Wednesday, March 4: Tune It Or Die!
GET A CLUE
by Rob Lopresti
I have a great idea for a story.
In fact, I’ve had it for years. I love the characters. I know about the big final confrontation between good guy and bad guy. I have the clever twist at the end ready to go. I’m all set. But I’ll probably never write the thing.
Because I’m missing one tiny detail. I don’t know how my detective solves the crime. She needs a clue and I haven’t been able to come up with one for her.
And there’s the rub. For me, characters are easy; clues are hard.
Playing fair
You could ask why it matters. Sure, people who don’t read in our field think that mysteries are all about solving the crime and catching the bad guy, but anyone who reads this blog knows that plenty of mysteries — especially short ones — don’t involve solving a crime in that sense at all.
I just browsed through recent issues of two well-known mystery magazines and about two-thirds of the stories could be said to be fair-play stories. That’s actually much higher than I would have guessed.
In a fair-play story the reader knows everything the detective knows, and theoretically should be able to solve the crime just as easily as the hero. In reality, of course, most of the time the reader doesn’t spot the clues and would be irritated if they did.
But, doggone it, this particular story needs to be fair-play and I can’t find the clue I need.
Cue the commercial
The reason I bring this up now is that a story I did manage to finish appears in the May issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (on newsstands now! Buy copies for your friends! Your enemies! Insulate your house with them!) . “Shanks Gets Killed” is a fair-play story. Here’s the set-up: mystery writer Leopold Longshanks agrees to take part in a mystery weekend for charity (he plays the victim; hence the title). But a real crime occurs and he has to figure out which of the paying participants is the bad guy. The clues, I hope, are all there for the reader to examine.
I just checked the 14 stories of mine that have appeared in Hitchcock’s and four are fair-play tales. Two of those are Shanks stories. A generous soul might think that two more (both about Shanks) squeeze into that category. Five more stories about Shanks are currently in the pipeline (one accepted, one weighing down the editor’s in-file, two in final tinkering stage, one in first draft) Three of those are fair-play. So my percentage seems to be creeping up.
Playing favorites
In response to one of John’s blogs Iast year I made a list of my favorite fifty short mystery stories (by other people.) I haven’t put the list up here but I will get around to it. I can tell you that only about ten of the stories — twenty percent — are fair play. So obviously fair-play isn’t an important factor to me (and maybe that has some connection to my interest in character versus clues).
Over to you: How important is it to you that a story give you a fighting chance to solve it?
“For me, characters are easy; clues are hard.”
That quote should hang over my desk. Being someone who always spouts off about character is everything, it’s an odd feeling to admit the same thing you are – that I have (what I think is) a great short story I’ve never been able to finish because I have no frocking idea how to solve the crime.
It’s nice not to be alone. Especially in a shower.
As stated,
I don’t think fair-play is a requirement for me because, as stated, I’m a character guy and will give great lengths of rope to stories that have great characters. But it’s also because I’m just not very smart. I doubt I could solve most mysteries even if the author posted huge billboards along the way, pointing to each clue. My mafia name is Big Paulie Obtuse.
That said, I still always enjoy the fair-play story – always enjoy smacking my palm against my forehead and saying, “Why didn’t I see that?” even though there was no chance BPO would have ever seen it.
Now, Melodie, will you pass the soap?
Rob, you’ve gone and done it, jarred me out of my comfort zone and made me think. I don’t care about fair play as long as a new character doesn’t appear on the last page and turns out to be the villain. All I care about is reading a good story and “Shanks Gets Killed” is one of them. It is a fair play story although I knew before reading the first word that Shanks would come out alive.
What kind of stories do I write? No pun intended in saying I haven’t a clue. One scheduled in the June AHMM includes two murders by two different people, yet no one is brought to justice. A private eye finds a man missing for years, but there is no explanation as to how he did it. That seems typical of my stories. Guess they fail under the heading of “What the hell happened here?”
Think I’ll go and write a blog about this.
I am at the opposite end from Dick on this–I really prefer to read only the fair play kind of story; I want to have an equal chance at solving the crime. If it ends with the hero revealing clues that would in real life have have been seen, but were actually hidden from the reader–then I just get fed up, rather than feel entertained.
Your stats on the mystery magazines are surprising–I wouldn’t have expected the fair-play ratio to be that high, either. It’s not really a lost art, though with the passing of Ed Hoch (nearly all of whose stories–and certainly all of whose series detective stories–involved fair-play clues), there’s a big gap to fill. Having done both types, I think the classical clued puzzled is much harder to do than the straight crime story.
I didn’t mention that one of th Shanks stories – I DO write other things, really — that i am working on, is an anti-fair-play story, one in which it is revealed at the end that Shanks has been hiding information. I’d call it a variation of what I call the Unknown Narrator story, in which you only know about the main character what he tells the other characters.
But plenty of stories aren’t fair or foul in that sense. They might follow the criminal. Or describe a confrontation leading up to a death. Or a hundred variations in which there is no crime to be solved.
I’m reminded of the physicist who said sadly of his student’s work, “That’s not right. It’s not even wrong.”
Paul, you can scrub your own back.
Unless it’s intrigue or something other than a pure mystery, I’m fanatical about fair play. On its own, my mind races ahead, trying to figure out what happens next. If they play fair and manage to fool me, the author gets extra points. This works for me even when it’s tiny mysteries within a story– a clue is uncovered and the reader is given a page or two to figure out its significance before the meaning is revealed and the plot moves on.
And congratulations once again!
Hi Rob,
I’m not as interested in fair play in what I read. I want to be entertained. If I enjoy the story that’s all that counts.
Last night I read and enjoyed Shanks Gets Killed.
Terrie