It's just that I find the mechanics of discovery never ring true to me. When I read back over key discovery scenes in draft one, I see someone marching through the scene wearing a sandwich board with the word PLOT on it, writ large with flashing arrows pointing to the word. I so so so don't want to treat the reader as an idiot. Or the characters. I feel uncomfortable pushing them round the page.

Yes, I know exactly what you mean - the story's bowling along nicely, and then CLUNK!, a piece of plot-mechanism kicks in.

I do suspect, though, that we're much more aware of it than a normal reader would be, because we set it up, and in your case because you're feeling self-conscious about it, perhaps? S

I think it helps if the way that X discovers in the autumn about what happened to Y in the summer is rooted in their character, though: that it's characteristic actions and events which lead up to the reveal, rather than them being overcome with a sudden curiosity to pry into a desk or listen to a phone call, or get talking to a new character who you know (and the astute reader may suspect) is there purely to pass on the information. When you're aware of the plot mechanisme creaking away in a book I think it's often more because of how it's done, than that the discover itself can't be made convincing.

Susannah, I sort of do different plot strands (sub-plots?) on different sheets. Theoretically, I can lay them over one another and have a sense of them knitting together. It's usually very loose, though, and is useful right at the beginning when I am trying to work things out. When things come together a bit more, I find index cards helpful. Each character has their own card, colour-coded depending on the story strand they are mainly featured in. Hopefully it all comes together at some point.

Of course, writing detective fiction means I don't have to worry about how things are revealed or discovered. I have a character whose job it is to go round asking questions and prying into the past.

It seems to me, certainly with my just-finished book, that a very very major character is one who is not actually present in the action of the book - the murder victim. It's a character only perceived through the people who knew him/her. I find that very interesting.

[quote]I think it helps if the way that X discovers in the autumn about what happened to Y in the summer is rooted in their character, though: that it's characteristic actions and events which lead up to the reveal, rather than them being overcome with a sudden curiosity to pry into a desk or listen to a phone call, or get talking to a new character who you know (and the astute reader may suspect) is there purely to pass on the information. When you're aware of the plot mechanisme creaking away in a book I think it's often more because of how it's done, than that the discover itself can't be made convincing.[/unquote]

Thank you. That's it exactly. Lol at 'being overcome with a sudden curiosity'. Root it in their character and it will grow organically. That post-it note makes it onto the butchers' paper, definitely.

Of course you could create a curious character from scratch - you'd probably find all sorts of uses for them apart from nosing in the desk to find the crucial letter, and then the letter being found would seem to have come about quite naturally.

It's almost like Dorothy L. Sayers' principles for the classical detective story: under the fair play rule you must provide the necessary clues for the reader to work out who dunnint, but you mustn't make them too obvious or the reader works it out too early. So you surround them with all sorts of other stuff which might well be clues but aren't, or point in the wrong direction, or are circumstantial and could have arisen quite naturally, or whatever. Then when the detective gathers all the suspects in the library and Reveals All, the reader feels everything dropping in place behind them, and thinks 'Oh, yes, of course!'

Emma

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Roger, I agree - a character who's only assembled retrospectively through others' accounts is fascinating. I remember one of my drama lecturers pointing out that we are first told what Othello is like by Iago, in some nasty detail, and have no reason to doubt his view until Othello himself comes on stage and the audience is shocked into realising that we've been convinced by what's actually Iago's slanders - even to a degree that we are complicit in the slander... so that we then find it easier to believe that Othello is convinced by Iago's slander of Desdemona and Cassio, and is complicit in destroying them.

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Hm, realise that's also relevant to Cherys's post - we are set up by an early dynamic to accept the same dynamic later, when it's crucial to the plot. If we hadn't been pre-conditioned like that, maybe we'd just sit there thinking, 'God this plot's creaky - why on earth would an intelligent leader of men like Othello believe such crap about the woman he loves so passionately?'

Of course, writing detective fiction means I don't have to worry about how things are revealed or discovered. I have a character whose job it is to go round asking questions and prying into the past.

Roger, this comment has just shown me what should have long been obvious. I look to crime novels for craft on plotting as the best of them demonstrate the art so clearly. But if one's protagonist isn't a detective who can and should nose around, and one's victim isn't dead, the classic crime structure doesn't hold. Ashamed to say I've only now worked this out.

If we hadn't been pre-conditioned like that, maybe we'd just sit there thinking, 'God this plot's creaky - why on earth would an intelligent leader of men like Othello believe such crap about the woman he loves so passionately?'

Emma, yes that IS interesting.

Crossing with another thread on which the link between acting and writing was mentioned - a director I worked with once gave excellent advice: In the first scene play the core of your character. After that you can go where you like with it because the audience will believe their first impressions and cling onto them. If a character is kind in Scene One and vile in Scene Two they are given the benefit of the doubt. On Othello, a tutor of mine pointed out once that Bianca is only described as a whore by Iago and everything she ever says to Cassio is calm and genteel. Yet she's always played so bawdily. We take Iago's description as reliable without question. So...if we prime the reader to believe something is the case, and have the Iago character paint the false portrait whilst he's still apparently credible, this may free the plot to unwind with less clunky machination.

The Dorothy Sayers rubric is pretty much to the letter, albeit coarsely, how my first draft runs until two thirds of the way through when it's too obvious whodunnit. Plot not character led.

This is so useful.

Hi Cherys - have been pondering this and thinking over the trillions of crime books I've read and the MC is not always a detective but you are right, they need a concrete reason to be looking into the whole thing. Thus lawyers, journos, etc are often used. Historians are also common, again because we 'expect' them to go about unearthing things.
What also works very well is someone who is none of the above but finds themselves forced to become involved...the reluctant hero...in order to save their skins or the skins of someone they know. That person simply needs a believable reason to start uncovering things.
HB x

[What also works very well is someone who is none of the above but finds themselves forced to become involved...the reluctant hero...in order to save their skins or the skins of someone they know. That person simply needs a believable reason to start uncovering things.[/quote]

Yes, I love this when done well. It has such drive. Like Snow Falling on Cedars. Wanting to find the accused guilty because he hates him, but ending up needing to prove him innocent because of honour and lost love of accused's wife. And just to demonstrate that even these weren't enough reasons to get involved, Guterson made him a journo too.

I just hadn't made the stakes high enough for the protagonist. She wasn't deeply enough involved in the lives of those around her - or rather her neck wasn't on the line until the very end. You use the word 'forced' Helen, which is telling and helpful. I had her deciding to go sleuthing out of a mixture of curiosity and niceness which is most definitely not enough. But to force her to get involved would automatically strengthen the plot.

Thanks. Currently reworking the plot and the comments on this thread have been enlightening.

I agree with Helen, it doesn't have to be a detective. Just someone who is compelled to get to the bottom of what has happened. I always think of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex as basically a detective story. Oedipus is forced to ask questions because of the plague that has settled on Thebes while he is king. He needs to sort it out. Little does he know where his questions will lead.

He's King so he has responsibility towards his subjects. Responsibility is a good key. My character is a psychologist, so has responsibility towards her patient, but not outside the ward in which she works, not to the degree I've given her in draft one. Something needs to make her sleuthing imperative not a whim.

Yes -it's that extra motivating factor that pushes the character.
My MC is a lawyer so she has reason to poke around but I still feel she needs extra impetus to get quite as involved as she does.
In book one is was the fear that her client might be guilty of a dreadful crime. She couldn't live with helping someone so damaged. In book two it is guilt at not helping the client at a point before things began to spiral. he has already let her client down once.
HB x