PLOT THREAD: Mystery

From Film Noir, to political conspiracy, to procedurals, to amateur sleuths, cosies, or Scooby Gang. Requires a lot of planning and then slowly plotting and reverse engineering when to reveal each clue to the reader. What misdirections did the criminal use? What clues were left accidentally?

At the heart of it a Mystery Plot Thread is a PUZZLE. Something to solve.

Mystery can show up as a subplot, how a scene is constructed, or even the “arc” of a character as you reveal their dark past. Mystery as an element doesn’t have to be a murder, it can show up in any thread, any genre, any story. A mystery inside/with an adventure could be finding the place. With romance, it could be the dark hero past. With thriller could be who set you up. With metamorphosis, it could be figuring out what an item, your newfound powers, or the magic does. Point is, you can have mysteries in anything.

When you’re creating a mystery… You want to stay one step ahead of the reader but play fair. (Thriller is when readers is one step ahead of the character). You want story questions with multiple answers. A string of clues that changes your perception of the question. Create the mystery, follow the paths of the killer and the victim and then the list of clues they leave behind. And then, start planting them. To conceal them: use misdirection, make the detective think they’re important but for the wrong reasons, or important but misread.

Mystery Plot Thread: Key Elements

• DETECTIVE: Often someone who’s “seen it all”, and often unprepared for what they find. Their surprise is our surprise. If epic character like Holmes, we have a Watson to be our “stand-in”.
• THE TRUTH: What’s concealing the crime. Who, what, when, where, why, how. The need to know. This is what you design first, and then tease apart all the clues and lay them out in various characters, places, and items for the detective to find.
• DARK TURN: The moment breaks the rules to expose the secret, their own or society’s. The hero is “too involved”. They’ve stared into the abyss and have become a bit of a monster too.

Mystery Plot Thread: Progress Bar

A SERIES OF CLUES. You’re turning over the cards. Reveals that explode like time bombs. Arc wise, as you go deeper and into the inner rooms, the abyss, the prot don’t find evil so much as themselves staring back at them. “Stare in the abyss”.

Mystery Plot Thread: Plot Beats

• STASIS: Sometimes a cold open. You might want to telegraph to the audience they are watching a mystery.
  • Showing the murder with the killer cleverly disguised.
  • Or start with a lot of motive by dramatizing why someone(s) might commit a crime. And maybe the crime is even dramatized but something goes horribly wrong.
  • Or dramatize a crime that happend long before the story’s present timeline and the start of the story is when the crime is repeated in the exact or similar ways.
  • Or flash forward to the murder, and most of the first half of the story is seeing what led up to the point of death.
  • Or the crime occurring. Or the victims discovering the crime. Point is, mystery doesn’t need to establish a ton of “stasis” as it’s about a crime that upsets the world’s status quo. You might show stasis if the world the story is speculative or not modern, for context.
• CATALYST: The detectives (cops, journalist, sleuth) is assigned, hired, called, or gets wind of the mystery (murder, kidnap, missing, runaways, unexplained theft/heist/robbery). In a noir, the typical dame comes to visit the private detective.
• B-WORLD:
  • They interview the victim, key witness, or the folks in charge of the murder scene (the company, the boss, the spouse, whoever). They’re unusually open or really cagey. They are the first suspect.
  • A rush of clues and progress on the case. Visit scenes of the crime, interview leads, follow trail. Find clues. Reenact the crime. Do CSI stuff. Find other leads to talk to. Find out all the “secret relationships” between all the side characters. Figuring out motive, means (weapon), and opportunity.
  • Readers get a survey of the power dynamics in this world. Or the start of it. Who’s in power, who answers to who, what “rules” are in place, and what you’ll rattle if you start poking this hornet’s nest. Maybe there’s a chase. You see a seedy underworld, subculture, or secret economy of how things work.
• MID-to-LOWPOINT:
  • After Prots make a little progress, they might face their first obstacle of a higher authority attempting to shut it down. Could be their boss, intimidation from the villain, or family telling them to not go down this path.
  • A secretive mentor appears to help them through the labyrinth the Prots got themselves into (Deep Throat, Mr. X). “Follow the Money”.
  • The clues dry up. Run out of leads. Stuck. Or the criminals raise the stakes (ask for more money, set a countdown clock, send a finger or horse head, kill a hostage, etc.) Or the detective is suspected of the crime.
  • The detectives start to play dirty or breaks the rules to keep the case going. Do something drastic/shameful to get an interview or access. They get a lifeline.
  • They get too close or they made a mistake somewhere. Someone is kidnapped, threatened, betrayed, double-crossed, misled to somewhere dangerous, get fired, get sued, or killed. Or they made a mistake and have to let the criminal go.
• CLIMAX: They find that one crucial clue right before they break into three. The case is broken open. They solve everything and must head into the final confrontation. Maybe the villain monologues. Or the detective does the parlour reveal. But the puzzle is solved.

Sources & Resources

• Snyder, Blake. Save the Cat Goes to the Movies. Michael Wiese Productions, 2007.
• Sanderson, Brandon, Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells, hosts. “11.23: The Element of Mystery.” Writing Excuses, season 11, episode 23, Dragonsteel Production, 5 June 2016, https://writingexcuses.com/11-23-the-element-of-mystery/
• Sanderson, Brandon, Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells, hosts. “11.25: Elemental Mystery is Everywhere.” Writing Excuses, season 11, episode 25, Dragonsteel Production, 19 June 2016, https://writingexcuses.com/11-25-elemental-mystery-is-everywhere/
• Sanderson, Brandon, Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells, hosts. “11.26: Elemental Mystery Q&A.” Writing Excuses, season 11, episode 26, Dragonsteel Production, 26 June 2016, https://writingexcuses.com/11-26-elemental-mystery-qa/
• “Lecture #2: Plot Part 1 — Brandon Sanderson on Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy” YouTube, uploaded by Brandon Sanderson, January 29, 2020, https://youtu.be/jrIogch5DBU
• “Lecture #3: Plot Part 2 — Brandon Sanderson on Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy” YouTube, uploaded by Brandon Sanderson, February 12, 2020, https://youtu.be/Qgbsz7Gnrd8

All other plot thread notes here