Tuesday, August 21: High-Heeled Gumshoe
THOUGHTS ON WRITING & SPENDING A WEEKEND WITH ME
by Melodie Johnson Howe
Daffy Duck once lisped, while being chased, run over, flattened, and resurrected, “This doesn’t make sense and neither do I.â€
Flannery O’Conner said, “…there’s a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once.â€
Regarding the detective story, Edmund Crispin, said, “For we have come to demand of it not only mystery with a plausible solution, but over and above that a mystery with a surprise solution; and over and above that, a mystery with a surprise solution which by rights we ought not to have been surprised at all.â€
These three observations display the illogical situation of the writer. It’s one thing for a “toon†character to comment on his own absurdity, but for one of the best short story writers to tell us to be stupid goes against all common sense. Just as writing a surprise ending that is really not a surprise does. And yet this is what we writers do.
If you can’t allow yourself to be stupid you won’t write. You’ll give up. The writer can’t possibly know everything all at once no matter how good the outline. Sometimes, like Daffy Duck, you have to walk around thinking, “What in the hell am I doing?†until that wonderful light bulb goes on. The moment of epiphany. It’s almost as good as an orgasm. That thought should keep us all writing.
However Crispin’s observation on surprise endings worries me. Not only is it true, but it’s become de rigueur. I find that when I near the end of some mystery novels I know the BIG finale is coming. My heart sinks and the book drops from my hand. I just can’t go through another forced surprise chase (again I think of Daffy Duck), or another bloodbath. Now, there are writers who have the ability to do this with style and wit, but they are few and far between. The surprise ending has become pyrotechnical and movie epic in form. Suddenly the solid sometimes wonderful prose I’ve been reading disappears before my eyes. It’s as if the writer morphed into a Tom Cruise character. Boom. Destruction. Surprise! Bullets. Blood. Villain dead. Surprise! But I’m not surprised. Even though I’m being told I should be. Pushing the edge no longer feels like the edge but more like a dull rim that the writer trips over, taking the reader with him.
I think of the quiet ending of The Long Goodbye. Marlowe sitting at his desk, listening to the disappearing footsteps of Terry Lenox. What could be more inevitable? Even poignant. Alas, I briefly attended a book club that read The Long Goodbye and they all agreed that they didn’t like it because nothing happened in it. There was no pay-off at the end. Maybe that’s why writers feel the need for the big ending. It was a depressing evening.
I’m not against the “protagonist in danger†closer. Or a chase. I’d be really surprised if there wasn’t one. Or if there was really a good one. I think the short story form demands the writer avoid this kind of ending. I’m sure there are some that work. But the short story doesn’t allow for a lot of bells and whistles. A lean smart novel can suddenly turn into a pimp-mobile by the end. But the short story starts out a sleek sports car and had better end up a sleek sports car or else it falls apart. The center won’t hold. It’s an unforgiving form in that way. That’s why I like writing them.
If you’ve managed to read this far I’m going to reward you by asking you to spend a weekend with me.
Sept 14-15 I will be a teaching a Santa Barbara Writers Conference intensive workshop: IT’S a CRIME! CREATING SUSPENSE in the MYSTERY NOVEL. The SBWC weekend intensives are held at the charming Villa Rosa Inn near the beach in Santa Barbara. Cost for the workshop is $295, and includes a welcome reception Friday evening and instruction all day Saturday and Sunday.
For more information please contact Marsha Meier at (805) 964-0367 or www.santabarbawritersconference.com
Good stuff (and not for the first time, uncomfortably close to some stuff I’d been saving for future posts…oh, well). I’d never heard the O’Connor quote which i like a lot.
M. Night Shyamalan seems to have written himself into a corner in this regard. Everyone KNOWS his films will have a surprise ending. That twists the whole movie into a knot.
I remember years ago the editor of a magazine reported that a story by Carol Cail had a surprise ending. I thought, well, that isn’t much help, is it? And sure enough, I saw the twist coming long before it did. And then the story went PAST that twist to another surprise. And then another. But that was a rare thing. (Wish I could do it.)
Great discussion. Of course, Edmund Crispin as a proponent of the artificial (not a pejorative!) classical puzzle was addressing a different type of book from the hyped-up action thriller. Both are fantasy with real-world trappings, but I imagine many contemporary readers would find gathering the suspects in the library for the master sleuth’s explanation unbelievable while being perfectly willing to accept as realistic a highly choreographed cinematic scene of chase and menace. I guess it’s a matter of which absurdity you’re willing to by into, and of course the skill of the writer to make you believe it. Rob has a point about Shyamalan’s films, but what about a writer like Jeffery Deaver, whose short stories we approach knowing he is planning a finishing shock? As a result of that knowledge, I sometimes guess them, but more often he manages to fool me anyway.