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"The Clue Was Right There, But I Didn't..."

So, Reader,

The killer was always able to come up on its victim.

Men, women—it didn’t seem to matter. Big, strong, average, petite. Five people, every one of them taken out by this extremely effective murderer, and the police didn’t have a clue.

But the writer had placed clues in the story from the beginning to the end. Subtle clues.

The question was: Could readers really spot them?

A great mystery is not a game of withholding information. It’s a game of managing to place the information and messing with the perceptions of your audience.

Your job was fooling your readers, or your watchers if you’re doing films, into seeing but not seeing, noting but not noting. Or perhaps, seeing but not giving enough significance to those minor little elements until someone puts it all together at the end and nails the right villain.

And you want your audience to be able to go:

“Ah, that’s why.”

That’s what you want.

You don’t want what I’ve encountered in my years in this business: people saying they know how to write mystery novels, then they have people simply declare they’re guilty, or some out of the blue thing happens, like a clue or witness that was never mentioned before.

And there is no trail of evidence that leads to that.

You leave your audience asking, “How did your detective get to that conclusion?” “Where’s the proof?”

These are the things we, as mystery writers, are supposed to handle meticulously.

Think about the last mystery you read where the final reveal just seemed to come out of nowhere.

Did you throw the book across the room? Did you turn off the TV set? Because you knew somehow you were cheated.

Now think about a reveal that made you grin. That made you go:

“Ah, yeah, that’s it. I should have…”

When we can relate to that, when we can go, “Yeah, I remember that feeling,” that’s what you want to get across to your audience.

So the question becomes: How do you put the clue in front of the reader’s eyes—or the watcher’s eyes—without it being obvious?

You don’t hide the clues from the viewer or the reader.

You hide the intention. You hide the significance. You distract them.

They may see the thing. They may hear the thing. But the significance of it doesn’t stand out at that moment.

Maybe it’s something that is said, but it’s said within a conversation that keeps moving. Unless you’re paying absolute hyper-attention to it, you’re not going to notice it at that moment.

Sometimes people will notice something:

“Ooh, wait a minute. That person shouldn’t have known such-and-such.”

That might make them suspicious of this individual. And if this is truly the individual, then at the end they’ll go:

“What? I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!”

That’s a different form of satisfaction.

You want to give your audience a red herring or tow or three suspects

Yeah, they had a motive, but they didn’t have the means or the opportunity. You’ll reveal that as you move forward.

That’s the fair-play rule.

You want to make sure you’re laying things out so your audience can find it, see it, or hear it, depending on the medium—but they don’t necessarily note the significance until the proper time.

So how does this work on the page?

You introduce a dual-purpose clue. You wrap it in a character distraction or an emotional moment – or outburst. You let the characters misinterpret the clue out loud.

Then, when the climax arrives, you don’t introduce new evidence.

You simply remove the emotional distractions and look at the evidence—or the clues—as you laid them out throughout the story.

You clearly see what each clue represents. When you put them all together, you wind up with motive, opportunity, and means, which point directly at your culprit.

Always play fair with your audience.

And in order to play fair, your first major step is to know how the crime was committed—which goes back to my rule of thumb:

On paper, commit the crime first.

Know all the ins and outs of it. Who done what to whom, why, and how.

Then you can build fair clues and determine through an outline—or, if you’re one of those people who writes by the seat of your pants, as you write the story—where to lay out your clues.

The best plot twist is the one where the reader says:

“I should have seen that.”

When the reader says, “I should have seen that,” or, “I heard that, but I didn’t give it the significance it warranted,” then you’ve had a successful fair-mystery experience for yourself and your audience.

For more tips and tricks on how to write your own crimes, listen to Simmons Says Mystery Mechanics Episode 55: The Clue Was Right There—How to Play Fair With Your Reader.​

Best,

Alex Simmons

NEXT TIME ON MYSTERY MECHANICS...
​
​A poisoned drink. A hidden spy. A ship full of suspects.
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Join me for another Mystery Mechanics how-to-write-mysteries webinar and learn how to set up strong suspects in a tense mystery tale.
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​SUSPECTS AT SEA
Saturday, September 26 at 12 Noon ET
Live on Facebook.​
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​Be there to get a clue.