Re: New Author needs help!!

sandy goes:

I've just joined a local writing club and am loving it. So far I've
just been writing about my adventures but what I'd REALLY like to do
is write a novel. I've been sitting down at my computer and writing
out characterizations of my charactters until they almost seem like I
know them. And I've been making an outline of my plot...which is
where I'm running into trouble.

My "book" is a murder mystery of sorts and I keep finding that I need
more information about how law enforcement works. Like us all, I've
seen a lot of movies over the years that have given me some supposed
information but I've still got questions. For example:

1. Will shooting a paintball gun leave powder residue on your hands
indistinguishable from a real gun?
2. If someone were to use a key (that had been given to them in the
past) and use it to enter a home without real permission and set up a
tape recorder, would any information on that tape be permitted in a
courtroom? What would the police do with this information (and would
the woman be in any trouble for having entered the home??)

I've tried asking these on a police group but they are ignoring me
(they must get a LOT of pleas for help like this).

I live in a tiny town and I doubt that our policeman (or do we have 2
now?) would really know anything.

Any suggestions on how to research this??? I'd like to make my book
as realistic as possible. I hate it when I read a book and find
unrealistic errors of this sort.

Thanks for your help and suggestions.

Why are you writing a police procedural when you know nothing about
police procedure, including how to find out about it? Why not write
about the world you live in?

People who read detective fiction are a very tough audience, and they
will be merciless if you are not completely on top of your subject.
The way to do that is either to be a law enforcement professional, as
a lot of writers in the genre are or were; or to research every detail
like a ***, and run everything past one or more professionals to
ensure authenticity.

The alternative is to write it some other way. Perhaps your
protagonist could be a wide-eyed student who doesn't know anything
about the way things work, but is determined to get to the bottom of
the case come what may etc. The innocent-abroad is another staple of
crime fiction from Miss Marple on up to the present day. The advantage
is that your reader need never be smarter than your heroine is,
because you'll be doling out the hard facts in small doses, as you're
able. You'll still need to do a lot of research, of course, but it
won't have to be flawless. Any gaps in the information given will be
gaps in your hero's knowledge, and that's no more than we expect, you
see?


--
AH
http://grapes2dot0.blogspot.com




.

Loading