Writing the Cozy Mystery: Series Tropes and Rituals

Magnifying glass hovers over an amber background.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’ve touched on this topic before, although before I was sort of working it through in my mind.  What I’m calling ‘series tropes,’ which is what writer Camille LaGuire termed ‘rituals,’ are those little recurring bits that turn up book after book in a series (this post is specific to cozies, but I know other genres use these elements, too).

Examples:

In M.C. Beaton’s Hamish MacBeth series, it’s Hamish’s hapless love affairs, laziness, and crazy pets.  For Hercule Poirot, it’s his vanity and OCD behavior. With Miss Marple, we expect her to compare everything and everyone to situations and people in St. Mary Mead, her village.

In my books, the tropes include Myrtle’s insomnia and post-midnight treks, Miles’s hypochondria, Puddin’s ‘thrown’ back, silly book club books, the way Myrtle’s soap opera helps her figure out the killer, and Myrtle’s horrible cooking.

How to Use Them: 

Humor:   You can use them straight out for humorous effect that resonates with regular readers. You can also twist the tropes and provide variations on the themes to make them even funnier (while putting the characters in situations that make them uncomfortable).

Sense of continuity: I think it provides a certain full-circle feeling for regular series readers.  They expect certain things are going to happen.  It fulfills reader expectations.  It’s almost like seeing a familiar landmark.

As a method to check in with recurring characters:  This is important for those of us who have regulars in our series.  Readers like to ‘catch up’ with characters who are like old friends and our tropes can provide opportunities for them to do so.

Tracking them: 

This is the easy part.  List all of your recurring storylines into a master list by series.  I have a staggering 18 in the Myrtle series alone.  I keep them in a Word doc that I review before each book.

Why should we include these rituals?   Mostly because readers enjoy them.  I struggled with it as a writer, thinking that maybe I was relying on these tropes as crutches.  But when I left them out, readers wrote me.  Now I go off my list, think of fun, new ways to use or twist them, and don’t worry about including them.  They’re clearly beneficial to my books.

For my other articles on writing cozy mysteries, see this link.

Do you have any recurring tropes in your series?  Do you keep track of them?

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Writing the Cozy Mystery: The Right Motive

A snowy train track curves into a foggy landscape.

by Elizabeth Spann Craig, @elizabethscraig

I can only imagine the number of murder motives that I’ve come across in the last 35 years that I’ve read and watched mysteries.

While writing cozy mysteries, I think finding a motive can be a bit tricky.  Although there’s some breadth out there in terms of how writers approach cozies, a large number of cozy readers seem to appreciate a very traditional approach…nothing too gritty. They want an escape in which the reader helps the sleuth find the killer.

This means that a recent mystery I watched where the motive involved revenge for past child abuse wouldn’t really be a great pick for the audience. Drug addiction can be tough too, although doable if treated carefully.

In my books, I tend to play it very safe.  The motives are still what I consider real life motives, but they’re more toned down.Continue reading

Writing the Cozy Mystery–Points to Consider

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

Writing the Cozy Mystery–Whodunit?

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigquestion mark

One of the most important aspects of the cozy mystery is the puzzle itself.  Aside from character development, the puzzle is the most important part of the mystery.  Mystery readers tend to be avid readers who are practiced at looking for clues to the killer.  Here are some thoughts about how to make sure the readers don’t solve our puzzle before we want them to.

Red herrings: To keep readers guessing, we need to provide some false leads for our sleuth. These leads frequently come from other suspects, but they can come from some of the physical (usually not forensic in a cozy) evidence surrounding the crime (something out of place, something missing, something there that shouldn’t be there).Continue reading

Writing the Cozy Mystery: The Suspects

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigfile000557708328

This is the second in my cozy mystery writing series.  Last week I focused on writing better sleuths. Today, I thought I’d take a look at another vital element for a solid mystery: good suspects.

How many suspects?  Fewer suspects can be easier for readers to keep up with, but can also mean that the murderer’s identity isn’t as much of a surprise.  If you have more suspects, you can more easily maintain the element of surprise at the end, but you have to be careful not to confuse the reader.  I usually prefer 5 suspects, killing one of them during the course of the book.  If you choose to have a lot of suspects, you can reduce confusion by making sure their names are very distinct or by giving them a casual reintroduction when they appear “onstage” again in the story.Continue reading

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