Marilyn's Musings

Damaged characters, murder mysteries, and dealing with the past by Patrick Linder I’m often asked how much of what I write about is real and how I come up with plot ideas. These are interesting questions for a writer of murder mysteries to consider, especially given the common advice that you should “write what you know.” Spoiler alert: I’ve never actually murdered anyone. I write about murder, but I consider myself first and foremost an emotional writer. Perhaps a better way to say that is that I am a writer most concerned with the emotion(s) of the story. That’s one big reason why I love mysteries—to solve a murder you have to also solve what the motivation was and what the repercussions have been, and these are almost always tied to emotion(s). If you take a step back and think about a mystery as this fantastic combination of crime, motivation, and repercussion, the emotional path often leads directly to any number of damaged characters. I love the emotional b...