Remington's Mystery Manifesto

Here is Remington's 7-Point Mystery Manifesto from episode 349!

• Fair Play

  • Relevant information should be shared with the audience, nothing vital or necessary that the detective knows should be withheld.

  • Specialist information must be handled carefully, ideally shared with the audience organically without framing it clumsily as a major clue.

• The Solution

  • The solution should be logical, yet surprising.

  • The solution shouldn’t be contrived and/or never in doubt (‘Never in doubt’ used here over ‘obvious’ because the obvious answer can be the correct one so long as the story makes you question it).

• The Process

  • The audience should see the process of hypothesis generation, hypothesis testing, falsifying, making connections, following leads, and how/when to use resources.

  • Failure, dead ends, misleading/false interpretations don’t diminish the intelligence of the detective if the process that reached them was rational and sound.

  • The process should never be minor information -> major inference -> certain solution.

• The Mystery

  • The mystery should have a special appeal to the audience, a reason why they’re interested. This could be because of high stakes for characters we care about, the satisfaction of unraveling a seemingly impossible puzzle (which must be particularly clever), it has thematic depth, or learning more about a compelling world/setting.

  • If the mystery exists solely to show how intelligent or impressive the detective is, it is a bad mystery.

• Clues and Red Herrings

  • Clues should be logical. Any individual clue can (and should) have multiple possible inferences or deductions, but together they should point undeniably and exclusively to the solution.

  • Red herring clues should provide clever misdirection and be believable, but ultimately be either demonstrably faulty or explained away.

  • Red herring suspects/theories should be meaningful, alluring, and disprovable.

  • The mystery should still be compelling, fascinating, and ideally unsolved even if the audience sees through the red herrings.

• The Detective

  • In many mysteries, "the detective" is the reader/viewer.

  • The detective should have a personality and character separate from being a detective, and this personality should inform/highlight how they go about their work, their strengths and weaknesses, their process, etc.

  • The detective should make active decisions to push the story and investigation further. These actions can be done quietly, subtly, or surreptitiously, but they must be taken. 

  • The detective should not be the sole source of insight or understanding (having a buddy cop, assistant, or even untrained participant to provide fresh new perspectives, share knowledge the detective may not have, or challenge the detective’s assumptions/inferences is valuable and doesn’t diminish the detective).

• Beyond the Detective

  • Characters should be distinct and interesting. Particularly important is that any relevant character, culprit, suspect, and/or red herring have strong, internally consistent motivations fitting to their personality.

  • Bonus points if the setting or circumstances are fresh and haven’t been seen dozens of times in every other mystery story.