In Praise of Smaller Mysteries
As a reader, I love subplot mysteries even more than main mysteries in the classical whodunnits. They’re so versatile, fun, and has so many cool uses!
Why use a subplot mystery?
There are five main reasons:
1: You have several ways to keep the reader engaged.
You don’t put all eggs in the same basket when it comes to delighting your reader. While a main plot mystery speaks to a certain reader who’s looking for that specifically, a subplot mystery can be the extra spice that makes an already good story irresistible.
Consider Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson. You have the overarching heist and defeating the villain, learning a cool magic system, the romance. And a subplot mystery. I discussed this with a friend lately, and while I loved the romance part, she didn’t care for the romance at all. If the whole book had been centered on the romance, it would utterly fail engage her. But she still liked it overall because she enjoyed the main plot and was really engaged in the mystery.
2: A subplot mystery is actually more mysterious than a main plot mystery.
Think about your typical murder mystery. You know the question: who killed the victim? You know how the middle is going to play out: investigating several suspects. You know the end: it’s revealed who (probably together with why and how, too).
But a subplot mystery?
Unless you’re going for something that’s really obvious and done before, there are much more unknowns and options for your mystery.
- You have a much bigger range of questions. What’s in the mystical package? Who’s telling the truth when these two characters tell wildly different stories? Why on earth is there a cheetah in my apple tree?
- The reader won’t know when it’ll be resolved. It doesn’t have to be in the end, it could be at any point in the story.
- The reader won’t necessarily know what else in the story it’s connected to. And that can be the fun of it! Readers love when two seemingly separate story threads come together in a cool revelation.
3: Subplot mystery can add unique flavor from the start.
A main plot mystery’s story question is typically raised because of the dead body found in the beginning. This mystery itself is so similar to tons of other stories, that authors need to add other details for it to stand out. The body is found in a library, or has a missing a finger, or is found alongside letters written in the dirt, etc.
With a subplot mystery, the question itself can be unique and add something visually or conceptually intriguing to the story right off the bat. Why are thousands of identical letters flying out of the chimney? You can probably immediately picture this and know exactly which story I’m talking about among the millions of mysteries out there.
4: Subplot mysteries are super versatile.
Almost any story can have some sort of subplot mystery. You can take a part of the story and create a mystery about it, making the reader more engaged than they’d otherwise be.
5: You can scatter clues everywhere in ways the reader don’t expect
Having a small subplot brewing that the reader forgets about for big chunks of the story, makes it so much easier to plant sneaky clues everywhere, including in the main plot storyline.
In the whodunnit, aka main plot mystery story, the reader is so trained to look for clues that whenever there’s a detail that doesn’t look like it’s absolutely necessary for the action, they’ll think: Aha! I can see a clue planted right there!
But when you have a lot of other story threads going on, and something else in the main focus, the reader won’t know exactly where to look, or forget to look for it at all, which makes it easier to hide in fun and clever ways.
Levels of Mystery and Revelation
The typical mystery progression goes like this:
Question —> Investigation —> Revelation
But not all of these have to be present. Here are ways to create different levels of mysteries and reveals:
1: Revelation only, AKA sudden plot twist at the end
A good example is the plot twist at the ending of the movie The Sixth Sense. No question were raised, only something we took for granted revealed to be untrue right when we didn’t expect it. This can be a delightful addition to your story that gives your reader an ending to rave about!
2: Question and Revelation Subplot
Some mystery subplot have only two parts: the question and the revelation, with no investigation. Dumbledore’s dead hand in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is an example of this. Harry asks Dumbledore a few times why his hand looks weird, but since Dumbledore reassures he’ll tell him when the time is right, Harry doesn’t need to go investigating or come up with lots of theories. It’s revealed around the midpoint, rather than an ending revelation, keeping the story engaging also in the quieter parts.
3: Question, Investigation, Revelation Subplot
In Mistborn: The Final Empire, the question ‘What’s the true nature of the Lord Ruler's power’ is raised and investigated, but is often in the background as different characters discuss the plan, learn the magic powers of Allomancy, train an army, and become entangled in romance and court intrigues. This makes the revelation so much more impactful, since the mystery is easily forgotten when the action is ramped up, and then it suddenly turns up again and combines the payoff of so many story threads at once in an explosive climax.
4: Question, Investigation, Revelation Main plot, AKA the full-fledged mystery
This is the typical Whodunnit (or the why- or how-dunnit). Since the whole plot focuses on the mystery, there needs to be a lot of investigation, including a number of red herrings to keep the story interesting. The whodunnit got a set of conventions in its golden age called the Ten Rules of Detection, its form perfected by authors such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.
Don’t leave your readers hanging!