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Mystery Factory

THE ULTIMATE MYSTERY RESOURCE

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Mystery Writing Advice

Cluetrails

cluetrail4Wanting to please everyone, has long been a trait of mine; some would call it a failing, yet I’m still sure it can be done, at least with mysteries. I want to have as many mystery party themes as possible available at MysteryFactory.com – something for everyone – with as little work as possible. Laziness is another trait of mine. Luckily there is a way it can be done.

I am going to write six different cluetrails and plug them into eighteen different mysteries; three mysteries per cluetrail.

A cluetrail is different from a mystery. The cluetrail is the path of clues that a sleuth follows to solve the mystery, and the mystery is the forest the path runs through … or the desert, town, castle, or anywhere ‘evil lurks in the heart of men’. A path can run anywhere. A cluetrail can be made to fit any theme.

It’s quite exciting to come up with scenario that works just as well in the late 1800s of Paris and in contemporary Hollywood. Poison can go anywhere though, just like a cluetrail.



In a Word

Here’s a question that has puzzled me for a long time: I have always considered the three elements of a crime leading to the solution as Motive, Method and Opportunity while others state the elements as Motive, Method and Means. Could someone please define the difference between Opportunity and Means for me. I’m thinking it might just be a matter of alliteration but I could be missing a finer point.



Bones

Research is a passion for me. When I began writing murder mystery scripts I was determined to have a performance that was entertaining AND ‘fair play’; meaning that all the clues needed to solve the mystery were presented to the audience so that the mystery could be solved if they were clever enough to follow the cluetrail.

Glorious years were spent reading and analyzing mysteries by the masters of the craft; Agatha Christie, Rex Stout and many, many others. Plots and perpetrators were reduced to their bare bones and plunked into a spreadsheet in an attempt to find a cluetrail formula. Patterns began to emerge. Library stacks were searched looking for one book that would detail the tangled web. It hasn’t been written yet. Ok – I’ll write it then.

The manuscript has been gathering dust for five years. Now as the website for Mystery Factory is taking shape I am starting to write instructions for mystery house parties. That dusty manuscript is going to be getting a workout. Over the next however long it takes, I will be sharing the process of what is involved in creating the bones of a cluetrail and fleshing it out into a mystery. Any feedback and questions will be welcome.



The Continuing Cow

OMG!  They’re taking over the world!  This article stolen from the Boston Channel. I’d put in a link but I don’t know how.

After Accident Woman Finds Cow In Car

Cow Lands In Back Seat

POSTED: 7:50 am EST February 2, 2008

UPDATED: 2:42 pm EST February 2, 2008

REHOBOTH, Mass. — Holy Cow! A Seekonk woman suddenly found an unexpected passenger in her back seat while driving home with her daughter after running a simple errand. Tonya Coccia, 46, said the street was dark when she suddenly saw cows that had wandered out onto the road from a nearby farm. She swerved, but hit two of them. One was a massive Black Angus. “I only saw it for a split second before it came up it into my windshield,” Coccia said.

One of the cows had gone airborne.

“There was airbags and smoke and me and my daughter was losing it. I thought that was it, but I felt my car start shaking.”

The cow had flipped over the roof of the car, gone through the back window and landed in the back seat.

“I didn’t really want to see what was there, but I saw a black cow head in my back window. My daughter turned this way and said ‘Mom there’s a cow in the back seat!’ And we just took off,” Coccia said.

The car’s hood and roof were crushed and the windshield was smashed.

Coccia said she realized there were bound be jokes. The cow in the back seat was not seriously injured, but the second cow did not survive.

“It could have just as easily gone through the windshield and we’d be talking about very serious injuries or possibly death,” said Rehoboth police Sgt. Richard Shailor.

The cow was frightened and agitated. Firefighters and police had to tie it down so it wouldn’t move inside the car. They towed the car to the farm and let it out.

Both Coccia and her daughter Haley, 14, suffered minor injuries. Her car was a total loss.



Forget the cat, the cow came back!

Oh my gosh the cow came back. Like a bad spaghetti western, the irrepressible bovine has returned! Talk about a story that just begs to be written – actually it’s practically writing itself. What to call such a story? The Cow with No Name? Shall we call him Paddy? Something about Cows? What was that sticky white stuff? Spy Cows?

You’ll remember from our last episode – oh wait – blogs are read backwards in time so unless you’ve been following along you wouldn’t know about the cow that fell through a mini-van windshield and then we had the farmer who shot a cow accidentally mistaking it for a coyote and now this! A cowknapping! Or perhaps the cow was the mastermind and the media cleverly twisted the story around to protect the little related calves and calfettes – or maybe the cow was actually the driver and the brother of a highly placed politician. We’ll probably never know the true story but here’s what the media is saying about the lastest farm animal incident. … and I’m going to milk it for all it’s worth!

Thieves in Malaysia load stolen cow into back seat of car

Published: Thursday, January 24, 2008 | 1:16 AM ET

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Thieves in Malaysia stole a cow, squeezed it into the back seat of a car and drove off with it but abandoned the animal when the getaway vehicle crashed into a tree, police said Thursday.

The cow, injured in the crash, was slaughtered by villagers. The thieves managed to push the cow into the back of a mid-sized sedan Tuesday night but were spotted by villagers who gave chase, said a local police official in the northern state Kedah. He declined to be named, citing protocol.

The driver lost control during the chase and drove into a tree, injuring the cow, he said. By the time villagers got to the crash site, one person was seen running from the car but police believe more people were involved in the theft, the official said.

It was not clear how they managed to push the cow into the car or whether the animal had been sedated. A blurry photograph in the New Straits Times newspaper showed the cow’s head with closed eyes sticking out of the back seat window of the crashed car.




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