How to Write a Great Mystery
 

What makes a mystery?

If you consider the books you've read most recently, you may be surprised to discover that many -- if not all -- are mysteries. From Dan Brown to Dennis Lehane, mysteries are hot items on today's bestseller lists.

This course will teach you the techniques you need to become a bestselling mystery author!


"The concepts I teach in this course combine the best advice of many writing professionals, tempered with my own experiences. If you follow these guidelines, you will write a successful mystery!"

Instructor Steve Alcorn is the author of three mystery novels, and is the Writing Academy's Fiction Forum Guru.

 

  

An Online course where you go one-on-one with the instructor!

Interact with Mystery author Steve Alcorn online. Learn from his fun, enthusiastic lessons, and then practice your techniques as you develop your own novel or screenplay in the discussion areas. Lessons include:

  • The Four Story Types
  • Three Act Structure
  • Plot vs. Story
  • Theme
  • Premise
  • Protagonist
  • Antagonist
  • Supporting Characters
  • Hook, Backstory, Trigger
  • Crisis, Struggle, Epiphany
  • Plan, Climax, Ending
  • Viewpoint and Narrator Reliability
  • Deductive vs. Inductive Reasoning
  • Scene and Sequel
  • The McGuffin
  • Crime Scenes
  • Red Herrings

and much more. Extensive examples show how these topics apply to mystery writing. Following each lesson you'll practice on  your own story, posting your writing for Mr. Alcorn's evaluation, and some interactive brainstorming!

The complete course is just $119.

Click Here to Enroll
 

Praise from Students:

"THANK YOU Mr. Alcorn. Not just for coming up with a great class and sharing your wealth of knowledge with us, but for me what was very special were the prompt and in some cases, immediate replies to our posts. That in itself made the whole class for me."

- Donnie

"I just want to say THANK YOU again, thank you for all the work you put into the course, thank you for taking care to reply so fast, thank you for your generous way of sharing your knowledge, thank you for setting up the forum - including the digest, which is a great bonus - to give us a way to keep in touch."

-Ann-Marie

"I love your course. The information so far has been
fantastic. Yours is the
first one I've seen proven against multiple famous novels and so I am very pleased with it. The forum where you give real feedback is a wonderful thing, too, and has already helped me out greatly. It also gives me motivation to write because I know my work will go in front of a published author who will give good feedback. It's been my desire to write a mystery novel for years and it looks like I might actually make that happen this time!

-Jon

"Taking Steve's course is giving me the tools I need to give my writing direction and focus, and his feedback is bang-on-useful!"

- Jan Klasson

"Steve Alcorn is a patient and encouraging teacher who is able to sift through mountains of words to find the gold nuggets that will make a good story."

- Mary Ann McSweeny

"Just felt compelled to write and tell you that I think
it's cool I'm taking a class from a guy whose book
intrigued me!"

-Jonathan

"Steve is precise and helpful with his comments. For those of us who need to step back and evaluate the larger picture, his method provides a revealing and insightful approach."

- T. A. Faraci

"Steve Alcorn is an EXCELLENT instructor. His stories and examples bring the instructional materials into the real world. His guidance as a Coach was invaluable in helping us grow from our own experiences. This is the first online course I have taken and I found the content to be much more comprehensive than I expected - thank you. I will highly recommend this course and Steve Alcorn to my peers! A wonderful learning experience!"

- Catherine