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Post by ᏞᎪᎠᎽ Ꮎf fᎪᏁᎠᎾms ミ☆ on Mar 24, 2019 15:10:40 GMT -5
I am trying my hand at writing a murder mystery story. I was inspired by Heathers, so mine also involves a murder of a popular girl.
Similarities to Heathers: the murder/death of a popular girl who was important to the social hierarchy; the main protagonist is the popular kid's "pet" (does whatever they tell him to do and he isn't treated as an equal); the protagonist's s/o is a bit off and their romance is a whirlwind; the protagonist's s/o hates the social hierarchy of the school
I think the similarities will end there though. I don't want to make it too similar to Heathers. Instead of the protagonist's s/o doing anything bad, I am struggling to see which of my characters would kill the popular girl.
Instead of three murders like in Heathers, the only murder in my story is the popular girl. I want to focus on the mystery of "who did it." There is the popular girl's boyfriend, the popular girl's best friend, the popular girl's rival, the popular girl's enemies from the neighboring high school in the next town...etc.
Then there's the protagonist and his s/o, but I'm pretty sure it'd be too hard to make the protagonist the perpetrator since it's written in his POV.
Anyone know how to write these types of stories? I don't want to completely copy Heathers
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Bisexual
will
native american cowboy
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Post by will on Mar 24, 2019 21:02:21 GMT -5
i like to use a venn diagram in stories like this i made an example here - m.imgur.com/H5DVczvstart with common reasons certain characters would hate her, then figure out some motives out of those reasons. then, out of all of those, consider how weak/strong a character's personality is - who would be most likely to snap under their given motives. and also, it wouldn't be impossible to make the main character the perpetrator. write away some excuse like a wild party a few night's previous. got hit by a car right after the murder and suffered from acute memory loss (for example, lacking the entire week or month leading up to the event). you could focus the story in on a single target - wait until the audience and everybody in the story are convinced they did it, then the presumably guilty character produces evidence that it wasn't them, and actually the main character. make sure to include this evidence in scattered places throughout the story (employ "chekhov's gun" here) so that it doesn't make it look like you... pulled the conclusion out of thin air
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Post by ᏞᎪᎠᎽ Ꮎf fᎪᏁᎠᎾms ミ☆ on Mar 24, 2019 21:17:44 GMT -5
i like to use a venn diagram in stories like this i made an example here - m.imgur.com/H5DVczvstart with common reasons certain characters would hate her, then figure out some motives out of those reasons. then, out of all of those, consider how weak/strong a character's personality is - who would be most likely to snap under their given motives. and also, it wouldn't be impossible to make the main character the perpetrator. write away some excuse like a wild party a few night's previous. got hit by a car right after the murder and suffered from acute memory loss (for example, lacking the entire week or month leading up to the event). you could focus the story in on a single target - wait until the audience and everybody in the story are convinced they did it, then the presumably guilty character produces evidence that it wasn't them, and actually the main character. make sure to include this evidence in scattered places throughout the story (employ "chekhov's gun" here) so that it doesn't make it look like you... pulled the conclusion out of thin air omg thank you for this awesome advice [insert praying emoji here] it will take me a while to figure out all my character and their motivations, so then I can work on creating those instances to build up to something and not pull it out of thin air! i'll check out the link too
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