How to create your own Murder Mystery event at the public library.

1. Creating a Murder Mystery
Event with Teens​
Or: “Creative Writing + Acting + Murder =
Best Teen Program Ever!”

2. Introductions:

3. Legal & Moral Disclaimer:
Murdering
People for
real is NOT
cool. This is
all pretend.
CLASS

5. Confessions:
How I got into the Murder Business

6. Metro Denver
Promotion of Letters
Denver-based nonprofit, focused on promoting
literacy among youth, loosely based on the
“826 Valencia” model founded by Dave Eggers.
Now it’s called:

7. Murder on Broadway

8. Murder on Broadway
“Death in Cereal Bowl”
“Death in a Cape”

9. Years Later…
Teen Initiated
Programming
@ The Library

10. The teens
decided we
should do a
Murder
Mystery
Event.
But...
WHO
SHOULD WE
MURDER?

11. Who Murdered Waldo?

13. How it worked the night of the Murder:
1) Teen guests check in, dinner is served.
2) The Suspects are the guests of honor at the head table. Waldo is a Dummy.
3) During dinner, lights go out and “SCREAM!!!!”
4) Lights come on, “Waldo is dead!” everyone at the head table is a suspect.
5) The teen guests are deputized, they must search for clues and interview the
suspects to solve the mystery.
6) Come back together an hour later for the final reveal. Individual or team that
solved the mystery the most accurately in the least amount of time, wins!

15. SO…
HOW DID IT GO?

19. Who Murdered Willy Wonka?
Unfortunately, I don’t have any
photos of the event. But here’s
some cool stuff we did:
-Dummy in Glass Elevator
-Chocolate footprints leading to…
-Augustus Gloop dead on the
toilet!

25. Who Murdered Draco Malfoy?

26. Who
Murdered
Cedric
Diggory?
Clearview
Library
District
Windsor,
CO

27. Why?
It’s fun
It’s creative
It involves teamwork
We have lots of books on murder
(so stop being so squeamish…)
And...
WHY?
WHY RESORT
TO MURDER?

28. When you do fun stuff, it’s

30. Okay, so we’re
ready to murder
someone…
BUT HOW
DO WE DO
IT?

31. StepbyStepProcess STEP 1: Brainstorming the Victim and the Suspects
STEP 2: Create the Setting
STEP 3: Creating Motivations for all the Suspects.
STEP 4: Use the Motivations to create the True Plot.
STEP 5: Divide the plot among all the suspects.
STEP 6: Create Physical clues.
STEP 7: Practice, Practice, Practice.
STEP 8: Advertise
STEP 9: Do it!

32. Now, it is time for:
Forced Group
Participation!
(yay!)

33. Warm-up exercise: Stream of Thought Chain Poetry
Today I shall climb a mountain.
Mountain men have impressive beards.
Beards are overrated.
Overrated is how I would describe
Shakespeare.

34. Start with who we want to murder or a Fictional
Setting we can set our murder mystery in.
We’re not going to use real people because, while it’s not nice to murder anyone,
it’s especially not nice to murder real, live people. Like Taylor Swift.

35. Now that we have an idea, let’s build a story:
Pick our characters
Motives for each character
True Storyline
Side Storylines
Physical Clues

36. Any Questions? My name is Thane. If you have
questions later, you can reach me at:
tbenson@denverlibrary.org
Any
Questions?
IS IT OVER
YET?