I’ve been travelling this week for work, and I’m way behind on blog posts. So for this week, I’m updating one of my first posts on puzzle-like plots.
This month on the SFWA Blog author Terry Bisson offers 60 Rules for Short SF and Fantasy. I found Rule #3 particularly interesting: “The SF reader is a gamer who brings problem-solving intelligence to the story. This is the SF writer’s one great advantage. Use it.”
While I don’t write science fiction, this got me thinking about the stories I enjoy reading. Most of them involve some mystery or riddle the protagonist must solve, a puzzle that keeps the reader’s mind churning until the end of the novel. My all-time favorite historical novel about medieval monks (a subject dear to this blog) is Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, a murder mystery at heart, set in 1327. The Name of the Rose helped spawn an entire subgenre of historical mysteries, and helped inspire my own novel. While my novel, Enoch’s Device, is more historical fantasy than historical mystery (it’s certainly not a whodunit), there is a puzzle at core of the plot for both the protagonist and reader to solve. In crafting it, I followed a basic rule: write what you like to read.
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| There’s a puzzle at the heart of this plot! |
I’m curious as to your views. Do you like a good puzzle at the heart of your plot? A story where you, the reader, can bring your problem-solving intelligence to bear? Or do you prefer other plot types for the fiction you read and write?
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| Brother William of Baskerville had quite a puzzle to solve! |