I'm going to assume that you already have an idea of what your mystery is going to be. So
we're not going to waste time thinking of ideas for a mystery. In this video,
I'm going to show you how to actually plot the clues for the mystery idea that you have.
We're going to do it in three stages. To make it easier to understand,
we're going to talk about writing mysteries as if we're finding and putting together
puzzle pieces. So, stage one. Suggest that there is a puzzle to solve. How can we be invested
in uncovering a mystery if we don't realize there is a mystery to solve in the first place?
It's like, how can we solve a puzzle if we don't realize there's a puzzle to solve?
So in this stage, we're going to make the character and audience aware that there is a
mystery to be uncovered. So what the question that you should be thinking about first is, how should
the character find the first clue? How do we make it an exciting and mysterious moment of discovery?
You've arrived at your hotel room. You sit down on your sofa, you turn on the TV, crack,
open a beer and watch football. Whoops, spilt my beer. It's all over the floor,
under the sofa. So you grab a cloth, you get under the sofa to wipe it up and while you're doing it,
you stumble across a puzzle piece. Hold on. This must be part of the puzzle.
Where are the other pieces? So now there's an urge to go looking around the room.
They find a single puzzle piece and they realize,
oh, there must be a puzzle here. There must be a puzzle box somewhere around here.
Where are the other pieces? The character should find the clue and realize that there's a mystery
to solve in a spontaneous and unexpected way. That gives us the magic of unexpected discovery.
The character is doing something completely separate. They weren't
looking for any puzzle pieces because they didn't know there were any to find.
And while they were doing something, whatever they were doing, they stumbled across the first clue.
Right place, right time. That's all. That is how the character finds the first clue.
They stumbled across it while they were doing something else.
I hope that sticks. So now he has to go looking for those other puzzle pieces, where they are.
And remember, they don't even know what the puzzle is or what it will look like
once it's all put together. They don't know how big this puzzle is either. They have no idea
how many pieces they need to find. 5 pieces? 10 pieces? 20? A million pieces? Who knows?
Now the character will start by going to the first place that they think that the rest of the pieces
could be. The puzzle box and the puzzle box is the place where all of the other puzzle pieces,
all of the clues, all the answers should be found. This is where they think the
answers should be found. But when they look there, they won't find anything.
This can be a person, or a place that they think will hold the answer that they need.
We find one piece first, just one, and then they go looking for the box.
It's the first place that they think the rest of the pieces will be found. Oh my. The box is empty.
And when they realize they can't find the answer there because the box is empty,
now they've got a real search on their hands. They're going to go search for
those puzzle pieces. Now the character goes looking around for the rest of those clues.
There are three questions that you can ask yourself. How does the character
stumble across the first piece? What were they doing? What is the puzzle box in your story?
And now where does your character begin searching for the rest of the clues?
Once they realize they're not going to find any in the puzzle box,
in the obvious place, they're going to go searching.
As they find piece after piece, that picture becomes clearer. Every time they find a piece,
they theorize what that picture could be and they might even test whether that could be true.
So, for example, in a detective story. Huh? That looks like this person. They go and investigate
it. If you want the story to continue, they are going to be wrong. So they're going to go search
for some more clues and they get a better idea of what the picture could be. When they find
some more clues they go, oh, it's not this person, it actually looks like this person. The easier to
find pieces will obviously be found first. Once they found them, what's left? The pieces that
are much more hidden and much harder to find. The more puzzle pieces that they do find, the harder
it becomes to find the remaining few. Eventually, they will be looking for the last piece.
And it's really difficult to find. They're certainly not going to find it on their own.
Usually, the focus of the character will no longer be to find the last missing piece. Instead,
the character will focus on finding a person who does know where it is,
which will point them in the right direction of the last piece.
Of course, that person or that place that is going to point them in the right direction is
also going to be hard to find. Stage three. The character will find the last piece to the puzzle
during this stage and they will solve the mystery. This is leading up to
the climax of the mystery. The reveal. There are two ways this can play out.
This can either be an anticipated reveal, which will be an intense suspenseful roller coaster
to its discovery. Or it can be a total surprise, which will be a plot twist. I'll explain how to
do both. The first way that this mystery reveal can play out is the anticipated reveal. So first
the character is going to have found out where this last missing piece can be found
through the help of someone else.
Then second, they go on this massive hunt challenge after challenge
solving problems, overcoming obstacles to get to it.
So the last piece, you're going to make it really hard to get to and the excitement comes from the
uncertainty. Will they actually get to it? We know it's here but they just have to get to it.
Are they going to get to this last clue? That's the challenge. Are they going to be
able to get to it? They finally get to the last piece. They finally finish the puzzle.
It will be a moment of clarity. And this moment will be an anticipated reveal because we knew that
they were going to find it here. They just needed to get to it. And we knew when they found it,
that that's exactly the right answer. That's exactly what we needed. Now, if you have decided
to write the final reveal of the mystery as a plot twist, as a surprise, it's very simple.
The character is going to think they have found the final piece, and then they go on this massive
hunt through challenge after challenge solving problems, overcoming obstacles to get to it.
That is going to make the character and audience believe that the mystery
has been solved and they have the full picture.
And they will only then stumble across the actual final piece by mistake. Oh. And that
is the unexpected plot twist. I thought this was the right one. And that means you're gonna
have to do everything I just said a second ago. Write this second to last piece as an anticipated
reveal. You will treat this second to last puzzle piece as if it's the final puzzle piece to solve.
Leave no room for your audience to think there is something that has to be solved.
The plot twist happens when the character stumbles across the actual final piece,
which changes the entire picture. What?! I thought we had solved the mystery.
This changes everything! And then we realize what the true picture is.
And we realize that the second to last piece was actually very misleading evidence.
We were pointed in the wrong direction. They connected to something that is not.
A red herring. Now I created a video called how to write red herrings. It was below standard.
Whether that video is still up or not, I don't know. But I'm going to do it again.
I'm going to do it properly like in this video. I only want to put out the highest quality
on this channel, especially these types of videos, the presentations. So look out for that.
It's going to be a real rollercoaster with twists and turns every single step of the way.