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Ideas for a locked-room mystery genre..

eraserhead_in_time

eraserhead_in_time

Like the title says, I would like to try my hand in this genre since I was always a big fan of Sherlock Holmes style books and stories...

4 FBI guys have been sent to investigate murder of a baronness of PapayaLand..
Room was locked from the inside and there is no sign of forced entry or exit...No eyewitnesses..


Any ideas on where I could go with setting up the plot ?
CSI and Dexters fan more than welcome to bring their expertise to the murder...:)


THanks
 
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eraserhead_in_time said:
Like the title says, I would like to try my hand in this genre since I was always a big fan of Sherlock Holmes style books and stories...
Click to expand...

Although they're fun I don't really like Holmes stories; Holmes solves them with information not give to the reader. I like Ellery Queen; he gives you every clue you need to solve the crime. I've actually sat down with the novel and a pad and tried to solve it myself - I never do :( .

I agree with Dready; start with the solution and work it backwards, the set-ups will present themselves.




(Papayaland? Are you kidding me?)
 
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eraserhead_in_time said:
4 FBI guys have been sent to investigate murder of a baronness of PapayaLand..
Room was locked from the inside and there is no sign of forced entry or exit...No eyewitnesses..
Click to expand...

INT. 221B BAKER STREET - NIGHT

Inside Watson and Holmes sit by the fireside. Holmes with his violin under his chin playing as Watson reads from the Strand.

WATSON: I'm just reading here about the baroness. A Papayaland murder you say, Holmes.
HOLMES: Yes, Watson, a bit of American pulp fiction.
WATSON: Indubitably, Holmes. But I do love a juicy read.
HOLMES: But I must warn you, Watson, the account is not for tender eyes. The poor baronness was whipped, beaten and chopped into pieces.
WATSON: How dreadfully awful. It's the work of seedy characters then?
HOLMES: Quite. But the solution is obvious, is it not?
WATSON: Absolutely, Holmes. Who did it?
HOLMES: The last person the Food & Beverage Investigators would ever suspect, Lord Chutney, himself.
WATSON: I daresay, Holmes, why would you accuse him?
HOLMES: Her spending was liquidating his assets in a hurry. When he realized what was at steak, he lost his senses. Or as the Americans say, he went bananas. His hired Oster men to do the job and drop her pieces down the chute. They then blended in with the tourists.
WATSON: How horrid.
HOLMES: It was alimentary, my dear Watson.

FADE
 
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@ Dready and Alcove.. Thanks..I shall start to reverse engineer the murder..lets see if i can Ellery queen tv show online..would like to see that as well...:)

@Fantasy.. nice one..hehe :)

Papayaland is just an arbitary place i said..We are shooting in DharamShala..small independent state within India where His Holyness Dalai Lama lives..
 
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Yeah, I agree with the reverse-engineering approach. I think a setting like this needs a big payoff. I mean, like, Usual Suspects payoff. I think in order for this to really work, the audience needs to have an "oh, damn, why didn't I see that?" moment.

And that's really difficult to come up with. Don't share it with too many people, if you do. Cuz that'll be your cash-cow.
 
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thanks cracker... and i actually do have a big payoff moment...atleast i think i do :)
but its also important to make the story till that point interesting as well..and in completely other direction..
unlike shyamalan who just seems to be too hungup on that "reveal"

i shall try :)
 
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Yeah i would say do it in reverse, or acutally plan the murder out before you plan the rest of the story... I was going somewhere with that, but i forgot what the rest of what i was goin to say was. Anyway, it seems like a good idea, you would then know the murder inside out and be able to fit a story arounf it. Obviously you need to have some sort of story though, i'm not saying you should go in blind with the story, just don't get too detailed before you've done the murder.
 
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This is a genre that could be reinvented constantly. I think there's a lot of scope for innovation. It could also be filmed on a fairly low budget.

I'd read Edgar Allen Poe for inspiration... Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter etc... You could drag one of his plots into 2011.

Other Poe like 'Fall of the House of Usher' and 'William Wilson' might not be classic detective, but might be worth a read, just to get into the mind of the guy. His ideas have such depth that people are still debating the true meaning of his work 100 years on. Despite their deep undercurrents, his pieces are still very filmable...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe_in_television_and_film

Jorge Luis Borges is another genius writer that occasionally turned his hand to the detective story.
 
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Modernise it a bit maybe.. there are plenty of scientifically conceptual solutions for a locked room scenario which could make it a lot more interesting than seeing conventional explanations re-written in a million murder mysteries.
 
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Planning suggestion

I apologize if I offended, that was not the intent. It was meant as a playful response to Alcove's comment. To answer your question, here are some points I've taken down over the years.

There are five possibilities: the clues are as they appear (sloppy murderer), the clues are arranged (clever murderer), the clues result from a string of unlikely coincidences (chaotic death/suicide), the clues are cleverly concealed (organized suicide), or natural death confounded by unlikely events (confounded scene). [Actually I can imagine a few more but these typically arise.]

In working backwards from the clues, you need to know the intentionality behind the clues as they may be decoys. Often I need to work forwards and backwards from the murder. I find the easiest way is to work through the clues is by putting them on index cards.

DEATH = KILLER + DEVICE + LOCATION -> CLUES
As absurdly obvious as it sounds, some clues will hint at the killer (hair, DNA, blood, etc.), some at the method (marks) and locations (leaves, fibers, etc.). So in your planning you need to decide what clues would your crime leave behind to tell the story of how the person actually died. Most audiences today are more sophisticated thanks to CSI and other crime-tech shows. They expect FBI agents to also be more techie in their crime scene approach.

Also, I would pick up a book that discusses profiling to get a sense of how FBI agents are taught to think about a crime scene. While clues are the visible elements, motivation is the subjective element. Most drama arises from the subjective rather than objective evidence. So as you craft your film, the clues are important but not the driving element. The sexual indiscretion and the result of its reveal is vastly more interesting and entertaining than the DNA evidence to most viewers.

I would put each clue on an index card. Think of other contexts where it may occur. This is the 'red herring' trail. Also I document the clue by how noticeable it may be. Next I look at what would make someone look at that particular clue ("evidence context"). Given all that, some writers shuffle them as to the order they are discovered. The least noticeable are the things that often frustrate audiences since they aren't privvy to it (that microfiber under the dashboard that cinches the case in the last 5 minutes). However, if you use your characters to motivate discovery that is not necessarily an issue ("Wait, you said her jeans were torn? Hmm, that dashboard ... Did we check it?"). Each clue should point to a potential killer or give an evolving picture of the killer. If done well, the audience forms their own assumptions which are wrong. Withholding information is pretty much bad form. And really, part of the drama comes from the final chase or confrontation scene when it all fits together.

For many viewers, just learning how it happened is not enough. So it's important to not forget the "why". The sequence of events is not the story. The story is the impact and drama that arises along the way. This is the "forward-working" piece. As the "investigator", I visit the crime scene and pull off the top clue. And I pursue it forward following the 'red herring' as well as other pieces. Until I finally expose all my clues. Sometimes you might hold one back until later and use it to help tie everything together later. The random element of shuffling means that as a writer you must confront the clues as naively as the investigator and slowly build a picture of WHERE and HOW to figure out WHO dramatically because you've already done the hard part.

If you know the WHO but not the HOW, there you have a battle of wits between the cop and criminal. Often evidence is mutable. In "Dexter", Dexter's position allows him to manipulate evidence at times, as do his nemeses. The driving issue, since we fully expect to learn the how, is the WHY.

Wishing you success with your mystery.
 
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thank you once again for these wonderful advices... im taking in all your words of wisdom...

i suppose i want to do a locked room mystery where are hardly any clues and on the surface it looks like a supernatural case and nothing else..but then slowly it becomes evident that it is a clever murder...

thanks once again to everyone..
 
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scoby doby do, where are you?

How about a play on the "Schrodinger Cat" thought experiment. Thats a CLOSED room death setup.

Is it 1st degree murder if the killer knows there is a 50% chance of survival? I don't think it is, so the killer gets off with a lesser rap and pleads it down to negligent homicide or something and gets out of jail in 7 years and lives happily ever after.
 
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