(no subject)

[luciazephyr]

HEY YOU


YEAH YOU, READING THIS

I know a lot of the folks on my FList collect writing meta and advice. Does anyone have anything for writing a story that revolves around a crime? I have pages upon pages of notes for the Psych fic, but I have no idea how to structure something like this.

Any help, folks and fen?

-Lucy

Comments

[firefly99.livejournal.com]

How do you mean 'story about a crime'? Do you mean in terms of the forensic stuff, or do you mean plot structuring?

[lucia-tanaka.livejournal.com]

Plot structuring. It's... a series of crimes that my detective and fake psychic have to solve.

[firefly99.livejournal.com]

A lot of that depends on what you're trying to do. Are you trying to write a Classic Mystery? This is hideous (use this) but it's as excellent a list for the rules of the Classic Mystery as you'll find anywhere.

Personally, I know you only ever write forwards, but the best way to write a mystery is backwards. Start with the crime, and then plot backwards from that. What can the criminal do to give them away? What little clues will the hero notice that the cops won't catch? How will he find them? It helps to have a very concrete setting in mind, too, so you can immediately think you'll know what'll be out of place in that setting.

Another useful rule for any story is that it's always best if characters work for everything that happens to them, unless it's the lucky coincidence which starts the story off. That's especially important in a mystery. A character stumbling upon the conclusion of a mystery by coincidence is incredibly unsatisfying.

[lucia-tanaka.livejournal.com]

See. there's all that, but it's also a supernatural mystery. Hrm.

But I'm bookmarking your resources. Any help is appreciated at this point.

I think my biggest issue is I'm not a plot person. I do Five Ways and scattered narratives. RtF was the first time I had everything planned and had a clear course of action in mind. This is even more plot-driven than that. It'll be a learning experience, to be sure.

[firefly99.livejournal.com]

The supernatural doesn't change the rules; you're going to have to use the same rules as in the classic mystery, but with the supernatural elements as plot elements. Even if Mr Black got murdered by Miss Scarlet in the library with her using her telekinesis, you're still playing Cluedo.

What does the supernatural element add to the story?

Is it actually part of the main mystery? Are Holmes and Watson investigating the murder of a wealthy man whose body was found drained of all blood with two puncture wounds on the neck? If so, you'll need to use most of the usual mystery conventions, but with the supernatural part as one of the many elements in your puppet show. Treat it no differently to how you'd treat anything else in your story - obviously establish it properly with worldbuilding and so on, but keep it consistent and use it crucially in the solving of the mystery or the committing of the crime. (I can't really help you there. Just take your supernatural ideas to their logical conclusions and figure out how.)

Or is it a subplot? Is Holmes investigating the murder of a wealthy man who was found with a dagger in his heart, but at the same time attempting to hide the fact that he's a werewolf from Watson? If so, again, you'll be using most of the main mystery rules while writing the story, but with another genre (urban fantasy?) mixed in around the edges. (Of course, the true genius of writing a subplot is matching them up so that one helps the other along, but that's a planning issue and not something I can offer much advice with.)

IN SHORT, DON'T LISTEN TO ME, I STILL THINK MGS2 HAS A GOOD PLOT


EDIT: One more thing I just thought of -

When dealing with the supernatural, remember the reader will already be familiar with a SHITTON of supernatural tropes, even if the characters in the story aren't. I wish I hadn't used the 'body drained of blood with two puncture wounds on the neck' example earlier because it's totally perfect for this scenario, but let's go back there anyway - Holmes is investigating a drained body, fangprints on the neck, bat droppings the only crime scene evidence. Your reader will read the book and say 'it's a vampire', even if Holmes knows nothing about vampires and doesn't believe in them. If you then end the story with the reveal that the culprit was A VAMPIRE SUCKING HIS BLOOD TO FEED BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT VAMPIRES EAT, BLOOD and with a big fanfare, assuming it was as hard for the reader to figure out as it was for Holmes, with no trope knowledge, to figure out, your reader is going to hit the little X button with extreme force at how hard you've just insulted their intelligence.

To get around this, you can use your readers' trope expectations against them. Perhaps the murderer was a vampire, but that the victim was another vampire being drained as part of a political gambit on the part of the murderer. Perhaps the body was killed by a werewolf, who then punctured its neck and drained the blood with a suction device to make it look like a vampire did it, in order to spark a war between their two families. REFRAIN FROM JUST MAKING CRAP UP HERE, i.e. it wasn't a vampire, it was a zombie, but zombies in my story have fangs, drain peoples' blood and turn into bats.

[lucia-tanaka.livejournal.com]

There's actually supernatural elements int he main plot (the cases and the Tarot influence) and the subplot (Lassiter's relationship with Death and his long-ignored psychic abilities). Both are interconnected because with Lassiter's abilities and Death's help, no one would ever figure out about the supernatural element to the cases due to one of those SEP field plot devices (I love Douglas Adams, what can I say).

And I'm not going SMeyer the thing up. I'm reading as much of The Sandman as I can to incorporate that universe's rules into the story and I have tons of notes on the Tarot and how people usually mess up the cards and ignore the Minor Arcana altogether. That I'm not extremely worried about.

And Lemme say, Doing the Research is sometimes totally awesome. It even gave me a precedent in Gaiman's work for Death making deals with people and taking personal interest, which was a worry of mine for justifying, but now I can point to "The Time Of Your Life" and go hey lookie here.

I wish I was writing this in the MGS fandom so I could whinge at you about this more. You're immensely thought provoking and helpful.

[gwynevere1.livejournal.com]

Hi. I found your journal in a roundabout way, following a series of links. I just wanted to drop a note that I find this Psych story you keep mentioning really interesting, and I hope you finish it.