I
resorted to writing murder in order to quench my insatiable hunger for killing
people in real life. However, my son has told me that I shouldn’t admit that
online just in case it blows up in my face ten years down the line when I’m
being implicated in a series of brutal murders. So, in order to ensure this
doesn’t happen, I will make something up J
Where
do I find the thrill in writing murder? I will answer this question with one
word, and then I will go into a little more detail afterwards. The word
is: CHALLENGE.
I
love a challenge, and this type of story will always pose a number of them
throughout the writing journey¾and not the actual tapping of the keys and
bringing something up on screen that reads well.
I’ve
resisted the temptation to tell you how much I love balancing an exciting
chase to catch a frightening killer. The graphic murder sequences, gruesome
crime scenes, and the opportunity to create clever twist-and-turn moments that
will make the reader believe one thing, only to surprise them and give them
something else they never expected.
You
are also writing about people who are at very dark time of their life
(family of victims), or people who are around them at this very dark
time of their life (investigators). Tension and conflict swirl around, but in
the back of your mind you wonder if they’re going to be killed next, or will
they be the ones doing the killing?? This is all ‘hairs standing
up on the back of your neck’ material.
Yes,
I LOVE that part of writing murder, and it is a thrill after you have written
the book and (hopefully) it all falls into place when your readers post their
positive reviews and feedback.
However,
I thought I’d tell you another ‘thrill’ I get out of writing murder, and it
starts early on in the process, once you have the bare bones of the story
floating around.
When
you write murder, you have a lot of viewpoints that you can tackle your story
from, and that challenge alone is a great responsibility (to yourself, too) in
order to tell the best murder story you can.
This
choice of approach (character viewpoint) will impact the type of murder story
you end up telling, and it can throw your story in a multitude of unexpected
directions. This has happened to me in the past, and it has transformed my
story in a big way. I would also like to add that this isn’t limited to a
murder story, but the change is far more dramatic.
Okay,
here we go:
You
will need at least one murderer, at least one victim, a nice mix of suspects,
and at least one person trying to find the murderer (usually the police, but
this can also be vigilantes, friends or family).
Each
victim will usually have a family or friend(s) that will be affected. So, when
you’re writing the murder story, you have a number ofviewpoints that you
can explore and integrate into your story. You have the power to utilise as
many of these viewpoints as you wish, but this in itself can be a challenge¾one
that I find very exciting and very frustrating in equal measure.
Let
me refer to my debut novel, Hourglass Heights: a supernatural
murder-mystery about a troubled detective investigating a string of brutal,
unexplainable murders at an apartment building. I told my story through the
point of view of the detective. I gave Marcia her own set of problems and
issues to overcome, along with a brutal murder case. I ended up with an erotic,
supernatural murder-mystery.
If
I’d chosen to tell my story through the eyes of one of the residents instead,
then it would have still been a murder story (same murder event), but it would
have been closer to a drama.
My
resident (let’s go with Daniel – the witness who heard ‘something’) wouldn’t
have been involved in the investigation, so he wouldn’t have been privy to most
of the facts that shaped Marcia Tanaka’s story. He wouldn’t have been involved
in the investigation OR the eventual capture or demise (I’m not going to give
it away!) of the killer, so we would have to cross out the words supernatural,
erotic and murder-mystery from the genre description. Daniel would also have
been ruled out as a suspect. In fact, we would have been left with no suspects,
only Daniel’s suspicions, which wouldn’t have been based on facts found through
the investigation.
Daniel
wouldn’t have known who (or what) killed the people in the building, so there
would be no chase or capture in any way. He wouldn’t have been aware of all the
backstory behind the owners of the building, and we wouldn’t have met Travis
Knight – who played a big part in the second half of the story - a character
that most of my readers have loved to hate. We would certainly meet a number of
new characters as a result too, which could have created other directions and
events in the story.
I
mentioned earlier that all murder stories need a murderer, victim, suspect
etc.., but I’ve ruled ‘the murderer’ out of Daniel’s version of Hourglass
Heights. Well, yes and no. There would still be a murderer, butwe would
never see him or her. We would just witness (through Daniel) all the residual
damage of his murders.
With
Daniel at the helm, I would say it would be more drama than thriller (unless he
started to investigate the murders himself – hmmm!!). Options. Exciting. And a
challenge to explore the possibilities of a man like Daniel taking it upon
himself to investigate.
Ian
David Noakes
Author/Screenwriter
(Hourglass Heights)
Article by Ian David Noakes
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