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Bonus: Clued In Writes a Mystery
176 Plays6 months ago
Brook and Sarah are about to start writing a traditional mystery together. In this bonus episode, they brainstorm ideas and review survey results from listeners and newsletter subscribers who weighed in on the sleuth's age and the mystery setting. Members of the Clued in Cartel will have the opportunity to read what they write as they write it. Joining the Cartel costs as little as $12/year (USD). To learn more, visit https://cluedinmystery.com/clued-in-cartel/.
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Music: Signs To Nowhere by Shane Ivers – www.silvermansound.com
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Transcript
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Transcript
Introduction to Project Planning
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to a Clued In Bonus episode. I'm Sarah. And I'm Brooke. And we both love mystery. Hi, Brooke. Hi, Sarah. So it's time to start talking about this right with us, right along. We really don't even have a name for this project yet. So this is a planning day for us.
00:00:31
Speaker
Absolutely. And we thought we would record it so that our listeners and hopefully our readers can get a sense of what this process is like for us. Exactly. This is brand new. We've never done it before. So we're just like getting real with everyone. And you get to see the process from the very beginning and then read along with us as we write this mystery together.
00:00:57
Speaker
That's right. And I don't know that we will record all of our planning sessions, but I think subscribers to the cartel can expect to hear at least a couple of these as we go along.
Choosing the Setting: Urban vs Rural
00:01:11
Speaker
And of course, they'll be able to read what we write as we write it. So they'll get to see the raw first draft.
00:01:20
Speaker
which is often very messy. Messy, maybe even a little confusing, but it will be fun. And Cartel members, although we may not record all of this type of content as we go along, it's kind of a big experiment. They will at least be getting regular updates on how the process is going, whether that's in our Substack newsletter or whatever format. We will definitely keep them updated and probably be asking for
00:01:48
Speaker
some advice as we've already done in a survey. That's right. We asked our listeners and social media followers and our respective newsletter subscribers. We asked them to weigh in on the setting, whether it was going to be urban or rural, and the demographic of our sleuth.
00:02:11
Speaker
We were so happy 129 responses so far. So thank you everybody for taking the survey and the results are in 74% of you preferred like a small rural town setting and 62% of you wanted that middle age, like maybe recently empty nester sleuth. So, um, I guess that's what we're doing, Sarah. Okay. Well, um, I,
00:02:40
Speaker
I'm surprised that the numbers were so high for the rural small town sleuth. I thought it might be fun to write an urban setting, but maybe we can do that for the next one, Brooke, because I hope that this isn't the only time that we do this, but ask me in a few months, I may say never again.
00:03:04
Speaker
We will wait and see. I agree. Um, so everyone, we brainstormed a little bit on each of those settings of some general ideas before we put it out to survey. And I will tell you that the, like the urban setting we're thinking of like a, an apartment building. So you still get like the insular community and it would be fun. So if you get that opportunity in the future, know that we have some ideas up our sleeves.
Exploring Small Town Dynamics
00:03:33
Speaker
But for this one, we will write in a small rural community. Might have to lean on you a little bit, Brooke, for input on that because I have spent most of my life living in a urban center.
00:03:49
Speaker
Yeah, we're very separate that way, right? We did a social media post recently, if you guys caught it, where I asked, who's the city mouse and who's the country mouse? And I am the country mouse, but I got you covered because this is all I've known, Sarah.
00:04:08
Speaker
I will say like my extended family is from a couple of small communities and I remember as a child spending time in those communities and kind of loving the freedom that I had to kind of wander around because the town was very, very small.
00:04:30
Speaker
Everybody knew everybody. I could go to the library and borrow books just using my mom's name as the borrower, even though she hadn't lived in the town for some time. But, you know, my grandmother was still there and I think it'll be really fun to write about.
00:04:52
Speaker
I do too. And that everybody knowing everyone else is, you know, the thing that's going to lend itself really good to our quaint traditional mystery. So what are some ideas that you have about the small town setting, Sarah? Do you have anything in mind?
00:05:09
Speaker
One question would be what the proximity to the next major center is. Are we really isolated or are we 30 minutes to bigger amenities and more people? Yeah, that's a good question.
00:05:29
Speaker
which I think would help us determine what kind of a role, if any, a police formal investigation would have.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great point. When I think of it, I think of that second scenario that you mentioned where, you know, it might be 30, 45 minutes, but you know, there's, you know, a shopping center and things like that. I think it also gives us some opportunity. Like if we were going to continue this and write more than one that, um, that gives you just a bit, a larger world to be able to carry out a series, always want to leave that door open.
00:06:11
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. That's a great point. And that's probably far enough away that there might be, um, say one or two police officers who may or may not live in the town, but have kind of the town as part of their, their jurisdiction. Ooh, I like that, that they're not there all the time. I really enjoy that.
00:06:35
Speaker
Uh-huh. And so maybe our sleuth is like, well, I got to take it on myself to do this investigating while you're in the next town over or whatever. And we could maybe even have, I don't know, something else happen that kind of pulls the police in a couple of different directions where they can't spend all of their time investigating this
Shaping the Town's Theme
00:07:00
Speaker
crime. I like that idea a lot.
00:07:02
Speaker
And I know when we were doing just our very vague general brainstorming to give the two choices of locations, we talked about perhaps this little town is sort of known for something. And one idea we said was maybe a literature festival, like maybe it's the town where
00:07:21
Speaker
A famous author was born or had lived and so now this town has kind of built themselves around this. So I was wondering if maybe we come up with a fictional famous author patterned after, are they an Agatha Christie type or are they a famous romance author or something? And then this place has festivals and even their shops are kind of themed literary.
00:07:51
Speaker
I like that idea and it might be interesting if the author that this town is kind of built around isn't a mystery author.
00:08:02
Speaker
I agree. I think it might get too, um, like it might get over the top if it's a murder mystery in a murder mystery town. It feels a lot. Yeah. Yeah. It does. It does. It does feel alive. I mean, you could get a bit meta. Um, but if it was, yeah, like if it was a, a romance author, um, and the town, maybe it's around Valentine's day or something, and the town has this big,
00:08:28
Speaker
celebration and you come to the town to find love or whatever. That could be a way to do it. I do like the idea of the town having some kind of theme. One other theme that I thought of was like a gardening town where everybody is super into gardens and
00:08:54
Speaker
You got some tools at your disposal that may may come into play. Maybe there's a like a nursery or a sort of some reason that it's like that has become this center because they do a lot of agriculture or something like that.
00:09:12
Speaker
Yeah. Or like a big flower festival. Yes. And then they have festivals. That's yeah. So yeah, we'll have to maybe nail down what that theme is. I'm not sure which one I'm leaning towards more, the author or the agricultural flower town.
00:09:30
Speaker
I know they, I think we need to think about it. They both have their perks, especially since I think the kind of the gardening town kind of goes well with the first thing we said where it's, you know, just adjacent to a large city, but it just makes, it gives it that very country, like just little, um, you know, enclave feel. So yeah, so we'll kick that around a little more.
00:09:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
Crafting the Sleuth's Character
00:09:56
Speaker
And so for our sleuth, empty nester, I was thinking more about someone who maybe returns home to look after an ailing parent.
00:10:12
Speaker
So they grew up in the town, but they have been away for a little bit. And the parent, we would have to handle this really delicately, but if the parent had dementia or something, that parent is an unreliable narrator.
00:10:31
Speaker
Right. So I don't know if I don't know how that would work. Um, but there could be some kind of neighborhood tensions that have developed over the last little bit, maybe as this parents health has declined. Um, and you know, uh, I know there can be some personality changes that come with dementia and, you know, maybe some, um, tension.
00:11:00
Speaker
As a result of that and arguments with neighbors kind of I I was envisioning that it's a neighbor who dies and Maybe the parent is Has had some conflicts with them. I like that
00:11:16
Speaker
you know when it goes really well with what i had in my head sarah because like when i started thinking about okay empty nester i thought okay is she recently i feel like she's a single person whether or not she was you know widowed in an earlier part of her life or she's been through a divorce whatever she's single but that you know okay now she's an empty nester what she gonna do with
00:11:38
Speaker
the next part of her life. And I like the idea of, well, you know, mom really needs help. And so I think I'll go home. It's time to start the new chapter. She needs me to come and be with her and help her. And so that's the impetus to make this change and go to a new place.
00:11:57
Speaker
One of the comments in our survey suggested that the sleuth's job, like if you get the impression that she has retired, I guess, which we still need to ascertain that because empty nester could be, you know, even 45 or 50 depending on when you had your children. But the comment was if her old jobs could give her some skills
00:12:22
Speaker
to then solve mysteries. And I think that's an important thing to have, is a reason why she's going to be good at this. Yeah, no, I agree. And I also agree with your earlier point. I would probably put the age of this sleuth
00:12:39
Speaker
younger than retirement age, 40s or 50s. And as you say, if the family was started quite young, then it wouldn't be outside of the realm of possibility for someone in their late 40s to be an empty nester.
00:12:56
Speaker
I think that's a really nice age to make this sleuth because it is a bridge age, right? That big change that you're having in your life. And I think it's still going to draw our readers who have already been through that. I think it's still close enough for them to relate to it. And I think we should just confirm that we're going to have a female rather than a male sleuth. We keep saying she. Yeah.
00:13:26
Speaker
I feel the most comfortable writing a female sleuth. And I think that that is the preference in this genre. Don't you, Sarah? I think it's the overwhelming majority is female sleuths. But the book that I'm reading right now has a male sleuth. And I think that's why I wanted to just confirm that that's what we were doing. Yeah. I wonder if the parent that she goes home to take care of should be
00:13:55
Speaker
a father rather than a mother though. So it's not like completely female centric. Yeah, I like that. And maybe she's going to end up working out some relationship issues that she's had with her dad over the years.
00:14:11
Speaker
Yeah. This is a good opportunity to do that. Right. And, and, um, if it turns out that the dad does have a dementia, then she could be feeling a little bit of time is slipping away for her to have that resolution. Yeah. I really liked that. Yeah. Oh, I see a lot of character development opportunities in that area. Totally, totally. Yeah.
00:14:37
Speaker
So what could we, if she's in her mid to late forties, she's probably still working or has just, she needs to have some sort of employment or? Yeah, she does. Yeah, I would think so. What could it be that would afford some legitimate investigative skills, but also afford the flexibility to be moving home and
00:15:05
Speaker
Or you know what? It could be that she's not moving home. She could not have grown up in that town, right? It could be where her parents were tired.
00:15:13
Speaker
I like that, and they would retire to this quaint little touristy town because they love to garden, or whichever it is. They're like, oh, we love that place, that's where we're gonna retire. Nice, okay. Yeah, so she maybe doesn't have all of, she's got her parents' background of who all of the characters of the town are, but hasn't, and maybe some of that is not consistent with what her experience.
00:15:42
Speaker
ends up being. Especially if we have dad being an unreliable narrator, she could get some misinformation, which could be really fun. Yeah. Yeah. So what are some things that you can do? I mean, she could have her own business, right? What are some things that she could do as a self-employed person and just move her service to this new little town? Well, she could be a writer or an editor.
00:16:11
Speaker
she could be like a small artisan. So whether it's, I don't know, something I got to think of something that's portable, right? Like, um, photographer. That's not really it. Is that a job anymore?
00:16:28
Speaker
I don't know. And I don't know if you would, how well you would be able to do that from the town unless it meant she was traveling regularly into the, into the bigger center, but then she doesn't get to do all the investigating that she wants to do. Right. True. But it could be, I don't know. I'm just thinking like she's got an Etsy shop and she sells
00:16:48
Speaker
Oh yeah, an online business. Okay. She has an online business and let's be real here. This is our world and she can be a highly successful Etsy shop owner selling, you know, some obscure thing. She can gain that success because we give that to her, even if in the real world, it's really, really hard to make a living.
00:17:11
Speaker
doing that thing. Yeah, absolutely. We've got some creative liberty here. Okay, we have to give this some thought, but what would give her the skills to be a good investigator?
00:17:28
Speaker
I do like the idea that she's an editor because that is, you know, we've worked with editor Sarah. They have to be so detail oriented and to, you know, especially somebody who looks at plot lines and does developmental editing. I think about the skills that it requires and you know, they're basically taking this story apart and putting it back together in a sense.
00:17:51
Speaker
And that would be a really great investigator too. I think so. And I haven't come across a lot of books that feature an editor as the sleuth. There's loads with an author as sleuth, right? Yeah, and she might not even be...
00:18:07
Speaker
We'll have to decide what type of work she edits. Does she edit nonfiction? Does she edit fiction? Does she work as an editor for various publications so that she has different clients? I think there's a lot of different directions we could take that.
00:18:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The only editor as Luth that I can think of is, um, the character in the magpie murders and the, um, it's not the magpie murders, it's magpie murders, right?
Developing Subplots and Relationships
00:18:37
Speaker
No, the.
00:18:40
Speaker
Um, uh, and I can't remember the name of the, the sleuth right now, but yeah, she, I mean, there, there have been books around the publishing industry, right? Sure. But yeah, someone who's maybe she's a freelance editor, um, that would give her, you know, then it wouldn't really matter where she was, um, doing that work from, and she can comfortably move to her parents' retirement town. Yeah. I like that idea.
00:19:10
Speaker
And the idea of being a freelance editor potentially opens up maybe some mini mysteries or like another plot line because she could discover something in her work that leads to a sort of mystery to solve.
00:19:25
Speaker
Yeah. And as you say, like if she's freelance, then she maybe has worked on a lot of different manuscripts and there may have been something that she's learned from a past editing job that she can draw on, right? Some, some fact, some... Yes.
00:19:43
Speaker
thing that she knows. Okay, funny aside, and I don't think our friend Lori Briley would mind me mentioning this. Lori has been on the show before and she writes middle grade mysteries, but Lori also doesn't edit, but she does freelance writing. And one of the magazines she writes for is a nut magazine. So there could be some sort of obscure detail that these people know about because of this work they've done. Like, yeah, I love that.
00:20:11
Speaker
Okay. Okay. So she's an editor, has moved to the town where her parents retired. Her mother has died. Her father is, his health is ailing. Yes.
00:20:27
Speaker
and there's some, I don't think we've quite landed on what the hook for the town is, but there's some draw, some sort of festival that brings people to the town that everybody gets into as part of this festival, right? Whether it's gardening or our earlier idea. If it was an author, there could be some tension between
00:20:57
Speaker
the editor and the author, if the author like comes to the town, right? Because they still want to be kind of the big shot literary person. And, you know, our editor character is kind of, maybe she has a little notoriety too. I don't know. We'll have to play with that.
00:21:19
Speaker
Or what if she was reading one of his books and notice that there was something wrong? And that maybe that happened in the past. Maybe she like outed him for something in the past when she did a job for him. She could be a bit of a, like a bit aggressive in her
00:21:45
Speaker
like demeanor, right? And that is, that's an another opportunity for like a character arc where she over the course of the story kind of softens. Yeah. Yeah. She could be, she could be super confident in herself and like think she's never wrong. Right. Um, because I think editors need to be very confident in the, in the work that they're doing. Yes. Um,
00:22:14
Speaker
And they have to, quite honestly, I would have a terrible time doing it because they have to take someone's baby and give them really bad news about it. So they have to be really willing to, you know, point out flaws. I don't think she would last very long if she didn't do that in a gentle way. But maybe this was one of her first clients was this
00:22:38
Speaker
author and he's never kind of forgiven her for the, for the harsh words that she had, um, that she had shared or, and maybe they need to have a bit of a confrontation. I don't know that they need to have a romance, but, um, they need to have some sort of like, yeah, okay. We can be friends.
00:22:59
Speaker
Yes, I think that is an opportunity for the quote unquote romance line. You know, sometimes in things that I've written, it's like a friend dance, if you want to call it that, where they're bitter enemies. But then, you know, over the course of the story, they become friends. And it gives, I think, the story the same type of push and pull that a romance line does. And but I will tell you, Sarah,
00:23:25
Speaker
a couple of the comments in our survey said some flirting or a little bit of light romance wouldn't be bad. So I think we leave that door open. Okay, okay. Yeah, we can do that. I feel like I'm pretty comfortable with kind of where we're starting this out. Any other comments that came through that you think we should be thinking about?
00:23:47
Speaker
Several people mentioned that they would like there to be a pet. And now that we've established that she's going to her dad's home, I wonder if it would be fun that dad has this pet that our sleuth really does not like. She's not a pet person. She doesn't want to have a pet.
00:24:07
Speaker
Except, of course, we know because this is this kind of mystery that she will come to love the pet, but it could take a while. And but dad, of course, loves this, whatever it is, we have to come up with what kind of animal.
00:24:20
Speaker
I like it. Yeah, I think that's great. A little enemies to lovers. We've got a couple opportunities for that. And I will say, you know, Sarah's comment, she said, you know, I feel pretty good about where we're at. And, you know, this is kind of a peek behind the scenes, obviously. And
00:24:43
Speaker
Sarah and I are both what's considered discovery writers so as long as we have some waypoints so to speak and then of course the general structure of the way a mystery happens.
Writing Phase and Listener Engagement
00:24:56
Speaker
We just kind of dive in and start writing and seeing what happens.
00:25:02
Speaker
Yeah. So, I mean, we haven't really talked about what the mystery is going to be, but I, to your point, Brooke, feel like I've got enough. I've got a good enough picture of the character and the situation. I feel like it could probably start, but I do like to have a sense of what that
00:25:25
Speaker
where the story is going. So what is that mystery? And I think I mentioned before this, so it's a neighbor that dies, I was thinking, right? And so the dad has had a conflict with the neighbor. We could have a couple of other people having had some sort of
00:25:43
Speaker
whether it's a argument about his flowers encroaching over on another neighbor's or having copied another neighbor's design or something like that, right, if we're doing the garden-themed town. I think I have enough to write some sort of mystery
00:26:06
Speaker
And I feel good about like nailing down, okay, the victim is going to be the neighbor because once we know the victim, then we can start building around like who the other suspects are and what everybody's motives were.
00:26:18
Speaker
Yeah. And having the victim as the neighbor gives the sleuth the reason for why she would be investigating. Because if her father is kind of the main suspect, obviously she wants to clear his name. For sure. And then that introduces her into the world of sleuthing and we'll see if maybe
00:26:43
Speaker
I shouldn't say the next book before we even get this book written, but I guess that's where my mind went. We have the opportunity. Well, I think Brooke, this is going to be fun. I think our next step is to start getting some words down.
00:27:01
Speaker
Definitely. And so everyone, if this has whet your appetite and you'd like to find out more about this project and follow along with us, please consider becoming a member of the cartel. We have all the information out on our website and we'll also leave a link in social media so that you can, can find us. And thanks for listening today to Clued in Mystery. I'm Brooke.
00:27:28
Speaker
And I'm Sarah and we both love mystery. Clued In Mystery is written and produced by Brooke Peterson and Sarah M. Steven. Music is by Shane Ivers. If you liked what you heard, please consider telling a friend, leaving a review or subscribing with your favorite podcast listening app. Visit our website at cluedinmystery.com to sign up for our newsletter, The Clued In Chronicle, or to join our paid membership, The Clued In Cartel. We're on social media at Clued In Mystery.