I have a problem in the stroy I'm writing. I have given my hero a clue and it's pretty vague. I need to find a way to give him the solution to let him move on to the next confrontation with the villains. Any suggestions?
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Hey! Just a quick word of thanks to all of you for your input. I think I've got it worked out now. Thanks again and God Bless.
Hey Mike,
When I first read your post I was going to remind you that visual clues can be used to literally force the reader to follow your trail of logic. The hero is reading a book signed Bigallo, next frame focuses on the fragment of a sentence...; you get the idea.
Then I reread your second post and realized that you trail of logic has four sequential associations; that's asking a lot of readers; unless you have a dedicated base of clue-sleuths, for example the fan base from xkcd (http://xkcd.com/ ) or you've got readers tied into your character and willing to follow them through a longer story.
One way to cut down the number of associations the reader has to make is to do a' jump forward' in the story, then have the hero monologue about he got to that point in the story. At the end of the monologue you then have the hero state, "But I'm still puzzled by...", and use that to guide the hero and reader together toward the next clue.
There may be some other characters that could provide insights. My hero is a high school student and his friends are on winter break. One of them could accidentally give him the insight he needs. What I have is one of the villains refer to meeting in "The Idiot's Junkyard". It's a reference to a renaisance era mathematician named Fibonacci, whose work is now coming into its own. He wasn't highly regarded by his peers and he often signed his work "Bigollo" which meant 'sojourner' or 'blockhead', another word for fool or idiot. In the story I'm writing, it's a reference to a company: Bigelow's Salvage.
Kevin D. Lintz said:
Are there any other characters who can provide some insight to your hero? It can be either deliberate like explaining it directly, or accidental, like maybe your secondary character says something offhand that make the hero think in a new direction.
Can you provide more specifics?