: Another answer links to a different question, which has an answer that says you can "give each of your main characters a conflicting theory of 'who done it'." The short story "In a Grove",

Another answer links to a different question, which has an answer that says you can "give each of your main characters a conflicting theory of 'who done it'." The short story "In a Grove", upon which the film Rashomon was based, has a mystery which is not resolved, and has each of the three witnesses to the mystery giving precisely this kind of conflicting account â€” they each claim they are responsible for a death.

The difference between this and a conventional mystery is that these characters know what happened; they just give different accounts. If the mystery is a "riddle", then a smarter person is more likely to figure it out. Not figuring it out suggests a character is too stupid to accomplish an important task. Especially in mysteries, readers don't like stupid characters.

So, make sure that characters the reader cares about don't look stupid.

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: Another answer links to a different question, which has an answer that says you can "give each of your main characters a conflicting theory of 'who done it'." The short story "In a Grove",

More posts by @Tiffany377

: The problem here is that your readers thought they were reading a conventional mystery novel, when what you (might have) intended to write was something in a completely different genre. You

: Can an "adult" story have a child protagonist? Is it ill-advised to have a child protagonist (either first or third POV) in a story that contain a fair share of violence and gore ? I'm worried

: How to write long extracts in a foreign language? In my writing there are eight groups of people, each with their own language that they speak. Do I put large amounts of writing into their

: Is it OK if I just mention in one line that she looks like some real world actress? Don't do that. First of all, don't overestimate the relevance of how people look when you aren't

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