Welcome to my newsletter!

"When Someone Gets Iced, You Wind Up With A Stiff."

Hey there, Reader: I know ... I'm a day late. Sorry.

But I'm not "a dollar short." I promised to give you some tips on constructing a great mystery thriller, SO HERE WE GO.

There are different ways of approaching creating such a project. You can come up with some character and a circumstance they're in and then build your mystery out of that.

Or maybe you think of a very popular or rare item that is desired by people, and subsequently, someone has to go after that, etc. Here's the thing.

For me and some of the people I admire, to create a great mystery with clues, wild characters, and everything else, you have to start with the actual center of the piece, which allows everything else to spin out.

You have to start with the Crime.

What kind of crime has been perpetrated that you want to build out from?

From the crime, you have the victim.

That doesn't mean that it's a murder case. It could be the person who's robbed or the person who's blackmailed or whatever.

Next, you work out the Method.

How was the crime committed?

And then you have Suspects. Who did it, or at least who you think did it?

You also need a Red Herring. A red herring leads the police or the sleuth in the wrong direction.

So now you have the crime, the victim, the suspects, the method, the red herring.

Once you understand how the crime was committed, who the crime was committed against, and who the people you suspect of doing it are, you're distracted by a red herring, something that appears to be maybe somehow involved but isn't really. It's got you looking over here when you should be looking over there.

Now, who figures all this out? Your Investigator has to find the clues, talk to the suspects, and traverse the terrain to examine how and why things were done.

For that to happen, for you to lay all this out properly, you must know how it was committed, who did what to whom, how they did it, and why.

And that’s what I’ll show you in my WRITE THE CRIME: COLD CASE CHALLENGE 3-Part Series.

Part One – This email and video mini-course teaches you exactly how to choose and construct the crime for your story.

Part Two -- Is a live webinar workshop where I show you how to Plan a short mystery thriller from Plot to Climax. By the end of it, you’ll have a complete outline and characters.

Part Three—This is an 8-week mystery writing course where you’ll learn how to write an entire novel or novella.

You can participate in one, two, or all three of the series.

Either way, you come away with a complete project.

Click on this link for more information. COLD CASE CHALLENGE​

Hope to see you on the case.

Now, get back to writing!

Best,

Alex Simmons

Have questions? DM me (@AlexSimmonsSays). Or email me.

If you need help telling your stories, Click Below and let me know.

CLICK HERE

3959 Saxon Avenue, Bronx, NY 10463
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