I don't know when it happened. I don't read mysteries, as a rule. Once,
in a book club, I had to read a compilation of Father Brown stories by G. K.
Chesterton. These obscure classics were written between 1910 and 1936 and
published as installments in a periodical. The protagonist is a stubby British priest
who solves mysteries by observation and mental acuity.
And also by coincidence which--to be honest--plays a part in the resolution
of almost all mystery stories. The problem with those little stories is that
some critical bit of information was always withheld from the reader, making it
next to impossible for the reader to solve the mystery on their own.
Needless to say, that little omission did not make me happy. In fact, it
pissed me off.
As humans, we want to figure things out. We like the challenge of being
smarter than the hero--or at least as smart as. We want to share that
"A-ha!" moment with the characters we have been walking so closely
with through the story.
So when I ended up unexpectedly writing mysteries, I knew I couldn't do
the same thing to my readers that Chesterton did to his.
Luckily, I'm a plotter. I write my stories in a straight line. That means
I can scatter the clues through the story as I write it. Assuming I know what
those clues are, of course.
The funny thing is, once I made the decision to write a
crime/suspense/mystery story I realized that all of my previous stories
encompassed crimes, suspense, or mysteries. I had been doing this all along.
Huh. Who knew.
Anyway, if I think about it, I guess I can trace this all back to my
hatred of math. Algebra, to be specific. (And long division. I always hated
long division.) But when we got to geometry and proofs, I was in heaven. I
thought that finding the steps from here to there--all small steps in the path
to the solution--was so much fun!
This wasn't boring old arithmetic, it was a mystery to solve. A puzzle where pre-described steps had to be laid out in a
logical sequence in order for the ending to make sense.
Awesome!
So now I see my mysteries as geometric proofs. Little steps which, when
connected in the correct order, lead a path to the resolution. This makes the
plotting of the crime detection so much easier to structure. And it explains
why I was writing them long before I consciously knew what I was doing.
Now that I'm here, I guess the next mystery question is: why is there a dead
body behind the study wall?
I'll let you know as soon as I do.
5 comments:
I believe that any good fiction book contains a mystery of some sort. Even in a contemporary romance or women's fiction there is the mystery of how the heroine and hero will get to their happily ever after or how the heroine resolves her issues.
Our lives are made up of daily mysteries - some as simple as 'what am I fixing for dinner?' and some more complex 'how am I going to write and get that list of "To Be Done" done.
Hi Kris, I'm back - I've never thought of geometry as a blueprint for solving a mystery but I'm right there with you on Algebra! Why do I care if A + B = C? I do not but I can see that it is a puzzle...just not one I want to figure out. And, Geometry? I memorized the theorms (I was good at memorizing) so easily passed the class because I just needed to "know" them not actually "use them" outside of parroting back the example in the book.
Be that as it may, what I find intriguing is that you could see the mystery in geometry and can a few years later (I'm smiling as I type that) are using that information in your writing. The reality is, we never know when something we experienced in our life will be useful when we sit down at the keyboard.
"I guess I can trace this all back to my hatred of math."
You made me laugh out loud, Kris! I had the same negative reactions to those old mysteries.
Thanks for a thoughtful, entertaining post!
Thanks, you two, for chiming in! :)
I didn't like math either, though I enjoyed Geometry. The tiny steps were great and made perfect sense to me. I was stuck when they started combining steps. I also hate it when the mysteries are solved by an obscure clue you didn't know about. I love Agatha Christie's books and the Brother Cadfael mysteries. He's a priest in medieval England. I enjoy the history as much as the mystery. :-) I'm enjoying your mysteries.
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