Over at Do Some Damage last week, Russel McLean posted about the changes the new technology has brought to the PI genre. Your PI character can now pick up a phone, click on a computer or text his buddy instead of pounding his feet on the pavement. http://dosomedamage.blogspot.com/2010/01/talk-talk.html
Russel's post made me think about Susan Glaspell's short story, "A Jury of Her Peers" http://www.learner.org/interactives/literature/story/fulltext.html written in 1917. A writer would be hard pressed to write something this chilling in today's world. The desolation that existed, especially out on the prairie, is almost impossible to duplicate. With cell phones, computers, even cars, nobody is that isolated anymore. In order to duplicate those conditions a writer has to blow out cell towers, kill car batteries, down electrical wires and create an act of God via a blizzard, tornado, or hurricane. And then, it would only be for a day or two, not the year's it took to build up to this woman's breakdown. To duplicate Glaspell's story, a modern writer would have to let the story evolve out of a series of coincidences rather than the natural evolution of their character's life.
So, I'm wondering, does having all of these coincidences in a story spoil it for you or do you just accept that that's the way it needs to be to make the story move forward?
7 comments:
Or set the story prior to about the mid-eighties.
There's an inkling of a story in what Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe would make of Google.
I tend to allow writers an occassional coincidence, as long as a major plot twist doesn't turn on it. I try not to allow myself any coincidences, although it's not always possible to avoid it totally.
Or write stories more about character than the solving of the crime.
The first time I've read "A Jury of Her Peers." Incredible!
Oh, Pablo, you're right! Imagine Sam Spade time traveling to the future to solve a case - what fun!
It's funny, Charles, how we hate coincidence in our fiction yet life, sometimes turns are just such a coincidence. But in a mystery it is more fun to follow clues, instead of bumping into Joe Smo who knows who the killer is.
That would work, Patti! And you're one of those writers who does that so well.
That's a great story, isn't it, David! I always wonder what these people who are forever holding a phone to their ear would have done back then. People have no clue how to be alone with themselves anymore.
Last year I read "Midnight Assassin" by Patricia Bryan and Thomas Wolf, since it was a true crime/historical about a hatchet murder (I'm writing a true crime memoir that centers around a 1955 unsolved hatchet murder), and learned that Susan Glaspell was a journalist covering the murder trial; she was so moved by it, she wrote "A Jury of Her Peers."
Here's an interesting article (although it's quite long, be prepared) in which Bryan talks about Susan Glaspell and the Hossack case: http://www.midnightassassin.com/PLBArticle.html
Thanks for the link, Kathleen! I'll check it out.
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