Whodunnit - Placement of Murder in the Story

What is the purpose of the murder?

Is the book about something bad happens to a bad character, and x, y, and z need to figure out who/what/why because Reasons?

Or is the book about something totally different, and an unpleasant character is offed for his unpleasantness, and it's a bad day for him, but ultimately it's just an element in the story amongst many elements, and solving his murder is a nice sideline, but not really the focus of the story itself?

As long as there have been murder mysteries, there have been creative people who enjoy tweaking the expectations of the genre.

But if you're writing an actual traditional whodunnit, I'd expect the murder to happen in the first one to three chapters, perhaps, and then spend the rest of the story working it out. Unless there's a compelling reason to spend so much screentime on what a terrible person he is ahead of time--- it's normal for all the motives to come out as the story develops, rather than depicting them from the start. Because ultimately, the victim is a plot device, rather than a dimensional character.

A lot will depend on your genre--- but I'm just going by the classic whodunnit structure.

I don't think there's a hard-and-fast rule on when the murder should take place as long as it's at least by the 50% mark—personally I prefer the first 15 to 25%—and it really has more to do with the focus of your story (detective & detection vs victim characterization*) and how much misdirection you plan to plant (heh). In one of my favorites, Still Life by Louise Penny, the victim is murdered just before the story begins and it begins with the detective's initial reactions. Still Life is as much a whydunit as a whodunit: was it an accident or a murder? Who would want to kill a harmless little old lady and why? Rex Stout often liked to get the kettle well and truly roiling with misdirection in his Nero Wolfe stories on what the story is supposed to be about and the interactions between all the characters before a murder takes place (which, of course, shifts the story and starts a major unraveling process). Again, it comes down to the focus of your story.

*(Also, I'd much rather find out the whydunit on the way to the whodunit. Personal taste, of course.)

Maryn said:

Is it possible to move the had-it-coming parts to a later point?

Maryn, hoping so

Click to expand...

That makes me think of Robert Parker's Spenser novels. So many of them started out as a straight PI story with the body not dropping until aroudn the end of Act 1, at least a few chapters in.

I’ve thought about this a lot, because I also am writing a story where the murder doesn’t happen for quite a bit. After reading a lot of classic mysteries I ended up with the ever-useful “it depends.” :shrug:

More specifically it depends on what question you’re answering and who the focus of your story is. Mysteries, in a general way, have three questions they must answer:

- How was the murder committed?

- Who is the killer?

- Why did the victim have to die?

You cannot satisfyingly end a mystery without answering those three questions, but that doesn’t mean they need equal time in the spotlight, and the structural choices the writer makes about those questions shifts the book’s focus (or vice versa). A book that focuses on the how, for example (locked room mysteries, alibi puzzles, “how did this naked dead man get in the vicar’s bathtub”) draws focus to the detective and gives them a chance to show off their cleverness as they unravel the mess; a book focused on “who” lends itself to a detailed psychological portrait of the killer.

The majority of the books I’ve seen that delayed the murder to the quarter or halfway point were of the third “why?” type, because it’s easier to understand why someone had to die if you’ve spent some time with them. These type of books typically focus on the victim and the victim’s community — the knot of people around the victim who are affected, negatively or positively, by their death. It also tends to work best with a victim who is to some degree the author of their own destruction, victims who, even if sympathetic, did something to deserve their fate. If this sort of focus on the victim’s world is your goal, a delayed murder can be very effective.

(My tastes do run to classics; I don’t know whether this is something that works in the current market... but I personally find it crippling to write to the market on a first draft.)

If you want some writers who do this, Ellis Peters used the delayed murder throughout her books — given the description you give above I would particularly recommend Fallen Into The Pit, a book where I knew a few chapters in who would die and spent the next several chapters vacillating between die already you bastard and agonizing because I liked all his potential killers. P.D. James has used delayed deaths in nearly all the Adam Dalgliesh books I’ve read. Georgette Hayer did a great delayed death in Envious Casca. The Nero Wolfe books completely do not prove my point (they’re very detective-centric even though you do get to meet the victim) but read them anyway. They’re awesome.

Personally, I would say ideally in chapter one (this is how most crime novels published in 2020 will start) or at least by chapter 3. It certainly must be in Act 1 (first 20%). Really, by the end of Act 1 your detective-protagonist has accepted to investigate the murder, and there is no going back.
I recommend taking a look at Blake Snyder's Save the Cat Beat Sheet.

https://www.savannahgilbo.com/blog/plotting-save-the-cat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp7NR2cmSS4

It depends on the premise of your story. In the TV show Columbo you see the murder and murderer in the first few minutes because the story is about why the murder took place and how the detective figures out who did it. If the murder leads to other major activities or consequences it should happen early on. Your character's murder at the end of act 1 is also relative to the length of your story. If the story is 3 acts vs 4 acts or 5 acts may give the murder a different feeling. How much do you want the reader to know the character, how much they empathize or detest them, may also change based on when it occurs. An excellent Whodunit I recently watched is the movie Knives out.

Earlier the better for me in a whodunnit, where the emphasis is on identifying the murderer. The reader doesn't necessarily have to know the life of the victim at the outset. That's revealed as the investigators (coppers, private detectives or amateur sleuths) do their thing.

Oh, I loved Knives Out, too, and I'm a Columbo fan. So good taste, K.S. Crooks.

And, like Helix, I'm a fan of the body hitting the floor early in the game. I agree that the victim's details can be revealed throughout the story, preferably through the detection skills of the MC. I like books that open with the murder and take off from there.

To me, the most interesting thing about murder mysteries is following along as the sleuth pieces together the identity of the killer.