BLOGWORDS – Monday 25 March 2019 – NEW WEEK NEW FACE – GUEST POST – C. HOPE CLARK

BLOGWORDS – Monday 25 March 2019 – NEW WEEK NEW FACE – GUEST POST – C. HOPE CLARK
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NEW WEEK NEW FACE – GUEST POST – C. HOPE CLARK
 
 
How Much Author Research Can a Reader Handle?

 

Mystery is the one genre that pits author against reader. The reader picks up the story accepting the author’s dare, with the author swearing the reader will not predict the ending before it’s properly revealed. It’s as old as Edgar Allan Poe and classical as Sherlock Holmes.

One would expect an intense amount of research required to create realistic red herrings and proper forensics, but the magic is not in the details of the science and facts. It’s in the reactions of the characters and escalated suspense achieved as a result of those details. . . something most readers don’t realize.

 

What is Too Many Details?

 

Andrew Horowitz’s 2018 runaway bestseller Magpie Murders is a ridiculously detailed mystery within a mystery, and a double whodunnit you won’t see coming. A tale with meticulous, exhaustive examination of every character both in the story and the mystery manuscript contained within the story. One needs a map and spreadsheet to keep up with names, places, dates, times, and relationships, and the absorption of it all will have you stopping every couple of chapters to ponder and take a breather. There’s always the fear that the book is running away from you.

Brilliant in the end . . . but a longer than normal read because of the intricacies. Intricacies the reader won’t necessarily take away with them after the read. They’ll simply be amazed at whodunnit.

Yet a tremendous amount of effort goes into those insipid details, because there will be one reader who will write the author back, having highlighted the mistake on page 182 about how fingerprints were taken or a gun was loaded. The knife was too close to the edge of the plate to be clearly seen, or the boat could not have sunk that fast due to the construction of the interior hull.

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Authors break a lot of sweat in this sort of research for fear of individuals who seek mistakes. It comes with the territory, remember? The author daring the reader? That reader expects the facts to be legit, the events clearly revealed, no mistakes, and no faking the clues.

 

Keep Up the Pace

 

On the other hand, regardless what they say, readers hate being entrenched in too much detail. Four pages of analysis stops the story’s pace and makes a mind wander off. Frankly, after the story is over, the reader can’t exactly recall what those details were that tripped up the bad guy and raised the brow of the sleuth. Admittedly or not, they were into the story for the intensity, passion, and reactions of the beings in play with each other rather than the factuality.

They want adrenaline, not a lesson in forensics. But they want to feel smart, too.

That’s why there’s an art to the mystery and the research going into it. Simple, yet crisply wise is the point. It’s easy to overdo the clues and spoil the cleanness of a well-oiled tale.

Think Silence of the Lambs. We didn’t get involved in the facts of skinning an overweight people to make a woman suit.  We just wanted the EWWW factor.

 

Plant Just Enough

 

Readers crave a book that trots briskly, dropping just enough clues and elements to make them feel intelligent and able to keep up with the detective or private investigator. Too much detail about automobile mechanics, thunderstorm formation, toxic formulas, or shoe sizes has the potential to frustrate even the most keen of mystery readers.

The vial contains poison. Do we need to understand it’s composition’s breakdown when exposed to air, or just know it dissolves lungs? An author doesn’t want Do we need to know that? to flit unexpected and unwelcome through their reader’s mind, because that pause. . . that stepping away from the page. . . is enough to interrupt the storytelling and lessen their opinion of you, the storyteller.

Writing the perfect mystery still pits the reader against the author, but it’s the shrewd author who enables the reader to believe he was keeping up all along. . . and understood all those clues. All it takes is planting enough information to sound smart without coming off scientific, enough facts to raise that adrenaline and excite, not educate for a final exam. After all, again, the reader needs to think he was right there with the protagonist. . . not stumbling ten yards behind.

 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

C. Hope Clark’s latest release is Dying on Edisto, where her research took her into the art of growing indigo, and the ability to identify poison. The fifth book in the Edisto Island Mysteries, the book is a crossover between this series and her Carolina Slade Mysteries, and the two protagonists finally meet and solve a case together in the jungle Lowcountry of coastal South Carolina. Hope is also founder of FundsforWriters.com, a newsletter that reaches 35,000 readers and earned Writer’s Digest’s choice in its 101 Best Websites for Writers. www.chopeclark.com

 

 

 

 

 

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