Analyzing Mysteries: Clues and Leads

Lately, clue pacing has been bugging me. If you are writing a mystery (like I am), how to you place clues? How do you decide when the detective finds the clues, and which clues she finds? How does this affect pacing?

I still haven't answered those questions, but as I was pondering this, I pulled out some outlines I'd made for two television show mysteries: an episode of Inspector Lewis ("Falling Darkness"--one of the most creepy and complicated episodes of Inspector Lewis ever) and an episode of Elementary ("The Leviathan"--not very creepy, but complicated). I compared them to see how the flow of clues/leads/suspects lead the detectives from the beginning to the end. And I made some interesting discoveries. In Inspector Lewis, there are several plot threads going at once. Lewis follows several leads at once, and the only connection the leads have is that they all involve the murdered woman. To contrast, in Elementary, only one lead is followed at a time, and one lead leads to the next.

I'll talk about Inspector Lewis first. First, I suggest you read this short synopsis (spoilers and all) of the episode (you'll have to scroll down to the bottom and push the "Read full synopsis" button). What I have to say will make more sense if you can compare it to the synopsis.

In this episode, the first half or more of the story is spent following several different leads--all of which are mostly wrong or red herrings. But the way in which the clues are found and leads are followed is a little bit scattered, as multiple leads are being followed at once. Here's a timeline of the leads (note: I made this out of the detailed outline I made for this episode, so it covers more clues than the synopsis. Don't worry if you don't know what clues it refers to, the point of this is to see the "pattern" in which the clues were followed and the fact that they investigate more than one lead until Mary Gwilliam's body is found.)

Laura’s friend, Ligeia, is murdered on Halloween night.

Vampire leads (garlic in the mouth and stake through the heart of body—dead ends, never brought up again.)

Stem cells.

Fridge letters.

Stem cells.

Psychic.

Ligeia’s ex and daughter (also dead end that never goes anywhere).

Ligeia’s boyfriend (he proposed, she ended the relationship=motive for him.)

More fridge letters (including "find Mary Gwilliam") and new murder.

Backstory connection to Laura, Ligeia, and house where second murder happened.

Charlotte gets questioned because she lives nearby.

Laura’s past.

Learn more about students at second murder house.

Consider Laura as a suspect.

Students’ suspicions and alibies (or lack thereof.)  

Boyfriend and stem cells--> reveal Ligeia’s boss’s motive (never brought up again.).

Gwilliam’s body found (tie in with fridge letters.)

Gwilliam backstory and clues.

More about students (two of them used to date each other—dead end).

Gwilliam connection to Laura.

Laura’s past.

Gwilliam and hospital.

Gwilliam’s past.

Psychic

Laura’s past.

Gwilliam's past.

Connection: Laura’s past to hospital where Gwillam worked.

Laura’s past.

Laura’s past.

Charlotte identifies one of the students as the guy who got home late the night of Ligeia’s murder.

Connection: the psychic was having an affair with said student, which is why he got home late (dead end).

Connect Laura to hospital-->learn about twins.

Figure out who twins are.

Twins are mentally ill-->tie in to their father.

Lewis gives explanation and conclusion. 

In this episode, anything that isn't Laura's past or related to Mary Gwilliam is a red herring. The stem cell research, the break up with the boyfriend, the psychic, etc. are all red herrings. Until Mary Gwilliam's body is found, Lewis follows several leads that are mostly red herrings. After her body is found, things start to come together.

In Elementary, only one lead is followed at a time. Sherlock finds one lead, asks questions about it, which leads him to the next lead, which leads him to the next lead, and so on. It's far more linear than Inspector Lewis. I'm going to do another timeline like I did for Inspector Lewis, so here's the synopsis for "The Leviathan". (Here's a more in-depth one, but that website has incredibly inappropriate links and pictures in the side bar.) A timeline of leads looks like this:

Crime is committed.

We get backstory on the previous robbery. 

Meet Mr. Green Stick

Sherlock examines crime scene and suggests it wasn't an inside job

Sherlock wants to find who did it in order to find out how they did it.

Sherlock visits old thief in prison-->thief says a dead thief sold info to a master thief.

Sherlock researches master thief, figures out who it is.

Sherlock goes to visit the master thief and spots a clue that proves they have the right guy, but said thief had a stroke two years ago and can’t walk, so it can’t be him.

Back to the original thieves-->only one thief went to trial, the rest took plea bargains.

Sherlock realizes that four jurors from the original robbery had the same skills as the thieves, and one is related to Mr. Green Stick

Theory: jurors copied original thieves.

One juror is murdered-->the stolen diamonds were at his house-->Sherlock's theory was right.

Theory: one of the other jurors killed him for the diamonds but couldn’t find them.

Another juror dies.

Collect DNA evidence on all previous jurors.

DNA doesn’t match jurors, but matches someone else-->she donated bone marrow to one of the jurors, so the DNA sample the cops used (saliva rather than blood) wouldn’t match (this is a factor of bone marrow transplants, don't try to figure it out, it's irrelevant to this exercise).
The jurors did it, crime solved. 

See how this was far more linear than Lewis? Sherlock started out with only one lead: the original robbery gang. From there, one clue lead to the next and there weren't very many red herrings (there were also a lot fewer plot threads). However, like in Lewis, they didn't start to really nail down who it could have been until about half way through the episode.

Some other differences between Inspector Lewis and Elementary:

• Lewis is a bit more omniscient than Elementary. We see things going on with the suspects that Lewis doesn't see. In Elementary, we only see what Sherlock or Watson sees. 

• Lewis puts more effort into developing the suspects and their secrets than Elementary does. This is the reason why there are more leads and plot threads. We get a much closer look at the suspects' lives in Lewis than in Elementary. 

• While this particular Inspector Lewis did involve a recurring character's past, it didn't have much to do with her overarching character arc. In Elementary, there is a side plot involving Watson's mother, which does add to the overarching relationship between Watson and Sherlock. 

So, what's the takeaway of this post? There are multiple ways to structure and balance clues and subplots and leads. How do you figure out how you should structure your mystery's clues? I haven't figured that out yet. What I did learn from this, however, was that I have the pacing of the mystery in my WIP wrong. At the beginning, when my detective finds out the suspect she was investigating didn't do it, it bumps her back to square one. This happens multiple times. I don't like that. It slows things down, and means that she rarely gets to deal with new information. In both Elementary and Inspector Lewis, when a clue leads to a dead end, there are other leads for the detectives to follow that are built on investigation they've done already. I need to figure out how to do that.  I plan on outlining some more mysteries (episodes of Poirot, Castle, and Psych, and the book I'm reading right now--The Season by Sarah MacLean), so hopefully I'll learn more.

What do you, fair reader, think of this? Have anything to add?

Plot Holes that Are Really Clues and Clue Timing

Lately I've been doing a lot of work on revisions, and I came across this one plot hole. Essentially, the insolvent estate my MC inherits shouldn't be in such dire straights.

At least, that's what my MC thinks.

In reality, when you look at the story more broadly, there are very good reasons for the estate's financial trouble.

So, what I thought was a plot hole is actually a clue that something is amiss and my MC is being lied to. This is a good thing. I'm writing a mystery; there need to be clues. This revelation got me to thinking. Sometimes it's okay if part of a plot thread doesn't make sense to the MC (or to the reader, for that matter). It's okay if the MC and her friends don't have an instant answer for everything. Because, if they're asking a question they don't have an answer for, they (and hopefully the reader) will be intrigued. Their curiosity will be piqued. And curiosity will pull a reader through the story (I read a blog post on this recently, which of course now I'm having trouble finding. Should I spot it again, I shall provide linkage.)

Now, that said, it is bad if I don't have an explanation. That is a plot hole.

The next thing I got thinking about was that now I knew that this thing was a clue and not a plot hole, would it give away who my villain is too soon? Only if I let it. I've got two options for dealing with this:
1. Let the villain lie and give a false explanation for the lack of funds that placates my MC for a short while, until she figures out the villain is lying. This explanation could also be unsatisfactory or throw suspicion on another character.
2. Put off the realization that there should be more money in the estate. She's busy, and maybe she thought she had an explanation for the lack of funds, then she realizes that no, her explanation doesn't work after all.
Bonus option: Do both. She doesn't realize there's an issue until I need her to (assuming I can pull that off without it seeming contrived) and once she does she asks about it and gets lied to.

I'm thinking I'm going to do both, then turn the story over to alpha readers and see what they think.

So, to summarize this post:

• It's okay if not everything has a nice, pretty little bow of explanation. In the middle of a story things that are all tied up and pretty can be boring. Unanswered questions things that don't make sense are more interesting.
• There are a couple ways clues can be timed to have the desired impact. 

What do you think of these ideas? Have anything to add? Tell me in a comment!

Mystery: Plot and Character

In the past week I've been working on improving the mystery in my work in progress. Since the book is supposed to be a mystery, I need to make sure the mystery is a good one that makes sense and keeps readers reading.

So, as I sat down a few days ago to work on fixing the poorly-written mystery plot of my story, I started brainstorming things for my characters to find out, and clues for them to put together, and so on. In terms of plot vs. character, this sounds like a plot thing, right?

Well, yes and no.

Of course it's a plot thing; the crime and subsequent attempts to solve it are what move the story along. But what gets investigated as the detectives try to unravel it? People. (And events, but for this post I'm going to focus on people.) Crimes are committed by people, and to learn more about the crime, you have to learn more about the people.

If a detective has suspects, they're going to try to find proof that one of the suspects did it. And to do that, the detective needs to investigate his/her suspects, which means the detective is going to learn more about them.  Now, of course not all of the suspects are the criminal, but they will still have secrets of their own. This, I realized, might be a good way to develop the suspects (side characters). If a detective is learning more about a certain side character, then so is your reader. And then the detective can then use what s/he learned about the side characters to help him/her catch the real criminal. For example, if the detective learns the mailman is a good shot, he can help take out the villain in the climax. 

So, with this new realization, I started thinking about the mystery in a new way: Which side character do I want to investigate, and therefore develop? We'll see where this new train of thought takes me. Obviously I'll need to think about other aspects of the story, but this will be a good starting point.