Patricia Highsmith - "Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction"

"Patricia Highsmith" av Jason Mecier

"I think gimmicks give flimsy entertainment, and one cannot expect intelligent readers to be amused by them. Many people who don't write and who don't wish to write can come up with gimmicks. They are simply trick ideas, having nothing, per se, to do with literaure or even good prose fiction, any more than practical jokes have. Some gimmicks are surprise endings; others a detail of medicine or chemistry unknown to the average layman which betrays or furthers the fortunes of the main character. Another type of gimmick is information withheld from the reader, quite arbitrarily and unfairly, until the end of the story or book. People who can't write very well can dress these gimmicks up in a bit of prose and sell them [...] They do not help much to give status to suspense and mystery writing."

- Patricia Highsmith, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction (s. 17)