Mystery Plot Clue Tracker
Plan clues, red herrings and reveals fairly.
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Plan the clues for a mystery. Crime or puzzle: [CRIME]. Culprit and motive: [CULPRIT_MOTIVE]. Detective or point-of-view character: [DETECTIVE]. Suspects: [SUSPECTS]. Create a clue tracker table with Clue | Where found | What it points to | False interpretation | When the reader should understand it. Include three red herrings with a reason each is plausible and when it is cleared. Plan the information timeline: what the reader knows by each quarter of the book. Provide a fair-play check list and the reveal scene structure with the order of discoveries. Note any places where the detective knows something the reader does not, and how to avoid cheating. Add a section on pacing the revelations, listing what the reader should know by the end of each act, and a set of misdirection techniques that stay fair, such as emphasis by position or ambiguity of meaning. Provide a test: a friend reads only the clues and guesses the culprit, and I record when they guessed. Add a worked clue ledger for an invented short mystery with five rows: the clue, where it is planted, how a reader may interpret it, the red herring it competes with, the scene where it is paid off, and its fairness rating. Label it an illustration. Add a timeline table of what each suspect did against the hours of the crime so that contradictions can be found, and a checklist for fair play (the reader sees every clue the detective sees, the solution uses information already given, no new facts appear in the final reveal). Provide a method for hiding a clue in plain sight in a scene with more urgent action, and a read-through exercise in which I list what a reader would suspect at the end of each chapter. End with a checklist for the final reveal scene: every clue it relies on has appeared on the page, nothing new is introduced, and the detective's reasoning can be followed step by step.
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