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shadydaveLast night, we went to see my cousin in the MTS production of The Thirteenth Chair. It's not a bad story -- a locked room mystery where the man holding a seance to find out who murdered his friend gets murdered himself while the lights are out, and the medium has to figure out whodunnit to clear her daughter -- but the execution was TERRIBLE. (Err, writing-wise, not acting-wise. Err, well, my COUSIN was good, anyway.)
Some tips for mystery writing:
-- Suspects: you should have more than one. And you can't just TELL us someone is a suspect without any evidence to that end. It's no good having a red herring if they couldn't possibly have done it!
-- Motives: suspects should have them. Also, you should inform the audience that the suspects have them, oh, before they actually confess.
-- Plotting: it's generally nice to let the audience know what's going on -- for example, revealing how a character knew what happened in a scene he wasn't present for, or how the murderer killed someone when they were allegedly unable to move. In fact, revealing information in general at a steady rate, as opposed to having the last two acts devoted to "Youdunnit!" "Nuh uh!" and infodumping at the very end to explain everything IN RETROSPECT.
-- Mystery Science Theater 3000: technically not the playwrite's fault, but The Dead Talk Back is totally ripped off from this play, which didn't really help with the quality control.
-- The butler: he should have done it, dammit. He had access to the locked room, freedom to move at the time of the murder, a motive, AND an ominous scene with a protagonist! This is four times as much evidence as we were provided for the actual murderer.
EXTRA CREDIT: Read The Thirteenth Chair on Project Gutenberg. In how many ways does this play go wrong? What would you do to fix it?
Some tips for mystery writing:
-- Suspects: you should have more than one. And you can't just TELL us someone is a suspect without any evidence to that end. It's no good having a red herring if they couldn't possibly have done it!
-- Motives: suspects should have them. Also, you should inform the audience that the suspects have them, oh, before they actually confess.
-- Plotting: it's generally nice to let the audience know what's going on -- for example, revealing how a character knew what happened in a scene he wasn't present for, or how the murderer killed someone when they were allegedly unable to move. In fact, revealing information in general at a steady rate, as opposed to having the last two acts devoted to "Youdunnit!" "Nuh uh!" and infodumping at the very end to explain everything IN RETROSPECT.
-- Mystery Science Theater 3000: technically not the playwrite's fault, but The Dead Talk Back is totally ripped off from this play, which didn't really help with the quality control.
-- The butler: he should have done it, dammit. He had access to the locked room, freedom to move at the time of the murder, a motive, AND an ominous scene with a protagonist! This is four times as much evidence as we were provided for the actual murderer.
EXTRA CREDIT: Read The Thirteenth Chair on Project Gutenberg. In how many ways does this play go wrong? What would you do to fix it?