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This episode of Writing Excuses has

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Season 18, Episode 15. This

0:20

is Writing Excuses. Building

0:22

a mystery now with more tools. 15 minutes

0:25

long. Because you're in a hurry. And

0:28

we're not that smart. I'm Mary

0:30

Robinette. I'm Tom one. I'm

0:32

Erin. I'm Dan. And

0:35

I'm Howard. And

0:38

we're going to talk about mysteries again. But now

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you have this whole toolbox of

0:42

different ways to build tension, and you see why

0:45

we were so excited about it. So

0:48

let's start talking about

0:50

mysteries. So we've been talking about mysteries

0:54

and anticipation. So

0:57

how do you apply anticipation to mysteries?

1:02

What are some of the classic ways we've seen

1:04

it done, or things that

1:06

you're like, this is the really

1:09

meaty, juicy way to do it.

1:11

I can talk about, I was

1:13

like, I'm just going to riff until one of you has an answer.

1:17

I was anticipating something and then

1:19

it fell through for me. Seriously,

1:23

though, one of the things that I did a lot

1:26

in The Spare Man

1:28

was that I was using anticipation. I was

1:31

using the anticipation of, you

1:33

know, waiting for that body drop is

1:36

one of the things in the first scene

1:38

or second scene. In

1:40

the second scene, I set up a fight.

1:43

And so that is building

1:45

for the reader the anticipation

1:47

that something is going to happen

1:50

with one of those three characters. And

1:53

that then allows me to have,

1:56

you know, to keep you moving along.

1:59

and then we get into

3:59

or juxtaposition or

4:01

conflict, I start with

4:04

what is the answer to the original

4:07

unanswered question of who

4:09

committed the murder. And then

4:11

I start making

4:13

notes about

4:16

where I want readers to

4:18

feel the different things. This is where I

4:20

want them to be excited. This is where I want

4:22

some sense of wonder. This is where

4:25

I don't know what's going on or what's going to happen,

4:27

but I've got to get get them to turn the page. So

4:29

here's a question mark.

4:31

And then as I sit down

4:33

with the manuscript, that's

4:35

when I open up the toolbox and start looking

4:37

at, oh,

4:38

oh, this is where I'll

4:40

throw in micro tension, because

4:43

the characters are talking about things that don't really

4:45

matter. But I need to explore

4:48

them. I need to explore the characters. So

4:50

I need them to

4:52

be passionate about what they're talking about and

4:54

to be perhaps a little bit in conflict

4:56

during the discussion. So my approach

4:58

to the use of the two walls is,

5:02

yeah. So I will say that

5:05

with Spareman, I actually started with not

5:07

who committed the murder, but how the murder

5:09

was committed. Because

5:12

for me, the thing that is interesting in a

5:15

mystery is the puzzle.

5:17

And that puzzle is around the

5:19

murder. So I figured out what is a really

5:22

interesting way to murder someone. And

5:24

then who do I have that can commit

5:26

that murder. And that was actually

5:28

the way that I built

5:30

that particular thing. And what

5:33

I'm hoping you're noticing, your

5:35

listeners, a thing that we keep talking about is that there

5:37

is no one right way to do things. Each

5:39

of these is a correct way. It's just whatever

5:42

is feeding you as

5:44

the writer.

5:46

Yeah, I don't want people to come away with this feeling like

5:49

with all of these different tools, you have to have

5:51

some kind of master plan, right? That you

5:53

need to know, Oh, I'm going to deploy

5:55

a red herring here. I'm going to deploy tension here.

5:57

I'm going to employ this at

5:59

the other there.

6:00

because you know i think a lot about

6:02

the parker whole thing about agatha christie

6:04

but her not knowing who the murder was

6:06

on so for set it on the page or something

6:09

along those lines right you can approach

6:11

it from i mean yes

6:13

you did you know which end of the tools the business and which

6:15

is the handle but you can deploy

6:18

those tools as you go

6:20

and sort of see where that leads you and sort of build

6:22

up to something that feels really consistent

6:25

a lot of making a mystery feel

6:27

right easy thing that happens the editing

6:29

process as you go back through and say

6:32

who i was giving a little too much information here

6:34

i need to withhold that there or this

6:36

is really confusing because i knew what

6:38

was going out but as i didn't set that up properly

6:40

to scenes ago right so mysteries

6:44

the of them more as magic tricks rather

6:46

than like perfectly executed plans

6:48

right you get to go

6:51

back through it in a just in tweak

6:53

and make sure everything's set up rate for your

6:55

audience to get there when they get their so

6:59

as we've been going through these last

7:01

few episodes what's really

7:03

stood out to me talking about all these different

7:05

forms of tension and in how to use them are

7:08

overlap between them and

7:09

ways to solve multiple problems

7:12

with a single tool so

7:14

for example ah

7:16

we've talked a lot about how we need

7:18

to care about the characters in order to

7:20

be invested in them that

7:21

is a perfect match

7:23

with the concept of micro attention because

7:26

if you give your character

7:28

enough texture that they have a

7:31

hobby or a job or

7:33

something that they love outside

7:35

of the plot then

7:36

suddenly you've given them something they can be

7:38

working on in

7:40

the background of a scene or

7:42

you know these these other kinds of little micro tension

7:45

problems they can be dealing with wow

7:47

trying

7:49

to solve are trying to ignore

7:51

the the much larger mystery and

7:53

and problem that their faces and

7:55

that solves a lot of things all

7:57

at once that that said great

8:00

example, sorry, and I'm going to use, or

8:02

a great point, I'm going to use the character Fantine

8:06

in Spareman as an example of that. So

8:09

there's two things,

8:11

two points of microattention for her. One,

8:14

she's doing crochet through much

8:16

of the thing, and at one point she's so

8:19

distracted she makes a mistake,

8:21

and in yelling, she's

8:24

mad not just about all of the other

8:26

things that are happening, but about the fact that

8:28

she had to rip out 20 rows.

8:31

And it's like having to rip out 20 rows has

8:34

no bearing on the overall mystery at all. But

8:38

it's a piece of character detail

8:41

and it adds this little bit of micro-tension. And

8:43

then the other piece for her

8:45

is her weird

8:47

pattern of cursing because she had made a deal

8:49

with her priest

8:51

that she wouldn't use

8:53

swear words. And so she curses

8:56

by a combination

8:59

of Shakespeare and Catholic martyrs.

9:02

And again, she hits a point where she's so upset

9:04

that she accidentally does swear. And

9:07

again, it's just this

9:09

tiny bit, a little

9:12

bit more attention that I'm applying to that scene

9:15

and texture to the character, which is a lot of fun. And

9:18

Fontine ends up as a lot

9:21

of people's favorite character or one of their

9:23

favorite characters because

9:24

of all these things that

9:26

you've done. Yeah,

9:28

yes, hashtag

9:30

Team Fontine or Team Gimlet apparently.

9:36

Why don't we take a moment and pause

9:38

and we'll come back and talk about some of our other tools

9:41

and how to apply them to mysteries.

9:44

Our Thing of the Week this week is Mark Oshiro's

9:47

new young adult novel, Into the Light.

9:50

It is a very twisty thriller

9:52

that's told in a nonlinear way. It focuses

9:56

on a young teen named Manny

9:59

who...

10:00

was first pulled into a cult called

10:02

Reconciliation and then subsequently kicked

10:04

out of said cult. We meet

10:06

up with him while he's on the road after

10:08

all of that. His sister

10:11

stayed behind, and so he's trying to reconnect

10:13

with her and then sees on the

10:15

news that a dead body has been found

10:18

in the hills near where Reconciliation

10:20

is based. There's

10:22

multiple timelines. There's different POVs

10:26

as we try to get to the heart of what

10:28

exactly happened at reconciliation, what is his

10:31

trauma around his experience with this cult, and

10:34

what is it like to navigate the world as a

10:37

queer adoptee who's been

10:39

sort of neglected by the system. It's

10:42

a really fantastic, pointed,

10:44

sharp, funny, weird novel. And

10:47

I think people are going to be very excited to find

10:51

the spoiler at the core of what makes this novel

10:53

tech and it's a real

10:55

thrill.

10:58

So when we're talking about mysteries

11:01

and tension, there

11:04

are a number of other tools that we have not

11:07

even gotten to yet. One

11:10

of my favorites and one of the core

11:12

things is the unanswered question.

11:15

So we talked about that a little bit in the first one. We've

11:17

got a whole episode on unanswered questions,

11:19

but when we're applying them specifically

11:21

to mysteries,

11:24

one of the things I want to look at is

11:26

not just

11:27

the ways to do it, like misunderstanding

11:29

the question, but also some of the dangers

11:33

in that. Like, what are some of the pros

11:35

and cons of delaying

11:38

an answer in a mystery?

11:40

Okay, so I've got a pretty good example of this one.

11:43

One of the things of the week that we promoted earlier

11:46

was my new book Dark One Forgotten,

11:48

which is a mystery and it

11:51

is the prequel to

11:52

a Brandon Sanderson fantasy

11:54

novel.

11:56

What that means

11:58

is that even though it is structured

12:00

as if you are listening to a true crime

12:02

podcast,

12:03

you go into it knowing that there will

12:05

be a supernatural angle. You

12:08

know that eventually it's got

12:10

Dan Wells and Brandon Sanderson on the cover. There's

12:12

going to be magic or some kind of

12:15

speculative element to it. Especially

12:18

if you've read the novel it's based on, you

12:21

know exactly how the mystery

12:23

gets solved. And so the

12:26

problem that I ran into in writing

12:28

it and that I had to send multiple

12:31

drafts over and over through my writing

12:33

group to figure out is it

12:36

is obvious to the reader

12:38

what's going on. We know that the

12:40

reason no one can remember the killer

12:43

or the victims is because there is some kind

12:45

of magic effect.

12:46

So

12:47

how long can I drag out that

12:49

anticipation

12:51

for the

12:52

reader, for the characters

12:55

to finally catch on

12:56

without making them seem stupid or

12:59

without frustrating the audience? And

13:01

it's difficult.

13:02

It was very hard to write

13:05

a story that kind of fundamentally

13:08

ignores one of its core premises

13:11

for the first half or so

13:13

of the story. So there's that unanswered

13:15

question like who's

13:17

the mystery but the fact

13:20

that it's a or who's the killer

13:22

the fact that it's a prequel means that

13:24

I needed to start and here's the solution

13:27

here's why I'm saying all this

13:29

what

13:31

I eventually had to do was

13:33

to just give you as much information

13:36

as possible.

13:37

It was essentially a story

13:40

about tying

13:42

off

13:43

every possible loose end before

13:46

they finally conceded that maybe magic

13:48

was real

13:49

because it takes place in our world. They

13:52

aren't predisposed to believe it even though

13:54

the audience is predisposed

13:56

to expect it.

13:57

And so three episodes of them.

14:00

exhausting

14:00

every possible other

14:02

explanation

14:03

Made it interesting enough To

14:07

get through that and so the anticipation

14:10

and the unanswered question was

14:12

was very difficult to

14:14

deal with I

14:16

Think this gets to something that we've talked about

14:18

before which is that sometimes you

14:20

can give the answer To

14:22

the reader or to the listener and I think

14:25

it's what's really cool about that example is

14:27

the question, it seems like to me,

14:29

becomes less,

14:30

is there magic involved with this? Because everyone

14:32

knows the answer is yes, but more how

14:35

will people deal with the revelation that

14:37

magic exists in the world? And so

14:39

that's a different unanswered question. And so

14:41

sometimes shifting from the

14:43

informational question, I think one

14:46

of the dangers sometimes in mystery is you think everything

14:48

has to be about information and plot.

14:50

But sometimes some of the most interesting unanswered

14:53

questions are the ones about emotion,

14:55

revelation, and consequence, as opposed

14:57

to the ones about who did what to whom

14:59

at what point.

15:02

Touching on something that Dan

15:04

said toward the beginning of this episode, and something

15:06

that Aaron just said, we

15:09

talked about how it's like setting up a magic trick.

15:12

In the second edition of Extreme

15:15

Dungeon Mastery, Tracy

15:18

and Curtis Hickman point out that

15:20

magicians entertain, purely

15:23

by deception. When

15:25

they explain how the trick is done, it just

15:29

kind of makes us feel dumb for not having seen it, which

15:31

is why they typically don't do it. Storytellers

15:36

entertain by setting up deception

15:39

and then with revelation. Aaron,

15:41

you used that word twice. When

15:44

I think of unanswered questions as a tool,

15:46

I'm

15:47

always thinking of the

15:49

revelation that is going to come

15:51

at the end, the reveal

15:54

of this is the answer to the question. This

15:56

This is how it was done. The magician

15:59

typically won't show. that they

16:01

were using a trick knife with a collapsible

16:03

blade. But in Knives Out, famously,

16:06

we are told about a trick knife

16:09

in the first act, and we are shown

16:11

the trick knife at the very end of

16:13

the

16:14

show. Interesting

16:17

that you say that because I have some friends who are magicians,

16:20

and we talk about the overlap between

16:23

magic and story

16:25

all the time. Because one of the

16:28

things that a magician must

16:30

do is that they must

16:33

tell the viewer that what

16:35

they're about to do is impossible. Because

16:40

you go into a magic trick knowing that they're

16:42

going to do something. And

16:44

I think

16:47

that that is also one of the things

16:49

that you have to do in different

16:51

ways. but it's still a narrative

16:53

thing that you are

16:56

using a lot of these tension tools

16:58

and a mystery

16:59

to

17:02

signal to the reader that this is actually

17:04

hard to solve. A

17:07

lot of the conflict things that you're using

17:10

are ways to say, there

17:12

are reasons that this is hard to solve, much

17:14

like what Dan was talking about with,

17:16

It's like, well, why don't they just think it's magic? It's

17:19

like, you have to present the impossibility

17:22

to them in

17:26

order to get the payoff of, here's

17:29

the solution and the answer. So a lot

17:31

of the tools that we've been talking about are tools that

17:33

you can use for that.

17:35

I think one thing that's important to remember in all of this

17:38

is that there's

17:39

a way in which mysteries and

17:42

the structure of a mystery is a fantasy. You

17:45

are selling people on the idea that

17:47

there are easy answers to complex problems,

17:49

that there is a trick behind the whole thing.

17:52

And,

17:54

you know, I think when we think about unanswered

17:56

questions,

17:57

Sometimes it is almost more interesting.

18:00

to not answer every single unanswered question

18:02

you put out there, right? Like sometimes you have a Darryl

18:04

who's still wandering around the island and nobody knows

18:06

why he's there. And that adds

18:09

this extra layer to what you're doing. And he'd

18:11

sell the fantasy of, wait,

18:13

we do know who the killer is. We do know what happened. We

18:15

do know what exactly was done to

18:18

pull this magic trick off. But, you

18:20

know,

18:22

things are hidden from the audience in that, right?

18:24

There are answers that we won't see and that's

18:26

okay. I think that can add a really

18:29

interesting layer to how you're

18:31

presenting your mystery, how you're presenting your answers, and

18:34

what questions are you really asking in the

18:36

story that you're telling.

18:38

I think these are all great points, and I'm hoping

18:41

that our listeners have some

18:43

new tools for when they're going back

18:45

into their mystery and can apply all

18:48

of these different forms of tension to the mystery.

18:51

We also need to set you up

18:53

for success for the next

18:56

episode. We are going to be doing

18:58

a deep dive

19:00

on The Dark One. Dan, do you want to tell

19:02

us a little bit about what people should

19:05

do?

19:07

Okay. As we explained several episodes

19:09

ago, our next little series

19:12

that we're going to do, we'll start with a

19:14

deep dive on Dark One Forgotten,

19:16

an audio book

19:18

by Brandon Sanderson and me.

19:20

Then we'll have

19:23

some other episodes spinning off of that. preparation

19:26

for that, you've had several weeks,

19:29

you have one more week left to listen

19:32

to Dark One Forgotten. This is audio

19:34

only

19:35

because it is a fake podcast

19:38

and you can get it pretty much anywhere

19:41

that has audiobooks, Audible and

19:44

Libro FM and Google Playbooks and

19:46

Barnes & Noble and all these other places. So

19:49

it's about six hours long

19:51

a little more.

19:52

Listen to that

19:54

and then get ready for next week

19:57

when we are going to dive

19:59

deep into...

20:00

everything about its structure

20:02

and it's the process of creating

20:05

it and why I love it so much.

20:08

One of the reasons that we're doing these deep dives

20:11

and then building episodes off of them is so that

20:13

you can see the tools that we use and hopefully

20:17

start to build a toolbox of your own which brings

20:19

us to our homework assignment.

20:21

Okay so yeah

20:24

part of your homework is if you haven't listed dark

20:26

ones yet, go listen to dark ones, but the other

20:28

part of your homework is make

20:31

a list of the tools

20:34

which you regularly return

20:36

to when you're writing. That might be mice

20:38

quotient, three-act structure, hero's

20:40

journey, whatever. Just make a list of the tools

20:43

that you already use regularly.

20:46

Then make a separate list of the tools

20:49

you know about,

20:50

perhaps tools like

20:53

tension via microtension, conflict,

20:56

anticipation, juxtaposition,

20:58

unanswered questions. Make a list of

21:00

the tools you know about, but don't think

21:02

you're using yet. And then try

21:05

to move one tool from

21:07

the second list to the

21:10

first one. This

21:12

has been Writing Excuses. You're

21:14

out of excuses. Now go build a toolbox.

21:20

Writing Excuses has been brought to you by

21:22

our listeners, patrons, and friends. For

21:25

this episode, your hosts were Mary

21:27

Robinette Kowal, Dong Won-sung, Aaron

21:30

Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Taylor.

21:32

This episode was engineered by Marshall

21:34

Carr, Jr. and mastered by Alex

21:37

Jackson. For more information, visit

21:39

writingexcuses.com.