Writing a Mystery Novel

During the UK school holidays there was a writing workshop on with a company called Chelsea Young Writers.  Last year I did a day course but this year I went along for a whole week of writing.  

This year I did the workshop with a famous author named Alan Durant who had just written his 100th book.  The theme for the week was 'Mystery' so we learned about the elements of a mystery novel, did writing exercises to practise examples of mystery writing and wrote our own mystery novels.

This is my class and our teacher.

 On the last day the parents came and we all read an extract from our stories. This is me reading my extract in front of the whole audience.

After I completed the course I got this certificate.

Since then I have been working really on editing my story.   I have also made some big changes and improvements to the plot.  My writing goals for this term were: 

1) To punctuate with better accuracy, checking for full stops and capital letters.  
We have been doing touch typing practise every day since we got to the UK, so I'm using my touch typing skills to type up my story myself. This is giving me a really good opportunity to work on this.

2) Include thoughts and feelings.

I have added lots more detailed descriptions and made sure I included descriptions of the characters' thoughts and feelings.

3) Use a variety of sentence lengths and structures.

I am also trying to do this and am trying to work out how to use these effectively.  I am trying to use shorter sentences for impact especially when I'm writing a particularly suspense-filled piece.


I want to be able to finish my story so I can self-publish it and sell it.  So watch this space!