Melting plot

I haven't written in three days. This is the third day.

It's 37 degrees Celsius outside (that's about 8000 Farenheit, if I'm not mistaken), and I've hit a bump in the plot.

This is the bump:

Much-much later in the MS, my MCs will be confronted with four riddles. Throughout the action leading up to this point, I will plant enough information for the savvy reader to solve the riddles himself.

Thing is, I haven't made up the riddles yet. And now's the time to start inserting clues.

This riddle-making business is hard. Especially because I would like the riddles to Not Suck. Since I write historical fiction, I can't just pull stuff out of my arse either. (Did that offend enyone?) The basis for the riddles will be elemets from relevant mythology and legend. And I want to make those elements integral parts of the story, not add-ons.

So, "just write it, and go back later and insert the clues," doesn't quite work for me.

Or maybe I'm simply not funtioning properly due to it being 8000 degrees Farenheit outside.

Any thoughts? Advice? Instructions for making a Big Fan?

Anything at all?

Thanks

chaostitan said:

That would have been my advice.

Since that doesn't work for you, I say sit down and work out your riddles. Once you have them, writing should be smooth sailing.

Click to expand...

And here I was hoping for some quick-fix magic remedy. Why can I never find one of those?

I did it. It took me three days doing little else, but I did it.

Thanks everyone for your support.

Don't worry, Shifty, I had no intention of being funny. I said riddles, but I didn't mean riddles in the usual sense. There are no questions.

It's a Dark Age device: a number of cryptic statements. Each statement consists of elements taken from relevant mythology/legend/whatever a knowledgable person should know about. That each line is in fact a riddle, takes some figuring out in itself.

But then it gets easier, because the answer to riddle number one can be found within riddle number two; the answer to riddle two can be found within riddle three etc. I say easier -- easier to solve, maybe, but quite a pain to make.

The last riddle does of course not have a spelled out answer. And here's where one can get really clever, and make perhaps the whole 'poem' (i.e. all the statements together) be the answer. Or some such thing. This last riddle with its cleverness (and the misunderstanding it will lead to) was all I had originally -- it's sort of a pivot point for the story.

...Oh, and I needed to make the hidden-riddle statements function as an invocation as well, sort of a protection formula.

Rather quite complicated, all in all.

Thanks everyone, once again. Bouncing ideas here can be a good thing

I suck at riddles too.

When I said in my OP, "I will plant enough information for the savvy reader to solve the riddles himself", I meant 'savvy readers unlike myself'.

I never read crime novels, because I never have a clue as to what's going on.