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NOTE: This Course will be held in a live, online format using the Zoom Platform. 
Class meets for six sessions, Apr 11th, 14th, 18th, 21st, 25th, and 27th | 7-9:30pm ET

Got a story idea lurking in your head that you never seem to get down on paper? Are you a big mystery fan who has always wanted to write one but never gets to it? Maybe you want to write a book but don’t how to start and the mystery structure is the answer? We all know writers write, but sometimes it takes a nudge, or a class, or someone giving you an approach to get you started. 

These sessions will focus on some of the elements that go into crafting a mystery novel. We’ll cover the basics of mystery plotting—that all important framework on which we hang our stories—and we’ll work on creating credible and distinctive characters, both good and bad. We’ll discuss point of view, the importance of setting and the role it plays, review some strategies for planting clues, and examine how mystery writers create tension page-by-page. There will be writing assignments, and wherever possible, if the student has a story idea in mind, his or her story will form the basis for the day’s exercises.

This course is open to beginners, as well as more experienced writers. 

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Instructor: Kate Flora

Flora has taught writing for the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, Brown University Continuing Education, The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, the Cape Cod Writer’s Conference, and for Grub Street in Boston. She’s a former international president of Sisters in Crime, and a founder of the New England Crime Bake and the Maine Crime Wave conferences. She blogs with the Maine Crime Writers. Flora divides her time between Massachusetts and Maine, where she gardens and cooks and watches the clouds when she’s not imagining her character’s dark deeds.

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