There were thirteen attendees, which would be a good start for Murder On The Mystery Writing Course, three of whom were men (I believe this is quite high for a creative writing class). Some wanted to deconstruct their favourite reading, others to pen a hardboiled thriller and make £££s, while one funny, well-spoken woman was a regular on murder mystery weekends and wanted to up her chances of picking the correct suspect and winning prizes.
My expectations weren't entirely met: it was perhaps foolish of the course tutor to promise she'd 'turn me into the next Raymond Chandler', even if her stab at my favourite crime-fiction author was uncannily accurate.
What I was hoping for, I suppose, was some sort of crime-writing matrix, a magic formula which would enable me to construct the perfect crime and resolution if I only followed it from A-Z.
I did leave with twice as many characters and twice as much plot as I came with, even if much of the 'plot' is notes reading '[INSERT CLUE HERE]'.
It's possible that I don't have the right sort of brain for writing mysteries and I should go instead for the thriller genre, where you just throw in an explosion whenever things look like they might be starting to make some kind of sense...
