Lainey Quilholt Mysteries Collection: The Complete Series

Excerpt from Lainey Quilholt Mysteries Collection

“This is not rocket science, folks, but it's close,” Mr. Taylor said as he paced the front of the class, black marker in hand, ready to pounce on the white board as he had during the last forty-five minutes to jot down basics of writing. “Writing a novel isn't like writing that essay for English in fifth grade where you fill in a lot of bullshit description just to fill pages.”

Some of the students around me chuckled, as did I. There was a certain energy which Mr. Taylor threw off like a Yorkshire Terrier in a room full of people. I grew fond of him within the first five minutes of my seven o'clock class in my first ever-college course. Everything he said I agreed with and he said a number of new things that had me excited about starting that novel of mine.

He stepped up to the white board where he'd written out several headings with a number beside them. He'd been going through these for the first portion of the hour, pausing to make a point, questioning us for our ideas and input, and to add his own to each sub-heading.

His marker poised at “Describe Character's Physical Appearance”. He wrote blue eyes in an almost illegible downward scrawl.

“Now, I don't know about you, but if a writer goes into great detail about what a character looks like, what they're wearing, that they have a mole on their right cheek, green flecks in their otherwise brown eyes, I'm outa there,” he said. He turned to us. “Jane Austen's description of Elizabeth Bennett was that she had 'fine eyes'. It's up to the reader to figure out the meaning of that and use their own imagination. If your character has brown eyes, or blue eyes. Fine. Write that, but don't waste a whole frigging page on the color of their eyes. Unless you've got a vampire with all black eyes, of course, I'd like to know that.”

More chuckles.

He turned back to his list on the board and tapped Protagonist & Characters. “No one is perfect. And if your protagonist is perfect, then, they're boring. Saints are nice, but, I'm sorry, their boring. Unless you behead them, of course, then you have a story.” Laughter. “A new writer makes a lot of glaring mistakes, and this, I can say, is one of my pet peeves. Give your protagonist a trait that might be considered a little wacky, or off. He, or she, can have a scar, or a tattoo that stands out, just to make them memorable. In any case, make them marred, on the inside, as well as outside. No one is perfect.” He gave everyone the eye. “And don't give your detective a drinking problem. That's old hack.” Chuckles all around the room. “Find some other maladjustment. Maybe he's OCD, you know, like Monk.” This was met with a few chuckles from the older students. The rest of us just stared. Leaning on his desk, he shook his head and sighed. “Once again, I'm dating myself.” He smiled at those who knew what character he'd meant. There were older students—over thirty—sprinkled throughout the twenty-five or so students. For the most part, all were sophomores, around eighteen or nineteen. I was the only freshman in the class. I'd gotten special privilege because of recommendations from my English teacher in high school. I'd been so excited about this class, and happy it was the very first class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Stopping at his desk Mr. Taylor grabbed a pile of papers. “Let's see a show of hands. Who's writing what genre. How many of you are writing suspense?” He held up his own hand. A few hands went up around the classroom. “How many are writing science fiction?” Again about four hands went up. One guy who reminded me of the character Hagrid, held up a hand as big as a catcher's mitt. Shaggy hair and beard obliterated his features, and he seemed to take up a large amount of Real Estate at the table behind me.

“Horror?” More people raised their hands. I counted six hands. “Okay, good.” He counted and then handed out the stapled sheets as he went from row to row in the room. “How many are writing romance?” There were a few timid hands. “Don't worry, if you aren't sure about it. If you like to read that sort of genre, raise your hands.” He looked down at the girl second from the front and smiled at her. “Writing romance has big rewards. It's got a huge audience, and usually a writer worth her salt can net six figures, especially if she gets a good agent and they can get her into one of the bigger publishing houses.” The girl's face turned bright crimson and she turned to her friend next to her. Both giggling with hands to their mouths.

While the hand-outs were passed back, I looked over mine. I loved hand-outs. He'd already handed two out before this. One was called How to Write your Novel, in which were xeroxed pages from writing magazines and was at least thirty pages in length. Another was called Goodbye Writer's Block. I decided I had a lot of reading to do later on, and happy about it. In fact I couldn't wait, I became slightly distracted by some of the subjects in the most recent handout. From the sound of pages being riffled through, others were just as itching to learn what was inside as me.

“You'll find that each genre has sub-genres. Take for instance mystery.” He looked around the room. “Anyone here writing a mystery?”

I raised my hand half-heartedly. I hadn't committed anything to paper. My summer had been too busy, what with graduating, my aunt getting married to Sheriff Weeks, and moving in with us. Oh. And the murder that occurred, in which I played some minor part in solving, working to unravel who had, and who had not murdered Arline Rochelle. Admittedly, I wanted to write about that, but worried about lawsuits. I was strongly advised not to.

Mr. Taylor stepped over to engage me. “What type of mystery are you writing? Or do you know?”

“I guess I hadn't thought about it,” I said, clueless.

“Do you have any favorite authors?”

“I've just switched over to murder mysteries, so I don't actually have anyone.”

“I'll give you a list, next time. But you'll see under Murder Mysteries in your handout—” he tapped the paper he'd just handed out in front of me “—you've got the Classic Whodunit, Cozy, Courtroom Drama, Espionage, Historical, etc.” He had stepped away from me with long legs and walked back to the front of the room and chose a blank area of the white board. “Let's take the cozy mystery. Normally, they take place in a small town, where all the suspects are present and familiar with one another, except the detective, who is usually an outsider, but not always.” He wrote out the general headings.

In my case, Weeks hadn't been as much an outsider as he wasn't quite yet a family member. But I reminded myself I would have to change the whole story, as well as names.

“And then there's the amateur detective. This is like the Jessica Fletcher character, or Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Those are both interesting characters to read.” He turned and our eyes met. “The trick of writing a mystery is knowing who did it, how, why and then write backwards.” He smiled and amended, “Well, not literally backwards.” Chuckles again rose from our classroom. I smiled, enjoying the fact he wasn't dry as a November leaf like my past English teachers had been.