{"id":10715,"date":"2023-11-08T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-08T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10715"},"modified":"2023-11-07T16:06:18","modified_gmt":"2023-11-07T21:06:18","slug":"keep-it-short","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10715","title":{"rendered":"Keep it Short!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Falling behind in reading my Ellery Queen <\/em>and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazines<\/em>, I dashed ahead with the EQMM<\/em> November\/December issue<\/a> when it arrived. Both magazines always have a smorgasbord of mystery subgenres and crime stories, in such diversity it\u2019s hard to compare one story to another. My two personal favorites from this current issue were \u201cA Small Mercy\u201d by Alice Hatcher<\/a> and \u201cKit\u2019s Pad\u201d by David Krugler<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hatcher\u2019s clever story successfully lulled me along with domestic difficulties and relationship challenges to the point where I didn\u2019t see the big surprise coming. It takes a confident writer to trust that readers will buy into the misdirection so solidly that the tables can be turned on them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This list of tips<\/a> on writing clever plot twists starts with having authors put themselves in readers\u2019 shoes. It suggests that as a story progresses, authors should develop a list of possible directions a reader might guess the story is headed in. Then \u201cdiscard every one of them as a potential plot twist\u201d! If the author can readily think where the story is likely to be going, chances are readers can too. That\u2019s why Hatcher\u2019s distraction\u2014making me think the protagonist was solving one problem, when actually he was solving another one\u2014worked so well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So pleased to learn she\u2019s a fellow University of Michigan alumna! You may know her from the award-nominated novel The Wonder That Was Ours<\/a><\/em> (2018) or her numerous short stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In David Krugler\u2019s \u201cKit\u2019s Pad,\u201d Kit, a homeless man, or the politically correct \u201cunhoused,\u201d which he scoffs at, takes the unhousing dilemma into his own hands. He finds an empty house for sale that\u2019s not properly secured and camps out in luxury. But this pad turns out to be Grand Central Station for late-night visitors sneaking in and looking for . . .  something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story has a very satisfying ending that gets him out of the \u201cbrutal wind scuffing off Lake Michigan\u201d (there it is again, my home state). It\u2019s what experts call<\/a> a \u201cresolved ending,\u201d and it\u2019s also a happy one. And it\u2019s happy because Krugler has made his protagonist clever and likeable throughout. If a less appealing character ended up in the position Kit does, I as a reader wouldn\u2019t be satisfied at all!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krugler is a history professor at the University of Wisconsin, Platteville, and has written two WWII spy thrillers: The Dead Don\u2019t Bleed<\/a> <\/em>and Rip the Angels from Heaven<\/a><\/em>. His short story \u201cEvery Fire Wants to Kill\u201d was published in the August 2023 issue of Mystery Magazine, <\/em>in which a different empty house opportunity is seized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Falling behind in reading my Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazines, I dashed ahead with the EQMM November\/December issue when it arrived. Both magazines always have a smorgasbord of mystery subgenres and crime stories, in such diversity it\u2019s hard … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Two standouts it another noteworthy collection from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. How these two stories, especially worked for me (and why).","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,53,120],"tags":[2136,2137,610],"class_list":["post-10715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-criminal","category-short-story","tag-alice-hatcher","tag-david-krugler","tag-ellery-queen-mystery-magazine"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2MP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10715"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10718,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10715\/revisions\/10718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}