Workshop Overview: "So You Want to Write a Murder Mystery"

• Set the stakes early – What’s at risk for the characters?
• Control the pace – Use short sentences and cliffhangers to create urgency
• Withhold information strategically – Give readers just enough, but never too much
• Use sensory details – Let the setting enhance the tension
• Foreshadowing and misdirection – Build suspense by hinting at what’s to come
  
  

Value: Learn how to write a tension filled, tight paced story, of any genre

Dramatic Whodunit: Write & Act Your Mystery

• Participants break into small groups.
• Each group writes a short mystery scene (10 mins) with a crime, clues, and red herrings.
• Then they act it out — using improvisation, role-play, character voices.
• Finish with feedback: What felt dramatic? Which clues hit? How did performance change pacing?
• You bring your theatre background to coach on voice, timing, tension.

Value: Writers learn how to think about character from an actor’s lens; performers sharpen storytelling.

Suspense Through Sound and Movement

• Explore how non-dialogue elements (sound, gesture, silence) build tension.
• Do a mini “silent scene” exercise: participants create a crime moment with just movement & expression.
• Then write a matching short mystery monologue or section.
• Discuss how pacing in performance informs pacing in prose.

Value: Helps writers understand subtext, tension, and rhythm; draws on performance skills to make scenes more vivid.

Character Interview: Deepening Dialogue

• In a “talk show” format, you (as host) interview participants who play their mystery characters.
• Writers develop a backstory, motive, secrets, tics and language
• During interview, you press them, provoke, dig into hidden motives.
• Afterwards, writers return to their draft and deepen character dialogue based on what emerged.

Value: Forces writers to think out loud like an actor; reveals character nuances they might not have considered and gives each character a true dialogue

Using Performance Techniques to Become a Better Public Speaker 

• Participants explore how acting skills strengthen presence on stage.
• They break their talk into clear beats and practise shifting tone and pace to hold attention.
• They work through body-based drills that build grounded posture, deliberate movement and confident delivery.
• They test vocal exercises that add colour, rhythm and clarity.
• They rehearse sections of a talk aloud and refine timing, breath cues and transitions.
• They use short pre-performance rituals that steady nerves and sharpen focus.

Value: Participants learn practical performance skills that make their public speaking sharper, clearer and more engaging.

How to Plot a Story

• Participants begin by defining a protagonist’s clear desire and how that desire drives action.
• They add pressure by designing obstacles that expose cost, risk and emotional conflict.
• They map five turning points — setup, disruption, rising complications, crisis and resolution.
• They build stakes by crafting decisions that grow harder at each step.
• They test their plot by checking whether character choices cause the next event.
• They track threads like secrets, motives and relationships to avoid gaps in logic..

Value: Participants leave with a workable plot structure shaped by character, tension and clear narrative movement