by Rachelle de Bretagne

Created on: October 06, 2007

Tips for creating characters for a murder mystery

Jenny was the girl next door. She lived in the next house to you for 25 years, before killing her husband with a kitchen knife.

We read stories like this in the news every single day, where people's look of disbelief that familiar characters within their lives have committed crimes they could never imagine them committing. Murder happens and people question motive. They question logic and come to many conclusions, and that is where the very heart of the murder mystery begins.

The characters used within the pages of a murder mystery are ordinary people with ordinary lives, though somewhere along the line, something caused them to react in a manner that society found unacceptable. Looking at dramas on the television, we see the breakdown of crimes portrayed on the screen, as a murder unfolds.

With a written work, those pictures that are perceived are gleaned from the words that are written and instead of painting a picture on a television screen, the writers job is to create images from the text that he writes that will work on the subconscious mind of the reader to create all the possible scenarios and conclusions that make up the murder mystery genre of writing.

Taking a look at the different aspects of characterization, let's see those which would be needed to create a murder mystery :

*Characters interaction with each other.
*Characters jobs and family
*Characters thoughts and motivation
*Characters reasons to want to eliminate someone
*Plausible though surprising outcome

CHARACTERS INTERACTION WITH EACH OTHER.

When you develop characters, you develop types of people that weave into a story to make it real. No one believes that the Queen will go to the corner shop to buy a packet of tea. No-one believes that a rich man rides a bike to work (unless he has reason), and in the same way those characters that you create must be real, unless the murder mystery is of the fantasy variety.

Readers that familiarize with the characters that you portray will be able to get involved in your story and feel it as real. It is this reality that makes a good murder mystery evolve and succeed. If you look at the Miss Marples scenarios, a little old lady gets nosy and has a feel for what is going on around her, and an intuition that her time as a retired lady gives her time to exploit and use to help the law enforcement agencies to find criminals. It's logical and works, selling millions.

Whatever walk of life your characters come from, it

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