Film Courage: For any genre what is mystery in a story and why is it necessary?
John Bucher, Writer and Narrative Consultant: There's a certain amount of mystery that is
necessary in every story I believe and that is because we have to get the audience asking
questions. There has to be something they don't know. There's a classical saying in Hollywood
“Give me what I want and expect but give it to me in a different way that I've never seen before.”
And this is of course very common in what we see. We see one film or one story or one television
show that has a great deal of success and then we see lots of people trying to replicate the
way that that film or television show executed that mystery the way that they got people asking
questions within themselves we see others try and replicate that but I believe that mystery
in one sense speaks to what it means to be human since the beginning of the human experience we
have long long ask ourselves is there something Beyond us is there something bigger than us when
there's even the smallest element of Mystery in a story it speaks to that craving we have to know if
there's something bigger if there's something Beyond if this is it or if there's perhaps a
world just beyond us that's even more real than what we're experiencing right here what are ways
you like to build mystery in a story I believe that mystery is built in a story through raising
the stakes in a story often times storytellers will will attempt to build mystery in a story by
pulling the blocks of the audience's understanding out from under them as the story progresses that
certainly is one approach however audiences can become quite frustrated by that and perhaps get
more confused as the Story Goes forward with that approach so I believe a more effective approach
is to actually raise the story and moving towards mystery how do we raise the stakes in a story well
there's a couple of ways we can do that one is to compress time certainly when there's a deadline
for something that has to be done that raises the stakes and the character suddenly doesn't have as
much time to complete this task as possible which means they're going to become reliant on things
perhaps Beyond themselves because what they have accessible to them is not necessarily going to be
enough to accomplish what they need to accomplish so there's going to become a Reliance on something
bigger than themselves in the same vein another way to raise the stakes in a story is to compress
space the the place the story takes place in may be one way to do that but it's it's really the
walls of the story start slowly moving in on the character and again the character is going to have
to look for something Beyond themselves in order to find a way out of this perhaps the journey will
be within perhaps it's something within themselves they didn't know was there other times and this is
something Joseph Campbell talked about Campbell talked about the idea of Salvation from without
in other words a character reappearing in the story or coming out of nowhere seemingly to help
and bring a solution that we didn't see possible this also is I think speaks to our desire for when
we find ourselves in the tightest of situations believing that maybe somewhere out there something
is going to come in and save us and provide that solution that we've been looking for is
every protagonist a detective every protagonist shares qualities of a detective they are searching
for something it may be that they're searching for something that exists in the world and it
may be a very external search and it may be that they're searching for something within themselves
it may be that that they're trying to locate something within themselves that they know is
there but they've never been able to access it it may be that they're trying to search for something
within themselves that others have told them is there but they've never been able to see it for
themselves whatever it is they're going to need clues in order to get there in the same way that
a detective needs clues in order to find what they are looking for those Clues rarely come without
another character bringing them to light it's so rare that a character will stumble upon Clues
themselves usually Clues come to the character through other characters not always but most
of the time it will be through introducing another character's energy or presence into the story that
suddenly A New Path opens up a new possibility opens up and when we find those paths and those
possibilities it begins to help us and solving the overall mystery that the character is trying
to solve so in a sense yes every protagonist is a detective though what they search for may
be radically different and how they go about searching for it certainly will be different.