So this morning while brushing my teeth, I started thinking about what keeps me reading a book. I came up with three things, and then just now thought of a fourth
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Now that I think about it, don't you think the "mystery" and the "imminent trainwreck" are sort of inverses of each other, in a way? One depends on the reader knowing nothing, the other depends on the reader knowing everything.
It seems like an interesting thing to consider in deciding exactly how much you want to let the audience know about what's going at a given time.
"Who is the evil tyrant, and why is he sending monsters to invade innocent?" vs "Here is the evil tyrant, and this is exactly why he's sending monsters to invade innocent towns -- and now we know that the second he and the hero meet, shit is gonna go down in the most real way."
Indeed! I was thinking, "Gee, Trainwreck combines well with all the other options." And then I realized, no, it is rather opposite to Mystery.
Sometimes authors try to play it both ways, with a mysterious figure who isn't really identified, but is the Bad Guy. There will be a a few scenes from very close 1st-person POV of a mysterious figure who is watching the Protag and thinking MUAH HA HA HA or maybe Damn you, foreign stranger who will screw up all my plans, but never actually telling us anything.
I've never seen that really work to my satisfaction.
More successful is a book that starts out with a Mystery and then as the Protag figures out what's going on, we may get some of the bad guy's POV to create the anticipation of a Trainwreck for the climax.
Which now makes me realize that under my definition, solving the Mystery cannot be the end of the book. Once the protag figures out what's going on, s/he then has to figure out how to stop it. Depending on how the author is using the mystery, the "Oh, I get it!" moment might be the
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I can do without or accept mystery, but your other categories, yes! I like clashing points of view on the same events. I also like conflicts of loyalty.
-- A screwed-up relationship between two people. Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe. They need each other. They respect each other. They drive each other crazy. The Wolfe books have almost nothing else going for them: Nero himself is entertainingly quirky but the mysteries are meh and the characters are thin.
But Nero Wolfe doesn't work at all without Archie. 1 <---> 2
Oh, and as to your asterisk footnote, I like to think so, but the book hasn't been published yet.
Ooh, good one! Books where the dynamic between two people carries you along. This would actually be the defining characteristic of the very best romance novels, but also many mystery series. It also works well in tertiary characters, to keep the "background" of a story interesting. (Though there it usually takes the form of wisecracking dialogue.)
Regarding the asterisk footnote: I think what I'm really looking for is a female Miles or Francis: smarter than everyone around them (and occasionally hoist on their arrogance); staggeringly charismatic; regarded with some suspicion by people who refuse to see what they really are; and adrenaline-addicted by their own latent self-loathing that compels them to be a bit self-destructive.
The closest female character I can come up with is movie!Lara Croft, and frankly I don't think the character was written with great charisma (it's all Angelina Jolie's charisma).
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It seems like an interesting thing to consider in deciding exactly how much you want to let the audience know about what's going at a given time.
"Who is the evil tyrant, and why is he sending monsters to invade innocent?" vs "Here is the evil tyrant, and this is exactly why he's sending monsters to invade innocent towns -- and now we know that the second he and the hero meet, shit is gonna go down in the most real way."
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Sometimes authors try to play it both ways, with a mysterious figure who isn't really identified, but is the Bad Guy. There will be a a few scenes from very close 1st-person POV of a mysterious figure who is watching the Protag and thinking MUAH HA HA HA or maybe Damn you, foreign stranger who will screw up all my plans, but never actually telling us anything.
I've never seen that really work to my satisfaction.
More successful is a book that starts out with a Mystery and then as the Protag figures out what's going on, we may get some of the bad guy's POV to create the anticipation of a Trainwreck for the climax.
Which now makes me realize that under my definition, solving the Mystery cannot be the end of the book. Once the protag figures out what's going on, s/he then has to figure out how to stop it. Depending on how the author is using the mystery, the "Oh, I get it!" moment might be the ( ... )
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-- A screwed-up relationship between two people. Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe. They need each other. They respect each other. They drive each other crazy. The Wolfe books have almost nothing else going for them: Nero himself is entertainingly quirky but the mysteries are meh and the characters are thin.
But Nero Wolfe doesn't work at all without Archie. 1 <---> 2
Oh, and as to your asterisk footnote, I like to think so, but the book hasn't been published yet.
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Regarding the asterisk footnote: I think what I'm really looking for is a female Miles or Francis: smarter than everyone around them (and occasionally hoist on their arrogance); staggeringly charismatic; regarded with some suspicion by people who refuse to see what they really are; and adrenaline-addicted by their own latent self-loathing that compels them to be a bit self-destructive.
The closest female character I can come up with is movie!Lara Croft, and frankly I don't think the character was written with great charisma (it's all Angelina Jolie's charisma).
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It's the only way.
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