Tips for creating page-turning mysteries

Let’s start at the beginning. And I mean the very beginning of your novel … the first few pages.

A mystery or hook isn’t enough to start your book off. It must go hand-in-hand with sympathy. Whether or not they realise it, a reader wants to care about the main character. They need to feel sorry for them somehow. So you must provide a glimpse of the thing in a character’s life that drives them, or keeps them down, or wounds them, or that they struggle with, or that thing they really, really want. But within that, there needs to be things left unsaid. Now that we are starting to care about this character, we want to know more … but we’re not going to get it all at once. We must keep turning pages for that.

On the flip side, sympathy isn’t always enough to pull a reader forward. In some books it is, and there are many writers who have done this very well. But if you combine that with an element of mystery, with something hinted at but not explained, something the reader realises they don’t yet know, you will have a beginning so powerful, the reader will be hooked in just a few pages.

At every moment in my novels, I ask myself: What would make the reader turn the page? I make sure there are unanswered questions, pending drama, worry and wonder. This is especially important at the end of every chapter. Chapters are like taking a tea break in your mind. If there’s not enough to pull you back in, a reader will take that mental tea break and may never come back again.

Let’s take a murder mystery, for instance. The mystery thread of “Who killed the Mrs Winthrop” isn’t enough. That might get you so far, but it’s not going to last. You need to throw in other mystery threads. Your subplots are a great way to thicken up the unanswered questions and the intrigue, such as “What is in the detective’s past that is clashing with this case?” “Why is the chief inspector trying to bury some of the facts?” “What is Zanthia Zool hiding in her basement and why?” “Who is sending the detective photos of his ex-girlfriend and why?” Maybe all the subplots’ intrigues are actually part of the main mystery in the end, or maybe what seems a subplot is actually the main story in a final twist, but keep that from the reader so that it feels like a whole lot more going on.

I once read a romance book from a very well-known and successful historical romance writer where the entire mystery thread was who was illegally smuggling goods into the cove from France and what that had to do with a strange snuffbox someone seemed bent on stealing. The 1700s heroine and the man she was falling in love with would go into an inn, ask questions of the innkeeper, turn up nothing, and then we’d be back to the romance bit. Then we’d be reminded of the mystery, so they’d go ask someone else some questions, and turn up nothing. And I mean nothing. It even got to the point where she was summarising the scene in a line or two such as, “While they were there, they talked to the innkeeper but he didn’t know anything.”

There were no new clues to follow, no growing mysteries, no more questions bubbling up, no subplots such as “What was Male Love Interest hiding?” Or even “Why did Female Heroine not want to fall for Male Love Interest?” Just the mystery of the smugglers and snuffbox. The plot kind of went: smugglers & snuffbox – investigate – no new information – romance; investigate original mystery – no new information – romance. Round and round. I assume the writer thought the romance would be enough to keep me going and that the mystery was just a great vehicle for getting the two to work together. Instead, I felt that the thin, evolving mystery hindered the romance bits. As a reader, I carried irritation into every scene I read, and that meant that all I felt was annoyed at the romance. I got to the point where I was wondering why the writer bothered to tell me they’d chased down another lead to another dead end. I’d think, “So? Maybe tell me when they find something instead.” Even if they had uncovered the merest sliver of a clue or new information or something else to investigate each time, it might have saved this plot.

If you have one thin mystery and that mystery never evolves into bigger and bigger, and more and more seemingly divergent issues, and if investigations don’t turn up at least a snippet of a new clue, and you think it will carry a reader through, it will do the opposite. They will get irritated. They may not realise why they are irritated or can’t seem to get into that book. Some people will read to the end because that’s who they are. Some will take that mental tea break and never come back.

There comes a natural point in a novel when a mystery must be revealed and questions must be answered. If you keep stretching that mystery out, a reader will start to notice your heavy hand on the plot and find it contrived. Not only that, but a reader’s emotions can only stretch so far. They need some sort of relief. Here is what I found really works: Have several hooks and mysteries and unanswered questions going, and reward your reader with little answers along the way.

One of the big mysteries in my book, Bloodline: Alliance is who the group of strangers are that the main character, Shenna, seems to have fallen in with. The strange raven-haired woman who disappeared oddly in the night in the first chapter especially interests Shenna because something seems to revolve around that woman somehow and Shenna cannot seem to get a hold of what it is. She knows it’s dangerous, she knows it’s central to the group of travellers, and she knows that somehow it’s colliding with Shenna’s own secrets. Shenna knows she has to either flee these dangerous people or find out answers. Fate makes that decision for her. You find out halfway through the book a lot of the answers to the mystery of the raven-haired woman, but while that is satisfying, there are so many, many more questions by that point, and the reader has to keep reading. What is the main character, Shenna, hiding and why? What exactly is the mission of the very odd group and why aren’t they divulging to her what it is, now that she knows other great and terrible truths. And that’s just for starters.

At any point when you give an answer to a mystery, especially a big one, remind the reader somehow of all or at least some of what they don’t know. A reader is going to experience a sense of satisfaction and relief at the point they have an answer. You don’t want them being so satisfied, there’s nothing to make them turn a page. Remind them of what they don’t know, and preferably remind them BEFORE you reveal the answers to one of the impending questions. If that’s not always possible, remind them immediately after. For example:

“She sat on the log by the fire watching their faces as they spoke. If what they had just said was the truth, then why did the strange one, John, disappear the other night? It didn’t make sense. And what was it they still weren’t telling her? She could tell they were choosing their words carefully and stepping around something. There was just enough of an edge to their words to stop her from sharing her own secrets. She was certain that if she revealed it, they would kill her.”

It doesn’t have to be a character sitting mulling over the questions. It can be a scene you create specifically that either raises a new question or reminds the reader of questions they haven’t had answered yet. A new murder? A strange disappearance? Overhearing two characters having a fight where unusual words were said? Sighting a shadowy figure down an alley? A question that makes everyone suddenly inexplicably awkward? You get to have fun making up something that works for you.

As I mentioned, one of the major mysteries in Bloodline: Alliance is who the raven-haired woman really is, and what her secret mission is. But that is not all. There is something strange about all the other travelling companions too. In fact, all of the travelling companions who join them are hiding secrets of their own. Those secrets are related, but a reader may not know that until much later. They are keeping their identity a secret too for the same reasons, but it throws up another facet of the mystery. And then there is the odd way everyone stares at the raven-haired woman when she brusquely questions the main character – Shenna – and challenges Shenna’s lies. Why are they all startled by the questions? What’s going on? Or why did that raven-haired woman suddenly disappear in the middle of the night after a strange conversation? What was that all about? And is someone chasing her? Or are they chasing the others? And why does the whole group skip around some conversations when Shenna is around? Where is the party heading and why aren’t they divulging the location? And what is it Shenna accidentally saw one night when she shouldn’t have? These are all questions around the same mystery, but look how many questions there are and chances for intriguing conversations and intriguing scenes. If I’d just kept repeating that the raven-haired woman had a secret and Shenna wanted to know what it was, you’d start to get annoyed at how far I was stretching that mystery out (“milking it” as they say). And those are just the mysteries around the raven-haired one. Shenna’s secrets are far, far bigger with facet after facet. And everybody’s secrets are colliding, creating tension, conflicts, drama, confusion.

Keep some of your hooks, unanswered questions and unresolved conflict going until the end. BUT: They don’t have to have started from the beginning. If you keep tumbling mystery upon mystery, and answering a few as you go along, then the mystery that keeps you going until the end, might in fact have come in halfway through. Or even towards the end. Be wary, though, of bringing in something at the last quarter of the novel that becomes the mystery, tensions or conflict taking the reader to the climax. If that is the way the book goes, do it well. In my novel Sacrifice, by the chapter before the climax, you know the answer to every question except one: how on earth can this possibly have a happy ending and how can it possibly all wrap up? By this stage, to pull off that climax, you have to have a deep love for the characters and care about them emotionally. If not, the climax would be an anti-climax. Of course you’d read the last chapter of a plot like that anyway, but it would be disappointing if it was just a case of knowing there’s going to be a punch-up or shootout and then it will all be solved, or the police are going to come in at the last minute and save them. In other words, have so many loose threads, so many unresolved problems, and such a great and overwhelming crisis for the characters, the climax is still the most powerful part of the book even though there are no mysteries left.

Imagine the diamond shape lying on its side. <> Start with a few simple but really intriguing hooks – the tip of the diamond shape. Now thicken up those questions, let them get wider and wider and wider. Answer some questions, yes, but have more and more unanswered questions so that in the middle of the book, there are so many of them, the reader is in this for the long-haul. They are well and truly hooked. Now you have a choice. If you can keep that level of intensity until the climax, go for it and I look forward to reading that book one day. It will be amazing! (Write to me and tell me the title and I’ll look you up.) But, mostly you will find that in the latter half, the mysteries get solved bit by bit, narrowing in and pointing to the climax. But something has to keep going until that climax. You must not satisfy my questions halfway through the book or even three-quarters through the book. Keep a reader going as close to the end as you possibly can, and then let momentum and love for the characters carry you along. By this stage, the most important question should be: How can this possibly wrap up and resolve? Your story should be so complicated, the issues so big, the reader can’t possibly imagine how this can resolve. If you can do that, and you have foreshadowed your climax elsewhere in the novel (that is, you’re not pulling out some random magic trick at the end that saves everybody), then your climax will blow them away.

How you do it is, of course, your choice as long as you don’t answer all my burning questions halfway through the book. I once read a fantasy novel for children that was so powerful in its unanswered questions, pages kept turning themselves until halfway through the book when all the answers were given. All of them. That doesn’t mean the action was resolved. There was still plenty of action, but the great unanswered questions, the things the main character wasn’t being told, the strange occurrences that weren’t adding up, the deeply intriguing things, were all answered and explained. I think the author thought that I would care enough about the characters by then, or would be caught in the drama and want to keep reading. The questions don’t need to get bigger and bigger towards the end. They can narrow in like the top of that diamond pointing towards the climax. But halfway through the book is the very wrong time to tell me everything. When it came to that children’s fantasy novel, I put the book down for a tea break and never came back. Even years later, I haven’t finished it.

This probably all feels like a disparate collection of tips and tricks. Perhaps you’re wondering how you’re going to pull it all together. Pulling it all together into an original plot idea and a draft of your novel is the one thing that comes with practice and experience. And it is honed through rewrites and edits. I can’t teach you that. Not here in this blog, at least. It is something you have to do yourself and figure out for your specific plot and then later show to a helpful content editor or writing tutor. However, I can show you how I did it so you can see it in action and maybe that will trigger some ideas for your own novels. If you haven’t already, try reading Bloodline: Alliance and Bloodline: Covenant for a more epic story, a journey novel with ancient foes, battles, swords and chases, and many races and places. It’s more of a traditional fantasy but with plenty of intrigues and a very deep, human element and story behind it all. Or perhaps you prefer a more intimate and very moving story set in one city in a Three Musketeers-type era where politics and schemes are a person’s greatest weapon. If a smaller cast of very memorable characters in a less traditional fantasy setting seems more your thing, try Sacrifice and Redemption.