Let's Talk About Crime (In Your Story, Of Course)

I'd like to start this week's post off with something of a lore drop. While I've been a professional writer for going on the past 12 years of my life, my degree is actually in criminal justice. For those who are wondering why, my logic was that I wanted to write crime thrillers, and if I was going to do that I should have at least some idea of how the criminal justice system worked... and since I had to get a degree in something, I might as well double dip my research, right?

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.

Seriously guys... it pays to do your research here.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

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.

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.

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!

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

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And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Authors Literally Don't Have Time To Chase Trends

I've been a professional writer for over a decade now, and I was an amateur writer for a good chunk of time before that. And over all the years I've been doing this, there has been a recurring refrain that I've heard over, and over, and over again... and it's people who tell you that you should write X, Y, or Z kind of story because, "That's what's really hot right now!"

This is terrible advice on two levels. The first is that a lot of writers can't shift outside their normal genre, style, length, etc. on a whim, and it's going to show through if they're creating something just to try to get on the bandwagon. Secondly, though, unless you're Chuck Tingle, you probably can't write anything fast enough to jump on top of a trend before it's gone.

Seriously... how the hell does he do it?

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

Seriously... Writing Takes Time!

At minimum, a novel is 50,000 words. These days, though, most novels aim for 75,000+, with genres like sci fi and fantasy regularly going to 100,000 words when the books go to print. Let's be generous, and say that you can write 1,000 words per day... that's not impossible. So if you write a short novel you're going to take 50 days of work, without interruptions... a little bit less than two months. Or if you're going longer, 75 days or 100 days of work... so, 2-3 months for a meatier title.

But that's just the first draft portion!

There's also the scripting that happens beforehand (I usually take a few weeks to lay out the timeline of a novel before I start), as well as revisions getting the book ready for market (which can take another month or two, at best). If you're self-publishing then you have to do the layout, cover art, etc. to make sure your book is ready for the public, and if you're skilled and experienced this can take at least a week to get perfectly right. If you run into technical difficulties, it can take a lot longer. So, under ideal circumstances, you're looking at 2-3 months if you have rapid turnaround... probably closer to 5-6 if you can keep up the pace of that word count... or a year or more for a longer book.

And if you're going with a traditional publisher? There's the submission process (which can take up to a year in some cases), and even once your book has been accepted you're looking at months to multiple years for it to hit the market.

Given the trends these days last for somewhere between 7 hours on the short end, and a couple of months on the long end, authors really do not have time to allow what's currently popular to lead them around by their keyboard.

I gave this same advice for tabletop RPG creators over on the Azukail Games YouTube channel a while back, but I felt it deserved repeating. Because too often we take our shots forgetting that our audience is a moving target... if we aim at where they were, then we aren't going to hit them. We need to be out in front, leading them so that we hit where they're going to be by the time our book intersects their path.

No one can predict the future, and no one knows what will and won't get popular. So all you can do is to write the best books you can, share them as widely as possible, and make sure you understand who your ideal readers are.

Lastly... don't listen to advice from people who don't have any experience doing what you're trying to do. Your mom's bestie might really enjoy her book club, and your former college roommate might really think you would be a great fit for the romantasy genre, but unless someone is a professional book reviewer, an editor, a fellow writer, etc., it's just a bunch of hot air. Don't try to capture it in a balloon, hoping it will fly you away to the promised land.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

Use Your Social Media With Purpose (If You Want To See Results)

These days social media can seem like it's nothing but doom and gloom, scammers and grifters, AI slop and apocalyptic predictors. It's constant, and it can be overwhelming. However, while I see a lot of folks say they want to get off social media entirely, I would like to propose an alternative solution that I think would fix a lot of problems for folks who are sick of being overwhelmed by their pocket boxes.

In short, take control of your social media so that you are plugged-in for the things you want to be plugged into. Focus your attention on the things that serve your needs, and that you enjoy, instead of just letting everything overwhelm you all the time. Curate your feed, and start pulling the reins.

Trust me, it's better for you, but it's also better for the creators out there that you're trying to stay connected to.

There is a speed you can have between 0 and 60.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

You Are In Control (And Creators Need You To Use That Control)

I've said this before, but I'm going to keep saying it because it's important. Creators of all stripes (artists, authors, filmmakers, and so on) need an active, engaged audience in order for us to keep making things, and to earn enough money at the end of the month to pay our bills. And for smaller creators who don't have the backing of massive corporations, or huge budgets to jet set to big cons, or buy up advertising space, social media is our lifeline to our audience. The deck is thoroughly stacked against us as it is, and we need your help to pull us up out of the muck and mire.

It's our job to make art, tell stories, and offer you things you enjoy... but we are down at the base of the wall, stuck in quicksand, reaching up to you. We cannot grab the wall and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. We need you at the top of the wall to reach down to us, or offer us a rope, so that we have some way to get traction and move forward.

But a lot of folks out there mistake just clapping their hands and cheering with actually throwing out a lifeline... they aren't the same thing.

Let's see if I can make it clearer...

Let me belabor this metaphor a bit, because it is imperative that folks understand this setup.

So, you have your creators who are slowly being swallowed by quicksand at the base of a wall. They're scrabbling at the wall, trying to find a handhold to at least keep their heads above water, even if it isn't possible to haul themselves out of the quicksand entirely. At the top of the wall we have everyone in our potential audience. They're looking down at us. Some of the folks on top of that wall are cheering us on, trying to encourage us to keep going, and not to give up. They're sure we're going to make it! The problem is that for all that shouting, we literally cannot get out of this quicksand on our own.

Worse, there are some people on top of the wall with long poles that are actively trying to smack our hands, to poke us in the eye, and to shove us back down into the mire. Some of them just don't want us to get out. Some of them dislike us personally. Some of them just do it because they're in a bad mood, or they want to lash out. But unless there are people on top of that wall who put in the effort to lower a rope so we can grab on, we're going to drown sooner or later.

For the purposes of this metaphor, the stick-wielders are all the trolls that creatives have to deal with on a daily basis. They're the people who report our posts because they don't like them, the people who try to get YouTube to take down our videos, and the people who pirate our work. They're the people who, instead of trying to help, or just being neutral, put in their efforts to actively hinder us and make what we're doing even harder.

Authors who have advertising budgets and big corporations? They have a powered winch at the top of the wall to haul them up. Yes, they still have to write the book, draw the comic, make the video, etc., but they are being buoyed up by a force that is far stronger than the average trolls and naysayers can do anything to really hinder. A few slings and arrows might hit home, but the creators are going to climb enough that they aren't in any danger of falling back down into the quicksand as long as they have that financial backing.

The rest of us? Well, we need you all on the top of the wall to help pull us up. And the more of you we have helping, the less effort any of you need to put in individually.

But the key part of this is that you need to be purposeful and deliberate with your actions online. Just wanting us to succeed and sending good vibes isn't enough... we need actions to move the needle.

Moving With Purpose

A lot of folks use social media passively. They doomscroll, throw out a like when they see something that catches their eye, watch a video that looks interesting, but they skim along the surface. Put another way, if you were riding a horse you're in the saddle, and you're holding the reins, but you're mostly just letting the horse go wherever the hell it feels like going.

The more deliberate the actions you take, the more that horse is going to go where you want it to go.

Tweak the parameters, and you get far better stuff.

The algorithm pays attention to the things you interact with, and the rules you set. So if you don't want to see posts from certain individuals, you block them (I am telling you this now, leaving people, pages, etc., you don't want to see unblocked just invites them back into your feed... block them, and get yourself peace of mind). The more things you block off, the less clutter you'll see in your recommendations on Facebook, YouTube, etc. If you enjoy the content you find on a particular page, though, then join that group, follow the page, subscribe to that creator. Don't just tell yourself you'll remember, because you won't. More importantly, though, subscribing to something helps that group, that creator, that page get noticed by more people.

Taking action is the currency of social media, both positive and negative. If you see a video, a post, etc. that you like, sure, you can leave a like on it... but taking an extra step can have a much bigger impact. For example, if you leave a comment of at least 7 words, that boost the signal, making it more likely to be seen by more people. If you share from the original creator, that does far more to boost the post than if you just re-shared the original link on your own timeline, because shares are one of the metrics that the algorithm counts toward how much attention it should give a specific post.

Put another way, 25 people sharing a post about an author's new book from that author's page is weighed much more heavily than 25 people copying the link to the book, and making individual posts about it on their own pages.

And if you actually bought a book, or another piece of merch from a creator you like? Go the extra mile! Leave a rating and review on the platform you bought it from, because the products with the biggest numbers of ratings and reviews are the ones the algorithm pushes out, and advertises to other people.

Deliberate effort from an engaged audience is the fuel that makes an artist's career go forward.

With all of that said, if you need to take a break from social media, you should do that. However, take a moment to ask what it is you're taking a break from... because it's possible that just cleaning up the mess and replacing the things you don't like with things you do like will do wonders for how you engage with these information engines.

And if you have creators you want to succeed (again, whether it's me or someone else) we all need you to be active, engaged, and deliberate if you want to help us. The problem is that a lot of people think that cheering from the top of the wall is helping, while in reality you're just letting creators drown.

Toss us a line. Even if it's small, and you aren't strong enough to pull us up all by your lonesome, the more lines a creator has, the more people will notice, and the more people will throw out their own lines in order to help us keep breathing so we can keep creating.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

Environmental Storytelling (A Study In Subtly Interacting With Your Audience)

The warrior entered the ancient chamber. The wind sang across the stones, and the light from his lantern danced across carvings from an age forgotten by history. Figures descended into the Earth carrying fire and steel, and never emerged again. Something cracked beneath his step, and he looked down. The brittle bones of an armored skeleton were spread across the floor. The dead warrior lay on their belly, one arm outstretched toward mouth of the chamber, and the sky beyond. The living warrior strode past, continuing deeper.

He found more bones. More broken armor and shattered weapons. All of them had their faces turned back toward the sun, their arms grasping for something they would never again feel.

If you've listened to any discourse about film, video games, or even art in general, then chances are you've heard of the concept of environmental storytelling. While it's more challenging to do in writing prose, that doesn't mean this concept can't be useful... especially if you're someone who has had a problem with showing rather than telling your audience what you want them to see.

When details can be important, but you want that importance to be subtle.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

When The Environment Adds To The Narrative

The idea behind environmental storytelling is that aspects of the environment that your reader (or viewer, or player) enters contribute to their understanding of what is going on without you explaining what it means directly.

As an example, take the introductory passage above. The presence of the warriors who came before is a bit of creep to add to the scene, yes, but all of the corpses appear to have been trying to escape from the end of the tunnel. Does that mean the monster down there allowed them to leave, but only once they were too wounded to be a threat? Is there a poisoned air in the cavern below that takes a while to kill those exposed to it? Or were these warriors meant to be human sacrifices, and those who tried to leave were killed by guards above?

We don't know... but just stating this detail as a fact puts it into the reader's mind. It shows them something about the environment, but without explaining the meaning (in the moment, at least). This primes the reader to be looking for an explanation, or to seek out something to make the earlier passage make sense. As such, they're going to be paying close attention as they look for further clues.

Everything is part of the environment... everything.

Another example is something that would make sense in the world of gaming... where the environment is something players have to actively interact with to understand the unfolding narrative.

Say that in the palace there is a small shrine near the Hall of Kings. A headless statue of a huge man sits with its hands out as if to hold a blade, but there is no sword there. A plaque simply reads, "In memory of the Lion Prince." Who is this? What does it mean? Well, we don't know, but again, that's added to the ongoing narrative as something that exists in this world. Then as the characters travel and explore the world further, they find an order of knights who all wear stylized helms in the shape of roaring lions. It is tradition for these knights to never remove their helms, or to let others gaze upon their faces. As the narrative goes on, a player may find that a particular sword has been handed down among the masters of this order... a sword of huge size that was purportedly wielded by their founder, who came from the West bearing many wounds. Those who see this sword may note that it is made of the same star steel carried by the royal family of the nation their quest began in to this very day. This implies, even if the narrative doesn't outright state it, that the Lion Prince left the land he was born to, traveled far to the East, and became the head of an order of warriors who adopted his heraldry, fighting style, and personal honor code.

Now, in a game, this could be left in the background as an Easter egg for players to discover if they wish to. But in a film, a novel, and so on, the mystery of the missing prince (and any possible legacy he may have left behind) should be part of the story you're trying to tell. It doesn't necessarily need to be the A plot of your book, but a strong B or C plot is probably a good idea.

A Light Touch Goes A Long Way

Environmental storytelling places a lot of trust in your audience. It expects them to be curious, to analyze what they read or see, and to dig down beneath the surface and connect dots. However, not everyone is going to pick up what you're laying down, which is why it's important to have a character to summarize important points once revelations happen, or events are set in motion.

A good way to think about environmental storytelling is to consider it in terms of a mystery. All the clues should be there in the text, and present for your reader to pick up on. Whether it's pry marks around a lock, or a spat of mud high on a wall where it shouldn't be, or a bruise on a body that hints at foul play or secret abuse, the clues to figure out what happened should be on the page for your readers to see as they follow along with the detective. And when the scene happens where everyone is brought into the drawing room, and the detective reveals the mystery, the audience can follow the clues (and understand the meaning) as they're laid out.

The difference is that with environmental storytelling in general, your reader might be the only one trying to deduce what's happening. Still, the clues need to be present, because that is how you get active readers to follow your breadcrumbs!

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!