Ordering of reveals, paper clues and the Doctor
When you're writing a detective story in which characters (and readers) need to follow a gradual journey of discovery, how do you get it right? And do you even know when it is right?
Some authors seem to be able to do this effortlessly (or maybe they just make it look like they do...) Agatha Christie could switch between challenging you with WHO did the murder to HOW it was done or perhaps WHY. For me, it's always a struggle. The plot looms over the writing, casting a shadow that makes it feel as though there could never be any other way an event could have happened. I forget to allow my characters to consider alternative explanations. Sometimes they must seem to be led by divine revelation!
There's also a certain backwards rationalising you can indulge in which doesn't sit easily with the reader. I saw this in a recent episode of Dr Who. The world was threatened by an Extinction Level Event, said the Doctor, and only he could save it. But what was it? What could possibly endanger the world so suddenly? Perhaps a bacteria, he theorised, moving quickly to identifying all the world's research laboratories and from this to winnowing down the possibilities until he was left with the exact lab in which a terrible accident was about to happen.
If you're the Doctor, perhaps this is the most efficient way to solve problems. You've had eternity to figure things out, after all. But it doesn't work for the run of the mill thriller - you need discoveries to be led by clues.
My aversion to mobile phone and computer-driven plotting (see a previous post) mean I reject digital clues and try to resort to the paper clue-dropping tendencies of characters of earlier ages. (I think longingly of the Kilmorden Castle...) But there are only so many pieces of paper that people can feasibly drop in one novel, so I turn to the poorly remembered conversation and to the visual clue that the detective saw but did not realise he saw. (Something that works much better in a visual medium like television or film.)
Mary Stewart said she only wrote one proper detective story because thrillers, which are generally driven by a breakneck urgency to find something or escape someone, are easier. (See The 39 Steps, in which all the momentum is supplied by Richard Hannay's frantic escape dash through the Highlands, while he worries away at a conveniently difficult to decode diary - another paper clue!) She's right, of course. But her one detective story, Wildfire At Midnight, is so wonderful - and so effortlessly and expertly plotted - that I can only assume she was unable to see her own brilliance. I wish she had written others.
Some authors seem to be able to do this effortlessly (or maybe they just make it look like they do...) Agatha Christie could switch between challenging you with WHO did the murder to HOW it was done or perhaps WHY. For me, it's always a struggle. The plot looms over the writing, casting a shadow that makes it feel as though there could never be any other way an event could have happened. I forget to allow my characters to consider alternative explanations. Sometimes they must seem to be led by divine revelation!
There's also a certain backwards rationalising you can indulge in which doesn't sit easily with the reader. I saw this in a recent episode of Dr Who. The world was threatened by an Extinction Level Event, said the Doctor, and only he could save it. But what was it? What could possibly endanger the world so suddenly? Perhaps a bacteria, he theorised, moving quickly to identifying all the world's research laboratories and from this to winnowing down the possibilities until he was left with the exact lab in which a terrible accident was about to happen.
If you're the Doctor, perhaps this is the most efficient way to solve problems. You've had eternity to figure things out, after all. But it doesn't work for the run of the mill thriller - you need discoveries to be led by clues.
My aversion to mobile phone and computer-driven plotting (see a previous post) mean I reject digital clues and try to resort to the paper clue-dropping tendencies of characters of earlier ages. (I think longingly of the Kilmorden Castle...) But there are only so many pieces of paper that people can feasibly drop in one novel, so I turn to the poorly remembered conversation and to the visual clue that the detective saw but did not realise he saw. (Something that works much better in a visual medium like television or film.)
Mary Stewart said she only wrote one proper detective story because thrillers, which are generally driven by a breakneck urgency to find something or escape someone, are easier. (See The 39 Steps, in which all the momentum is supplied by Richard Hannay's frantic escape dash through the Highlands, while he worries away at a conveniently difficult to decode diary - another paper clue!) She's right, of course. But her one detective story, Wildfire At Midnight, is so wonderful - and so effortlessly and expertly plotted - that I can only assume she was unable to see her own brilliance. I wish she had written others.
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