Writing the Cozy Mystery–Points to Consider

Mystery Writing Tips

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigfile6851297891836

This is the last post in my series on cozy writing. (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5  6.) Today I thought I’d wrap up a few things that are, mostly, specific to cozies (where some of the earlier posts could have been applied to other subgenres of mysteries.)

Murder method.  If the method is gory, the state of the victim’s body isn’t explained in great detail. There isn’t a focus on forensics in cozies.  If you’re using guns, be accurate but move away from a lot of forensic detail…keeping it simple.  In a cozy, the focus is on the puzzle itself.

There tends to be a lot of blunt force trauma, suffocation, strangulation, stabbing, poisoning, and victims being pushed down staircases.Continue reading

The Secret to Sales Without Selling: Your Author Newsletter

Business of Writing, Tools for Writers

by Joel D Canfield, @SomedayBox700

I once surveyed all the authors I knew about what they wanted most for their writing.

The universal response was “Someone to do my marketing for me.”

I considered setting up an affordable and effective marketing service and then trying to sell it to all those people, but that’d be like Henry Ford giving us faster horses.

What authors really want is a way to spend more time writing and less time marketing, but still sell books. And if possible, to do it without hating themselves in the morning. Or being hated by everyone around them.

I’ll state my premise up front: the way to do that is follow these two steps:

  1. Write more top-quality books, and
  2. have a great email/newsletter list.

Authors who write more good books sell more books.

Authors with a newsletter email list full of fans sell more books.

And they do it with less marketing, more writing.

Here’s how.Continue reading

Twitterific Writing Links

Twitterific, Writing Tips

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Twitterific writing links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engineBlog (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 30,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.

Stop sweating the synopsis and write it:  http://ow.ly/T7oW8 @hollyrob1

The Evolving Literary Agent: What Savvy Writers Need to Know:  http://ow.ly/T7oQS @JaneFriedman

5 Books About Imaginary Religions:  http://ow.ly/T7pyy @tordotcom  by Michael W. Clune

Weaving a Tapestry of Page-Turning Story:  http://ow.ly/T7oXH @Saboviec             Continue reading

Writing the Cozy Mystery–Common Pitfalls

Mystery Writing Tips

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigfile6881312030155

If you’re just joining us, I’ve been running a series on writing cozy mysteries. (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).  Today I thought I’d cover a few problem areas that we might run into when writing a cozy mystery.

Slow pace, story seems weighed down.   Is the story too basic and formulaic? What’s going on with your sleuth in her personal life? What background can we discover about the suspects? Is there a subplot we can develop that sheds light on one of the recurring story characters? Are there recurring story characters (they are common in cozies).  Can we tie in the subplot with the mystery somehow?

The issue could be mechanical, too. Try for shorter sentences, more dialogue, and shorter chapters.  Try changing the sentence structure around a little.Continue reading

The NINC Conference—Interesting Points

Business of Writing

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigdownload

The Novelists, Inc. or NINC, conference in St. Pete Beach, Florida, was chock-full of interesting speakers and takeaways.  Looking around the conference rooms, nearly everyone was jotting down notes on paper or their laptops.  And…the weather was wonderful there. I was happy to escape the dismal weather North Carolina has had lately.

A few takeaways I wanted to share (these are from sessions I attended, but you can hear from others if you go to @Porter_Anderson or @JaneFriedman’s #NINC15 tweets on Twitter:Continue reading

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