Gumshoe: Creative Writing Through Mystery Stories - David McRobbie

Published by Longman Cheshire Pty Limited: Melbourne, Australia, 1989.

Here is a book that I have read solely to get some ideas in putting together a unit of work for some of my English students. I selected the book from a pile being given away by my former Head-of-Department, and when I noticed that some of my students had an interest in mystery fiction, I pulled the book back out and read through it for ideas.

For what I have been working on, it is a helpful, if slightly 'light' resource. McRobbie breaks the mystery genre down into its different elements - so chapters on such things as plot, settings and 'The Detective' - and intersperses them with original pieces of short mystery fiction. As someone who enjoys the 'whodunnit' genre, these stories are not very complicated, but then, that's not the point! Although for most of the stories I found myself going, "Well, of course its that person, they just said [insert incriminating statement here]," in making it that obvious McRobbie is able to highlight to high-school students how clues should be scattered throughout stories.

If I wasn't planning on developing some mystery stories with my students, this would not be a book I would come back to. But as I am planning on doing so, this is a good resource. 

It would also help to get your head around writing whodunnits if you were a wanna-be author.

Which, I guess, also makes me the target audience.

Completed 19 October 2022.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Various Picture Books

Image
As I said in my review of Peter Rabbit's Storytime Collection , I am wanting to find a way to acknowledge the books I read to Ezekiel without adding individual picture books to my reading list - I feel that would dilute it a bit much. So in this post, I've decided to look at a group of picture books all together. I've picked five picture books that I like (with a notable and noteworthy exception), and also asked Elise for five picture books she is  enjoying reading to Ezekiel. It's interesting (and helpful for this list) that our lists haven't overlapped at all this time around. So, here are ten picture books (plus one bonus 'book') that Ezekiel has been exposed to in the first 7ish months of his life: Karl's List Bunnies on the Bus - Philip Ardagh and (illustrator) Ben Mantle. Published by Walker Books Ltd: London, 2020 (2019). This is one of my favourites among our current picture books. A group of bunnies hijack a bus and hurtle through the town on th
Read more

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Image
Published by Allen & Unwin: Crows Nest, NSW, Australia, 2008. Book snobs, block your ears. *whispers* I think the movie was better. Okay, book snobs, you can unblock your ears now. *waves to get the attention of book snobs* To be honest, a huge reason why I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society at this moment in time was that I thought it would be funny to have two books with ridiculously long titles appear back-to-back in my list. For anyone who thought that there were super-deep reasons why I picked the books that I did, I hope this helps you see the error of your ways. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (which I am refusing to shorten for the rest of this review) still tells the same story as that in the movie adaptation (also called  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society ), but does so in a less gripping (though still interesting) manner. This is for a few reasons: firstly,  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society book is e
Read more

Words of Radiance - Brandon Sanderson

Image
Published by Tom Doherty Associates Books/TOR Fantasy: New York, 2014. Book 2 in 'The Stormlight Archives' series. Preceded by ' The Way of Kings .' Followed by (spin-off) ' Edgedancer ' and (main series) ' Oathbringer. ' Well, I finally read the second Stormlight book, this one even longer than the last  at a whopping 1080 pages, and once again found myself enjoying Sanderson's world immensely. The plot does take longer than strictly necessary in places - particularly in the storyline following Shallan Davar as she journeys towards the Shattered Plains - but overall is still a page-turner. By the middle of Words of Radiance our three main characters (Kaladin, Shallan and Adolin) are finally in the same location, something that was never achieved in the first book. In keeping them apart for so long, Sanderson is able to give his readers a real understanding of what makes each character tick, and this becomes quite interesting as when these character
Read more