At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If the book is a mystery to its author as she's writing, inevitably it's going to be a mystery to the reader as he or she reads it.
I don't think the problem is that people don't read enough mystery books, but that people don't read.
Writers who want to interfere with adaptations of their work are basically undemocratic. The book still stands as an entity on its own.
I did know that the book would end with a mind-boggling trial, but I didn't know exactly how it would turn out. I like a little suspense when I am writing, too.
I couldn't ever write a straight crime novel: there'd be an intrusion of weirdness at some point.
Fiction should be about moral dilemmas that are so bloody difficult that the author doesn't know the answer.
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.
There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.
Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.
The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.