At school of crime with Camilla Läckberg

"Unfortunately, there are no magic formulas that I can share; The most important thing is to start writing, regardless of the fact that each sentence is composed perfectly."
Camilla Läckberg

Cleaning in my tablet of the books purchased / loaded and then forgotten in the chaotic electronic library (dematerialization also has its disadvantages ...), I found this short essay by Camilla Läckberg under my nose. At school of yellow. Seven-step guide for aspiring mystery writers by Camilla Läckberg, translation by Claudia Durastanti, publisher Marsilio. A reading that had been suggested to me by a friend of mine, an independent editor, already in 2014. Imagine how much is hidden in my electronic library!

I had downloaded it immediately, especially since it is available for free on Amazon and on all online book stores. Perhaps I was waiting to read it after having tasted at least one novel by the author, one of the best crime writers in Sweden, but then I decided to start first from this short essay, which at the bottom shows the first pages of each of her bestsellers. I must say that despite being a quick text, it inserts several food for thought and deepening, a sort of Quick start of the mystery novel. And that's how I enjoyed it.

I am a great fan of mystery novels, constantly looking for authors to discover, and I do not hide that I thought more than once that I could write, sooner or later, a mystery. Precisely for this reason, I first decided to download the book and then I read it with curiosity.

Crime school. At school of yellow

Before making writing her profession and becoming one of Sweden's best-selling crime writers, Camilla Läckberg worked for several years in marketing in the city of Stockholm, where she still resides. Her series of novels, all set in the town of Fjällbacka where she was born and raised, has been one of the best-selling and translated, with 20 million copies in fifty countries. The first book, The Ice Princess, was awarded the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in France and in 2005 another novel, The Stonemason, was named the best Swedish crime novel of the year by the Svenska Deckarakademin (Swedish Academy of Mystery Books).
Of his first four books, four films were produced for Swedish television. The Fjällbackamorden series was also created starting from the characters of his novels, but with completely new episodes. Here in Italy this series was broadcast in 2014 by the television channel LaEffe with the title Omicidi tra i fiordi.

This essay A scuola di giallo is available online free in English on the official website of the writer, under the heading Crime School: www.camillalackberg.com 
The Italian publisher Marsilio has made a small free ebook with the Italian translation, you can also find it on Amazon: A scuola di Giallo: A Seven-step guide for aspiring mystery writers
In the Italian version there are 60 pages, of which only 16 are dedicated to the "seven steps", while the remaining are dedicated to the first chapters of each book of the author for sale, a taste of her skills and style.
At the end of each lesson there are also short exercises and recommended readings on the subject.

Lesson n.1 Chiseling

Because that's what it's all about: a craft work, not a magical or innate talent that you can never get hold of. It is important that there is a certain aptitude for writing, this is obvious, but a mystery novel requires more craftsmanship than anything else, a skill that can be acquired with the right tools and a lot of hard work.

Camilla Läckberg does not feed illusions: writing a thriller is a very fine chiseling, an accurate work where more than the talent for writing counts the hard application and infinite patience.
He then shows us some rules that according to the author are not fundamental, but can help the writing of the first mystery novel, to prevent the reader from getting bored or worse feeling cheated by a murderer who came out of nowhere at the last pages:

1. All clues identified by the detective must also be known to the reader.
2. The murderer must be introduced at the beginning of the story.
3. The crime must be serious: no one wants to read a mystery based on tulips stolen from the neighbor.
4. The solution must be actively deducible, better than a conclusion in which you stumble randomly in the final
5. There must be more suspicions, and the murderer must be one of them.

Especially for her, a good plot must contain the four fundamental elements, the so-called 4 M (in their English sense):

• Murder;
• Motive (motive);
• Mean (weapon);
• Moments of opportunity.

The 4 M's are also called the 4 pillars of the detective novel, but I do not know the origin of this definition.

Before starting to write, therefore, it is necessary to know everything about the murderer, the victim and the methods of the murder. From there then we start by subtraction, deciding what to show gradually to the reader, sowing clues in the plot like Pollicino's crumbs. The reader must have all the valid elements before the solution: if he manages to collect the crumbs, he gets to the murderer before the author reveals it to him.

Lesson n.2 The skeleton

"The basic plot of a mystery novel is not so complicated: if you strip a mystery of all the supporting material, everything will be reduced to a motive, a murderer and one or more modus operandi. Now let's take this skeleton and cover it with a little meat starting from the most important component: tension."

You will certainly have noticed watching a thriller movie: the best are those who manage to keep you glued to the chair thanks to the suspense, the anxiety to know the ending that spurs our curiosity. There are several ways to build this tension:

• Change the setting where the actions take place, moving the player from one place to another.
• Change the internal setting, i.e. the thoughts and reflections of the characters, by changing the point of view of the actions.
• Mislead the reader, deliberately provide him with false leads to distract him from the real murderer. And here Camilla Läckberg suggests three useful practices: creating an incongruent character, to which the reader will immediately look according to the principle "the murderer is the last person you would suspect"; reveal a false alibi of a character, without immediately showing his motivations and reasons for lying about his work; Turning the killer into a potential victim, the most classic method to hide it from the reader.
  According to the writer there are no limits to the imagination to deceive the reader, but I do not agree: these listed are now clichés, which work only if the author respects his reader and does not want to deceive him in a sneaky way. For me, Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians is incomparable, but I was disappointed by The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Cinematically, extraordinary in this sense is The Usual Suspects.
• Increase the number of suspects, because the more characters involved, the greater the interest in discovering everyone's cards.
• Feed the insinuation: insinuate that a character is hiding something or that a detail has escaped the investigators, or create hypotheses about the murder itself, obviously wrong, shifting the reader's attention from the truth.
• Using Cliff-hangers: The word cliff-hanger comes from the world of television dramas, when an episode of a series ends with a serious situation suspended in the middle, just like someone hanging with one hand from a life-threatening cliff. Viewers are forced to continue with the next episode to know how he will fare.
  One of my favorite series, The Bastards of Pizzofalcone, has used it especially at every season  finale and then we have to wait for the new episodes to see what happens!
  Transporting this technique to the pages of a book, not just mystery novels, the cliff-hanger works very well when different settings, different points of view, movements of the various characters alternate, suspending the previous scene in the middle of the action.
  Writer Dan Brown makes use of it at the end of each chapter: he cuts the action in the middle, forcing the reader to start the new chapter to satisfy the pressing curiosity. The rest of tension, necessary not to tire the reader, is thus moved to the middle of the chapter, but few leave a chapter halfway, right?

Lesson n.3 The characters

Populating the novel is one of the funniest aspects of a crime writer's craft; Imagine the possibility of creating an exclusive world from imagination alone! Try to have fun while doing it, the characters will not only be believable but will end up appearing like old friends.

The importance of the characters in a story seems obvious to me, but the value of their credibility is not. Unfortunately it is easy to fall into the use of labels and clichés in the description of the characters (the computer scientist bored with the habit of writing), in reality, however, none of us can be pigeonholed entirely in a stereotype, we all have slight inconsistencies that make us unique, peculiarities that are not attributable to anyone else.
Like many other writers, Camilla Läckberg also suggests filling out cards of our characters, the more we know them the better we can imagine them in action in our story. If they are well constructed, they themselves point us to the next twist in the plot.

Name
Sex
Age
Nationality
Tone of voice (hoarse, soft, taut, deep, whining, resonant, etc.)
Dialect, particular expressions (recurring phrases, sayings, bad words, etc.)
Height
Skin color
Eye color
Weight
Aspect
Physical characteristics (limp? Does it have big hands? protruding ears?)
Smell
Clothing
Posture
Gestures
Resemblance to someone ("looks like X when young")
Hobby
Marital status, children, relationships (it is better to write names too)
Brothers, sisters, relatives (even here it is better to write the names)
Education
Profession
Financial situation
Religion
Sexual orientation
Favorite food
Favorite movie
Favorite novel
Dwelling, frequented places
Driving license, car or other means
Character
Dimensions of the social circle
Bad habits

They are many details, some I added myself, but they should not be used all together. The author must know the character, but the reader only needs a few of these to fill the void with his imagination. Some features can then be shown in action, instead of just listed. A rally driver will definitely have a license and a car.

Lesson n.4 The dialogues

Well-written dialogue not only helps to give your characters a body but also serves to advance the plot, while poorly written dialogue risks making the book trash right away.

Although there are some novels where the script of the dialogues is reduced to a minimum, although with excellent results if we think of some classics, in a detective story they are absolutely necessary, together with the action of the characters contribute to the narrative tension. Any investigator must interrogate his suspects, after all.
Writing a good dialogue is a superfine yet invisible art: a good dialogue is not noticed, it flows within the scene without us realizing it. It is on bad dialogue that the reader stumbles and interrupts the immersion in the story.
To write a credible dialogue you can use some tricks, as Camilla Läckberg herself points out:

• consider the characteristics of the characters who speak and cut the dialogue to their size;
• dynamize the text by starting the paragraph with a dialogue, follow the character;
• do not always indicate who is speaking ("...", said Patrik) but let the reader guess it from the tone of the sentence; if necessary enter the specification, try to vary the verb "said";
• Do not fill the text with adverbs to clarify the emotions of the speaker ("she whispered softly"), trust the ability of the reader;
• Look for realistic dialogue, but exclude routine conversations ("good morning" and "good evening" with passers-by) that do not contribute in any way to the narrative;

On the last point, one of the most used exercises, also suggested in other manuals and writing courses, is obviously to secretly eavesdrop on a conversation of others in any place and time of the day, write it down and reread it: would it really make sense within a story? And if so, for what kind of story?

Lesson n.5 The setting

Choose the environment you know best as your main setting. If you've only been north for a couple of weeks on vacation, don't set your mystery there: no matter how much research you've done or how many books you've read about Norrland, you're missing most of the details about that environment.

According to Camilla Läckberg, the setting is a relevant component for a mystery, a character in its own right, with a voice of its own. That's why to make it better, you need to choose a place that you know thoroughly, the place where you live or where you grew up for a long time, of which you remember the scents and colors, the corners most hidden from the eye of the tourist, the different atmospheres with the changing seasons, the mentality and customs of the local population. Details that are not traceable on the net and that are not learned with a short holiday.
I think he's right, but only when you want to consider the setting as important as a character, in fact. Instead, there are respectable thrillers in which the city remains only in the background, without adding much to the story, and at the same time without diminishing it at all.

However, having to insert the setting among the characters, there are some suggestions to outline it at best. First of all, the golden rule " show don't tell" applies, showing rather than explaining. But we can also:

• use the weather as a symbol of emotions, like the rain for the melancholy of the protagonist (personally it seems trite and trite ...);
• use the background as an integral part of the scene, especially at the scene of the crime;
• use all five senses, not only sight, but also smell, hearing, touch and, why not, even taste;
• also include historical, economic, demographic, religious information, as it is experienced directly by the people who live there.

Lesson n.6 Research

The first fundamental lesson is that not everything you write in your book has to be true, but it has to be credible. The trick is to master the topic you're dealing with.

Within a mystery novel, the knowledge to be acquired embraces several different fields: from the investigation procedures in force in the country where it is set to the notions of forensic medicine; from the findability, use and effects of firearms to the elements of psychology used by a mentalist. To add all the subjects related to the life of the murderer and his victims, their own professionalism depends on your learning.
Fortunately, nowadays we have excellent tools for research, more than ever: not only books and libraries, but the internet that connects all authoritative sources of information, just a click away. The best, however, remains the direct interview with those who really work in that particular field.

Lesson n.7 The protagonist

There are few crime writers who have preferred not to use a protagonist, which in my opinion serves to establish the tone of the whole story. If you are imagining a saga centered on a particular person, it is important that you are able to "feel" it and approach it in an intimate way.

Perhaps this would be the first point from which to start, especially if we do not want to write a single mystery novel, but an entire saga focused precisely on the investigations of the protagonist.
The first decision concerns the type of protagonist of our story: a professional detective, directly involved in the investigation with exclusive elements, or amateur, with an external and particular perspective?
This is a choice that we could skip if we decide to rely on a couple of protagonists, one of whom is a professional (policeman, commissioner, inspector, lawyer) and the other a friend completely outside the environment, which however provides the most creative, and perhaps light-hearted, part of the search for the murderer.

Some famous examples that come to mind:

Professionals

Hercule Poirot by Agatha Christie, Police Inspector
Maigret by Georges Simenon, Commissioner
Kay Scarpetta by Patricia Cornwell, medical examiner
Montalbano by Andrea Camilleri, commissioner
Alice Allevi by Alessia Gazzola, forensic medical specialist

Amateur

Miss Marple by Agatha Christie, a curious old woman
Robert Langdom by Dan Brown, Professor of Art History
Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, investigative consultant
Annika Bengtzon by Liza Marklund, journalist
Mikael Blomkvist by Stieg Larsson, journalist