Hallie's going on about what makes us stop reading

HALLIE EPHRON: Last weekend I had the great pleasure of giving a talk at CrimeCONN 2025, a day-long mystery lovers' conference at the wonderful Ferguson Library in Stratford, CT, and sponsored by the New York chapter of Mystery Writers of America.

My talk: "DEADLY DOZEN: How not to shoot yourself in the foot writing a mystery novel."

Here's me, revving up the crowd with the still sturdy Detection Club Oath, coined in 1930 by Golden Age British mystery writers who included G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers.

In the process of preparing for my talk, I unearthed an article ("What makes me stop reading a mystery") that I wrote in 2009 for (the sadly now defunct) THE WRITER magazine. As part of my research for that piece, I'd interviewed our wonderful Boston area mystery bookseller Kate Mattes, mystery reader/reviewer and librarian Lesa Holstine, St. Martin's Minotaur editor Kelley Ragland, and literary agent Janet Reid.

So pause for a moment and think of the mystery novels you've started, read a chapter or maybe two, and then set the book aside. What made you abandon it: Reasons?

Here's some of the reasons the experts I interviewed said they stop reading:
1. Taking too long to get going. "That doesn't mean there has to be a murder right away but I have to be interested enough to get to the murder." (Kate Mattes)
2. A main character who doesn't actively solve the mystery. "I have to care what happens to the main character." (Lesa Holstine)
3. Too much introductory material, background information, or one-by-one introductions to the main characters complete with description. "A savvy writer jumps right into things and feathers in the necessary information as she moves forward." (Kelly Ragland)
4. A dull narrator's voice. "Voice and character can keep me reading even if nothing is happening." (Janet Reid)

What would you add to (or strike from) the list?

A peek inside the sausage factory - What we're writing

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Welcome to What We’re Writing week!

Recently I put together materials for a class I gave for the Writers Digest Mystery and Thriller Writers Conference. (I get to do it via Zoom from the comfort of my new desk chair!) I was talking about one of my favorite topics: character-driven plotting.

I usually start off quoting what I once heard Walter Mosley say. It went something like this:

STORY is what happened. PLOT is the order in which it’s revealed to the reader

I’m still chewing on his words. I think this is what he means…

STORY in a mystery novel is the crime: what led up to the crime  (sometimes years or generations earlier), what the villain and suspects did and why. The pieces get revealed in dribs and drabs as the sleuth discovers them. It’s kind of like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that has no edges, the reader putting the pieces in place along with the sleuth.

PLOT is more about the sleuth’s journey. How they get involved in the investigation, why they care about the outcome, what they discover, what they discover about themselves, and how the investigation challenges and changes them. It's told sequentially.

That's one of the reasons why mystery novels are so hard to write: there are TWO stories. The investigation (the sleuth and their associates figure out what happened), told sequentially. The crime itself (what led up to it, what happened, who did it, and why), revealed as the sleuth puts the pieces together.

So… it’s complicated! And hopefully when you read one of our novels, you will be blissfully unaware of the two stories we’re trying to tell while keeping you bamboozled and finally gobsmacked when all is revealed.

Are you a fan of puzzling mysteries or do you prefer the adrenaline rush of a thriller, where you know who the villain is early on, and goal becomes beating the clock and keep the bad thing from happening again.