20 Master Plots (19 page)

and lies), and the answer is inanimate, but still meets the conditions of the riddle. A riddle is a guessing game, often with a twist. It's usually witty and shrewd, and sometimes insightful.

Children's riddles are simpler; adult riddles are more sophisticated and require greater thinking skills. Take this old English rhyming riddle, for example:

Little Nancy Etticoat

In a white petticoat

And a red nose;

The longer she stands

The shorter she grows.

This riddle, like most riddles, follows a simple structure based on two elements. The first element is general (Little Nancy Etticoat / In a white petticoat / And a red nose) and is understood generally and metaphorically. The second element is specific (The longer she stands / The shorter she grows) and is understood literally. The second element is also a paradox. How is it possible for someone to grow shorter the longer she stands?

The clues are in the first element. If we take Little Nancy Etticoat to be a thing personified rather than a person, we know two things about her/it: it is "dressed" in white and has a red "nose."

Rephrase the question: What is it that is white and has a red "nose" that grows shorter the longer it stands?

At this point you must make a leap of understanding. Since this riddle is old (that is, before the days of electricity), it no longer is current. But you'll understand the answer as soon as you hear it (if you haven't figured it out already).

Answer: a candle. The red "nose" is its flame. The longer a candle burns ("stands"), the shorter it becomes ("grows").

Most cultures have had the riddle as part of their folklore since ancient times. We are familiar with the literary riddles in
Through the Looking Glass
("Humpty Dumpty") and in fairy tales in which the hero must answer a riddle before he can be granted the hand of the princess in marriage.

This test of cleverness (wit as opposed to strength; mentality as opposed to physicality) is considered the ultimate test. Hercules must perform tremendous physical feats, but cleaning out the Augean stables is nothing compared to the test of the riddle.

The most famous riddle in all of literature is the one the Sphinx asks Oedipus. The Sphinx apparently had nothing better to do with her life than ask young men passing by a riddle she'd made up. No harm. Except that if you didn't answer the riddle correctly, she'd eat you.

Try your luck:

What has one voice and walks on four legs in the morning, on two at midday, and on three legs in the evening? (Remember, you're barbecue if you can't come up with the right answer.)

When Oedipus gave the right answer to the Sphinx, she got so depressed she killed herself. And the happy people of the kingdom made Oedipus their king. Not bad for a day's work.

Oedipus' answer:
"A
man, who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two feet when grown, and leans on a cane when aged."

The riddle in higher cultures is an important part of the literature. In early literature they're generally the realm of gods, ogres and beasts, and it's up to the hero to answer the riddle correctly if he wants to pass or win the freedom of a captive princess. But as we became more sophisticated and took gods out of the equation, the riddle evolved into much more sophisticated forms. Rather than one-liners, they became part of the weave of stories themselves.

Today the riddle has metamorphosized into the mystery. The short text of the riddle has become the longer text of the short story and the novel. But the focus is the same: It is a challenge to the reader to solve the problem.

Your mystery should have at its heart a paradox that begs a solution. The plot itself is physical, because it focuses on events (who, what, where, when and why) that must be evaluated and interpreted (the same as the riddle must be interpreted). Things are not what they seem on the surface. Clues lie within the words. The answer is not obvious (which wouldn't satisfy), but the answer
is
there. And in the best tradition of the mystery, the answer is in plain view.

Don't kid yourself about developing a mystery. It requires a lot of cleverness and the ability to deceive the reader. If you remember the parlor game of charades, you have a rough idea of what it's like to write this kind of story. The goal of charades is to convey to the audience through a series of clues the "title" of a person, place or thing. This title is the "solution" to your story— reality as opposed to appearance. But for the audience to solve the puzzle, it must work with a series of cumulative clues—which are often ambiguous—and then try to sort through those clues to understand the true relationship among them. The clues in charades aren't always clear (except when you look back and understand the rationale that created them). The audience understands that things aren't always what they seem to be, but that a clue is a clue. All the audience must do is interpret the clue
correctly.

Easier said than done. You want to create clues that don't have obvious, absolute solutions. You want to create clues that could mean one thing as well as another, and only a person who's been attentive and understands the interconnection among clues will piece them together to make sense of them. Readers tend to get angry with writers who throw in red herrings; that is, clues that aren't real clues at all, but are added for the sole purpose of throwing the reader off the track. Let the reader throw herself off track by misinterpreting ambiguous clues. Don't toss in clues that don't add up. Don't give clues that are throw-aways. Concentrate on clues that must be understood
correctly,
clues that can be misunderstood. This is the heart of the author's cleverness. Readers don't mind making wrong turns if they feel they read the road sign incorrectly. They
do
mind if you set up a false road sign. Remember, this is a game, and you must play fairly. Give the reader a chance.

That doesn't mean you should make it easy. Try to find a nice tension between figuring out the solution too easily and making it impossible to figure out. If you're too coy, you'll lose your readers. Give them
something.
But put the burden on the reader to interpret that something correctly.

Herman Melville wrote a mystery called
Benito Cereno.
The story seems simple, but that's the trick of the mystery writer: Things are rarely what they seem. The captain of one slave ship visits the captain of another slave ship. The visiting captain guides us through the story. We see everything through his eyes. Only he's not terribly bright. He sees clues all around him, but he fails to make sense of them. But we do. As the captain of the ship gives him the tour, he sees slaves sharpening axes. Strange, the visiting captain thinks to himself, slaves shouldn't be allowed to have weapons.
Exactly.
The appearance is that Benito Cereno is running a lax slave ship. The reality is that the slaves have taken over the ship and are just pretending that they're still slaves because they don't want the visiting captain to know. The visiting captain is too dim-witted to interpret the clues. Melville challenges the reader: Can you figure it out? Mysteries rely heavily on the rule about making the causal look casual. The best place to hide a clue is in plain view.

Edgar Allan Poe is credited with being the first American short story writer, and one of his most famous stories is "The Purloined Letter." Many consider this to be the first "mystery" story as we know it, with a detective seeking a solution to a riddle/problem.

The detective is C. Auguste Dupin, who spawned a whole generation of detectives, from Hercule Poirot by Agatha Christie to Inspector Maigret by Georges Simenon. Unlike the man of action, Dupin is thoughtful, acting as the surrogate thinker for the reader, exploring, uncovering, explaining. The challenge for the reader is to solve the riddle before the protagonist does, which makes the riddle a contest. If the protagonist figures out the riddle before you do, you lose; if you figure it before the protagonist, you win.

"The Purloined Letter" presents the riddle from the start. The prefect of the Parisian police bursts into Dupin's apartment to tell him that a certain minister of the court has stolen a compromising letter from the Queen. We never learn what's in the letter, but whatever it is, it's political dynamite, and the prefect has been charged with getting back the letter. He's searched the minister's apartment from top to bottom but can't find the letter. He wants Dupin's advice.

Dupin asks some questions about the physical appearance of the letter and the prefect's method of searching the minister's apartments. He suggests the prefect search the apartment again.

A month later, the letter is still missing. When Dupin learns that the Queen is willing to pay 50,000 francs for the return of the letter, he produces it instantly, to everyone's amazement.

Based on the evidence given, how did Dupin know where to look?

Dupin explains. The trick was understanding the mind of the minister. A clever man himself, the minister would expect the police to conduct a careful search of his apartment for the letter, so it would be stupid for him to hide the letter under a chair or some out-of-the-way place where it would certainly be found. From this Dupin surmises that the best place to hide the letter would be in plain sight; that is, not to hide the letter.

On a visit to the minister's apartment, he sees a letter hanging from a ribbon over the mantle. Sure enough, it turns out to be the missing letter.

"The Purloined Letter" is a riddle, and it presents the same challenges to the reader as the one-liners above. The game is more sophisticated, more challenging, but it's still the same game.

WHODUNIT?

Frank R. Stockton is not exactly a household name, but he did write one story in 1882 that everyone called "The Lady or the Tiger?"

This story is an example of the unresolved paradox. In a past era, a barbaric king had developed his own system of justice. He put men who offended him into an arena with two doors and told them to choose a door (something like an ancient Monty Hall). Behind one door was a ferocious tiger that would instantly devour the hapless man, and behind the other door was a ravishing princess who instantly became his wife.

A young man of lowly station fell in love with the king's daughter (and she with him), and when the king found out about it, he made the young man face the test in the arena. What would it be, the princess or the tiger?

Except the princess wasn't the king's daughter; it was some other young woman. The king's daughter, who loved the young man, did some snooping on her own and found out what was behind the doors. When the young man looked up at her, she signaled for him to choose the right door.

Therein lies the dilemma. If she saves her lover, he'll belong to another woman. And since these people are barbarians, they lack civilities such as selflessness, so it wouldn't be beyond the princess to prefer death for her lover than to let him have another woman. The young man is faced with a dilemma: What is behind the right door, the princess or the tiger?

When asked for the solution, Stockton wisely said, "If you decide which it was—the lady or the tiger—you find out what kind of person you are yourself." The decision, if there is one, belongs to the reader and how he views the world and human nature.

But a story like this can't go far. It presents the paradox and let us savor it momentarily. The characters are purely stock (king, princess, commoner), and the situation and the action play over everything else. In short, it's a gimmick.

In the last hundred years we've developed the riddle/mystery into its own form, with stories that are much more sophisticated than Poe's or Stockton's. Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, P.D. James, Georges Simenon, Mickey Spil-lane, Arthur Conan Doyle, H.P. Lovecraft, Dorothy Sayers, Ambrose Bierce, Guy de Maupassant... the list is impossibly long, containing a number of the world's brightest writers (and many not so bright). For some it's an art form; for others, it's a business. The latter churn out books one after another, working with formulas that have proven successful in the past. (Mickey Spillane once said, "I have no fans. You know what I got? Customers.")

The form developed its own conventions. One such hallmark is the intrusion of the dark, cruel criminal underworld into everyday life. These two extremes create an imbalance between good and bad, dark and light, right and wrong, safety and danger. This instability creates what critic Daniel Einstein calls "painful insecurity, rampant cynicism, and violent, unforeseen death."

Most of us at one point or another have read a mystery novel or watched 1940s
film noire
adaptations, such as Raymond Chandler's
The Blue Dahlia,
Dashiell Hammett's
The Maltese Falcon
or Agatha Christie's
And Then There Were None.
A 1931 German film, titled
Der Mann, Der Seiner Morder Sucht (A Man Searches for His Murderer
), was remade in the United States as
D.O.A.
in 1949 starring Edmond O'Brien (and remade again in the late 1980s starring Dennis Quaid). Structurally, it follows the same format as the riddle, opening with the general and moving to the specific.