Wrapping Things Up

[image error]When I was a kid, there was a riddle that asked why when you’re looking for something, is it always in the last place you look? Because once you find it, you stop looking. When you’re crafting a mystery, the last thing that happens is the mystery is solved. The entire book has been setting up clues and red herrings, introducing facts and characters that may or may not play a prominent role in solving the crime.

In classic mysteries, all the suspects were gathered in the drawing room and the detective would summarize the crime and accuse each suspect in turn, then explain why that person couldn’t have been the killer.

It’s a little harder to get away with that nowadays. And, in truth, the cops keep working until they’ve eliminated everyone and zero in on the real suspect, so solving the crime means ending the case—at least until it goes to court, but I don’t write that part of my mysteries.

How do you keep from a huge dump at the end, even if it’s not in a drawing room?(and a tidbit—Agatha Christie originally wanted Poirot to solve the cases in the courtroom, but she was told that would never happen in a court of law, so she shifted it to the drawing room)

First off, it’s doubtful that your detective is really working alone. At the very least, he’ll have a partner or colleague. There are also the lab techs, the crime scene investigators, the researchers…all providing information that has to be communicated, and at the right time. Reveal something too soon, and it’s going to spoil the mystery. Wait too long and it looks contrived. Save too much for the wrap-up and you’ll confuse your readers by bringing too many characters into the scene.

What I’m finding as I write the final chapters of my Deadly Secrets sequel is that I need to foreshadow a little more. Since I don’t plot in advance, this isn’t surprising.

Do I need my hero to find a specific clue—something that belongs to another character? I need to go back and make sure I’ve shown the reader that the character owns the item—and, to be fair, that it shows up more than once, and has some significance. Of course, to keep the mystery, all of these clues have to be subtle. We want red herrings, not red flags. One good way to do this is to show the specific item along with others. Maybe the character is emptying her purse and we see lots of items inside. The significant item becomes one of many.

Or, your character is caught and the detective starts asking questions. Your character answers, providing explanations to both the detective and the reader. But why is this character so willing to tell all when the detective questions him? Is he timid and easily cowed when the detective asks him a question? Is he arrogant and has to boast about how clever he was? Or does he simply admit defeat and confess? When I answer that kind of question, I’ll go back through the manuscript and add a snippet or two early on showing those traits.

Thus, as I’m wrapping up my sequel to Deadly Secrets, I’m pulling threads together. I’ve got my “idea board” full of sticky notes reminding me what things have to be addressed. Even as I’m trying to get to “the end” as quickly as possible, when I discover things haven’t been foreshadowed (usually because I had no idea the story was going there), I have to stop and fix them. Usually, it’s just a matter of adding a paragraph—often less—to cover things. So, although it seems that forward motion is slowing down, in reality, in the long run, it’s going to make a cleaner manuscript needing fewer edits.

Do you read mysteries? Do you beat the detective to the solution, or do you need to go back and see that yes, the author did provide all the clues, but they were so well hidden, you didn’t recognize them. Do you ever feel like the ending is rushed as the author is trying to wrap everything up in one final scene?

Come back tomorrow for a virtual trip to the Great Sand Dunes National Park.