Category: How to

The Reader has to be Hooked by your Story

~ Philip Shepherd ~ Leave a comment

The reader has to be hooked on the first page, and you must not release them for the whole novel.
In any literature, the opening sentences, paragraph, page or chapter can be critical, and crime writing is no different. Start your story off with some significant event, or a narrative that is profound.
Here are a couple of opening types that have worked:

  • The start of the novel with the protagonist in some physical or emotional danger.
  • A flashback opening can start with a time of high intensity from somewhere later in the story and then flashback to the circumstances leading up to the actual beginning.
  • The first day on the job opening: An excellent way to propose the world to the reader is to see it through the eyes of the protagonist, or the antagonist. Sometimes the Antagonist is the first person narrator; this is very rare.
  • The everyday hero opening is when your protagonist is going about their ordinary life, and some event has them careening off to another way.
  • Outside action is the external action event which could be a robbery, or a murder, or any problem that doesn’t involve the hero.
  • Never begin with a summary of the weather. In a crime novel, if you open with a report of the weather it will make people assume the weather killed somebody.

Do Not Be Tedious or Boring

~ Philip Shepherd ~ Leave a comment

The worst offence a writer can perform is to be dull or boring. It is a very woeful offence to be boring. The reader will stop reading and move on to another book while keeping in mind the author is not to be seen again. If a crime novel becomes boring, there’s a very high chance it is because the writer was fatigued while composing the words. The worst bit of guidance I have ever been told, and it’s slung around like a rule that must be followed is; ‘Write what you know.’ It’s not entirely honest, as you should ‘Write what excites you.’ With research into what is exciting to you, so you then understand what you write, and that excitement will come across on the page and excite the reader.

Manuscript Format on Submission

~ Philip Shepherd ~ Leave a comment

1. The manuscript you submit should be printed on standard, 8 ½” x 11” 20 lb paper on one side of the page only. (This is standard American paper, evidently, in the UK an A4 size page will suffice, but be sure to ask the publisher or agent. )

2. Remember to double-space your manuscript, just like a PhD thesis or journal paper, and indent the paragraphs or when dialogue five spaces. (This is the most important rule. The double spacing is easier to read and also adds room for critique notes.)

3. Use a 12 point font Courier or Times Roman, but always check the publisher or agent’s guidelines before your submission.

4. Be sure to only use white paper for your manuscript and proper business stationery for the cover letter. Don’t send work in pretty envelopes with art or images from your website on them. The publisher or agent will not care about your smart associations because they will not read the story.

5. Mark each page with a page number and include a header with your last name, a word from the title, and page number. A busy editor may drop a pile of manuscripts on the floor; you want it to be quickly reassembled in order.

6. Don’t send your query letters out without fully researching the agency or publisher. RESEARCH THIS CAREFULLY. The top reason for rejection is the manuscript doesn’t fit for the publishing house or agency. So make sure that the publisher or agent handles the genre of books you are submitting. Consult a market guide, but also try to dig a little deeper than that. Don’t worry; it will pay off.

7. Get names. Do not send your letter to ‘ Dear Sir,’ so take a minute and phone the agent or publisher, if you must, to find out to whom you are to address your submission. In the end, always read the submission guidelines.

8. If in any doubt, always query first. This is particularly true if you are looking for an agent. If they are curious about your project, they will then request more materials.

9. Only send what is requested. Don’t send any gifts, bribes or promotional supplies with your package. Don’t submit summaries for the manuscripts that you may have in the drawer when they’ve only asked to see one document.

10. Spend the same time and energy on the submission package as you did on your manuscript. Be sure to make it as sharp as possible. This submission is your sales tool. Also, have the help of critique partners and writer friends in making it perfect.

Help with Writing a Mystery

~ Philip Shepherd ~ Leave a comment

The first action is to pick a unique and unusual location. For a strange and unique mystery. This goes back to keeping things simple. Allow the wonder and confusion to stem from one part or the other of your story. Too much can create chaos in your reader.
Limit yourself to five or fewer suspects. Not only does this make your story more tight and concise, but it also makes it easier for your reader to keep track of the clues and hints.
Create subtle connections to each character to create cohesion. Your supporting characters are suspects by design. Each one should connect to each other in subtle ways. This will tie your story together in ways that will leave your reader reeling, but in a genuine way.

Eventually, it all stems down to; The intensity of your mystery will arise either from the characters or the intricacy of the crime. It is best to stick to one or the other, and you should have success.

Outline with a Pantsing Attitude

~ Philip Shepherd ~ Leave a comment

Don’t let an outline prescribe your novel’s plot rigidly – use it compliantly.
Novel plot outlines are extremely useful for giving your story a clear sense of direction and purpose. Writing a book is like heading out to an ocean in a small boat. The outline helps if you have a method and a course laid out. The same time, you need to be equipped for sea changes.
Sticking to your outline, you might ignore places where variation would make sense. Where your outline might say, your tale should go in one course while the characters (your creative intuition or Pantsing attitude) are telling you to go in another. It’s essential to treat your outline as a guide – this way you can chart the entire course of your novel while still allowing for sensible detours. Use the brainstorming and three-act structure to create a blueprint for your book.

Some Laws for Writing a Detective Story

~ Philip Shepherd ~ Leave a comment

1. A reader must have the same opportunity with the investigator for solving the crime.  All the clues must be plainly stated and reported.
2. No deliberate tricks or dishonesty may be placed on a reader other than those performed legitimately by the perpetrator on the detective.
3. There must be no love engagement.  The profession in hand is to bring a perpetrator to the bar of justice, but not to bring a lovelorn pair to their wedding
 day.
4. The detective themselves, or one of the official police investigators, should never turn out to be the offender.  This is plain trickery, on a par with offering someone a penny for a ten-pound note.  It’s false pretences.
5. The offender must be concluded by logical reasoning — not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated admission.
6. A detective novel must have a detective in it, and a detective is not a detective unless he or she detects. Their purpose is to collect clues that will ultimately lead to the person who did the dirty work in the first chapter being apprehended. If the detective does not reach their conclusions through an investigation of those clues, he has no more solved the problem than the pupil who gets their answer out of the back of the arithmetic textbook.
7. There frankly must be a corpse in a detective novel. No lesser crime than murder will suffice.  A couple of hundred pages is far too much bother for a crime other than a murder, or a few.  After all, the reader’s task and investment of energy must be rewarded.
8. The puzzle of the crime must be solved by naturalistic means. Such methods for learning the truth as slate-writing, ouija-boards, mind-reading, spiritualistic seances,  crystal-gazing, and the like, are taboo.  The reader has a chance when matching his wits with a typical detective, but if they must compete with the world of ghosts and go chasing around metaphysics, they are surely defeated.
9. There must be only one detective — that is, but one protagonist.
10. The offender must turn out to be a person who has acted a more or less prominent part in the story (antagonist) that is, a character with whom the reader is familiar and in whom they take an interest.
11. The butler or servant should not be made by the author as the culprit. This is begging the question; it is a too easy solution.  The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person — one that would not ordinarily come under suspicion.
12. There must only be but one offender, no matter how many murders are perpetrated.

Remove unnecessary words

~ Philip Shepherd ~ Leave a comment

On a different note to my regular diatribe, passive voice can also make your writing more concise, strangely enough, by removing unnecessary words, i.e. information that isn’t required to get the message across or are unimportant.
“John Doe was hit by a car and then rushed to hospital.”
“John Doe and what happened to him is the focus of this sentence, not the thing that hit him.”
Additionally, it isn’t important how he got to a hospital, only that he’s there. (I’m particularly upset at ending a sentence with a preposition) 
This passive construction is much more efficient than;
“A car hit John Doe, and then an ambulance rushed him to a hospital,” which sounds as awkward as ‘passive’ sounds when ‘active’ should be used.
It isn’t vague like passive can be, but it isn’t concise, either. Another example is “John Doe was charged with the murder of his wife, Jane,” which sounds much simpler than “Police charged John Doe with the murder of his wife, Jane,” or even “Sergeant James Ryan charged John Doe with the murder of his wife, Jane,” where it isn’t clear whose wife Jane is. (or this one)

If writing a short story that only should contain 1500 words then you could look for the words that just add completeness like;

“John sat down and read a book.”  –  6 words

“John sat and read a book.”  –  5 words

There is sat down and stud up.

Improve Your Writing

~ Philip Shepherd ~ Leave a comment

Some quick helping points that can improve the very next piece you write.


1. Know your reader, and this means more than knowing a few demographics (how old they are, their average income, etc.). To know your readers means you understand their fears, frustrations, and aspirations. Writing from the reader’s perspective will dramatically change the way you write.
2. Know your objective.
3. The pieces you write like blog posts, press release, video script, or anything else, need have only one aim. I can call this objective the Most Desired Result, or “MDR.” Knowing your MDR forces you to write with crystal-clear focus.
4. Use short words; you don’t need a thesaurus.
5. To convince, you must be clear to understand. Utilising short words is one of the best ways to make your meaning clear. So, don’t show off how many big words you can use.
6. Use short sentences. Your thoughts come across more clearly in short sentences. A bonus is that short sentences prevent you from confusing your readers.
7. Use short paragraphs.
8. Let’s imagine you come to a webpage filled with a large block of text. There are no paragraph breaks. Are you likely to read it? Most people would say no. Make your writing skimmable, scannable, and scrollable. Use short paragraphs.
9. Use active language.
10. Active language is powerful and interesting. In contrast, passive language is tedious. How do you identify which is which? In an active sentence, the subject is performing the acting: “Bill fixes cars.” But in a passive sentence, the target of the action becomes the subject of the sentence. For instance, instead of saying, “Bill fixes cars,” I might say, “The cars are fixed by Bill.” 
Passive language presents your idea inadequately. It does feel “backwards.” Also, it is more difficult for many readers to understand. Write with power. Use active language.
11. Write recklessly, re-write ruthlessly.
12. When you eventually write your first draft, it’s okay if it’s appalling. In other words, write carelessly. After you have your first draft on a document (or in memory), filled with strength and power, you can clean up any “messes” you might’ve made. Be ruthless when you edit and re-write.

Plot Better Fiction: Tell Better Lies

~ Philip Shepherd ~ Leave a comment

What is Fiction?
Fiction is lies; the writer is writing about characters that have never existed and scenarios in a novel that never happened. Reality usually is utterly dull. To make it more interesting, you have to complicate it, and complicate it some more. Occasionally, the reality becomes complicated and hectic, almost as complex as fiction. I’m sure many of us have been through those situations.

Telling Better Lies
Fiction novels are based on reality and then made more complex with exciting characters. You find an interesting scenario in real life and think that it can be made into a novel or a few scenes in a novel. The first thing you do is ask yourself, “How can I make this outrageous?”
As a new writer, you’re thinking, “But, I need to make it believable to keep the suspension of disbelief. This means that you hover too close to reality and being dull. If anything else, reading about a wealthy landowner who has ghosts that suck blood in their house probably won’t be boring. The idea is to set your fictional world, in the beginning, then your reader will be less in reality.
Star Wars, although a movie, started off showing a reasonably sized spaceship being pursued by a massive great big one. Going onboard the smaller ship, there was robots and laser beam fighting. After the first scene was complete, we had been taken to a space travel capable race and introduced to two main characters. From then on the characters were developed and exciting problems were included to outrageous standards.

Strong Characters

~ Philip Shepherd ~ Leave a comment

All of this foreshadowing and suspense-building, that we spoke of in recent blogs, does little if the reader does not care about what happens in the climax of your novel. The best way to make sure that the reader cares is by creating strong characters that are real to the reader. When characters feel real, the reader will care what happens to them and about the suspenseful situations they encounter. Characters’ behaviour should seem reasonably plausible to the reader.
Building suspense requires mastering some writing techniques. It also requires making sure that you have engaging characters whose challenges matter to them and your readers. Suspense needs conflict and drama to grow. Compressing time or limiting the character’s freedom or means in some other way can help build suspense. Planting false clues via red herrings that leave the reader and characters unsure as to who can be trusted is also useful. Authors writing crime fiction must create a strong motivation for readers to invest in seeing suspenseful setups through to their conclusion.