by Victoria Mixon @VictoriaMixon
I’m reading an Ellery Queen today, after a whole pile of other pulp mysteries, and I’ve also started re-reading Hillary Waugh’s Guide to Mystery & Mystery Writing. Waugh was one of the great American mystery authors of the twentieth century (he died only a couple of years ago), and he dissected the mystery genre with great insight and intelligence.
One of the things he discusses is a crucial aspect that was missing from some (but not all) of Edgar Allan Poe’s seminal works, from which the entire Western mystery genre sprang, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” “The Purloined Letter,” “Gold Bug,” and “Thou Art The Man”:
Fair Play.
But what is Fair Play?
Fair Play is letting the reader know what’s going on. Even more than that, Fair Play is planting the clue to the solution early—preferably on one of the first pages.
Now, the general understanding of Fair Play is that we have to do it to keep the reader’s loyalty. If we don’t Play Fair, the reader gets mad at us and goes away. Birdcages throughout the ages have been papered with books by writers who ignored the Rule of Fair Play.
But Fair Play has an even more important job than that. After all, writers get away with all kinds of crap with their readers, and if they’re good enough writers the readers take it, pay for it, and keep coming back for more. No. Fair Play is based on something even closer to the reader’s heart than fairness, and that is. . .
Having a good time.
As an Australian friend of mine discovered when he visited me years ago in downtown San Francisco, a grand adventure, whether real or fictional, is all about having a good time.
Whatever else goes on in our story, our reader wants to enjoy the experience of reading it.
Of course, people’s ideas of enjoyment vary widely, and readers in general tend to enjoy a lot more of being ejected from their chairs, dragged around, thrown against the walls, and smacked silly than you’d ever believe.
But, more than anything else, readers enjoy resonance.
That’s when they get to the end of the story and find there, unexpectedly and yet inevitably, the beginning of it. That clue the writer planted on the early pages.
Putting our reader inside a brass gong and giving it a good, hearty clang.
Readers love this! It’s possibly the single most important reason for the popularity of mysteries throughout the past 150 years. A devastating event. And the key to that event.
Give the reader a whiff of something tantalizing, lead them a merry chase in all the wrong directions, and then smack them in the face with the whole tantalizing pie.
It’s that wonderful, visceral sense of familiarity, that whisper in the back of the mind: this ending was inevitable. It’s the seductive implication that, if they’d just paid close enough attention (and they will the next time they read it, they promise themself!) they could have figured the ending out before we showed it to them. It’s that magical authorial sleight-of-hand, creating a positive emotional response in the reader by what we’ve left out as much as what we’ve put in.
Planting a clue to the Climax in a story’s Hook is the simplest, most powerful fiction technique I know.
It makes the story a relentless progression always forward toward a Climax both unexpected and inevitable, a living, breathing thing in the reader’s hands, the story of an ending that appears to have been manifested out of thin air by sheer genius.
Thanks so much to Victoria for guest posting today and for sharing with us an excerpt from her insightful writers’ resource, The Art & Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual.
Victoria Mixon
has been a writer and editor for thirty years and is the creator of A. Victoria Mixon, Editor, voted one of WritetoDone’s Top 10 Blogs for Writers. She is the author of The Art & Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual and the recently-released The Art & Craft of Story: 2nd Practitioner’s Manual, as well as co-author of Children and the Internet: A Zen Guide for Parents and Educators, published by Prentice Hall, for which she is listed in the Who’s Who of America. She spends a lot of time tracking clues on Google+ and Twitter.
Elizabeth – Thanks for hosting Victoria.
Victoria – You are so right about the importance of playing fair with the reader. Mystery readers enjoy “matching wits” with the author, and you’re quite right about that sense of closure when the clues are revealed for what they are. Thanks for a very helpful post.
Thanks so much for coming by today, Victoria! You’ve made such a good point–that resonance is satisfying to readers and gives them that full-circle feeling. Putting clues to the climax in our book’s hook is a great tip–thanks!
Great post. Resonance isn’t just for mystery novels either – it’s a device that’s wholly satisfying in any story . It keeps the reader thinking they could just about spot it, but in fact they only can if they’ve been through the experience of the book. Just like the characters – only when they’ve lived through the plot do they ‘get it’.
Excellent essay! Yes, fair play is so much more than just being fair. It’s about reader involvement in the process.
And yes, resonance is a part of the whole concept of paying off on promises. It’s artistry. It’s creating harmony. Definitely important to all kinds of fiction (or even non-fiction), but especially important to mystery.
Elizabeth, thank you for hosting me! It’s been so great getting to know you better.
Yes, I love resonance. So easy. And yet so powerful. It’s one of those magical simple fixes that makes fiction such a subtle and brilliant craft.
Margot, you’re very welcome! How kind of you. I love the intellectual component of reading mysteries—that wonderful dangling carrot that I just might solve it on my own.
:)
Oh, I know, Roz! Resonance is for everyone. If every writer knew about it, even the most bizarrely mis-structured story could pack that whallop readers love. (But don’t tell them I said so.) Cheeky grin.
Absolutely, Daring Novelist: “artistry, harmony.” Perfect words for it. You know who taught me resonance? Handel.
Agreed. One of the most annoying things mystery writers can pull is hiding crucial pieces of evidence and other detail. In other words, not giving me, the reader, a chance to notice what’s really going on.
To be fair, it’s hard to fool me all the way to the climax without doing that, but accomplish it and you’ll be on my A list, and I will recommend you to fellow mystery readers.
I’ll remember that if I ever write a mystery.
Yes, Andrew—that skill is what separates the adults from the kids in this field.
I’m pretty adept at figuring out the culprit too. The best mystery writers are the ones who take this into account and treat us as though we’re the smart cookies we think we are. . .and then lead us completely astray through our own scintillating wits.
Alex, treat every story as a mystery. You’ll be amazed at the results you get!
It’s true, Mary. Readers love being dragged out of their chairs and thrown around the insides of their own heads. Even the quietest, most subtle story should be a conceptual detonation that blasts the reader into epiphany.
Thank you, Hart! :)
There are so many techniques and tools to fiction that a writer can’t just ‘feel’ their way into. That’s what makes this such a wonderful, complex craft. And it’s why pantsing, for all its great fun for the author, will barely scratch the surface of a well-told story.
All those fabulous ways to mess with the reader’s head–a writer can spend their entire life developing expertise with them (and many have) and never learn them all.
So, that’s why I love a good mystery – it’s knocking me around a bit. Love it.
That was brilliantly put. It really is one of the most satisfying experiences of reading, but it isn’t necessarily intuitive when we’re writing. I mean leaving the clues… SURE… avoiding them feeling cheated, definitely, but the full circle think is the next tier up.
Thanks for inviting Victoria to the blog today. Her book is a tremendous resource, especially for newer fiction writers, like me. :)
I love this idea! I first heard it in a college lit class from Edith Wharton (I mean, we were reading Wharton. She wasn’t teaching.), and I find it even more satisfying in mysteries.
Thanks!