Editorial: Oct 28

Fantasy and Mystery

         Well, here we are just before Halloween and I've already done the fantasy and horror installment. Bad planning on my part. Still, Mystery is very much a part of Halloween, not to mention both Fantasy and Horror, so it still works. And after all, who wants to be formulaic anyway.

         In many ways, mystery is a staple element of fantasy. There are always unexplained phenomena, and strange events happening in fantasy stories. However, not all fantasy stories with elements of mystery in them are mysteries. To really be a mystery story, in my opinion any way, the clues to the solution must be within the story, and they must be presented in such a way that it is possible for the reader to solve the mystery before the characters. Many fantasy stories have ancient mysteries for certain, but they are usually solved by the sudden discovery of information by the main characters that makes the solution obvious. In a true mystery story, that shouldn't happen. Clues should be discovered and analyzed by the main character(s) while the reader has a chance to do the same.

         In a more traditional mystery, we have a crime, accompanied by a criminal and a victim. We have a number of clues, and red herrings as well, and we have a detective. So, is there anything in this model that precludes a fantasy setting? Of course not.

         Some of the more famous mysteries have elements of the Fantastic in them. Sherlock Holmes and the Case of The Hound of the Baskervilles (I think that is the proper title) had the Hound, which was more an urban legend, but added a fantastic element to the story none the less. Terry Brooks did a series of modern fantasy stories, the second of which had a lot of mystery to it, including the fact that he didn't reveal who the real villain of the piece was until very near the end. At least two of the Harry Potter books had strong mystery plot lines going for them.

         Going outside of literature, there was an interesting movie that I saw while over seas about a private detective in the 30s-40s named Harry Lovecraft. He worked in Hollywood handling cases involving magic, which most of them did, since nearly everyone used magic.

         So, fantasy and mystery can certainly go together. There are some things to carefully consider, however. Most of them have to do with one of the things that makes Fantasy Fantasy, and that is magic.

         Magic can create endless mysteries, but it can also make them far too easy to solve. You have to set the limits on magic very early to make a credible mystery. For instance, how challenging is a murder mystery going to be if a mage can call the spirit of the dead back to question it. How much difficulty will a detective have in solving a crime if she can open a window through the mists of time and look back to see who did it? Obviously, magic must be tightly reigned in for a mystery to work. Or must it?

         One of the great things about magic is that it works for the other side too. So your mage can summon the murder victim back huh? Most likely, the dead won't know more than it did while alive (that is a fantasy staple). So, if it were, for example, strangled from behind, or killed by an invisible attacker, then it's information is of limited use. It can tell the detective who might be a likely suspect but that's about it. So the mage can see the past? She performs the ritual, casts her spell, the mists part, and she sees herself committing the crime. Maybe it is a shapeshifter. Maybe is it an illusionist. Or maybe it is a Mind Mage who controlled the detective. In any case, she's going to have to find out who the real criminal is, and worse, if she can see the past odds are some other mage can too, so she's got to solve the mystery before someone points the finger at her.

         One thing you must be very careful about when writing a fantasy mystery is to never let the fantastic nature of the world hide clues from the reader. For example, if the crime was committed in a tower room fifty feet above the ground and the only means of entrance was an open window, you must be honest at the start about what kinds of creatures and races in your world can fly. It is not fair to your readers to have the detective make an accusation, then whip off the accused cloak to reveal a set of butterfly wings unless the reader knew that there was the possibility before hand. You can introduce that with descriptions of said character, having a hunched back or walking as though his back troubled him, or perhaps one of the characters has helped this character up after a fall and felt something odd around the man's shoulders.

         What you should absolutely not do in such a story is have the detective pull the cloak off revealing the wings, and then have the supporting cast say, "Of course, he's a Vleren, and they can all fly!" without having ever mentioned the Vleren before. That, quite frankly, is cheating. It will cost you readers for sure if you do things like that. So, in summary, always put all the necessary information to solve the mystery in the story, so the reader can solve it too. Of course that doesn't mean you can't hide it in other devious ways, just so long as it's there.

         So, give a try at creating a Magical Mystery Tour for us all to enjoy.

Tune in in four weeks for a slight change of pace, Odd Fantasy.

By the way, if you have any topics you'd like to see covered, please feel free to send them in to the feedback section for the Fantasy Newsletter, or email me directly.