Mystery Boxes

Previous chapter talked about plot twists and introduced the idea of “surprising readers” … in the wrong way. This chapter talks more about mysteries and revelations. They are a vital part of any story (especially mainstream ones). One theory in particular—the “mystery box”-style of storytelling—has unfortunately taken over Hollywood and is applied badly almost every time.

Let’s talk about it.

Creating a Mystery Box

The technique is simple. You place a box in the world of your story, but you lock it and make the characters interested about what’s inside. A Mystery Box.

This is an analogy. It doesn’t have to be a literal box, of course.

You can place a character who does many mysterious things, but refuses to explain or clarify any of it. You can reveal information that seems contradictory.

This is the fastest way to create a mystery that hooks viewers. More generally,

You add an extraordinary element to the world, but hide details or explanation, and make it near impossible for the characters to get that.

This style of storytelling is obsessed with shoving mystery boxes into the story. More so than actually solving the mysteries.

What could go wrong

This might seem strange. Why add a mystery if you have no solution? Isn’t that terribly disappointing?

Yes, yes it is. Abrams co-wrote the hit TV series Lost, for example. To this day, fans are unanimously angry about the fact that many mysteries were never resolved (or received a handwavy explanation). I am part of this group. I just felt … empty after finishing the series. It was all pointless. We were just following a jumble of ideas from writers who had no clue what to do.

There are three situations in which a mystery box disappoints.

• It is simply never opened.
• There’s nothing inside, or what’s inside has no (interesting) meaning or value.
• There was no way for readers to predict or discuss what could be inside.

Never opened

Placing a mystery box is useless—at best—if it is never opened. (At worst, a bad mystery box is frustrating and causes viewers to just completely give up on your story.) So many writers just don’t have the time or motivation to resolve all their threads, so they just … pretend they don’t exist.

Even worse, they pretend the solution is “obvious” if you just “really think about it” ;) Never, ever, ever, call your audience dumb for not getting something. Never hide behind a mask of “my story is so smart, I don’t have to clearly give the answers!”

Worthless content

It’s equally useless if the mystery box turns out to be empty, or has nothing of interest inside.

You’ve worked up the audience for 10 hours of television. You’ve shown this mystery box, made it even more mysterious with every scene, made them work really hard to open it. And then … it just contains a bottle of precious wine that somebody stored long ago.

It may feel like you’ve given a solution.

You may work really hard to justify it (the wine is really expensive, so the box had a really good lock, and the one who stored it was a wealthy gentleman who lived here 100 years ago).

It doesn’t make the solution interesting or worthwhile.

No setup

As discussed in more detail at Setup & Payoff.

Your mystery box might contain the greatest thing ever. But if that thing was never introduced, has no clues leading towards it, and could not have been predicted … it will feel worthless.

This can be quite overt: through research and action, the hero learns what is inside the box in advance.

But often the hints are more general. The hero learns that it’s something magical, or something dangerous, or something that might give him superpowers. The audience doesn’t know exactly what’s inside and is kept guessing, but they know enough to make educated guesses and play along.

Creating a good mystery box

All of this doesn’t mean mystery boxes are bad. It means they are often written badly.

This is true for all (writing) advice. When not understood, when not applied with insight and care, they become a smokescreen that clouds the better story.

Practice creating mystery boxes, but practice developing and opening them even more.

With some practice, it’s not hard to insert a mystery box into your story. It’s quite easy to come up with a mysterious idea and then just … give no explanation whatsoever. Make it really hard to open that box. Use as many steps as you can invent.

The idea is that you can do this without knowing the solution. It’s especially helpful for “pantsers”: writers who just need a good start, and then improvise the story as they go. Or writers who have to write a full season of television each year, unsure if they get greenlit for the next season.

It’s a great tool to get an audience hooked and to set up a story.

Opening a Mystery Box

Now comes the hard part: providing satisfying solutions. The question of “now what?”

Thinking Backwards

The most common approach is “thinking backwards”. You have your mystery. Now ask yourself: “what event led directly to this mystery?”

Take that step back. Now ask the same question: what event led to this one?

Keep taking steps back, until you’re at a stable point. A normal situation that needs no further explanation or setup.

This reveals a chain of “revelations” that provide the solution to the mystery.

It’s similar to the plotting technique of “points on a map”: taking one step towards your goal in every chapter. Give one bit of information about your mystery box every scene. The reader feels like they make progress. It gives them time to think about it, slowly connect the dots themselves.

There’s a tendency to overcomplicate these solutions. This is either inexperience or an attempt to sound smart and intelligent. Don’t fall for this. If people finish your entire story and still have no clue what the heck just happened or why the heck the mystery existed in the first place, the story has lost all meaning.

Keep the chain of steps rather short. Each step should be a major, interesting turning point in the mystery. If you have too many steps, see if you can combine some of them.

Letting Plot Decide

The other approach is to let the plot decide. You place the mystery box, and then you just start writing. You write the plot to be as interesting and engaging as possible, inventing new information as you go along.

Slowly, as you invent new information, a solution to the mystery should form. At some point, you’ve written 15 chapters and given so much backstory, that you have enough to form a coherent solution.

I use this approach, but then again, I am very much a pantser. Even then, I do a bit of planning.

I know from experience when I should be giving hints or solutions. When I reach that chapter, but don’t know the details yet, I stop writing. I take a day off, writing one question at the top of my notebook “WHAT IS THE SOLUTION TO MYSTERY X?” I only continue writing once I’ve done enough planning ahead to know I can open that mystery box in a satisfying way.

With this method, you often get a very interesting first half of the story, but can struggle to make the second half (with the solutions and revelations) equally compelling. I’m still learning how to balance these two.

Example: puzzle games

This technique is also used by many puzzle game designers. I’ve used it for that as well.

You start with “what if I have a level in which the player ends in situation X?” From that state, you work backwards, trying to find “moves” that would lead to this solution. You keep adding moves until the level is in a starting state that doesn’t immediately reveal the solution.

Similarly, the most common trap for puzzle game developers is making puzzles that are waaaay too hard. Because you invented the puzzle, you know the solution. So you think it’s too easy. You keep adding more elements, misdirection, obscuring the solution, until it’s just a mess that no player will understand.

That’s why they have another rule: “each puzzle hinges on one new, creative observation”.

The difficulty in puzzles shouldn’t come from complexity or size. The best puzzles are very tiny and minimal, easy to understand at first glance. Their solution is hard because it requires one creative logical leap.

The same is true for mysteries in stories. The solution should be simple, but only once you connect the right dots.

Now write

Write a story focused on mystery boxes.

• At the start, place a big one.
• As the story goes on, keep placing smaller ones, regularly revealing what’s inside.
• At the end, during the big climax, open that biggest mystery box.

As always, these chapters focus on just one structure or framework. So really go all-in on the mystery boxes here, even if that means ignoring other elements that you’d need for a good story.

See how creative you can get. Test your mystery boxes on friends/family/colleagues to see how much they are “hooked” by them.

Also practice providing satisfying solutions. When in doubt, I’d rather you spend more time on that. (Invent 5 different solutions and test which one works best.) Mysteries are easy to come up with. Mystery boxes are easy to place. Opening them and being impressed by what’s inside is much, much harder.