By Eric Weiss
Everyone loves a good mystery. Stories are just more fun when you don’t know what’s going to happen next – and the story doesn’t even need to be a mystery for that to be the case.
That’s the funny thing about mystery. For many people (and many bookstores), mystery is a genre unto itself. In fact, it’s one of the oldest genres – the domain of legendary figures like Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot – with tropes that are familiar to fans and non-fans alike (we all know the butler did it). Fantasy has magic and dragons. Mystery gets secret passages and Colonel Mustard in the Library with the Candlestick.
However, the appeal of mystery isn’t really about dusty attics and spoiled heirs squabbling over the family fortune. What hooks readers is the intrigue, and that can be translated into any genre when you know how the mechanics work.
So what makes a good mystery? And more importantly, how can you leverage those mystery elements in your own fiction?
Keep reading for 3 mystery writing ideas that go well with any story!
1. Keep a secret from the audience
By definition, a mystery challenges us with information we don’t know. Who’s the killer? Why did they commit the crime? How did they pull it off? There’s an inherent narrative pull, and we keep reading because we want to know the answers.
That structure can be just as effective in any other genre. If you ask the right question, you’ll give the audience an incentive to stick around for the next reveal.
Need some examples? A heist movie like Ocean’s Eleven isn’t exactly a whodunnit, but it is a howdunnit that opens with a very straightforward question: how will this team of misfits rob a casino? It then proceeds to answer that question with a series of partial revelations that don’t fully make sense until the end of the film. Similarly, One Piece is a swashbuckling pirate adventure, but fans waited more than two decades to find out why the D. in Monkey D. Luffy is supposed to be significant.
Just remember that a secret isn’t necessarily a twist – a surprise that catches the audience off-guard because they weren’t looking for it in the first place. That kind of trick has shock value, but it’s less useful as a hook because the audience doesn’t know it’s coming. You’re trying to give people a reason to stay. That means you need to tell them just enough to pique their interest in what’s coming next.
2. Give your character a detective’s journey
Jigsaw puzzles are fun because we like creating order from chaos. Mysteries have a similar appeal. The detective's journey is almost cosmically satisfying because it’s essentially a narrative puzzle – a story about an investigator looking at a bunch of seemingly random pieces and then arranging them to create a picture.
Anyone who’s ever solved a puzzle will immediately relate to that kind of character arc. The protagonist’s interest and the reader’s interest are aligned insofar they both want to figure out what’s going on, and that makes it easier to get the audience invested in your story.
That’s doubly true if the solution also helps balance the moral scales. A traditional mystery ends when the perpetrator is brought to justice, and it’s gratifying to know that their wrongdoings will be punished.
Try to take advantage of that desire for some kind of order. Ned Stark’s investigation of Joffrey’s lineage drives much of the action in A Game of Thrones, offering the promise that the Lannisters will eventually be called to task. Meanwhile, Macbeth introduces mystery in the form of prophecy. The titular character won’t be overthrown until Birnam Wood moves to Dunsinane. How, exactly, is a whole forest going to walk up to a castle?
Like most Shakespeare plays, Macbeth ends when the moral scales are balanced. A Game of Thrones subverts those expectations, but that subversion only works because George R.R. Martin has such a strong command of familiar tropes. The real world is full of loose ends. You have more control in a world you’ve created, and can tie everything off as neatly (or as messily) as you’d like when the truth comes out.
3. Give your characters something to hide
In a good mystery, the killer has something to hide. In a great mystery, EVERYONE has something to hide – it just doesn’t necessarily have to have anything to do with crime.
It’s ultimately about being attuned to human complexity. In a classic whodunnit, duplicity is the foundation of a good red herring. It gives the protagonist probable cause to investigate every character. Maybe the groundskeeper is cagey when asked about money. The protagonist discovers they’re in a mountain of debt, and concludes that that may have given them enough motivation to steal that precious diamond.
The thing is, there can be a completely innocuous explanation for that kind of behavior. Maybe the groundskeeper got swindled in a bad business deal. They’re working two jobs to pay it off, but they don’t like to talk about it because they’re ashamed of getting scammed.
At the end of the day, we’ve all got things we wish we could forget – things that we hide because it’s nobody else’s business, or things we hide because it would affect the way we get perceived. A detective with a drinking problem is a stock character in noir fiction, but it’s a habit that would rightly cause other characters to question their judgment if it came to light. That adds tension to the story, and improves your protagonist’s character arc if it forces them to confront their demons.
Either way, it’s a good reminder that there’s more to everyone than what you see on the surface. An unexpected motivation or backstory can give a character a richer personality and make their interactions with other characters far more compelling.
--
Check out our Mystery Prompts Expansion if you want help keeping your readers on the edge of their seats. You can also try combining with other sets to add a touch of the unknown to one of your tales!
