Writing Tips (#TuesdayTips)
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TuesdayTips159
TV Review:
Gaia: A Death On Dancing Ledge.
Today’s Tuesday Tip is another TV review. This time it’s the three-part documentary Gaia: A Death On Dancing Ledge.
The programme is available on the BBC iPlayer.
The documentary, presented by Zara McDermott, explores the mysterious disappearance of nineteen-year-old Gaia Pope-Sutherland.Many of the documentaries I recommend delve into the mechanics of investigating serious crime, such as police procedure and forensics. This one is a little different. As writers of crime fiction, we often portray ultimately successful police investigations. Also, we can sometimes skirt over the victims’ stories to focus on the detectives. This series redresses that balance, somewhat.In a nutshell, Gaia went missing from Swanage, Dorset in November 2017. She was missing for eleven days, before being found dead. The initial police investigation was described as ‘amateurish’ in that the officers handling the initial report incorrectly categorised her as low-risk, rather than high-risk, perhaps leading to her unnecessary death. During the search, three individuals were arrested on suspicion of murder, although they were subsequently released without charge and Gaia’s death ruled non-suspicious.
That in itself is an interesting story. But the backstory leading up to these tragic events is a convoluted, dark and heart-breaking tale. Gaia’s family and friends are at the heart of this story and McDermott is an engaging and sensitive presenter. She delves deep into the circumstances surrounding Gaia’s disappearance and death, and goes to some very dark places, unearthing an online culture of abuse and toxic masculinity.
I recommend this documentary as a reminder that the police don’t always get it right, and that behind even a seemingly accidental death, there is often a complex and upsetting story.
Did you see the programme? What did you think? Have you any other recommended shows?
Feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next time.
Paul
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
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TuesdayTips158
The Camera (Or Audio) Doesn’t Lie.
The other day, I was thinking about how much the way we write has changed in the last 100-odd years. There are the obvious changes to the process. Few modern authors write long-hand, or use a typewriter, and largely that has made our craft easier and more stream-lined. Computers are a God-send to people like me. Even as I bash out this blog post, I benefit from the ability to delete or change words, sentences or even paragraphs. The kindest thing one can say about my handwriting is that I have my own font; if I was limited to a pen and paper, the waste bin would soon be over-flowing and whoever I employed to turn my final manuscript into typeset for my publisher would need the skills of an archaeologist deciphering ancient cuneiform runes (case in point, my computer has just corrected the spelling of cuneiform – it has an ‘e’ in the middle. Who knew?).
In recent years, I have started using the specialist writing package Scrivener (#TuesdayTip80). I’m not saying that Agatha Christie would have written better stories if she had used it, but it may have made her life easier and she might have had a better work-life balance.Then there is the internet – a tremendous time-suck that probably decreases my productivity in many ways. But on the flip-side, having so much information instantly available certainly saves me hours or days of traipsing to the library or writing to experts to make sure I have small details correct.
But there is one thing that modern writers have to consider that perhaps was less important at the turn of the last century – namely needing to consider what happens when the book leaves the page. I’m not talking necessarily about TV, stage or film adaptations. Or even radio dramas – few books are ever translated to those media. But audiobooks are a huge growth area. I’ve mentioned before some of the challenges that audio narrators faced – take a look at my summary from a discussion with my long-time narrator Malk Williams (#TuesdayTip69). But there are a few other things that you need to consider, should your book ever be translated into a different format.First – it is extremely common for writers of crime fiction and thrillers to describe the crime or murder that has taken place and then spend the remainder of the book trying to solve the crime. I often put mine in the prologue. In prose, the culprit’s identity is easy to conceal.
“The killer stabbed the victim, screaming ‘I hate you’, repeatedly.”
gives nothing away. But this subterfuge is obviously harder to pull off when the killer has a distinctive voice – how will your audio narrator hide the fact that the murderer is the only female Scouser in the book? This is even more tricky on screen, or in a dramatic performance. How do you conceal the identity of the actor?Second, what about unreliable narrators (I mean the character, not the highly-skilled professional reading it aloud)? Or books that rely on the reader assuming that one character is the person being described, when in fact it is another? In audio, this can be solved by asking the narrator to simply do a straight reading, rather than using different voices or actors for each character. But again, this is a lot more tricky in dramatisations, especially visual. I can think of at least one thriller where the big twist at the end is that the first-person narrator is actually somebody different to who the reader thinks it is. It’s done amazingly in the book, but how do you portray that on screen without giving the game away?
There are no easy answers here. My advice is that you simply write the best book you can, and let others worry about if the story is filmable. Only a tiny percentage of books will ever be dramatised, so don’t worry too much. That being said, there are lots of clever tricks that writers can use to conceal a character’s identity in a way that will also work on screen. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to comment here or on social media!
Until next time,
All the best,
Paul
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
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TuesdayTips157
TV Review:
Code Blue: The Killing of June Fox-Roberts.
This week’s #TuesdayTip is a recommended watch. Code Blue: The Killing of June Fox-Roberts, available free on ITVX in the UK.
https://www.itv.com/watch/code-blue-the-killing-of-june-fox-roberts/2a5302
I’m recommending this two-part documentary because not only is a fascinating fly-on-the-wall documentary following a horrific and tragic murder investigation, but because it shows the police investigation beyond just the usual ‘forensics and following leads’ that we see in many of these shows.
I’m not going to give away too many details, in case you are unfamiliar with the investigation and want to follow it through to the end. But in summary, June Fox-Roberts, a 65-year-old grandmother, was found by her daughter dead in her home near Pontypridd, South Wales in November 2021. She had been dismembered and beheaded with an axe and an attempt had been made to clean up the scene. Her limbs and head were missing.
The documentary follows the police from the very start of the investigation, and includes lengthy interviews with June’s family as they come to terms with the horrific circumstances of the killing. As a writer of crime fiction, I found it a useful reminder of the human cost behind such crimes. The investigation itself was pretty standard fare; it yielded little in the way of new procedural details for me to incorporate into future books, although others may find it more useful. That being said, if you are looking to build a realistic investigative team for your books, the various job titles for the different specialists are worth noting and it was interesting to see the meetings between detectives and forensic and search experts as they formulated their strategies before commencing their tasks. All too often in fiction you could be forgiven for believing that a body is found and within half-an-hour, the paper-suit brigade are traipsing around the crime scene hunting for clues.
You might not want to incorporate all the details of these meetings in your book, but references to them taking place adds authenticity. Since this occurred in November 2021, there were some interesting clues as to how the police, like the rest of society, were learning to live with covid; some officers were without masks, whilst others clearly felt more comfortable with them.
Most of all, the candid interviews with family and police gave me insight into the impact on all concerned. It was clear to see that for many of the officers involved, the scene that greeted them was something they could never unsee. June’s daughter, who found the body, was clearly still in shock months later. She admitted that she hadn’t really started grieving properly. June’s other daughter had to endure cruel speculation on social media that she was the culprit and her interview was heart-rending.
As crime writers, it is important not to forget that there is a human story behind the crimes we portray. And that everyone involved, whether it be the victim, their loved-ones or the professionals that deal with the crime, will be impacted in some way.
Did you see the programme? What did you think? Have you any other recommended shows?
Feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next time.
Paul
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
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TuesdayTips156
Twist And Shout.
In Praise Of The Mid-Point Twist.
If there is one thing I really love, it’s a mid-point twist.
This brilliant device is when about halfway through a book, the writer completely upends the story and smashes all of the readers assumptions, making them start again from scratch.
Those who have read Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, or seen its film adaptation, will know exactly what I mean.
Without giving away any spoilers from specific books or films, a classic example might be that the entire narrative is based on something apparently happening and then the writer suddenly reveals that it never took place, or it was just a figment of a character’s imagination.
For it to have been pulled off successfully, and for the writer not to be accused of cheating, the reader MUST be able to stop at that point, go back and reread, and realise that yes, everything still works even if what they assumed was true isn’t.The secret to a good mid-point twist is the set up.
I’ve already discussed the use of Red Herrings TuesdayTip#153 and how to whittle down the suspect list TuesdayTip#154, and both of these are possible tools. Other examples of twists might be a person assumed to be dead/alive not being so. A crime that never occurred. A supposed motive that turns out to be completely off base.I call it a mid-point twist to differentiate it from the twists that often occur towards the end of a book. And for me, it has to be a big twist. Not so much an elimination of possible suspects or the closing in on the real motive, rather a complete game-changer.
For many writers, the mid-point twist is often the focal point of the book and is conceived right at the very beginning of the writing process. In the author’s mind, the book is then composed of two parts – the before and the after. Many writers work outwards from the twist, making sure that both parts are compatible with that twist.
Of course it isn’t easy. Since the twist is perhaps the most memorable part of the story, it is vital that the writer balances the need to completely catch out the reader (and characters), with the need to ensure that all the clues were there from the beginning. This means the author needs to hide them or disguise them. It is not enough for the reader to simply exclaim “I didn’t see that coming!”. They need to be able to retrace their footsteps with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and realise that it caught them out because of their assumptions.
Again, without giving away spoilers, I can think of several recent books that caused me to actually gasp out loud or swear at the author’s audacity.In a way, it is analogous to the brainteasers that you sometimes see.
An old chestnut (that is far less effective these days, thank goodness) is this puzzleA man and his son are involved in a serious car accident. The man dies and his son is seriously injured. When the son is wheeled into the operating theatre, the surgeon proclaims “I can’t perform the operation, that’s my son!” How is this possible?
Of course the answer (which would have caught out far more people forty years ago) is that the surgeon is the son’s mother. It plays on the outdated assumption that a senior doctor, such as a surgeon, must be male, thus the boy’s dead father. An alternate solution, using more modern attitudes to family structure, is that the son had two fathers, one of whom died, the other being a surgeon.
Of course this can be fraught with challenges.
First, as we see from the above example, readers’ assumptions change over time. It’s hard to imagine modern audiences being fooled by a twist that relies on most surgeons being male.
Second, if you have your eye on your book being adapted for the screen, you need to consider that it can be much harder to hide crucial details and clues on the screen than on the page. In a book, the reader only gets the information that we want them to see.
Third, you have to decide if other characters are in on the secret, or they to are fooled. If they already know about it, then you also need to craft their interactions with the reader and other characters in such a way that they don’t give the game away, or you don’t have to jump through too many hoops to make it plausible that they knew all along but said nothing.
Finally, you still have to be fair. Just as introducing the culprit right at the very end of a book can be frowned upon, turning everything on its head without giving the reader at least a chance to work it out beforehand is cheating.Remember, you can mislead, distract or fool your readers, but you must never lie.
What do you think of the mid-point twist?
As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next time,
Paul.
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
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TuesdayTips155
Block Buster
Ideas To Thwart Writer’s Block
I’d Buy That For A Dollar!Today’s #TuesdayTip is another Block Buster – a short exercise to either bust your writer’s block, or just a fun writing challenge to practise your skills. It focuses on description.We’ve all stumbled across those late-night shopping channels on TV, where dangerously enthusiastic presenters attempt to sell us gadgets that we’ve never heard of or never realised we wanted. Even more impressive are those presenters who manage to wax lyrical for several minutes about something mind-numbingly tedious or ubiquitous, like a pillow. Helped by what appears to be a remarkably generous discount (often recouped by expensive postage and packaging), they extoll you to either phone now, or these days, visit their website. Given that they are largely competing against Amazon, with its free Prime delivery, you have to take your hats off to them for accepting the challenge.The skill (aside from a level of excitement that makes you squint at the TV to see if their nostrils are red and their pupils dilated) lies in the description. And it is something they share with writers.
Part One: Choose an everyday object. To do this, perhaps look around where you are sitting or wander around the house. To increase the level of challenge, choose something really dull or which we buy because we have to and rarely give any thought to beyond price.
Now write a paragraph or two describing this item as if your audience can’t see it and have no idea what it is. Go into excruciating detail (to make it fun, you don’t have to be trying to sell it. Perhaps, the object is really rubbish and you are warning folks off.) Consider as many senses as appropriate (I’m going to assume that you don’t feel the need to taste a pillow).Description is a vital skill for any writer, especially for written prose or audio drama, where one can’t rely on visual stimuli). But a book soon grinds to a halt and readers get bored if you over-write. So the next part of the activity hones the necessary skills to avoid tedium.
Part Two: Take your previous prose and distil it to two or even one sentence. What is the essence of the object? What does your reader need (or want) to know about? Let their imagination do the heavy lifting here. Everyone is familiar with pillows, so don’t waste time telling them what one is. Focus on describing it. The smell of a pillow is probably irrelevant – unless of course it has the scent of a lover’s perfume or the damp, shampoo smell from their still-wet hair.
If you want to extend this activity still further, you can repeat this second part of the activity for different audiences (or different characters). A detective looking at a crime scene, will be interested in different aspects of a pillow than someone checking into a hotel for a romantic evening.
Remember the rules:
- Set yourself a time limit.
- Write without stopping, editing or overthinking.
- Write whatever comes to mind and don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense.
- It doesn’t matter if it has nothing to do with the scene that you are stuck on.
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
Until next time,
Paul
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TuesdayTips154
Whittling It Down.
Today’s #TuesdayTip looks at the way in which a whodunnit narrows down the field of suspects until only one or two remain, before the big reveal identifies the culprit. In many ways, this goes hand-in-hand with the setting of Red Herrings #TuesdayTips153.
There are lots of different ways to do this, and a full-length novel will often (but not always) have more than a short story. But here is a commonly-used structure for many novels.
Opening: The crime occurs.
First section: One or more viable suspects are introduced.
Second section: More suspects are introduced. Some of the earlier suspects are ruled out. Perhaps try and keep one of the early suspects in the game here (it could be the culprit or a Red Herring). This can help fixate readers and characters on one person, who with a few twists and turns either makes it to the end and is revealed as the killer, or is eventually dismissed.
Third section: More of the suspects are eliminated, but there is still more than one possibility.
The second and third sections can be repeated more than once, if you want a longer, more twisty tale.
Fourth section: Now you really need to start working on the remaining suspects. Do you eliminate them gradually, narrowing the field, or keep them all in the game until the very end?
Denouement: Finally, all the evidence is pointing to the culprit(s) and there is the big reveal.But this isn’t the only way to structure a novel, and there are plenty of alternate structures.
Here are a few more popular formats:
Lots of initial suspects introduced simultaneously, before being whittled down to one.
Popular with ‘stuck on an island with the killer’ thrillers or similar. There are countless examples of this, especially in Golden Age fiction. A typical scenario might be a deserted mansion with an eclectic bunch of guests (each with their own secrets and agendas). Someone is murdered. We know that the killer has to be one of these guests. Over the course of the book, each of the guests is eliminated (either through evidence or by becoming the next victim). Eventually, there are just a couple left, and finally the culprit is revealed. A variant might be that there is more than one killer.
Two suspects – each remains viable until the final reveal (although the reader might alternate between who they think it is). This structure lends itself really well to psychological thrillers or unreliable narrators. Someone is telling the truth (or at least a partial truth), whilst the other is lying (again with some partial truths mixed in). Ideally, the reader (and other characters) will find themselves switching between who they believe. Given that the odds of guessing the culprit from the outset is 50/50, the goal is to have the reader change their mind repeatedly (see TuesdayTip151 for why readers guessing who did it halfway through isn’t a disaster).
Everyone is guilty – for obvious reasons I won’t be naming any particular stories here, but suffice to say there are some extremely good examples where it turns out that multiple characters played their part in the crime. The trick here is to falsely eliminate some of those characters early on, so that the reader doesn’t guess where you are leading.
The late entrant – this is a very dangerous approach that risks alienating readers and leaving them feeling short-changed. As mentioned before in Tip151, it is largely accepted that all the suspects should be present in the story early on, so that readers have a sporting chance of working out who did it. Suddenly revealing at the end that the culprit was someone that hasn’t featured at all is a bad idea. My advice would be to either steer clear of this entirely, or if you must, perhaps introduce them in a very minor role early on (eg a faceless delivery driver scoping out the scene before they commit the crime, or an unknown face at the victim’s funeral); easily forgotten by the reader, but still there. But treat this with caution (and I recommend testing this with honest and open beta readers to see if they think you’ve played fair).Are there any other story structures that I haven’t included here? As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until we meet again, Paul.
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
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TuesdayTips153
Catch Of The Day:
Red Herrings.
The Red Herring is a staple of crime fiction. It’s so important that it even lends its name to the monthly magazine for members of the Crime Writers’ Association.
The term can be traced back to 1807 when the polemicist William Cobbett told of having used the pungent smell of a smoked herring to distract hounds that were chasing a rabbit.
Its purpose is to distract or side-track the characters and/or the reader.
Red Herrings can be intentional or unintentional (a coincidence).
There are lots of variants of this narrative trick, but here are three broad categories and examples of their use:
Distraction.
Intentional: Cash and jewellery are stolen in a burglary to distract from the fact that the burglar was after an incriminating letter.
Unintentional: A murder victim’s bag is stolen – somebody found the body and decided to help themselves to their bag.
A suspect that turns out to be innocent.
Intentional: The killer hides the murder weapon in someone else’s wheelie bin.
Unintentional: The young man in a hoodie caught on CCTV running away from the crime scene was just trying to catch a bus.
A suspect that is apparently ruled out, but who turns out to be guilty.
Intentional: The suspect apparently has a cast-iron alibi, but it later transpires that the alibi is manufactured.
Unintentional: Husband was spotted on a local shop’s CCTV at time of murder, so can’t have killed his wife. But the timestamp on the CCTV hadn’t been updated when the clocks changed.A Red Herring is composed of two parts and the placement of these parts within the story is crucial to its effectiveness.
Part One is the setting of the Red Herring. You can place this anywhere in the story – and a novel may well have multiple red herrings that come into being throughout the tale, but the key is to ensure that it happens sufficiently early in the story, or a particular story arc, that both the characters and readers have time to think about its potential significance. To use the second example, after the discovery of a murder, the police trawl the area for CCTV and find footage of a young man in a hoodie. They immediately set about trying to identify him.
Part Two is the resolution. In order for the Red Herring to be effective, this needs to be separated from its setting by time (for the characters) and pages (for the readers). In other words, the characters need to waste time and shoe-leather pursuing this suspect, and the reader needs to have it in the back of their mind, if not the forefront, for a chunk of the narrative. Therefore, when the man in the hoodie turns out to be entirely innocent, the characters feel disappointment, and the reader shares in this.In a typical whodunnit, the writer will usually try and set up more than one viable suspect (who may or may not be known). Red Herrings can be a crucial part of this process.
What do you think of Red Herrings? Are there other examples of types of Red Herring that you can think of? As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next, time, Paul.
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
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TuesdayTips152
Block Buster
Ideas To Thwart Writer’s Block
Tell Me About Yourself.
Today’s #TuesdayTip is another writing exercise/writers’ block buster and is inspired by an occasional feature on this blog I call #ConversationsWithTheirCreations. I invite another writer to conduct an imaginary interview with one of their own fictional characters.
So for this Blockbuster, I am going to ask you to conduct such an interview. You could use one of your own characters or one previously created by someone else.The aim is to interview them as if you are meeting them for the first time.
Think of it more as a TV or radio interview, rather than a police interview. With that in mind, think about what a reader or viewer would want to know.The purpose of the activity is to make you think more deeply about the character and get to know them better. Pay particular attention to their backstory and how that lead them to the place they are now, and how it influences their actions.
Remember the rules:
- Set yourself a time limit.
- Write without stopping, editing or overthinking.
- Write whatever comes to mind and don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense.
- It doesn’t matter if it has nothing to do with the scene that you are stuck on.
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
Until next time,
Paul
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TuesdayTips151
I guessed it halfway through!
“I guessed who did it halfway through!”
This triumphant statement, often featured in reviews, is enough to chill any crime fiction writer’s heart. For months – if not years – you’ve slaved away at your manuscript. Meticulously plotting a twisty narrative designed to keep your readers guessing; carefully devising and placing red herrings to divert your audience away from the real solution and crafting memorable characters as a distraction from the actual culprit.
All for nothing! All your hard work is in vain and your beloved book baby is going to crash and burn.
Fear not! Take a deep breath! It doesn’t matter.
First of all, let’s look at what they’ve actually said.
“I guessed who did it halfway through!”
That’s right, guessed.
There are few hard and fast rules about writing a crime novel. But one that is generally accepted, is that the culprit should appear early in the book, probably within the first quarter or so. Introducing a last-minute twist involving a brand new character a couple of chapters from the end is generally regarded as unfair to the reader. Therefore, you will probably want to introduce a few other reasonable suspects early on as well.
Let’s assume that by the midway point there are five or so plausible people who could have done the deed. All things being equal, if you were to stop your reader now and demand to know who they thought might be guilty at this point, then they have a one in five chance of being right!
If a hundred people read your book, twenty will guess the right person. If ninety guess the right person, perhaps you have a problem, otherwise it’s all down to the laws of probability.
Nobody likes to admit they were wrong.
Crime readers, especially those who read a lot of books, like to play along as the story unfolds. They are going to try to work out who did it. For many of us, working out the solution before it is handed to you in the denouement is immensely satisfying. Dare I even say it’s a wee ego boost? That’s just human nature. On the flip-side, getting it wrong is less satisfying. That’s not to say we can’t enjoy being fooled by a clever writer. Far from it, and there are plenty of kind and generous reviewers who will recommend your book because you hoodwinked them. But I would suggest, that human nature being what it is, more people are likely to publicly crow about getting it right than getting it wrong.
Flip-flopping doesn’t count.
A good writer keeps you guessing. In some of the best books I’ve ever read, I’ve chosen my pick pretty early on. But then there’s been a twist and I’ve changed my mind. Sometimes more than once. Even if it turns out I was right in the first place, that’s not a real win. Because the writer still fooled me for at least part of the book. So they have done their job.
So they figured out who did it? So what?
OK, let’s assume that a reader does decide upon the correct suspect early on and sticks with them to the end. Well here’s the thing – they won’t be sure they’ve got it right until they read the last page. It’s very unlikely that they are going to put your book down because they made a guess on page 150. Furthermore, the classic TV show Columbo literally told you who did it in the opener. Yet millions stayed tuned in, because what they really wanted to see was Columbo solve the mystery. To paraphrase the old cliché, it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.
What are your thoughts on trying to guess the culprit?
As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next time.
Keep on guessing,
Paul.
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
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TuesdayTips150
Artistic Licence.
Ignore Or Explain It Away?
In last week’s #TuesdayTip (Tip149) I discussed how it is important to make your procedure authentic, rather than realistic; to craft a compelling story without burdening your readers with too much detail. This week I want to look at a related idea – how to get away with using artistic licence.
It’s something that we all struggle with. Artistic licence is the need to ‘break the rules’ to create a compelling story. We often see this in police procedurals. An admittedly unscientific survey I conducted of the books on my bookshelf, reveals that the main character in most of these books (especially those in a series) is usually an implausibly high rank. A Detective Chief Inspector or Detective Inspector, or even a Superintendent. This dogged individual will visit crime scenes, interview witnesses and suspects, chase bad guys and even perform the arrest at the end. My own series of books centre around DCI Warren Jones, who does all of the above.
Unfortunately, in real-life this is far from what really happens. In the UK, inspector ranks and above are largely office-based. They are likely to be the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) in charge of a major investigation, but it is an organisational role. They direct the case, but the legwork is usually carried out by detective constables or detective sergeants. Interviewing is a highly specialised role these days, conducted by interview specialists, which are almost exclusively DCs and sometimes DSs. SIOs will often visit a crime scene, but they are usually being shown around by other experts who have already been on site for some time. And they certainly don’t go running after suspects and arrest them.
But for narrative purposes, a DI or DCI is an extremely useful rank. The implied level of seniority means that they can plausibly decide how the case is going to be solved, with a team below them to carry out the work, whilst still having to answer to those above them (a great source of narrative conflict). In theory, they see all the evidence and can piece together all the pieces to ‘solve the case’. That’s not how it works in real-life. In reality it is far more of a team effort, but for the purposes of story-telling readers (and viewers) need a ‘hero’ they can focus on.
I came up against another instance of reality getting in the way of my story very early in the series. My books are set in a fictional north-Hertfordshire town called Middlesbury, but Warren and his team are officers in the very real Hertfordshire Constabulary. About halfway through writing book one, The Last Straw I was doing some research and realised to my horror that ALL major crime in Hertfordshire and the adjoining counties of Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire is investigated in one big building in Welwyn Garden City run by the three constabularies to increase efficiency and save costs. I had already set up the team structure as described above, with Middlesbury CID consisting of a Detective Superintendent in overall charge, my hero DCI Warren Jones as SIO and then a small team of officers below him. This places Warren in the centre, and limits the number of major characters that readers need to get to know. It also allows those characters to remain consistent from book to book, rather than each investigation being staffed by a different selection of officers assigned from a pool (conveniently, none of my main characters are on annual leave when each year’s murder happens!).As a writer, I therefore had two choices. Either ignore reality and hope my readers will forgive me because it’s a cracking story. Or address it head-on. In my series, I decided to address it head on. I explain that Middlesbury CID (which is geographically quite distant from Welwyn Garden City and semi-rural) is a unique ‘first response CID unit’. Middlesbury deals with major crime in the local area and recruits additional officers as needed from Welwyn. This is a complete fiction, as far as I am aware.
This set-up also helped me address the other big use of artistic licence; DCI Jones being the heart of the action. I’ve made it a bit of an in-joke, with Warren being acknowledged as probably the only officer of his rank who still interviews suspects and visits crime scenes (some of his peers are jealous that he gets to poke around crime scenes whilst they are stuck in budget meetings). Narratively, it also means that Middlesbury and Warren are always under pressure to justify their unique (and costly) status.
Touch wood, my readers seem happy to accept this and I have had few, if any criticisms. I’ve even had the odd retired police officer comment that ‘it sounds like something we might do‘.
So my advice is this:
If you are going to use artistic licence to break the rules, first know the rules so you can break them effectively. Then decide whether you are going to ignore this on the grounds “it’s fiction, innit?” or if you are going to explain it away.
Lee Child once said that readers will forgive one big instance of implausibility. He was specifically referring to the fact that about once a year, Jack Reacher will wander into a small American town where there is a problem bubbling beneath the surface, which he will then fix in his own unique way (spoiler alert: there will be violence and mayhem and the evildoers will usually end up buried in the ground, before Reacher moves on, never to be seen again until it’s time for the next book).
So, decide what your instances of implausibility are and decide whether you are going to keep them or fix them. And if you keep them, whether or not to address them head on.
Do you have examples of artistic licence? How do you think they should be dealt with?
As always feel free to comment here or on social media.
If you are a writer with a tip to share, or fancy writing a fictional interview between you and one of your characters, please feel free to email me.
Until next time,
Paul
