The “cozy mystery” genre fascinates me, as I’m always impressed when authors keep me guessing right until the end, so I asked author Sally Carpenter to explain how she writes this genre. Here’s what she said ….

“I write cozies, a subgenre of mysteries with little or no foul language, no graphic violence or sex and featuring an amateur sleuth. Mysteries are strong on structure: the clues must be laid out in an orderly way so that the solution “plays fair” with the reader and is reasonable and supported by the clues. The ending can’t arrive as a bolt from the blue or a sudden hunch.

Along the way the writer strews red herrings, which are distractions to lead the reader to suspect the wrong person and not guess the solution too early. The term comes from an old practice in hunting, where smelly fish were dragged across a path so that the tracking dogs couldn’t pick up the real scent.

In my writing, I generally finish an early draft and then go about to add in more clues and red herrings. In three of my books (I’ve written eight so far), I also changed the identity of the criminal, as the revelation came too early in the book. This, of course, necessitated a change in the clues and herrings.

My most recent mystery, The Highland Havoc Caper, features Sandy Fairfax, a 39-year-old former pop star who is restarting his career and trying to spend more time with his children. He’s divorced, and the ex has custody. In this book, his teenaged son, Chip, helps him with the current mystery.

Sandy and Chip find a body inside a castle. They run to get help, but when they return, the body has vanished. Nobody will believe their story or look for the corpse. I had to get Sandy back inside the castle so he could look for clues, but he and Chip had been told not to return. What to do?

Sandy’s an actor, so I got the idea that he’s offered a job as a guest star on a TV show that’s filming inside the castle. Presto! Problem solved, plus it added the spine of the story. In all of my Sandy books, he’s working in an entertainment job. Plus, the gig gave him access to a raft of new characters and suspects that otherwise wouldn’t appear.

The TV show happens to be Chip’s favorite program. He wants to meet April Dancer, the 19-year-old star of the show. An early draft had April’s mother, who is divorced and making a play for Sandy with the idea he could help her daughter’s career. April is going after Sandy as well as a father figure.

When finished, the draft was too long. How to cut the book? I questioned the need for Mrs. Dancer. In my previous book (The Notorious Noel Caper), some women were after Sandy to future their standing in a beauty pageant. The troupe of women throwing themselves on my protagonist was getting repetitive.

Also, it made no sense for Mrs. Dancer to be on the studio lot with her daughter. In California, minors are required to have a parent or guardian present when they’re acting. But I’d established April as an adult to avoid anything unseeming in her acting scenes with Sandy. And having both April and her mother go after Sandy was awkward.

So, I dropped the mother character altogether. I gave some of the mother’s lines to April. I developed April into a stronger character, one who thought she was in control of her destiny. Instead of her looking up to Sandy, she was now after his son, and Sandy didn’t want his boy dating an older, more world-wise woman who was constantly in the press.

In developing the clues and herrings, I changed the relationship of two characters. In early drafts, the showrunner (producer) of the show and the director were good friends. Then I put an element of conflict between them, in that the showrunner believed that the director was having an affair with his wife. This turned up the heat on some otherwise blah dialogue.

My books are fluid. When starting, I know the ending and some stops along the way, but other points subject to change. I plan to be more deliberate with my plotting in my next book—part of my Psychedelic Spy series—to avoid the frustration and rewrites I faced in Highland. Yet I’m sure I’ll have some pleasant surprises along the journey.”

 

For more information about Sally Carpenter’s books and to download free stories, go to her website, http://sandyfairfaxauthor.com.