The Shining—in Tahiti?

Kathleen Kaska

         

          Sherlock Holmes has become so popular you can find him almost anywhere—even in outer space. But most of us can’t imagine the Great Detective without thoughts of Victorian London, or Miss Marple without St. Mary Mead, or Nero Wolfe without his Manhattan brownstone.  

         How much thought do you give to your mystery's setting? Is it mere backdrop or an integral part of your story?

          I think we all agree that when a story's setting is more than just a physical locale, the story’s plot is greatly enhanced. And when the setting is powerful enough to become a principal character, the story is impossible to forget. Take for example Stephen King's bestseller, The Shining. Had King set this story in tropical Tahiti, would it have had the same impact? King undoubtedly could have put a spin on the plot and produced another memorable thriller, but for those of us who have not yet acquired King’s Midas Touch, it wouldn’t have worked. 

          Each time I've read The Shining I felt the frigid winter of the Colorado Rockies, the evil spirits haunting the Overlook Hotel, and the desperation of Wendy Torrance to flee the shackles of her prison in the blizzard. 

        My selection of settings for the Sydney Lockhart series is fairly easy. Each mystery occurs in an historic hotel. I look for relatively famous ones that are still in operation. I stay a few nights, study the history, and eventually concoct the plot. Using the uniqueness of each hotel enhances the atmosphere of each story, but making the place come alive has its struggles.

         When story and setting work together, you’re on to something big. As much as I love the place, The Great Gatsby wouldn’t have worked in Waco.

Plot Fizzles

If the plot fizzles out partway through your manuscript, what do you do? It’s a worry faced by writers since we first put stylus to wax, ink to papyrus. We do many things to try to avoid this – we plot, storyboard, brainstorm, journal and sweat! Sometimes we fly by the seat of our pants, letting the plot unfold as it sees fit, then we can add/delete/modify as needed. Some of us detail each movement of the plot, with every step carefully orchestrated.

No matter our best intentions, we can stall. Is it the plot, or has one of our characters gone off track? Do we write our way forward, or go back and check all the threads, finding the one that we lost or dropped? Do you use plotting software? Writing software? Critique partners? Writers' groups?

There are great suggestions for getting around these kinds of problems – and most writers run into them every once in a while – so dish! What is your best way to keep your plot storming along, and what do you do when it mires down, even momentarily? Makes no difference if you’re a seat-of-your-pants plotter or a plotter who lays out every twist and turn.

Libby McKinmer
Romance with an edge
www.libbymckinmer.com
libby@libbymckinmer.com

Plot is Everything

While doing some online studying on writing good mystery novels, I ran across an article written by Ginny Wiehardt, titled "Top 10 Rules for Mystery Writing." Good article, just click on the title if you want to read it. She puts as number one in importance, the plot. Here's an excerpt from the article:

1. In mystery writing, plot is everything.
Because readers are playing a kind of game when they read a detective novel, plot has to come first, above everything else. Make sure each plot point is plausible, and keep the action moving. Don't get bogged down in back story or go off on tangents.

***

I tend to agree. Certainly in any fiction genre, plot is of tremendous importance. But in the mystery novel it takes front and center stage, more so than say, the romance novel - where the same old "boy meets girl and they eventually fall in love against all odds and probability" plot will work just fine. Back story all you want, go off on a romantic and/or dangerous tangent here and there if you please, so long as the characters and situations are complex and interesting enough, and it all ends in a steamy lovemaking scene with the promise of living happily ever after, you're fine. Or the spiritual/inspirational novel where the messages delivered, if powerful and insightful enough, can be of more importance than a super duper move-it-always-straight-forward plot interlaced with several sub-plots and all kinds of twists to it.

Not so in the mystery novel. The "guessing game" aspect, the beloved "twists," those smack yourself on the forehead "aha!" moments when you realize how cleverly the author has misdirected your attention and/or had you despising the wrong "obviously guilty" character up until now - this is the quintessential stuff of good mystery writing. A superior plot is absolutely key and the mystery novel without one is doomed to mediocrity without it.

That's my opinion. What's yours - and why?

The mystery mystery by Chester Campbell

We write about it and talk about it all the time. It's part of the title of this blog. But just what is a "mystery?" My computer dictionary defines it as: "Something that is not fully understood or that baffles or eludes the understanding."

Does that mean we don't really know what we're writing or talking about? I sometimes think so. But to put a more kindly face on it, I'd say us writers don't expect our readers to understand what's going on until we explain it to them.

The explaining takes a lot of different twists and turns and involves many different people.

So what makes a good mystery? Plot is important, of course. Without it, there would be no mystery. But I think the most memorable mysteries are those featuring truly memorable characters.


Most familiar in the classic hardboiled ranks are guys like Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee, Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer, and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe. From a different perspective, there are Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, along with Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane.

Coming down to the present, the list could go on and on. Fortunately, there are lots of contemporary authors creating memorable characters.

But the question remains, is plot more important in creating a memorable mystery, or is it character? What do you think?

Chester Campbell
Murder Mania