How To Write A Sherlock Holmes Story
In this post, we cover how to write a Sherlock Holmes story.
Everybody loves a good mystery. Why not write one on your own? How about using the world’s most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes? This article will show you a formula for writing such a short story.
How To Write A Sherlock Holmes Story
Sherlock Holmes is the world’s most famous detective. He stars in books, movies, radio plays, and even manga comics. Readers just cannot get enough of him. Authors around the globe have been writing pastiches for over a hundred years.
How does Sherlock Holmes hook the reader? It is a combination of a formula story structure, a great cast of characters, and a few other elements. Let us take a closer look.
The Formula Story Structure
Originally, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote fifty-six short stories about Sherlock Holmes. They all keep using the same elements. We will use them to construct a formula story structure. As an example, we shall use one of the most famous stories, The Speckled Band.
1. Setting The Scene
Typically, Watson starts his story in their apartment on Baker Street. In a cosy home scene, Watson and Holmes are engaged in some pastime. Holmes often does something relevant to the new case.
We can see this at the beginning of The Speckled Band where the client wakes Holmes, Watson, and Mrs Hudson. Later, we learn that the victims were killed in their sleep.
2. Call To Action
A cryptic letter or a visitor (a client or Inspector Lestrade) disturbs the peaceful scene at Baker Street. Holmes learns the basic outline of the case. He only accepts the client if solving the mystery is a challenge to him. Money never is an issue. Holmes then demonstrates his superior intelligence with a ‘parlour trick.’ The detective shows what his observations tell him about the client. Then, the client gives a detailed account of the crime. Holmes and Watson discuss the case in private.
In The Speckled Band, Holmes uses the pattern of mud sprinkles on the client’s sleeve to explain she has travelled in a dogcart.
3. Inspecting The Crime Scene
Holmes is a practical detective. He always visits the crime scene, sometimes even in costume. Watson often accompanies him, asking questions. He is the perfect foil to explain Holmes’s methods. Gathering the clues, Holmes forms an idea of how the crime happened. Usually, he wants further proof before he shares his thoughts with Watson.
In The Speckled Band, Holmes and Watson arrive in the village, posing as architects. They inspect the victim’s room. There, they discover a bell pull that cannot ring. Holmes decides to spend the night in this room to catch the murderer.
Read: 10 Elementary Tips For Writers From Sherlock Holmes
4. The Vigil
Holmes is secretive about his plans. Typically, he simply instructs Watson to come along with his gun. They lie in wait to catch the criminal red-handed. The vigil ends with the confrontation of the criminal.
In The Speckled Band, Holmes and Watson wait in a nearby inn, observing the suspect’s mansion. A second vigil takes place when they go to the victim’s room inside the mansion. Here, they discover the snake. Attempting to kill it, Holmes drives it back, and the snake kills the murderer. Mystery solved!
5. Closing The Case
This is the moment Watson, and the readers, have been waiting for. Holmes explains how he worked out the case. Watson asks questions to understand the tricky bits of Holmes’s logic.
In The Speckled Band, Holmes fills Watson in on the details while travelling back to London.
Now that we have our basic plot, we need the setting, the characters, and a few other extras to give our Holmes story that special zing.
Elements To Spice Up Your Holmes Story
1. Mysterious Crime
The more outrageous the crime, the weapon, and the circumstances, the better. ‘Locked-room puzzles’ (like in The Speckled Band) are always spectacular. Perplexing the reader, they set the stage for Holmes to show off his superior intelligence.
Other curious crimes include a diamond in the belly of a goose (The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle) or the illusion of a supernatural hound (The Hound of the Baskervilles).
2. Interesting Cast Of Characters
The detective himself must be larger than life. Even as a superhero with incredible powers, he must also have flaws. These flaws make the hero relatable to the reader.
Every great detective needs a sidekick. As the viewpoint character, the reader sees the world of mystery through his eyes. He is the character who we all identify with.
We also need minor characters that even out the detective’s shortcomings. For example, Holmes does not cook or clean. Mrs Hudson runs the household. Holmes can solve any mystery, but he needs Inspector Lestrade to arrest criminals and send them to prison.
Other characters must include clients, victims, and villains.
3. Typical Objects
Holmes is a larger-than-life character because we know so many endearing details. He wears a bathrobe at home, or a deerstalker when he is on the hunt. He smokes, he conducts chemical experiments, and he plays the violin. We all know his meerschaum, the Persian slipper, or his magnifying glass.
4. A Sense Of Place
Every Holmes story revolves around the apartment in Baker Street in London. The crimes often call the detective away from the city. Conan Doyle uses his settings to create an atmosphere of foreboding.
In The Speckled Band, the house of the criminal is under construction and the lawn is ‘ill-trimmed.’ This signifies to any Victorian reader that the affairs of this household are not in order.
5. Something Exotic
Conan Doyle liked to use exotic elements in many of his stories, especially for his villains. The exotic often originates in the countries of the Commonwealth, such as India.
In The Speckled Band, the villain has exotic pets, a baboon, and a cheetah. His secret pet, the snake, is rare and extremely poisonous. Exotic influences are even more important in the novels.
Now you know the basic setup of the Holmes stories. The authors of the successful pastiches show us that the trick is to stick to these tried-and-tested elements, to vary them. Introduce small elements of your own that are so logical that Conan Doyle could have invented them himself. You don’t want to copy Conan Doyle. Elementary, right?
The Last Word
There are many pastiches on Sherlock Holmes and reading any of them will give you a sense of how to write one yourself. For more advice, please read Anthony Horowitz’s ten rules. They show his strategic decisions before he started writing his Holmes novel The House of Silk.
Further Reading:
- Laurie Kind, A Beekeeper’s Apprentice, and further novels of the Mary Russell series (pastiches)
- Nicholas Meyer, The Seven-Percent Solution (pastiche)
By Susanne Bennett. Susanne is a German-American writer who is a journalist by trade and a writer by heart. After years of working at German public radio and an online news portal, she has decided to accept challenges by Deadlines for Writers. Currently she is writing her first novel with them. She is known for overweight purses and carrying a novel everywhere. Follow her on Facebook.
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