Should my query lead with the detective, or with the crime?
In a lot of detective or mystery novels, the detective is the POV character and the protagonist, but the initial hook has little to do with him. Some crime has been committed, and the detective is brought in to investigate. Though he may develop high stakes in the case as the story proceeds, he doesn't have any major connection to the case at its start.
In the book itself, I don't see any problem with Interesting Detective A investigating Interesting Case B, even if there's no immediate connection. But how should I write a query about this type of book? Whichever one I start with, moving on to the other feels like an unrelated jump:
Kirk Klondike is a seashore detective; he claims the seashells whisper their secrets right in his ear. MEANWHILE, a nefarious serial killer is leaving a steady flow of bodies bobbing among the waves, each strung up and stung to death by jellyfish.
-- the two are bound to collide, but that "MEANWHILE" really bothers me. It just screams out to me that I've changed the subject within the first few lines. I have the same problem with other re-phrasings I've come up with, like Little does he know he's about to encounter... or Until he happens to come across....
Is this expected? Is this considered "par for the course"? Or is there some more elegant way to structure queries like this, so that they can flow naturally from a single starting point?
2 answers
I think this may be a Heisenbug. I've linked to the wiki, but basically this is a problem that appears only when looked at too closely. I just came across this in my programming studies, and like many, I fall in love with new words and want to use them.
In this instance, you may have bugged the perception by highlighting "meanwhile." In the normal flow of reading quickly, this may have been inconsequential.
Somewhere (sorry for the completely unscholarly reference) I read an essay by Orson Scott Card explaining why he became, er, less than enamoured by writing workshops. It was this tendency to look too closely at things. If you have won the reader's attention, and he or she is engaged in the material, things like "his eyes rolled down the front of her blouse" are perfectly grasped. The literal meaning of the words, though hilarious, are not perceived at all. [I got that from Stephen King, er somewhere].
Now, to do something I learned from Japanese stylists, an essay should always be concluded with "What's wrong with what I said."
Here's one thing that might be wrong with the foregoing thesis. The excerpt does not read like a chunk of story. It reads like a precis, a synopsis, and abstract, or a blurb.
Now, if that's the case, then it should be polished to critical perfection--if such a thing exists.
For a blurb, I don't like the "meanwhile" either. I would favor a harsh, contrasty jump. This way we have the jarring effect of going from the protagonist's to the antagonist's viewpoint. Since this is a story with a definite "good guy" and a definite "bad guy." It's appropriate to put in a shock bang! First, we have a detective who gets clues by listening to seashells? OK. I'm in the story. That's a great opener. Now, give me something about the killer, oh, stung to death by jellyfish? Hah. Lead with that. That's the counter to the seashell listening. It's equally weird, and... enticing. The object of the blurb is to make you want to read the story.
So...
"....in his ear, but/however/suddenly! the seashells are silent/strange/frightened about what appear to be jellyfish marks on the first body."
[Edit] What's really wrong with this thesis.
As Standback points out in the comment below, I have misused the term "Heisenbug."
I reproduce his comment here because I do not wish to misinform people.
A Heisenbug isn't a problem that wouldn't exist if you weren't looking for it; it's a problem that clearly exists, but which changes its behavior in reponse to seemingly-trivial attempts to investigate it, making it infuriatingly difficult to track down to a root cause.
Evidently, there's a looser definition that rolls around physics departments at the colleges I've been associated with; that is, "a problem that is actually caused by looking at it." That was what I meant. Calling that a "Heisenbug" was a new twist.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/14494. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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I think you can vary the structure depending on the story.
By way of example, mystery writer Jennifer Moss splits her descriptions: of her three novels and one short story, two start with the detective, Ryan Doherty, and two start with the crime.
For example, the first one starts with the detective, and segues into the case:
After his partner is killed and girlfriend takes off, Detective Ryan Doherty has one last chance to save his career with the double murder of ad execs Scott and Carly Redding. Ryan quickly learns that life wasn’t so lush at the Reddings’ agency, Town Red Media, where the list of ex-employees runs fifteen pages long.
And a later book dives right into the case, and the detective is more incidental to the description:
When rapper Terrico James claimed to be “mightier than Jesus,” nobody took him seriously…until someone did. Terrico’s dead body ends up nailed to a cross and Chicago Detective Ryan Doherty is on the case. Was it a fringe religious sect making a statement? Or Terrico’s protégé, Mandy Ross, a petulant pop star who sheds hearts like glitter in her path? With the help of his partner, Matt Di Santo, and the spirit of his dead partner, Jon, Ryan fights his way through cultural divides to find the murderer.
My feeling is this: If the crime is personal, or the detective is going through something which is as important as the case, you can start with the detective smoothly. If it's "just a crime," and the detective happens to get that case, start with the crime.
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