mancalledtrue | A Brian Corvello Mini-Spork

This is probably dirty pool, but I’ll do it anyway. On a bulletin board called Pokemasters, Brian Corvello used to submit articles for its now-defunct fanfiction e-zine. Today, we’re going to see how one of them holds up when you put his own writing against it.

(Full disclosure: I used to write for the same e-zine.)

The article’s titled “Avoiding the Trap: Updating Knox’s Ten Commandments”, and right off the bat, the irony is suffocating me:

When an author writes fiction, any fiction at all, he must avoid one serious trap – writing a situation that is a cliché. A story that has clichéd situations is a bad story, for many reasons. But some writers can’t help themselves sometimes. They have a hard time coming up with things that are completely fresh, and often wind up with situations that are essentially old wine in new bottles.

As we’ve seen, “old wine in new bottles” could sum up Brian’s entire oeuvre. It’s not as obvious in “Operation: P.O.W.E.R.P.U.F.F.” as it will be when we get to his Yu-Gi-Oh work, but the man is a serious victim of self-repetition and cliché. If I put several of his stories side-by-side you could probably see where he did a minimal rewrite in at least three.

This sentiment was well known to a British writer named Ronald Knox, a Catholic priest and mystery writer who lived in the early 20th century. He was a member of the Detection Club, a group that included such well-known mystery authors as Agatha Christie, E.C. Bentley, G.K. Chesterson, and Dorothy Sayers. Novels he wrote include The Viaduct Murder, Double Cross Purposes, and Still Dead

Knox disliked clichéd material, so as a nod to his being a Catholic priest, he published The Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction. This list, unfortunately, is somewhat outdated today, but we can still apply it to modern writing.

He’s also the least recognized member of that group, with the possible exception of Mr. Bentley. Ironically, Brian mentions Agatha Christie – whose work I adore, but who, alas, suffers from much the same self-repetition issue.

So what did Mr. Knox’s list look like, and how well does it apply? Thankfully, Brian supplies it, allowing for me to give my own critique before we see Brian’s rewrites:

If you write such stories, thou shalt obey these laws:

1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.

Acceptable. TV Tropes calls this “Chekov’s Gunman”. Christie broke this rule at least once, but she made it work; it’s far too easy to bungle it.

2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.

Acceptable for “realistic” detective fiction – and frankly, I haven’t seen all that many worthwhile “supernatural detective fiction”. (Don’t give me Harry Dresden or the Nightside novels – those are as much detective novels as Lord of the Rings.)

3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.

Acceptable, on the grounds that adding more turns your story into a “Hey! Another secret passage!” story instead of whatever you wanted it to be.

4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.

Acceptable; your falling action and conclusion should not have a longer word count than your climax.

5. No Chinaman must figure in the story.

This is a little bizarre to modern eyes, but back in Knox’s day, the “mysterious, sinister Chinaman” was a ridiculously well-worn trope.

6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.

Acceptable, since freak accidents of luck get annoying really fast.

7. The detective must not himself commit the crime.

Here I raise a question, since, properly applied, it could work; and then again, this is probably off-limits for the same reason as the first commandment – WAY too easy to bungle.

8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.

Acceptable, and a rule far too often broken by Agatha Christie; TV Tropes calls the violation of this rule “the Clueless Mystery”. (See also: Detective Conan/Case Closed, where most mysteries are solved via clues the reader never saw.)

9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.

Let’s set aside that Watson was not actually an idiot, being made that way by hundreds of hack writers and adaptations. I posit that most detective stories would work a lot better if the Watson were eliminated entirely. (My favorite Poirot stories are the ones where Captain Hastings is absent.)

10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

Acceptable. If a twin is involved, making the twin’s existence a shock point is a really annoying idea.

Now, just by reading this list, you probably figure that all of it is outdated, and that modern fiction breaks these laws all the time. And you likely wonder what mystery fiction has to do with other forms of fiction.

Well, Knox had to be one heck of a writer to get into the same club as Agatha Christie. His Commandments are still useful, and can be updated for modern times, so long as you analyze them.

So, let’s take them in order…

“All of it is outdated”? The only rule that doesn’t apply to today’s writing is the one about Chinamen! What is Brian talking about?

And notice the arrogance displayed there – “He was a heck of a writer, but I bet I can make his rules a hundred times better!”

1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader is allowed to follow.

The second part of this rule is a very good safety tip for a mystery story. Knox is saying that the culprit’s thoughts should not be open to the reader, because thoughts concerning the crime could not be concealed if they were.

Set sail for the far shores, Captain Obvious!

The first part is a good safety tip for any fiction at all. The villain who is going to give the heroes the most trouble should at least be mentioned early. Even if the heroes only deal with his cohorts for most of the story, they should know what their goal is.

But concealing a villain’s goals makes for a useful device. What if the heroes and villain are actually after the same goal, and sabotaging the minions is actually harming the heroes? Better yet, what if the heroes, by stopping the minions, are actually advancing the villain’s goal?

Of course, if a hidden danger exists that is behind the most visible villain, this is okay. But, it must be handled with care. It should not come as a complete surprise at the end.

“Yu-Gi-Oh: Dark Messiah”. Sin. We knew the villain reported to someone, but Brian yanked the true identity out of his ass at the three-chapters-left mark.

Hints should be dropped along the way that, perhaps, the one whom the heroes are fighting is just a part of a bigger picture. That way, readers won’t feel deceived, and you don’t fall into the cliché.

Again, Brian’s pulled an even-greater villain out of thin air at the climax more than once.

2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.

Knox was a firm believer that in detective stories, the culprit should be human. He wasn’t opposed to fantasy, but he thought that such things were for other writers. The supernatural and almost-supernatural tended to ruin the setting of mystery stories. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle expressed this in Sherlock Holms’ epic case, The Hound of the Baskervilles where it was implied that the killer was a supernatural beast. In truth, it was really a savage, but very mortal dog, whose hellish appearance was obtained by phosphorous.

I’d say “Thanks for ruining the surprise!”, but after a hundred years, you have to work with the assumption that everyone knows this by now.

This rule may be useful in one regard – it is important to keep genres from spilling over into one another. If you want to do a crossover, fine, but make sure the genres match. (And before anyone mentions it, I’m guilty of breaking this safety tip. Possibly my worst fanfiction ever was a crossover where the genres didn’t match, and I’m not gonna provide a link to it.)

I referred to breakers of that rule as “World Staplers” in a list of fanfic author archetypes in a different e-zine article. For once, Brian and I agree. (I assume that he’s referring to the KND/Yu-Gi-Oh crossover fic he’s since pulled down.)

3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.

What Knox was concerned about was the fact that secret rooms, doors, and passages were so common in mystery fiction, they were almost expected, and they often were key to the most important clues.

Captain Obvious steers his mighty boat, the S.S. No Shit, across the heaving seas!

In more modern fiction, we can imply this rule to objects that turn up a great deal in such stories. Using old objects in new ways to get a point across may work. Take Hagrid, the groundskeeper of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books. His wand had been broken after he had been expelled, so he concealed the broken pieces in an umbrella, which made a makeshift wand. An umbrella that doubles as a magic wand is certainly unique, and Rowling could have applied the theme to a lot of similar objects. Go for the unexpected. Tired of old oil lamps that hold genies? No-one uses oil lamps for light anymore anyway. Maybe someone found something else that could hold a genie.

Never mind that trapping a genie in a lamp used to be a sign of incredible power, since djinni were one step below Allah as far as power went.

Anyone else amused that his only example is from a children’s book?

4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.

Possibly the worst type of cliché is the deus ex machina, the unlikely solution to a problem that comes from nowhere and rescues the heroes at the last minute. It seems like divine intervention whenever it happens, and says that God somehow favors the heroes of the story. Even if a miracle happens, there should be some reasoning behind it.

Says a man who writes heavily in Yu-Gi-Oh fanfics, where the last card that saves the day is ever-present. And he can’t even claim virtue of the setting, since he’s had cards literally appear by magic on top of his player’s decks a hundred times.

Also, that’s not even what Knox was talking about. He was talking about the device of “the untraceable poison” – where a killing is attributed to some bizarre, nonrealistic circumstance that requires loads of gobbledygook to explain.

The same thing is true for villains, however, which is what Knox meant by this rule. This rule may be a little outdated (modern fictions of all sorts use new chemicals and technological devices all the time) but there should always be an explanation for them. If an assassin uses a poison that only three government agencies know how to make, be prepared to explain how he got it. Even in the world of fantasy, you can only push the envelope of believability so far.

Well-said. And yet your villains often pull out cards that no one has ever seen before without a word about how they got them… To be fair, he does usually offer some explanation, but all too often they come out of left field.

5. No Chinaman must figure in the story.

This seems like a racist comment, but it made sense to Knox. In his time period, when a suspicious-looking Asian man showed up in a mystery novel, you could almost guarantee that it meant bad news. The stereotype was out of control in the literary world, and Knox had to include this to try to stop it.

Okay, didn’t think he would stop explain to it. Kudos for actually looking into why Knox would make such a rule.

In modern fiction, we can use this rule to make a good one of our own: Avoid stereotypes of all sorts. No-one likes them, no-one appreciates them, and they’re clichéd.

Good, good, that works…

This is why The Sopranos got so much bad press.

MAN CALLED TRUE HAS PERFORMED AN ILLEGAL OPERATION AND MUST SHUT DOWN

I’m sorry, but did ANYONE complain about stereotypes in The Sopranos? If anything, the show was praised for NOT being stereotypical in its presentation (even if all the characters were Mafioso, they made a point of establishing that WASN’T the norm…).

Of all the examples Brian could pull out circa the end of 2008, he picked that one?

On the other hand, if you include a character that goes completely against the established stereotype for his race or position, you may wind up with an interesting character.

Indeed… pity Brian never bothered. The only original non-Anglo characters Brian has written are stereotypes. (In the sequel to “Operation: P.O.W.E.R.P.U.F.F.”, he praises KND for the character of Maurice, which just puts more of a glare on how he’s never had an original black character.)

The same goes with locations. The Yu-Gi-Oh anime, for example, has long been centered in the fictitious Domino City, located in Japan (exactly which island, we don’t know, but it seems to be based on Tokyo in the same way Gotham City is based on New York). Most fanfic writers follow suit, and place Yu-Gi-Oh fanfictions in a Japanese setting. I went against this grain once with Dark Messiah, placing the whole story in New York City, but there’s nothing that says a fanfic using the Yu-Gi-Oh elements must be in any well-known location at all. In the anime world, the game that they play is globally known, so you can use any location at all, and not restrict yourself to the same old thing.

And that and “City of Souls” are the ONLY stories he’s written not set on some random island or in a virtual universe. Both are set in NYC. For bonus hypocrite points, he lives in New York City.

6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.

Another rule about the dreaded deus ex machina. It applies to heroes far more than it applies to villains. Heroes should earn their victories, and this plot device should be avoided at all costs.

Behold as the brave Captain Obvious pilots the S.S. No Shit along the crushing waves of the Sea of Duh!

7. The detective must not himself commit the crime.

Basically, Knox was saying that the hero trying to solve the crime should not be the one who committed it. It goes without saying that unless you are planning a story where the bad guy is supposed to be the main character, you shouldn’t reveal at the end that the hero was the one behind all the misfortunes all along. Even if he was doing something questionable in secret, there should be someone else behind it.

The S.S. No Shit cuts through the waves of the Sea of Duh, as Captain Obvious seeks his destination: The Island of Yeah, So!

People have played with this idea from time to time. There are stories I’ve heard of where the hero has a multiple personality, he doesn’t know it, and he has no idea that the person he is looking for is his other personality. (And that might make an interesting story, in fact.) Clearly, an outright case of the hero deceiving the readers should be avoided, but if the hero can be responsible for the villain’s actions while trying to stop them at the same time… Well, such a story would take a lot of work just to explain, and might be very original indeed.

Isn’t that the plot of A Scanner Darkly?

8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.

This means that anything the hero knows in relation to the current situation, the reader should know. The hero can still have his secrets, but if the readers don’t know vital information, future situations can be ruined.

Disembarking from his proud ship, the S.S. No Shit, Captain Obvious travels into the Island of Yeah, So in search of its chief settlement, Of Course!

In modern fiction, whether a hero keeps something secret from the readers or not depends mostly on when he intends to make use of it. For example, I write Yu-Gi-Oh fanfiction, and in a duel, even in the actual anime, it’s quite common for a duelist to glance at the card he has drawn, decide to save it for later, and not let the readers know what it is until he actually uses it. It’s usually something that will play a big part of the duel in a later scene. However, for more vital information (such as Misty’s reason for wanting to kill Aki in a recent episode), it was important that it be revealed as soon as possible (which it was, right when Misty confronted Aki). Basically, don’t save everything for the end – save for the end what’s meant to save for the end.

I’m… not sure who Misty and Aki are. Either way, this listing is, as my frequent stories of Captain Obvious should make clear, less rewriting the rules for the modern times than they are just restating them and trying to pass it off as his own work.

9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.

In other words, any character designated as a sidekick must not outshine the hero and save the day. This sentiment, of course, is ignored many times in modern fiction. (I can’t remember the number of times that Robin – any of them – has done something that Batman owes his life to.)

This may be a case when Knox was on the wrong track. The sidekick likely shouldn’t be less intelligent than the average reader, or the hero won’t survive. Harry wouldn’t have lasted to his third year if Hermione were on the level of most of the folks who read the books. Still, a sidekick shouldn’t eclipse the hero entirely, unless the sidekick is the true hero of the story. If that is the case, the fact should be established early on. And even the true supporting cast should not be thought of as expendable dolts. Heroes cannot do everything themselves.

As my statements above should make clear, this is one of those occurrences where Brian and I actually agree on something. But it doesn’t reflect well on Brian that his examples are from a comic book and, again, a children’s book. It gives this unpleasant image of Brian as a manchild.

10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

Ah, yes, the “twin-gets-someone-in-trouble plot device”! This has literally been used for centuries, ever since Shakespeare wrote Twelfth Night, and continues to the present day. A classic example of a clichéd plot. Practically every hero faces an “evil twin” of himself at one point (or more) in his career, and unfortunately, folks never seem to get tired of this situation. Sometimes, this specific situation may be necessary, but it seems to be used all the time.

It’s because “evil twins” provide a very nice way to contrast the hero as he is now from the hero as he could be if he had taken a different path. There’s a reason it’s a classic, Brian.

Basically, if any situation in fiction has been done as often as this one has (I can list a dozen off the top of my head) it’s a cliché that should be avoided. If you’re a good writer, you can think of something better than situations that have been done to death in other works of fiction.

So of course he’s used it at least twice.

The biggest problem with fiction is, as the years go by, more and more of it is produced, and it becomes harder to think up ideas that are truly original. With fanfiction, it’s even harder, as you are already using a pre-existing work as your base. The sign of a good writer is to think up something truly original.

The Ancient Greeks managed to sort out about thirty plots. Thirty. And a good number of them were only ever used in Greco-Roman drama. Pure originality is an ideal, not a practice.

Knox had the right idea. If he were alive today, he might update his Ten Commandments for the modern world of writing, and whatever he came up with might teach us a few things. After all, a writer who was accepted into the Detection Club likely wrote some pretty good stuff.

Or he managed to sell enough books in a certain genre.

As you can see, Brian’s nonfiction work is basically his fiction work, but in his own voice – repetitive, hand-holding, and rather smug.