Crafting Middle Grade Mysteries (Melanie Conklin)

When I started writing middle grade, I didn’t set out to write mysteries. I just enjoy books that keep me guessing. I always have, ever since I was a child. Straight-forward stories didn’t fascinate me as much as the ones that surprised me. I was (and still am) a little know-it-all, so even at age eight, I was captivated by intellect and absolutely adored it when an author fooled me so well that I was stunned by the outcome of the story. Fool me once, and you had my respect. Fool me twice, and I was a fan for life.

One of my favorite series of all time was Alfred Hitchcock’s THE THREE INVESTIGATORS. I showed up dutifully at the library every week hoping for a new story, despite the fact that Alfred Hitchcock had passed away in 1980. Those were pre-internet days, and I had no idea there would be no further books, but that didn’t keep me from re-reading the ones that existed over and over again. I loved that the three boys worked as a team. I loved the plot twists. The sometimes-scary settings and stakes. The way the boys subverted the adults in their lives to figure things out, and their awesome junk-yard style clubhouse. Those books had my entire heart, and I still remember the plot to many of them.

I think there’s a very specific connection to mystery for younger readers. Children are in the process of slowly discovering the reality of the world around them. As adults, we’ve seen a lot. It’s harder to surprise us. For middle schoolers, the entire adult world is a mystery—one they are slowly pulling back the veil on, bit by bit.

If you’re an avid mystery reader, you might recognize that reference to what I think is arguably the best middle grade mystery ever: Rebecca Stead’s WHEN YOU REACH ME. In that story, a girl named Miranda is trying to figure out the source of a series of mysterious notes. Each message references something that no one in Miranda’s life could possibly know, which is both terrifying and captivating to her. The novel is slim, the chapters compact, and the twist? It’s the best one I’ve ever read. If you haven’t read it, do so ASAP! And no spoilers.

As an author, I aspire to surprise my readers as much as possible. I think that’s why my books keep getting more and more mysterious. All stories have a mystery thread to them, but in my stories, the external plot tends to revolve around a central mystery—though the reveals often turn out to be more a matter of perspective than science fiction. If you’re looking at a cylinder from the side, it appears to be a rectangle. As soon as you turn it, the truth is revealed, changing your previous preconceptions about the rectangle you saw.

That’s how a good mystery works, too. You show the reader a world through a specific point of view, and the reader forms assumptions about that world. All it takes is a well-timed reveal to turn those assumptions on their head. And voila! The reader is surprised.

Seeing as middle grade readers are literally re-forming their view of the known world every day, they are the perfect audience for surprising reveals. Children have an innocent gaze. They are just learning about deception. They may be new to the idea that adults have flaws, and that not every adult can be trusted. Middle grade gives us a very special space to explore those themes and show young readers all the ways human beings can surprise us. Sometimes those surprises are good and sometimes they are bad, but they’re always captivating to a young person searching for answers about how the world works. 

Mysteries revolve around the notion of truth. Young people crave truth and certainty. They need these building blocks to create a foundation for their understanding of the world, and they are constantly seeking truth in the world around them. 

In fiction, the most practical way to create a compelling mystery is to take a rather obvious truth and hide it. This is what happens in the real world, after all. Truths get clouded and buried and misconstrued and stolen. Humans have battled over the ownership of truth since the dawn of time, and I imagine we’ll go out arguing about what’s true as well. If you’re honest about the way people sometimes obfuscate the truth, mysteries almost write themselves. Humans make reliably terrible choices, but we also band together in times of trouble, take risks, think critically, and do our best to uncover the truth, no matter how deeply hidden.

For today’s mystery writers for young readers, my core guidance is to always, always tell the truth. A mystery that rings true, no matter how surprising, is a story that readers will hold in their hearts. They will come back to it again and again, because it’s so satisfying when we figure something out. Answers are the whole point of existence. We’re here to learn as much as we can before we go.

As I approach the release of my latest middle grade mystery, A PERFECT MISTAKE, I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll have a lot of readers fooled, but whether I manage to surprise them or not, hopefully by the end of the story, they’ll feel a little more certain about the world and their place in it.

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A Perfect Mistake is available July 12. 

Visit Melanie Conklin online, or follow on Twitter: @MLConklin