Do you REALLY like a mystery?

[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 !

[domisotto]

I abhor the puzzles in the video games and don't like the games that are heavily weighed toward dimensional puzzles like Tomb Raider.

But I am an avid historic/cozy mystery reader, & loved Nero Wolf and Sherlock Holmes stories as a kid. Love stuff like Total Recall.

I started and abandoned my own historic mystery/thriller because I couldn't see the audience for it, but hey, that's life. Unlike the book-world, on-line world doesn't like mysteries much as a genre.

(Shrug)

[essem]

I started and abandoned my own historic mystery/thriller because I couldn't see the audience for it ..... Unlike the book-world, on-line world doesn't like mysteries much as a genre

No, but is content to recast fantasy as 'history' in the interminable war for readers ... allegedly

P.S. sorry to hear of that decision; totally respect it though - we each have to do what we have to do

[domisotto]

Even my fantasy was too heavy on politics and historic parallels for the on-line readers. I gotta be the only writer of the reverse harem fantasy romance who got comments that people learned stuff from the story and the conversations in the comments when I was quoting the historic events I was using as inspiration for the plot. I kindda can’t dodge this bullet.

The problem was not just mystery part, it was also handling of historic events in a better way than Assassin Creed when character just stands and watches them. I was addressing it, but overall, I just didn’t feel I can write Three Musketeers like yarn and still stick to the historic anecdotes accurately enough.

The historic fiction that gets traction on-line is mostly bodice rippers...

Ehh, I will prob get whistled down for being too Hard even with BL, a terrible pun...

[Kinokolu]

I like to solve crosswords and read books, mysticism is what we usually invent for ourselves. If I wanted to write a book, it would definitely be a guide to solving different crossword puzzles. I think people would benefit from reading it, especially those who like to solve these crossword puzzles like me. There are times when you get a question you do not know the answer to, so I for example had to go to a crossword puzzle solver to help me. For such situations, I would write a book.

[Feroxiious]

I like a mystery, but I think they're often not well suited to serialisation. When the whole thing can't be read at once, the balance between the longer reveal and the small payoffs has to be very good, which is often hard to gauge as a creator.

[MickC]

As a writer of a work that is labeled as "mystery", Mystery is mostly about revealing the truth about a specific character. Mysteries doesn't need a detective protagonist or anything related to murder and crime; the protagonist has to find out the truth about the person behind these things.