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the authors and friends of
Not Your Usual Suspects for an occasional
series of posts about their world of reading, writing and publishing.
Short and sweet, hopefully both informative and entertaining - join us at
I-Spy to find out the how's and why's of what we do.
TODAY'S POST: I-Spy: Writing the Gay Mystery – Creating a
Series
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Well, we’ve nearly come to the end of our series on writing
the gay mystery novel. Next month will be a Q&A session, so feel free to
post your questions for December’s blog in the comment section below.
My final column is on a topic I’m asked about a lot: writing
a mystery series. Or, more exactly, writing a successful mystery series. Because,
let’s face it, we all want our series stories to be a big hit with readers. We want a series with legs, a series that will take off and run for years.
The first thing to know about writing a mystery series is
you don’t begin a series because you love your characters. Loving them is a
plus, but not being able to let go of your characters is not really enough. Nor
is it enough that readers – or even your publisher – beg for more. Again,
that’s all great, and those are all factors in the decision to continue writing
about a particular set of characters, but the main reason to write a series is
you have a story to tell that can’t be done justice in one book.
This is a little different from writing a romance series
where often the subsequent books will feature supporting cast members from
previous stories (all those Hot Men of Seal Team 8 or Sexy Donahue Brothers or
Sassy MacCafferty Sisters spinoffs spring to mind). It’s also different from
writing fantasy where there’s such a huge overarching plot that the hero’s
personal quest is almost secondary.
In a mystery series, each story – case -- is complete in
itself, although there may be a greater and overarching mystery to be solved.
The real story has to do with the central protagonist(s) major and ongoing
conflict with…well, whatever that conflict might be. The conflict might be
internal and personal or it might be with a powerful antagonist. But in all
instances, we begin with the protagonist(s). The characters are what keep
readers coming back for more, even in series books that seem to have run their
course (and we can all name several of those).
An ideal series protagonist is a someone readers will be
willing to spend a long time with, years with, someone they will watch grow and
change – and yet still recognize as an old and familiar friend. What makes
readers fall in love with some characters and not others is as great a mystery
as any concocted by Agatha Christie’s, and I don’t have any real insight there
beyond making your character as real as you can – giving him both strengths and
weaknesses, but don’t let the strengths be superpowers and don’t let the
weaknesses be more interesting and dominant than the strengths.
I do have some useful tips, though. Don’t give your protagonist a lot of quirks and mannerisms. However
amusing that stuff is in the first book, by the fifth book, trust me, you won’t be
laughing. Don’t saddle him with a
disability or any kind of health issue unless you’re prepared to deal with it
realistically and long term. Don’t
make the supporting cast of friends and family too large, too zany or too
psychotic. Don’t make your main
character a cop or any other member of law enforcement unless you’re willing to
do a LOT of homework.
Do keep extensive
notes on supporting cast as well as the main characters. It doesn’t seem like
it when you’re writing the first book, but you will forget the make of your
protag’s car (let alone the color), what year he graduated from college, and
the middle name of his youngest sister. Yet without fail these are the very
kinds of trivial details you’ll have put down in print in one book or another.
Do consider
carefully where your protagonist will live (and how easy it will be for you to
research that place) and what he does for a living (same as above). Consider
whether his profession is something conducive to a life of crime. Any category
of crime fiction is suitable for a series, but consider carefully what you want to write in the long term. Don’t write a comical
amateur sleuth first book if you don’t actually enjoy writing comedy or amateur
sleuths. You can’t change tone and genre mid-series without some heavy reader
attrition.
Do give your
protagonist family and friends and a community to live in. Your supporting cast
is not only the source of sub-plots, they will be useful for future main plots.
A personal investment on the part of the protagonist always makes for a more
intense and interesting story.
It helps to know you’re writing a series BEFORE you start
writing the series. That allows you to do two very important things: plan the
course of your character (and perhaps story) arcs and – most important – avoid
tying up all the loose ends at the end of the first book.
That last point is especially important because, while
readers will inevitably complain at the end of the first book that you didn’t
tie up all the loose ends, if you do
tie up all the loose ends, there is no point to writing the rest of the series.
While you don’t want to leave readers entirely unsatisfied, you do not want closure at the end of any but the final
book in a series. “Closure” is succinctly defined by Sara Paretsky in Writing Mysteries: A Handbook by the Mystery
Writers of America, “…the decisive resolution of conflicts plaguing the
protagonist in such a way that a sequel can destroy or intrude on the reader’s
relief.”
In a gay mystery series there is always the immediate puzzle
to be solved, but over the course of the series there is also the greater puzzle
of the who the protagonist really is and what he ultimately wants out of life. Which I suppose brings us to the end – and
also back to our starting point. I began this column in January with the same
quote I believe I’ll use to end it.
The gay sleuth symbolically confronts the ultimate mystery every gay
man must face at some point in his life: his difference from his family and the
general society into which he has been born.
The Gay Male Sleuth in
Print and Film, Drewey Wayne Gun
Questions?
Thoughts? Opinions?
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A distinct voice in gay fiction, multi-award-winning author
JOSH LANYON has been writing gay mystery, adventure and romance for over a
decade. In addition to numerous short stories, novellas, and novels, Josh is
the author of the critically acclaimed Adrien English series, including The
Hell You Say, winner of the 2006 USABookNews awards for GLBT Fiction. Josh is
an Eppie Award winner and a three-time Lambda Literary Award finalist
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OTHER POSTS cover:
Kindlegraph / the art of research / writing male/male
romance / rejection and writer's block / building suspense / writing love
scenes / anti-piracy strategies / audio books / interviews with editors and
agents / using Calibre.
We welcome everyone's constructive comments and suggestions!
