DZ-126: Secrets and Clues

Listen if you want to understand how hidden information drives character motivation and plot structure!

“Getting information puts your character in danger. And danger rewards your character with information." — One of three ideas we steal from game design in this episode. In this two part series, we talk about how secrets, clues and hidden information motivate characters and may (or may not) help you plot from a character perspective. Part One (this episode) looks at WAKE UP DEAD MAN; while Part Two looks at SIDE EFFECTS, and the pilot episode of SHRINKING.

The other two (related) ideas are:

Landmark information (characters just have it), Secret (they know it's there, need to unlock it), and Hidden (invisible until they pay the cost)
Narrative velocity — are characters pushed forward or are they pulled forward?

To that end, in this episode Stu, Chas and Mel start with the murder mystery (ostensibly the easier deep-dive): Rian Johnson’s WAKE UP DEAD MAN. But this is a complex film made even more complex by being a dual-protagonist film. Uhuh. Benoit Blanc is pulled through the story by his need to solve the case; Father Judd pushed through, against his will, to prove his innocence. Breaking down how that plays out — and why it matters for the kind of escalation each character can sustain — is the heart of the episode.

And inevitably we go on some tangents: pointers, plants, and underpinnings (from our Everything Everywhere All At Once episode) fair play in locked-room mysteries, Narrative POV (as always) and node-based plotting and what dungeon-crawl game design has to do with writing a web of clues.

As always: SPOILERS ABOUND and all copyright material used under fair use for educational purposes.

"Information puts players in danger and danger rewards characters with information, right? That's kind of the loop with like thriller game design." — Stu Willis @ 00:05:40

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→ Read the transcript for this episode.

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CHAPTERS

00:00:00 – Cold Open
00:00:18 – What do we mean by Secrets and Clues?
00:13:22 – Wake Up Dead Man
01:22:50 – Key Learnings & Wrap Up

FILMS

WAKE UP DEAD MAN (2025) — (w) Rian Johnson

SCRIPTS

Study the script: WAKE UP DEAD MAN (2025) — Rian Johnson

LINKS

EPISODES IN THE SECRETS AND CLUES SERIES

DZ-126: Secrets and Clues

RELATED EPISODES

DZ-90: Setups & Payoffs in Everything Everywhere All At Once

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Full show notes at: https://draft-zero.com/2026/dz-126/
Changeover: 20260523-1413

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