June 19, 2008: Encoding Mysteries

One of the trickier things about this novel is encoding the clues. At its core, this book is basically a mystery in which several characters discover one secret after another that, when put together, reveal a terrible conspiracy.

The writers of Lost and Battlestar Galactica just make up a bunch of weird shit as they go along and hope to tie it all together in the end. They just throw in a polar bear, trusting themselves to improvise a reason for it later after an all-night, coffee-addled session in the writers' room.

Because I find the false starts, titillating dead ends, and confusion that result to be annoying as a viewer sometimes, I've tried to start with my conclusion and build the clues leading up to it. I've done a lot of list-making, a lot of argument-building. I feel a little like Vincent Bugliosi, except I'm not developing a known case as much as wholly inventing one.

Bugliosi, too, doesn't have to worry much about the dramatic import of his clues, though he probably presents his best ones later in the trial. The real challenge for me has been not to reveal too much too soon or undermine one revelation with a weaker one. Each clue has to build on the next, each has to be more significant and dangerous, and each has to be harder to get.

Because I know the answer at the end, though, the clues aren't much fun to invent. Maybe that's the real reason those writers make it up as they go along: they may or may not pull off something sublimely surprising or resonant, but at least they'll have the fun in the meantime of saying to each other, "Wouldn't it be crazy if Starbuck came back from the dead? Sure. Put it in. We'll figure it out later."

Next time, I'm going to take a more fluid approach. I didn't need to outline as much as I did (I've gone through half a dozen useless ones, some down all the way to the scene level), I didn't need to write character biographies, and I didn't need to START with my deep emotional meaning because it would have been more fun to discover as I went along.

Or maybe it's better to say I don't need those ANYMORE. Maybe they served as training wheels for this first novel.

Posted by Will Ludwigsen on June 19, 2008 9:13 AM | Permalink