Locked-room mysteries and their writing process

A magazine I've sold a few short stories to in the past recently sent me an email requesting I write a few locked-room mysteries for them. That's a great opportunity and all, but as I sat down to look at what I had written I felt like there was some room for improvement. This is mostly because what I had written was absolutely disgusting in terms of quality, but also because I approached the whole thing without giving it much thought aside from having a neat trick in mind.

What do you guys do when writing locked-room murder mysteries? Namely, what techniques do you use to come up with a clever puzzle that doesn't make the reader feel cheated?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for some magical formula—though that would be nice—but I'd love to hear about your writing process in going over your locked-rooms. This doesn't just refer to actual locked-rooms, but also impossible crimes that are sometimes referred to as locked-rooms. Let's not start a debate nobody cares about as to the actual definition of a locked-room; a somewhat reluctant acceptance that it's an impossible crime is enough for the purposes of the thread.

So in short, have you written locked-room mysteries before? What do you do to make sure they are as effective as possible? What's your method? I figure a discussion on this could be interesting.

This is interesting, A while I tried to write a Locked room story where the twist was that the victim had actually no only killed himself but succesfully mailed his own head to the police station to frame the hero.

Everyone said it was an retarded idea so I dropped it, but I am intrested in seeing what mysteries tv tropes can come up with.

There's absolutely no way I can tell if your idea is good or not. A locked-room murder is interesting because it's an impossible scenario explained through natural and convincing means. Assuming you got a good trick, a good narrative voice and a good story to justify the locked-room happening then it could work.

But to be perfectly frank, your crime just...doesn't strike me as too clever. Even assuming you had an explanation for how someone mailed his own head to the police, it would feel like a terrible solution. It would feel like the author taking the easy way out to surprise his reader as opposed to actually working a more...classy trick. Let me put it this way:

Suppose you can explain exactly why the character did that and how he did that. It would still( unless you are a genius) leave the reader with the impression that he was, if not cheated, at least swindled in some form. And that's the best case scenario. More likely your story will be seen as unbelievable even by the standards of the genre and quite frankly not very good. Maybe you are a genius who can make that concept work, but it sounds like a bad concept to me.

edited 18th Jun '12 2:39:54 AM by Lestrade

Now I did say it was a terrible idea.

I can't give you any advice on how to write a good thriller, but I would suggest wacthing the tv show Jonathan Creek if you haven't all-ready. that's all about locked room mysteries and is a good show in it's own right.

The best piece of advice I can give you is to never make it an actual suicide. Readers enjoy finding out who the murderer is out of a half-dozen suspects, and will always feel jilted if it turns out the victim killed himself instead. A suicide is worse than the narrator or the detective committing the crime. At least with these cases, the readers don't feel like their time is totally wasted and will still look for clues that implicated the narrator or the detective. If the victim committed suicide, then the entire mystery is pointless.

The next best advice I can give is to have a change of direction in the middle of the story. This is easily achievable via murdering the primary suspect up to that point. If you can make it another impossible crime in and of itself, so much the better.

A basic formula for a good story.

1. Crime 2. Intro of Sleuth, Chekov's item 3. Suspects 4. Motives - everyone wanted to kill the victim, even the detective, but one suspect becomes very suspicious-looking. 5. Back Story of Sleuth 6. GASP! Primary Suspect is dead. 7. Hidden Motives 8. Review of the Clues 9. Chekov's item reveal! 10. Gather everyone and reveal the Murderer! 12. Reasoning, Motive, Oppurtunity, Means, etc. 13. Epilogue

Before I go on, my experience with locked-room mysteries is limited to a lot of 7th grade daydreaming and rough notes, and some somewhat recent look into psychology, possibilities, etc. Plus a couple random plots that I haven't had the time to include into any serious story.

I always tried rough drafting from the perspective of the murderer. Usually, I ended up plotting out the murder - who do they kill, where, when, how - and then I figure out the why. In hindsight, I don't think this is usually the best approach. I think figuring out the why first is the most important, followed by the how, then the where and when. It makes the murder and the act of killing more meaningful. Someone drowning their victim is average, someone drowning their victim because of a water-related or breathing-related incident is chilling.

Basically, it depends on the gimmick you want your murder to focus on. Is it Victim Oriented, where we learn more and more about the victim and whether or not they "deserved" to be killed? Is it Suspect Oriented, where the possible killers are fleshed out throughout the investigation? Or, in a lot of cases, is it Murder Oriented, where the interest of the reader should be focused on how exactly the killing happened?

A good writer will be able to go back and forth on all three of those categories in one story, but if you're doing a Murder Of The Week type setting, that just isn't always plausible.

That's the most basic way I've always looked at murder mysteries. There's probably a hundred-and-one better methods. Especially because I become really, really self-conscious after plotting the murder and wonder "would this ever really happen? how much of this was really contrived?"

I'm a pretty big Creek fan and while it's the humour and characterisation that make it a truly outstanding show, the mysteries are usually pretty good.

This is only speculation but based on the structure I'm pretty sure they begin with the 'how' - the magic trick or misdirection that's going to form the basis of the mystery. Then they come up with a (admittedly sometimes contrived) way for that trick to be performed, intentionally or otherwise, as part of a crime. Then, knowing the basics of what's going to happen, they build the characters, situation and motivation - the who, where and why - to fit, making them as quirky and vivid as possible. After that they make the actual plot - how things are revealed to the characters and the audience, with the audience almost always a step behind, and at least some kind of drama or urgency unfolding during the investigation.

I think it's also of note that each episode features at least one and sometimes several 'hooks', highly visible weirdnesses of the case that draw attention. They're usually red herrings, but they have some kind of thematic importance or give the investigators a clue about the truth of the matter. Basically, a locked room is an illusion, and an illusion needs two things: a solid behind-the-scenes mechanic, and a compelling bluff to cover it with. Mechanics are now well-explored, so your best bet is probably to look through previous stories and magic tricks and rip something off with your own quirk or spin added to throw off people familiar with it. As far as the cover goes, a lot of that is personal taste. Quirky and theatrical like Creek works well, but just as in stage magic, anything that grabs attention can work, even if what's so distinctive is how incredibly mundane and realistic things seem.

edited 10th Oct '12 4:50:38 PM by Kesteven

Detective Conan has a crapload of locked-room mysteries. My favorite one would be where a guy is found dead in an idol singer's apartment: he killed himself by falling onto a jagged icicle. The reason he killed himself is because he thought he was rejected (in person) by his girlfriend, who was really a frightened colleague of hers who was stalking her and leaving pictures of her in her apartment. The icicle melted away, leaving a stab wound but no weapon, framing the girlfriend for the death.

edited 11th Oct '12 4:23:07 AM by MrMallard

Reminds me of Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl, and that Creek episode with the alien. Honestly though in all cases you'd have to think the police would catch on if they weren't struggling under the weight of all those idiot balls, but maybe that's just my opinion as someone who was awake for most of chemistry class in high school.

edited 11th Oct '12 9:19:17 AM by Kesteven