Learn to layer intrigue and deepen your story in this afternoon workshop with best-selling author Patricia Crisafulli.
Every good mystery has a hook—but the best ones weave in a second thread to keep readers turning the pages. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to create layered mysteries that connect across time, place, and character. These techniques work for a wide range of genres beyond mysteries!
Tragedy befalls someone. A crime is committed. A terrible wrong grips an individual, a family, a community. These kinds of inciting incidents open the pages of a mystery. But the quest to solve the crime—discovering the perpetrator and their motivation—often takes you into other mysteries: a long-ago cold case, an unsolved crime, revenge extracted years or generations later. Or even seemingly unrelated incidents that turn out to be deeply connected.
The presence of a mystery-within-a-mystery adds depth, texture, and greater intrigue to a story. But the secret is in the proportion and the propulsion: In other words, which mystery drives the story? And which will be secondary/supplementary?
Patricia Crisafulli, author of the bestselling Onita Harbor Mystery series, deploys the mystery-within-a-mystery approach in her own work. In addition to investigating a present-day crime, an artifact must be identified and authenticated. Solving one mystery intersects with the solution of the other. Along the way, seemingly disparate circumstances begin to overlap–until they become part of the whole.
In this hands-on workshop, you’ll learn how to:
- Plot both the primary and secondary mysteries
- Create disconnection and disparity to keep readers guessing
- Pull the threads together in satisfying ways
- Craft a denouement (big reveal) that ties it all up with intrigue and surprise
Plotting the mysteries
You’ll work on plotting the mysteries that will drive your book. You’ll identify the primary mystery–the inciting incident that begins the quest or investigation. Then you’ll explore the secondary mystery–whether that’s something from the past or a seemingly unrelated concurrent incident.
Creating disconnection and disparity
You’ll brainstorm the basic details of the two mysteries, learn how you can keep the incidents separate to make them look coincidental and emphasize their disparity.
Pulling the threads together
You’ll delve even deeper into plot and narrative strategy to begin weaving together the commonalities, similar themes, or coincidences that show a link between the two mysteries. This linkage may at first be circumstantial, but you’ll learn how to highlight elements of each by examining the other. Whether their connection is direct or indirect, discovering how these seemingly separate incidents overlap is deeply satisfying for your readers.
Crafting the big reveal
You’ll learn narrative strategy for “untying the knot” of your seemingly unrelated incidents and how to then weave them together into an interconnected solution.
By the end of this workshop, you’ll have:
- A framework for building a layered mystery
- Writing exercises and prompts you can use again and again
- Strategies for connecting incidents across time and place
- New skills in crafting plot twists and seeding clues
- Community and encouragement from fellow writers
Is this workshop for you?
This workshop is for:
- Writers new to the mystery genre
- Writers who want to sharpen their craft
Saturday, November 22, 2025
1-5 pm
In-person at the Wordcrafters studio
436 Charnelton St. Ste 100
Eugene, OR 97401
Cost
Access: $119 – if you have limited access to funds
Sustainer: $159 – the actual cost of this program
Patron: $199 – if you have more access to resources and can support others who need to pay less
Choose the ticket price that best reflects your financial capacity. We trust you to discern your level of need or ability to help others with less access to wealth.
Learn more about our Pay From Your Heart Pricing.
Scholarship info: We want everyone to have access to our writing programs. If you need additional support, please complete our scholarship request form.
Wordcrafters members save 10% on this and other events and classes.
HEALTH CONSIDERATIONS
Masks are optional. Please stay home if you’re unwell with any upper respiratory illness.
Your instructor
Patricia Crisafulli (she/her) is an award winning, New York Times best-selling author. Her latest novel is The Secrets of the Old Post Cemetery, released fall 2025 from Woodhall Press. Her debut novel, The Secrets of Ohnita Harbor, published in 2022, followed by The Secrets of Still Waters Chasm in 2023 (both from Woodhall Press). She earned a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree from Northwestern University where she received the Distinguished Thesis Award in Creative Writing.
The Secrets of the Old Post Cemetery is the much-anticipated third book in the Ohnita Harbor Mystery series, reuniting readers with beloved protagonist Gabriela Domenici, the smalltown librarian whose accidental sleuthing puts her on the frontlines of death and danger. At the heart of the mystery is The Traitor’s Map–a highly inaccurate spy map from the American Revolution that could be a hoax, a ruse used against the British, or a poor attempt by an 18th century amateur cartographer. When Gabriela assigns the map as a research project to a group of college students, one of them is found murdered on the lakeshore–triggering a spiral of death and deceit that soon embroils Gabriela and the man she loves. The Secrets of the Old Post Cemetery tells a riveting story of emotional complexity as it explores love, betrayal, murder, and a chance for redemption.
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