How to Write Mysteries by Shannon OCork

OCork, Shannon. How to Write Mysteries. Cincinnati, OH: Writers’ Digest Books, 1989.

How to Write Mysteries is a quick summary of writing crime novels from start to finish. It doesn’t deal much with what it’s going to take to get you to set down and do it, but it is full of advice on what make mysteries work.

To OCork, a mystery is a like a game you play with your readers. A mystery novel is puzzle and the reader is trying to solve it by figuring out who committed the crime, typically murder. The writer must play fair by providing all the clues needed to figure it out, but at the same time provide an interesting story that obfuscates and distracts.

OCork speaks of this in terms of the real story and the apparent story. The real story is the solving of the mystery. The apparent story is all the stuff the characters must go through, some directly related to unraveling the crime and some tangential, to accomplish it.



The book deals with the mechanics of writing a mystery novel: types of mysteries, plot development, style, character development, pace, dialogue and more. It also covers what to do after you've written your book: manuscript preparation, submitting to publishers and starting your next book.

OCork uses examples throughout to illustrate her point. Some come from published works, but many come from a story she makes up for the purpose of illustration. It’s not a novel, but it does illustrate how one thing builds on another, from plot to the full story. Using this common example shows how everything ties together.

In one chapter, OCork addresses the writer’s life. It is a lot of work. If you’re making a living as a writer, or hoping to, it is your work. That means making the sacrifices needed to do the work you want, but also enjoying the fruit of it.