Trope Talk: Detectives

I've done it, Watson! I've put the pieces
together at last! This video was sponsored

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You know, most of the time when I read books
or watch shows I kinda can’t stop myself

from overthinking them. I think it’s just
a side effect of the critical analysis stuff

plus approaching art and media from my weird
pseudo-professional angle - I usually can’t

really engage with a story without trying
to pick

it apart and see how it works. You know, like,

I’ll… listen for how an actor’s doing
their performance or clock what trope we’re

doing and judge the plot from there, stuff
like that.

The one genre that breaks this rule for me,
funnily enough, is mysteries. The one story

format the audience is supposed to critically
engage with - I don’t. More accurately I

can’t. It might just be that I’m really
bad at noticing stuff in general so I skim

over the sneaky clues, it might be that I’m
really bad with names so I can’t keep the

suspects straight anyway. But honestly, even
the really well-written mysteries that differentiate

the characters and give the audience enough
clues to theoretically crack the case don’t

grab me - I have a higher success rate just
guessing

from the tropes. Like if it’s an Agatha

Christie number, even odds the killer’s
gonna be

the most eligible bachelor in the cast. I’ll

still read ‘em and enjoy ‘em, but most
of the time the ending will totally blindside

me. I’m not good at putting the pieces together
for myself.

Which is why I love and appreciate the character
archetype central and foundational to the

mystery format - the detective. The one character
tasked with putting all the pieces together

and revealing to the audience what the actual
plot is. Without the detective, people like

me - the watsons of the world - wouldn’t
get anything out of mystery stories.

Now detectives aren’t exclusively found
in mystery

stories, but they are pretty inextricably

linked with the genre. Detectives investigate
situations and solve puzzles - mysteries are

centered on the process of solving that puzzle,
but mysteries and mystery-adjacent plots are

present in stories of all stripes, which means
the detective archetype can be organically

integrated into almost any genre and narrative
structure. If there’s a puzzle of any kind

happening in the plot, you can have a detective
in the plot too.

Now “detective” is a job and a narrative
role, not a character type, so theoretically

any character archetype can fill the role
of a detective - but there are some majorly

popular subtypes that are essentially stock
characters. The “Hard-Boiled Noir

Detective” type is typically a tortured

alcoholic or general addict with a constantly
running inner monologue, a jaded and world-weary

perspective on life and a disproportionate
number of morally questionable dames slinking

into their office for shenanigans - which
is funny, because while this archetype is

very well-known, classic noir detectives have
almost nothing in common with the tropes they

spawned. Sam Spade, the detective in the Maltese
Falcon, the most iconic noir ever - has almost

no personality, no tragic or tortured tendencies,
and he doesn’t even react to the death of

his

partner with much more than mild frustration.
The Hardboiled Noir Detective archetype has

more in common with Dick Tracy than any proper
noir protagonist. Then there’s the Gentleman

Detective, almost the polar opposite of the
Hardboiled Detective, a classy and frequently

aristocratic adventurer type, unilaterally
well-educated and almost always British, frequently

butting heads with a bumbling police department
coincidentally full of lower-class people.

Sherlock Holmes, the most popular detective
ever written, kinda spawned off a whole set

of Sherlockalikes - all eccentric, brilliant,
usually mostly focused on a forensic investigative

approach, and generally accompanied by a long-suffering
guy friend who narrates the actual adventures.

That third-person narration angle isn’t
a Holmes exclusive

- in fact, it’s one of only a few ways to

present a mystery to an audience.
See, the problem with a mystery is the audience

isn’t really allowed to know everything
that’s

happening in the plot until the end. There

always has to be something hidden for the
reveal. This means the audience can’t have

a third-person omniscient perspective but
they also usually can’t have a full first-person

perspective on the detective, because almost
all mysteries have a denouement at the end

where the big twist is revealed and everything
falls into place. This denouement starts when

the detective reveals what’s going on, not
when the detective figures out what’s going

on, so if the audience is already in the detective's
head, we get that information too early. Some

stories will kinda fudge this by giving us
the

detective’s perspective and having them

think stuff like “of course! that must be
it! everything makes sense now!” and then

reveal the actual information they figured
out during the denouement

proper. Failing that, most detective stories

will take a third person perspective, either
from a less-than-omniscient vague third-person

narrator or from the perspective of another
character who isn’t the detective and serves

as an audience surrogate.
This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, though.

There’s kind of a gradient here that sort
of determines what kind of story - and what

kind of detective - we’re going to get.
On the high end of the scale, some mysteries

show the audience almost everything. This
is pretty rare, and it’s arguable that stories

of this type aren’t exactly mysteries at
all. Probably the most iconic example of this

format is Columbo,

a very popular detective show from the 70s
where every episode begins with a full, comprehensive

view of the murder. We know who did it, how
they did it, how they covered it up and usually

even why they did it. The “mystery” element
is not who did the crime, but how is Lieutenant

Columbo going to catch them. In true mystery
form the episodes all have an ending reveal

of various kinds, but they’re usually revealing
something Columbo did or discovered offscreen

- the twist isn’t in the crime, but in the
solving of the crime. This is also not uncommon

in stories where the detective character is
technically the antagonist and the protagonist

whose POV we’re following is the actual
criminal they’re trying to catch - these

stories will often turn into battles of wits
where

the audience has more knowledge than any of

the individual characters. Even some Sherlock
Holmes stories technically fall into this

category - there’s no mystery in A Scandal
In Bohemia, the surprise reveal at the end

is that Irene Adler fully saw through Sherlock
Holmes’s sneaky disguise and totally outmaneuvered

him to leave the country with her new husband
and the photo he wanted.

It’s more common for a mystery to give the
audience something like 70-80% of the relevant

information. We typically don’t know who
did it and we don’t necessarily know the

motive - so in order to keep those vague during
the investigative process,

the suspect’s character backstories will

usually be somewhat muddled or obscured, since
otherwise it’d be too easy to eliminate

people and narrow it down.

These mysteries will usually give us something
of the method - like if someone was poisoned,

a forensic report will say what poison it
was - and a large pool of suspects to identify

the criminal from. The reveal of the criminal
almost always involves a reveal of some hitherto-unknown

element of their backstory or characterization
that the detective has worked out without

the audience’s knowledge. In these stories,
the detective character is usually digging

up clues about the crime to piece together
an empty profile of who the criminal is, and

then finding out who in the cast fits that
profile. How they do that depends on the individual

detective and their personality.
But before we get into that, I wanna touch

on

the last category - because some mysteries
give the

audience very little information. And this

is… usually bad. Like, actually bad writing,
and I don’t say that lightly. Hiding too

much information from the audience can be
seen as a sign of bad faith on the part of

the author. If the audience couldn’t reasonably
guess the solution from the information given,

it’s a violation of mystery convention.
For instance, if the killer is a hitherto-unmentioned

character who just happened to be in the area,
that’s completely plausible and it might

even make more sense

in context than any of the main cast doing
it, but it’s not a fair conclusion

to a mystery that’s supposed to be fair

to the audience. All these things
serve to undercut the integrity of the mystery

plot.

These stories feel worse for the audience
to engage with. They also sometimes don’t

make much sense in hindsight, since without
enough information in the story to piece it

together, it might not actually hold together.
Writing a mystery is hard - you usually have

to do it backwards from the way it’s presented
in the plot, starting from the crime and working

through what clues and hints that crime would
leave, rather than starting from the mystery

and figuring out who’d make the best criminal
as you go. If the writer sets up a mystery

without

actually knowing the solution beforehand,
the story’s

not going to hold together as well. And if
the writer DOES know the mystery going into

it but drops, like, tiny tiny clues that don't
actually combine to form the bigger picture,

that kind of has the same problem where the
audience can't really engage with the mystery

because they don't have enough information.
This brushes

up against the same problem I talked about
in the plot twists video - twists for the

sake of shocking and surprising your audience
are good if you, the writer, like feeling

smart, but bad if you, the writer, want your
audience to actually critically engage with

your work. The audience needs to be able to
follow along, and since the audience can’t

know

more than the author, at the bare minimum,
the author needs to know the solution before

they start constructing the clues what audience
gets. And ideally they also need to give the

audience enough clues that they could theoretically
extrapolate the actual solution in kind of

the same way the detective is theoretically
supposed to.

In the
ideal mystery format, the audience is only

missing

one key piece of information by the end of
the story, so when the detective does the

reveal of that one key piece it makes everything
else fall into place. But frankly it’s easier

to write a mystery where the crime leaves
almost no clues and the detective figures

out the solution by……… knowing what
the author needs them to know and being right

because the author said they were. That way
there’s

no chance of the audience figuring it out

before your detective does and thus undercutting
your detective's incredible super geniusness.

For instance,
while Original Sherlock Holmes definitely

had some pretty outrageous deductive leaps,
extrapolating whole character backstories

from ink stains and muddy boots, some of the
adaptions take this a step further. Like when

BBC’s Sherlock adapted A Scandal in Bohemia
into A Scandal in Belgravia, it added in this

little background mystery because the closest
thing the main plot of that episode has to

a mystery is what is Irene Adler’s Phone
Password, which isn’t… you know… interesting.

And it’s the first half of Sherlock’s
name because she’s in love with him now,

and that’s the kind of basic-ass romantic
subplot nonsense the audience could see coming

a mile away, so that doesn't really scratch
the "my detective needs to be smarter than

the audience" itch. But the mystery sideplot
centers

on the unexplained death of a tourist by blunt

force trauma to the back of the head with
no apparent weapon and no sign of the killer

in the middle of an empty field. Sherlock
brushes this off immediately, claiming that

he’s figured out the answer just from the
position of a car that backfired relative

to the tourist and from the fact that the
tourist was killed by a blow to the back of

the head. This is the last we really hear
of it for a while until Adler

reveals to Sherlock that she has also solved
it, and explains that the tourist was killed

accidentally by his own boomerang. Does this
make sense from the information given? K-uh…

…kinda.

It theoretically fits the lack of any killer
or murder weapon, since the boomerang flew

merrily away after clocking the dude, although
it is a little questionable if the boomerang

could've done that kind of killing impact
and then flown like a hundred feet away and

landed in the nearby creek, but that's okay.
Is that

something the audience could’ve been expected

to guess from “the position of the car relative
to the hiker at the time of the backfire”

and “a single blow to the back of the head”?
Absolutely the f*ck not, come on. It’d be

just as valid to assume (and probably easier
to believe) that he got hit by a very

small meteor. What were the odds? I dunno!

This mystery isn't fun to solve or see solved
because the audience doesn't even get a chance

to think about it.

When a mystery gives the audience too much
information, there’s not much of a mystery,

since there’s nothing to figure out - but
if a mystery gives the audience too little

to go on, it’s not gonna keep them guessing
- it’s going to lose their engagement. It’s

like, you need to give them enough pieces
of the puzzle that they can guess what the

final picture is gonna look like - not all
of them, or they’d know for sure, and not

just a few edge pieces or the monochrome sky
background, because that’s not interesting

for the audience to engage with. At its worst
it actively discourages the audience from

trying to solve the mystery. It’s a tricky
balance to strike.

But at the heart of the mystery story is the
detective. As the character at the center

of unraveling the mystery, or, more broadly,
revealing the plot, the detective is, in some

ways, the center of the mystery and the narrative
overall. And how they navigate that mystery

depends a lot on their individual character.
The first place we tend to look to understand

a character is their character

motive. Most characters have a clear reason
for doing what they do - but that’s not

always true for detectives. While some are
motivated by a general goodness or a sense

of duty or a general intellectual curiosity,
some detectives have next to no personal investment

in solving crimes or mysteries - it’s just
their job. The more jaded ones might even

complain

about it. Ironically, for a detective, motive
is one of the least important facets of their

character.
Instead, there are three important aspects

of the detective’s character, and they mirror
the narrative structure of the mystery. First,

there’s their investigative method. How
a detective gathers clues and information

depends almost entirely on their character,
personality and skillset. For instance, Sherlock

Holmes takes a forensic focus, observing and
gathering trace physical evidence to paint

a picture of the crime. Then he often does
more on-the-scene investigating, frequently

in increasingly ridiculous disguises to gather
information without putting people on-edge.

In contrast, we get detective characters like
Miss Marple, who’s a purposeful trope subversion

- she looks like a totally different stock
character, a pleasant but slightly vague gossipy

old lady who also happens to have an encyclopedic
understanding of the human psyche, and solves

the crimes she investigates through nothing
but psychological profiling and her general

understanding of how people work, relying
on other people to do the actual clue-gathering

legwork. In a similar vein, Agatha Christie’s
other detective hero, Hercule Poirot, also

focuses more on the psychological angle, though
he does more in-person investigating and clue-gathering.

Instead of broad psychological profiles, Poirot
focuses more on understanding the motive behind

the crime and deducing the criminal from there.
Columbo is another deliberate subversion - he’s

a proper police detective, but he comes across
as a befuddled and disorganized dude, dresses

pretty sloppily and drives a car so old he’s
frequently asked if he’s undercover. He

tends to do

a first pass spotting physical evidence
the forensic guys don’t always catch cuz

they don't realize what they're looking for,
but

the bulk of his investigative method relies
on interviewing slash pestering the killer

about the problems he’s noticed in their
story in such a good-natured and innocent

way that they get so rattled they end up

incidentally revealing the truth. Other detectives
have other methods - the grittier, more hard-boiled

ones will sometimes threaten or even torture
people for information, the more gentlemanly

ones usually rely on their book-learning and
scientific knowledge to piece things together,

etc etc. Since this clue-gathering usually
takes up the bulk of the mystery in one way

or another, this is the side of the detective
that usually reveals the most about their

fundamental character.
The second aspect of the detective’s character

is how they put it all together. This is much
subtler than the clue-gathering because most

of the time we don’t actually see how this
works - it’s an internal process wherein

the detective figures out what exactly has
been going on, and if the audience gets too

clear a look at it, they’re gonna find out
the big reveal too early. But even if it’s

largely invisible, it’s still a fundamental
facet of the detective’s character. Maybe

they put things together in sudden bursts
of clarity and inspiration and run off without

explaining anything first, maybe they take
careful and methodical notes and collect the

dots more slowly, maybe they chase down a
hunch or two before they hit on the right

angle. If the audience has a more omniscient
perspective and already knows what the detective

has to figure out, we’ll sometimes see the
detective putting the pieces together mostly

for the audience’s benefit - spotting a
clue we’ve already seen, noticing a discrepancy

we’ve already realized doesn’t work, looking
befuddled for a moment before silently realizing

something, or (in contrast) calmly and immediately
figuring out the information the criminal

has tried very very hard to hide and explaining
how they came to that conclusion so we, the

audience, know

they weren’t cheating - there’s all sorts
of ways to play it depending on the detective’s

character.
And finally, the third aspect of the detective’s

character is how they handle the big reveal.
When they finally put the pieces together

and lay it all out for the audience so we
get the full story for the first time, how

the detective handles that says a lot about
them. Some are very flamboyant and bombastic,

hitting on the right answer with a big speech
and a room full of awed listeners and one

not-so-secret criminal in the throes of a
third-act breakdown. Some are the complete

opposite, entirely subdued and maybe even
sad at the whole tragic picture. Some might

be businesslike or methodical, with only the
barest hint of an emotional response peeking

through. Sometimes there’s no triumph and
no victory - this is more common with the

hardboiled detectives, who tend to be broadly
pretty jaded and depressing even on their

best day, but you can also get this with the
more emotionally sensitive detectives when

a particularly depressing case rolls around
- like if the criminal was a victim of circumstance

or a lovable innocent bystander got hurt or
the situation is generally kinda fucked. Some

detectives will, in rare circumstances, actually
let the criminal off the hook, which can say

a lot about the detective and how much they
might be willing to bend the rules in rare

circumstances.
But that said, the greatest asset of the detective

character is also their greatest narrative
weakness - they’re inextricable from the

context of the mystery narrative. Some detectives
do have rich, personal lives on the side - for

instance, Dorothy L. Sayers’s detective
character Lord Peter Wimsey has a rich inner

life and eventually makes the slow shift from
Gentleman Playboy Detective to Love Interest

For The Author Self-Insert - it’s
really good, I promise, it's just so funny

to me that

that’s very obviously what happened. But
most detectives are kind of nonentities outside

the context of the case. Sherlock Holmes is
ferociously bored whenever he’s not on a

case and frequently self-medicates with technically
legal drugs, and that’s almost become narrative

tradition with the grittier detectives, who
will often be addicts struggling with current

or former dependencies with very depressing
non-lives outside of work. Sherlock Holmes

and his various
Holmesalikes also usually have next to no

social life or friends, and they’re often
framed as being consumed by their work and

the thrill of the case. That’s not to say
it’s impossible to write a detective character

with more to their life than just the mystery
- but it’s really not necessary most of

the time, so a lot of writers avoid it, since
the only parts of the detective’s character

that come up during the mystery-solving process
are the parts that tie into their role as

detective, not the rest of their life. Circling
back to Columbo again, we know that he’s

got

a life, and a pretty good one by all estimates.
From his various charming quirks and anecdotes

we know that he’s got a dog he never names,
a loving wife and a massive nebulous extended

family he’s on good terms with - but, for
instance, we never learn his first

name, and it's a running gag that his wife
never appears onscreen. He has a life outside

of work that we
catch blurry glimpses of, but it never matters

to the story, so glimpses are all we get.
You know, it’s funny, when I, uh, originally

sat down to write this script I was trying
to focus entirely on detectives and not go

off on mysteries too much.
But it wasn’t until I was halfway through

that

I realized you really can’t separate them.
The detective is fundamental to the mystery

and the mystery is fundamental to the detective
- even if the audience perspective changes,

that mutual structure stays constant. The
nature of the detective is to engage with

the mystery; they can have basically any character
outside of that, but how they engage with

the mystery is really what defines them as
a detective.

So… yeah.

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