The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing the Modern Whodunit (14 page)

This scene moves the story. Roz’s reluctance to become involved with Olive Martin is crucial to the story’s development. On the other hand, unless she does continue to visit Olive, there is no story. Roz begins with the goal of abandoning the story. Iris, knowing how Roz will respond, cleverly creates the obstacle of readily agreeing and suggests that Jenny Atherton, Roz’ rival, can take over the project. Now Roz faces a conflict: If she gives up the project, Jenny will get it; if she continues her interviews with Olive Martin, she will be forced to deal with a person who repels her. Roz resolves the conflict by staying on the project, which creates a new obstacle for her: Now she must continue her research into a story that she finds highly offensive.

The scene does other work besides committing the reluctant Roz to write about Olive Martin. It characterizes Roz as uncertain in her convictions, sensitive and emotional, and easily manipulated—all traits that become important later in the story. The scene emphasizes Roz’ powerful response to Olive Martin. And it shows that Iris knows how to get her way with Roz.

The law of stimulus-response motivates the characters in this scene. Roz calls Iris to beg off the project. Iris responds by readily agreeing—which, as Iris expects, causes Roz to respond by changing her mind.

The scene gives the illusion of taking place in real time. It contains no summary of events or condensation of time. The conversation between Roz and Iris is played out in its entirety. The attributions in the dialogue and the descriptions of the characters’ actions appear to consume all of the pauses in the conversation. Thus readers sense that it takes them as long to read the scene as it would take actually to witness it.

Building bridges

A work of fiction is not constructed entirely of scenes. Some events should be summarized, as we have seen. The passage of time between events needs to be suggested, and the consequences of a scene sometimes need to be pondered.

The bridges or transitions between scenes take various forms:

1.
Summary of intervening events
. What happens between the scenes may be uninteresting, unimportant, or unproductive. It does not contain the conflict elements that would make it a scene, but it still needs to be accounted for. In
Cruel and Unusual
Patricia Cornwell simply writes: “I tried Marino and he wasn’t home or at headquarters.” Nothing more is needed.

2.
Indication of elapsed time
. Whether it’s a few minutes, hours, or even months or years, you must keep your readers informed about the passage in time between scenes. For example, in
F Is for Fugitive
, Sue Grafton accounts for a hunk of time this way: “After supper, I snagged a jacket from my room and headed down the back stairs.”

3.
Analysis of the ramifications of the preceding scene
. Pause before the next scene to interpret and consider the implications of the scene that has just ended. Periodically in mystery fiction readers need to stop, stretch, and take a deep breath. Things have been moving fast. There’s a lot to ponder for both the sleuth and the reader. Before you move forward to the next scene, you should help your readers understand what’s happened so far and how the last scene affects the story. Here’s how Dick Francis does this in
Straight
:

4.
Consideration of future actions
. What should the sleuth do next? How can he use what he’s learned in the preceding scene? What are his alternatives? Unless you share your sleuth’s thinking with your readers, they will feel unprepared for the next scene. In
Skinwalkers
, Tony Hillerman uses this bridge:

Bridges can be as brief as a phrase or sentence, or they can go on for several paragraphs. Their purpose is to move the protagonist smoothly from one scene to the next. Bridges are not always necessary or desirable, and sometimes you can omit them entirely by starting a new chapter or inserting a line break, then beginning the next scene directly. In many cases you can trust your readers to fill in the gap between the two sequential scenes without explanation. The next scene logically comes next, and readers can follow along without being told what has happened or how much time has elapsed between them.

The bridges that connect scenes are by their nature passive and introspective. They are summaries that come directly to the reader from the story’s narrative point of view. They do not take place in real time, and they lack all of the other elements of scenes.

All fiction needs bridges. But keep them to a minimum, keep them brief, and keep them focused. When writing bridges, it’s tempting to theorize, philosophize, speculate, recapitulate, rhapsodize, and expound. When you do too much of this, your story’s momentum grinds to a halt. Mystery readers don’t pick up your book to learn your views on life and love and death. They care about your story’s characters and their problems.

Chapter 10

Dialogue: The Lifeblood
of Mystery Fiction

Because your sleuth can’t be everywhere at once, she cannot witness all of your story’s crucial events. If she actually saw the crime as it was committed, of course, then there would be no mystery. For the same reason, she cannot overhear conversations in which the culprit reveals his motives, divulges his plans, or confesses his guilt.

That’s why dialogue between the protagonist and other key characters is so important in mystery fiction. Although the hero or heroine must be active and participate in and witness many events firsthand, it’s largely through conversations with others that the sleuth (and the reader) gathers clues. Thus the primary method for information-gathering in mystery fiction is the interrogation, although it’s rarely a simple matter of asking questions and receiving answers. The sleuth understands that the various people she encounters have their own agendas. Some characters refuse to cooperate. Some become belligerent. Some lie or withhold information. Others distort the truth for their own private, and sometimes subconscious, reasons. These lies and distortions can create new directions for investigation, some of which may prove productive while others turn out to be false trails and dead-ends.

Sometimes characters divulge key information without intending to—information that becomes significant only later, after other clues have been collected.

More than other forms of fiction, the mystery calls upon dialogue to perform multiple tasks, such as delineate character, create conflict, build tension, establish mood, present clues, suggest false trails, and give momentum to the story. An effective dialogue scene can accomplish all of these jobs in a few seemingly simple and straightforward exchanges. Because of the special importance of dialogue in mystery fiction, the writer simply must master the art of recreating conversations that are clear, entertaining, and realistic while performing the vital clue-gathering function.

Writing dialogue that sounds real

The conversations that we engage in and overhear in real life tend to be repetitious, semi-articulate, and boring. Transcripts of such conversations, while authentic, would make tedious reading, and the writer who tries to recreate them literally risks writing muddy and hard-to-read dialogue.

In real life, for example, this is how a woman might try to explain to her male friend that she doesn’t want him to spend the night with her:

This exchange is “realistic,” but it’s not readable. Effectively written dialogue creates sparse and clear speech that wastes no words and yet sounds authentic. But simply eliminating the redundant and inarticulate parts is not enough; it produces flat, lifeless dialogue.

For example:

It’s impossible to read this exchange without losing track of which character is which, of course, but otherwise this dialogue is sharper and easier to read. The message comes across clearly, cleanly, and concisely. But it lacks impact. It fails to suggest the powerful mixture of emotions that the characters must be feeling—emotions that were more strongly conveyed in the first version.

One way to correct this is to write dialogue in which the characters talk about their feelings. They can reassure each other of their love and tell each other of the pain and conflict they are feeling. Unless handled with extreme restraint, however, direct expressions of emotion tend to sound maudlin and overblown and inconsistent with the characters’ personalities. They do not ring true.

For example:

Here the writer has taken the easy way out by having the characters say exactly what they are feeling and thinking. There is no drama in a conversational exchange that tells rather than shows.

Another form of telling rather than showing in dialogue substitutes highly expressive verbs and descriptive adverbs for the characters’ own expressions of emotion:

The characters’ emotions in this version are absolutely clear. The expressive verbs (“murmured,” “growled,” “whispered”) and the descriptive adverbs (“sadly,” “tearfully,” “hopefully”) leave no doubt in the reader’s mind.

The problem here is that the writer has intruded on the scene to explain what is happening in the characters’ minds. The reader is yanked out of the point-of-view character’s shoes. The author has intervened to remind readers in no uncertain terms that there is indeed a diligent writer at work, controlling their reactions by telling them what’s going on and interpreting it for them—and, in the process, depriving them of the opportunity to gather clues and use their imagination. When that happens, readers don’t identify or empathize with the characters; they remain passive observers. The intrusive writer has destroyed the potential emotional impact of the scene by overexplaining it.