Writing any fiction, from a short story of a few thousand words to an epic novel, is always an undertaking. One of a writer’s most important resources is motivation. Often, what motivates a writer to continue writing mirrors what motivates a reader to continue reading. In the case of a mystery novel, the reader reads on because they’re hoping for a satisfying conclusion to a difficult question. In the outlining phase, the mystery writer writes for the same satisfaction. In order for that motivation to exist, the question that you start with needs to be mysterious, to demand an answer, to drag your attention back to it when it wanders. That’s the role of any writing prompt, really — to engage the writer’s interest and get the creative mechanism turning.
A mystery demands our attention by presenting us with a situation that doesn’t make sense. As humans, over the course of our lives, we come to understand what “normal” looks like in our world. We learn what to expect, and what to be surprised by, what to believe, and what to be suspicious of. When something in reality doesn’t match our expectations, and particularly when that disruption could present a threat to our wellbeing, we have an instinct to investigate and explain.
With that in mind, here’s one way to quickly create prompts for a mystery story.
- Come up with a familiar setting or situation. Establish a “normal.”
- Either add something that would be very surprising to find in that situation, or remove something whose absence will surprise us. (Bonus points if there’s some implication of threat.)
- Ask yourself how and why that strange disruption to the normal situation occurred.
Here are a couple examples of the method in practice:
I’ll start out with a setting: a monastery. What does a normal monastery have? Well, it has monks. So if we take away all the monks, without a trace, then we have our mysterious situation. Now I have to figure out why and how the monastery became empty. Perhaps its monastic order developed into a fanatical fringe sect of their religion that culminated in a mass suicide. Or maybe they dispersed around the world to enact a secret holy mission after years of planning. From either of those ideas, I could develop the mystery into something more complex.
Let’s try another one. This time the situation will be a music festival. Let’s add something that wouldn’t usually be present, something which would be very surprising to run across. How about a WWII era German zeppelin? The music festival might be held in a derelict factory, and the festival-goers could find the airship in one of the giant warehouses. So why is it there? Maybe it was the mode of escape for some Nazi officials after the war was lost. Or maybe it’s a replica, built with the intent of passing it off as real and selling it to a wealthy and eccentric collector of wartime relics.
So there it is! It’s pretty simple. All you need is a setting, and a disruption, and you’re good to go. The rest will depend on your problem solving and creativity. Here are a few final tips:
- Add an element of threat or danger. Make it so that, if the question isn’t answered, somebody will be hurt. This gives the mystery stakes.
- Either set your mystery in a situation you’re quite familiar with, or do some research on your setting. You need to know what “normal” looks like in a given context before you can disrupt it.
- Start with the “why,” then answer the “how.” A person’s motives will often determine which methods they’re willing to use.
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