6-Week Mystery Novelist

Course Details

Writing a crime novel badly is the most underrated crime of all. Too many clues, or not enough of them. A denouement any 3-year-old could see coming by page four. Characters as original as a "dark and stormy night," and dialogue that clangs off the ear like a rusty bedpan. You can learn the basics of writing a crime or mystery novel pretty much anywhere these days, but the focus of this class will be to teach you how to write one agents and editors will find nearly impossible to reject.

Admission requirements:
You should submit a letter of interest, including a brief work history, previous coursework and a writing sample of no more than 15 pages. See class details, below, for exact instructions.

Instructor Bio

Gar Anthony Haywood's Courses

Gar Anthony Haywood is the award-winning author of 10 crime novels and two pseudonymously written stand-alone thrillers. Gar's first Gunner mystery, Fear of the Dark, won the Private Eye Writers of America's Shamus award for Best First Novel in 1989. In the summer of 2000, Fear of the Dark was also included among 200 books Vibe magazine identified as essential reading. His sixth Gunner novel, All the Lucky Ones are Dead, made the Los Angeles Times' bestseller list, and was subsequently named one of the year's Ten Best mysteries by Booklist.

Man Eater, written under the pseudonym Ray Shannon, received starred reviews from both Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly, who described it as "the best Elmore Leonard ripoff since Elmore Leonard." His second novel under the Shannon name, Firecracker, was hailed by the Chicago Sun-Times as "a machine-gun paced, witty romp of a thriller."