PERPETRATOR/S the bad guys PROTAGONIST/S the good guy who s trying to bring them to justice. They can be set in any time location different points of view. Suspense Clues/red herrings
Scarily Intelligent Logical Detail Orientated Love puzzles Focussed Able to oversee the entire novel Read Crime Novels voraciously After due Consideration. The man with the gun did it!!!!
Know the market. Don t just trot out the clichés. Read widely Get complex - complex but plausible plots -With rare exceptions, simple no longer sells. Stay with the darkness - cute, cozy crime is out Don t forget jeopardy. - white knuckle as well as intellectually satisfying. Concentrate on character. Strong memorable characters with flaws Write well! Be economical - PRECIS PRECIS PRECIS make your writing taut and pacy
British Characters drive the Plot Police Procedural Psychological Dark humour Perceived as Cosy More whodunit American Plot drives the characters Dialogue driven Fat free prose gives the work more pace More gung-ho Higher death rate Shorter chapters and brisk pacing Hollywood influence
Personally I like the English style better. It is not quite so brittle, and the people as a rule, just wear clothes and drink drinks. There is more sense of background, as if Cheesecake Manor really existed all around and not just the part the camera sees; there are more long walks over the Downs and the characters don t all try to behave as if they had just been tested by MGM. The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers. Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder
THE CRIME Research Research..Research.. CHARACTERS Motivation Create a backstory for yourself, this informs the character The reader may never know this backstory Show not Tell - IMPORTANT VOICE Who drives the narrative STORY ARC Inside the narrative, plant obstacles. The bigger the obstacle, the better the story. RED HERRINGS KNOW HOW IT ENDS!!!!!!!!!!
RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH WHY - The Eternal Question WHAT WHO WHEN - motivation would cause someone to commit the crime, or to frame someone else? - would follow through on that motivation? - as the lynchpin of the plot its important to identify T.O.D./CRIME WHERE - Location, Location, Location..
Fraud Robbery Blackmail Cyber crime Counterfeiting
People Trafficking Prostitution Pornography Child pornography Snuff Movies Porno Movies
Drug Cartels Drug Running Drug Pushers Junkies Need for drugs Stealing Murder Anti social behaviour
Credit Card Fraud Con Artists Corporate Fraud
TROLLING IDENTITY THEFT PORNOGRAPHY
When researching be aware that certain words trigger investigations i.e. Child Pornography Trafficking Snuff Movies Etc. Computer programs at GCHQ constantly monitor the web tape
MOTIVATION BACKSTORY THAT INFORMS YOU IN YOUR WRITING SHOW NOT TELL IMPORTANT DECIDE THE PROTAGONIST Discard your first two ideas assume they'll be the first ideas that occur to your readers Make the crime matter personally to the protagonist, to raise the emotional stakes. This could be related to:. protagonist's mysterious past, close friend or family member in danger, the fate of the town, country, or world.
Don t write likeable characters Write characters that make mistakes think fast and think badly flawed characters who are 3 Dimensional Likeable characters are BORING Empathy Make the hero funny a victim in a dilemma being selfless What do your characters really want let the question Will they get it? Fuel your narrative
PSYCHOPATHS v sociopaths 1% of Pop. 4% of Pop. Antisocial personality disorder Lack Empathy Disregard for social rules and behaviour Feel no remorse or guilt Violent Psychopaths Innate condition Usually well educated with good job Controlled Behaviour Highly manipulative Unable to form personnel attachments Takes calculated risks Leaves minimal clues Sociopaths Learned behaviour Uneducated and unable to keep a steady job Erratic behaviour, rage and anger May form attachments to individuals or groups Spontaneous crimes tendency to leave clues Pschologia.co
Sex Love Obsession Art, (objects) Person Money Status Greed Hunger Desperation Psychopath Sociopath
Decide the characters who will die More than one character can die Try to pick an unlikely person for death This creates suspense A character that the reader has started to empathise with i.e. a child, a loved one, a central character Shocks the reader, makes them want to read more Take note from Game of Thrones, no-one no matter how central to the plot/story arc is safe from death. If it upsets you to kill a particular character it will also upset the reader BONUS!
How they die People are actually hard to kill. Its human nature to fight back. - A bullet to the head is effective - Stabbings - are time-consuming, difficult, and messy - Poisons are slow - Strangling is tough - and they just won t stand still whilst being axed. (It s a bummer!) So when you write the perfect murder scene, think about how realistically you kill your victim. Be creative (see previous presentation)
Specific time of death cannot be found easily Many mortis factors are considered when estimating time of death. Body Mass Temperature A dead body will naturally adjust temperature (algor) to achieve equilibrium with its surroundings and will display time-telling factors muscle stiffening (rigor) blood settling (livor) colour (palor) tissue breakdown (decomp). The presence of toxins also effects body changes. Cocaine amplifies the mortis process, while carbon monoxide retards it. Be careful in getting your forensic guru to commit on specific time.
Investigator Private: Miss Marple, etc. The Law FBI, Police, Forensic investigator etc. Victim Witness Perpetrator Steve McQueen The Thomas Crown Affair
THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR THOMAS CROWN
TIME Ticking clock a tight time frame, good for building suspense. PITFALLS Impossible to sustain a constant high level of suspense. Downtime gives readers a chance to catch their breath. Lulls the Reader into a false sense of security. If your protagonist is on the run for 48 hours, is there time to eat or sleep? Giving your character a limited amount of time to solve a problem is a great way to build suspense, but you can place constraints on your character that increase tension in other ways as well:
Foreshadowing - suggestions of things that may happen. Either direct or indirect. Characters can be given information that acts as foreshadowing. This information can be a red herring, or not. The protagonist might learn that one character served a lengthy prison sentence for a violent crime, and this may end up being a red herring intended to misdirect the reader s attention away from the actual perpetrator of the crime. Another more direct type of foreshadowing would be one character learning that another has a terrible secret. Atmosphere and mood create suspense. Examples: An oppressive atmosphere in an old house where a murder has taken place; a gloomy deserted urban street or country lane, or a tense police precinct where everyone is on edge as a killer threatens to strike again.
High stakes Things at stake must be crucial. character s life or livelihood, long-held dream or something else, it cannot be unimportant. Stakes must go up rather than stay the same or decrease. E.g.. Police investigation can impact on the detectives, marriage, position or ethics. The stakes become higher than the initial motivations for solving the crime.
You can only build suspense if the reader trusts you to play fair. Build the reader s trust by fulfilling any promises that you make throughout the book. follow through on any major set-ups. This might feel tricky in the context of red herrings, but red herrings are not so much meant to trick as to mislead readers. In other words, red herrings should always have an alternate explanation so that the reader does not feel cheated. Anti-climax has been used by many writers effectively, but you should weigh departing from common genre expectations against the possible displeasure of readers. If you spend a lot of time on some detail so that it seems like it is going to be significant and then you abandon it, your reader may feel frustrated. On the other hand, if you show your reader early on that your set-ups pay off, then you can build suspense with longer and more complex set-ups with story arcs across the entire book (or series) and sustain your reader s interest throughout.
Key to show-not-tell Smell is the strongest link to emotional connection. A gruesome photos of a gut-shot corpse is bad Try writing the stomach-puking stench of a maggot-crawling, gassing-off decomposing body. Show the detective binning his 500 leather jacket because the putrefaction permeated the calf-skin pores, and dry cleaning it just made it stink worse.
Write believable dialogue Be honest. Cops and crooks swear like sailors be true to the characters Be balanced. If every fourth word is four letters, it ll get a little overpowering, but none at all is unrealistic. Writing F@#*! Is not dialogue!!!
A red herring is a clue that takes the reader and/or characters in the wrong direction A Red Herring should weave easily into the details of the story Red herrings can sometimes prove to be the real deal Queen of Red Herrings Agatha Christie i.e.: Then there were none, Murder on the Orient Express Agatha Christie would have both the CLUE and the RED HERRING in the same scene but the scene pivoted around the Red Herring. This gives an intelligent reader a 50/50 chance of guessing who really did the crime.
More than any other genres, Crime Writing tends to follow standard rules.
PLOT IS EVERYTHING!!!. Have a crime A killer never kills because they are mad, there is always a reason. Don t be boring write what excites you Grab the reader by the throat on the first page and don t let go The Action Opening: The Flashback Opening: Introduce ASAP detective culprit crime within the first three chapters
The crime should be sufficiently shocking preferably a murder (personal preference) The crime should be BELIEVEABLE Solve the case using ONLY rational and scientific methods. The culprit must be capable of committing the crime. NEVER try to fool your reader. Do your research. Wait as LONGGGGGGGGGGGGG as possible to reveal the culprit. Endings that slap you in the face As B movie king, Roger Corman once said, when the monster is dead, the movie is over. Luke Preston Crime Writer
Foreshadowing and suspense-building is redundant if the reader doesn t care about the climax of your novel. Strong authentic characters are needed that speak to the reader. Then readers will empathise and care about the suspenseful situations they encounter. Characters behaviour should be plausible. Suspense needs conflict and drama to grow. Compressing time or limiting freedom builds suspense. Planting false clues via red herrings that leave the reader and characters unsure as to who can be trusted is also effective. Strong motivation must be created for readers to invest in seeing suspenseful setups through to their conclusion. Do not have a final scene where the criminal details how he did it. Lazy writing and unrealistic
Joseph Wambaugh. He s the ex-lapd guy who wrote The Choir Boys, The New Centurions, and The Onion Field, and invented the character Roscoe Rules, whom every cop loves. Wambaugh said,, The best crime+ stories are not about how cops work on cases. They re about how cases work on cops.