Stories as puzzles

[Brian G Turner]

I've long noticed that in epic fantasy, at least, many readers seem to love to try and work out the connections between things - just look at our George R R Martin to see how readers puzzle over these.

Thinking about it, it's they're in soap opera, too - will he, won't he; will she, won't she? Whose the father of the baby? Is she really his mother? What happened, when did, where...

Thrillers make a point of this, the most successful ones being the ones to set up the most interesting puzzles - The Bridge, Da Vinci Code, anyone?

With the romance genre, perhaps it's less about whether a couple come together, as much as the how and why?

We're a puzzle-solving ape. Computer games demonstrate our love to tackle them.

The question is, how much are puzzles part of story telling? Isn't conflict just another use of the term?

If all this is true, how much can aspiring writer ensure that their story delivers the most satisfying puzzles?

I'm looking at my own WIP and wondering where the puzzles are...if I'm too close to see them properly, and if I can focus on any while rewriting...

Just thinking aloud.

 

[The Judge]

I love puzzles myself, and I've put them in my WIPs in various guises:

SF1 -- who is the woman, who are the voices, how are things connected?
SF2 -- why the nightmares, what happened with her father, is there attempted murder, who is the perpetrator?
Fantasy1 -- why was her father killed, how has her mother got to be where she is, who is following her, who is trying to kill her and why?
Fantasy2 -- what the hell is going on...?

I actually wrote a blog about this once, though, as I don't know it's necessarily a good thing being too puzzling. Because I enjoy teasing out clues and noticing things and making connections I put clues in my works so that readers can work things out for themselves, but I bury those clues, as one would do in a murder mystery, so readers have to be vigilant to spot them, and it's clear that those who have read my work just don't see them. With the SFs I don't think it mattered, as the mysteries were solved, but I think Fantasy1 suffered because I didn't make some implied things explicit.

As a minor example, with my Fantasy2 currently in Critiques, I specifically made a point of giving Berendt's full name in the intro which includes, inter alia, the names Anyar and Yahn, as a broad hint that the characters Anyar and Yahn who are talked of as third parties are in fact also aspects of him. I think I would have noticed that if it had been written by someone else, but I rather suspect no one else reading it has made that connection because (a) the names are buried inside his other names and (b) there's too much other stuff going on. And while the puzzle of his identity might be intriguing for some, it's also liable to raise too many WTFs and put people off.

So puzzles are good, but I think they can be double-edged swords, and if readers don't know the clues to the puzzles are there, there's a danger of not being explicit for those who don't want complexity.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

You have to intrigue your readers, and puzzles are a great way. I think it's important that in at least some of the cases you (the author) don't know the answers yourself - allows the subconscious to work. (I do this all the time; admittedly, in a couple of cases, I never came up with a solution...) The past-master of all this must surely be Gene Wolfe.

 

[j d worthington]

It's certainly true of weird tales and horror/terror, which greatly rely on, in Henry James'* terms, presenting the reader early on with a mystery which the rest of the work develops and/or explains. (Some stories, of course, retain their power by use of ambiguity and ambivalence in resolving said mystery, allowing the mystery itself to intrigue and puzzle the reader, but at a sustainable level which satisfies emotionally, rather than leaving one feeling frustrated.)

*If memory serves

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I like laying a few questions and hope I pose interesting answers. I really enjoyed writing book three and seeing the trails leading back to earlier books.

I think Pat Rothfuss does this well by the way. Lots of clues, not so many answers.

 

[HareBrain]

As a reader, I like the puzzles being there but I put almost no effort into solving them. I'm happy to arrive at the answer when the character does. And sometimes, arriving at the answer is the first clue I have to the puzzle's existence. God I'm lazy.

 

[Boneman]

As a reader, I like the puzzles being there but I put almost no effort into solving them. I'm happy to arrive at the answer when the character does. And sometimes, arriving at the answer is the first clue I have to the puzzle's existence. God I'm lazy.

Ditto... I pays me money, I expects 'em to gimme the answer, not to have to work it out meself!

 

[Brian G Turner]

The longer I think about it, the more I think the concept of the puzzle underlines the structure of a lot of great genre fiction.

Who, where, why, what, how?

The trouble is, it's one thing to acknowledge it as a reader, but completely different when trying to apply it as a writer. I know the need to raise questions in the reader's mind, but I'm not sure on how to artificially construct them into a puzzle in its own right. Perhaps I'm not supposed to.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I'm writing mostly mysteries, so it's my job. I've always been keen on hidden things and finding clues -- I grew up with Encyclopedia Brown books, after all! And it's an absolute reflex that I look at odd names and read them backward to see if they spell something, and notice patterns and things that are off from what they would be by the ordinary rhythms of language, and thus catch anagrams and hidden messages. How did we get off of those in the 75, anyway?

All that said, people will now be sadly disappointed by my mysteries, as I'm not THAT dedicated and haven't hidden any clues in that fashion. That I recall, anyway. Oh, dear. Did I? That's what happens when one takes three or four years to finish a book.

 

[J Riff]

In Mystery, there is the 'locked room murder' subGenre? I think Bill Pronzini did some. Those can be fun, if you enjoy feeling like a genius/idjut depending on the outcome.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I'm not sure on how to artificially construct them into a puzzle in its own right

If writing, start with answers and write the ending and then create puzzles working backwards
Then fit that into an outline working forwards.

 

[Toby Frost]

I suppose almost every story contains a puzzle, even if it is just “Who will survive and how?” Certainly it’s a big incentive to read a novel. Sandy Petersen once described some of Lovecraft’s stories as structured like an onion: with each new episode another layer of the onion is peeled away, until the (mind-destroying) centre is revealed (and everyone is crying). I think one good technique is to tell a simple story from the wrong angle: “a daughter murders her father to inherit his will” is simple, but not if the body of the father is found at a family gathering where there are five other people with good reasons to murder him. The untangling of the real story will take up most of the action of the plot (and in doing so create another story).

 

[Brian G Turner]

The Harry Potter and Game of Thrones series are both great examples of stories as puzzles.

The first three Harry Potter books at least each contain a unique puzzle for Harry to face and solve - to the point where sometimes it can seem either very clever or somewhat convoluted. And, of course, there's the slow reveal of the backstory which itself presents additional questions and mysteries.

George R R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire contains numerous mysteries about how various details connect. Jon Snow's parentage is an obvious one, as is the origin of the White Walkers. But how the different house relate through their histories is also clearly set up as another series of puzzles that are slowly revealed (sometimes too slowly!).

 

[Brian G Turner]

And then, thinking about it, the basic format for any story is a puzzle: protagonist wants something, and comes into conflict with an antagonist trying to stop them getting it. Those are the pieces of the puzzle - they raise questions - but how the puzzle resolves into answers is something to hook a reader.

The trouble is, I can see this as an observer and reader, but have no idea how to apply it creatively!

 

[ErikB]

I think that human nature is one of question and answer. Trying to figure out who, what, when, why, how, and where are important parts of any story for the reader.

We get started with puzzles (questions) in stories as readers long before we start writing them ourselves.

Do you like green eggs and ham?
Well would you, could you in a box? Or maybe if you're wearing socks? Would you like them here or there? Etc...

As children we know green is not the normal colour of eggs and ham. We are curious though if Sam-I-am will give in and say he likes them under the right circumstances. We wonder if there is any hope that he will like them ever?

Then bam! He tries them and likes them. We get our closure. Dr. Seuss understood that we like to question things.

The same way we wonder about the success, motives, mortality, and end result of every book we read. Puzzles/questions are an integral part of keeping a reader involved.

They are vital to suspense, horror, and mystery writers. But I cannot think of many tales that do not try to place puzzles for readers to consider into their stories.

Good writing is about creating a strong interest in the work. There are few ways to generate more intrigue than with variable and well constructed questions and puzzles for readers to consider.

 

[Gonk the Insane]

I think there are almost 2 different definitions of puzzle here, albeit separated by a nebulous grey boundary. I'd say that your everyday puzzles - why's the character doing this, what's motivating them, how did they get in that pickle in the first place - are an aspect of conflict. They pose questions and the conflict's present in the delayed resolution of that question. Then there's the puzzle-as-a-story type of story, where for me that has been amped up and the puzzle(s) become more critical to the plot, as in the example of Harry Potter where solving the puzzle forms the crux or part of the crux of the storyline. Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem and Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief also spring to mind as these kind of stories.

The trouble is, I can see this as an observer and reader, but have no idea how to apply it creatively!

In terms of going large on the puzzle element I did it in my last effort. The story revolved around a guy in a remote prison in the middle of the desert, and my focus was less on seeing what happened when characters got loose, but more on the situation itself - why's he there, how did he end up there, what else is going on, etc. I deliberately limited locations and even number of characters to draw focus in on the situation, and the early part of the novel was all about that as opposed to, say, characters beginning a traditional quest. Perhaps that's an extreme way of doing it (part of it was to stretch myself as a writer) but I had a rather different mindset going into it and during writing than in, say, the previous trilogy where it was all about a quest with goals and the puzzles were of the more garden variety. So I think maybe framing a story around a puzzle/unresolved question is one way to go, if you want to go big on the puzzle element. But if you want more of the everyday puzzles... I think that's harder, and maybe hardest of all for plotters rather than pantsers. Because I don't have stuff plotted out I have all these holes, I guess you'd call them, where someone's long-lost mother could be anyone (or totally irrelevant to the story) and might be only later in the book that I see where that could make a big impact. Some holes I'll fill in as I go, others will bug me until I see where/how it best fits. Some of them will prove to be irrelevant, but usually one or two take the story down avenues that wouldn't otherwise have occurred to me. Of course, the down side of that is it can be frustrating when you can't figure out the "answer" to each of those little puzzles!