How to Write Killer Fiction: The Funhouse of Mystery & the Roller Coaster of Suspense

Author:Carolyn Wheat
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Language Arts & Disciplines, Detective and mystery stories, Mystery & Detective, General, Literary Criticism, Suspense fiction, Authorship, Composition & Creative Writing, Fiction
ISBN: 9781880284629
Publisher: Perseverance Press
Published: 2003-04-15T10:00:00+00:00

Our hero begins his journey in the ordinary world. This is Cinderella's house before her father remarries, or, in T. Jefferson Parker's Little Saigon, hero Chuck Fry's world before his brother's wife is kidnapped. Some external event forces change and decision, and pushes the hero out of the ordinary world into a special world where new realities, new rules, must be learned, and where there will be tests and tasks to be mastered.

The Little Mermaid's special world is our ordinary one, because her ordinary world lies under the sea. Clark's heroine is taken from her ordinary world of Manhattan to the special world of her prince's domain; Fry's special world is that of the Vietnamese exiles. Even though they live in Orange County, California, and he makes no physical journey to find them, their world is alien to him. Accepting the adventure and crossing into the special world marks the end of Arc One and the beginning of the big bad middle.

The middle of the story is where the growth occurs. Here the hero meets allies and learns to distinguish (through trial and error) between those he can trust and those he can't. Tests and tasks abound, skills are learned, a mentor gives direction (in Little Saigon a Vietnamese elder helps Fry understand some of what's going on), and the hero moves inexorably toward a direct confrontation with evil.

Evil may reach out and harm the hero, but eventually, he must move in the direction of the evil instead of running away. Once freed from police custody, the Fugitive (in the movie of the same name) doesn't hop a plane and go to Peru, he marches straight into the very hospital where he once practiced, risking being seen and captured, in order to find the one-armed man. When the Wizard of Oz tells Dorothy to get a straw from the Wicked Witch's broomstick, she doesn't shrug and say, "I guess I can't get home then"; she sets off toward the witch's castle to do what has to be done. When Clark's mermaid finds out about The Door That Must Not Be Opened, she steels herself to open it, no matter what the consequences. The cops, the Vietnamese, and Fry's own brother and father all beg him to stay out of the kidnapping case, but he doggedly continues his quest for the truth that will free his sister-in-law.

These heroes enter the Inmost Cave, the most dangerous place they can be, the heart of their enemy's power, because they must. And they encounter death. Snow White "dies" when she eats the poisoned apple; Jenny McPartland is urged to "become" her dead predecessor; Fry faces death when he's pitted against ruthless Vietnamese gangsters.

The ultimate confrontation pits good against evil. Good wins, but we're never quite sure it's going to, and we never know exactly how our innocent and seemingly less powerful hero will find the tools and the heart to prevail.

What heroes win is the elixir, a fancy name for their new knowledge, their hard-won insights and maturity.

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