Productive Mysteries

Why, when, and how to baffle the reader.

The latest chapter, “Heart,” is a mini-mystery within Quibble. Definition, coming upon the scene of a murder, puzzles over clues to pick up the killer’s trail. It’s fortuitous this chapter should arrive just as, at last, I arrive at talking about mystery.

In November, I began corresponding with the writer

Jeremy Harshman

, whose novels and novellas are serialized at Greyburne’s. We traded several notes on the challenges of publishing fiction online, but eventually we got around to critiquing each other’s writing. I began to read Jeremy’s novel Becoming P.T. Lyfantod and gather thoughts on it. Jeremy read the first twelve chapters of Quibble out of sequence in order to advise me on a certain question (should I reorder them?). In the end, Jeremy voted against the reordering. I agreed with his reasoning, so I left the order alone. Having read the first five chapters of his novel, I wrote a critique of it. Soon thereafter, with my permission, Jeremy published the critique in full.

CRITICAL HIT

This reflection isn’t about Jeremy’s book, so I’m not going to recount my critique here. But I am citing one passage of it in order to reflect on Quibble. Sandwiched among my observations about his story, I offered Jeremy this advice about something to aim for in a novel’s opening chapters:

If possible, you should also sprinkle in “productive mysteries” — carefully chosen unanswered questions which intrigue the reader and make them want to keep reading in order to get the answers. And of course it follows that, having made a promise to your reader that they’ll get said answers, you’ve got to fulfill the promise, deliver those answers at some point.

One “mystery” for the reader, going into Quibble, is why the novel uses the language it does to talk about technology. Indeed, for some time, it’s not clear what’s being talked about is technology. This is purposeful. The first part takes place Within and focuses on Ones, who worship tech but have no idea it is tech. Ones wouldn’t even know what the word technology means. The point? A religious understanding of tech has replaced the scientific understanding altogether. The novel asks, “If the former understanding of tech replaces the latter, what sort of society might it eventually produce?”

Also, it’s asking the reader to think about language as a function of society and, in this case, which function this society’s language most serves. How does the Ones’ language direct and order the shape of their lives, their values, and their thinking? What does it then say about their lives, values, and thinking?

I believe all writing makes this sort of inquiry about language on some level. As books like Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and A Clockwork Orange do, Quibble makes the inquiry more explicitly and self-consciously than usual. (Is this a good idea? Well, the novel bets it’s a good idea and tries to make something rich and meaningful of it.)

But that’s just one sort of mystery. A slew of others crop up in the first few parts of the book, variously related to plot, theme, and characters. Here are some of the big ones:

• Why do Ones live as they do? What’s the point of living in such an environment as Within? How did they get there?

• As a rule, Ones do not willingly come Without. But Quibble does, and she learns she’s far from the first One to come Without. How did the other Ones get there? And, once we learn how they got there, what does it mean for the future of Ones?

• Definition hates Zeros, and soon after meeting her, we discover she has a reason, but that reason is the action of just one Zero and the apparent inaction of others. Is her hatred justified or really a prejudice? How will it influence the story?

• As illustrated by Alnasl’s musings on faith, the Zeros share religious beliefs with the Ones, even though they’ve been Without and they know it’s not annihilation. Despite knowing certain tenets of the Ones’ religion are manifestly untrue, Zeros largely support and enforce Unity’s confessions (Its theocratic dictates). Why?

• Other people, the Far, also live Without. They hate Zeros, too, but also fear Zeros so much that they’ll try to kill a Zero on sight. Why? Who are the Far, and what’s their place in this transhuman world?

As suggested by my advice to Jeremy, the question I asked myself about each mystery was, “Is it productive?”

I won’t answer that question here. Doing so would amount to apologia for my writing. I am firmly of the belief that writing shouldn’t need apologia. It either succeeds on its own merits or fails by its lack of them. And if it fails, no mere argument can rescue it from that. So I leave it to you, dear reader, to decide the matter.

But then why am I bringing all of this up? The point I want to make — it’s implied by my advice — is that there are unproductive mysteries, unanswered questions that serve no good purpose in a story. As a writer, it’s your job to weed them out.

How to spot unproductive mysteries and weed them out is my topic here. Because, of course, if you can weed them out, you can tell which are your productive mysteries, and then they’ll get the spotlight they deserve.