How to Handle the Stakes in a Cozy Mystery + Giveaway (Part 2 of 4)

by H.R. D’Costa, @scribesworld

Handling the stakes in a mystery with an unlikeable victim isn’t entirely a straightforward affair.

On one hand, when the victim is unlikeable, you’ll have puh-lenty of suspects, which should make your plot more engrossing.

On the other hand, because readers don’t care much for the victim, they might not care whether the sleuth achieves justice on the victim’s behalf.

But if you can’t fuel your mystery with stakes of justice…what can you do?

That’s the question we’re exploring in this four-part blog series on handling the stakes in a cozy mystery. (By the way, although the illustrative examples are cozy-centric, many of the tips in this series can be applied to mysteries with a harder edge.)

To give you an overview:

• In Part 1, we covered methods to bolster the stakes that emphasize the sleuth.
• In Part 2 , we’ll cover methods to bolster the stakes that emphasize other storytelling elements that readers care about. (You’re reading Part 2 right now.)
• In Part 3 (forthcoming), we’ll discuss considerations to take into account when applying these story stake tips to cozy mysteries in a series.
• In Part 4 (forthcoming), you’ll see these considerations in action when I share a sample lineup of stakes for a hypothetical cozy-mystery series.

So. It’s agreed. Your readers don’t care much for your unlikeable victim. Even so, there are lots of other story elements that can entangle their emotions.

If you emphasize these elements in your cozy mystery (perhaps saving them for this very book in your series, when you know the plot is going to involve an unlikeable victim), then this emotion may be enough to carry readers forward.

In other words, when readers start to ask themselves—Why should I care about finding out who killed this guy when he’s such a jerk?!—you will have provided them with a satisfactory answer.

Below are three suggestions to get you started:

Focus on Your Series Hook

A great definition of a series hook comes courtesy of our very own blog host, Elizabeth Spann Craig.

As defined by Elizabeth, hooks in a cozy mystery are:

Special themes, meant to appeal to the primary reading demographic, as part of the series brand.

Through personal experience with, or extensive research into, the arena of your hook, you are bound to uncover intriguing details that you know will fascinate your readers.

Save these juicy tidbits for this book, where the victim is unlikeable.

Think of the murder mystery Gosford Park. The exploration of class differences is the hook—and it’s just as interesting as the mystery.

A detail that still sticks with me to this day: servants below stairs are not referred to by their own names, but by the name of their employer because “it saves confusion.”

Here’s another example of what I mean. Cozy-mystery author Ellen Jacobson lives on a sailboat with her husband, and sailing is the hook of her Mollie McGhie cozy-mystery series.

One day, when Ellen and her husband were sailing around New Zealand, a dolphin swam alongside their boat and “sprayed us with something. I think it was dolphin spit and Scott thinks it was dolphin snot.”

Years later, Ellen used their debate in a scene in one of her cozy mysteries.

This is just the kind of unusual detail that your own target audience might enjoy discovering. Thus, it makes sense to incorporate it into the plot—especially when you’re writing about an unlikeable victim. Why?

Even when readers are feeling rather non-committal toward the mystery, they could keep on turning the pages to see how your sleuth and her friends resolve the dolphin debate. Brownie points: the ongoing dolphin debate could give the sleuth the insight she needs to solve the case!

Focus on a Reoccurring Subplot

By the end of the mystery, the case must be solved. But when you’re writing a series, you can leave a subplot open, and develop it over multiple series installments.

Is your sleuth involved in an on-again, off-again romantic relationship?

Consider saving a major development—e.g. after months of absence, the sleuth’s love interest returns on-scene—for this book, where the victim is unlikeable.

Because your readers will be heavily invested in the subplot, they’ll be compelled to keep on reading even when their curiosity over who killed the unlikeable victim starts to wane.

As an added bonus, readers will also be compelled to buy future installments of your series due to their emotional investment in subplot developments. Score!

By the way, click on the following link if you’re looking for tips on subplots. That’ll lead you to an “easy as pie” guide dedicated to this topic.

Focus on Likeable Associates of the Victim (E.g. Friends, Family, etc.)

Emphasizing the effect that solving the case has on the victim’s family is always a good technique to use when developing the stakes in a mystery.

But when the victim is unlikeable, it becomes extra valuable.

Because the victim’s family members are likeable, you can cultivate a relationship between them and your readers. Hence, readers become invested in the case—and keep turning the pages of your cozy mystery—not because they particularly care about the victim, but because they want to see the victim’s family experience closure.

You can even use this approach to create a ticking clock that’ll generate increased urgency. For instance, the victim is the town’s resident troublemaker who, before his death, caused all sorts of headache for the grandmother who raised him.

Before the murder of her grandson, the grandmother’s health wasn’t that great. After the murder, her health took a turn for the worse. The sleuth must solve the case in time in order to provide relief to the grandmother before the grandmother passes away.

The Animal Factor

In cozies, animals oftentimes become characters in their own right, staking their claim on readers’ hearts. So, as another option, you could get readers to invest in solving the case due to their affection for the victim’s pet.

Actually, when you think about it, the pet’s attachment to its owner dilutes the victim’s unlikeability to a certain extent. After all, if the pet loved the victim, the victim couldn’t be all bad now, could he?

To mine this sentiment further, you could have the victim’s pet show up on your sleuth’s doorstep, seemingly pleading with the sleuth to solve the case. Perhaps, due to some twist of fate, the sleuth is even entrusted with taking care of the pet until other arrangements can be made.

Again, it’d be good to have this development occur right around the midpoint, when the sleuth (and readers, too) are becoming frustrated over all the effort expended to solve the case for a victim who is, through recently uncovered evidence, revealed to be even more of a jerk than originally thought.

Also, it might be a nice touch to bring back the victim’s pet at the climax of the novel, to help apprehend the murderer at the end of the story.

* * *

If you, like many cozy-mystery authors, are writing in a series, you have to be strategic with how you use the story stake tips from Parts 1 and 2 of this blog series. Some work better if they’re saved for later books in a series.

I’ll go into more detail in Part 3, where I’ll share guidelines for mapping out the stakes in a mystery series. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, if you’d like to dig deeper on your own, download this cheat sheet with 11 types of story stakes. It might (a) give you additional ideas for how to make readers emotionally invested in the outcome of the case as well as (b) help you generate a variety of motives to match your healthy list of suspects.

You can also check out my writing guide Story Stakes: Your #1 Writing Skills Strategy to Produce a Page-Turner That Transforms Readers into Raving Fans of Your Screenplay or Novel. See below for details on how you could win a paperback copy…

Win a Paperback Copy of Story Stakes

For every post in this blog series, you have a chance to win a paperback copy of Story Stakes  ($15.95).

Described as “a must-have in your top 10 books on writing” by one Amazon reviewer, it’ll show you how to use story stakes to elicit the maximum degree of emotion from readers as well as how to raise the stakes (even when they’re already high!).

For a chance to win today, answer this question in the comments: Which series hook, reoccurring subplot, or animal character have you found particularly appealing?

Elizabeth will randomly select four lucky winners by Monday, August 19.

Note: This giveaway is only open to residents of North America, South America, and Europe.

Good luck and happy writing!

About H. R. D’Costa

A graduate of Brown University, H. R. D’Costa (a.k.a. HRD) is an author and writing coach who specializes in story structure and story stakes.

Known for her “deep dive” instruction style, she is the author of 8 writing guides including Sizzling Story Outlines , Story Stakes, and the 4-volume Story Structure Essentials series .

For practical, actionable writing tips designed to help you keep readers glued to your pages, visit her website scribemeetsworld.com, which is also home to the Ultimate Story Structure Worksheet (downloaded over 37,000 times by writers from around the world).

IMAGE CREDITS: Coffee & book by Amariei Mihai; Misty lake by Dominik Dombrowski; Sailboat by Karla Car; Friendly dolphin by Pablo Heimplatz; Pen nib by Art Lasovsky; Girl reading on a dock by Bethany Laird; Elderly woman by Cristian Newman; Smiling dog by Seb