So you want to write a crime novel: Part 10 - Dialogue

 

Dialogue is one of the trickiest aspects of writing a novel. The plain truth is that the dialogue we read in books is nothing like the dialogue we use when we actually speak and interact with other people. When we are face to face with someone, we use their facial expressions to interpret what they are saying. That feeds how we then respond. 

That cannot happen in a book unless you actively make one character—your POV character use others’ facial expressions as part of your deductive plan.

 If for example you have a group of characters who are all familiar with each other, their habits, and anything that the group uses will be familiar to all. Let’s say we have a group of security consultants in a thriller—if one character then says, for example, “We can ask our IT guy, Michael.”, this becomes unbelievably clunky dialogue. The group knows their IT guy is called Michael. The person saying the sentence knows the IT guy is called Michael as does the person listening to the sentence. “Give it to Mike, he’ll sort it,” would be far more realistic while still conveying information.

 The secret to successful dialogue is making it sound effortless and realistic. Widespread reading in your particular genre will soon aid you in identifying who writes excellent dialogue and who does not. Knowing the difference is key. One thing I would highly recommend is that you go to YouTube and watch small scenes from films to get an idea of how written dialogue can sound real. Look up Oscar winners for screenplays and go find their work.

As a writer, you should always be aware of people around you in public situations. Listen to their speech patterns. Listen to what I call the music of their sentences. You will find that someone who speaks in a Yorkshire accent will not speak the same song as someone from Norfolk, for example. Eavesdropping is an essential part of learning how to write effective dialogue.

 Dialogue is not just communication between characters. It gives information to the reader. If you are writing a crime novel written in the first person, one of your biggest problems is that whatever that person witnesses is all that person knows. So if for example Georgia Pattison, needs to know that X has happened, she needs somebody else to tell her it has happened because she was not there to witness it herself. Phone conversations and eavesdropping are useful for this. If the book is written in the third person, this issue becomes less of a problem.

 One of the most common problems writers encounter in writing effective dialogue is that because they are creating the speeches from within their own brain, it is very easy to fall into the trap of all the characters’ dialogue sounding the same. The same speech patterns, the same rhythm. But, not only will the words each character uses be different, their phrasing will be different: the emphasis will be different. 

The successful writer must pick this up and encompass it. One way to do this and I think it is especially important in the crime novel, is to know your characters inside out - and this includes their speech patterns and the vocabulary they use. For example, your villain, Hugo, because of his background/upbringing/goals, will have different patterns and vocabulary from Inspector Daniels with his upbringing etc.

What does Hugo’s voice sound like? Is it a snide voice? How does his view of the world and his place in it affect his speech patterns?

Your dialogue should reveal something about the character who is speaking. If it is a stand-off between your protagonist and your antagonist, they may have different but related goals. Hugo will want to avoid arrest. Daniels will work towards solving the crime and arresting Hugo. That will affect how they interact with each other.

 As an exercise, let us pretend that Hugo has slipped away from his office, come home, murdered his wife, and slipped back to his office. Inspector Daniels is the Senior Investigating Officer. Hugo, being the husband, is his prime suspect. Now, you must decide how clever or how sloppy Hugo has been in the execution of this crime. That will affect how Inspector Daniels interviews Hugo and how Hugo's ego believes he can pull the wool over the inspector’s eyes.

Now write the scene. It doesn't have to be long. Remember to make your dialogue individual to each man so that the reader does not need to read many “he said/she said”. The aim of this exercise is for you to make it clear to the reader who is speaking.

If the dialogue is a long one, you can have one character say the other character’s name. For example Daniels could say: 

' Hugo, we checked with your office. Your car was not in its parking space for 45 minutes at the time your wife was murdered.'

'Oh, for heaven's sake, this is stupid. I've just lost my wife and you're wittering on about where I parked my car. I don't suppose you have a specific time of death yet. You see, I do know about how tricky TOD is for pathologists. I'm not the moron you seem to think I am.'

'We have witnesses who are adamant your car was not in its space. Why?'

'If you must know, inspector, I parked at the other end of the car park this morning under a tree out of the sun. If you had a Merc., you'd do the same.'

'Then where were you? Your secretary couldn't find you.'

Daniels is keeping his sentences short and succinct while baiting them to make Hugo lose his cool. Hugo's sentences are longer with what he thinks are appropriately condescending comments, trying to undermine Daniels, make him believe Hugo is superior, and must be treated with more respect. It isn't working. Or, if it does work, you have to find a way to make Daniels realise he has been manipulated and formulate a plan for the next time he interviews Hugo.

Over to you. You aren't trying to write a crime novel here, just a short scene, so there is absolutely no pressure, but a lot of fun to be had.

 

 

So you want to write a crime novel: Part 9. Focus

 

The word focus has many meanings. Concentration is the definition that most people think of first. However as a writer focus can mean many things. It can encompass discipline, habits, and anything else that will aid you to become a more aware and mindful writer.

All writers need to exercise focus but for the crime writer the focus must be maintained to ensure that you have placed your clues correctly, you are being completely fair to the reader, your characters have revealed or hidden something from the reader, and you have worked out the balance of your scenes. Every scene must drive towards the conclusion, which is the revelation of the killer.

 So my first advice regarding focus would be for you to write notes about the scene you intend to write. Jot down the first sentence of your scene, leave a few lines and write the last sentence of your scene. By doing this you know your start and end points and clarified what you are trying to achieve. On the lines in between those two things, write the key points that you must cover. These will include actions by your characters, a seeded clue or a little revelation that might be a red herring taking your reader up the garden path or a huge clue that is so obvious the reader will be immediately suspicious that it might be a red herring. Then when you begin to write, you know where you are going, but I would always advocate leaving a bit of leeway so that if your brain suddenly thinks wait a minute, if I make Roger do X, that will confuse everybody. By making notes, you will immediately aid your focus for the scene.

 What can affect your focus? Knowing what you are going to concentrate on in your writing session, dealing with your surroundings, whether that be noise or interruptions or making sure that there is nothing in your immediate environment that is going to distract you. This includes family! Do not be apologetic about your writing. This is important to you and nobody, be it your mother who thinks it is a little hobby she can interrupt for a chat about nothing, or email, phone calls should be permitted to distract you and take your time away. 

  Focus is a time-limited activity. Some writers use “timed sprints”. These can be 30 minutes of timed concentration where you just write, followed by physical activity, be that walking around the house for 10 minutes jogging up and down the stairs or, as in my case, putting on a short 10-minute playlist and dancing. The physical act of moving about re-energises the neurons in your brain and makes you more effective when you sit down for your next timed sprint.

 Where you write. When you research the habits of successful authors, you will find that this is not a one size fits all situation. The crime writer, Ian Rankin, for example, can only write in his office at home in Edinburgh or his farmhouse in France. Nora Roberts used to say her office was a notebook and wherever she and the notebook went, that was where she wrote because she could still maintain supervision of her children but jot down her story at the same time. Some lucky writers, of whom I am one, have a dedicated room in their house that is an office. Others write on the bus going to work or have to squeeze in a couple of hours when they come home from work. 

Some writers go outside the home.  JK Rowling wrote her first Harry Potter book in the coffee shop. I have used and libraries. A new place to write occasionally kickstarts your brain into a new form of creativity. If you do decide to occasionally or even all the time, write in public spaces, you need to have a portable office that you can take with you. In other words plenty of pens, your laptop, (make sure it is fully charged!), notepads, earplugs and music, your notes and anything else that you think you will need.

 I use an A5 “activity” diary. This gives me a Monday to Friday A5 page-a-day book in which to write down my objectives for each day and how much time I will devote to each activity. At the end of each week I can review the past week, write down what went well, write down what didn't and   what will make me happy to achieve in the next seven days.

Reviewing your week in this way gives you the impetus to carry on. It is also invaluable in assessing where you are in a project and if you need to change some of your forward planning. In short, especially if you are also holding down a job, and/or have a family as well, you need something that is going to keep yourself on track.

 Being a slave to your habits will stultify your brain, so change them about from time to time. Get those brain neurons firing in a different pattern. Old habits are hard to break. They fight for their existence and they are very persuasive, because if you are leading a very busy life, it is so easy to give in to the habit. But just because you can do something does not always mean you should.

 Focus, discipline, habit, call it what you like. But the plain fact is that without it not only will you never write a book but you certainly will not be able to write a crime novel. I hope some of the ideas I have given you above will help you in your writing journey.

 

A few formidable ladies of history

 

We have, in general, been led to believe that women are the weaker sex. If we look at women over the last 1000 years, there are so many unsung influential women, it is impossible to even scratch the surface in a blogpost.

It is quite irritating that going back to before the 17th century, we only tend to know about women who were either royal or notorious. In the royal category, we can put Eleanor of Aquitaine. In 1190, at the age of around 65, Eleanor rode across the alps in winter to Navarre to fetch Berengaria and escort her to her wedding with Eleanor’s favourite son, Richard the Lionheart.

Another doting royal mother comes into the category of formidable women. Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. She worked tirelessly at the courts of Edward IV and later Richard III ensuring that Henry, in exile in Brittany, was kept abreast of events. When Richard’s blunt way of dealing with people made him so unpopular, Margaret steered her son’s journey from exile to the throne and the formation of the Tudor dynasty in 1485.

In the notorious category, I have to mention Cleopatra who is alleged to have said ‘I will not be triumphed over.’ She was—mythbuster—not beautiful but struck Julius Caesar and Mark Antony with her wit and charm. Another memorable woman is Bess of Hardwick, who survived four husbands, growing very wealthy in the process. A close friend of Elizabeth I, she also remodelled Chatsworth and built Hardwick Hall.

Moving forwards to the 20th century, Emmeline Pankhurst endured horrendous abuse in Holloway Prison when she went on hunger strike to win votes for women. And here I must mention Rosa Parks the African-American civil rights activist who in 1955 refused to give her seat on the bus to a white man. Hands up who knows the name Professor Sarah Gilbert. She is the scientist who designed the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine in an unbelievably short time and has saved countless lives.

Another group of heroic women who have only lately been acknowledged, worked tirelessly in constant danger to help the allies win World War II. I refer, of course, to the women agents of SOE. Some of these agents are now household names. Noor Inayat Khan, Codename Madeleine was the first female radio operator infiltrated into France. She was betrayed to the Gestapo, escaped at least twice, and was finally kept in chains and tortured for information. She revealed nothing. Her final word before being shot in the head was Liberté.

Most female agents were awarded civilian MBEs by the war office. Noor was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1946 and only in 1949 did the British government award her a George Cross. Violette Szabo was also posthumously awarded a George Cross. She is noted for keeping up the morale of other captured agents. She, along with Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe, were executed in Ravensbruck by being shot. Bloch and Rolfe were so harshly treated, they were carried to their deaths on stretchers. For anyone interested in reading more, I heartily recommend Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks. I have read thousands of books but this one is definitely in my personal Top Ten.

It was reading about the heroines of SOE that inspired me to write Distant Shadows. Although the main action of the book takes place in 1953, my heroine, Peggy, was a radio operator in France in 1944, whose Paris cell was betrayed to the Nazis. She escaped but returned to England spitting accusations of treachery and was swiftly bundled out of SOE. Now in 1953, Peggy has uncovered a fraudulent operation relating to the assignment of contracts in the rebuilding of London. Outraged at the cynical duplicity of the perpetrators, Peggy writes anonymously to her old SOE supervisor. But in so doing, has she enabled the traitor from 1944 to find her again?

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

 

 

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.