How to Write a Damn Good Mystery: A Practical Step-By-Step Guide from Inspiration to Finished Manuscript [Hardcover]

I highly recommend _How to Write a Damn Good Mystery : A Practical Step-by-Step Guide from Inspiration to Finished Manuscript_ with two caveats:

1. The author often offers his opinion as fact.
2. The book sometimes reads like an advertisement for the author's other how-to-write-fiction books.

Jim Frey mentions his other how-to-write-fiction books about twenty times during the course of this 267 page book. At an average of one plug every thirteen pages, that doesn't sound too bad. But, Frey tends to begin chapters by talking about his other books, which quickly becomes repetitious and grated on my nerves because I thought it unnecessary: Don't tell me what you said in another book, just tell me again in this book. I can only recall one place where he mentioned a fiction book he wrote. This may be because all the mystery novels he has written are now out of print.

Jim Frey uses his ten years of teaching experience to justify some of his opinions, which he presents as facts. Jim's mystery novels are all out of print and he appears to be making a living putting on writing workshops and writing how-to-write-fiction books. This makes me a little wary due to the old truism, "Those who can do; those who can't teach."

One of Frey's opinions, presented as a fact, is that you must have a plan before you begin writing fiction. Read interviews of your favorite writers and you will notice that they all have different writing habits and approach their work in different ways. For instance in one interview, Elmore Leonard said: "I have no idea where it's going. I have no idea how it will end. I just start it. Sometimes, Chapter 1 will become Chapter 2 or 3; one time it became Chapter 10. I don't plot the whole book out. I'd rather not know what's going to happen myself." Dean Koontz, in _Writing Bestselling Fiction_, also suggests that beginning writers start with an outline, but admits that is not the way he writes. Elmore Leonard and Dean Koontz are best-selling authors, whose books are still in print. They and many other authors I have read recognize that the creative process can be different for each writer. It drove me nuts every time that Jim Frey presented his experience a fact or as the only way to perform a particular writing task.

Frey also offered examples that showed how his method fits in with those presented by other authors. One I can think of is what he calls a "mini-scene" which Swain and Bickman call a sequel. I gravitate toward the practical and examples and Frey offers the ultimate example by walking you step-by-step through creating the characters and plot in write-along mystery, Murder in Montana. He also goes into how to actually write a scene and revise it through the final draft. This example is great and I wish he spent more time "where the rubber meets the road," with the actual writing process.

_How to Write a Damn Good Mystery_ is easy to read, and offers good sound advice (if you take the author's opinions as just that) presented in logical, step-by-step approach. Here's what I took away from Frey's book in the order he recommends:

1. Start with creating the murderer using concepts from Lajos Egri's _The Art of Dramatic Writing_: creating the physiology, sociology, and psychology of the character and giving the character a ruling passion.

2. Creation of the murder and what Frey calls the "plot behind the plot": the plot line of the murder from the murderer's perspective. Write a journal in the voice of the character [I find this very practical as this type of writing is very close to fiction writing].

3. Create the detective, then 2-3 false suspects, and the other characters who will people the novel. Create journals in the voice of each of these characters.

4. Create what Frey calls a stepsheet, which is a plot outline for the entire novel that also shows what happened outside the scenes to appear in the book.

5. Speed write a first draft, writing important dialogue, but summarizing action in all-caps [the way action is summarized in a screenplay]. The idea is to get through the first draft in a few days.

6. Polished prose is actually prose that has been rewritten many times: rewrite the story 15-20 times, then polish the prose, bettering bits of it hear and there 30-40 times more.

7. Learn how to write good prose by typing 2-3 pages a day, verbatim, from a novel of a highly accomplished author. Then try to write a page in the same style.

I found a lot to like in this book. I will be reading it again, but I'll skip over the parts that grate, and concentrate on the golden nuggets. On a scale of one to ten, I'd give _How to Write a Damn Good Mystery : A Practical Step-by-Step Guide from Inspiration to Finished Manuscript_ a solid eight.

I bought the book thinking that the previous review ("A great guide, but some "facts" are actually opinions," February 14, 2004) was a great kickoff, eager to hear more from Frey himself. For example, the idea of flying through a quick first draft, writing it almost as a screenplay and blocking out the actions in all caps, intrigued me. Frey rolls around to this idea towards the end of the book and admits it wasn't even his own idea but one he'd lifted off a half-ploughed writer at a conference. Having finished the book, I can say I got as much from the review above as I did from the book itself.

Frey treats his own method as THE WAY to write, gives no alternatives, and makes no acknowledgement that there are a number of ways that writers approach their work. Worse, he states that thick, well-rounded characters are preferable, but then peoples his own examples with the thinnest of trope characters. He even advocates these `archetypes' (which read more like stereotypes) as a good way to start framing your characterization, a process I think is completely backwards, and tends to leave writers in the shallow waters where they began to kick about. The examples he gives throughout tend to be uninteresting and lack consistency; when he gives an example of a poor writing sample he does not remedy the ill by making that same sample better or good or `damn good,' he just skips to a new example completely, which tends not to be `damn good' itself.

Most annoying, Frey kicks off nearly every chapter or salient point with a blatant stump for one of his other published books on writing. I finished the book frustrated I had purchased what amounted to a paper-thin infomercial for books I now have no desire at all to purchase.

Skip this silly book completely and invest in Orson Scott Card's excellent "Characters & Viewpoint" or Carolyn Wheat's "How to Write Killer Fiction."

This book does not go into all the poisons, weapons, clever plot reversals, etc. that you might find in other mystery writing books, but it does tell you where and how to begin, how to create characters with depth and interest, a plan for a logical and surprising plot, and tips on improving writing style. To me, it is the first book I have read on this subject that makes the writing process clear. I have been a fan of mystery novels since childhood, and I always wanted to write one but did not know how to generate a good enough story. Now, since Frey's book, I have an idea I am excited about and I am, for the first time, writing a mystery novel.