Murder Mystery Writing System

Jack Pachuta’s Murder Mystery Writing System is a 62-page pdf that outlines a process for creating a murder mystery. Follow the process and you will create your own murder mystery that you can use as a basis for a murder mystery party.

The Murder Mystery Writing System doesn’t specify a format for your game, because formats can differ. But if you follow the system you will end up with a mystery that you can then incorporate into whatever format you want.

Jack uses the system in his successful murder-mystery writing seminars, and he is the creator of the Mysteries on the Net parties, so he knows what he’s talking about.

The writing system process

At the heart of the system is an eleven-step process:

1. Scenario synopsis
2. Suspect synopsis
3. Suspect relationships
4. Suspect profiles
5. Key non-suspects
6. Timeline
7. Additional storylines
8. Red herrings
9. Clues
10. The perp
11. The logic

Each step goes into some depth. For example, the first chapter (Scenario Synopsis) covers the mood or theme that you have chosen, the mystery’s setting, the location of the body and causes of death, and so on.

The Murder Mystery Writing System includes blank forms for each step to capture your thoughts and ideas. (This does mean there are quite a few mostly-blank pages in the pdf, but I think they are useful for capturing your thoughts.)

Seven secrets for murder mystery success

As well as the process, the Murder Mystery Writing System includes seven secrets for writing a successful murder mystery party. These include:

• Give all suspects a motive
• Use lots of red herrings
• Develop at least three storylines
• And more…

What I liked

The overall process is great (I like a process), and I can see how you can quickly end up with a satisfying murder mystery.

The system makes several other good points:

Make the victim unlikable: I haven’t always done that, but I did it for The Show Must Go On! and found it very satisfying. Apparently, it’s also fun to investigate the murder of someone who deserved their untimely end. I should do that again!

Make sure each suspect has a motive: Otherwise, they’re not suspects!

Explain why the other suspects could not have committed the crime: One of the final steps is really useful as it forces you to make a convincing case about why each of these suspects did not commit the murder. I will take this to heart in the future!

What was not so great

I have no complaints about the Murder Mystery Writing System itself, but I found the presentation somewhat amateurish, with cheesy clip art. I would like to see it with a fresh, modern layout.

Have I used it?

I haven’t yet used the Murder Mystery Writing System myself, but I plan to.

I write interactive games (like Hollywood Lies), which don’t focus on a murder as much as the Mysteries on the Net games that Jack writes. Instead, in Hollywood Lies there are many other plots and storylines – the murder is just one part of what’s going on, and not all of the characters are interested in the murder.

So in an interactive game like Hollywood Lies, making the murder a real mystery won’t help as there are so many other things to focus on.

But having said that, I haven’t tried using the system. So my plan is to try it for the next mystery that I write (which I do using the process outlined in my book), and when I do I will update this review with my thoughts.

Other thoughts

Other thoughts about the Murder Mystery Writing System:

Don’t decide who the murderer is too soon: The system recommends not deciding who the murder is until the very end of the process. Instead, make all the suspects equally suspicious and only decide who did it towards the end. And then craft the clues that point towards the murderer.

The murderer doesn’t know: Jack recommends that the murderer doesn’t know that they are the murderer. He argues that he used to do that in his early games, but “It quickly became apparent that the event would meet its own untimely demise if the killer wasn’t capable of answering with a straight face.”

One of my frustrations with the boxed How to Host a Murder… sets was that the murderer didn’t know that they had done it. I understand Jack’s point, but in the interactive games we do tell our murderers that they did it – but there is so much subterfuge and deception in those games, that everyone is lying at least some of the time. (And so the murderer doesn’t stand out.)

Overall

The Murder Mystery Writing System is a solid process for creating a murder mystery involving numerous suspects. It is ideal for murder mystery party games where the focus is on solving the murder.

While I haven’t used it myself, I do plan on using it when I next write a murder mystery game, along side the process outlined in my book.

Purchase Jack Pachuta’s Murder Mystery Writing System from the Msyteries on the Net website.