Crime Procedural tips and tricks...
I suggest it was Colonel Rochester in the laundry with the frying pan, AKA; so you want to write a crime procedural.
I do not claim to have any kind of expertise at this; mostly I flail blindly in the dark; but I have written crime procedurals, and I do plan to write them again, so I might as well conceptualise how it's done. Who knows? It might help me!
We start in the attic.
First off, there is no one right way of writing a mystery. There are several different approaches you can take.
1. The one most people think of, the 'whodunnit'; most of Agatha Christie's mystery novels employ this technique. There is a murder, several possible suspects, an investigator is brought in to examine them and they narrow it down to the single (or several, if this is the Orient Express) attacker.
2. The 'howdunnit'; we see the murder, we know who the perpetrator is; the joy is finding out exactly how it happened, and how the investigator is going to figure it out.
3. The whydunnit; you know what's happened and how it's happened, now you need to figure out the motivation behind it (this is usually veering more into the psychological thriller side of fiction.)
A crime procedural can fit into any of these, although usually it will be a whodunnit, and unlike a good Poirot often we don't have the luxury of an immediate cast of suspects to interview. The point of the mystery is to read the characters making their discoveries. It is often a tricky mix of character and action driven plot; characters work to uncover clues, but a lot of the time the information will come in a breakthrough they may not have been directly involved in. There is a fine balance between leaving enough clues for the ending not to be completely left field, but not revealing so much the reader knows who did it within the first ten pages.
Crime procedurals are meant to be fairly realistic; and therefore writing them in fan fiction is a long process full of research. This does, however, include reading other works of fiction of the genre you're writing in. Unlike professional writers, we don't always have access to the same levels of information (unlike television writers, for instance, who can happily pay someone else to do all their research for them.) And, because we're most likely writing a piece set in the 70s, not all the information we find is going to be applicable. So, I do recommend cheating. Immerse yourself in the world of crime; read non-fiction and fiction. And don't be afraid to handwave a little bit. I find the "la la la la la, it's fiction" approach often makes me feel a lot better. Yes, we want to write the best fan fiction we can, but, at the same time; it's fan fiction. Our livelihoods don't hang on how accurate our written interview procedure is.
And down the stairs we go.
In a crime procedural, an outline is pretty much a must-have, but the order in which you attack that outline is your choice. You should know things like setting, your victim, your investigators, and the culprit. Then, once you have those sorted, get into the nitty gritty of summarising scenes. This can be as vague as you like; but you should probably detail in your major clues.
In Life on Mars, your main location for the larger part of the story is likely to be the station; make it a character in its own right. Talk about the details of the smoke, the coffee-cup rings on tables. Build up a climate, an atmosphere to work in. Of course, you can't stay indoors all the way through the story; you need to visit the crime scene, say hello to Lenny Lowlegs, who saw him downstairs doing something suspicious with the rubbish. Movement, or at least the illusion of movement, is what makes a crime procedural different from many other stories. Things happen that the characters can't control! And then the characters do control what happens next. You're likely going to want to have as many 70s (and specifically 1973) details sprinkled about as you can --- small, seemingly insignificant things; kipper ties and russet wallpaper. There's places like lom_workshop and countless threads on TRA which should help with this.
You have to have some idea who your culprit is. You have to know why they did what they did; maybe not every last detail, but enough of the reason. There are many motivators, but they aren't necessarily motives. Was it jealousy? Greed? Revenge? By which means did they do this thing? How much of an opportunity did they have? Unless it's a double bluff, culprits usually have alibis; how did they set these up? This character should be a well-rounded individual, at least in your notes. How much of that gets written into your story is your choice, but it's a lot easier to write about them if you know them. Mysteries and crime procedurals are about people more than they are processes.
The same applies to the victim(s); although a lot of what you'll concentrate on with a victim was their relationship with others. How did other people perceive them? What were they known for? Why would they have been a target?
As for the investigators; well, I trust you know enough about them. To make the story sizzle and spark, you're going to want some conflict, but ultimately, in a satisfying crime procedural with a relatively happy ending despite the bloodbath, I advise that your characters work together in the end to solve the crime. Sam and Gene might come to blows over difference of method. Ray and Chris might have expectations heaped on them from high and be highly stressed. Annie and Phyllis might be competing at trying to show the boys up. But in the end, it's a team/joint effort. Decide early on whose point of view you're going to use. When you're first starting out it's best to stick to one; but as you develop, bouncing point of view is a useful device for setting up dramatic irony (the reader knowing more than the investigators realise they know.)
And your other suspects; don't be afraid to flesh them out either; give them individual quirks. Remember, they have to have at least one of these; motive, means or opportunity. When all is revealed, said and done, they probably shouldn't have all three.
I do most things on computer so I can cut and paste, but index cards are also very useful. Write your main clues on each card and shuffle them around until you have them in some sort of order that suits you. In a crime procedural the readers learn the facts at the same time as the investigators, even though they may not know exactly what they mean or signify. And you have to lay down these clues from the beginning. Not to mention add clues that lead to nothing; red herrings and misdirection are often needed to keep up the suspense --- mysteries are all about suspense.
What constitutes a good clue? Well; anything, really. The classic 'synthetic fibre', the welts on the chest, the suspect tripping over their words, the person who was seemingly in two places at once, the never-before-heard-from impartial witness, the footprint outside the window, the uncovered photograph, the disappearance of a key player. Whilst many of these are undeniably cliché, you can always play the "but would this writer really be that obvious?" game. Yes, yes they might. There is almost always a 'crucial clue', the piece of the puzzle that was missing from the start, that your investigators just couldn't get a hold of for whatever reason.
Into the cellar with you!
Once you know what you're doing, start writing. Keep things in mind, but try not to get too worried about the idea of reaching milestones or critical points; let the characters steer you. You can always go back after you've finished writing and edit to tighten everything up. Your initial ideas may change. They probably will. Don't be afraid to let things go. You can always use those elements in another story later down the track.
Make sure you add a clue in early. Have there be some piece of information your characters know they need, but don't know how to get. Lay down a red herring and show the pursuit, perhaps bringing it full circle so that the tangent actually gives the characters something they didn't know they were missing. Write, write, write, then edit and revise. Look at your outline again, your means, your motive, your opportunity. Run your story by a couple of beta readers. (Even though it looks like I don't use a beta reader a lot of the time; I actually do. It just looks a bit weird if I say "thanks to mum" in my notes, you know? I am often running my ideas by others.)
At the heart of your story should be your chosen protagonists; how they react to the case, what they want to happen, the development of their relationships with others. As I said before; most people actually read crime procedurals for the people, not simply the case. In a lot of professional pieces there are sub-plots; sometimes involving romance. There will often be an overarching theme. In fan fiction (and a lot of professional fiction) it's perfectly acceptable to concentrate more on how the characters feel about what's going on as opposed to BIG CLUE 1, BIG CLUE 2. After all, we have to care about what's happening --- you have to care about what's happening.
It isn't easy; it's really not. It takes a lot of diligent, careful work. It takes scrapping whole scenes; adding in new ones, editing maniacally. It takes discussion, and dedication. But in the end, it's worth it.
Links:
The Routine Autopsy
A Twelve Act Bare-Bones Plot
Writing Mysteries
I do not claim to have any kind of expertise at this; mostly I flail blindly in the dark; but I have written crime procedurals, and I do plan to write them again, so I might as well conceptualise how it's done. Who knows? It might help me!
We start in the attic.
First off, there is no one right way of writing a mystery. There are several different approaches you can take.
1. The one most people think of, the 'whodunnit'; most of Agatha Christie's mystery novels employ this technique. There is a murder, several possible suspects, an investigator is brought in to examine them and they narrow it down to the single (or several, if this is the Orient Express) attacker.
2. The 'howdunnit'; we see the murder, we know who the perpetrator is; the joy is finding out exactly how it happened, and how the investigator is going to figure it out.
3. The whydunnit; you know what's happened and how it's happened, now you need to figure out the motivation behind it (this is usually veering more into the psychological thriller side of fiction.)
A crime procedural can fit into any of these, although usually it will be a whodunnit, and unlike a good Poirot often we don't have the luxury of an immediate cast of suspects to interview. The point of the mystery is to read the characters making their discoveries. It is often a tricky mix of character and action driven plot; characters work to uncover clues, but a lot of the time the information will come in a breakthrough they may not have been directly involved in. There is a fine balance between leaving enough clues for the ending not to be completely left field, but not revealing so much the reader knows who did it within the first ten pages.
Crime procedurals are meant to be fairly realistic; and therefore writing them in fan fiction is a long process full of research. This does, however, include reading other works of fiction of the genre you're writing in. Unlike professional writers, we don't always have access to the same levels of information (unlike television writers, for instance, who can happily pay someone else to do all their research for them.) And, because we're most likely writing a piece set in the 70s, not all the information we find is going to be applicable. So, I do recommend cheating. Immerse yourself in the world of crime; read non-fiction and fiction. And don't be afraid to handwave a little bit. I find the "la la la la la, it's fiction" approach often makes me feel a lot better. Yes, we want to write the best fan fiction we can, but, at the same time; it's fan fiction. Our livelihoods don't hang on how accurate our written interview procedure is.
And down the stairs we go.
In a crime procedural, an outline is pretty much a must-have, but the order in which you attack that outline is your choice. You should know things like setting, your victim, your investigators, and the culprit. Then, once you have those sorted, get into the nitty gritty of summarising scenes. This can be as vague as you like; but you should probably detail in your major clues.
In Life on Mars, your main location for the larger part of the story is likely to be the station; make it a character in its own right. Talk about the details of the smoke, the coffee-cup rings on tables. Build up a climate, an atmosphere to work in. Of course, you can't stay indoors all the way through the story; you need to visit the crime scene, say hello to Lenny Lowlegs, who saw him downstairs doing something suspicious with the rubbish. Movement, or at least the illusion of movement, is what makes a crime procedural different from many other stories. Things happen that the characters can't control! And then the characters do control what happens next. You're likely going to want to have as many 70s (and specifically 1973) details sprinkled about as you can --- small, seemingly insignificant things; kipper ties and russet wallpaper. There's places like lom_workshop and countless threads on TRA which should help with this.
You have to have some idea who your culprit is. You have to know why they did what they did; maybe not every last detail, but enough of the reason. There are many motivators, but they aren't necessarily motives. Was it jealousy? Greed? Revenge? By which means did they do this thing? How much of an opportunity did they have? Unless it's a double bluff, culprits usually have alibis; how did they set these up? This character should be a well-rounded individual, at least in your notes. How much of that gets written into your story is your choice, but it's a lot easier to write about them if you know them. Mysteries and crime procedurals are about people more than they are processes.
The same applies to the victim(s); although a lot of what you'll concentrate on with a victim was their relationship with others. How did other people perceive them? What were they known for? Why would they have been a target?
As for the investigators; well, I trust you know enough about them. To make the story sizzle and spark, you're going to want some conflict, but ultimately, in a satisfying crime procedural with a relatively happy ending despite the bloodbath, I advise that your characters work together in the end to solve the crime. Sam and Gene might come to blows over difference of method. Ray and Chris might have expectations heaped on them from high and be highly stressed. Annie and Phyllis might be competing at trying to show the boys up. But in the end, it's a team/joint effort. Decide early on whose point of view you're going to use. When you're first starting out it's best to stick to one; but as you develop, bouncing point of view is a useful device for setting up dramatic irony (the reader knowing more than the investigators realise they know.)
And your other suspects; don't be afraid to flesh them out either; give them individual quirks. Remember, they have to have at least one of these; motive, means or opportunity. When all is revealed, said and done, they probably shouldn't have all three.
I do most things on computer so I can cut and paste, but index cards are also very useful. Write your main clues on each card and shuffle them around until you have them in some sort of order that suits you. In a crime procedural the readers learn the facts at the same time as the investigators, even though they may not know exactly what they mean or signify. And you have to lay down these clues from the beginning. Not to mention add clues that lead to nothing; red herrings and misdirection are often needed to keep up the suspense --- mysteries are all about suspense.
What constitutes a good clue? Well; anything, really. The classic 'synthetic fibre', the welts on the chest, the suspect tripping over their words, the person who was seemingly in two places at once, the never-before-heard-from impartial witness, the footprint outside the window, the uncovered photograph, the disappearance of a key player. Whilst many of these are undeniably cliché, you can always play the "but would this writer really be that obvious?" game. Yes, yes they might. There is almost always a 'crucial clue', the piece of the puzzle that was missing from the start, that your investigators just couldn't get a hold of for whatever reason.
Into the cellar with you!
Once you know what you're doing, start writing. Keep things in mind, but try not to get too worried about the idea of reaching milestones or critical points; let the characters steer you. You can always go back after you've finished writing and edit to tighten everything up. Your initial ideas may change. They probably will. Don't be afraid to let things go. You can always use those elements in another story later down the track.
Make sure you add a clue in early. Have there be some piece of information your characters know they need, but don't know how to get. Lay down a red herring and show the pursuit, perhaps bringing it full circle so that the tangent actually gives the characters something they didn't know they were missing. Write, write, write, then edit and revise. Look at your outline again, your means, your motive, your opportunity. Run your story by a couple of beta readers. (Even though it looks like I don't use a beta reader a lot of the time; I actually do. It just looks a bit weird if I say "thanks to mum" in my notes, you know? I am often running my ideas by others.)
At the heart of your story should be your chosen protagonists; how they react to the case, what they want to happen, the development of their relationships with others. As I said before; most people actually read crime procedurals for the people, not simply the case. In a lot of professional pieces there are sub-plots; sometimes involving romance. There will often be an overarching theme. In fan fiction (and a lot of professional fiction) it's perfectly acceptable to concentrate more on how the characters feel about what's going on as opposed to BIG CLUE 1, BIG CLUE 2. After all, we have to care about what's happening --- you have to care about what's happening.
It isn't easy; it's really not. It takes a lot of diligent, careful work. It takes scrapping whole scenes; adding in new ones, editing maniacally. It takes discussion, and dedication. But in the end, it's worth it.
Links:
The Routine Autopsy
A Twelve Act Bare-Bones Plot
Writing Mysteries