Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/1488
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

EDIT: In reconsidering this question and a conversation I had with a colleague the other day I believe I have something to add on this. He mentioned reading about the way Agatha Christie used to construct her stories. He made the assertion that she used to write the whole thing without actually knowing who the murderer was, then analyse what she had written to find a suitable murderer as she approached the end and then quickly "plant" the clues along the way.

Whether this hearsay is true or not I cannot say but it did make me wonder if there was anything about Christie's methods on line I found:

[http://www.christiemystery.co.uk/method.html](http://www.christiemystery.co.uk/method.html)

And from the same site:

[http://www.christiemystery.co.uk/plot.html](http://www.christiemystery.co.uk/plot.html)

Hope those help!

-END EDIT-  
FINAL EDIT

Just to put the lid on this and make it complete, following the Christie search I just did a generic one for whodunnit plot methods and the best link, despite feeling a little spammy, was:

[http://www.squidoo.com/writing\_whodunit\_mystery](http://www.squidoo.com/writing_whodunit_mystery)

-END EDIT-

When I wanted to write a crime novel I didn't worry overmuch about the "whodunnit" aspect of the novel as the crime I was describing was so bizarre it was more of a "whatexactlyarewedealingwithhere". However I did want the rather surreal situation I was describing to have some sort of psychological veracity and for the police procedural details to be accurate. Perhaps these desires were born of the bizarreness of the actual incident I was describing. (It's that odd that I'm not even going to attempt to describe it here.)

In preparation for that I consulted the Writer's Digest volumes [Scene of the Crime](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0898795184) and [Armed and Dangerous](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/089879370X). The former was considerably more helpful than the latter and my actual weapons reference for firearms is a rather scary volume called the [D20 Modern Weapons Locker](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0786931329) which is for a role playing game but contains a great and accurate write up of almost every firearm in the known world (I told you it was scary). The Weapons Locker also points out matters for simulating the realism of weapons in games and deals in points of fact like there being no way to silence a revolver.

Finally for a psychological aspect I read many of the behavioural profiling memoirs of FBI Behavioural Profiler [John Douglas](http://www.johndouglasmindhunter.com/home.php). His books with Mark Olshaker give Douglas a chance to discuss the psychology of the criminal in depth that is more than sufficient for an author to know their criminal. He mostly talks about serial killers obviously but also about particular single murders and even a few "nuisances" like the profile of the kind of guy who would add a urine kicker to the office coffee pot (similar psychological make up to the unabomber for the record).

What all this taught me was that if your crime is compelling the "mystery" aspect kind of takes care of itself. A story in which you just ask "who" dunnit is not as exciting as one that asks "why" they dunnit and "what" they tried to do to cover it up.

From that time whenever I design a crime story I always walk through the crime from the perspective of the criminal and allow the detectives to work back to the crime from the evidence.

Original score: 9