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How to Write a Damn Good Mystery: A Practical Step-by-Step Guide from Inspiration to Finished Manuscript ReviewDespite its drawbacks, How to _Write a Damn Good Mystery: A Practical Step-by-Step Guide from Inspiration to Finished Manuscript_ is the best book I have yet read on writing a mystery. For a step-by-step guide to mystery writing, I found it more flexible, more readable and less stuffy than _The Weekend Novelist Writes a Mystery_. _How to Write a Damn Good Mystery_ offers excellent guidance for character creation, but I would recommend _Getting Into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn From Actors_ by Brandilyn Collins, which goes into character creation in greater depth, as supplemental reading.
I highly recommend _How to Write a Damn Good Mystery : A Practical Step-by-Step Guide from Inspiration to Finished Manuscript_ with two caveats:
1. The author often offers his opinion as fact.
2. The book sometimes reads like an advertisement for the author's other how-to-write-fiction books.
Jim Frey mentions his other how-to-write-fiction books about twenty times during the course of this 267 page book. At an average of one plug every thirteen pages, that doesn't sound too bad. But, Frey tends to begin chapters by talking about his other books, which quickly becomes repetitious and grated on my nerves because I thought it unnecessary: Don't tell me what you said in another book, just tell me again in this book. I can only recall one place where he mentioned a fiction book he wrote. This may be because all the mystery novels he has written are now out of print.
Jim Frey uses his ten years of teaching experience to justify some of his opinions, which he presents as facts. Jim's mystery novels are all out of print and he appears to be making a living putting on writing workshops and writing how-to-write-fiction books. This makes me a little wary due to the old truism, "Those who can do; those who can't teach."
One of Frey's opinions, presented as a fact, is that you must have a plan before you begin writing fiction. Read interviews of your favorite writers and you will notice that they all have different writing habits and approach their work in different ways. For instance in one interview, Elmore Leonard said: "I have no idea where it's going. I have no idea how it will end. I just start it. Sometimes, Chapter 1 will become Chapter 2 or 3; one time it became Chapter 10. I don't plot the whole book out. I'd rather not know what's going to happen myself." Dean Koontz, in _Writing Bestselling Fiction_, also suggests that beginning writers start with an outline, but admits that is not the way he writes. Elmore Leonard and Dean Koontz are best-selling authors, whose books are still in print. They and many other authors I have read recognize that the creative process can be different for each writer. It drove me nuts every time that Jim Frey presented his experience a fact or as the only way to perform a particular writing task.
Frey also offered examples that showed how his method fits in with those presented by other authors. One I can think of is what he calls a "mini-scene" which Swain and Bickman call a sequel. I gravitate toward the practical and examples and Frey offers the ultimate example by walking you step-by-step through creating the characters and plot in write-along mystery, Murder in Montana. He also goes into how to actually write a scene and revise it through the final draft. This example is great and I wish he spent more time "where the rubber meets the road," with the actual writing process.
_How to Write a Damn Good Mystery_ is easy to read, and offers good sound advice (if you take the author's opinions as just that) presented in logical, step-by-step approach. Here's what I took away from Frey's book in the order he recommends:
1. Start with creating the murderer using concepts from Lajos Egri's _The Art of Dramatic Writing_: creating the physiology, sociology, and psychology of the character and giving the character a ruling passion.
2. Creation of the murder and what Frey calls the "plot behind the plot": the plot line of the murder from the murderer's perspective. Write a journal in the voice of the character [I find this very practical as this type of writing is very close to fiction writing].
3. Create the detective, then 2-3 false suspects, and the other characters who will people the novel. Create journals in the voice of each of these characters.
4. Create what Frey calls a stepsheet, which is a plot outline for the entire novel that also shows what happened outside the scenes to appear in the book.
5. Speed write a first draft, writing important dialogue, but summarizing action in all-caps [the way action is summarized in a screenplay]. The idea is to get through the first draft in a few days.
6. Polished prose is actually prose that has been rewritten many times: rewrite the story 15-20 times, then polish the prose, bettering bits of it hear and there 30-40 times more.
7. Learn how to write good prose by typing 2-3 pages a day, verbatim, from a novel of a highly accomplished author. Then try to write a page in the same style.
I found a lot to like in this book. I will be reading it again, but I'll skip over the parts that grate, and concentrate on the golden nuggets. On a scale of one to ten, I'd give _How to Write a Damn Good Mystery : A Practical Step-by-Step Guide from Inspiration to Finished Manuscript_ a solid eight.
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