One Super Sneaky Way to Hide Your Villain
This post contains the fifteenth chapter of my work in progress, The Tangled Web Twists the Plot. Looking to catch up on previous chapters? Start here.
Over the last several chapters, we’ve been dealing with ways to explicitly disqualify the Villain from consideration, by providing a concrete reason why he (supposedly) cannot be guilty. Now we’re going to wade into territory that’s a little bit sneakier. Instead of explicitly disqualifying the Villain, we will implicitly disqualify him. That is, we’ll give your reader a reason to assume he’s innocent, without ever thinking too much about it.
For an example of this, we need look no further than the twist I call The Guilty Group. This is a wonderfully versatile twist, as you will soon see. And it couldn’t be simpler. All you have to do is give the reader a reason to assume that the Villain comes from one particular group of characters, who share some quality in common—a motive, a belief, an ability. That’s the Guilty Group. The twist comes when you reveal that the Villain, in fact, comes from outside the group. Or perhaps that he was a secret member of the group all along.
For an example of the first version, let’s take a look at an episode of Murder, She Wrote called “It’s a Dog’s Life.” In this episode, wealthy patriarch Denton Langley is murdered, but instead of leaving his fortune to any of his family members, he leaves everything to his faithful dog, Teddy. More crimes follow the first murder, and Teddy the dog is framed—which might invalidate his claim to the estate! It’s pretty clear to everyone exactly who belongs in the suspect pool: the three snubbed heirs, who are no doubt still trying to get their hands on the fortune. They are the Guilty Group, and with the viewer focused on them, all other characters are implicitly disqualified from suspicion.
But outside the Guilty Group is where we’ll find our villain: Langley’s lawyer, who thinks he can bleed to estate for big, fat fees as long as Teddy’s status as heir remains in question.
What about the second version of the Guilty Group twist? For that, we’ll turn our attention to an episode of Remington Steele called called “Blue Blooded Steele.” In this episode, our Sleuth, Mr. Steele, is manipulated into claiming a false identity, that of Reggie Whitewood, the long lost son of the recently deceased Duke of Rutherford. He tries to set the record straight and explain that he’s not the duke’s heir—but for some reason, the other members of the family just won’t accept his denials. They insist on welcoming him with open arms. Even the heir’s old nanny claims to recognize Mr. Steele as the long lost scion of the family.
We get a clue to the heirs’ motives when the Sleuths investigate the terms of the duke’s will. If the duke’s son hasn’t been found by the time of his death, the money doesn’t go to the duke’s other relatives—instead, it goes into a trust for twenty years, to allow time for the son to be found.
However, if the son is on hand? In that case, he inherits everything—unless he dies before his investiture. If that should happen, then the entire fortune gets split among the remaining hairs: the duke’s nephews, Archie and Angus, his niece Gwen, and a single charity, the Foundation to Save the Sussex Speckled Blue Butterfly. This makes the path to riches for the heirs very clear: wait for Steele to be legally recognized as the duke’s long lost son—then kill him.
Steele fends off attacks while trying to figure out which of the duke’s relatives can possibly be the killer. But it turns out that the Villain is none other than the old family nanny—who has manipulated herself into a position as head of the Foundation to Save the Sussex Speckled Blue Butterfly.
So in this variation of the twist, the Villain does indeed come from inside the Guilty Group—the duke’s heirs. But it still gives us a surprise, because we hadn’t understood which characters were members of that group. Nanny, as a servant and not a family member, looked like she was in the clear.
Classic Plot Twist: The Guilty Group
Summary: We believe the Villain must come from a specific group of characters. Instead, the Villain comes from outside that group; OR, The Villain is a secret member of the group.
Belief violated: The Villain was a member of the Guilty Group. OR, We understand which characters belong to the Guilty Group.
Examples: Remington Steele, “Blue-Blooded Steele,” “Hearts of Steele,” “Steele at Your Service,” “Gourmet Steele”; Murder, She Wrote, “Its a Dog’s Life”; Death in Paradise, “Wicked Wedding Night”
Effectively, what we’re doing when we write a Guilty Group twist is drawing a big, red circle around one group of suspects, forcing our readers to focus on them. And with what do we draw such a circle? Logic. In both “It’s a Dog’s Life” and “Blue Blooded Steele,” we used the logic of motive—we assumed that the dead man’s remaining heirs would want to eliminate a primary heir—through murder or a frame job—to get their hands on the fortune.
But motive is not our only option. We might draw the circle with:
opportunity, focusing on only those suspects who were in a house at the time of a murder.
ability, focusing only those suspects who could swim out to the lighthouse where the Victim lived
belief, focusing only on those suspects who opposed the Victim’s religion
group membership, focusing only on those suspects who had a role within the Victim’s company
gender, focusing only on those suspects who had the ability to get the Victim pregnant
Whatever criterion you use to draw your Guilty Group, you can draw your reader’s attention to it like a moth to a flame.
But it should be noted that when using the Guilty Group twist—or any twist that implicitly disqualifies the Villain from suspicion—we are using a form of sleight of hand, somewhat like a magician pretending to pull a coin from a spectator’s ear. The magician uses playful patter to keep the audience focused on his face, while his fingers do the important business of retrieving the coin he previously concealed in his palm. The illusion works as long as the audience is looking where they’re meant to—but if the magician is too obvious with his hand movements, someone will catch onto the trick.
The same is true for you. The Guilty Group will not keep your reader’s focus if your actual Villain draws too much attention. That means your Villain shouldn’t be seen to have a glaringly obvious motive, a golden opportunity to commit the crime, or ideal skills for carrying it out. If this happens, your reader will likely see right through your ruse.
A Guilty Group twist that fell prey to this deficit is the movie Glass Onion. In this film, technological genius Miles Bronn invites all his old buddies—known as the Disruptors—to a private island. They all show up—but at the midpoint, we learn that one of them, Andi, is in fact an imposter. The real Andi died a week ago, apparently by suicide; the woman who arrived at the island in her place is her twin sister, Helen.
Helen doesn’t believe the suicide narrative, and is eager to unmask which of Andi’s old friends might have killed her. She’s already sussed out a motive: in the days before her death, Andi had unearthed evidence that would prove that the invention upon which Miles’s tech empire is built was, in fact, her own. The Disruptors know that Andi was the real inventor, but a few years ago they were all bribed by Miles to testify in his favor, allowing him to establish intellectual property rights over Andi’s invention and seize all the assets of the company they built together.
But when Andi found clear evidence that would allow her to re-open the case, she was sure she could turn the tables on Miles. She e-mailed her old friends, the Disruptors, with her findings. And then, in short order, wound up dead. Helen is sure that one of the Disruptors killed Andi, in order to curry favors with Miles and keep living on the lucrative crumbs of his multibillion dollar tech empire.
The Disruptors, then, are our Guilty Group, because they are the only four people who received Andi’s email. Therefore, they’re the only ones who know Andi has evidence that can unseat Miles. Right? Right?
I mean… no. Miles is the Villain, and while the movie made every effort to present this as a surprise, I really couldn’t take it as one. If the motive was to curry favor with Miles, a Disruptor didn’t have to actually kill Andi—he or she could simply forward her email. And with a lot less effort, too. Since Miles was always known to be the person with the best motive for eliminating Andi, he was never off my radar. The film’s detectives might have dismissed Miles from suspicion, but they couldn’t really force the viewers to do so.
Want to keep reading? The next chapter is here.
Have you ever wanted me to help you write your mystery novel? Next week I’m starting another round of my 8-week coaching program, Simple Mystery. To kick it off, I’m hosting a free workshop on Zoom this Friday at 4PM EST. Want to join, talk shop, and walk away with a full plan for creating a mystery novel? Join here: www.fictiontechnician.com/writeyourmystery
