: About Me

"Mystery Stories" is an innovative website set to launch in early 2008. Included in this site is a concept of scoring the solving of mysteries (the equivalent to showing your work in math class) combined with raking people long term. We plan to also use the stories in an educational setting to help students develop better comprehension of stories.

*SUBMISSION GUIDELINES*
1) Mysteries should be around 1500 words.
2) Mysteries should be written for the sixth to eighth-grade reading level.
3) Mysteries should include at least 4 clues and at least 4 suspects.

It is vital to our website functionality that you submit a list of suspects at the beginning of your mystery. When our users click on your story, a list of suspects appears. Next to the suspect is the choice of "innocent" or "guilty." Thus the need to identify at least 4 suspects.

*MYSTERY TEMPLATE*

SECTION I - Identify suspects

Bob Jones
Seth
Aunt Joanne
Mailman
Landlord

DO NOT describe characters in this section, e.g. "Bob Jones, a lonely 58-year-old ex-con."

SECTION II - Mystery body

At this point, DO NOT allow your characters to let the cat out of the bag: "Bob, it was you all along!" Based on the clues and suspects, the reader should play detective, and figure it out on his own. This section should end with something like, "I know who did it" at which point, the reader will have to solve the mystery.

SECTION III - Identify the clues and the solution

Now is the time to show how the mystery was solved. Also, make it easy for our administrators to identify clues, preferably by listing them at the end of your story.

"Mystery Stories" is a pseudonym for our Marketplace publisher.

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