Editing the Mystery Novel.

I'm editing Dog Show Detective, a novel aimed at kids between 8-10yrs about 11yr old Kitty who takes her Miniature Schnauzer to dog shows and solves mysteries. This week I started the editing process. Okay, I skimmed the manuscript and made a coupla' notes. It's the festive season, time has been short.

Last week I told you Kitty's dog would go from being called Shakespeare to Spade because it had more significance to the story. This week I've found a few more necessary changes.

Sometimes ideas come to us after we've already written a scene, so I make notes in my notepad. For each manuscript I dedicate a MS Word document for chapters, another for notes and ideas, a Plot Builder file to see how the manuscript is shaping together and a handy-dandy notepad (tip I learned from Steve in Blue's Clues), to jot down ideas when out and about. I find ideas and corrections come when I don't plan them, so the notepad gets filled and the doc file stays empty.

I was halfway through the Dog Show Detective mystery before I realised I only had one suspect. Not much of a mystery then. Instead of going back, I ploughed on and wrote in more characters as if they had been there from the start. Now in edit time I need to find ways to believably introduce them and start to drop hints about motives.

Motives act as clues, they tell us who we can suspect and who to dismiss. A character's motive must be realistically weighted for the crime, for example, most people won't commit murder these days just because they've fallen out of love with their spouse. Divorce seems a much easier solution. BUT, if the person stood to loose a lot financially, they were dedicated to a religion that forbids divorce, they are scared their spouse will beat or kill them if they try to leave, or if they're having an affair with their under-aged student and their wife has discovered it, then you have a strong enough motive.

Writing-World has a great post about dropping clues into your mystery narrative and explains the different types of clues you can use. Another great site is Perpetual Prose on Crafting Twists and Dropping Clues.

You will need to have several characters with strong motives for the crime, which is where I originally went wrong with my manuscript. Once I placed in a few more characters with various motives, I discovered two chapters from the end that my original suspect would not be the perpetrator at all! I love it when our narratives surprise us.  :-)

For newbies to mystery I strongly recommend reading and dissecting Agatha Christie novels, she had several formulas that worked well. The Christie Mystery is a site that has some very helpful tips for mystery writing, including a post on 'The Least Likely Suspect', one of my favourite Christie novels had ALL the suspects commit the crime.

Point of view is important for a crime novel, the most popular being limited third person (that's what I have chosen) or first person. The reason for this is because in most mysteries you don't want the reader to know the answers before the detective. You can experiment with different styles if you are little bit clever ;-). Check out Sylvia Dickey Smith Books if you need the different point of view possibilities explained.

This may sound repetitive, but reading mysteries is a great way to work out how to craft a mystery. I've been reading a couple of kids' mysteries such as Trixie Beldon, Nancy Drew and The 39 Clues (1st book by Rick Riordan). This has shown me another flaw in my narrative. I've focused on setting the story up to mislead and eventually lead to the solution, I've tried to have fun and exciting chapters, but I haven't had enough DANGER. 

Kids want action, they want their mystery fast paced and exciting, they want to worry about the characters. Don't underestimate your young reader, they learn quickly how to spot patterns. I'm often informed by kids that they know the main character will survive, so they don't worry so much about them, but when secondary characters are in danger, that can be scary because you just don't know how necessary they might be. I'm going to write in a few more near misses for Kitty's friends, family and even Kitty's dog.

Kids also love stereotype characters, Scooby-Doo almost always included a scary, old grounds-keeper that would seem really mean, but not end up being the villain.

Okay, so lots of work to do for me this week - I have to actually get onto making changes to my manuscript and I'll be reading How to Write Killer Fiction by Carolyn Wheat and Youdunit Whodunit by Nicola Furlong.

Time to edit - let's turn that good idea into a great narrative.

Editing - What comes after the 1st Draft?

During November I wrote a 60k first draft of a YA fantasy novel, The Costume Maker, a tale about a group of teens thrust into a magical world of fairies, gypsies, dragons and danger. My plans were to spend December editing, so first I needed to spend some time researching approaches for revising a novel. That's what I've been doing this week.

Here's what I've found so far and some nifty resources:

Universally across my research I came across a common theme for step one. Put your finished first draft aside and don't read it for a period of time. 

James Scott Bell calls this 'letting it cool' in Plot and Structure (I liked this book so much, I ordered Revision and Self-Editing in the same series and am keenly awaiting its arrival). The idea is to gain an objective approach when you read through your novel for editing.

If you're a visual person like me, you see your story unfold in your mind as you write it. This has its benefits and can create its own obstacles. Seeing your story may mean that you don't get stuck for plot ideas, but it could also mean you miss describing things that you see, leaving gaps in your plot.

By putting your manuscript aside for a few weeks or longer, you can read your words with fresh eyes, allowing you to be more critical of the narrative, structure, language, characters, etc.

Even though I'm not ready to revise The Costume Maker just yet, I printed out my manuscript anyway. There is a certain elation that comes with seeing your writing in print, the thickness of all those pages, your creation. This is your reward for finishing.

In Word by Word, Anne Lamott (I downloaded the audio-book from iTunes) says you should never think of printing your drafts as wasting paper. Value your words, they deserve it, you deserve it.

Before November, I was working on my novel Dog Show Detective, so in a 'here's one I prepared earlier' moment, I'll be working on revising my first draft of that novel this month.

The best advice I found was from Christopher Vogler in Using Myth to Power Your Story (also available from iTunes). Vogler suggests thinking about the story you've written and coming up with one word that it's about. This is harder than it first seems, surely we wrote our stories with a theme in mind? I'm pretty sure I started with a premise for Dog Show Detective, but lost it somewhere in the writing process. I can't decide if it should be 'Loyalty', 'Mystery' or 'Identity', I suspect it may be as lame as 'Dogs' at this stage.

You probably have more than one word that your novel is about, but you could prioritise those theme words. Next you have to decide the premise surrounding that word. If your word is 'Love', is your premise 'Love conquers all', or 'Love is blind'? Then using that premise as a guide you go through your story scene by scene and make sure each one relates to that theme.

Using this technique, I have already realised a major change that I want for Dog Show Detective, if I use the word Mystery as a theme word and 'Things are never what they first seem' as a premise, I've decided my sidekick's name must change. Shakespeare is Kitty's Miniature Schnauzer that she enters in dog shows and together they solve mysteries. Now Shakespeare's name will change. My favourites so far are Spade, Poe or Doyle.

Another way of approaching your edit is to look at your plot structure, do you have an introduction of the characters, climb of action, climax and resolution? Or break your plot lines down to the individual character's plot chart, visit How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book to hear more about this.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing for Young Adults has a complete section on revising and suggests using a critique group or writer's group. This book suggests sample questions to ask when getting people to review your work as well as providing overall areas to review in your narrative.

If you can't join a local writer's group, you can find critique groups online. I sometimes use Critique Circle, you upload your chapters for review and critique other people's work in return.

When revising your manuscript, keep in mind who you are writing for. Dog Show Detective is aimed at young novel readers, about 8-10, so I write the story specifically for what my 8yr old daughter would enjoy. If you write for kids, then let kids critique your manuscript, then you'll know what works and what doesn't.

And as I said last week, read what you write. I'm reading young girl's detective novels, like Phillip Pullman's Ruby in The Smoke and  Julie Campbell's Trixie Beldon series.