The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing the Modern Whodunit by William G. Tapply Page B
Authors: William G. Tapply
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view immediately—preferably in the first sentence. Let your readers—the participants in your story’s puzzle-solving quest—know whose shoes they will be walking in as they move through your story, whose eyes and ears and nose they’ll be using to witness your story’s events. Choosing your story’s point of view is one of your most crucial storytelling decisions.
First person
The first-person narrator is the character who experiences the events of the story and who interprets and explains them to the reader in his or her own words.
Kinsey Millhone, for example, is the “I” in Sue Grafton’s popular mystery series. Readers walk—and sometimes run—through the stories in Kinsey’s shoes. They go only where she goes, know only what she knows, see and smell and hear only what she experiences and is aware of and believes is important. Readers don’t know what any of the other characters is thinking or feeling or experiencing. They can only speculate based on what the characters say and how they act in Kinsey’s presence.
Grafton begins A Is for Alibi by immediately establishing Kinsey’s first-person narrative voice:
My name is Kinsey Millhone. I’m a private investigator, licensed by the state of California. I’m thirty-two years old, twice divorced, no kids. The day before yesterday I killed someone and the fact weighs heavily on my mind.
The very first word in Grafton’s book is that first-person possessive pronoun “my,” clearly establishing the first-person point of view. Kinsey is straightforward and candid from the beginning. Readers trust she will tell them the truth, and they have faith that she will share important information with them.
Through the eyewitness reports of the first-person narrator, readers accumulate information. They test it, interpret it, link it with other bits of information, and formulate theories. Readers understand that things are happening offstage that Kinsey cannot tell us, and they assume that the story’s other characters do not share all of their thoughts with her. Some characters, in fact, may mislead Kinsey. Others could be lying.
First-person narrators are not omniscient. As a young female California private investigator, Kinsey Millhone has her own ways of perceiving the world. She notices and understands things differently from the way John D. MacDonald’s first-person narrator Travis McGee and Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski do.
Readers who want to solve the case must take into account Kinsey’s personality and limitations as well as the facts as she recounts them in her narrative.
It’s no coincidence that so many successful mystery stories are told by first-person narrators. Readers readily identify with the “I” of these tales; it’s a powerful alliance. If readers like and trust the first-person narrator, they feel that they have a friend. It makes for strong reader loyalty.
Readers meet and learn about other characters directly through the experiences and perceptions of the first-person narrator. For example, early in Linda Barnes’s A Trouble of Fools , Carlotta Carlyle’s doorbell rings:
It was slightly past noon on a late September Sunday that had no business being so cool, and I wasn’t expecting anybody. I squinted my left eye shut and pressed my right one to the peephole. If I had been expecting someone, it wouldn’t have been the cozy old lady who perched on my front stoop like an inquisitive bird. As I struggled with the last deadbolt, always sticky, she turned up the collar of her woolly pink coat, and got ready to hit the buzzer again. She wore white cotton gloves. I haven’t seen a pair of white gloves in ages.
“ Coming,” I yelled, forestalling the buzzer.
She was too old for a Mormon missionary, so I steeled myself for the Jehovah’s Witnesses pitch. Possibly Antivivisection. I hoped she was antivivisection. I wondered if I could keep a straight face while I asked her where to donate the parakeet for
First person
The first-person narrator is the character who experiences the events of the story and who interprets and explains them to the reader in his or her own words.
Kinsey Millhone, for example, is the “I” in Sue Grafton’s popular mystery series. Readers walk—and sometimes run—through the stories in Kinsey’s shoes. They go only where she goes, know only what she knows, see and smell and hear only what she experiences and is aware of and believes is important. Readers don’t know what any of the other characters is thinking or feeling or experiencing. They can only speculate based on what the characters say and how they act in Kinsey’s presence.
Grafton begins A Is for Alibi by immediately establishing Kinsey’s first-person narrative voice:
My name is Kinsey Millhone. I’m a private investigator, licensed by the state of California. I’m thirty-two years old, twice divorced, no kids. The day before yesterday I killed someone and the fact weighs heavily on my mind.
The very first word in Grafton’s book is that first-person possessive pronoun “my,” clearly establishing the first-person point of view. Kinsey is straightforward and candid from the beginning. Readers trust she will tell them the truth, and they have faith that she will share important information with them.
Through the eyewitness reports of the first-person narrator, readers accumulate information. They test it, interpret it, link it with other bits of information, and formulate theories. Readers understand that things are happening offstage that Kinsey cannot tell us, and they assume that the story’s other characters do not share all of their thoughts with her. Some characters, in fact, may mislead Kinsey. Others could be lying.
First-person narrators are not omniscient. As a young female California private investigator, Kinsey Millhone has her own ways of perceiving the world. She notices and understands things differently from the way John D. MacDonald’s first-person narrator Travis McGee and Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski do.
Readers who want to solve the case must take into account Kinsey’s personality and limitations as well as the facts as she recounts them in her narrative.
It’s no coincidence that so many successful mystery stories are told by first-person narrators. Readers readily identify with the “I” of these tales; it’s a powerful alliance. If readers like and trust the first-person narrator, they feel that they have a friend. It makes for strong reader loyalty.
Readers meet and learn about other characters directly through the experiences and perceptions of the first-person narrator. For example, early in Linda Barnes’s A Trouble of Fools , Carlotta Carlyle’s doorbell rings:
It was slightly past noon on a late September Sunday that had no business being so cool, and I wasn’t expecting anybody. I squinted my left eye shut and pressed my right one to the peephole. If I had been expecting someone, it wouldn’t have been the cozy old lady who perched on my front stoop like an inquisitive bird. As I struggled with the last deadbolt, always sticky, she turned up the collar of her woolly pink coat, and got ready to hit the buzzer again. She wore white cotton gloves. I haven’t seen a pair of white gloves in ages.
“ Coming,” I yelled, forestalling the buzzer.
She was too old for a Mormon missionary, so I steeled myself for the Jehovah’s Witnesses pitch. Possibly Antivivisection. I hoped she was antivivisection. I wondered if I could keep a straight face while I asked her where to donate the parakeet for
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