A couple months ago, I wrote a blog post making fun of Lost. I had watched the first season, but gave up fairly early into the second when it appeared the writers weren’t really going to answer anything. I know that Lost fans will disagree, so I offer the disclaimer: yes, I know that they kinda, sorta explained things throughout the show and kinda, sorta explained everything at the end. But that doesn’t mean much to me, because I had given up on it by then. My complaint was not that the writers couldn’t surprise us with an explanation, but that it didn’t seem like they were planning on it. It felt weird for the sake of weird. It didn’t feel like an intricate mystery; it felt random.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because I’m revising Variant and one of my editor’s comments is that we need just a smidgen more explanation/foreshadowing/clues. Not too much–we don’t want to give all the mysteries away–but we need more than what’s there. It’s like my complaint with Lost: I don’t mind a difficult mystery, but I want to feel like it’s going somewhere. I want to be assured that there actually is an answer, and I just need another clue or two before I can figure it out.
I’ve always been fascinated by the questions that never get answered, and I think there’s a fine balance between not enough explanation and too much.
Back in high school I read The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux, but when I think back on it I rarely think about Raoul or Christine or even the Phantom. Instead, my favorite part is a tiny section of Chapter 20, where Raoul and The Persian are venturing down into the depths of the opera house:
Then the Persian took Raoul up the stairs again; but suddenly he stopped him with a gesture. Something moved in the darkness before them.
“Flat on your stomach!” whispered the Persian.
The two men lay flat on the floor.
They were only just in time. A shade, this time carrying no light, just a shade in the shade, passed. It passed close to them, near enough to touch them.
They felt the warmth of its cloak upon them. For they could distinguish the shade sufficiently to see that it wore a cloak which shrouded it from head to foot. On its head it had a soft felt hat….
It moved away, drawing its feet against the walls and sometimes giving a kick into a corner.
“Whew!” said the Persian. “We’ve had a narrow escape; that shade knows me and has twice taken me to the managers’ office.”
“Is it some one belonging to the theater police?” asked Raoul.
“It’s some one much worse than that!” replied the Persian, without giving any further explanation.
And that’s it. That’s all we see of this “shade in the shade”. We’re left with the mystery: who could be “much worse” than the police, but somehow helpful to the opera? How is there a second mysterious figure lurking under the opera house, yet who is completely uninvolved in the current kidnapping and rescue?
I love this character–it works so well. First, it gives us an illusion of depth: there is much more going on below the opera than we previously thought–the phantom isn’t the only scary thing down there; he’s just part of a larger scary setting. And the unexplained mystery can be left unexplained: we’ll find out the phantom’s secrets in great detail, and our main plot will be resolved, but we’re not going to find out everything. Just like we talked about with Jaws, we’re not afraid of a big shark, we’re afraid of the unknown. So, even though the phantom eventually becomes known, there is still plenty of unknown to keep things creepy–and to keep us thinking and wondering.
On the other end of the Spectrum Of Unexplained Mysteries: Eric D. Snider wrote a great article about the film “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Anyone who’s seen the movie knows it’s cryptic and strange. The last time I saw it, I was about 14 and I don’t remember it making any sense at all. I’d be interested to watch it now and see how my perception of it has changed. In an interview, Stanley Kubrick, the director, stated that the mysteries should NEVER be explained:
How much would we appreciate La Gioconda [The Mona Lisa] today if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas: “This lady is smiling slightly because she has rotten teeth” — or “because she’s hiding a secret from her lover.” It would shut off the viewer’s appreciation and shackle him to a “reality” other than his own. I don’t want that to happen to 2001.
So, we have all these differing degrees of mystery: Lost, where it doesn’t look like we’re ever going to get answers, but we (kinda, sorta) do; Phantom of the Opera, where the main mystery is completely and thoroughly explained, but other secrets lurk in the background; and “2001: A Space Odyssey”, where no answers are given and interpretation is left up to the viewer. (And, on the other end of the spectrum, we have stories like “The Sixth Sense”, where you learn The Big Secret, and say “OH! Well, that explains EVERYTHING!”)
And I bring all of this up to say: I’m still struggling with this stupid balance between Too Much Explanation and Not Enough Explanation. This revision is going very well except for this last issue. I think my editor and I are going to be discussing this in depth.
What are your thoughts? Do you like mysteries left hanging? Or do you like everything explained? What are your favorite examples?
I’m with you in the mixed emotions category. I’m also dealing with that in my current WIP, but my problem is that I’m apparently giving away TOO much. Makes sense considering I love solving mysteries. Every last part of it. Sure I could guess if I wanted to make up my own ending for things. Otherwise I want to know what the author intended. Don’t just take me on the journey. Meet me at the finish line.
I should proofread my blogs more. It appears that I discuss a spectrum with three ends. Awesome.
(That’s just one of the many unexplained mysteries. Your welcome to go theorize about it on fan sites.)
I think I’m closer to the 6th Sense (although not necessarily to that degree always)–I love a good mystery where the answer is totally unexpected but the answer was also right in front of my eyes the whole time. That AHA moment is priceless.
But a little lingering mystery is always fun too.
(So basically, um, totally not helpful. I’m sure Variant will turn out awesome.)
Personally, I love the Rowling/Sanderson/Shymalan type endings, where these hugely mysterious clues are laced throughout the story and thoroughly explained by the end. It keeps my biting at the bit, turning the pages, glued to the seat to find out more! To find out EVERYTHING!
However, I do enjoy stories where the mystery is left unresolved. Several Poirot films have achieved this masterfully; the main mystery gets solved, but tiny, personal mysteries are left unresolved.
The film INCEPTION does this also (in a different way than Poirot)… but I won’t say how.
Another great article, Rob!
In college, I took a very interesting methodology class that made me think about this (my major was political science). On the one end of the spectrum were scientists who believe that human beings are like any other phenomenon–that their behavior can be quantitatively studied, analyzed, and modeled with near perfect accuracy. On the other end, however, were “scientists” who believe that human beings are fundamentally unquantifiable, that it is impossible to create a model that accurately models and predicts human behavior, and that any attempt to treat humans like any other scientific phenomena is doomed for failure because of this.
This concept panned out for me when I considered how I like my aliens in science fiction. There’s a big difference between the aliens in Alastair Reynolds’s Revelation Space, for example, and the aliens in Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin. In Revelation Space, you always get the sense that the aliens are knowable–that if we could gather enough information, we would understand exactly how and why they do what they do. Indeed, this is eventually the case. In Spin, however, you never get that feeling–we can know what they do, and a little bit about why they do it or where they come from, but we cannot fundamentally know THEM–there are mysteries within mysteries and elements about them that are so transcendental that they are beyond our limited human comprehension.
I actually prefer stories where there is an element of the unknowable, because these stories ring more true to me than the other kind. There is an element of the alien and the unknowable in everything, and the best stories, IMO, bring us to the threshold of the unknowable and let us gaze into it without losing our footing on this tidy little world as we think we understand it.
I don’t know if any of this makes any sense, but in short, my advice is this: if a mysterious story element is fundamentally knowable (like the identity of the killer in a murder mystery), I expect to have it explained by the end. OTOH, if a story element is fundamentally unknowable and established as such (like post-human transcendence in 2001: A Space Odyssey), while I might expect to have enough explained to me that I don’t get confused and lost, I feel that the unknowable thing itself should remain unexplained and mysterious.
OneLowerLight–
There was a panel at last year’s World Fantasy Convention that discussed that very thing. The panel was called How To Make a Monster, and they discussed everything from the standard supernatural villains (vampires, etc) to aliens to dragons. And the panelist were arguing about exactly what you describe: should monsters be understandable and, in some ways, human, or should monsters be completely foreign and unknowable.
One movie that I really loved (though I know many people who hated it) was No Country For Old Men. One of the major themes (SLIGHT SPOILERS) is that chance/luck/circumstance plays a significant role in life, and often you simply can’t find any larger meaning for why things happens. I think it’s fascinating that that message–the lack of meaning and understanding–is so painful and shocking to us. Humans crave explanation and categorization, and when we’re told that not only can we not understand something but that no explanation even exists, it scares us.
Anyway, I think this is turning into a blog post. Maybe I’ll talk about this more next week. Thanks for the discussion!
I am with you, exactly exactly.
Lost became dead to me early, right at “Polar Bears,” where as NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN had me, had me forever, at “Hit By A Truck.”
I just stumbled across your blog surfing link to link and I am enjoying it.
Thanks, Joshilyn! Good to have you here.