Mystery
This week: Deception Edited by: Gaby More Newsletters By This Editor
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Hi, all! I'm Gaby and I'm one of your Mystery Newsletter editors. Thanks for having me. Please, feel free to comment, share your opinion as well as your writing with us editors, and anything else you'd like to add. We look forward to hearing from you!
We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
- Goethe
Frank and explicit - this is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and to confuse the mind of others.
- Benjamin Disraeli |
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Have you seen the movie Secret Window? It's based on Stephen King's Novella Secret Window, Secret Garden. I know that his writing is more horror than mystery, and even though I haven't read this particular book yet, the movie itself had a fine line between those two.
Aside form the fact that I adore Johnny Depp and would watch anything with him in it, I thought the movie was fascinating. You sit there and watch someone lose their mind completely, but you don't figure that out until later. Eerie. It's more of a psychological thriller than anything else. You get to observe a character go completely insane without realizing it.
A well developed character is necessary to any story. You want your reader to know every little detail. It's what creates the needed connection between those two. But what if you couldn't/shouldn't? What if the goal is to reveal all those emotions, thoughts, expectations, etc. at the end of your story? How do you do that and still make your reader be interested in your character/s and what the story is about?
Deception
This is not an easy task. While you can create a character who pulls tricks on a detective in order to deceive him, your reader gets to put the clues together. In such cases, the detective is on his/her own. Your reader gets to cheer, hope, yell, roll their eyes, hold their breath, as you create unfortunate events which hinder the good guys from solving the case too quickly.
Deceiving characters in a book/story is one thing, deceiving your reader is another. You don't want to make a fool of them, but you want to create that 'smack on the forehead' moment toward the end where everything becomes clear as day. You can't give away anything until then! This is the type of writing where you turn into the writing magician.
While a magician shows a person one thing as a distraction, he's doing something else to deceive them. We, as the subject, can only focus on one thing at a time. Even though we think we can multitask, more likely than not, our brain can't focus on more than one thing at once. However, because this is visual, it creates some problems for you as the writer.
The tools you'd need are the same as for any other story you'd write, except, they are nothing but a deception. Emotions you write about are what your character should be feeling while the visual is only a part of the big picture. Same ingredients, deceptive views.
Can you do it?
Many of us ask about whether or not we've given away the clues too easily or if we haven't told the reader enough. Right there, we know that it's not easy to hide things from the reader while trying to get them involved in the story. You think deceiving them would be any different? Perhaps easier or harder? I'd love to know!
If you have a story where you deceive the reader the most, please, let me know. I'd love to see what you have!
'til next time!
~ Gaby
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In my last newsletter "Mystery Newsletter (January 22, 2014)" I asked for written pieces without murder in them. Here are the replies:
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The following were picked specifically for this newsletter:
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| | Invalid Item This item number is not valid. #1935536 by Not Available. |
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