Writing Mysteries: Keeping the Story Straight, Part I

Yesterday I pushed the submit button on my seventh novel, my fourth self-published in that genre and my sixth self-published book with Amazon. I'm getting to be an old hand at that, although I confess to not understanding the marketing end of Amazon yet.

So here it is.

I wanted to make some comments about its writing that might help others.

In my thinking there are two types of mystery fiction: one with dramatic irony and one without. Both have suspense but perhaps the one without dramatic irony has more suspense. To compensate, the one with dramatic irony has to have something else that is interesting, such as good characterization.

What do I mean? Dramatic irony means the reader knows something (in this case, the culprit) that the characters may not, except the culprit. Crime and Punishment is an example. We know Raskalnikov killed the two women, the pawnbroker and her sister. The suspense, or dramatic question, is whether he will confess before he goes completely mad (he's pretty much there already) or whether the detective will figure it out, and which will come first. And in the process we get an intriguing picture of human guilt and Dostoevsky's world view on the human condition, sin, and redemption.

Now, don't worry, I'm not comparing myself to Dostoevsky, only saying that my latest novel fits in to that category. Some of the betareaders have said, "I figured out who did it before the end," or "pretty early" and thought I should change that, but I wrote it that way on purpose. I'm not trying to keep the reader guessing until the end and then have a big reveal of WHO DUN IT, but showing how the others are affected by the crime while those who don't know the culprit figure it out, and develop one character's arc as a participant in the process.  That's all rather vague, but no spoilers here.

The trade-off, I hope, are developed characters and the unique voice of the main character, about whom I am planning a series of at least two more if I can get these off the ground. They would be very filmable, by the way. I have also finally learned that length is not the secret of good writing, so this one clocks in at less than 240 pages and 73,000 words.  It could be read in a couple of days even by me, and I'm a slow reader.

Now, to get off the commercial, there is a second type of mystery, what I call the Agatha Christie version of mysteries. She specializes in stock characters: the retired British military officer, the rich widow with dependent children or stepchildren she is keeping under her thumb, randy lower class charmers who work at resorts, young heir and heiresses whose inheritance might be in jeopardy so someone might need to die to ensure their getting it. There are others, and to her credit she brings in some wonderful exceptions, but you get the picture; these same types all show up in some way or another. Then there is Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot, whom we know will figure it out in the end.

The reader (or more likely audience) follows along and has fun trying to pick up on the clues until Hercule or Jane has everyone meet in the drawing room and then explains his or her process and who and why DUN IT. And sometimes you think, "Of course! I knew it" and get to gloat over one's spouse who didn't figure it out, and sometimes you think, "What? that was the most convoluted reasoning I've ever seen!"

(I'm poking fun here; nobody does it better than AC, and I like to say I've read more than my share of Agatha's work and never turn down the opportunity to watch a new one on TV, except that I think I've seen them all. And again, she does some wonderful variations on a theme, my favorite being Murder on the Orient Express which is probably the most intriguing of them all.)

However, Agatha is no Dostoevsky. We rarely have any empathy for the victim. The victim probably deserved it, even. That doesn't matter; the culprit is still guilty and must be found. And we rarely get much in the way of psychology, theology, or sense of the human condition. People kill for revenge, passion, and money in AG's work, or a combination. Why else?

I also think Miss Marple is more interesting than Poirot, although David Suchet has given Poirot more depth than Agatha ever did (a paper I plan to present at some point).  Miss Marple does often say that one sees all the crimes of the world in a small English village, much like Faulkner has in Okwotopani or whatever he calls that place. (Just kidding, I know the name, I just can't spell it without looking it up). And she's right--human sin does not need London or the Nile or the Eastern European mountain in a blizzard to take root and flourish.

Unfortunately, Miss Marple has to travel to Bertram's Hotel or the Carribean to prove her thesis, so as with LOVE BOAT or MURDER, SHE WROTE, we find Miss Marple journeying on some pretense to another town or country to use her skills.  Poirot gets to stay home in London sometimes.  And so we get the common joke, "If you see that old lady coming, run! Someone will get murdered."

So, after that little detour to say that my two mystery novels so far fit into the dramatic irony category (although that doesn't mean any others I write will), I will write in the next post about the process.