The “Suspect Board” Method: How I Plot Mysteries Without Losing My Mind

The “Suspect Board” Method: How I Plot Mysteries Without Losing My Mind

I don’t plot mysteries in straight lines. I plot them like crimes.

With motives, contradictions, timelines, and people who are absolutely lying to me on paper.

The suspect board is how I keep my stories in organized chaos.

It is not pretty. It is not aesthetic. It is not Instagram-friendly.

But it works.

A suspect board is exactly what it sounds like. A visual map of everyone who could be guilty, why they could be guilty, and what they are hiding, even if they aren’t. It’s not about finding the killer. It’s about understanding the story’s pressure points.

Mysteries don’t run on answers. They run on motives. Every character on my board gets three things.

What they want.

What they fear.

What they would lie about.

If a character has none of those, they’re not interesting enough to stay.

The board forces me to treat every character as dangerous in their own way. Even the kind ones. Especially the kind ones.

I connect them with lines. Not just for relationships, but also for emotional debts. Who owes whom. Who resents whom. Who protects whom for the wrong reason.

Suddenly, the story stops being about “who did it” and starts being about “who could have.”

And that’s where tension lives.

I don't focus on what happened, but why it happened. The suspect board is is a great tool for that.

Humans are messy. Logical. Illogical. Loyal. Cruel. Protective. Selfish. All at once. And when you let them exist that way, the mystery stops feeling constructed and starts feeling real.

Another rule of my suspect board is that everyone must be wrong about something.

Not lying. Wrong.

Because people rarely have perfect information. They remember things incorrectly. They interpret moments through emotion. They fill gaps with assumptions.

I also write down what each character thinks the truth is. Then I write down what the truth actually is. The distance between those two is where most of my scenes are born.

If I can remove one suspect and the story still works, that character is not doing enough. If I can reveal the answer and nothing emotionally shifts, the story is not ready.

The board is not about complexity for the sake of complexity. It’s about fairness. I want my readers to feel surprised, not tricked. I want them to be wrong for the right reasons. And that only happens when every suspect is believable.

Sometimes I stare at the board and realize the story wants to change direction. A side character becomes more dangerous than planned. A motive grows heavier. A relationship becomes more important. I let the board rewrite me.

That’s how I know the story is alive.

The suspect board also protects me from lazy twists. If a reveal doesn’t grow naturally out of what the characters want and fear, it doesn’t belong. Shock without logic is just noise.

Do I always follow it perfectly? No. Sometimes I break it. Sometimes I change my mind.

But I never write a mystery without building it.

The suspect board reminds me that every crime is emotional before it is logical. That every lie has a reason. That every secret exists because someone thought they had to protect something.

And when I write from that place, the story stops being about solving a puzzle.

It becomes about understanding people.

Which, in the end, is always the hardest mystery.