On Distracting Fiction

People who think a lot, certainly us writers, usually devise ways to leave a topic alone for a while, so as not to worry too much or to gain perspective on the forest behind the nearby trees. 

Working memory tends to revisit what has recently been “in mind,” occasionally popping something out of the recent background into the foreground of active thought. However, that recall creates a new short-term memory on the topic, often overlaying the original —over and over. And so, the topic may not fade without the introduction of a distracting topic or task. To break the cycle  may require a distraction lasting half as long as the short-term memory process itself. 

Timewasters such as solitaire may suffice to dampen new episodic memory formation, but sticking with a good story is far more likely to keep your mind distracted for an hour. That means that one’s working memory no longer keeps automatically coming back to the worrisome topic, writing a fresh record that enhances easy recall. Unfortunately, this may also edit the memory via omissions, recall errors, or jumping to conclusions.  (At least, that's how I interpret the psychologists' memory studies of the last forty years.)

Immersing Fictional Frameworks

Good fiction is interesting in its own right, offering views of how other people think, examples where one’s reasoning, valid in most cases, doesn’t work sometimes. One jumps to conclusions, fooling oneself. Furthermore, detective fiction frequently upholds the ideals of justice via situations seldom encountered in real life, with characters who keep trying; they have ideals to uphold.

There are some tried-and-true frameworks for the serial fiction storyline, ones that readers find more compelling than others. The best-studied is the epic, a series of stories (Iliad, Odyssey, etc.) probably invented back in the days of the hunter-gatherer campfire:  those nine-part epic tales studied by Misia Landau (youth sets out on a quest, fails, returns, sets out again with a helper, survives a new set of trials and tribulations, finally succeeds and returns home, and so on12). They seem to have emerged in many cultures from the retelling of simpler narratives. These frameworks are frequently reused, a century later, with a new twist. And sometimes, a familiar framework is simply used as a training exercise, not intended for publication.  

The Arthur Conan Doyle stories about Sherlock Holmes have proven an attractive framework for modern writers. The Sherlockian template incorporates an 1880s setting in England, a rational-but-aloof genius who has extraordinary powers of observation, an educated sidekick who doesn’t connect the dots as quickly, a motherly landlady, a spymaster brother, a police inspector with unreliable superiors and, from the shadows, there lurks an evil genius managing a vast criminal enterprise.

The modern takeoffs from the Sherlockian template often add a very capable young woman at the center of the story who has modern ideas about women’s work and aspirations. One sees a feminist pioneer struggling in a traditional setting where chaperones are mandatory, divorce is rare, 'respectable' women do not work, and where they are seldom educated and thus assumed not to be competent at non-household endeavors such as managing an inheritance or a business, however good they prove to be at managing a household.

To this, a romantic element, missing in the original Sherlock series, is often added.  Some takeoff series invest a lot of writing effort in character development, where the reader gets some insight into the process of becoming so wise. They are far more interesting than the original Conan Doyle stories.

Sherlockian Takeoffs

Since I work on climate matters, I need frequent resets of my working memory to reduce dwelling too long on civilization's future (unless we act quickly, the prospects include a human population crash followed by a very dark age). And so I have sampled a half-dozen Sherlockian book series. Laurie R. King’s “Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell” series, about twenty books over the past thirty years, became my standard of comparison as none of the other Sherlock series came close. I've re-read the Mary Russell books a half-dozen times.

Now I have a second favorite in that class, Sherry Thomas’s “Charlotte Holmes” series of six books (her publisher persists in calling them the “Lady Sherlock Series” despite the lack of that honorific in the stories themselves). There is an extraordinary amount of character development for both major and minor characters.

There is no Sherlock in the cast; he is invented as a non de guerre in the first book, but only after a few chapters that read like a historical romance. In mid-conversation with a client, Charlotte leaves to consult with her invalid brother, who is said to listen from an adjacent room; she returns in a few minutes with a written list of observations about the client and some questions. Most of the cast are soon in on the secret.  Such are the strategies invented by women trying to gain entrée to male-dominated fields. My mother, in her song-writing phase in the 1950s, copyrighted a few songs under a male name, others with just her initials.

Dr. Watson is gone as well; he starts out deceased in foreign wars but his widow Mrs. Watson owns the building on Upper Baker Street and uses “Mrs. Hudson” as a nom de guerre. Watson's sidekick role goes a handsome aristocratic gentleman, Lord Ingram, who has an even darker spymaster brother resembling Mycroft. Charlotte propositions Lord Ingram a few times before briefly succeeding.  

Moriarty mostly stays off-stage until  Thomas's sixth book when, in the opening pages, he visits Baker Street and implores Charlotte to find his missing daughter, likely kidnapped by his lieutenants who have been trying to take over Moriarty's criminal empire.

In Laurie King’s series, there is substantial character development for Mary (she starts out only 13 years old, so there is a growing-up overlay as well). Eventually, her retired mentor Sherlock begins to change. Mary is usually the narrator, with an occasional chapter from Sherlock's point of view. In the Sherry Thomas series, many of the cast are given interior monologues filled with stress and doubt; we see them struggling to transform themselves. 

I expect that these two neoSherlockian series will provide templates that will replace the 140-year-old Conan Doyle template as frameworks worth imitating by future Sherlockian authors. I'd certainly be tempted to write a neoSherlockian takeoff myself, were I to need a two-month distraction and could not travel.

-WHC

 [1]  Misia Landau (1984), "Human evolution as narrative," American Scientist 72:262-268. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27852647