Detectives are Backwards Protagonists
W e want our characters to be fish out of water. You must realize, of course, that I’m an expert on fish out of water. But that has nothing to do with writing. Often, when we look at the story structure we find that the second quarter of the story is when the protagonist is the most out of his element. In Cinderella this is when she makes her appearance at the ball. In Beauty and the Beast this is where Belle goes to live in the beast’s castle. It is always the case that we go from a character being within his element, but his element is killing him to him being out of his element and having to learn something to survive, or so it would seem. It’s interesting, but there is a whole class of stories that don’t follow that model. In fact, it is reversed. Look at the detective story. In the detective story, our protagonist begins as a fish out of water, but when the mystery appears he really hits his stride. The detective protagonist is too much for the ordinary world. Look at Diagnosis...