REFRIGERATOR QUESTIONS

by Rob Lopresti

My friend Paul is an accomplished writer in many fields but he has yet to achieve the highest pinnacle of literary achievement — which is to say, he has yet to sell a mystery story.

Recently he asked me to review a story he was about to submit and I went through it, enjoying it, and scribbling a few corrections and suggestions, ending with an idea for punching up the ending. But the next day, thinking about the story before I returned it to him, I realized that there was a hole in the plot structure. Why had Jones sought out Smith and told him about the crime? Logic would say Jones would stay the hell away from him.

I knew why Paul had Jones do it: to mislead the reader. But that didn’t explain why Jones did it. The character’s action was illogical and I told Paul he had to fix that. But I also told him that this had been a refrigerator question.

Fat man at the icebox

Like so much that I (think I) know about storytelling, this idea comes from Alfred Hitchcock. He said (and I am paraphrasing wildly) that there are two categories of plot problems in movies. Category one: the viewer is watching the movie and suddenly he thinks, for example, that doesn’t make sense. Why would they split up when they know there’s a killer in the house? That takes the viewer out of the film, says Hitch, and it’s bad. Try to avoid that.

Category two: the viewer gets through the movie unscathed. Later at home he opens the fridge for a snack and thinks, Hey, if the tennis player was in such a hurry to get out of the stadium, why didn’t he just play to lose? Hitchcock called that a “refrigerator question,” and he didn’t care about them. In effect, it was the writer/director’s responsibility to get you safely through the movie. If you had problems afterwards, you were on your own.

And my problem with Paul’s plot was in that category. I didn’t notice it while I was reading the story, only when I thought about it later.

Defrosting versus deconstruction

Does that mean that Paul, to keep picking on him for a minute, shouldn’t patch the hole? I’d say it doesn’t mean that, for two reasons.

First, Hitchcock’s rule makes the assumption that everyone will have the same reaction to the movie (or, to be fair, maybe he is thinking of the alleged “average” viewer). In reality, for any given plot problem, someone will spot it immediately, some only later, and some will never notice it or care.

But second, a movie ain’t written fiction. People tend to watch a movie all in one go (even in the age of DVDs, I think). With novels, not so much. And even though one definition of a short story is a piece of fiction you can read in one sitting, I don’t think people necessarily do. That means they have more chances to stop, think, and spot the potholes.

So Paul went back and explained why Jones did what he did, and that improved the story. Interestingly enough, I asked him to read one of my stories and the son of a gun spotted a similar motivation problem in mine. The nerve of the guy.

And one more refrigerator question

Who ate all the chocolate pudding?