appear in the facade of one executioner, Anwar Congo, who confesses to having nightmares about his death squad days. In the scenes from the movie created by the killers, they perform all roles, and playing a victim further rumbles Congo’s conscience, to devastating effect. Intercut throughout are musical numbers from the executioners’ film featuring dancing girls emerging from a fish-shaped structure and one of the gangsters in spectacular drag—all adding to the sense of a fever dream that is really a nightmare in disguise. While this beautiful, disturbing, and enigmatic film may not be what most people think of when they think of “true crime,” what else would you call a work that so courageously addresses truth, justice, and the taking of human life?

Watch on Peacock | Watch on Amazon Prime Video .

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Teacher arrested for assigning class to write ways to kill a student

A classroom is shown.

A teacher surrendered his license after getting in legal trouble for an assignment he agreed was inappropriate.

A teacher has been arrested after giving a Virginia middle school class an assignment to write about killing a student, according to court records.

The incident occurred in January 2022 in an English class at Crestwood Middle School in Chesapeake, but Scripps News Norfolk's investigative team recently learned about the arrest after a Freedom of Information Request to the Department of Education regarding teachers who lost their license in the state.

The class assignment was to write "ways to kill" one particular student in the class, according to court records. The records state that the idea for the assignment came from another student in the class, but that the teacher went along with it.

The students reportedly pulled out their tablets and began to write various ways to kill the selected child in the class. Documents outline how the ideas from the students included chopping him up, throwing him out the window, burning him alive and feeding him to a dog.

That night the child told his parents, and authorities got involved.

When asked by authorities why this happened, records state that the teacher said it was hard to engage the class, and the student at the center of the assignment didn't appear upset. But the teacher agreed it was an inappropriate assignment and told police it was an error in judgment.

The teacher pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Teacher arrested after hitting 4-year-old student who has autism

The Florida educator, who teaches students with disabilities, was charged with child abuse over two incidents.

According to a statement from the Chesapeake School District after Scripps News Norfolk reached out for comment, the teacher "was employed as a teacher at Crestwood Middle School from August 31, 2020, through April 8, 2022. Our practice is that we do not comment further on such situations involving personnel. The safety of our students is our top priority, and Chesapeake Public Schools expects all employees to act with the utmost professionalism to provide a positive learning environment for all students."

The National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification (NASDTEC) is a clearinghouse that helps identify red flags when teachers are applying for licenses across the country. It reports that approximately 6,000 of the 3.5 million public school teachers have adverse action taken against their licenses for a wide variety of issues, and in many cases those teachers do not lose their licenses.

The teacher involved in this case did surrender his license.

NASDTEC, which offers free online preventative and corrective courses for teachers and leaders nationwide, thinks there should be more emphasis on preventing problematic behavior before it happens.

The group's executive director, Jimmy Adams, said he believes every teacher should have to undergo a refresher class about professional ethics every five years. But the group stresses that the vast majority of teachers are phenomenal people, who never get into trouble and are working to educate and inspire the children of America.

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How to Write a Mystery Short Story

Last Updated: December 29, 2022

This article was co-authored by Lucy V. Hay . Lucy V. Hay is a Professional Writer based in London, England. With over 20 years of industry experience, Lucy is an author, script editor, and award-winning blogger who helps other writers through writing workshops, courses, and her blog Bang2Write. Lucy is the producer of two British thrillers, and Bang2Write has appeared in the Top 100 round-ups for Writer’s Digest & The Write Life and is a UK Blog Awards Finalist and Feedspot’s #1 Screenwriting blog in the UK. She received a B.A. in Scriptwriting for Film & Television from Bournemouth University. There are 8 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 51,821 times.

If you want to write a short story that really captures your audience, you might want to try writing a mystery. While you will find that the conclusion to your mystery is the most important part to creating a great story, it is critical to pay attention to the minute details and clues along the way.

Writing Your Mystery

Step 1 Know the scope of your story.

  • A crime of some sort, usually a murder.
  • A sleuth or detective.
  • A criminal.
  • Clues that the writer will drop along the way for the sleuth to find.
  • The other elements of a short story include: location (or setting); time period; dialogue; character development. These are also present in the mystery short story.

Step 2 Determine the crime.

  • To think of your crime, you may find it beneficial to ask yourself "What if...?" questions. For example, "What if...there an unexplained murder in the house?" "What if...someone went missing unexpectedly?"
  • You can often find ideas for your mystery story in news headlines or daily activities. If you're writing a historical mystery, you might find yourself intrigued by unsolved mysteries of the past.
  • Once you start to generate "What if...?" questions, you may find it difficult to stop!

Step 3 Choose a setting for your story.

  • Recognize that the size of the place will influence the development of your story. For example, in a large city or busy public place, you will have lots of opportunities to introduce witnesses. However, in a “locked-room mystery” (one where all the characters seem to be present in the same room throughout the occurrence of the crime), you will likely have no external witnesses, but may be able to draw upon your characters opinions and biases of each other.
  • Focus on the elements of your setting that are essential to the story. For example, is weather essential? If it is, write about it in great detail. If it is not, only mention it briefly or leave it out altogether.

Step 4 Set a time period.

  • A short story won't have a lot of time to spend describing historical detail. If your setting requires a lot of explanation, consider using a longer form.
  • Be prepared to do all the necessary research to make your setting compelling and realistic to the reader.

Step 5 Include realistic details.

  • You can use these details to establish setting, offer clues, and make characters more realistic.
  • Because you're writing a short story, make sure each detail functions in at least 2 of these ways.

Step 6 Create compelling characters.

  • Some characters should be potential suspects for having committed the crime (and at least one should actually be guilty of the crime), some should be supporting characters that serve to make the storyline interesting (a love interest or meddling mother-in-law, perhaps), and one (or more) should be focused on solving the mystery.
  • Well-written characters will have motives for acting in ways that further the plot.

Step 7 Describe your sleuth.

  • Keep track of all the traits of your sleuth. Know his or her personality, physical characteristics, tendencies, habits, best and worst qualities, and signature style (among other things). Even if you don’t reveal all of her characteristics to the reader, it is important to be consistent throughout your short story.
  • Consider developing your sleuth around yourself or around someone you know. This can help you decide on certain features and traits that will result in a thorough description of your sleuth.
  • Think about including weaknesses and foibles. [6] X Research source While you may want your sleuth to have superhero-like mental capacity or razor sharp intuition, there might be some things that they struggle with as well. [7] X Research source This will make your character more relatable to your readers.
  • Ensure that your sleuth is unique. If you have trouble determining this, think about what makes you unique and add some of that character into the character of your sleuth.

Step 8 Consider motives and emotions.

  • Remember that your reader is not getting paid to read your story, so your reader must also have an emotional investment to continue to read.
  • A good sleuth will have an investment that gives him motivation to go above and beyond the standard nature of the job. He should have a deeply personal connection to solving the crime.

Lucy V. Hay

Lucy V. Hay

Go beyond a typical "whodunit" to add a surprising twist. Author Lucy Hay says: "Sometimes your mystery might be about figuring out who's done a crime, but other times, you might reveal that right away. Then, the goal would be to discover why they've done it, instead."

Step 9 Consider your antagonist or villain.

  • Describe your villain well, but not too well. You don’t want your reader to guess right from the beginning of the story who is the culprit. Your reader may become suspicious if you spend a disproportionate amount of time describing one character.
  • You may want to make your villain someone that has been slightly suspicious all along. On the other hand, you may want to make the revelation of the culprit or criminal a complete shock. “Framing” someone throughout the story is a surefire way to keep your readers hooked to your mystery short stories.
  • Instead of a villain, consider including a sidekick. Maybe your sleuth has a friend or partner that will help her sort the clues and point out things that she misses. [10] X Research source No one says the sleuth has to do it all alone! What if the sidekick and villain end up being one in the same?

Step 10 Present an opportunity for mystery.

  • Don’t underestimate the power of the “backdrop” for the crime. An intricate understanding of the setting in which the crime takes place is an important tool that will help when it comes to developing your narrative.
  • In a short story, the "opportunity" may well have happened before the story begins. In this case, the triggering event will be the detective's first decision to get involved.

Step 11 Provide tantalizing clues.

  • Present a clue early on in the book that your sleuth (and your reader) won’t recognize as a clue. [12] X Research source This will make your reader go back and think “AH! That’s what that meant!”
  • Lay out false clues. [13] X Research source Lead your reader (or your sleuth) in the wrong direction to create an extra exciting story.
  • Build tension through clues. Has your sleuth gone a long time without finding a clue? Does he have seemingly conflicting clues? The more puzzled you can make your reader, the more intriguing they will find your story.

Try to build suspense throughout the story. Author and screenwriter Lucy Hay says: "One of the key elements of a mystery is tension. It has to be compelling from the beginning. There's also a certain level of misdirection involved in a mystery, where to guide the reader to follow a certain thread, but it's actually completely wrong."

Step 12 Make your conclusion surprising.

  • While surprising, your conclusion should also feel inevitable when looking back over the arc of the whole story. Using a “deus ex machina” ending that seems to come from nowhere is less likely to be interesting to the modern reader.
  • Many mystery writers decide on the ending first, before writing the rest of the short story. [15] X Research source Knowing your ending will allow you to better plot the story, which builds towards the revelation at the finish.

Step 13 Trick your reader.

  • Who does your reader expect committed the crime?
  • Why is it unexpected that the actual criminal committed the crime?

Understanding More About Mystery Short Stories

Step 1 Read other authors mystery short stories.

  • You can also read collections of short stories by your favorite mystery writers. Short story collections by Jonathan Kellerman, Edgar Allan Poe, Lawrence Block, and more.
  • Collections of well-crafted mystery short stories are published every year by the Best American Mystery Stories.

Step 2 Take a class.

  • If you're not sure whether a class will help you with your particular interest, ask the instructor prior to signing up.
  • You'll probably be able to see a course's reading list (or syllabus) before you sign up. This can be a good way to help you decide whether or not the class will be good for you.

Step 3 Join a writing group.

  • You can also find writing groups listed on bulletin boards, online listservs or Craigslist. Meetup.com also lists writing groups.
  • A writing group can help you meet other people who may have more experience publishing their work. You can learn from their experience.
  • Online writers' groups are increasingly popular. Look on social media sites such as Facebook or Tumblr.

Step 4 Attend a conference.

  • There's also the Nancy Drew Conference, the Left Coast Crime Conference, CrimeFest 2016, and more.
  • An online search for mystery writers conferences may help you locate a conference in your area.
  • Conferences are also great ways to meet agents who can help you market your work, or discussions about the merits of self-publication.

Community Q&A

Community Answer

You Might Also Like

Write a Short Detective Story

  • ↑ http://www.dorrancepublishing.com/blog/cracking-case-tips-write-mystery-novel/#.VpK9_RWLSM8
  • ↑ http://www.fictionteachers.com/fictionclass/mystery.html
  • ↑ http://www.brighthubeducation.com/help-with-writing/128019-creating-a-mystery-story-five-steps/
  • ↑ http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/mystery/tips.htm
  • ↑ http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/triv307.html
  • ↑ http://www.dorrancepublishing.com/blog/cracking-case-tips-write-mystery-novel/#.VpVr3hWLSM9
  • ↑ http://www.mwany.org/2016/01/so-youve-written-a-mystery-short-story-now-what/
  • ↑ http://thewritelife.com/join-writing-group/

About This Article

Lucy V. Hay

To write a mystery short story, start by coming up with a protagonist, which is generally a detective with a unique personality. For example, they could have a distinct way of talking, or a specific fear that they’ll need to confront. Then, come up with a mystery and a reason for the hero to connect to it emotionally. Throughout the story, provide both real and “decoy” clues, so that when you reveal the culprit, the answer makes sense in the context of the story, but surprises the reader at the same time. To learn how to choose a setting and time period for your mystery, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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A Long-Forgotten TV Script by Rachel Carson Is Now a Picture Book

In “Something About the Sky,” the National Book Award-winning marine biologist brings her signature sense of wonder to the science of clouds.

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A cut-paper and sumi ink illustration shows a young boy watching a small plane as it soars through the sky trailing cirrus clouds that look like jet stream. The silhouetted boy, the plane and the clouds are cut from black and white paper. The bright sky is rendered with blue ink that fades dark to light from top to bottom.

By Maria Popova

Maria Popova, the creator of TheMarginalian.org and the author of the forthcoming “The Universe in Verse: 15 Windows on Wonder Through Science and Poetry,” has written about Rachel Carson in her book “Figuring.”

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SOMETHING ABOUT THE SKY , by Rachel Carson. Illustrated by Nikki McClure.

A cloud is a spell against indifference, an emblem of the water cycle that makes this planet a living world capable of trees and tenderness, a great cosmic gasp at the improbability that such a world exists, that across the cold expanse of space-time, strewn with billions upon billions of other star systems, there is nothing like it as far as we yet know.

Clouds are almost as old as this world, born when primordial volcanoes first exhaled the chemistry of the molten planet into the sky, but their science is younger than the steam engine. At the dawn of the 19th century, the chemist and amateur meteorologist Luke Howard, still in his 20s, noticed that clouds form in particular shapes under particular conditions. Applying the principles of the newly popular Linnaean taxonomy of the living world to clouds, he named the three main classes cumulus , stratus and cirrus , then braided them into sub-taxonomies.

When a German translation reached Goethe, the polymathic poet with a passion for morphology was so inspired that he sent fan mail to the young man who “distinguished cloud from cloud,” then composed a suite of verses about the main classes. It was Goethe’s poetry, translating the lexicon of an obscure science into the language of wonder, that popularized the cloud names we use today.

A century and a half later, six years before Rachel Carson awakened the modern ecological conscience with her book “Silent Spring” and four years after “The Sea Around Us” earned her the National Book Award (whose judges described it as “a work of scientific accuracy presented with poetic imagination”), the television program “Omnibus” approached her to write “something about the sky,” in response to a request from a young viewer.

This became the title of the segment that aired on March 11, 1956 — a soulful serenade to the science of clouds, emanating from Carson’s credo that “the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race.”

Although celebrated for her books about the sea, Carson had begun her literary career with an eye to the sky.

She was only 11 when her story “A Battle in the Clouds” — inspired by her brother’s time in the Army Air Service during World War I — was published in the popular young people’s magazine St. Nicholas, where the early writings of Edna St. Vincent Millay, F. Scott Fitzgerald and E.E. Cummings also appeared. She eventually enrolled at Pennsylvania Women’s College, intent on majoring in English.

And then, the way all great transformations slip in through the back door of the mansion of our plans, her life took a turn that shaped her future and the history of literature.

To meet the school’s science requirement, Carson took an introductory biology course. She found herself enchanted by the subject and changed her major.

But she never lost her love of literature. “I have always wanted to write,” Carson told her lab partner late one night. “Biology has given me something to write about.”

She was also writing poetry, submitting it to various magazines and receiving rejection slip after rejection slip. Somewhere along the way — training at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, writing reports her boss deemed far too lyrical for a government publication and encouraged her to submit to The Atlantic Monthly — Carson realized that poetry lives in innumerable guises beyond verse.

In 1952, she would rise from the table she shared with the poet Marianne Moore to receive her National Book Award with these words: “The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction. It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.”

If there was poetry in her writing, Carson believed, it was not because she “deliberately put it there” but because no one could write truthfully about nature “and leave out the poetry.”

It was a radical idea — that truth and beauty are not in rivalry but in reciprocity, that to write about science with feeling is not to diminish its authority but to deepen it. Carson was modeling a new possibility for generations of writers to come, blurring the line between where science ends and poetry begins.

That was the ethos she took to her “Omnibus” assignment about “the writing of the wind on the sky,” detailing the science of each of the main cloud classes and celebrating them as “the cosmic symbols of a process without which life itself could not exist on earth.”

After coming upon fragments of Carson’s long-lost television script via Orion magazine, the artist Nikki McClure — who grew up immersed in nature, worked for a while at the Department of Ecology and finds daily delight in watching birds under the cedar canopy by her home — was moved to track down the complete original and bring it to life in lyrical illustrations.

Known for her singular cut-paper art, with its stark contrasts and sharp contours, she embraced the creative challenge of finding a whole new technique in order to channel the softness of the sky.

Using paper from a “long-ago” trip to Japan and sumi ink she freely applied with brushes, she let the gentle work of gravity and fluid dynamics pool and fade the mostly blue and black hues into textured layers — a process of “possibility and chance.”

Then, as she recounts in an illustrator’s note at the back of the book, she “cut images with the paper, not just from it”: “The paper and I had a conversation about what might happen.”

What emerges is a kind of tender visual poem, as boldly defiant of category as Carson’s writing.

Although Carson never wrote explicitly for children, she wrote in the language of children: wonder.

Less than a year after “Something About the Sky” aired on “Omnibus,” Carson took over the care of her orphaned grandnephew, Roger, whom she would soon legally adopt. (He’s the small boy romping across McClure’s illustrations.) In what began as an article for Woman’s Home Companion and was later expanded into her posthumously published book “The Sense of Wonder,” she wrote:

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.

SOMETHING ABOUT THE SKY | By Rachel Carson | Illustrated by Nikki McClure | Candlewick Studio | 56 pp. | $19.99 | Ages 5 to 8

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    1 Try working backward. Most crime stories begin with the crime, and this can be a handy technique for the author as well. Briefly describe an exciting or mysterious crime scene: jewels disappearing from inside a locked safe, a fortune teller found dead in a canoe, or the prime minister's secretary caught carrying a bomb into 10 Downing Street.

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    In short stories, specifically short stories that are focused on solving a crime, the crime needs to be out of the ordinary, but the protagonist should still be able to solve it in an "a-ha" moment, that would both make sense to the reader in retrospect, and also surprise them at the same time.

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    1 Use a real life crime or event as inspiration. A good detective story usually starts with a strange or intriguing crime. Look at current news stories for crimes that have been committed recently or solved by real life detectives. Use a crime from the past, such as a cold case that has never been solved, as inspiration for the crime in your story.

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    1. Begin with the murder. Get into the victim's head as they die. Make it as real and as awful as you can. This invests the reader with sympathy for the victim no matter how horrible they were in life and lends that much more urgency to your protagonist's quest to find the murderer.

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    1. Murder Mystery at the Mansion: A renowned police detective must solve a complex murder case where the victim was found dead at a mysterious haunted house, the only clues being strange symbols scrawled on a cryptic note. 2.

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    The Elements of a Great Mystery Short Story. A good mystery story, whether it's a mystery novel or a shorter form like short stories or novellas, always includes certain key elements: A crime, typically a murder. A detective, professional or amateur, tasked with solving the crime. A list of potential suspects, each with a motive.

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    Rob Doyle, a consummate literary risk-taker, exhorts writers to "try writing a story that doesn't look how short stories are meant to look - try one in the form of an encyclopaedia entry, or ...

  16. How to Write a Mystery Story (with Examples)

    First use suspense at the start, usually in the form of a crime. Secondly, start adding clues for the investigator or main character, and introduce one or more suspects. Finally, the main character either solves the mystery, or doesn't, if you want to end on a cliffhanger and write a second part to your story. Thanks!

  17. How to Write a Mystery Short Story: 8 Steps with Examples

    Placing hints and red herrings in mysteries is also possible. 2 - A compelling hook A great mystery should entice the reader to want to figure out the crime, and a fantastic beginning is essential for capturing their attention. The first paragraph of a mystery should contain enough information about the crime to pique interest.

  18. How to write the perfect crime story

    To write a crime novel, of course, you need a crime. The murder story is as old as the Bible (if you count Cain and Abel) and the crime I chose to kick off Crusher. Next you need a protagonist to ...

  19. How to Write a Short Story in 9 Simple Steps

    How to Write a Short Story in 9 Simple Steps Short Stories: A Writer's Guide 1. Know what a short story is versus a novel 2. Pick a simple, central premise 3. Build a small but distinct cast of characters 4. Begin writing close to the end 5. Shut out your internal editor 8. Share the story with beta readers 9. Submit the short story to publications

  20. Best Mystery / Thriller Story Ideas to Inspire Your Writing

    Curated writing inspriation delivered to your inbox each week. A plane takes off with 81 passengers. It lands with 82. Mystery / Thriller. As a joke, you use your cell phone to dial your own number. Someone picks up. Mystery / Thriller. The world's wealthiest person has recently been put in prison for life. They offer half their fortune to any ...

  21. How to Write a Short Story: Step-by-Step Guide

    "Thank You Ma'am" by Langston Hughes "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin How long should a short story be? Like we said in the previous section, short stories typically contain between 1,000 and 10,000 words. Stories longer than 10,000 (but shorter than 40,000) words are generally considered novellas.

  22. Crime writer George Pelecanos on 'Owning Up' in his new story ...

    His latest short story collection takes that same unsparing look at his own past. Author Interviews Police raided George Pelecanos' home. 15 years later, he's ready to write about it

  23. The 25 Best True-Crime Stories of All Time

    But that book was an expansion of "Orchid Fever," a basically perfect example of the comic, exuberant, sneakily profound true-crime magazine story. Orlean's writing vibrates at a frequency ...

  24. Teacher arrested for assigning class to write ways to kill a student

    The students reportedly pulled out their tablets and began to write various ways to kill the selected child in the class. Documents outline how the ideas from the students included chopping him up, throwing him out the window, burning him alive and feeding him to a dog. That night the child told his parents, and authorities got involved.

  25. How to Write a Mystery Short Story (with Pictures)

    Part 1 Writing Your Mystery Download Article 1 Know the scope of your story. A short story is usually between 5,000 and 10,000 words, but may be as long as 20,000 words (80 pages, double-spaced). The author H.G Wells said that it's a short story if you can read it in half an hour.

  26. The Best True Crime to Stream: Viral Stories With a Twist

    Quickly came a bonanza of memes and television appearances — including a segment on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" — as well as talks of his own reality show. But the good times didn't last. A few ...

  27. Rachel Carson's Sky Writing Is Now a Picture Book

    She was only 11 when her story "A Battle in the Clouds" — inspired by her brother's time in the Army Air Service during World War I — was published in the popular young people's ...