Description
Writing the Comedic Mystery
September 1-26, 2025 via groups.io
Level: Beginner to Published Writer
Instructor: Beth Daniels
Workshop Description:
There are all types of mystery niches in which to write stories: amateur detective, police procedural, government agency, spies, private detectives, capers, cozies, romantic suspense. Even paranormal romance. Any one of them could be a comedic mystery. Why? Because comedy is in the characters, in the presentation. In the “voice” of the story. Are there good and bad comedic elements? Does comedy have to run through the entire story? How does one deal with crime and manage to keep the reader smiling, perhaps laughing out loud, and still present a satisfying story? Particularly if the crime scene is a gruesome one. Well, that’s what this workshop is determined to lay out for your consideration.
Comedy and mystery have been rubbing shoulders since the Golden Age of Mystery, and likely before it, too. Today you can find it entwining the murders investigated and solved on Only Murder in the
Building, and the forthcoming adaptation of Richard Osman’s The
Thursday Murder Club series for Netflix. Mystery and comedy met up
in Castle and has been a standard since Rockford Files and Columbo in the 1970s, through Remington Steele, Hart to Hart, Simon and Simon and others in the 1980s. Join Beth to see what it takes to mix grins, snickers and laughs with murder (and other crimes) most foul.
Building, and the forthcoming adaptation of Richard Osman’s The
Thursday Murder Club series for Netflix. Mystery and comedy met up
in Castle and has been a standard since Rockford Files and Columbo in the 1970s, through Remington Steele, Hart to Hart, Simon and Simon and others in the 1980s. Join Beth to see what it takes to mix grins, snickers and laughs with murder (and other crimes) most foul.
Wish you could have readers chuckling over your mystery as they do Janet Evanovich’s, the late Elizabeth Peters’s or Charlotte MacLeod’s, and lots of cozy mystery writers do? There’s a balance to maintain between the chokes of laughter and the down and dirty solving of the mystery. Comedic mystery can move into other genres than straight mystery or romantic suspense with comedy stirred in, too.
Join Beth Daniels (aka Beth Henderson, J.B. Dane, Nied Darnell), who has a difficult time keeping comedy from seeping into stories be they romance, fantasy or a cozy style mystery tale. This workshop is all about letting crime tickle your funny bone and that of your reader!
Instructor’s Bio: Beth Daniel’s first published novel, Nikrova’s Passion (written as Beth Henderson), was a romantic-suspense-comedy. Although it was a contemporary when released in 1990, Beth feels it might merit having the tag “20 th century vintage” added on today. Most of the mystery tales she wrote until a few years ago tended to be historical romances with strong mystery elements. But it was that first book that won her acceptance as a valid writer of mystery from Mystery Writers of America. Since NIKROVA was released, she has worn several pseudonymic hats while penning 30+ novels of romance, both historical and contemporary. Then she decided to jump onto another genre train – the fantasy one. Today she writes cozy paranormal lite romantic comedy as Beth Henderson, urban fantasy mystery comedy as J.B. Dane, and Weird West Steampunk, Dieselpunk, and Gaslamp Fantasy adventure/mystery/comedy as Nied Darnell. She hasn’t entirely given up on romance but what she loves best about writing in the various fantasy niches is that she can really cut loose in terms of comedy.
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