 Mystery: August 29, 2012 Issue [#5236] |
  Mystery
This week: Setting the Stage Edited by: Jeff  
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"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
-- Carl Sagan
Mystery Trivia of the Week: Canadian mystery novelist Louise Penny is the author of several mystery novels, and has the distinction of winning two Anthony Awards as well as four consecutive Agatha Awards (2007-2010).
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SETTING THE STAGE
One of the most important elements of a story - especially a mystery story - is where it happens. There millions of unique locations in the world (and millions more unique worlds waiting for you to imagine them), and it's important that you select an appropriate place for your story to occur. The reason why so many horror movies have scenes that take place at night is because the darkness adds an air of tension and foreboding. It wouldn't be as scary to walk through those woods on the edge of town if it was the middle of the day and you could see what was lurking around every tree! Similarly, romantic stories are often set in romantic places... Parisian cafes at sunrise, beaches at sunset... places that make the reader feel a sense of warmth and luxury.
When it comes to mysteries, careful thought needs to go into the place where the events in your story happen. If you're writing about a detective playing a cat-and-mouse game with a crafty serial killer, would a more compelling location be in a remote settlement with a population of 50, or a major metropolis with millions of people who could be the potential killer (or victims)? Or if you're writing a bank robbery story, the mechanics and approach to the robbery would be completely different if you're talking about a suburban branch of a multinational banking conglomerate versus the lone branch of a local credit union in a remote corner of Nova Scotia.
Make sure that you pick a location that's appropriate to the story you're trying to tell. Or better yet, try and figure out how a unique location can put an interesting new spin on a familiar story. Maybe robbing a small-town bank would be more interesting than another grand-scale bank heist in the city. Perhaps you could find some new and exciting possibilities if your detective character were chasing a serial killer through a remote Alaskan township, or worse, knew that it was one of the twenty regular townspeople.
Once you have your setting figured out, make sure you do enough research and know it well enough to make it an engaging part of your story. Make it feel authentic for the reader, so they get a sense of where they are in the world. While sometimes a faceless city or a generic suburb or a nondescript island retreat can be effective, it's usually better to give your readers a real sense of where they are. Embrace the setting of your story and incorporate elements that they can't get anywhere else. Why have a car chase through random and bland city streets when your San Francisco-set mystery can have them flying off the steep hills its streets are known for, or racing across the Golden Gate Bridge? If you're going to have your characters travel to an extravagant ski location like Aspen, or the Swiss Alps, include the details and elements that will help your reader feel like he or she is really there experiencing that location.
If you really go the extra mile to think about and incorporate an interesting setting into your writing, it can add an entirely new dimension to your story. The location might even play a role itself, becoming almost a character in its own right if the protagonist has to struggle against his surroundings just as much as he has to struggle against the villain he's pursuing. As writers, it's our job to spend an extraordinary amount of time developing characters and stories in order to make them realistic and compelling for our audiences. While you're doing all that hard work, consider spending an equal amount of time developing your setting. A realistic, engaging, and interesting setting can be just as much of a draw as a brilliant character or a clever plot twist.
Make sure you don't take your locations for granted. 
Until next time,
-- Jeff
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I encourage you to check out the following mystery items:
As I awoke that first morning, with the winter light coming through the sheer curtains, I practiced not moving. Every single muscle was relaxed and nestled under crinkly down comforters from my grandmother which had managed to stay with the beach house through the years.
I could faintly hear the sound of the gulls and behind that, the waves which served as a metronome to the sea's rhythm. The walls had taken on the feeling of being salt sprayed and the room's light was the pale blue of dawn.
When I left, I took the old red station wagon that had sat in the garage for a decade. No one would miss it, and they wouldn't think to come looking for me. After all, they were used to my unplanned excursions.
It was time to find some answers to the questions haunting my mind for so long.I had procrastinated as long as I could,always taking the easy way out to avoid any real connections.Now the onset of winter filled me with a vague longing and I knew I had to face my fears and start to live in stead of just existing.
Even as a child growing up in the sheltered comfort of the family brownstone on Sentinel Street, I was aware of our town's strange and unsettling nature. I couldn't tell you how I came by this awareness for no one spoke of it, little was written that could instil such thoughts, and on bright, sunny days Arkham could be just as quaint and pretty as any other New England town. But as a child I felt it nevertheless.
As I grew older my childish world was consumed by the everyday concerns of the adult world, and the feeling became relegated to that mental box marked 'childhood fantasies'. By the age of nineteen my life was filled with a fledgeling career as a property lawyer, and at the age of twenty-six I moved to Boston to join the practice of Mssrs Lloyd, Cable and Richards. I prospered, I married and Arkham became a memory of summer afternoons, of walks along the Miskatonic and the Aylesbury Pike, and of a town whose ancient buildings inspired the outlandish musings of a solitary and over-imaginative child.
And so it was until 1936, when I received a telegram from my mother informing me that father had fallen terminally ill. Over the nine years since I'd left Arkham I had never been back, the pressures of work and commitments of married life had mitigated against it, but the news determined that I should go.
I want the press to know about this. Thus far no one has believed what I have said, and I am well aware that my sanity has come into question - even with myself. But I refuse to denounce my claims, and write it all off as nothing more than a figment of my imagination. The effects seem too real, and the matter of the body reminds me of just how real that frightful time was.
It had begun slowly at first, I heard scurrying everywhere I went, and I would constantly find many of my belongings hidden in dark and unlikely places: pens, keys, spare change, small articles of clothing, tid bits of food; it seemed to matter little. Initially I had suspected the trickery of my young daughter Charlotte, whom had recently developed a liking for grabbing things she wasn't supposed to, and I likened the disappearances to being the newest stage to her kleptomania.
I lay awake in my bunk, my thoughts filled with dreams, schemes, and regrets for all the things I lacked the courage to accomplish. I admit to being a coward, but I was also wise enough at seventeen to know that the world was filled with countless perils, and that someone as small and naive as myself was safer within the confines of the monastery. As fate would have it, a most improbable opportunity presented itself this night. The task ahead wasn't dangerous, but it would be most unpleasant.
Tom tended to think he was so well liked by right-wing conservatives for his values, that he could say and do whatever he pleased. At one time Etta hoped he would wake up from his dream state, but today she didn't care.
One well-spoken word from her or Greg, and Tom Davis’s political career, and possibly his life would end. She and Tom had not been intimate since before Tommy disappeared from the battlefield in Iraq in 2005. Tom’s hypocritical double life style had driven both of their children away from home long ago. This Presidential campaign had pushed her to her limit; she was tired of lying to the media to protect Tom.
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Feedback from my last newsletter about serialized storytelling:
Charlie Cogwin  writes, "I have never written mystery before, I was just wondering, if you get some time, if you could check my piece out. I believe you would have a good prespective on it. It is 3500 words. I know your busy so no worries if you can't. Thanks."
Thanks for submitting your item... I will be sure to check it out!
alockwood writes, "When you deal with your brother, you wonder if you'll see him again."
Whenever I deal with my brother, one of us usually ends up in a headlock. 
allorde writes, "Mystically monitored."
Tornado Dodger  writes, "Great newsletter Jeff! I had never heard of the term MacGuffin, believe it or not. This was really interesting. Then again, your NL's always are. "
Aw, shucks.
Arakun the twisted raccoon  writes, "Great newsletter!"
Thanks for the inspiration! 
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