Writing Our Own Work
Writing is simply thinking through my fingers says Isaac Asimov. This is easy for one of the founding minds of science fiction to state, and somehow when it comes to us - writing self-reflecting blog posts and (hopefully) clever murder mysteries - we agree. Getting our fingers on the keyboard is step one of many. Putting the words on the page begins the process of cognitive connection. Whether we are reflecting on how we produce live events, sharing stories about our travels, or writing up a new suspect bio, writing it down lets us see the ideas flow directly onto the page and encourages reflection on those thoughts.
As you may have noticed, Enigmatic Events has recently restarted our monthly check-ins through blog postings and newsletters (if you’re not signed up already, you really should be!). Doing this once a month really offers us a time to be present with our work and process the accomplishments we’ve made and prepare for future endeavours. Creating checkpoints is a highly recommended way to celebrate achievements, set objectives, and encourage development - having written documentation of these reflections allows us to return to these reference points in the future.
New Work
Besides producing monthly blogs, between myself and Chris, we tend to write about four new works per year for Enigmatic Events. These are usually new mysteries, but sometimes take the format of theatre pieces we hope to produce, or even a series of puzzles. With our newer mysteries, Chris and I always start with a spark. Sometimes that can be as simple as “the butler did it” and sometimes as nebulous as “80s movie mystery”. Whenever the ideas froth to the surface, we try to lock them in by writing. It tends to begin with a murder, but frequently the characters emerge before the plot shows itself.
For Chris, he writes the victim first - who are they and what characters could be around them. And most importantly, what is about the victim that makes multiple people have motive to kill them? Chris doesn’t always write “guilty victims”, but it is his preference. There’s enough killing of the innocent in the world that we don’t need it in the games we play.
We usually cast characters by assigning them initial archetypes - the brains, the brawn, the shy one… but as many writers will know, characters can take on a life of their own. Nat usually starts with the characters, finding the folks who revolve around the case. As we explore the people in the story, we are able to find voice, characterization, and - more often than not - motive. Maybe the cheerleader caught her teacher changing the answers on her exam. Perhaps the mad scientist is in love with their creation, and will do anything to keep people from finding out! Writing through these voices shows us who of our imagined cast could have committed the crime - and how they relate to the victim and the other suspects. This creates multiple plotlines and stories for the players to discover.
Then, we think about who was most likely to have done the deed. Who seems the most plausible or the most interesting. Once we’ve got our killer, with method and motive, we can write the rest of the evidence to prove it!
Living Work
We have a fun job here, making mysteries and hosting events is an absolute treat. Sometimes, though, the content creation gets overwhelming. I thank goodness every day for the technological advances humans have made. Since the two of us works so collaboratively, we utilize software like Notion. This allows us track and edit each other’s work, live. So, while I am writing this blog post, Chris is working on a mystery rewrite for a different client - but when he needs a break he can come correct my spelling, and I can sneak a peek at his plot lines. Technology allows us to swap documents easily and creates a seamless writing group where sometimes I don’t even remember who started writing a mystery finale and who finished it.
Working in living documents also allows us to update our older files with the times and with client needs. We have to always be thinking about how we can adapt our work. Recently we have seen an uptick in folks who attend our murder mysteries asking about the genders of the characters they portray. We have had to think about whether the perceived gender of any of our characters is actually important - and if it’s not, we’ve decided that their pronouns and name should be neutral. This has been one of the biggest edits we have moved forward with, and has been helpful for casting and writing future cases!
Future Work
Going forward, one of the goals of Enigmatic Events Collective is to create offerings for our clients to use without our hands-on help. We have multiple at-home Table-Top Role Playing games released and available, but we know people are looking to host murder mysteries without us. Writing for others is something we have been discussing frequently, as we tend to structure our mysteries for our own brains and needs. As two people who have run hundreds of mysteries between us, we suspect that looks a little different to our potential clients!
With this new kind of offering we are having to think about what forms of checklists, preparation sheets, instructions, and mystery packages will be most helpful for our print-and-play users. Writing what we don’t know is a bit of a mystery to us, but we hope to have more answers and more offerings in 2026.
