ReaderfoldWhat evidence led your reader to the wrong person?
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Build a questionnaire for your draft.
Choose your genre and draft stage. Edit the questions, remove any you don’t need, and download a reading brief you can send to people.
Updating the options replaces edits below. Series-ending and full-reveal questions are omitted for excerpts.
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Where did you first want to keep reading? Which detail created that interest?
Locates the moment the story earns attention.Where did you skim or lose the thread? Name the passage and what you were waiting to learn.
Separates a loss of interest from missing context.Which detail would you most want preserved in a revision, and what would be lost without it?
Identifies strengths a revision might accidentally remove.Who did you suspect before the reveal, and which specific clues led you there?
Reconstructs the reader's theory from the evidence on the page.Which investigative step followed naturally from the evidence, and which felt like a lucky leap?
Tests the chain between observation, deduction, and action.Which unanswered question were you most interested in solving at this point?
Checks whether the investigation has given the reader a concrete mystery.At the end of this excerpt, what did you expect to happen next, and why?
Tests the promise of the excerpt without asking for a whole-book judgment.
How to use the mystery questions
A satisfying mystery lets readers build a theory. These questions help you trace that theory, check the fairness of the reveal, and distinguish a clever misdirection from missing information.
Capture suspicion before the answer
Ask readers to record who they suspect at an agreed stopping point, along with the clues behind that suspicion. Do not disclose which clue you hoped they would notice. After the reveal, ask what changed meaning. These are different questions and belong at different points in the read.
Separate a red herring from a missing explanation
A false lead can still be grounded in true observations. When the explanation arrives, ask what became clearer and what required a new fact. A late fact is not automatically a flaw, but it matters if the reader was expected to solve the mystery without it.
An example of a useful clue question
A witness says she heard the midnight bell, although the town clock stopped at eleven. Ask: Which part of her account did you trust, and why? If the reader never noticed the stopped clock, revisit its placement before adding another contradiction.
Follow the investigation in Readerfold
Choose Mystery clues for one reader and Plot logic for another. Include the actual clue sequence, not only the solution. AI may anticipate a familiar pattern or miss evidence, so use its passage notes to form questions for a human reader's first encounter.