Hey guys just one quick question here. See, I'm new at writing mysteries and this one website I found about the rules of writing mysteries is to "cater to your readers". What does this mean? If anyone could answer this for me I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks and have a great day!
It means that you should write your book in such a way such that your intended reader would like it more.
I think it means don't indulge yourself as you write but try to entertain the readers. Not just entertain but give them what they want, which is powerful engaging story. It's a shift in focus that can make a huge difference.
Mysteries—like Romances and other specific genres—have 'requirements' an author must meet to fulfill the expectations of the readers of those genres. Things like 'happy endings' for Romances, or 'mystery solved' for Mysteries. Stuff like that. So if you're writing in a specific genre, you need to cater to the expectations of those readers. Don't try to give your Romance a sad ending, or leave an open-ended conclusion to your Mystery, etc. These kinds of deviations may make for a better overall story, but the readers of most genres would be very disappointed if their expectations aren't fulfilled. And they do have expectations. Like people who watch Road Runner cartoons. If you finished with the Road Runner getting caught and eaten, or with Wile E Coyote deciding he doesn't care about the Road Runner any more, and instead gets caught up in a plot where he's infatuated with a lady coyote, your audience will not be pleased. Genre writers read to find out how the story problem will get solved. They don't want to wonder whether the problem will get solved or not.
I agree with all the above posters. However I will add that as an exception, but not the rule, grand subversion is a tool on its own. Challenging reader expectations can revolutionize a genre or outright make a name for the creator in question. GRR Martin's GOT plot is the immediate recent example that comes to mind, but there are many others whose DNA you see in all walks of stories today that we take for granted. Sometimes the consumer doesn't know what they want. Sometimes. Again, that's only if it's deftly managed. I can't stress that enough. There needs to be a good reason and the product still has to be good.
Some genres are more proscriptive than others, though. You can have all sorts of stuff happening in all sorts of styles and still call your work Fantasy, for example. Fantasy doesn't imply a particular storyline. It only implies that the setting and/or characters exist outwith the real world. But a reader of Mysteries wants to read a story where the mystery gets solved. They want it to be difficult to solve, but they assume when they start reading that it WILL be solved by the end. The readers of Romance want to know that, no matter what imaginatively awful messes their progagonists get into, they WILL get together at the end, eventually. That's a given. There is a limit to how far you can push those envelopes and still meet reader expectation. My mother-in-law was a huge fanatic for murder Mysteries. She liked to try to figure out who the killer was and how they dunnit. She considered a Mystery successful if her efforts to guess the killer failed—but the revelation of the real killer made perfect sense. She would have been absolutely raging, however, if she'd got to the end of a Mystery, and there was no killer. That would be an author she would never read again.
If the website didn't explain it any better than that, you might want to look at some other sites, or get a few books on it. There are a lot of websites out there that just give cryptic, very minimalist information cribbed from other sources—it seems to be a disease of the internet. Usually they pay more attention to graphics than the information. That might not be the kind of website you found, but still I'd recommend spreading your net far and wide. Generally (with exceptions) on the internet you'll find broad but shallow information, and in books it tends to go much deeper. That's because people writing books are getting paid to do it, so they can and do put a lot of time and effort into research and writing it up in detail, plus their editors double check on them and make sure the facts are straight (supposed to anyway). People posting on the internet often do it for free in their spare time, so can't put in that kind of time and effort. That doesn't mean all books are good though, or that all websites are shallow. It's just a general rule of thumb. But on subjects I want to really learn about I like to use the internet to locate sources of info—often books. Though I do sometimes find really good websites along the way.
Understand what prospective readers are looking for and make sure you include it in your book. What you want to write isn't as important as what they want to read.
That would be an interesting spin to the program. Often the relationship between the roadrunner and the coyote reminds me of the relationship between Tom and Jerry. When will Tom ever catch Jerry? Some people root for Tom and some for Jerry. But there’s also the program about that skunk (Pepe le Pew) who’s attracted to that cat who he thinks is a skunk (but it’s not) because the cat happens to have a perfect stripe over it’s back done by paint - and washes off - so Pepe le Pew thinks the cat is a female skunk. As it happens, he’s repulsed by the cat without that stripe (that washes off). So as you watch the cartoon you wonder when he’ll find out the truth and fall out of love with the cat. Perhaps some people are rooting that Pepe le Pew doesn’t find out. And others that he does (also for the sake of the cat, of course, who is amusingly suffocated by it). So I guess mysteries can work through all the genres, no matter what you’re writing. Even over a lot simpler storylines such as these cartoons have. You can hold off the mystery and still keep people intrigued whatever it is you’re writing.
Oh absolutely, but what you're talking about is not what's meant by the genre of Murder Mystery. Any kind of genre (or non-genre) writing can include elements of mystery, romance, science fiction, etc. But when it comes to the genre itself (especially the more restrictive or specific ones as Jannert said) you must observe certain conventions very specifically.
Yes, I was talking about how mystery could be incorporated across multiple genres. I wasn’t being specific to crime or murder mysteries.
This reminds me of a story I heard from a video on writing. Essentially there was a story that the speaker of the video had read, that was quite good and interesting. It started out as a standard fantasy novel, but at some point in the second half subverted all the expectations that one usually has for such a story... and it was almost universally hated. Basically anyone who liked the standard fantasy story that it seemed to be telling, hated when it twisted it. Anyone who was not a fan of the standard fantasy story never read far enough to get to the twist. (There were obviously a few exceptions, but it was overall not received well.) The point is that whenever you are writing a story you are making promises to your reader, both intentionally and not. If you start out telling one type of story, do not do a 180 and go in a different direction. Readers might like to be surprised, but they hate being betrayed. This can explain why some subversions work and some don't. GoT was brought up so I'll use that as an example based off my own opinions on the show/books. First GoT quickly sets itself up as being different from a normal fantasy. Early on one of the characters gets crippled and it doesn't get any more lenient as it goes from there. The reader quickly learns that in this story, actions have consequences and those consequences can be severe and permanent. That is a promise that the author makes to his readers, and now they trust that it will follow through as the story progresses. Now for some criticism I have about how the GoT show progressed in its later years. Spoiler: WARNING, some spoilers implied at, but not outright stated The showrunners, not being the author, might not have fully grasped what promise was made, they seem to think it was that the audience wanted a show where people could die, or that was filled with subversions. In their defense if you asked anyone why they liked the show, that's probably what they'd say. So they filled the last few seasons killing off anyone they thought they could get away with, and subverting major plot points because it seemed to be what people wanted. And while that might have been the case for some of the audience, others (like me) disliked the apparent lack of logic behind these decisions. Now that was an intentional promise on the part of the original author, but what about an unintentional one. Well GoT is a good example of when that goes wrong too, with one of its primary PoVs/main characters. If you paid attention to season 8 of the show, and its fallout, you probably know who I mean. Spoiler: WARNING, Major Spoilers Daenerys. Now it's hard to know for sure what Martin intends to do with her arc, since the books aren't finished yet, but if it is the same as the show, then I'll say that he has run afoul of the perilous rocks of unintended promises. If you are reading this I hope you have already watched the show and know what I mean, if not, I did warn you. So to sum up, he introduces Daenerys as an underdog hero. Someone who starts out with no power and then slowly claws her way to the top. Now she does show some warning signs in this process being, on occasion, ruthless and bloodthirsty, though no more than most GoT characters, and it always has a relatively understandable reason behind it. Now in the climax of the show, Daenerys commits an act that is completely unforgivable, one that is supposed to signal to the audience that she is actually a villain and has been this whole time. And the response to this was, mixed, to put it lightly. Some of the fanbase saw the warning signs as proof that this was the inevitable outcome. Those who didn't like this twist argued that just because she had crossed some lines in the past, did not set up evidence that she would cross this one, especially since her apparent motivations for her previous actions were at odds with this one. How does this embody an unintentional promise? Essentially it comes down to reader expectations (and why knowing your audience is important). The fantasy genre has a lack of heroic female protagonists, especially of the type that Daenerys was presented as. Because of that several people, who wanted to see something new from the fantasy genre (especially when it came to how it presents its female characters), latched onto her as one of their favorite heroes of the story. By turning her into the villain within the last two episodes of an eight season show, the creators betrayed that group of the audience. They created a promise, Daenerys is a hero (albeit one who is a shade darker than normal, but GoT itself is a shade darker than normal), then broke it by identifying her as a villain. Okay, so that was... long. But I hope it kind of clarifies why it is so important to know your audience (and cater to them). Which is, by my understanding to mean, do not break the promises you make to your readers, both intentionally and not. With the understanding that unintentional promises mostly stem from the audience's expectations/desires. P.S. I know I might've come off as if I know what I'm talking about, but I don't. I just love talking about GoT and saw this as a somewhat on-topic place to do it.
Sorry @dbesim, I wasn't trying to be pedantic, I only brought that up because the original post is about writing Mysteries, I think that's specifically what they're trying to do. I also think it's important to understand what you brought up, that mystery can be used across other genres.
It just means write a good story. But since what makes stories good are "subjective" and all, it's easier to say write what readers like... which is a good story.
A 100% Hippo reply. Also, "you" in this reply is the generic every-you, not the personal individual you. I personally think it means stop making it about you. I came to read your story, not to have you all up in my metaphorical personal space as you narratively intrude all up into your work. Examples: - I'm getting into this one fast-paced action scene, but there you are, the writer, explaining things that are not germane to me and that DO NOT NEED to be explained, murdering the pace. - I'm enjoying an intimate scene between two characters, but there you are making it an unsolicited creepy threesome. - Some character is randomly spouting some opinion or sentiment that feels out of place, not part of the story... oh... I see... it's your opinion, the writer, and since you've found no better place to insert it - and it's Very Important™ for us to know - here seems as good a spot as any to leave that steaming little curlycue pile of opinion. - You're clever. Oh so clever. You, my friend, are Clever Trevor. Or at least you think so. And this story that initially seemed to be about some people doing some shit is, in fact, just a token little vehicle for us to receive your life-changing, devastating cleverness. To me, it means that the reader came to read a story, a story defined to some extent by the genre and other bits of metadata the reader collects prior to reading, thus forming an expectation. If the reader wanted a conversation or a date with you personally, the reader will reach out to you.
To me, it means listening to feedback from readers who generally liked the story's style and genre. If everyone tells you that something has to change, you should at least try their suggestion. Quotes for prose wasn't for me because it reminded me of work as a programmer, so I just targeted readers who like a simple and evocative style. For the rest of their suggestions, I tried to find a median point overlapping as many preferences as possible. Doing as they say isn't enough, so you need to analyze lots of data on what people like and crunch the numbers. Most female readers dislike explicit transitions. Poetry readers have a bias for many verbs and active tense. Most of all, smart jokes never work, it has to be stupid. I wrote and tested over 1000 jokes with an audience and they never responded to anything trying to be clever. This psychological effect probably applies to other areas where the reader perceives the author's ego as something delaying the story. Like repeating over and over again how clever and awesome the detective is, while the reader might not even agree.
My feeling is , if you make a study of the top selling books . Pick the most popular. Write a copy of it , you might have a big seller as well .Personally , as I am my own target audience, I write things I like and hope I'm not unique.
