I was listening to a teaser soundbite on NPR this morning, and the wonderful New Orleans mystery author Julie Smith spoke about the comment she often hears from readers who learn she resides in the city where her novels are based. They tell her the high crime rate in New Orleans must provide plenty of material for her novels. She said that they don't understand what mysteries are really about. It's not the crime, it's the secrets. I turned off my clock radio and said to the murky air of pre-dawn, well, late dawn, in my bedroom:
Ain't it the truth.
How many secrets do we have in a mystery? There's obviously the secrets kept or attempted to be kept by the antagonist, crook, criminal, villains, or miscellaneous dastardly deed do-ers. And in my opinion, if a writer is worth her salt, there are the secrets kept by the protagonist, amateur or professional sleuth or all around good guy. And if a writer is really, really good-- I mean really good: everybody's got a secret. And those secrets get reeled out and revealed s-l-o-w-l-y, maybe over the arc of a whole series. For some fodder for the secret mill, try the link below or buy Frank Warren's books from his PostSecret Project--a blog that collected thousands of anonymous postcards over a period of years from people confessing their secrets from the mundane to the deeply disturbing. http://postsecret.blogspot.com/ What's your secret? What are your characters' secrets? How do they intersect?
4 comments:
This is such a great blog. I'd heard of it but never looked it up until now. One of my favorite posts:
"I'm the kind of person who can't separate a bunch of bananas in the store because they'll miss each other. I have to buy the whole bunch, or none at all."
But, if I tell you, it's not a secret anymore.
Love the Post Secrets site!
I like the one about picking the worst Christmas tree--the Charlie Brown tree--the same postcard, if I recall. It used to be that you could see months and months of secrets on the Post Secret blog. It was amazing and inspiring and pretty damned weird, too.
Next time you're in the bookstore, take a look at the books. Kind of cool...
And Sue Ann, is it still a secret if they don't know who you are?
Sorry, but I have no secrets. Once you undergo a Police pre-employment background investigation, no stones are left unturned. (And they still hired me...)
Great post.
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