The world is full of ideas for your next book, and unsolved mysteries can be a great boon. Of course, that also depends on your imagination and what kind of story you can link to those instances. Still, you can’t go wrong in explaining the greatest mysteries in history.
As long as the story is believable and accepted by your audience, you can do some great things. Not to mention that explaining unsolved mysteries can fit into any genre regardless of happenstance.
It all comes down to how well you weave the story.
Why Use Unsolved Mysteries for Your Books?
Using unsolved mysteries is perhaps one of my favorite ways of getting story ideas. Because there are so many myths and legends surrounding some of them, there is a lot of fuel that can help you put together a great tale.
For example, my explanation of what happened to the Powhattan and the wreckmaster in Shadows of Atlantic City were…adjusted…in a way to give the book and the plot more wiggle room.
The best part is that as a fiction writer, you can even spin it as an alternate universe even if the mystery becomes solved at a later date.
Unsolved mysteries can either be the primary driver of a plot or a small subplot in the story. I’ll give you a few examples of what I mean a bit later, but you have a lot of flexibility as long as your story makes sense to your target reader.
That’s part of why I love unsolved mysteries so much. They’re kind of like having plot prompts that I can build around in any fashion. They can be full-length novels or just a handful of short stories. It all comes down to how far you want to take explaining the mystery.
Depending on the circumstance, there’s going to be a bit of research involved to make it feel real. For example, explaining how the pyramids were built will need some research into Egypt 10,000 years ago. Or, a story about how Billy the Kid really died would need some research into the Wild West in the late 1800s.
The point is that there are endless ways you can spin some of the greatest mysteries throughout history. All it takes is a bit of imagination to get you going and researching the era to give it realism.
Where to Find Unsolved Mysteries
You can find unsolved mysteries almost everywhere. Because it is such a popular niche, you can find documentaries and more on Netflix, YouTube, and many other locations.
Google is your friend in this case, but always corroborate the results. Some sites will tout mysteries where there are none or blatantly push absurd conspiracy theories as legitimate mysteries.
Running a search in YouTube will yield hours upon hours of material. The first several might center around the television show, “Unsolved Mysteries” hosted by Robert Stack.
A great channel on YouTube for finding mysteries includes Sideprojects with Simon Whistler. Simon and his crew put in quite a bit of work to provide the base of the mysteries they show in videos. And since they base all of the information on fact, it’s a safe bet that you’ll be properly informed.
What about using conspiracy theories? You can do so much with conspiracies that they can be in their own category among story ideas. As long as your audience understands that you’re writing pure fiction, the mystery behind a good conspiracy can easily become an amazing book.
If you really want to ruffle some feathers, you can always dive into explaining bible mysteries. But when it comes to religion, you need to tread lightly. Some folks are hyper-sensitive, and it could lead to some severe complications and uproar.
Consider the flak Kevin Smith got after producing “Dogma.” Though, that wasn’t really based in mystery and was just a warped view of Christianity. Still, writing about religious mysteries is kind of like walking on very thin ice. Be careful where you step.
In any case, unsolved mysteries are virtually everywhere spanning the entire history of humanity. Add a dash of imagination, and you could produce a work of art.
3 Examples of Using Unsolved Mysteries
1. Half-Million-Year-Old Building
In the YouTube video, “Incredible Archaeological Discoveries from 2023,” there is a short clip about wood from a structure dating back about 476,000 years ago. It is believed that markings in the wood at right angles suggest a log-cabin-like joining created by tools. It’s at the 8-minute mark if you’re curious to watch.
The mystery boils down to who built the structure as it predates what we know about such practices by tens of thousands of years. If we’re writing a story about the home, we could:
- Describe a time traveler getting lost in that period and having to make a home for himself.
- Tell about extraterrestrials stranded on Earth who created the home until they were rescued.
- Explain how the Homo Naledi were far more intelligent than previously thought, and the home is just an incidental structure of a much broader story.
- Weave a tale about human civilizations that are much older and how today isn’t our species’ first attempt on Earth. The structure could be remnants of a home the first time Homo Sapiens.
- Write a horror story about a cabin in the woods and a man being chased by some vile creature. The structure is an incidental home that is discovered by archeologists half a million years later in the final chapter or epilogue.
2. The Voynich Manuscript
Of all unsolved mysteries, one of the more creative is the Voynich Manuscript. It is a book that is believed to be from the 1400s – 1500s and written in a text that no one can decipher.
Although there are claims that it has been identified, mostly as a fraud, no one knows with certainty.
Essentially, the lettering is unidentifiable and the plants and images portrayed in the book are baffling. So, what can we do with this particular manuscript?
- A human-like extraterrestrial brought the book from his home world and then lost it during the story, which makes the Voynich Manuscript more of an incidental plot device.
- A portal between dimensions opens, and a scholar comes from her world into ours and winds up getting stranded on Earth.
- Perhaps someone from an underground society comes to the surface to explore and loses the book.
- Atlantis still exists, and the book is written in Atlantian depicting the plant life of the island.
- The creator of the book begins having visions of the language and imagery, broadcasted on a frequency only he can receive from a distant planet in an attempt to preserve its society before a cataclysm.
3. The Mary Celeste
Ghost ships are plentiful, especially in the 1800s. In 1872, the Mary Celeste was found intact, afloat, and void of captain and crew. With enough supplies to last months and no clear damage caused to the ship, the mystery is what happened to those who were on board the craft.
There is a lot we can do with the mystery of the Mary Celeste. For instance, we could write a book about:
- How the voyagers were kidnapped by extraterrestrials one person at a time.
- A stowaway creature that preys on the crew of the ship and eventually slips back into the ocean after eating everyone.
- A serial killer who dispatches the 10-person crew and escapes when the ship is found afloat.
- How a spectral being like a wraith could have drained everyone on the ship one at a time. The bodies were tossed overboard out of fear of some disease spreading.
- Perhaps a tentacled beast followed the Mary Celeste, taking one person at a time to consume in the depths of the ocean.
The Mary Celeste is just one of many ghost ships shrouded in mystery. One could easily put together a nautical anthology with all of the ships lost and found at sea, the crews never to be seen again.
Ideas for Books Are Everywhere!
The world is full of unsolved mysteries that can be made from incredible tales. By twisting and warping reality around the mystery, you could write anything from alien intervention to rigidly historical explanations. As long as the story feels realistic for the genre’s audience, you can do so much by exaggerating circumstances.
The hardest part is figuring out which one you want to write for each mystery. There are so many ways you can go, and a lot of them are going to be great ideas.
The thing to keep in mind is that you’re writing fiction. You can take a literary license and fill in the blanks with your imagination. In other words, don’t be too stringent on absolute facts. Make the story realistic, but don’t be afraid to embellish or make up things as you go.
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