  Mystery
This week: Know When To Fold 'Em Edited by: Jeff  
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"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the
fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science."
-- Albert Einstein
Trivia of the Week: Elizabeth MacKintosh's two best-known pseudonyms were Josephine Tey (under which she wrote mystery novels) and Gordon Daviot (under which she wrote plays). MacKintosh was an intensely private person, shunning nearly all publicity during her career and cutting off contact with loved ones after being diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. Many of her close friends didn't even know she was ill until after she passed. Actor John Gielgud famously discovered the passing of his friend in a newspaper as he was about to perform in Shakespeare's The Winter Tale.
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KNOW WHEN TO FOLD 'EM
There's an old Kenny Rogers song from the 1970s called "The Gambler." And while that song is technically about a character named, you guessed it, The Gambler giving advice to the narrator, it actually has a lot of applications to writing mysteries. In particular, the first few lines of the chorus are particular applicable to those who craft stories intended to keep people guessing:
You got to know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away,
And know when to run.
When you play a card game like poker, you have to know when to keep your cards and stay in the game ("hold 'em") versus when to give up ("fold 'em") before you lose too much. Knowing when to fold and walk away can be just as important - if not more so - than knowing when to keep pushing forward.
There will inevitably be a time in writing a mystery story where you're wondering whether to keep teasing a particular detail of the plot, or to resolve it and move forward. For me, that's a lot like playing a hand of poker. Do you hold onto that detail and keep stringing the reader along, hoping for a big payoff? Or do fold and concede that it's time to move on to the next hand?
I read a lot of self-published books in the mystery/thriller genre last year and, as I've discussed in previous newsletters, one of the pitfalls of self-publishing is that you don't have a team of editors, marketers, beta readers, and other professionals at the ready to help like you would if you had a contract with a traditional publisher. And, unfortunately, a lot of self-published writers don't have the resources or the desire to engage those professionals, so there are often a lot of books that find their way into the world with some major problems. One of those problems is when an author doesn't know it's time to fold his or her hand, particularly in relation to revealing information.
Thrillers can get away with giving the reader a little more information, because the appeal of that particular genre of books is the tension that's build from the progression of a plot. For example, the reader may very well know that the bomber is inside the Empire State Building because the real focus of the thriller is likely going to be whether the hero can get to the Empire State Building in time to stop the bomber. The fact that the Empire State Building is the place where it's all going to go down is not central driving force; it's the timing.
Mysteries, on the other hand, are often about solving the puzzle. The mystery version of that scenario above is actually where the bombing is going to take place. The discovery of the location being the Empire State Building is the central driving force.
Now, authors are smart. If they're writing a mystery where they know the Empire State Building is the big reveal that the audience is waiting for, they know they shouldn't reveal that piece of information until the end of the book. The problem is, some authors will then try to either (a) take up the space in between with filler, or (b) keep the mystery going even when the audience has figured it out.
Filler is dangerous, especially in large quantities, because it takes the reader out of the story. Whether the filler is needlessly specific description, subplots that have little bearing on the story, or any of a variety of other types, readers can identify it fairly easily. Even if they don't recognize it by name, they know the feeling of getting to a part in the book that bores them. Why are there ten chapters about the protagonist's awkward family relationships when I bought a book about stopping a serial bomber? Why is the author spending five thousand words describing the intricacies of the lobby decor in the middle of the chase sequence?
Even worse than filler, though, is stubbornly pretending like the mystery hasn't been solved even when the audience knows where it's going. Have you ever watched a movie or read a book where you realized the surprise twist at the end way early and just sat there for the entire last half of the experience going, "C'mon, get on with it! We know how this is going to end so hurry up already!" A lot of mysteries fall prey to this trap because the author knows the mystery can't be solved until the end, but doesn't know what to do with a reader who figures it out early.
This is where an old Kenny Rogers song about a gambler comes in. Authors need to be good poker players. They have to know when they have a winning hand and when they don't. And if they don't ... if they have a piece of information that they're desperately putting off revealing to the audience and are really having to work at convincing themselves that it makes sense to keep delaying that reveal ... maybe it's time to fold the cards and move on to the next hand. And by that, I simply mean get the reveal of that information over with and move onto the next plot point.
One of the best pieces of advice that I've ever received about story structure is challenging yourself by asking, "What would happen if my ending happened in the middle?" It's an exercise that tries to show you not every story necessarily has to end where you think it does, and that oftentimes, your story is far more interesting and has longer legs if the plot point you thought you were going to end on was only a surprising twist in the middle.
That story about a bomber at the Empire State Building? Sure, you could write a compelling story about a protagonist who is trying to discover which of the 65,000 buildings in Manhattan is the target of a bomber. But if you feel like you really have to stretch to fill up an entire book or feature-length screenplay with filler or repeated "Which building is it?" story beats, ask yourself what would happen if the protagonist correctly identified the Empire State Building halfway through. The building itself has dozens and dozens of tenants spanning its 102 floors, not to mention all the tourist traffic. It could be as much of a mystery to figure out where in the building the bomb is as it would be to figure out which building.
If you're writing a mystery that relies on revealing important information to your audience, know how to read the table. Figure out when to hold 'em and keep teasing the same information. But just as importantly, know when the fold 'em and let that reveal happen so you can move on to other parts of the story. You don't want to be the author that's sitting there with a bad hand, desperately trying to make it work when all of your other readers at the table already know you should have folded on that particular point ages ago.
Until next time,
Jeff
If you're interested in checking out my work:
"Blogocentric Formulations"
"New & Noteworthy Things"
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This month's official Writing.com writing contest is:
I also encourage you to check out the following items:
EXCERPT: For five years he had been alone on the island, and in all that time he hadn’t seen another human being. Before the shipwreck, which had brought him to that state, he had always been a sociable and outgoing man, most fully alive only amidst the busy hubbub of society. And so he had been forced, by a trick of fate, to learn the grim arts of solitude and introspection from anew.
EXCERPT: My eldest son Peter. Successful, fit, beautiful wife, and two-point-five kids. He believes I’m too old to live on my own, and so he’s made the decision that I would be better off in an “assisted living home”. Or, as my grandson Jake calls it, the old person prison. Three square meals a day, a mandatory exercise period, and lights out at nine o’clock. Doesn’t sound like he’s too far off.
EXCERPT: “There, there, little baby. Don’t you cry? Mama’s a blackbird going to teach you to fly.” Sounds were vibration he felt while being held and rocked in a singing attendant’s arms. It didn't happen often.
Staff were not allowed to sit long. She looked down at him with pity. "You poor little dumb child. You don't even know you are blind and deaf." She thought it was just as well. Only pain could go there.
EXCERPT: It was called Grandpa's Coin Box, and it was always there.
There, on the sideboard. I can't say it was gathering dust, because it got dusted every day. Very carefully dusted.
EXCERPT: FBI agent Robert Hearth shook his head and stroked his chin as he stood in the house of a murdered politician. In the victim’s house were forensic specialists, police, photographers and a coroner.
“Quite odd isn’t it?” asked his associate Agent Rick Palmer.
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Feedback from "Mystery Newsletter (December 13, 2017)" about the mysteries of the ocean:
DB Cooper  writes: "Did you know the filming of the Titanic movie was also a cover for a SUPER secret operation to recover a sub?"
Sounds like a heck of a story!
gingerlyme writes: "Interesting topic - thanks for food for thought and facts!"
Thank you for writing in!
dragonwoman  writes: "Thanks for including my flash "Timely" in this week's newsletter."
You're very welcome!
eyestar~* writes: "Brilliant take on mysteries. The Earth is indeed magical with so many secrets! I enjoyed your research facts and invitation to write mystery with a difference. Thanks."
Thank you for the kind words. Glad you enjoyed it!
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Mystery: January 10, 2018 Issue [#8699]
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