  Mystery
This week: Logic & Plausibility Edited by: Jeff  
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"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
- Carl Sagan
Random Mystery Trivia of the Week: One of the most prolific and successful mystery writers of all time is Japanese novelist Jiro Agakawa, who - best known for his humorous mysteries - has written over 480 novels in his thirty-year career, and has sold over 300 million copies of his books. That's more copies of his work sold than Robert Ludlum, John Grisham, J.R.R. Tolkien, Michael Crichton, or Clive Cussler (individually), and a larger body of work than Nora Roberts, Danielle Steele, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and James Patterson combined! 
EDITOR'S NOTE: Make sure you check the Ask & Answer section below... starting this week, I'm going to be posing a discussion question! 
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LOGIC & PLAUSIBILITY
Wow, that sounds like an incredibly boring topic, doesn't it? Unfortunately, logic and plausibility are an important part of our job as mystery writers. I'll do my best to keep the conversation semi-interesting. 
The best mysteries are artfully and skillfully crafted puzzles that reveal themselves to the reader one piece at a time. What that usually means, at least from a writing standpoint, is that the author has to carefully consider his options, and plan the best course of action. He has to get into the mind of the bank robber and figure out how he's going to pull off the robbery. But he also has to get into the mind of the cops who are trying to stop the robbery, and figure out how they're going to try to resolve the situation with a minimal amount of risk and the maximum chance of apprehending the criminal. A great writer carefully considers all the angles, and then crafts a story that still surprises and entertains an audience.
Not too long ago, I heard someone pitch me a story about a hostage situation. The general idea was that the bad guys take hostages in a fixed location (in the penthouse of a building, on a bridge, on a train, etc.). It's not a terribly original concept, but more than a few stories and movies have been created based on such a premise. I told him that the concern I had was that - by taking hostages in a fixed location - the bad guys were essentially trapping themselves in a confined space, allowing themselves to be surrounded by the authorities. What then, is their escape strategy? Once they get what they want, how do they get away from the scene of the crime without getting caught?
In a hostage situation, the authorities respond... and respond in force. It's not just a couple of black-and-whites pulling up across the street. If the hostages are in a building, they surround the building on the ground and in the air. If the hostages are on a bridge, there would be helicopters in the air, blockades on the land on either side, and boats in the water. If the hostages are on a train... well, you get the idea. The logical and plausible reaction from the authorities to a hostage situation is to secure the area and make sure the criminals (and hostages) can't just walk off undetected.
When coming up with the situation around which your mystery is based, that situation needs to be considered from all angles. There's an old maxim in the screenwriting business that says, "Smart villains, smarter heroes." The reasoning is that it weakens a story when a conflict is "dumbed down" to allow for an unrealistic or unoriginal solution. The bad guy is holding a gun on the protagonist and is about to shoot... when the gun jams. The hostages are being kept in a secure location with no way in... but the hero finds a window that was left unlocked, or a door that's unguarded. The villain has the hero strapped to an elaborate torture/killing device and is moments away from being rid of his nemesis... only to leave the room, assuming the hero will be killed in the next ninety seconds.
As you develop your mysteries, try to put yourself in the mind of each of your characters. The person solving the mystery, the person(s) who caused or created the mystery, the people involved in the mystery. Each of them has their own priorities, motivations, and goals. In order to create a logical and plausible story, you have to consider all of these characters and their actions, because you want a story where the mystery is solved by a character who works for it, not because the mystery is solved by a character who has it fall into his lap, or solves it because another character does something completely illogical and implausible based on who he is and how he normally acts.
Having something illogical or implausible in your story is often one of the biggest and most pronounced problems in a narrative. It's the kind of problem that someone points to and says, "That's not what a cop would do in that situation!" Or, "The criminal is an expert marksman, but he misses a clean shot at the hero from point-blank range?" Unfortunately, these are the kinds of problems that can also be hard to see when you're in the middle of writing a story, and juggling a thousand and one other concerns, issues, and problems in order to pull it all together. But they are problems that can completely ruin a story for a reader, especially if the problem is a big one, like the entire basis of a getaway (or the entire basis of solving a mystery) being predicated upon one "easy" moment that would logically or plausibly be a stretch to believe, given your characters and story.
Make sure you plan and plot accordingly to avoid these pitfalls. If you can come up with a mystery story in which every character is acting to their fullest potential and avoids pitfalls in logic or plausibility, you're going to have a much stronger, more satisfying narrative. 
Until next time,
- Jeff
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This week, I would encourage you to check out the following mystery items:
"The Egyptian heat was almost more than Sarah could bear. She longed for her home in the English countryside. The archaeologist had been transferred to Luxor two weeks ago in search of a coveted sacred text. The book was excavated from the Valley of the Kings the week after she arrived."
"Last week Henry Price, the son of a wealthy family friend, proposed to me. Being already 19 years old, I knew it was in my best interest to say yes. Henry is the only man that I've ever loved, however I feel as though I shouldn't be marrying him. The night after he proposed, I had one of the horrible dreams that plagued me as a child. I'd not had one in almost 10 years, and now I can't sleep without seeing the faces of these bloodthirsty beasts again."
"Jay said he opened the glove compartment in the car one day and found a gun. His dad had yelled at him to, " Leave that alone! Don't ever touch that again!". He never got an explanation for why his dad had a gun, but Mark and Jay figured maybe their dad was a spy or something. Why else would a person like their dad need a gun?"
"On the day in question, the giggling, enthusiastic boys took the undulating cliff paths to the house and sneaked in through the back door, which had been early left open. It was as if the house itself was inviting the children in, some decrepit creature beckoning them with a creaking smile."
"The night sat heavy on the city. Something was up. I felt it deep, like when you know someone has died. You couldn't possibly know, but you did. If something was up in my town I wanted to know about it. I've been on top of things in this town since Billy Bob Carter was the president's brother. I had to make some calls."
"Don't you just hate it when your absolutely normal life is interrupted by the fact that your family is made up of demons? That's exactly what happened to me. It's complicated to explain, but I’ll do my best."
"The musky room was quiet and dark with the exception of the odd annoying on and off again flicker of a not so distant fluorescent light. It dully illuminated the dingy old apartment every few seconds through what could only be described as a poor excuse for a window. The one and only window to the apartment, which looked more like a misshaped rectangular hole in the wall, was taped up with loosely stuck together masking tape to help hold what was left of the broken glass pane together, inevitably destined to fail its sole purpose with the arrival of the winter rains."
"They were standing on the east side of the house. Very carefully they made their way toward the back of the house through brush and grass.The yard was littered with memories that were lost to time and to the grass. An old corroded swing set, an obsolete dented Chrylser. A half chopped pile of wood and a rusty axe, remnants of a barn that burned down years ago probably due to some teenage party that got out of hand, and a hoary bycicle."
"I began to look around the cabin in a half-hearted attempt to see if this was some sick joke played on me by the old lady and the rest of the passengers. Through no fault of my own, my eyes locked to hers as I prepared to resume my uncomfortable position in which I had spent the last seven hours."
"Inches away from my face she was. Her breath; minty and cold. Who is this woman? She lurks in the shadows, and reveals herself to the prey she intends on capturing. A vampire? A werewolf? Who knows, she just be a psychopath for all we know. A first she was just a myth, but now . . . now she watches us all."
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QUESTION OF THE WEEK: What is one of the worst offenses to logic or plausibility that you've read in a (published) work, or seen in a movie?
In response to my last newsletter on romantic mysteries:
No comments! 
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Mystery: March 16, 2011 Issue [#4290]
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