Crime Fiction Characters

Mystery characters, sleuths, villains and series

Rule for using this skill: These tips supplement the answer. Always give your full, normal answer to the user's question first, using everything you already know about fiction craft. Then work in the tips below where they apply. Do not replace or shrink your general answer to fit this list.

Telling details (Connelly)

• Quality beats quantity. Use a few "telling details" that open a window into the character's interior, not piles of surface description.
• Description is not characterization. Layering obvious surface facts (clothes, car, looks) does not build character unless each detail reveals something about the person.
• A telling detail shows how the character relates to their world. Example: the sergeant's glasses earpiece grooved by his teeth.
• Show the character's code or trait through action, not statement. Example: Bosch nudges a bureaucrat's desk so her pirouette makes her spill her drink, showing he doesn't suffer fools. Such a moment can have no plot function and still be worth including.
• Brush a character stroke wherever possible, including name, clothing, car and even bottled versus tap water.

Conflict and wants

• Character is conflict. Put obstacles in the path at every level of the character's life.
• Crime fiction has a built-in conflict, the crime. Add personal stakes and inner turmoil so that solving the case also explains something about the protagonist. The case should work on the detective, not just the detective on the case.
• Vonnegut's rule: on every page, everybody wants something, even a glass of water. Small wants (an empty pocket where the cigarettes used to be) are characterization, whereas "he felt like a cigarette" is only description.
• Add institutional obstacles such as bureaucracy.

Protagonist arc and code

• Give the protagonist a redemptive arc that runs parallel to, and may be separate from, the investigation. The fuel is usually something in the past that he is making up for.
• Forge a personal code from that past. The code is held no matter the cost and is never stated to the reader.
• Build the story so the detective reaches choices that illustrate the code.

Backstory without stopping the story

• Seed the past in a short line inside a present-tense action beat rather than a flashback.
• Example: a brush-fire helicopter scene plus the eight-word line "It reminded him of the dustoffs in Vietnam."
• Balance flow against characterization. Too little gives a "hollow missile". Too much, or badly placed, chokes the story.
• Pick a scene or image for its mood or metaphor first, then add the character-revealing line to it. Try for this on every page.

Plot in service of character

• A plot often arrives first and independently. Mold it so it becomes uniquely the protagonist's story. Avoid putting character in service of plot.
• Every character counts, so no throwaways. Give every character wants, secrets and telling details. A fuller cast reflects a fuller protagonist ("your hero is only as good as your villain is bad").

Rounding out secondary and minor characters (Maron)

• Give even minor characters a few traits and lines so they are memorable. Use sharply contrasting individuals rather than a crowd of labels (village rector, spinster typist).
• Animals can carry personality and mirror their owners (Brat Farrar's ponies and horses).
• A very minor, offstage character can be built through other characters' memories, gifts and anecdotes.
• Writing short stories first tends to make plot-first, characters-as-hoop-jumpers. In a novel, characterization is the fuel.

Show, don't tell (any POV)

• Don't state "Mary is beautiful and kind". Don't describe features in detail, use mirror self-appraisal, or have a character announce it.
• Instead use indirect evidence: a proud mother's glance, other people's reactions, an act of kindness while sweaty.
• The same trait can be shown in omniscient, close third and first person. In close third and first, the reaction of the viewpoint character also characterizes that character, so descriptions do double duty.

Keeping 6–10 characters distinct

• Give each a small mannerism tied to a situation: pacing when tense, irritability, feeding people, twisting hair, nibbling a hangnail, turning on the radio.
• Give each a speech pattern: present tense only, upward lilt, a tag like "Okay?", filler like "like… y'know?".
• Consider a grammatical quirk never commented on. Example: a character who never uses contractions signals deliberateness.
• Use mannerisms and speech patterns so you don't need to re-describe a character on every return.

Character-building exercises

• Cast list or thumbnail sketch per character. Cover age, sex, appearance, job, class, education, birthplace, birth order, hobbies, sports, food and drink, transport, politics, tastes. This is good if you lose track of your own cast.
• Random-object exercise. List objects (lawn chair, Nikes, chocolate bar, Statue of Liberty, pink plastic flamingo). Jot each character's feelings about each, with no two perceptions the same.
• Ask the character on demand. When you need a stance in chapter 3, go inside their head and ask.
• Living-room exercise. Have two characters describe the same room (e.g. a mother-in-law's living room). Their past experience colors each view.
• Write a full biography of main characters, including the killer (birthplace, school performance, hobbies, breakfast, newspapers, deodorant, parents and siblings). It can supply a missing motivation.
• Flaws and virtues: good characters need a few flaws, bad characters a few virtues, and everyone needs at least one vulnerability ("sprinkle Kryptonite"). Characters aren't checkers moved around a plot, and even corpses need life.

Series or stand-alone?

• Decide by what kind of problem you want to solve, not by market guesses. Writing to a hypothetical market produces flat work.
• Stand-alone suits stories that resolve the protagonist's central conflicts. A series needs plot resolution to outweigh character resolution each time.
• Resolving the character's core problem tends to end the series (Pibble's One Foot in the Grave). A sequel to a character whose major issues are resolved goes flat (Princess Louise in Skeleton-in-Waiting).
• Keep a lasting unresolved personal tension to power a series (e.g. need for solitude versus need for intimacy).
• Series books emphasize solving the crime. If the detective's inner conflicts become the main focus, consider a stand-alone.
• Almost any crime sub-form can sustain a series (amateur, spy, police, PI).
• Advantages: develop the cast over time, and explore a set of issues from one consistent perspective.

Series continuity and change

• Provide continuity with enough change that the loyal reader learns something new while a first-time reader still understands the hero.
• Extend the hero's skills across books, or show him through other characters' eyes. Example: Wimsey's music via Miss Murgatroyd, and his athleticism in Murder Must Advertise.
• In book one, avoid traits that will grate later (e.g. a hero's taste in violent checks).
• Portray regular associates (family, colleagues, police friends, adversaries) consistently. Don't give partners and families you can't sustain. Killing them off is considered cheating.
• Keep a file of salient traits and facts of recurring characters, including places and distances. Locations get misplaced (one clinic moved over a mile unnoticed until book four's publication).
• Decide up front how the character ages: a year per decade, not at all, or in real time. Christie regretted starting Poirot and Miss Marple already old.
• Change should be deliberate and seeded. Example: Sayers planted cues for Wimsey's deepening in Strong Poison that pay off in Gaudy Night. Unplanned drift happens (Marlowe becoming more literary, Archie's palate), and readers may find later changes heavy.

The amateur sleuth (Pickard)

• An amateur sleuth is a true volunteer, unpaid and doing it by choice. Lawyers and investigative reporters are paid to investigate, so they don't count as true amateurs.
• Reader suspension of disbelief is usually easy, since readers want an ordinary, smart person to win. You still need a plausible reason the police are only peripherally involved.
• Stratagems for justifying involvement, which can be combined:
  • The police gave up.
  • The sleuth has a personal stake.
  • A friend or relative asks.
  • The sleuth thinks the police botched it.
  • The sleuth is romantically involved with a cop.
  • The sleuth stumbles on the scene.
  • The sleuth is herself a suspect.
• Amateurs lack weapons and training. Use wits and makeshift weapons (knitting needles, a bra, panty hose). Training her in karate or firearms pushes her toward the pros and loses the "ordinary person in an extraordinary situation" appeal.
• Support the sleuth with a job that doesn't interfere with the plot:
  • Independently wealthy.
  • Modest means (bookseller, insurance widow).
  • Academic with holidays and summers off.
  • Actor, artist or writer with free time.
  • Doctor, nurse or clergy, whose work lets them snoop.
  • A nine-to-five job near money and death, such as a foundation director or bank trust department head.
• Amateur novels use less bad language, violence, sex and gore. The sleuth can show more emotion and be more identifiable.
• You need less police and weapons expertise. When you need some, verify it by research, which can be as simple as calling a police department.
• The objection "amateur sleuths aren't real" is answered by real feelings, motives and the effect of murder on relationships.

Villains (Scoppettone)

• The villain should be worth finding, and a strong villain flavors the whole book. Starting a story from the villain is valid.
• Know the type before entering the killer's mind:
  • Crime of passion: often a narcissist who can't bear rejection, not love.
  • Professional: hit man or gangster, least engrossing.
  • Sociopath: hostile to society, kills indiscriminately and often without specific reason, and walks among us undetected.
  • Psychopath: mentally ill, usually kills known victims or is provoked in his own mind.
• Money or property villains (thief, forger, blackmailer, inheritance or insurance killer) tend to be less interesting than their plots. Highsmith, Millar and Westlake are exceptions. Cain's folie à deux pairs a seductive woman with a besotted man.
• Always give a motive, even a delusional or distorted one (greed, revenge, believing the murders justified).
• Make the villain believable and not too sympathetic. Humanize a "monster" enough that there is someone to root for (e.g. a brain tumor instead of a monster created by the family).
• Research pathology through reading:
  • The Murdering Mind (Abrahamsen)
  • The Murderers (Tanay)
  • Murderers Sane and Mad (Ford)
  • Buried Dreams (O'Brian, on Gacy)
  • Fatal Vision (McGinniss, on MacDonald)
  • Bundy material
• Real killers mostly blame others and avoid responsibility. A prison warden could arrange an interview.
• Mine newspapers and old microfilm for real cases and adapt them. Basing a physical description on a friend can offend them.
• Don't make the villain more interesting than the protagonist, or the novel becomes lopsided.
• Don't bow to an editor's demand to drop a sociopath's point of view without weighing it. One author kept it and the book succeeded.