The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting 7 March 2008

Before we go to far, you might want to think about how you, as a writer, like to set up your mysteries. Or suspense.

How do you get a reader interested, how do you keep them reading, how do you convince them that somewhere down the way, you are going to reveal something interesting?

'saright? Something to contemplate on a weekend in March, eh?

Over at http://nancyfulda.livejournal.com/195030.html Nancy raises the question, and talks a bit about what doesn't quite make it (leaving out stuff? Just skipping right over important info? Nah, that's not a mystery, that's just a mistake, isn't it?).

My first response was that as writers, we need to raise questions - and then answer them. Part of what we do in the first part of the writing is to show that we can be trusted, that we will not leave the reader dangling on the edge of the precipice without sooner or later throwing them a rope, bringing in the helicopter with a skyhook, or somehow getting them out of that predicament. And having built up their trust, we can take them on a deeper dip over the edge of the cliff - and then raise them up again. Kind of like a roller coaster ride, give them a glimpse of what's coming, and then chug up the incline for a while, and . . . zoom down the incline . . . then around the curve! And then do it again.

Hum. Let's see. Mystery by expectation? Suspense in the interruptions?

How do you create that air of mystery, anyway?

When we write, we learn about ourselves.