You know you’re reading a great mystery novel when you’re up at three in the morning, unable to put it down. When you finally get to sleep, the characters go romping around in your dreams. You get to the final page and smack yourself in the head because the solution is a complete surprise, and yet so obvious in retrospect. This session will demystify the art and artifice and get down to the nuts and bolts of writing a killer mystery novel. Topics include:
– What makes a novel a mystery: constraints of the genre
– Harnessing a “bookended” 3-act structure
– Creating a compelling protagonist with a back story driving them in the present
