The Mosquito In The Bedroom

You're dead tired. It's a summer night and you're sleeping with just a sheet over you. And that's too hot. You've just flipped off the light. The house is quiet. And then you hear it--the whine of a single mosquito in the bedroom with you.

Do you turn the light on again and hunt the blighter? Do you pull the sheet over your head and hope she can't bite through it? (It is a she. All biting mosquitoes are female.) Or do you just lie back and think of England?

I can think of few things more irritating.

Mimi on The Drew Carey Show was pretty irritating. She was everything I could hate in a character. She's unpleasant, unattractive, and just plain irritating. She was there by design. And in this design she plays a very specific role: She's an irritant.

Once I started looking for "irritants" I started finding them in different variations in a lot of stories. And I realized that I'd been suggesting them without knowing why.

In the case of Mimi, her job was to keep Drew from ever having a peaceful, happy day at work. The mutual animosity was intended to keep a ready reservoir of conflict at the ready.

And more than conflict, the irritant provides distraction.

Suppose you have some heavy exposition. Perhaps you've got an infodump you need to get out of the way. Your readers need to know a whole lot of stuff that'll make your next plot point make sense. Or that'll provide the several missing puzzle pieces your protagonist must fit together. Sure, you could have your hero attend a lecture and all the things s/he needs to know about whodunnit would be laid out in straightforward prose. But lectures are often boring. Just ask Ferris Bueller.

Just add a mosquito to the infodump. The mosquito will irritate one or both of the characters giving/receiving the info and they'll take breaks from lecturing or listening to try to swat the mosquito. Or try to avoid getting bitten by it.

Keep in mind that the mosquito is not a central part of the story, it is an accessory intended to provide narrative distraction. S/he cannot take over the story, and cannot side-track the narrative, but must merely provide some speed-bumps on the way.

Think through some of your scenes where you've heard there's not enough conflict, or that this scene is boring (but you know it's necessary to set up something else). Consider adding an irritant to the scene--an annoying, pestering distraction. Maybe a potentially violent boyfriend of the girl your protagonist is chatting up. Or an angry customer vying for the attention of the sales clerk from which your detective is coaxing some privileged information.

What you want to do is multiplex the various interactions. Just take the straight Q and A ping-pong match, and insert various Mosquito to A and Q to Mosquito interruptions. Don't divert your original course of Q and A, just add a lot of swatting and buzzing.

Sherly, You're Joking

I recently saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie. And I liked it. But not the way you're thinking. If you want to see a great action movie, by all means take in Game Of Shadows.

But the movie reminds me of a local restaurant called Twisted Rooster. They have on the menu a sandwich they call a Reuben sandwich, and it's a great sandwich with coleslaw and Russian dressing--but it's not a Reuben sandwich.

Game of Shadows is a cool Steampunk 007 movie. I'll buy Sherlock Holmes being an action hero, but he's not a spy--he's a private eye. And I'll buy into Mycroft Holmes being a gubmint official, but he's not a diplomat--he's a mathematician. The shaken-not-stirred character is cool, but not Sherlock Holmes.

It's someone else.

Just as Sherlock Holmes is not a Steampunk 007, Mycroft Holmes is not a Victorian M.

The considerable powers Mr. Fry brings to the role were significantly underused. When he played Jeeves to Hugh Laurie's Wooster, I saw the makings of an excellent Sherlock Holmes. The years and Mr. Fry's expanding waistline has made him into a perfect Mycroft, but he was used largely for comedic effect in this movie. He didn't really do anything significant--just like M does in your typical 007 movie.

I once had the occasion to know several cryptanalysts and cryptologic mathematicians. They manifested the very sort of smarts one would expect of the Holmes brother who went into mathematics. Sure, there's deep involvement in a nation's intelligence community, but it's an armchair sort of thing that you saw in the Tom Clancy stories where a roomful of analysts debate the significance of a radio intercept or a satellite photo--not the parkour-style chasing about that you'll see James Bond do.

I had altogether expect Mycroft to be heading the codebreaking effort against Moriarty's notebook, not Dr. Watson's lovely bride.

Other quibbles. Dr. Watson was mustered out of the military because of a war wound. In the canon he has delicate health, but in this movie he walks with a limp. A limp that goes away when he's dancing, or when he's running. Hmmmm.

Then there's Mycroft's nudism. It has comedic effect, but it's altogether gratuitous--unless you were wondering about Mr. Fry's middle-aged spread. Like wise Sherlock's aversion to horses? Where'd that come from? Arthur Conan Doyle had no problem making Sherlock an expert swordsman and boxer, why would he stint with horsemanship?

Moriarty is some kind of Lord of War (without the cocaine), and he's aiming to start a World War by sabotaging some kind of peace conference that reminds me a lot of a Star Trek episode.

Finally there's Rivendell on the Reichenbach falls. This is Rivendell.:

This is the Reichenbach Falls where Holmes and Moriarty have their final conflict:

 

Notice any difference?

I happened to like the Lord Of The Rings, 007 movies, Star Trek and the Wild Wild West, but I will never confuse them with Sherlock Holmes.