: How to elaborate a crime case I would try to write something as Crime-Detective Story. I'm a beginner of this genre and the first obstacle I find is the "idea" of a crime. I mean, I don't

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I'm actually inclined to think that knowing the solution (i.e. planting clues) before knowing the crime, and knowing the crime before the knowing the solution are both imperfect methods, since neither are really the thing that the reader is interested in.

I strongly suspect that what people like about detective stories isn't so much the answer, or the details of the crime, as it is the relationship between the clues and the answer. People like trying to guess, and they like it even better when they feel like they could have guessed (because it all makes perfect sense, in retrospect), but didn't, because the writer constructed the story so cleverly.

My advice, then, is to first work out the sort of reasoning that the character(s) will use to solve the crime. Think about the sort of logic that detectives use (in stories, at least; though probably in real life too):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inference en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning
Once you have this, you can begin to structure the plot. If C can be concluded from A and B, and F can be concluded from D and E, you just have to make sure F is something that the character's can work out the crime from, and A, B and D are things that they can find out over the course of the story.

I think once you have an approximate structure of this sort in place, filling in your As and Bs and so on is much easier, and the advantage of doing it this way is that the clues can easily be things that the characters are able (or even likely) to find, and don't need to seem too improbable or convenient.

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In my experience of writing crime stories, I've found what works best for me is to have the crime solution the work backwards to the crime. This allows me to make sure all the necessary clues are in place throughout the book to let the reader solve the crime along with the person investigating.

This is also rule one in S.S. Van Dine's 20 rules for writing detective stories, published 1928 gaslight.mtroyal.ca/vandine.htm
Personally, I struggle to do it the other way (by starting with the crime) because then it feels to me like I'm forcing the clues to be placed and trying to avoid the dreaded en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina for the detective to solve it.

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