Ten Tips on How to Write Mysteries for Young Adults

Mysteries are what started me reading as a young adult, and mysteries are what started me writing in my twenties. Mysteries for young adults can serve as delightful distractions. They can challenge the mind while entertaining, and engross the average reader like few other genres can. Here are ten tips on how to write mysteries for young adults.

Tip One: Just as we grown-ups like to feel younger, children and young adults like to feel older. Therefore, it helps to make your protagonist as old as those in the upper age group who will be reading your stories.

Tip Two: Many children’s book authors prefer to stick with a single point of view throughout their stories, since multiple viewpoints can confuse young readers. However, multiple viewpoints can be used for young adult stories, since the readers are more advanced.

Tip Three: Young adults, especially reluctant readers, can be impatient. As such, young adult mysteries should generally introduce the main character immediately and toss him into the action. Save setting and back story for later, and even then, keep them to a minimum.

Tip Four: It is important to maintain suspense. Use the setting and secondary characters to help accomplish this. The setting need not necessarily be dark, but it should be capable of sending a few chills whenever necessary. Consider Hogwarts in the Harry Potter series, and how J. K. Rowling uses the castle as a device to create suspense.

Tip Five: The ending of each chapter should add to the suspense. End each chapter leaving questions unanswered, so that the reader will not want to dog-ear the page and put the book down, but be utterly compelled to read on.

Tip Six: Add some peculiar characters. While your main character should be likeable with some forgivable flaws, you can be more creative with your secondary characters. They can be quirky and mysterious, even morally ambiguous.

Tip Seven: Use time to create suspense and to aid in the pacing of your novel. Problems and conflicts that need to be worked out in a certain time frame are much more exciting than those which could linger on indefinitely.

Tip Eight: Carefully place clues and red herrings throughout your young adult mysteries. Mystery writers should always play fair with their readers, even more so when their readers are children or young adults. Clues should be subtle but available. Red herrings are misleading clues, distractions meant to throw your protagonist (and your readers) off the true scent.

Tip Nine: Use minimal exposition. Young adults typically do not want to be bogged down in narration. Always abide the writer’s primary rule: Show, don’t tell. Your mysteries should move from scene to scene, and readers should have little sense that they are actually reading, as opposed to being part of the story or seeing the events vividly in their minds.

Tip Ten: Be accurate. Choose a setting you have lived in or been to for the purpose of research. Children and young adults more than anyone like to point out mistakes.

Thanks for reading these ten tips on how to write mysteries for young adults.