and this """mystery"""" that I am writing has...none of that. and actually it's all he thinks about but for the life of me I can't figure out what background noise there should be
Not a mystery fan myself, but I would have guessed it would be a combination of obfuscating important things, gving a reason why the mc has certain odd skills, and also a way to drop in a mix of chekov's guns and red herrings?
but I was ehhing because he's basically Aziraphale only human so it's... just like a 50 Shades of Grey sort of carbon copy with less smut and no particular talent
which can be a vehicle for learning 1. there's more to life than the mystery, and 2. things outside the mystery can be a source of inspiration for how to address the mystery
I think maybe in the first draft it doesn't really matter, since it's more about the framework of "mc wants to do the mystery and gets dragged into other things" and then in edits you can massage it so the Real Life things rhyme with the mystery in subtle ways?
a little more specifically than "just do it!!!" advice, tho, I mean that the things that interrupt the mystery are the kind of details you'll want to come back and tweak later anyway XD
so getting it Exactly Right the first time through doesn't really inform the structure of the story to follow, so much as the final structure of the story informs what the details should be
advice I should listen to ever