How to Write a Mystery in a Screenplay

Mysteries are one of the oldest and most effective storytelling devices. Audiences are drawn to  them because they are challenging and engaging. It’s a step above a normal story narrative because a good mystery is not just entertaining - it’s interactive. The audience lives vicariously through the protagonist(s), creating an even more visceral cinematic experience.

When we watch movies full of mystery, we become detectives ourselves. We’re tasked with looking at the clues, finding the most obvious suspects, and solving the mystery. But writing a mystery isn’t just about withholding information. It’s about how and when you reveal it. It’s about giving the audience just enough to keep them invested and guessing.

Then there’s the added thrill of anticipation and expectation. The best mysteries play with audience anticipation, and do all they can to subvert their expectations to create new, unique, memorable, and cathartic cinematic experiences.

Here we offer a beginner’s guide to writing mysteries in your screenplays. Let’s see if we can anticipate your questions, subvert your expectations with pro writing tips on the subject, and offer you a new outlook on how to write effective mystery. 

What Is a Mystery in Storytelling?

Mystery in storytelling is really the art of the unknown. It’s much broader than just murder cases and puzzles for detectives to solve. In any literary or cinematic medium, mystery is:

• A question that needs to be answered.
• A truth hidden beneath layers of misdirection.
• A secret waiting to be uncovered. 

A mystery works as a narrative engine, driving the plot of the story. It’s what will keep the script reader turning the pages, and keep the audience on the edge of their seats. Mystery, at its core, is an elevated form of storytelling that you can use as a tool to create even more interest and intrigue. Mysteries keep audiences guessing, keep them engaged, and give them the natural dopamine rush of solving a puzzle. 

Here’s the added benefit of writing mysteries: they make audiences feel smarter when they figure out what the mystery actually is, and when they don’t, it’s a cathartic feeling when the story outsmarts them.

Mystery Sub-Genres

The great thing about mysteries is that they come in many different shapes and sizes, offering screenwriters multiple options. It’s a movie genre full of many sub-genres to choose from. 

1. Whodunits 

This is the most classic sub-genre of mysteries, dating back to the old tales of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie novels. A crime has been committed, an ensemble of characters are suspects, and someone must find out who did it. The best contemporary examples include:

• Knives Out - Rian Johnson updated the Agatha Christie model with humor, misdirection, and modern family dynamics.
• Glass Onion - His follow-up offered a more contemporary twist with tech billionaires, influencers, and a sun-drenched Greek island.
• Clue - A playful send-up of the genre with multiple endings that embraced the absurdity of whodunits

The key element of this sub-genre is it being the closest to an interactive experience that a movie can be. Audiences love them because they are tasked with looking for the clues, and weeding out the suspects and their motives.

In whodunits, almost everyone has a motive. That’s the fun of it. Anything is possible. Anyone could have committed the crime. They all have their own reasons. They all have potential alibis. And the audience can take part in solving the mystery, and then experience the great shocks, twists, turns, and reveals that make the movie even more memorable. They can also lead to multiple viewings because of those reveals, which studios and streamers love. 

2. Detective Stories 

While detective stories share elements of whodunits, these types of mysteries focus less on multiple suspects and more on solving a direct mystery through the eyes of a detective, or someone acting as detective as they try to solve a mystery. The audience experiences the case alongside the protagonist(s), sharing their breakthroughs and frustrations, and sometimes their obsession with solving the case. It’s less interactive, and more about following the story, along with its reveals, to get a better understanding of what may be going on. When the protagonist figures things out, the audience does too. 

• Se7en - Detectives Somerset and Mills unravel a string of murders tied to the seven deadly sins.
• Zodiac - A slow-burn real-life serial killer mystery about obsession, journalism, and the cost of chasing an elusive killer in the public eye.
• Prisoners - A detective and father blur the line between justice and vengeance as they hunt for missing children.

3. Howdunits (aka Procedurals)

Sometimes it’s not about who did it, but how, and why. The suspense and mystery come from peeling back the mechanics of the crime. We may know who did it (unless there’s a twist), but these mysteries are all about how the crime was committed, and why. 

• Primal Fear - A young altar boy confesses to a murder, but how the truth unravels is the twist.
• CSI and other variations - The ultimate procedural format where the science and reconstruction of crimes are central.
• Spotlight - Investigative journalists uncover the Catholic Church abuse scandal through painstaking research, interviews, and cross-referencing evidence, showing the mechanics of journalism as the mystery unfolds.

4. Mystery Thrillers

Mystery thrillers combine mystery with suspense and danger. They don’t always involve detectives and investigators as protagonists (although they can). Instead, the protagonists the story follows are usually the ones in danger. There’s a threat, and the mystery revolves around who the threat is and why the perpetrators are doing what they are doing. 

• Gone Girl - A missing wife, an unreliable husband, and a media circus create a tense, shifting mystery.
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - A journalist and hacker dig into decades-old family secrets while in mortal danger.
• Silence of the Lambs - Clarice Starling must solve a serial killer case while navigating Hannibal Lecter’s manipulations.
• Lifetime thrillers - Someone, usually a woman (catering to the Lifetime Network’s main demographic), is facing a threat and must survive as the mystery of the threat is slowly revealed. 
  
  

5. Puzzle Box Mysteries

Puzzle box mysteries are more unique because of their non-linear, intricate, and/or mind-bending structure and narratives. The narrative of the mystery itself becomes the puzzle. 

This type of mystery is often married to other mystery sub-genres (read above), but are unique in the way their stories are told. 

• Memento - A man with short-term memory loss tries to solve his wife’s murder, told backward in time.
• The Prestige - Rival magicians battle to put on the best illusion for an audience, each hiding their secrets until the final, devastating reveal.
• The Usual Suspects - A con man spins a story that hides the truth in plain sight.

The structure of the story mirrors the mystery. Audiences then get to piece together the puzzle to solve it. There can be external puzzle box mysteries, where the puzzle to be solved involves characters and scenarios around a protagonist, or maybe a protagonist doesn’t know how they got where they are (Severence). There can also be internal puzzle box mysteries where a protagonist doesn’t know who they are (The Bourne Identity). 

5 Necessary Ingredients for a Well Written Mystery

There’s a general recipe for engaging mysteries, and each ingredient is essential. You add your own flare to the recipe with your own unique and original characters, concepts, twists, turns, and subversion of audience expectations, but you need the base ingredients to create a foundation. 

1. The Core Mystery to Be Solved  - You need a central question that needs to be answered. This is what drives the story. You can (and should) add additional mini-mysteries within, but there needs to be the core mystery - the core concept - that drives everything.

2. The Proxy - A proxy is the POV protagonist, or group of protagonists, who guides the audience through the mystery. This is how audiences live vicariously through a character, allowing them, and the cinematic experience, to be as interactive as possible. 

3. The Clues - In hindsight, audiences need to be able to go back and see the clues that led to the big reveal. The weakest reveals are those that come out of nowhere, largely for the shock value alone. They’re usually revealed in bad exposition. The strongest reveals are backed up by clues peppered into the plot and story along the way. Look no further than The Sixth Sense and its climactic reveal, where the movie actually goes back and showcases the clues that led up to the twist. 

4. The Red Herrings -  Red herrings are false leads that keep the audience guessing. This is  where screenwriters can have the most fun, leading audiences away from the truth, forcing  them to second guess their own mystery-solving abilities. When you throw the audience off, they become more and more engaged in the story and mystery. 

5. The Big Reveal -  Sometimes the journey is more important than the destination, yes. However, you always want to do your best to come up with a satisfying ending. You accomplish that by coming up with something original and unexpected - that last little twist that subverts the expectations of the audience, giving them something they haven’t seen before. 

Writing Mysteries Is Not About Tricking the Audience

Writing a mystery isn’t about tricking the audience. It’s about engaging them. That’s what they want. They want to go on the ride. You want them to dance between what they know, what they  suspect, and what they discover. 

As you’re writing a mystery, ask yourself:

• What’s the central question/mystery driving the story?
• What avenues, alleys, and paths can branch out from that central question/mystery?
• What clues and red herrings can be planted to keep the audience guessing?
• How can the knowledge of the audience be controlled?
• How can I deliver a reveal that shocks, but also satisfies?
• You are not there to trick the audience or make fools of them. You want them to be able to solve the mystery along with your protagonist. You want that interactive relationship between the audience and your characters. 

A third of the audience will figure the mystery out before the end reveal. Another third will have their expectations and assumptions subverted. The remaining third will likely claim that they figured it out, but the truth is that they more than likely considered multiple solutions, one of which happened to be the final reveal. 

Your job is to write something that compels and engages them from beginning to end, and then also offer a legit road map of clues, plants, and payoffs for them to go back to so they can see that they haven’t been tricked. Instead, they’ll find out that they just went on an amazing, well-written interactive cinematic ride. And hopefully a good one at that!