How to write a detective story for school. James N. Frey How to Write a Brilliant Detective Story. Classification of detective stories

Beginning authors are divided into two types: the first get down to business without reading a single book and rely only on faith in their own talent, while the second cannot make up their mind for years, try to gain experience, and start closer to retirement. But to become a successful young author, you need to study and try at the same time. T&P have compiled seven books on writing that you can read to learn how to write.

"The Million Dollar Story"

Robert McKee

American screenwriters have a secret that all aspiring writers should know. This secret is the three-act structure of the feature film. On the screen, action can develop only according to such a structure, and main character as you move towards the final, it must definitely change.

Russian-speaking authors traditionally overestimate inner world heroes, their feelings and mental anguish. What aroused the interest of readers in the century before last does not find a response among contemporaries. The world has become “faster”, texts have become shorter, there is not enough time for anything. Today, only action can keep a reader reading. Running his eyes over the lines on the page of a book, he must see, hear, feel and experience what is happening inside the work.

"Bird by Bird"

Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott teaches perhaps the most important thing - to be honest: both with yourself and with readers. This book, poignant and sincere, talks about the writer’s lifestyle and the difficulties that await him. The author tells how to overcome the fear of the first draft, how to write constantly, write a lot, write well, while having fun.

Why can't you start a new writing project on Mondays and in December? What they think and feel famous writers when do they start working on a new text? How to force yourself to write? Anne Lamott answers these and other questions on every page of her book.

Most books on how to write a detective story are chock-full of wise advice: how to collect evidence, how to leave a false trail for a criminal, where to find poisonous mushrooms and how to take fingerprints. You may get the impression that a detective novel is a mixture of ingredients. They are carefully measured, thrown into a bowl, beaten with a wooden spoon until a homogeneous mixture is obtained, then briefly put in the oven and - voila - a brilliant detective is ready!

I don't want to disappoint you, but it won't work out that way.

The book “How to Write a Brilliant Detective” is not at all a collection of instructions on what you can and cannot write. This book will teach you how to brainstorm, build a detective story, write a draft, and make edits. This book will detail how to create vibrant, dynamic, three-dimensional characters that, when given free rein, will help you construct a complex, intricate, yet believable story. It will be full of mysteries, dangers, dramatic conflicts and tension.

In addition, the book will explain how to choose the right narrative form, how to perfect the style and polish of the novel, and how to find a literary agent after completing the manuscript.

Is there a guarantee that you will write a brilliant detective story if you use the recommendations outlined in this book? Sorry, there are no such guarantees. A lot depends on you. If you follow the instructions carefully and religiously, make the characters act as they are meant to, if you write, write, write, and then edit, edit, edit until your novel is sizzling with passion, you may find great success. Many detective writers have achieved this. What's worse about you?

Learning to write brilliant detective stories is like learning to skate. You fall, struggle to get back to your feet, and get back to work. Over and over again you repeat the same thing. Finally, you let your friends read your work, and they say: “Listen, this is a real detective story!”

You shouldn’t perceive working on a detective story as tedious or even hard work. Detective fiction is adventure literature, so you need to be imbued with the spirit of adventure. There are a lot of stories about writers who sit until they sweat blood, staring at blank slate paper. Bloody sweat is the lot of writers who create serious literature. For crime writers creative process should be... well, let's say, pleasure. Create characters, invent cities and even entire worlds that never really existed, think about how a murderer can avoid retribution, condemn to death people who resemble your sloppy ex-wife, a tyrant boss, a bitch mother-in-law - what could be more pleasant?

Our adventures will begin in Chapter I. In it we will discuss why people read detective stories, think about what place detectives occupy in modern literature and what participation they take in creating the mythology of culture. If you are planning to write a detective story, it is extremely important for you to know all this.

Answer one, classic (and nonetheless correct)

If you want to write detective stories, you first need to understand why people read them.

The usual answer is that people want to “escape from reality”, immerse themselves in silence for a couple of hours, get away from the bustling life, and want to have fun. However, there are many other entertainments that are not as popular as reading detective stories.

It is generally believed that readers enjoy solving a mystery crime, just as they enjoy solving a crossword puzzle. They say that a detective novel is a kind of puzzle that baffles the reader. The author plays with the reader, hides evidence, casts suspicion on innocent people who act as if they are the murderers, etc. The reader will most likely go the wrong way, and all his guesses will be wrong. The detective in a detective novel, as a rule, always surpasses the reader in intelligence and is the first to discover the killer.

However, if there was a passion for riddles main reason readers' love for detective stories, this genre would have died out in the thirties and forties of the 20th century, along with a special direction of detective novels called “locked room detectives.” They were carefully thought out and full of mysteries. The murder took place in a room locked from the inside; only a corpse was found in it. Bullet wound there is, but there is no bullet. The body was found on the roof, then it disappeared. Any reader who independently identified the killer could be proud of himself.

To write a brilliant detective story, one puzzle is not enough.

Marie Rodell, in The Detective Genre (1943), gives four classic reasons why people read detective stories. These reasons have not changed to this day.

1. Readers are interested in following the main character’s train of thought; they empathize with the detective pursuing the killer.

2. Readers enjoy the satisfaction of seeing a villain get what he deserves.

3. Readers identify themselves with the main character, “get involved” in the events of the novel and thereby increase their own significance.

4. Readers are imbued with a sense of confidence in the reality of the events occurring in the detective novel.

Marie Rodell further notes that “a detective novel that does not meet these requirements is doomed to failure.” What was true in the time of Marie Rodell has not lost its significance today. Moreover, now we need to approach working on a detective novel much more seriously than before. The modern reader is a skeptic, he is more aware of the methods of police work, and has become more experienced in jurisprudence. Making him believe in the reality of what is happening is now much more difficult.

Modern detective novel and heroic literature

Barbara Norville, in her useful and informative book How to Write a Modern Detective Story (1986), argues that the modern detective novel has its roots in medieval morality plays, noting that “in the modern detective novel negative character commits a crime against his neighbor; in a morality play, the negative character is guilty of the sins of pride, laziness, envy, etc.”

Undoubtedly, the medieval morality play and the modern detective story have common features. However, I believe that the roots of the modern detective story go much deeper. The modern detective novel is a version of the most ancient legend on Earth - the mythical tale of the wanderings of a warrior hero.

When I speak of "myth" or "mythological features", I mean that the detective story contains mythological elements and is a retelling of ancient legends modern language. The hero of ancient legends killed dragons (monsters that were feared by the society of that time) and saved beauties. The hero of a modern detective novel catches killers (monsters whom he fears modern society) and saves beauties. Many qualities of the heroes of ancient legends and the characters of modern detective stories coincide: they are brave, loyal, strive to punish evil, are ready to make sacrifices for the sake of an ideal, etc.

It's been a while since we dived into the hopeless abyss genre literature, did not revel in the gray monotony, and then a wonderful opportunity just appeared - this week I came across an interesting classification of detective stories online, which I hasten to introduce you to today. And although the detective story is one of my least favorite genres, the classification below is so elegant and laconic that it just begs to be written down. And it will be even more useful for beginners to know it.

Let me remind you once again that we are talking about a classic detective story, the plot of which is built around a mysterious murder, and the main driver of the plot is the search and identification of the criminal. So…

Classification of detective stories.

1. Fireplace detective.

This is the best thing ever traditional type detective story in which a murder has occurred and there is a narrow circle of suspects. It is known for certain that one of the suspects is the killer. The detective must identify the criminal.

Examples: numerous stories by Hoffmann and E.A. By.

2. Complicated fireplace detective.

A variation of the previous scheme, where a mysterious murder also takes place, a limited circle of suspects is outlined, but the killer turns out to be someone outside and usually completely invisible (a gardener, a servant or a butler). In a word, minor character, which we could not even think of.

3. Suicide.

The introductory ones are the same. Throughout the entire story, the detective, suspecting everyone and everything, searches for the killer to no avail, and in the finale it unexpectedly turns out that the victim simply committed suicide, killed herself.

Example: Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians.

4. Gang murder.

The detective, as always, has outlined a circle of suspects and is trying to identify the criminal. But there is not just one killer among the suspects, because everyone killed the victim with joint efforts.

Example: Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express."

5. Living corpse.

There has been a murder. Everyone is looking for the criminal, but it turns out that the murder never took place, and the victim is alive.

Example: Nabokov's "The True Life of Sebastian Knight."

6. The detective killed.

The crime is committed by the investigator or detective himself. Perhaps for reasons of justice, or perhaps because he is a maniac. By the way, it violates commandment No. 7 of the famous ones.

Examples: Agatha Christie “The Mousetrap”, “Curtain”.

7. Killed by the author.

The introductory ones are practically no different from the above-mentioned variations, however, the scheme implies that the main character should be the author of the story. And in the finale it suddenly turns out that he was the one who killed the unfortunate victim. This scheme, used by Agatha Christie in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, initially caused real anger among critics, because... violated the first and main Ronald Knox's 10 Detective Commandments: « The criminal should be someone mentioned at the beginning of the novel, but it should not be a person whose train of thought the reader was allowed to follow" However, the technique was subsequently called innovative, and the novel was recognized as a true masterpiece of the genre.

Examples: A.P. Chekhov “On the Hunt”, Agatha Christie “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd”.

Addition.

As a bonus, I will give three additional original schemes that have been used a few times, but clearly expand the above classification:

8. Mystical spirit.

Introduction into the narrative of some irrational mystical power(vengeful spirit), which, possessing the characters, commits murders with their hands. In my understanding, such an innovation takes the story into the related area of ​​a fantastic (or mystical) detective story.

Example: A. Sinyavsky “Lyubimov”.

9. Killed by a reader.

Perhaps the most complex and tricky of possible schemes, in which the writer strives to structure the narrative so that in the end the reader is surprised to discover that it was he who committed the mysterious crime.

Examples: J. Priestley “Inspector Ghoulie”, Kobo Abe “Ghosts Among Us”.

10. Dostoevsky's detective.

The phenomenon of Dostoevsky's novel " Crime and Punishment", which undoubtedly has a detective basis, lies in the destruction of the traditional detective scheme. We already know in advance the answers to all the questions: who was killed, how and when, the name of the killer and even his motives. But then the author leads us through dark, untrodden labyrinths of awareness and comprehension of the consequences of what was done. And this is something we are completely unaccustomed to: the simplest detective story evolves into a complex philosophical and psychological drama. All in all, this is a wonderful illustration of the old saying: “ where mediocrity ends, genius just begins».

That's all for today. As always, I look forward to your feedback in the comments. See you soon!

This is the name of the list of twenty points that I saw yesterday in the author’s VKontakte public. Mostly online authors gather there, but this list is allegedly taken from the Eksmo forum. Mmm... To be honest, as I read, my eyes widened more and more, because in fact, for every point “how not to do”, I remembered at least one successful book or successful film in the detective genre, where this very “don’t” "That's exactly what was done. I myself had some, but - okay, let’s say I’m not an indicator. But world literature and cinema, it seems to me, still mean something.

So, if anyone is interested:

1) The reader should have equal opportunities with the detective to solve the mystery of the crime. All clues must be clearly identified and described.

2) The reader cannot be deliberately deceived or misled, except in cases where he and the detective are deceived by a criminal according to all the rules of fair play.

3) There should not be in the novel love line. We are talking about bringing the criminal into the hands of justice, and not about uniting yearning lovers with the bonds of Hymen.

4) Neither the detective himself nor any of the official investigators should turn out to be a criminal. This is tantamount to outright deception - the same as if they slipped us a shiny copper coin instead of a gold coin. Fraud is fraud.

5) The criminal must be discovered deductively - using logical conclusions, and not due to chance, coincidence or unmotivated confession. After all, choosing this last path, the author quite deliberately leads the reader along a deliberately false trail, and when he returns empty-handed, he calmly reports that all this time the solution was in his, the author’s, pocket. Such an author is no better than a fan of primitive practical jokes.

6) A detective novel must have a detective, and a detective is only a detective when he tracks and investigates. His task is to collect evidence that will serve as a clue, and ultimately point to who committed this vile crime in the first chapter. The detective builds his chain of reasoning based on the analysis of the collected evidence, otherwise he is likened to a careless schoolboy who, having not solved the problem, copies the answer from the back of the problem book.

7) You simply cannot do without corpses in a detective novel, and the more naturalistic the corpse, the better. Only the murder makes the novel interesting enough. Who would read three hundred pages with excitement if we were talking about a less serious crime! In the end, the reader should be rewarded for their trouble and energy.

8) The mystery of the crime must be revealed in a purely materialistic way. Such methods of establishing the truth as divination, seances, reading other people's thoughts, fortune telling, etc., etc. are completely unacceptable. The reader has some chance of being as smart as a detective who thinks rationally, but if he is forced to compete with the spirits other world, he is doomed to failure ab initio

9) There should be only one detective, that is, only one main character of deduction, only one deus ex machina. To mobilize the minds of three, four, or even an entire squad of detectives to solve a crime means not only to scatter the reader’s attention and break the direct logical thread, but also to unfairly put the reader at a disadvantage. If there is more than one detective, the reader does not know which one he is competing with in terms of deductive reasoning. It's like forcing the reader to race a relay team.

10) The criminal should be a character who played a more or less noticeable role in the novel, that is, a character who is familiar and interesting to the reader.

11) The author should not make a servant a murderer. It's too much easy solution, choosing him means avoiding difficulties. The criminal must be a person of a certain dignity - one who does not usually attract suspicion.

12) No matter how many murders are committed in a novel, there must be only one criminal. Of course, the criminal may have an assistant or accomplice, but the entire burden of guilt must lie on the shoulders of one person. The reader must be given the opportunity to concentrate all the fervor of his indignation on one single black character.

13) In a true detective novel, secret gangster societies, all sorts of Camorras and mafias are inappropriate. After all, an exciting and truly beautiful murder will be irreparably spoiled if it turns out that the blame falls on an entire criminal company. Of course, a murderer in a detective story should be given hope of salvation, but allowing him to resort to the help of a secret society is going too far. No top-notch, self-respecting assassin needs such an advantage.

14) The method of murder and the means of solving the crime must meet the criteria of rationality and science. In other words, pseudoscientific, hypothetical and purely fantastic devices cannot be introduced into a detective novel. As soon as the author soars, in the manner of Jules Verne, into fantastic heights, he finds himself outside the detective genre and frolics in the uncharted expanses of the adventure genre.

15) At any moment, the solution should be obvious - provided that the reader has enough insight to figure it out. By this is meant the following: if the reader, having reached the explanation of how the crime was committed, re-reads the book, he will see that the solution, so to speak, lay on the surface, that is, all the evidence actually pointed to the culprit, and, even if he, the reader , as smart as a detective, he would be able to solve the mystery on his own, long before last chapter. Needless to say, a savvy reader often reveals it this way.

16) In a detective novel, long descriptions, literary digressions and side themes, sophisticated character analysis and recreation of atmosphere are inappropriate. All these things are unimportant to the story of the crime and its logical solution. They only delay the action and introduce elements that have nothing to do with the main goal, which is to present the problem, analyze it and bring it to a successful solution. Of course, a novel should include enough description and well-defined characters to give it credibility.

17) The blame for committing a crime should not fall on a professional criminal. Crimes committed by burglars or bandits are investigated by the police department, not by a mystery writer and brilliant amateur detectives. A truly exciting crime is one committed by a pillar of the church or an old maid known to be a philanthropist.

18) A crime in a detective novel should not turn out to be suicide or an accident. To end the tracking odyssey with such a drop in tension is to fool the gullible and kind reader.

19) All crimes in detective novels must be committed for personal reasons. International conspiracies and military politics are the property of something completely different. literary genre- for example, a spy or action novel. A detective novel should remain within a cozy, homely framework. It should reflect the reader's daily experiences and, in a sense, give vent to his own repressed desires and emotions.

20) And finally, the last point: a list of some techniques that no self-respecting author of detective novels will now use. They have been used too often and are well known to all true fans literary crimes. To resort to them means to admit your incompetence as a writer and lack of originality.

a) Identification of the criminal by a cigarette butt left at the crime scene.

b) Arrangement of an imaginary spiritualistic seance in order to frighten the criminal and force him to give himself away.

c) Forgery of fingerprints.

d) An imaginary alibi provided by a mannequin.

e) A dog that does not bark and therefore allows one to conclude that the intruder was not a stranger.

f) At the end of the day, placing the blame for the crime on a twin brother or another relative who is like two peas in a pod like the suspect, but is an innocent person.

g) Hypodermic syringe and drug mixed into wine.

h) Committing a murder in a locked room after the police broke in.

i) Establishing guilt using psychological test naming words by free association.

j) The mystery of a code or encrypted letter, eventually solved by a detective.

Choose in which era the action will take place. This could be any time from Ancient Egypt to the distant future, and even a fictional planet in a new galaxy.

• Do a little research about what happened in a particular country - murders, mysterious cases. If the crime has not been solved, you can come up with any solution.

Create the image of a detective. He might be cool guy, an intellectual, a victim of circumstance, or even the source of trouble in your story. It is not necessary to answer all of the questions below. However, being thorough at this stage will help you write a believable story with a lively and complex central character.

• Come up with the most basic things. Is it a man or a woman? Name? Age? Appearance (skin color, eyes, hair)? Where is he or she from? Where does the hero live at the beginning of the story? How did he get involved? Should he be the victim? Is he the cause of what is happening?
• Give the hero a family. Parents? Brothers and sisters? Significant other? Children? Other relationships? Social groups? Someone who has mysteriously disappeared... Let the circumstances be as real or as unusual as you wish.
• What kind of life does the hero lead? Is he a celebrity or is he still a newcomer? Does he have an exceptional mind? What crimes does it solve - murders, thefts, kidnappings?
• Think about what your hero loves. What's his favorite phrase? Favorite color, place, drink, book, movie, music, dish? What is he afraid of? How practical is it? Do you use perfume, and what kind - strong, weak, pleasant or not so pleasant?
• Think about religion. Is your main character religious? If so, what faith does he belong to? Perhaps he came up with it himself or chose from different religions what suited him personally? How do beliefs influence his actions? Is he superstitious?
• Decide how the hero behaves in relationships. Does he have many friends? Is there best friend? Is he a romantic by nature? What first impression does he make? Does he love children? Does he read a lot? How do you feel about smoking?
• How does the hero dress? If this is a woman, does she use cosmetics or dye her hair? What about piercings or tattoos? Is your character attractive, and how attractive does he consider himself? Is there anything he would like to change or something he is particularly happy with? How much time does he devote to his appearance?
• It may seem that for short story this is too much, but it is necessary to work out the image of the main character as deeply and in detail as possible for a good story.