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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/24778
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I've been delving a lot into the the crime investigation genre, and at first I thought "Simple, just start of with Who, What, Where, When, Why and How and you've got yourself a story!" but I quickly realized it's much more complicated than that.

A crime solving story has Leads, it has Witnesses, it has Clues, it has Unexpected Discoveries... and I'm just lost in a sea of possibilities...

So I've tried to reduce the basic structure of a story to this:

- There is a **protagonist** who tries to find out the "Who, What, Where, When, Why and How" of the case
- There are **Clues** which may or may not go somewhere, and must be interpreted by the protagonist to have any meaning.
- There are **Witnessess** who serve both to bring light to the case or muddle it further.
- There are **Misdirections** normally due to simple human nature that can cause someone to seem guilty.
- There are **Leads** which are advancements in the plot as the protagonist makes sense of everything else
- And there are **Culprits** which are responsible for whatever the protagonist is investigating.

So my question is... am I leaving anything out? Is there some fundamental aspect to an investigation I'm forgetting? Bear in mind I consider Plot Twists to simply be a form of Misdirection.

Original score: 9