by Barbara D'Amato
You're writing a crime novel. You've worked out a surprise ending. You want it to make sense when the reader arrives at the end, but not to be so obvious that readers go "Aw--I saw that coming." Since readers differ in their ability to deduce, as well as their desire to deduce--like the reader who says, "I try not to guess the ending; that ruins the surprise," -- how far do you go in planting clues?
You might feel good about producing a book that in your opinion was obvious enough so that ten per cent of the readers can deduce, not guess, whodunnit and ninety percent can't. You would delight in the rest being surprised, but telling themselves they had every reason to know the guilty party.
Agatha Christie said that she didn't understand why people didn't guess her endings early on, they seemed so obvious to her. And indeed most of her Marples and Poirots really play fair with the reader. I suspect that she knew perfectly well she was hitting a golden mean of obfuscation.
Where this is really critical, of course, is the traditional puzzle mystery.
Ellery Queen issued a challenge to the reader. Somewhere near the end of the novel was a boxed announcement, saying that the reader now had all the clues that Ellery Queen had seen and that only one solution was possible. I believe his first mystery carrying this challenge was THE ROMAN HAT MYSTERY, but it became a feature in several novels after that. The challenge boxes were inserted at the proper place in the manuscript after typesetting. I would imagine that the writers, Manfred B. Lee and Frederic Dannay, would have been happy if ten or fifteen percent of their readers got it. Then the rest could exclaim "Of course! I should have seen that."
However, the same balance is important in a private eye novel where there is no assumption that the reader will deduce the ending. The reader may find out the explanation at the same time that the shamus does. Or the thriller. Take something like the double-twist, triple-twist endings of Harlan Coben. They may be astonishing, but they can't be out of left field. They have to be satisfying.
Satisfying, of course, is not the same thing as predictable.
Challenge to the reader. Challenge to the writer.
Showing posts with label Agatha Christie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Agatha Christie. Show all posts
Friday, March 05, 2010
Monday, June 16, 2008
A-book-a-year-a-book-a-year-a-book-a-year!
by Barbara D'Amato
We’ve all heard that Stephen King and Dean Koontz, prolific writers both, were told not to write more than a book a year, and if they couldn't resist writing, write under a different name.
Her publisher told Agatha Christie not to write more than a book a year. Think of all the Christies we might have if the publisher hadn’t been so foolish.
The reasoning seems to have been that more that a book a year would:
First, diminish the value of the book. If you can write it so fast, it can’t be worth much.
Second, the public will think the second book is the first book and if they already have the book for this year, they won’t buy the new one. This comes under the heading “The Public is Stupid,” which is used as an excuse for a lot of ill-considered and paternalistic behavior.
Well, things aren’t like that any more.
Clea Simon and others have called attention to an article in the Boston Globe by David Mehegan. Mehegan notes that publishers are now urging their authors to get out at least one book a year. Not surprisingly, the issue has been a hot topic on crime and mystery writers’ listserves. The pressure to put out a book a year is apparently strongest for suspense and thrillers but strong for mystery writers as well. Sometimes a promise to write a book a year is a condition of accepting that author in the first place. Difficult? Not so good for quality? It’s good for marketing.
In the article, Patricia Cornwell is quoted as saying, “It’s no problem as long as you don’t have a life.”
Dennis Lehane said that he would not go back to doing a book a year, back to the “hamster wheel.” His novel PRAYERS FOR RAIN came out, he believes, before he really perfected it. Under pressure to get it into print, he thought too late of a way of making it much better.
There are writers who seem to have no trouble with a book or more a year. Robert B. Parker has three books out with a 2007 pub date---NOW & THEN, HIGH PROFILE, and SPARE CHANGE, which I suppose will keep him high profile. But very few people can work that way successfully. On the listserves, there has been much talk about burnout. And of course the issue of quality.
For about fifteen years I brought out a book a year. My just-finished manuscript took four years. There were family reasons, plus I was working part of the time on another project, but mostly it took longer because it’s a bigger book with more technical detail. But I, and I’m sure a lot of other writers, find this new publishing demand stress-inducing. Or as a friend said to me, “poisonous.”
The publishers say we have to keep reminding the readers that we exist.
This seems to be another form of The Public Is Stupid. The public will forget your name if they don’t se it constantly.
Opinions, anyone?
We’ve all heard that Stephen King and Dean Koontz, prolific writers both, were told not to write more than a book a year, and if they couldn't resist writing, write under a different name.
Her publisher told Agatha Christie not to write more than a book a year. Think of all the Christies we might have if the publisher hadn’t been so foolish.
The reasoning seems to have been that more that a book a year would:
First, diminish the value of the book. If you can write it so fast, it can’t be worth much.
Second, the public will think the second book is the first book and if they already have the book for this year, they won’t buy the new one. This comes under the heading “The Public is Stupid,” which is used as an excuse for a lot of ill-considered and paternalistic behavior.
Well, things aren’t like that any more.
Clea Simon and others have called attention to an article in the Boston Globe by David Mehegan. Mehegan notes that publishers are now urging their authors to get out at least one book a year. Not surprisingly, the issue has been a hot topic on crime and mystery writers’ listserves. The pressure to put out a book a year is apparently strongest for suspense and thrillers but strong for mystery writers as well. Sometimes a promise to write a book a year is a condition of accepting that author in the first place. Difficult? Not so good for quality? It’s good for marketing.
In the article, Patricia Cornwell is quoted as saying, “It’s no problem as long as you don’t have a life.”
Dennis Lehane said that he would not go back to doing a book a year, back to the “hamster wheel.” His novel PRAYERS FOR RAIN came out, he believes, before he really perfected it. Under pressure to get it into print, he thought too late of a way of making it much better.
There are writers who seem to have no trouble with a book or more a year. Robert B. Parker has three books out with a 2007 pub date---NOW & THEN, HIGH PROFILE, and SPARE CHANGE, which I suppose will keep him high profile. But very few people can work that way successfully. On the listserves, there has been much talk about burnout. And of course the issue of quality.
For about fifteen years I brought out a book a year. My just-finished manuscript took four years. There were family reasons, plus I was working part of the time on another project, but mostly it took longer because it’s a bigger book with more technical detail. But I, and I’m sure a lot of other writers, find this new publishing demand stress-inducing. Or as a friend said to me, “poisonous.”
The publishers say we have to keep reminding the readers that we exist.
This seems to be another form of The Public Is Stupid. The public will forget your name if they don’t se it constantly.
Opinions, anyone?
Saturday, April 12, 2008
There Is a Tide
by Barbara D'Amato
We’re about to launch into our two-week Raymond Chandler binge, so I thought I’d take a look at one of his predecessors, Agatha Christie. I’ve recently been rereading THERE IS A TIDE . . . . It was first published in 1948, just six years before THE LONG GOODBYE, [1954]. Both books deal with aspects of the post-World War II years. The central question in THE LONG GOODBYE is the character of a man altered by fighting in the war. Christie, not surprisingly, is more embedded in the aftereffects of the war and the changes in British society. The Brits lost close to 400,000 people in military deaths, and that doesn’t include civilians killed in bombing raids, or non-military personnel, like ambulance drivers, medical support, and so on, at the front. There was no town in the U.K., and scarcely any family, without its losses. The war changed British society to a degree Americans couldn’t imagine.
The story:
Wealthy Gordon Cloade is killed in the Blitz, the house he was in destroyed and four people in it killed. His widow, Rosaleen, stunned by the blast, inherits his estate and moves to his family home in Warmsley Vale. Her former husband disappeared in Africa and was reported dead. Now there are rumors he may have faked his death. Gordon Cloade had promised to help his several strapped relatives financially, but the widow has no reason to do so. However, if her former husband never died, she was not legitimately married to Cloade and cannot inherit his estate.
The characters include Cloade’s niece Lynn who had served in the Wrens during the war. Lynn has seen the world. She has come back to Warmsley Vale much changed, finding her home and tame and small. Her longtime fiancé has stayed at home through the war because as a farmer his production was vital to the war effort. He now feels that the world and his fiancée look down on him for not having served.
There are Christie’s deft, Rembrandt sketches of the possibly-stodgy fiancé, several Cloade relatives, and of Rosaleen’s brother David, a bold, risk-taking young man with a wonderful war record—just the sort who doesn’t do well in peacetime.
The novel has all of Christie’s legendary smoke and mirrors. And mirrors behind mirrors. Chandler and Christie have somewhat similar writing techniques--short, declarative sentences, not heavily reliant on subordinate clauses and flowery touches, although Chandler is much more into simile and metaphor than Christie, despite the fact that the writer character in THE LONG GOODBYE seems to belittle simile.
THERE IS A TIDE . . . is not Christie’s best work. It is somewhat too complicated, a criticism which could be made of THE LONG GOODBYE as well. And a minor flaw is that the resolution of the romance between the lead character and the pre-war fiancé is a little pat. However, it is a wonderful time capsule, a picture of a bomb-blasted culture in the years immediately following the war. And an interesting contrast to THE LONG GOODBYE.
We’re about to launch into our two-week Raymond Chandler binge, so I thought I’d take a look at one of his predecessors, Agatha Christie. I’ve recently been rereading THERE IS A TIDE . . . . It was first published in 1948, just six years before THE LONG GOODBYE, [1954]. Both books deal with aspects of the post-World War II years. The central question in THE LONG GOODBYE is the character of a man altered by fighting in the war. Christie, not surprisingly, is more embedded in the aftereffects of the war and the changes in British society. The Brits lost close to 400,000 people in military deaths, and that doesn’t include civilians killed in bombing raids, or non-military personnel, like ambulance drivers, medical support, and so on, at the front. There was no town in the U.K., and scarcely any family, without its losses. The war changed British society to a degree Americans couldn’t imagine.
The story:
Wealthy Gordon Cloade is killed in the Blitz, the house he was in destroyed and four people in it killed. His widow, Rosaleen, stunned by the blast, inherits his estate and moves to his family home in Warmsley Vale. Her former husband disappeared in Africa and was reported dead. Now there are rumors he may have faked his death. Gordon Cloade had promised to help his several strapped relatives financially, but the widow has no reason to do so. However, if her former husband never died, she was not legitimately married to Cloade and cannot inherit his estate.
The characters include Cloade’s niece Lynn who had served in the Wrens during the war. Lynn has seen the world. She has come back to Warmsley Vale much changed, finding her home and tame and small. Her longtime fiancé has stayed at home through the war because as a farmer his production was vital to the war effort. He now feels that the world and his fiancée look down on him for not having served.
There are Christie’s deft, Rembrandt sketches of the possibly-stodgy fiancé, several Cloade relatives, and of Rosaleen’s brother David, a bold, risk-taking young man with a wonderful war record—just the sort who doesn’t do well in peacetime.
The novel has all of Christie’s legendary smoke and mirrors. And mirrors behind mirrors. Chandler and Christie have somewhat similar writing techniques--short, declarative sentences, not heavily reliant on subordinate clauses and flowery touches, although Chandler is much more into simile and metaphor than Christie, despite the fact that the writer character in THE LONG GOODBYE seems to belittle simile.
THERE IS A TIDE . . . is not Christie’s best work. It is somewhat too complicated, a criticism which could be made of THE LONG GOODBYE as well. And a minor flaw is that the resolution of the romance between the lead character and the pre-war fiancé is a little pat. However, it is a wonderful time capsule, a picture of a bomb-blasted culture in the years immediately following the war. And an interesting contrast to THE LONG GOODBYE.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
James M. Cain and Agatha Christie
By Barbara D'Amato
In grade school, high school, even college, I read fiction without much—or maybe any—sense of the structure that supported it. Even when I was lucky enough to take a course with Vladimir Nabokov, who led us to focus on details, rather than just coast along enjoying the events, I don’t think I had any sense of structure. That didn’t come until I started trying to write.
Structure and narrative technique. In structure and technique James M. Cain and Agatha Christie are very much alike. Not in content, I suppose, although you could make an argument that several of Christie’s villains are like Frank.
As Libby Hellmann mentioned in an earlier post, The Postman Always Rings Twice was the one-conference one-book choice at Magna cum Murder last week in Muncie. I hadn’t read Postman in many, many years and remembered nothing about it. I was surprised to see Christie’s technique in it.
For example, it is told mostly through dialogue, as are Christie’s novels. Both authors are far more “show, don’t tell” than was most fiction of the period.
The sentences are direct, using nothing that a friend of mine used to call “fancy writin.’” Cain can be lyrical in the accumulation of sentences, but like Christie doesn’t go in for Proustian length or complexity.
Or elaborate scene setting. Like Christie, Cain gives you only as much setting as you need. It has been said about Christie that she never includes a scene just for atmosphere or padding. Every scene advances the plot. Cain too.
Both writers are deceptively plain and forthright. Robert Barnard has said about Christie that her writing seems simple, and yet is very subtle. Both authors are so declarative that the reader takes the information as simply true, a useful deception in Christie’s puzzles.
Christie believed a novel should be capable of being read in one day. Cain’s novels can be gobbled in an evening.
James M. Cain and Agatha Christie, siblings under the skin? There’s a scary thought for Halloween.
In grade school, high school, even college, I read fiction without much—or maybe any—sense of the structure that supported it. Even when I was lucky enough to take a course with Vladimir Nabokov, who led us to focus on details, rather than just coast along enjoying the events, I don’t think I had any sense of structure. That didn’t come until I started trying to write.
Structure and narrative technique. In structure and technique James M. Cain and Agatha Christie are very much alike. Not in content, I suppose, although you could make an argument that several of Christie’s villains are like Frank.
As Libby Hellmann mentioned in an earlier post, The Postman Always Rings Twice was the one-conference one-book choice at Magna cum Murder last week in Muncie. I hadn’t read Postman in many, many years and remembered nothing about it. I was surprised to see Christie’s technique in it.
For example, it is told mostly through dialogue, as are Christie’s novels. Both authors are far more “show, don’t tell” than was most fiction of the period.
The sentences are direct, using nothing that a friend of mine used to call “fancy writin.’” Cain can be lyrical in the accumulation of sentences, but like Christie doesn’t go in for Proustian length or complexity.
Or elaborate scene setting. Like Christie, Cain gives you only as much setting as you need. It has been said about Christie that she never includes a scene just for atmosphere or padding. Every scene advances the plot. Cain too.
Both writers are deceptively plain and forthright. Robert Barnard has said about Christie that her writing seems simple, and yet is very subtle. Both authors are so declarative that the reader takes the information as simply true, a useful deception in Christie’s puzzles.
Christie believed a novel should be capable of being read in one day. Cain’s novels can be gobbled in an evening.
James M. Cain and Agatha Christie, siblings under the skin? There’s a scary thought for Halloween.
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