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 Mystery: July 12, 2017 Issue [#8386] |
  Mystery This week: Where the Mystery Takes Place Edited by: Kate - Writing & Reading   More Newsletters By This Editor   1. About this Newsletter 2. A Word from our Sponsor 3. Letter from the Editor 4. Editor's Picks 5. A Word from Writing.Com 6. Ask & Answer 7. Removal instructions 
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. There’s this puzzle your reader must solve. You plant clues in verse or prose to lead or mislead your dedicated reader along the way to the believable solution that solves the puzzle and ties up loose ends. Simple, right
The solution to the puzzle may be obvious or obscure, clues may be elusive and the puzzle itself may confound the erstwhile reader along the way to the resolution that changes the sleuth and delights your reader. The fun of it is in the journey, the means by which your sleuth and reader, immersed in the surroundings you’ve created for them, find and solve the clues in order to solve the puzzle. Or, it’s not knowing that Colonel Mustard did it with the candlestick in the conservatory (from 'Clue,' the game), but the means by which you challenge your sleuth and reader to deduce and then prove this as the one logical and viable solution.
stion? Whether that region be the inner city or isolated mountain range, hidden Druid cave or Papal conclave, they each allow the writer to take his/her reader on a journey through those environs in order to find clues and solve the puzzle. 
Movement of your character through a scene – engage the environment, topography, architecture using the senses. What if your character arrives at a snake-handler’s meeting hall deep in the Appalachian foothills, enters through the open door, and a sudden crack of lightning cuts the power. What does he hear or see or smell right away? What does he perceive as he encounters other persons? Amphibians? A storm that rattles the timbers and drives piercing hail through holes in the old log cabin? Engage your character with the character of the setting. Perhaps your character could “hear death’s rattle among the teeming multitude of snakes newly freed, no longer subject to manufactured electricity or caged cold metal bars.” 
Show what your character feels at the encounter, how it affects him. Does it frighten and, if so, how does he interact with the scene, culture; and how does it change him or affect his quest. Does the encounter give him pain, pleasure, recognition? The possibilities are as many as the writers to envision them - show the reaction and interaction, in concert with the puzzle - whether true or false 'clue.'
Engage the encounter from the character’s frame of reference. For example, although each may be bent on finding a camper who went missing, a forest ranger would perceive and react to an encounter with a bear in the woods differently than a weekend camper. Based on his level of experience and you, as writer’s knowledge of this, each would perceive differently the encounter itself and react accordingly. The ranger might notice the scent of fresh blood on the bear, while the camper would react first to the sheer size.
If you treat the encounter as with another character, giving life to the surroundings, it becomes a character either helpful or antagonistic. It comes to life in the pages of your novel or epic poem or short story and interacts with the sentient characters – and your readers. So, giving a personality to the environs of your mystery creates for your reader not merely additional clues to find and solve but another ‘character’ to engage, vital to solving the puzzle/mystery itself.
