How to write good mystery (like Harry Potter)

In my opinion, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is the perfect archetype for good mystery. It may be simple and straightforward, but that’s what makes J.K. Rowling's first Harry Potter book a perfect example. It’s easy to follow, and it does everything a good mystery should: 1. it keeps you guessing right up to the end, 2. all the pieces fall into place during the reveal, and 3. it rewards repeat readings.

To really understand what makes a good mystery, it’s helpful to compare a good mystery to a bad mystery. The television show Lost is a great example of a bad mystery. WARNING: there are spoilers up ahead, but Harry Potter is almost 20 years old, and Lost ended five years ago, so that "spoiler" warning should expire soon.

The first Harry Potter book has a simple mystery: who is trying to steal the Sorcerer’s Stone and harm Harry? The key to making this a successful mystery is that all of the clues could lead you to the correct conclusion, but the average reader doesn’t see how all the clues fit together until the very end.

All of the clues – put together properly – reveal that Professor Quirrell is the story’s villain. But all of the clues also point to Professor Snape, and that’s the key to making this mystery work: the clues make sense in context and could lead you to the correct conclusion, but the clues also point to a different culprit.

Here’s a great example: someone is using magic in an attempt to knock Harry from his broom during a Quidditch match. Harry’s friends see Professor Snape whispering an incantation, and interrupt him. On their way to stop Snape, the kids have a humorous little bit of slapstick: they accidentally knock over Professor Quirrell in the stands. In the end, it turns out Snape was whispering his incantation to protect Harry, and Quirrell was cursing Harry's broom.

Do you see how this rewards the reader? The clues are all there. An attentive reader could notice that Professor Quirrell was knocked over at the same time that Harry’s broom started working again. When Quirrell is revealed as the villain, that clue falls into place and makes sense. On a second read-through, the reader sees the story through a new lens.

Compare that to the end of Lost. All the clues throughout the series led up to . . . nothing. Readers analyzed a repeated string of numbers, hidden codes, and riddles. In the end, none of their work was rewarded. The “twist” at the conclusion did not follow from the clues, so no attentive viewer could have figured it out, and a repeat viewing has no value. Your new lens changes nothing.

Think of a good mystery as a puzzle. Once the last piece is put in place, you want your reader to see the final picture and say “of course! That’s what this was building to! Every piece fits together perfectly to create this picture!” In Lost, you spent six years painstakingly putting puzzle pieces together, only to have the puzzle ripped out from under you and a new picture put in its place. That’s not how puzzles work.

Your goal is for your readers to say “aha!” when they’ve reached the end. You don’t want to hear a “huh” or an “oh, okay.”

To accomplish this, make sure your clues point to the mystery’s solution.

Now that your clues create a solvable mystery, we run into a problem: Won’t that make it obvious?

That’s where Snape comes in. Your clues must lead to the solution, but they must also point to other possible solutions. Going back to our Quidditch match example, Harry’s friends stop Snape’s incantation at the same time they knock Quirrell over, leading the average reader to assume that Snape was the cause of Harry’s plight.

The reason this works is that Snape is not a simple “red herring.” A red herring exists in the plot for no other reason than to distract the reader from the true solution to the mystery. But Snape is not here as a simple distraction. He’s a fully-developed main character who serves as a source of antagonism to Harry and his friends completely apart from the Sorcerer’s Stone mystery. There’s no better way to tell your reader that someone is not the villain than to have him in your story for no other purpose than to look evil and be the obvious solution to the mystery.

Remember, your goal is to involve the readers in your story. Make them feel like they can solve the mystery if they work hard enough, then reward them at the end with a solution that makes sense, but that they didn’t see coming. Then sneak enough clues in throughout the story that they want to reread it and see how everything fits together.

If you want more examples of great mysteries, check out Agatha Christie’s novels, especially “And Then There Were None.”

What are some of your favorite mysteries? What mysteries ticked you off with their endings? Let us know in the comments.  

How to Write Well. Step 5: Break the rules

Here's a fun fact: the Coen Brothers don't outline their plots before they write. That should come as a big surprise to anyone who has seen their movies. They’ve written and directed complex films like “Fargo,” “No Country for Old Men,” and “The Big Lebowski”; movies with dozens of characters, interweaving plotlines, and plot twists galore. How could the Coen Brothers not outline as they write their scripts?

They don’t have to. And you don’t have to either.

When writing it’s important not to worry too much about the rules you learned in school. I’m sure you learned lots of important tips and tricks that have worked for lots of people throughout the years, but there’s a world of difference between a tip and a rule.

Before I go any further with this idea, let me add one important caveat: some rules should almost never be broken. Please don’t misspell a word unless you have a very good reason for doing so, and the rules of grammar are as close to sacred as you get in writing. If you want people to understand what you write (and communication is our goal when writing), then spelling and grammar are important.

What I’m talking about are the “rules” that can often put a creative writer into a box that stifles creativity. Rules like “always outline before you write,” “never split infinitives,” and “never start a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but.’” These aren’t hard and fast rules, they’re stylistic recommendations.

Outlines

The outline is one of the worst offenders. Many writers have a brilliant idea for a story, lifelike characters, and then - instead of letting those characters loose on a page and seeing where they go - the writer outlines the whole story ahead of time. The writer winds up putting their characters and their setting into a straightjacket, all because that’s what they’re “supposed” to do. That’s the rule.

If you like to outline, that’s fine. But you don’t have to outline. That’s the beauty of the writing process: your end product should be clear and well written, but how you get there is up to you.

How do I personally write? Usually, I come up with an idea, have some characters in mind, and then start. I like to be as surprised as my readers about where the story is going. I’ve mentioned this saying before on this blog: “If I have to think about it, it’s not worth writing.” That just means that I don’t like to over-plan. If I have an idea for later in my story, I’ll jot it down. But I try to steer clear of a hard and fast outline.

One of my goals in this blog is to help you relax about your writing. Don’t overthink, don’t stress out about all the rules, and don’t edit while you write. Just write. It really is that simple.

If your characters are developed, let them go wherever they want to. It can be the same for nonfiction. If you’re writing a news article, write a story that you’d like to read. When I write a complicated article on the town budget I’ll often write a rough outline, but for features about interesting people or events it’s often easier to just tell a story without being tied down by pre-planning. If you’re writing a term paper, outlines can be helpful, but they might be a waste of time for you. The process is your own. Figure out what works best for you.

There are lots of other “rules” you don’t have to follow. Have you ever been told not to split an infinitive? Well one of the most beloved TV shows of all time certainly got away with it. In fact, they coined a phrase that has entered our everyday speech. Star Trek split an infinitive with its famous “to boldly go where no man has gone before” line. And that’s fine. “To go boldly where no man has gone before” doesn’t have nearly the same ring to it, so they broke the “rule.”

What other “rules” do you like to break in your own writing? Or are you a rule-follower through and through? Let us know in the comments. 

p.s. For more on the Coen Brothers’ writing process, you can go to this article, which includes a great quote from them on the subject of outlines: “[It’s] a floating outline. If we’re writing scene B, we have some clear idea of what scene C might be and a slightly fuzzier idea of what D might be and a vague idea of what the ramifications of that might be – or maybe not. It just kind of falls off into darkness.”

How to Write Well. Step 4: Let it be

When learning to write well, it is important to have some tips and tricks for editing well. For one great editing tip, I turn to the Beatles: “Let it be.”

We’ve already covered how important it is to edit after you write instead of while you write, but it’s equally important to give your work a little time to rest before you go back and edit it. Let it be.

The reason you have to let your writing rest is the same reason it’s a good idea to have someone else help you in the editing process: you’re too close to your own writing.

Researchers have found that our brains tend to ignore typos and errors in our own writing because we’re already familiar with what we’re trying to say. In your own mind, you already know that you meant to write “You must expect mistakes,” so when you edit and see that you accidentally typed “You must accept mistakes,” your brain is already familiar with your intended meaning. So what does your brain do? It fixes the error.

Your brain knows what you’re trying to say, made an assumption based on that knowledge, and has already jumped ahead to the next thought.

But a new reader isn’t familiar with your subject or your writing. His or her brain can’t make as many assumptions. The brain can’t fill in as many gaps. So they’ll notice all those little mistakes your brain likes to ignore.

Think about how you read. When you were first learning to read, you had to sound out each and every word. Do you have to do that now? Most likely not. Without even realizing it, reading has become second nature. We read whole words at just a glance because we recognize them. You may remember – from way back in kindergarten – the term “sight words.” Instead of taking the time to sound out each individual letter, our brains recognize whole words all at once.

Sight words are great for speed reading. They’re terrible for editing. Your brain has been trained to glance at a word, and make an assumption about what that word means. To do that quickly, it doesn’t bother with whether that word is spelled correctly or not. If your brain is already familiar with what it is reading, it can make far more assumptions.

 

You may have even received an email forward demonstrating this phenomenon, in which the wrods are srcambeld but you can still raed the wolhe eamil.

Typos aren’t the only problem with editing your own work. Your writing might make absolutely no sense, but you’d never know it. You might be missing key information, but because you are familiar with your subject you don’t notice all those holes. I think we’ve all read news articles that leave out important information, especially in the age of rapidly-developing news stories.

“They caught ‘The Virginia Cow Tipper?’” you ask yourself. “That’s great, but who in the world is ‘The Virginia Cow Tipper?’” The writer of that article is already familiar with the background of the article, and didn’t even realize how much information the article was missing.

So that’s why we let our writing rest. The longer you wait between writing and editing, the less familiar you are with your own material, and the less your brain can fill in the gaps. It’s important to look at your writing with “fresh eyes” so you can catch all your mistakes and see which parts of your writing don’t make sense.

So when editing, remember to “Let It Be.”

How to Write Well. Step 3: Don’t edit while you write

You may have heard this wonderful quote from Ernest Hemingway: “Write drunk, edit sober.”

Turns out Ernest Hemingway didn’t actually say that. Also, I’d never advocate alcoholism. But at its heart, that quote has some great advice: Don’t stress the first draft.

It’s important not to edit while you write. It's important to write without the encumbrance of over-stressing during your first draft. I’ve coined another quote that perfectly encapsulates my writing philosophy: “If I have to think about it, it’s not worth writing.”

Sure, that sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. Don’t overthink. Don’t draw complex outlines. Don’t nitpick every sentence as soon as you’re done writing it. Just sit and write. It’s that simple. 

How many of you have started a writing project and then given it up halfway through because “you just can’t get it right”? How many of you have gotten frustrated in the middle of a project because it’s not coming out perfectly?  

Any time I worry about perfection while I’m writing my first draft, I get discouraged. I get discouraged that I’m not writing well enough, and I get discouraged that my writing is taking so long.

But that’s not the point of a first draft. The first draft is a chance to get all of your ideas down on paper. Tell a story to yourself, then worry about telling it to others.

Michelangelo didn’t instantly turn a block of stone into a sculpture. He didn’t get so frustrated with David’s left eye that he didn’t finish the whole statue.

Get your ideas down without worrying about the end result. Then go back and look at what you have with fresh eyes. Don’t allow yourself to worry about the final product until you edit. And don’t stop writing to edit until you’re done. That’s how you get frustrated.

I learned this lesson thanks to the National Novel Writing Month. If you’re not familiar, “NaNoWriMo” is a challenge to write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. A deadline like that forces you to write without stopping to edit, to not worry about what you’re writing. I learned not to worry during the first draft. It was an incredibly freeing experience, and it continues to be a freeing lesson.

When my wife asks how the writing is going, I like to say that “I’m just vomiting words on a page. I’ll edit them later.” It’s gross, but it points to an important lesson: Don’t edit while you write. 

Write freely.