If you are a mystery writer looking to use March as an inspiring catalyst for your writing, lean into spring motifs. Create seasonal prompts, build localized settings, or take advantage of annual networking and reading events. March naturally brings spring cleaning and unpredictable weather, which offer perfect, moody backdrops for a whodunit.
Spring Cleaning Plot Device
Treat the chaotic shifts in the weather as your primary antagonist or plot device. Use sudden spring storms or melting winter snow as natural mechanisms to:
Sever communication lines
Trap your characters
Reveal long-buried clues
Seasonal Springtime Writing Prompts
Use the awakening of spring as a thematic contrast to a murder or dark crime. Choose one of these as the setting for a sudden, disruptive crime:
Colorful spring festival
Local garden show
Outdoor historical re-enactment
Join a Writing Community
March is famously packed with crime-writing and reading festivities:
Mystery Writers of America panels to learn directly from bestselling authors
Study the classics during online events like March Mystery Madness
Submit Your Work
March is a heavy season for literary calls and submissions. Emerging writers of color can submit to opportunities like:
Sisters in Crime…keep going…Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award
If you are white like me:
St. Martin’s Minotaur / MWA First Crime Novel Competition
For hands-on exercises, practice the reverse plotting technique. This starts by outlining your crime's climactic resolution. Next, sneak in at least three Easter eggs, which are clever spring-themed distractions aka red herrings in your opening chapters that point away from the real culprit.
Sources
Mystery Writers of AmericaSisters in Crime Eleanor Taylor Bland Crime Fiction Writers of Color AwardSt. Martin's Minotaur / Mystery Writers Association First Crime Novel Competition