Compelling Mystery
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sharingfantasies
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I suspect that "compelling mystery" might be different from one person to the next. To me, it is a story that keeps me guessing right up to the end. I don't really care for those stories that tell me whodunit at the beginning. I want an author who writes books that make me whine when I have to wait an entire year for the next one to be published. More popular authors are people like Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner, Dorothy Sayers, Sue Grafton, Ellery Queen etc. The internet has lots of lists of mystery authors. Good luck.
oggbashan
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The usual source for advice is Dorothy L Sayers introduction to the first volume of Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror, published by Gollancz in 1930.
NOIRTRASH
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Raymond Chandler ridiculed Sayers.
NOIRTRASH
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I think Le Carre is the best mystery writer, especially in the George Smiley books.
oggbashan
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And she probably retaliated, but her foreword is an essay on genres of detective fiction, not just her own work.
If you can find it, it's worth reading and is a standard text for UK students studying detective fiction. I lent my copy to a friend. She had to scan it and reprint it for the whole group.
NOIRTRASH
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Its not available on Kindle, and the hardcover copies cost a fortune.
oggbashan
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It's still under copyright but I think there is a 1990s paperback version.
colddiesel
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Chandler essentially ridiculed crime writers who didn't write like he did - and he had a point, because a helluva lot have tried to copy him.
Sayers deserved the criticism she got, I suspect that Chandler realized she had talent but she was a fearsome social and intellectual snob and allowed her own inadequacy of character to produce inferior work.
He was no-where near as hard on Agatha Christie, who had far less ability than Sayers, but at least her repetitive crap was her at her best.
PD James was a far better female British crime writer than either Sayers or Christie, but probably too English to appeal to a wider audience.
NOIRTRASH
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http://www.openculture.com/2014/02/...mmandments-for-writing-a-detective-novel.html
CHANDLERS THOUGHTS ABOUT WRITING
CHANDLERS THOUGHTS ABOUT WRITING
NOIRTRASH
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NOIRTRASH
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According to my Theory of Prime Numbers every industry, science, art has its prophet of God who defines the industry, art, science, etc. And the others, like Newton, simply collect seashells on its shore.
NOIRTRASH
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It seems to me mystery may be a fugue form of story organization. I came upon this in a mystery by James Ellroy. It satisfies all of Chandlers conditions, too.
loquere
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Game of Thrones.
Desiremakesmeweak
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Really, I mean REALLY, from the benefit of some distance in history, Sayers and Chandler are TOTALLY different writing styles - even though you might think they have similarities when it comes to detective yarn plotting or exposition and all of this.
I think it's a mistake to view 'detective fiction' or 'thriller fiction' as specifically about the plotting and the structures within novels. Sayers was ALL about the 'massage' and not the message; Chandler WAS the message as long that is, as it was blunt one.
For me there is a lot of interesting and well-known 'mystery' fiction, especially all of the original gothic 'purple prose' stuff, that virtually always completely fucks up any kind of rational ending. Everyone dies horribly, or the story goes completely off the rails altogether and you can't even work out who you're actually reading about! I mean whatsisname - Truman Capote - is the worst! He is such a fucking amazing good writer, bu-u-u-u-t, his books are too long because of some stupid publishing theory about how long a book ought to be.
Pacing too, is so different from writer to writer: why I like Maclean is pacing, why I like James Hadley Chase is pacing, why I like Deighton is pacing, why I like Mickey Spillane is pacing - and their pacing and sense of it is all completely different.
A mystery is compelling because...? ??
A MYSTERY IS COMPELLING BECAUSE:
of -
atmosphere,
people and personalities,
and the spider's web...
But what exactly IS that spider's web?
Ah but mystery DOES need to be compelling. That's a very special word that, 'compelling.' You MUST. You MUST go on, you MUST see behind that door, MUST.
I love Woody Harrelson in these types of stories; he is SO the protagonist - needy, defective, nice guy, desperate, stupid, clever, struggling to be intelligent and nearly gets there or even gets there, meritable, worthy but disfavoured, honest... ...the whole idea is that no one believes in their own 'happily ever after' and so Woody ain't gonna get one either.
But these are not the mystery stories that I would write. I wouldn't feel honest trying to write that stuff.
I think it's a mistake to view 'detective fiction' or 'thriller fiction' as specifically about the plotting and the structures within novels. Sayers was ALL about the 'massage' and not the message; Chandler WAS the message as long that is, as it was blunt one.
For me there is a lot of interesting and well-known 'mystery' fiction, especially all of the original gothic 'purple prose' stuff, that virtually always completely fucks up any kind of rational ending. Everyone dies horribly, or the story goes completely off the rails altogether and you can't even work out who you're actually reading about! I mean whatsisname - Truman Capote - is the worst! He is such a fucking amazing good writer, bu-u-u-u-t, his books are too long because of some stupid publishing theory about how long a book ought to be.
Pacing too, is so different from writer to writer: why I like Maclean is pacing, why I like James Hadley Chase is pacing, why I like Deighton is pacing, why I like Mickey Spillane is pacing - and their pacing and sense of it is all completely different.
A mystery is compelling because...? ??
A MYSTERY IS COMPELLING BECAUSE:
of -
atmosphere,
people and personalities,
and the spider's web...
But what exactly IS that spider's web?
Ah but mystery DOES need to be compelling. That's a very special word that, 'compelling.' You MUST. You MUST go on, you MUST see behind that door, MUST.
I love Woody Harrelson in these types of stories; he is SO the protagonist - needy, defective, nice guy, desperate, stupid, clever, struggling to be intelligent and nearly gets there or even gets there, meritable, worthy but disfavoured, honest... ...the whole idea is that no one believes in their own 'happily ever after' and so Woody ain't gonna get one either.
But these are not the mystery stories that I would write. I wouldn't feel honest trying to write that stuff.
NOIRTRASH
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I think mystery is compelling when all the facts fit multiple targets.
Desiremakesmeweak
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Okay. Ya got me. I'm gonna give away a secret here. And you all owe me.
Mystery is sex. Real sex.
And real sex is urgent, frenzied, on the edge of something about to explode, and even when it does and was good, there is the hope and the destiny that it will happen again.
Sex is crazed. It is fevered.
Real sex is when the Banditos are having a shoot out with the Cossacks, and the person in the story grabbed the other person out back and they both went into the shed as the shots went off outside behind them, and the screams and the pain and the death, and the trouble, and then a rattler which was holed up in a part of cool, concrete, broken wall, bit one of the lovers and the other one ran out to get ambulance people and as the bit person limped out too, they grabbed a honey squeeze pack off the kitchen back of the restaurant/bar and sucked on the honey as the paramedics got to them, not knowing really what was going to happen next except that it was likely to be bad.
And the paramedic asked: 'You been shot?'
'No but I'm gonna be 'cause I fucked that girl and she's the bikie boss's daughter.'
And the paramedic checks out the dame and she is Megan Fox.
'Okay. Get on in the ambulance.'
...And just as the dude was limping in, his eye spots this swarthy-looking guy in a long white beard with a sniper's rifle recede back behind some bushes a way's off. He knew that guy. It was Anjem Chaudry.
Meanwhile, the media was making a lot of, later that day, about how the gang shoot-out was caused by either of two American bikie gangs.
And as darkness fell, Megan Fox had packed a carry bag and was looking for a place to hang out while her boyfriend's leg ballooned that evening and he was being kept on watch overnight so that the antivenene expert could say which shot to give him in the middle of the night. Or if he got there by early morning.
The snake expert was flying in on a private jet from out of town.
The landing lights flashed, the tyres screeched and yelped, the darkness was all around except for the tiny lights of human civilisation.
The highway in was blocked because of security. There was a delay.
The bikie boss, who happened to BE an expert in snake bite poisons, walked into the hospital, 'cause he knew everything. And he could fix everything. And he knew where his daughter was, and what she'd been up to, and with whom.
The only mystery to him was what was Jimmy Johnson doing on that same ward floor? Jimmy Johnson, the only kid at school and then later in the navy, who could whup his ass in a head-to-head fight...
Mystery is sex. Real sex.
And real sex is urgent, frenzied, on the edge of something about to explode, and even when it does and was good, there is the hope and the destiny that it will happen again.
Sex is crazed. It is fevered.
Real sex is when the Banditos are having a shoot out with the Cossacks, and the person in the story grabbed the other person out back and they both went into the shed as the shots went off outside behind them, and the screams and the pain and the death, and the trouble, and then a rattler which was holed up in a part of cool, concrete, broken wall, bit one of the lovers and the other one ran out to get ambulance people and as the bit person limped out too, they grabbed a honey squeeze pack off the kitchen back of the restaurant/bar and sucked on the honey as the paramedics got to them, not knowing really what was going to happen next except that it was likely to be bad.
And the paramedic asked: 'You been shot?'
'No but I'm gonna be 'cause I fucked that girl and she's the bikie boss's daughter.'
And the paramedic checks out the dame and she is Megan Fox.
'Okay. Get on in the ambulance.'
...And just as the dude was limping in, his eye spots this swarthy-looking guy in a long white beard with a sniper's rifle recede back behind some bushes a way's off. He knew that guy. It was Anjem Chaudry.
Meanwhile, the media was making a lot of, later that day, about how the gang shoot-out was caused by either of two American bikie gangs.
And as darkness fell, Megan Fox had packed a carry bag and was looking for a place to hang out while her boyfriend's leg ballooned that evening and he was being kept on watch overnight so that the antivenene expert could say which shot to give him in the middle of the night. Or if he got there by early morning.
The snake expert was flying in on a private jet from out of town.
The landing lights flashed, the tyres screeched and yelped, the darkness was all around except for the tiny lights of human civilisation.
The highway in was blocked because of security. There was a delay.
The bikie boss, who happened to BE an expert in snake bite poisons, walked into the hospital, 'cause he knew everything. And he could fix everything. And he knew where his daughter was, and what she'd been up to, and with whom.
The only mystery to him was what was Jimmy Johnson doing on that same ward floor? Jimmy Johnson, the only kid at school and then later in the navy, who could whup his ass in a head-to-head fight...
ElectricBlue
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Now that's a piece of fan fiction I didn't expect to see!
You should continue this.
You should continue this.
Desiremakesmeweak
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NOIRTRASH contributes so much to this site - as do a few others, of course. But he's entitled to a bit of FF.
Desiremakesmeweak
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Not yet. Seems like crime/detective fiction. I know I myself have veered away from strict 'mystery' in the discussion thus far. Mystery is quite complex to do well, I think.
If I were to do mystery, I'd do what I normally write -, and then cover it all over in 'myst.'
NOIRTRASH
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What is fan friction? Is that like stories that glorify PILOT?
