Character arc for a detective?

I disagree. The detective and the characters you mention above do arc.

Look closely.

 

I think the short answer is: they can but they don't have to. I also don't think it much matters whether we're talking Mysteries, Police Procedurals or Thrillers. Lisa Gardner's profilers had an arc of sorts in Right Behind You. But I think that the fact that so many works in the genre are part of a series tends to militate against a discernable character arc for the mc. Susan Breen's Maggie Dove does arc in the first book of the series. It will be interesting to see what happens to her going forward.

 

Sir, you speak sooth. It's just that, all my life, when I've needed to know something I've bought a book about it (or as many books as it took). In my innocence it didn't occur to me for some time that writers would provide poor advice for other writers, but that probably says more about me than it does about them.

I did wonder quite why there were so many books about fiction writing that were penned by writers of whom I had never heard, but the final blow came when I bought a book by... well, he had better remain nameless, I suppose. Suffice it to say that it's one of the relatively few books that I have ever hurled with a certain venom into the dustbin. It was bad enough that every few pages I had to endure yet another paragraph of boring and irrelevant self-promotion, but the book itself was fundamentally unreadable. It was quite impossible (and I tried, heaven help me, I tried) to discern whatever meaning was intended to be conveyed, since the whole thing was additionally beset throughout by a seemingly-endless series of trivial and/or meaningless metaphors that had the effect of totally obfuscating whatever message the author was attempting to convey. Grrr.... That book was indeed the last straw, as far as I was concerned!

And the joke was, that the author of that book was supposedly writing about structure. (How sad is that?).

As you see, the result of my reading has been to leave me, if anything, more confused than I was when I started. Back to the drawing b... sorry the keyboard for me, therefore. At least I have plenty of experience of writing non-fiction that might hopefully get me through.

Hence my very sincere thanks to the good folk here who have helped to straighten me out.


@Siena

>"The detective and the characters you mention above do arc."

Really? Thank you, but I'm afraid I can't agree.



@EdFromNY

> "I think that the fact that so many works in the genre are part of a series tends to militate against a discernable character arc for the mc."

I'm sure that's a part of what is going on here. And so much *is* going on (what with genres and sub-genres and over a century of development of the mystery/detective story) that it's not easy to see things clearly without getting so specific that the ensuing debate would have to continue for some considerable time.

And we all have writing to get on with, right?

 

Nothing wrong with that. Might even be the most appropriate thing. A mystery detective's character arc might be that at the beginning, she thinks her mind is the only one that can come up with the solution, but by the end she accepts that collaborating with others is a better way to go. Conversely, at the start he might be tenuous, clumsy, and ineffective, but as the case is solved he becomes more competent and sure of himself.

That kind of thing.

As has been said, a noticeable character arc isn't an absolute necessity in the mystery genre, but in a longer work it's good if you can integrate one in. The point is that if you do, it should rise out of and influence the process of solving the mystery. Our hero's overcoming his deathly fear of cats is a pimple and a boil on the skin of the work if the case has nothing to do with cats.

Though I imagine some writers could pull it off . . .

 

I think I get it. Arc not strictly needed, but could be useful as an optional extra (fear of cats notwithstanding).

But seriously, thank you for a great summing up!

 

I wouldn't prefer that, but I read all fiction, including murder mysteries, as an examination of character. The murder in a murder mystery, for me, is just a way to highlight character.

Although...hmm. Y'know, it's entirely possible that one of the reasons that I like murder mysteries is because they provide a highly detailed snapshot of character. They show us who these people are, right now, in the harsh light of extreme circumstances.

Though that suggests that I still want an arc for the detective, because for him, the circumstances are likely to be business as usual. He doesn't get that harsh light, so I need him to be interesting for some other reason.