"Writing Picture-Perfect Mysteries" with Elaine Marie Alphin

Mel is Mel Boring, moderator of this chat with Elaine Marie Alphin, and editor of the ICL web site.

Elaine is Elaine Marie Alphin, an expert writer of mysteries for young readers. Elaine’s books often tend toward the mysterious, ranging from Civil War ghosts to time-traveling triceratops troublemakers to modern terrorists to serial killers. Her GHOST SOLDIER (companion to GHOST CADET) was nominated for the 2002 Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery, and COUNTERFEIT SON won the 2001 Edgar for Best Young Adult Mystery. Elaine’s PICTURE PERFECT comes out in August 2003, a mystery about a boy gone missing in the California redwoods.

Pink shows the usernames of the people who asked Elaine questions.

Elaine: Thanks so much, Mel! It's a great pleasure to be back here, visiting with so many writers.

Mel: You have been a VERY popular guest, I know, even before I became web editor. Elaine, do you recall the FIRST thing you ever wrote, at any age?

Elaine: Well, the very first stories I wrote were the ones I made up to tell my father, even before I started school. We would walk together on early weekend mornings and tell each other stories. The one I remember best was about a cat who had three tails, each a different color, but had trouble stumbling around, banging her tails into things. So she had to come up with a solution that made the most of her tails. I guess I was about three when I made that one up.

Mel: Did you think of yourself as one day being a professional writer back in your youth?

Elaine: Oh yes. : ) I always wanted to grow up to see my stories on library shelves. I loved going to the library! I had no clue how I was going to do it, but I always wanted to write. I started selling my writing for the first time in college. Even though it was journalism, it was a lot of fun. The college was too small to have a journalism department, so being an editor on the school paper was a paying job and I was the fine arts editor. But I wrote all the articles myself! The editor-in-chief got so upset that he told me I had to find more writers. So I made up a fictional student and wrote articles under his byline. I guess you could call that creative journalism.

Mel: Looking back, what were the steps that took you from that cat-tail story, to college writing, to BECOMING a professional writer?

Elaine: I read constantly, and I wrote constantly - everything from creative answers to spelling word homework (the kind where you'd write a sentence for each word - I'd write a paragraph!), to short stories, to novels during my college years.

Mel: Did you want to write for CHILDREN when you first began writing professionally?

Elaine: No, I didn't realize that was the perfect genre for me. Because you study literature for adults. I assumed that if I wanted to write serious books - books that would make readers think, books that would make them question their assumptions, and even change as a result of reading them - I'd have to write for adults. But then I discovered (as I became an adult) that a lot of adults don't really want to change. They've made their compromises with life, and they want to read books that say they chose wisely. The readers who were constantly questioning their assumptions were, of course, children and teens. The way I wrote my first book for young readers was through my first mystery, actually. I got a research grant to study the murder of the Princes in the Tower, in England, and I meant to write a historical novel for adults. But when I was working on it I got more intrigued by the victims, who were kids. I got the idea of writing about an American family who visit England. The American kids meet the ghosts of the murdered Princes, imprisoned in stained glass windows, and get drawn into solving their murder mystery. And I had such a good time, I realized I'd found my readership!

Mel: Your OWN story is a GREAT story! You’ve written quite a few mysteries, and you’ve got a new one that’s just published, don’t you? What’s it about, Elaine?

Elaine: PICTURE PERFECT is going to come out in August. It's the story of a boy whose best friend has disappeared in the California redwoods (I grew up in California). Ian is afraid that something terrible has happened to Teddy, but he's even more afraid that he knows something about it that he can't quite remember. One by one, the other people who Ian tentatively trusts begin to disappear also and he becomes increasingly frightened that he knows what's happening - or that he might even be doing something himself because he has these times when he zones out and can't quite remember what happened. But if he's going to find Teddy - or Teddy's body! - he'd better find a way to remember.

winandlose: Did you start writing professionally right out of college?

Elaine: Hi winandlose! Well, yes and no. I continued to write journalism professionally for some time before I realized that writing for children was the right thing for me. And at that point I discovered that children's literature and adult literature were rather different. So I signed up for the Institute of Children’s Literature's course (yes, I'm an Institute grad!) and learned how to rewrite my PRINCES IN THE TOWER mystery, which ended up being published as TOURNAMENT OF TIME, and also wrote my first novel entirely intended for kids in the course - THE GHOST CADET.

Mel: Did you always intend to write mysteries?

Elaine: Not at all! Even though THE GHOST CADET was a mystery about a ghost and a missing family heirloom, I didn't think of it as a mystery as I was writing it. In fact, when COUNTERFEIT SON was nominated for the Edgar Award and won, I was totally surprised because I didn't think it was a mystery at all! But as I thought about it, nearly all of my books have been mysteries in some way because I always tend to write about a youngster trying to find out something that is unknown, hidden objects, or missing people, or undelivered messages, or mysteries of identity. Sometimes you can surprise yourself with your writing. Now that I realize I'm writing mysteries, I do plan each new novel that way from the beginning.

ccollier: Elaine, wasn't your book entered in the Edgars in the mystery category to win?

Elaine: Hi, ccollier. Yes, two of my books have been entered in the Edgars, one in the juvenile mystery category (GHOST SOLDIER) and one in the Young Adult mystery category (COUNTERFEIT SON). The publisher entered the books for me. That's how it works for most awards - your publisher knows what awards the book might be eligible for, and takes care of entering it.

Mel: Tell us some about the Edgar Awards, Elaine, like how and how often they are awarded.

Elaine: The Edgar Awards are presented every year, by the Mystery Writers of America. It's a big banquet in New York, and I was so thrilled to be nominated because there were all these really famous people there in their tuxedos and gowns, and then there was me! You know you're nominated when you come to the dinner, but you don't know who's won until they make the announcement, kind of like the Academy Awards. I never expected to win, so I was sitting there enjoying myself, just thrilled to be part of the evening, and then they called my name, and you could have knocked me over with a feather! I don't know when I've ever felt so proud to be a writer.

Mel: That's a great MYSTERY story itself! What does the "Edgar" stand for in the "Edgars"?

Elaine: The Mystery Writers of America created the Edgar Award to honor one of the first great American suspense, mystery, and horror writers, Edgar Allan Poe. The award is a great little ceramic bust of Poe looking soulful and mysterious. I have him sitting on my file cabinet to inspire me.

Mel: What IS a mystery?

Elaine: To me, a mystery is a novel that centers around a hidden truth that only the writer knows. This might be the location of a secret hiding place, or the truth behind a family secret, or the explanation of how an unexpected object appeared in a familiar place, or the identity of a blackmailer or a thief, or the identity of a kidnapper and the location of his victim, or even the identity of a murderer! The main character has to discover this hidden truth by putting clues together to unravel the mystery. That means that mystery writing is the most carefully plotted sort of writing, because the writer has to know the solution and plant the clues that will add up to it, without making the ending trivially obvious to the casual, skimming reader.

mbvoelker: When I read a mystery I always fall for all the red herrings and am completely surprised by the ending. Can a person like me hope to successfuly write a mystery?

Elaine: Hi, mbvoelker. That's a great question - and the answer is of course you can write a great mystery! The very fact that you fall for all the red herrings should help you see the type of red herrings you could introduce into a plot yourself to confuse your readers and distract them from the ending that your real clues have set up.

t green: I like mysteries but can never guess whodunnit. Can I still plot a good mystery?

Elaine: Hi, t green. You're in the same boat as mbvoelker. You enter into the world of the mystery and don't put the clues together for yourself. Once you finish reading a mystery that really surprised you, go back and read it again, looking for the clues that led to the whodunnit solution and isolating the clues that led you astray. Then see how you could do the same thing in your own mystery writing. That's what I meant when I said I read constantly as well as writing constantly. When you read critically, seeing what works and what doesn't, you can see how to use what works in your own writing and also avoid what doesn't, like being too obvious, or not being honest with the reader.

flyby: Is a mystery necessarily a novel?

Elaine: Hi, flyby. That's a good question. Since I always set out to write novels, and discovered that some of them were mysteries, I guess I'd have to say yes. Unless, of course, you're writing nonfiction mysteries. For example, a mystery about what happened to the lost colony of Roanoke. If I'd written a nonfiction account of the murder of the PRINCES IN THE TOWER (without the idea of a ghost being imprisoned in stained glass windows), that would have been a nonfiction mystery. Jane Yolen is writing a series of terrific nonfiction historical mysteries about subjects like Roanoke that I'm sure kids will love.

ekuffmom: How many clues should be in a short story mystery?

Elaine: Hi, ekuffmom. I think you should have at least three honest clues in a short story, plus some misleading information to disguise them. Always think about the rule of threes - three obstacles, three clues, three red herrings. That will help you confuse your main character at the same time you're showing him (and the reader) what really happened.

ccollier: How about a mystery literally about red herrings? That would throw everyone for a loop--LOL!

Elaine: It would be fun to have a mystery all about red herrings - as long as there's a real mystery at their heart. Readers would love a comic mystery along those lines!

Elaine: I'd like to mention to everyone that you'll have to forgive me if I hit the wrong keys. I'm still recovering from a pretty serious injury to my right wrist, and it slows me down typing. I've rested it today and am trying to type my thoughts as fast as they come (an exercise in futility!) and as the evening wears on I'm sure I'll have more glitches, so please bear with me.

Mel: You sure don't SEEM to type like a lady with a bum wrist, Elaine!

Elaine: Thanks, Mel - and everyone for your patience! I can feel it burning, but I'm having such a great time chatting with you. I'm trying not to think about it!

Mel: How much planning do you do before you start writing? Do you know how the mystery is going to work out, or do you just start writing and figure it out along the way?

Elaine: Different writers do it differently, of course, but I find it best to plan out the mystery before I start writing. I work out a detailed outline that shows how I plan to reveal the clues without making them too obvious and where I plan to stick in the red herrings. This outline gives the novel a good sense of overall pacing. And it helps me build tension from a mysterious opening, through the main character's increasingly desperate struggle to solve the mystery, up to a tense ending where the main character is desperate to uncover the truth and is prevented from finding it and exposing it. He might be prevented by a villain who doesn't want to be found out or by a bumbling friend who gets in the way at the wrong time or even by his own fears or weaknesses. If I don't do this planning, I find I end up rewriting over and over again in order to go back and plant the clues I wanted.

Mel: How do you plant clues so they’re not so obvious that the reader and the main character see them and know the answer right away?

Elaine: That's a good question and it's a hard one, because it's tough to strike a balance. One good way is to put a clue in plain sight, but mention it before either the main character or the reader realizes it's important information, or to distract them from noticing its significance. For instance, in GHOST SOLDIER, the ghost is looking for a family descendant and we meet the person early in the book, but the meeting occurs in a completely different context. Alexander is even told that the descendant is trying to make family connections but he hasn't met the ghost yet, and he's too concerned about his own problems to pay any attention to this vital piece of information. We see clues connecting the two, but Alexander is always distracted from making the connection.

t green: Is writing a mystery easier than figuring one out?

Elaine: I think it is, t green! Because when you write a mystery, you as the writer already know the solution! When you're reading one and trying to figure it out, you can be led astray by red herrings or fail to see the obvious importance of that clue hidden in plain sight.

Mel: You mentioned that an outline can give you a sense of pacing and tension. How does it do that?

Elaine: For me, the outline helps me establish a fast, hopefully relentless, pace, by grabbing the reader with the first line, showing me where and when to hide each clue in terms of how significant it will be to solving the mystery and keeping the tension up by setting up cliffhanger chapter endings. The main character should never feel he can give up and turn away from the mystery and the reader should always feel compelled to turn the page and start the next chapter, instead of closing the book. There's nothing I like to hear from a reader more than telling me he or she couldn't go to sleep until finishing the book! And the way to make that happen is planning so you build tension with each cliffhanger until the book feels like a roller coaster ride.

Mel: Elaine, a purely curiosity question now from me. We are all interested in NAMES and PEN NAMES. How did you decide, and when, to use all THREE of your names in your byline?

Elaine: Well, when I was a little girl and got into trouble, my mother always called me "Elaine Marie! My parents rather hoped I'd be something distinguished, like a doctor, and were not too pleased that I became a writer. So I felt that signing my manuscripts "Elaine Marie," in the spirit of getting myself into trouble, was the right thing to do. : )

Mel: How do you grab your reader with that first line?

Elaine: I think it's important to throw your reader off-balance from the very beginning. I like to start with an alarming or mysterious statement that indicates something is rotten in the state of Denmark. For example, in PICTURE PERFECT I start with: "I see him falling away from me, into the fog. Towering redwood trunks surround me like majestic pillars in some otherworldly cathedral, pushing me back, keeping me from him. I hear the dull thumps his body makes, hitting the duff covered slope." But almost immediately the reader sees that this was only a dream. And then we realize that the dream might be a memory. So where does the truth lie? The reader - and Ian - are both already off-balance.

Mel: GREAT writing, Elaine!

t green: What was the first story you ever sold?

Elaine: Hi, t green. Wow - that's almost hard to be sure of. And that's not because I've sold so many I don't care to remember! That's because you often write stories, and send them out to so many places, that you may sell them out of order. I think the first children's story I actually sold, regardless of the long delay time in its getting published, was "A Song In The Dark." It was my Assignment 9 in the ICL course and it went on to win a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award for Fiction when it finally came out about 6 years after I sold it!

dolly: Hi Elaine! How long did it take you to find a publisher for your first book?

Elaine: Hi dolly! The first book I published was THE GHOST CADET. I finished it in 1984, and it was published in 1991. I spent all the years in between trying to find a publisher! I finally found Henry Holt, who published it very successfully, through a listing Holt put in the SCBWI Bulletin.

neatoldlady: Do you use your personal experiences very much?

Elaine: Hi neatoldlady (great username!). Yes, I often use my personal experiences in my writing. Sometimes I work through a problem in my writing because I figure I'm not unique in my experiences, and if I had problems growing up, other kids today have similar problems. And sometimes I'll combine my personal experiences with external ideas. For example, I used my personal experiences sailing and my sense of the release that sailing offered in COUNTERFEIT SON, but I combined it with a serial killer story that was way outside the realm of my personal experience! I'm more likely to draw on personal emotional experiences, and use them to intensify the plot in my books because that makes the emotional punch more genuine and specific, if I can draw on specific memories.

toni: So, is murder not out of the question for young readers?

Elaine: Hi, toni. Of course murder is not out of the question for young readers - but how immediate the murder is depends on the age of the young readers in question. In general, the truism has always been that you shouldn't have a young kid face down a dangerous murderer, and I'd say that's a pretty good rule to follow. A middle grader might face a situation like the one in TOURNAMENT OF TIME, where the murder happened centuries ago and the kids are only facing the ghost of the killer. But with middle graders it's more common for the kids to face a villain like a blackmailer, or a geek behind computer fraud who might kill your hard drive with a virus but isn't going to murder real people. But you can throw out all the rules when you get to young adults! For teens it's okay to push the tension and action up to a life-or-death situation, because teens think about life and death all the time. In both COUNTERFEIT SON and PICTURE PERFECT the teens face violent, dangerous villains. But I make sure they have something at stake, something that makes them face this danger and I try never to make life seem cheap to the characters or to my readers. I think even teens are still young enough to search for admirable role models in the characters they read about and I believe that writers should offer hope, no matter how dark life (and the threat of death) seems.

Mel: EXCELLENT answer, Elaine!

Elaine: Thanks. It's from the heart.

toni: Thanks, Elaine, great answer to the question about murder and young readers!

Elaine: Thanks so much, toni!

Mel: Elaine, how do you set up cliffhanger chapter endings?

Elaine: Well, I think the easiest way is probably by using action. In PICTURE PERFECT, much of the action takes place in the redwood forest. When Ian ultimately confronts the villain, the chapter ends with him escaping on a bicycle: "I balance the backpack in front of me and lean forward. Then we're upright again and weaving through trees heading where [he] can't follow by car and easily outpacing his running speed no matter how well he knows the trails." Or tension can be expressed with an unanswered question. Ian keeps hearing a strange voice in his head, a voice he remembers from his childhood. One chapter ends: "Is he back because what happened to Teddy is my fault? Or is it my own guilt I have to expose?" Or a tense chapter ending could come about through dialogue. Ian's father expects him to be a perfect, obedient son. One chapter ends: "Erase those photos, Ian. And we'll say no more about it." "No!" [Ian's friend] shouts, but Dad ignores him. "Go on, Ian," he says. "Or are you so selfish you can't even do that much for your own flesh and blood?" Hopefully the reader feels compelled to turn the page and find out what Ian does!

flyby: What aproach helps you most when you get stuck?

Elaine: Hi, flyby - that's a terrific question, because we all get stuck at some point, whether we like to admit it or not. Sometimes it helps to read through what you've written. It may fire you up to go forward. And sometimes it points out that you wandered from the story at some point, maybe following a character who seemed more exciting than your outline but who actually led you astray. Sometimes it helps to walk away from your computer or your pad of paper. The mind is a funny thing. It sometimes plays tricks on you, and gets so critical that you can't write another word. But the moment you put yourself in a position where you can't write (gardening, washing dishes, working on a greasy engine is great for this) the mind puts new ideas into your head! The trick is to have a pad of paper nearby along with a pencil you don't mind getting muddy, wet, or greasy and jotting the thought down before it can get away. If all else fails, try thinking about the place where you're stuck while you're falling asleep. The mind works through the night, and you may wake up with the perfect answer. Of course, you may wake up with it at 3 AM! But that's a small price to pay for the idea that gets you unstuck and writing again!

amme: How do you decide how much research to do before starting?

Elaine: Hi, Amme. That's a very good question, and I'm not entirely sure it's something you decide. If you're writing a historical murder mystery, you need to do a lot of research on the period, so that's pretty easy. When I wrote COUNTERFEIT SON, I did a lot of research on serial killers and used almost none of it in the book, and I did a lot of research about sailing to refresh my memory and used a lot of it! When I wrote PICTURE PERFECT, I was able to go back twice to visit the redwoods in California, and I used all of that research in the book. But I also did a lot of research about the demands a "perfect" parent makes on a child who is less than perfect, in other words, emotional abuse and in the first draft I used way too much of that in the book. Sometimes you have to let go of the research and just write the story. Once the draft is completed, you'll see where you need to fill things in. But what brought Ian to life wasn't my research into emotional abuse. It was my imaginative ability to become Ian and put myself into his position and write from instinct rather than from research. A lot of writers also postpone beginning to write by researching, and that's something to watch out for. If you're making excuses for not starting the writing yet because you need to do more research, jettison the research and just start writing!

Mel: Emotional abuse seems to be SUCH a common thing, Elaine, and I think LOTS of kids will identify with that.

Elaine: I hope they will, Mel.

tig: Do you think a mystery that involves a hi-tech solution would be particularly well received, or is just being a mystery enough, even today?

Elaine: Hi tig. That's an excellent - and particularly appropriate question! Because a lot of the mystery in PICTURE PERFECT revolves around computers and digital cameras. Yes, I think hi-tech is very popular with young readers today. The one danger is that technology outstrips the imagination at a tremendous pace. Even in draft form I had to update my computer technology in the book when Apple went to the whole new look of OSX! In the end, my editor and I opted for pushing some things, like the capabilities of affordable digital cameras and of modems, a little ways into the future, so that it wouldn't seem old hat to readers in 2003, and would still be believable, and even, perhaps, current, in years to come.

Mel: Elaine, how important is dialogue in a mystery?

Elaine: I think dialogue is really useful in writing mysteries - because of what characters say, and what they leave unsaid. If a main character could just go around and ask everybody what happened, he'd figure out the truth by page 5. So you can use dialogue to confuse the issue. Either the kid doesn't know the right question to ask, or he might feel that he can't ask someone (like an adult, say - a teacher or a parent) an all-important question, or the person he asks isn't the person who knows the answer, or the person outright lies to him, or gives him an answer that turns out not to be of any help at all, or the person avoids telling him the real answer by telling him something else to distract him. Real people (adults as well as kids) won't always answer an embarrassing question. Sometimes we avoid it, sometimes we refuse, and sometimes we lie, or at least pretend we don't know the answer or misunderstood the question. So your characters can respond the same way. I try to let the help that the main character receives, or the misdirection he's given, grow out of the personalities of the other characters around him.

Mel: How important is setting in a mystery?

Elaine: Setting is very important! The setting can increase the tension by adding to the danger. In PICTURE PERFECT, the redwood forest is all important - accidents can happen in the back trails above the river (genuine accidents or staged accidents). The setting can be exotic, because an unknown place throws the main character (and the reader) off-balance. But you don't have to use a strange setting. In fact, a tense mystery that takes place just down the block can be even more scary to readers! Wherever you set your mystery, however, be sure to describe the setting vividly, through the main character's eyes. You see, when you mix in descriptive details with your clues you can mask the critical information from both your main character and the reader.

taggy: Is a quick 2-day time line best or longer 2-week time line, for short mysteries?

Elaine: Hi, taggy - that's an excellent question. If you're talking about short stories, I'd say two days is more than long enough. In fact, a couple of hours can be long enough for a short story mystery! But if you're talking about chapter books, with a more complicated mystery and a larger cast of characters, then a couple of weeks may be best.

Mel: So if you do all this planning to arrange the clues and set up cliffhangers, is writing a mystery just a formula?

Elaine: Not at all! Series mysteries usually have to be written to a formulaic outline, but the best mysteries for kids and teenagers give the main character a personal stake in the mystery. They give him a motivation to solve this particular mystery, even if he never solves another one in his lifetime. What this boils down to for me is character development. I believe the main character and the characters who help or hinder him must be believable, complicated people. And honest character development always transcends formula.

Mel: How do you create a cast of secondary characters that will intensify the mystery?

Elaine: I ask myself how those characters could work with (or against!) the main character's struggle to solve the mystery. Some of them might want to help, but will prove hopelessly inept. Some might be very helpful, like Ian's friend Sara, but will be taken out of the action at a critical moment. Sara has flu and her mother is convinced it's more serious and carts her off to the emergency room when she's supposed to be helping Ian read Teddy's journals. And some might deliberately work against the main character, either because one of them is the villain or maybe because a secondary character doesn't like the main character for some reason not even related to the main mystery! Or maybe that character has a reason for not wanting the main character to solve the mystery because it might reveal a secret that the character wants to keep hidden more than he wants to see the mystery solved.

Mel: If mystery is PLOT-driven, Elaine, how important can CHARACTER development be?
Elaine: Personally, I find it really hard to differentiate in my own writing between the concepts of plot-driven and character-driven books. A believable character drives the plot forward because of what he wants and what he does about it and the plot develops the character by the complications that he faces. If you don't have character change and growth, I think, then no matter how intricately plotted your mystery is, it will just end up leaving the reader flat at the end.

Mel: Is it enough to develop your main character and then let the rest of the characters in the cast develop as best serves the plot?

Elaine: I think it's very important that the rest of the characters be well-rounded, believable people. They don't all have to grow and change as much as the main character but they should emphasize the theme by serving as variations on it. PICTURE PERFECT's theme involves images and the reality behind them and each character expresses this in a different way. Some of them knowingly construct a false public image. Some of them have something they need to hide. For some of them, their reality and their image are one and the same. So the reader sees variations on the theme that (hopefully!) bring it into focus.

Mel: How do you develop a villain?

Elaine: First, I try to find a way to make the reader care about the villain by making him in some way sympathetic or, at least, understandable. A cardboard villain is unbelievable, so you want him to have a reason for his misdeeds, at least a reason that makes sense to him. Also, if you develop a sympathetic villain, he automatically arouses less suspicion than he would if he acted like an obvious villain and that heightens the mystery. If only one character looks unsavory, the reader's going to figure out he's the bad guy right away. In fact, if you can make one character SEEM totally villainous, but not be guilty of anything, you can distract everyone's attention from the real villain!

Mel: GOOD plot point!

Elaine: Another way to use red herrings. ; )

Mel: Do you have to have some deep theme in a mystery? Isn’t the suspense and action enough?

Elaine: Of course you want to have a theme! The theme is the take-away from any good book. I think that readers remember a clever plot twist for a little while. They remember a character they love for a little while longer. But they remember the theme that character exemplifies for a lot longer. The only mysteries that don't really need significant themes and rely solely on action and suspense are series mysteries - but even those tend to have some take-away. If it's all plot and no theme, the reader will forget it before he closes the back cover.

t green: Are technical nonfiction "mysteries" (like physics or other sciences) well received in the publishing world today?

Elaine: I'm sure it varies from publisher to publisher, t green, but I'd say that most of them love technical nonfiction mysteries because it gives them the opportunity to teach nonfiction science concepts in an entertaining way. And all publishers know that teachers and librarians are crying out for books that invite students to enjoy learning in creative ways.

iamnina: I'm curious-do you use an agent or deal direct with your publishers yourself?

Elaine: Hi, iamnina - no, I don't have an agent. I deal with my publishers directly, myself.

Mel: How honest do you have to be with your readers? Can you surprise them at the end with something they didn’t ever see directly in the story to that point?

Elaine: Well, we're away past the era of "the butler did it"! You have to play fair - within limits! You can surprise the reader as long as you've set up clues to foreshadow the revelation. That way the reader has a satisfying sense of "Ah, of course!" But you can play fair with the reader and still leave him totally off-balance, if your main character is off-balance. In both COUNTERFEIT SON and PICTURE PERFECT, I explore the idea of memory and identity through unreliable narrators. Cameron has amnesia, and Ian zones out and hears voices. Ian's first-person narration in PICTURE PERFECT is bound to be unreliable because he doesn't know (or doesn't want to know) the complete truth. So I could be 100% honest in sharing his thoughts with the reader, but the reader is never completely sure whether to believe Ian or not.

Mel: What’s the scariest moment for the reader - and the characters - in a mystery?

Elaine: I think it's the moment just before something terrible is about to happen or even MIGHT happen. It might also be the moment after a false alarm, when both the reader and the main character relax, thinking nothing is going to happen at all right before something even worse than the false alarm happens. That's because once it's actually happened, it may not turn out to be as scary as the reader expected or it may be so terrifying it makes the reader put the book down. Anticipation is the spookiest thing of all and it gives the reader a stake in the mystery, because he's doing the anticipating as much as the characters in the book are.

Mel: What do you think is the hallmark of a good mystery?

Elaine: The main character should not only succesfully solve the mystery, but should also discover something about himself. And the reader should discover something along the way, also.

Mel: Elaine, breaking in is hard to do, because the questions just keep coming, and your answers are right on the money. Listening to you tonight, it is easy to see why you are an award-winning mystery writer! And you did all you did tonight with a very sore wrist! I suspect that we would have still more questions of you if you could return to our chat room some day. Will you do that?

Elaine: I'd love to, Mel! And I apologize for my wrist problems.

Mel: NO PROBLEM, Elaine! Two weeks from tonight, we will continue our Summer of Refreshment with Stephen Roos, on Thursday, August 7, about "Turning Your Real Life Into Entertainment." Publishers Weekly noted his "sharp, distinctive wit" in its review of TWELVE-YEAR-OLD VOWS REVENGE (AFTER BEING DUMPED BY EXTRATERRESTRIAL ON FIRST DATE). The Horn Book acclaimed THE FAIR-WEATHER FRIENDS "a funny, poignant story, a perfect vacation book," and called MY FAVORITE GHOST "rollicking." Come back on August 7 and chat with Steve, the man with an outrageously funny sense of humor who turns his real life into books for young readers that are raved about.

Mel: And THANK YOU again, Elaine Marie Alphin, for explaining so freely and clearly how to write mysteries for young readers. I'd bet there are some among us children's writers who have never even considered writing mystery, but who will now, since you've helped us to understand what mystery writing is all about tonight. GOODNIGHT to you all, and welcome back to the chat room two weeks from tonight!

Elaine: Good by all! And good writing!