Writing & Publishing Small Town Secrets

[P.M. Turner]

So I've got a big one in the works, but upon telling my dad, he declared it very unrealistic and hard to believe. The last thing I want to do is spend any more time writing about ideas that don't work and which I will abandon later. (I've already been doing that for almost four years!) So I figured I would check in with you guys again. After all - you're the experts!

Here it is: let's say that the secret of Timber Gulch is that a well-beloved, upstanding member of the community has committed a murder. Or possibly murders. Not because he is truly an evil criminal at heart, but because circumstances forced his hand. I am absolutely aware that there are no moral excuses for murder, but work with me here. It helps if you've ever seen the Charles Laughton movie "The Suspect" (1944), because that illustrates my point perfectly. Taking it further, let's say there are a number of people in Timber Gulch who are in on the secret. They know, but they do not turn in said murderer, but rather protect him, because (to reiterate) he is a beloved citizen, and they don't want to see him arrested. This is the mystery at the heart of the story, and the one my MCs unwittingly find themselves involved with. Now, is this plausible, or is it merely ridiculous?

 

[Accord64]

I'm actually watching a show set in current-day Wyoming ranch country. One character got into a fight with another behind a bar (both a bit drunk). One guy said some awful things about the other's missing wife and things got heated. A punch was landed that unintentionally killed the guy who said those bad things.

The family helps to cover it all up and keep it secret. The perpetrator is a good man who lost his tempter when goaded, so you feel sympathetic. But the moral implications can't be overlooked.

So something like this can be done. Don't be discouraged.

 

[Leithia Juarch]

Oh, i have a story with a thread similar to that. I think it depends on the particulars, how it's worked out in the story, especially the themes and consequences. A bit of Crime and Punishment. He's a vigilante?

 

[Zee]

I think it’s plausible, especially if it happened out of town, so nobody in his small community actually personally knew the person/people he killed. They’d have a strong emotional connection with your character, but his victims would just be names in the news, at most.

It raises a lot of questions, and would have to be done with care, but I think, done right, it’s a believable storyline.

 

[P.M. Turner]

especially if it happened out of town, so nobody in his small community actually personally knew the person/people he killed.

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That's an interesting thought. Originally I had thought maybe the victim/s were just very nasty, unlikeable people (i.e. - a blackmailer??) which would also sway the townspeople's sympathy to the side of the killer.

It raises a lot of questions, and would have to be done with care, but I think, done right, it’s a believable storyline.

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Would you care to give some examples of maybe just a few of the most important questions that would need to be dealt with? What you're thinking may not be what I was initially thinking, and I'd much prefer to avoid any embarrassing plot holes.

 

[carolinamtne]

I think it's a very plausible plot line, especially in a small town. Write it and see what happens.

What were some of the other plot lines?

 

[Wes B]

I'm gonna suggest that a huge number of stories contain elements that are implausible or hard to believe. One of the storyteller's arts is to sneak them in so subtly that we don't recognize the implausibility as its happening. I mean, after all, if the readers wanted reality, they might just look out their windows, instead of getting a book... As long as the implausibility is entertaining, it won't break our suspension of disbelief, just so as it comes as a slow drip, rather than a deluge.

Now, elsewhere, you mentioned watching the entire Twin Peaks series. That's a shining example of not only turning the implausible into the acceptable, but embedding it into the zeitgeist. (When the show first came out, phrases like 'damn good coffee', 'damn fine cherry pie,' and myriad homemade variations permeated everyday conversation. (Everywhere!!!) The actual diner where the diner scenes were filmed became constantly flocked by tourists, stopping in for coffee and pie. And even tho their cherry pie wasn't homemade -- it was trucked in from a distributor -- they couldn't keep it in stock...)

Take a quick peek (or a twin-peek ) at the opening of the pilot. Everyone is just quirky. We all have quirks, so that just has a rustic sort of charm. (It only develops into all out weirdness, with time.) The guy who discovers the corpse keeps repeating the wierdly-pronounced, 'wreaaaped in pleaaastic1' He phones the police station, where the receptionist merely seems very scatterbrained. Agent Cooper comes in to investigate, and while he first seems a fish out of water, looking on in wide-eyed surprise at the quirkiness of the place, he's also his own sort of quirky. As he dictates into his little device, he conflicts an obsession with getting every detail right, against being distracted like a child by trees and comments that start the coffee joke going. we start out discovering the strangeness of the place along with him, but he gradually blends into the world, just as quirky as the rest...

And don't get me started with The Log Lady. She's maybe not actually a character as she's a story fixture, like the sawmill. Every small town seems to have one poor soul who's totally disconnected from reality, so she starts out as that person, and doesn't seem at all implausible. But she's an excuse to drop in weapons-grade weirdness, making such weirdness just part of the setting.



Good, memorable implausibility/weirdness is set up oh-so-carefully, with the charm of thoughtful decoration, rather than random bric-a-brac. Think the inside of a Cracker barrel restaurant, as opposed to the inside of a junky antique store. there's a similarity, but then they're nothing alike, at all.

If you described the weirdness of Twin Peaks to your dad, but eliminated the careful setup that made it a sensation, I'll bet he'd have shaken his head at that, too...

TL;DR... The setup is key. We're so hungry for a Good Story that we'll swallow almost anything, if you wrap it nicely enough...

 

[Zee]

Would you care to give some examples of maybe just a few of the most important questions that would need to be dealt with? What you're thinking may not be what I was initially thinking, and I'd much prefer to avoid any embarrassing plot holes.

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Well, for starters, I'd want to know exactly why the killings/murders were committed. Was it accidental manslaughter, or premeditated murder? If this guy, no matter how nice he appears, has committed multiple premeditated murders, I'm going to have a harder time believing there's a bunch of people willing to risk prosecution by the law into order to cover for him. Maybe just one or two people (close family members) would do it...but that's hardly a whole town's secret then, is it?

 

[Jared Williams]

here is an idea....

perhaps an outsider comes in - even better if it is someone big, like a government official working a case (like FBI or a state trooper from a big city or something) or a business tycoon who wants to buy up a region of the town for some sort of investiture and is forced to come to the city to "convince" some of the residence to capitulate to his company.

then you have a beloved but difficult personality like someone struggling with either mental illness or tremendous trauma (even better if the trauma victim is from out of state too, but who has very strong connections to the town)

Finally, you have an former convict who has turned his life around and is now a well respected and loved personality in the town who has taken the difficult personality with town connections under his wing. The business tycoon or government official gets into it with the difficult personality person - perhaps the business tycoon is the cause of some of the trauma or adds trauma in some way - and due to the illicitness of the act, no one knows the business tycoon or government official is there, then the former convict town person stands up for the difficult personality person and in the defense through self-defense and purely accidental, the tycoon or official dies. In the act, perhaps the former convict has broken parole or something like that, and has such a blighted past that it is agreed upon that no one in the big city would believe he is innocent - even more if circumstantial evidence makes it look really really bad (for instance a loud and public argument between them the day before or things like that)

then the townsfolks who support the former convict help him cover it up.
to further it, the townsfolk hide the fact that he is a former convict...perhaps have him change his name or perhaps he already did...


Of course, the book would start after all that has occurred....


just one idea. perhaps you can use elements from it? just what came to mind when I read your quandary.

 

[P.M. Turner]

you mentioned watching the entire Twin Peaks series. That's a shining example of not only turning the implausible into the acceptable, but embedding it into the zeitgeist.

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Excellent points, all of them, @Wes B but especially what I quoted above. "Embracing the bizarre as normal" is what I call it, and I love it.

Agent Cooper comes in to investigate, and while he first seems a fish out of water, looking on in wide-eyed surprise at the quirkiness of the place, he's also his own sort of quirky. As he dictates into his little device, he conflicts an obsession with getting every detail right, against being distracted like a child by trees and comments that start the coffee joke going. we start out discovering the strangeness of the place along with him, but he gradually blends into the world, just as quirky as the rest...

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Agent Cooper - or Coop, as his friends refer to him - is one of the most well-written lead characters I've seen in a very long time. He's idiosyncratic, yet charming, and also gives off a vibe of "Don't mess with me." He's good in a tight spot, loyal, and principled. Easily one of my all-time favorite fictional characters; I was rooting for him all the way.

 

[P.M. Turner]

Well, for starters, I'd want to know exactly why the killings/murders were committed. Was it accidental manslaughter, or premeditated murder? If this guy, no matter how nice he appears, has committed multiple premeditated murders, I'm going to have a harder time believing there's a bunch of people willing to risk prosecution by the law into order to cover for him.

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This requires longer and deeper consideration on my part, but thank you, @Zee !

 

[P.M. Turner]

just one idea. perhaps you can use elements from it?

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I'm sure there are elements within the idea you posed that would be useful to me! It's a fascinating concept, and I thank you for sharing it, Jared!

 

[BAMB]

have you considered that the person taken out had had something on the people of the town? Say he was a landlord or someone who held the liens against all the farmland around the town and businesses in town. Especially if you are making it a period piece and putting in the 1930's for instance. Your good guy is desperate because Mr. Scrooge, the bad guy with the liens, has just announced he plans to foreclose on all the deeds he's holding and then he's planning to raze the town to the ground to build a factory or something. Good guy struggles with him and accidentally kills him in front of others - maybe it was a mob that had approached the guy. The decisions is made to hide the body (or dispose of it) so no one should know what happened - the guy just disappears.

since he's just missing and not known to be dead, the banks just keep taking the payments from the farmers and business owners and it gives them time to pay off their debts before the missing lien holder is finally declared dead. And no one really is up to reporting the bad guy dead because he was cutthroat amongst his associates, so none of them cared enough to come looking and just spread rumors about where he might have gone.

IT could also set you up for someone like, say Bob Crachett who kept coming in to work and collecting things but wondering where Mr. Scrooge had gone to start looking. It could then set you up with the innocent but moral good buy Bob Crachett facing off against the town. Or Bob just hires a detective to go looking.

OH! I just thought of a movie that fits this theme perfectly! Look up 1955 "Bad Day at Black Rock" with Spencer Tracy. It has the exact theme you are looking for!

 

[BAMB]

so go watch Bad Day at Black Rock with your Dad then you can point to the tv and say "See? The story line has actually been used!"

Oh, but I will say you have one catch. The more people involved in a conspiracy, the harder it is to keep it secret. Which is why so many of these vast grand conspiracies about secret global networks and such become much less likely to be real. But such secrets are even hard to keep the more common, every day people you have involved. So you might not want the entire town knowing what happened and involved in the coverup; maybe a handful of hte prominent ones or similar.

 

[Jeff Potts]

So I've got a big one in the works, but upon telling my dad, he declared it very unrealistic and hard to believe. The last thing I want to do is spend any more time writing about ideas that don't work and which I will abandon later. (I've already been doing that for almost four years!) So I figured I would check in with you guys again. After all - you're the experts!

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Get an unbiased opinion from a potential reader.

The premise sounds interesting.