{"id":69,"date":"2019-02-08T14:31:53","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T20:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cliffjohns.net\/?p=69"},"modified":"2019-02-08T14:31:53","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T20:31:53","slug":"the-technique-of-the-mystery-story-by-carolyn-wells-1913","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cliffjohns.net\/?p=69","title":{"rendered":"The Technique of the Mystery Story by Carolyn Wells, 1913"},"content":{"rendered":"<div dir=\"ltr\">\n<div style=\"font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000;\">\n<div>I finished reading <em>The Technique of the Mystery Story<\/em> by Carolyn Wells, 1913.<\/div>\n<div>Yes, that&#8217;s <strong>1913<\/strong>.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Wells wrote this when the mystery story was still comparatively young, but surprisingly, not much has changed in the last hundred years, from the chapter on getting mysteries accepted as literature, to the missteps and clich\u00e9s of the time, which are still missteps and clich\u00e9s. <span style=\"font-size: large;\">Her advice on writing mysteries is still good, if in some places more amusing than intended because of the intervening years (Don\u2019t have the butler be the murderer \u2013 it\u2019s been done to death).<\/span><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"font-size: large;\">What I found most useful to me was the history lesson, that is, her interrogation of the mystery writers and their protagonists who were popular at the time (and still important to read if you are a fan or a scholar of the genre), and a historical analysis of the changes in the genre from Poe to 1913.<\/span><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"font-size: large;\">This is a quality read. It\u2019s available on audio from Librivox for free since it\u2019s out of copyright, although the reading is done by chapter and by several people.) or you can probably find a copy on ABE books or the like \u2013 maybe even in the library.<\/span><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I finished reading The Technique of the Mystery Story by Carolyn Wells, 1913. Yes, that&#8217;s 1913. Wells wrote this when the mystery story was still comparatively young, but surprisingly, not much has changed in the last hundred years, from the chapter on getting mysteries accepted as literature, to the missteps and clich\u00e9s of the time, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cliffjohns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cliffjohns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cliffjohns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cliffjohns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cliffjohns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cliffjohns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70,"href":"https:\/\/www.cliffjohns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/70"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cliffjohns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cliffjohns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cliffjohns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}