Don't Murder Your Mystery: 24 Fiction-Writing Techniques to Save Your Manuscript from Turning up. D.O.A.

Chris Roerden
Bella Rosa Books (2006)
ISBN 1933523131
Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (2/07)

I’ve always been a voracious reader of how-to manuals, but all too often I felt really disappointed after finishing them. It seemed that so many of the authors are of the “if I cannot do it myself, I’ll teach others how to do it” kind. So after reading one of those books I’d feel like I’ve wasted both my money and my time. Chris Roerden’s “Don’t Murder Your Mystery: 24 Fiction-Writing Techniques to Save Your Manuscript from Turning up… D.O.A.” definitely does not belong in that category.

Ms. Roerden, a writer and an editor herself, is definitely well qualified to teach others the art of writing, and she does it extremely well. Her manual deals with 24 most common “clues” to amateurish writing and provides excellent, thought-provoking means and ways to fix them.

The material in the manual is organized in a logical, easy to follow manner, starting with the worst offenses, those that would practically guarantee the elimination of your manuscript the moment it hits the literary agency or a publishing house. Ms. Roerden smoothly guides you through those initial stages of review and suggests easy and doable ways to correct the mistakes. She explains the terminology used in her book and itemizes the elements of a novel.

The subsequent chapters deal with the various mistakes and weak points of writing. Each “clue” is explained based on examples showing you how 130 published writers solved those same problems in their writing. Each of the “clue” chapters ends with a Find & Fix Clue section, which should be immensely helpful to both new and seasoned authors. Let me list just a few of those “clues” -- Hobbled Hooks, Perilous Prologues, Bloody Backstory, Fatal Flashbacks, Deceptive Dreams, Dastardly Description, Poisonous Predictability, Disappearing Bodies and quite a few more. The alliterations used for nearly half of the clue names are quite amusing.

There are a few extremely useful pieces of information for new authors to be found at the very end of the book. The first of those is the explanation of the standard manuscript format. Although a writer should definitely check out the submission guidelines of the publisher they are submitting the manuscript to, this concise explanation should definitely be very helpful as well. This section is followed by two lists, one of recommended non-fiction reading and another of popular (and useful) internet sites. Both are an invaluable resource for anybody who is contemplating writing a mystery.

Even if you do not harbor hopes of writing a mystery one of these days you’ll probably agree that “Don’t Murder Your Mystery” is good reading just for the sake of it. If you are already an author, you should still read it and I bet you fill find plenty of useful ideas and bits of information on how to become a better writer. And if you do hope to be a published author, by all means get a copy of this manual. As far as I am concerned, my copy will be permanently parked on my office bookshelf – the one behind the locked door. If it ever vanishes from there that just might happen to be a good start for an entertaining mystery….

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