How was she murdered?

Well, tell us about the character.

What is she like? What's her routine? Why would someone want to kill her?

In the (paraphrased) words of Agatha's Christie's most famous detective, Hercule Poirot: The character of the murder victim is essential to the murder.

I think that's one of the difficult things about her... she's so nice. I don't know why someone would want to kill her!

She's in her twenties, pretty and young looking. She's looking for a way to get somewhere bigger, better, more interesting than the small town she lives in. She's really SET on that and not so much on the people around her, even the guy who obviously adores her (suspect number one after death!).
I guess I'm still building her character. She's malleable. Thus far, that's all I have going for her. It's weird how she's going to hardly be in the story at all, but her character is SO IMPORTANT!

Title: all the lies of georgia gray
Progess: 0%
Sanity: 96%

Maybe she saw or overheard something about a crime, and the people committing the crime decided she was a liability and had to take her out...

Well, there's your means. Now for method.

I kill off one of my police officers towards the end of my novel this year [single mother, 5 year old daughter, which she only told me after I decided she dies] and she is killed while rescuing my MC Alexia. The cop that is killed is shot with Alexia's gun, and it is the perp they spend the book trying to catch. [Really complicated how he gets the gun]. So, a gun might just be the key, or a piece of glass or a knife, depending on how well-planned the death is.

Opportunity.

Well, if they plan it so they know when, know her route etc then a gun or a knife that they'd take with them. In this case, let's just say they spend a day or two working out her routine before killing her. If not, and they follow her the day/night she overhears them, I'd say have them follow her and then use an opportune weapon like a shard of glass to stab her.

Voila. Your whole death planned. So the cops'll start out with the method, and then work up to means and opportunity. What do you think?

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Helen Blakemore: If he insists on coming in here, we'll have to shoot him.

Personally, I would suggest the method that works for me. You may not work well with it, but I'll suggest it.

Figure her out. Figure out why she is wanted dead. Figure out who killed her. THEN figure out how they killed her.

It's much easier to fit a murder to a murderer than a murderer to a murder. For example, someone who poisons has a different psychological makeup than someone who strangles. From the personality of the murderer, a way to kill may suggest itself.

First of all - do you know WHO murdered her? Men and Women are going to go about it differently. If it was a crime of passion she might be strangled by a man. Jealous female? She might be poisoned.

Small farm community? You could run over her with a tractor or she could be pushed off a cliff into a ravine.

Reasons why she might have been killed?

She seemed like a nice girl, but she was dating a married man and threatened to tell his wife.

There is a crazy female who is in love with the nice guy (who is the suspect) and she saw her as a threat.

She saw two people together that shouldn't be. (Example - the mayor and the developer, the town preacher and the teenager,
the banker and his secretary...)

She seemed like a nice girl, but she was blackmailing several members in town (the preacher, the mayor, the banker...)

Best way to figure it out --- is to just ask yourself "What if...?"

What if she saw something she shouldn't have?
What is she was seeing someone she shouldn't have?
What if someone thought she saw something, but she didn't?

Good luck!

2006 - Walking With The Ghost
2007 - Athame To Die

Word Count ~

Never trouble trouble until trouble troubles you!

What if she just looks like someone that the serial killer is mad at?

EDIT: never mind, I said you said WHY was she murdered.

If you use the phrase "Way Past Cool" near me, I will be forced to kill you. :)

You could have someone murder her using the things that she works with, so that it wouldn't look as much like a murder (assuming that her killer didn't want it to be seen as a murder, which makes sense). This suggests food poisoning to me, or perhaps poisoning of something she used regularly in her work (with some poison that would seep into her skin, perhaps, or something that she woudl inhale, though this might make other people sick as well).

Think about whether your killer wants to make this look like a suicide or like an accident. Or whether your killer doesn't care if everybody sees it as a murder (though it would be more interesting if the first question was whether it was a murder or not).

Maybe the killer didn't set out to kill her. It could have been an accident or a quarrel that got out of hand. But they realise that she's dead ... they think, "Well, swending me to the chair ain't gonna bring her back, if I can get away with this, then at least it will only be one life ruined ..."

She sounds ambitious. What sort of things would she do to acheive her ambitions? She could step on the wrong toes somehow.

It's hard to plan the murder until you decide who. The way someone is killed says a great deal about the nature of the murderer.

Strangulation? Intimate and personal killing.
Poison? Planning and waiting?
Death by farming equipment? Sounds impulsive or even accidental. Perhaps opportunistic.

If your mystery is a cozy, you can still have a gory death. Just keep it off camera.

Well, if she was murdered at the diner and it was a moment of passion type murder, use something there. A butcher knife, a frying pan, the oven or the freezer.

MissWrite
Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. ~E.L. Doctorow