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I've done it, Watson! I've put the pieces
together at last! This video was sponsored
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by Campfire Blaze!
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You know, most of the time when I read books
or watch shows I kinda can’t stop myself
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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
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really engage with a story without trying
to pick
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it apart and see how it works. You know, like,
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I’ll… listen for how an actor’s doing
their performance or clock what trope we’re
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doing and judge the plot from there, stuff
like that.
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The one genre that breaks this rule for me,
funnily enough, is mysteries. The one story
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format the audience is supposed to critically
engage with - I don’t. More accurately I
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can’t. It might just be that I’m really
bad at noticing stuff in general so I skim
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over the sneaky clues, it might be that I’m
really bad with names so I can’t keep the
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suspects straight anyway. But honestly, even
the really well-written mysteries that differentiate
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the characters and give the audience enough
clues to theoretically crack the case don’t
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grab me - I have a higher success rate just
guessing
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from the tropes. Like if it’s an Agatha
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Christie number, even odds the killer’s
gonna be
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the most eligible bachelor in the cast. I’ll
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still read ‘em and enjoy ‘em, but most
of the time the ending will totally blindside
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me. I’m not good at putting the pieces together
for myself.
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Which is why I love and appreciate the character
archetype central and foundational to the
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mystery format - the detective. The one character
tasked with putting all the pieces together
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and revealing to the audience what the actual
plot is. Without the detective, people like
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me - the watsons of the world - wouldn’t
get anything out of mystery stories.
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Now detectives aren’t exclusively found
in mystery
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stories, but they are pretty inextricably
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linked with the genre. Detectives investigate
situations and solve puzzles - mysteries are
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centered on the process of solving that puzzle,
but mysteries and mystery-adjacent plots are
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present in stories of all stripes, which means
the detective archetype can be organically
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integrated into almost any genre and narrative
structure. If there’s a puzzle of any kind
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happening in the plot, you can have a detective
in the plot too.
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Now “detective” is a job and a narrative
role, not a character type, so theoretically
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any character archetype can fill the role
of a detective - but there are some majorly
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popular subtypes that are essentially stock
characters. The “Hard-Boiled Noir
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Detective” type is typically a tortured
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alcoholic or general addict with a constantly
running inner monologue, a jaded and world-weary
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perspective on life and a disproportionate
number of morally questionable dames slinking
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into their office for shenanigans - which
is funny, because while this archetype is
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very well-known, classic noir detectives have
almost nothing in common with the tropes they
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spawned. Sam Spade, the detective in the Maltese
Falcon, the most iconic noir ever - has almost
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no personality, no tragic or tortured tendencies,
and he doesn’t even react to the death of
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his
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partner with much more than mild frustration.
The Hardboiled Noir Detective archetype has
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more in common with Dick Tracy than any proper
noir protagonist. Then there’s the Gentleman
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Detective, almost the polar opposite of the
Hardboiled Detective, a classy and frequently
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aristocratic adventurer type, unilaterally
well-educated and almost always British, frequently
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butting heads with a bumbling police department
coincidentally full of lower-class people.
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Sherlock Holmes, the most popular detective
ever written, kinda spawned off a whole set
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of Sherlockalikes - all eccentric, brilliant,
usually mostly focused on a forensic investigative
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approach, and generally accompanied by a long-suffering
guy friend who narrates the actual adventures.
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That third-person narration angle isn’t
a Holmes exclusive
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- in fact, it’s one of only a few ways to
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present a mystery to an audience.
See, the problem with a mystery is the audience
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isn’t really allowed to know everything
that’s
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happening in the plot until the end. There
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always has to be something hidden for the
reveal. This means the audience can’t have
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a third-person omniscient perspective but
they also usually can’t have a full first-person
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perspective on the detective, because almost
all mysteries have a denouement at the end
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where the big twist is revealed and everything
falls into place. This denouement starts when
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the detective reveals what’s going on, not
when the detective figures out what’s going
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on, so if the audience is already in the detective's
head, we get that information too early. Some
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stories will kinda fudge this by giving us
the
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detective’s perspective and having them
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think stuff like “of course! that must be
it! everything makes sense now!” and then
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reveal the actual information they figured
out during the denouement
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proper. Failing that, most detective stories
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will take a third person perspective, either
from a less-than-omniscient vague third-person
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narrator or from the perspective of another
character who isn’t the detective and serves
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as an audience surrogate.
This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, though.
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There’s kind of a gradient here that sort
of determines what kind of story - and what
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kind of detective - we’re going to get.
On the high end of the scale, some mysteries
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show the audience almost everything. This
is pretty rare, and it’s arguable that stories
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of this type aren’t exactly mysteries at
all. Probably the most iconic example of this
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format is Columbo,
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a very popular detective show from the 70s
where every episode begins with a full, comprehensive
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view of the murder. We know who did it, how
they did it, how they covered it up and usually
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even why they did it. The “mystery” element
is not who did the crime, but how is Lieutenant
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Columbo going to catch them. In true mystery
form the episodes all have an ending reveal
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of various kinds, but they’re usually revealing
something Columbo did or discovered offscreen
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- the twist isn’t in the crime, but in the
solving of the crime. This is also not uncommon
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in stories where the detective character is
technically the antagonist and the protagonist
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whose POV we’re following is the actual
criminal they’re trying to catch - these
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stories will often turn into battles of wits
where
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the audience has more knowledge than any of
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the individual characters. Even some Sherlock
Holmes stories technically fall into this
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category - there’s no mystery in A Scandal
In Bohemia, the surprise reveal at the end
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is that Irene Adler fully saw through Sherlock
Holmes’s sneaky disguise and totally outmaneuvered
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him to leave the country with her new husband
and the photo he wanted.
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It’s more common for a mystery to give the
audience something like 70-80% of the relevant
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information. We typically don’t know who
did it and we don’t necessarily know the
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motive - so in order to keep those vague during
the investigative process,
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the suspect’s character backstories will
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usually be somewhat muddled or obscured, since
otherwise it’d be too easy to eliminate
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people and narrow it down.
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These mysteries will usually give us something
of the method - like if someone was poisoned,
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a forensic report will say what poison it
was - and a large pool of suspects to identify
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the criminal from. The reveal of the criminal
almost always involves a reveal of some hitherto-unknown
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element of their backstory or characterization
that the detective has worked out without
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the audience’s knowledge. In these stories,
the detective character is usually digging
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up clues about the crime to piece together
an empty profile of who the criminal is, and
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then finding out who in the cast fits that
profile. How they do that depends on the individual
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detective and their personality.
But before we get into that, I wanna touch
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on
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the last category - because some mysteries
give the
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audience very little information. And this
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is… usually bad. Like, actually bad writing,
and I don’t say that lightly. Hiding too
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much information from the audience can be
seen as a sign of bad faith on the part of
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the author. If the audience couldn’t reasonably
guess the solution from the information given,
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it’s a violation of mystery convention.
For instance, if the killer is a hitherto-unmentioned
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character who just happened to be in the area,
that’s completely plausible and it might
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even make more sense
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in context than any of the main cast doing
it, but it’s not a fair conclusion
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to a mystery that’s supposed to be fair
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to the audience. All these things
serve to undercut the integrity of the mystery
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plot.
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These stories feel worse for the audience
to engage with. They also sometimes don’t
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make much sense in hindsight, since without
enough information in the story to piece it
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together, it might not actually hold together.
Writing a mystery is hard - you usually have
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to do it backwards from the way it’s presented
in the plot, starting from the crime and working
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through what clues and hints that crime would
leave, rather than starting from the mystery
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and figuring out who’d make the best criminal
as you go. If the writer sets up a mystery
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without
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actually knowing the solution beforehand,
the story’s
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not going to hold together as well. And if
the writer DOES know the mystery going into
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it but drops, like, tiny tiny clues that don't
actually combine to form the bigger picture,
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that kind of has the same problem where the
audience can't really engage with the mystery
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because they don't have enough information.
This brushes
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up against the same problem I talked about
in the plot twists video - twists for the
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sake of shocking and surprising your audience
are good if you, the writer, like feeling
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smart, but bad if you, the writer, want your
audience to actually critically engage with
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your work. The audience needs to be able to
follow along, and since the audience can’t
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know
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more than the author, at the bare minimum,
the author needs to know the solution before
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they start constructing the clues what audience
gets. And ideally they also need to give the
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audience enough clues that they could theoretically
extrapolate the actual solution in kind of
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the same way the detective is theoretically
supposed to.
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In the
ideal mystery format, the audience is only
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missing
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one key piece of information by the end of
the story, so when the detective does the
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reveal of that one key piece it makes everything
else fall into place. But frankly it’s easier
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to write a mystery where the crime leaves
almost no clues and the detective figures
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out the solution by……… knowing what
the author needs them to know and being right
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because the author said they were. That way
there’s
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no chance of the audience figuring it out
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before your detective does and thus undercutting
your detective's incredible super geniusness.
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For instance,
while Original Sherlock Holmes definitely
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had some pretty outrageous deductive leaps,
extrapolating whole character backstories
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from ink stains and muddy boots, some of the
adaptions take this a step further. Like when
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BBC’s Sherlock adapted A Scandal in Bohemia
into A Scandal in Belgravia, it added in this
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little background mystery because the closest
thing the main plot of that episode has to
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a mystery is what is Irene Adler’s Phone
Password, which isn’t… you know… interesting.
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And it’s the first half of Sherlock’s
name because she’s in love with him now,
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and that’s the kind of basic-ass romantic
subplot nonsense the audience could see coming
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a mile away, so that doesn't really scratch
the "my detective needs to be smarter than
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the audience" itch. But the mystery sideplot
centers
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on the unexplained death of a tourist by blunt
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force trauma to the back of the head with
no apparent weapon and no sign of the killer
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in the middle of an empty field. Sherlock
brushes this off immediately, claiming that
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he’s figured out the answer just from the
position of a car that backfired relative
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to the tourist and from the fact that the
tourist was killed by a blow to the back of
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the head. This is the last we really hear
of it for a while until Adler
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reveals to Sherlock that she has also solved
it, and explains that the tourist was killed
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accidentally by his own boomerang. Does this
make sense from the information given? K-uh…
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…kinda.
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It theoretically fits the lack of any killer
or murder weapon, since the boomerang flew
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merrily away after clocking the dude, although
it is a little questionable if the boomerang
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could've done that kind of killing impact
and then flown like a hundred feet away and
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landed in the nearby creek, but that's okay.
Is that
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something the audience could’ve been expected
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to guess from “the position of the car relative
to the hiker at the time of the backfire”
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and “a single blow to the back of the head”?
Absolutely the f*ck not, come on. It’d be
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just as valid to assume (and probably easier
to believe) that he got hit by a very
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small meteor. What were the odds? I dunno!
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This mystery isn't fun to solve or see solved
because the audience doesn't even get a chance
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to think about it.
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When a mystery gives the audience too much
information, there’s not much of a mystery,
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since there’s nothing to figure out - but
if a mystery gives the audience too little
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to go on, it’s not gonna keep them guessing
- it’s going to lose their engagement. It’s
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like, you need to give them enough pieces
of the puzzle that they can guess what the
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final picture is gonna look like - not all
of them, or they’d know for sure, and not
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just a few edge pieces or the monochrome sky
background, because that’s not interesting
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for the audience to engage with. At its worst
it actively discourages the audience from
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trying to solve the mystery. It’s a tricky
balance to strike.
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But at the heart of the mystery story is the
detective. As the character at the center
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of unraveling the mystery, or, more broadly,
revealing the plot, the detective is, in some
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ways, the center of the mystery and the narrative
overall. And how they navigate that mystery
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depends a lot on their individual character.
The first place we tend to look to understand
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a character is their character
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motive. Most characters have a clear reason
for doing what they do - but that’s not
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always true for detectives. While some are
motivated by a general goodness or a sense
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of duty or a general intellectual curiosity,
some detectives have next to no personal investment
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in solving crimes or mysteries - it’s just
their job. The more jaded ones might even
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complain
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about it. Ironically, for a detective, motive
is one of the least important facets of their
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character.
Instead, there are three important aspects
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of the detective’s character, and they mirror
the narrative structure of the mystery. First,
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there’s their investigative method. How
a detective gathers clues and information
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depends almost entirely on their character,
personality and skillset. For instance, Sherlock
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Holmes takes a forensic focus, observing and
gathering trace physical evidence to paint
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a picture of the crime. Then he often does
more on-the-scene investigating, frequently
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in increasingly ridiculous disguises to gather
information without putting people on-edge.
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In contrast, we get detective characters like
Miss Marple, who’s a purposeful trope subversion
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- 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
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the crimes she investigates through nothing
but psychological profiling and her general
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understanding of how people work, relying
on other people to do the actual clue-gathering
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legwork. In a similar vein, Agatha Christie’s
other detective hero, Hercule Poirot, also
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focuses more on the psychological angle, though
he does more in-person investigating and clue-gathering.
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Instead of broad psychological profiles, Poirot
focuses more on understanding the motive behind
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the crime and deducing the criminal from there.
Columbo is another deliberate subversion - he’s
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a proper police detective, but he comes across
as a befuddled and disorganized dude, dresses
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pretty sloppily and drives a car so old he’s
frequently asked if he’s undercover. He
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tends to do
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a first pass spotting physical evidence
the forensic guys don’t always catch cuz
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they don't realize what they're looking for,
but
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the bulk of his investigative method relies
on interviewing slash pestering the killer
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about the problems he’s noticed in their
story in such a good-natured and innocent
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way that they get so rattled they end up
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incidentally revealing the truth. Other detectives
have other methods - the grittier, more hard-boiled
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ones will sometimes threaten or even torture
people for information, the more gentlemanly
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ones usually rely on their book-learning and
scientific knowledge to piece things together,
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etc etc. Since this clue-gathering usually
takes up the bulk of the mystery in one way
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or another, this is the side of the detective
that usually reveals the most about their
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fundamental character.
The second aspect of the detective’s character
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is how they put it all together. This is much
subtler than the clue-gathering because most
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of the time we don’t actually see how this
works - it’s an internal process wherein
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the detective figures out what exactly has
been going on, and if the audience gets too
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clear a look at it, they’re gonna find out
the big reveal too early. But even if it’s
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largely invisible, it’s still a fundamental
facet of the detective’s character. Maybe
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they put things together in sudden bursts
of clarity and inspiration and run off without
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explaining anything first, maybe they take
careful and methodical notes and collect the
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dots more slowly, maybe they chase down a
hunch or two before they hit on the right
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angle. If the audience has a more omniscient
perspective and already knows what the detective
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has to figure out, we’ll sometimes see the
detective putting the pieces together mostly
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for the audience’s benefit - spotting a
clue we’ve already seen, noticing a discrepancy
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we’ve already realized doesn’t work, looking
befuddled for a moment before silently realizing
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something, or (in contrast) calmly and immediately
figuring out the information the criminal
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has tried very very hard to hide and explaining
how they came to that conclusion so we, the
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audience, know
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they weren’t cheating - there’s all sorts
of ways to play it depending on the detective’s
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character.
And finally, the third aspect of the detective’s
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character is how they handle the big reveal.
When they finally put the pieces together
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and lay it all out for the audience so we
get the full story for the first time, how
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the detective handles that says a lot about
them. Some are very flamboyant and bombastic,
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hitting on the right answer with a big speech
and a room full of awed listeners and one
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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
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be businesslike or methodical, with only the
barest hint of an emotional response peeking
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through. Sometimes there’s no triumph and
no victory - this is more common with the
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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
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a particularly depressing case rolls around
- like if the criminal was a victim of circumstance
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or a lovable innocent bystander got hurt or
the situation is generally kinda fucked. Some
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detectives will, in rare circumstances, actually
let the criminal off the hook, which can say
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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
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character is also their greatest narrative
weakness - they’re inextricable from the
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context of the mystery narrative. Some detectives
do have rich, personal lives on the side - for
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instance, Dorothy L. Sayers’s detective
character Lord Peter Wimsey has a rich inner
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life and eventually makes the slow shift from
Gentleman Playboy Detective to Love Interest
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For The Author Self-Insert - it’s
really good, I promise, it's just so funny
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to me that
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that’s very obviously what happened. But
most detectives are kind of nonentities outside
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the context of the case. Sherlock Holmes is
ferociously bored whenever he’s not on a
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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
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or former dependencies with very depressing
non-lives outside of work. Sherlock Holmes
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and his various
Holmesalikes also usually have next to no
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social life or friends, and they’re often
framed as being consumed by their work and
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the thrill of the case. That’s not to say
it’s impossible to write a detective character
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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
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that come up during the mystery-solving process
are the parts that tie into their role as
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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
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and the mystery is fundamental to the detective
- even if the audience perspective changes,
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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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