Building A Mystery

The question isn’t “Whodunit?” It’s “What if?”

Two authors of mystery novels and short stories talked about the nuts and bolts of writing last night at the .

Sarah Smith and Toni L. P. Kelner addressed an audience of about 15 people on the topic of “Using what you know to write a mystery.”

You can use anything in your background to set up a mystery, Kelner told the audience. Kelner, author of the Laura Fleming mysteries and other stories, including “Sleeping with the Plush” and “The Pirate’s Debt,” said she set her first successful stories in the south, “where my mother’s people are from.”

Smith, author of “The Other Side of Dark” and “Chasing Shakespeares,” among others, is a fan of Victorian and Edwardian settings. She shared memories of her grandmother’s house, which was “last updated in 1910.” Every night, she and her grandmother would go down to the cellar and fill buckets with coal, which they carried up to the kitchen to fuel the coal stove.

But the basis of storytelling, Smith said, is “What if?”

A young man in his teens leaves his home and disappears.

What if he saw a murder?

Or reappears 20 years later?

Smith tackled a historical issue—slavery in Boston—in a contemporary setting. There was a personal connection, she said. Her daughter married a man from South America who faced prejudice after 9-11, she said. She wants a world where, she said, their children have a place.

After eight books with a southern setting and dialect, Kelner said she moved one book of characters north, to Massachusetts. She lives in the area.

But she’s also written short stories about characters she didn’t know, she said, such as the circus, pirates and ghosts. She likened different settings to different languages.

Like Smith, Kelner said she is curious about what if’s for her characters. Pirates, for example, lived by rules, Kelner said. If there are rules, she said, people will break them. What do you do with them?

Both authors answered a handful of questions from the audience. Asked about whether they schedule writing time, Smith said she blocks out two hours a day, between 5 and 7 p.m. Kelner prefers to write at night, after her daughters go to sleep. But instead of continuing into the wee hours of morning, she sets herself a word goal, which changes, she said, based how imminent her deadline is.

Both writers said they pass early drafts of their work to a writing group or friends before editors. They are no strangers to editing, they said, and sometimes a good idea goes bad, they agreed.

Smith is working on a book about the Titanic. She just killed off the character that she initially wrote the book for. “Now,” she said, “it’s a much better story.”

The Friends of the Woburn Public Library sponsored Smith and Kelner’s visit.

In the audience sat Loretta Shuck, a member of the Friends group since it started about eight years ago, she said, and a library trustee. She likes to support friends programs, she said.

Next to her sat Joyce Gatta, who teaches English part time at Middlesex Community College. Gatta has written a little, she said before the program started. Gatta came to listen to the speakers, support the library and, yes, to lower her snow-induced cabin fever. “That, too,” she said.

Assistant library director Becky Deaver also attended the program. She’s always read mysteries, she said. She described the program as very interesting. “They told nice stories,” she concluded.