 Mystery: June 27, 2018 Issue [#8977] |
  Mystery
This week: Dangerous Locales Edited by: Jeff  
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"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the
fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science."
-- Albert Einstein
Trivia of the Week: According to The Telegraph, the most dangerous fictional city to live in would be Cabot Cove, Maine from the television series Murder She Wrote. Based on aggregated data and information from the show, the town has a population of only 3,560, and yet saw an average of 5.3 murders per year. That equates to 1,490 murders per million. That's a 60% higher homicide rate than the nation of Honduras, which has a violent death approximately every 74 minutes! 
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DANGEROUS LOCALES
If you're looking for a nice, quiet, safe place to live, chances are some of the fictional locales (both completely fabricated and fictionalized versions of real places) featured in enduring series aren't places you'd actually want to live. Cabot Cove, Maine, as mentioned in the trivia above, would easily be the per capita murder capital of the world. If you lived in the Grey's Anatomy version of Seattle, the last decade of life in the Pacific Northwest would be full of train and ferry crashes, multiple bombings, multiple hostage scenarios and/or active shooters, a plane crash, a sinkhole, a bus explosion, an earthquake, multiple epic storms, and massive amounts of property damage. And the world of Desperate Housewives is a single cul-de-sac of homes that's been involved with more criminal activity, conspiracies, and death than most mid-sized towns.
This phenomena is one that happens to a lot of long-running series, where writers look for bigger and bolder events to subject their characters to. When you've been living with characters for a long time and see them go through a whole variety of experiences, there can be a tendency to want to up the stakes or increase the scope of the narrative to keep things feeling fresh and interesting. Last July, I wrote a newsletter that focused on this issue from a character development standpoint ("Mystery Newsletter (July 26, 2017)" ), but for this newsletter I wanted to look at it from a location standpoint.
In some cases, all of the crime and depravity and horrible events that take place are a part and parcel of the location itself. Gotham City in the DC Comics universe, for example, is supposed to be a crime-infested, dangerous place to live. The fact that there are criminals roaming the streets (and even super-villains popping up from time to time) is part of the mythos of the place... and a few of the Batman stories (and the Captain America: Civil War movie) have even delved into the philosophical concept that increased crime and opposition are in and of themselves a response to the show of power by superheroes making themselves known.
If your setting isn't intended to be a haven for criminals or a horrible place to live, it might be worth thinking about how past events impact the location. At a certain point, chaos and destruction will be noticed by those who pay attention to the details and throughlines of a fictional world you've created, and at that point it will pay dividends if you've put some thought into why the location is the way it is, rather than leaving readers and critics to assume you're just not paying attention. For example, if your character is a small town sheriff, what would explain the crime wave necessary to justify an extended series of narratives?
With science fiction and fantasy, it's a little easier to explain. The show Smallville (about Superman/Clark Kent growing up in high school) is able to explain their "weird superpowered antagonist of the week" by establishing that a bunch of other meteor fragments landed all over town when Clark's ship landed, thereby creating a mechanism by which these oddities can keep popping up. In X-Files, Mulder and Scully were able to explore unique phenomena by traveling around to different locations to discover them.
Should you find yourself stuck with a single location and a large amount of crime, supernatural occurrences, or other oddities, considering putting some thought into why these things are happening in this location.
Until next time,
Jeff
If you're interested in checking out my work:
"Blogocentric Formulations"
"New & Noteworthy Things"
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EXCERPT: Rose Turnbull no longer heard the roar of the ocean waves. Irritation from the sand embedded between her toes disappeared. “What can it mean?” She gasped.
The sight of a single long-stemmed red rose on her beach chair brought that same vibrantly flushed color rising on her cheeks. “What a mystery has been brought to my shining eyes.” Her lips almost formed rose petals of their own in reply to the sight of this suddenly appearing gift from an unknown visitor.
EXCERPT: I was like a secret agent, living the high life in Monte Carlo and Casino Royale provided exquisite room service. After my last dime disappeared, I then booked back on the next boat back to England.
EXCERPT: The couple made an offer on the quaint tudor relic. Christa reluctantly told her boss she would handle the inspection.
EXCERPT: The passion arrived almost as soon as my dad turned on the TV to watch The Pink Panther, a mystery-comedy film where a bumbling Inspector Clouseau searches for the stolen pink panther diamond, the most fabulous diamond in the world. My father had watched the original movie as a kid and loved them, calling them his favorite childhood movies to watch. As a result, my family started watching the original movies as soon as the summer holidays arrived. So as the sun glared and Maine beaches filled with men and women of all ages, I would occupy myself with The Pink Panther.
EXCERPT: I’ve planned this special moment already for a long time. What I had to do, had been etched in my head as a series of monochrome film images. Everything was engraved in black and white in my memory, in such a manner that I almost could do it with my eyes closed.
EXCERPT: I remember once telling Erin that there is nothing scarier than a darkened window in a big house. Nothing’s scarier, she amended, than a lighted window in a big house, because that means that somebody’s home. In hindsight I believe that a subset of our psychosis was being displayed here; my level of trust, her level of mis-trust. I had thought about saying, but didn’t, if the great fear is that somebody’s home, then you most likely are somewhere you have no business being. I knew that it didn’t really matter much. For as long as I had known my big sister I had never known a place she would not venture, prohibited or not, or an order that she would not take as a direct challenge to disobey.
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Feedback from "Mystery Newsletter (May 30, 2018)" about game theory:
Princess Megan Snow Rose  writes: "Thank you, Jeff for including my newest item in your newsletter. This means a lot. This story has been in my mind for three years. I enjoyed the newsletter. Always: Megan"
You're very welcome. And thank you!
Quick-Quill  writes: "There was a TV show a while back where two couples/family were given a suitcase of money. They could chose to spend it all on themselves and give none away or share any portion with the other. Only one person could choose so a wife or husband had to live with the choice. The two families were brought to the other's home in secret to see what they needed in order to make that choice more clearly. Neither knew the other had a case themselves. When they met at the end they found they had to exchange cases, giving each other what they donated. What an eye opener into the minds of people. Some kept more and gave little, some gave more because one figured they could live with what little they took. It lasted maybe one or two seasons."
The human psyche is an endlessly fascinating thing to study. 
D Carlson  writes: "I really enjoyed this article. I would make only one point, though. At the end you said we can all understand why somebody would embezzle from his company, but can we?
I would think that it would be illogical for a person to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars for early retirement, and expect it to go unnoticed for very long.
On the other hand, people generally being a generous bunch, it may be completely logical (at least in the embezzler's mind) to expect some leniency if the money was being used for an expensive medical treatment for a child.
With my characters, I always know what they're doing, but sometimes have to sit them down and have them tell me the why.
Great article"
Thanks for your feedback! By understanding "why" someone would embezzle, I just meant that we can understand the underlying motivation (greed, the desire for financial security, etc.). I didn't intend to imply that we necessarily sympathize with or agree with the decision. And I agree that, to an extent, the motivation may not seem logical, or at least less logical, to someone with a differing set of motives and/or concerns. For example, someone who has a significant or overriding fear of the police or being incarcerated probably won't commit a white collar crime, no matter how lucrative or enticing the extra money might be. 
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