Peg Herring's Blog - Posts Tagged "plot"

I know not what path others may take, but as for me, it's the same path, over and over. As I write, I leave big holes, but as I edit, again and again, they fill themselves in almost as a matter of course. As big problems are solved, smaller ones come to light and get their turn for my full attention. It's the fourth time through that I see a tiny event that deepens the bad girl's motivation and makes her more realistic. On the sixth time it might be an incident that, added to the main plot, diverts the reader and allows for a bigger surprise at the end. And it's the tenth time through that the phrasing smooths out, making each character sound like himself, different from all the others.

It's how I work, and it's how I know I'm no Mozart, just a writer who has to work really hard to get better.

Writers know what it is, and readers do, too: Too Dumb To Live. It's that moment in a book where a character does something so out of logical bounds that we're thrown out of the story while we scream (silently, one hopes) "No sane person would go into that basement/warehouse/alley/crypt, etc. In the book I'm reading, it is the hull of a ship that's aground in the Arctic Circle. The two men (Double TDTL) rappel into the hold in their street clothes, knowing that a) the ship is sliding off the shelf and will soon sink, b) there are unexploded charges aboard, c) the water temperature will kill them in minutes. Maybe understandable if they had to save the President or find the Holy Grail or retrieve Mom's oatmeal cookie recipe, but no - they're pretty much just looking around.

Writers know it has to happen sometimes, but readers really need at least one sentence that gives it credence. "Hank, you're always been a crazy bastard, but you're my friend, and I'm not letting you do this alone." Or "Hank knew it was crazy, but the need to find out what was in that hold was overpowering."

Come on, guys. Help a reader out.

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.

I'm always flattered when a reader tells me he/she couldn't put one of my books down. It 's a high compliment to be told I caused a person to be so caught up in a story that he couldn't stop until the end. The best books, of course make us rather sad to get to that last page, but we rush ahead to it anyway, accepting the inevitable destination in exchange for the excitement of the journey.

I mentioned that I'm reading THE HOUSE AT RIVERTON by Kate Morton, and I was reluctant to put it down this morning and come to the computer. It almost feels as if I, as the reader, am holding these poor people up, making them wait to find out what happens in their lives. That's the spell a good writer weaves: readers feel their presence, their participation, is required.

Even when it isn't possible to read a book straight through, and for many of us it seldom is, the author has succeeded if the desire is there to put our own lives on hold while we "help" the characters sort theirs out.

I had a twist I wanted to add at the end of my WIP, but it was giving me trouble. I'd worked out most of it, but I wanted a delay in one plot event (a murder...what a surprise) that would create some irony and a more satisfying conclusion. I was ranting about it at the breakfast table, and my husband, who never reads my stuff or offers an opinion, listened, knowing it was important to me because I've hardly left my office for three days.

His comment? "You're making it too complicated." And after a ten-second scenario!

I was. I was trying too hard to be clever, when all I really need at that point in the story is what's already there. The irony is apparent; I was going a step too far, not trusting my readers to get it. Looking at it through the eyes of someone who has no (well, very little) stake in the plot outcome, I could see that.

Out of the mouths of non-mystery readers!

Sounds like it might lead to a "Who's On First?" situation: "What is a mystery? I don't know; it's a mystery to me." When we say we love mysteries, what do we mean?

It could mean we love picking out clues in a story and separating them from the red herrings. Some of the greats of mystery excel at the casual reference that is so important later in the story or the item clutched in the dead man's hand that could be nothing, could be something.

Some of us love the chase; the physical danger, the "Oh, *&^%" moment where we can't see how the protag is going to get out of this one, even though we're sure (well, almost sure) that it will happen.

Some of us love the characters: Jack Reacher, V.I.Warshawski, Inspector Gamache, or whoever, despite faults and flaws, makes us want to know how they're doing these days.

And some of us love it all. We can argue about whether suspense is mystery or thriller is its own genre or cozy versus hard-boiled, but for those of us who love it, a puzzle is usually enough. I may be in the mood for John Rain today and Gertie Johnson tomorrow. I am equally at home in Billy Boyle's WWII stories or Hester Latterly's Victorian era or Walt Longmire's modern-day west. As long as there's a plot that I can unravel along with the author and his sleuth, I'm there.

The mystery I'm reading right now doesn't have it. The descriptions are artful, the plot moves along, the situation is unique and interesting. But I feel the author's hand on my shoulder, pushing me along, trying to make me believe what she needs me to believe in order to get to her conclusion.

Characters say things that sound, well, out of character, and I hear her yell, "THAT'S A CLUE, READER!" People explode with anger, blurting out their secrets when they should be cautious and subtle. Several minor characters can't seem to decide what their own personality traits are. The protagonist has already told me twice how beautiful she is ... and I'm supposed to like her?

Finally, everyone in the book except the protag, her ethnic sidekick, and the wrongly-accused client is nasty and not afraid to show it. I can't help but think that if there were that many overtly mean-spirited people in one spot for long, the earth would open up and swallow them in pure self-preservation. I also hope the people of this author's state don't read her books: the Chamber of Commerce would cringe at her slamming of the whole state's morals, legal system, and inhabitants.

Will I finish the book? Probably. Will I read another by this author? Probably not. Good authors paint images that make us believe the people and situations are real, no matter how outre they may be. Second-rate authors try to force us to accept their view of the world, and their characters are cartoonish stereotypes, spewing bad dialogue and doing unreasonable things to move a clunky plot along. Second rate doesn't get a second chance from me; there are too many good authors out there.

I can never decide what I love about the books I love. Yes, I want to know what happened, and when it gets to a certain point, I have to read to the end to find out. But there's also, in the back of my mind, the fact that I know what will happen, sort of. The mystery will be solved, the characters, at least most of them, will go on. So is it the plot that's most important, or is it the characters?



Aside from noir, where I don't like anybody and therefore usually don't read, I look for characters that I like or at least sympathize with. The book I just finished, NO GOOD DEEDS by Laura Lippman, has a kid I wanted to slap for his attitude, his language, and his actions. But he's sympathetic. I knew kids like him when I taught school: self-destructive but not on purpose. Mixed up about what life is and what it could be. This kid drives the plot with his contrariness, and that's what makes a book worthwhile to me, characters who can't possibly act other than their personalities demand and the resulting events. Although things somehow end up at a logical place, not everyone will be perfect at the end. Not every wrinkle in life's fabric will be smoothed. But because the characters somehow focused their strengths and overcame their weaknesses, there is closure. That's what I want as a mystery reader.

Short answer: I don't know.



Longer answer: GO HOME AND DIE is, I will admit, "a little bit me, a little bit you". I lived in Flint, Michigan in 1969. I was out of the women's lib loop, skinny, and unsure of what I wanted to make of myself. I wore glasses that I hated. So Carrie started with some of my hang-ups. But she became her own person so quickly that soon I hardly recognized her.



Jack Porter, Vietnam vet, is an amalgam of several people I knew back then. A friend at college had stepped on a land mine and was struggling to rebuild his life with a ruined leg. My husband (then boyfriend) returned in January of 1969. He and other friends told me little anecdotes about daily life that made their way into the book. They would talk about the food, the weather, the card games; they didn't talk about the war.



Somehow, forty years later, my brain concocted a mystery in which a prim young woman meets an embittered but decent (and hunky) vet. She learns from him about the way the world operates. He gets from her a reconnection with the goodness in life.



Of course, I had to throw in some problems along the way: a few murders and a very beautiful woman whose hold on Jack threatens everything: their budding relationship, their business partnership, and even their lives.



Comment on this blog and you'll be entered in a drawing for a free copy of this e-book, GO HOME AND DIE.

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."