  Mystery
This week: The Mysteries of Human Behavior Edited by: Jeff  
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"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
-- Carl Sagan
Mystery Trivia of the Week: In the ABC television series Castle, Nathan Fillion's celebrity author character Richard Castle plays a weekly card game with other famous novelists. For the first (pilot) episode, they actually recruited real-life bestselling authors James Patterson, Stephen J. Cannell, Michael Connelly, and Dennis Lehane to sit at the table for the scene at the card game.
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THE MYSTERIES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR
There are a lot of great mysteries in the world, but few of them are more complex and harder to explain than those of human behavior itself. People might wonder how Stonehenge or the moai on Easter Island were built, or where Amelia Earhart's plane ended up, or who Jack the Ripper really was. The why, though, can sometimes be the most fascinating question of all. As humans, the things we do and why we do them can be an endless source of mystery.
Of course, there are the really big, famous whys... like why did Hitler do what he did? Or why Michael Jordan was so sensational at basketball and yet terrible at baseball? But there are also a lot of little whys that many of us deal with, or have dealt with, in our own lives. Why do we push people away when we really want to be closer to them? Why do some of us care more about documenting our experiences on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. than actually living them? Why do we let our peers (or our desire for acceptance) pressure us into doing things we don't agree with?
When it comes to writing mysteries, we can spend entire novels (or an entire series of novels) exploring the depths of a person's psyche and investigating what it is that makes them do the things they do. Humans are sophisticated, complicated beings with the capacity for higher reasoning that can also at times conflict with our baser instincts and desires. In 1943, Abraham Maslow presented a hierarchy of needs that is still used by psychologists and sociologists today. Essentially, it provides several levels of "needs" that we have as humans and we need the main ones satisfied before we can worry about those on the next level. They're laid out as follows:
LEVEL 1 (PHYSIOLOGICAL): Breathing, food, water, sleep, reproduction, etc.
LEVEL 2 (SAFETY): Security of body, employment, resources, health, property, etc.
LEVEL 3 (LOVE/BELONGING): Friendship, family, sexual intimacy.
LEVEL 4 (ESTEEM): Self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, etc.
LEVEL 5 (SELF-ACTUALIZATION): Morality, creativity, spontaneity, lack of prejudice, etc.
Essentially, we have to satisfy our basic physiological needs for food, breathing, sleep, etc. before we can even start to worry about feeling safe and secure. And we can't focus on love and belonging if we don't first feel safe. And we can't work on our own self-esteem if we're still lacking that feeling of love or belonging to someone or something else. If you take something on the lower levels away from someone (the security of having a home, or their ability to get enough rest, or even their family members), they cease to be able to function on a higher level (like creating art, or making moral and ethical choices, or building self-confidence and the respect of others). When you think about it, that makes a lot of sense, and can often explain some of the erratic human behavior we witness. If someone is lacking one or more of those things that the rest of us have in our lives or even take for granted, their actions can become more understandable, or maybe even put into a sensible context.
Then again, there are times when the choices we make and the things we do simply defy logical explanation or interpretation. Sometimes people just do things that aren't rational or sensible or explainable... and that's the true mystery of human behavior. As a subjective topic, there is no formula for predicting it, or system for categorizing it, or method of controlling it. We can make our best estimates and assumptions and pose theories... but not everything with human behavior fits into a nice, neat box.
When it comes to your own writing and your characters' motivations, maybe Maslow's hierarchy can provide some insight or justification for why they do what they do. It's certainly true in a lot of situations. Then again, maybe your characters do things that are completely unexpected and unanticipated... and in that case sometimes half the fun is trying to figure them out and discover why it is they've done what they've done.
Until next time,
-- Jeff
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I encourage you to check out the following mystery items:
Lightning flashed. For one brief second, everything was illuminated and my life was never the same…
There she lay sprawled in death, the wooden stake out of her reach. He looked at me in horror, smoke curling from his pistol barrel.
Tears in my eyes, I knelt beside her, the woman I could not help but love. She had nearly outsmarted me yet again. I had been a fool, had not understood as I sought to solve the perplexing case.
He stood up and looked at himself in in the mirror that hung in the living room. He wondered what other people might think if they seen him now in pajamas, a robe, and work boots.
He walked outside and looked out across the yard. He could see the neighbor’s house over the short fence to the right and the house a few car lengths down, and across the street. The only lights on at either house were the front porch lights.
He looked in his yard now and something struck him wrong. Something wasn’t right about the yard.
She was fully immersed in her book, had blotted out the rhythmic, metallic churning of the wheels on the rails, when she started to feel a bit chilly again. She moved to pick up her jacket and became aware of legs and two, booted feet. Raising her head, she saw a man sitting on the opposite seat; turned into the corner and right up against the window, gazing out. His hands were on his knees, which jerked erratically. It gave her a little start. I never noticed him arrive.
It was hard to believe there had been a fierce storm last night, though the worst of it had been far out to sea. Now the sky was cloudless, and even though the sun was high in the sky, the breeze coming off the water made the air feel cool. Jerry's shoes, laces tied together, were hung around his neck, as he walked barefooted along the beach with water splashing over his feet. He carried a small canvas bag for the shells he hoped to add to his collection at home.
He saw a dark blue bottle with a cork stopper, half buried in the sand. Inside it, he could see a piece of rolled-up paper. He pulled out the cork, turned the bottle upside down and shook it hard trying to get the paper out. He gave the bottle a couple more shakes. The paper would not come out. The way the paper was curled he could see that there was writing on it but he could not read it. He replaced the cork and put the bottle into his bag. He would try again at home. He laughed. Already his writer's imagination was off and running. What was on the paper? It could be anything, even a treasure map.
I awoke to bright, green tinted sunlight. An itching sensation ran over my body and a numbness inflicted my legs. A cool breeze fluttered across my face. As my eyes adjusted to my surroundings, I could start to make out where I was, although they were still only fuzzy figures, a forest. Was there a forest nearby, I asked myself before realizing the redundancy of my statement. I took a moment to look around once again before trying to lift myself off the ground. I failed, falling back down, and took a moment to regain my composure. I sat upward now and stretched my left leg, my right leg was still asleep, though. I took this affliction to my advantage to try and recall what happened before. Nothing much came to mind however, only a large black and white room, drowned in gray scale. My head started throbbing, when I clutched my head to locate the source, it had already disappeared.
I got a call. From my agent. Collect.
“Earth to Sam. Come in Sam,” Jerri Wheeler said after I agreed to pay for the call. She was my old on-again, off-again agent-cum-sweetie, mostly off-again, still trying to get my works placed in a house that didn’t care as much about the WHO as about the WHAT. She went looking for a publisher that would take on newbies who had a story to tell and could tell it. I gave Jerri my manuscript of “Jack-Of-The-Block,” and she shopped it vigorously, so she said. Shopped it unflaggingly, so she said. Shopped it mightily, so she said. Shopped it till it dropped, but no takers.
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Mystery: April 10, 2013 Issue [#5617]
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