Recently, I attended the Public Safety Writers Association's conference where the most wonderful award winning mystery author, Betty Webb, was a keynote speaker and also gave us some marvelous mystery writing tips. Betty told us how not to begin a mystery novel as well as how to do it. A couple of the how not to begin were with the weather and a dream. The first page of the novel is a promise to the reader. It should have action, action, action--a crisis not of the main character's own making, and he or she should solve the problem him or herself. The first page better be the best possible. She said there are two elements to a story: style and structure. She suggested having a dead body on the first page and another in the middle. It is a good idea to have the detective or sleuth be the one to discover the body. Tension should build on every page. A strong arc of action is what sells a book. Only use one or two sentences for back story. Another tip was to circle all the "w...