Someone has been murdered. Or at least it looks that way. Or some other dastardly thing has happened, or will happen. The main character has to get to the bottom of it — to investigate, identify and catch the bad guys, and stop them or bring them to justice.

This is perhaps the most common type of story we see in commercial fiction and television drama (especially on the broadcast networks). In movies, the Save the Cat books call it the “Whydunit” genre. Their author Blake Snyder wrote that successful movie stories tend to fall into one of ten types, and I think this is a really useful tool for writers developing stories: to determine which genre they are trying to write, and to make sure the story meets the criteria of that type. In the past I have blogged about many of the others, including Dude with a Problem, Out of the Bottle, Golden Fleece, Institutionalized, Rite of Passage, and, to some extent, Buddy Love.

Now it’s time for Whydunit, and the question of how mystery and suspense works in stories in general. The latter is an issue that I see coming up a lot in scripts that I read — especially the use of mystery and suspense regarding the main character of a story. As I’ve blogged about before, I think it’s problematic to leave the audience in the dark about what’s going on in terms of the hero(ine)’s overall problem/goal, its stakes, and what they’re trying to do from scene to scene. That includes withholding information in order to work toward some big twist at the end. In general, if the audience doesn’t solidly identify with and understand the main character, and get invested in what they’re trying to do, I think they tend to have a hard time emotionally engaging with the story. Which I think is a writer’s primary job and goal. 

So we tend to want to make that stuff crystal clear and relatable enough — what they’re trying to do and why it really matters, for all to be right with the world (in both their eyes, and the audience’s). Where mystery can be used effectively — in certain types of stories, at certain times — and at the center of every Whydunit — is when the main character doesn’t know the answer to something that’s really important, and they’re trying to find it out. (This usually requires the audience to also not know the answer, so they don’t get ahead of the main character, and become impatient with them.) As part of this, other characters can be mysterious. But when the main character is mysterious themselves, that’s when I think we tend to run into problems.

The Whydunit tends to set up a very simple and relatable puzzle to solve. And audiences love to solve puzzles. Usually the main character is playing “detective,” whether professional or not, and in the best movie examples, they have or develop a strong personal connection to solving the case. It’s not just about doing their job.

Virtually every scene is a step in them trying to find out what they need to know, in order to end the mystery. Sometimes they spend the third act climax (or part of it) chasing down the perpetrator after they’ve finally indentified and found them. Other times, the climax is simply about identifying “who done it” — and the final defeat/capture of that person is more of an afterthought. In either case, the great bulk of the story, including all of Act Two (save scenes centered on a B Story) consists of “investigative beats.” These are fun-to-watch scenes of conflict where the main character (sometimes as part of a team) follows up on leads and clues, questions people, observes (sometimes undercover), tries to find out information and generally “works the case.”

The key to keeping things interesting and compelling is that they must make small bits of progress where certain questions get answered, but not enough to reduce the tension or fully solve the problem. It’s kind of like “one step forward, two steps back” — when they figure out something new and important, it usually leads to some bigger complication, question, conflict or challenge that makes things build further, with the status of the mystery changing in virtually every scene, but defying complete resolution.

Difficulty is the key. They usually have to struggle for every little scrap of partial victory, with nothing ever handed to them. There’s conflict at every turn. And speaking of “turns,” Save the Cat describes a “dark turn” happening at some point in a Whydunit — where the hero(ine) goes against their own or society’s rules, and perhaps becomes somewhat guilty or worthy of harsh judgment in their own way, fairly late in the story. I think this is something to be careful with, as it’s easy to lose the audience if this goes too far and isn’t redeemed. But it’s part of what might elevate a standard mystery story (of which there are so many on bookstore shelves) to something movie-worthy — along with the uniqueness and importance of the case itself, and the hero(ine)’s personal connection to and stakes in it.

In the end, there is usually a “secret” at the center of the crime, which is more about “why” the bad guys did what they did (or are doing what they are doing), and not just “who” they are. For the writer, understanding the bad guys and everything they do is pretty important, before one can even begin the intricate plotting of this kind of story, where almost everything is kept hidden from the audience and the main character, and only little pieces are revealed, one by one

It’s easy to confuse a “good guys vs. bad guys” story, in terms of which Save the Cat genre it fits. This often happens when a writer isn’t sure whether the hero should know who the bad guys are or not, be fighting them or not, and be on the run from them or not. I would say if they know who they are, or are fighting them or on the run from them, it’s probably not a Whydunit. It’s probably a Dude with a Problem or Golden Fleece. Or maybe a “Superhero.” Because in a Whydunit, it’s all about not knowing the answers, and being the aggressor — the one who’s on the hunt, giving chase, and most of all, trying to figure it all out.

 

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