Welcome back to the Drawing Room.
Last week you put the first crack in your ordinary world. The small wrong note, left unexplained. This week we let it spread. And a heads-up: this is the last of the drafting lessons. After this, the series changes shape, and you get to watch the part almost no writing course will show you. More on that at the end.
If you're just joining us: this is the fifth of seven free Sunday lessons where we write the opening of a mystery together, one move at a time. You can start right here, and the first four are waiting whenever you want them.
LESSON 5: THE CRACK WIDENS
Last week you cracked your ordinary world. This week it spreads.
A single wrong note, left on its own, is just odd. A reader files it and reads on. What turns odd into a story is what happens next: the wrongness stops sitting in one spot and begins to unsettle things around it. The world, or the people in it, start to feel it too.
The move this week is not to explain the crack, and not to resolve it. It's to let it press harder. The question you raised last week doesn't get an answer now. It gets heavier. Why? Because a crack you explain deflates. But a crack you let grow pulls a reader straight through the chapter.
Cracks widen in a few different ways. Reach for whichever fits your story:
It unsettles a person. Someone can't let it go. They worry at it, change what they were about to do, look twice at something they'd have walked past.
It brings company. The one odd thing makes you notice a second. An absence, and then a silence. Wrongness rarely travels alone.
It tilts the world. The ordinary rhythm stumbles. The afternoon that was about to roll comfortably on… doesn't.
It forces a choice. Someone has to decide whether to look away or step toward it. That decision is often the exact moment a character becomes your sleuth.
Remember Korina Moss's Cheddar Off Dead from last week? The crack was a piece of knowledge: the reviewer who could make or break Willa's new shop is known for savaging local businesses. That's the dread, quietly planted. Now watch it widen. The reviewer doesn't show when he's meant to, and that absence sits wrong. Then he turns up, unannounced and drunk, flinging accusations at the very people Willa is trying to befriend in her new town. The private worry has become a public scene, and it doesn't just threaten her shop anymore; it threatens the place she's trying to belong. Notice what Korina does not do: she doesn't tell you what it means yet. The crack is bigger, louder, harder to ignore, and still unanswered. That's the whole move. You're not paying off the question. You're raising the stakes on it.
A quick honesty note, because it matters. In Korina's book that drunken scene lands well after chapter one, and in Osman's Thursday Murder Club the murder is chapters away. These writers have a whole novel to breathe. They can let a crack sit and simmer, because they've got three hundred pages to pay it off. You have one chapter, and you're writing it to practice the move and see what your story hands you. So we compress. We're doing in a single chapter what some novels spread across several.
Which points at something worth knowing: how long you hold a crack before widening it is a dial, not a rule. Hold it a long while and you build slow, creeping dread, the way Osman does. Widen it after a chapter or two and you get a measured build, like Korina. Or open right on the wound, the way Louise Penny does in Still Life, dropping a body in the opening pages and letting the shock ripple out from there. Slow, measured, immediate: Not one of them is more correct than the others. It depends on the book and the feeling you're after. But for a first chapter you're drafting to find your story, compressing is a good bet. Get the crack open and spreading now, while it's all still loose and discoverable. You can stretch it back out later, once you know what you're building.
What to avoid: answering too soon (let it breathe; a crack resolved on arrival was never a crack), and its opposite, blowing it into full catastrophe. Still no body. Still no panic. You want the ground to tip, not give way. Pressure, not disaster.
Why now? Because this is the beat that gives your opening an engine. By the time you finish it, the ordinary world is visibly off balance, and neither the reader nor, maybe, one of your characters can quite look away. That's a first chapter with momentum, and it's exactly where we leave the draft for now.
Now… me first. My passage is below my signature, with this week's work in bold.
I knew I had to disrupt the group. But I didn't want to only disrupt it. A crack is a chance to get to know people, because you learn who someone is by how they act when something's wrong. So I let this beat do both. Josiah got a little depth: still the Adonis, but silly, playful, a rapport with Sarah that tells you they go back. Gary got a layer too, he's the prepared one, the guy with the hydration pack nobody else bothers with, already a half-step more careful than the rest. And Dan, I let him watch. He's taking it all in now, even catching himself warming to Josiah, then pushing back when Gary shrugs Merv off. That's the sleuth in him waking up: not the guy with answers, the guy who can't stop noticing. I've got more brewing with this group, but I'm going to let it build. For now, the ground's tipped, and that's where I wanted to leave it. But I'm excited to keep getting to know this cast of characters.
Your turn. This week, widen the crack you opened last week. Don't explain it. Don't solve it. Let it spread… into a person who can't shake it, into a second wrong note, into a world that slips off its rhythm. A paragraph or two. End with the ground a little less steady than it was. Something's wrong here, and now it's growing.
Take the week with it — no rush, no falling behind. Then send it along if you'd like. I'm reading.
That's the drafting done. Five weeks ago you had a blank page. Now you've got a place, the people who fill it, and a crack running through all of it.
Here's the thing to think about before the next week. Everything I handed you these five weeks — start with place, meet your sleuth through the senses, crack it, widen it — none of it is a rule. They're tools. I gave them to you in an order because a method is easier to learn than a shrug, but what you build with them is yours, and it will look nothing like mine, and that's the point. There's no right way to write a mystery. There's only the way that builds the story you're after.
Which is exactly why the next part matters. Next Sunday, something different. I hand my rough pages to Korina Moss, and she reads them the way a developmental editor does: Did I hit what these five lessons set out to do? Is the place alive, are the people landing, does the crack actually pull? Where can I strengthen what I've already drafted? You'll see her notes, and how I take them. The part most writers never get to watch.
— Patrick / Stone Lyon Society
The chapter, so far — this week's work in bold.
The road stretched for miles in front of Dan Odell. The hot Charleston sun beat down on the pavement in front of him, making him sweat as he ran — well, if he was being honest, it was more of a jog… well, if he was being really honest, it was more of a shuffle — today's practice race for his running club. He tried to ignore the stabbing pain in his pudgy side and the thick cotton in his mouth. Why did he sign up for this? What made him think running would be a good way to meet people? He wasn't made for this stuff.
Dan was never the most athletic, even before he turned 40 and it seemed to become impossible to make friends. But for a reason his oxygen-deprived brain couldn't remember right now, he made the brilliant decision to join the Chucktown Runners, a hip new running club whose members were mostly half his age. Now he was panting as his feet plodded onto the steaming black concrete, the heat mounting in the rubber soles of his too-new shoes. Cars blew past him. The breeze they left in their wake felt nice, even if it was brief. He knew he should hear the traffic, too — this area was notorious for it — or even the two old men in sweat-lined tank tops having a passionate but playful argument from their neighboring front porches across the street, but all he could pick up was the sound of blood rushing in his ears, whooshing like waves in rhythm with his hammering heart.
Still, somehow, he continued.
On either side of him, lining the cracked road, a family of willow trees frowned down at him, their sagging leaves like tears. Embarrassed at his sad attempt at a race. Dan didn't have to worry about the finish line yet, though. Just make it past one willow tree. Then the next. And so on. That's what he did, counting the weeping trees. Breaking down the run into little goals.
Finally, the trees gave way to a church. Just a squat brick building with a stained cross. The more opulent churches were up ahead, he knew, in the expensive part of town. Then came a few old houses. The ones that hadn't been gentrified in this neighborhood of North Charleston yet. Eventually, Dan passed an intersection with a Walgreens on one side and a fish market on the other — the smell of dead fish hanging in the humid air. Just ahead was Park Circle, a roundabout with a large park in the center and more roads splintering off like spokes on a wheel.
But more importantly, it was the landing spot for Dan's running group. If he squinted, he could make out the bright running shorts and slick Under Armour of his group mates. How long had they been waiting for him?
When Dan crossed the roundabout and reached the edge of the park, the rest of his running group clapped. Dan fell to his knees and gave them a thumbs up. The cool grass caressed his shins as he labored to catch his breath.
Everyone smiled politely at Dan then looked away. Everyone except Josiah Jones, a lean college student with a thick chin and even thicker chest. He was shirtless. He was always shirtless, because when you had Josiah's body, why wouldn't you be? Dan wondered if God made people like Josiah from a mold, and then whipped together people like Dan from the scraps left over after trimming the original model.
"Here," Josiah said, walking over to him and lifting him up under the armpits like a parent supporting a toddler. "Stand up. If you hunch it's harder to breathe."
Dan let Josiah lift him to his feet, not because he wanted help — he would've rather been left alone — but because he didn't have the energy to push back. Then Josiah raised Dan's arms over his head. Frustratingly, it helped. Dan's chest opened up and he could suddenly breathe.
"There you go," Josiah said in his confident southern accent. Very Matthew McConaughey. He nodded along for a few seconds as Dan caught his breath, then patted Dan on the back. "Good job, bro."
"It gets easier," another voice chimed in. Stepping from behind Josiah, their group leader Sarah Rylance smiled at Dan. It was a warm and real smile, though tinged with pity. Ugh, Dan thought, that hurts more than the muscles in my legs. A few years older than Josiah, Sarah wore black tights and a light pink sports bra with a funky criss-cross pattern on the back. Her hair, the shimmering mahogany of the pine cones from the New England town Dan had moved from, was pulled up in a ponytail with a little pink hair tie.
"We're going for a beer at The Sentry," she continued, "if you want to join us?"
She was being polite, but Dan knew he didn't belong. She was giving him a way out, to make it seem like it was his choice. That had to be it. She was thoughtful like that. She was also the reason Dan had joined the group in the first place — she'd put her picture on the flyer Dan stumbled onto in their local coffee shop — but he quickly realized he had no shot. People like Sarah didn't fall for people like him. That was just the way of things.
Dan wiped his forehead on the breathable shirt he'd bought at Wal-Mart the day before. It was soaked through with sweat, now a red much deeper than when he'd spotted it on the rack, so it actually made his forehead even slicker than before. "No, thanks. I should get back and shower."
"You sure?" Sarah asked. But why was she keeping up the ruse? Dan had already given her the answer she wanted.
"It's gonna be lit," Josiah added.
"Yeah, yeah," Dan said. "I'm good, thanks."
Sarah studied him for a minute, her eyes lingering like she was working on a puzzle. "Okay, you know where we'll be if you change your mind."
Dan gave them a thumbs up and hunched his shoulders. He turned to walk away but Sarah called to him. "We'll see you Thursday, right?"
Turning, Dan hesitated before smiling. "Sure."
Sarah beamed at him. A flash of brilliance. Then she tapped Josiah on the shoulder and nodded toward the rest of the group. They ran over — how could they still run like that? — to the others and started making their plans to go out for their beer.
Dan didn't have the heart to say it to her there, but no, he would not be coming back Thursday. He would be home, scarfing down some takeout and chasing it with a bag of Skittles. Probably icing his chafed nipples while the rest of them tortured themselves again on the pavement.
That could be said via email, though. Why spoil their runner's high?
Dan waited at a crosswalk, watching a team play frisbee golf on the other side of Park Circle. He was just thinking, Damn, why didn't I choose frisbee golf instead of running?, when he felt a tap on the shoulder. He spun around to see Gary Chandler, a mid-30s professional and the member of the running group probably closest in age to Dan.
"Hey, Dan-O," he said. (In all of ten seconds of meeting Dan, Gary had adopted this nickname for him on account of his first name and last initial — and the fun callback to the old TV show, Hawaii Five-0.) "Have you seen Merv around? We're grabbing some beers and wanted to let him know."
Dan looked around the park. No, he hadn't seen Merv. So he shook his head.
"Weird, right? Maybe he took off." Gary shrugged. "Anyway, you coming out with us?"
"No," Dan said. Again. "I'm heading back."
"Too bad. Next time," he said, then added, "Have a good one," as he jogged back toward the group, his gunmetal black basketball shorts swaying over his bright white meggings. His perfectly gelled hair, on the other hand, didn't move a fraction — it'd take the front line of the New England Patriots to break through that formation.
Dan frowned and turned back to watch the frisbee golf match across the street. Traffic was clear. He could cross now. And yet… he didn't feel right. It wasn't like Merv to cut out without saying goodbye. This was only Dan's second time out with the running group, but he'd already picked up on Merv's reputation. He was in his 60s and the oldest in the group — damn near geriatric, as Merv would say — but he seemed to have more energy than the rest of them combined. He always finished in the top three of the group, and he didn't just join the rest of them for post-practice libations; he was usually the one corralling and pressuring the rest of them to join him.
No, this didn't sit right at all.
Dan scratched at the stubble on his chin as he rolled it over in his head. Then, without realizing it, he found himself turning around and jogging back into the park. "Hey, Gary!"
Some of the group had already gone by the time Dan caught up to Gary. Sarah and Josiah were still lingering close by, though. They were probably planning to drive over to the bar together. Dan had to catch his breath before he could speak. Why did he launch into a jog so soon after the practice race?
Gary looked at him, concerned. "You okay?"
Dan held up a palm — hold on — and nodded. His other hand rested on his aching knee. He just needed a second. Okay, what did Josiah say? Right, stand up. Spread the chest. Open the lungs. Dan did so and, again, he was surprised by how quickly his breathing slowed to normal. Or reasonably normal.
"It's not right," Dan said.
"You're going to join us?"
"No," Dan said. "I mean, I don't know. But Merv… he wouldn't just leave."
Gary waved it away. "He's Merv. He probably went ahead of the rest of us."
"Did Josiah see him? There's no way he'd beat Josiah back here, so if he finished the race, we should know."
The shirtless Adonis appeared next to Dan, almost as if by magic, or a blessing from the Gods. "Somebody say my name?"
Dan turned his attention to Josiah. "Did you see Merv come back?"
"Nah," Josiah said, "but maybe he beat me this time?" Dan responded with a raised eyebrow. Seriously. "Yeah, good point. That's not likely." Josiah chuckled. "Dunno. Maybe he decided to go home."
"Did Sarah see him?" Dan asked.
Josiah shrugged and called across a small stretch of the park to their leader. "Yo, Sarah!"
"I could've done that," Dan muttered, turning red. He wouldn't have, though. That was the difference between a guy like Dan and a guy like Josiah. That and about six chiseled abs that could withstand the force of a SWAT team's battering ram.
Sarah strolled over to them, her thumb hovering over her phone. As she finished typing something, Gary sipped from a straw connected to a water pack he wore like a backpack. Josiah swept a hand through his feathered blond hair, held up by a thin elastic headband the color of a healthy juice.
"Hey girrrrrrrl," Josiah greeted her. He flexed his pecs and wriggled his eyebrows.
"Stop it," Sarah chastised him, but a playful smile lurked at the corner of her mouth. This was their language. Her eyes scanned the three of them. What an odd collection of would-be runners they must look like. "What's up, guys?"
"Dan thinks Merv had a heart attack," Josiah said flippantly.
"What? No, I didn't—"
"I was just texting him," Sarah said, cutting Dan off. She clearly knew how to translate Josiah into normal person. "I'm worried about him."
Dan nodded. "That's what I was saying. Did he text you back?"
"No, not yet, but I just sent it."
"I'm sure he's fine," Gary said, taking another sip from his hydration pack. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. It could be anything. Maybe he ran into an old friend. Maybe he got tired and stopped somewhere for water. My CamelBak doesn't seem so stupid now, huh?"
That last bit seemed directed at Josiah, who didn't notice — he was too distracted, like a sugar-filled toddler, by the other activity in the park. Kids on the nearby playground. An intramural league playing baseball across the field. Women running the circle in their tight outfits. Okay, most of his attention was really on the women.
Dan couldn't help but crack a smile — despite his intimidating figure, there was something undeniably endearing, maybe even fun, about Josiah — but his thoughts quickly returned to Merv.
What Gary said made sense. It was probably nothing. Dan could just go home and enjoy a long, hot shower before stuffing himself full of carbs. Let the group update him on Merv later.
And yet…
"We should split up and look for him," Dan found himself saying. "I'm sure Gary's right…" He trailed off, letting the group make their own sense of the implied but left unsaid. But Merv was 60. But he was reliable. But he liked to join the group after the run.
What if it was something more serious than a water break?