THE UNFINISHED MAN

by Rob Lopresti

A couple of weeks ago I attended a concert and happened to sit next to my friend Jane. We were talking about books and she told me that she had tried reading my story in the book Seattle Noir and had stopped halfway through.

I was reminded of a line from the great movie Airplane!: “The foot’s on the other hand now, isn’t it?” It certainly was.

You see, I have written here before about my increasingly common experience of deciding to stop reading a given book or story. There may come a time when you have to tell the piece of writing adios. But this was the first time I had encounter someone who had given one of mine the kiss-off.

I asked Jane if she remembered the point in my story when she stopped reading, and miracle of miracles, she did. My hero was watching a woman who reminded him of his ex-wife and had just noticed two stealthy-looking dudes following closer behind her. Jane thought something bad was about to happen. She explained that she was reading at night and she decided she didn’t want to read something scary then. I believe she said she switched to a book on architecture which she found more soothing.

I thought carefully about what I said next. I believe it was: “Well, you’re right. Someone does get killed. And since this is noir, you can’t really say it has a happy ending, but the bad guy does get caught.”

Then I shut up. I didn’t want to twist her arm. As I’ve said many times, a reader has the right to stop reading.

The muster of suspense

But what astonished me was that she had stopped reading because my story was too suspenseful. I have also complained here many times about mystery writers who switch to writing suspense. Apparently the pot has been denigrating the kettle’s hue.

Which doesn’t mean I will stop writing suspense, if that happens to be what pops into my brain. And I’ll keep complaining about what I don’t like. (Hey, I liked my suspense story a lot.)

But the point is this: if you are lucky enough to have readers, and insanely lucky enough to get to talk to some of them, occasionally you’re going to hear bad news. And if you don’t know what the reader is going to say – Hey, that’s suspense.