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Cozy mystery outline template

A cozy mystery outline puts an amateur sleuth in a small community, gives them a death to solve early, and walks them through the suspects, a false lead, a second blow, and a wrong accusation before the real reveal. Violence stays off the page and the community is mended at the end.

A rebound logbook and binding tools lie beside a bookbinder's boat at a quiet village lock.

When to use it

  • Your sleuth is an amateur with a shop, a hobby, or a village.
  • You write a series and need each book's shape to be familiar.
  • Your solution feels unearned. The wrong-answer beat makes the right one land.

The 4 acts

  • Act One: The Crime. The small world, the people in it, and the death that breaks its peace.
  • Act Two: The Suspects. Everyone with a reason, and the one lie each of them is telling.
  • Act Three: The Wrong Answer. A second blow, and a confident answer that turns out to be wrong.
  • Act Four: The Solution. The detail that was there all along, the reveal, and the world put right.

The 11 beats at 70,000 words

The marks assume 70,000 words, because cozy mysteries usually run 65,000 to 80,000 words. Each beat keeps its percentage at any length, so scale the marks to your own. The story structure calculator works them out for any length.

  1. The Community 2% · word 1,500 The village, shop, or circle the sleuth belongs to. Everyone worth suspecting later appears here doing something ordinary.
  2. The Body 10% · word 7,000 A death that disturbs the peace, on the page or just off it. Early, and never gratuitous.
  3. Drawn In 18% · word 12,500 Why an amateur cannot leave it to the police: a friend accused, a debt owed, their own name on the list.
  4. The Suspects 30% · word 21,000 Each suspect gets a motive, a secret, and a lie about something smaller than the murder.
  5. The False Lead 42% · word 29,500 The evidence points somewhere convincing. Play it fairly: the reader should believe it too.
  6. The Second Blow 50% · word 35,000 A second death or an attack that rules out the easy theory and raises the stakes.
  7. A Warning 62% · word 43,500 The sleuth has come close enough to be a threat, and someone makes that clear.
  8. The Wrong Answer 70% · word 49,000 They accuse, or nearly accuse, the wrong person, and it costs them a friendship or their standing.
  9. The Overlooked Detail 80% · word 56,000 Something planted in the first act reads differently now. Only now does the pattern hold.
  10. The Reveal 90% · word 63,000 The killer named, and every clue shown to fit. The reader should think: I could have seen it.
  11. Order Restored 98% · word 68,500 The community mended and a little changed, with one thread left loose for the next book.

A worked example

Hattie repairs old books on a canal boat, and the lock keeper is found drowned in his own lock.

  1. The Community. The towpath, the tea room, the narrowboat families who winter at the basin.
  2. The Body. The lock keeper is found at dawn with the sluice gates open.
  3. Drawn In. The police arrest Hattie's nephew, who argued with the keeper the night before.
  4. The Suspects. The tea room owner, the boatyard heir, and the keeper's estranged daughter all lie about that night.
  5. The False Lead. A torn page in the keeper's logbook points at the boatyard.
  6. The Second Blow. The boatyard heir is found unconscious by the same lock.
  7. A Warning. Someone floods Hattie's boat while she sleeps.
  8. The Wrong Answer. She accuses the daughter in front of the whole basin, and is wrong.
  9. The Overlooked Detail. The logbook binding is new; someone rebound it to hide a missing page.
  10. The Reveal. The tea room owner, who has a bindery's glue on her apron, falsified the water rights.
  11. Order Restored. The basin holds a party at the lock, and a new keeper asks Hattie about a very old book.

Open this template in Tabularia

Tabularia opens a new Book on the Cozy Mystery shape: its acts and a chapter for each beat, named for it, with each note pinned beside the chapter it belongs to. The book's word goal is set to 70,000 words. You name the Book before anything is created.

Open in Tabularia

Or take it away

The Word file has every beat with its note and mark, a line under each for your own plan, and the example above. It opens in Word, Google Docs, Pages, and LibreOffice.

Download for Word