Writing Crime

Yesterday at Story Club, my young writers’ workshop at Thrive cafe, we investigated writing crime.

First we discussed memorable detectives, or detective pairs. Lil and Nedly of Sophie Green’s Potkins and Stubbs series are a pair that stand out to me. In this series the investigators are a little girl and ghost. Detective pairs can have complementary skills. In Potkins and Stubbs, the ghost becomes handy as he can walk through walls and spy on people. But he can’t pick anything up or interact with most humans — Lil has to do all that sort of work.

We went through some basics of a crime story.
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• Detective (a memorable, unique detective or pair)
• Setting (spooky settings create tension that can aid a mystery)
• Crime (what happened?)
• Criminal (who committed the crime and why — what was their motive?)

And of course what is the motive of the detective — why do they want to solve the crime?

Fantastic ideas exchanged in the group included two very intelligent pigeons who were stealing things, a mysterious woman in blue, an unlucky detective turning 13, a monster that is very good at hiding and a happiness-stealer who sneaks into dreams. 

One writer shared her idea of making suspicious characters to draw the reader away from the actual criminal.
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Though it was a hot, sunny day outside, I felt the chill a good mystery will bring. Better than ice cream!

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