Tips for Creating a Successful Series Sleuth

Today I'm turning my blog over to Dan Andriacco, who is the author of nine mystery novels. Thc cover to the left is his latest release - Bookmarked for Murder. This is  his sixth Sebastian McCabe – Jeff Cody book.  Dan's going to give you his tips for creating a successful series sleuth...

Ever since The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes began appearing monthly in The Strand magazine in 1891, mystery readers have loved series sleuths.

So if you want to achieve success as a mystery writer, your best bet is to create a memorable protagonist. As veteran private eye writer Bill Pronzini said, “It's very hard to write stand-alones now and maintain a career – unless you’re someone like John Grisham.”

Presumably, you are not. And from fledgling authors, agents and publishers are looking for a series. They want to sign on a franchise that they can grow.

In my own work, I have written a trilogy featuring Enoch Hale, an American journalist living in London in the early 1920s, and the ongoing Sebastian McCabe-Jeff Cody series, which I hope lasts as long as I do.

Mac and Jeff, who live in a small town in Ohio, are only the leading actors of an entire cast of ongoing characters. Readers have been kind enough to tell me that opening a new McCabe-Cody adventure is like going home again. This is certainly an advantage in a series.

But, as fellow blogger Noah Steward told me, “The most important thing in a series is its detective character; if (he or she) doesn’t catch the interest of the reading public, you won’t be selling a very long series.”

So what makes a good series detective?

Your detective can be amateur or professional, likeable or irascible (think Nero Wolfe), young or old, male or female, working on a space station or imperial Rome. But he or she should be interesting, easily distinguished from competitors who are outwardly similar, suitable to the story’s style (police procedural, cozy, hard-boiled, etc.) and someone that you and your readers will not soon grow tired of.

One of the greatest dangers of attempting to create a unique protagonist is that you wind up with an unbelievable collection of eccentricities, more a caricature than a character. That might be okay if you’re going for farce and can carry it off, but most mystery readers want their detective to be heroic and yet real enough to believe in.

Consider a true original – Sherlock Holmes himself. One of the greatest American mystery writers of the 20^th Century, Rex Stout, perceptively wrote:

“Holmes is a man, not a puppet. As a man he has many vulnerable spots, like us; he is vain, prejudiced, intolerant; he is a drug addict; he even plays the violin for diversion – one of the most deplorable outrages of self-indulgence.” But, Stout went on, there is much more to Holmes than that: “He loves truth and justice more than he loves money or comfort or safety or pleasure, or any man or woman. Such a man has never lived, so Sherlock Holmes will never die.”

There was only one Sherlock Holmes. Although I am a Sherlockian, Sebastian McCabe and Jeff Cody are nothing like him. Neither should your sleuth or sleuths be. Create a believable detective of your own who will move comfortably in the sort of story you want to write, whether it be lighter than a chocolate mousse or harder than steel. Make him or her someone you love and want to spend time with – and your readers will, too.

Know your market. But know your hero even better.

Like to know more about Dan and his writing or buy his books? Here's the links to get you started...

http://bakerstreetbeat.blogspot.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Andriacco/e/B001KILC0I

   

Creating Suspense: Guest Blog Post by Dan Andriacco

Recently, while preparing a series of talks for the Mad Anthony Writers Conference in Hamilton, Ohio, I’ve been thinking a lot about suspense.

Story structure is the skeleton of a work of fiction, but suspense is its life’s blood. Twists, subplots, clues or foreshadowing, red herrings, and conflict – all those essential ingredients are designed to increase suspense.

Suspense isn’t just an important in mysteries, thrillers, or novels of romantic suspense. All fiction needs it, and all successful novels – even the ones we studied in school – have it.

“Suspense is the art of marking the reader care what happens next,” Marie F. Rodell wrote in her
classic textbook Mystery Fiction: Theory and Technique. “Mystery alone – merely something hidden or disguised – will not include suspense unless the reader is made to care about finding the truth.” 

It’s not enough that the reader doesn’t know what’s going to happen next. He or she must also want to find out. That only happens if he or she identifies with the characters.

In the original 1956 edition of The Mystery Writers Handbook edited by Herbert Brean, a now-forgotten writer named Eleazor Lipsky had a short article on suspense that was the most insightful I’ve ever read. He said that what he called “storytelling doubt” arises from the reader’s emotional identification with a character’s doubt. That’s why a suspenseful story retains its suspense on multiple readers.  

Will the protagonist’s goal be reached? Will her boyfriend succeed in making her his next victim? As readers, we know may know the answer – but the protagonist doesn’t, and we identify with her. That’s also how we can be in agonizing suspense over the fate of a series hero like Jack Reacher, Aloysius Pendergast, or Dirk Pitt who certainly will survive the novel to make more money for his author.  

How do we create that doubt about the outcome that leads to suspense? 

Story structure is based on crisis and resolution. In a novel there are many minor goals on the way to the main goal of solving the murder or finding the treasure. There is suspense in this anticipation, this doubt over each minor goal. “When anticipation ends, the story is over,” Lipsky notes. 

But until that point, each resolved crisis leads on to a bigger crisis for the protagonist. How will it turn out? The protagonist, whom we care about, doesn’t know – and therein lays suspense. 

Want to learn more about Dan and his writing? Here's three options:

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