In today’s episode, Brook and Sarah are joined by Jessica Brody to discuss her new fiction release How to Write a Murder and how she drew on her successful non-fiction books about writing to pen this novel.
Discussed and mentioned
How to Write a Murder (2026) Jessica Brody
The Guest List (2020) Lucy Foley
Death on the Nile (1937) Agatha Christie
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Transcript
This transcript is generated by a computer and there may be some mis-spellings and strange punctuation. We try to catch these before posting, but some things slip through.
| Sarah | Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I’m Sarah. |
| Brook | And I’m Brook, and we both love mystery. |
| Sarah | Hi, Brook. |
| Brook | Hi Sarah, today we’re going to be talking to Jessica Brody about her brand new book, How to Write a Murder. |
| Sarah | Yes, I am so excited about this conversation. And before we begin, I will introduce Jessica. Jessica Brody is the author of more than 20 novels for teens, tweens, and adults, including I Speak Boy, Better You Than Me. Addie Bell’s Shortcut to Growing Up. The Chaos of Standing Still, 52 Reasons to Hate My Father, the Unremembered Trilogy, and the System Divine series. |
| Sarah | She’s also the author of Save the Cat Writes a Novel, the number one best-selling plotting guide for novelists, and several books based on popular Disney franchises like Descendants and Lego Disney Princess. |
| Sarah | Jessica’s book have. Jessica’s books have been translated and published in over 23 countries and several have been optioned for film and television She lives with her husband and three dogs near Portland, Oregon. |
| Sarah | Welcome Jessica. |
| Jessica Brody | Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here. |
| Brook | So Jessica, this is your first mystery, though obviously you’ve published regularly in other genres. What was different about plotting and writing a mystery compared to those other books? Did you have to change any of your processes? |
| Jessica Brody | Well, anytime you start a new genre, there’s always a learning curve. And I had a huge one, um steep one, shallow one. I never know whether the curve is supposed to be shallow or so or steep. I think it’s a shallow curve, meaning slow. It was a very slow process. It took me a lot longer to write this book than normal, than than my past books. And I think that’s because I literally had to teach myself how to write a murder while I was writing a book called How to Write a Murder. |
| Jessica Brody | You know, I wrote a book on how to plot novels and there’s a whole chapter about. mysteries in there. But, you know, I was analyzing other people’s work and breaking it down into patterns and and teaching other writers how to write one, but I hadn’t written one myself. So, my process was pretty much the same in terms of how I like to plot and write and revise and um all of that, but just figuring out how to plot something this complicated and layered with red herrings and mis-directions and clues and investigation that was a brand new experience and Just super fun. I really enjoyed doing it. I i hope to continue to write murders for. A long time. |
| Sarah | So that is so great to hear that you are going to continue writing these. The book itself feels a bit like ah a magician explaining a trick while performing it at the same time. Did you ever worry that learning the the behind the scenes structure behind a mystery would make it harder to surprise your readers? |
| Jessica Brody | It’s so funny you say the magician thing, because I actually just wrote a a guest post for someone’s website about how. I felt like I was a magician kind of pulling back the curtain and revealing the trick and basically breaking the magician’s code, which is, I think writers have sort of a code too of um we don’t reveal how we do things, but that’s actually exactly what I do. I I run a writing school. Obviously, I’ve written books about how to how to write. And I think that’s one of my teaching styles is I show you exactly how I do things. And i’m I’m not one of these kinds of teachers who will sort of present something and then hide my own work. Like I will show all my students my messy first drafts. I will show them my revision process. And so this felt very natural to me. |
| Jessica Brody | But the fun part of it was, you know, I’m not showing you to give you a spoiler. I’m showing you to set up a red herring. But there’s a narrator in the book who I always just refer to as “the mystery writer” with pun intended. And they are basically telling you that they’re writing the book that you’re reading. |
| Jessica Brody | And they’re pulling back the curtain to show you how they’re doing it. And so that writer, when I wrote their chapters, it was really fun for me because I got to play with this idea of. How can I reveal what I’m doing? How can I tell the reader, oh, this is the part of the book where someone’s going to die, or this is the part of the book where there’s probably going to be a second body, um or this is the part of the book where where you get a lot of red herrings. How can I do that and also still make it mysterious? And I actually found it to be easier than not. I thought that that would be a hard process, but it ended up being a really fun process because I got to really play with this um this idea that the the narrator, as we all know, there’s a lot of unreliable narrators in mystery. So are they telling you the truth? When they’re saying, oh, look out for red herrings, is it because they just gave you one or because they’re about to give you one and you’re never quite sure what they mean? um So I just found that to be really fun. I don’t think I don’t think it ruined anything. um Definitely didn’t ruin anything for me. It just allowed me to play within a world that I know really well, which is plot structure and and teaching people how to write. |
| Sarah | Have you had feedback from readers who aren’t necessarily authors that… it didn’t feel like it was spoiled, the mystery for them? |
| Jessica Brody | i’ve I mean, the book is not out yet. I think it’ll be out by the time this airs. So we’ve had some early readers, um some… that have given me some fantastic feedback that they really enjoyed the sort of breaking of the fourth wall by the narrator. And they enjoyed sort of seeing behind the scenes of what was happening. And it, you know, it doesn’t, I don’t think it reads quite like a like a plotting guide, but the joke is that it’s sort of structured like a plotting guide. But it’s definitely more written for the reader as ah as a way, it’s less teaching writers how to write a murder, and it’s more teaching readers. about the genre that they love with like a little bit of a peek at this is actually how all us mystery writers write books and I think um Well, it’s like how this mystery writer wrote a book. But I think writers get something out of it, too, because they get a little… there’s a lot of winks at writers. There’s a lot of jokes about writers. There’s even a lot of Easter eggs for some of my you know what I teach writers. um But I think readers will just enjoy seeing the genre that they love, the tropes that they love sort of being taken apart and dissected and then explained to you in a way that makes you wonder how it’s being used. |
| Brook | Yeah, I think you’re right. While you didn’t mean to make it a how to for authors, I do think that there are some really great lessons and maybe some things that we do intuitively. But then when you, you know, point them out, you go, yeah, that that really does impact my process. So that was really interesting. So. |
| Jessica Brody | I tried to put in the book was, it’s a bit ah It’s a bit of an ode to writers in in the end. It it it explores on a deeper level. It explores what it, what is required the courage and the stamina and the determination that’s required to like bear something out of your soul and put it on the page. And I think that’s the respect that I have for writers is the amount of courage it takes to write something. um And so there’s sort of an underlying current there beyond the fun of the mystery and the clues and you know who did it and how there’s also just a little bit of a like ah like a reverence for writers in general. and um And that’s woven into the story as well. As you start to see some of the characters go rogue, you know they’re not following the plan that the writer has put out for them. And um that’s always part of the process for writers too, of the moment your characters stop behaving the way you want them to behave and sort of take on a life of their own. And um I tried to make that almost like a literal a ah literal representation in the book. |
| Brook | Yeah I really enjoyed that part and can completely relate. when things don’t go. to plan. So that was really fun. um Well, later in this season, Sarah and I are going to talk about the rules of mystery, like set forth from The Detection Club. Do you think that there are any of those rules that… are unbreakable. |
| Jessica Brody | Wow. um As someone who wrote a plotting guide, which a lot of people call like the rules of plotting. um I would say all rules are breakable. I mean, it really, but what I say. |
| Jessica Brody | I try not to break too many of the golden ones in this book. There might be a few. but What I like to tell writers whenever they say, you know. They’ve read Save the Cat Writes a Novel and they’re like, can I do it this way? Can I break this rule? and like None of it’s a rule. It’s all just a guideline and it’s all just a blueprint that you can follow or not follow. um But what I tell them is make sure you have a reason. |
| Jessica Brody | And it needs to be something purposeful. Like… I on. I often advise writers not to break rules just to be rebellious, but to do it for a very specific reason. And I think it’s probably applies here as well. If you’re trying to do something really cool and different, that’s great, but make sure it works with the plot. it um It has some kind of intentional purpose in the thing you’re trying to say. Which is, you know. I don’t think that me pulling back the curtain as and saying, here’s how the writer is writing the book is necessarily breaking the rules, but it had a very specific intention in the way the story is written. In the the message I want to get across, in the themes of the book and even in the the solution at the end everything sort of had a purpose it wasn’t just maybe it started out of like oh I would love to just write a um a mystery narrator who’s telling you how they’re doing it but in the end I I felt like it had to kind of all come together. So, that’s always my advice, whether you can or can’t is sort of. I think your personal choice. And then, you know, you’ll have to deal with the consequences of the readers and some readers will love it and some readers won’t. And that’s kind of the joy of writing is you don’t know what the response is gonna be um but you know do it. Do what you want. That’s what I always say. do Write the book you want to write and let the rest just be the rest. |
| Sarah | I, I, I really like how you’ve answered that and and kind of given permission for people to um to play with those rules, and one of your characters, Darius, he’s deeply analyzed mysteries and and he’s, he’s you know, talking about the steps and and the structure of mysteries. And so I think that your advice, I think um allows people to to play with that structure as well. Is there anything? that you think in the way that a mystery plays out that there are elements of the structure that need to be there. So, you know, we’ve got this permission to play with with the rules or, or you know play with how with readers expectations, but is there anything that you think like, “Actually, don’t. don’t play with that.” |
| Jessica Brody | Um. Yeah, I mean, that would be probably my… my these would be my personal preference as a mystery reader but. And then there’s also you know you can get very logistical about it well to be called a mystery there has to be a crime that’s committed there has to be a perpetrator there’s probably someone who’s solving the crime whether they’re officially a detective or not um or maybe it’s just the reader who plays detective and everyone else is sort of um you know, just part of the story, but there. |
| Jessica Brody | In my mind… I think there has to be a solution, whether it’s fully spelled out or not. um um I kind of feel like it’s a flexible rule. some Some writers choose to leave some things um unanswered but I feel like you can’t leave everything unanswered um unless there’s a sequel but even then you kind of want to answer something in this book. There’s just certain things that I don’t I wouldn’t necessarily call them unbreakable rules. I would call them more reader expectations and genre expectations and whether or not you’re going to leave readers feeling satisfied by the end. And then there’s sort of another level of it is, is whether you want to traditionally publish or self-published because I think self-published authors have a lot more flexibility. They don’t have sort of gatekeepers to um adhere to, but in the traditional publishing space, if you want to get an agent and a publisher, they all have to get on board with whatever rule. quote, rules you’re breaking. um And so there needs to be. You know, some there might, there might be pushback there in the process. um But if you choose to write whatever you want, break all the rules, self publish it. Like I said, there might be readers who you might feel the backlash from that, from readers. But again, I don’t. because self-publishing is something that is an option today, I don’t think anybody can I think. Anybody could break any rule they want and put it out there. um It’s just a matter of what what do you want out of it? Do you want readers to feel satisfied? You probably need to give them an ending that feels satisfying. |
| Brook | Right. And in the world of mystery, that is kind of one of… the most important backbones I think is that you know satisfying ending so I would agree. |
| Brook | You briefly said. Um, You briefly mentioned that there are some Easter eggs to save the cat in this book, and I found them really fun. so Tell us about how did you decide how much of that writing world you put in your story? and and how much then you kept to the plot. |
| Jessica Brody | Yeah, you know I from the very beginning, I wanted there to be a fictitious Save the Cat writing guide in the story. So, I had to make one up because I didn’t want to use the real one. I wanted it to be like a nod, like a wink to the Save the Cat Writes a Novel book that people know me for. um I think in the very first draft, it was called I didn’t know what to call it. So I called it Rescue the Dog. |
| Jessica Brody | In my own little like brackets of like placeholder that figure out what to call this. And I just called it that because I wanted like ah a real nod to it. And then I decided, okay, that’s a little bit too on the nose. So, I went with something that’s a little bit more nuanced And that is… um For Save the Cat fans out there, I think you’ll get this. um There’s… One of the critiques of the Save the Cat method or any plotting method is that it feels, quote, formulaic. And, you know, I have all sorts of counterpoints to that. So, I wanted the word formula in the name of my fictitious writing guide. And then I thought, well, you know, it’s all about writing bestsellers. So, I called it the Bestseller Formula. And I just thought that was kind of a fun nod and only like the true Save the Cat fans will understand the joke of the word formula. Um, But anyway, so I I eventually named it that. and What’s funny about it is that whole fictitious plotting guide. It evolved as my story evolved because I had to sort of figure out not just how to bring the 15 beats of the Save the Cat method in, if you’re not familiar, Save the Cat method breaks all stories down into 15 beats. |
| Jessica Brody | I had to sort of bring those in, give them more mystery flavors. um But then also I use them to break up the story. So the story is broken into 12 steps instead of 15 beats. And then there’s steps and then there’s chapters. |
| Jessica Brody | And I had to kind of make that work for the plot as well. So there was a lot of like. maneuvering of things. um It’s not an exact map to save the cat, but it’s pretty close. um And then I just had a lot of fun. like planting those little Easter eggs, because I knew that writers would read this book. um I knew most of my audience is writers, and I would be pitching this book to them. And I wanted to give them something I wanted to give them these little gifts. um So you know, in the first a couple chapters someone does save a cat there’s a quite literal there’s a there’s a pretty literal one there um the writer at one point says let “let the fun and games begin” and fun and games is one of the beats of the save the cat method and and the writer says this right as the fun and games beat is beginning in the…you know, in the outline. So there’s just some fun things like that in there. |
| Brook | I bet that was really fun to weave all those pieces and parts together. |
| Jessica Brody | It was. Yeah. |
| Sarah | So I think you alluded to this, Jessica, but Is this… The only mystery that you are going to write or have you now been bitten by the mystery bug? |
| Jessica Brody | Well, um You know. I have been bitten by the mystery bug. Mystery was always a genre that was on my bucket list that I just never had the time, the courage or the right idea to write. I was writing young adult, middle grade, sci-fi. I mean, it was sort of. |
| Jessica Brody | I always go where the idea goes. The next idea is the the one I write. um But I usually had a contracted book that I had to write. Like I had sold two books or a series. And so, there was always another book that I already had to to write. So, mystery just kind of kept getting pushed back and pushed back. And like I said, I didn’t have the right idea. |
| Jessica Brody | And then when I finally finished my last book contract and I did not have another book due, I just sat back and went. What should I write next? And I I asked myself, what do you want to write for you? What do you what would be most fun for you to write? And my you know little mystery novel like bug came up and I was like, well. the idea sort of started with this question of… I’m known for the Save the Cat plotting guide. But a lot of writers use it. If you you went to like a writing conference, most writers would have at least heard of it. |
| Jessica Brody | um And I thought, so what if… If… What if there’s this mystery conference where everyone has read read the same mystery writing guide? And then it… that if you figure out that someone’s actually using that guide to plot a real murder. um And so. that’ That was kind of the original idea. |
| Jessica Brody | But once I got into it, I just had so much fun. I’ve always had a puzzle brain. I’ve always loved puzzles. When I was a kid, I used to set up little you know scavenger hunts for people in my house and with clues and things. And so I think I was always kind of…Leading toward writing mystery and then I remember telling my husband multiple times while writing this book, I was like, “I found my genre” after so many writing so many books. |
| Jessica Brody | “I found my genre. This is my genre.” So I definitely want to write more. And um fortunately, my publisher bought two books when they bought this one. So now I’m working on a second one, which is really exciting. |
| Brook | That is exciting. Are you able to tell us, you know, but because this story had this very meta feel, will that continue in your mystery worlds? |
| Jessica Brody | I am still sort of working out the second one. I would like to have a similar tone to this one a similar this is a very… It has some darker undertones, but the packaging, as you know, is very, it’s light, it’s playful. |
| Jessica Brody | um There’s a mischievous quality to the book that is more fun, I think, than… then dark. um But there are some darker storylines, you know, sort of delivered in that in that package. And I would like to do something similar with the second book. |
| Jessica Brody | I definitely… had a lot of fun with that tone and that and that level of of um darkness was kind of the perfect sweet spot for me so I think i’d like to continue to play with that whether I can do something this meta again I don’t know I don’t know if this is like a was like a fluke and just, I put every meta thing I could think of into this book and now I have nothing left. Um, I don’t know, but I’m going to try. We’ll see. |
| Sarah | Oh, that’s great. um And, you know, I can think of a ah couple of other books that. kind of play with that meta method of of storytelling. Ah. And. I imagine as a writer. Like. At some point you’re. Kind of like, oh, I’m. I’m done with this. Right. And, I you know, I i I think mystery writers who have um a series and they’ve got the same you know the same detective or the same amateur sleuth I suspect that… They all kind of reach that. like i’m I’m just…tired of this group of characters and I’m going to write something different. And that’s the nice thing about mystery is that you can, right? Like there are so many different types of mysteries and and different ways to play with the genre. |
| Jessica Brody | Yeah, and I love that about it too. I love that I could. go to the mystery section of my bookstore. I could pick up something fun and light and puzzly or it could pick up something dark and sinister and twisty um And it’s kind of like, what what mood am I in today? |
| Jessica Brody | , what kind of mystery am I in the mood for? um And I do have a nod to that in the book. There’s ah there’s a chapter in the book where Darius, one of the main characters, is trying to figure out what kind of murder mystery this is that that this writer is writing. |
| Jessica Brody | And he flips through The Bestseller Formula to the… to the back where he’s got There’s just got all the genres, the sub genres of mystery. And he’s like, am I in a noir? Am I, is this a. Is this a noir? Is it a police procedural? Is it a cozy? And he’s like, well, there is a cat, so maybe maybe this is a cozy. And so there’s, I had some fun just kind of playing with that. I mean, in the end, this is very much a locked room sort of isolated setting mystery. |
| Jessica Brody | But yeah, I would love to try my hand at some of the other subgenres as well. and And that’s, again, like you said, what makes it really fun is that you can just… play around and do ah and do different things. |
| Sarah | And so you know you mentioned all the different… or that there are so many different sub-genres. Is there a mystery that you wish you could read for the first time again? |
| Jessica Brody | Oh gosh, like all of them? That’s such… Such a great question. I’m getting better, but I was infamously, before I wrote Mystery, I was infamously bad at guessing the endings of mysteries like I I’m like the perfect reader I I’m fooled all the time Um. I have gotten better at it. I’ve noticed since I started writing mystery, I’m able to spot things that I don’t think I used to spot. Like, oh, I see what I see that plant right there. That’s interesting. um Because now I’m sort of reading it with more of a writer’s eye than I used to. |
| Jessica Brody | um So… Funny enough, like all of the ones that are my favorites are the ones that really fooled me. And so I feel like. If I read them again now. You’re saying like if I could erase my memory and read them for yeah for the first time. |
| Sarah | Mm-hmm. |
| Jessica Brody | Yeah. Oh gosh, it’s so hard. The Guest List is one of my favorites and it’s… um It was ah a huge inspiration for How to Write a Murderer, just in the you know the mysterious, ominous setting that the characters get trapped in. um Very different story, though. |
| Jessica Brody | That one was, I just love going back to that one. I study it just to see like how, where did she reveal this and where did she plant that? So that one’s high up on my list. I actually did have this experience with… um Death on the Nile the other day. I started reading it and… |
| Jessica Brody | I had this idea I was like I think I know who did it I think I’m like I’m finally getting this. Like I’m finally picking up the clues. And then I realized I read it in high school. and And there was like this subconscious memory. I didn’t remember the book at all, but suddenly there was this part like right at the beginning. I’m like, I bet, I bet that’s the killer. um So that was maybe a literal version of your question. um i’m so I’m just… trying to think of I’ll just go with The Guest List just because it’s my favorite um Yeah. |
| Sarah | It it is a great book. |
| Brook | That’s a good pick. |
| Brook | Well, Jessica, thank you again. This has been so fun to talk to you about your brand new book. Where can listeners find out all about you? |
| Jessica Brody | JessicaBrody.com is a great place to start. It’s sort of my hub. um You can find all my books there, all my novels there. If you are a writer and you want to ah learn more from me, I also have writingmastery.com. And that’s where my Writing Academy lives as well. |
| Sarah | Wonderful. Well, we’ll make sure that we put. Links to those in the show notes. And yeah, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been such a pleasure to chat with you about your book and writing generally. |
| Jessica Brody | Thank you so much for having me. I love talking about mysteries with fellow mystery lovers. |
| Brook | And thank you listeners for joining us today on Clued in Mystery. Until next time. I’m Brook. |
| Sarah | And I’m Sarah. And we both love mystery. |
