While I have released some unusual noir mysteries in the form of my hardboiled cat novels Marked Territory and Painted Cats, most of my work has been outside the realm of straight crime stories since I graduated. However, I have dusted off my degree for more than a few editorial critiques, and this week I wanted to talk about crime in our stories.
Because a lot of the time people get this very wrong.
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| Seriously guys... it pays to do your research here. |
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Corpus Delecti (Body of The Crime)
All right, let's begin at the beginning here. If you are going to write a story where a crime constitutes an important part of your plot, regardless of whether it's a private detective story, a cop drama, or just a novel about an average Joe getting in over his head, you first need to know and understand what crimes are being committed. You don't need to be able to cite case law, but it is a good idea to look up what constitutes a crime in the place where your story is being set, and what the circumstances are when it comes to your plot.
And make sure that you understand a protagonist isn't immune to prosecution... that will break people's suspension of disbelief.
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| Malice aforethought you say? Interesting... |
Just as an example, if your protagonist comes home to find his wife cheating on him with another man, and that man grabs a knife off the bedside table before charging at the protagonist, then your lead could absolutely pull a gun off his hip and shoot the guy dead while making some kind of claim for self-defense. This will still be an extremely messy situation, and there may be legal pressures put on him, but meeting deadly force with deadly force (particularly if the state has castle doctrine, where a resident has no duty to retreat from their own home) means you could portray this as a situation where he has no legal consequences for this act once all the facts come out and the police wrap up their investigation.
However, say that when he came home and caught his wife with her lover, said lover didn't try to escalate anything. He put his hands up, said he didn't want any trouble, he had no idea she was married, he'll just go. Your protagonist doesn't have that legal cover in this situation, and gunning the guy down would likely be manslaughter at best. But if it turns out he knew his wife was cheating on him, and he came home unexpectedly to catch them? That could be read as murder, because it required planning, which could be read as malice aforethought (typically a major element of a murder charge).
This is the main way a lot of folks end up messing up crime in their stories; they don't actually know the name of a crime, or what the parameters are that define that crime. And you could argue that some of that will be up to lawyers and courts in the story, as average folks might not much care about the difference between manslaughter and murder, or understand the differences between degrees of a felony when it comes to theft, dealing controlled substances, arson, etc. You, as the author, should have a working idea of what defines these crimes, though, because characters who should know need to sound authoritative on the subject.
Because if your protagonist is just a regular schmuck who gets caught up in a criminal conspiracy, no, they don't necessarily know what's happening. But if they're a lawyer, a cop (current or former), or even a gangster, they should have some idea if what they're doing/getting involved with is illegal, and exactly how illegal it happens to be.
What's The Point?
Understanding the crimes in your story is the first part of the battle... the next part, though, is that you have to actually fit those crimes into your story in a way that makes sense. After all, people don't just go around committing serious felonies just for the hell of it. So you need to understand why they're doing something before you just throw crimes into your book to escalate things and add drama.
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| Oh yes, those are crime boxes. Full of crime, they are! |
Let's take a situation that happens in a lot of thrillers... someone witnessed a cop kill someone. Their life wasn't in danger, there was no mistaken intent, the officer just executed someone. Maybe the cop then tossed the body in the woods and tried to hide it, or maybe they called in a report, planting evidence on the corpse that would support a fabricated story, but there's a witness that saw them just gun somebody down in cold blood. Now, the question you have to answer as the author, is why? Why did that cop kill this person?
There's a slew of reasons to that question! Off the top of my head you might find:
- The cop is a serial killer, hiding behind their badge to protect themselves.
- It was personal, and the victim wronged the cop in the past.
- It was business. The cop is on the take, and did this on behalf of his criminal bosses.
- It was business. The cop extorts people, and he's sending a message to others.
- The cop had a vendetta. He knows (or thinks) the suspect was guilty of a crime he couldn't prove.
These are just a sample of motivations, but the point here is that the crime by itself is just one side of the coin... the other part is how that crime fits into your narrative. The crime is an element, but you need to use it to cast shadows on the rest of your plot to create the proper atmosphere for the rest of your story.
For instance, if the cop is a serial killer, does this become a game of cat and mouse as the witness tries to get people to believe them, while the cop is trying to silence them... perhaps permanently? If the cop was acting as an enforcer for a syndicate, is his action merely a stepping stone in the investigation, breaking open a wider case of corruption where the protagonist takes on the mob? If it's personal, is the witness someone who knows the cop? Is this a secret they now share, and it begins to poison their relationship as the killer gets more and more nervous, while the witness begins to worry his friend will kill him to keep the secret?
The specifics of the crime haven't changed... but the dramatic element it represents is different in each story suggestion. And while it might be true that just starting with a crime is a good way to begin storyboarding your book, it's rarely a good enough place to just begin your first draft... especially if what you're writing is a mystery. And for that reason, I would suggest folks take this blog entry, and combine it with the advice I gave in When Writing A Mystery, Start At The Middle of The Onion.
Putting these two things together really helps you figure out just what is happening in your plot. And once you know that, all you have left to do is to figure out how your protagonist interacts with these events, and watch the dominos start to fall!
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