How to Write a Murder Mystery: Characters by Bryan Hallett
Crime fiction in general and murder
mystery in particular is a popular staple of bookshops, theatre and
television drama, and is a genre often tackled by new writers. This
article is written from the standpoint of someone who writes mysteries
for theatre performance, but the lessons and techniques can be applied
to any media.
However you wish to present your mystery, there are at least three
vital elements to a ripping mystery: characters and plot. So often the
budding writer gets so bogged down in developing a complex web of
intrigue that the all important element of character development is
missed entirely and consequently we hardly care what happens to them.
I strongly advise that a murder mystery, in what ever form, should
start with the development of characters who fit closely into the
environment you have chosen for your story. Plot will come later, and
actually flow from the characters you have created.
So, let's begin with the environment. Murder mysteries set in a 1930s
English mansion have been done, pardon the pun, to death, but there are
reasons for their popularity. For starters, this setting instantly
gives the writer a set of stock characters with whom the reader/watcher
will already be partly familiar. Secondly the confined setting often
means that the list of suspects is immediately obvious. I'm certainly
not advocating that you avoid such a setting, but there are hundreds of
other situations which can give rise to a similar set of conditions.
Consider, for example, a submarine, an office party, a medieval
banquet, an Antarctic expedition, a spaceship, a cruise ship, a town
council meeting - the list can go on and on.
Once you've picked your place you can easily begin to think of a series
of characters. Let's concentrate on the submarine for now to get an
idea of how this might work. We obviously need a captain, and let's add
a couple of officers and ratings for good measure. We shall want to
make the trip a little interesting along the way, so let's throw in a
mysterious passenger and his beautiful wife. We don't even need to name
our gallant crew at the moment - but we can begin to sketch in the
characteristics that can point the way to an interesting plot.
So then, our captain. He needs a bit of backstroke. Let's make him a
gruff old sea-dog who demands high standards and is nearing retirement.
He has a fear of water developed after his wife drowned in a pleasure
boat accident. We can go on this way with all of our major players, and
then the interesting part starts - working out their relationship with
other characters.
I usually do this by drawing a bubble diagram and connecting each
character to each of the others with an arrow describing their
relationship. For example:
Captain -----------> blames for death of his wife
----------> Officer 1.
Captain -----------> was once engaged to
-------------------> Beautiful wife.
Eventually we have a web of interconnections that begin to suggest a
framework for a story. Some of these interconnections may fall by the
wayside or be changed as we progress, but it's a good start.
Now go back to your characters and assign them names. If you are
planning a comical story these names could suggest their
characteristics (eg Captain Stable), or you may want something more
sombre. Add a few more notes on their character then you are ready to
begin on part 2 - the plot ...
About the Author
Bryan Hallett runs a successful Murder Mystery company, Murder To Measure, based in the South West UK. He has hosted dozens or murders himself and is still without a criminal record.