Ian O’Neill | Bertram's Blog

The Magic Of Mysteries: The Art (And Joy) Of Misdirection

August 18, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Ian O’Neill, the one-time advertising copywriter turned award winning freelance journalist, is the author of Endo, a mystery/suspense novel set in Ontario, Canada. Ian has written for newspaper, magazine, radio, television and once wrote a dirty limerick on a dusty car but didn’t sign it. Ian writes:

I worked for Parks and Rec when I was younger and on a rainy day managed to bring in a magician to entertain the kids in our program. It was fascinating to not only watch him perform but also to see the looks of amazement on the kids’ faces. Like watching a magician, reading mysteries is one of those instances where we want to be misdirected. Let’s face it, if the clues are easy and laid out for us with bold, capitalized letters, there’d be little joy in reading the book.

I was certainly old enough when watching that magician to know that he was intentionally misdirecting us. He’d open a hand and hold it high in the air like he was trying to get a teacher’s attention. To ensure we were all looking at his raised hand he’d tell us to keep our eyes on the magical hand, or something to that effect. I didn’t watch his raised hand, I tried to watch his other hand, but there was no way I could because it was either behind his back or under a cloth or behind the volunteer he’d pulled from the audience. Even knowing that I was being mislead, I couldn’t see how.

That is writing a mystery story in a nutshell. A reader knows they’re going to be mislead and as the writer, you can’t let a reader feel like they’re being mislead. Readers will be watching your magic hand, but they know you’re up to something and you can’t let them know what it is until the end of the final act. If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.

Planning The Grand Illusion

You set the mystery with a criminal act like a murder, kidnapping, theft or some other problem that needs to be solved. This is the grand illusion of the story since whatever logical reason for the crime at its discovery made by your detective will likely change. If he/she nails the circumstances of the crime immediately, it would be like a magician explaining his illusion while performing the trick. Though the detective could be right but change their reasoning throughout the story only to come right back to their first conclusion. There are always options and nothing is static.

At this point I’d suggest reading my article, Games Have Rules, Writing Has Guidelines, on the so-called ‘rules’ of writing a mystery.

MacGuffin Is Not A County In Scotland

A Maltese Falcon, a very large diamond, a chalice, a massive shark, destiny, a ring (that rules all others)…all of these have something in common. They are all MacGuffins; an object, event, or character that serves to set and keep the plot in motion. Remember, though your major plot device may be the murder, kidnapping or other crime, it won’t necessarily be the MacGuffin. Consider the Da Vinci Code. The murder of the curator was the main plot device that started the entire journey, but the Holy Grail was the MacGuffin. The major plot device and MacGuffin are not always the same thing.

Once you have sorted out your MacGuffin and your major plot device you can move on to building your story to a satisfying solution. You’ll lead your reader on an adventure, not directly to the solution, but on a meandering path you must ensure is an enjoyable one for them.

There are those capable of writing on the fly, using few notes or plans. Others go through the outlining process and use the finished product as a sort of road map to help them stay on that meandering path. I need the outline. I never consider my outlines to be carved in stone. They are malleable and easily changed. An outline for a chapter can be a single word, sentence or paragraph. I wonder why anyone would write pages for the outline to a single chapter – save that for when you write the actual chapter.

An outline allows the writer to carefully craft the slights of hand and misdirection of the story. Readers are like detectives, registering information and filing some of it under clues. The crime scene will have its clues, what the protagonist sees and hears yields a fair share of clues, interviews will have an impact, actions of characters will give up clues as well. You need to have this straightforward, legitimate clues mixed in with false ones. All of these can be worked out in an outline, then flushed out in the writing.

The Planting Of Evidence – Slight of Hand

I must admit that building a mystery story was at times both enjoyable and excruciating. There is a lot of misdirecting going on and none more powerful than the creation of suspects. My novel is filled with interesting characters, unfortunately a great deal of them are less than admirable, at least on the surface. The victim has family, friends, co-workers, bosses, current or ex lovers, who are all potential enemies. As entertaining and enjoyable as it was to create these characters, it always turned into a precarious balancing act. If I reveal too much then a part of the illusion is revealed. Keep information too close to the chest and you eliminate a suspect crucial to maintaining the illusion. That was where the outline truly was a blessing in managing the balance.

Red Herrings – The Ultimate Misdirection

Though your readers are not bloodhounds and their quarry is not an escaped convict, nevertheless they must be thrown off the trail in order to maintain the illusion and to continue the enjoyable chase. Every writer will put their own stamp on this device.

Many stories revolve around characters who inevitably throughout their daily lives come in contact with many different people and places. Was the victim involved in criminal activity like selling drugs or stealing? Did he abuse his wife? Did she cheat on her husband? Was she blackmailing someone? So many questions surround a victim, the answers to which reveal facts and inevitably, red herrings. The reader, upon discovering the answers right along side the detective, is understanding of the misdirection and likely feels closer to the detective for having gone through the process with them.

Writers of mysteries and crime novels have to be careful with how often they use any device. Readers will tire of them quickly if there are so many that they become easy to spot, redundant or just plain boring. In other words, be selective. As with the example above, use secondary characters to chase down leads and return with an answer. Yes, the questions should be followed up but the protagonist need not follow every lead in front of the readers’ eyes. Get creative and have the detective, or someone else, do some of the sleuthing off the page.

What’s Up Your Sleeve

Magicians and their assistants take oaths never to reveal how their magic works (under punishment of hanging upside-down in a straightjacket over a frozen lake). Readers need to know how all that evidence and all those clues worked to find the solution. It all must fit together like fantastical magic tricks. Once revealed, everything that lead the detective and reader to the solution must make perfect sense for if it doesn’t, the result could be disastrous to the relationship. Maybe not hanging upside-down in a straightjacket over a frozen lake, but something far worse – the loss of a reader.

Magicians practice for hours to perfect their magic. Writers should consider the rewrite their practice – time to hone their skills, the story right along with it, to the best they can possibly be. Write, rewrite and rewrite some more. Only then will you see the flaws in the illusion and be able to smooth them out. In the end, the mystery is indeed magic.

One lucky commenter, chosen at random from Ian’s two guest posts will receive a copy of Endo, which will arrive in an evidence bag with a toe tag, five fingerprint card strips and a few ‘crime scene tape‘ bandages.

Also see:
Never Be Afraid to Ask by Ian O’Neill
Keeping it Real in a Fabricated World

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Posted in books, How to, writing. Tags: Endo, Evidence, Ian O'Neill, MacGuffin, misdirection, Red Herrings, The Grand Illusion, writing mysteries. 20 Comments »

Keeping It Real in a Fabricated World

August 18, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Writing a fiction novel can be oxymoronic since we fill the fabricated story with facts. In my novel, Endo, I made up a detective, his life, the world around him, but added facts to keep the reader grounded. I used real towns and cities but fabricated the buildings and addresses he visited. I created numerous characters but gave them real jobs: park rangers, crime scene investigators, a coroner and most of all, police officers.

I didn’t kill anyone but I did research what happens after a body is discovered. In storytelling there needs to be a mix of truth amongst lies. It’s a delicate balance that keeps the reader walking a fine line between what is real and what isn’t. As writers, we must suspend our reader’s disbelief. To do that, we need to understand how far is too far. Sometimes we miss the mark and readers are more than pleased to point out the error of our good intentions.

I’m not the first writer to bend the truth to benefit his story and I know that all of the writers reading this piece will do the same. But, I caution you on just how far you’ll go to make a story plausible because too far means the reader will not believe. Even in genres where you’d think anything is acceptable, you still have to maintain the parameters that you set out in the story. So, in chapter two you introduce a woman who can read minds; any mind, anywhere, as long as the person she’s trying to read is in her sight. Then, chapter 29 rolls around and she is miraculously able to read the mind of a killer in a basement apartment in Arkansas when she’s in California. But it made the story plausible, right?

Our focus here is on crime and mystery novels and I’m not going to spend a lot of time on formula; suffice to say most mystery novels begin with a crime.

The usual suspects: murder, kidnapping, bank robbing, theft of some kind. Regardless of the crime you choose, it must be believable. If it begins with an outlandish crime then it’s your job to talk the reader into believing it could happen.

Writers have the best job in the world. We get to make stuff up for a living. We create the crime, make it seem implausible or difficult for anyone to accomplish. We throw in obstacle after obstacle in hopes of stopping our heroes from getting to a solution. We muddy the waters with all kinds of distractions including love, lust and greed to name a few. In all of that, our reader must never stop suspending their disbelief. It sounds like a very tall order and that’s because it is.

Cops and detectives are different in all parts of the world, each operating under a different set of rules and guidelines. It would be best to find out specific rules and laws in the country or area of the detectives, cops or P.I.s in your story. For the purposes of this article, let’s have our hero be a cop from the States.

A policeman being first to arrive at a crime scene acts in similar ways to a detective in the same situation. Their eyes are wide open to the possibility that the perpetrator is still at the scene. Once they check the scene and realize they are alone, what do they have at their disposal to take in the scene. Well, at first, as I said, their keen senses but eventually they’ll use what every person in law enforcement carries, a pad and pencil.

Mundane, yes, but a necessary tool not only for the cop in question, but also for the writer. Balance is key. It offers reality at a time when you’ve introduced a fake crime. Besides, the pen or pencil could be a weapon, right?

Detectives often draw out the scene as accurately as possible. Sound familiar? I’m not sure how many of the writers reading this article do this, but I draw out my main characters’ homes’ floor plans. Or, the floor plans to any buildings that appear frequently in the novel. Just as I can check back to ensure my accuracy and not test my memory, your detective can do the same.

The scene is secured. By that, the detective or policeman will ensure that no one enters the scene thereby contaminating evidence. Anyone already at the scene, including the first on the scene, will not smoke or use the sink or toilet. No one will touch anything at the scene. This is as real as it gets considering Locard’s exchange principle. Dr. Edmond Locard, considered to be the father of modern forensics, in 1910 opened the first forensics lab in Lyon, France. He postulated that a criminal would leave behind evidence and take evidence from the scene, therefore an exchange would occur. Today we call it trace evidence.

Can shit be traced?

When writing always remember that you must keep your reader’s belief suspended. It will impact every word you put on the page. I watched a show about real cops on a case and all were huddled around a door while a crime scene analyst (yeah, a CSA), took a shoe impression from a door. One of the lead detectives looked into the camera and with sarcasm dripping from every word said, “And now we’ll just enter this into the shoe database.”

This very scenario is believable if handled correctly. Remember, too, that readers want to believe. If a person’s stomach contents can tell investigators what the victim ate, they have a good chance of using that information in many ways. They can use it as a timeline or trace them to a location. This happens and is believable. A victim’s fecal-matter can be traced but you have to ask yourself if a reader wants to follow along with that lead?

I wrote a scene and posted it to my online writing group. It was in a courtroom during impact statements – when the victim’s loved ones, family and friends convey to the court how they have been effected by what the convicted person has done. These are usually part of a murder trial and my story was no different. I painted a picture of the courtroom and how, after one man had told the killer he would rot in hell and be damned forever for what he’d done, people applauded and cheered. One of my critics refused to believe this could happen. I never explained to them that I’d seen it happen a number of times in documentaries that followed murder cases to their conclusion. It wouldn’t have mattered. They had a right to not believe this situation. There is always a chance that some reader will no longer suspend their disbelief based on their own morals and sensibilities.

Situations are difficult to predict amongst readers, but using existing investigation tools and better, the personnel who perform them, will cement a reader’s belief. And, there are a lot of different experts one can draw on to balance out fiction with facts. Crime Scene Analysts are responsible for photographing a crime scene as well as recovering evidence and processing latent fingerprints. Document Examiners work mostly in a lab to examine documents and document-related evidence which includes handwriting, printing and signatures. There’s also a Firearms/Tool Mark Examiner who is responsible for performing scientific analysis on firearms and tool mark evidence. One of the least known jobs of this expert is to examine and compare footwear and tire tread evidence.

There are an abundance of individuals responsible for tracking and taking down criminals: Evidence Custodians, Criminalists, Photo Technicians, Lab Technicians and probably one of the most recognizable, Latent Fingerprint Examiner. Job descriptions are available on the internet for these positions or in several excellent books on forensics and criminology.

While crafting your mystery referring to these facts will enable you to suspend your reader’s disbelief – what could be the biggest fact about fiction.

One lucky commenter, chosen at random from Ian’s two guest posts, will receive a copy of Endo, which will arrive in an evidence bag with a toe tag, five fingerprint card strips and a few ‘crime scene tape‘ bandages.

Also see:
Never Be Afraid to Ask by Ian O’Neill
The Magic of Mysteries: The Art (and Joy) of Misdirection

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