It’s a surprise, but when you think about it you realize it makes sense. B is for Burglar has the best twist ending, ever. KG: Yes, Sue Grafton and her Alphabet Series. You think the mystery is solved, but it’s not, which is another great way to keep readers on their toes.ĮC: Is there a particular mystery novel that really shaped you as a writer? I also tend to do false endings, which comes from screenwriting. It’s always the person you least expect, right? So I’ll always throw in a red herring suspect who’s really not even ever called a suspect.

The biggest thing for me is, because I read a lot of mysteries, I can always guess who the killer is. Now there are just certain things I try to pull from the genre. KG: At this point, I’m not so concerned about the second dead body, though I did have two dead bodies in my earlier novels. So I do what I call my “chapter outs,” which is just like me trying to end each chapter on a really climatic moment so the reader will want to move on to the next chapter.ĮC: Do you consider mystery genre conventions while outlining? Like, are you trying to make sure you have the second dead body appear at exactly the halfway point? You know that last scene before commercials that makes you hang around. There’s also a thing called an “act out” in TV writing.

Every scene-you’re going to get something. My books are very plot heavy in that way. There just can’t be a scene where a character’s walking down the street admiring the trees. Every scene has to push the story forward. So, at this point, you only have like forty-two minutes for an entire show. So how does your screenwriting background impact your fiction? He said that exact same thing about questions driving each act. By the end of each act, each question is answered, but the answer raises a new question. This comes from my screenwriting background. What I try and do is have a question for each act. But I have horrible handwriting, so I will type it up into a document on the computer. KG: I have a journal I do free thought in. I use a three-act structure, and I throw the third act out every time when I finally get around to writing it.ĮC: Take me through your outline process. Once I have the character, and I have the murder, then I outline. I just need to know the basis of her personality. I don’t need to know everything about her. I write first person, so obviously that’s the person I need to understand best. Kellye Garrett: I figure my main character out.

Kellye garrett like a sister