The Mystery Starts Here

OK, What’s a Point of View?

Let’s face it, point of view is hard for some beginning writers. They get tripped up, jump from Sally’s POV to Bob’s on the same page – sometimes in the same paragraph! Don’t do that. In any book, but especially in a mystery, the author is trying to confuse his reader to make solving the murder, robbery, kidnapping – or maybe all three, difficult to solve. You don’t want to make the text more difficult by switching POV incorrectly. So what’s the best way to write POV?

Here’s a tip – pretend that you are a cameraman, filming this mystery. Your camera can only see and hear what the character sees and hears. If you want to bring another actor on stage, the camera has to shift and follow that actor. You can shift by changing to a new chapter or perhaps by leaving a double space so the reader knows you’re shifting.

If you are at all concerned that you’ve shifted POV, read your manuscript out loud Better still, read it into a tape recorder. That way you can check to make sure your dialogue flows well and makes sense, too. Hope this helps.

This is a short blog, but I’ve been busy! My husband and I rescued a new companion from Lab Rescue. Duke is a three-year-old yellow lab and an absolute love muffin. It’s hard to think of murder, stalking and bloody crime scenes when a big dog is slobbering on you and demanding kisses and love!

Remember to comment and ask questions! I learn from these blogs, too.

I’m reading a mystery right now – and I’ve been reading it for a week! Why? It’s 475 pages long. Now, I don’t mind long novels at all, IF they’re interesting. This one isn’t. The author keeps going off on side trips, telling the reader a lot of stuff we don’t need to know, nor do we care. This book should have been about 350 words long and it would have been a much, much better – tighter book.

The book started well, or I never would have gotten this far, but after about page 250 – I started skimming just to get to the end and find out whodunit. This particular author has a habit of throwing the killer in at the last moment and it’s someone we’ve never heard of before! If that happens, on top of all this superfluous information, this book is going to hit a wall, hard.

When you’re writing a mystery novel, please, please write tight. We don’t care about the detectives ex-wife’s nieces cat – unless the cat killed someone. In this book, the author keeps mentioning one of the characters suffers from IBS – why? I wish I knew – it has zero to do with the plot. Maybe she suffers from the malady herself, or read an article about it or ….who cares?

Write tight and you’ll keep your reader biting her nails and turning pages.