How to Make a Marlowe in 12 Easy Lessons (Part 1)

             If you've read more than a few mystery novels in he past, you've probably heard how readers tend to divide the genre into three sections: the cozy, the hard-boiled, and the police procedural. Later on, Lord willing, I plan to post in detail about the elements of these sections. For now, I'd like to share 12 (abridged and edited) rules about writing a mystery story from pulp mystery writer Raymond Chandler (all of which can be found in full form in this book).

For those who don't know, Humphrey Bogart became the face of hard-boiled detectives after his portrayal as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, two of the more famous characters of the genre

Raymond Chandler’s Twelve Notes on the Mystery Story

1.                  It must be credibly motivated, both as to the original situation and the denouement; it must consist of the plausible actions of plausible people in plausible circumstances, it being remembered that plausibility is largely a matter of style.
2.           It must be technically sound as to the methods of murder and detection. No fantastic poisons or improper effects from poisons such as death from nonfatal doses, no silencers on revolvers or snakes climbing bellropes (although, if well researched, you can evade this rule). Such things at once destroy the foundation of the story. If the detective is a trained policeman, he must act like one, and have the mental and physical equipment that go with the job. If he is a private investigator or amateur, he must at least know enough about police methods not to make an *** out of himself.
3.                It must be honest with the reader. This is always said, but the implications are not realized. Important facts not only must not be concealed, they must not be distorted by false emphasis. Unimportant facts must not be projected in such a way as to make them portentous. Inferences from the facts are the detective’s stock in trade; but he should disclose enough to keep the reader’s mind working. It is arguable, although not certain, that inferences arising from special knowledge are a bit of a cheat, because the basic theory of all good mystery writing is that at some stage not too late in the story the reader did have the materials to solve the problem. If special scientific knowledge was necessary to interpret the facts, the reader did not have the solution unless he had the special knowledge.
4.                It must be realistic as to character, setting, and atmosphere. It must be about real people in a real world. Very few mystery writers have any talent for character work, but that doesn’t mean it is not necessary. It makes the difference between the story you reread and remember and the one you skim through and almost instantly forget.
5.                It must have a sound story value apart from the mystery element; i.e., the investigation itself must be an adventure worth reading.
6.               To achieve this it must have some form of suspense, even if only intellectual. This does not mean menace and especially it does not mean that the detective must be menaced by grave personal danger. This last is a trend and like all trends will exhaust itself by overimitation. Nor need the reader be kept hanging onto the edge of his chair. The overplotted story can be dull too; too much shock may result in numbness to shock. But there must be conflict, physical, ethical or emotional, and there must be some element of danger in the broadest sense of the word.
7.              It must have color, lift, and a reasonable amount of dash. It takes an awful lot of technical adroitness to compensate for a dull style, although it has been done, especially in England.
8.               It must have enough essential simplicity to be explained easily when the time comes (this is possibly the most often violated of all the rules). The ideal denouement is one in which everything is revealed in a flash of action. This is rare because ideas that good are always rare. The explanation need not be very short, and it often cannot be short; but it must be interesting in itself, it must be something the reader is anxious to hear, and not a new story with a new set of characters, dragged in to justify an overcomplicated plot. Above all the explanation must not be merely a long-winded assembling of minute circumstances which no ordinary reader could possibly be expected to remember. To make the solution dependent on this is a kind of unfairness, since here again the reader did not have the solution within his grasp, in any practical sense. To expect him to remember a thousand trivialities and from them to select that three that are decisive is as unfair as to expect him to have a profound knowledge of chemistry, metallurgy, or the mating habits of the Patagonian anteater.
9.               It must baffle a reasonably intelligent reader. This opens up a very difficult question. Since readers are of many minds, some will guess a cleverly hidden murder and some will be fooled by the most transparent plot. It is not necessary or even possible to fool to the hilt the real aficionado of mystery fiction. There must be some important elements of the story that elude the most penetrating reader.
10.               The solution must seem inevitable once revealed. This is the least often emphasize element of a good mystery, but it is one of the important elements of all fiction. It is not enough merely to fool or elude or sidestep the reader; you must make him feel that he ought not to have been fooled and that the fooling was honorable.
11.                It must not try to do everything at once. If it is a puzzle story operating in a rather cool, reasonable atmosphere, it cannot also be a violent adventure or a passionate romance. An atmosphere of terror destroys logical thinking; if the story is about the intricate psychological pressures that lead apparently ordinary people to commit murder, it cannot then switch to the cool analysis of the police investigator. The detective cannot be hero and menace at the same time; the murderer cannot be a tormented victim of circumstance and also a heavy.
12.               It must punish the criminal in one way or another, not necessarily by operation of the law. Contrary to popular belief, this has nothing much to do with morality. It it a part of the logic of detection. If the detective fails to resolve the consequences of the crime, the story is an unresolved chord and leaves irritation behind it.

          He adds twelve added notes, all of which will come later. If you are like me, with a strong distaste of Chandler, feel free to disregard these rules. They have worked for several hard-boiled authors, so I would recommend to pick and choose what you take from the above lessons.