The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Arts & Entertainment => Topic started by: jay-ell on September 03, 2008, 03:52:06 pm
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The detective story is the purest form of storytelling.
True or false? Discuss.
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Yes!
Now get back to writing your story.
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But...my story isn't a detective story!
Also, I'm almost done. How's yours coming?
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False. Fibbing to your mom is the essence of storytelling.
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No! The detective story isn't a form of storytelling, it's a kind of story. Whether it's the purest of those I'd have to think more about. I'm not currently sure it's a particularly useful or exciting question, so I suppose I'll have to think a bit more about it to know whether it's worth my doing so.
I guess I'll get back to you.
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Wouldn't it be more efficient to just go ahead and think about the answer, instead of taking the time to think about the question and then possibly having to think about the answer on top of it?
Also, we seem to be breaking the first rule of Write Club.
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Whether it's the purest of those I'd have to think more about.
Yes let's define the "purest" bit. Purest in which sense? And from that we follow. What about giving us your angle, J-L? What got you thinking about this?
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I don't think so. Cosmology is probably the most pure form of storytelling. The first stories ever told, in oral traditions, were stories intended to explain the great mysteries.
Creation stories, folklore, and religion probably comprise the purest form of storytelling. The modern counterpart would be escapist fantasy. Tolkien type stories that reflect our reality, although very dimly, in a complete separate universe while maintaining recognizable and applicable themes of heroicism, good vs evil, etc. This is why the Star Wars Universe persists, why other sci-fi and fantasy universes have broad and persistent appeal.
That's what I think, anyway.
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When you're telling a story, you expound enough in the beginning to get your audience interested in finding out more. Who is Obi Wan, and will he save the Princess? Will Macbeth really become king, and how will the witches' prophecies ever come true? You tell the audience that there's something they don't know. Then you slowly reveal clues until you reach a satisfying conclusion that validates all that came before.
By bringing this dynamic of "guess what's next" to the forefront, a detective story drops a good deal of pretense, and allows you to see storytelling for what it is: a game. Storytelling is a game wherein your brain tries to correctly predict the ending. And when the ending comes -- if it is a good book -- you're sad because though you can read it again, you'll not be able to play at it.
Also, bad endings are like cheating.
I'm looking at YOU, Stephen King's It.
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Detective stories and mysteries are the purest form of storytelling because the author, in the process of crafting the tale, must know the logical progression of events and then deliberately conceal parts of it to make it interesting.
All writing is selection. When we choose to describe a character's eyes but not his feet, we select the aspect we think the reader will find most interesting. But when a mystery writer omits a key piece of information that would make the ending obvious, s/he creates interest even in the mundane. It's like carving an optical illusion out of white space.
Also, what Pedro said.
All consumption of storytelling is about discovery; the best storytellers know and foster this. Detective stories, then, is storytelling distilled to its most basic elements: conflict, discovery, resolution. The lack of additional layers makes it easy to discern the beauty of the narrative skeleton.
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Some of the fun in re-reading a story comes in observing how the author conceals the necessary facts. Diversion, false leads, etc. Its sort of a metacognitive experience though, and completely different from the initial read. Some authors I like to do this with (Robert Parker, Sue Grafton); others I'll read once but don't enjoy the style of the author enough to want to dissect it (O'shaugnessy, R. Patterson), and still others (J. Patterson) are so ham-handed with their machinations I can't even stand to read the book through in the first place.
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this makes me want to write a detective story that says such as "I walked into the office. Notice that I don't say WHOSE office! Nudge Nudge Wink Wink!"
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No wonder I'm no good at detective stories.
I write like tidal waves of needles, daring you to find the single piece of hay.
Much more suited to comedy, character studies and science fiction, I reckon.
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I'm voting true but for a slightly different reason. The yearn to discover the secret is strong but I think most good detective stories also work because they usually end up being about basic human relationships and interactions, there's just normally a lot of red herrings to disguise it. Or maybe I read too much Agatha Christie.
With regard to reading them to find the secret, this is why I hate Sherlock Holmes stories (despite liking the character and setting enough to read all of them) because they always seem to rely on a clue that is never revealed to the reader.
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Wouldn't it be more efficient to just go ahead and think about the answer, instead of taking the time to think about the question and then possibly having to think about the answer on top of it?
You're right!
The answer is "mulberry".
Personally I think that stories have too many different potential functions for there to be one kind that's demonstrably the "purest". Why is the fact that storytelling can be used for Pedro's "game" a more basic function than the fact that it can demonstrate a pithy truth, showcase a well-realised set of characters or just let everyone know what an incredibly shit day we've had so they'll be nice to us? Stories are just something that writing and speech and other such abstractions allow us to do, and I don't see that they have a purpose beyond what we give them when we use them.
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I think most good detective stories also work because they usually end up being about basic human relationships and interactions, there's just normally a lot of red herrings to disguise it. Or maybe I read too much Agatha Christie.
This is true, but I never thought of Agatha Christie as one of the good examples of it.
I think that the reason that mysteries are so popular nowadays is that they have to have some structure and an ending that makes some sense. Whereas modern 'serious' fiction doesn't seem to be required to have a plot at all. In a detective story you have to actually tell a story, not just throw some random stuff on the page and hope people think it's deep. Or maybe I read too many New Yorker short stories. (And that's only one by accident every few years - still WAY too many.)
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This is true, but I never thought of Agatha Christie as one of the good examples of it.
There's a repeated line in the Miss Marple stories about living in a small village telling you everything you'll ever need to know about people. I always took that as a pointed hint that the point of the story wasn't what happens so much as who it's happening to and their relationships.
At the risk of introducing gender politics into the discussion I think this is also why (modern) crime writers seem to be predominantly female, or at least it seemed that way last time I was in that section of a book store. When guys try to write about murders you tend to end up with thrillers instead of mysteries.
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This is true, but I never thought of Agatha Christie as one of the good examples of it.
I think that the reason that mysteries are so popular nowadays is that they have to have some structure and an ending that makes some sense. Whereas modern 'serious' fiction doesn't seem to be required to have a plot at all. In a detective story you have to actually tell a story, not just throw some random stuff on the page and hope people think it's deep. Or maybe I read too many New Yorker short stories. (And that's only one by accident every few years - still WAY too many.)
HA!
I agree totally (and I still read almost every short story in the New Yorker). That's one of my main criticisms with modern fiction -- it's gotten so stylized that there's no there there. It's all well and good to write prose that is beautiful and innovative -- I admire a good sentence as much as the next guy. But if the action conveyed is so tiny or internalized as to be undetectible that just unsatisfying. I want style and plot. (I'm looking at you William Gibson...)
Is the Detective Story the purest form of storytelling? No. I'm not sure what it means to be a pure form of storytelling? I suppose the purest form would be a first-person narrative in which the storyteller is also the narrator told in chronological order (i.e. This happened to me, then this happened to me, then this...) Would that be more like a "Journey Story"?
In a Detective story the detective is a stand in for the reader. The essential plot details are revealed to the reader through the detective, so that adds a level of complexity to the story. And the contrivances discussed by which authors present some details and hide others in order to create dramatic tension, well that's another level of complexity. So I don't think a detective story is really very "pure" at all.
Which is A-OK with me. A good detective story is extremely satisfying to read. A good detective story requires a good detective. I think getting to know those characters is more than half the fun of a detective story. It's hard to come up with a truly new plot but interesting new characters are all over the place.
Two of my favorite detectives: Edward X. Delany and Judge Dee Jin-ji
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A post in this thread reminded me, has anybody played the IF game 9:05 (http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=qzftg3j8nh5f34i2)?
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I think the last detective story I read was in the Hardy Boys series.
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A post in this thread reminded me, has anybody played the IF game 9:05 (http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=qzftg3j8nh5f34i2)?
Ooh! Ooh! Me, sir!
...but I don't really have anything interesting to say about it offhand. It did what it did well, though I was disappointed by what happened if you just waited around.
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Ooh! Ooh! Me, sir!
...but I don't really have anything interesting to say about it offhand. It did what it did well, though I was disappointed by what happened if you just waited around.
Without know anything about the game I just happened to do the thing that you're not supposed to think of doing your first play through. It was still really interesting, though. Just waiting never occurred to me.
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Yeah, I think one of the difficulties it has is that the IF audience contains a significant chunk of people who will turn everything over with a fine-tooth comb because so many works of IF demand that you do so.
I like Adam Cadre. But then I've only played this and "Photopia" so I haven't all that much basis for that.
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Yeah, I think one of the difficulties it has is that the IF audience contains a significant chunk of people who will turn everything over with a fine-tooth comb because so many works of IF demand that you do so.
I like Adam Cadre. But then I've only played this and "Photopia" so I haven't all that much basis for that.
I tend to prefer games that are more straight forward. Like Emily Short's Beauty and the Beast game. Or ones like Vault that don't require think of crazy things to finish but prompt you with an AMUSING menu after the game is over.
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I think the last detective story I read was in the Hardy Boys series.
Umm, yeah. Same here. Detective stories haven't ever really done it for me, although I did read and immensely enjoy Mystic River. Oh, and the Dirk Gently books.
But most good stories, like JL said, have to be good at the "slow reveal."
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I guess Discworld books often have detective story elements too them. Especially the Sam Vimes books. And I dig me some Discworld.
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Whereas modern 'serious' fiction doesn't seem to be required to have a plot at all.
Every now and then I get an inferiority complex about my pastime reading material and make an effort to read something "worthy", and invariably come to this same conclusion. Are the English programs out there promoting this type of arch inaccessibility? Is this James Joyce's fault?
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i like it.