If you can have a great story that people can follow the mystery and get the suspense, and then you have those moments of tension and a splash of visual fun, then you kind of get everything. You get your money's worth.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'm not a fan of endless mystery in storytelling - I like to know where the mythology's going; I like to get there in an exciting, fast-paced way - enough that there's a really clear, aggressive direction to where it's going, to pay off mystery and reward the audiences loyalty.
People love a good mystery; I understand that.
What would you have if you didn't have a murder in a mystery? You'd have something for the lower-level readers. When you get up into the upper levels, there's nothing that will engage you or compel you or get your emotions churning like a murder. It's the ultimate stakes.
You run the risk, whenever you build your story around a central mystery, of either letting it go too long, or revealing it too soon and then taking the wind out of the sails of the narrative.
The thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer, is that you always find a mystery in every situation.
Mystery is something that appeals to most everybody.
It's good to have mysteries. It reminds us that there's more to the world than just making do and having a bit of fun.
Writing a mystery is more difficult than other kinds of books because a mystery has a certain framework that must be superimposed over the story.
If there's some triumphant end of the story, I guess in a roundabout way I've gotten what I wanted, which is the ability to do interesting things and the wealth to be free.
It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away.