Tag Archives: Mystery Writing Workshop

Mystery Making: sisters in Crime Style

Barbara Struna, Cape Cod, mystery, Mystery writing, Mystery Writing Workshop, Nicole Asselin, Sharon Healy Yang, Sharon Yang, , , , , , , , ,
Last month, January, I joined two of my Sisters in Crime (NE) authors (Nicole Asselin and Barbara Struna)  at the Centerville Library on the Cape for a fun presentation:  “Mystery Making .”  The Speakers Bureau of Sisters in Crime New England offers loads of exciting, informative, and enjoyable programs, but this is one of the most popular.  The audience gets to help us create a mystery  right before their eyes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

How is this mutual creation accomplished?  I’ve seen slight variations of this method, but here’s what usually happens on the presentations in which I’ve been involved. We, the writers, collect anonymous suggestions from the audience in bags marked “names,” weapons,” “motives,” and “setting.” Then we pull suggestions from the bags without looking – well, we look enough to see that we actually get our hands in the bag – reveal what we see, then post it on a white board at the front of the room.  We really get the ball rolling by each making  suggestions and cooperatively shaping characters to go with names, shaping those characters’ lives in terms of setting.  Pulling together how setting and character relationships create motive and how all three are reflexively related to the weapon(s) used.  Of course, the order of the discussion might change at different events, but our joking interplay always brings out how all the elements in creating a mystery are interlinked.
Especially fun is the audience’s participation, as they help create the mystery novel, not just by their suggestions on the anonymous paper slips, but as we gradually invite them in for more and more participation in drawing the elements of writing a mystery into a final form.  It’s a blast to hear people arguing over what weapons are plausible and which are not (big argument over the efficacy of spatulas), or helping us weave a plot in a setting where weapons like a surf board, a yoga mat, an awl, a kazoo, and, (yes) even a spatula can be elements of doom. Really neat, a member of the audience suggested that if the yoga mat would be involved in the murder, we should call the book Savasana:  The Corpse Pose.
Click on the photo above to read the suggestions.
And then, along the way, as we talk with the audience about how we might integrate all the different elements into a tale, we get to talk about how people write (e.g. pantsers vs. plotters) and how the type of mystery you write shapes what elements you will use and how you will use them.  Nicole writes baseball-centered tales in something of a cosy mode, I write historicals in a 1940s noir mode, and Barbara writes tales set on the Cape where the mystery arises from questions of the past.  So, the audience gets to see how and why the mystery genre is so richly varied.
The beautiful thing is that getting a program like this is so easy for your library or other organization.  You can also get your pick of authors (according to availability) from the various members of Sisters in Crime New England.  Just as wonderful, the Speaker’s Bureau has other programs, as well, that focus on writing, publishing, promotion, mystery genres, etc.  Just contact Leslie Wheeler at speakersbureau@sincne.org or go to the Sisters in Crime New England web site, Speakers Bureau.  Hope to see you at an event in the future!
By the way, here I am proving that a spatula can be a deadly weapon.  so there!

Photos courtesy of Judith Marshall at Centerville Library, and De-Ping Yang

Mystery Making with Sisters in Crime in Vermont

Autumn, Brattleboro Literary Festival, Lisa Lieberman, Max Folsom, mystery, Mystery Writing Workshop, New England, Sadie Hartwell, Sisters in crime New England, , , , , , , , ,
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Recently, I had the fun experience of being involved in the Sisters in Crime panel Mystery Making at the Brattleboro Literary Festival in Vermont.  The authors with whom I participated were Sadie Hartwell and Max Folsom.  Lisa Lieberman was our MC. This panel is quite unique, challenging our creativity and drawing in the audience to  craft a mystery with us.  How does it all work?

The audience members are all given index cards and asked to write on a separate card:  a character name, a motive for murder,  a method for murder, and a location.  Each of the three members of the panel circulates with a bags for each category, and the audience puts the appropriate card in the designated bag.  Then, under the direction of our MC, the fun begins. Starting with names, each of the panelists selects a card from the bag, and we have to come up with a character whom we think goes with that name, including a back story and how the character fits into the story.  Sleuth? Suspect?  Victim?  Sidekick?.  Then we go through each of the other bags and create a story around the locations, murder methods, and motives, working with each other and the audience to resolve conflicts and develop the intricacies of a mystery plot. Lisa kept track of the projections on a white board in the front of the theatre. I was so impressed when my husband Yang jumped in from the audience to explain how you could have  a poisoning by tofu!

Initially, I had a little trepidation about whether I would be up to the task, ad libbing a story, but I had a ball! We ended up with an intriguing tale about a vengeful love child, a shady importer, a socialite with a stripper’s past,  a militant health food maven, a deceptive scuba expert, the Nobel Prize, and, of course, poisonous tofu.

 

The Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro was quite the venue!  An art deco theatre, likely from the 1920s, this building had gorgeous statues, mosiacs, carvings, and Spider Man.  How did Spidey get in there?  Listen, bud, he’s got radioactive blood.  He can do whatever he wants.

 

 

Mystery Making is a session that is available for libraries, schools, festivals, etc. through the Sisters in Crime New England Speakers Bureau.  Usually, there is a fee, but under certain circumstances, there may not be.  Check out the web site for details at Sisters in Crime New England.

 

Passport to Adventure: WSU Writers Workshop

1940s mystery, book signings and readings, Burning Cold, Film Noir, Jessica Minton, Letter from a Dead Man, Lisa Lieberman, mystery, Mystery Writing Workshop, Sisters in crime New England, suspense, Worcester, Worcester State English Majors, writing, Writing Workshop, , , , , , , , ,
On Friday, April 26th, I had the pleasure of joining Lisa Lieberman in presenting the writing workshop “Passport to Adventure” at Worcester State University.  Like me, Lisa writes historical mysteries.  Hers follow the adventures and intrigues of Cara Walden from 1950s Hollywood to England and Italy (special guest appearance by Cary Grant!) to Hungary during the Revolution and soon to Indochina.  Lisa is also Vice President of Sisters in Crime New England.  In that role she’s been working to bring new blood, so to speak, into our organization.  This fun work shop is one means she is rolling out to do so.  I was happy that she asked me to join her.
To give you an idea of how fun and inspirational this work shop is, here’s Lisa’s description: “The Surrealists used to pool their money and buy a one-way ticket to the furthest destination they could afford. They’d send one person off on an adventure and they’d have to make their way back somehow, and tell the others all about it when they returned.  Along they way, they’d collect talismans that helped them navigate the dark places they encountered. In this workshop, we’ll be sending each of you off on an adventure and when  you get back, you’ll have the outline of a short story.”
Of course, we didn’t literally send anyone off ‑ that would be a really long workshop.  More pragmatically, we had a display of all kinds of intriguing objects from which participants could choose for the “talismans” or souvenirs. For a destination for their journey into the mysterious, we had them select one sealed envelope from an array, each with a different noir image to inspire their journey into creativity.  They had time allotted to get started on who one character in the image was and what his/her concern was.  Then, to spice things even more, I got to do individual tarot reading of past, present, and future of their characters ‑ which would aid them in thinking through where their characters had been, what conflict they were in now, and how that conflict might be resolved.  It was fun for me to give vague interpretations of the cards and then watch our writers run with them, already inspired by their images and selected souvenirs.  Wonderfully, the writers all seemed pretty well pleased with what they had come up with and planned to continue their tales.  One fellow even told me he had finished his short story and had submitted it to the Al Blanchard Short Fiction Contest.  Since he’s one of my students, of course, I’m pulling for him to win!
Our faculty liaison, Cleve Wiese was so excited by our endeavors, that he not only now has a story he wants to finish, but asked us to come back next fall to do the session with the WSU writers’ club INK.  Another faculty member wants us to do the workshop with his course The Writers Life in the spring!  And here’s the good news for everyone else out there!  Lisa and I would be delighted to come to schools or writers’ groups to do the workshop as well!  So let me or Lisa know if you would like us to work with you.  Once again, Sisters in Crime is out there making a difference for writers, published and unpublished!  Joining was one of the best decisions I ever made!