How to Begin Writing Your First Screenplay

I’ve never written a screenplay so I’ve decided—even though I don’t plan on branching out into screenwriting—to rewrite one of my stories as one. Just for practice because I think that stretching myself, my abilities, is a good thing!

Writing a Screenplay: First Things

1. The Logline or One-Line

I’ve written an article about this (See: Creating A Logline). Basically, a logline is a sentence that spells out in dramatic fashion the central conflict of a story.

The central conflict is composed of three things:

1) The protagonist’s goal.
2) The person or force that opposes the protagonist’s goal.
3) The stakes of the conflict.

Here is a formula:

[Protagonist name] is a [description of protagonist] living in [setting]. But when [complicating incident], [protagonist’s name] must [protagonist’s quest] and [verb] [villain] in order to [protagonist’s goal].

An example logline for Die Hard:

Headstrong NYPD detective John McClane wants to save his estranged wife and her colleagues from certain death at the hands of Hans Gruber, a mercenary willing to sacrifice anything to get his hands on $640 million in bearer bonds.

Joe Bunting over at The Write Practice wrote an article about how to write a screenplay. He gives the following tip on how to craft your logline:

“It’s also helpful to put a summarizing adjective in front of your characters to give a sense of their personalities.”[1]

Here’s his example: “A headlong orphan and his Vulcan nemesis must save the Federation (and themselves) from revenge-seeking Romulan from the future.”[1]

2. Write a Screenplay: Beat Sheet

After the logline it’s time to hammer out the beats in the beat sheet.

First, a few terms:

Thesis world: The Ordinary World of Act One.
Antithesis world: The world of Act Two, a world that is the opposite of the thesis world.
Synthesis world: The world of Act Three. A Synthesis of the Thesis and Antithesis.

Example:

Thesis world -> protagonist trusts his peer group.
Antithesis world -> protagonist doesn’t trust his peer group.
Synthesis world -> protagonist trusts himself.

Example of a beat sheet: The Winter Soldier.

Description of what should be in a beat sheet:

1. Opening Image. Give a brief description of who the protagonist is before his world changes.

2. Inciting Incident/Catalyst. Protagonist is thrown out of her familiar world—the Ordinary World—and she begins her quest.

3. Start of Act Two. Protagonist is first challenged by new things. There must be drama. It must be clear whether the protagonist succeeded or failed.

4. Midpoint. If things are good for the protagonist early on this is where they go bad. If things are horrible for the protagonist early on then this is where they begin to go his/her way.

5. Bad guys close in. Often there is a ticking clock involved.

6. All is lost/Dark moment. Lowest part of your characters’s story.
The dark moment or dark turn does against what hero believed in the thesis world. Act Three is the synthesis world.
Finally reaching the tower where the princess is being kept, the hero finds… she’s not there! And not only that, it’s a trap! It looks like the Bad Guy has won.

7. Break into Act Three. Protagonist has an epiphany. Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis.

8. Epiphany. Things turn around. “Step 4: The hero now has to come up with a new plan. And it’s all part and parcel of the overall transformation of the hero and his need to “dig deep down” to find that last ounce of strength (i.e., faith in an unseen power) to win the day.”

9. Race to the finish. A plan is formulated.
“Thinking on the fly, and discovering his best self, the hero executes the new plan.”

10. The Climax. The protagonist and antagonst square off. This is the final confrontation between them. It must be clear that the outcome of this context will be final. No do-overs.

11. Wrap Up: Cash out the stakes. Tie up any loose threads.

Synopsis

A synopsis doesn’t include subplots or minor characters. It is only about the main character and his/her plotline.

Capitalize the names of characters the first time they appear. Also, the synopsis should we written in the third person, present tense.

Rather than create an example of my own, I’ve found an article that includes a wonderful example so head on over to Publishing Crawl and read How To Write a 1-Page Synopsis.

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Every post I pick a book or audiobook I love and recommend it to my readers. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post. :-)

Today I would like to recommend a book I’ve read through many times, I’m talking about 1,000 Awesome Writing Prompts by Ryan Andrew Kinder. I’ve used many of his prompts as writing exercises to begin my writing day.

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I haven’t talked about how to write a screenplay per se, this post is already long enough. I’ll save that for next time.

That’s it for today! I’ll talk to you on Friday. Till then, good writing!

Notes:

1. How to Write a Screenplay: The 5 Step Process.

Be a Book Doctor: How to Evaluate Your Own Story

Book doctors are wonderful. A book doctor is someone who isn’t your husband/wife/parent/friend, someone who can be objective toward your manuscript, someone who can dispassionately evaluate the content and structure of your story. And this can be an enormous help, especially at the beginning of your manuscript when you’re working on your story’s overall structure and shape.

But you don’t have to send your story off to someone else. You can be your own book doctor. How? The first step is to put your manuscript in a drawer and try to forget about it for a week or two. When you take the manuscript out of the drawer you’ll be able to see it more objectively.

There are a few stories I wrote so long ago that I no longer remember them. Reading them again was like reading the work of a stranger. It was painful but rewarding! At the time I wrote it I felt that something was off but I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly needed to be fixed. When I reread the story after a period of years I realized that the story had no midpoint, no crisis, no moment of revelation. The good news: as soon as I saw the structural defect it was surprisingly easy to fix.

So, if you don’t want to send your work off to a book doctor then put it in a drawer for a couple of weeks. Reread the manuscript through from top to bottom and ask yourself the following questions:[1]

Scenes:

• Does each scene have a goal and stakes? Does the main character want something in every scene, even if it is only a glass of water?
• Do you include sequels after the scenes? Or even mini-sequels between scenes (this works especially well if you have one scene per chapter).

Acts:

• Does each act have a main overriding goal and are the stakes spelled out?

Overall Structure:

• Is there a major turn/twist of the plot at the 25, 50 and 75 percent marks?
• Is there a clear Call to Adventure?
• Around the middle of the book—the midpoint crisis—the protagonist needs to understand the story world in a different light. Sometimes this information is about one of the characters—the love interest, the protagonist, the mentor, the protagonist’s helper—or about the Special World of the Adventure.
• Is the Special World of the Adventure strikingly different from the Ordinary World of  the protagonist’s ordinary life?
• Is the protagonist locked into the quest by the 25 percent mark.
• Does the protagonist have an All Is Lost moment at around the 75 percent mark?
• Is there a race to the finish after the All Is Lost point and before the climax?
• Is it clear that the climax is a final test, one that at most one character can win?
• Are the stakes cashed out and all loose ends tied up before the story ends?

Protagonist:

• What state of affairs would make the protagonist happy?
• What danger/obstacle prevents the protagonist from achieving this happy state of affairs?
• Does the protagonist have a moral compass? Does the climax hinge on a moral issue? That is, does it hinge on a point of selflessness vs unselfishness? (Selfishness: Abandonment of conviction for the sake of personal advantage. Unselfishness: Adherence to principle despite the temptation of self-interest.)
• This is just something to think about, it’s not a hard and fast rule: Is the protagonist good but not the brightest penny in the jar or are they brilliant but morally flexible? It doesn’t always happen that the protagonist is one or the other, but there does seem to be a bit of a tradeoff between these two characteristics.

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Every post I pick a book or audiobook I love and recommend it to my readers. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post. :-)

A few months ago I read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris. He is a master of telling folks how to make the most of their time. He helped me! In time for the holidays he's come out with another book: Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers. I haven't read it yet, but it's at the top of my to-be-read list.

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Notes:

1. Many of these questions I’ve taken from Janice Hardy’s wonderful article: How to Be Your Own Book Doctor.

How To Use An Editing Program To Improve Your Writing

A good editing program will tell you how many words your story has, how many of those words are unique, how many sentences there are, how many paragraphs, how readable your text is, the number of cliches you’ve used, and so on. 

And that’s great, but one thing I don’t like about editing programs is that, often, the numbers displayed don’t give any context. For example, if I have 10 adverbs in my story is that bad or good?

The trick, I’ve found, is to compare my writing with that of my favorite authors; those people whose work I both love and envy. For me that’s writers like Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood.

What follows is a comparison of two of my trunk stories—I wrote them when I was a teenager—with sections of Stephen King’s and Neil Gaiman’s work. 

Here are the results:

As you can see, the major difference between my old work and my favorite authors is the number of cliches in dialogue and redundant words. Beyond that, my old stories had more vague and abstract words. Also, my sentences were shorter than my favorite authors and I used shorter paragraphs.

That information is valuable. It shows me ways I can work on improving my craft.

Conclusion

Editing programs can be wonderful if you take the stats they give you with a grain of salt. Their value is in letting you compare your writing with others, to see the differences and similarities. If I love Stephen King's writing but he uses a few adverbs, I'm not going to be overly concerned about using a few adverbs even though I agree that they are weeds that deserved to be plucked from one's writing.

My own personal yardstick is the authors I admire, the authors I want to write like (and I don’t mean exactly like; each writer needs to have his/her own voice). But you have ideas about what good writing is and what bad writing is, and you've acquired these ideas from reading other writers. There are authors you think are terrific writers and authors you would be devastated if anyone compared you to.

The editing program I use is Pro Writing Aid. It doesn’t work well on larger blocks of text (10,000+ words) but it tells you many things about your manuscript: grammar, overused words, readability statistics, cliches, sticky sentences, vague words, repeated words, sentence length, consistency, dialogue, pacing, pronoun use, and much more. I’ve used the program on and off for a couple of years and, because I personally use and like their product, I’ve become an affiliate for them. 

What editing programs do you use? Have they helped you become a better writer? I'd love it if you shared your experience. :-)

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Every post I pick a book or audiobook I love and recommend it to my readers. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post. :-)

Today I'd like to recommend The Mental Game of Writing: How to Overcome Obstacles, Stay Creative and Productive, and Free Your Mind for Success by James Scott Bell. Lately I've been struggling with anxiety and find reading "you can do it!" books soothing. And James Scott Bell is a really nice guy (I met him!) who gives terrific advice.

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That's it! Have a great weekend and I'll talk to you again on Monday. Till then, good writing!

Editing Your Zero Draft

NanoWriMo is over! If you participated and wrote more than you would have otherwise, you’re a winner. If you ended up writing 50,000+ words, that’s awesome!

It’s been a week since NaNoWriMo ended so you’ve had a chance to distance yourself a little bit from the story. If you don’t have sufficient distance from your writing the danger is that when you read your Zero Draft you won’t be able to be objective. What I try to do is put my manuscript away for a week or two so I can come back to it with new eyes.

In any case, after enough time has passed rescue your manuscript from the drawer and read it from start to finish. There’s only one rule: don’t edit until you’ve read the whole thing. This is torture for me, but it’s important to re-load the whole story into your mind without changing anything.

When I read something that’s not right, a misspelling, etc., I want to go into the file and fix it but if I were to do that then I’d start adding sections that didn’t need to be added and deleting material that was necessary for the development of a future event.

I find one way to lessen the temptation to edit is to print a hardcopy of the manuscript and, if I must make notes, then at least I can’t change the electronic file. By the way if you want to save paper and load your manuscript into an app that allows you to mark up a file I recommend GoodNotes, it’s the app I use.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you read:

- Does a character’s name change halfway through the story? Is the name spelled the same way throughout the manuscript? Do all the names you use begin with a different letter? Are all the names sufficiently distinct from each other?

- Is each character absolutely necessary to advance the plot? Can two (or more) characters be merged into one? Or are there too few characters?

- Do NOT worry about grammar or spelling (other than for names) at this stage. If you’re anything like me, you’re going to end up not using a lot of the text in your Zero Draft. Fiddling with grammar and spelling would just waste your time.

->After your first read through.

After you’ve read your story through try to answer these two questions:

(a) What state of affairs represents happiness to your protagonist? Being together with friends and family? Winning the lottery? Retiring from their job? Going into business for themselves? Traveling the world?

(b) What danger threatens to keep the protagonist’s dream from becoming reality?

Now try and answer these questions:

What is the protagonists external goal? That is, what concrete thing or state of affairs does the protagonist desire to bring about? For example, in Die Hard John McClane wants to protect his wife and the other hostages and defeat the terrorists.

Is there a physical object that represents this goal? For example, in Raiders of the Lost Ark Indiana Jones wanted to bring the Ark back to the United States.

In the recent movie “Arrival” the protagonist’s external goal is to understand why the aliens arrived on earth, to understand the alien language.

Make sure you know what the protagonist’s goal is—it will form the spine of your story.

Story Structure

I’ve written quite a few posts about story structure (link and link) so I won’t go into that here. But be sure that your protagonist’s external and internal goals are what drives the key scenes of the story.

Antagonist

Another thing to focus on at this stage is that the protagonist has a suitably strong antagonist. You want the antagonist and protagonist to have the same goal and for it to be impossible for them both to achieve the goal. Also, it tends to work well if the protagonist and antagonist are alike in many ways.

If the antagonist is the protagonist's nemesis then he/she will be quite a bit like the protagonist but differ in at least one important respect.

In Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark, Beloq is Indy’s nemesis. Both men are archaeologists and are driven to procure relics. But they operate by very different moral codes and view the relics they hunt for very differently. Indy appreciates the relics for themselves while Beloq is primarily interested in what the relic can do for him in terms of wealth or power.

The number one thing that you need to keep in mind as you re-read your Zero Draft is to be kind to yourself. There are going to be awful bits and there are going to be glorious bits. Don’t stress about the disastrous passages, focus on the good, focus on what works. Stay positive.

If you’re anything like me there are going to be a LOT of drafts between now and your final one. It’s a process of weeding out what doesn’t belong and gradually shaping the story. It’s early days still. If you keep at it you’ll end up with a story you love.

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Every post I pick a book or audiobook I love and recommend it to my readers. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post. :-)

Today I am feeling whimsical so what better book to recommend than Fantastical Beasts and Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling. From the blurb: "When Magizoologist Newt Scamander arrives in New York, he intends his stay to be just a brief stopover. However, when his magical case is misplaced and some of Newt's fantastic beasts escape, it spells trouble for everyone…"

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That's it! I'll talk to you again on Friday. Till then, good writing. :-)

Writers: How To Get Rid Of Fear

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

—Frank Herbert, Dune

Fear is real. It’s that hard fist that twists your gut, that grabs hold of your heart and squeezes. It’s an elevated pulse and the inability to catch your breath.

Everyone’s number one fear is different. Perhaps you might be terrified by the thought of receiving a one star review. Or of your mother/father/grandmother/child discovering you write erotic fiction. Or of publicly putting yourself out there, doing the work, publishing your writing, and failing horribly. Or ... I could go on forever.

Beating The Fear

Here are a few things I do to deal with fear that work for me:

1. Recognize that fear is an emotion.

Often my fear is just a feeling of untethered doom. I’m not afraid of any one thing, the fear just flows through me grabbing the things I’m currently most anxious about and blowing my natural hum-drum concerns WAY out of proportion.

2. Start shutting off the fear by shifting from emotional mode to analytical mode.

This is true for me: the more fearful I am the less rational I am.

I’ve found that strong emotion and analytical thought don’t happen at the same time. If I’m in the middle of an anxiety attack I’m not thinking rationally and vice versa. Which makes sense. If I’m having a fight or flight response the blood is being directed toward the bits of me that are good at either fighting or fleeing. And, sad to say, none of those bits are inside my noggin.

But it’s often difficult to make that transition from run away emotion to analytical thought. Here are a few questions I ask to help me shake the fear, to help me take back control:

3. Name your fear.

By “name” I mean write it down. Be specific. Often fear is just a feeling of untethered doom, it’s not cognitive at all. Force yourself to pin down exactly what you’re afraid of. What are you afraid of losing? If what you fear comes to pass, what would that state of affairs look like?

Sometimes I have quite literally been afraid of nothing. After writing my fear down I realize that even if it came to pass it wouldn’t significantly damage me or anything I care about.

Keep in mind that fear is a shapeshifter, a chameleon. It’s more of a feeling than a thought. As I said, for me it’s often a feeling of doom that wraps it’s black tendrils through me and follows me wherever I go.

Often we don’t really know what we’re afraid of, or the fear shifts, takes on different forms. Since we can’t pin it down it lurks in our head and takes on innumerable forms.

Fear has physical effects that are themselves harmful. It is very difficult to be emotional—and fear is one of the strongest, primal, emotions there is—and thoughtful at the same time. The very presence of fear makes it more difficult to think clearly.

Fear feeds anxiety. Write down what you’re afraid of, pin it down. Be explicit. Detailed. As soon as you see it you can start thinking about it rationally and the fear will begin to lose its power over you.

4. Do something.

In general, doing something is better than doing nothing, even if that something is simply reciting an affirmation like Frank Herbert’s “I must not fear.”

Do nothing and your fear will probably win. If you do something then the fear might still be there but maybe it won’t. If you keep trying, if you keep working at it, you will find something to banish the fear.

Don’t let fear paralyze you. When that happens the fear becomes an endless loop feeding itself, continually growing stronger as you grow weaker.

5. Do something that will make what you fear less likely.

Do something practical that will mitigate the consequences if what you fear comes about. For example, my number one fear used to be that I wouldn’t be able to support myself with my writing. What did I do when the fear hit? I threw my energy into writing and publishing!

6. How likely is it that what you fear will come about?

My fears are generally rational in the sense that they _could_ happen, what I tend to lose sight of is that it is improbable in the extreme that that exact thing will happen.

When you write down your fear be sure to make it specific. Detailed.

Don’t just write: I am scared I will be a failure.

Write: I am scared that after all the years of work I put into my manuscript, after all the money I spent having it edited, that I will publish it and everyone who reads it will hate it and leave a one star review.

There are LOTS of ways to be a failure and it’s easy to give that fear power if we don’t pin it down exactly what we’re afraid of. After we write it down our rational mind can go to work analyzing it and (this has been my experience) it immediately starts to lose it’s power over me. If that doesn’t happen then I’m usually not being specific enough.

7. What can you do to make the fear less likely?

Fear is often a reaction to change or potential change. Change is scary, but it doesn’t have to be. Often change is both good and bad. The trick is to optimize the good and minimize the bad. Ask yourself: what can you do that would make it less likely for what you fear to come about?

For myself: Write more. Publish more. The more one writes and publishes the better one becomes at both. Professional writers aren’t those who have no fear, they are people who have learnt to write anyway to, as Steven Pressfield says, Do The Work.

8. The worst case scenario rarely happens.

When I’m stressed I imagine a worst case scenario. And that might be okay—after all, it’s not a bad idea to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. What I find I have to keep firmly in mind is that this worst case state of affairs isn’t my current state of affairs _and it may never be_.

I want you to imagine something. Imagine a state of affairs, one not as bleak as the worst case scenario your mind/brain/soul is fixated on. Now realize that this future is possible. Perhaps it is just as likely as the bleak one that has been gnawing at you.

9. Every day do one thing that brings you closer to your goal.

Ask yourself: What could I do that would make my fear less likely to come true?

Every day do something that brings you closer to your goal then write it down what you did in your writing journal. Then, at the end of the month, look at what you did that month.

Look at where you were at the beginning of the month and where you are now that the month has come to an end. Realize that you have made progress toward your goal. Realize that you _can_ achieve your goals!

10. Embrace Failure.

If you’re not failing you’re not trying and if you don’t try you’ll never win. Simple as that. To banish fear we must act. We must fail to win.

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Every post I pick a book or audiobook I love and recommend it to my readers. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post. :-)

I’m re-watching the TV show Supernatural. I love that show! Though I love the Sam and Dean characters, they aren’t the stars of the show, the monsters are. This is a monster book for writers: Writing Monsters: How to Craft Believably Terrifying Creatures to Enhance Your Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction by Philip Athans with an introduction from the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society.

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That’s it! I’ll talk to you again on Wednesday. In the meantime good writing! Don’t let fear win.

How To Write A Cosy Mystery: The Sleuth

I’ve written about the difficulty I used to have writing mystery stories, something a number of you empathized with. At the time I thought it was odd I couldn’t write a mystery since I’ve read them all my life.

The other day I realized most of the mystery stories I had been reading during that time were written before I was born. I think that's one reason I had such trouble writing a contemporary mystery—I was out of step with today's readers. To fix this I ended up taking my own advice (see: How To Tailor A Story To Readers) and read a number of contemporary mysteries.

I chose cozy mysteries and selected 4 popular authors, buying one book from each author. Each book had a rank of less than 5134.

To give you an idea what that means, according to the Kindle Best Seller Calculator, a book with a rank of 5133 sells about 32 books a day. Not bad! Sure, if the author is charging a dollar for the book they’re only receiving about 35 cents in royalties but that’s still $11.00 per day or $330 per month. That’s a bill payment! [2]

So let’s take a look at the characteristics of a modern cosy focusing on the sleuth.

Sleuth

The Sleuth Is An Amateur

The sleuth is, generally speaking, not a professional investigator. She may be, for example, a party coordinator, a mystery writer, a bookstore owner, a caterer, a librarian, but she’s generally not a police detective, coroner, medical examiner, private detective or even newspaper reporter.

As we will see, the sleuth often owns her own small business, one that brings her into close contact with her fellow townspeople.

The Sleuth Has A Connection To The Police

Because the sleuth is an amateur it comes in handy for her to have a connection to a professional like a police detective. Perhaps the sleuth’s boyfriend is a detective, or one of her in-laws. If it’s a small town and your sleuth runs the local bakery then you could always just have the detective come in for a coffee and sweet pastry every morning.

The Sleuth Is Likable

The sleuth is usually unambiguously good. They are no antiheroes in a cosy mystery!

As soon as I wrote that I thought of Sherlock. Of course Sherlock isn't a cosy! But still. It’s a quintessential British mystery. I would argue that even though Sherlock defines himself as a high-functioning sociopath that he is both good and (for the reader at least!) likable. Why?

Because Sherlock has various good-guy qualities. For instance, he is loyal in the sense that he stands by those who stand by him. And he is good in the sense that he does not repay those who do him good deeds with evil—at least not intentionally! Anyway, moving on ... ;)

The Sleuth Investigates

What does the sleuth investigate? Three things: the crime scene, the suspects and the clues.

Although the murder itself is often done offstage, the sleuth should investigate the scene of the crime. Generally this means going there and taking a look. Since she’s not a professional and, really, has no legitimate reason to be there, this can take a bit of creativity. Which may be why the sleuth often finds the body! Problem solved.

Much less common, the sleuth learns about the crime scene through intermediaries—for instance, she might not have been on the case when the first murder occurred and so must talk to the detectives who were there, study their notes and so on.

(I’ll cover the suspects and the clues in a later post.)

The Sleuth’s Hook

The Sleuth, being an amateur, needs a reason to investigate the crime. Perhaps this is why—at least in the books I’ve read—the first victim is often found either on the sleuth’s property or nearby.

Another possibility is to isolate everyone in the story so that characters can be pressed into different roles. For instance ...

• It could be that the worst snowstorm in recorded history has cut off the inn, or possibly the entire town. 
• It could be that a flood has demolished the only bridge into, or out of, town.
• It could be that the sleuth is part of a team building exercise.
• It could be that the sleuth is part of a small English village.

The Sleuth As Character

The sleuth is, of course, the protagonist so the same pointers apply here that apply for any protagonist. When the sleuth is introduced, answer as many of the following as you can:

• What does the sleuth desire above all else?
• What is her ruling passion?
• What does she fear?
• What does she do better than anyone else?
• What are her tags?

The Sleuth: Tropes 

Tropes aren't necessarily bad, it just depends on how reflectively they're used.

Leaving the big city.

In most of the cosy mysteries I've read the sleuth has moved from a big city back to the small town they grew up in.

Disastrous romantic relationship in the backstory. 

Often the sleuth has had a disastrous romantic relationship in the city and this is part of the reason she moves back to her hometown. Sometimes the significant other comes to visit the sleuth and this becomes a subplot.

The sleuth becomes the owner of a small business and struggles financially.

Very often the sleuth owns some sort of business that brings them into regular contact with townspeople. Sometimes she has inherited the business from a family member such as a parent or grandparent.

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Every post I pick a book or audiobook I love and recommend it to my readers. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post. :-)

Today I'm recommending Writing Deep Scenes: Plotting Your Story Through Action, Emotion, and Theme by Martha Alderson and Jordan Rosenfeld sold by Writer's Digest. From the blurb: "Writing Deep Scenes teaches you how to write strong, layered, and engaging scenes—the secret to memorable, page-turning plots. It's filled with practical tools for building layers and nuance into your scenes, employing the right scene types at the right junctures, and developing a profound understanding of how plot and scene intertwine."

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References

This article drew from material in the following articles:

4 Things You Should Know About Writing a Cozy Mystery Novel
20 Tips for Writing the Cozy or Traditional Mystery
Writing the Cozy Mystery
The Mystery of Mysteries: 16 Steps to Writing the Cozy Mystery
How To Write a Cozy Mystery

Notes:

1. How To Write A Murder Mystery, by Lee Goldberg.

2. I’m NOT saying that if you choose to write a cosy that you will meet with similar success! I know you know that, but I thought I’d better say it anyway. :-)