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Writing Prompts

70 Mystery Writing Prompts That’ll Keep Your Readers Hooked

From whodunits to unsolved crimes, here are over 70 mystery writing prompts that will keep your readers hooked from beginning to end.

The mystery genre is all about gathering clues and evidence to solve a crime or mystery of some sort. Common mysteries to solve may include murder, kidnappings, theft and any other unsolved crimes. The thing that makes a mystery story so appealing is that no one knows who the true culprit is until the very end of the story. And the big reveal at the end is always shocking to the reader. The secret to a good mystery lies in the plot twist . You have to be two steps ahead of your readers – Get inside the head of your readers and think, “Who would your readers think the main culprit is?” Then switch it around, and pick someone who is highly unlikely to be the real baddie.

You can pick a random prompt from our mystery writing prompts generator below to practice your plot twist skills on:

In a mystery novel, characters are a huge part of the mystery. Common characters may include:

Street smart detective – They ask all the right questions, but are the answers to be trusted?
Bent cop – Known for planting fake evidence at crime scenes.
Mysterious guy – No one knows anything about them, and therefore they could be an easy suspect in the case.
The scapegoat – The one everyone is blaming.
The obvious suspect – All clues point to this person.
The unobvious suspect – No real evidence against this person, but somehow they link to the crime in question.

When writing your mystery story think about the characters you would include carefully before diving in. We even recommend creating character profiles for each character, and maybe even a mind map to show their connection to the crime in question.

Take a look at this collection of the best mystery books for teens for some more ideas!

70 Mystery Writing Prompts

List of over 70 mystery writing prompts, from unsolved murder cases to items that vanished into thin air:

The richest man on Earth has a hidden vault filled with millions of dollars, expensive jewellery and gems. One night he goes to add to his collection of gems and notices a sentimental piece of jewellery missing.
One-by-one random things keep on going missing in your house. First your watch, then a teapot. Who is taking them and why?
One of your classmates mysteriously stops coming to school. It’s been nearly 2 weeks since you last saw them. What could have happened to them?
A police officer finds a dead body at a barber’s shop in town. The cause of death was drowning. No one knows how the body got there and who did it.
A person takes a game of snakes and ladders too literally. In random locations around the city, snakes and ladders have been placed. Where do those ladders go? Why are snakes placed in these random places? Can you solve this strange mystery?
You wake up in a warehouse with no memory of how you got there. The warehouse office is filled with newspaper clippings of missing people from the past 20 years. Who is the kidnapper and why are you in this warehouse?
Last night a series of supermarkets and warehouses across the city were robbed. The thief or thieves only steal toilet paper. Can you solve this case?
Meet Benji, the cat detective. Benji is a feisty feline who is on a mission to capture the great tuna can thief.
At exactly 7.08 pm last night a scream was heard from 59 Pebble Lane. The neighbours knocked but no one was home. Later that night, the police arrived at approximately 2.13 am to find a cold dead body on the floor in a pool of spilt tea.
You are a reporter for the Imagine Forest Times newspaper, you are writing an article on the missing bird eggs in the local forest.
Imagine you are a security guard. It’s your first night shift at the local art Museum. The next morning a priceless painting goes missing, and you are blamed. You need to prove your innocence before you are sent to prison, but how?
Write a time travel mystery story where the main character keeps going back in time to find out who really murdered their parents.
You and your friends go to the fairground. You decide to ride the carousel. Round and round you go, and then the ride stops. When it stops you notice one of your friends is suddenly missing. Where did they go? (See our list of writing prompts about friendship for more ideas.)
The main character in your story is caught red-handed with the missing jewel in their hand. But did they really steal this jewel?
Write a diary from the perspective of a paranoid person who thinks their neighbour is stealing from them.
Write down an action scene where the main character trails the secondary character to an abandoned warehouse. What do you think will happen next?
Someone has been stealing mobile phones at your school. You think you know who it is, so you set up a try to catch the thief.
A bent police officer has been planting false evidence at crime scenes for years. Who are they protecting and why?
Write a script between two characters who are meeting in secret to discuss some new evidence in a murder trial.
Imagine you are a detective interviewing a suspect in the crime of jewellery theft. Write down some questions that you might ask the suspect. If you have time, you can also write the possible answers from the suspect’s point of view.
You discover a note in your bag. It says, “I know what YOU have done!” – Who can have left this note, and what are they talking about?
Write a story about a young police officer who is solving the murder case of his best friend from high school. The twist is that this police officer turns out to be the murderer.
For over 10 years, your twin sister was missing. But there she is – Suddenly walking in the middle of the street. Where has she been? What happened to her?
Imagine you are an investigator examining the scene of a murder crime. What types of clues would you look out for? Can you make a list of at least 10 possible clues you might find?
A police car is chasing a potential suspect in a murder trial. Halfway through the chase, the police car disappears. The suspect slows down their car, and wonders, “What happened? Why did they stop coming after me?”
You come home from school one day and notice that your mother’s things are gone. Your first thought is that she left you and your father. But the truth is that she was kidnapped by someone.
A mysterious person has stolen all your teddy bears and is holding them for ransom somewhere. Each day you get a cryptic riddle. If you can solve each riddle you will receive one teddy bear back each time.
It’s the year 3,000. Your main character is a lawyer for a robot. They must prove this robot’s innocence in a human murder trial. (See this list of sci-fi writing prompts for more inspiration.)
Someone keeps stealing textbooks from your school. One day you go to school and see a huge statement art piece outside the school made from the stolen textbooks. Can you find out who did this?
Cinderella has turned into a detective. She needs to solve the case of the stolen glass slippers. After all those glass slippers are super rare.
The main character in your story must prove their innocence in a murder trial. How would they do this? What evidence would they need?
The main character in your story discovers that their brother is the real killer. They then try to destroy all evidence linked to their brother to protect them.
“Poppy! Poppy! Where are you, buddy?” Mindy searched for her pet Labrador everywhere. But she was nowhere to be seen. It turns out all the dogs in town have been missing since last night. What could have possibly happened to them?
Someone has been leaving embarrassing photographs of various people all over town. Can you track down this person? Why are they posting these photos?
Write a mystery story titled, ‘Piece-by-Piece’ about a jigsaw puzzle thief who is stealing random puzzles pieces.
You notice some muddy footprints leading into a thick forest at your local park. You follow this trail of footprints to a secret hatch in the woods. The door of the hatch has been left open. When you go inside you discover something shocking.
Your dog digs up an old lunchbox in your backyard. Inside the lunchbox, you find a key, an address and some old newspaper clipping of missing people. You think you can solve this case of the missing people by just visiting that address. But things get a little more complicated…
This is a mystery story about a boy named Billy who’s home alone and is playing with a toy truck when he finds a strange box. His mother, a lady with a past, is suspicious of this mysterious box, so she calls the police. Billy’s mother is a detective, and they find that the box is really a trap, and Billy is kidnapped.
Write a crime mystery story about how a little girl’s dream of becoming a scientist led to her death. Why would anyone murder a young girl who wants to be a scientist? How did this happen?
A small-town sheriff gets caught up in the biggest robbery in history. When over a million dollars just vanish into thin air, people are quick to blame the shifty-eyed sheriff from out of town. But is he really the culprit in this crime?
When Sara was a young girl she was kidnapped by a strange man and woman who took care of her. But now Sara wants to know what happened to her real parents. Are they still alive? Are they still looking for her?
The clock is ticking. Somewhere in the city, a group of hostages are locked up. With every hour that goes by, one hostage will be killed. The main character, a street-smart detective must solve the clues to find the location of these hostages in time.
A police officer finds himself in a very unusual situation. It is just before 6 pm on a Friday night when police were called to a disturbance in the street. The call came from a man who was allegedly threatening a woman with a knife. The man was arrested at 6.05 pm and taken to the police station. However, it was later revealed that the woman left at home has been murdered by someone else, but who?
A murder mystery party takes a dark turn when one of the guests is murdered for real.
Write a mystery story titled, ‘Who Stole My Homework?’ The main character’s A* worthy English essay is stolen by someone, but who?
Use this sentence as inspiration: Inspector Robins pulls out his notebook and writes down two words: Green fingers.
“10 car windows broken in 10 days! What does it all mean? What does it mean?” Exclaimed Detective Riley.
During a stop and search, a police officer finds a dead body in the boot of a car. But is the car driver really to blame?
A lost bracelet ends up in your best friend’s locker at school, along with other precious items. Your best friend is wrongly accused of stealing these items.
One girl must find her stolen prom dress before the prom. In the days leading up to the prom, more and more of her accessories for prom night are being stolen. Who is this thief?
Write a mystery thriller titled, “Come and Get It”. It’s about an arrogant criminal who is stealing sentimental items from each police officer in the state, He leaves these items in random locations in the city, along with a note that says: Come and get it!
Every night the car alarms for every car on your street turn on at exactly 2.03 am. why is this happening, and who is responsible?
A mysterious hacker has hacked into the city’s power grid. They have the power to on and off electricity whenever they want. Can you catch them before they do any more damage?
A secret admirer is leaving expensive gifts for your main character. At first, these gifts seem great, but then they soon take a dark twist (see our Valentine’s Day Prompts for more inspiration).
Your main character is at their senior prom. Dancing the night away. Suddenly the lights go off. Pitch darkness for a minute. When the lights come on, your best friend is gone. And there’s a message in red paint on the wall: You’re next!
Your teacher gives back your English assignment, and you got an F! Looking closer, you realise that this is not your assignment at all! The same starts happening in your other classes. Someone has been swapping your assignments – But who?
For the past few days, you have been receiving anonymous emails from someone. The emails are telling you not to be friends with him. You don’t take any of these emails seriously until the police come knocking on your door.
A family picnic at the park becomes unbearable when you open up the basket to discover every family members untold secrets.
You are at a Chinese restaurant with your family. It’s time to open up the fortune cookies. When your mother opens up her fortune cookie, it says: “One of your children has been very naughty!”. Then your father opens his cookie up, it says: “Who’s been sneaking around behind mommy’s and daddy’s back?” All eyes at the table are on you. But what did you do?
Your main character is a bent cop. Trying to manipulate the course of justice, and helping real criminals get away with murder. One day, someone plants evidence that gets this bent cop arrested for a murder they did not commit.
Write down a scene between two characters. In this scene, the ‘real’ criminal is trying to convince a detective that someone else is guilty of the crime of stealing from a church.
There are three potential suspects in the murder case of Phillip Green. You are the lead detective on this case. What questions would you ask these suspects to find the real murderer? Make a list of at least 10 questions you may ask.
A health inspector arrives at a vegan restaurant to discover rotten vegetables, and raw, old meat. The owners know nothing about this and believe someone planted this as sabotage. Who can have sabotaged the vegan restaurant?
Write a short mystery story for kids titled, ‘Why is the sky blue?’ One child’s curiosity about the sky leads them to discover a secret playground in the park.
Your main character is a news reporter who is convinced that the killer of Rosie Moore is still out there. They know that the police have convicted the wrong person for this heinous crime. Can your main character find the real killer before the wrong person is sentenced to life in prison?
Someone has been replacing all shampoos around town with a hair removal solution. When half the town’s hair starts falling out, it is up to you, a top detective to solve this crime.
Write a mystery story set in the future where a secret cyber group called the ‘Merry Man’ are hacking the bank accounts of rich people and giving this money to the poor. Your main character is a police detective trying to hunt the members of this cyber group down.
A mysterious person is playing a nasty game of hide and seek with you. They have kidnapped your friends and family members and hid them in various locations within the city. You have exactly 1 hour to find each person before something bad happens to them.
Someone has left a note in your locker at school. The note reads: Help me, please! You ignore this note, but more notes start appearing in your notebooks, bag and even at home. Until eventually you get a package through the mail. You open this package and scream…
Write an animal mystery tale about a dog who wants to find the original owner of a doll he found in the park.
Can you solve this bonus mystery prompt: Someone has been stealing socks from the locals at night. Who could this be and why would they be doing this? (See video prompt below for more ideas.)

Did you find these mystery writing prompts useful when writing your own story? Let us know in the comments below!

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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Best Crime and Mystery Writing Prompts of 2023

Krystal N. Craiker

Readers love mystery stories because of the suspense, the puzzle, and the plot twists.

The mystery genre is a great genre to explore for writers who love writing suspense and enjoy learning about true crime.

Writing a crime or mystery novel can be a lot of fun, but it can be difficult to come up with fresh ideas.

Writing prompts are a great way to get your creative juices flowing. These writing prompts and story ideas can give you enough fodder for everything from a short story to a whole series of novels.

The great thing about writing prompts is they aren’t restrictive. The prompt will probably be unrecognizable by the end of your story because you changed it so many times.

Even if you stay true to the prompt, you can still write an original story. If you give five authors the same story idea, you will get five unique stories.

So, take these mystery writing prompts and make them your own.

Use them as inspiration and change them up. Write a whole novel based on one of them. Take bits and pieces from several prompts for something epic. Or just use them as writing exercises .

Historical Mystery Story Ideas and Prompts

Police procedural and detective writing prompts, cozy mystery writing prompts, general suspense thriller novel writing prompts, serial killer mystery writing prompts, how to use mystery prompts in writing.

Bootleggers in 1920s Chicago keep winding up dead. Two detectives must partner together to solve the murders. One detective has dedicated his life to ending bootlegging, as his father was a raging alcoholic. The other is a homicide detective who dabbles in bootlegging on the side.

In World War II, an army nurse goes missing in the Pacific Theater of Operations. The disappearance is written off as a defection by superior officers, so it’s up to her nurse friends to discover what happened.

A dead body appears at a noble’s house party in Regency England. No one claims to know who the victim is, which leads to two mysteries: who is it and whodunit?

A town in the Mughal Empire falls victim to a serial killer. The victims are all middle-aged mothers. A young woman, whose mother was the first victim, works with a military general to find and stop the murders.

King Louis XIV’s favorite virtuoso is found dead. He tasks a reluctant lieutenant with investigating everyone at Versailles to find and stop the killer. Every witness tells the lieutenant a different version of the murder because they all have something to hide.

Someone has kidnapped the daughters of two prominent figures from both sides of the Mexican Revolution in 1912. Both leaders send a detective to investigate the kidnappings. The two detectives are from rival sides of the revolution, but they must put aside their differences to find the missing girls.

A detective in the Orlando Police Department must investigate the mysterious deaths of three Disney World princesses. The detective hates children but now spends every day at the most kid-friendly place on earth.

A Scotland Yard detective is at risk of being fired for her reckless behavior. She’s sent to a remote village to investigate the disappearance of a local baker. None of her superiors care about the case, but she quickly finds herself in a dangerous game of cat and mouse with the killer—and no backup.

Coffee is delivered to the police station by an anonymous donor. One of the cups doesn’t have a name written in the cup. Instead, there’s a creepy note, and the cup is filled with something far more sinister than coffee.

A burnt-out police detective must work with his ex-wife, a renowned forensics expert, to solve the murder of a prominent member of the government.

A police officer is on a family vacation to an isolated mountain town with no active police department. When the owner of the lodge is found dead, and all the phone and internet lines are cut, it’s up to the officer to solve the case before the murderer takes another victim.

An investigative journalist believes that several high-profile thefts, spread over five decades, are related. The only person who believes them is a quirky small town sheriff.

An elderly small town librarian winds up dead in her own library. It appears to be from natural causes, but the day before she emails her most bookish patron with the subject line: Clue for my murder. The body of the email contains only a library call number for a book.

A star athlete on a full-ride scholarship and a studious aspiring scientist must solve a series of mysterious deaths in their dorms before their dream university is closed forever.

The grumpy owner of a local pub (who hates children) and a young girl from the local elementary school pair up to solve the disappearance of an elementary teacher who moonlights as a bartender.

A successful businessman returns to his coastal hometown for the holidays. After drinking spiked eggnog, he wakes up in the boat of his high school girlfriend, who is now a professional fisherwoman. He has no memory of the night before, but now he’s the prime suspect in a murder investigation. With the help of his ex, his overbearing mom, and his former chemistry teacher, he must work to clear his name.

The murder of the resort’s entertainment director rocks a peaceful resort town on a tropical island. No one particularly liked the victim, but the head maid and a quirky bellboy feel obligated to solve the murder to avoid losing guests and, therefore, hotel income.

An accountant has always believed that her mother died in a car crash. When her grandmother passes away, she finds a half-finished investigation in the old woman’s basement. Her grandmother suspected murder for almost two decades and never told a soul! She picks up her grandmother’s investigation to discover what really happened to her mom.

A sweet 90-year-old woman enters a police station and confesses to a series of murders spanning 70 years. The problem is she is fuzzy on the details due to her age—or is she? Detectives must investigate the murders as she remembers the names and locations of her murder victims.

Fed up with the bureaucracy and corruption of the criminal justice system, an assistant district attorney fakes their own death to enter the seedy underbelly of the organized crime world. They want to bring down the killers who keep getting away with murder—and their mysterious top boss.

A criminal psychologist helps profile an unknown murderer in a brutal triple homicide. But as she completes her profile, she notices some shocking similarities to her washed-up brother, who lives with their elderly father.

All over the country, people are dying of arsenic poisoning. They all had one thing in common, they took the same vitamins. An investigator from the Food and Drug Administration visits the manufacturer, only to find a sinister conspiracy that goes much deeper than just a few factory workers.

The office gossip winds up dead after a company retreat. Multiple people had a motive. The main character let their dark secret slip that weekend, and now they must solve the murder to avoid the truth getting out.

A series of bank heists occur on the same day in four different countries. The next week, several heads of crime organizations descend on Monaco. An Interpol agent must go undercover in the high-stakes world of organized crime and gambling to solve the mystery.

Prisoners keep winding up brutally murdered at a penitentiary. Several of the imprisoned serial killers are suspects. A federal investigator, with a hatred for even the most petty criminals, is sent to investigate the murders. He must work closely with inmates and learn that they are only human. Bonus: the serial killer is a prison staff member, not an inmate.

A serial killer terrorizes a major metropolitan area, but officials can find no common link between the victims except how they’re killed. When her sister is murdered, an Uber customer service representative takes matters into her own hands. The murderer is an Uber driver who saves addresses and waits months before returning for the victims to avoid suspicion.

Ten people, from across the country, wind up dead. They’re all killed in exactly the same way, and they all have a page from Shakespeare’s Complete Works pinned to their shirt. A detective pairs with a literature professor to solve the case before the Bard Killer can claim any more victims.

A series of murders occurs in the Midwest. All the victims fit the same profile: young with dyed hair. Every victim visited a busy truck stop the day they died.

Someone is murdering L.A. food truck owners, leaving only their charred remains behind. The protagonist is a forensic anthropologist who is married to a food truck owner.

The first victim enters a crowded store wearing a bomb. They are clearly under duress, but they steal a cheap item, only to be blown up remotely, causing many deaths. Organized crime and terror units investigate this, only for another victim to go in exactly the same way a few weeks later. By the third victim, it’s clear there’s a sadistic serial killer at play.

Using mystery prompts can help get your story flowing. It’s a great way to challenge yourself as a writer.

Prompts are open to interpretation, so it’s up to you to find the next great story within them.

Want to write your own spine-tingling mystery? Register for Crime Writers' Week, April 24-27.

Learn from bestselling authors like janice hallett, ajay chowdhury, and sophie hannah., sign up today. it's free register now.

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Krystal N. Craiker is the Writing Pirate, an indie romance author and blog manager at ProWritingAid. She sails the seven internet seas, breaking tropes and bending genres. She has a background in anthropology and education, which brings fresh perspectives to her romance novels. When she’s not daydreaming about her next book or article, you can find her cooking gourmet gluten-free cuisine, laughing at memes, and playing board games. Krystal lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband, child, and basset hound.

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50 Intriguing Mystery Story Ideas!

Mystery story ideas often follow a similar pattern. Early on, a dead body turns up, a valuable item goes missing, or a puzzle begs to be solved. The reader knows that by the end of the book, questions will have been answered, which is a comforting element in even the most gruesome murder mysteries.

This simple structure allows for endless creative and original variations. And ten different writers could take the same writing prompt here and write ten vastly different stories! I’ve been reading a lot of mystery novels lately — mostly cozy mysteries, not gritty crime novels, although I might enjoy those, too. That inspired me to write this list of prompts for mystery story ideas.

You can also use this list as an idea generator for free-writing. Whether you stumble across a story idea you love in the process, or you just get your creative writing juices flowing again, it’s so worth it.

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Although I had mystery novels in mind, some of these could become a subplot in a different fiction genre, from fantasy and romance (especially romantic suspense), to historical fiction and thrillers. (And you might also be interested in my list of 50 thriller plot ideas !)

Be sure to save the post for future reference (or pin it on Pinterest!)

Mystery Story Ideas

1. A woman asks a writer to write the story of her life. Then she goes missing.

2. Murder victims are found buried with some of their wordly goods, Viking style.

3. Three people close to the murder victim have confessed. Each of them swears they acted alone.

4. Notes and gifts from her “Secret Santa” at work take a strange turn.

5. It’s going to be a beautiful wedding at a beautiful destination, but two people in the wedding party have been murdered.

6. The creator of a high-tech prototype that will change an industry has gone missing.

7. Her parents believe her to be their biological child, but they all learn otherwise.

8. The dead woman’s wedding ring is found in a ditch forty miles away.

9. A museum conservator is restoring an old painting, and an X-ray reveals something shocking or mysterious painted or written in the layer beneath.

10. A sorority sister who bullied prospective pledges is found dead.

11. As a man researches his genealogy, he finds that ancestors from a few different generations and a few different countries made visits to the same remote place.

12. Someone replaced the woman’s contact lens solution with a damaging liquid. (This mystery story idea brought to you courtesy of a phobia of mine!)

13. He’s always been a faithful husband, but someone has planted false evidence of his having an affair.

14. A detective is hired for a high price to find a thief who stole something that doesn’t appear to have any real value.

15. Every unmarried lady at the ball wanted to dance with the duke, so it’s too bad he was found stabbed in the garden.

16. In the middle of a wilderness, someone finds an abandoned bunker with security cameras, powered by a generator.

17. The graves of historic figures are being robbed.

18. Clues to the mystery come to him in dreams, but nobody believes him.

19. Serial murders in cities in two different countries are very similar.

20. A man she didn’t know left her a valuable and unusual item in his will.

21. A writer researching his biography of a Golden Age movie star comes across something that makes him suspect that contrary to the official story, she was a murder victim.

22. The accidental death of this investigative reporter seems a little too convenient.

23. The murders all relate to common fears, such as public speaking, flying, and heights.

24. A woman wakes up with a headache and goes into work, only to learn that she’s been missing for a month.

25. Writers are being murdered at the mystery writers’ convention.

26. The painting must have been stolen from the museum in broad daylight, but the security cameras malfunctioned and no witnesses have come forward.

27. Three different guests at the Air BnB died later under mysterious circumstances.

28. A practicing witch or voodoo priestess is accused of murder.

29. The murders are re-enactments of famous murders in novels or movies.

30. He claims to be the rich man who was lost at sea two decades ago.

31. The inspector’s friend is murdered while he is talking on the phone to the inspector.

32. A dead body is found in an unclaimed piece of luggage at the airport.

33. He was murdered on his honeymoon on a cruise ship, and his new, much-younger bride was the only one on board who even knew him.

34. A woman who didn’t know she was adopted meets her twin sister, who gives her a dire warning.

35. One of the pies submitted to the state fair contest was poisoned.

36. The report of a celebrity’s death is false, but he dies soon after.

37. The murder victims all have the same tailor.

38. Who would kill the guest of honor at their 100 th birthday party?

39. The victim was found drowned in a whiskey barrel at the distillery.

40. A wife arranges a romantic “scavenger hunt” for her husband, but someone else changes a few of the clues.

41. The thief who steals rare books always leaves a sonnet behind. (As someone who’s written a few sonnets, I’m particularly fond of this mystery story idea, but you can think of all kinds of creative “calling cards” for criminals!)

42. The wrong body is in the casket at the visitation. No one knows who it is, or where the other body is.

43. The murders were definitely committed by a human, but resemble the attacks of wild animals.

44. After the woman returned the lost wallet, someone began stalking her.

45. The book she’s reading seems to be telling the story of her own life, though she doesn’t think she’s ever met the author.

46. A man who faked his own death must be found in time.

47. Someone in a villain costume and mask attempts to kill an actor at a fan convention. The actor is saved by a fan dressed as a superhero.

48. An Egyptian mummy, or what appears to be one, is found in an unlikely place.

49. A man is found murdered following a heated argument with several people on social media.

50. A body is found in the organic vegetable garden at a hippie commune.

Do you have some thoughts on mystery story ideas?

If so, I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

And if you want more inspiration, please check out my book 5,000 Writing Prompts ! It has 100 more mystery writing prompts in addition to the ones on this list, plus hundreds of other master plots by genre, dialogue and character prompts, and much more.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and happy writing!

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50 True Crime writing prompts

December 7, 2023 by Richard 1 Comment

Do you love true crime? Here are 50 True Crime writing prompts that can help you turn your hobby into a passion. Write the next great crime novel with these 50 true crime sounding writing prompts. (Writing prompts are not real crimes, no one was harmed during the making of this list). These true crime prompts can get you writing with ideas that sound like they were ripped right from the headlines!

True crime continues captivating masses as one of the most popular genres, with avid fans endlessly speculating on unsolved mysteries, criminal psychology, and masterful investigative work unfolding in news reports and headlines. Audiences love dissecting enigmatic cold cases, theorizing serial killer motives, and imagining how they’d outmaneuver corrupt officials evading justice.

Now arrives an imaginative blog series fusing this prevalent fascination with suspenseful true crime tales and creative writing. Readers can expect fictional vignettes and character studies directly inspired by the most bold, shocking and macabre cases occupying our national obsession.

Over 50 riveting posts, expect to encounter short stories featuring secret smuggling rings infiltrated by tenacious journalists, wrongly imprisoned citizens unraveling vindictive conspiracies after daring prison escapes, detectives decoding visual clues left by elusive murderous siblings spreading fear, and ordinary individuals pulled into dangerous criminal webs while investigating deceased loved ones’ hidden lies.

Combining a lifelong love of suspense literature with more recent true crime intrigue, this blog presents fascinating “what if” spins on the ever-intriguing true crime stories currently dominating headlines and feeding society’s undying macabre curiosity.

Here are 50 True Crime writing prompts

Even forensic experts were baffled – how did an intruder bypass advanced security systems to steal priceless artifacts without leaving a trace? His daring heist would come to be known as The Case of the Ghost Thief.
Shannon thought she found happily ever after – until private investigators uncovered her new husband’s murderous past lives hidden under aliases. She was now the hunted.
Jimmy always skirted the rules growing up – but law enforcement must finally bring his car theft ring screeching to a halt before more hot vehicles vanish.
They thought moving to an elite gated community guaranteed protection. That belief shattered violently the night a serial squatter left a trail of bodies inside their barricaded paradise. Safety was now the illusion…danger the new reality.
Emotions running fiery-hot – that was Chief Inspector Davis’s initial theory when a beloved community elder and her family wound up slain in a remote cabin amid the ashes. But science would soon reveal cold calculations behind the vengeance.
If walls could talk inside Cell Block D. What the guards can’t contain and the razor wire fences can’t cage are the secret worlds unfolding through whispers and stashed notes between unlikely allies. The true power dwells inside…
“We were the last ones to see little Susie alive…” Three witnesses hold clues that don’t line up when piecing together the 10-year old’s final joyful afternoon – before her devastating fate just 10 miles outside town.
They assumed reports were exaggerated – until their humanitarian mission encountered the child trafficking ring thriving right under the world’s nose. Now ensuring justice requires playing chess against ruthless warlords and corrupted politicians.
When the mysterious copper box appeared atop the police chief’s desk sealed in wax imprinted with a serpent insignia, he knew this case would brand his career – and likely claim lives before shocking town secrets finally crawled into the light.
Criminal masterminds often slip up with small oversights. So when Jake noticed the pharmacy robber’s odd accent slipped slightly, detecting the imposter became his lone chance to solve the undiscovered crime network hiding statewide.
Even behind the fortress of Sing Sing’s reinforced walls, ruby red secrets passed illicitly through inmates’ cunning hands held the power to silence snitches and elevate new criminal royalty – if ever whispered to cunning ears on the outside.
They were the most savage contract killers Chicago ever produced – until two detectives decode the murderous siblings’ visual calling card and broadcast their identities citywide under a simple symbol printed on matchboxes and tucked into victims’ pockets.
My journalism mentor once said chasing truth often demands unlawful maneuvers. But infiltrating the smuggling ring as an undercover boat hand to uncover their offshore operations proves my breaking point might meet the ocean floor instead.
As lead prosecutor, I must sway the suspicious jury to convict the charismatic, cutthroat Wall Street tycoon guilty of swindling millions from innocent pensioners. Little do they know we shared steamy history I’ve done everything to bury – but if it guarantees he finally pays…
Bumping off low-level street dealers was child’s play for Vincent’s upstart cartel. But rubbing out a top enforcer from the old-guard narcotics gang as a brazen power move would ignite all-out war across Miami – and likely redraw the city’s trafficking empire.
Master burglars live by simple rules – disable alarms, grab valuables quick, torch remnants that might identify. But when one veteran thief’s signature arson accelerant technique links a startling number of cold cases together, findings short-circuit investigator’s expectations.
We expecting riveting war stories interviewing Sylvia for our documentary on little-known heroes. While the plucky French freedom fighter certainly dazzled describing sabotaging Nazi supply lines, something about her cagey manner hinted at buried secrets too dark for celluloid.
As the trial’s ringmaster directing lawyer lines of inquiry, all knew DA Preston Brooks owned the courtroom – unless the defense somehow exposed his Achilles’ heel, an affliction even his savviest opponents currently remain unaware.
While the mysterious Poison Pen letters mailed to wealthy elite seemed relatively harmless at first, the handwritten death threats and secrets exposed about powerful figures suggested an elaborate web of vengeance – with citywide implications if culprit isn’t quickly collared.
They considered clever Checkbox Carl’s suburban spree an anomalous blip explaining the rash of burglaries targeting only worthy 18th century maps and globes worth millions as strange midlife crisis. But when a body surfaced matching his contexts, authorities shifted focus to more sinister theories.
Investigators traced the assassin’s origins when scans of his forged passports and covert communications revealed subtle regional spelling slip-ups, blowing his dangerous cover.
Jason’s prison escape plan counted on inmates providing distractions while he climbed fences. But overnight the convict code turned against outing snitches, leaving him solo against the spotlights.
While Pickpocketing Peggy’s hotel robberies proved harmless at first, when an elderly guest died from heart failure after the sneak thief invaded his room, her petty crimes turned deadly.
When “The Nun” kept showing up at mob hits wearing a habit over her signature red dress, police struggled tracing her identity through networks of lookouts ever covering this phantom’s lethal tracks.
They were the Bonnie and Clyde of cyber hacking – until global intelligence agencies decrypted the romantic partners’ secret online communications revealing the tools behind their digital heists.
Metro Crime’s finest joined forces following a tip declaring Sherlock’s Gentleman’s Club the perfect money laundering front. But bringing down its network of corrupt officials backing this secret den proved far more scandalous.
Mesmerized by her handsome biologist tutor since freshman year, star student Valerie stole rare toxins to spike his nagging wife’s gin and win her dream man – at least until suspicious scratches appeared on his arms.
As the tenacious small-town reporter investigating corrupt sheriff kickbacks, Sam never expected to be tied as a traitor and dumped unconscious into the bayou’s hungry jaws. This time the story itself might just devour him.
While the Cavendish Museum gala promised glitz showcasing Imperial Russia treasures, when assassins took patrons hostage demanding access to the Tsarina’s jeweled Faberge egg, the dream night soured into a tactical nightmare.
Tracking South Boston’s elusive smuggling gang leader “Lucky” felt near impossible given his triple bolt deadlocks and savvy camera maneuvers avoiding identification – until a bright drug sniffing police canine brought new tricks locating his hidden vault.
Even struggling as an ex-con and recovering addict, Nina’s counseling youth and penning cautionary addiction memoirs earned community respect – at least until criminology students correlated timing between her relapses and local pharmacy break-ins.
As lead archeologist unearthing ancient funerary treasures, Scarlett knew tomb raiders and black market dealers craved the priceless icons we discovered. But mummifying a traitorous dig team member as a brutal warning seemed extreme escalation.
While rural police wrote off the campground stalking incidents as harmless wildlife, Cryptozoology professor Artie Adler’s personal encounter suggested more sinister theories – perhaps explaining certain missing person cases spanning decades too…
Having trained vicious attack hounds for high profile clients wary of kidnappers and assassins, canine security consultant Bruno knew never to ask names or motives. But the bounty hunter currently tailing him indicates one guard dog may have switched allegiances, to dangerous personal cost.
As the reigning “Queen of Illegal Poker” in shady casino circles, lady luck let players assume Bianca’s wins came through chance alone. When bitter rivals with brutal reputations arrive to compete, however, her skill and charm may no longer protect the card empress.
Seeing another inmate sneak away into solitary always elicited curiosity what rules were violated. But when Charise recognized the visitor’s Italian loafers and signet pinky ring slipping inside, she knew Omerta’s code now demands her silence… under penalty of a more permanent isolation yet to come.
While the Faceless Butcher evaded capture leaving no traces at gory slaughterhouse crime scenes, newly promoted Lt. Aaliyah Nasser discovers surveillance tapes showing a masked figure without gloves at the stainless steel sinks.
Coded ledger entries tied clean cut broker Elliott Hays to the lucrative art theft ring fencing stolen Warhols and Rembrandts via Swiss accounts. But could his surprise release on lack of hard evidence trigger a brazen museum robbery the very same night?
Turning rats usually reduced prison sentences substantially. But Norris failed to realize the sharp consequences after he snitched to the DA about the Aryan Clan’s gun running operation from behind bars – consequences now hunting him on the outside.
While the mysterious Poison Pen letters seemed relatively harmless at first, the handwritten death threats exposing dark secrets about powerful city figures suggested an elaborate insider campaign of coercion and vengeance brewing on anonymous elite typewriters.
When beloved Father Pat’s troubled past came to light after an exposé revealed the once admired clergyman fabricated his entire identity and background with the Church, investigators shift focus to unraveling what other altar boy secrets “Patrick” hides behind the holy cloth…
As lead prosecutor, all expected ADA Alexis to steamroll the violent empire of a ruthless drug kingpin whose muscle intimidated witnesses citywide into silence. Little did observers know she shared an intimate past with the golden-toothed dealer – one with photos to prove it.
While Metro PD anti-corruption squads wiretap organized crime fronts, under scrutiny Judge Terencesynchronizey Terence subtly communicates his sway over closeted city officials through coded dinner menus dropped at usual dead drop takeout joints. But can anyone decipher the orders?
When his daughter Allison disappears walking home from calculus tutorials, gut instincts tell pop psychologist Dr. Malcolm one of his unstable clients now targets his own family. As encrypted therapy session tapes trickle in taunting his powerlessness, outsmarting a diabolical psychopath becomes Malcolm’s only recourse to ever see Allie again.
No one expected Ferdinand to survive San Quentin much less keep his humanity given the horrors there. But salty convict poems he secretly scrawls beyond night sticks and constant shakedowns reveal how creating art and probing society’s gaps helps imprisoned minds find fleeting freedoms within confining walls.
While curating the soon-to-open National Museum of Organized Crime fulfilled Susan’s academic dreams, when a mysterious fedora-wearing patron keeps appearing alone on off hours obsessively gazing at exhibits featuring one display-encased tommy gun in particular, Susan realizes nightmare history shrouded in legend threatens her and possibly others bound by blood oath.
The framed photograph of their supposedly estranged mother arrives in nine year old Nina’s mailbox without explanation days after they buried their devastated father. But her name signed on the back in familiar feminine script suggests the deceased parent they knew was tangled in criminal deceit – pulling Nina into the dangerous web.
As lead detective haunted by the serial child killer somehow always vanishing moments before cops arrive to grisly suburban scenes over two states, Vinny notices through photos that one familiar middle school guidance counselor grayscale vehicle sits parked in multiple old crime scene backgrounds…
While intrepid student sleuth Kendra didn’t expect unmasking her prep school headmaster’s hidden DUI manslaughter past would catalyze his resignation, the threatening late night voicemail referencing her “meddlesome nature” suggests this Walter White shirt-wearing teacher harbored even darker secrets yet to unravel.

And so concludes our chilling collection of 50 true crime writing prompts pulled straight from the headlines. These fictional snippets aim to ignite your creative sparks and have you penning the next gripping thriller. With tales covering everything from alluring art heists to scandalous poison pen letters tormenting elites, this series allows your imagination to run wild theorizing “what-if” scenarios about the ever-intriguing world of crime. Use these creative launches to develop short stories, expand into novellas, or even inspire full-length novels filled with the intrigue and complex characters that make true crime tales irresistible page-turners. Wherever these prompts lead you, embrace your fascination with the genre and let the writing take hold until “The End” arrives. Just be careful if you find yourself identifying a little too closely with the criminal masterminds…We hope you enjoyed these writing prompts. If they were not your cup of tea, we have many other prompts on our site . Also, please leave us a comment, we’d love to hear from you!

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About Richard

Richard Everywriter (pen name) has worked for literary magazines and literary websites for the last 25 years. He holds degrees in Writing, Journalism, Technology and Education. Richard has headed many writing workshops and courses, and he has taught writing and literature for the last 20 years.

In writing and publishing he has worked with independent, small, medium and large publishers for years connecting publishers to authors. He has also worked as a journalist and editor in both magazine, newspaper and trade publications as well as in the medical publishing industry. Follow him on Twitter, and check out our Submissions page .

Reader Interactions

December 7, 2023 at 8:49 pm

I loved this list. I got some great ideas from it.

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Mystery Story Ideas: 25 Murder, Mystery, and Mayhem Prompts to Inspire Your Story

by Ruthanne Reid | 61 comments

Free Book Planning Course! Sign up for our 3-part book planning course and make your book writing easy . It expires soon, though, so don’t wait. Sign up here before the deadline!

What makes a mystery such a compelling type of story? Maybe it's the puzzle, the details that keep us guessing, or the quirky sleuth or investigator. If you love to read mysteries, too, why not give on of these mystery prompts a try today?

The mystery genre begins with a crime, a puzzle, or other situation that requires solving. Authors leave clues and red herrings that the sleuth (and reader!) follow to solve the case. Some of the most famous authors in this genre include Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler, and Dorothy Sayers.

There are a number of sub-genres in the mystery category: cozy mysteries, police procedurals, detective, capers and heists, noir and more.

Need help with a structure to get you started? Take a look at our article on the nine types of stories here . And you might also like our full guide on How to Write Mystery Novel .

Today, let's look at some mystery writing prompts to get your creative juices flowing and your own mystery started!

Five Cozy Mystery Creative Writing Prompts

A librarian happens across a crime scene when they clean the basement archives.
A murder mystery party goes wrong and potential suspects point at each other to avoid arrest. (Especially effective if set in an enclosed location.
A secret society of mystery readers realizes that there is a real killer still on the loose and the clues are hidden in a dead author's books.
A murder scene on a movie set becomes reality when the star is found dead, and the prime suspect discovered missing.
A new restaurant owner in a small town uncovers a long-forgotten mystery from the town's past but the mysterious circumstances unearth a real killer.

Ten Crime Solving Story Ideas

6. Charles McDougall, Scotland Yard's best Inspector, is laid up in the hospital with a badly broken leg, but that doesn't mean he's off the clock! An online news headline describing a tragic gas leak/explosion catches his eye. Four people died: a housewife, a minor politician, a young chemist, and the daughter of a local mobster. Somehow, using only clues from the internet (and what he can worm out of his coworkers), he has to figure out which of those people was the actual target, and why.

7. Agatha Christoph (get it?) is a retired schoolteacher in a beautiful little town in New England. She never married and has no children, so her friends are everything to her. That's why when her best friend, Martha, is blackmailed with vague threats about some risqué photos from Martha's youth, Agatha jumps to the rescue. But Martha's youth was a LONG time ago. Who could have those photos? And what could they possibly want?

8. Mars is colonized, though there's no air outside the domes. Travel from dome to dome is by train. The Eberswalde Express is the “luxury” locomotive, filled with old-timey elegance and charm. It takes a day and a half between stops to give wealthy patrons full time to enjoy the amenities. AND WOULDN'T YOU KNOW IT…THERE'S A MURDER! Weirdly, this murder mimics the plotline of The Orient Express, and Elsa, a librarian and mystery buff, recognizes the details. With a murderer on board and nowhere to go, everyone is in danger. Can Elsa solve this murder before the killer strikes again?

9. Ever heard the phrase, “It is not who fired the shot but who paid for the bullet”? This is a philosophy Tomoe Gozen lives by. Tomoe (who, by the way, was a real female Samurai ) serves her general well, but when a fellow soldier dies mysteriously one night after a game of Chō-Han, she can't simply accept that the death had no meaning. Brave and clever, Tomoe follows clues until she learns who ordered the murder: Emperor Antoku himself. But why would the emperor of Japan want to kill a lowly soldier? And why the subterfuge?

10. Medieval France. Fourteen-year-old Amée is a servant girl with a genius IQ stuck as a scullery maid in her fief lord's castle. She leads a lonely life, with plenty of time to think and analyze, though—and this is important—she can't read. But something strange is happening here. The fief lord keeps bringing new brides home… and within two weeks, those brides disappear. A new one—nearly Amée's age—has just been brought to the castle, and Amée knows the clock for survival has already begun to tick. She has time to figure this out. Will she before it's too late?

11. Omar Yehia is a colonel in Cairo's police department. The government is unstable, and the people are unhappy; he has his hands full with violent cases all the time. Unfortunately, one day, a slain prostitute turns out to have something on her person that no one in Egypt should have at all: Queen Mary's Crown . How on earth did she get that ? More importantly, what will Omar do with the 48 hours his superiors give him to crack this case before they report this to foreign authorities?

12. Sandra is a mystery-lover. She sees mysteries and hidden conspiracies everywhere they aren't , and her sister Carrie laughs this off as a silly quirk… until Carrie is framed for the murder of the man in the next apartment. Carrie's DNA is somehow all over the place, though she swears she's never even been in that apartment before. No one thinks Carrie is innocent but Sandra… and she has a limited amount of time to prove her sister is innocent.

13. Twelve-year-old Alexandra is a leader . She runs her school's newspaper, manages three after-school clubs (the book club, the fencing club, and the junior stamp-collector club), and doesn't have time for nonsense. Which is why when she sees a man dressed all in black carrying a manilla folder as he climbs out of her principal's window, her determination to get to the bottom of it knows no bounds. Look out, data-thief. Here comes Alexandra!

14. David is a senior software engineer for a major tech company, and he spends most days knee-deep in other people's databases, trying to figure out what they did wrong. One day, he happens across a piece of malicious code designed to steal financial information. He reports it and deletes it, but he comes across that same code again—in the database of a completely different company. He finds it again; and again. And the fifth time around, his manager drops a hint that the higher-ups think he's the best person to figure out who's planting it. Undercover, they send him to each of the company's data centers: one in London, one in Boston, one in Dallas, and one in Seattle. It's going to be his job—socially anxious as he is—to interview everyone and find out who's planting that code and why.

15. General March hires Detective Thomas to try to find the person who's been blackmailing March for the past twenty years. Thomas tracks the miscreant down, but finds that the man behind the threats has been dead for the past ten years. So who's carrying on the blackmailing? And is the secret that's held March prisoner this long something that should stay a secret?

10 More Murder Mystery Story Ideas

16. Defense attorney Bob Larson enjoys his job. He likes justice; he likes being right. Usually, he thinks right and wrong are really easy to spot. Then he ends up representing a young Navy Seal who shot and killed an elderly woman—and claims it was in self-defense. Who's really the bad guy?

17. Samuel sleepwalks. He also thinks he loves another man's wife. He's more surprised than anyone when he's arrested for that man's murder. Did he do it? Or is he being set up to take the fall?

18. Mystery writer Dan Rodriguez takes the subway every day. Every day, nothing happens. He wears earbuds and a hoodie; he's ignored, and he ignores. Then one evening, on his way home from a stressful meeting with his publisher, Dan is startled out of his funk when a frantic Middle-Eastern man knocks him over at a dead run, then races up the stairs—pursued by several other mysterious looking thugs. The Middle-Eastern man is shot; and Dan discovers a small, wrapped package in the front pocket of his hoodie. What's inside, and what does he need to do to survive the answer?

19. Wealthy, unmarried Anne Lamont is murdered, and she leaves her entire fortune to a man she met two weeks before, putting suspicion squarely on him. Detective Arnold thinks the man is innocent. He has a week to make his case before this goes before a jury. But when he digs into Anne's background, he finds the sweet old matron wasn't at all what she seemed.

20. A headless corpse is found in a freshly-dug grave in Arkansas. The local police chief, Arley Socket, has never had to deal with more than missing gas cans and treed cats. His exploration of this weird murder digs up a mystery older than the 100-year-old town of Jericho that harkens all the way back to a European blood-feud.

21. Someone is murdering homeless people in Phoenix, Arizona. Detective Sally Fortnight is determined to get to the bottom of it… but what she uncovers may be more deadly than she could ever guess.

22. On the Lovely Lady riverboat in 1900's Louisiana, professional gambler Lacroix is just doing his thing when a scream startles him and the other players from the poker table. It turns out the captain of the steamboat has been murdered, and only someone on the boat could've pulled it off. Lacroix already has a record. In two days, the Lady will pull into Shreveport, where he stands a good chance of being arrested… unless he can suss out the killer first.

23. Detective Donna Madison is on a completely routine case (bootleg watches, just so you know) when she stumbles across a ring of jewel thieves. Two murders, a clever fortune-teller, and a stuffed cat filled with clues later, and Donna finds herself uncovering a far bigger mystery than where stolen watches go.

24. It is the Cold War era. Private Eye Charles Nick searches for a missing cryptanalyst, all the while dodging an obsessed FBI agent who thinks Nick is a communist spy. The cryptanalyst, by the way, went missing for a good reason: he might have cracked the latest Russian spy code, and he's running for his life.

25. 1850's England: elderly Doris and her six young wards are caught in a storm and forced to ask for shelter at an enormous manor deep in the English countryside. But all is not well in this home, and before long, Doris faces a bizarre problem: the manor's lord, Sir Geoffrey, claims his estranged wife Alice is going to murder him that evening. Alice, meanwhile, claims that Geoffrey is going to murder her. After dinner, both are found dead, in the library, seated as if having a rational discussion, but dead as mice. There is no obvious murder weapon, and quite possibly, the murderer is loose in the manor. Doris is no detective, but she might as well figure this out. Given that storm, help won't be coming until it's too late.

(This is the fourth in my series of story ideas, by the way. If you're interested in the others, check out 20 fantasy story ideas , 20 sci-fi story ideas , and 20 romance story ideas. )

Do any of these story ideas get your inner-criminal devising? Let us know in the comments .

It's time to play with story ideas! Take fifteen minutes and develop one of these story ideas into at least one scene. Don't edit yourself! Set your imagination free, then post your results in the practice box below. Don't forget to leave feedback for other writers! Share your practice in the Pro Practice Workshop , and leave feedback for a few other writers. Not a member? Join us .

Ruthanne Reid

Best-Selling author Ruthanne Reid has led a convention panel on world-building, taught courses on plot and character development, and was keynote speaker for The Write Practice 2021 Spring Retreat.

Author of two series with five books and fifty short stories, Ruthanne has lived in her head since childhood, when she wrote her first story about a pony princess and a genocidal snake-kingdom, using up her mom’s red typewriter ribbon.

When she isn’t reading, writing, or reading about writing, Ruthanne enjoys old cartoons with her husband and two cats, and dreams of living on an island beach far, far away.

P.S. Red is still her favorite color.

Thriller story ideas with picture of hand reaching through mail slot in door

61 Comments

I hate giving presentations.

I am a software engineer. Or I used to be, until that fateful day my boss called me into his office to figure out who’s been trying to hack into our clients’ code. Now, I am a reluctant detective.

I got the job purely by chance. I happened to be the only guy working the evening (it was Valentine’s) that the malicious code first showed up. I deleted it and reported it to the higher-ups. I was then tasked with the incredibly boring task of searching through the millions of lines of client code that we had access to in order to ensure there had been no other security breaches. The work may have been tedious and time consuming despite the clever automation I baked in, but it was not as pointless as I’d expected: the same code was present in four other code bases.

And that is why I was standing there, sweating bullets and trying to keep my hands from visibly shaking as I presented my findings to the CEO of our company.

“All that’s great, Dave,” said the CEO, calm as ever, “but what are you going to do about it?”

“Well, we’ll have to find the parties responsible, Mr. Zheng.”

“And who do you think that could be, Dave?” He sounded mildly curious about the breach that could cost us our entire reputation and millions of dollars in lawsuits.

“The only people with access to the code bases of all these clients, and I confirmed this with them, is, well, us.” I said.

“So, what are we going to do about it?”

“Find the person and turn them in?”

“Wrong. First, we figure out a way to enhance security of our code base to prevent future attacks, even from within. Jane, put your best engineers on the job.” He said to my manager.

“And Dave, you have been relieved of all your duties so you can focus on finding me the person responsible. You have one week. You may leave now.”

I had a meeting with Jane the next day. I’d never seen her so frazzled before. But the CEO had that effect on people. It’s like he sucked the calm out of you. But he was a brilliant man. That’s why he was CEO.

“So, do you have any ideas, Dave?” she asked.

“I have one. But it’s risky and it may not work.”

“Go on…” she said, carefully.

“A coding competition open to all our employees. An amazing prize besides bragging rights that should draw any hacker in.”

“Ah, and the problem would be to hack into our system?”

“No, that would be too obvious. You see, after all these years on the job, I’ve learned that each person has a distinct coding style, a coding signature, so to speak. Code is personal. It tells you how a person thinks, how careful they are, how considerate etc. Even something as simple as formatting or variable declaration becomes ingrained in a person after years of coding. I believe I can find the hacked using this competition.”

“Well, it’s not like we have any other ideas. Whoever it was used a ghost ip so we cannot track them. This may be our only shot.”

If this were a novel-length piece, I’d go into the nuances of how I designed a problem that was original and yet challenging enough to entice a brilliant programmer working at the best tech company in the world. But suffice it to say that while solutions are difficult, they’re a piece of cake compared to designing problems.

The day of the contest came and entries flooded in. Everyone was interested in getting out of a day of work. Even Janice from accounting was there.

The contestants spent 24 hours hacking up a solution, powered by free pizza. I spent the next 24 hours scouring through thousands of lines of code to find the suspect.

Finally, I found a match. The aha moment turned into a head scratching one when I realized who had sent it in.

I couldn’t believe it. The hacker, and the person with the best solution, was Janice from accounting?!

Sana, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE what you’ve done with this! You’ve managed to make it interesting, to set up characters, and to have a complete beginning, middle, and end. Terrific practice!

I find this interesting 🙂

Some great ideas in this post Ruthanne, I might have to take some of them with me to my writer’s group tomorrow as I know one of our members loves writing mystery. Number 16 really grabbed my attention and makes for a great paranormal mystery.

That would be great, Amanda! I hope they really enjoy them! 🙂

Feel free to turn any of these paranormal. 😉 I tried to keep them largely “normal” for the sake of the audience, but I personally love a little magic in my mystery. 😉

I was woken up by a loud thunder…. I shot out of bed, just to look out my large window and find out its pouring rain!! “Ping…ping…ping..”. I tun around back to my bed to see what all that noice was. It was my phone. Probably my boyfriend texting me and seeing what im doing, but the thing is, its not that hes not a good boyfriend, its just that im in love with someone else, someone whose name is Anthony… Anthony works with me in English class, were partners. My boyfriend hates when I hang out with him.. “HAZEL! TIME TO GET UP! SCHOOL STARTS IN 1 HOUR!”. What is she talking about? Whats all the rush? I have 1 hour left. That’s plenty of time! Whatever, im just going to go get ready and not fight about it. I walk to my new grey dresser, and open the handle in which leads me to my make-up and hair stuff, I sit down and look in the mirror while putting foundation on. After doing my makeup, it was time to do my hair, what am I going to even dress my hair up today? A pony tail? A messy hair bun? What would my thick, brown, long hair even look good in? its probably best just to straighten it. In the middle of straightening my hair I burn my hand, and threw the wand. “OW! OW! OW! OW!” I Scream, “ Stupid fucking straightener!” I swear. “EXCUSE ME YOUNG LADY! WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY!” My mom yells from down stairs. “ sorry mom! I burned my self! It wont happen again!”. My mom hates when I swear. She hate when anyone swears. But what was I supposed to do if I got a 3rd degree burn on a hair straightener? which is least likely to happen. “ PINGGGG- PINNNNGGGG-…..PINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG…PINGGGGG….PINGGGG.PINGGG” My phone kept on going, and going. And going. “GOD DAMN IT HAZEL ROYAL! JUST PICK UP THAT DAMN PHONE!” Ughhhhh why does she always make me do stuff!!!!!. So I go and grab the stupid phone. “ What? Why do you keep calling me adan?” I said as calm as can be. “ why are you not answering the damn phone babe?” well… PROBABLY CAUSE IVE GOT A LIFE OF MY OWN. But was I going to say that? No. I wasn’t. “sorry, im just in the middle of doing my hair. Can I call you later babe? I don’t want to be late for school, theres only 20 minutes left.” I replied. “okay, but youll make sure to hang out with me instead of Anthony?” adan russed while he spoke, “ yeah, I will, bye babe!” I mimicked his tone. “ bye” adan said. Finally, why does he always have to call me when im in the middle of doing things!? (thats what ive got down so far, im still trying to finish it)

These are the best by far in your story ideas!!!! I love them SO much, especially #20, #14, and #7. I am a mystery lover (I have all of the old Nancy Drew, some of the Trixie Belden, and several of almost 100 – and over- year old Girl Scout mysteries.) and these really “tickle my storytelling bones”. ;-D

Awesome, Renee! I grew up on the old Nancy Drew, too! I hope you take these ideas and turn them into something absolutely wicked fun!

What a great list. I’ve been skipping the other lists because they aren’t in my genre, but I had to read this. And not only because I’m currently stuck on my current work in progress.

I confess that I’m especially drawn to Number 7. Can you blame me?

Thanks for the boost!

This is awesome, Carrie! I’m so, so glad to hear it! I hope you can take that idea and spin it into something fabulous. 🙂

I’ve read all of your ideas and discover that you’ve provided more than just a list of ideas. Far more.

The ways you’ve played off known people and known characters (Agatha Christie and Nick Charles of Thin Man fame) have opened up a couple of doors to me that I hadn’t previously considered. All a of sudden, every novel I love and every character I admire has the potential to influence my own fiction.

Carrie, it delights me that you caught those silly references! 🙂 I’m just thrilled.

I’m also glad this has inspired you. I really believe that creativity is an ocean; if you’re in it, you’ll get wet! We’re all influenced by one another, and that’s the way it should be. 🙂

Hey! Those are pretty good! Thanks!

I’m glad you like them, LaCresha! Enjoy! 🙂

15. Just the smell of it makes me want to run home and hide under my bed. The sight of it, on the other hand, is enough to make me dizzy and feel as though I was going to pass out and vomit at the same time. All my life and throughout my career as a police chief, I’ve never had to deal with any big cases. Nothing ever happens in small towns in Arkansas. But, now, after fifteen years of being a chief and twenty five years of being a police in general, something interesting was finally happening. It just so happened that this happening happened to be a disturbing, horrific, gut-wrenching homicide.

When I got the call I could barely believe what I was hearing. Someone had found an uncovered grave, in which was a fresh (yes, fresh) corpse. Oh, and I forgot to mention-the corpse had no head. After years of dealing with petty middle school criminals and rabid cats, there was an actual crime to be had. But the crime seemed completely unbelievable. So, I sent a few men down to the local cemetery to investigate. The news I received about ten minutes later was enough to send shivers down my spine. The men had found the body, just as the eyewitness had described it. And on top of that, a close inspection of the surrounding land revealed various body parts hidden in books and crannies around the cemetery. Body parts! For Pete’s sake, why did this have to happen in my town? I didn’t have time to ask questions, though. There was a killer on the loose, a psychotic, genuinely dark, and horrifying killer.

I already feel sympathy for your character, and your description is very thorough without being overly so. Your pov is consistent throughout, and the revelation of there being more body parts keeps me wanting to read. A very captivating piece. Well done.

I really like how you make this shocking by making the sheriff so shocked! Good stuff. plus your description of the smell made me sick (in a good way ) 🙂

Great start, Annie! I really hope you continue this. I see characterization and solid voice, and your pacing is great. 🙂 I love what you did!

Can I use this?

Nope! Sorry :/

While Wein cannot copy Annie’s writing (which was fab), I doubt anyone can stake a claim to the prompt of “small town police force has to deal with actual real crime” as a plot–it’s been done before, it will be done again. It’s how you write it, the characters, details, twists and locations you craft that will make it your own!

So, SmartWein, make something originally yours based on the foundational concept. It will be better because it came from your brain and is shaped around the story you create! Find a different crime, or a different protagonist, pick a different setting, write it yourself and you’re golden! Pick a setting that means something to you. Pick a crime that personally horrifies you. Then drop in that bored detective who hasn’t solved anything more complicated than Roe the Regular Drunk, Annie the Irregular Drunk and Jen the Incontinent domestic squabbling, one single “hit and run” that left a sixteen year old with a broken ankle and he saw the license plate number and Matt fessed up straight away, and Laurie’s cat climbing into the rafters of Jo and Ted’s grill… in ten years… but this crime has shocked everyone in this sleepy quiet town down to their ruffled toilet cozies.

It will be better for it.

When I can’t think of an idea, I pick a story I consider to have been terrible and think about how I would take its foundational idea and run it to a superior place. In this case, I recommend you took at Annie’s writing and figure out why it appealed to you, what aspects of it worked. Was it the sensory description? The character? The horrific crime? Once you understand why it appealed to you, you will then have an idea of what to tweak in your own ideas! Perhaps now you know you need to describe the crime with more. But will it be the reeking decomposing head covered in wriggling white maggots, the slimy femur covered in slick moss recovered from the dog’s mouth, the red bloodwashed room that tastes of iron when you breathe, or the ear-splitting shriek that comes from the direction of the dock and endless ocean? What twisted, demented ideas can YOU come up with? What a great mystery indeed! Aha! Ahahahhaa!

If you’ve come up with all these ideas yourself, I do take my hat off to you. Or doff the old top hat, as P G Wodehouse would say. I could spend a week on these!

Agreed! These were fun and interesting ideas!

Thank you, Kat! 🙂 I’m so glad you like them.

Haha! Thank you, Christine! I definitely take inspiration from the stories our world is filled with, but I do my best to make each one unique. 🙂 Enjoy!

Yesterday I sat down and started with #1, writing an opening scene. Will post it here as a separate comment, but it’s LONG. 🙂

This is my first time doing a practice exercise.

20. It was Helen who had found the bodies of their hosts. The poor girl had gone into the library after supper at the invitation of Sir Geoffrey to find herself a book to read to the younger children. Her scream had ricocheted through the eerily empty halls, alerting both Doris and the manors’ butler Wilfred. That had been a while ago, and Doris was still attempting to comfort the girl unsuccessfully. Wilfred also had his hands full attempting to keep the younger children from entering the room where the bodies still sat. A single look passed between the two adults, followed by a slight incline of both their heads. Doris stood up, guiding Helen up the staircase with one arm around the girls still shaking shoulders. The other reached out towards the butler as they passed, a flask being swiftly stowed away for use on the unsuspecting children. As she reached the first floor landing, Doris turned to look back. He still stood at the foot of the stairs, watching after them. A silent sentinel, a pillar of strength in a time of such uncertainty. She allowed the briefest expression of gratitude to cross her face before continuing on. They would have time to talk she knew, once the children were asleep.

Intriguing! I like the pace. I feel like you have the beginning of a solid story line.

I LOVE it! Working on the characterization of the butler as well really helps to expand this beautifully. I hope you keep writing it! Great first-time practice. You’ve caught my attention!

#9 from the top half-this is a really rough draft – 15 minutes is very short. I like this idea a lot and hope to expand it to something real at some point

David lifted his head from the monitor screen, and pushed the thick frame of his glasses so they perched on the bridge of his nose. He stared down at the lines of code. This was no ordinary scripting. If allowed to exist in this environment the company would be a gateway for any hacker with any know-how at all to abscound with sensitive data, financial information, possibly even money itself. Anyone that got through that gateway would easily be able find their way to whatever information they desired. He looked over the code once more and checked the interface as well to see if there were anything obvious to the end-user. He decided the interface looked normal.

He took screen shots of the code and the interface, and logged the occurrence. Then he notified the project manager, Sam Wolfe.

He used instant message:

Hey, I found some strange scripting while updating the firewall. I sent u screenshots and logged the problem Check log h259.

Wolfe shot back

I’ll take a look and let u know what I think. Thanks 4 the heads up.

Back to the code. He deleted the miscreant code. Just for good measure he ran a scan on the machine and on the servers as well.

*grins* Oooh, I was hoping someone would grab this one! It’s one of my favorites (probably because this IS my husband’s job, haha).

I think this is a GREAT first draft. Your writing practice is terrific! Thank you for sharing it! I hope you continue it, too.

Scotland Yard’s top Inspector, recovering from a fall, has read about an explosion at a chemist’s. (I’m using the English term for drug store in this tale.) Four people died, including the chemist. ( Pharmacist over here.) Now McDougall is trying to determine the intended victim and the why.

“Nasty piece of work, that. I read the account in The Times Online last night.” Charles McDougall shook his head. “Hate to see innocent people killed. Or were they innocent? Which of them was the real target?”

Tony, his younger colleague reproved him. “Mac, old pal. You’re here to rest, relax, and heal up. You’re not to give a thought to mini bombs and targets right now. And the next time you go flying down some stairs, take a cushion. You could have broken your neck, you know, and Scotland Yard can’t function without you.”

“Right. The wisdom of my hoary head and all that. So who’s got the case and what has he found out so far?”

“Are you deaf, Inspector? I just said…” Tony paused as a pretty nurse entered the room. His dark eyes gave her the once-over as she set a small paper cup on McDougall’s bed table.

“Here’s your pain meds. Now let’s take your temps, love.” She stuck a thermometer prong in McDougall’s mouth. “Can’t have you getting infection on us.”

Tony grabbed at his stomach. “Ow! Help! I’ve got this sudden, awful pain. Gall bladder maybe, or appendicitis. Will you stick me in a bed somewhere and nurse me back to health, too, sweetie?” He gave her a big grin.

With one hand the nurse pulled a wicked-looking hypodermic needle out of her pocket and waved it in Tony’s direction. “See this? We poke everyone who complains of a pain with three of these. Hospital policy. You’d be surprised how many visitors it cures on the spot.” She set the syringe down beside him where he could fully appreciate its size, then turned to record her patient’s temperature on the chart by his bed.

Tony eyed the needle lying beside him. “Three, eh? I feel so much better already. Fancy dinner some evening — away from these barbaric devices?”

She laughed. “I’ll see what my boyfriend has to say about that. He’s quite partial to seafood, if that’s what you’re thinking of having.”

“Oh, well. Another time, then.”

She picked up the needle, gave him an exaggerated wink and walked out of the room.

“Some friend you are,” McDougall grumbled. “Here I am at death’s door and all you’re thinking of is running off with my nurse.”

Tony turned back to his fellow Inspector. “Hey, I’m a lonely guy. No one to come home to; no one to cuddle with in the wee hours. Can’t blame me for trying.”

McDougall snorted. “Maybe if you’d quit loving them and leaving them you’d have someone to come home to. You get distracted so easily, Weekes. I asked who got the case.”

“Barrows was asked to take a peek at it. Which he did, and reported the basics to us in a briefing this morning. Scotland Yard hesitates to get involved; minor stuff like this the local police should be able to handle. The only reason we’re looking into it at all is because two of the victims are ‘persons of note’ so there could be a bigger picture.”

“Adam O’Connor being one.”

“Right. Even though he’s small potatoes in local politics, it never hurts to take a look.”

McDougall shifted in his bed and wiggled his broken leg in the brace that held it. The younger man jumped up and stepped toward the bed, extending his arm and a bit of TLC. “Need some help getting settled there, Mac?”

McDougall grabbed onto Tony’s solid forearm and heaved himself up a bit. “Thanks. I’m good now. Hate this traction business! All because my sister’s grandson dropped his ice cream cone on the top stair step. Anyway, maybe someone didn’t like O’Connor’s particular policies? Or had he some shady involvement that got out of hand?”

Tony sat back down. “Doubt it. Pretty mild sort. At least not involved in any controversies apt to get him killed. And the other victim ‘of note’ was the daughter of Pierson Rathmore.”

“The mob boss? So that was the school girl. Rat-tat-tat.”

“Yeah. Her name wasn’t released in the news, least not as of this morning.” Tony brushed his fingers through his dark hair. “I wouldn’t want to be the bloke who planted that bomb. Not with Pierson Rathmore on my trail — and he will be. He’ll have several of his boys out looking for the fellow. As you say, ‘rat-tat-tat.’ If we don’t get the perp first, he’ll be floating down the stream without a boat.”

“But she couldn’t have been the target. Someone wanting to settle a score with Rathmore plants a bomb that hits her happenstance at a drug store? Not likely. Rathmore has a couple of sons, too; if this were to hurt him, seems the perp would have aimed for one of them rather. ”

“Well, the girl — his only daughter— was dear to his heart. Everyone knew it. And maybe not quite as much security clustered round her as around the heirs. Also, apparently, she had this regular habit: every Monday on her way home from school she stopped in at this particular chemist’s to buy a chocolate bar. One of our agents kept tabs of Rathmore’s children for awhile back when we were trying to nail him over some mysterious disappearances.”

“Every Monday? And she was eleven? Now that is curious.” McDougall’s gaze turned toward the window as he pondered this fact. How many eleven-year-olds would have a regular habit like that?

“We’re checking out the chemist who was killed, too. Blake Mederach, late twenties. Seems his name’s been mentioned in police notes a time or two. Possible traffic in prescription drugs. Nothing proven, though.”

“And the unidentified woman? Your average housewife stopped to fill a prescription?” McDougall frowned. “Hand me that glass of water, will you.”

Tony stood and passed him the glass. “Mrs Annette Reeves. Nothing on her at all. Active in the church ladies, PTA, that sort of thing. Likely an innocent lamb who stayed longer than she intended. A witness who left the drug store a few minutes earlier said they heard O’Connor nattering to her about one of his future projects for the community. Unless something turns up, we’re assuming being there at the time of the explosion was simple happenstance for both of them.”

“Yeah. A jealous husband or lover may pop in waving a gun, but bombs are a little out of their league. As you say, just in the wrong place at the wrong time. My wife should be dropping by shortly; I’ll get her to attend the lady’s funeral and keep her ears open. She won’t mind doing that.”

“I’ll mention that at the next brief. Now I’d best be off. Oh… Hello!” Tony’s eyes lit up as a slim young woman stepped into the room and looked around. Her long blond hair was pinned up on her head with a barrette and she was wearing a stethoscope round her neck.

“Hello, gentlemen. Hope I’m not interrupting something? I was just passing by and thought I’d take a peek in, see how you’re doing, Mr. McDougall.”

Her bright blue eyes studied him. He could almost hear Tony’s heart rate shooting up.

“I’m surviving,” he replied, taking note of her bright blue eyes. He could almost feel Tony’s pulse rate shooting up. Right now his visitor’s eyebrows were waggling up and down, signalling frantically for an introduction. McDougall sighed.

“Sorry, Love,” he said. “I know you’re the Resident for this ward, but I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Doctor Lundgren. At your service, sir.” She grinned at him, then picked up the patient’s chart. “All vitals well, I see. Much pain.”

“Not really. One bad one right now. Allow me to introduce my colleague, Anthony Wolf — I mean Weekes.”

“Pleased to meet you, Doctor Lundgren. Delighted. Enchanted, even,” Tony held out his hand. Behind her back, McDougall rolled his eyes upward.

She gave it a firm shake, responding to his smile with one of her own. “Nice meeting you as well, Mr-Wolf-I-mean-Weekes.”

“Sorry you have to go, Tony,” McDougall said pointedly. “Do come again this evening and bring more news.”

Dr Lundgren turned back to the patient, replacing his chart. “Well, keep up the good work, then. Get lots of rest.” She chuckled and patted his braced-up leg, then spun around and marched out of the room.

Tony followed her into the hall and McDougall heard him offering some worried-tone malarkey. “You know, Doctor, I’m quite concerned about my pal. He seems edgy and uptight, letting work issues bother him too much. Could we maybe discuss this over lunch?”

McDougall didn’t hear her answer. He shook his head. What was that old saying about chasing the butterfly of happiness?

Then he opened the laptop sitting on the night table in front of him. For now he’d do what he could to puzzle out the drug store bombing. Later, once he had his leg all plastered up with a sturdy walking cast, he’d give Tony a good swift kick in the pants.

I. LOVE. What you did with this. The humor is just fantastic! The pacing is really fun, and I wanted to keep reading! I hope you want to continue with it. 🙂

In fact I do. This is one “exercise” where I saw not just the opening scene, but more of the story unfolding and I want to work it all out. When I do, I’ll post it in parts on my fiction blog and leave you the link here.

And then I’ll start on suggestion #2. 🙂

This is TERRIFIC! Did you ever finish the story?

Thank you! No, I didn’t — shame on me! It got shoved to the back burner and seems to have fallen off the stove — but I think of it now and then. 🙂

Okay, here we go… #3 ( and I have never read The Orient Express either!)—

Elsa hops on the train and, book in hand, takes a seat. She relaxes and opens her book. Elsa looks around before she begins to read. She is a librarian and a mystery buff, and she enjoyed anything related to mysteries. Growing up, she was an only child and found ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ in the books she read. As Elsa reads, a scream pierces the air. Startled, she looks up; half thinking that she imagined it. But this was not true; people are nervously glancing around and an elderly woman had fainted. Elsa gets up and closes her book. She steps into the aisle, puts her book on her seat, and walks to where she thinks the scream came from. ‘In the back of the train… The bedrooms, maybe!’ Elsa thinks. She pushes her auburn hair away from her face and walks to the bedroom hallway. Elsa notices a door is slightly ajar, so she steps closer to it. In one movement, she flings the door open and steps inside. She gasps. A man lies prostrate on a bed, purple finger marks on his neck. Elsa turns on the light and walks to the man’s side. Suddenly, she thinks that she might be blamed for the murder, so she steps away. Almost immediately, a policeman and the conductor appear in the doorway. The conductor faints on the spot while the policeman rushes over to the dead man. With a quick glance, the policeman compares Elsa’s hands to the marks on the man’s throat. “You didn’t do it; I know better than that, anyway,” he assures her. Elsa nods and tells him, “A man did it, judging by those fingerprints.” The policeman covers the body with a bed sheet and blanket, and motions for Elsa to help him with the conductor. The policeman and Elsa drag the conductor from the room and into the hallway. Once there, the policeman releases his hold on the conductor and closes the bedroom door.

Elsa runs back to her seat in the front half of the train and something strikes her as odd. She picks up her book and flips to a certain page. Elsa finds that the murder (and the setting!) is identical to her book, The Orient Express. Elsa again flips through the book to see what happens next. The train crashes into a snow bank, the people on board are stuck, and the murderer is on the loose.

That night, Elsa lies in her bed looking out the window at Mars’ scenery, wide-awake. She tries to banish the bone chilling, fleeting thoughts flying through her head. A small thud announces the presence of something… or someone! She turns on the bedside lamp. A half-day more on this trip- and more if the train crashes! Elsa thinks wearily. She grabs something from under her pillow. Elsa turns the light off, while silently hopping out of bed and pulling on fluffy bunny slippers. She pads out into the hallway with a penlight and runs over the events in the story again. What was that? She spins around and flashes the light in the direction of the cargo/baggage hold. Elsa backs into a corner. The blood freezes on her veins when the sound of footsteps – not her own – filter through the cargo door. Elsa flicks the penlight off and hides behind a large vase nearby. There was just enough room for her to maneuver into a position where she could see the cargo door. The door opens and a person clad in black steps out from the shadows. Elsa stifles a gasp when she sees the person’s face. But she calms down when she holds the penlight tin one hand- and a gun in the other. She covers the penlight’s small bulb, turns it on, and throws it to the other side of the small hallway, creating a spinning light sure to catch the person’s eye. The person (or should I say man) quietly speeds to the light and Elsa courageously steps out with the gun pointed at the man. “Hands up!” she orders calmly. The man, startled, spins around. By the look on his face he is shocked… and amused. Elsa sure was a sight to behold: pink-and-red pajamas, bunny slippers, and tangled hair. The man slowly laughed and sped down the corridor only to be stopped by the policeman. The man gives; he puts his hands up. The policeman closes in on him and handcuffs the man. Elsa takes a breath. “Why, conductor?” she asks incredulously. The murderer was the conductor. “I’m a retired actor and I needed fame again, even if people didn’t know who I really was. The stupid movies makers thought I was getting useless, so they kicked me out with a coulpla’ hundred dollars in payment!” he shouted. “I was going to be the star in the movie production of The Orient Express, but they traded me in for some guy five years my senior. And plus, I knew how the plot went!” Elsa nodded.

Then, she explained her part: “I went to the policeman here and told him how it fitted tight along with the plotline of The Orient Express, and my suspicion of what was to happen. He agreed and he gave me one of his guns. Thankfully, I was right and now you are caught, the people are safe, and I can sleep.” Elsa handed the gun to the policeman and padded back to her room, where she collapsed on her bed and fell asleep.

WOO! What an exciting ride! I love that you chose present-tense for this; it made all the action more immediate, like I was walking alongside her.

The bunny slippers were a great touch, too! 🙂 Thanks for sharing!

As the president of the drama club and debating society, a member of the music club and the vice-president of the Leaders Book Club, Tolu had a lot on her plate. She was also the Student Head of the junior school where she had only just enrolled at the beginning of the school term despite being a transfer student. She had had to turn down the position of class president when she turned Student Head.

She knew her classmates snickered behind her back everyday but there was nothing she could do about it. She was called an over acheiver and all sorts of names that made her ire rise but she turned a blind eye.

With just one more term to go before the end of the session, her parents were quite worried that she had not invited any friends home nor had she mentioned any. They had tried to broach the matter with her but it was futile.

Meanwhile, her studies did not suffer and she was the school’s darling. She was very organised and precise. But when the school decided to set up a chess club and make Tolu the president, without any votes, other children began to plot. The taunts became more obvious. The jeers became louder.

And so on a certain sunny afternoon when she left her class to make her way to the teachers office for a meeting with one of her tutors, she decided to take the long route in order to avoid some of her enemies. In her thirteen year old mind, she was plotting moves using an imaginary chess board. She was winning the chess game when a shadow momentarily blocked out the light. It lasted only for a few seconds but her curiosity overtook her. She was walking behind the windows and it seems that someone had just risked the principals wrath by sneaking into his office.

Worse yet, that person was holding a file, the kind opened in every students name when they join the school. The files that have details of students lives and the things that teachers observe without wanting the student to find out. As Tolu saw this, she decided to investigate. Still carrying her heavy school bag on her back, she decided to find out who it was and who was coward enough to steal students file. She resolved that she would investigate and inform the principal, afterwards.

Crouching, she stole closer to the principals window and peeped into the office.

Hi, is it alright if I use some parts of the ideas listed here in my own stories, rather than following the prompt word by word? I’ve been working on an episodic detective series for my college portfolio and I’m out of ideas. I really like a few of the mysteries presented here and would like my teen detective to solve them.

This isn’t any of the above just another story idea:

21. Cody is a casual teenager who wants to fulfil his dream of being hypnotised; when hypnotist David finally comes to town Cody pays a visit. David’s attempt to hypnotise Cody ha gone wrong; Cody is stuck in an unbreakable trance which has made a connection between his and David’s mind. Whatever David thinks, Cody does. Will David’s biggest desire of vengeance succed or will it fail….

This is the first time in years thats im trynna write fiction. This is #13 here, i forgot the name so came up with Mark.

It was a typical Sunday in the metro station, deserted. On any other day, the platform would be swarming with daily office commuters but on the weekends and especially Sundays there would be but handful. As Mark entered the platform, he was pleased to see the emptiness. Travelling in the stuffed metros was always a pain. He checked the clock hanging over head, 10 minutes for the next train. Less people meant lesser frequency of trains. He stationed himself right where he always stood , beside the first of many pillows along the length of the platform. A train hustled itself behind him on the opposite route. Among the people coming out were couples, families on a holiday trip and few other men and women. But one particular person caught Mike’s attention. He wore an old discoloured shirt and shorts, not what people wear when travelling. He looked sort of in his 30’s, physically well built but of stout height. He bad bruises on his cheeks, clear sign of being on the receiving end of punches. Walking hurriedly on the platform, he kept watching backwards. Suddenly he started running, tripped and collided with Mark sending both men on the ground. Before Mark could react, the man was up and away. It did not take Mark long to figure out why the man had started running, he saw a group of men coming towards him, apparently chasing that guy. They did not give him a second look and kept running.

Mark was surprised at the happenings. In his 3 years of travel though the metro, he had never witnessed anything like this. He was still coming back to his senses when another train pulled up. This time, it was on his desired route. He quickly walked to the edge of platform waiting for the train to stop. At that moment, he heard a loud bang ricochetting in the underground. He froze right where he stood. Unmistakably, that was a gun shot!

I just read these mystery ideas. I love them all so much. I was planning on writing a mystery for my first Nanowrimo novel in November. Idea #7 gave me so many great ideas for my novel! Do you mind if I use it?

I loved the ideas. I was looking for an idea to apply to a bunch of background material I have, but couldn’t find anything that fit, so I thought I’d mention it here and see if you have thoughts. In short, I’ve been in contact with the descendants of the mutineer’s on the HMS Bounty. If you recall, after taking the ship, they found an uncharted island in the Pacific called Pitcairn where the 30 descendants live today. I just happen to have tons of material on how they live, celebrate Christmas – many colorful stories for background color. I was trying to think of a cozy mystery idea on, or off, the island with a hypothetical descendant. They are visited by supply ships every other month and small cruise ships three times a year. Not much to go on. Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated. Note – I’m a maritime history writer that’s looking to move the the Mystery genre.

16. Running though streets, abandoned, was something he had never seen himself doing in his mind’s eye. The steady rhythm of his feet was echoed by the equal rhythm of his attacker’s footsteps. Blood mixed with sweat ran down the lean, wrinkled face of the victim, his heart pumping as he realized that his fate would be the same as Melissa’s: death. He had reached a dead end in the street…and his life. His attacker grabbed him, threw him on the ground, then took his time in creating pain for the victim.

Sally Fortnight put her brick-red hair into a neat french braid as she remembered how nearly she had lost her head earlier on that year. She was tired of sitting at home on leave. Being a cop in the police department of Phoenix, Arizona, was her life, her being, and a psychopath cutting a careful line along her collarbone and a cut starting at her ear and making its way to halfway along her cheek, intended to go to her mouth, slow and painful without anesthetic. She touched her scars on her hands and looked down at similar scars on her bare feet where she had been drilled into a metal table. Her green eyes teared up as she remembered the look on his face as he went about his work. She had loved him, and she never knew what had hit her. Her daze was interrupted by a ring on the doorbell. She quickly grabbed her 9 millimeter and looked through her oaken door’s eye hole. A Phoenix detective badge was held up at the hole, and a female voice called out, “Detective James, Phoenix Police Department, Homicide!” Sally opened her door and embrace her best friend, her partner, and her confident in everything.

Could i take number 7 and turn it into a story and publish on Wattpad? Would that be okay?

Thank you very much!

You use Wattpad too?

My timer went off right as I was finishing up the last sentence… how ironic! I used #13 for this story.

Daniel Rodriguez – Dan to his few friends – was a simple man. He took the subway in the mornings to his day job, he always wore a hoodie (the train was cold, thank you very much), and he had to have his music. The swaying train coupled with the complete separation from outside noise made the perfect environment for him to write. He hadn’t been published yet, but he wrote nonetheless. He loved mysteries – he wanted to be famous for them some day. “Hey! Watch it!” “Look where you’re going!” Annoyed exclamations and shouts that Dan could actually hear over his music made him snap out of his thoughts. With a scowl on his face, he took out his earbuds, and looked up to see what the commotion was about. He saw a man, shoving past people and trying his hardest to run. The man had dark, tanned skin and intense features, but he couldn’t make out much else besides that and his clothes, which were distinctly middle-eastern. He stood to get a better look, but as soon as he had, the man nearly ran him over. With an ‘ooph!’ and a loss of breath, he was practically slammed back into his seat. Dan couldn’t even find the will to react; he only gave an incredulous look and shook his head. Whatever, it wasn’t his problem. By the time the middle-eastern man was out of sight, however, another strange occurrence happened. A group of men in dark-colored suits and sunglasses pursued him, moving equally as fast, if not faster. Saying nothing to anyone – and ignoring the cries of the people they pushed over in their pursuit – Dan watched them go by with intrigue. “Is it the feds? Are they chasing that guy?” he asked the woman sitting next to him, who seemed equally as intrigued as he was. She only shrugged. “No idea. Oh, hey, I think you dropped your notebook.” She pointed to Dan’s composition journal, which he wrote down all of his ideas and character designs. He mumbled a ‘thank you’ to the woman, embarrassed, but leaned down to pick it up. When he did, something small fell out of the pocket of his hoodie. His eyebrows furrowed and he looked at it for a second. It was a small package, neatly wrapped in newspaper and tied with string. He had no idea what it was or where it had come from. He picked up his journal and the package, but before he had much time to think about it, there was a gunshot. Startled, he shoved both of them in his bag and stood. Everyone in the train car went deadly silent, waiting for what happened next. With a squeal, the train slowed to a halt. Police bombarded the subway when it stopped, and when the door to the next car opened, Dan could see what happened. “Oh my god… that guy was…” he choked out. The middle-eastern man from before was clutching a bloody stomach wound, barely holding on. The men in suits were nowhere to be found. With the last of his strength, the man looked Dan dead in the eye. Dan gulped, feeling a chill run down his spine. The man gave a short nod, and then his eyes slid closed and did not open again. Dan felt frozen in place – he could hardly process what was going on. Then, suddenly, he remembered the package. With trepidation, he pulled it out of his bag. “What in the world have I gotten myself into…?” he murmured, eying the package. And yet, even as he thought this, he knew he shouldn’t turn it in to the police. The man’s nod was one of trust, one that said he was depending on Dan. He couldn’t just give it up so easily. There was only one problem nagging at his mind: what was in the package?

I need a murder mystery escape room idea. U see, the group I was working with kicked me out but kept my idea as the purge. So I have to start all over, so I decided to start all over. I’m not sure what kind of clues I need AND materials. HELP!!

Hi! I’m 14 years old and I’m writing a story that is about a murder of a 14 year old girl’s boyfriend. I need some more ideas about how I should continue… Please help me!

Make it interesting by making the girlfriend murder him

Ahh… I should make her have a demon that controlled her that night and have her remember she killed him! Great idea! Thanks so much!

I’m thinking of using #18 (and adapting it, maybe for NaNoWriMo). Maybe the watch is a time machine.

Thank for sharing your crime Solving Idea’s. NeedAssignmentHelp provides the best python assignment help, python homework help in the US, Australia & UK at a pocket friendly price. https://www.needassignmenthelp.com/python-assignment

I like the ideas. They catch your attention and let your imagination free. It helps a lot for the young ones who want to take up writing in the future. Thanks. Waiting for a lot more ideas to help me become an author.

I spent nearly a year on my first book. It was easy because I inserted myself into the story line. It’s published and I am now working on a private detective novel. The ideas here are great but after 38,000 words I hit a brick wall. I have been stalled for 2 days now. thanks for the article

#1 Charles’ eyes riveted around the unfamiliar room. He stared at his leg, feeling perturbed. This had to be the WORST time to be a clumsy detective. He folded his arms and gave a sulky pout, like a five year old. Then, Christina, his lowly nurse, burst in with a large food tray. She gave Charles a big smile. “Looks like today’s full of mystery.” She set the food tray down. Charles’ eyebrows flew up. “What?” She looked around the room to see if anyone else was up. “Some gas leak caused an “explosion that killed 4 people.” Charles’ eyeballs almost bulged out of his head. “Killed who?” “There was the housewife, a minor politician, a young chemist, about twenty or so, and… oh yeah! Damian’s daughter.” Damian was THE worst mobster Scotland Yard had ever seen. Charles realized there was a mystery to solve. He smirked. I am a preteen so I know my little paragraph wasn’t the best. Any feedback on how to improve and polish my story will be great, thanks.

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Incredible Mystery Story Ideas: 65 Creative Mystery Writing Prompts

March 9, 2022

There are few things as satisfying as fleshing out a fantastic idea. It’s a great creative writing exercise . Many writers use short writing prompts as inspiration for story starters.

What makes a good prompt? It’s relatively simple: a good prompt has a who and a what. You don’t necessarily need a where or when, but they can be included to form a more specific mystery plot.

But what if you can’t think of anything? Here are 65 mystery writing prompts to get you started. Any of these ideas can be turned into a short story or a mystery novel!

Mystery Story Ideas And Mystery Writing Prompts

Mystery story starters.

Below are starters to help you in conceptualizing, imagining, and creating a new mystery story:

The fast-paced city you currently reside in turns out to be moving irregularly one day. People wander around slowly, cashiers swipe items slowly, and cars seem to be slower than your walking pace. Everything slows down except you.
A man visited his best friend’s house, only to find a scrapbook with pictures where his face has been intentionally erased.
A woman has arrived home after work one night, only to noticed that there is not one other light in her apartment building that is on except for hers. Where did the other people go? And who is inside her apartment?
A group of teenagers were looking for an adventure, they end up at an abandoned house; a series of screams followed their entrance.
A man was browsing his emails one night, when a new email pops up saying: “Someone will knock on your door; no matter what it takes, secure the door.”
A person is detained for a crime and believes that they are innocent but their DNA is on the murder weapon and the clothes of the dead body. As a detective, you have to find ways to prove their innocence.
A woman’s grandfather passed away and left his last will. However, on the day before its reading, the attorney was nowhere to be found and has disappeared without a trace.
An 80-year-old woman is convinced that you were her teacher in 1950 and added that you were her favorite. However, you were born in 1994.
A man wakes up and everything feels like deja vu . Is it because of the wrong choice he made the night before?

Historical Story Ideas and writing prompts

The following prompts include mysteries in the ancient world.

As the head archaeologist on the dig, you get the honor of opening up the sarcophagus. What a surprise it is to find a cell phone in a thousand-year-old tomb.
An ancient artifact arrives at the museum you work at. Your mentor is tasked with dating and placing the piece. When you come in the next day, you find your mentor murdered and the artifact missing.
A man who struck it rich in the gold rush suddenly disappears, leaving nothing but a cryptic note.
A sharp-tongued guard and the mayor’s aid team up in WWII Germany and try to find the true killer of the mayor. Plot twist: it’s the guard.
A defense attorney and the high school-aged son of the murder victim team up together to find the murderer, only to realize it’s actually a suicide.
The main character is a mafia member in 1920’s New York who has to get away with murder.
A story set in the 1900’s where the entire police force is complacent in the crime.

mystery writing prompts for mystery stories, mystery writers

Classic Murder Mystery Plot Ideas

A new boy arrives in your small town just in time for something to go terribly wrong at the yearly homecoming parade, resulting in at least one death. As chaos depends on your high school, one has to ask, “Who is responsible?”
A dead body turns up at your apartment. The local police chief of your small town is convinced you are responsible, and he’s determined to find the evidence to arrest you.
A woman is missing and presumed dead. As a private detective, you aren’t limited by the law the same way police officers are. You’re stumped, that is, until the next-door neighbor is killed, and you were the last person to see her alive. Well, besides the murderer.
Even as an experienced detective, you’re still surprised when someone confesses to a murder they’re convinced they committed, mostly because you know they didn’t do it. Or did they?
A relationship ends, and the following day the man is found dead.
A recording of a confession of murder is dropped off at your station. As the head detective, you’re tasked with finding out who the victim is and who the killer is.
A hardboiled PI and a stranded bridesmaid enter the underbelly of society after a mass grave is discovered.
A baker who consistently stumbles into trouble is the main suspect in a murder investigation.
A story starts with, “I was twenty-one when I first met my killer.”
The detective is atoning for murdering a man in his youth.
A murderous hitchhiker must be caught before he strikes again, but it’s the 70’s and everyone hitchhikes.
A housekeeper that is a hoarder finds a decayed body in her home under a pile of things.

Mystical/Magical writing prompts

Your best friend goes missing, and in the chaos that ensues, you find out she’s a practicing witch. Does this have anything to do with her disappearance?
You follow the detective as he solves the murder, only to find out he’s narrating how his own death occurred.
You find a secret door in an abandoned manor you’re exploring. Upon opening it, you step back in time. Who put the door there and why? Why is the house abandoned?
Murder victims keep turning up surrounded by strange symbols. They look like ritual killings but end up being something entirely different.
You buried your sister years ago, yet here she is at your doorstep. Which one was the imposter, and which one is your real sister?
You’re haunted by your lover’s ghost (literally), and you have to find out who killed them.
A haunted house is sold in the suburbs. The protagonist can hear the ghosts, and they’re begging her to solve their murders.
A lost wallet appears in front of you on the sidewalk, and when you pick it up, you’re transported back in time and must solve the missing person’s case before you can return.
A flight vanishes mid-air, lost in another dimension.

General writing prompts

Someone is proposed to. The only problem is, where is their current spouse?
Your best friend stops by to say hi. The only problem is they’ve been missing for the better part of five years. They have no recollection of any missing time at all.
Secret Santa starts off with a bang when the first present is a mangled hand. Unfortunately, as the rest of the presents are unwrapped, the manager’s body emerges, piece by piece.
The family is together for the first time in a decade, all to read grandpa’s will and see who gets what. No one was prepared for the winner to take all approach that grandpa took towards catching his murderer.
A reporter investigating policy corruption disappears.
A house fire and a burglary next door appear unconnected, but a mysterious note implies otherwise.
An heiress is missing and doesn’t want to be found. Is finding her the right thing to do?
A forensic scientist and a babysitter are drawn into a decades-old cold case. Is the killer even alive anymore?
A serial killer that’s never been caught aids in the investigation of a different serial killer.
A manipulative janitor finds a missing child in the basement of the school he works for. How did he get there?
A hardboiled PI with a double identity must keep his secret safe, as he is thrust into the spotlight.
A whodunit story about drug trafficking that starts with a live alligator being thrown through the farmhouse window.
A story where every witness is lying about everything but one fact and when those facts are combined the truth can be found.
A story where the key suspect is a hallucination.
A story where the protagonist is the murder victim.
A story idea where the detective solved the crime but is suffering amnesia.
Evidence arrives at the detective’s door that may reopen a decade-long cold case.
The husband is in denial that his wife is missing at all and keeps trying to give evidence that she’s still around.
A story is set in a prison where the killer is already caught, but no one knows it.
A priest’s dead body is found by his congregation.
A story where the murder scene and mystery are told through a child who doesn’t understand everything.
A story where two characters who are never in the same scene together turn out to be the same person.
The FBI agent is completely incompetent yet somehow stumbles across the truth.
A story where a minor character is actually the killer.
A story where one of the characters has a secret that everyone knows exists but is never revealed.
A story where the protagonist fails, and the killer gets away (for now).
A story that simultaneously takes place in two different timelines.
A story where the protagonist’s main objective is revenge, and he’ll take down anyone who gets in his way, regardless of who they are.
They’re racing the clock to find someone buried alive.
A story where a blue-collar crime spans four decades and two generations.
A story that is non-linear and involves a spy searching for a murder weapon.
A story where the protagonist is a sociopath, but the reader doesn’t know. They may or may not be the actual villain.
A story where the key witness is a compulsive liar.
Write a story that is a retelling of a Shakespearean tragedy.
A journalist is wrongfully accused of murder and thrown in jail. From there, he must find a way to solve the crime and bring the actual murderer to justice.
A story where the serial killer had been put to death a decade ago, but it is now back.
A story where someone overhears something they aren’t supposed to and is kidnapped. The detective has to find them.

Mystery Story Ideas to improve your writing skills

Using These Prompts as Plot Ideas

There is no right or wrong way to use these mystery writing prompts, whether you write them exactly as suggested or you alter them as you see fit.

The purpose isn’t to come up with a perfect piece that follows the prompt exactly, but rather to get your brain flowing so you can write more within the mystery genre.

Depending on the amount of time you have and the length of the piece you decide to write, you can easily work through a prompt a day. Choosing a prompt is as easy or as complicated as you make it. You can randomly choose one, or you can sort through them to find the perfect prompt.

Once you have the right prompt , the length of the story has to be determined. You can write a snippet, a short story , you can write a full-length novel or begin a small series of mystery novels. It’s entirely up to you.

It’s always helpful to have prompts lying around, whether the prompt is from your own mind that you scribbled down or if it was from someone else because prompts help you get the creativity started.

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How to Write Crime Stories

Last Updated: January 29, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by David A. Payne, JD . David A. Payne is the President and Executive Producer of RainStream Media, a media company who focuses on telling true crime stories with underlying themes of social justice. He has extensive experience in media and entertainment, having served as both General Counsel and a C-level executive for comapnies such as Turner Broadcasting, CNN, and USA Today. He is also a lawyer - he received his JD from the Duke University School of Law and is licensed to practice law in California. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 240,469 times.

Like many authors, crime writers sometimes get an itch to break the conventions of the genre and create something unique. This is a fine impulse to listen to, but not one you want to take too far. Weigh the advice you hear against your own opinion, and find a path forward that includes everything you love about the mystery genre, garnishing the story with your own style.

Outlining the Plot

What could have led to this crime scene?
What motivation would cause someone to commit the crime, or to frame someone else?
What kind of person would follow through on that motivation?
Use Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? questions to get you started: Who committed the crime and who did they do it to? What was the crime? When did it happen (morning, evening, afternoon, dead of night)? Where did it happen? Why did they do it? How did they do it?

Recognize that the size of the place will influence the development of your story. For example, in a large city or busy public place, you will have lots of opportunities to introduce witnesses. However, in a “locked-room mystery” (one where all the characters seem to be present in the same room throughout the occurrence of the crime), you will likely have no external witnesses, but may be able to draw upon your characters opinions and biases of each other.
Focus on the elements of your setting that are essential to the story. For example, is weather essential? If it is, write about it in great detail. If it is not, only mention it briefly or leave it out altogether. A dark, gritty setting adds atmosphere and works well with stories centered on organized crime. Setting a crime in an idyllic, ordinary town adds its own kind of chill.

Some characters should be potential suspects for having committed the crime (and at least one should actually be guilty of the crime), some should be supporting characters that serve to make the storyline interesting (a love interest or meddling mother-in-law, perhaps), and one (or more) should be focused on solving the mystery.
Well-written characters will have motives for acting in ways that further the plot.Okay, the gritty noir detective or genius investigator is an option, but come up with alternatives or twists.
Make the crime matter personally to the protagonist, to raise the emotional stakes. This could be related to the protagonist's mysterious past, a close friend or family member in danger, or the fate of the town, country, or world. [1] X Research source

Step 4 Consider your antagonist or villain.

Describe your villain well, but not too well. You don’t want your reader to guess right from the beginning of the story who is the culprit. Your reader may become suspicious if you spend a disproportionate amount of time describing one character.
You may want to make your villain someone that has been slightly suspicious all along. On the other hand, you may want to make the revelation of the culprit or criminal a complete shock. “Framing” someone throughout the story is a surefire way to keep your readers hooked to your mystery short stories.
Instead of a villain, consider including a sidekick. Maybe your sleuth has a friend or partner that will help her sort the clues and point out things that she misses. [3] X Research source No one says the sleuth has to do it all alone! What if the sidekick and villain end up being one in the same?
Think of the basics. Male or female? What is the detective's name? How old are they? What do they look like (hair color, eye color, and skin tone)? Where are they from? Where are they living when your story starts? How did they become part of the story? Are they victims? Are they the cause of the problems in your story?

Present an opportunity for mystery. Create a situation in which a crime can reasonably occur and one that you will be able to reasonably recreate yourself. Did all the power go out in the city due to a thunderstorm? Was a door or a safe accidentally left unlocked? Paint a vivid picture of the situation surrounding the occurrence of the crime that will be the focus of your mystery.
Don’t underestimate the power of the “backdrop” for the crime. [4] X Research source An intricate understanding of the setting in which the crime takes place is an important tool that will help when it comes to developing your narrative.
Here are some suggestions for crimes: Something has been stolen from the classroom, Something is missing from your bookbag, Something strange is found on the baseball field, Someone has stolen the class pet, Someone is sending you strange notes, Someone has broken into the Science materials closet, someone has written on the bathroom wall, someone has tracked red mud into the building.

Step 6 Consider clues and the detective work.

You should include evidence processing skills such as fingerprinting, toxicology, handwriting analysis, blood spatter patterns, etc.
The detective work must be good. Develop how your detective or protagonist ultimately solves the case, keeping their personality and qualities in mind. Make sure it isn't cheesy or too obvious.

Writing the Story

If you want to write about what happens before the crime, you can go back in time for the second chapter, adding a subheading such as "one week earlier."

This is especially important for the biggest reveal — whodunnit? — and the wrong choice can ruin a novel for a lot of readers. The villain should either be a suspect or demonstrate enough suspicious behavior that a clever reader can guess the identity.

Community Q&A

Give yourself time. You can plan everything in advance, or you can write rapidly and edit later. Both approaches require a great deal of time, and a willingness to make major changes. Thanks Helpful 3 Not Helpful 1
Enlist people to edit your story and give feedback. After some polishing, steel yourself and show the work to strangers. Their advice will be harsher but more honest than your friends'. Thanks Helpful 2 Not Helpful 1

Crime fiction is a genre filled with cliché. There's a fine line between paying tribute to your favorite stories and style and straightforward copying. Thanks Helpful 13 Not Helpful 0

↑ http://armchairinterviews.com/pages/crime-fiction-tips-and-pet-peeves
↑ https://writerunboxed.com/2022/05/03/hiding-your-villain-in-plain-sight/
↑ https://screencraft.org/blog/writing-a-likeable-sidekick-7-archetypes-you-can-choose-from/
↑ https://jerichowriters.com/how-to-write-an-immersive-setting/
↑ https://www.novlr.org/the-reading-room/the-art-of-the-plot-twist-how-to-keep-your-audience-guessing

About This Article

If you want to write a crime story, start by choosing a crime, then work backward, describing what led to the crime. Think about what kind of person might commit a crime like this, and what might motivate them to do so. For instance, if you’re describing a bank heist, your criminals might be a gang of petty thieves looking for a big score, or it could be parents of a sick child who need money for treatment. Give the reader clues, but throw in some misleading details as well so the audience won’t guess what’s going on too early in the story! Read on to learn tips on describing your crime scene! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Writing Tips Oasis - A website dedicated to helping writers to write and publish books.

How to Write Crime Fiction: A Beginner’s Guide

By Georgina Roy

Welcome to Writing Tips Oasis and our newest guide – this time around, on Crime Fiction.

Crime Fiction as a genre is often confused or mixed up with other genres or its own subgenres/categories, like mysteries, which we will talk about later. The Crime genre is an umbrella that entails everything that is related to a crime: from mysteries to thrillers, although in thrillers, the crime is often ongoing, while in crime fiction , the crime is already perpetrated and the protagonist is looking for the perpetrator. For that reason, we will look at thriller as a separate genre that crosses with crime, rather than as a part of the crime genre as a whole.

On the whole, we will divide this guide in three parts. In the first part, we will focus on the crime itself, because that will define the category (or subgenre) of your novel. The second part will focus on the plot of a crime fiction novel, and the third part will focus on how to build a crime puzzle.

Without further delay, let’s move on to the first part and try to tackle the task of writing a crime fiction novel.

Table of Contents

Part One: The Crime

1. what crime fiction encompasses, 2. choosing the crime, 3. crime fiction categories, part two: building the crime plot, 1. choosing a protagonist, 2. creating the world, 3. portraying secondary characters, 4. creating ambiance and mood, 5. balancing plot and character, 6. twists and resolutions, part three: building the crime puzzle, 1. how to create a crime puzzle, 2. usage of unreliable narrators, 3. using foreshadowing, 4. creating the usual suspects cast, 5. red herrings and chekov’s guns, 6. avoiding clichés, 7. avoiding plot traps.

The crime is the most important element of a good crime fiction novel. Although, it’s worth noting that the crime, in this case, comes after compelling plot and characters, which are necessary for any kind of novel. The crime in a crime fiction novel, however, needs to provide two things:

interest in the readers as to how it was done;
interest in a compelling protagonist who will solve the mystery for the readers.

Here is the thing, you can have a compelling protagonist and interesting characters (upon which we will talk extensively in the second part of this guide), but unless you have an extraordinary crime, you are not giving your protagonist and characters anything to work with. For that reason, let’s start by distilling all the separate elements of crime fiction novels before we move on to creating one.

The list of what a crime fiction novel needs, or what the crime fiction in general encompasses, can be way too long. For that reason, let’s begin by analyzing what a crime fiction novel provides for the readers.

First, we mentioned the compelling protagonist and interesting characters. The compelling protagonist is usually a detective/investigator/agent in a secret/clandestine organization, usually a government institution, and in legal organizations like PI agencies or various different police departments. That means your protagonist will be the readers eyes and ears (and emotions) in the legal process.

The interesting characters fall into different categories. First category is victim/eyewitness, the second is the bad guys (or just one bad guy) among many suspects, all of which need to have motive to perpetrate the crime, the means to do it, and finally, alibis or lack of them, which leads to the protagonist investigating these people in order to find out what happened. The thing about these characters is that they become the readers’ mediums for experiencing what it’s like to be an eyewitness or to be a suspect in a crime (and as much as we like to say that the world has become a horrible place, most people don’t actually want to be eyewitnesses or suspects in a crime. For this reason, crime fiction along with romance are among the best-selling genres in the world – they provide escapism for the readers in realms that they don’t particularly want to visit).

Third is the crime itself. Here is the thing: a crime that is easily solved by the protagonist will be even more easily solved by your readers, most of which will be crime fiction fans, and if you write in a crime that can be easily solved, the readers will lose interest.

Next in line are ambiance, setting, worldbuilding, and the way that you handle them need to fall in line with the story you want to tell.

And by choosing the crime, we don’t really mean decide if your novel is going to revolve around a murder or a theft, for example. Nor do we mean decide if the protagonist is going to be a man or a woman. What we mean is the crime as a whole: what (murder, theft, kidnapping, etc.) it is, who did it, who will investigate it, and how will they go about it. These three things will decide in which crime category (or subgenre) your story will belong in. And these categories have their own markers that the readers will expect, and knowing that gives you, as a writer, the chance to subvert their expectations and surprise them.

Moreover it will keep you from making rookie mistakes, like for example, having a spunky 22-year-old private eye investigate someone’s murder instead of a detective, going to morgues and other places, investigate witnesses and so forth. A private eye will never have the authority to investigate someone’s murder. When private eyes are hired to investigate someone’s murder, it means that the police have closed the case and have been unable to solve it, or have locked up an innocent man or a woman as the perpetrator. However, a private eye would not investigate the murder right after it happened. Unless the private eye is closely related to the victim, which would give her a personal motive.

And so forth. A spunky 22-year-old female private eye as the protagonist will shoot your novel straight into the chick-lit crime mystery pile, or the cozy mystery. On the other hand, make the woman a little older, late twenties, for example, and make her a legit investigator, and then you have a crime novel that would belong in a different subgenre, like legal or police.

In conclusion, the category your story will belong in will ultimately be decided by your story itself. Deciding on a category before starting to write your will enable you to:

read other novels in the same/similar subgenre, enabling you to know the most common expectations and plots;
outline your novel, so you do not end up involving psychics to give your protagonist clues to the antagonist;
find ways to subvert known clichés and tropes and storylines.

Let’s take a look at the most common categories or subgenres of crime fiction and their expectations and common themes.

There are many different subgenres or categories when it comes to crime fiction. Some of these are more prolific than the others. For example, we can look at mystery as a separate genre, as well as detective, and thriller as well. All of these, however, involve two things: crime and the legal system, and protagonists who need to solve the case, no matter what.

The mystery genre is easy to describe. Everything starts with the perpetration of a crime: someone has been murdered, or something has been stolen. A good mystery will involve both, for example. Then, the investigator comes along and begins to investigate the crime. Your job as the writer here is to throw hurdles and obstacles at the protagonist, even go as far as to make it personal for the protagonist to solve the case to provide more motivation. In addition, you need a cast of the usual suspects, and the more unusual you can make them, the better. The faker their alibis, the better. However, be careful not to make everyone fake their alibis just for the sake of it. Red herrings are fine as long as they do pay off in some way. Keep the readers engaged by creating a mystery that seems impossible to solve at a first glance.

One of the best things about the crime fiction genre is the possible overlap within its categories, as well as the possible mixing of crime with different genres. A detective crime fiction novel always features a detective who is most often investigating a homicide. Along the way he has to go through many obstacles in order to get to the truth, and if he is dealing with a serial killer/a ring of organized crime, the bodies will continue to drop. And even the seemingly natural death of the victim’s neighbor turns out to be a murder. There are two things to be careful of: if there are too many murders and victims, your readers might get lost in the details. Second, if the murder is too complicated to be solved, you might fall into the deus-ex-machina trap. In addition, you don’t want to make the murder too simple – that would make your detective not up to his job.

Thriller (as cross-genre)

A good example of a thriller and crime fiction mix is a novel that revolves, for example, around a kidnapping. The reason why we’re looking a thriller novel as a separate genre is because usually, a thriller novel happens while the crime is being committed. It’s a conflict between the villain and the victim, and, if the victim loses, that’s when the legal department becomes involved. That fact, by default, separates the crime genre and the thriller genre.

However, for example, if the police are involved and trying to prevent a serial killer from committing another murder, and if the novel also focuses on the serial killer’s next victim to be (who he probably has already kidnapped), then you have a novel that is both crime and thriller.

Police procedural fiction novels revolve around a police department that’s trying to solve a crime. Usually, you have the cast of a detective (who may or may not have a partner, who may or may not be a sidekick), a couple of forensics and at least one pathologist, and maybe even additional lab people like a toxicologist, etc. The crime and the perpetrator are usually shown in a prologue, and the readers follow the story of the police department solving the crime. Police procedural fiction allows a glimpse into the world of the police and the story is more about how to catch the murderer through evidence and investigation.

Legal crime fiction novels are a specific subgenre of crime novels. They still involve the same elements of crime fiction: a crime has been committed, and an organization is involved in solving that crime. This time, that organization is the legal department. This means that the action is all in the court room, and usually, the conflict revolves around a lawyer trying to prove that the accused is innocent of the crime, sometimes to the extent of solving the mystery and finding the real murderer, putting himself or herself and their close friends or coworkers in danger.

Locked room

Again, there are many overlaps in crime fiction categories, and the locked room mystery is one of them. It can overlap easily with all the other subgenres. All it needs is to have a crime committed in a locked room (though not necessarily an empty one). This means that the perpetrator could not have easily come and gone from the scene of the crime. What really sets this subgenre apart is the impossibility of the crime. They almost always revolve around a murder, and the readers are presented with the same puzzle – the locked room – as the detective. The puzzle is what entices the readers to read more, hence the major overlap with other subcategories, from detective to legal to cozy mysteries.

Cozy mystery

What sets the cozies – or cozy mysteries – apart is the setting and the ambiance. The violence is toned down, and the murders are usually through poisons or other means, and the motive is almost always personal. Another element that sets them apart is the protagonist, who in this case can be anyone within a community. Usually, the cozies are set in small towns in scenic locations, where the ambiance plays just as big of a role as the characters themselves. The protagonist is usually in a position to solve the mystery: a sheriff, a librarian, a doctor – someone who will have a lot of contact with almost all of the people in the community.

Whodunit refers to the subgenre of crime fiction where the plot revolves solely around discovering who murdered someone. As with other categories, the protagonist is the detective who is investigating the crime, and the usual suspects are making difficult to tell, well, whodunit.

There are other categories of crime fiction. Chick-lit mysteries, where the protagonist is a female, hardboiled crime fiction, where a cop in the Prohibition era has to deal with both the crime gangs and the crooked crime system, the caper crime fiction, where it’s more about committing a petty crime (theft) and getting away with it, and many other categories.

Many different writers define plot in different ways: we all know it when a novel has a tight plot, and when the plot is not right, all readers know it. Here is the thing – plot is what your story depends on. You can think of plotting a novel as putting all elements of one story into a linear grid and knowing which event of the plot happens when in the novel. You can have a good story, but if you don’t put each element of it in its proper place in the grid, you have a jumbled novel with a very loose plot.

A well balanced structure will have three acts: the exposition, or act 1, which is the beginning of your novel. During this part, your protagonist needs to be introduced to the problem. In the case of crime novels, regardless of category, the problem will always be a certain crime – murder, theft, both, or something else. You have created a situation – a problem, and now the protagonist has to solve it.

In the real world, whenever we face a problem, we go for the easiest solution. It’s human nature to take the shortest path to solve a problem. When your protagonist decides to go for the easiest solution to the crime leads you to the first plot point – where the easiest solution to the problem – the easiest explanation for the crime – is actually not right.

However, not all is lost, for the protagonist – be it a detective, an investigator, a private eye – will have other clues to follow. The continued investigation in the case is what will make up the second act of your novel. The second act is very important because here you will present the readers with two things: one, what your novel is really about, and how the protagonist managed to solve the crime and discover who did it. Often, the closer the protagonist is to the truth, the more in danger he or she will be (or their loved ones, like friends and family). Someone – usually the villain, or depending on the connection between the protagonist and whoever committed the crime, the antagonist. The closer the connection between them, the more personal the story will get, thus increasing the stakes for all characters involved.

The closing of the second act is when the protagonist solves the crime. The third act – the resolution – is all about catching the villain, making a valiant attempt at rescuing or saving someone, and for wrapping up all the other secrets and red herrings that were bound to prop up in the first act.

In the next two parts, we will talk about everything from plotting to worldbuilding – to how to create red herrings and use other storytelling tools to plot your novel just right and give your readers a great thrill of a read.

When it comes to choosing a protagonist, we don’t really refer to making up a cast of characters and then deciding which one of them will move the plot forward. Stories often dictate who gets to tell them, and the same thing applies in this case as well. For example, you cannot tell a cozy mystery story if you choose the neighborhood gossip as the protagonist. Every category has its own share of most common protagonist. The neighborhood gossip or the old spinster that lives around the bend might get to be a protagonist of a cozy mystery novel if the crime and the perpetrator are directly connected to her. But, you can also place a dazed city detective as the new head detective in a small town and tell the story through his eyes. The detective would be a better candidate in this particular example, simply because of two reasons:

– the detective, as a newcomer, will have a great perspective on the little town, enabling you, as the writer, to fully immerse the reader inside the world you’ve built;

– the detective has more potential to change, due to the fact that he has recently moved to a new place to live. An added bonus is the fact that he is moving down in his career by moving to a small town where he is bound to have less work, which immediately poses the question as to why he would do that, hinting a dark and possibly traumatic past in the big city. (An additional added bonus is the opportunity to connect said dark traumatic past to the present mystery that the detective has been presented with).

In conclusion, by choosing your protagonist, you’re choosing what kind of a crime story you will tell. However, make sure that your protagonist is in the best position to tell a story. Due to the fact that crime fiction is all about giving the readers a taste of crime investigation, your protagonist needs to be in the best position to tell the story and give the readers that glimpse, and, in addition, make sure that the protagonist is in a good position for a change. This means ensuring that there is a certain inner conflict in the protagonist that prevents him from solving the crime. Thus, dealing with that inner conflict becomes paramount to the resolution of the story, and giving a satisfying answer to the mystery.

The creation of the world in a crime fiction novel depends, for starters, on the genre that you’ve chosen. A cozy mystery demands a small town, a police procedural novel will be more colorful and the mystery more difficult to solve if it happens in a big city. Meanwhile, you need to determine if you’re going to mix in other genres – paranormal, science fiction, medical science, or maybe even romance – which will further define the parameters of your world. For example, a paranormal crime fiction novel will need a crime that was paranormally done, and by default, you need characters that will be equipped with the right paranormal tools to solve the mystery.

However, when it comes to pure crime fiction that has not been mixed with other genres, the world is all about the crime. For this, you will need to do a lot of research into investigative procedures, and, depending on the story you want to tell, you should find people who have had personal, real experiences, either as witnesses or as investigators. And while the internet has become an enormous resource for writers, it is best if you can have real-life interviews to get a recount of such experiences in real life.

Because here is the thing: no decent investigator will fail to look for prints, clues and DNA at the scene of the crime. Of course, the best mysteries revolve around the lack of clues, prints or any kind of DNA to point the protagonist in the right direction. However, your readers will immediately catch onto an amateur investigator, and if that’s the kind of story that you want to tell, then you need to present your protagonist as an amateur from the start – and have him or her become better and better at their job as the novel progresses. On the other hand, if your characters are supposed to be experienced investigators/detectives/crime solvers, they need to act and do things that would show that, rather than have them blunder and wander around the case like amateurs.

This means that your world will be made up of two sets of characters: the protagonist and the usual cast of people who will help him or her solve the crime (fellow investigators, partners, friends, forensic people focusing on different fields that will do tests and provide the protagonist with clues coming from analysis, mentors, family members who may or may not contribute to the drama, or, in fewer words, the good guys), and the characters who are connected to the crime: suspects, victims that hide something, shady characters who may or may not be connected, and the villain and his collaborators, of course.

The protagonist will be flung into a world of laboratories, interviews with suspects, and a lot of going back and forth as he or she is trying to solve the crime. Remember, the world you will create will need to be the perfect place for the crime to be committed, but you also need to figure out the scale of the crime. Then, there is also the impact that the crime would have on an established community – a small town, a precinct, a county, or a big city neighborhood. The people from a big city neighborhood that sees crime daily will react differently to a crime than people from a small town that has not seen any crime for years.

The world needs to be consistent, especially in locations, time, and the daily life of the characters. Moreover, in most stories, the protagonist is flung into a different world than the one he knew before when he or she is introduced to the problem (in this case, the crime). However, in a crime fiction novel where the protagonist is usually a detective or an investigator, the world of crime investigation will be familiar to them, so make sure that you’re presenting the protagonist with a highly unusual case that forces him or her to go out of their comfort zone, both personally and professionally, to solve the crime, and explore a new world along the way.

Besides the protagonist, we will divide the rest of the cast into several categories.

1) The Suspects

The suspects are very important. The more suspect they are, the more difficult will it be for the protagonist to dig the truth out of them. The mistake that you might make here is to make all the suspects unwilling witnesses and unwilling to talk to the protagonist just for the sake of making things difficult. Remember, if people are shady and secretive, then there must be a good reason for it. They might be protecting something, like the existence of an affair, or maybe they were stealing money and are afraid of that fact coming into the light. Regardless, whatever it is, the secret needs to be big enough and have enough impact for the suspect to do whatever they possibly can to keep the protagonist from discovering it.

2) The Helpers

Or, people who will help the protagonist to solve the crime. The helpers can be other professionals, as we mentioned before, or they might even be family members with the right insight at the right moment. The right information at the right moment has to be delivered in a way that makes sense in the plot, otherwise you’re looking at characters who are only there to be the writer’s deus-ex-machina and help the protagonist achieve his or her goal easily. Remember, a good mystery will present obstacles even in the process of obtaining clues. The best way to bring these characters to life is to present them with clues that make matters more confusing, rather than more clear.

3) Other characters

Not all of the characters in a crime novel will be part of the suspects or the helpers group. If you keep your characters strictly into those two categories, your novel will lack color and vividness. However, make sure that you’re not creating extra family members and friends for the protagonist just to make sure that they are present in the novel. Make sure that even the side characters that are not directly related to the plot are still needed in the story.

The reason why we put the suspects as number 1 is because you need to know and develop these characters just as much as the protagonist and the villain. A decent villain has a deep reason as to why he or she is doing things, and the suspects will need an equally compelling reason and motivation to keep their secrets. When it comes to the other characters, the more you develop them as characters, the easier it will be for you to discover their voices and traits. Make sure that each character is unique – otherwise, your readers will feel like they are reading a long two-sided monologue rather than a dialogue.

In a crime novel, there are several ways to create the right ambiance and mood.

Creating ambiance and mood in a novel begins with the right location. Choosing a beach town for a cozy mystery is a good idea, especially if the events happen during winter and you have fog rolling in from the ocean. On the other hand, if your story happens in the middle of summer in Vegas, the atmosphere will be a lot more different. The first location helps create the cozy mood needed for that type of a crime novel. The second location (Vegas), on the other hand, would be a perfect setting for a police procedural and create an ambiance of speed and thrill, helping you make the readers feel excited about where the story is going.

The pacing of a novel is important in many different ways, but here, we’re looking at pacing as a tool to create ambiance. Here is a very simple rule in pacing: action scenes demand a fast pace, which means using shorter sentences to convey the speed of the action itself. Longer sentences, on the other hand, are used to slow the pace down, to allow time for reflection, on the side of the characters. Both fast and slow pacing of a novel need to be used when creating the mood and ambiance in your story.

Different PoV’s:

you can use multiple point of views in a crime novel: the protagonist, the villain, and you may even offer point-of-view chapters through the eyes of a victim. However, you need to be careful when you choose to add different PoV’s. If you follow the villain, you might reveal so much that the mystery will be obvious to the reader. This is not a good idea, unless you’re writing a story about how the villain was caught, while his or her identity is not that really important in the overall course of the story.

Or, in other words, on the structure of individual scenes and how to build them. One of the easiest ways to understand scenes is to divide them into two parts. The first part of a scene is the disaster, where the protagonist tries to achieve a goal but fails. The second part of the scene is called reflection: where the protagonist faces the new problems and makes a decision and creates a new short-term, immediate goal for himself (or herself). The first part of the scene focuses on the plot (achieving a short term goal that will take the protagonist one step closer to the resolution), and the second part of the scene focuses on the protagonist’s reaction to not being able to achieve the goal (or he or she does achieve it, but that only leads to more problems that the protagonist needs to face), hence, the second part focuses on character.

What makes each story unique is the characters that are in it, not just by what happens in it. What makes characters pop and come to life are their reactions to the events that happen to them. Balancing your scenes in the form of disaster/reflection allows you to move the plot forward and to offer insight inside the protagonist’s mind, further bringing that protagonist to life.

In a crime novel, the protagonist is faced with the problem of solving a crime. A twist is when the protagonist solves the crime either wrongly, or only partially. He may arrest the apprentice, but he has not arrested the master yet – and sometimes, the protagonist is not even aware of this fact. In other words, be careful not to make your twist cause the readers to believe the protagonist is incompetent. If the protagonist catches the wrong guy, then make sure that the protagonist has very compelling evidence against him.

This, however, does not mean that you need to pull of mind blowing twists in order to have a satisfying conclusion and resolution to your novel. Depending on the plot and your story, you might choose to go in one direction only to offer a twist right before the end. However, a twist is not that easy to pull off, so make sure that the twist makes sense in hindsight, and then make sure that you both hide and present all the clues leading up to it beforehand. Otherwise, the twist will not belong in the story, and can really be a havoc to the final resolution of the plot and the story.

The crime puzzle is the puzzle you present the readers with when you present them with the crime that propels the start of the story. In other words, the more unusual the crime, the better are your chances at creating a puzzle. The reason why it’s important to treat the crime as a puzzle is because your readers will automatically do that, and as they read your novel, they will try to guess who did it. If you reveal too much, you will enable the reader to figure out who did it before your protagonist does. It’s good if this happens towards the end of the novel, however, if your readers discover by themselves that the villain is the character who seemingly randomly appears on page 15, then you have revealed way too much way too soon.

In this section, we will focus on the tools and elements that can help you build up a great puzzle in the course of the story that will be just as difficult for the reader to solve as it will be for your protagonist.

The best crime puzzle in a novel begins with the crime itself. An unusual crime will present a better puzzle than a usual one. This does not mean that you need to go out of your way to create a crime that is out of the ordinary. For example, you can start your novel with a seemingly random shootout on the street, where the murderer decides to take his own life. Then, the puzzle that needs to be solved would be why the murderer acted that way, so the focus befalls on the murderer and the secrets he was keeping while he was alive. Not every crime needs to be committed behind locked doors without forced entry and without any immediate physical evidence besides a dead body. Often, unusual circumstances will do: a children’s Halloween party ends on a bad note when one of the children is found to have been drowned in an upstairs bathroom.

In a novel, anyone can be an unreliable narrator, if the writer decides so, even the protagonist. However, in a crime novel, an investigation will depend on witnesses. People might have been at the crime scene, or nearby, and they may or may have not heard or seen something. That’s when you get the opportunity to use unreliable witnesses. Their unreliability can be a result of many reasons, which means that the unreliability must be a part of their character. Maybe someone down the alley heard something, but he is a homeless man fighting off a hangover, and his recalling of events is not ideal. He may have seen a man when in fact he was looking at a really tall woman, for example.

However, remember that here, we are talking about building a crime puzzle. Unreliable narrators do not always lie – but make sure that your unreliable witnesses do offer some useful clues. Otherwise, you will have both your protagonist and your readers stumbling about in the dark trying to solve a crime without any real clues whatsoever.

Foreshadowing is a tricky tool to use in a novel, because it always needs a pay-off. You cannot foreshadow a big showdown between a corrupt system in the city and a small-time investigator without delivering on it.

In addition, you might foreshadow too much – so much that your foreshadowing has become foretelling, or, letting know your readers exactly what is going to happen. Foreshadowing as a tool can be used to steer your readers in one direction through use of symbolism, only to pull the plug on them and deliver the payoff in a way that they did not expect. As a storytelling tool, you can use it to foreshadow anything from significant moments to the actual resolution of your novel, maybe even through a simple painting that the protagonist will pay minimum attention to.

Usually, there is a vast array of suspects in any crime novel. The more unusual the crime, the more unusual the suspect list will be. In fact, the crime might even cause the protagonist to look in unusual places for the perpetrator. In the example of the Halloween party from above, depending on the age of the children, the suspect list might range from teenagers who were at the party to the elderlies. This is the moment when the protagonist chooses which suspects to discard as the possible criminals, and which ones to keep investigating.

This means that among the suspects, there will always be some who will be discarded: due to a strong alibi, or because of other reasons, like lack of physical health. It’s not necessary for the protagonist to discard the real criminal as a suspect, but when that happens, the suspect is revealed in a twist at the end.

However, in order to create a better crime puzzle, the serious suspects need to have a motive to commit the crime, the means (physical strength, location, etc.), and proximity to the crime scene. In addition, they need to keep their secrets close and be unwilling to tell the truth when they’re being interrogated. Some might keep secrets that can put them in jail, others can keep secrets because of other reasons. But, like all the other tools, the use of unreliability in characters needs to be sparse and limited to when it’s really needed.

Red herrings are clues that you place in the novel in order to steer the protagonist and the reader in the wrong direction. Red herrings are your best friend when you want to write a novel with a good twist at the end. Here is the deal about red herrings: they mustn’t be too obvious, but they also need to be effective. A red herring that is too obvious will make the protagonist look incompetent when he follows it. On the other hand, the red herring is useless if the reader and the protagonist completely miss it.

The elements that actually should be missed – or not paid much attention to – are the Chekhov’s guns. The rule of Chekhov’s gun is easy to remember: if you introduce a gun in the first act of your novel, by the end of the third act, that gun needs to fire a bullet. However, the bigger the introduction of the Chekhov’s gun, the more obvious their firing will be. For that reason, it’s best to introduce these elements as minimally as possible, and then when the gun does fire off, it’s both a surprise for the readers.

Like all other genres, the crime genre is also filled with tropes, situations, twists, resolutions, and character clichés. There are many common ones that appear in almost all crime fiction novels.

– The estranged wife – the detective is such a workaholic that all he ever thinks about is the job – the crime, the missing person, the theft – and he almost never sees the kids, he never pays attention to their home anymore. They may be divorced, if they’re not, they probably will by the end of the novel.

– The hospital situation – a key witness has been so severely injured that the doctors are not sure if he or she is going to survive. The detective has to go to a hospital to check on the witness, all the while dodging and dealing with family members who are outraged that all that the detective cares about is solving the crime.

(The above two examples offer a very good glimpse into the rule of clichés: once you start, it’s easy to build a cliché on top of a cliché until your whole novel ends up being nothing more than a string of clichés – which does not guarantee you a big audience)

– The good cop/bad cop combo – often seen in police procedural, a suspect or a witness is being interrogated by two cops, one of whom is playing bad cop. A good subversion of this cliché is when the two partners consciously decide to play those roles for a reason (maybe to manipulate a manipulative suspect), however, if you’re going to use this cliché, then maybe you need to rethink the whole story.

– The veteran gets a new rookie partner – and from then on, you can continue building on top of the clichés: the partner might throw up at his first autopsy, he might feel too much empathy for other people, something the gruff, old, veteran detective cannot stand anymore because the streets have hardened him.

The danger with clichés is that you will easily start building on them. The best way to avoid clichés is to first recognize them, and then turn them over. Make the rookie be able to deal with anything, while the older detective is tired of all the evil he has seen. Make the rookie reckless and get into danger, while still managing to solve a crime, reminding the old grizzled detective that the cause they’re fighting for is noble and brings good. There are many ways to subvert a cliché with a little thinking outside of the box. The more you apply it, the easier it will be for you to detect clichés during the writing of your novel and subvert them in interesting ways.

Here is what happens when you fall into a plot trap – i.e when you write a crime that is proving to be impossible to solve. First, you might get stuck during the writing process and may have to fall back on deus-ex-machina to solve your problem, or, to fall back on another gem: when stuck, have a gunman come in and stir things up. If you need a gunman to come in to stir things up, then you’re in trouble, plot-wise.

In order to avoid plot traps, it’s advisable to plot your novel before you write it. This will help you foresee possible problems. Since the novel will revolve around a crime, you will need to plot the course of the protagonist’s investigation. Then, you will need to know exactly what the villain will be doing during this time: will he take action against the protagonist, forcing him into a reactive position, and if so, how and when will that action take place, how will it enable the protagonist to continue with the investigation, and how is the villain able to pull such a thing off.

Another way to deal with plot traps is to make drastic changes in order to eliminate them. This usually happens when you discover plot holes during the editing process of your novel, and it might take a lot of time (months even), to deal with them. Be wary of the solutions that come out of nowhere, because they are bound to anger your readers. In other words, do not have a psychic come up with clues for your protagonist, unless you’re writing a story where the evidence of psychic people is recognized as legal by the law.

Writing a crime novel is not an easy process. Compared to other genres, like romance, a crime fiction novel demands that you do your research into crime and the investigation process. If you’re going for a courtroom crime novel, then you need to have really good insider knowledge of what really is happening in a court room. In addition, you need to read as many novels from the crime fiction genre, because that will enable you to recognize clichés easily. It’s a lot easier to recognize clichés when you’re reading them, and it’s even easier to unconsciously regurgitate clichés in your writing without even realizing it. Having a good basis of research and reading to fall back on will help you write a better novel – and if it’s your debut novel, it will help you attract more readers.

This concludes our guide to writing crime fiction. We hope you will find it useful when writing your crime fiction novel. Make sure to give yourself enough time to prepare with research, so you do not need to look up random (but important facts) when you’re writing your novel. In addition, do not forget that in a crime novel, everything revolves around the crime, however, it is the characters that will bring your story to life, so, make sure to focus both on plot and character (and the balance between them) in order to tell a tighter – and more profound story.

Georgina Roy wants to live in a world filled with magic. As a screenwriting student, she is content to fill notebooks and sketchbooks with magical creatures and amazing new worlds. When she is not at school, watching a film or scribbling away in a notebook, you can usually find her curled up, reading a good urban fantasy novel, or writing on her own.

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Creative writing: an introduction to writing crime fiction

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The Director's Welcome

The deadline for booking a place on this course has passed. Please use the 'Ask a Question' button to register your interest in future or similar courses.

Aims of the course:

To provide students with an overview of crime fiction from the first detective story written by Edgar Allan Poe to recent acclaimed thrillers.
To introduce students to central techniques of writing crime fiction.
To encourage students to make their own experiments with the form.

Learning outcomes:

As a result of the course, within the constraints of the time available, students should be able to:

Describe the history and development of crime fiction and its sub-genres.
Identify and analyse key craft strategies associated with crime fiction writing.
Undertake their own crime fiction writing, whether in response to specific exercises/prompts or a more extended work-in-progress.

Course content overview:

Crime fiction recently overtook general and literary fiction for the first time as the UK's biggest-selling novel genre.

While crime fiction makes use of universal story structures and archetypes, this broad literary tradition has its own conventions and narrative strategies.

The aim of this online course is to introduce students to the craft of crime fiction, including inter alia : detective stories, psychological/spy thrillers, and mystery/suspense novels.

Each week we will examine a different writing technique: plot, characterisation, narrative point-of-view, dialogue, and novel-openings & endings.

Emphasis will be placed on (i) craft discussions, (ii) close reading of crime novel extracts, and (iii) writing prompts and exercises.

Schedule (this course is completed entirely online):

Orientation week: 24-30 may 2021.

By studying this week the students should have:

Become familiar with navigating around the VLE and from VLE to links and back
Tested their ability to access files and the web conferencing software and sorted out any problems with the help of the eLearning Helpdesk
Learnt how to look for, assess and reference internet resources
Used forums to introduce themselves to other students
Contributed to a discussion forum to introduce themselves to other students and discuss why they are interested in the course, what they hope to get out their studies and also to respond to News item sent out on behalf of tutor

Teaching Weeks: 31 May-4 July 2021

Week 1 A detective calls: story structure and the classic whodunit

Acquired a basic understanding of the origins/tradition of both narrative storytelling and the classic detective tale.
Discussed key features, readerly pleasures, and possible limitations of the old-fashioned whodunit story.

Week 2 Characterisation in crime fiction

Learned to create compelling protagonists and antagonists in crime fiction, in particular by understanding how character and story development are linked.
Discussed specific passages from crime novels where the story dynamic (thesis/antithesis) between protagonist and antagonist is effectively exemplified, and where a character’s desire is (a) established and later (b) satisfied.
Completed a character-based writing exercise.

Week 3 Narrative point-of-view in crime fiction

Understood key reasons for composing crime fiction in a certain narrative voice
Studied excerpts from acclaimed and classic crime novels using different POV modes
Experimented with writing in ‘close third’, omniscient third person, unreliable first person et cetera.

Week 4 Dialogue in crime fiction

Performed close readings of dialogue-heavy excerpts from selected crime novels.
Developed a critical understanding of the strategic possibilities and effects of good dialogue in crime fiction beyond conveying information.
Put into practice this critical understanding with a short piece of creative work.

Week 5 Openings and endings in crime fiction

Analysed the nature and objectives of effective novel openings and endings.
Completed a writing exercise on first sentence/paragraph (lede) and conclusion (synthesis) of a crime story.
Studied and discussed a range of examples from crime fiction.

Feedback Week: 5-11 July 2021

Each week of an online course is roughly equivalent to 2-3 hours of classroom time. On top of this, participants should expect to spend roughly 2-3 hours reading material, etc., although this will vary from person to person.

While they have a specific start and end date and will follow a weekly schedule (for example, week 1 will cover topic A, week 2 will cover topic B), our tutor-led online courses are designed to be flexible and as such would normally not require participants to be online for a specific day of the week or time of the day (although some tutors may try to schedule times where participants can be online together for web seminars, which will be recorded so that those who are unable to be online at certain times are able to access material).

Unless otherwise stated, all course material will be posted on the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) so that they can be accessed at any time throughout the duration of the course and interaction with your tutor and fellow participants will take place through a variety of different ways which will allow for both synchronous and asynchronous learning (discussion boards,etc).

A Certificate of Participation will be awarded to participants who contribute constructively to weekly discussions and exercises/assignments for the duration of the course.

What our students say:

"Excellent in all respects. Tim was encouraging and supportive and gave useful feedback on the wide range of submissions."

"I was impressed by how well designed the course was and by the quality of the materials provided."

"Tim Glencross has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the genre he teaches and a contagious enthusiasm for it. He is patient, supportive and understanding teacher. He is the sort of man one would like to have at one's table at a wedding. Or simply have a chat with over a glass or a cup of something in the quiet setting of a country pub."

"My busy life with work and small children means I needed to steal moments here and there to get through the material, so the fully online format suited me perfectly,"

"There was a wealth of background information, high-quality student-generated content for discussion purposes, excellent presentations by our tutor, and a vast number of thought-provoking questions."

This course is open to everyone, and you don’t need any previous knowledge or experience of the subject to attend.

Our online courses are designed especially for adult learners who want to advance their personal or professional development. They are taught by tutors who are expert in both their subjects and in teaching students of all ages and experiences.

Given the nature of creative writing, it is important that students' use of English is sufficiently fluent to be able to understand in English nuances of meaning and have a familiarity with the structure and grammar of English. Please note that all teaching is in English. You should have near-native command of the English language in order to get the maximum benefit from the course.

For information on bursaries for this course, please see https://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/info/bursaries

Course dates

Course duration.

Academic Directors, Course Directors and Tutors are subject to change, when necessary.

Qualifications / Credits

Course code.

Institute of Continuing Education Madingley Hall Madingley Cambridge CB23 8AQ

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2024: A Year of Literary True Crime

6 new and upcoming "nonfiction novels" full of truth, clarity, and devastation.

Over the past few decades, we’ve seen exponential growth in both creative writing programs and the true crime storytelling industry, so perhaps it should come as no surprise to find so much beautiful writing about terrible events. Just so, as true crime has matured, those who tell such stories have learned essential lessons in how to avoid exploitation and bring in appropriate context and empathy (the anthropologists in the list below are especially notable in their sensitivities).

The works on this list are about complicated situations, torn individuals, delayed or denied justice, and a world in which those who bear the most responsibility for harm are not the ones who face the most consequences. They are about the criminalized, the victimized, and the systems that perpetuate the circumstances that enable and encourage violence. True crime is, at best, a depiction of the nexus between worlds, a disrupted moment in which incongruous threads collide with brutal symmetry. There is a before, and an after, and a long after. The after does not end.

Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling , by Jason de León (Viking, March 19)

Jason de León is an anthropologist who uses the concept of “radical hanging out”, or embedding himself in communities for long periods of time, to tell the stories of those smugglers who eke out a bare bones living bringing people over dangerous, ever-changing routes towards relative safety. De León is kind, empathetic, and context-savvy when it comes to depicting those who lesser journalists might have rendered as one-dimensional exploitative boogeymen; the real story of exploitation is that of the United States’ impact on Latin American lives. The people in Soldiers and Kings may walk a gritty path of extra-legality, but they were not forced there in a vacuum.

The Way That Leads Among the Lost: Life, Death, and Hope in Mexico City’s Anexos , by Angela Garcia (FSG, April 30)

Angela Garcia is the second anthropologist on this list, also interested in extralegal acts by those who are forced into unconventional solutions. Here, she portrays the informal rehab system of Mexico City’s anexos, established as makeshift community responses to the need for affordable and accessible treatment centers (and to a lesser degree, assisted living and hideout spaces). In these cramped and crowded rooms, powerful work is done—not always helpful to the individuals in question, but always aimed at fulfilling a need shared by an enormous amount of underserved people. Angela Garcia has crafted a moody, thought-provoking, and fascinating work that will make you consider the ethics of stop-gap measures in a nuanced and hopeful way.

Shadow Men: The Tangled Story of Murder, Media, and Privilege That Scandalized Jazz Age America , by James Polchin (Counterpoint, June 11)

James Polchin uses the murder of a blackmailer by his wealthy target as a jumping off point to examine power, privilege, gender, and sex in Jazz Age America. Polchin is previously the author of the much-launded Indecent Advances: A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice Before Stonewall, and Shadow Men cements his place in the new true crime canon.

Carrie Carolyn Coco: My Friend, Her Murder, and an Obsession with the Unthinkable , by Sarah Gerard (Zando, July 9)

Sarah Gerard’s skills in both creative writing and private investigation are on full display in this disturbing account of her friend Carolyn Bush’s murder by a roommate, and the many iniquities that enabled the crime. She also examines a wider culture of male privilege and entitlement at her alma mater of Bard College, the same school attended by both Carolyn and her killer, drawing a convincing through-line between the university’s abysmal record on sexual assault and mental health treatment and the shocking crime at the heart of her book. Gerard also connects the case into a wider discussion of privilege and power in the New York literary scene, and shows the devastating impact of Carolyn’s loss on an entire community.

The Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant L.A. , by Jesse Katz (Astra, July 16)

In this stranger-than-fiction story, Jesse Katz unpacks the context of a botched hit and its long-lasting consequences. L.A. is home to numerous street vendors, caught in a gray market economy in which both authorities and criminals add to immigrant families’ financial burdens. A teenager. bent on joining a gang is told to take out a vendor who refuses to pay rent on his small patch of concrete; the target survives, but an infant is killed by a stray bullet. The shooter then is subjected to an assassination attempt, itself botched, and the subsequent long-drawn-out legal consequences reverberate across the Los Angeles underworld.

Guilty Creatures: Sex, God, and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida , by Mikita Brottman (One Signal Publishers, July 23)

Mikita Brottman’s latest psychoanalytical approach to true crime looks at purity culture and Christian morality, grappling with the story of a murder committed by two married lovers because it seemed to them less shameful than a divorce. There is never a shortage when it comes to crimes in Florida, but Brottman has captured one of the strangest, and saddest, to ever occur in the Sunshine State.

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Entertainment
Lily Gladstone, Riley Keough, and a Stellar Young Cast Make <i>Under the Bridge</i> More Than Just Another ‘Dead-Girl Show’

Lily Gladstone, Riley Keough, and a Stellar Young Cast Make Under the Bridge More Than Just Another ‘Dead-Girl Show’

T here are so many cop shows. So many murder shows. So many shows about innocent dead girls who turn out to be less innocent than they looked. Most are pointless wallows in the suffering of others, real or fictional. A precious few— Twin Peaks , Sharp Objects —transcend the clichés of an overplayed genre through artful storytelling and thematic depth. Hulu ’s Under the Bridge , premiering April 17, doesn’t reach the latter series’ heights. But thoughtful, empathetic writing and excellent performances make it more than just another dead-girl show.

On the evening of Nov. 14, 1997, 14-year-old Reena Virk joined a gathering of teens near a bridge in Saanich, British Columbia and never came home. Under the Bridge adapts, with some creative license, the true-crime book about Reena’s case by Rebecca Godfrey, played in the series by executive producer Riley Keough . A writer who grew up in the area but hasn’t visited in years, for reasons that seem related to her brother’s death when they were kids, Rebecca is here to research a book she’s calling Victoria Girls . She starts poking around the local girls’ group home, Seven Oaks, just in time to get the scoop on Reena’s (Vritika Gupta) disappearance.

Hers is just one of many perspectives through which the show filters the crime. Killers of the Flower Moon Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone co-stars as Cam Bentland, a young cop working the case alongside her adoptive father, Roy Bentland (Matt Craven), a police chief with a habit of cutting corners and intimidating witnesses in order to achieve his desired results. Cam, who is Indigenous and spent part of her childhood at Seven Oaks, dreams of escaping this insular community through a transfer to Vancouver—one she’d be more likely to receive after cracking a high-profile case like Reena’s. Two of the frenemies Reena met up with at the bridge, Josephine Bell (Chloe Guidry) and Dusty Pace (Aiyana Goodfellow), live at Seven Oaks. Jo is the charismatic, mercurial queen bee, a girl obsessed with John Gotti and gangsta rap. Her best friend Kelly Ellard (Izzy G.) rounds out the pseudo-gang they’ve dubbed “Crip Mafia Cartel.”

Under the Bridge also spends plenty of time with the Virks, Jehovah’s Witnesses of Indian descent who are rocked by their daughter’s rebellion long before she vanishes. Reena fights constantly with her austere, religious mother, Suman ( Archie Panjabi ). After girls at school bully Reena for having hairy legs, Suman walks in on her shaving and declares that caring about something as worldly as what other kids think amounts to “paganism.” Under the Bridge creator Quinn Shephard ( Not Okay ) makes nuanced use of the Virks’ hybrid identities, contrasting the specific tensions within the household with the blunt prejudices they face in the community where Suman’s side of the family has lived for three generations. The series so effectively establishes this dynamic in the present that an episode devoted largely to tracing Reena’s roots, from her grandparents’ arrival in British Columbia to her parents’ courtship, feels redundant.

It isn’t the only instance where the show gives viewers too much information—perhaps in a well-intentioned attempt to do justice to the true story or the book by Godfrey, who died in 2022. It makes sense, for example, that Cam and Rebecca, who must now collaborate to uncover the truth, grew up together and have a complicated history. But Cam’s own backstory, with her father, has enough details and twists to fuel a miniseries of its own. And the timing of Rebecca’s return to her hometown, with a manuscript that couldn’t be more relevant to Reena’s case, reads as contrived. Under the Bridge can get goofy, too, in its depictions of the author at work. Watching her speak full paragraphs of grandiose prose into a recorder, it’s hard not to cringe.

Fortunately, the show is compelling enough to overcome an occasional silly moment. So many crime dramas from the past decade repeat the same pat takeaways about how race and class intersect with criminal justice systems, but Shephard avoids broad generalizations. She is alert to the specificity of not just Reena’s background, but also the diverse experiences of every other character caught up in her story. Stereotypes turn out to be red herrings, for investigators as well as viewers. Shephard is perceptive, too, about the way discrete social groups interact among themselves: small-town police, parents of various racial and socioeconomic statuses, teenage girls who think they’re tougher and meaner and more gangster than they really are.

The acting is even better than the writing. Gladstone’s Cam conceals a lifetime’s worth of anger—about her own upbringing, about her perennial outsider status—beneath an impassive exterior. Keough makes a wonderful morally questionable journalist, who manipulates Jo and drops acid with teen burnouts, in part because she still has yet to get over her own sullen goth phase but also because she convinced herself, back when she was the suspects’ age, that she is a bad person. The younger actors are just as remarkable. Guidry’s Jo is the kind of girl everyone has met, magnetic and terrifying at once. She’s the sun that Reena, Dusty, and Kelly revolve around, each in her own utterly convincing way. Euphoria ’s Javon “Wanna” Walton brings empathy to the difficult role of their friend Warren Glowatski. Through these performances, Under the Bridge subverts our assumptions to make a powerful distinction between what people say, what they do, how they’re perceived, and who they really are.

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Best Crime Writing Contests in 2024

Showing 41 contests that match your search.

Storytrade Book Awards

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novel, Poetry, Romance, Science Fiction, Science Writing, Script Writing, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult

The Storytrade Book Awards recognizes excellence in small and independent publishing. Open to all indie authors and publishers including self-published authors, university presses, and small or independent presses, our annual awards program spotlights outstanding books in a number of fiction and nonfiction categories.

Additional prizes:

Medal, Book Stickers, Digital Seal

💰 Entry fee: $75

📅 Deadline: June 30, 2024

The Book of the Year Awards

The Independent Author Network

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novel, Novella, Poetry, Romance, Science Fiction, Science Writing, Thriller, Young Adult, Crime, and Short Story

The Independent Author Network presents the 10th Annual IAN Book of the Year Awards, an international contest open to all authors with 55 fiction and non-fiction categories. Winners are eligible to receive a share of cash prizes of $6,000 USD. Open to all English language print and eBooks available for sale, including small presses, mid-size independent publishers, university presses, and self-published authors.

$6,000.00 USD in total cash prizes

💰 Entry fee: $49

📅 Deadline: August 16, 2024

Edinburgh Short Story Award

Scottish Arts Trust

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, Short Story, Suspense, Thriller, and Young Adult

£3,000 first prize for writers worldwide and stories on any topic up to 2,000 words. We welcome stories in all genres: literary, historic, crime, romance, gritty realism, contemporary, humour and more.

2nd: £500 | 3rd: £250 | Publication

💰 Entry fee: $12

📅 Deadline: February 29, 2024 (Expired)

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Genre Smash Short Story Challenge

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Horror, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult

For this short story challenge, all participants will be randomly assigned a genre pairing. As soon as you receive your ‘smashed’ genres you'll have until the closing time to write and submit a short story of any length up to 5,000 words, that perfectly and seamlessly combines both genres into one amazing short story.

Publication

💰 Entry fee: $11

📅 Deadline: October 23, 2023 (Expired)

Best Stories on Human Impact of Climate Change

Secant Publishing

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, Short Story, and Young Adult

We are seeking the year's best original short stories (fiction) devoted to the theme of global climate change and its human impact. We are interested in literary interpretations of how individuals and families, cities and nations are bearing the brunt of a world dominated by new extremes of weather, seasons, and eco-disasters. All genres welcome.

2nd: $500 | 3rd: $250 | Publication in anthology

💰 Entry fee: $10

📅 Deadline: March 01, 2024 (Expired)

Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award

Killer Nashville

Genres: Crime, Essay, Fantasy, Fiction, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novel, Poetry, Science Fiction, Script Writing, Short Story, and Thriller

The Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award is committed to discovering new writers, as well as superlative books by established authors and, upon discovery, sharing those writers and their works with new readers. There are a large number of both fiction and non-fiction categories you can enter.

💰 Entry fee: $79

📅 Deadline: June 15, 2024

Reader Views Literary Awards

Reader Views

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Non-fiction, Novel, Novella, Poetry, Romance, Science Fiction, Science Writing, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult

The Reader Views Literary Awards program helps level the playing field for self-published authors, recognizing the most creative and exciting new books in the industry. Our awards program is recognized industry-wide as one of the top literary awards programs for independent authors.

Several marketing prizes (e.g. book review)

💰 Entry fee: $89

📅 Deadline: December 15, 2024

Elegant Literature's Monthly Award For New Writers

Elegant Literature

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, Short Story, Thriller, Young Adult, Flash Fiction, and Science Writing

One of the largest awards open to unpublished writers and closed to professionals. We are the first magazine to pay pro rates and only accept submissions from new writers, putting over $150k into the hands of emerging talent around the globe so far. One new writer receives the grand prize. We also choose the best stories, pay the authors professional rates, and publish them in our magazine. April guest judge is Christopher Fielden.

10x Paid publication, 25 x $20 USD | Free entry to Novelist Accelerator

📅 Deadline: May 01, 2024

Chapter One Prize

Gutsy Great Novelist

Genres: Fiction, Novel, Young Adult, Crime, Fantasy, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, and Thriller

The Gutsy Great Novelist Chapter One Prize is awarded for an outstanding first chapter of an unpublished novel. The prize is open internationally to anyone over 18 writing a novel in English in any genre for adult or YA readers. Winners will be announced March 29, 2024.

2nd: $500 |3rd: $250

💰 Entry fee: $20

Not Quite Write Prize for Flash Fiction

Not Quite Write

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, Science Writing, Thriller, and Young Adult

The Not Quite Write Prize for Flash Fiction challenges writers to create an original piece of flash fiction based on two typical writing prompts plus one ""anti-prompt"". An anti-prompt is a challenge to break a specific “rule” of writing while telling a great story. Participants compete for AU$2,000 in cash prizes, including AU$1,000 for the winner, cash prizes for the entire shortlist and two bonus ‘wildcard’ prizes. Winners are read aloud on the Not Quite Write podcast, where the judges share in-depth analysis about the entries and offer free writing advice. The Not Quite Write Prize for Flash Fiction is hosted in Australia and open to all writers of any age and level of ability around the world.

Publication on the Not Quite Write website and podcast

💰 Entry fee: $16

📅 Deadline: April 21, 2024

Historical Fiction Challenge

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult

For this short story challenge, all participants will be randomly assigned a period in history. As soon as you receive your assignment, you'll have until the closing time to research, write, and submit a short story of no more than 4,000 words, set during this historical period.

💰 Entry fee: $17

📅 Deadline: October 28, 2022 (Expired)

Spring Microfiction Battle

Writing Battle

Two days to write a 500 word short story. The peer-powered quarterly writing contest where every story receives oodles of feedback. Write one. Read ten. Win thousands.

Genre Winner (x4): $1,500

Genre Runner-up (x4): $375 | Feedback by industry professionals

📅 Deadline: May 03, 2024

Clash of the Query Letters

Darling Axe Editing

Genres: Fiction, Memoir, Non-fiction, Novel, Crime, Fantasy, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Novella, Romance, Science Fiction, Thriller, and Young Adult

Our judge, Michelle Barker, will be asking herself one question: does this query letter convince me that I'm in the hands of an adept novelist with a unique and engaging story to tell?

CAD $200 for 2nd place, $100 for 3rd place

💰 Entry fee: $4

📅 Deadline: January 31, 2024 (Expired)

Work-In-Progress (WIP) Contest

Unleash Press

Genres: Crime, Essay, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novel, Novella, Poetry, Science Fiction, Science Writing, and Young Adult

We aim to assist writers in the completion of an important literary project and vision. The Unleash WIP Award offers writers support in the amount of $500 to supplement costs to aid in the completion of a book-length work of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. Writers will also receive editorial feedback, coaching meetings, and an excerpt/interview feature in Unleash Lit.

Coaching, interview, and editorial support

💰 Entry fee: $35

📅 Deadline: July 15, 2024

Goldfinch Books Novel Award

Goldfinch Books

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Novel, Romance, Science Fiction, Thriller, and Young Adult

Goldfinch Books, an independent bookshop, café and event space in Alton, Hampshire, UK has announced a UK nationwide literary competition to coincide with the inaugural Alton Arts Festival. The Goldfinch Novel Award 2024 is a prize for emerging authors (aged 16+) with completed young adult or adult novels. This competition is open to authors in the UK and will have a prize of £300 for the winning novel, chosen by judge Kiya Evans, Associate Literary Agent at Mushens Entertainment.

Goldfinch Membership

💰 Entry fee: $14

📅 Deadline: May 15, 2024

Inspiring Fiction's Special Edition Short Story Contest

Inspiring Fiction

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Mystery, Science Fiction, Short Story, and Thriller

Inspiring Fiction’s special edition short story contest is on the theme ‘Freedom’. We are looking for crime, speculative, and fantasy short stories. The winner and shortlisted entries will be published in a bumper crossover issue of Tangled Web Magazine and Mirk Fantasy Magazine.

Publication and published review by the editor

💰 Entry fee: $6

📅 Deadline: July 31, 2024

A Warm Mug of Cozy Anthology

Warm Mug of Cozy

Genres: Crime, Flash Fiction, Mystery, and Short Story

Do you like writing short cozy mysteries? If so, we would love to invite you to submit your work for potential inclusion in our first Warm Mug of Cozy Anthology. Theme: No restriction, as long as your story follows the classic rules of Cozy Mystery.

2% royalties per published story ($)

💰 Entry fee: $5

📅 Deadline: March 31, 2024 (Expired)

April Flash Fiction Challenge

Writing Peers

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Science Fiction, Short Story, Crime, Horror, Mystery, Romance, and Thriller

Are you seeking lots of feedback? Ever wondered what it’s like to step into the shoes of a jury? Pull a genre, pick a prompt, and let your creativity soar. Submit your piece, then review other entries and develop an eye for what makes a story stand out. Receive detailed feedback, evolve as a writer and you might even walk away with the prize money!

💰 Entry fee: $15

📅 Deadline: April 14, 2024 (Expired)

Best Indie Book Award

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Novel, Novella, Poetry, Romance, Science Fiction, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult

The annual Best Indie Book Award® (or BIBA®) is an international literary awards contest recognizing self-published and independently published authors from all over the world. Entries are limited to independently (indie) published books, including those from small presses, e-book publishers, and self-published authors.

💰 Entry fee: $65

📅 Deadline: August 15, 2024

Ironclad Creative Short Story Competition

Ironclad Creative CIC

Genres: Fiction, Short Story, Crime, Fantasy, Flash Fiction, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Novella, Romance, Science Fiction, and Thriller

We are looking for short stories that respond in any way to: 7:12am. You can use that in the text, as a theme, or any way you want. We accept any prose genre and any length of story up to 6k words. We’re looking for writers who have exciting voices and can move us - that can happen in any genre of prose. We’re not accepting plays or poetry for this competition.

2nd: £50 | 3rd & 4th: £25 | 10 short-listed entries: publication

💰 Entry fee: $8

📅 Deadline: April 30, 2024

Writer's Games

The Writer's Workout

Genres: Fiction, Short Story, Crime, Fantasy, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Poetry, Romance, Science Fiction, Script Writing, Thriller, and Young Adult

The Writer's Games is a free competition with six surprise challenges over six weeks, designed to help each individual writer improve his or her craft fast. FREE registration is required in advance (opens May 1, 2024). Every entry from a registered participant receives honest, unbiased feedback from multiple judges. There's no elimination; push yourself to try each challenge and see what you alone can do in 72 hours each week. The top five winners each week are published in a competition anthology (that's 25 chances, plus the Judges' Choice!).

Publication in anthology, 72 Hours (26+ spaces)

📅 Deadline: July 22, 2024

Winter Flash Fiction Battle

Genres: Fiction, Flash Fiction, Short Story, Crime, Fantasy, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, and Thriller

Three days to write a 1000 word short story. The peer-powered quarterly writing contest where every story receives oodles of feedback. Write one. Read ten. Win thousands.

Genre Winner (x4): $2,000

Genre Runner-up (x4): $500 | Feedback by industry professionals.

💰 Entry fee: $25

📅 Deadline: February 01, 2024 (Expired)

Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize

Gotham Writers Workshop

Genres: Crime, Essay, Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Romance, Science Fiction, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult

The Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize is a writing competition sponsored by the stage and radio series Selected Shorts. Selected Shorts is recorded for Public Radio and heard nationally on both the radio and its weekly podcast. This years entries will be judged by Carmen Maria Machado (In the Dream House, Her Body and Other Parties).

$1000 + free 10 week course with Gotham Writers

The Letter Review Prize for Books

The Letter Review

Genres: Crime, Essay, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novella, Poetry, Romance, Science Fiction, Science Writing, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult

The Letter Review Prize for Books is open to writers from anywhere in the world. Seeking most unpublished (we accept some self/indie published) novels, novellas, story collections, nonfiction, poetry etc. 20 entries are longlisted.

$1000 USD shared by 3 winners

📅 Deadline: October 31, 2023 (Expired)

The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction

Genres: Essay, Memoir, Non-fiction, Crime, Humor, and Science Writing

2-4 Winners are published. We Shortlist 10-20 writers. Seeking Nonfiction 0-5000 words. Judges’ feedback available. Open to writers from anywhere in the world, with no theme or genre restrictions. Judged blind. All entries considered for publication + submission to Pushcart.

Publication by The Letter Review

💰 Entry fee: $2

Black Orchid Novella Award

Wolfe Pack & Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

Genres: Crime, Mystery, and Novella

Novellas are an important part of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe's opus. To celebrate this format, the Wolfe Pack and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine have partnered to sponsor the Black Orchid Novella Award. Each entry must be an original, unpublished work of fiction that conforms to the literary tradition of the Nero Wolfe series.

Publication in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

📅 Deadline: May 31, 2024

The 2022 First Chapter Book Contest

TheNextBigWriter, LLC

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Novel, Science Fiction, Thriller, and Young Adult

Have a book or a novel idea you've been noodling? Enter your first chapter into the Booksie First Chapter Contest and see how it does. You don't need to have finished the book. You don't even need more than the first chapter. We're looking for a start that will grab our attention, that is original, that is well written, and that makes us want to beg you to see what comes next. And for those we find, we'll provide some awards to inspire you to finish writing the book or, if finished, to help get it published.

Gold contest badge.

📅 Deadline: May 14, 2022 (Expired)

7 Day Story Writing Challenge

Genres: Fiction, Flash Fiction, Short Story, Crime, Fantasy, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, Thriller, and Young Adult

Register now for our next 7-day story writing challenge. A secret theme, a randomly assigned genre, and just 7 days to write a story of no more than 2,000 words. Our 7-day story writing challenges take place throughout the year. The challenges are free and you can even get feedback on your story. Take part in one challenge or take part in all of them!

Publication on website

💰 Entry fee: $0

📅 Deadline: April 22, 2024

Stringybark Open Short Story Award 2024

Stringybark Publishing

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Short Story, Crime, Flash Fiction, Horror, Humor, Science Fiction, Thriller, and Young Adult

Our annual flagship competition, the Stringybark Stories Open Short Story Award 2023, is now bigger than ever! Thanks to Graeme Simpson and Anne Buist, a record prize pool of over $1300 is on offer. The theme is open, the only constraint is that there must be a reference to Australia somewhere in the story. It doesn't matter how small a link there is (it could be a jar of vegemite on the counter), there just needs to be one!

2nd: $360 | 3rd: $210 | 4th: $110

📅 Deadline: February 25, 2024 (Expired)

The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books

Genres: Crime, Essay, Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novel, Novella, Poetry, Romance, Science Fiction, Science Writing, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult

Free to enter. Seeking 0-5000 word (poetry: 15 pgs) excerpts of unpublished books (Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction), including most self-published and indie-published works. 2-4 Winners (publication of extract is optional). We Shortlist 10-20 writers. Open to writers from anywhere in the world, with no theme or genre restrictions. Judged blind.

Optional Publication of Excerpt, Letter of Recommendation

Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors

Grist Magazine

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Humor, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult

Imagine 2200 is an invitation to writers from all over the globe to imagine a future in which solutions to the climate crisis flourish and help bring about radical improvements to our world. In 2,500 to 5,000 words, show us the world you dream of building. A great Imagine story is not afraid to explore the challenges ahead — the path to climate progress will involve struggle and adaptation, and we invite you to show that — but ultimately offers hope that we can work together to build a more sustainable and just world. We want to see stories that incorporate real world climate solutions and climate science, as well as cultural authenticity (a deep sense of place, customs, cuisine, and more) and characters with fully-fledged identities.

Publication in magazine

📅 Deadline: June 24, 2024

New Deal Writing Competition

New Deal Museum

Genres: Christian, Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Horror, Humor, LGBTQ, Mystery, Novel, Novella, Poetry, Romance, Science Fiction, Short Story, Thriller, and Travel

GVCA is excited to announce the ninth annual New Deal Writing Competition! This competition challenges writers to use a painting chosen by the staff at GVCA as inspiration for a short story. This year’s painting is “Playtime” by Fred Ross.

Publication in newsletter

📅 Deadline: March 15, 2024 (Expired)

2024 Spring Prose & Poetry Contest

Onyx Publications

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Poetry, Science Fiction, Short Story, and Thriller

Our contest provides a First, Second, and Third prize for both prose and poetry. There are no themes or special requirements so just send us your best work. We recommend you read through previous editions or listen to the works and author interviews on our Story Discovery Podcast to get a sense of the range of creativity we enjoy.

$500 + publication and author interview on Story Discovery podcast

2nd: $150 | 3rd: $75

Summer Nanofiction Battle

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, Science Writing, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult

Two days to write a 250 word short story. The peer-powered quarterly writing contest where every story receives oodles of feedback. Write one. Read ten. Win thousands.

📅 Deadline: August 02, 2024

The Rubery Prize

Rubery Book Awards

Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Humor, Memoir, Mystery, Non-fiction, Novel, Novella, Science Fiction, Thriller, Young Adult, and Romance

The Rubery Prize is a prestigious international book award seeking the best books by indie writers, self published authors and books published by independent presses, judged by reputable judges. Through our reputation of finding quality and outstanding books we aim to bring recognition to the works that win and heighten an author's profile.

£200, a write-up

💰 Entry fee: $60

Discover the finest writing contests of 2024 for fiction and non-fiction authors — including short story competitions, essay writing competitions, poetry contests, and many more. Updated weekly, these contests are vetted by Reedsy to weed out the scammers and time-wasters. If you’re looking to stick to free writing contests, simply use our filters as you browse.

Why you should submit to writing contests

Submitting to poetry competitions and free writing contests in 2024 is absolutely worth your while as an aspiring author: just as your qualifications matter when you apply for a new job, a writing portfolio that boasts published works and award-winning pieces is a great way to give your writing career a boost. And not to mention the bonus of cash prizes!

That being said, we understand that taking part in writing contests can be tough for emerging writers. First, there’s the same affliction all writers face: lack of time or inspiration. Entering writing contests is a time commitment, and many people decide to forego this endeavor in order to work on their larger projects instead — like a full-length book. Second, for many writers, the chance of rejection is enough to steer them clear of writing contests.

But we’re here to tell you that two of the great benefits of entering writing contests happen to be the same as those two reasons to avoid them.

When it comes to the time commitment: yes, you will need to expend time and effort in order to submit a quality piece of writing to competitions. That being said, having a hard deadline to meet is a great motivator for developing a solid writing routine.

Think of entering contests as a training session to become a writer who will need to meet deadlines in order to have a successful career. If there’s a contest you have your eye on, and the deadline is in one month, sit down and realistically plan how many words you’ll need to write per day in order to meet that due date — and don’t forget to also factor in the time you’ll need to edit your story!

For tips on setting up a realistic writing plan, check out this free, ten-day course: How to Build a Rock-Solid Writing Routine.

In regards to the fear of rejection, the truth is that any writer aspiring to become a published author needs to develop relatively thick skin. If one of your goals is to have a book traditionally published, you will absolutely need to learn how to deal with rejection, as traditional book deals are notoriously hard to score. If you’re an indie author, you will need to adopt the hardy determination required to slowly build up a readership.

The good news is that there’s a fairly simple trick for learning to deal with rejection: use it as a chance to explore how you might be able to improve your writing.

In an ideal world, each rejection from a publisher or contest would come with a detailed letter, offering construction feedback and pointing out specific tips for improvement. And while this is sometimes the case, it’s the exception and not the rule.

Still, you can use the writing contests you don’t win as a chance to provide yourself with this feedback. Take a look at the winning and shortlisted stories and highlight their strong suits: do they have fully realized characters, a knack for showing instead of telling, a well-developed but subtly conveyed theme, a particularly satisfying denouement?

The idea isn’t to replicate what makes those stories tick in your own writing. But most examples of excellent writing share a number of basic craft principles. Try and see if there are ways for you to translate those stories’ strong points into your own unique writing.

Finally, there are the more obvious benefits of entering writing contests: prize and publication. Not to mention the potential to build up your readership, connect with editors, and gain exposure.

Resources to help you win writing competitions in 2024

Every writing contest has its own set of submission rules. Whether those rules are dense or sparing, ensure that you follow them to a T. Disregarding the guidelines will not sway the judges’ opinion in your favor — and might disqualify you from the contest altogether.

Aside from ensuring you follow the rules, here are a few resources that will help you perfect your submissions.

Free online courses

On Writing:

How to Craft a Killer Short Story

The Non-Sexy Business of Writing Non-Fiction

How to Write a Novel

Understanding Point of View

Developing Characters That Your Readers Will Love

Writing Dialogue That Develops Plot and Character

Stop Procrastinating! Build a Solid Writing Routine

On Editing:

Story Editing for Authors

How to Self-Edit Like a Pro

Novel Revision: Practical Tips for Rewrites

How to Write a Short Story in 7 Steps

How to Write a Novel in 15 Steps

Literary Devices and Terms — 35+ Definitions With Examples

10 Essential Fiction Writing Tips to Improve Your Craft

How to Write Dialogue: 8 Simple Rules and Exercises

8 Character Development Exercises to Help You Nail Your Character

Bonus resources

200+ Short Story Ideas

600+ Writing Prompts to Inspire You

100+ Creative Writing Exercises for Fiction Authors

Story Title Generator

Pen Name Generator

Character Name Generator

After you submit to a writing competition in 2024

It’s exciting to send a piece of writing off to a contest. However, once the initial excitement wears off, you may be left waiting for a while. Some writing contests will contact all entrants after the judging period — whether or not they’ve won. Other writing competitions will only contact the winners.

Here are a few things to keep in mind after you submit:

Many writing competitions don’t have time to respond to each entrant with feedback on their story. However, it never hurts to ask! Feel free to politely reach out requesting feedback — but wait until after the selection period is over.

If you’ve submitted the same work to more than one writing competition or literary magazine, remember to withdraw your submission if it ends up winning elsewhere.

After you send a submission, don’t follow it up with a rewritten or revised version. Instead, ensure that your first version is thoroughly proofread and edited. If not, wait until the next edition of the contest or submit the revised version to other writing contests.

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Abel gance’s ‘napoléon,’ restored over 16 years, to open cannes classics before heading to netflix , mark gatiss writing & starring in uktv drama about crime-solving bookshop owner.

By Jesse Whittock , Max Goldbart

Mark Gatiss (center) and the cast of 'Bookish'

EXCLUSIVE: Sherlock star Mark Gatiss is writing and starring in a British TV drama about a bookshop owner who helps police solve crimes.

Bookish will be a six-part series for UKTV crime drama network Alibi set in post-war London in 1946. Gatiss, the co-creator of BBC shows such as Sherlock and The League of Gentlemen and Netflix/BBC’s Dracula and actor in films including Operation Mincemeat and Mission Impossible — Dead Reckoning , is the creator.

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Starring alongside Gatiss is Polly Walker ( Bridgerton , Line of Duty ), who plays Book’s colourful wife Trottie. She is charismatic and adventurous, owns a wallpaper shop next door and loves Book deeply but not physically. They shares a ‘lavender’ marriage, which helps conceals Book’s sexual orientation at a time when it was illegal to be gay.

Guest stars include Joely Richardson ( The Gentleman , The Ballad of Renegade Nell ) , Daniel Mays ( The Long Shadow, Code 404 ) and Jonas Nay ( Deutschland 83 , Concordia ). Other core cast members include Connor Finch ( Everything I Know About Love ) as Jack, Olivier award-winner Elliot Levey ( We Were the Lucky Ones , Quiz ) as Inspector Bliss and Buket Kömür ( Our House ) as Nora.

Each case will span two 70-minute episodes and will, according to producers marry “post-war nostalgia with the reckless and life-affirming atmosphere of the times.”

Hotel Portofino producer Eagle Eye Drama is attached to make the show, which has a 2025 airdate on Alibi. Germany’s Beta Film has international distribution rights. The series is produced in association with Belgium-based Happy Duck Films, which is part of the Eagle Eye stable, and is supported by the Belgian Tax Shelter.

UKTV Head of Drama Helen Perry produced commissioned the show, which was ordered by Alibi Channel Director Emma Ayech. The BBC Studios-owned broadcaster is behind crime shows such as the Nicola Walker-starring Annika , Molly Windsor and Martin Compston vehicle Traces and the Barcelona-set drama The Diplomat .

“UKTV is the home for writers’ passion projects, and we are so proud to be working with the exceptionally talented Mark Gatiss on his, along with the effervescent team at Eagle Eye,” said Perry. “Mark’s unique detective thriller is full of wit and heart, with a central platonic love story that is sure to enthral audiences. And because Book is a gay man, at a time when it was illegal to be so, we are proud that the drama shines a light on an important LGBTQ+ story. The star-studded cast Eagle Eye have already put together is tribute to the sure-fire hit Bookish is to become.”

“To misquote Goodfellas : ‘All my life I’ve wanted to be a detective!’,” said Gatiss. “I couldn’t be more excited to be bringing this series to the screen, and to plunge viewers into our intoxicating version of post-War London. It’s an under-examined time and an under-examined world and Bookish is the strange, funny and thrilling show that I’ve always wanted to make.”

McGrath, Chief Creative Officer for Eagle Eye Drama, added: “There are some characters, some ideas that just leap off the page and demand to be realised. Book, Trottie and the clever crimes Mark Gatiss has woven around the precinct of Archangel Lane is one of those projects. The answer to every crime can be found in a book and in Bookish , Mark Gatiss has created a unique, memorable and stand out new detective series.”

Beta’s Chief Distribution Officer, Oliver Bachert, said the show was “sure to become a great example of a sophisticated crime drama and instant classic for audiences around the world.”

Gatiss is repped by Curtis Brown for acting and by PBJ Management for writing. Walker is repped by The Artists Partnership.

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Charif Shanahan on the relevance and rewards of poetry

Expert Viewpoint
Weinberg College

April is National Poetry Month. To celebrate, Northwestern Now sought out Charif Shanahan, assistant professor of English at Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, to discuss the craft of poetry as a tool for knowledge generation and the rewards of writing and reading it.

Shanahan recently was honored with the 2024 Whiting Award in Poetry for his second book of poems, “Trace Evidence” (Tin House, 2023). The highly selective $50,000 award recognizes writers for their early accomplishments and promise of great work to come. Past recipients have gone on to win top literary awards including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and PEN awards.

“Trace Evidence” also has been recognized by several prestigious literary foundations. The collection was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award; was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry awards; is a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award, and topped The Guardian list of best poetry books of 2023 .

Shanahan happened to arrive at Northwestern during the height of the pandemic in 2020 as he was growing, shaping and editing the poems that would become “Trace Evidence.”

The youngest of three sons, Shanahan was born in the Bronx to a Moroccan mother and Irish American father. On his father's side his heritage is third-generation white Irish American from New York City. His mother was born in Casablanca and raised in a family at the intersection of Arabness and Blackness. This combination of cultures, race, nationality and queer identity has been the wellspring of his poetry and creative practice.

“Inhabiting the interstices — racially, culturally — required me to look hard at the world in an effort to understand the reasons, both historical and current, for that ‘positioning’,” Shanahan said. “It has also been enormously generative creatively.”

The book’s probing center poem, “On the Overnight from Agadir,” which tracks his quest to locate himself in his mother’s homeland, also explores a devastating bus accident he survived while conducting genealogical research as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Morocco.

Shanahan chose the title “Trace Evidence” because it works as both noun and verb, thing and action. It also references the language used at a crime scene.

“Trace evidence is generated by contact between surfaces, a drop of blood, or some DNA, and are the vestiges of what has occurred in the space,” Shanahan said. “It felt like an operative metaphor for thinking about race and identity in a postcolonial context and from a mixed-race perspective, and about what can be seen and what can’t be seen.”

In the Q&A, Shanahan talks about sources of inspiration, what poetry can teach us and how to approach a poem.

“Trace Evidence” captures moments from childhood to explore questions of identity. What makes memories a fruitful source for poetry?

Memory-driven poems are, in my view, less “about” the earlier moment and more about how the individual later in life has integrated, or not integrated, that memory into their understanding of themselves and human experience. The question is why a certain memory has stayed with you, what gives it life. The poem, if it does its work, can touch the answer to the question, which ideally then casts light on the questions of others.

What do you hope you do as well as your mentors?

It is important to me to convey the sense of discovery inherent to the process of making poems. When we sit down to write a poem and know exactly what we mean to say, the draft might be competent, but is usually dead on arrival, spiritually. I want my students to know that poetry enables them to discover the answers to questions that they may not have consciously known to ask, that, whatever those questions are, the answers are inside them. For students who won’t continue writing poems, I hope that they come to see the utility and relevance of poetry to their lives and will continue to be poetry readers.

Why do you take the risk to craft and deeply consider things when there is a possibility that people may misinterpret or miss the point?

The failures of language are exciting to me. It means that we are at the edge of something real and important that is hard to convey and therefore worth finding a way to transmit. The difficulty of its expressability is related to its particularity, its value, its worth. As a poet, I’m inspired when I arrive at a place where language fails because it means something is there worth discovering and giving shape to through the means of poetry.

For those who are resistant and feel like poems are too abstract, what's your guidance for reading poetry?

There are so many kinds of poems. Some are immediate and clear and accessible and want to be understood, known, seen, even useful. We might not entirely understand a poem when we first hear or read it, but we can still take something from it. It’s a cultivated misconception that poems are puzzles waiting to be “figured out”— poetry is the human voice, and all we’re being asked to do — at first, at least — is listen.

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Best Crime and Mystery Writing Prompts of 2023. Krystal N. Craiker. Content Manager and Indie Author. Readers love mystery stories because of the suspense, the puzzle, and the plot twists. The mystery genre is a great genre to explore for writers who love writing suspense and enjoy learning about true crime.
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L.A. is home to numerous street vendors, caught in a gray market economy in which both authorities and criminals add to immigrant families' financial burdens. A teenager. bent on joining a gang is told to take out a vendor who refuses to pay rent on his small patch of concrete; the target survives, but an infant is killed by a stray bullet.
I was accidentally in Taggart
His writing is heavily influenced by the 10 years he spent working in journalism, but he credits the relationship between Jason and Amita, and the plot for his first cosy crime book The Bingo Hall ...
AI Story Generator & AI Story Writer
Start your creative process and bring out your rough story idea's potential with Magic Write's AI story generator, powered by OpenAI. Simply launch Canva Docs to access the story maker tooI. Enter a detailed storytelling prompt, and watch as words fill the page within seconds. Run free with this AI-generated story draft and transform it ...
'Under the Bridge' Is More Than the Typical 'Dead-Girl Show'
Hulu 's Under the Bridge, premiering April 17, doesn't reach the latter series' heights. But thoughtful, empathetic writing and excellent performances make it more than just another dead ...
20 Intriguing True Crime Books To Tease Your Curiosity
American author Erik Larson wrote the bestselling true crime book "The Devil in the White City." 19. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1965) Perhaps the best-known true crime work of all time, In ...
The Ultimate List of Crime Writing Contests in 2024
Add to shortlist. Genres: Crime, Fantasy, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Horror, Humor, Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, Science Writing, Short Story, Thriller, and Young Adult. Two days to write a 250 word short story. The peer-powered quarterly writing contest where every story receives oodles of feedback.
Mark Gatiss Writing & Starring In UKTV Crime Drama 'Bookish'
EXCLUSIVE: Sherlock star Mark Gatiss is writing and starring in a British TV drama about a bookshop owner who helps police solve crimes. Bookish will be a six-part series for UKTV crime drama ...
Charif Shanahan on the relevance and rewards of poetry
April is National Poetry Month. To celebrate, Northwestern Now sought out Charif Shanahan, assistant professor of English at Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, to discuss the craft of poetry as a tool for knowledge generation and the rewards of writing and reading it. Shanahan recently was honored with the 2024 Whiting Award in Poetry for ...