Write a mystery detective story
Detectives and super-sleuths make great characters for stories – pupils can practice their creative writing, design cartoon characters based on criminals and crime fighters and research the science behind their techniques.
Below we’ve amassed some links for your students to learn about the genre, get some tips for developing a story and finding information to get them inspired.
Edgar Allen Poe wrote the first modern detective story in 1841, and it was another of Poe's novels (The Mystery of Marie Roget, 1850) that was the first to use forensic science as part of the crime-solving story.
But it was Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes (from the 1880s) who was the first forensic star of literature. Doyle was a doctor and based the character on a couple of forensic experts he had been taught by at medical school.
Agatha Christie also drew on medical knowledge to construct her plots. She had worked in a hospital dispensary during the war where she learnt loads about poisons; a cause of death she used in almost half of her stories. For more on this history stuff, check out Channel 4’s Forensic Fiction.
Agatha Christie and Doyle’s stories tend to be about inspired amateur sleuths, nowadays it’s all much more professionalised, so if your students are writing a modern-day story they might want to check out our Clued up Careers page to find out about their characters’ special roles and skills.
The very British characters of Miss Marple and Sherlock Holmes are just one side of crime fiction. What about the comic-book Superheroes such as Batman, Superman etc? They tend to be less realistic than standard detective fiction, but you’d be surprised how much of their fantastic element is based on scientific ideas.
Check out BBC-i’s Science of Superheroes for more information. Maybe the students could take a bit of forensic science and blow it up into a fantastical sci-fi idea for their story.
Tips for writing a detective story
BBC-i’s how to write a crime novel pages are written by a real crime-novelist, Alison Joseph. It also has links to profiles of the careers of other crime writers to get you inspired.
All stories need a beginning, middle and a great big conclusive ending. You’re lucky with a detective story because the genre naturally provides you with a perfect ending – the solution of the crime.
However, to really make the most of this you’ll need to carefully construct clues (and even counter-clues to throw the audience off the scent!) and artfully create a sense of suspense to keep the reader entertained all the way till the end.
The solution to the mystery could be the solution to a science puzzle which you’ve given clues to the audience for along the way (so if they’re very clever they’ll have worked it out…). Or you could make like the Scooby Doo gang and have a great unmasking.
What little bit of evidence the criminal forgets to recover is crucial, and is often the key part of the story as the readers all wonder at the amazing brain-skills of the detective. You can read some of our Thick As Thieves true stories to get some ideas.
Or for some more subtle ways that a criminal might get caught, get the students to check out sites such as the Forensics Science Pages and Science Net.
Cartoon ideas
If you are going to have a cartoon detective you’ll need to think carefully about what it will look like. There are loads of well-known cartoon crime-busters for the students to think about to get ideas.
Part of the greatness of cartoons is that they tend not to be completely realistic so you can exaggerate, characterise and dramatise to extremes. However, the students could deliberately keep real science in their story, to mix with a more fantastic element. Or, you could even do it as a photo-story and get groups to dress up as the characters.
One of the most important things to do if you are going to make a cartoon is to plan. It is worth making a sketch of a storyboard before you start drawing it up properly. If you use thin paper you can lay out each draft as a trace of the one below it.
Even if your story is going to be completely written it is perhaps still worth sketching out a storyboard, just to help to plan it. The plot and the exact order you give information to your readers in is so important to the telling of a good crime story!