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Using Mystery to Seduce Your Audience!
A storyteller creates a mystery in a story by giving a resolution but not its cause or meaning. Agatha Christie, for example, in her murder mysteries gives you the murder but not who is the murderer. This lack of vital information induces the audience to feel intense curiosity and frustration. Mystery thus works in the opposite way to suspense. With suspense, as discussed in the previous Story Guy Newsletter, the audience is given some information about a high stakes conflict or choice but doesn’t know its resolution and consequences. Creating and playing a mystery in a story is a vital way to seduce and manipulate an audience.
Most often the mystery questions a writer sets up and plays relate to the questions of Who and How, but often a story can also have smaller mysteries related to questions of What, Where, and especially Why. A writer who is especially skilled at pressing a key mystery question into the minds of an audience will set up something that seems impossible to have been done. A mystery at this level can be more intriguing to an audience than a big suspense question. Lee Child created an intense and seemingly impossible mystery in his novel The Visitor. Another recent excellent example is in the film Saving Mr. Banks. In this based-on-fact drama, we long to learn the deepest reason P. L. Travers is rejecting Walt Disney’s offer to buy her Mary Poppins book. In the climax of the film, Disney and the audience get the last clue to Travers’ motivation and can finally understand her and solve the mystery. Disney can now succeed in his quest and the audience can have a strong emotional response to learning the poignant meaning of the mystery.
Writing Takeaway
To create a mystery line in a story, a writer must first set up an important mystery question in the minds of the audience and then carefully work out what important story information the audience will and won’t be told. And then work out when and how they will be told the given information. That is, during the story, the writer has to logically and dramatically (and often deceptively) reveal clues that the audience can use to solve the mystery. The audience will then be fully engaged to solve the mystery before the main character does or the author reveals its answer.
Writers who do not consciously understand how a mystery works and so don’t artfully employ one in an appropriate story are not emotionally moving an audience to the depth that they can and should. As noted in my earlier newsletter, a vital part of good storytelling is the HOW and not just the What. How much do you focus on the HOW in your stories?
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Scott McConnell is a story consultant for writers, producers, directors, and publishers.
Writing Tips In Other Story Guy Newsletters
About Scott McConnell The Story Guy & His Story Services
Scott McConnell started in the film and TV business in Los Angeles performing script analysis for Samuel Goldwyn, Sundance, Hallmark, Nu Image, Roger Corman, among others. He ended his producing work in Los Angeles as a showrunner. Scott is now a writer and story consultant, lecturer, and mentor. He supports writers, producers, and directors, as well as production and publishing companies, to develop and improve all forms of stories, but especially scripts and novels. Besides developing and editing individual stories, Scott offers a Mentorship Program, where he supports creatives to write a story from concept to first draft, while teaching them a writing process of all the key stages of crafting a story. To discuss your story or screenwriting class needs write to Scott at [email protected]
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