The Game's Afoot

Summertime - a great time to catch up on reading. Or writing. Not a great time for watching television.

Not that I watch a lot of that, of course. Who does? (wink wink) Still, there are new episodes of Murdoch Mystery to see and the new series of Sherlock on DVD to watch again. This week both have reminded me of the joy and challenge of a constructing a really good puzzle.

Unlike reality, a good mystery has to have all the pieces laid out for the reader - the true detective. While real cops have to muddle along with messy real crimes, a whodunit needs to present the clues - not in plain sight but not too obscured with extraneous information. Also unlike reality, not only does it have to make sense, it has to be engaging too. Not easy.

It wasn’t until I had to plot out the action plan for a climactic battle that I got a handle on how I could pull off a decent murder... mystery. In order to keep everyone straight, I had to make maps of the battle field, diagrams of the actions with “with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one” to quote Arlo Guthry’s Alice’s Restaurant.

The most useful part of the process, from a writing point of view, was the timeline. This told me who was fighting who, when, and why. I slotted the motivations and outcomes into a table, but the timeline kept everything straight.

It was the same principle as a detective’s evidence board. When I finally had a crime to commit (to paper), it was like a murder investigation in reverse. I started with all the facts, worked out some of the critical misdirections, then decided how the information would be revealed in the course of the story.

I was on the third draft of Under A Texas Star when I started using this method of organization. Though the murder investigation is the B plot of the story, I wanted it to stand up in court (the one where my readers are the jurors). I created a timeline, a table of suspects and list of clues that would lead to the murderer plus a few red herrings that would point to the other suspects. Marly and Jase’s detective work - separately and together - further the investigation, their character development and their relationship. I kept it all straight with my timeline...“with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one.”

It becomes a kind of game. The puzzle has to be challenging enough to be interesting, but not so complicated that you annoy your reader. Above all, the puzzle must further the story, not replace it.

When I plot out a mystery, the game’s afoot.




Of your favourite authors, who creates the best puzzle for you to solve?

The Tyranny of the Blank Page

It is so intimidating to begin. When the page is blank it is so full of possibilities. Every word written diminishes your options. It's not only intimidating, it's disheartening. What helps you when you're facing that page? I've developed two separate files on my computer that help me. One is encouragement - quotes on creativity. The other is instruction - descriptions of their process as shared by writers I admire.

At the moment my favorite (paraphrased) quote on creativity is:

What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will
close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.
Ira Glass, host of This American Life.

You can find a link to the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI23U7U2aUY
He recommends giving yourself deadlines. He recommends COMPLETING work. I find him inspiring, I hope you do too.

In the second category of support for my writing (instruction): I want to learn from the best. I recently discovered the Vorkosigan saga by Lois McMaster Bujold. I recommend her books to everyone. They are amazing. Operatic in scope, human in a way that will touch you. The author recently posted about reading order on her MySpace page. Essentially she grouped the books by story arc. I read them beginning with Shards of Honor and then continuing chronologically (as they are listed from # 3 onwards in http://www99.epinions.com/content_4838039684, then add the most recent novel, Cryoburn.) I read them obsessively through December and January, and then read Falling Free and Dreamweaver's Dilemma at the end, when I was desperate for more. If you like science fiction then I think that order works wonderfully. If you will only read mystery then I would start with omnibus book The Borders of Infinity, which gives you a nice mystery in the novella, "The Mountains of Mourning." I would then read from Brothers in Arms forward. They could all be classed as types of mystery (from espionage to straight mystery) from there to the end, if you take them in story arcs. (For instance the mystery in A Civil Campaign is slight - the book is more about political maneuvering. However, if you treat Komarr and A Civil Campaign as one story, then it is essentially a mystery; one which also examines the natural aftermath of investigating a crime and then having most of the information on that crime classified, so that it cannot be openly discussed.)

Having read Bujold, I despaired. Her sheer talent seems so far beyond what I could reach. Then I read a bit of an interview in which she talked about her writing process. She imagines one or two scenes at a time, works through them in her mind, then captures what she imagined on paper. It explains why her books move from one powerful scene to the next, why there are so many scenes you go back to re-read (and then find yourself re-reading the rest of the book because you cannot stop). I'm going to try her process...and keep Ira Glass's advice in mind!

So my question to you would be, what helps you keep writing?