To Set Up or Not to Set Up
I have come to the conclusion, having just hastily written up an RPG session that revolves around the uncovering of the Big Scheme, that writing mysteries is hard.
Not just mysteries, I should say. Foreshadowing in general can be bloody difficult. Because fundamentally, I, the writer, am in possession of all the facts: I know precisely where I want the plot to twist, exactly what I want to be revealed and when, whether it’s a romance or a con or a plot to blow up a planet. I know what’s going on. You, dear readers, or players, or whoever you are, do not. But for those reveals to be successful, for those payoffs to feel good and deserved, they have to be set up right. And that means a careful balance of not writing as much as writing.
No plot twist should come entirely out of nowhere. To paraphrase myself in a recent interview, not everything need be a Chekhov’s Gun, but if Chekov is one of your characters then you should at least establish that he’s a competent marksman. A writer should sow the seeds of what’s to come, to make these things feel earned when they get resolved… and also to reward the eagle-eyed reader who connects the dots a little early. Or indeed to throw off those who connect the wrong dots. Either’s fine with me.
In my feedback edits of The Owl in the Labyrinth, on which I am currently working, one thing that came up was a plotline that didn’t feel like it was set up fully. I had been conciously dropping hints throughout the book of how it was going to resolve – hell, I started doing so back in Nightingale’s Sword – but it seems I didn’t do so clearly enough. And that is fine, and another reason for getting good proofreaders: I am very happy to go back and tweak things, to foreshadow more heavily. It takes another set of eyes to get that balance right, sometimes. Because like I said: I know everything, but the reader does not, and so it’s very easy to go too light on the setup without realising it.
Equally, I’m trying to avoid telegraphing things too heavily: it’s just frustrating as a reader to realise exactly what’s coming and then have to wait 200 pages to actually have it confirmed. Balance is key.
And so when I’ve been pulling together this RPG session for tomorrow, I’ve been trying to strike that balance. I want my players to at least start connecting the many dots I’ve left for them. I want them to make the realisations, at least some of them. They’re the characters, after all, not just the readers – it’s their story, their mystery to unfold. And it’s even harder to find that balance of telling and implying as a result. I have seeded dialogue, I have set up clues, I have even drawn maps and left hints in those.
We’ll see what happens. But by the Golden Throne, if these idiots don’t pick up on the suspiciously named, suspiciously operating and suspiciously existing shipping company by the end of the session, someone’s getting thrown out of a window. Whether it’s in or outside of the game is up to them.
