NEW PARIS BOOK IN PROGRESS IN 2024: SECRETS AND PUZZLES – Blog # 4.
I’m reminded that the best books contain secrets and puzzles. My New Paris Book – a fictional but auto-biographical novel – should have secrets and puzzles too then.
Why are secrets and puzzles so fascinating for readers. Is it because everyone likes to be ‘in’ on the secret – to know something that only the few know? I think it’s because people are a little bit nosey about other people’s lives. People like puzzles because finding a solution to a puzzle means that they have conquered chaos – they have restored order.
Can I add this knowledge to my new book?
Secrets: What is a secret? A secret is an information gap. It is the unknown. So, what new information does the main character in the novel know that others don’t? Or do other characters have a secret that the hero needs to know? That’s true of this new novel – someone indeed has the secret, the key to the character’s French dilemma.
Due to Brexit and the changing status of her British passport, she must leave France. Due to her mother’s health, she must go to Australia, but her Australian passport is about to expire. Due to the pandemic, there are global health warnings and global travel restrictions – she must stay in France. The information she needs – the solution to her dilemma – comes from an unlikely source. The French government information has holes and loopholes, and confusions and complications, but another portal has the solution. But, she doesn’t know this, and time is running out.
Who has the secret? Who is this insider? What price does the character pay to know this secret? What other secrets are out there?
Puzzles: People want the world to make sense. They want to conquer the unknown, find the anomalies and contradictions and inconsistencies, and to identify the gaps in their information. All this preferably with the minimum of stress and anxiety. And all the while, life goes on around them.
The sign on the wall in a Parisian street says it all: Ce n’est pas normal – This is not normal.
In solving puzzles, is the answer what the character was expecting? Does the answer lead to another dilemma? This is not expected. This does not fit with what went before.
How many more puzzles in life – in her French life – does the character face? Does the hero just retreat with a red wine; a good French cookbook, and read Julia Child’s 2006 memoir, My Life in France?
Does the reader gain information that satisfies them?
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