 Mystery: June 01, 2005 Issue [#404] |
 
Mystery
This week: Edited by: InkyShadows  
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Something mysterious is lurking out there ... just beyond the edges of your peripheral vision. What is it? Did that shadow move? Is that cigarette smoke I smell? Whose footsteps are following me everywhere I go? Eyes dart every which way, trying to catch a glimpse of the danger that lurks ... out there.
Such are the panicked feelings and thoughts of the victim in a mystery story...
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Have you ever seen the Steve Martin movie Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid? If you haven't, you have missed one heck of a terrific spoof on the detective genre of mystery stories, and you really should rent the movie and take a look at it.
First of all, it is important to note what a spoof is. It is a genre that pokes gentle fun at a specific genre by calling attention to its conventions. In the detective story, there are many such conventions. For instance, the detective never dies; he always speaks in street-tough wise-craking language; he is amost always a loner; he never marries; he dwells on the seedier side of life in the underbelly of society, and so forth. You get the picture, right? Well, a spoof takes those conventions and explodes them so that they become bigger than life and much more noticeable, and this is where the humor of the spoof comes in. The viewer/reader comes to expect these things to be blown out of proportion, and because of this they see the humor in the repetition of the conventions.
In Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, Steve Martin plays the private investigator named Reardon who over-uses the smart-alec, wise-guy tough talk. He finds himself working for a dame who is always there when he gets himself shot, always in the same place, always with the same results; she pulls the bullet out with her teeth each time, and he survives yet again. He must find his way to a highly aromatic cheese factory, the bad guys' lair, in order to save the day, and he says that the number on the door -- which is a 2 -- is as stinky as the stuff they made inside the place. But the thing, for me, that made this spoof different from and more fun-loving than other spoofs is the intercutting that is done to allow Reardon to hold conversations with characters from 1940s films noir, like the Bogart character Marlowe, Fred MacMurray's character from Double Indemnity, James Cagney's character from White Heat and many others. To do this, Reardon has to dress up like he is the stunt double for other characters, sometimes male, sometimes female, in the films that are spliced in with his outer story.
Here is a challenge for you...
Take your favorite style of mystery story, figure out what conventions exist within its form (what things are always there no matter what story of that type you pick up to read), and write a spoof that explodes the genre conventions so that they become noticeable and funny.
Then, send me a link to your story, and I'll highlight it in next month's Mystery Newsletter.
Till next time, this is InkyShadows , signing off...
Here are some of my picks for the month for you to read, rate and review:
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Here are a few of the wonderful comments my last newsletter generated...
schiperke
Excellent newsletter, Inky!
Good point about obvious clues. I hate it when I solve the mystery in the first chapter. I like those books you are tempted to go to the end to see "who done it!"
Schip
Vivian 
Good newsletter, Inky, and very true. You have given mystery writers excellent advice. ~~ Viv
billwilcox
That was great tying in your stolen computers with plotting a mystery story. Write On!
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