Episode 60: Let's talk about mysteries

In today’s episode, Fable and the Verbivore dig into all things mystery from the art of building questions in your reader’s mind to the basic elements that make up stories within this genre.

Mysteries are intriguing to us as readers and we’ve found the study of the techniques that mystery authors use to craft their stories fascinating as writers. We start by breaking the concept of “what is a mystery?” free from its genre and explore the dictionary definition that says it’s “something that is difficult to understand or explain - a puzzle, an enigma, a conundrum, a riddle, a secret, or an unsolved problem.”

In this episode, we delve into how stories from all genres can contain mystery elements that create tension, uncertainty, and help the readers become more invested in finding out what happens next. We discuss how mystery writers are masters in strategies of misdirection. They cloak clues by hiding them in paragraphs of setting description, buried in lists of information, and quickly move focus away by directing the reader’s attention to character interactions where the reader is invested in the outcome.  

We also discuss examples of where books outside the mystery genre used mystery elements to great effect as in Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and The Magnolia Sword by Sherry Thomas, and how writer/director Rian Johnson intercut thriller plot beats within the who-dun-it film Knives Out to create a fascinating story that challenges the assumptions of what mystery stories can be.

We hope you enjoy this episode! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

The Verbivore references the dictionary definition of mystery which is “something that is difficult or impossible to understand or explain” and “a question that needs answering.” Some synonyms are a puzzle, enigma, conundrum, riddle, secret, or unsolved problem.

Fable and the Verbivore referenced many different resources and articles to prepare for this conversation. Here are a few that they found helpful:

The Verbivore references the YouTube channel Just Write’s video discussing how the Harry Potter novels serve as functional mysteries. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_Y0NFHNhgg

The Verbivore mentions a trick to have two outlines to manage your mystery and another to manage all of the clues (real clues, false clues, pivotal clues) and what your suspects are up to at any given point in the novel. There are several resources that mentioned this practice, but the YouTube video “NANOWRIMO / How to Write a Murder Mystery” by Rae Sterling was the most helpful and concise.

Fable mentions the 3 elements of mystery as discribed by Save the Cat! They are:

  • 1) The detective does not change, we do; yet he can be any kind of gumshoe — from pro to amateur to imaginary.

  • 2) The secret of the case is so strong it overwhelms the worldly lures of money, sex, power, or fame. We gots to know! And so does the Whydunit hero.

  • 3) Finally, the dark turn shows that in pursuit of the secret, the detective will break the rules, even his own — often ones he has relied on for years to keep him safe. The pull of the secret is too great.

The Verbivore references Rian Johnson’s subversion of the mystery genre in his movie Knives Out by purposefully adding in thriller elements and beats into his story. She doesn’t refernces details to keep from spoiling the movie, but there are several great YouTube videos that explore this melding of these story elements. Here are the links [Spoiler Alert]:

Books Mentioned:

Movies Mentioned:

  • Knives Out - Written and Directed by Rian Johnson

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Bethany Stedman