Published: February 15th 2025, 5:18:08 pm
Here is Remington's 7-Point Mystery Manifesto from episode 349!
Fair Play
Relevant information should be shared with the audience, nothing vital or necessary that the detective knows should be withheld.
Specialist information must be handled carefully, ideally shared with the audience organically without framing it clumsily as a major clue.
The Solution
The solution should be logical, yet surprising.
The solution shouldn’t be contrived and/or never in doubt (‘Never in doubt’ used here over ‘obvious’ because the obvious answer can be the correct one so long as the story makes you question it).
The Process
The audience should see the process of hypothesis generation, hypothesis testing, falsifying, making connections, following leads, and how/when to use resources.
Failure, dead ends, misleading/false interpretations don’t diminish the intelligence of the detective if the process that reached them was rational and sound.
The process should never be minor information -> major inference -> certain solution.
The Mystery
The mystery should have a special appeal to the audience, a reason why they’re interested. This could be because of high stakes for characters we care about, the satisfaction of unraveling a seemingly impossible puzzle (which must be particularly clever), it has thematic depth, or learning more about a compelling world/setting.
If the mystery exists solely to show how intelligent or impressive the detective is, it is a bad mystery.
Clues and Red Herrings
Clues should be logical. Any individual clue can (and should) have multiple possible inferences or deductions, but together they should point undeniably and exclusively to the solution.
Red herring clues should provide clever misdirection and be believable, but ultimately be either demonstrably faulty or explained away.
Red herring suspects/theories should be meaningful, alluring, and disprovable.
The mystery should still be compelling, fascinating, and ideally unsolved even if the audience sees through the red herrings.
The Detective
In many mysteries, "the detective" is the reader/viewer.
The detective should have a personality and character separate from being a detective, and this personality should inform/highlight how they go about their work, their strengths and weaknesses, their process, etc.
The detective should make active decisions to push the story and investigation further. These actions can be done quietly, subtly, or surreptitiously, but they must be taken.
The detective should not be the sole source of insight or understanding (having a buddy cop, assistant, or even untrained participant to provide fresh new perspectives, share knowledge the detective may not have, or challenge the detective’s assumptions/inferences is valuable and doesn’t diminish the detective).
Beyond the Detective
Characters should be distinct and interesting. Particularly important is that any relevant character, culprit, suspect, and/or red herring have strong, internally consistent motivations fitting to their personality.
Bonus points if the setting or circumstances are fresh and haven’t been seen dozens of times in every other mystery story.