Some Details: Fast-Rope vs. Rappel

David Dean's excellent blog post, which provided important details for those writing about Catholic characters, put me in mind of some other information you might find useful.  And, naturally, given my background, these details tend to be military in nature.  But, I see a lot of military techniques used in cop shows, and sometimes evidently by real police, these days.  So I thought you might have seen some of these techniques, too, and that this info might interest you -- as mystery writers.

There are many places where a helicopter can't land, but people need to get off the helicopter and onto the ground below.  Thick jungles or forests are such locations, but there are others you might not have considered.  Think of the roofs of high-rise office buildings: they are often festooned with antennae that prevent a helicopter from landing.  Yet, a helicopter -- if properly equipped -- can put people onto that roof, or take them off.

When helicopters can't touch down, but need to offload personnel, two options are fast-roping and rappelling.  Fast-roping is faster than rappelling, but I've seen fictional law enforcement units using both methods on TV and in movies, so I'll cover both here.

FAST  ROPE OPERATION
Note the number of men sliding down each rope
at the same time. UH-60 Helicopter.

HELICOPTER  RAPPEL OPERATION
Note that there is only man per rope
at any given time.  UH-60 Helicopter.

Viewed from a distance, Rappelling and Fast-Roping from helicopters can look very similar.

In both cases, people slide down ropes that hang out of helicopters.

But the person rappelling is usually attached to the rope by a D-ring or snap-link, while a fast-roper is only attached by hands and feet.

A coiled Fast-Rope:  The eye-splice at
photo bottom is used to tie-into the aircraft.  

The ropes used by these two operations are quite different -- because they serve very different needs.

("Fast-Rope" can evidently be spelled with or without a hyphen, and even sometimes as a single word.)  A fast-rope, itself, is a thick hawser-type rope about 1.5 to 2 inches thick.  The ropes are pretty long -- 35 feet and 40 feet, I seem to recall.  With a few that were about 60 or 70 feet.  The number "78 feet" sticks in my mind as the greatest distance one can safely fast-rope -- though I may be wrong.

The rope needs to be thick, because the fast-roper needs something to hang onto.  As I mentioned above, the fast-roper isn't tied or snapped to the rope.  Instead, s/he gets down from the helicopter to the ground by grabbing the rope in gloved hands, and between boots, then sliding down the rope as if it's a firehouse pole.

Fast-roping uses a thick rope that the roper slides down,
similar to sliding down a firehouse pole.

Fast-roping is a quick way to empty a helicopter that can't land, because several people can slide down each rope at the same time.  Hence the name "Fast-Rope": a rope used to empty a chopper fast.

These fast-ropers are much better spaced (closer)
than the folks in the upper left pic.  Going out closer
means you get more folks on the ground faster.

On my old A-Team, we usually rode UH-60 or MH-60 Blackhawks (seen above) when we fast-roped, and would use two ropes to exit the aircraft: one per door.  As we neared the objective, helicopter crewmen would prepare to deploy the fast-ropes, while we gathered in two groups, one around each rope, where it hooked to the chopper.

Everybody would grab the rope, in a specified well-rehearsed order -- the top of each man's hands touching the bottom of the hands of the man holding the rope above him -- ensuring no one's hands overlapped anyone else's.

When we hit the objective, the crewman dropped the rope coil out the door and leaned out to be sure the far end was dragging on the ground as the chopper moved slowly forward.

Simultaneously, our "doorman" would do the same thing with a quick glance (to ensure he didn't slide down the rope, only to plunge off the end.)  Then he would swing out and jump his feet onto the rope, sliding down.

As the doorman went out, the man beside him rotated around and dropped down the rope, followed by the next guy, and the next.  In this manner all twelve of us could descend the two fast-ropes, with our equipment, and be "weapons-up" in a matter of seconds.  Due to the chopper's forward movement, we'd hit the ground about 2 or 3 meters apart.

The ticket with a fast-rope is that the friction generated between your gloved hands, and your boots, on the rope, slows you down enough that you don't get killed or injured by the drop.  And that's A LOT of friction!  I saw a buddy of mine, who tried to fast-rope without gloves one time.  His palms and fingers looked like hamburger: horrifically blistered, torn and bleeding.  He had to wear serious bandages for about two weeks.  (To his credit, he fast-roped, wearing the bandages under his gloves, during those two weeks -- because it was VERY important.  But it hurt him like heck, every time!)

On the web, I've seen photos posted by knuckleheads who prided themselves on letting go of the rope as they descended, only to grab it again later, to slow their descent.  However, I strongly urge you not to let any fictional law enforcement personnel practice this foolish "showboating" in a story.

The fact is: the folks in those online pics are just Good-Time Charlies; they aren't carrying any equipment.  If they had been, and they'd let go of the rope -- even for just a moment -- they'd have been toast.

If you look closely, you'll see that the folks in the pics in this post aren't carrying any equipment either. Clearly, these are training photos, though I never did any fast-rope training in which I didn't wear at least my load-bearing equipment and weapons.

When I did this work, the U.S. Army did not officially permit anyone to fast-rope while carrying more than 35 lbs. of equipment.  However, 35 lbs. was just about the low-end weight of our load-bearing equipment, weapons and basic combat ammo load in SF.  When we added rucks, we could fast-rope with up to 50 or 60 lbs., but that really is about the top-end limit for safety.

I can think of a specific instance when 7th SF Group had us practice fast-roping with heavier loads, such as 75 or 80 lbs., and even more.  They did this for very good reasons, hoping we could find a way to fast-rope with heavier loads, by doing a good PLF (Parachute Landing Fall) when we hit the ground, to minimize the impact.  That much weight, however, resulted in quite a few injuries, which was how we came up with the 50 or 60 lbs. total equipment weight limit.  And, the fast-roper carrying that much, had better do a good PLF on impact with the ground.

The sad fact is:  You can parachute while wearing a 110 lbs. rucksack (I've done it -- A LOT.  It hurts, but it works.  Trust me.), but you can't fast-rope with more than 50 or 60 pounds of gear strapped to your body.  Well . . . you can, if you want . . . but the odds that you'll be in fighting shape after hitting the ground are pitifully low.

Common rappelling ropes.

Which brings us to Rappelling.

This guy has his brake hand on (right hand).
He's waiting for permission to go.

This person is in mid-rappel.

Rappelling is probably more familiar to you than fast-roping.  Even if you haven't practiced it, you've seen it in countless mountain climbing or adventure films, such as The Eiger Sanction.  Both fellows in these two photos are practicing standard repelling: off a wall (left) and out of a helicopter (right).

High-speed "Swiss Seat"
or "Harness"

In both cases, they're wearing very nice high-speed "Swiss seats" or "Harnesses" similar to the one seen to the left.  The "rappeller" hooks a snap-link to the D-ring on his seat, and runs the rope through the snap-link so that it wraps around it but can still slide through.  In some cases, s/he may run the rope through the D-ring, itself, though this isn't necessarily recommended.

Though this type of harness is nice, it's not necessary for rappelling.  Frankly, I always had to use a rope "Swiss seat" similar to the one in the drawing on the right.

To create this Swiss seat, you take a rope about five or six feet long, hold the center at your waistline below your navel and wrap the ends around your back to bring the ropes front again.  Then, you wrap the ends once around the rope, just forward of your thighs, and tuck the ends under the rope, bringing the running ends down between your legs and running them back up across the rump cheeks to come back up between your body and the rope around your back.

Now, squat down while you pull up on the two ends of the rope, tightening everything you just did.  (Men must take particular care at this point, to ensure the ropes do not cross each other, or the crotch area!)  Once your seat is tight, stand, while holding the ropes good and tight, then tie the ends together in a square knot (see pic).  The drawing shows the square knot tied below the navel, however I was taught to tie it off on my "off-hand" side.  (i.e.: Since I'm right handed, and hold my rappel line with my right hand as "brake hand," this brings the rappel line around my right side.  Thus, I "tie-off" my Swiss seat -- with the square knot -- on my left, to keep it out of the way of the rappel line when I'm rappelling.)

It's also possible to do a "Body Rappel" by passing the main rappelling line under one thigh and across the body and back, but I don't want to get into that because:

• It's too easy to describe it in a way that might put a practitioner in danger.
• Frankly, I find it quite uncomfortable, and would only employ the body rappel in an emergency.
• To get a look at roughly how it's done (for story-writing purposes) you're probably better off watching the 1986 horror movie House, in which the main character uses a body rappel method at one point, and you can see how it might work.

Some readers may have seen rappelling, but might not completely understand how it works.  So let's discuss it a moment.

Take a look at that the pic of the guy rappelling off the wall again (right).  His left hand, on the rope in front of his body, is his "guide hand." The guide hand doesn't really grasp the rope; it just lets the rope run through it, in order to guide the manner in which it enters the snap-link or D-ring.  This hand has little to no impact on the speed of descent.

His right hand, which is thrown out away from his body, is his "brake hand."  In this photo, he's in mid-drop: the rope is running freely through both his hands.  He bounded out from the wall when he threw off his brake hand, which is why his feet aren't touching the wall.  He's currently falling down the rope.

In this photo (left) you can see how the rappeller is completely suspended by the rope pulling up on his snap link.  Note the trailing rope that wraps around the right side of his body (left side of photo), and that his right hand is behind his back.

This guy has stopped, or slowed, his descent by moving his brake hand tightly up to the small of his back.  This action causes the friction of the rope around his waist, and the rope trapped against his back by his tightly grasped right hand, to overcome the inertia of his fall, slowing or completely stopping his descent.

When going down a wall, a person can walk, but more commonly they "bound" -- jumping out from the wall as they release their brake hands, zipping down the line, then moving the brake hand to the small of the back and swinging up the feet to meet the wall when they want to stop.

The person in the foreground (pic on right) is the "belay man." His (or her) job is to watch the person rappelling, and stop their fall if that person seems to suddenly lose control.  Belaying is accomplished by grabbing the rope in two gloved hands and running backward to put tension on it.  This tension binds up the rope, where it passes through the snap-link and around the body, and thus breaks the fall.

Rappelling off a wall is just like rappelling out of a helicopter except:

1. There is no wall to push off of.
2. Helicopter rotor wash -- the wind of the rotors pushing down -- will push the rappeller more quickly down the rope, making it harder to stop.

In either case, once the person rappelling hits the ground, s/he must run backward until the rope comes completely out of the snap link (or simply open the snap link and pull out the rope!) in order to get off the rope.  

Now, recall that "Belay Man"?  The reason you can't easily send more than one person down a rappelling rope at once, is that the weight of the person rappelling below would act as a belay, stopping or majorly hindering anyone trying to follow.  This is one major reason why fast-roping is faster than rappelling, when it comes to emptying choppers.

There are other types of rappelling.

The person on the left is performing an "Australian Rappel."  In this case, instead of creating a Swiss seat, that five or six foot section of rope is simply wrapped twice about the waist, and the snap link is attached in the center of the small of the back.

This person is using his right hand as brake hand, and he's got it raised as if about to put on the brakes.  You brake, in an "Aussie" by raising your brake hand tightly to your chest.

On the right, is a person practicing the Australian Rappel on the "free side" of the wall, where there is no wall beneath the platform you jump off of.  This is how you practice performing an Aussie from a chopper, when no helicopters are available for training.

As you can see, he's just jumped off the wall, brake hand held out to zip down the line until he decides to brake his plummet.

Note, from the photos above, that the Australian leaves the rappeller with a free hand that's not doing anything.

In this photo on the left, of South Korean police in action, you see that these guys are using the Aussie to bound/run down the wall of this high-rise, while holding weapons at the ready.  The Aussie also permits them to look where they're going, so they can engage any bad guys who poke their heads out, if needed.  The shield held by the man on the right side of the photo tells me this is probably a breaching team.  They plan to breach a window or door below, in order to enter the building from an unexpected direction -- preferably directly into the room occupied by the bad guys.








Rappelling can put good guys where the bad guys don't expect them to show up!I hope you found this useful.

I hope you found this useful.

See you in two weeks!

--Dixon

Break in Contact

Because of a shift in the blogging schedule, I took a blog vacation for a couple of weeks.  I neither read nor commented, and I hope no one minds. It was a good time for it, because my son started back into school (a new one) last Wednesday, my mother-in-law came for a visit (I like her quite a lot, so that's not the problem some might think it to be), and my older son's motor scooter broke down at the same time my jeep went on the blink.  Consequently, I've spent quite a bit of time acting the part of family chauffeur, lately, driving my wife, daughter and son back and forth to work at different times of the day (and sometimes pretty late at night).

I don't mind all the driving.  In fact, I've always enjoyed driving.  One of my favorite activities during my army days was driving trucks, sometimes with trailers, under difficult conditions.  I feel (and others have commented) that I handle a "deuce-n-a-half" in the field, the way other people handle a sports car on a slalom. A "deuce" is  a 2.5-ton army truck, for those who don't know, which means it can carry 5 tons of load when driving on standard paved roads, or half that load when driving cross-country.  And, a "deuce" excels at running cross-country.

In fact, you can even plow down small trees with one if you have to.

I know; I have.  When I had to.

No, all that driving hasn't bothered me.  And neither has the extra time spent with individual members of my family.  Driving my wife, or one of the kids to or from work is one of the few times I get the chance to speak with them alone, without others wanting my attention.  And that's nice.  It provides an opportunity to discuss personal things, to engage in conversations that might otherwise be difficult to hold.  And, my son's girlfriend sometimes tags along, and she's an English major studying creative writing at Arizona State, so we have fun conversations about writing.

I like the driving. I like the extra time with family. But I find it difficult to set and maintain any sort of schedule when my own schedule is driven by several other people's schedules. My wife is no problem: she goes in around eight in the morning, and I pick her up at five. My younger son is no problem either: he rides his bike to school in the morning, and I supervise his homework when he gets home in the afternoon. My older kids, however, both work part-time jobs that start and end at odd hours.  And they work rotating shifts, which means their schedules vary greatly from day to day -- sometimes even changing during the day.

All this mish-mash of schedules has me considering a very special problem.  One that's all my own.

The Fragility of Writing

I don't know if you have this problem.  I'm sure that some writers don't suffer from it, while others probably do.  I envy the former, and commiserate with the latter, because I find writing a very fragile thing.

Seems to me, there are different types of fragility, of course, just as there are different ways of interpreting the word 'fragile.'

My father-in-law, for instance, a retired postal worker, has been known to comment: "Ah!  There it is again, that word fruh-gee-lee.  I think that's an Italian word, means: Throw this hard at the wall and see if it sticks!"

I did mention that he's a retired postal worker, right?

While I don't know if it's true, I've heard that diamonds are difficult to scratch, but can shatter quite easily if smashed by a heavy solid object.  Something to do with their structure, evidently.

Other materials, such as steel, may have great tensile strength (essentially meaning they're hard to bend), but relatively poor compression strength (not standing up so well when smooshed).

For me, story writing has a very special sense of fragility.

Whenever I read about a writer who works as a successful  lawyer or doctor, is deeply involved in raising ten kids, plays semi-pro volleyball or something as a hobby--yet, has still managed to publish six thousand books and two gazillion short stories in multiple genres--I figure the following:

(A) This is someone with excellent time-management skills.

(B) This is not someone who finds story writing as fragile as I do.

I believe I've mentioned before, on this blog, that if I had my wish, I'd write behind locked doors with red and green lights above them.
I'd control which light was on with a switch: green if I'm not busy, red if I'm writing and need to be left alone.  Maybe I'd add an amber light for when I'm ruminating, casting around for a good idea or something that catches my fancy, ready to hit the red light when something gelled.  I'd stay locked-up with that red light on for as long as it took to complete a single work -- days, weeks, even months -- ordering out for food, cigars, soda, etc., and only coming up for air when the job was finished.

This isn't because I detest my fellow man, or don't like spending time with my family.  It's because one of the ways I find writing most fragile is through what I call "break in contact."  I might be chugging along, writing great stuff, knowing just where the train is headed--and if I'm left alone, I'll get there--but, if my work is interrupted, that break in contact, a time when I'm not engaged with the story, causes problems.

When I sit down to start back in, I often find I've forgotten key transitions that I'd already worked-out in my mind, as well as phrases that seemed perfect for upcoming spots.  Sometimes simply a key word goes AWOL in my absence, evading all my attempts to recall and employ it after my return, occasionally never resurfacing.  (This is most galling when I only recall the word while reading the final copy of the story, once it's been printed in a magazine, and I find myself lamenting: "Arg!  That other word would have been so much better there!")

I've tried writing notes to myself, or even outlines, so that I'll remember this stuff when I get back to my desk.  But I find this brings me up against another aspect of writing's fragile nature.

I once knew a writer who warned me not to ever "talk out" a story.  She claimed that if I got a story

© Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY 2.5

out of my head, before I got it down on paper (or into a computer, these days), I'd lose the inner drive, the need, to get it out again.  I think the idea here is roughly akin to letting the steam out of the boiler on a steam engine.  You might get up a good head of steam, but if you let it all escape through a stop-cock, there's nothing left to drive the engines.

I've found that if I outline a story, every important transition or phrase that I jot down opens a little stop-cock, letting off some of the pressure in my head.  It doesn't take many open stop-cocks -- particularly if they're open for awhile -- to make me lose what I need.  It's as if the motive force, driving my writing, just evaporates.

This is one reason why I often write late at night, or in the dark hours of the morning.  No one is around to interrupt me after they've all gone to bed, and -- after sometimes driving my daughter to work at 3:45 a.m. (she has to be there at 4:00), I have a couple hours to write before folks start getting up.

Except for our cats, of course, who -- for some reason -- seem to insist on being fed!  Then they want to come out on the balcony with me, so they can hang out on the window ledges and watch birds flit through the trees.  I try not to let this bother me.

I'm interested in hearing if any of you find your writing work to be somewhat fragile in nature, and what you do to address this problem.

See you in two weeks!
--Dixon

Have You Seen This Book?

PBY Catalina

I once read a wonderful non-fiction book about a man who flew early seaplanes -- including the PBYCatalina . Though, due to his nationality, I believe he called it a Canso in his book.

He didn't start out in a PBY, however. Suffering from malaise brought on by his experience as a pilot (fighter pilot, I think) in WWI, he bought a small second-hand seaplane. He also purchased a tent, packing it and his few belongings into this fragile, floating biplane built of canvas stretched across a light wood frame. I suspect the plane may have looked a bit like the one of those below.

This work was autobiographical, you see, and the man who wrote it lived in Australia or New Zealand. I’m not sure he was originally FROM that down-under portion of the world; he may have been born and raised in England, or one of the other Commonwealth countries. I’m afraid I just don’t remember. I read the book too long ago. But, I know he knocked-around there after the war.

He and his dog spent a few years flying that tiny, wood and fabric seaplane from secluded inlet to unoccupied small bay, around Australia or New Zealand, sometimes venturing to a deserted island or two. They’d fly in, and he’d anchor the plane off an empty beach, fishing for food, camping on the coastline, playing with his dog, staying for a day, a few days, maybe a week or two before moving on.
He rigged a rod on a spring, which he dropped down to hang vertically from the side of the fuselage when landing at night. He called this “my fishing pole,” and used it to gauge his altitude above the waves when landing during low vision conditions—not a stupid guy. When he needed fuel or foodstuffs he couldn’t scavenge, he’d land in a harbor and find work to supply the funds he needed to keep going.

His was a happy vagabond’s lifestyle during that time, chosen in order to escape the bonds of gravity, freeing him from the earth and worldly cares. An antidote to civilization, we might say. Though, to him—and I don’t believe he ever states this outright—I think it proved an antidote to the mechanized mayhem he’d witnessed on the battlefields of Europe. A sort of mental pressure relief valve, perhaps. He took the one, really good thing he’d gotten from the war: his knowledge of aviation. And he used it to erect a gateway to the rest of his life.

He and his dog bummed around the world down under, until he was approached by a fellow looking to build a new airline there. Then, he began flying for pay, charting flyways across the continent and to local islands, with his boss, later flying passengers and freight along the routes they’d laid down.

As I mentioned, I read the book several years ago. But, if memory serves me right, that airline job didn’t last too long, before he was tapped to fly anthropologists, geologists, geographers and other explorers among the islands of the south Pacific. His flying and navigational knowledge soon led to
his being asked to staff aircrews trying to set new distance records, or connect spots on the globe by air for the first time. I believe he even helped scout and establish the routes Pan American would use for their trans-Pacific flying boat service.

In truth: His writings came as an unexpected, and extremely pleasant surprise to me: an aviation book, written by an aviator, filled with technical information presented in an exciting manner, because this technical data was all part and parcel with the decades of flying adventures described in his narrative.

Over time, he found himself at the controls of larger, more expensive and more powerful flying boats, capable of covering much longer distance between refueling. I think he even wound up flying several of the early PBY models during this time, such as the aircraft in the photo on the left.

He worked with others, setting distance records, or making first-time flights between remote, tiny specs of land dotted among the vast enormity of the indifferent Pacific Ocean. An ocean known for devouring even the bones of many adventurers, swallowing them whole into its mysterious depths, leaving only a question mark to float through history. His was not a boring life.

When WWII came along, he volunteered for the air corps, and was stationed in Nova Scotia, or
Iceland, or somewhere like that, flying PBY’s on search and rescue and anti-submarine patrols. After the war, he returned to the south Pacific, helping to set records by flying between South America and Pitcairn Island and Australia—places like that at least. I no longer remember most of the details.

I recall, however, that at one point, while crewing a PBY on a distance record flight over the ocean, they suddenly ran into a problem. They couldn’t transfer oil from one engine to the other, and one of their engines needed more oil, or it would soon burn out. He pulled the short straw, and thus—in mid-flight!—had to climb out onto one of the angular struts holding the wing up. 

This photo shows the angular wing struts on the PBY pretty well.

There, he tapped that engine’s oil pan and filled a can with oil. Then he struggled back inside the fuselage, clambering back out on the other side to partially fill the other engine’s empty oil pan. This process had to be repeated several times, during the flight.

Can I vouch for the veracity of such an occurrence? How could I? I have no idea if such a thing would be possible. The way he wrote it, however, I could feel his sheer terror while out on that wing strut, frigid wind whipping his hair and clothing, making his eyes water, the vast unforgiving Pacific yawning far below his tightly grasping feet and hands as the wind whipped the oil everywhere, turning the strut slick between his fingers. Yet, he presented the information almost as if saying: “Well, you know, that’s the sort of thing you had to do back then. It was just a job.” In sum, I wound up believing his story completely. I don’t doubt it at all—impossible as it may sound.

I learned a lot from this book.

I learned that the way to look for an island in all that empty ocean, was not search for the invisibly small speck of land, but to look for the clouds that always rose up over land in the middle of the sea. These clouds were the flag that spoke of the islands below, and a good pilot listened with his eyes to what they told him.

So too, he knew the proper sound and feel of his aircraft, the way I know the sound and feel of my wife’s car or my jeep. When something went wrong, he could hear it, feel it through the controls, as if the plane were a living thing in his hands. He spoke of the gauges, and what they meant—usually when describing what he suspected had gone wrong with the plane, nearly always when they couldn’t land.

I learned that seaplanes, flying boats, can’t land on the open ocean. Not really. Not without running a high risk of coming to grief. The swells of the open sea are just too much for a seaplane to take, on landing. Instead, landing requires a bay or inlet, some stretch of water protected from such high seas, so the surface is calmer, flatter, smoother, giving the aircraft a much better chance of staying in one piece during the touch-down impact.

As I say, this book taught me a lot. But, much of it has fallen out of my memory over the years. And, now, I find I need this technical information he shared.

Unfortunately, I can’t find the book! The library I checked it out of, says it was almost never borrowed (a truly sad fact imho—It’s a glorious read!), so they sold it for probably around 50-cents. 

I’ve Googled and searched and tried library sites. But, I don’t know the title or author. I’ve even tried looking up the names of men who crewed aircraft on record-breaking runs in the south Pacific—all to no avail.

So, if you, or someone you know, happens to recognize the book I’ve described, and you can give me any info that would help me find it again, I’d really appreciate it.

You can just place the information in the comments section. I’ll have my notification button turned on.  So, even if you’ve stumbled across this post years after I’ve put it here, please leave me any info you have: I’ll get an email notification that you’ve posted here.

Thanks! And, I hope the rest of you have gotten some little something out of this post.

See you in two weeks,
--Dixon

Explosive Theory and the Impact of Romance on Mystery

by Dixon Hill

Four weeks ago, I posted here, asking what readers thought of mixing romance and mystery genres. I wondered: When do the two genres make a good fit, why does this happen (or not), and how can a writer mix the two genres to best effect?

Readers provided excellent comments, ranging the gamut of romance/mystery collusion.

• Leigh mentioned the difference between the concepts of a story categorized as ‘romance with mystery elements’ vs. one presented as a ‘mystery with romance elements’—a very large difference, indeed, it seems to me, particularly in terms of structure and emphasis, where writing is concerned, as well as readers’ expectations. 
• Fran and Janice pointed to a connection between the essence of dance and the essence of mystery—a concept that may, perhaps, be more important than it might at first appear—while Fran went on to provide an interesting “visual” in her comment. 
• Elizabeth gave us some excellent specifics, stating that romance and mystery elements work well together, depending on story characters and plot conflicts, as well as story arc, stressing the need for these elements to organically fit the story, serving the plotline, instead of being gratuitously tossed in.   
• An anonymous reader broached the subject of mysteries enjoying a romantic tension, even when the story arc doesn’t necessarily conclude with a Happy Ever After ending. 
•  And, C.S. Poulson, a reader I’d not encountered before, but warmly welcome, asked how the addition of romance to any well-written story could ever be a bad idea. 

Ms. Poulson's question surprised me, frankly, because it so closely resembled the question in my own mind, which had set me on this track of thinking in the first place.

A properly executed romance subplot should—at least it seems to me—provide added depth to the story and help us get to know certain characters a bit better. Surely, I’d think, injecting the protagonist into a romantic relationship of some kind—even if it’s never acted upon—ought to provide a writer with ways to illuminate aspects of the protagonist’s philosophy and behavior that might otherwise be difficult to mine in a mystery without this flavor.

On the other hand: 

While I’ve read many mysteries in which romance elements increased story depth and fleshed-out characterization, sometimes even raising plot stakes and ratcheting-up dramatic tension, I’ve also, unfortunately, encountered those in which romance elements seemed at odds with the mystery, breaking the mystery’s tension at inopportune moments or simply tripping-up the flow of the storyline.

Which is why I found myself asking almost exactly the question posed by C.S. Poulson, in her comment: I wondered how the addition of romance to any well-written story could be a bad idea, and why?

Looking for answers to this question, as well as wondering how to prevent the aforementioned problem, is what led to my last two posts, and this one today.

Explosive Theory and Romance/Mystery Interplay 

In my last post, I told you about an experience I had, in the army, experimenting with impromptu explosive sine wave modulation. These shock waves, created when explosives are detonated, manifest themselves as sine waves that travel through those items targeted for demolition. In fact, according to explosive theory, they are largely the force that does the dirty work: tearing steel girders apart, punching holes through reinforced concrete, or throwing dirt high into the air while creating large holes in the ground.

Sine Waves, properly combined,
can result in great beauty.

I wrote that post because, having ruminated about this subject, I’ve become rather convinced that there is a relation between what I view as sine wave modulation and mystery/romance genre interaction.  It's a simple truth that has undoubtedly been quite obvious to many of you reading this. I, however, hadn’t given it any thought before. And, consequently, the idea is new to me.

In short, it seems to me that success or failure in genre-mixing, in general, is not only concerned with points made by readers in the above-mentioned comments, but is also reliant on something I would call “genre harmony and resonance” and the resultant “amplitude modulation” incurred by the story’s dramatic tension.

That mouthful may be enough to make you cross-eyed, though your own experiences may naturally have led you to internalize the same idea, but couched in a very different manner. I tend to think in fairly mathematic or scientific terms, however, and therefor think it might be a good idea to express myself visually.

We’ve all seen drawings of story arcs, and these drawings come in many different versions:

These plot diagrams look rather blocky in nature.

 But, others seem to model along a curve, or general curve . . .

                                                             




 . . .  some of which tend to resemble sine waves or modified sine waves.

We've all enjoyed books or stories that employed mutiple layers of plot or depth.  One of the more complicated story arc diagrams I encountered rather closely resembled my own mental picture of story arc interaction within such a multi-level, or -- as in our case -- cross-genre, story:

And this mental picture, which existed in my head long before I ever found this diagram online, is what led me to think about successful genre mixing in terms of sine wave propagation.  Which, naturally (for me, at least) called explosive theory to mind, and made me remember that experience I had modulating sine waves at Ft. Bragg all those years ago.

In diagram terms, this is what the visiting blaster was trying to train us to:

(Example 1) Locate and time our explosive charges so that their resulting sine waves would cancel out.

(Example 2) Meanwhile, my friends and I managed to locate and time our charges so that the resultant sine waves piggy-backed on each other, thus increasing the sine wave's amplitude -- which got us in hot water with a couple of generals.




(Example 3) A more realistic example of what we achieved, however, probably more closely resembles this: The sine waves we created probably didn't quite piggy-back, being slightly out of phase (i.e.: the purple and blue waves are out of sync with each other), resulting in a sine wave (red wave) with increased amplitude, but not a sine wave with amplitude increased to the level we were targeting.


This interaction of sine waves, that are out of phase with each other (Ex. 3), or else in direct conflict with each other (Ex. 1), became of particular interest to me when considering mystery/romance cross-genre pieces that did not seem to work.

I'm still thinking about ways in which mixed-genre story arcs might be combined to create "sine wave" arcs of increased tension, or perhaps sometimes accidentally cancel each other out--resulting in reader disappointment.  I'm also thinking about how to properly locate and time disparate elements, within a single story that enjoys a mix of two or more genres, with their tension arcs arranged in proper phase.

And this question of Phase seems potentially crucial to me.  Sometimes, when sine waves interact, the result is a wave with perhaps a greater amplitude -- that wave is no longer regular.  It's no longer a sine wave.

As I explained earlier, I really don't understand music.  Don't get me wrong: I enjoy listening to it.  I like singing along, even.  But, I've never been able to truly understand it.  Which is why I'm a writer and not a musician.

On the other hand, I do enjoy dancing.  A LOT!  And, I also know that musical notes or tones involve waves, and that these tones may be altered by modulating the frequency or amplitude of these waves.

Another design created by sine waves.

Harmony and resonance are two terms most people probably identify with music, thus I believe we begin to see why the concept of interacive wave theory (such as the one I practiced that day on the demo range) and dance come into play here.

I used a dance metaphor in the pictorial portion of an earlier post, to illustrate my thoughts about the interplay of mystery and romance. This wasn’t a conscious decision my part. However, I’ve since come to think it may well have sprung from my unconscious (and not necessarily correct) understanding of the mixed-genre relationship.

I'm sure that anyone who constructed a book with all the pieces fully plotted on a graph would only succeed in creating something too static to appeal to most readers.

Literature is not math.  Yet, I can't help wondering about sound waves (which I understand ARE mathematical) that combine in harmony pleasing to the ear -- as well as the phase, frequency and amplitude of their component notes --wondering if this might help serve as a model for the preferable shaping of literary wave forms when combining plot elements or other genres.

While doing my research, I was surprised to run across site about perfume fragrances at http://www.indieknow.net/2013/08/a-beginners-guide-to-fragrances.html  in which "Lisa C." writes:  “Ever learn about a story arc? It starts off with your intro, leading to rising action, punctured with a climax and then falling action tying everything up in the conclusion (obviously there are more complicated arcs as well).

“Your perfume has a similar ‘adventure’ while sitting on your skin.  You might see the anatomy of perfumes' notes depicted as a pyramid, but I find I understand it better when I give my perfume its own story arc because your perfume is constantly in a state of evaporation and change while on your skin.”

Some interesting videos I found may be located at the following URL's.

 http://www.indiana.edu/~emusic/acoustics/phase.htm

 Discordant and canceled sine waves on this page: http://www.math.umn.edu/~rogness/math1155/soundwaves/ 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIuJTWS2uvY

Let me know your thoughts.

--Dixon