Friday, June 8, 2012

Re-Post: Writing and Research

This post originally appeared over on shortbreadstories.co.uk in support of the Million for a Morgue Short Story Competition. Russel is reposting here as he is still in the midst of redrafts. Normal service will resume shortly.

The best crime fiction – the best fiction – creates the illusion of reality. That is, the writer throws in just enough real life to distract from the bits he made up.
I suppose that’s what you call artistic licence.

Realism is rarely real.
 
But a good writer is always aware of what he is doing, and knows just how much reality he can allow to intrude on his fiction. After all, if all crime fiction were “real”, there’d be a lot more internal investigations and far too many scenes of filling out forms for us to care. Also, if crime fiction were an accurate reflection of reality, then no one would go out of doors for fear of the pervert serial killers who live at least three to a street in the fictional world of many crime fiction writers.
So to offset all the unreality of what we do, crime writers have to ground their work in some kind of reality. Val McDermid, of course famously uses the expertise of Dundee’s own Dr Sue Black to assist in upping the realism of her investigative procedures. By melding her own gothic sensibilities with the rigors of Black’s knowledge, McDermid creates a world that is at once artificial (the killer is generally always caught, Tony Hill never quite succumbs to a full and crippling breakdown that would mark the end of the series, the killer always has razor-sharp motivation for their crime) and utterly real (her knowledge of the terrible things that can be done to the human body, as well as her razor-sharp psychological insights, allow the reader to buy into the fiction).
Sue Black is, of course, one of the driving forces behind Million For a Morgue. If you don’t already know, Dr Black and the team are looking to raise 1 million pounds to fund a “centre for excellence” in forensic research. With the full force of the aforementioned Val McDermid and 12 other bestselling crime writers to back them up, this is one serious fundraising effort. The Morgue will be named for one of the 12 crime writers. And its research will have a global impact, assisting law enforcement around the world.

Not only that, but no doubt a knock-on effect of the project will be to inspire crime writers, and perhaps even present them with new challenges. As research improves on current forensic techniques, many crime writers will have to consider how their novels are to straddle that line between reality and fiction.

While it is possible to write a crime novel with little research, you will be caught out by eagle-eyed readers if the research basics aren’t even considered. It’s a lesson I learned early when I sent out first drafts of my novel, The Good Son, to trusted professionals in the industry. I found that I’d managed to confuse Scots and English criminal law and procedure. In fact, the first print run of the book includes a reference to a job that exists only in English law. That mistake was subsequently altered for future editions.

I did not have to worry much about forensics for my first couple of novels. Or police procedure. I was writing a private eye novel, and thought at first that I could get away with making it all up. But I soon discovered that this was impossible. Making my character an ex-policeman meant he had to know certain things about the law. And while PI’s are unusual heroes in UK crime fiction, they still exist in this country. Check out the Assiocation of British Investigators, and you’ll discover the profession is alive and well. During research for The Good Son, I found myself calling on the assistance of one of the UK’s senior eyes to help me get a sense of the world he saw every day. I remember the first time I phoned him, I got very excited when he had to hang-up mid-sentence due to being on a stakeout and needed to follow a suspect. I think, for him, it was routine. For me, it was a momentary adrenaline rush. I never did find out who he was following or why. But of course, that’s standard: even private eyes have to maintain a client confidentiality.

A great deal of research can now be done online, which is perhaps why it has become so important. If Joe Q Reader can look up some basic blood spatter information, then you should be able to as well. And you’d better, or the reader will call you on it and start to disbelieve further aspects of your work. But of course, you only want to include as much of your research as necessary in the book. If you put too much on the page, you slow the plot, and lose the reader just as much as if you’d made the whole thing up.

Research, then, is key for any crime writer. You don’t have to put it all down on the page, but you have to know enough to make your world ring true. You have to put in enough fact to disguise the outright fantasy (or, as its more generally known, “dramatic license”). As well as helping forensic research and law enforcement agencies across the globe, a project like Dundee’s Centre for Forensic Excellence will likely affect the way that crime writers approach their work. Its discoveries may change the way we look at criminal investigation and in order to keep their work plausible, crime writers like myself and the 12 bestsellers who have backed the project will have to work hard to keep our stories “real”.

2 comments:

chemistry journals online said...

Interesting post. Once after the research has completed there will be merits and demerits in the output. Many of the scientist after the research in the conclusion they will display only merits. But a good scientist is one who displays both merits and demerits in an output of a article.

Steven J. Wangsness said...

It really bugs me when writers don't get their facts straight. So when writing my little novel I tried to avoid giving more technical detail than necessary and definitely researched the rest. The internet absolutely makes research easier so there's no excuse not to do it now.