My son’s idea of “what makes a good mystery”
My son is nine-years-old and in the gifted class. I'm still kind of embarrassed when I say that, because I don't want to brag, but it's just a matter of life. When I talk about my nine-year-old fourth grader, it helps to understand that he's read The Hobbit, the entire "Series of Unfortunate Events", and is in the middle of the sixth "Harry Potter" book.
He can explain the Three Act Model and the sequence of rise, climax and denouement, and how conflict is required to build this sequence of dramatic tension and release. Of course, like any parent, I wonder if he really understands it, or just recites what he's been told.
His new gifted class teacher is well-connected to other such teachers in our district, and some of them got together and had their students read the same book, Chasing Vermeer, a mystery. They then started an inter-school discussion of sorts on a blog set up for the purpose. The first blog post to which they were to respond asked, "What makes a great mystery?"
Many of the responses were the kind of thing you expect from the upper grade school levels: "One that I can't put down," "One with a great cover," "One that keeps me guessing." A few were moderately insightful, but few really grabbed hold of something that explains how to write a good mystery. But here's that proud parent moment, over which you may roll your eyes if you wish… my son's response:
I think what makes a good mystery is:
- a key item or number
- characters who normally don't like each other work together
- no one except main characters know about crime/theif
Chasing Vermeer involved numerical clues, so he focused on "number" there, but #1 hit up on the essential MacGuffin. But #2 is the big one for me… right there, he defines part of a good mystery as creating conflict. Not just the primary conflict of solving the mystery, but secondary conflict between two main characters who don't get along. Sure, he was prompted by the content of the book, but he identified this aspect as being important. I haven't read the book, but I'm guessing that #3 is a source of tension and possibly direct conflict. The big difference between his response and most of the other responses is that his response addresses concrete elements of story and while the others are much more general.
So I have some confidence… he is actually understanding something of the theory he's been taught. Now, I'll grant you, he's been taught a lot more than the usual fourth grader. They did study rise and climax in class, but he and I have looked at some of his favorite movies and books to identify and understand the story elements at work.
On the other hand, he needs to work on that i-before-e thing.
NaNoWriMo – not for me
Well, NaNo blew my blogging out of the water. I quickly fell behind on my novel, and didn't feel like I should write blog posts when I didn't feel like working on the novel.
My big problem was that I fell behind, and the further behind I got, the more intimidating and overwhelming the idea of striving to complete it by December became. So with nobody cheering me on, I didn't have much incentive to not slack off.
Doing this under a tight deadline just isn't for me. I need to find a way to establish a writing habit that isn't driven by anxiety or self-imposed pressure. (I've never been good with self-imposed deadlines, and I've certainly never been good at tricking myself into believing that something matters when it really doesn't.)
So I've still got this novel, and I think it has the makings of a reasonably good story. I plan to finish it, but I have to find a way to finish it on my own terms.
NaNoWriMo: Writing is easy, starting is hard
This has been a pretty interesting experience so far. I've never actually tried to write dialog before, and I'm finding it a lot easier than I expected. I don't find the process of writing hard or unpleasant, but the surprising thing is that even when the writing is going well, I find it hard to start.
A couple times it was because I didn't know what I was going to write when I started. For instance, I finished a scene at the end of my first writing session, and starting the second was difficult because, while I knew what had to be accomplished in the next scene, I didn't know how to start it or have any clue what the characters would say. When I finally sat down to write, after much stalling, I skipped that scene, or at least the beginning of it and jumped into the middle of a later conversation.
But even when I left a scene unfinished, I had a lot of trouble sitting down to finish it. Partially, I think, because I didn't really know where the scene was going.
It's a weird feeling, though. Even when I know where things are going, even when I know that I enjoy the process of writing once I get rolling, I find I'm reluctant to start. What mental block am I dealing with, that's telling me that I don't want to write, when I actually like doing it and am satisfied with the quality of the work? Some secret, unconscious fear that it's really horrible. It can't be any more of a waste of time than roleplaying or watching TV… it's not a "I have better things to do". I'm really wondering if it's just habit. That I expect it to be uncomfortable, because it's been uncomfortable in the past.
Or maybe I'm just afraid of success. If it actually is any good, I'll feel obligated to pursue it further. That it will quit being fun and turn into real work, like I did with my programming hobby (now my career), like I did with roleplaying (I can't just play, I have to create, and creating leads to trying to publish, and trying to organize communities). Maybe I'm really afraid, having found this to be enjoyable, that I'll find a way to make it an obligation and suck all the joy out of it.
I don't know. I don't feel any of those ways consciously. I just know that I don't feel like writing until two minutes after I've started, but getting started is way harder than it ought to be.