The Puzzling Identity Is Revealed

BETTER KNOWN as the who-dun-it, the "puzzling-identity"
story is, a dying animal in the slick zoo. Why? One good
guess might be that the current slick mode uses "real "
emotions and laudable sentiments in almost all popular
fiction. The classic who-dun-it is an intellectual game in
which only the stagiest motivations are used to set the
story in motion. Just as there is a taboo in today's best
science-fiction against introducing any considerable emotional
content, so the who-dun-it was almost invariably
carried along on a passionless plane. A unique crime and
ingenious methods of detection made the story. The only
sentiment content of most who-dun-its was the trite and
universal crime-doesn't-pay one. There was little attempt
on the writer's part to elicit from the reader either sympathy
or empathy. A good puzzle was sufficient. Today,
that is rarely the case. A puzzle is fine, but it must be hung
with all sorts of tinsel.
After stating the rule, we should talk about the exceptions,
because they are important. Who-dun-its appear
regularly in the popular magazines, but they are mainly
the work of name writers whose heroes are the detectives
they have made famous. It must be remembered that the
mystery story has very rigid strictures which closely limit
what can and can't be done. No editor is knowingly going
to buy a story with a situation that has been used before.
And only professional mystery writers who devote all their
time to the game are well read enough in the field to know
what has and hasn ' t been used by other mystery writers.
Originality is difficult to achieve in the mystery story for
anyone, but almost impossible for the neophyte who casually
decides he will give one a spin.
To take a crack at the who-dun-it simply because he has
tried most other types of slick stories is a mistake. Although
he may be competent enough in slick fiction in general,
the casual writer of the mystery story is, after all, only an
amateur beside the man who devotes himself exclusively
to mysteries. It's a case of the generally good swimmer competing
against the specialized swimmer with a stroke that
the specialist has devoted his life to perfecting. But, if you
have in mind what you think is a fairly original mystery
situation and want to write it, play the long shot—set your
detective hero up for a repeat performance.
About that detective—Sherlock Holmes is still the standing
model. A detective-hero will have idiosyncrasies and
have them a-plenty. He will proceed with a unique
modus operandi of detection. He will be opinionated to
the point of prejudice and extremely brilliant after his
own peculiar fashion. And these highly individualistic
traits will be placed in strong contrast by surrounding the
detective with the fictional equivalents of everyday people .
Usually, only one other outstanding personality will appear
within the framework of the story. That is the crimm
final, of course, and his individuality will not be apparent
until he is revealed as the criminal. That's the classic setup.
Variations, naturally, if effective, are as good or better.
Now back to the detective-hero. The smooth, cultured
gentleman of leisure who dabbles in detection for his own
amusement is not entirely passe in the slicks, but the writer
will do better to establish a detective who, one way or the
other, is in the detecting business. One currently popular
detective is a sheriff in a cowboy town. Neither sheriffs
as characters nor subtle detection separately are new to
the slicks, but together, they are. A foreign detective operating
in an exotic (the more exotic the better) land is
good. A professional psychiatrist using psychoanalytic
methods of detection would be a unique innovation. A reformed
criminal depending on his special knowledge of
crime, or a clever young patrolman, might catch an editor's
eye. The point to be made is that a writer, working in
a story form as well worn as the who-dun-it, must provide
some originality. That originality can be the story's locale,
the method of detection, the nature of the crime, a historical
setting—really anything, just so the editor and finally
the reader will not feel he has read precisely this tale
before.
In a sense, the justification for writing this book lies in
the fact that the trite story structure is not only sufficient
for writing salable fiction but necessary. But a certain
amount of innovation is always required. That tiny bit of
originality the writer must provide himself, and no formula
will tell the writer when the spark is the right one.
That is the unknown factor in writing for the slicks. It is
the commodity for which the slick publisher pays the
writer twenty-five or fifty times the amount the pulp publisher
pays. But more of that later.
The reason this particular plot-line was not defined as
"The Identity of the Criminal Is Revealed" was to leave
the way open for the inclusion of the non-detective, noncriminal
identity story.
An ordinary housewife with an adolescent daughter is
visited by her younger, recently divorced sister. The housewife
has always resented the sister because of her apparent superior
social grace. At present, though, the sister seems to be
down on her uppers. One day, the housewife discovers that a
hundred dollars is missing from her purse. When the possibility
of having lost or misplaced the money is ruled out, the
housewife begins to wonder why her sister, who has obviously
been in need of money, has been anxious but unable to tell her
something. She also observes that her daughter has been acting
s trangely. The housewife is about to confront her daughter
with the big question, when she finds that the daughter had
been worried, not about having taken the money but about
some petty school matter. That leaves the sister.
The housewife waits patiently, and finally the sister decides
to get off her chest whatever had been troubling her. She is
deeply in debt, as the housewife suspected, and wants to marry
again. Then comes the juvenile deus ex machina. The sister's
five-year-old son turns up with the money, having taken it
Innocently in childish play. In the process of discovering the
culprit, the housewife is able to take care of both her sister's
and her daughter's troubles, as well as free herself from her
inferiority feelings in respect to her sister. That's the reader's
extra premium.
Here is a genuine who-dun-it cast in familiar slick-story,
home-drama terms. The classic mystery tale has been given
new vitality.
Of the three suspense questions available to the writer
of popular fiction, WHAT, HOW, and WHO, the last is
the cleanest. The difficulties of breaking into the mystery
field have been indicated, but the entire remainder of the
slick-story world is open to the use of WHO-suspense. The
"it" of the who-dun-it need not be a murder; it need not
even be a crime. In fact, a complete reversal, such as a whodid-
the-good-deed piece, is full of potential.
category:plot lines
Category:information