Creative Writing: Agatha Christie Research

For this Creative Writing Project, I will be researching about Agatha Christie as the theme I chose for my project is Thriller, Crime, and/or Mystery.

Agatha Christie

She was well-known for her murder mystery books. Her murder mysteries were extremely popular as, not only were they the first ever written in this genre, but also because they have captivating detectives, a diversity of suspects and the creation of a true rule for murder mysteries.

source: agathachristie.com

For this research, I will be looking into one of her best selling releases called 'And Then There Were None'. It is a murder mystery book about 10 strangers who are invited into a remote island, in which also they are each being accused of a terrible crime. However, suddenly as the member start to die one by one, they all start to turn and accuse one another of being the killer.

Though I have not fully read the book, reading the blurb caught my attention. Upon reading the reviews, most of them say that the most appealing part of the book are the characters. They continue by saying how Agatha Christie did a great job in differentiating and giving varied personalities of each character in the book. Besides the characters, they also mentioned how, in this book, the plot twist was unpredictable and unlike other murder mystery books.

After further research, I concluded that Agatha Christie starts writing her murder mystery stories by outlining the plot story first and what murder is bound to happen. I find this method extremely helpful as outlining the plot from the beginning will give me ease for further chapters along with planning the main murder of the plot. She also immediately wrote her last chapter after finishing the first chapter as to help and guarantee that she does not stray off course of the story she had planned in the beginning.

References:

Gad, J. (no date) And then there were none by Agatha Christie: Book of the month, by Agatha Christie | Book of the Month. Available at: https://www.bookofthemonth.com/all-books/and-then-there-were-none-321#:~:text=Considered%20the%20best%20mystery%20novel,accuses%20each%20person%20of%20murder. (Accessed: 26 May 2023).

Lamothe, L. (2020) Agatha Christie’s plotting secrets, Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@lorilamothe29/agatha-christies-plotting-secrets-7129b56c687f#:~:text=She%20outlined%20her%20plots%20before%20she%20wrote%20a%20single%20word&text=First%2C%20she%20would%20figure%20out,red%20herrings%20to%20divert%20readers. (Accessed: 26 May 2023).

Li, S. (2021) Book review: And then there were none by Agatha Christie - Global comment, Global Comment - Where the world thinks out loud. Available at: https://globalcomment.com/book-review-and-then-there-were-none-by-agatha-christie/ (Accessed: 26 May 2023). 

Writing, F. (2022) The writing style of Agatha Christie, FreelanceWriting. Available at: https://www.freelancewriting.com/creative-writing/the-writing-style-of-agatha-christie/#:~:text=Agatha%20preferred%20to%20plot%20her,pull%20readers%20in%20different%20directions. (Accessed: 26 May 2023).