Do you REALLY like a mystery?

[RyzaCobalion]

i like it when the mystery actually gets the reader actually thinking and try to solve the mystery themselves while the story progress. Making the reading go "wait, that this doesn't make any sense how could... .. O.O sudden realization WAIT..... WAIT WAIT.." then go back to the previous chapters to love for clues but only the readers can solve the mystery.

[MeltingCORE]

I love mysteries! One of my favorite series of all time is Higurashi and the thrill I had reading through the sound novels for the first time was absolutely incredible. It was mind-bending. I'll have to check out your work!

[HGohwell]

but then having low or no patience in waiting for a reveal, tolerance for ambiguity etc.

This is a problem I've talked about having all over the place in all genres. Some people seem to have no patience at all and don't seem to understand basic tension building. They want you to spell out the villains plan from the get go. They want to know everything about who a character is on their introduction. Explain you character's tragic backstory the moment it's hinted at rather than building it slowly. Slow burn is no longer just a slow building romance, it's just romance because normal romance is just getting together straight away.

It feels like readers in general are getting less patient in all areas not just mystery. Which is odd because people seem very willing to sit through the mystery of which guy in the love triangle is gonna get picked. Maybe because it's often written so it's not actually up in the air, just pretending to be.

One of my favorite series of all time is Higurashi and the thrill I had reading through the sound novels for the first time was absolutely incredible. It was mind-bending.

Umineko is my mystery of choice and lead me to Higurashi and ridiculously complicated and confusing and a lot to sit through for the pay off but so worth it. I struggle imagining some readers these days having the patience for some of these long complex mysteries.

[irene_addler]

I've never thought about it before now, but whenever I say that I love a good mystery, I really mean a good detective story. Which is a specific category of mystery, but there are other stories that aren't detective stories that are mysteries...interesting.

[Iris-Grimoire]

I like mysteries, maybe not as much in a genre I particularly love but I read them every now and then; I think impatience, when excluding people being easily distracted or wanting quick gratification, might be the lack of initial payoffs. A lot of writers fall in the big mystery, talk about the big mystery all the time, and you lose a bit of interest when it's all very cryptic and the plot just molds itself to not reveal anything until the end or big climatic moment. If, say, it's a spooky town story, it's cool to reveal little horrifying things or why the supporting character is prepared in a certain way, even if you don't have to say the source of the mystery right away. Give readers a bit of expectation as to how they're going to solve the plot with the characters!

Most of the time though, it's just the reader being impatient or reading too much into things because the mystery wasn't what they wanted. Hard to write a mystery if you don't have the patience as a writer.

[rajillustration]

I love mysteries--but my favorite mysteries usually reveal smaller mysteries before they get to the big main reveal. If there was only one big reveal at the end, I would be awfully bored by the end of the book. Part of the fun of mystery is when you start to unveil all of the secret plots behind the scenes that just kind of build on eachother, but can't tell which secret plot lead to the big death the book is about.

[essem]

It's rather unfair to say that readers are simply just impatient

Fortunately that isn't what I said

Agree that any good story needs to engage first though. Anything good for that matter. It's just what actually engages folk is often somewhat different to what they say, or what they think engages them ...

[essem]

That's definitely where sub-genres - cosy, murder etc. - come in handy

[essem]

If it's a decent story it will answer those questions, just watch it omg

You made me laugh hard with that

[essem]

You're way better read than me - you're possibly flagging how some of the tropes of classic mysteries have become tired clichés?

[essem]

If there was only one big reveal at the end, I would be awfully bored by the end

Totally relate to that. Whether or not I've succeeded, I did at least set out to make readers think they would be getting the familiar tropes, only to hit them with other layers as they progress ... but then London Watch House is sited in a world of subversion & counter-subversion I have to confess though, the final edit is very different to the more nuanced version I originally wrote because, in the end, I caved to some degree in the face of all that whingeing from people craving more, sooner

[essem]

I'll have to check out your work!

You'd be very welcome ... as long as you really do love mysteries

[essem]

gets the reader actually thinking and try to solve the mystery themselves

Nail on head - if you're demanding reveals without even trying to work something out first, you really aren't a mystery lover

That said we can all be self-defeating at times with our self-talk. I've lost count of the times people have seen me doing a crossword only to announce 'I can't do those' ... however share a couple of tips & techniques and suddenly you can't get your bliddy pen back !

[disqette]

Mystery is one of my favorite genres, but I actively avoid mystery stories that take place in historical (cough Victorian London cough) settings or modern settings that revolve around government conspiracies. Those two are pretty much the face of the mystery genre and I feel like the genre really isn't doing much to keep up with the times due to the redundancies in setting.

Most people like mysteries in their story, but that may not necessarily mean they like what the vast majority of the mystery genre is.

Additionally, I personally like when the mystery is revealed bit by bit. When everything is revealed all at once, it becomes mentally exhausting. It also gets the reader involved in solving the mystery.

[domisotto]

For me, mystery needs to be balanced with the lines that I can logically follow. I grow frustrated when everything is too nebulous, particularly if the plot relies on setting different from the existing one.

For example, I am currently feed backing a book where the author constantly saying that the world is not like ours and may have different prejudices. But I have no clue 25K words in what is going on with the characters or why it is inappropriate for them to be together as well as a couple of other side plots.

If I wasn’t critiquing the book, I would have given up at that point, because I can’t stay in the dark for 100K words, and I also may end up with no answers. I need to participate with the characters, and be invested in their search for solutions.

Mostly I read historic and cozy mysteries, and I think over years, I just read one series of books that I ended up having no idea what the plot was and what happened in the end. I read it because it had a lot of information on the antiques (Lovejoy mysteries, people probably don’t know them).

My favorite series of all times were Lindsey Davis Falco's mysteries and Peters Peabody's mysteries. I also enjoyed a few books by Evanovich and Fluke before they petered out

[essem]

Thanks all. It's truly interesting to hear people's differing interpretations as to what a Mystery might / not incorporate - a good reminder that it's simply not possible to please all the people all of the time, in particular in such a discerning era. I knew writing London Watch House would be a challenge, but never anticipated how much more difficult it would be in such an atomised world to connect with its readership

[elisabeth_ist]

This. I'm all about those slow but just-right reveals, but I know that plenty of other people aren't. It requires a certain amount of patience, sure, but you also have to be the kind of person who gains a lot of satisfaction from making theories and seeing how they play out.

My Tapas book is actually very much like that, so I've been trying to figure out how to explain that, okay, right now it comes off a bit slice-of-life, but we're actually just going to keep escalating and escalating until we get to the denouement, and all these little things you remember from earlier chapters are going to come together! And you will gasp! Or at least, I hope you will!

Except that you can't really explain that, or else you ruin the surprise of the thing.

Anyway, I read mysteries all the time. Val McDermid if I feel like being really shocked and disturbed; otherwise, give me a Margery Allingham or an Agatha Christie and a piping hot cup of tea, please.

Hannah, Not the Wolf | Tapas

[elisabeth_ist]

Additionally, I personally like when the mystery is revealed bit by bit. When everything is revealed all at once, it becomes mentally exhausting. It also gets the reader involved in solving the mystery.

So much this! I totally agree.

[elisabeth_ist]

I've lost count of the times people have seen me doing a crossword only to announce 'I can't do those' ... however share a couple of tips & techniques and suddenly you can't get your bliddy pen back !

I mean, I love crosswords, too. Maybe there's some crossover between crossword-lovers and mystery readers? Someone should do a study, lol.

[essem]

I'd be amazed if someone hasn't already done a PhD addressing that, wouldn't you? Actually, as touched on earlier, I'd propose the nexus is less Mystery readers and more a person's tolerance for ambiguity - hypothesis along the lines that factors like phone technology & populist politics are accelerating society-wide levels of intolerance - but there's no way I'm putting up my hand for a PhD right now, so knock yourself out !