 Mystery: July 03, 2013 Issue [#5762] |
  Mystery
This week: Setups & Payoffs Edited by: Jeff  
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"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
-- Carl Sagan
Mystery Trivia of the Week: Swiss-Brazilian-American writer A.C. Frieden has spent a lifetime researching topics for his novels... literally. Born in West Africa to a Swissair executive, he traveled extensively in his youth and spend considerable time in Calcutta, Geneva, London, and the United States. He hold degrees in molecular biology and law from his studies in Louisiana, Moscow, Vienna, Texas, and Chicago, where he currently resides. Throughout his travels, he's researched and documented his interests closely, including interviews with officials and sources in more that a dozen countries spanning five continents. If anyone's qualified to write a Jason Bourne-style international thriller, he certainly has the right pedigree!
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SETUPS & PAYOFFS
In most fiction writing - and especially in mystery writing - it's important to properly set up and pay off elements of your narrative. One of the worst things you can do for your reader is to have a surprise or a "twist" come out of thin air without any logical basis. Not only can it be incredibly confusion and transport the reader out of the story as they try to come to terms with what just happened, but it can also leave the reader with the feeling of being cheated. Part of the fun of reading a mystery is being able to "play along at home," guessing the plot twists and surprises and identity of the culprit before the author reveals them. All that goes out the window if you bring in a sudden plot twist from way out in left field and don't properly set it up for the reader to understand and appreciate.
More than a decade ago, when I wrote my first screenplay, I ran into this problem. I was so enamored with the idea of clever plot twists that the audience would never see coming, that I didn't give any thought to how to properly set them up. I'll save you all the gory details, suffice to say that my main character (who traveled to Los Angeles from Washington D.C. to solve a case) finds himself at a climactic standoff with the bad guys, only to realize that his partner on the case, his boss at the Bureau, the person who asked him to help, and his girlfriend from back in D.C. were all complicit in the crime he was investigating. They just showed up and/or turned their guns on him during the Mexican standoff in the big finale. Although I was surprised to see the criticism at the time, almost everyone who read it inundated me with a flurry of questions. Why would the client hire him to investigate her if she was the villain? At what point were the partner and boss in on it? Did they each know the other one was playing for the bad guys? How the heck is the main character's random girlfriend from the opening ten minutes suddenly involved??? 
It wasn't pretty.
But it did teach me something valuable about setting up the twists that I want to pay off later. None of those elements on their own were inherently bad; there are plenty of examples of loved ones, bosses, friends, clients, etc. all turning on the main character... and in some stories the twist is expertly done and we marvel at how we ever could have missed it. But in order to get your audience to the moment where they marvel at the fact they didn't see something so obvious coming... you first have to give them the hints and the clues that will let them piece the information together. The flaw in that first screenplay of mine is that I didn't give the audience any hints. I didn't drop any clues or give them any indication so when everything actually happened, it felt more abrupt and bizarre than satisfyingly twisted and clever.
As a general rule, every payoff needs a setup. If you want your protagonist to take out ten armed men with a flurry of martial arts moves, you need to first establish the fact that he can do martial arts so that when he does it, the whole thing doesn't seem jarring and convenient. Maybe we see him training earlier, or notice a trophy case at home filled with MMA awards. If you want your main character to catch another character off-guard by suddenly speaking the foreign language the other person assumed he didn't know, you need to establish for the audience that he speaks the language in advance of the scene. The better you're able to set up the payoff, the more satisfying the payoff will be.
Conversely, it's also a good idea to payoff every setup. Especially in mystery writing, you don't want to have a lot of loose ends dangling around at the end of the story. The tighter and more resolved you can make your narrative at the end, the more satisfying it will be. So if you set up the fact that your character speaks a foreign language or is a really good hand-to-hand combatant, there should be a scene in the story that pays off that setup and gives your audience a moment to appreciate the fact that you created that context for them. This is particularly true of red herrings... few things are more frustrating in a mystery narrative than unresolved red herrings. You don't want your reader to finish a story and sit back and think, "Hey, what about the missing brother? Whatever happened to him?" Or, "If the stalker really was the sister all along, what was the creepy ex-girlfriend doing when the protagonist ran into her at the grocery store?"
There's a very symbiotic relationship to setups and payoffs. The more you can tie them together, the better they're going to work for you. Take the time to properly set up your payoffs and make sure that you satisfactorily pay off all your setups. If you can master the give-and-take relationship between these two narrative elements, your work will shine that much brighter.
Then all you have to do is figure out how to bury the twists and turns so the audience doesn't seem them coming. 
Until next time,
-- Jeff
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I encourage you to check out the following mystery items:
Okay, Eric. I know that you want to get something off your chest because the only time that you ever invite me to have lunch with you here at the local Burger King is that you need someone to lend a sympathetic ear.
And believe me, David. You are getting no argument from me on that. It all started when I was trying to put the finishing touches on my latest novel when I suddenly found myself face to face with Old Man Writers Block again.
And in order to get over that latest bout of writers block, you decided to spend some time at the beach?
You know me all too well. Do you, David?
Michelle's phone vibrated during the meeting. When her manager glared at her, she reached down to shut it off, hoping it wasn't the daycare about her son. Being a single mother was difficult at times, and with the economy taking a dive, it was important that she do everything in her power to keep her job. She struggled through the rest of the meeting trying not to think about what was waiting for her on the phone. Finally the boss stopped talking about sales figures and released the staff to start the days work.
It was a box! It took me all of three-seconds to correctly surmise this undeniable, yet noteworthy, detail. That it was laying outside of my particular apartment unit was a much more troubling mystery, and one that demand deeper analysis. The peculiar angle at which I was perched over the box permitted a reasonably clear view of four out of the indisputable six sides, and from what I could tell there were no notable markings on any; no forward address, no return. Just two strips of clear postal tape bound around the box that converged at the top and formed a cross. I was just in the process of returning from my midmorning swim when I had found the strange guest, making itself known outside my apartment.
A strong wind swept the rain across the dual carriageway and through the valley of wasteland where Frank used to kill time in his teens. There would soon be dozens of red brick houses built there and he wanted to hold and embed that place in his memory before it changed. There was something comforting to him about the bricks and old car tyres lying abandoned on the unused road.
“Why are you here, I sent for Count Hugh de Champagne?” Pope Pascal II demanded.
Hugues de Payens opened the black leather pouch dangling from his belt and pulled out a letter. He handed this to a young monk in a brown robe who offered it to the pope.
“Count Hugh de Champagne was too ill to travel. As his vassal, he sent me. This is a letter of introduction. The count greatly regrets that he could not be here to meet with you. If it pleases your holiness, you may consider me to be in your servitude for any duty.”
I’d just ushered a dozen homeless people out of Saint Sebastian’s Catholic Church. I hated doing it. Chicago in January is brutal for anyone on it’s streets. The homeless came to the church for some warmth and to snooze in the pews. Our pastor, Father Posjena wouldn’t allow the church to be open all night. So, I had to send them away in the late evening. “The church isn’t a hostel for these people,” as Father Posjena put it. He didn't like it, but I told him I thought the church was for everyone—even in the middle of the night.
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Feedback from my last newsletter about the Catacombs of Paris:
Mark Allen Mc Lemore  writes, "Sounds like a good, morbid time! I love skulls (uh, if you can't tell by my port customicon). Seems like I seen the Lost Cities of the Underworld about these. Anyways, entertaining newsletter, glad you had fun eating in Paris. "
Thanks for writing in! Happy to hear you enjoyed the newsletter. 
StephBee  writes, "Thanks so much for sharing your adventures in Paris and the stories of the catacombs. I didn't realize they were there but it makes perfect sense. I hope your trip inspired a notebook full of stories! Smiles, Steph"
Thanks, Steph! Always great to hear from you.
blunderbuss writes, "Many thanks for an absorbing newsletter. Have you read Andrew Miller's book called 'Pure'? This is really fascinating; based on the clearing of Les Innocents Cemetery just before the outbreak of the French Revolution. Again,it was necessary because of the heaving pollution and noisome gases - graphic, but a mystery tale at its centre, too, plus other issues."
I haven't read it yet, but it sounds great!
Mara ♣ McBain  writes, "Fascinating NL! Viewing the Catacombs is the only reason I would even consider Paris. LOL I have all the class and fashion sense of the country girl I am.  "
Yeah, there's a reason I spend my time in Paris crawling through the Catacombs rather than designer wardrobe racks at all the boutiques
BIG BAD WOLF is Howling  writes, "You never know." (Submitted Item: "Redwall Interactive" )
Very wise. 
DB Cooper writes, "That's so creepy!"
Yeah, it was definitely a creepy place to visit!
Tornado Dodger  writes, "What a cool editorial! I had heard the phrase but never really knew what the catacombs of Paris were. What a truly exciting setting for a story to take place.  I look forward to reading more about them. Thanks! Keep up the great work. "
Thanks for the kind words!
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