Three Genre-Crossing Blunders To Avoid

Three mistakes I made—and you don’t have to—when writing a first mystery or suspense novel

By Andromeda Romano-Lax

Recently, my first suspense novel, The Deepest Lake, was published by Soho Crime. It’s my sixth novel and a departure from my previous genres of historical fiction and literary fiction. Many people ask me why I made the leap. The answer’s easy: I wanted to have fun! I’d read some compelling, emotionally satisfying page turners by authors like Lisa Jewell and Liane Moriarty, and I wanted to try my hand. 

Fewer people ask, What mistakes did you make in your first efforts? To save you some time, here are three of my earliest genre-crossing blunders.

Sprawling through space and time

My first idea for a suspense novel took place in Canada and Italy. No surprise that I was tempted to sprawl, given that my earlier fiction, including historical and hybrid novels, crossed continents and centuries. 

It’s possible to write a mystery or suspense novel about multiple locations, of course. I justified my approach, citing Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mister Ripley, which takes place in the U.S. and Italy, as a model. Yes, but. 

Many more suspense novels take advantage of a constricted environment (think: lodge, ship, remote place, single town) and a constricted timeline (days or weeks instead of decades) to increase tension and maximize atmosphere. If you’re a first-timer like me, why make things hard? The right location and timeline will do some of your work for you. The Deepest Lake takes part in one village, plus some nearby dwellings, on the shore of Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. Most of the main novel storyline takes place over the course of a week.

Lower stakes at the start

My first attempt, the Canada-Italy novel, opens with an art gallery break-in. I hoped this would create a sense of menace, but none of my early readers reported feeling any chills. I had bigger events coming, but they wouldn’t gather momentum until the book’s second half. Some literary thrillers do make the reader wait for hundreds of pages—Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton is an example—but most plunge the reader into action much more quickly and hopefully, it’s action that matters, so we understand what our protagonist will lose if things don’t go his way. 

In The Deepest Lake’s first chapter, we enter the POV of a mother looking for answers about the death of her daughter, who drowned in suspicious circumstances three months earlier. 

Compare the two novel openings: Gallery break-in and no one harmed, versus a suspicious death and a desire for answers that will lead to more peril. If you’re plotting your first crime novel, consider how long you’ll make your reader wait before she understands the full stakes of a situation. 

A character without a clear want 

One of the muddiest aspects of many manuscripts is not understanding what a character wants. Trouble enough when the reader doesn’t know, but often the writer doesn’t know either. Too often, wants are abstract. A protagonist wants to understand herself or figure out the meaning of life in some vague way. Ask yourself this: is the want strong enough, and clear enough, to impel action? Can we participate vicariously in the want? Can we see it—and its obstacles—on the page? Or are we lost in confusion and ennui?

Kurt Vonnegut once told students that a character needs to want something, even if it’s just a glass of water. Good point, and small, concrete wants do keep things moving. On top of that, a literary novel may feature a character who doesn’t want something, and that “not-want” may help substitute for a “do-want,” especially if it’s clearly shown to us. 

But to propel most novels intended for a general audience, you’ll want a big want, whether that’s solving a crime, locating a missing person, escaping danger, or righting a wrong. Notice I’ve used crime fiction examples, because the truth is, crime-oriented wants tend to be quite understandable. The genre offers us practice in using clear desire as a scaffold—some might say a Trojan horse—for other less clearcut or tangible wants, in addition to cultural commentary and all kinds of intriguing (and more literary!) thematic questions. 

Genre writing isn’t easy

Sometimes, we’ll hear a fellow writer saying they want to try writing a romance, sci-fi or mystery, thinking it’s easier than writing literary or experimental fiction. It isn’t. The “rules” are clearer in some ways (see the above three tips), but readers of these genres are demanding. They expect some formulas to be followed, and then they hope writers will go beyond the formula and bring something fresh to the table.

Once I figured out some helpful guidelines and started on my second suspense novel, which became The Deepest Lake, the drafting was easy. But then came revisions. I spent four months on a first draft. I spent two years on drafts two to….twelve? Twenty? I stopped counting. Of all my novels, I revised this one the most. 

And that’s fine. I squeezed all the learning I could out of it, which has helped me get ready to write the next one. Already, I’ve learned some new lessons in addition to the ones above. I hope to share them with you in another year and in the meanwhile, I’ll keep reading, writing, and planning my next genre leap. 

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Born in Chicago and now a resident of Vancouver Island, Canada, Andromeda Romano-Lax worked as a freelance journalist and travel writer before turning to fiction. Her first novel, The Spanish Bow, was translated into eleven languages and chosen as a New York Times Editors’ Choice, BookSense pick, and one of Library Journal’s Best Books of the Year. Her next four novels, The Detour, Behave (an Amazon Book of the Month), Plum Rains (winner of the Sunburst Award), and Annie and the Wolves reflect her diverse interest in the arts, history, science, and technology, as well as her love of travel and her time spent living abroad. With The Deepest Lake and her next novel, What Boys Learn, Romano-Lax has recently turned to psychological suspense.

THE DEEPEST LAKE

In this atmospheric thriller set at a luxury memoir-writing workshop on the shores of Lake Atitlán, Guatemala, a grieving mother goes undercover to investigate her daughter’s mysterious death.

Rose, the mother of twentysomething aspiring writer Jules, has waited three months for answers about her daughter’s death. Why was she swimming alone when she feared the water? Why did she stop texting days before she was last seen?

When the official investigation rules the death an accidental drowning, the body possibly lost forever in Central America’s deepest lake, an unsatisfied Rose travels to the memoir workshop herself. She hopes to draw her own conclusion—and find closure. When Rose arrives, she is swept into the curious world created by her daughter’s literary hero, the famous writing teacher Eva Marshall, a charismatic woman known for her candid—and controversial—memoirs. As Rose uncovers details about the days leading up to Jules’s disappearance, she begins to suspect that this glamorous retreat package is hiding ugly truths. Is Lake Atitlán a place where traumatized women come to heal or a place where deeper injury is inflicted?

The Deepest Lake is both a sharp look at the sometimes toxic, exclusionary world of high-class writing workshops and an achingly poignant view of a mother’s grief.

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Category: How To and Tips