Something New About Mystery Stories That I Discovered Today
As I've been practising more and more awareness, I have become more and more familiar with the concept of stepping back from a perspective and seeing the perspective itself. Then stepping back from this 'seeing' perspective and seeing that perspective.
This is what happens everyday when my mind is going nuts thinking about what this one thinks of me, what happened that day, what will happen today etc. AND I suddenly then detach from the mind and step back. Then I am able to see all those thoughts as going on in mind - I am not thinking them.
In mystery stories, I think authors give you lots of perspectives including the top detective's perspective and a favoured perspective. It's not just the events in the story that they use, they use dialogues, they may even use words uttered by a very trustworthy person like a detective to create an opinion in the mind of the reader which makes him take at least SOME things for granted - just like we normally take it for granted that 'we' are thinking, not watching our thoughts.
So, for example, in Rebecca, the author made it look completely obvious that Rebecca was loved by her husband - that was only too apparent. So many people said it, the guy himself became all touchy when the wife was spoken about, he didn't even utter her name - it seemed obvious. Only, it wasn't true.
In Rebecca, of course, the perspective that was wrong was a very BIG, CLEAR one. In other stories, though, small things may be treated as obvious and all those small things may add up to big 'dead-end' sort of conclusions which can confound the reader.
Right now, I am reading (rather listening as it is an audio book) a book called The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne. It's a murder mystery and I haven't yet finished the book, so I don't know the solution to the mystery.
What I have noticed though is that not accepting anything as obvious and actually stepping back from the whole book itself and thinking why the author may have planted a certain line in a certain place - can help me crack the mystery before the detective himself. At least that's what I think.
Let me apply this method and see if I can do it.
This is what happens everyday when my mind is going nuts thinking about what this one thinks of me, what happened that day, what will happen today etc. AND I suddenly then detach from the mind and step back. Then I am able to see all those thoughts as going on in mind - I am not thinking them.
In mystery stories, I think authors give you lots of perspectives including the top detective's perspective and a favoured perspective. It's not just the events in the story that they use, they use dialogues, they may even use words uttered by a very trustworthy person like a detective to create an opinion in the mind of the reader which makes him take at least SOME things for granted - just like we normally take it for granted that 'we' are thinking, not watching our thoughts.
So, for example, in Rebecca, the author made it look completely obvious that Rebecca was loved by her husband - that was only too apparent. So many people said it, the guy himself became all touchy when the wife was spoken about, he didn't even utter her name - it seemed obvious. Only, it wasn't true.
In Rebecca, of course, the perspective that was wrong was a very BIG, CLEAR one. In other stories, though, small things may be treated as obvious and all those small things may add up to big 'dead-end' sort of conclusions which can confound the reader.
Right now, I am reading (rather listening as it is an audio book) a book called The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne. It's a murder mystery and I haven't yet finished the book, so I don't know the solution to the mystery.
What I have noticed though is that not accepting anything as obvious and actually stepping back from the whole book itself and thinking why the author may have planted a certain line in a certain place - can help me crack the mystery before the detective himself. At least that's what I think.
Let me apply this method and see if I can do it.
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