Close to the Vest—Embracing the Mystery in Your Fiction
Quick! What does the green light at the end of the dock mean for Gatsby? What is the significance of the colored rooms in Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death”? There are lots and lots of guesses, and lots and lots of critical papers even about such things, but honestly, only Fitzgerald and Poe know for sure. And that’s just fine. The reason these two stories continued to resonate with people is because of the mysteries they still hold.
Fine, fine, fine. Those are literary masterpieces. What about popular fiction? Okay. Challenged accepted. I’ll go as low-brow as movies. Is Decker a replicant or not? Are you sure? What’s really going on with the titular Spider Woman in that movie about her kiss? Is “the shape” in the original Halloween killable or not? (Before the endless sequels, of course.)
See? Mysteries.
And not just the “Was it Colonel Mustard in the dining room with a pipe wrench?” kind of mysteries (though those can work too.)
The best stories, and again, as with any essay on this blog, in my heavily read and studied opinion (vanity, thy name is Sean), all leave a bit of mystery unsolved for the readers, whether in some character’s story (What is Ned Land’s story?), some symbol that isn’t defined (Is the rain really a stand in for sex in this scene?), some action unexplained (What did he say to her in that aside the author didn’t reveal?), or some thematic idea unspoken (If good triumphs over evil, why did Hannibal escape?).
And we can learn a lot from them.
Yes, yes, I know. We live in a world of best-sellers and Summer blockbusters where every secret is supposed to be revealed by the end of the final act and we fill in all the blanks for our audiences. After all, that’s what modern readers want, right? Everything wrapped up in a pretty little bow with the right tag and a proper message on the card so it gets delivered to the correct person who can open it up and suddenly make sense out of everything he or she or they has seen or read. That’s what publishers look for, neat little bows. All the ducks in a row. All the questions answered.
But think about it for a few moments… What if we didn’t?
Read the full article:
https://seanhtaylor.blogspot.com/2022/04/close-to-vestembracing-mystery-in-your.html
