How a passing interest in SOE became a passion to write a mystery/thriller

 

Writing Distant Shadows was a joy. My way of paying tribute to the lost agents of SOE in the second world war.

 I have long been interested in the brave actions of the FANYs (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) in WW2. The women agents who carried on their tradecraft under the noses of the Gestapo and, in France, the Milice, the French political paramilitary organisation formed to fight against the French Resistance.

 These brave women suffered in the torture chambers of Nazi concentration camps. Beaten, tortured, worked to death on starvation rations, they often ended their lives by being shot in the back of the head or given lethal injections and their bodies burned. For this, they were, in the main, awarded MBEs, apart from Noor Inayat Khan, Codename Madeleine, who was still regarded as “missing” in 1946.

 Despite opposition from Whitehall, Vera Atkins, from SOE F Section, insisted on going to France and Germany to find out what had happened to “her” girls. It was also at her insistence that the War Office agreed to award the agents honours and for them to be regarded as “killed in action”. She also persuaded the authorities to honour Noor Inayat Khan with a George Cross in 1949. These agents were incredibly brave, while being incredibly modest about their part in the allied victory. And even when security restrictions were eased, few ever spoke about their time as agents.

 This was my starting point for Distant Shadows. And the more research I did, the more determined I became to write a book with an ex-SOE agent, who had escaped from Paris, as its protagonist. 

 Distant Shadows grew from the usual what-if?s that drop into writers’ heads. What if one agent escaped, aided by her superior in England? What if her accusations of treachery and betrayal were covered up by the top brass and she was hustled out of SOE? What if she knew her life was in peril from the traitor, so decided to change her name and disappear? And then the final what if? What if she recognised a pattern of fraudulent activity in the bestowal of government building contracts and decided, nine years after going into obscurity, to stand up for her principles at the start of a new Elizabethan age, and bring the fraud to light?

 For anyone interested in reading about the FANYs and Vera Atkins, I can recommend:

 Sarah Helm: A Life in Secrets: the story of Vera Atkins and the lost agents of SOE.

Marcus Binney: The Women Who Lived For Danger: The Women Agents of SOE in the Second World War.

 There is a memorial to the lost FANYs at St Paul’s Church in Knightsbridge, London. More information here: Women's Transport Service (FANY) : London Remembers, Aiming to capture all memorials in London

 And here is the precis of the book that came out of all those what-ifs!

 Distant Shadows:

 It’s the day before the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The dawn of a new Elizabethan era. It is also the day Peggy Palmer, formerly Agent Claudette sent to Paris by the Special Operations Executive, decides she has no option but to bring the corrupt building scam by Knowles Bros. into the light of day. Who can she ask to help? Who will believe an almost 30-something spinster, firmly on the shelf by most people’s standards?

 Peggy decides to contact her old SOE supervisor, now Sir Andrew Kingsley, put to work in an out of the way government department. Peggy’s anonymous letter starts a chain reaction that brings the distant shadows of her time as a radio operator in Paris in 1944 back into her current life. And with shadows come memories she has tried to forget. Of her lover, taken by the Gestapo, tortured and murdered. Of the traitor in the ranks she is still convinced betrayed them all.

 She has made a point of becoming unmemorable in the 9 years since her accusations of treachery were dismissed by the top brass. 9 years since she decided it was safer to disappear, change her name and her job. More than once. Distant shadows fed by long memories.

 And will those distant shadows revive the spectre of the traitor who betrayed her Paris cell; who condemned the love of her life to end his on the end of a Gestapo butcher’s hook? Can Peggy trust Sir Andrew who seems almost too anxious to stay close to her? What is he afraid of? And why is successful thriller writer Noah Keyes, another of her SOE trainers, equally anxious to be at the centre of the action?

 What avalanche has Peggy’s decision to write that letter begun? And will she survive the fallout?

 Distant Shadows is available here: - https://bookgoodies.com/a/B09CQ1G9GY

 

So you want to write a crime novel: Part 8. Suspense

 

Suspense is a vital component of writing a crime novel. At its most basic, suspense is based on fear. The reader’s fear. The more anxiety you can make your reader feel, the more successful your story will be.

Conflict. The most important aspect of engaging readers to the extent of them being fearful, is your protagonist and your antagonist. Unless readers not only like your main character, but are mentally cheering them on, why would they be in the least bit bothered when danger threatens and there is the danger the antagonist might win? But then, you can also make the antagonist engaging, too. A likeable rogue with a hard edge that may make the reader overlook him/her. More conflict within the reader.

Strong characters, with flaws that they are fighting to overcome in order to obtain their objective will make your story unputdownable. You must make sure your main character and your antagonist are determined. The one to obtain the objective and the other to make sure that doesn’t happen. Sometimes your protagonist and antagonist will want the same thing. That ups the ante on the conflict. It’s like two people fighting for the love of a third person, except that in a crime novel, it is much nastier and devious.

Time. If you make your characters fight against the clock, the suspense level spikes immediately. If John cannot get to Isabel by 4pm, chances are the killer will get there first and she is next on his list. Can John reach Isabel in time? Make your time short.

There’s a song in Singing in the Rain called Make ’em Laugh. In a crime novel, you make them wait. And you do this by scene cutting; closing the scene on a cliffhanger. You have set up the action but right at the point where the reader is desperate to know what happens, you end the scene and go onto another character doing something different. However, part of the agreement between writer and readers is that the writer does not leave readers hanging for too long. Otherwise they will lose interest and shut the book. Tom Clancy did this very well. He had multiple characters, all facing huge problems and switch from one to the next and so on. If your readers are fully engaged with the characters, the suspense will be incredible. Use time to your advantage.

Foreshadowing. In other words, hints. Sometimes subtle, sometimes up-front. These are a joy to play with because you are trying to lead the reader up the garden path of misleading facts that don’t mean anything. Some hints will, of course, be crucial to the central action of the book. A hint might be, for example, the way a character behaves; something that indicates a state of mind or mindset. Who can forget Bogart in The Caine Mutiny constantly playing with small steel balls? It doesn’t foreshadow an event but sets up the perception of the character’s behaviour and makes what happens later logical.

Foreshadowing for events is less subtle. Perhaps one character is afraid of the dark but is abducted and shut in a cellar with no light. How will he/she deal with the panic on that fear on top of being abducted? Foreshadowing is necessary for suspense and, if done with finesse, can have your readers going in any direction you want to send them.

High Stakes. This is a good accompaniment to the time element above. If the stakes are high and the time is tight, readers are going to be glued to your story with their hearts thumping. Let’s go back to John trying to reach Isabel before the killer does. We already know he must get to her before 4pm. So you introduce a really high stake twist. The hospital is 20 minutes away: he should be ok. But then, he is caught up in a huge accident and its resultant traffic jam halfway to the hospital . Up the stakes, up the suspense.

Plot Twists. (Spoiler Alert) An essential part of a crime novel. Many how-to­ books advise trying a twist on a twist. The extra one you don’t see coming even if you think you’ve worked out who the killer is. Look at the end of the film Sixth Sense. How many people—including me— didn’t work out that the main character was, in fact a ghost? 

How about your protagonist trying to help his brother who has been accused of a murder he didn’t commit. You follow your protagonist’s actions using short time constraints and the high stakes of brotherly love, trying to find evidence to prove the brother innocent and you show the brother twisting painfully on this hook, with his distraught wife and children suffering too. And then the protagonist does find enough evidence to clear his brother. He is declared innocent. The next day, the brother confesses he was guilty. The twist on the twist can also be tightened by how your protagonist finds out the truth. And what they do about it.

Red Herrings and Clues. You need to seed these so carefully. Experienced readers will spot them a mile off. But sometimes, you want them to. And some of the subtle ones will be misleading and a couple of the not-so-subtle ones will be true. I try to plant a significant clue, in passing, early on in the book before the reader has settled down. Throughout, you must be fair to the reader. No sudden appearance of someone at the end who wasn't there at the beginning. The clues must be hidden in plain sight. Drip-feed your clues, don’t give them all at once. And don't answer them all at once, either. Make the reader work for the solution.

 In conclusion, if you put a strong, likeable but flawed character who has a goal and who will take readers with him/her on a cake-walk journey with plenty of conflict, red herrings, twists and high stakes, exacerbated by time constraints and any other problems you can manufacture, you will have a solid, absorbing and enthralling crime novel.

 

So you want to write a crime novel. Part 7. Characters

 

Character is how you develop through your life experiences. The dictionary definition is the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.

A character is also a person in a novel or play or film.

The one impacts on the other.

 When you create the characters in your crime novel, obviously, the ones who will occupy most of your interest are your main character (Protagonist) and the killer (Antagonist).

These two characters may often be very similar in character. In other words, they may be aiming for the same prize but what that prize is, will be altered by their mental and moral qualities.

Your protagonist will not be all good, just as your antagonist will not be all bad. Everybody, even serial killers, have good and bad qualities and your writing will be much richer is you exploit this.

Your protagonist wants to catch the killer. The killer does not want to be caught.  Killers in crime novels are frequently portrayed as being so arrogant they think they will never be caught, but just as your killer is a human being, he or she will have doubts and be indecisive just as we all are.

Your protagonist may also be arrogant enough to think he or she will catch the killer, but, unless they are the boring stereotypical flawed drunk with inner demons and everyone’s hand turned against them — how boring that trope has become — the one difference will be that your protagonist will have an ally who supports them. That could be a murder squad if you are writing a police procedural or a close friend/partner who acts as a sounding board for your amateur sleuth and helps them clarify their thinking.

By contrast, unless the murder(s) are a joint enterprise, your killer will only have him or herself to talk to and that may well increase their arrogance and certainty.

But what about the other characters? You must have a big enough ‘stable’ of characters in your novel to make the mystery a mystery. And remember that one of Agatha Christie’s main strengths was that all her books have a huge range of characters. That gave her so much leeway to seed clues and red herrings aplenty and lead us down a usually very winding garden path.

Think of five friends. They will all have differing characteristics because they will all have had differing life experiences.

Joanna might have been raped by her stepfather, was too frightened to tell anyone, so never gained justice. That experience will have coloured her view of men. She may shun relationships or, worse, she may have a behavioural habit of choosing controlling, abusive men because her self-worth is under the floorboards - like her husband might be if she suddenly snaps.

Now compare Joanna to Rebecca, whose upbringing was sunny and secure and whose parents encouraged her to be happy. Rebecca will be as different in character as chalk is to cheese, because she has not had Joanna’s experiences. But does that make Rebecca ripe for being a victim because she will automatically be more trusting?

What about Tom? He’s working for his dad in the family firm of builders. Tom was brought up to think there was no alternative, but his one desire is to go to art school and paint. He earns good money but spends it to compensate for not being what he wants to be.

 Compare Tom to Ian, whose father walked out when Ian was three and his baby sister was just turned one. Dad told Ian that he must now be the man of the family.

Tom might be resentful but unable to break away from the security of a good family and a steady income. Ian has been hustling to help his mother since before he went to school. He worked three jobs. A paper round, helping people with their gardens and walking neighbours’ dogs. You might presume Ian is more likely to succumb to the lure of earning easy money by working for the local drug lord

And then we throw in the what-if? How would knowing Tom and Ian's characters affect your novel if you turned that presumption on its head and made Tom the drug runner because he wants to salt enough money away to go to art school while not giving up being able to spend his earnings?

I would counsel not creating your characters to fit your plot. There will always be something off kilter with the resulting book. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of crib sheets for creating characters, some of which go to ridiculous lengths in terms of what your character eats, hates etc.

Why do I think that is overkill? Because, in truth, our likes and dislikes in terms of colours won’t affect the story one iota - unless the character is colour-blind. All it will do is confuse you, the writer, because you will have spent so much time making everyone completely different, you will feel a need to include all of it in the book.

If you decide one of your characters is allergic to shellfish, that food preference may be relevant as a clue or a red herring. But knowing that Greg likes steak but hates lamb is meaningless unless it has a purpose in the book. Don’t bog yourself down.

Think of the 2 most popular detectives in the last 140 years. Christie’s Poirot and Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. What do we know and what do we need to know about each?

We know Poirot is egg-shaped, vain, fussy, and meticulous. We have no idea what colours he likes or dislikes or even his food choices because those are irrelevant to the stories.

There is nowhere in the Poirot stories where he says ‘Look at that woman in the red dress, Hastings. She must be guilty because I abhor red.’ No. He might say ‘Look at that woman in the red dress, Hastings. See how she looks around. I wonder why her hand is in her pocket.’

Similarly, we know that Holmes is tall, fit, vain and smokes a lot. Conan Doyle sees Holmes as a machine so the reader couldn’t give a Flying Fortress whether he likes dogs or cats. We don’t need to know it.

I am a visual writer so like to find pictures that fit the character in my mind’s eye. For example, in The Tudor Enigma books, my protagonist, apothecary, Luke Ballard, looks like a younger William Petersen, who played Grissom in CSI. The minute I saw one particular picture, I knew just what Luke Ballard was like as a person.

Try it. Let’s say you want a man in his 20s who is a bit of a flirt, a charmer, but who has a look in his eye that says he uses it for his own ends. Keep those characteristics in mind. A charmer with a nasty edge. Now go into your preferred search engine and check out images of men in their 20s. It may take some time but one may well just pop off the screen. That’s what your character looks like.

Look again. What can you imagine him doing? Would he kill someone without a second thought? Would he go to Africa and build schools for children? Could he be one of twins? Plenty of playing room for creating havoc in your story with that one.

Once you know the essence of your character, you have something to build on. What does it matter what he wears or what toothpaste he uses unless the events in your story demand we know he would never use whitening toothpaste? And if he is the victim, why was whitening toothpaste found in his hotel bathroom?

When you have enough characters to people your story, start thinking about how their characteristics will impact on your basic plot. You will find that they affect it greatly and sometimes they can send you in a totally different direction. In Long Shadows, I have one character who made an unplanned declaration of love. Not only had he not planned it, neither had I. But, knowing what he was like—his characteristics—I knew exactly what new path I could make him tread and it strengthened the book. Long Shadows is due out shortly.

Last words. Don’t hurry your characters into the world. Let them stay by your side as you walk the dog, cook dinner or cut the lawn. Let them talk to you as you wander around the supermarket. When you know them and you know the bones of your plot, you can create a compelling story.

 

 

So you want to write a crime novel. Part 6: Structure

 

Structure – otherwise known as Can of Worms.

 People – both authors and lecturers in creative writing – attach a lot of importance to structure for the reason that the framework of your novel is vital to its ebb and flow. In other words, without the structure, your story, like a house must have sound foundations and a strong set of scaffolding to prevent it from crumbling into the dust mid-build. There are several types of formal structure. Here are four of the more formal.

 The Three-Act Structure.

 This is the structure most often used, for the excellent reason that it keeps the author on track with the readers standing at your character’s shoulder watching the action unfold.

 At its most basic, Act One involves the introduction of your characters and setting, the progression of your plot (the events in your story) through your characters to what is called the point of no return. Which means your detective makes the irrevocable decision to carry on because there is too much evidence of wrong-doing to not carry on.

 Act Two is where the majority of the action takes place, where you lead the reader up as many garden paths as you can logically fit in, send them in circles and get to the point where your detective has all the clues – as has the reader – but misreads them and enters what I call the dark night of the soul. This is where they have a serious crisis of confidence.

 Act Three is where the detective picks themselves up, brushes themselves down and starts all over again, this time managing to link the clues properly – which your carefully constructed garden paths have stopped the reader from doing – and leads on to the thrilling, tense and dangerous denouement. Followed by a quick come-down scene, which can be presented as an afterword or epilogue.

 The Three-Act structure fits the rhythm of a crime novel very well, but do not feel that you cannot experiment. I suggest you begin with this format and branch out when you know the rhythm of your writing and how you can play with the structure of your books.

 As a rough guide, Act 1 is usually around a quarter or perhaps a little more of the book, Act 2 half of it and Act 3, which should be fairly fast and frantic, the last quarter.

The Mirror Structure

 This is where you start with the last character or setting and end with the first and this can take the form of a prologue or a chapter or just a couple of pages. The writing must be very clever because the author has a duty to remain true to seeding clues and being fair to the reader. However, the great advantage of this method is that you can write partial sections with no resolution, which reflects life. Not every end will be tied up. BUT the main questions must be answered.

 If your story starts as the mystery ends, then you must still have enough of a story to answer the posed question – what happened to X and who committed the crime? – for that not to be answered until the end of the book.

For example, you could start with either a first person or third person short prologue about why the unnamed and, if you can, un-gendered, narrator —usually the perpetrator — rationalises what he or she did. It is a kind of In my end is my beginning type of book and if you can pull it off, it will be spectacular.

The Milieu Structure

 This relies on the world in which your story occurs. In other words, setting is key. The story starts when your main character enters the world and ends when they leave it. It is almost a bystander’s story, a narrator who cares nothing for the main character or his/her journey arc, only how what the MC does or does not do affects the bystander’s world. This would lend itself to crime stories with a supernatural element where the setting is so important as to almost be a character. And, with this structure, the author can use an omnipotent point of view. But there are serious traps set for the unwary here, so if you want to try this format, do your research about which authors use it and read the books to get a good understanding of the structure.

The Idea and Character Story

This is where the idea starts the ball rolling. Who gets killed, who killed him/her and how the killer is caught. The character story is exploring how your main character grows – or doesn’t – through the action of finding the killer. And please, I beg of you, no washed up cops, who drink too much and have inner demons. My own opinion is that if you want to read of such characters and how they cope — or don’t — read literary fiction. A crime story is about crime. It involves characters and how they see the world and yes, you probably need to allow the reader into a bit of their private lives, but would you take all your angst and demons to work with you? Do you think if you did you would be in that job very long?

 In next month’s blog, I will be dealing with character.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So you want to write a crime novel: Part 5. Plot and Theme

 

 

Some people get very confused about the term plot. Plot is, quite simply, the events in your novel. Nothing more, nothing less. That said, it is enormously important because if you chart the events that need to occur and then play with the order of them, you can write a completely different novel. So plot is a central, vital part of your story. We will cover how your characters can affect the events – your plot – even as you are writing it, in a later blogpost.

 Your theme — and every story has one — is an overarching entity that floats above the story. I will deal with that in a while.

 Plot

How does it work in practise? That depends on what lit the fire for the story in the first place, of course, but the following is an idea off the top of my head as I type this sentence.

 What-if a burned-out singer wants to make a comeback, but ends up murdered before she can lay down one track in the recording studio?

 So we need enough characters, with motives, to people this story. Let’s have the victim first. Melody Honeycutt was hugely successful ten years ago before she was seriously injured in a road traffic accident in the tour bus on the way to her next gig. This impacted on her backing singers, her manager, her (then) husband, their (now teenage) daughter because it was her success and its resultant income that kept them financially afloat.

 The last ten years have been rough for Melody but she has recovered enough to want to sing again, something made more important when she sees the state of her finances, the management of which she had left to her husband, Jack, which is the main reason he is now her ex-husband. She has decided to put together some songs, a few of which she has written herself, and record them before piggybacking on any success the album has to do another tour. Do you see how the character will affect the events in your story?

 Okay, so the last two paragraphs are the premise of your story. To tighten up your understanding of that premise, you now need to create an elevator pitch — so called because it has to be short enough to pitch to an editor in an elevator and strong enough to spark his/her interest. BUT, creating an elevator pitch makes you focus on the absolute central issue in your story even if you never get anywhere near an editor (or an elevator).

For the following example, I must thank Penny Grubb & Danuta Reah’s The Writers Toolkit, since revised with the new title How To Write Fantastic Fiction.

An elevator pitch is the heart of your story in a few sentences.

1. You need a compelling character – we have Melody.

2. Her objective – to be successful again.

3. A situation where Melody is in a perilous situation – not a physical peril, necessarily, depending upon what you are writing. The peril is a situation that might prevent her from achieving her objective.

4. Melody’s opponent.

5. Melody is faced with a disaster caused by that opponent. What is at stake?

You can play this out several times within the life of the novel, but the bare bones are those five elements. How does this work for our story?

One sentence to cover the first three points above.

(1, 2 & 3) Melody Honeycutt (main character), desperate to restart her singing career, cut short by an accident (objective), comes out to drive to the studio for her first recording slot, but finds all her tyres have been slashed.(Peril)

And then the what’s at stake issue:

(4 and 5) Her ex-husband (opponent), who is aware she is trying to kickstart her career, rings to say their daughter has been rushed to hospital (disaster). Should Melody rush to the hospital to be with her daughter and miss the once-only recording opportunity or should she leave her daughter to her husband and the medics and forge ahead with her new career (what is at stake)?

From these bare bones, you can build a hundred different stories, in several genres. If this were a romance, the daughter would probably be in a coma and Melody and Jack would rekindle their love over her sickbed.

If this were a historical novel, you might have Melody trying to succeed as a singer at court. Her husband is jealous that her beauty might attract a wealthy courtier. When her daughter is injured, the stakes might be that the Queen or one of her ladies has promised to consider the girl as a maid. You get the picture.

For a crime novel, I would be tempted to make Jack a controlling character who has secretly kept tabs on Melody ever since she kicked him out for embezzling her money. He has “accidentally” caused the daughter’s injury to stop his ex-wife from ever becoming famous again. Melody rings the hospital and the injury is very superficial. She rings her daughter who tells her to get to the studio.

Melody borrows her neighbour’s car or the (handsome?) neighbour drives her to the studio. Jack then embarks on a full-scale scare and stalk campaign to frighten her into stopping. He kills her cat, leaves threatening messages on her doormat and dead animals on her doorstep. But the police can’t pin anything on him. You can go from there…

Theme

Sometimes writers know the theme before they start. Sometimes it becomes obvious in the writing. However, all fiction has a theme of some kind. You either decide what it is and then start plotting or you write and discover the theme as you go but without knowing your theme your writing will not be as focussed as it should be.

Carrying on from the plot above, what could the theme for Melody’s story be? Escape from a long bondage, perhaps, when she becomes a success again. Or, if she succumbs to the threats and doesn’t fulfil her dream, the theme might be fear overcoming ambition. The choice is yours, but you can see that the former would be an upbeat, feel-good ending and the latter a downbeat one. Whatever you choose, the ending must be logical and satisfactory.

So you want to write a crime novel: Part 4. Outlining

 

Outlining aka A Can of Worms

 In many ways, crime novels are no different in terms of structure from other genres, but they certainly differ in details, character traits and action scenes and sometimes these need careful plotting.

 I am going to say right up front that “how to” books can be helpful to a writer of any experience to help them write better and faster. There are hundreds of authors who earn more money by writing books on how to write than by their fiction and thousands of books out there telling you how to outline your books for surefire success. If you are a novice, it is easy to glaze over at the amount of advice, some of which is in direct contradiction to other advice. Even experienced writers who remain alert to the possibilities of new ways to look at how they write can get stuck in a rut of reading advice after advice. You may think that buying several books – I have at least 9 – on structure, outlining etc., will make you a better writer.

 I am here to tell you it doesn’t work like that. Because you are you and your thought patterns and how you see the world is different from mine or anybody else’s. In short, you have to read, try and keep it if it works for you and discard it if it doesn’t. Otherwise you will spend all your time trying to find that perfect system and no time doing the creative bit, which is why you wanted to write in the first place.

 There are two types of writer when it comes to outlining and plotting. The pantser and the planner. Whichever you are, a crime writer will need a crime (murder, usually), a detective, clues, red herrings and several characters including the villain(s).

 If you are a pantser (someone who sits at the keyboard without a thought in their head and who puts fingers to keyboard to see what happens), you will say you never outline. I beg to disagree in part. Yes, you might have no idea when you start, but I certainly believe that your first draft is, in effect, your outline to see what has and has not worked; what needs changing and what needs discarding. By the time you have finished that first draft, you will know your characters and their motivations, but you might have written yourself into a couple of corners and need to do some major re-writing.

There are varying degrees of planner. Jeffery Deaver, for example, plots every nuance so meticulously, he almost writes a short novel in the plotting phase. Hybrids – and I am one – write a loose road map but allow enough wriggle room for change when you are in the heat of the first draft. Following the road map analogy, I know the beginning and the end and which towns (clues) I have to go through to get to my destination. But whilst on the journey I am more than likely to go off the main road at a tangent. Sometimes that strengthens the story; sometimes it leads into a cul-de-sac. Sometimes getting out of the cul-de-sac gives a glorious opportunity to seed a really obscure clue.

 Some successful authors, such as Minette Walters, have no idea who the villain is until over halfway through. There is a certain logic in this. If the author doesn’t know, then the clues will not point to one particular person and you have an opportunity to confuse the reader still further.

So, let’s look at a few ways of outlining your crime novel.

 Physical – and usually cheaper – methods.

 Index cards. I use these, even though I have Scrivener (more later). I prefer a physical system where I can jot down disjointed ideas — clues, character actions, events — on separate index cards. They are useful because you can rearrange them to see if you have the best flow line for your book. Sometimes shuffling them up will lead to a clue or red herring you hadn’t thought of.

 Notebooks with sections. You can use one section for the characters – a page for each; one section for details of your setting; a section for your plot, i.e. the events in your book and a section for clues and red herrings.

 Whiteboard or very large post-it notes/pieces of paper. When you have that first what-if? thought, it might be the central tenet of your story. It might be a what if X is found dead in a locked room with no weapon in sight? It might be the theme of your novel and every novel has a theme whether or not the author realises what it is. It might be the motive for the murder(s). Write that in the centre of your whiteboard/post-it note/paper. From that central point, you can make a mind map – simple or complicated. As ideas come to you, you look along the arrows out from that central point and make a note along the most relevant arm. Or, it may be more relevant for you to jot down the events, bits of character traits and the clues in different colours. I sometimes do this, then take a picture of the whiteboard, download it to my computer and use it as the basis for my outline.

 

Techno methods

 Most writing software includes sections on research, characters, settings, and things to help the writer write the book. My only advice is to be familiar with what the package does, but only use those parts of it that are relevant for your way of planning your book.

 Instead of giving my opinion here, I will put a link to a review page and you can make up your own mind.

Book Writing Software (2020): Top 10 Pieces of Software for Writers (thewritepractice.com)

 Mind maps: As with the writing software, I state no opinions. But you can find out more here: 

Compare The 10 Best Mind Mapping Software of 2021 - The Digital Project Manager

 

Whichever methods you use and I emphasise they must suit your writing methods, only take from them what you need.

 So my last advice is to take a look at all these methods, try them out – many software packages have a one month trial – and see what is the best fit for you.

 Next month, I shall be covering Plot and Theme in your crime novel.

 

So you want to write a crime novel - Part 3. Research

 Research is absolutely key to the success of your book. Why? Because somebody, somewhere will know what you don’t and if you get your information wrong, you will lose a reader. I once read of the ‘stink of carbon monoxide’, whereas it is odourless. I’ve never read another book by that author.

So, the watchword with research is get it right and go the extra mile to make sure it’s right.

 Is your setting contemporary, recent past, historical, the future? That will massively affect your research and the behaviour of your characters. Someone on a 25^th century space mission to a distant star will have completely different behaviour/social mores/beliefs/knowledge than an 11^th century monk in England.

 Likewise, the country in which you set your novel will need to be believable. So, if your detective is in 19^th century Paris, you need to know what Paris looked like then. No point in mentioning the Eiffel Tower before January 1887 when its construction began and it didn’t open until May 1889, the lifts weren’t working properly and it took an hour to climb to the top. You may not need to put that in the novel, but you need to know it.

 Something as small as time can trip up the unwary novelist. We are so used to clocks now that it would be easy to make an error if you are writing historical novels. Sundials and water clocks have been around since before the time of Christ, but the first non-water clock in England was at Dunstable Priory in 1283 and its sole purpose was to regulate canonical hours. The first mechanical clocks did not appear until the 14^th century. Check your facts.

 Research your chosen setting thoroughly. There are plenty of online resources to help you.

Google Earth/Maps where you can “travel” along the roads your book takes place in. Yes, it may be a few years out of date, but not many.

 If your book is set in the future, common everyday things may have a more catchy name. J D Robb’s Eve Dallas books are set in 2060 New York, where they have wrist units that tell the time apart from other capabilities.

 Make your characters believable, but, as you are writing crime, your characters – good and bad – will have traits other genres do not need. I will say this in a later post, but don’t set them in a vacuum. All chars were doing something before the book opens; they had a life, work, went shopping etc. Make them real for your period and that means the language they use.

 My own view on language in historical books is not to be too welded to the truth of the period. In my own Tudor Engima novels set in an alternate Tudor history, I use a few slight differences, for example mayhap for maybe and I sometimes alter the word order to make it sound more archaic, but your reader must not have to wonder what your character is saying. This also applies to accents. I remember trying to read a Scottish crime book, which was probably very good, but written in such abstruse dialect I had no idea what anybody was saying.

 Don’t make your main character or your killer (or any character, come to that) all good or all bad. People are people and have been since we came out of the cave system. Greed, revenge, money, fear and love live in all of us; it’s part of our DNA, so although modern man has many resources to use in the implementation of the crime, his/her instincts are exactly the same as someone living in Ancient Egypt.

 Technology is beguiling for those writing books set in the future. The world really is your oyster, but, again quoting the J D Robb books, the author has a world where everybody’s DNA is on file, so dead bodies can be identified immediately and the technology also permits the investigating officer to determine the precise time of death. 12th century Brother Cadfael had to rely on his knowledge of where plants were found, properties of herbs etc. So, unless you are writing a book set in the 11^th century where your detective has been sent back from the late 21^st century, be very careful about what was available for your detective at the time your book is set.

 Your method of murder will also depend on the time your novel is set.  Firearms has an interesting history. The Chinese used fire lances in the 10^th century. The first cannons used in Europe were in the early part of the 14^th century and hand-held cannons in the late 14^th century. So check your ballistics. A rifle is not a pistol is not a revolver.

 A knife wound will mean blood spatter. Even if your novel is set before the forensics of blood spatter were documented, your detective will notice what the spatter looks like and, if he/she is experienced, will be able to surmise how the crime happened.

 If you use poison, be sure you know doses, effects and times of activity; ditto drugs. With some drugs, your killer will have to know where to source them and that, in itself, can be part of your plot. If your killer decides to strangle the victim, make sure your forensic knowledge is in accordance with the time in which your novel is set.

 With all your methods of murder, make sure you know what the post-mortem will discover and how the pathologist knows it.

 As with all research, you will only use a sentence or two in passing to add believability to your text. Do not be tempted to display your new-found knowledge because that will not only stop the flow of the novel, it will make your reader roll their eyes and shut the book. Do not preach.

If you would like to explore internet resources, I have included links below, but also a link to my own book, gleaned from over 30 years experience as an information professional and over 20 years searching the Internet. You can find my book here.

 Below are some of the resources you may find useful and I hope you have found this blog useful. Next month, I shall deal with outlining your book.

 Research Resources for Mystery and Crime Writers (writerswrite.com)

 7 Great Websites for Crime Writers | WordDreams... (wordpress.com) – USA emphasis

 Resources for Crime Fiction Writers (addictivebooks.com)

 England / United Kingdom - Guide to Online Primary Sources - LibGuides at University of California San Diego

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