Here's where we bring it all together! In this series, we've talked about a lot of steps toward planning a cozy mystery: planning clues, inventing suspects, devising plot twists. In this video, we'll go over the process for planning a cozy from start to finish, so you have a complete game plan for writing your mystery novel. 

I love writing cozy mysteries! Check them out here: https://smile.amazon.com/Jane-Kalmes/e/B07Z43ZL39/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

I developed my ideas about fiction try studying many resources, including these books: https://www.fictiontechnician.com/fiction-kit/

0:00 Intro
0:32 Step 1
2:46 Step 2
4:21 Step 3
5:03 Step 4
5:58 Step 5
10:01 Step 6
16:11 Step 7
17:09 Step 8
18:35 Step 9
19:48 Step 10
20:16 Step 11

/////////////////// VIDEOS I MENTIONED  ////////////////////

Step 1: Plumbing the Promise of the Premise: https://youtu.be/Vb7MdimyRl4
Step 2: Sketching Out Sleuth and Chronic Issue: https://youtu.be/OLAvEclvzA0
Step 3: Love Interest and Obstacle: https://youtu.be/DgoYDgFJSCw
Step 5: Choosing a Plot Twist: https://youtu.be/92P4dflDYWI 
https://youtu.be/yxJ26Er9_2M
https://youtu.be/5Z8UeG7YDiQ
Step 7: Inventing Fake Suspects: https://youtu.be/r1sMiogOZbU
Step 8: Red Herrings: https://youtu.be/Jm7UIJF9wp0
Step 9: Clue Planning: https://youtu.be/GNR0g60m0EI
Step 10: Outlining: https://youtu.be/R9kc3lmAXKM
Step 11: Scene Planning: https://youtu.be/b6uXJv_6LE4

//////////////////// LET'S CONNECT! ////////////////////

🕸 My website: https://www.fictiontechnician.com/
📘  My books: https://smile.amazon.com/Jane-Kalmes/e/B07Z43ZL39/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1
📬  Sign up for my newsletter: https://www.fictiontechnician.com/contact/
🔔  Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXiBaSKGlgEFoRW_gKpvF8Q?sub_confirmation=1

Today, we're going to plan out the entirety of a cozy mystery novel.

We're going to go through each step that is going to take us from the first germ of an idea to the finished outline.

We've got 11 steps, and by the time this video is over, you will have a complete game plan for attacking your next manuscript.

You'll also know what to do when your plan gets a little gummed up in the middle because yeah that's gonna happen.

Hey everybody I'm Jane and you guys voted for a ghost hunter cozy so That's what I'm gonna be planning out in this video.

The very first step I'm going to go through is plumbing the promise of the premise, which we talked about a couple of weeks back.

Now, by plum, I don't mean anything having to do with toilets.

This step is sort of a directed brainstorming step where we ask ourselves questions to figure out what expectations our audience will bring to the book and also figure out intriguing ways that we can deliver on those expectations.

We're also going to do a little research in this step and we're probably going to find a lot of inspiration.

For my ghost Henricozi, I began my research with the Complete Idiot's Guide to Ghosts and Hauntings.

1 of the things I learned is that ghosts supposedly manifest in situations where there's been a lot of pain and trauma preceding death.

So this is where I get my first real inspiration.

What if this book is set in a building that used to be a tuberculosis sanitarium sometime around the turn of the 19th century, a building where many TB patients suffered and died.

Now the building has been remade into something else, but there's a huge ghostly population floating around, dwelling on their old grudges, and that's going to make things very interesting for our sleuth.

It may even give us a second mystery to solve.

Our sleuth is probably going to need to solve a modern day mystery, but she may also find herself untangling something that happened to these ghosts over a century ago.

So what has our sanitarium been turned into in the modern day?

Well we're gonna tackle this with a great all-around planning tool and that is the list of 5.

We'll force ourselves to come up with 5 possible answers to this question, and before the end, most likely we will have hit on 1 that really sings.

Well, our sanitarium could be a modern day hospital that should have some fun possibilities, or actually it could be a mental hospital.

Maybe our sleuth has the ability to see ghosts and she's been misdiagnosed as mentally ill and placed here in the hospital against her will.

Or maybe the building has become a school or small college that should give us a nice pool of characters from which to draw our suspects.

Maybe it's become a modern day luxury resort.

Some of those sanitaria were fairly swanky.

Or maybe it's become a library and we can put a bit of a bookish spin on our mystery.

I think I can make something fun with that.

So I am just gonna keep plumbing the promise of the promise until I have all the rules of my world worked out and I have enough little bits of fun that I feel I'm ready to move on to step 2, and that's sketching out my sleuth and her chronic issue.

Okay, this step is all about sort of giving a little bit of personality to my sleuth and importantly defining her emotional storyline.

We know that her acute issue, that is the events driving the plot, are going to be solving a murder, but we need her to have a chronic issue, a problem of longstanding that's going to give her a place to grow from as she solves this murder.

So let's start by just giving her a little personality.

I think I'm gonna make my sleuth from the American South, maybe Georgia, because ghosts just scream southern gothic to me.

I think her first name is going to be Peyton.

It'll be like an old family name, maybe with some ghostly history attached that can be revealed later in the series.

So what shall I give her for investigative talents?

Well, in my last step, 1 of my rejected options for my TB sanitarium was that it had become a mental hospital.

My thought at the time was that perhaps Peyton had an ability to see ghosts and she'd been misdiagnosed as mentally ill.

Let's say instead that she has this ability, but she's managed to keep it a secret all her life.

And that is going to lead us right into defining her chronic issue.

Peyton wants social acceptance more than anything else.

As soon as she was old enough to understand how weird it is to see ghosts, she's been keeping it under wraps.

And so her character growth is going to be about coming to embrace her strange talent and use it.

Let's give her a couple of stifling parents who care more about image than substance, and let's give her a deep fear of being seen for who she is and then at strategic places throughout the plot she is gonna have to face up to that fear.

Step 3 is gonna be coming up with Peyton's love interest along with an obstacle that's keeping them apart.

Well He could be a resolute skeptic, someone who just won't believe that Peyton can see ghosts.

Or another option, since she's always prioritized social acceptance, he can be someone who's socially undesirable.

I see Peyton as kind of a high class socialite with a lot of wealth and connections, so Our love interest can be just an average Joe, someone who parents won't think is good enough for their little girl.

Potentially that could make him the police investigator on our first case.

Just a nice, solid middle class detective who doesn't quite fit in with Peyton's crowd.

Let's call him Jack and let's give him hazel eyes because why wouldn't we?

Step 4 is going to be choosing a setting.

Now I've already decided that I've got a ghost infested resort that was once a sanitarium but why is Peyton there along with some of the other fun characters I'm already thinking of like her demanding mother?

Well let's say they're there for a wedding.

In fact, let's say it's Peyton's wedding.

This really plays into her desire for social acceptance.

She's marrying someone very, very acceptable, someone rich, someone connected, someone who's good on paper, but all wrong for her.

This is going to be a resolute skeptic character, Someone who would rather believe that his fiance is crazy than believe in the supernatural.

He's a nice enough guy, he's not a villain, but he's going to cause difficulties along the way.

All right, this is a very important point.

We don't have to plan any of these characters down to a detailed level.

We're just sketching in the broad strokes because we're going to keep everything a little loose until we've been through each of the first 10 steps once and the basic engine of our plot is running smooth.

Step 5 is going to be choosing a plot twist or maybe 2 that work well with everything we've invented so far.

So 1 plot twist that seems tailor-made for this setup is the A and B twist.

In this video I called it a Butler did it twist But I feel like A and B is really a better way of capturing this twist, which is just a twist in which we expect the killer to come from group A, but he actually comes from group B.

The wedding party and all the guests, who are part of 1 social circle, and the wedding vendors and resort employees who are part of a different social circle.

If a guest is killed, we're gonna expect the killer comes from the same group, but that may not be the case.

Maybe that guest stumbled onto a crime being committed by the resort owner and he decided to kill her.

Another fun plot twist that I imagine would work in this setting is 1 I'm calling above suspicion and it's where the guilty party is someone we would normally consider above suspicion.

There are all sorts of characters we normally would consider in this category.

Peyton is above suspicion obviously because we're seeing everything through her eyes.

The love interest, Jack, he should also be above suspicion.

But maybe there are other characters who should be above suspicion, like say a pastor.

We've got a pastor officiating the wedding, so that could be a fun twist.

A fun way of hiding a character who we won't seriously suspect in plain sight.

We could say perhaps that he's not really a pastor.

He's a criminal who assumed the pastor's identity long ago when he first came to the parish and was unknown to the community.

But 1 of the resort maids knows him from their sordid past, and when he comes to the resort to perform this wedding she recognizes him and tries to blackmail him.

But what I think I'm tempted to use is just a good old-fashioned perfect alibi twist.

Let's set up our murder to take place during a major wedding event.

There will be a lot of focus on which characters left the table during the dinner and exactly when and for how long, but ultimately our killer will be somebody who seemed like she was at the dinner the entire time because She committed a decoy murder.

Let's say there's a harpist who's been hired to play the wedding.

She was also playing during the rehearsal dinner, but perhaps from a small balcony above the diners.

During the rehearsal dinner, she paid a hotel maid to sit at her heart wearing her gown and also used a recording of her music so the night's entertainment wouldn't be interrupted.

That gave her the freedom to sneak out and kill the victim.

This seems like a fun twist, but I think we can go further.

We can try to plot a secondary twist, something that's going to either compound the ending or maybe something that's going to shake up our investigation halfway through.

So in this video, we talked about how a plot twist is nothing more than something the reader believes that turns out to be false.

We're going to take a technique from that video and just start listing the assumptions that go along with our premise.

So we've got a high society southern girl preparing for her wedding on a lovely island resort surrounded by family, but also able to see ghosts.

What are the assumptions inherent in this premise?

1 assumption we'd make in this situation is that her parents actually have the money to pay for this wedding.

The ghosts are all telling her the truth.

You wouldn't necessarily think of a ghost as being motivated to lie about something, but it could happen, right?

Everyone there for the wedding has no ulterior motive.

The groom actually wants to marry Peyton.

The resort is not a front for any sort of shadier business and all the ghosts actually died of tuberculosis, not murder.

And I think the assumptions that I'd absolutely choose to violate would be number 2 and number 6.

I'd have maybe a trio of ghosts who have been talking to Peyton throughout the plot.

At the midpoint, we'll learn that our female ghost was murdered, and at the end, we'd learn which 1 of our male ghosts did it.

In fact, maybe our ghostly murderer would lure Peyton into danger in the final climax because he doesn't want his good name destroyed.

If you're enjoying this video so far, please smash the like button and then let's talk about step 6, planning characters for our villain and victim.

Well, we already have our villain and we'd flesh her out a little in this step, but what we really need is our victim and a good motive for the murder.

Alright, and here is the first point where I'm going to run into some major trouble figuring out that victim.

The problem is, if it's anyone too involved in the wedding party, their death should be a reason for postponing the wedding.

I don't care how much money Peyton spent on her dress, No decent person hosts a major celebration the day after their aunt or best friend or other close connection was murdered.

That would kind of let Peyton off the hook about cancelling her engagement.

She wouldn't have to really face up to the fact that the guy is wrong for her.

She could just kick everything down the road.

And also I really want the drawing room scene.

The scene where she lays out her suspicions and accuses somebody to happen during the ceremony.

Because if I've got a wedding in a cozy mystery, why wouldn't I put those 2 scenes of high anticipation together?

So I don't want the wedding cancelled, but if it's anyone from the resort staff, anyone unconnected to the wedding party, well then most of the people whom Peyton knows won't be very viable suspects and that's gonna rob us of some opportunities opportunities for Peyton to fill us in on the suspect's backgrounds opportunities for long-standing tensions with her family to interfere with her investigation and opportunities for subplots related to her life to dovetail with the solving of the mystery.

We could square the circle by having this be a murder that doesn't look like murder.

Maybe Peyton's great uncle Herbert dies the night of the rehearsal dinner and since he's quite elderly and in bad health no 1 thinks it's foul play.

In fact, Uncle Herbert's poor health could be a reason that the wedding date was moved up.

Maybe Peyton feels like she's been rushed into a hasty marriage because her parents wanted Uncle Herbert to see her get married.

So, Since his death is sort of expected, and since he wanted this marriage, it's not a reason for postponing the wedding.

Alright, so now we are dealing with a trope which we can call the pointless murder.

Why Would anyone murder an elderly man in poor health?

Why assume the risk of being found guilty of murder when you might simply wait a month?

There are basically 2 reasons a killer might strike in this scenario.

They want something and it's urgent, or they fear something and it's imminent.

In the first case, they need money now or control over the family business now.

In the second, they fear that the victim is just about to give testimony against them or change their will, something the killer views as an imminent threat.

So what might Uncle Herbert have been just about to do?

Well, it makes sense that it was something that was going to coincide with Peyton's wedding.

Maybe he was going to tell her an old family secret or give her a portion of his estate as a wedding present.

Actually, let's say he has a family heirloom he's planning to give her as a present.

This heirloom is going to impart information in some way, and it's going to be a big part of the puzzle.

And probably both Peyton and the killer are going to spend a good portion of the book searching for it.

All right, I'm loving this idea, but now we are in trouble because so much of the planning that we've done is now in need of revision.

I no longer feel like it makes sense for the harpist to be the killer.

I feel like it should be a member of the family.

And it no longer makes sense for the love interest to be a police detective.

If there's no apparent murder, then there's no need for a detective to come to the island.

First, we didn't invest a lot of time in the details.

We didn't plan out our detective's partner, his law enforcement history, his career goals.

We just gave him a job and we can easily change it without a lot of time lost.

Secondly, all along the way, we've been making notes of our secondary and tertiary possibilities.

Possibilities that we initially rejected, but which we might go back to now that we're in need of revisions.

So a lot of what we wrote down for our major plot twist, our herpes dequability, has to be axed but we still have written down A and B twist and above suspicion twist as strong possibilities for this plot.

Well we could use that above suspicion twist.

Another way for a character to be above suspicion is if they seem to be very emotionally close to the victim.

Also, elderly characters can often seem above suspicion.

So what if our killer is Uncle Herbert's dear, sweet wife, Aunt Enid?

Okay, first, I think Aunt Enid should have a better way of keeping the heirloom out of Peyton's hands.

And secondly, why is she committing this murder at the resort, an unfamiliar place with lots of people flitting about?

It seems like it would have been so much easier at home.

It feels like our killer needs to be a member of the family who doesn't often see Uncle Herbert but has the opportunity to get at him now that they've all gathered for the wedding.

Well I think the twist that we're gonna have to go with here is the tangled web.

This is a twist where the primary crime isn't the 1 that kicks off the book.

And the crimes that happen in our story are just cover-up crimes.

They're the tangled web of deceit that our killer is weaving to conceal his or her original sin.

So let's say our killer is Uncle Herbert's brother, Uncle Ed.

Long ago, the brothers were in love with the same woman and Ed became so jealous that he killed her.

Afterwards, He felt tremendously guilty and wrote down a confession.

He put that confession somewhere he thought no 1 would ever find it, in the locket that was meant to be buried with his victim.

However, the victim's mother, who knew her daughter planned to marry Herbert, gave the locket to him as a token of remembrance.

That locket has been unopened this entire time, and since it's the most sentimental thing he owns, in fact, since it symbolizes love to him, Uncle Herbert wants to give it to his darling grandniece on the eve of her wedding.

Ed is worried that If it changes hands, the new recipient, Peyton, will certainly look inside.

He's probably tried several times to get his hands on the locket, but he hasn't been successful.

And now, to keep his secret, he resorts to killing his brother.

Step 7 is going to be inventing fake suspects.

We need somewhere between 3 and 5 people who could have done it and that means they're going to need possible motives and potentially Secrets for our sleuth to uncover.

So let's think up just 1 right now for this video Let's say that some people did have a financial motive for offing Uncle Herbert PDQ and 1 of those people was Peyton's cousin Quinn.

Quinn knows that in Uncle Herbert's will all the grandnieces and nephews are cut in for a portion of the inheritance but those who are married get a much bigger slice of the pie.

Quinn, who is married, has been counting on getting her inheritance in order to bail herself and her husband out of some major financial trouble.

But if Peyton is married before Uncle Herbert dies, that's going to cut into Quinn's payoff.

Let's say she and her husband invested heavily in a business venture that went belly up and she's been acting like it's a huge success in order to keep up appearances.

Step 8 is going to be creating 2 or 3 red herrings.

Now a lot of these are going to come straight from our suspect list.

Essentially each suspect is a little subplot.

The subplot begins when we first notice something strange about the character that makes us suspect them, and it ends when we learn something that lets us dismiss them from suspicion.

Quinn's red herring subplot will begin when we notice that she's wearing unusually cheap clothing for a woman who's as successful as she claims.

And it will end when we learn that she didn't commit the crime, perhaps because she was busy at the time, perhaps because she professes her love for Uncle Herbert and Peyton believes her.

There are lots of ways to remove a suspect from suspicion and bring their red herring to an end.

And I detailed a lot of those in this video.

Another place we may look to develop red herrings is to ask what our killer has been doing throughout the plot.

Maybe he's been laying a false trail of breadcrumbs for our sleuth to follow.

That could very well be a red herring, a line of suspicion that she follows that ends in a big goose egg.

It's also worth at this time trying to come up with some ideas for how our red herring subplots can hook into the main plot.

While investigating each of these lines of inquiry, Peyton is probably going to find clues that lead her to the eventual killer.

For example, when we investigate Quinn, we'll learn that Uncle Herbert had a big surprise in store for Peyton, the present, which is now missing.

Quinn can slip this information in casually without even noticing its significance, but it's info that will eventually help Peyton solve the main plot.

Step 9 is clue planning, and we're going to plan out as many of the clues as we can at this point using my handy-dandy super simple spreadsheet, which we talked about in this video.

We'll start by just listing the information we want Peyton to acquire along the way.

Well, we want her to learn that Uncle Herbert had a present for her, and we learned that through Quinn's testimony.

We also want her to learn that someone was in Uncle Herbert's room around the time of the murder, and we can come up with something for that.

We need her to learn that the person in the room was Ed and we need her to learn Ed's motive.

We're just going to keep working down our list until we've come up with all the facts Peyton is going to need to put the whole story together.

And we try to come up with a clue, something Peyton can observe that will give her each piece of information.

Since we're working on a ghostly cozy, I want to make sure that at least some of our clues come from things the ghosts have either told her or drawn her attention to.

We also need these same clues for each of our red herring subplots.

So we need to know that Quinn's business was failing, and we need to know the information she has about the will, about married relatives getting a larger cut.

And perhaps we need to know what Quinn was doing during the murder, which will eliminate her from suspicion and close off that subplot.

Now that we have our storyline, step 9 is to actually outline the novel.

I'm going to make a list of every scene, and to do that, I'll start by planning out story beats.

My story beats are largely based on the Save the Cat structure by Blake Snyder, but I do have a few modifications, which you can see in this video right here.

I do actually have an order that I use to work through these beats.

I don't just go from start to finish, but I like to kind of nail down the high points first.

Now it's time for step 11 and I'm gonna plan out every scene in my novel and when I say plan I don't mean that I'm going to just write down what happens in the scene.

See all Jane Kalmes transcripts on Youtube

11 Steps to a COMPLETE Cozy Mystery Plot