Lady Adventure

Last 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?

Did you know that the Knights of the Round Table invented the pick-up line?

And thus Sir Gawain spake thusly, Ladye, in sooth thou muste be soore weried, for with michel fleetness of foote thou hast flied both toward and froward throughout min swefnes all the nicht!
-- "La Morte D'Arthvader"

Anyways, find this instructive tidbit and more in "When You Marry", one of those amazingly helpful efforts from the 50s and 60s designed to tell you almost nothing useful about dating, love, sex, and marriage: Love, 1962 American High School Style.

And go watch some MST3K while you're at it:

Are You Ready for Marriage?
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE RUBBER BAND?!

What To Do on a Date
Had this been an actual date, you would have been instructed where to go.