by Harrison Demchick, @HDemchick
Have you ever read a mystery where the culprit’s motivations made no sense at all?
Or how about one where the culprit is caught because he did something he would never plausibly do?
I’ve seen quite a lot of this in the mysteries I’ve edited. Mystery is a genre of logic, and a good mystery is a puzzle waiting to be solved, but where that puzzle so often falls apart, particularly in early drafts (and even for very talented writers), is with the culprit. And the reason is that, very often, the actions of the culprit serve the story rather than the character.
There’s a reason for that. In most fiction, we develop our story around the protagonist. It’s the protagonist with whom we spend most of our time, and if there’s a character arc, it’s usually hers. The experience of the novel is defined by her actions and experience.
But mystery is a little different, and the reason it’s different is that it’s the antagonist’s actions that really drive the story. The culprit commits the crime, and the detective reacts. That’s not to say that the detective is inactive—she’s certainly trying to solve the mystery, and ultimately both characters are reacting to one another (even before we know who the culprit is)—but fundamentally, the detective’s story is unraveling the culprit’s story. And that means that you, as author, need to know the culprit’s story as well and as clearly as the detective’s.
Moreover, that story, and the character who lives it, need to make sense.Continue reading