  Mystery
This week: Clue Me In ~or Out ~ of the Puzzle Edited by: Kate - Writing & Reading  
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If there were no mystery left to explore
life would get rather dull, wouldn't it?
Sidney Buchman
A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.
Raymond Chandler
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Greetings, we know a mystery is a puzzle. Your sleuth (professional, amateur, or anywhere in between), along with your readers, embarks on a journey you devise to solve the puzzle by finding and deciphering the clues you plant.
Yes, plant, like seeds in a garden. Consider your garden, be it on a patio, a terrace or in your backyard. You plant seeds, tend them, watch them grow with your care to yield the fruit or flowers you envisioned. Now you may calculate sun position, soil conditions, pollination potentials, and plant your seeds in measured rows with the intended vision diagrammed in your mind or a journal. Or, you may begin with the image of your finished garden, plant seeds, then transplant overgrowth, fill in fallow spaces, and water and prune as needed along the way until your vision bears fruit (or flowers) to please your eye.
Both of these images of planting clues work. You may choose to outline your plot, planting clues along the way, leading your sleuth and reader towards the logical outcome of your mystery. Or, you may envision a crime or puzzle, begin writing until you reach a satisfying ending, then go back and edit the details to plant clues and show your reader how to arrive at the same solution.
Along the writing of your mystery, whichever your method, you plant clues, facts that lead to the ultimate satisfying and believable truth, solving the puzzle. Consider a crossword puzzle. You answer questions and fill in the blanks, revealing letters to help guide you to answering other questions and ultimately solving the whole puzzle - using clues.
In a mystery poetic or prosaic, you plant clues for your sleuth and reader to uncover and solve. Instead of the straight question and answer of a crossword, however, you engage all their senses, challenge them both to find both the obvious and subtle clues.
 Plant tangible clues, evidence, for the sleuth and reader to uncover, i.e., weapons, alibis, hair, fingerprints, shoe prints, an items of clothing, a scent of cologne.
Let the dialogue reveal clues, responding to the sleuth’s inquiry, overheard conversation between suspects or bystanders, whether or not accurate perceptions or intended misdirection
Behavior observed by the sleuth and reader, such as relationships (bickering siblings, where one disappears or is found no longer alive, for example).
You see, clues can be obvious or subtle, there for your sleuth and reader to uncover and analyze to uncover lies and truth along the way to solving your puzzle. You don’t want to give them a trail of breadcrumbs to merely pick up and follow, but for your sleuth and reader to first uncover, then resolve based on their assessment. You set them on the trail, and give them sufficient information to cast doubt upon the clues they find, making them question and, incidentally, thus uncover further clues. You create uncertainty by inciting doubt, challenging your sleuth and reader to uncover which clues are true (once they find them) and which are false, misdirection.
False clues you plant misdirect the sleuth or reader, casting doubt and causing them to consider options which may be logical, but are uncovered as false or leading nowhere.
Red Herrings is the name given these misdirecting clues. Some are obvious on the surface, others must be ‘dug up,’ but both offer a bit of spice to the writer’s prose or verse. You also might choose to devise a bit of misdirection by planting clues that draw attention, but lead nowhere. Yes, those pesky red herrings.
Red herrings are diversions that intend to move the sleuth (and reader) off the trail, sometimes by using facts to hide the truth. If clues are seeds, then red herrings are bait.
Red herrings were at one time the dried fish (stinky) that would be used to lead dogs off the trail of a hunt. The term subsequently came to refer to anything that is used to misdirect in speech – written, spoken, alluded to (body language). Consider politicians, for example, leading people en masse to accept their programs by covering up their ‘scent.’ Now the perceptive sleuth takes the time to either solve or disprove the illusion and move on to uncover and solve additional clues en route to solving the puzzle
Consider the following, by Scott Mortenson,
You’re a bus driver. You leave the depot at 6:05 AM, and at your first stop you pick up three passengers. On your next stop you pick up five passengers. On your third stop four get off and nine get on. On your fourth stop, three get on and five passengers get off. On your fifth stop, eight get off and seven get on.
Got all that? Okay. What color are the bus driver’s eyes?
In the example above, you have all the facts, all the clues. Did you answer the question correctly? Only you know, as I don’t know the color of your eyes. As you were adding and subtracting the numbers, you were following clues used to distract you, or red herrings. (I kind of like the image of some bus passengers as ‘herrings.’)
I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey and as you plant the clues of your mystery, either in orderly rows (plotting) or in the editing process after writing the story from beginning to end or, somewhere in between the two, remember to slide in one or two appear to lead to the solution, but do nothing to solve the puzzle.
Write On
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
with thanks to ~ http://www.fallacyfiles.org/redherrf.html
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I invite you to see if you can find the clues planted by some of the sleuths in our Community. Let them know, perchance with a review, if you saw it coming."
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Thank you for sharing this exploration with me. I wish you happy sleuthing in word and deed.
Write On
Kate
Kate - Writing & Reading
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Mystery: March 06, 2013 Issue [#5552]
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