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Peg Herring's Blog - Posts Tagged "clues"
Leaping, Solving, and the Hunch
One problem I face as a mystery writer (and reader) is how smart the protagonist gets to be. Even when I was a kid I knew that Sherlock Holmes was often way off in his self-proclaimed "logical deductions". Saying that a man's wife no longer loves him because his coat has a loose button is beyond ridiculous, and such Holmes moments have been spoofed many times by comedians better at it than I.
But here's the thing with mysteries: writers have to make leaps sometimes to make the story work. The cop has to have a gut instinct that tells him he's on the right track, so he zeroes in on one suspect out of the twenty possibles. The detective has to be better than everyone else at putting the pieces together and finding a solution, so she sees the connection between victims that everyone else has missed all these months. The amateur sleuth has to make a leap from "it could be anyone" to "what about this guy?" , picking up on some small detail that sets him on his often bumbling path to the story's climax.
The author's job is to make these moments palatable for the reader, so everyone goes along, takes the jump, and makes it to the other side. It's one of the mystery writer's most difficult tasks: if the gap's too big, the reader can't or won't span it. If it's too small, the reader's way ahead and eventually wanders off to look for something more interesting. And if your crucial clue is that the dog didn't bark, well, good luck with that.
But here's the thing with mysteries: writers have to make leaps sometimes to make the story work. The cop has to have a gut instinct that tells him he's on the right track, so he zeroes in on one suspect out of the twenty possibles. The detective has to be better than everyone else at putting the pieces together and finding a solution, so she sees the connection between victims that everyone else has missed all these months. The amateur sleuth has to make a leap from "it could be anyone" to "what about this guy?" , picking up on some small detail that sets him on his often bumbling path to the story's climax.
The author's job is to make these moments palatable for the reader, so everyone goes along, takes the jump, and makes it to the other side. It's one of the mystery writer's most difficult tasks: if the gap's too big, the reader can't or won't span it. If it's too small, the reader's way ahead and eventually wanders off to look for something more interesting. And if your crucial clue is that the dog didn't bark, well, good luck with that.
The Tangled Web of a Mystery Plot
I hope all you mystery readers appreciate the work we writers put into killing people.
For me, a plot has to make sense, be satisfying, and follow logically. I try very hard to avoid TSTL moments (too stupid to live) where a character goes after the killer alone, at night, in a swamp, in high heels or whatever.
I want my readers to have a fair shot at identifying the killer, but I really hope they are surprised, too. In the book I finished reading this morning at breakfast, the clumsy cop who got in the way of the investigation was just a bit too inept for believability, and I knew he was The Guy.
Of course there have to be red herrings (NPI), not too many, though. And when there is a scene where the killer spills his/her guts to the protag, I require a really good reason for them to be spending time together, not just a desire to gloat on the criminal's part.
The denouement, the "unraveling", should be evident by the time we get to it. There should not be long scenes where the sleuth explains motivation or complicated factors. Hints interspersed in the story should come together, so the reader thinks, "I should have seen it coming."
What all this does is make it difficult to write a good mystery. I would never claim that I'm great at all these things, but it is what a mystery writer should strive for: logic and believability, with an ending that wraps everything in a package that makes the reader say, "That's good."
For me, a plot has to make sense, be satisfying, and follow logically. I try very hard to avoid TSTL moments (too stupid to live) where a character goes after the killer alone, at night, in a swamp, in high heels or whatever.
I want my readers to have a fair shot at identifying the killer, but I really hope they are surprised, too. In the book I finished reading this morning at breakfast, the clumsy cop who got in the way of the investigation was just a bit too inept for believability, and I knew he was The Guy.
Of course there have to be red herrings (NPI), not too many, though. And when there is a scene where the killer spills his/her guts to the protag, I require a really good reason for them to be spending time together, not just a desire to gloat on the criminal's part.
The denouement, the "unraveling", should be evident by the time we get to it. There should not be long scenes where the sleuth explains motivation or complicated factors. Hints interspersed in the story should come together, so the reader thinks, "I should have seen it coming."
What all this does is make it difficult to write a good mystery. I would never claim that I'm great at all these things, but it is what a mystery writer should strive for: logic and believability, with an ending that wraps everything in a package that makes the reader say, "That's good."
The Limits of Teasing a Reader
Okay, Author, you've got a big secret in your book, something that happened to the main character in the past that has a bearing on how he/she acts today. Here are Peg's rules for dealing with it:
First, refer to it sparingly. I get tired of being reminded that there's something you know that I don't.
Second, make the clues progressive, so I have a chance of figuring it out, at least partly, before the end.
Third, the secret had better be good enough when I get there to justify the hints and clues. I want to feel what the character felt and decide I might have had the same reaction.
I guess it's pretty obvious that I just finished a book with such a secret. I got tired of the vague hints that kept coming up but never added to my understanding of the character. And in the end, I thought the author hurried through the explanation so that I never got the sense of experiencing the terrible event with the protagonist. He was so well drawn in the rest of the book that I felt cheated by being left out of his life-defining moment. I'd been teased all along, and then the author just walked away. Authors shouldn't do that.
First, refer to it sparingly. I get tired of being reminded that there's something you know that I don't.
Second, make the clues progressive, so I have a chance of figuring it out, at least partly, before the end.
Third, the secret had better be good enough when I get there to justify the hints and clues. I want to feel what the character felt and decide I might have had the same reaction.
I guess it's pretty obvious that I just finished a book with such a secret. I got tired of the vague hints that kept coming up but never added to my understanding of the character. And in the end, I thought the author hurried through the explanation so that I never got the sense of experiencing the terrible event with the protagonist. He was so well drawn in the rest of the book that I felt cheated by being left out of his life-defining moment. I'd been teased all along, and then the author just walked away. Authors shouldn't do that.
