Jellybeans and Applesauce Vampires: A Guide to Mystery Writing

Hey Fam,

No, it isn't an off-brand Bailey School Kids book you missed reading.

I’ve been working on a story that also happens to be a murder mystery and I have come to the conclusion that… mysteries basically mean writing the same story 3 times. 

Let me explain:

There is a form of writing that is sometimes referred to as ‘pantsing’ and if you are a ‘pantser’ that means you write your stories by the seat of your pants with no outline of events or structure really planned before. You just kind of write it. Which is admirable, a lot of very successful writers do this, but that makes it difficult to leave breadcrumbs along the way for your reader, and since solving a murder is all about them clues… you get it. 

So here I am writing what actually happened. The crime as it was committed, how evidence got left behind, etc. Plus any rumors that appeared along the way. So I need to sort out what I will be calling. Stage 1: Who did what with how many jellybeans? 

V will be the victim and K will be the killer. Cool, that makes sense. Ok, so K needs a motive… Jellybeans… get it? See, there is a formula happening. K has jellybeans for V, and V is either in the wrong place at the wrong time or forced, either by manipulation or force into the wrong place at the right time and BAM, JELLYBEANS ON THE FLOOR. 

I’m starting to think this analogy has some holes, but I’m in too deep now so hang on…

We got the Jellybeans (motive), we got the Jelly (crime) and the beans (the clean up.) This is what I know, as the omniscient brain behind the writing process that no one else knows. No one. 

Next: The reason why the crime wasn’t solved. This is what the rumor mill, or the cops, or the court of public opinion think happened. Bits are right, because facts, but overall the assumption is wrong and thus the crime cannot be solved. Thus I shall call this stage: Those jellies cannot be beaned.  Sticking with the analogy. 

So the cops can’t bean the jellies, and the people who know about the crime are like “clearly V did [blank] with the gummy bears and that is why X is Y but not Z.” People get facts wrong, the wrong people are asked for information, people lie, bad people pass polygraphs (NEVER TAKE THE POLYGRAPH) and good people fail them (I LITERALLY JUST TOLD YOU NOT TO TAKE THE POLYGRAPH) Maybe there are no suspects, maybe there are too many. Maybe the wrong person goes to prison. 

This happens in real life all the time. 

BUT, the most important part of this stage is establishing why the original people on the case did not or could not solve it. There are a lot of factors that can be based around time and simple human error; was DNA not a thing? Did the cops miss something? Was the crime not noticed until much later? Did someone tamper with the scene and evidence? Did too much time pass and the investigation went cold, then was forgotten-by everyone except V’s family and friends. It stops being on the news and in papers, people stop talking about it, other crimes happen, people stop caring. 

There is also the ugly side of humanity to consider; was V a person of colour or a visible minority and thus proper attention was not given. Were they part of multiple minorities? Were they a sex worker? Was there substance abuse involved? Did they have a criminal past or were previously a runaway? Intersectionality is key, because no one is ever just one thing, and when it comes to people on the margins of society, they are often labeled as just that one thing and then passed over. K’s get away with bad things, until someone cares. 

Which is where Stage 3 comes in, because for whatever reason [insert catalyst here] your main character and their squad, if there is one, care. Those meddling kids/adults get involved and due to a fresh set of eyes, luck, or just giving a damn, suddenly clues! I will call this stage, And then there were jellybeans. Wow, this analogy is awful. 

Someone dig up Agatha Christie so I can apologize. 

These are the bits and pieces your characters find and piece together. The grains of truth from the rumor mill, the notes from the cold case files, newspaper articles, etc. and different eyes looking at the same clues and getting very different information. Because intersectionality is important. Life experience is important. 

For example, if I told you I refuse to eat almond-flavored things 99% of the time, some might just think that I don’t like almonds. But another true crime fan will know that cyanide smells like bitter almonds to some people, and thus, you can poison someone with almond flavored stuff, and would know that I am being both paranoid and presently not poisoned by cyanide. 

Genius, I know.

So now you have your Scoobies with varying life experiences and viewpoints, picking up on clues and piecing the puzzle together. Neat, but remember, they still don’t know exactly what happened so they can be wrong. They can come to the right conclusion, that K jellied V’s beans and hit on important points with accuracy, but at the end of the day if only two people know the truth and one has been jellybean’d, that leaves the remaining person to tell their version of events [insert colonialism reference here] and they can spin the truth to their liking… or just not say a damn thing. 

Wow, this is a very long post for me to explain that mysteries are like onions [insert Shrek] and there are a lot of layers to consider. 

I effing love it. 

All this flailing around in the dark and considering the layers of the mystery onion got me thinking about moments from the past. Like ya do. And I realized in a sort of related but also entirely erroneous moment from my childhood that, crap… I might have been responsible for the installation of screens in my elementary school windows. 

“But Rune!” ye say. “Screens in windows have been a thing for a long time!”

“Nay nay.” I respond, “Not in the 90s. Not all schools were created equal, and my kindergarten classroom did not have screens.”

It is a well known fact that I am a goblin of a person, always have been and always will be. I do shit that doesn’t make sense and usually I just get weird looks but am written off as ‘eccentric, but harmless.’ 

Queue; kindergarten Rune. A smol goblin childe who did not appreciate such things as rules, and designated snack time, and old tunes like “Rune, I’ve told you for the thirtieth time do NOT climb on the counter!” 

To all of these things, lil Rune said, “balls to that!” 

So, applesauce cups. If you know you know. I had one in my lunch and I wanted it, but it wasn’t snack time or recess and since rules barely apply to my goblin ass I thought, do it lil’Rune, you can get away with it. Because remember kids, it’s not illegal if you don’t get caught. 

It’s called wisdom, and I am an old, chaotic soul.

So I sneak and get my apple sauce and hide poorly in the back corner of the class room behind this big doll house that several kids are actively using. I do the thing I do, where I pretend I’m a vampire and drink the apple sauce like the tiny monster I am and when I’m nearly finished… The teacher calls us for story time. 

I’ve already committed the crime, and rules be damned, I’m getting away with it. So I take the nearly finished apple sauce and tuck it behind some books under an open window. 5 year old me thinking, heck yes, I’ll get rid of the evidence later and I join storytime believing that I am a criminal mastermind. The day goes on and ends, and I forget about ye olde evidence because I’m effing 5. 

The next day, it is lovely and warm and the teacher opens up all the windows again. Then at some point, after our recess and during story time, there appears to be a problem. By this time, that leftover applesauce has been baking in the almost-summer-break sun for almost two days and, like flashing lights at a dumpster fire, is drawing the attention of the white-trashiest of insects. The wasp. 

Ok, so it’s halfway through story time and there is a wasp. Just one wasp in a room full of 30 sticky children… well 29 sticky children and 1 sticky goblin disguised as a human. The teacher tells us to ignore it, and we don’t, but she continues with story time anyway. Then mere minutes later, we, the sticky youth of tomorrow-year, are screaming because suddenly ‘wasp’ becomes ‘FUCKING WASPS.’ Literally wasps everywhere. I know memory is fallible and I was probably thinking there were more wasps than there actually was, but even if I do some very bad math, there still had to be 20 or 30 wasps suddenly in the classroom. Enough that the teacher was also panicking and ushered us all out into the hallway. 

They closed the doors to the kindergarten classroom and, kids being kids, we were caught up in the hype that the world was ending because wasps definitely took over our classroom and it was only a matter of time before they took over the world. Someone, definitely not me, mentions Killer Bees because it’s the 90s and the panic gets worse because now there is only a cinderblock wall and a wooden door separating us from the pre-murder hornet murder bees. 

We ended up in the library for the rest of the day, which sounded like a great time except 30 sticky humanoids barely out of toddler years, hyped up on adrenaline and good old fashioned 1990s panic, kept insisting we saw more wasps outside. We only calmed down when the librarian, Ms Simpson, did the only logical thing. She shut the windows, drew the curtains closed and waited for the adrenaline to wear off and the head we had generated being a nightmare factory caused us to become lethargic and tired. 

I don’t remember much about what happened after we were in the library. I know the janitor got called in and the next day the classroom was blissfully wasp free. Summer vacation happened and when I started back in the fall there were screens in all the windows. 

How does this ridiculous tumble down memory lane relate back to writing mysteries? 

Well, as far as I know the teacher and other kids never figured out who left the applesauce in the window, and I’m no narc so you know I didn’t say a word. So, there was no substantial evidence and no witnesses, even though I quite literally did it in plain sight… sometimes a crime is so overt it’s covert. There was also most certainly evidence tampering as the janitor would have thrown away literally the only evidence there was. 

All anyone knew is that someone had left a mostly finished snack in the window behind some books and the classroom was invaded by wasps. If anyone had looked closely at the evidence they would have seen my trademark vampire style of drinking the contents through the foil lid, but they didn’t. Instead the rumor mill pointed the finger squarely at the boy who was always getting in trouble for breaking the rules and causing trouble. Myself included because I was fucking 5 and forgot I had ever committed the crime to begin with.

The case was never solved, and the reaction from the community was to put screens in the classroom windows to prevent it from happening again. 

30 YEARS LATER: It dawns on me that I was absolutely the culprit and that all the clues pointed directly to me, but the investigation was weak, evidence was destroyed, the rumor mill got in the way, someone else took blame for the crime, and I went on with my life until I solved my own case. Whew, what a trip.

Moral of the story, kids are the worst and kindergarten teachers aren’t detectives.