Speak Just for Yourself

A reader asked a current popular author (formula mystery stories) if her characters ever surprised her by doing their own thing without her direction, as characters do sometimes. Her reply was an emphatic negative. She next said the surprise is that anyone would believe such a thing happens; after all, she writes fiction. Such an attitude might indicate that this author does not read how other writers create real masterpieces nor read the masterpieces herself.

Many an author doesn’t know all the characters are going to say or do, but when a writer just lets it happen, it’s as if he is merely listening to and watching the characters talk and act. In one story I read, the author didn’t know the name of the protagonist until another character asked him his name well into the story, and it popped right out, whole and perfect, without the author’s needing to search for a name. Because the point of view in this story was that of the protagonist, he had no reason to give his name until asked and the author had no business to intrude on his thinking. This is what people mean when they say the story writes itself, not that it happens all through the story, but in enough places that the author feels it’s throughout the story. Some of these writers say when the going is not so good, it’s because the author has taken over, and the story does not work again until the author lets the characters resume leading the way.

Readers forget formula mystery stories because they present no well-defined characters. A series detective is not the wisest choice to deliver this necessary magnet for literary achievement. We remember him or her, but over time usually not the stories. Of course, there is always one story that sticks in our minds, though we have forgotten who wrote it, such as the non-series number called “The Specialty of the House,” via Hitchcock, written by—

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