For mystery fans, there are some intriguing ways to use podcasting to make an investigation seem real for all involved including your listeners. Podcasting mystery messages can be very fun and exciting.

Before you record your first podcast, you will need to first plot a good mystery story. You do not have to record or write the full story in one sitting, but you will need to create the plot to ensure the success of your podcasts. Your plot should consist of mainly two things. The characters names, and the storyline that you plan to follow with your podcasts.

You can create as many characters as you like, but you will surely want at least 3 main characters that will be the highlights of your podcasts. You will need the sleuth, the victim and the criminal. The sleuth will of course be the main character of your podcasts, where as the victim will probably be eliminated within the first podcast or maybe the second. The criminal of course will only appear once in the final podcast once he is captured, or the criminal can be a friend of the sleuth to make the ending more surprising.

Once you have your characters decided upon, write down their names and general personalities that you would like them to portray in your podcasts. You will then want to locate a few friends or family members that would like to help you in recording the story with their voices, where each friend or family member plays a character.

Now create the plot of your story, but make sure that during this creation process that you plot it in segments, where each segment is your daily, weekly or monthly podcast.

Once a general guideline of your plot is created, you can then start working on the script for the first podcast. Create your script where it ends on a note where the next podcast will pick up. Provide a few clues in the podcast, and to make things fun you could even provide clues on your website. Just put a concluding message in your podcast-letting listeners know that more clues can be found at your site, and provide them with the URL.

Try to conclude your first mystery within the first 15 or so podcasts. If the story continues for too long, then listeners may lose interest. You can always create new stories to podcast about, but you cannot always win back a listener that you lost because your story went o for too long.

During your next to the last podcast, right before you reveal who the criminal is, you can host a contest to see how many listeners were able to figure out who the criminal is before the criminal is revealed. Just place a form on your website for listeners to fill in with their guesses. Make sure that your form prevents multiple submissions from the same person. Mention the URL to the form to your listeners in the podcast, and let them know that all correct guesses will win a prize. A good prize would be having the next sleuth named after the winners, or another of your podcasts characters.

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