Mystery

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

original posting: Sun, 8 May 1994 18:35:02 JST

[GET READY TO...]

Not the big mystery, just the little everyday mysteries that keep a reader turning pages, wondering...

1. Pick an object - book, revolver, letter, knife, bottle of pills, etc., etc.

2. Pick a container - paper bag, drawer, pocket, briefcase, trashcan, etc., etc.

3. Take a character.

4. Two approaches

a. write the scene where the character starts to get into the container and show us the character getting the object out and revealing to us (the readers) what it is and so forth. Then go back and insert a pause (dialogue, narrative, flashback, whatever) making us wait, but keeping us aware that we don't yet know just what is in that container...

b. write the scene, showing us the character starting to get into the container. write the pause, with the dialogue or whatever. then finish getting the object out and revealing to us readers what the heck we've been waiting for.

Very simple - hook, pause, revelation. and if you overlap them so that the reader always has at least one and often more than one unfinished mystery to look forward to - they'll keep turning page after page, pulling themselves right up and into the ending.

[...WRITE!]