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crimes for a living. But unless you give your series sleuth an area of specialization that could logically involve her in mystery puzzles, you will be hard-pressed to think up an entire series of cases for her.
    If you intend to write a series, then make your sleuth either a professional (private investigator, police officer, crime reporter, lawyer) or an amateur with special crime-busting credentials.
    But you have to sell your first book before you need to begin worrying about a series. If you’ve dreamed up a can’t-miss storyline that demands an amateur one-shot hero, that’s the book you should write. Elmore Leonard and Dick Francis and many other successful mystery authors create new heroes for every story. They thereby avoid the trap that ensnared Conan Doyle, who became so bored with Sherlock Holmes that he killed him off. Eventually Doyle was forced to revive his famous detective when readers made it clear that they wanted only Holmes stories from him.
    Defining characters by what they want
     
    Your sleuth should obviously be drawn with the greatest care. You want your readers to identify with her, root for her, agonize with her when she fails, exult with her when she triumphs. Make them care about her happiness and her health and her success. Make them wonder how she’s getting along with her ex-husband or lover. Make them hope she’ll have a chance to take a vacation, or play more tennis, or visit her father in the nursing home. You want readers to wish your sleuth would eat more sensibly and quit smoking and finally settle down with that elusive young policeman.
    Making readers bring these concerns to your books doesn’t happen by accident. In the process of developing mystery heroes and heroines, you must explore their full range of interests, desires, needs, and fears.
    Everything that goes into characterizing your sleuth can be expressed in terms of what she wants. Readers will worry about her because she has goals that are important to her and it’s not certain that she’ll achieve them.
    Every mystery hero or heroine, like every real person, has several needs and desires. These goals may conflict with each other and with those of other characters. Such conflicts lend depth and texture to your story. Your sleuth, for example, may want to follow the trail of a killer from Chicago to Baltimore. But he also wants his wife to be happy, and she doesn’t want him to leave her home alone to watch over their wayward teen-aged son (who wants to skip school and experiment with marijuana).
    But your readers will not be satisfied with a novel about your sleuth unless a whodunit puzzle is its focus. In every novel, no matter what other problems your heroine has to confront, she wants above all to solve a crime.
    This purpose supersedes all of her other goals. If it didn’t, she’d go visit her father or play tennis instead of tracking down the bad guy.
    Define your story by your sleuth’s motivation. What does she want? Why does she want it so badly? Why does she care enough to take significant risks to attain it?
    Then identify your villain’s goals, and make sure that his wants are strongly felt and in direct conflict with your sleuth’s.
    Mystery novels focus on the needs and goals of their characters: The sleuth wants to unravel the clues, identify the villain, and bring him to justice; the villain wants to elude the hero, escape detection, and get away with murder. Many of your characters’ goals will not be readily apparent to your readers. Those that are hidden help to create the story’s mystery. Deducing the true aims of the villain, for example, typically forms a vital part of the story of detection.
    For each important goal, decide why the character needs or wants it so much. Then create scenes that suggest those goals. Your characters’ actions are clues to their goals.
    A mystery plot can be understood as an evenly matched game between protagonist and antagonist. The stakes are high. Both have