Literary motives?

[writera]

(I wasn't sure whether to post this here or in Brainstorming, but as I'm not planning on going into my own projects here, I thought it might make a fun, general topic.)

As some of you might know, I've been working on a literary murder mystery - and there's many mysteries set within the literary or publishing world. (Think of an episode of "Murder She Wrote" for example.) But it made me wonder - what would make some good literary motives? Primarily for murder mysteries but even for non-murder ones too.

Try as I might, I can only come up with two or three:

1. Plagiarism (someone copying/stealing someone else's book and it subsequently becomes a bestseller...)

2. An "in" contact promising someone something writing-related (to help someone write/edit/publish a book, get a publisher/agent) and not following through with it.

3. Going full-on meta and fantasy and having a writer wanting to kill their own character or a character wanting to kill their writer. (This one doesn't really count as I'm thinking more of motives in non-fantasy mysteries, but it's a fun idea.)

Beyond that, I can't think of any good literary motives unless you were to take more generalised motives (money, sex, etc.) and just put the players into a publishing industry (which does sound a bit like an episode of "Murder She Wrote"! That show often featured mysteries set in various industries and companies.) But I mean something really juicy, something really literary, something that has a real literary flair or theme... I'm stumped.

Another reason I didn't post this in Brainstorming is I'm not necessarily sure if I want to use a literary motive in one of my stories (I sort of have one in my current WIP but it's more of the MSW variety - generalised business wheeling and dealing applied to a book-related business). But I do have a second killer with a motive that could potentially do with a literary twist. Mostly, though, I like creating some of these food-for-thought posts and would like to hear everyone's ideas.

So - literary reasons a fictional character might want someone dead, or commit some other non-murder-related crimes?

 

[Woollybear]

Maybe that gal who wrote a murder mystery and it turned out she had actually murdered her husband. It seemed like she wrote the book ... as a way to avoid being investigated for her husband's death. Or something like that ... I never read past the headline.

I can't tell if this might fit or if it's opposite what you want. I'm stumped too.

 

[Mfraser]

Or, similarly, someone who is trying to work out a tricky plot (the perfect murder?) and decides the best way to find out if it could work is by going ahead and doing it?

 

[Lakey]

S.L. Huang’s novel Yellowface might give you some ideas. In that book, a writer steals a dead friend’s manuscript and publishes it as her own. Her motives for the theft are complicated, including envy of her friend’s success, desperation about her own career, and a dollop of racial resentment. The friend’s death is accidental rather than a murder, but it wouldn’t take much of a tweak to make it a murder instead. Moreover,

Spoiler

a junior editor at a publishing who loses her job after critiquing the protagonist’s actions goes to some lengths to scare the protagonist, and while she stops short of murder, it is again not a stretch to imagine her going that far.

Another literary motive I can think of — this one is more unhinged — is that a crime writer might kill someone to see what it feels like, to be sure he was describing it accurately in his books. The protagonist of Patricia Highsmith’s A Suspension of Mercy does not quite do this, but almost — he fantasizes about a murder, and buries a rolled up rug (fantasizing that there’s a body in it) to get a realistic sense of how difficult that would be to do. For his writing, you see.

Then, remember the Bad Art Friend discourse a couple of years ago? There, too, you might find motivation for murder. The accusation was not straightforward plagiarism, but something more amorphous and at the same time more visceral — a writer’s exploitation of an another individual’s own personal story.

 

[frimble3]

Someone in prison for murder, writing a book about 'another' murder, to throw shade on the real killer, or throw someone else under the bus as a possibility?
Or someone writing a mystery to demonstrate to a potential victim how easy it would be to kill them?

 

[GreenThumb]

Someone murders a writer who wrote a novel that's a thinly-veiled memoir about a criminal family? Or a writer accidentally or intentionally reveals a secret in their manuscript?

 

[Silenia]

Snarky critic harps on and on how a critical plot point is unrealistic and would not actually work that way in the "real world". Infuriated writer sets out to prove them wrong by re-enacting it in real life?

(Quite possibly not even intending to kill the critic (or whoever else they re-enact it on), just show them how wrong they are. Except it turns out the critic was right that [insert action] would have killed the protagonist, not left them with a minor ouchie for the love interest to kiss better...)

 

[Unimportant]

Embittered author gets their millionth rejection. Kidnaps publisher's kid as hostage and threatens murder to force book publication. Six figure print run and millions in marketing ensure strong initial sales but critics and readers alike massacre the novel in Amazon reviews.

Person, possibly family member of author, is convinced author modeled their stupid/evil antagonist on them. Especially if the fictional character has done something criminal that the real person actually did and thought they had got away with. Person needs to kill the author before they write the sequel that reveals the whodunit.

 

[The Black Prince]

One of these ideas is disturbingly close to the ms I've just completed.

I may have to "take steps" to protect my masterpiece...

 

[Friendly Frog]

You could do a lot of different things with having someone write something that someone else wants to keep from the light of day. It doesn't need to be a murder, or any other crime, maybe justa piece of what would otherwise have been obscure information. Like say, an historian translating a newly discovered scrap of paper and intending to publish it and the treasure hunter who thought he had the only copy and was using it to locate a treasure and doesn't want potential competition.

Or maybe someone's memoire in which the writer casually mentions meeting someone who shouldn't have been there, maybe because they're the criminal and this account disproves their alibi, or maybe because they are the victim and this account upsets what has been established in the trial.

Or just professional rivalry. They want to be the first to publish a find and they are willing to go to extraordinary lenghts to stop the competition. Publish and perish, rather.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch has a clever story cycle in which the Wicked Stepmother writes her own account (part two in the Charming Trilogy, I think) of what went down with Snowwhite because she's tired of being, what she considers unfairly, maligned.

Spoiler

Snowwhite disagrees and sues.

If you want something more rooted in the literary/publishing world...

Maybe someone has ghostwritten a book and either the ghostwriter or the employer (or both!) doesn't want this fact to come out. And maybe the paper manuscript with the reveiling name(s) was lost somewhere in the editor's sloppy office.

Or there is an important book being printed, and lots of people are trying to get a sneakpeek and aren't as law-abiding about it. That could lead to all sort of interesting shenanigans in the publisher's office or at the homes of the employees.

 

[writera]

Great ideas here all! Thank you.

I won’t go into my WIP too much here as this isn’t the Brainstorming section. I am open to some suggestions, but I also want to keep the thread general as well. Suffice it to say, the first victim in my WIP is a critic and the red herring is that everyone assumes someone killed him because he gave their book a bad review, and while there is some wheeling and dealing involving a book-related business involving the first killer, the real hidden motive for the second and primary killer is a family connection. If that second killer, a relative of the critic’s, also had a literary motive as well it might be a good idea to deepen the theme but I want to be careful not to make it related to any bad reviews (too obvious and already in use for the red herrings) and I don’t want it to be overkill either, so maybe something subtle. Literary and subtle … a tall order perhaps.

I remember some neat literary motives and red herrings in a novel called The Hellfire Club by Peter Straub. It’s worth a look if anyone’s interested in a literary mystery/thriller. It’s a few years since I’ve read it but I read it a few times. A novel that’s slow to start off with but gets increasingly more suspenseful and strange, it features a very cool literary retreat, a WIP from hell, a bizarre literary family, a long ago mystery involving a poet, and a popular Lord of the Rings-style novel that may have been plagiarised. Plus a serial killer and a road trip!

There’s probably more titles I can recommend but that’s just one off the top of my head that I really liked. I’ll have a think if there’s more that I can remember enjoying and if anyone has any more recs too, feel free to mention them in this thread!

 

[AnnieColleen]

The victim’s past published books haven’t done so well, and the killer hopes a high-profile death will cause post-mortem success they can benefit from.

Or the killer is furious with the victim for wasting their talents by doing something else instead, and things got out of hand.
Or they had artistic differences that got out of hand - particularly if the killer is in a position to then step in and finish a current project on behalf of their late friend/colleague.