Anyone can pull a rabbit out of a hat, it's pulling a hat out of a rabbit that's the real trick. (OK, where is that from? It's a quote but I unremember of what...)
"But I believe it's possible to play fair with the audience and plant the seeds of your ending without telegraphing it to any but the most perceptive, if any at all."
It certainly is in text, good mystery writers do it, and in music. I'm certain that it is in other media as well. But it's awfully easy to cheat and use a deus ex machina ("What you failed to see, Watson, and I never pointed out to anyone else either, is that the dog had no nose which is why it didn't smell the intruder"), or especially in SF to suddenly pull out $tech-solution, and many authors do that. Asimov was very aware of that tendency and commented on it, his mystery stories (both the SF Wendell Urth and the non-SF Black Widowers) are very good at putting the clues into the story in such a way that looking back or re-reading they are obvious but they aren't to the first-time reader (or at least not to most).
"I never saw that coming (but I should have done)!" is a good reaction. "That doesn't follow!" is not...
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-07-12 10:59 am (UTC)"But I believe it's possible to play fair with the audience and plant the seeds of your ending without telegraphing it to any but the most perceptive, if any at all."
It certainly is in text, good mystery writers do it, and in music. I'm certain that it is in other media as well. But it's awfully easy to cheat and use a deus ex machina ("What you failed to see, Watson, and I never pointed out to anyone else either, is that the dog had no nose which is why it didn't smell the intruder"), or especially in SF to suddenly pull out $tech-solution, and many authors do that. Asimov was very aware of that tendency and commented on it, his mystery stories (both the SF Wendell Urth and the non-SF Black Widowers) are very good at putting the clues into the story in such a way that looking back or re-reading they are obvious but they aren't to the first-time reader (or at least not to most).
"I never saw that coming (but I should have done)!" is a good reaction. "That doesn't follow!" is not...