I'm delighted to welcome Kristin Kisska back to SleuthSayers today with this guest post. It's perfect timing because today is a special day for her--publication day for her first novel! Congratulations, Kristin! --Barb Goffman
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Game
On
by
Kristin Kisska
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Credit-Lindsey Pantele Photography Thank you, Barb Goffman, for letting me take over
your Sleuthsayers’ byline today!
Picture this.
A diligent, twenty-something graduate student
sitting through her fourth lecture of the day, the statistics class, which had earned
the reputation for being the dullest required course for the degree. She’s two
semesters deep into her MBA program and wishes she’d had the foresight to skip
this one lecture. But with her notebook open and a No. 2 pencil in hand (this story
is set in the analog era, not digital), she waits for the bell to ring,
announcing the start of class.
But instead of yet another mind-numbing lecture
swirling with math terms like means, medians, and regression lines, the
professor introduces a topic that perks her up— game theory , a mathematical
model of corporate and geo-political strategy. This has been used to analyze
everything from the Cold War, mergers and acquisitions of global companies, privatizing
utilities (hello, Ma Bell), and even chess strategies.
While most of this high-level concept was beyond
this starry-eyed grad student’s mere human-level grasp of math, one of game theory’s
core elements resonated with her:
Every player (a) is rational, and (b) will
always make decisions in their best interest.
The element’s inverse truism is that if a player
does something that seems counter to their best interest, then the opponent
does not have complete or perfect information.
Spoiler alert. This grad student was me.
Let’s fast forward a couple decades (or three). I’ve
since traded my global corporate finance hat for my #SuspenseGirl author hat. Not
many lessons from my MBA days have helped me in my current career path, but I’ve
used this one element from that epic statistics lecture every single time I sit
down to write fiction. If all fictional characters were to behave
predictably, what fun would that be? Not much. I’d argue most readers crave the
chance to solve puzzles. If not, mysteries wouldn’t be the th riving genre they are
today.
When it comes to fiction—particularly crime
fiction—astute authors can use this game theory element to their
advantage. By layering in a character’s unexpected behavior, either subtle or
obvious, a crime fiction author can signal to the reader that new—surprising—information
will be forthcoming. It can elevate the reader’s experience by hinting at the richness
of the character’s as-yet unrevealed backstory:
Secrets. Relationships. Unresolved traumas. Character
wounds. Behind-the-scenes conflicts. Or even a deeper understanding of the
stakes involved.
Let’s consider the classic movie Star Wars. When
Obi-One Kenobi is fighting Darth Vader, the first-time viewer would expect Obi-One
to fight for his life. Survival is a rational, relatable, and universally
assumed goal. But for no explicable reason, when Obi-One sees Luke Skywalker
watching the fight from a distance, he surrenders by raising his lightsaber and
allows Vader to strike a death blow. In the moment, we (the viewers) are as
confused and shocked as Luke Skywalker. It’s not until later that we learn that
by dying, Obi-One could amplify his power for good because he becomes one with the
energy of the Force.
Or, as is in the case of my debut novel, The Hint
of Light , (published today!), the unconditional love of a mother toward her
child can make her actions seem irrational and unpredictable. In real life, over-protective
mothers are so common in society we’ve labeled them as mama bears, helicopter moms,
and even tiger moms, but these terms boil down to the same concept. The
maternal-child relationship can be so intense it can make people do very
strange things when placed under pressure. A mother, in an effort to keep her
child safe, can seem both irrational and unpredictable. And yet, when viewed
from the mother’s lens with her specific interpretation of events, her priorities,
and the options open to her, readers may understand the extreme choices she has
made.
We could carry this example one step further by also
challenging the first part of this game theory element—that all players
are rational. It’s not always a given. In fact, we have a thriving subgenre
called psychological suspense, which
depends on the concept of the unreliable narrator . But I addressed this
in another Sleuthsayers blog post, Deconstructing a Narrator: https://www.sleuthsayers.org/2020/05/deconstructing-narrator.html
Now, I have a little game theory homework for
you. What character in a novel or movie made a choice that shocked you? What new
information did you learn after the fact that made their choice seem reasonable?
PS - Let's be social:
Twitter @KKMHOO
Facebook - @ Kristin Kisska
Instagram - @KristinKisskaAuthor
Website - KristinKisska.com
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