Video Transcript (computer generated - may contain errors)

Sara Gentry: Welcome, writers. Today I have Ted Hawks with me. Welcome, Ted.

Tedd Hawks: Thanks. Great to be here, Sara.

Sara Gentry: And let me introduce our writers to you just a little bit more so. Tedd is a writer, teacher, and creative coach from Chicago. His writing work spans the Lgbtq Literary fiction. Ya. Murder, Mystery and Science Fiction. You kind of have a lot of genres there, don't you.

Tedd Hawks: Yeah, all over the place.

Sara Gentry: That's fantastic. I love it. He is passionate about fostering creativity. He strives to help others unleash their imaginative potential, and confidently tell their authentic stories so welcome again, Tedd, and I love that you have all this different genre experience.

Tedd Hawks: Yeah, I probably should focus at some point. But I just like dabbling a little bit.

Sara Gentry: No, I think some of us are meant to be broad, like I just,  I truly do believe that. Okay. But today Ted is gonna talk with us more specifically about mystery. Because this is a fascinating genre to talk about. And maybe you know, we tend to talk about mystery, maybe in combination with thrillers and suspense novels and and all those tend to get lumped together, so that we can establish maybe some ground here for the writers who are with us. How are we going to define a mystery? The mystery genre.

Tedd Hawks: Yeah, it's a great question, because, like you said, there, the Venn diagram overlaps so heavily. Especially kind of modern crime fiction. But 1 of the definitions I really like is that murder, mystery or mystery fiction? It has a protagonist who's pursuing the solution to a crime or mystery, and a thriller is a protagonist who's fighting against an antagonistic force, whether that's like a company or a person. But I think that's a really nice distinction, and one that I've used in my own work, too.

Sara Gentry: I love that you brought up crime fiction, too, because now we're like even slicing and dicing further, it can be so gray and murky. So, writers. If you get confused about this, it's okay. You're in good company, because there are a lot of different overlaps. So what is it about mystery that you enjoy? I know you've written mystery, and then you coach it. What is it about the genre that you enjoy working with?

Tedd Hawks: I just love it so much because I always think of it as kind of a chess game against like the writer. Because you're trying to figure out. Get to the solution before they give it to you right? And Agatha Christie is one of my favorites, and just reading some of her like just brilliant endings, the murder of Roger Ackroyd, and Murder on the Orient Express. Those like really huge twists. And I know you're gonna talk about twists, too. And this as well. But one of the things I kind of tend towards the cozy because 2 of the things that I absolutely love in the genre are character. Because I think, especially in cozy, you can bring sort of a big character type and play with, you know the nuances, and you know, give them a secret that they'll take into the work that you have to unearth. And I really love that. My characters are usually big, broad stroke characters, a lot of fun with very distinct voices. And then I also just love the setting aspect. Often murder mysteries, especially on the cozy side. We'll have, you know, a mansion you know, a creepy place, or, you know, a little cottage or rural environment. So I love like building that sort of scenery and setting for folks. So those are the 2 of the big reasons.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, I love that you that you mentioned the character, because I do think mystery is a really interesting genre. In that we will see a series centered around like the amateur sleuth, or whoever whoever's doing stuff. And what's so interesting is that I mean, you can read them in the order in which they are released. But sometimes you can even read them out of order, because you're just getting this satisfying book arc, and then I can maybe even skip ahead, like Book number 8. If Book number 7 is out at the library, and I can't get access to it, I can be able to hop over and still and still enjoy the read, so they don't necessarily have to be sequential. And I don't know. I think that's something that sets mystery apart, perhaps from the other genres in the adult fiction space.

Tedd Hawks: Yeah, I know that's a great, great way to think about it. I never really thought about that before. But yeah, often it's very much sort of a reboot reset every series. You have new characters, new setting, new place. And you get to kind of just go in and have fun. But yeah, that's a great point.

Sara Gentry: Yeah. Well, and it would say, like, I better have it be a good character to come back. Nobody wants to follow a boring character over this series of 10 books.

Tedd Hawks: And that's 1 of the things I was thinking about, too, is what's fun about, sort of like the some of the classic, you know detectives like I mean Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes is they don't have that like deep, tragic backstory that we expect kind of in modern fiction. But they're just sort of like a weird person who does a really great job solving crime. And you get to kind of go along with them. So it's kind of a cool sort of, you know, trend away from kind of what we're used to in terms of our protagonist.

Sara Gentry: Yeah. Yeah. And I suppose if you're someone who enjoys developing secondary characters, what a great way to do it! Because every book you get to like, bring on a new cast, perhaps.

Tedd Hawks: Yeah, exactly.

Sara Gentry: Okay, so like, these are, maybe some good things about working in the genre. What do you find either challenging or frustrating? I mean, we know every genre has got its like, you know, maybe easy things and hard things. So what about mystery, do you think is particularly challenging?

Tedd Hawks: I think what's really hard in both writing and coaching and mystery is, you know, in the endless, like a plotter, pantser debate like you really gotta plot a mystery like it really has to be tight. Everything has to lead to the solution. And it's oftentimes, you know, as we write like things just kind of go. Haywire characters do what they want, plots do what they want, things kind of go in different ways, so really corralling it, and making sure you have a good idea of the architecture where the clues are, where the red herrings are, and and the precision of that. And the murderous. And the mystery genre is really tough. And it's, you gotta be really sort of a big fan of details, to get to to work well.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, I've had several people tell me I really should be more involved in mystery because I'm somewhat left brained. Coming from math and my affinity, for, like Sudokus and jigsaw puzzles and things like this would lend itself well, probably, but I'm such a scaredy cat, you know. So the cozies I enjoy. I have read quite a few cozies, but it's sometimes hard to know like, unless there's like a very clear cover where I'm like that’s probably not gonna take me somewhere I want to go. It can be hard sometimes to distinguish, and I just am such a scaredy cat.

Tedd Hawks: Oh, yeah, yeah, just stay cozy. Yeah, that's the way to go.

Sara Gentry: Okay. So you've got this mystery work that you've done. Do you want to talk a bit about that? You've got a mystery series that you've been putting forth. Do you want to talk just maybe a little bit about that?

Tedd Hawks: Yeah, and it's kind of funny, too, in talking about genre, because, you know, my, the 1st book in the series, Beatrice. It follows an amateur detective. 2 amateur detectives as they kind of solve these little little crimes that are going on. And the 1st one is, you know, kind of classic closed house mystery happened at the mansion. Second, one is sort of an homage to Scooby Doo. They're in this like a haunted cabin out in the woods and investigating a monster mystery. And then the 3rd one actually turned into a thriller. It was more about the antagonist and the pursuit of, you know. This criminal in a city. So it was kind of funny to see, like that progression of like straight mystery into this thriller. But yeah, they're very humor forward. We have a lot of fun with the conventions of the genre with characterization. Very silly and I kind of play with a found narrative form. So it's supposed to be this, this, a bad writer who wrote this book, and I'm kind of revising it and editing it and take the series from there. So I play. I play a lot with the conventions in the genre. Yeah.

Sara Gentry: That's so much fun and writers, you probably don't need any more prompting. You heard it here, Scooby Doo. So that is super fun. Okay. But you have also written in other genres. And you coach other genres and I do think that the skills that we learn, I mean. I don't know about you, but I certainly encourage my writers to read outside of the genre that they're writing. I think sometimes people become so focused on just like I write fantasy, therefore I read fantasy and I think there's so much to be learned from different genres, because I think they all have unique strengths that can help a writer. What do you think about mystery specifically, has helped you in your other work, or maybe even vice versa.

Tedd Hawks: Oh, yeah, so actually, when I finished my 1st murder mystery book, I wrote a blog series, about kind of what I learned, and I revisited it before we had this chat today, and there are kind of 3 things that stood out for me that I learned them in the process of writing. The murder mystery, I think, are very applicable across the board. The 1st one was to, as much as possible, write every day. Whether it's 20, 30 min. But with the murder mystery, especially, what I found is I was writing after work, and sometimes it'd be 3, 4 days a week before, between writing sessions, and I would forget the characters, their voices, what had happened, what clues I was! So I was in my spreadsheets. I was on my outline just to get started into the work. So I always recommend to start and write as much as you can every day, you know, even if it's 10 min to just kind of keep the world and the characters and the voices in your head. The second one was just about being flexible and being gracious to yourself as you write because when I started the 1st book you know, I was like, sir, you probably appreciate this. I had my like outline. I had my spreadsheets, and I was like, this is easy. I'm just gonna put this all down, and it just went off the rails like Chapter 2. I have like draft 4 of my outline, and I got so in my head about everything. I couldn't even figure out what I was doing, so I sent it to a beta reader, and he's like, oh, it's fine, but I have no idea how you get to the end what you do. So if you're listening to this, and you don't think you can write a murder mystery. I did it so you can pull it off and it was just like learning to be gracious with myself, and, you know, be flexible and adapt. I kind of went from like an outline of the whole book to just kind of a rolling 3 chapter outline, just to kind of keep myself on track. But a lot of flexibility and what happens. So that was another big takeaway I had. Yeah, in terms of the process and the last one, and is very closely tied to that. And as I was writing forward just to kind of consider failure as part of the process, and not an outcome like you will hit those walls. You'll have no idea what's going on, and have to send it to a beta reader just to get the recalibration. But that's just part of the process. And we all go through that. And it's, you know, getting that feedback, getting that new perspective, jumping back in and making those changes. So those were like the 3, the 3 biggest I took away from that 1st 1st experience, and it's gotten a little easier in some ways as I wrote the other 2. But you know each one is a different beast.

Sara Gentry: So when you wrote this Mystery series, was it your 1st time writing a series, or had you written series in other genres as well?

Tedd Hawks: No, it was the 1st series, and when I, when I wrote the book, the 1st book, I didn't plan for it to be a series, but then it sort of evolved from the 1st one. So that's maybe something new, too. 

Sara Gentry: I'm glad that you mentioned the flexibility. I am someone who tends to be more of an outliner, but I had tried something a couple of years ago, because I thought, you know, I'm gonna start with a simple outline. But you and I are both associated with Author Accelerator. So it was an Inside Outline. And I was like, and then I'm gonna make it a really big inside outline. And then I'm gonna outline each chapter with like micro beats or whatever, and about maybe like 5 chapters in, I was like, this is not working for me, and I had to stop and just go back to like my not quite the simple one. It was a fuller outline, and it's actually in a spreadsheet now, but having it felt like it gave me a little bit more flexibility in the writing process then, like, so it's interesting because I really thought I really really thought that the super detailed outline was was gonna be the ticket for me, and it proved to be the opposite.

Tedd Hawks: That's me and when I sat down with mine super detailed, I outlined. It was like Chapter 2 that was off the rails. Oh, no! What am I gonna do?

Sara Gentry: Well, at least you didn't like throw your hands in the air and give up all hope, and just like, say, forget it. I'm you know, I'm not gonna keep going. So you know, that's good to do, too. So alright. How can our writers here connect with you online? I want to make sure people can find you. We'll have links to all this stuff. But is there a place you like to hang out?

Tedd Hawks: Yes, that for book coaching, especially my website, teddhawks.com and then I'm on Instagram at teddwritesstuff as well. And that's more of my like personal work. And me posting about writing, but my website, you'll find all my coaching information and links to some materials that I have. So yeah.

Sara Gentry: Very good. Is there? Are there any particular types of books that you especially love to work with writers?

Tedd Hawks: Oh, I love thriller love, mystery. I'm working with a sci-fi client now, which I really enjoy. I didn't. I didn't know if that would be a good fit. But I've really loved that as well. So yeah, I would say, those 3 genres are my bread and butter.

Sara Gentry: Very, very cool. Well, Tedd, I just want to thank you for your time, and writers check out Tedd's books, and we'll have links to all the things so that you can find Tedd and ask him questions about mysteries.

Tedd Hawks: Yeah, thanks, Sara. This was so much fun.

Sara Gentry: Yeah, thank you. This was great. Thank you so much for your time. Alright, writers, we will see you later. Thanks for joining us. Bye.